Though I saw his face, I'm no Belieber!

It all started with a very unexpected SMS from KakAisya several months ago.

"Anisah, do you want to go to the Justin Bieber concert to chaperone some kids? Haha."

My reply was swift and eloquent.

"UGH NO WAY NOT IN A MILLION YEARS!!! NOT EVEN IF SOMEONE PAID ME. Why, who wants to go? Don't tell me it's AIDA. My own sister...I'll never be able to look at her the same way again."

"No...KakAmnah's friend Zul is looking for volunteers to chaperone orphans to the concert. I thought it would be fun. Haha."

"Oh! Well, since it's for a good cause, then count me in!"

And so began our Epic Journey to the Land of the Bieber. Along the way, we were able to rope Awi and Nazriq into The Quest. Grim, hardened and battle-weary, guided only by pure courage and the weight of a mighty responsibility, the four of us joined The Fellowship of the Non-Beliebers.

The Fellowship of the Non-Beliebers were made up of 150 strong volunteers who had been divided unevenly into 21 teams, each tasked with a specific orphanage to take care of. Awi, Nazriq, KakAisya were assigned to Sunway Mentari Learning Centre, and had to chaperone 17 hobbits orphans from the shire their orphanage to the Land of the Bieber.

Waiting for our fourth member to join us

Unfortunately, just as the four of us were to embark on our Journey, we learned disastrous news: our particular orphans would not be going to Bieber Land. With no one to chaperone, well, we couldn't just up and go on our own, innit? It would miss the whole point of the quest entirely. So we were asked to join another team and take care of a different orphanage: the Zomi Learning Centre.

And So It Begins.

On the bus to The Land of Bieber

We arrived -- all 79 of us -- at the Stadium Merdeka at around 5pm, excited and ready. The gates were to open early for us, so that we wouldn't lose the orphans in the crowd.

I was personally in charge of six orphans, ages ranging from 8 to 15 years old. They were all Burmese refugees, all boys, and all very sweet. I didn't ask them their names, since I knew I would promptly forget it a second later, and since people's faces always look alike to me, I was at a loss to how I was supposed to remember who my kids were. Then it hit me. Duh. The colour of their t-shirts. "Okay," I muttered under my breath. "Two red t-shirts, two white t-shirts, one black and one green. Two of them are wearing caps cocked to the side, and that one in green keeps looking at me and smiling."

The one in green, (Tuang Pin, his name was, I later found out) towered over me and asked, shyly, "how old are you?"

My reply (21 years old!) elicited a chorus of groans from all six boys --some even smacked their foreheads in frustration.

Then they promptly asked me whether I was married.

Me and my kids 

Meanwhile, we were waiting on the road, outside the stadium for the person holding the 300 tickets to show up. The kids were getting restless as half an hour passed by, but they remained well-behaved -- staying with their designated group of six, chattering at the top of their voices in a language I couldn't understand. But none of them strayed away or showed any signs of anger.

Then everything went downhill from there.

First came The Rain. Nothing could compare with the thunderstorm that drenched us to the skin. We were wearing raincoats, but after an hour of waiting in the thunderstorm, my socks began to get all wet and squishy. The raincoat was quite short, too, so while my tudung and t-shirt stayed dry, knee-down I was soaking wet. But I'd been through worse, so I didn't complain. Much.

Throughout that ordeal was The Wait. For the man holding the 300 tickets. At about 6.30, we were told he'd arrive at 7 p.m. "Alright!" I thought. "Just another half hour. Not that long, since we've already waited an hour and a half for him."

When the rain stopped, I amused myself by hanging out with my 6 kids. They kept asking me really silly and random questions, like "how old is your father?" "what is your hobby?" and thrust out their fists to me, as if they were holding a microphone.

So sweet!

One kid asked me, "how many teech you have?"

That one stumped me. "Uh, what did you say?"

"Teeth," one of my other kids corrected him. "He means, how many teeth you have!"

"OH!" But I was still stumped. How many teeth did I have? Two less than the average person, thanks to my braces, but the exact number was beyond me. So I just grinned widely and allowed them to count my teeth for themselves.

7pm came and went. Two hours of waiting, with more to come. By now, all the orphans were downright depressed, and the rain began pouring down again in bucket loads. One of Nazriq's kids sat at the edge of the pavement, shoulders hunched forward, refusing to move, look or talk to anybody. Others simply cried. Some asked, plaintively, where the tickets were.

My kids were doing alright, though -- they were coping by kicking rainwater at one another.

7.30 p.m. and still no sign of the tickets. The chorus of excited screams coming from the audience safely inside the stadium were torturous. We were told the ticket-holder was stuck at KL Sentral. Zul was trying to negotiate with the concert manager, to allow the orphans in even without the tickets. No one knew if it would work.

"Yang aku tah fahamnyer, apasal dia tuh tak bertolak awal-awal?" one of the other chaperones was saying with clear exasperation. It was a question no one could answer.

"At this rate," I said grimly to Nazriq, "we'll probably just be watching the concert from outside here."

