I haven’t updated my blog for a while as I was in Hong Kong and Macau for a holiday. Needless to say, most of my holidays usually has a concert/event involved. Hehe. This is starting to become an international knowledge.

This trip was definitely booked because I want to go to Hong Kong (been saying it for years) and at the same time, to watch the Grasshopper vs Softhard concert at the Hong Kong Coliseum. It is always fun to watch an act in their home country because the show is so much more fun and spectacular in terms of the stage set up and banter.

After watching Grasshoppers in concert earlier this year at the Resorts World Sentosa, we decided to go to Hong Kong to watch the Grasshoppers concert. No regrets man. All the fun in Singapore is only about 10% of the fun in Hong Kong. I’m not kidding.

This concert is a joint concert with a duo called Softhard. I watched the 2nd night (25 October 2012) and it was a full house of 12,000 people.

Anyway, given that both Grasshoppers and Softhard have Cantonese as their first language, the jokes and banter came fast and furious. The things they said were so funny that I was in tears at one point. And to think that I only understood like 60% of what they said. (My Cantonese is alright and some of their content only understandable by Hong Kongers.)

I must add that I was quite surprised to see that the Hong Kong Coliseum is such a small venue. It is actually smaller than the Singapore Indoor Stadium really but they have 24 entrance/exits to aid the human traffic flow.

Also, I love how the floor of the stage is at ground level and there was only a barricade that separated the first row of seats from the stage. They don’t have that usual gap you see between the stage and the audience.

The floor of the stage is can actually project videos and can be raised in whatever configuration required by the show. It can also change on the fly as well giving the stage a different setup with each song. It’s so super cool that I feel like I need to go back to the Coliseum to watch another concert just to see the configurable stage floor in action! It is by far the coolest stage I’ve ever seen.

Right, back to the actual concert. The showtime as printed on the ticket was 8.15 pm. Doors only opened at 7.45 pm and the show started at 8.30 pm. It didn’t stop until 11.15 pm. 2 hours and 45 minutes in all; how often do you get that with an international English artist? I bought the CAT 2 tickets (HKD 380, before the HKD 6.50 fee; in all, it is about SGD 63). Regret, I should have gone for the CAT 1 (HKD 580/SGD 94) to sit right at the front.

While Grasshoppers said in the June concert in Singapore that they will bring their concert to Singapore in early 2013, I’m not sure if they will bring this Grasshopper vs Softhard concert to Singapore. A lot of the content won’t translate well in Mandarin and some of the content are quite political about the sentiments of the locals. Furthermore, I’m not even sure if anyone knows who Softhard are in Singapore. Still, we’ll wait and see.

Finally, here are the photos from the show: