The Day After......

An enjoyable birthday! Thank you to all for the warm wishes (lots of emails and eCards) from across the globe. I got a few cool presents here, a nice bear cake (lots of frosting.... but still no 3 layer red cake made by Mama Dickinson.... with 1.5x the frosting recipie!!!) and my Taiwan Friends/coworkers taking me out for my first Karaoke experience here in Taiwan.

So it's almost a religion here to go Karaoke. They take you into a private room that seats 15 people or so (this was the medium room... we'll get a larger room next time and do a Friday night gathering). Food and drink are brought in (can order via computer) and you punch up the play list of songs you want to sing. There are three microphones scattered around the room for anyone to join along. The biggest difference from my US Karaoke experiences is that in Taiwan... EVERYONE SINGS! Nobody claims "I can't sing" or "I don't sing in front of people"... there is no excuse here for not singing. I tried the "I can't read the chinese" excuse for the songs in Chinese, but they attempted to work around that. I could pick up the tune pretty easily. They had maybe 150 songs in English to choose from. While I was unable to perform "The Roof... The Roof... The Roof is on fire....", I was able to perform Prince Purple Rain (no Kiss or Raspberry Beret available), some Elvis Falling in Love, and Beatles (can't remember at the moment.... have a headache).

I promised to try to learn at least one song in Chinese before I go back to the US - I have my work cut out for me. Can't even immitate it like I would if it were in Frech, German, or Spanish.....

The videos that are played behind the text are the actual videos (well... for the Chinese ones at least... some WEIRD stuff going on behind the English ones probably due to anal US copyright crap). So you can see the actual singers and hear your friends singing along:) The videos are actually kind of funny! About 75% of the videos involve a girl crying (some Chinese, some Taiwanese..... they usually kept me up on the difference since my ignorant eye could not tell the difference) and I continued to make a point of that all night. Plus I would add some English commentary (like my ISU roommates always loved when I did that for movies) to make everyone laugh.

Here are some of my favorite moments from the night. For the birthday folks also celebrating this week, this one is for you (feel free to sing along)



Another birthday present was the Red Wings winning again! 2-0 with two shutouts... I'll take it and hope for at least a split in Spittsburgh and a victory on home ice to skate around with the Cup! Remember, the Wings are 12-1 over their last three Cup Finals!!! Usefull knowledge there that no, I didn't have to look up to verify!

My headache is getting worse - think I'm off to bed. Enjoy your Wednesday!!!