Back from the Land of Karaoke Hell

I attended my mom's brother's wife's mother's birthday party tonight. Digest that first. Okay? Well, I attended the birthday party, and for the life of me I have no idea why people choose to throw birthday parties in Chinese restaurants. In Serdang, no less, The Land of Karaoke Hell.

"Why 'The Land of Karaoke Hell' though?" you ask.

Time for another history lesson, standard fixture in any authentic Saffron post. I once had the misforune of attending a wedding dinner in a Chinese restaurant in Serdang, complete with the whole Let's Sing Bad Songs From The 60s karaoke theme. That's not so bad, right? The difference though, is the fact that they cranked up the karaoke machine even before all the guests have arrived. Maybe some asshat thought he/she was being smart and decided to do a pre-dinner show. Well, my dears, it was a pre-dinner show gone horribly, horribly, horribly wrong.

I was near tears even before the dinner began, and they were not tears of joy for the happy couple. I felt a great rage and wanted to kill them, slowly and painfully, cos I don't think even Abu Graib used torture devices so cunningly.

Thankfully, tonight was easier, meaning they started the karaoke session at the 4th dish or thereabouts. Unfortunately, the dishes started slowing from that point onwards, probably because they wanted to let people sing, which really sucked for the rest of us non-singing guests, because all we wanted to do was finish and get the heck out of there as fast as humanly possible.

Karaoke sets aren't really expensive, if you really wanna sing that badly, go get a set and stop torturing other people's eardrums. To make the situation worse, the sound crew (or whatever sorry excuse of a sound crew tonight) had the volume up at max. There was virtually no bass, it was all high-pitch screeching. I actually got a headache at one point, cos it was so goddamned loud, bloody hell. There's really no winning in the hall, cos there was a huge ass chandelier in the middle and wall-mounted speakers on the sides, so you're dead no matter where you sit.

I don't know what it is with aunties and uncles who like to sing in public. I mean, do they have no sense of what they sound like? If a lifetime of singing in the bathroom will create people like them who have delusions of singing grandeur, by god, I will stopping all my Saturday Night Fever moves when I'm shampooing my hair, cos I do NOT want to hobble on stage when I'm 70 and sing Tian Mi Mi.

I always thought weddings and, in tonight's case, birthdays, are supposed to be happy times. For the life of me I don't get how subjecting people to 200 decibels of caterwauling is going to make any of your guests happy. In the end, I took to stealing a sip of my bro's liquor whenver it got too much, and then alternating with a sip of my mom's Sprite, cos I'm a wuss and can't take liquor by itself.

In the end the Oaf and I spent night playing American Idol judges. Unfortunately, we were both Simon Cowell on crack, which resulted in uproarious laughter from people sitting at our table. Hey, you burst my eardrums, I make fun of you in public. I still got the shit end of the stick. :p

CHANDELIER SEZ, "I'M A SURVIVOR!"
SO AM I, DEARIE, SO AM I.

Notes:
Chandelier pic from here.