9 years later.. with Yoga Lin

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Decided to write this post because I was reminded of my many memories with Yoga Lin while chatting with friends after the concert. It’s 2.46am right now and his concert ended slightly less than 6 hours ago at the beautiful Esplanade Theatres.

Looking back, it has really been a super long time since I first saw his performance on One Million Stars 星光大道 where he was the champion for their first season. Then, he was only 19 with an amazing soulful voice which differentiated him greatly from the other singers. Well, it was the voice that attracted me and that was it – I didn’t know I was in for.. and then it all began.

8 December 2007 – Yoga’s first visit to Singapore together with the 3 other singers from the singing competition.

Anyway, one interesting thing about this post is that you can see how the video/picture quality gets better over the years.. well, of course with the advancement of the mobile phone.

Yoga’s solo performance for “Man Walking on Tight Rope” 走钢索的人, a song he performed during the singing competition. I think he had gotten full marks for this song.

The following year, he started working on his debut album “Mystery Guest” 神秘嘉宾 and he visited Singapore once again!

19 July 2008 – The autograph session was ‘combined’ with another female singer 刘力扬 and it was held at Bugis Junction. I remember that it was raining that day and he walked to the stage with someone sheltering him with an umbrella. Apologies for the poor quality video from 9 years ago.

Anyway, so the turning point for me came after December 2008 when I suddenly had nothing to do in life. I can’t remember how and why I suddenly got addicted to one of the Yoga Forums originating from Taiwan. I spent many nights on that forum, forcing myself to read/type traditional chinese and talking to people from all over the world with the same interest. I got to know of friends not only from Singapore, but from Taiwan, Hong Kong, China, Korea. To date, I still keep in contact with quite a number and some of us grew to become friends beyond yoga. Even without talking about him, we still have many other things to talk about. I even travelled with some of them =p

It was only after December 2008, can I truly admit that he became the first singer that I have ever ‘chased’ for. Simply put – I define it by going for autograph sessions, gathering together as a ‘fanclub’ and attending his public events, watching his concerts, buying his magazines and CDs and the list goes on..

Before you question my sanity, I would like to repeat that Dec 2008 – Jul 2009 was the gap months in my life where I had almost nothing to worry about. Prior to Dec 2008, I used to judge people that queue for autograph sessions and going crazy over idol chasing and I grew to evolve to that person I ‘judged’. #allforyoga

15 February 2009 – He came to Singapore for an autograph session at IMM for his concer ticket. It was a funny memory because after the concert, I laminated the ticket only to realise that the ticket works bt heat transfer which means that the moment my ticket went past the laminator, it beame all black.. hurhur. Anyway, from this event onwards, I was already meeting up with the ‘fanclub’ girls from Singapore/Malaysia.

20 February 2009 – His first debut concert in Singapore at the Singapore Indoor Stadium! The ticket sales were pretty average and they invited SHE and Olivia as guests, perhaps as an attempt to boost the ticket sales. I guess the venue was a little too big given his “still rising” popularity in Singapoer. For this concert, the girls pooled together quite a bit of money and bought tons of lightsticks for the entire concert hall, creating some sort of “red ocean” for him (similar to the one he had in Taiwan). It was pretty amazing. Looking back, this was his only fanciful concert he had in Singapore, with many costume changes, dance steps, backup dancers and props.. Kind of miss the 大制作 but then again, I prefer watching him doing what he does best – just singing and enjoying the music (which is what his future concerts focused on). As much as we like the fanciful stuff, we also want thim to do what he is most comfortable with.. He also introduced to us a lot of nice songs from other artiste like 我要我们在一起,躺在你的衣柜,对不起谢谢,谢谢,天使的侧脸,我,Stand by Me.. I really miss this setlist. As I typed, I just created a yoga playlist to play all his old songs (especially the concert live versions).

12 April 2009 – He came to perform for the finals for Campus Superstar Season 2, where he was like the ambassador or something.

June 2009 – I visited taiwan and watched yoga live at the Golden Melody Awards. With the help of my new taiwanese friends, they helped me secure 3 tickets for me and my 2 friends. It was during the awards show where I first know the existence of Super Junior..  If I didn’t recall wrongly, he won something like Best album packaging award which was pretty lame but oh wells, he got to go on stage for it! Well, so this was the first time I actually saw him overseas!

