Karaoke blues

Just this past Monday, a friend of mine had a birthday, so a bunch of us (or rather, he) decided to go to Redbox to celebrate with him there. Bearing in mind that it was a weekday night, the guy who arranged for us to go out (he was the 'Ahmad" of the day) promised that we would be back early as all of us had to work the next morning. The initial idea was to wait till midnight to wish the birthday boy happy birthday (his birthday was actually on Tuesday), after which we would leave and head home, latest by 1 am. I reached home at 3 in the morning.

Having said that, we did have an enjoyable time. As a general rule, I'm pretty shy and dislike hogging the limelight. Thus the microphone was hardly with me, despite the badgering from my friends to "faster choose your song!" I've since realised that most people don't really care if they can carry a tune or not. It was all I could do to keep from laughing when my friend repeatedly began all his songs off-key or in a different pitch.

Which brings to mind another topic, rather off-tangent, but related nonetheless. I now know why those folks on American Idol or Malaysian Idol even bother joining the competition when their rendition of songs is enough to turn the composers in their graves. Somehow they're disillusioned by the fact that they can actually sing. To their own ears they sound great, but pity those other poor folks that have to bear with their singing. So it's not really a matter of being thick-skinned or whatever, but they actually think they're good at what they do.

Coming back to Redbox, I did reluctantly take the mike probably once in every 10 songs, after further hassling from my friends. Fortunately for me, after a while they got too engrossed to bother about me anymore, so I busied myself with the coke and kacang. Looks like I won't be getting an invitation to anymore karaoke birthdays anytime soon.. :p