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We walked into the Cashbox KTV with wide eyes, an inconspicous sac full of beer,
and the anxiety for a new experience.
The place was unidentifiable to our naive Western eyes. This was not a kareoke bar, this was a
hotel. There were plush couches and
a chandelier in the lobby, and any number of attendants and wait stuff zipping
about the front desk.
Gone was the public atmosphere.
This was my only experience with kareoke in the past. We had attended Kareoke night at a bar
in West Toronto. An enthusiastic
and crowd-pleasing, but terribly corny DJ took cards from prospective
singers. He would cue up the CDs
and call the people in order.
Everyone was horrible.
Sally
had booked a room. A room! And it needed to be booked! Here we were in this multi-storey
hotel-like building with a multitudinous number of rooms and the place was
full.
Up an elevator and down a hall to our room, the atmosphere remained like
that of a fancy hotel. And then the
door opened up to our private kareoke suite. Leather couches and marble table. 50-plus-inch TV hooked up to some
computerized kareoke machine.
Artwork on the walls. Our
own bathroom. It felt like some
private mafioso lounge. Like I
shouldn�t be here. Fancy shit.
(For the most part...) Everyone sang very nice. A good sound system, along with pitch
control for register adjustment, and even reverb effects allowed for this.
The local repertoire, with few exceptions, was a lenghthy series of
indistinguishable love ballads. Our
Chinese friends sang long perfectly to these with all seriousness. One might not have been able to tell
their voices from the original vocal track.
The Western spirit took to the songs with a bit more
levity however, partially due to a limited stock of English songs � mostly
Oldies and newer pop and R&B tunes.
I have no problem taking on the acts and transitioning from Frank Sinatra
to Sid Vicious to Shaggy. Our first
visit, voluminous and beer-laden, led to some raised eyebrows and sideways
glances from our Chinese counterparts.
As always, when questioned as to eccentricities, I simply blame it on my
whole country: �That�s how they do it in Canada.�Subsequent visits have proven
this to be a fact. Why not? It�s a cultural thing; not just me, it�s
all of them...
A handy phone system keeps attendants on their feet. A call for assistance brings someone to
the room within sixty seconds.
Any
food, drink, etc. required can be ordered and is brought only minutes
later. Efficiency. It works. This place is open 24 hours a day and is
always packed. Anyone can be a
star.