Karaoke 0: Prelude

I found myself, just a few hours ago, in a KTV cafe somewhere in Chinatown. It began when my army friends extended an invitation to join them, and let's just say that it was highly uncharacteristic for me to agree.

Dinner? Anytime. Outing at the library? Sure thing. Shopping for undergarments? Ok, but don't tell anyone. But singing?!?

In the end, it was a matter of pride. When I finally joined the group, who were happily queing up playlists comprising the biggest names in Chinese pop, a friend whispered to me, "Hanting, it's ok, you can just choose an English song to sing. We don't mind."

In history, nothing starts a war faster than the insulting of pride.

For the official record, my Mandarin isn't anything like my Grandma's, and I qualify it by pointing out that she can pen Mandarin poems while I break a sweat ensuring my spoken and written grammar is correct. However, and it's a very, very important 'However', I am able to read all my Mandarin newspapers and comics without having to guess the meaning of every alternate line, and I can appreciate Mandarin music to a respectable degree. Most importantly, I can engage a cabby in a full Mandarin conversation for 40 minutes, and heck, you've got to admit that's one h*ll of an Oral Test.

So yes, I was able to recognize almost all the songs that were belted out, and contributed a few renditions of my own too. On hindisight though, it seems kind of fishy that only my songs were 'accidentally prematurely cut short due to technical faults of the remote controller'.

At the end of the day, the one person in my mind was Ms Oei, my secondary school Mandarin teacher. She was the very first teacher I had who stressed that a proficiency in the language would enrich our lives in ways we cannot imagine. Her philosophy did more than that for me tonight - it bridged a very important gap for me, and brought my friends and I closer on some intangible level.

Thank you mam! I took about four years to finally understand the most important lesson you were trying to teach, but at least I had the foresight to ask you for a general extension for all work, way back in '99. =)