I'm the karaoke king!!

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Hi All,

How's things? Hope you're all fine and/or dandy.

This is the last entry for July as I am heading for a week holiday back home in Australia. I'll try and tell you more silly stories when I'm back in vietnam in August. Til then, look after each other, and hopefully I'll see you if you're in melbourne 😊

This week's entry is thus:

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AMY, LEELA, KIF and ZAPP are all on a double date. Kif is awfully shy.

AMY: Kif, you're so quiet. You haven't said a word all night.
KIF: Well, um, um ... hello.
AMY: 'Cause I was really hoping we could talk and stuff.



....
AMY: Kif!
LEELA: Lieutenant Kroker!
KIF: Oh, my!
LEELA: This date is entirely over. Amy? Conference!



KIF: Is there nothing we can do, sir?
ZAPP: There's only one sure-fire way back into a woman's heart and parts beyond. I speak of course, of karaoke.
KIF�termined) My years in the School Boys' Chorus will not have been in vain!

- Futurama

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TV's taught me just about everything I know about girls, which probably explains why I don't know anything about girls. I always guessed that karaoke probably wasn't going to be a sure fire winner with the ladies, but I was fairly sure being a rock star was.

So, straight after finishing high school (because in an asian family you focus on your studies and just about nothing else, except maybe piano, violin or ballet), I became terribly rebellious and learnt how to play guitar over my summer holidays.

The first song I ever learnt predictably was stairway (please don't send hatemail), followed by (in no particular order) 'more than words' by extreme, followed by 'lightning crashes' by live, and 'creep' by radiohead because I thought they gave me rock cred at the time 😊

But because of the crowd I was hanging out with at uni, who were largely overseas students, I figured if I was going to be a hit with the young ladies from south east asia, I was going to have to learn songs they liked. So there was a period of time at uni where I knew how to play soppy love songs by Richard Marx, Jewel, Ronan Keating, Robbie Williams and a few other such artists (I blame this on being young and not having developed a sense of music morals). Sadly, despite my efforts to be the Asian Ronan Keating, the groupie count was pretty low. Ok, very low. Ok, very, very low....

Fast forward to Vietnam in 2007, and my grounding in sweet and soppy love songs from the early and mid nineties has become a very useful 'skill' in getting along with my Vietnamese colleagues, who LUUUURRRRRVVVVVEEEE their sweet and soppy love songs from the early and mid nineties.

My first experience of this was at one of their bi-monthly birthday party celebrations which involved dinner, beer and karaoke (every other party I have been to since in Vietnam so far has involved food, beer and karaoke). Now as the night wore on they started to pluck up the courage to ask me and the other 'non-locals' to get up on stage and sing a song.

Now those that know me know that I love being on stage, but generally get very shy in front of strangers. That and I was still only on my first beer at the time. They persisted however and after a period I finally relented. Flipping through the songbook, I was torn between choosing something a bit edgy and challenging, and something I knew was going to be popular. In the end, I passed on Nirvana's 'heart shaped box' and Depeche mode's 'I feel you', and settled for Richard Marx's 'Now and Forever', which is fairly high on the soppy factor, so I knew it was going to be a winner.

I should explain at this point that karaoke in Vietnam is a little more sophisticated than in Australia, in that all of the machines here have in-built scoring (like the playstation game if you've ever played it). So at the end of the song, the machine will rate you out of 100 on pitch and rhythm. I was curious but not necessarily looking forward to seeing a score at the end, but them's the breaks.

As I got up to sing my song, I got a cheer because they knew the song (or so I thought. I later found out that it was because I was one of the first non-locals to give it a go). So I sang my song, putting in as many anguished 'eyes closed, fists clenched moments of passion' poses as I could, trying to look as pained and emotional as Richard Marx does in his music videos. but I was opening my eyes during the chorus because I could hear all the guys joining in the singing.

Now that was a really cool 'live the moment' experience right then. To see and hear all the boys singing along was quite a sight. But at the same time, it's a little creepy hearing a large group of men singing back to me in their vietnamese tinged english: 'UNTIL THE DAY THE OCEAN DOESN'T TOUCH THE SAND, NOW AND FOREVER, I WILL BEEEEE YOUR MAAAANNNNN....'

Anyway, at the end of the song, one of the boys gave me a plastic flower (swell, my first uh,karaoke groupie....), and then my score flashed up on the tv screen: '100! You are a Pro!'

This was followed by rapturous applause and cheering 😊

It is at this moment that I experienced this weird sense of pride and embarrassment all at the same time.
Sure, I was pleased, this was one of the few times in my life where I was ever going to get a perfect score for anything, but I was still rather embarrassed because of the circumstances. If only I could score 100 for some other skill like I dunno, impressing girls instead of boys or something. Ah well....them's the breaks.

Anyways, enough already, Til next time, see ya.

Ben

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