14 September, 2010

WELCOME TO SHANGHAI
Wall Lords 2010 Finals, Shanghai China.

You write in dairies. I ride on visual journals. Enjoy the video log on my Shanghai trip with SkopeOne and Mimer (OAC). Produced by Under The Radar. Video documented by Mazlan, JJ and Eman. Edited by Eman. Music by: Carolina Liars, Free The Robots, The Raconteurs, The Subways and Diabolic feat. Immortal Technique.


Day 1: The Arrival
Touch down! Shanghai! After a gruesome butt munching 5 hours of sitting down in the plane. It's 1pm in the afternoon and the weather was looking great. Sunny, windy and lots of awesome infinite horizon of architectural buildings. Ranging from western influenced to oriental shrines. As usual when we arrive at Shanghai Airport, the custom took around 15mins to check me cause of my beard, thanks guys for stereotyping. Thumbs up! Okay after that was clear, we began to walk out the arrival gate, Mimer, who's a chinese, managed to walked past the x-ray luggage machine without being stopped by the calm and cool security custom. Suddenly, the security custom began to panic and called up Skope and me to the x-ray machine to scan our luggages. Power! China 2 : Singapore Malay: 0.

After the hassle, the three of us got up a cab for 175 RMB (SGD 38) for a one and half hours ride. Although it was a long journey to our "5 star" hotel. The culture there really transport me into a new dimension of never ending seas of skyscrapers, non-wearing helmet motorcyclists and honking-obsessed drivers.


3.30PM: Meet me at the Motel
Finally, Motel 168. You know whats the best thing about Shanghai when I walked into the hotel? We can smoke in it. Beat that Singapore. No more going outdoors to smoke. Woohoo! When we arrived at the hotel, we were greeted by Stan, the editor and founder of Invasian magazine, and Redy, the marketing producer.


Apart from the friendly Invasian peeps, I hired two bodyguards, not normal two bodyguards, twin bodyguards! Ah Kong and Ah Macho repping ZincNite Crew! Skope, Mimer and I were divided into two rooms as there were only two beds in a room, and so I got my own room, that's the reason why the bodyguards were hired. Haha. Although there was wi-fi connection in our area, but we had difficulties logging into facebook, twitter or MSN messenger, and guess what we the locals told us about why we couldn't log in, they banned western websites. Nice.

5.45pm: Meeting the Asians.
All the crews were called up to meet up at the conference for cigarettes, briefing and meet and greet. It was nice to meet the rest of our asian neighbors, Malaysia, Indonesia, Philippines, Korea, Thailand, China and Taiwan. After introduction and programs we have to attend during the 3 days event, we had to play a game of "that spray-can is mine, Im'ma punch your face G". We sent out Mimer as a representative to pick a number and wait a turn to choose our colours for the final battle on Day 3. We were only given 30 cans to fill up a 10m by 2m wall.


11pm: Bombs Away
After the Royal Rumble was over, and everyone was happy like a unicorn in a sunflower field. We were all invited to an open party at a local club called SHELTER, which was originally an old WWII bunker.

11.45pm: Let's ditch this joint
What's more important, music or streets. Ah.. Forget about what I've just asked. The Lions and The philippines knew that partying isn't our thing, so we brought out our ammunitions along with us. Shanghai didn't know what hot them that night. Tags, bombings and paste ups.


Day 2: EXPO
8am: Time to wake up, smoke on the bed with your cigarettes in your hand, wake up again and take a nice hot shower and be down by 11am for a trip to the World Expo 2010, out skirt of Shanghai, around 2 hours ride. ROOOOAD TRIIIP!

When they said Expo, the first thing that came to my mind was, oooh ok a huge space with many things inside. Ok can. Damn was I wrong, the World Expo was around the size of two Sentosa islands, which you have to take a boat to travel from one expo to another. Hell yeah, that big. And another thing was the bus deport, it was like a desert of busses parked beautifully in organized lanes.

4pm: The Big Dogs
After a long walk from the bus deport to the mouth of the Expo, we finally reached the German pavilion where we met up with CanTwo (Stick Up Kids, Germany), Shiro (Stick Up Girls, Japan) and JayFlow ( The Wall Destroyers, Korea). All of us were inspired by their pieces and got us so geared up for tomorrow's competition.


5pm: Tee-bag taggers
We were informed that all the countries will be going up on the main stage later on at 6pm at the Expo to be introduced to the public about the presence of Wall Lords that will be happening the following day. So we gave our best hand-styles we have. Demonstrating styles from different cultures and social influenced backgrounds.



Day 3: Lock and Load
9am: Bullets swarming, enemies growling. Walls start bleeding colours. A sleepy start. Slept around 4am the last night, settling the sketches, spray-cans and plan B. Slept through out the whole journey to the Wall Lords venue. We were given a duration of 8 hours to complete our mural and an additional of tagging and throw-up battle after the murals are done.

Results:
1st - Korea
2nd - Thailand
3rd - Taiwan

The competitors' murals:
Singapore

Malaysia

The Philippines

Korea

Indonesia

China

Thailand

Taiwan



Day 4: Goodbyes
10am: After a long 4 days of fun and meeting new people, it's time to say goodbye. I really feel close to the peeps at Shanghai. Learning their cultures, languages and styles. Exchanging stickers, taggings and souvenirs, it was an unforgettable experience. Although it was so long and goodbye, we managed to keep in contact by the power of the internet and facebook, oh yeah facebook.

3pm: Reached Shanghai airport, grabbed a few bites from burger king. And at 4.15pm, off we go back to Singapore. Singapore, hope we made you proud.


Here's Tutu (Indonesia), Clogtwo and Mimer (Singapore), Egg and Exle (Philippines).


All images are copyrighted (c) 2010 by Clogtwo.