Karaoke Ethics

If there is one thing that annoys the shit out of me (10 out of 10 times) is people with no karaoke ethics. Don't get me wrong, simply becos these people have no karaoke ethics, this doesn't mean that they are mean / bad / wicked. Sometimes, they could be the nicest fellas around...

So what are karaoke ethics?

The oh so familiar song

Many a times, the minute a song starts playing, friends around you will go "OHHHH I luuuuurve that song" or "OHHHH I knoooooow this song" then...

• Proceed to perform a duet without even asking you
• Or worst, sing-along (without mic) but somehow manage to drown your voice completely

This may be ok for one or two songs... but imagine this happening for the rest of the session! Wouldn't this drive you mad? I know we're into this for fun but harlow... some of us like to sing and truly would like to perfect our singing and by you belching out loud (and sometimes out of tune) with / without a mic is just plain rude... especially when you did not ask for the song in the first place. If you like the song, you can always sing it later on (by yourself).

Pity the banana

Being a banana is already hard enough given that we need to ensure that whatever Chinese songs that we wanna sing are translated into 'pinyin'. From there, we either memorize the damn lyrics or the smarter ones (like me) will load them into a PDA to be carried around. But being a banana would also mean that we will have limited Chinese songs to sing. In my case, I only have the 'pinyin' for about 8 songs. So, can you imagine my frustration when others perform a duet without even asking... when all you ask for is just to sing the 8 songs peacefully! It's not like I have 800 songs or something. Plus, YOU god-damn know Chinese and have like over a million songs to sing SO WHY MUST you FIGHT to sing along with other people's songs? Be sensitive will ya... when you sing your Chinese songs, we leave you to it, so please, return the courtesy and shut the fuck up when we sing!

Being a banana would also mean that we will have to rely on the true yellow man to help us select the Chinese songs we wanted. But half the time, because you are so damn busy singing other people's songs, you forgot about our songs request! Then when you are not doing so, you are busy singing the songs you selected yourself earlier and usually like 10 songs in a stretch! I'm sorry, but are you mad? Why do we have to sit thru 10 songs sung by you, yourself and you alone? Is this your personal concert or something? Well, if you're gonna pay for the bill, I supposed it's still tolerable but if not, shut the fuck up and please rotate the mic will ya.

Dance floor mania

Karaoke rooms are usually SMALL and they are made so small for not just economical reasons but also the fact that when you sing, you are not expected to prance around the entire room. At most we wiggle our butts sitting down or standing up. This is ok except that some people goes to karaoke to select dance tunes like "Don't Cha by PCD" for the sake of DANCING in a KARAOKE ROOM!!! Are you mad or something? If you wanna dance, shouldn't you be at a disco or something? Again, why are you wasting precious karaoke hours on nonsense??? * roll-eyes *

Thus to summarize the points mentioned above...

• Thou shall wait for ur turn to sing ur song(s)
• Thou shall not sing louder than the person holding the mic
• Thou shall not sing 10 songs at one stretch
• Thou shall not pick any MTV during a karaoke session to wiggle your butt
• Thou shall not have loud conversations when one is singing

If you're guilty of one or more of the scenarios above, no offense. This is just coming from someone who likes singing at karaoke and have been annoyed multiple times... by good friends who in reality are reaaaaaaaally nice people.

On a separate note: In conjunction with the brand new year, have modified the template slightly. The text area has now been widened for ease of reading. Hope you like it. Cheers.