Tonight, I had dinner with Nick, Josh, and Frank Seide, a German expat working in speech at MSRA. Josh and Nick decided to hit the sack, so Frank and I hooked up with Dave Vronray and his wife along with Neema Moraveji and his girlfriend at karaoke! Now, in the US, when someone says karaoke, I’m sure you’re thinking big crowd, lots of alcohol, and major public embarrassment. Karaoke in China, and from I understand Japan, just involved lots of alcohol. You’re usually in a private room with 2-8 buddies, and the embarassment is relatively private. At PartyWorld (and that is the name… some Chinese outfits do use English names), we had a room that could fit about 12 comfortably around a U-shaped couch, with the opening of the U facing the TV. You then pick songs from a nearby computer and sing! They have both English and Chinese subtitles, so it all works.
However… for English songs, instead of the music video you’d normally see, you see this random video that has clearly been pirated from… well, who the hell knows. One of the videos we saw was as near as I could see a “Welcome to Georgetown University” video from the early 90s they probably sent to freshmen! You’d figure if they’re already snagging the audio, they could at least find something somewhat close for the video…
At any rate, we had fun. And the embarrassment was minor. I sung some Frank Sinatra… ‘cuz he doesn’t really sing, he just talks to words. And women love it… 