Karaoke here, however, is quite different…and I’m hooked. They have “Family Karaoke” places where you go and pay a couple of dollars an hour for a private room with a supped-up sound system and a computer database of thousands of songs from all over the world. You choose the songs and the artist and have at it. You can even raise or lower the key during the song! The best part is that it’s not at all important whether or not you can sing (though most people here can). The important thing is that you have a great time and sing LOUD!
So after going several different times with various groups of people over the last few months, some relatively new friends of mine invited me to go with them tonight. Like most days here, nothing quite went according to plan, but we didn’t care. We just enjoyed hanging out together as we rode around the city trying to locate a karaoke place that wasn’t full. Finally around 9:00pm we found a winner and settled in for 2 hours of some crazy fun.
Now despite my earlier intro I have to tell you that this group wasn’t typical. They are all in a choir at their university—and one of them just finished with a national singing competition. All the same, I had never heard any of them sing and didn’t quite know what to expect.
The short version is that it was probably some of the most fun I’ve had since I moved here. They were all quite good and made the whole event fun for everyone else as they’d invite others to sing some of the lines, cheer and dance when the rest of us were singing, etc. We even worked to teach each other some songs in our native languages. It was a riot…and I loved every minute of it.
I don’t know what you did this weekend, but if you’re ever bored on a Friday night and happen to be in this hemisphere, gimme a call. I’m pretty sure there’s some karaoke madness waiting for you too!
