10 months ago, I made the move to the charming city of Shanghai. It’s incredible how in this neither long nor short amount of time, I gained so much in terms of skills, experience, and knowledge I never expected I would ever garner in my lifetime. Shanghai is truly a city that has opened my eyes in so many ways.
In these 10 months, my main focus was to work on my singing, dancing, and language skills and I can confidently say that I’ve achieved exactly all I was hoping for and more. There is definitely still room to grow and improve (there is always room to grow and improve… even as a professional!) but I am undoubtedly very happy and excited about my progress and current level of my skillsets at this point in time in this respect.
Other than skill honing, during this time, I had the pleasure of working with incredible music producers to record 3 singles to be launched as an Extended Play (EP) in the time to come.
Travelling back and forth Shanghai, Kuala Lumpur and Singapore was the common theme in the past year in preparation for my EP as one of my music producers, 黃一 (Aaron Huang), from The Voice China is based in Shanghai and my other music producer, 彭學斌 (Percy Phang), is from Malaysia. Then there’s my incredible vocal coach who was in Shanghai along with my language teacher and dance school. With a Singapore-based management and my previous presence as a Fox Sports Asia TV host, I had continual work in Singapore as well.
So this training period required some massive amount of multi-tasking capabilities from focusing on honing my skillsets, brain-storming artistic direction with my music producers and music video director, Chuan Looi (also based in Malaysia), planning and coordinating with my manager, Jamie (AM Media Artistes based in Singapore) to trying to have a life outside work (it was fairly non-existent if I’m going to be honest). Just writing this all out seems nice, simple and fairly uncomplicated but the past year has went by in a sort of blur and I had to do my very best not to lose it halfway through.
When I decided to embark on this journey, I made very sure of the commitment I was going to have to make and to expect the challenges of attempting what some may deem the impossible (even I at one point). Expectations are an incredibly important tool to use in order to get through the difficult stages in life. It really helped me prepare for the worst and not lose my mind or breakdown completely.
I must admit, there were points where I was dangerously close to pulling the plug wondering if all of this was worth it in the end. In retrospect, I am thankful and relieved that I managed to pull through but that is not without some serious support from a few key people in my life.
As I write this, my 3 singles have been recorded (from February through March), and I have just finished filming my very first music video debut. At this point, I can confidently say, it truly has been worth it. All the blood, sweat, and tears shed throughout this grueling process will definitely make the taste of success that much sweeter.
Now, of course, that is not to say I am expecting success upon launch. In all honesty, I am feeling pretty nervous about the whole thing because I have absolutely no idea what to expect. All I can safely say now is that I am tremendously satisfied and proud of the work that my team and I have put together and I am super excited to share it with the world.
I cannot emphasize enough how much time and how much work it took to finally get to this point… All I know is that even amidst the frustrations, the heartaches, the disappointments, and the stress that I’ve been through, I would do it all over again. Because in the end, it was all worth it.
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