 

4 February 2010 – Live Unplugged @ Dragonfly

This was like a special ‘live’ performance where he got to play his favourite style of music – solely with a live band. I really love live performances as you can tuly hear the capability of the singer which in this case was really perfect. We went really early and we kind of had a semi priority queue. If I’m not wrong, I was like second or third row from the stage and took many awesome videos except for the last song (which was my favourite – 突然想起你 by Elva) as he told us that if we want to take photos and videos, we should be standing right at the back. so.. most of us put down our phones and cameras for the final song.

And for the last song which I didn’t film.. someone else did and the footage is awesome!

5 February 2010 – Autograph Session @ IMM

No idea why I can’t find any videos of his performance but perhaps I decided to stop holding my camera and enjoy the performance after what he said the day before..

6 February 2010 – He had a 933 event at City Square Mall which was a little short and there was no singing. Nevertheless, it was nice just to sit there and watch him talk. Ha. those were the days.. Yep so if you do notice, that’s like 3 days with Yoga in Singapore. Pretty much like “idol-chasing” where I spent hours waiting and watching.. I guess this was the craziest 3 days ever for the whole of my idol-chasing life. #pre-kpop days

13 March 2010 – e!awards ceremony @ Marina Bay Floating Platform

Anyway, this was also the first time i saw SHINee live and I wasn’t a fan back then.. but who would have known that half a year later I’ll be totally into them..

12 November 2011 – Singapore Hits Awards. I remember that we were contemplating whether to go or not since it was such a huge gap before we last saw him and the feels were not really there but.. we still went in the end!

7 October 2012 – Autograph Session @ JCube Level 5

24 November 2012 – Fugue Concert @ Star Vista

I remember that I didn’t take any video this concert because I wanted to enjoy it to the fullest and at the same time my friend and I was a little distracted by the guitarist on the right (where we were sitting). Also, this concert had a screen which displayed lyrics, allowing us to sing along with him which was really cool!! In the 2017 concert, yoga (with his damn awesome memory) was impressed that many of us could sing along despite not having the lyrics displayed plus that venue had no reception so we couldn’t possibly have checked the lyrics online. yoga oh yoga~~ paying so much attention to the small details.

2 March 2013 – Fugue Concert in Genting, Arena of Stars

I remember this was a very impulsive decision made with one other friend. We kind of had concert withdrawal symptoms and suddenly there was a $0 flight from Singapore to KL which means that we only had to pay for taxes which was about $56. Also, I haven’t visited Genting in ages and we thought.. why not? PLUS, there was a Mayday concert happening in KL as well (which my friend was a fan). So.. we ended up there! The most random random random and amazing thing that happened was that we took a polaroid with the guitarist (Aaren Tien) when he came out to keep his guitar at the end. It was so awkward but we can’t stop laughing throughout..

****** and that was it. the last time I saw Yoga.. until 2017 ******

The last time I saw him was 3 years and 11 months ago.

3 February 2017 – Yoga Concert @ Esplanade (Part of Huayi Festival)

The best part of this concert was that.. we were sitting in row 1 & 2. I had no idea why the seats were so extremely good this time. The problem with pre-order is that you cannot get to choose your seats and that you will have to take whatever/whichever and it was SO SUPER NICE  that the front row seats were not reserved for VIPs & Sponsors but for us – fans. I mean.. it is always nicer for him to look down and see us (hopefully familiar faces) right? We were so close and it was hard to resist not taking any video/photos. I tried as much to not take when he is looking at us as the close proximity is really pretty freaky since it was really the first time we ever set so near! The people in the first row could even shake his hand! He sang many new songs which i wasn’t too familiar with but he had a good mix of older songs which was really lovely. I can’t believe that he randomly sang 突然想起你 which I first heard him sing in 2010. Many happy memories were rekindled during the concert and post concert. We had a great laugh reminiscing the past 9+ years we had with him..

If you only have time to watch just one video of mine, please watch this medley series which was part of my Instagram Story.

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So glad that I’ve finally settled down my emotions and write this amazing entry which will become something that I will read often whenever I’m trying to recall things about him. No idea who will read this entry since I’m writing this in English and his fanbase is mainly in Chinese but.. oh wells, it’s for me to read anyway.

Suddenly, I kind of remembered something I read in the forum years ago.

2007年 – 幸好认识你

2008年 – 好在还有你

2009 年 – 不能没有你

Ending off with my favourite photo of him.

Loved this photo so much that I printed it as a sticker for my iPhone 3GS (before I took it out for Nickhun’s signature). heh.

The next time I see you, you would probably be a dad by then.. we shall see!

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