My first KTV

First off, thanks for all the comments. I can’t see them on the blog, but they are forwarded to my email. Lets me know that I do have an audience ;)

I’ve also been lax about birthdays so here goes:
-Cousin Scott (IL) and would have been my Grandpa Bill’s 80th Birthday-Aunt Anne (HI) is the last of my mom’s siblings to turn 40. I hear she had a good party and
Hawaii continues to keep her looking much younger than she is.
-Looking at my notes it’s my Aunt Karen’s 22nd birthday, or her birthday is on the 22nd. You make the call ;)

Now for all the news that isn’t…

So you always hear how into karaoke that Asian people seem to be. Well this theory was put to the test on Saturday. Hagel and Bryan (intern for ATO Shanghai) arranged for us to rent a room at a Karaoke or KTV place. We showed up at 11:30pm and we had a pretty diverse crowd. There were several Americans interning in the ATO and the US Commercial service, then students from my university, Chinese friends of the Americans, and American friends of the Americans. Confused yet? Well try remembering all their names.

We arrive and are taken up to the VIP room. KTV works like this: in the US we drink a lot and before getting up in front of a bar full of strangers to try our best not to slaughter a song. KTV feels more like a house party. There was a leather couch in a large U and then to the side another sitting area with a TV and some gaming system on it. We never did end up using it, but it was nice to have the extra sitting room as there was a steady stream of people. It was a diverse crowd and you could easily see some cultural differences. We Americans like to be up in front of the group dancing and singing. The Chinese preferred to sit and sing from wherever they were. The song that defined this the most was Lynard Skynard’s Sweet Home Alabama. This was a usually raucous version, I expected it but I don’t think our Chinese friends did. One of the Americans made the comment that we had just illustrated the difference between the US and China.-This continued with the Americans (drinking) and the Chinese (only drinking tea or soda) until 3:30am. I had no idea what time it was and was not even tired. It felt more like a house party with a great electronic set up. We paid our tab and headed out. About 4 of us, including myself, were not yet ready to go home so we hit another club called Babyface. It’s a huge place and as we arrived there was a guy selling meat on a stick that smelled delicious and we walked past two girls that evidently had too much to drink and also some sort of argument. I dare not call it a fight because neither of them could really stand. The music was pretty loud so we only stayed for a short while before we called it quits.

As a first experience goes, that was a pretty interesting one. Diverse crowd, actually sang a Chinese song (Dui mian de nu hai kan guo lai), and didn’t make it home until nearly 5:30am. I would do it again, but not on a week night like my students. They will go from midnight until 6am and then make it to my 8am class. I usually assume that if a student is sleeping in my class that he/she went to KTV the previous night and it’s a safe bet.