KTV Revelations

...first of all, only when living in Taiwan would I have to double check my old blogs to makes sure I wouldn't have an overlapping name about karaoke. Second of all, karaoke!

Today Fiona, Ingrid, Alison, Alison's niece and I went to KTV--for a good 4 hours or so. It was fantastic! We had a nice mix of English and Chinese songs going on, accentuated by Ingrid and I popping to our feet whenever an English song came on--felt a bit like a Jack-in-the-box after a while, but in the best possible way that that sentence can exist.

In the course of the day we had plenty of wonderful revelations, as I learned the odd waves in which American music apparently crossed, or didn't cross, the ocean to Taiwan. We had a Taiwanese version of "We Will Rock You," for instance (why change Queen? WHY???), and a Taiwanese version of "Lady Marmalade" (of Moulin Rouge fame), as well as a song called "Rumour Has It" which was definitely not Adele.

And, as always, we had our share or lovely "music videos" which featured young models acting ridiculous while draped across various inanimate objects, including that old stand-by of irony, "Colors of the Wind" featuring a cookie-cutter blond chick on a big white sailboat. Kind of missed the point of the whole Pocahontas thing...and, incidentally, Ingrid and I had quite a bit of fun with the old Disney songs.

The most interesting part to me, though, was that apparently N*Sync, and even Justin Timberlake as a solo artist, completely skipped over Taiwan. I somewhat knew this from last week, when Maggie and Alison and I were talking about the Backstreet Boys (for some reason?) and I mentioned that, back in the day, I was more of an N*Sync fan. (True confessions, right here.) They had never heard of them.

Today, though, as Ingrid and I went a little crazy to "Bye Bye Bye" (because we could, that's why!), I realized that, even if they had missed N*Sync as a band, there was no way they could have missed Justin Timberlake. After all, beside his solo career, he's been in a hefty string of high-profile movies lately--The Social Network comes to mind--and I know from walking past innumerable billboards and posters (heck, I walked past one tonight!) that his two most recent, In Time and Friends with Benefits, have been widely publicized here in Taiwan. Surely mentioning his name would grant instant context to the cheesy 90s throwback songs we were belting.

Nope! Fiona and Alison were still stumped; when Ingrid whipped out her smartphone to get a picture on our side, Alison's niece recognized him and Fiona kind of remembered him from The Social Network, but that was it. Perhaps it's America-centric of me, or maybe it was just the age in which I was raised, but it is still absolutely unfathomable to me to not know Justin Timberlake's name!

In other news, some rather embarrassing footage of me singing and dancing to good ol' N*Sync, Mariah Carey and Avril Lavigne songs (amongst others) may or may not now be in existence...

But they, fortunately for everyone, are not on my camera chip. The following photos, on the other hand, ARE!

We were having fun, I promise :)

Yeahhhh KTV!

Anyway, thanks to my multi-hour belting, my throat is now a little worse for wear...but it was totally worth it! Yet another thing I would say only in Taiwan: karaoke is fun!

Christmas carolling in the halls

我可以唱歌嗎?

Four adorably small Taiwanese faces look up at me expectantly, their little yellow stamp cards clutched in front of them.

"OK," I say. "Go ahead!"

Their eyes widen and fix on me as they focus the entirety of their 3rd grade attention on getting it right.

"You better watch out, you better not cry! You better not pout, I'm telling you why--Santa Claus is coming to town. He's making a list..."

I can't help but smile; by halfway through the song I'm mouthing the words along with them, then wondering if I shouldn't, since the point is for them to have memorized it for themselves. But really, it's impossible not to sing--their enthusiasm and concentration makes for contagious joy.

Today at Hanmin we had a special Christmas day. All of the grades took half of the day to rotate between different stations, and every student was issued that little yellow stamp card with the word SONG written on it and space for three teachers' stamps; if they filled it in before the end of the day, they got to put their ticket in a raffle drawing.

This made for a day in which roving packs of tiny carolers roamed the hallways, grabbing willing teachers and breaking into song on a moment's notice. It literally made my day.

All of the 5th and 6th graders had learned "Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer," at my suggestion; the 3rd and 4th graders had learned "Santa Claus is Coming to Town," and the 1st and 2nd graders had learned "We Wish You a Merry Christmas." I got mostly awe-struck 3rd graders singing just the first line of their song (though there were some brave enough to do the whole thing), and towards the end I had a tiny 1st-or-2nd grade duo brave confronting the foreign English teacher to "Wish me a Merry Christmas." I was more than happy to give them my little blue Yang yang stamp in reward for their efforts.

Good job! - Yang yang

By the last hour, I was racking my brain for all the Christmas songs I could replicate, making it through a fairly impressive repertoire and discovering that my strongest memory of the lyrics to "Oh Christmas Tree" are not actually to "Oh Christmas Tree," but to "Oh Big Green Tree," a parody version I learned for a church musical I was in back in middle school. Huh.

When I made it home, it had to be Christmastime THEN. So I turned on my Christmas lights in my room, grabbed a mug of hot chocolate, and watched the remainder of It's a Wonderful Life, then watched Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer, (twice, so I could find start-and-stop points for my lesson tomorrow) and found a website offering Christmas music that I could listen to while reading--you guessed it--a Christmas book.

All in all, a pretty great way to spend the day, listening, singing, and just generally celebrating the celebration of Christ's birth! ...with Yang yang and Rudolph.