It felt so cruel, you know? I mean, these were refugee orphans who had gone through a lot in their lives. Today was supposed to be a special day for them -- they were going to watch a concert, see a famous pop star, have fun. How often do you think these orphans had such kind of entertainment in their lives?

At about 7.45, the rain had stopped so we distributed KFC around, since KFC had sponsored meals for all the orphans and the chaperones as well. While distributing the food, one of the security guards simply came up, took one of the KFC containers from the plastic sack Nazriq was holding, and ran off with it. Can you believe???

Finally, at 8, after more than three hours of us waiting, the tickets arrived. I grabbed 6, called out blindly to my kids among the sea of people, and they all came to me eagerly. With trembling hands, we divided the tickets, and I yelled out to them, "Go, go, go!"

But the nightmare was far from over.

The pushing and shoving...oh my God. It cannot be described.Within seconds, I'd lost my kids in the throng of Beliebers. Hundreds of people, mostly adults, all trying to get through one tiny gate. All in a frenzy with Bieber Fever. You can imagine it for yourself.

I was being squeezed from all sides, while my body was starting to feel numb. It was getting difficult to breathe, so I turned my head up to the sky, desperately gulping down the night air. It's moments like these when you curse having such short height.

However, I wasn't the worse off at that moment. To my right side, a tiny little girl who barely reached my stomach was being slowly crushed by the adults around her. By this time, I was literally screaming in outrage. "STOP PUSHING!" I shrieked, my voice cracking from the volume I was using, and perhaps popping a few nearby ear drums in the process. If anyone of you have ever heard me present, just imagine that volume magnified ten times louder. I grabbed the little girl, trying to protect her, while still screaming my head off. "THERE ARE CHILDREN HERE! STOP PUSHING!"

Didn't make a damn difference, though.

Finally, one of the other chaperones was able to persuade the guards to unlock one other gate, just for our organisation, though. I ushered the little girl in and literally threw my ticket at the guard, not even bothering to wait for him to rip the stub and return it to me.

We were in.

I'd never been to Stadium Merdeka before, so I took about two seconds to take the place in -- the filled up seats, the throng of people down below, the stage with Justin Bieber's face splashed on the background -- then I went back down to business. I called out to my kids, and they obediently came over to me. I informed them we had to wait for all the other orphans from Zomi to come in before we could all go to our designated seats. I was worried -- Nazriq and his kids were through, but I hadn't seen KakAisya and Awi at all, nor any any of the other Zomi chaperones.

Things were getting desperate. Behind us, at the entrance, the security guard was yelling viciously at a man and his girlfriend for sneaking in through the Orphans Only entrance. The man, dgn muka tak malunya, simply shrugged his shoulders as his girlfriend pulled them further into the stadium.

Beliebers.

Our seats were located opposite the stage, but quite far off. Not that anyone minded in the least -- especially not me. On one of the screens to the left was a purple countdown indicating when Bieber would step onto the stage. I leaned over the fence, my eyes trained on the stage. People below us were getting excited, but I just couldn't feel anything at all. So I tried to imagine this was a Coldplay concert, and a thrill ran through me.

It felt a bit weird to be here, honestly, among all the Bieber fans, and me not liking Bieber at all. It reminded me of going to the Eclipse premier with Kak Aisya. I felt hollow, unable to join in with the exuberance displayed by everyone around me. Well, everyone except my fellowship, of course.

"Do you think maybe we shouldn't have gone?" I said to Nazriq, who was standing beside me. "Let people who actually like Bieber volunteer instead? I feel like it's a bit wasted on me."

But Nazriq shook his head. 'If the volunteers actually liked Bieber, takut diorang tak ikhlas nak tolong."

True, that. After all, the tickets for us volunteers were free.

Then the concert began.

Even as a Non-Belieber, I had to admit that the kid's got talent. He danced around the stage with such energy, his voice unwavering, that I began to wonder whether he was pulling an Ashlee Simpson. Still not sure actually. His songs were your typical kind of pop, his voice slightly nasal and kiddy-sounding, and also unfortunately drowned out by the instruments. Blame the sound engineer.

From my position, Justin Bieber was reduced to a tiny, over-active white dot flanked by other over-active dots. Which, obviously, I didn't mind at all. Neither did the orphans sitting below me. They were jumping up and down with such enthusiasm that my heart warmed at the sight. There. That was the reason I'd come here, braved the wet rain, and waited three hours outside the stadium on an empty stomach, with water seeping into my socks. Not for the Bieber, but for the orphans.

Justin Bieber on acoustics. One of his better performances that night

All too soon, my attention wavered and I began tweeting and smsing my friends. My ears were ringing with pain, so I stuffed Nazriq's earphones in them, as makeshift earplugs. (I'd like to think I was the only person among 17 thousand who wore earphones throughout his concert.) I even struck up a conversation with the security guard next to me; a young, pretty lady who looked as bored as I was.

After a very staged encore, finally, it was all over.

You can just see how tired we were

So all in all, it was a very exhausting, but rewarding night. :-)

And no, I'm still no Belieber.