Karaoke Asian Style

On Saturday, I went to karaoke with friends to a new place recently opened in Glen Waverley. I thought it would be bad since the whole building looked so small and I was wondering how could they possibly squeeze a karaoke place upstairs. However to my surprise, despite the rooms being a bit small, it was otherwise quite good. The place was clean and didn't smell of years of spilt alochol and cigarettes, had good toilet facilities (you really need good toilets after you drink too much for either the excretion of fluids or regurgitation of solids if you get too drunk), good song selection, very good widescreen TV and best of all, cordless microphones. The cordless mic is perfectly suited for karaoke venues. No more tangling of wires trying to pass the mic around or spilling drinks by knocking them over with the microphone cord and best of all, no slightly drunk people tripping over the cords and sending themselves and half the contents on the table flying across the room and onto other people.

As you can see from the photo above, Asians go to karaoke where they get their own private function room and sing with their friends. I go to karaoke quite often and love it. I love singing, usually badly, although I do sing a few songs well. We also love to play our Asian games at karaoke that all get more fun the more drunk you are. Asians in general are really into karaoke and know so many songs. Everyone knows all the lyrics to even really new songs that are just released. In Asia, music videos are always accompanied with lyrics and everyone learns the lyrics by heart very quickly. Karaoke DVDs are also very abundant and people sing at home on their own systems even. I must admit that sometimes I crank up the system at home and start belting out a few songs just because its fun.

The games we play at karaoke can be spilt into two type as follows:

*Hand gesture type games - They involve shouting out various actions or numbers and the loser being the one who does what the other person shouts. My favourite is the "Guessing Finger Game". Each person holds out their fist and take turns to shout out a number multiple of 5 between 0 and 20. You can either keep both hands closed, open one hand or open both hands. If the number of exposed fingers is equal to what they shout, they go again. Two correct guesses in a row means the other person drinks the beer. The game gets better the more drunk you are. You may shout 20 and only open one of your hands, meaning that the maximum number of fingers can only be 15 even if the other person opens both hand. Since this game is played at a very quick pace, its hard to think properly sometimes. You can really feel yourself struggling to control your hands the instant they shout the number so as to avoid losing.

*Dice type games - They involve guessing what your opponents have or trying to get the best combinations. You can probably just see one of the dice cups on the table in the photo. Its the black plastic cup facing downwards where 5 die are underneath it. The dice game are just too hard to try to explain with text and would take me two whole pages to do so. So lets just say they are fun and all involve a bit of luck and skill.

While some people are playing games or chatting, whoever's song comes up quickly stops playing and starts singing. There is a lot of competition to get your song on actually. Whoever has the remote controlling the song choice normally picks quite a lot of songs for themselves. Then someone else takes the remote and programs all their songs. So occassionally after one person has sung too much, songs are inserted in and queue jumped so someone else can sing. There are a lot of unintended duets or threesomes since a lot of songs are known by many people and all want to sing. Even if you picked a song does not guarantee you get to sing it, although usually you do. Its a dog eat dog world in karaoke, if you want to sing, you grab the mic.

By the end of the night, I had consumed many many beers, was a little tipsy, had a sore throat and nearly no voice. I also consumed lots of junk food typically provided at Asian karaoke places such as fried chicken wings, fried fish balls, fried spring rolls, fried samosas, fried squid balls and fried chips. I think you can see a theme, everything is fried. However I had a great time and can't wait for the next karaoke session. Its good value for money when you think about it too. You don't actually pay a cent for the room and equipment. The place does impose that you spend a minimum amount on food and drinks though. By 4am, we had all well and truly sang until we had no voice left. We were troopers though and were singing right until they stopped the machine as usual. :-)