Boredworkers.com

Let me just make it clear, I am NOT a fan of the Malaysian Idol series and neither do I religiously follow its progress through the weeks. I do however catch the occasional result show that’s shown on Monday when I’m down at the gym at my office (I don’t even know what channel it’s on!).

Anyway, last Friday was the finals. I know this because I read it in the papers, heard it over the radio, watched it in the news, heard it from friends and even got offered tickets to the Finals and Result show to be held in in Genting Highlands‘ Arena of Stars. The tickets, if you are curious, were offered to me by a colleague of mine in Genting Highlands. Since I knew that WL was interested in the results, I asked her whether she wanted to go up for the show but she said she rather watch it from home. And so we did.

Now, there’s been alot of buzz about the show. I knew that it was down to Nita and Daniel but I’ve heard neither sing before. WL was telling me that Nita was the better voice but Daniel had the personality. I sat through the first four songs of the final show and drew the same conclusion. The sound system at the Arena of Stars sucked as usual. IMHO, neither of them were anything to shout about. But that’s just me. I was sleepy and couldn’t bring myself to finish watching the show, so I called it a day and went home.

Now, the most interesting part about all this was that I received an SMS from my dad’s phone asking me to vote for Daniel. I didn’t pay much attention to this until I got home and asked my sister whether she got the same message. Apparently she did and the source of the message was my mom. So, even mom’s caught the Malaysian Idol bug. That thought remained on the back burner for the rest of the night and most of the next day until dinner time as the results show came closer.

WL and I were out at a mamak store having Roti Canai and Fried Maggee when the subject popped up again. Should we vote? RM0.50 is not a big deal but if you send several, they do add up to quite a bit. My mom’s SMS came back to mind and who was I to argue with authority? I did also have some credit left over from my post paid Maxis-75 plan so I might as well use it.

After some frenzied phone calls to WL’s sister, my mom and my sister, we finally found out how to vote. Type ‘VOTE<SPACE>DANIEL‘ and send to 33722. The funny part was that someone thought that they had to literally type in ‘<SPACE>‘ in the message. Also, there was some confusion about the phone number that we had to send the message to. I recall seeing the number 33721 flash on the screen during the show and my mom gave me the same information. Was this a blooper on the part of the production crew??!

We sorted all that out with some experimentation and managed to get the first SMS through. “RM0.50. Thank you for your vote” or some such message. I can’t remember the exact words and I’ve deleted all the responses. 2 more votes from me in succession followed by 2 votes from WL and we were almost due home to watch the show. I decided to throw in an extra vote for good measure.

While WL watched downstairs, I was up in my room doing some photo editing. Come 21:55, I heard some shreaks and laughter from downstairs. I rush down to see what the commotion was about to find WL, my sister and my sister’s fiance, Simon, were cheering the fact that Daniel has won. “Oh joy and rapture! My votes had turned the tide!“, came the egoistic thoughts. If it weren’t for me, Daniel would have crashed and burned. HAH!

So the series came and went. At the end of it, I am RM2.00 poorer and with nothing to show for it. Lets just wait and see what Daniel makes of the title and whether he does indeed live up to Roslan’s comment of him being a ‘Super Star’. Blargh and my hats off to the people who thought up the idea of SMS voting.