For the love you bring won't mean a thing, unless you sing, sing, sing

Perhaps I should say a little bit more about my birthday celebration. The night of August 30 began at a local restaurant called Barbarossa. The menu was very Western and actually written in English. This often presents a problem, because although you speak English, and the menu speaks English, the waiter often does not. So, suppose you settle upon the Spaghetti Bolognese (which I did). You will then have to figure out a way to communicate to the waiter that you want that item. Thankfully a number of Chinese people were at the dinner and helped me out. Usually you just ask for a copy of the Chinese menu and find an item that costs the same price as the spaghetti, and hope that's it. So far this method has worked for me.

After dinner, we had a karaoke room reserved. I had never done karaoke in my life, let alone Chinese karaoke, so I didn't know what to expect. We arrived at a decadent lobby, full of marble floors, gold things, and hand-made furniture. Honestly, it looked a lot like a place a king might live, or at least Donald Trump. We got on an elevator where I noticed that the building had 36 floors! I really hope that there is karaoke happening on all of these floors, though deep down I know this couldn't be.

Our room, number 512, was confusingly on the fourth floor. The helpful employees shepharded us in to the room which consisted of: a rather large tv, a rather large couch, two microphones, and an excellent sound system. One of the natives amongst our group began to fiddle about with the karaoke computer. We mistakenly believed that, because he Chinese, he would have an innate understanding of how it worked. We would soon regret putting Yang Zhun at the helm.

In the meantime a cake was brought in, in addition to some Chinese beer (as it was my 21st birthday). Everyone sang happy birthday. This would not be the last time.

After enjoying the delicious cake, and watching the Chinese chess players on TV for many minutes, we began to grow impatient with Yang Zhun. He kept asking for one more moment, and eventually the karaoke system whirred to life. His first song choice: Happy Birtday.

Everyone sang along again, laughing at the strange video playing in the background, which consisted of a bunch of people running around in giant bunny suits. As it turns out, this would be one of the more normal videos of the night. (The least normal video of the night was the three minutes of rugby footage that played over a Chinese song called "Friendship")

Just as we finished singing Happy Birthday for the second time, the song's tempo picked up and started again from the beginning. At this point we were beginning to grow weary of its simple melody and lyrics, but sang along anyways. The happy birthday song proceeded to play 6 more times. Towards the end of the last rendition, Yang Zhun pressed a button and the machine skipped to the next song. It is unclear why he did not press this button much, much earlier.

After that, the karaokeing improved dramatically. I did many songs that night including a couple of Backstreet Boys numbers as well as "Drop it Like it's Hot" and "Dancing Queen" which, I've decided, is the world's hardest karaoke song. I learned a number of important karaoke lessons that night:

a) Do you know the VERSE of the the song? It is not enough to know just the chorus, as this will result in lengthy periods of embarassed mumbling.

b) Does the song contain high notes that you will never ever be able to do justice to? Coming upon a note like those found in many BSB songs presents a decision: do I go for it, or do I switch over to the falsetto. Either way, it's probably not going to go well.

c) Is the song a rap song? It's pretty much impossible to do a rap song well on karaoke. Dont' think that I didn't give "Drop it like it's Hot" everything I had, but the words on the screen came with such speed and persistence that I was doomed from the beginning.

d) Is the song in Chinese? I can read Chinese fairly well, but definitely not when it's Taiwanese Chinese, which means infinitely more complex characters. I would say I had about a 10% hit ratio on the Chinese songs, and that was only because of the occasional English word that cropped up. As for the melodies, I probably hit an average of two notes a song, under the theory that even a broken clock is right twice a day.

So that was karaoke. It was extremely fun, and I'm so glad that my boss, Fay, was able to organize it.

The next day I was hoarse from singing. A Chinese intern named Kevin invited me to an intern celebration and on the way over explained that we would be singing the Weird Al song "I Bought it on eBay" (to the tune of "I Want It That Way") in front of a crowd of roughly 200 people. It was the sort of pleasant surprise that makes living in China such an adventure.

The event that day was a send-off for the roughly 100 interns who had worked at eBay that summer. The crowd was done with the work, and giddy with excitement. Even the lamest joke got a big laugh. At one point, an intern showed a video presentation and the crowd erupted. I was confused, he hadn't even told a joke. I asked Kevin why people were laughing.

"The lighting in the video was not very good".

