Singing Daisy Bell, part 2

Three years ago I stood on this stage of the Cititel ballroom to sing a very poor version of Daisy Bell. It was the favourite song of Dato' Tan Chin Nam who had died in 2018 and I had wanted to honour his memory. When the Malaysia Chess Festival was organised again earlier this month after a long hiatus due to the coronavirus lockdown, I told the organisers that I wanted to honour Tan Chin Nam again. But I wasn't planning to do any singing by myself again. No more singing, I had promised myself soon after the 2019 chess festival. What I wanted was for the GACC boys and girls who were helping to run the chess festival to organise themselves and sing Daisy Bell. I had downloaded a version of this song and had stripped out the vocals. thus leaving a so-call karaoke version. Thus on the first evening of the chess festival after the Merdeka team open championship had concluded its first day, I made a pitch to the organisers. Basically, it was a pitch to the prospective singers. Everyone thought it was a good idea and I left it at that.

I returned to the chess festival on its penultimate day. As the closing was on the next day, it was imperative that the GACC singers had their practice that very night. Somehow, we had to assemble outside the Cititel as the ballroom had already been locked up. It was quite surreal to have a group of people standing among the parked cars and singing Daisy Bell not once but twice. But I was glad that they did get the hang of the song quite well. They also put in a practice the next morning before the start of the final round. Unfortunately I was around but someone did record the practice. And quite a hilarious session that was, as the boys and girls created a new version of the song for dedication to the chief organiser, Hamid.

Anway, I was called on stage during the closing ceremony to introduce the song, and after some hiccups when the back-up GACC singers failed to appear, I duly passed the microphone to the capable hands of the two main singers, Jonavhan and his sister, Jonavene. They did a good job to urge the audience to sing along with them and, as could be seen in the video below, Tan Mei Sian (the organising chairperson of the Malaysia Chess Festival) and Tan Lei Cheng (the chairman of IGB Berhad, main sponsor for the Malaysia Chess Festival) thoroughly enjoyed themselves singing to Daisy Bell.