On the 1st of June, Publika held a talent competition called Publika Live at The Square. It was my first time watching a talent competition live, so I was looking forward to attending this event! I had not heard about this event until my church friend, Boon Keong made it to the semi-final round together with his band TANGS. Being nice (hehe), I went to support his team with a group of people from church.

I was stuck with the Pangs at Publika for more than 30 minutes thanks to Caleb who wanted to leave early for no particular reason haha. We just walked around, waited for Caleb to get some stuffs and chilled at Chatime. The band reached later and they were told that they had to come up with another performance for the semi-final round around 15-20 minutes before the competition started. It was a last minute thing for every contestant, but lucky for TANGS, they already had a backup song. 

Kailey.

Bailey.

There were 10 contestants altogether competing in the semi-final round and only five of them will be chosen by the judges to compete in the finals. Each contestant had to perform twice for the semi-final and once for the finals. Their performance were judged based on a few criteria such as showmanship and originality. As for the judges, I do not recognize the most of them except for Mark O'dea from The London Boys. And it turned out that it was his birthday! One of his fan bought him an iPad as a gift for his birthday wah damn lucky lor.

Out of the 10 contestants, there was only one dance group and the rest were either solo singers or a band. I was telling Bailey that I was sure the dance group will make it to the finals cause they were the odd one and indeed they did lol. But they were really good and their dance was humorous and entertaining! We could not even guess which was their third performance because three of their performances were perfect. I was very impressed with some of the singers too such as Lizzie Parkinson who sang Sweet Nothing with a twist to the song. 

The band, TANGS.

On stage!

Sadly, TANGS did not make it to the finals but at least they had one of the best supporters around! When it was their turn to perform, we stood up and cheered for them haha. Since they did not make it to the finals, we went to have our super late dinner at Fatboy's Burger Bar. The restaurant was located few feet away from the stage, so we could still catch the finals. Decided to share a burger with Kailey because I wasn't that hungry. Their burgers are of huge portions and the patties are so so juicy! Yet the burgers are damn overprice lor- one burger costs more than RM15, so if you are on low budget it's best to not visit that restaurant haha.

But I can't deny that the burgers are yummy...ahh.

The amount of supporters who came. There were more who are not in the picture!

It was indeed a great day and I enjoyed spending time with my friends! Also, it was interesting watching a competition live for the first time and listening to the comments from the judges. Some of them were really strict on judging the performances while some were lenient. There was this one guy who seemed to have very little words to say. Each time, his comments consisted of less than 20 words lol. There was once he commented more than 30 words and we were indeed surprised haha.

Anyway, congrats to the winners who did an amazing job and to all the participants as well!