It was in this environment that I decided to do some Backstreet Boys dance moves in front of a crowd of 200 chinese people that I had never met before. As the Weird Al backing kicked in, I began the pointing and shimmying that had made all the girls scream in the "I Want It That Way" video.

The Chinese reaction was substantially more subdued. Not a single person laughed. Or even reacted. It was as if they had all decided to pretend that the lonely American up front was not doing hilarious things, WHICH I WAS! I quickly gave up the dance moves and finished the song with the rest of my group awkwardly.

I sat down dejectedly as song finished, and another act took the stage. An eBay intern played backing on an out of tune guitar, while his friend sang cheesy pop songs. The crowd loved it.

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Being that this is my 21st birthday, and being that this was my 100th blog post, I was planning on writing something grandiose.

But I just spent three hours at the karaoke bar, and I am exhausted.

tom rocks

Why do you, you seem so afraid? But I can't figure you out

My apartment in Shanghai is about 4 miles from where I work. Still the commute can present problems. Before I got here, my gracious host, Jeff, suggested that I take the subway into work. So I tried this on the first day. The first subway car to pull up was so full that when it stopped at the station, people that wanted to keep going actually got squeezed out. I finally managed to get in on a "spacious" one, but quickly swore off the subway.

So I started taking the taxi to work. I should mention that Shanghai taxi drivers are the most amazingly inept group of people in the world. You would think that if you're job was to drive people places, you would learn tricks of the trade, such as not going on the immensely crowded freeway, or stopping when I say to. One of my taxi drivers stalled at the end of the ride, gesturing wildly and acting confused for roughly 30 seconds, so the meter would roll over and he would get an extra kuai. One kuai is worth 12.5 cents.

My 4 mile morning commute usually takes about half an hour.

In the evenings, I decided to start walking home. I usually walk to the gym, which is on the way home, and then stop at whatever restaurant catches my fancy, before finally making it back to the apartment. It's about 5 miles all told, and usually takes about 2-3 hours after the workout and the dinner, but its fun, because I get to see some of the back alleys in Shanghai.

Today on the way home, I was feeling lazy. I had some leftover Indian in the fridge, and I just wanted to get to the gym quickly, so that I could enjoy my delcious dinner. I left work and began hailing taxis. Shanghai is a desperately under-taxied city, even worse than New York. It was rush hour, and it didn't look like I was ever going to find a ride, so I began to walk in the direction of the gym, hailing any taxi that drove by.

Suddenly, a motorcycle with a taxi medallion, pulled up beside me. I'd seen these before, apparently the Chienese government has decided to allow some motorcyclists to ferry people around town, but I would have none of it.

"No thank you" I said, and the man drove off.

Instantly, I regretted it. I had come to Shanghai for adventure, and here adventure had shown up on a motorcycle and offered me a ride, and I had the temerity to refuse him. When the next motorcycle taxi pulled up, I asked the driver how much it cost. He held up two fingers. I got on.

"Two kuai," I said, adjusting the seat as best I could, "how cheap!"

He laughed, "not two kuai, twenty kuai!" By now he had begun to accelerate, and I was in no position to bargain.

I should say now that I have never been in a motorcycle. Years of brainwashing from both parents have convinced me that motorcycling is a truly evil activity, on par with killing a man or putting your elbows on the table. So when he hit the gas I had no clue what to do with my dangling legs. They hung limply from the side of the bike, until my driver began to yell, "Put your legs here!" pointing to foot holds.

He was a talented driver, but I quickly realized the mistake that I'd made in getting on that bike. Shanghai streets are the craziest in the world, full of unexpected and ignored one-way signs. There are large bike lines on either side of the road, but cars will plow down them if the traffic is bad.

On multiple occasions, the driver would pass cars by weaving through oncoming traffic. The whole time I sat on back, thinking "please take your time, there is no rush, and life is precious". At one point I screamed. The whole experience was straight out of some cliched action picture where the well-meaning nerdy computer geek (me) gets onboard some spaceship/racecar/motorcycle with the take-no-prisoners follow-no-rules hero (the driver) and hilarity ensues. Only it's not so funny when you're the guy whose life's in danger.

Finally we arrived at the gym in one piece. The driver had a huge grin on his face when I handed him the money which means that either he was ripping me off or he had enjoyed the sounds of the muffled screams coming from the back of his bike.

Either way, I'm never doing that again.