Mayhem at MTV Asia Awards

It's the most anticipated awards show to be held in Malaysia for year 2008. I have attended a few awards show this year like Frost & Sullivan IT Awards and Malaysia's IT Industry Award (see how geeky I am?) but my dream came true when I got the invite to attend the glamorous MTV Asia Awards to be held for the first time in Malaysia at the beautiful Arena of Stars, Genting Highlands. And my dream came truer when I found out that the host of the event will be none other than the yummy looking lead singer from 30 Second from Mars, Jared Leto more famously known for his potrayal as a wild jock in "My So-Called Life". I still remember the days when I and my sis drool over him whenever Claire Danes expressed her undying crush on him. Well, who wouldn't?


So when the weekend finally arrived, I grabbed my bags and packed for an exciting weekend at Genting. Unlike other award shows, this one started right on time, in fact 1 minute earlier than scheduled: 6.59pm. The show was opened by the dedlicious looking girl band who dressed to fulfill all men's fantasies, Pussy-Cat Dolls. When the names of the hosts were announced, the first being Jared Leto, hell broke lose again. The girls chanted his name like he was a god of music or something like that. And fortunately, he did not dissapoint. He was calm, cool even entertaining throughout the show interspersing his words with some comic reliefs and together with the effevercent Karen Mok, they made a great duet host.

I was lucky to get to go into the mosh pit even though I got tickets for seats as they needed lively vibrant people like I to fill up the pit. I and my friend shouted till our throats are sore. It was amazing to watch Jared Leto so close and to have him hear me scream. Haha.

The show was graced by in ternational bands like Click Five who won the Knockout Award, the pretty boys band from Korea who did amazing dance moves for groups of screaming teenage Koreans who flew all the way to Malaysia to see them perform and picked up the waward for best Korean artiste, the extremely talented British singer, the winner of X-Factor, Leona Lewis who picked up the award for best breakout artiste and the alternative band from Singapore, Eletrico which gave a stunning performance with the talented Stefanie Sun who then picked up the award for best Singapore artiste. There were alos local artistes like Projevct E.A.R which did a great job with their rendition of alternative rock music. The winner of best artiste from Malaysia was won by (suprise, suprise) not the ever award taking Datuk Siti Nurhaliza but our very own Chinese performaer Nicholas Teo who I think deserved an award after all the good music from his albums have been hitting No. 1 in Malaysia's music charts. It's a pity he did not perform during the show.

The best performance in my humble opinion is when Click Five combined their music "Stop and Stare" with the sounds of kompang from a group of kompang players. And the best showmanship of the night has to go to one of the most famous bands of today "Panic at the Disco" who ended the show with a bang with colorful acrobats adorning the stage while they play their famous songs from human pyramids to dancers in trppical attires and acrobats jumping around the stage. The show ended punctually at 9.30pm but you can see that the guests were still starving for more actions. However, as this is not a concert but meant for live TV, no encore was played.

All-in-all, it was a fantastic, fantabulous (if there is such word in the vocabulary) experience, the high one feels from having close brushes with the celebrities and seeing them so close was unimaginable. I was so happy to be part of the in-crowd of music for the 2 and a half hour. Some of Malaysians cyber celebrities who were there are Kenny Sia who did a live blogging for the show despite not being able to enter the event but got into the After-Party, Miss Malaysia Universe 2008, Levy Li (I call her Leggy Li, well, will she not get invited to any event? ;) and KinkyBlue Fairy who all got a fair share of my experience and excitement.