(Day Zero Project) Sing Karaoke with Friends : DONE
I always ranted that I do not have enough time to blog. Due to the past 4 days-long holidays, I (kind of) don't have that excuse anymore. So here it is, a long overdue post I should have posted MONTHS ago.
Singing karaoke with friends is one of the easiest thing on my Day Zero list -I am bound to do it anyway at a certain point of the year. My closest group of friends and I are not that creative in thinking up what to do during our meet up; karaoke is a regular part of our activity-repertoire . However, I figured this would be a less intimidating way to start my 101-things-challenge, and wouldn't it be fun to go to karaoke with different group of friends? Less Afgan, Raisa, and Bruno Mars for a change. I mean, I still love them, but a little variety would be nice.
Since this is one of the easiest things to do on my list, it is not fair to just perform this once. Thus, I have done this three times. Yes, perhaps I should spare more time to do other things on my list, but DOESN'T MATTER, JUST CELEBRATE THE LITTLE THINGS! WOOO!
1. Karaoke with office colleagues
Female occupants of TB-HIV Research Centre has a lot of things in common. Being a discount freak is just one of them. Turned out we are also karaoke-fiends. Therefore when Mbak Mawar asked us to make use of her free 5 hours karaoke from purchasing some random vouchers in le wild discount apps, that was just an offer too good to refuse.
So, we did it. Twice. Long live Mbak Mawar. Long live Diva Family Karaoke!Moar discount pls.
We tacked a piece of paper at an office cupboard where people could write down songs they want to sing during our karaoke outing. It was going to be a 5-hours karaoke, and we wanted to use that opportunity well. Every. Single. Minutes. This was our song list just a few minutes before really going :
What I love about going karaoke with them is, aside from songs we have listed beforehand, they sang the most obscure songs in the world. One person would be singing something in French, the others in Spanish, Swedish, and whatnots. There were no pressure whatsoever to choose something that everyone could sing. Perhaps it was also because we have 5 hours to spare. Times two.
I sang mostly K-Pop, which was apparently pretty unknown in the part of the world they were living in (Southern hemisphere of Saturn, more likely). When we were not contributing our share of obscure songs, we sang pretty popular tunes, most of them from the 70s to 90s. Naturally, because my song taste resembled Woman of My Colleagues' Age, I hogged the microphones quite often during this session too.
Self realization : How long is the ideal karaoke session? I would say 5 hours! Plenty of time to introduce The Glorious Hotness That is SHINee to new audience. Plus, it was strangely enjoyable when I joined singing some old songs, and my colleagues were bewildered, "how could you know this song?" PLEASE. Everyone knows Engelbert Humperdinck and The Platters...
...right?
So, we did it. Twice. Long live Mbak Mawar. Long live Diva Family Karaoke!
We tacked a piece of paper at an office cupboard where people could write down songs they want to sing during our karaoke outing. It was going to be a 5-hours karaoke, and we wanted to use that opportunity well. Every. Single. Minutes. This was our song list just a few minutes before really going :
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| You can estimate the average age of my colleagues from looking at this song list |
What I love about going karaoke with them is, aside from songs we have listed beforehand, they sang the most obscure songs in the world. One person would be singing something in French, the others in Spanish, Swedish, and whatnots. There were no pressure whatsoever to choose something that everyone could sing. Perhaps it was also because we have 5 hours to spare. Times two.
I sang mostly K-Pop, which was apparently pretty unknown in the part of the world they were living in (Southern hemisphere of Saturn, more likely). When we were not contributing our share of obscure songs, we sang pretty popular tunes, most of them from the 70s to 90s. Naturally, because my song taste resembled Woman of My Colleagues' Age, I hogged the microphones quite often during this session too.
Self realization : How long is the ideal karaoke session? I would say 5 hours! Plenty of time to introduce The Glorious Hotness That is SHINee to new audience. Plus, it was strangely enjoyable when I joined singing some old songs, and my colleagues were bewildered, "how could you know this song?" PLEASE. Everyone knows Engelbert Humperdinck and The Platters...
...right?
2. Karaoke with Eyang Aul
"Eyang Aul" is how I call Aulia Dewantari. We were in the same extracurricular activity during junior high, in which she joined acceleration class and graduated one year earlier. She had this habit of calling me "Tante" for no reason, thus I retaliated (?) by calling her "Eyang" (grandma). She does not call me Tante anymore but because I am a consistent (?) person, I kept calling her Eyang.
Aulia, who has been studying in South Korea for some time, told me that she was going back to Bandung for holiday. I spontaneously suggested that we should go to karaoke together, and surprisingly, she said okay. I was worried that it was going to be a very awkward meeting; we rarely chatted after junior high, we haven't met since 2010. Our whatsapp and facebook conversation remained amicable, but sometimes online convo is different from real life. Apparently, I worried for nothing...
