When we lived in China, one of the Filipina teaching assistants sold me a karaoke system. She had heard me wishing for one, and she said, “All Filipinos have karaoke! I have two.”
It’s so fantastic and so simple. There’s a microphone and a book with thousands of song titles. You just plug the mic into the TV, flip through the book, pick a song, and punch the song code into the microphone keypad. Voila! Magic!
The music is a little tinny, the lyrics on the TV are sometimes just a wee bit wrong, and the background graphics can be strange (a bright-eyed lemur, Big Ben, a canal in the Netherlands…). But it’s still heaps of fun.
On Friday, I invited some Lao girlfriends over to play. They did not mess around.
They brought a ridiculous amount of yummy treats, and then they got down to business. Huddled over the songbook, they made a list of their choices and then took turns in the spotlight. Mai was a bit of a mic hog, but with good reason. She had a gorgeous singing voice. Actually, most of them did. I was concerned that they wouldn’t like the song selections, but they knew more of the titles than I did.
Ton had brought a boy named Phu. He didn’t speak English, and he just sat in a chair clutching a pillow and taking pictures on command for the whole evening. He was so courteous and sweet. After he drank some Pepsi, he self-consciously slipped into the kitchen to wash his glass. As usual, Tony greeted the first arrivals and then bolted.
Carbo-loading for the songfest. Ton, Not, Lae and Nang chow down on the snacks.
Keo, Addie and Ton pick songs.
My mic is a prop. It’s not even plugged in. That’s Keo and Nang in the back; Ton, Lae, Mai and moi in the front.
YMCA!!!
At one point, I noticed the songstress crowd had thinned. That’s when I realized they were using my camera and staging a fashion shoot on my Chinese daybed. Such lovely ladies!
Here, the gang sings “Every Time You Go Away” by Paul Young.