Back in junior high, I thought we had a very essential difference in music taste. For example, she was an avid fan of Linkin Park (still is), while for me Linkin Park could not -SHOULD NOT- counted as singing, it was more throat-injury-inducing screaming. Now that I have learned the errors of my ways and appreciate musics-genre-in-which-the-vocalist-scream-a-lot, we are actually quite similar. Even our vocal range were similar! Or...perhaps it is more fitting if I say, our preferred singing techniques were similar. Expect a lot ofscreeching dolphins falsetto when we are singing together!
Who cares, falsetto is da bomb, man.
Self realization : It is official, Eyang Aul is my spiritual twin in terms of choosing karaoke songs. Never have I ever sing with someone who deliberately choose Josh Groban in karaoke. Or The Prayer (Andrea Bocelli and Celine Dion's version). But to balance things out we also sang a lot of Linkin Park and Queen.
Aulia, who has been studying in South Korea for some time, told me that she was going back to Bandung for holiday. I spontaneously suggested that we should go to karaoke together, and surprisingly, she said okay. I was worried that it was going to be a very awkward meeting; we rarely chatted after junior high, we haven't met since 2010. Our whatsapp and facebook conversation remained amicable, but sometimes online convo is different from real life. Apparently, I worried for nothing...
Back in junior high, I thought we had a very essential difference in music taste. For example, she was an avid fan of Linkin Park (still is), while for me Linkin Park could not -SHOULD NOT- counted as singing, it was more throat-injury-inducing screaming. Now that I have learned the errors of my ways and appreciate musics-genre-in-which-the-vocalist-scream-a-lot, we are actually quite similar. Even our vocal range were similar! Or...perhaps it is more fitting if I say, our preferred singing techniques were similar. Expect a lot of
Who cares, falsetto is da bomb, man.
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| Blurry selfie we took before we left. Ciwalk, courtesy of my Samsung Ace which only has back camera, LOL. Reminiscence of the usual selfie quality during our junior high years. Well, better than nothing... |
Self realization : It is official, Eyang Aul is my spiritual twin in terms of choosing karaoke songs. Never have I ever sing with someone who deliberately choose Josh Groban in karaoke. Or The Prayer (Andrea Bocelli and Celine Dion's version). But to balance things out we also sang a lot of Linkin Park and Queen.
We should really go karaoke-ing again. Or at least meet up and take a proper selfie with a better quality.
3. Sing with Theu Voogoeh
This is an honorary mention since I haven't gone to karaoke with them this year.
Theu Voogoeh used to be an all-girl band. Anna and Emma were vocalists, Empi and Nadia were the guitarists, Chindy played bass, Ditta on drum, and Salita took charge of the keyboard. Since I only played Sundanese flute and recorder at that time, and my screeching dolphin voice was of no use for them, I was appointed as "manager"/cheerleader. We do not perform anymore, but we still enjoy singing together in an enclosed karaoke space.
Being a former-band, we had a long list of memorable songs. Some they had performed, some incited fond memories, some were too embarassing that they shouldn't be spoken of. We had soft spots for The Cranberries and always sing some parts from the band in our meet-ups. We listened to t.A.T.u, despite their faux-lesbian image, and translated some of the lyric of Malchik Gay to Sundanese. We also perform impromptu rap to Andrea Bocelli's song.
Shame that we did not record that. It was the most epic rendering of "Vivo Per Lei" :)
Self realization : It is always wonderful to find someone, or a group of people, with whom you are comfortable to be weird with :)
Thanks my friends for bearing with my voice LOL.
Overall, this has been a very easy, very enjoyable challenge. I have 100 things left, though...haha. Well not really 100 because I have completed some and started the others. Will be updating the challenge later.
Ciao!
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| "Singer not found" LOL |
Being a former-band, we had a long list of memorable songs. Some they had performed, some incited fond memories, some were too embarassing that they shouldn't be spoken of. We had soft spots for The Cranberries and always sing some parts from the band in our meet-ups. We listened to t.A.T.u, despite their faux-lesbian image, and translated some of the lyric of Malchik Gay to Sundanese. We also perform impromptu rap to Andrea Bocelli's song.
Shame that we did not record that. It was the most epic rendering of "Vivo Per Lei" :)
Self realization : It is always wonderful to find someone, or a group of people, with whom you are comfortable to be weird with :)
Thanks my friends for bearing with my voice LOL.
Overall, this has been a very easy, very enjoyable challenge. I have 100 things left, though...haha. Well not really 100 because I have completed some and started the others. Will be updating the challenge later.
Ciao!
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