spring cleaning the blog

To my horror, I realise I have 45 blog posts which are still in draft mode, some as old as 2005. (To be fair, some are actually posts which I took down. You know, those of a textual nature.)

Anyway, I'm not sure why I never posted this one dated 10 Dec 2007, about my secret karaoke buddy (well, not so secret anymore).

Perhaps I wasn't sure if what I wrote would hold true, but now, with hindsight, I am convinced my observation was right.

I vaguely recalled writing this only because of the previous post. And then someone asked for his number today. So clearly it's time for this post to see the light of day.

Here's the cleaned-up version:

Last Saturday night, I did something which I'd only ever done with one other person.

I sang karaoke.

I've always resisted singing in front of other people, despite having a number of KTV queens as friends. The only exception is my sis, and even then she sings 70% of the time we go K together.

It's not that I'm tone deaf (do tone deaf people know they are tone deaf?) or my voice is horrible (do people with horrible voices know that their voices are horrible?), but I'm painfully self-conscious when faced with mikes or cameras or public speaking or, in this case, semi-public crooning. Heck, I get the jitters when I have to speak at meetings even. ("Errrrr...I agree with what so-and-so said...errrrrr...ya.")

Back to Saturday night.

An old friend was back in town after four months in Hong Kong and we met up.

Actually, he wanted to meet for kopi, but I was working as a salesgirl, he said let's do drinks, but I dragged him to a fashion show instead, we then had supper at his fave Tiong Bahru zichar, after which we had ran out of things to do.

He wanted to karaoke and he could be very persuasive if he wanted to. So Party World it was.

Curled up with my legs under me for warmth on the red vinyl bench, I clutched a cold mike in even colder hands.

Kindly, he picked songs which he guessed I would know. Jay Chou. Cheer Chen. Mayday. I tried my best to speed read the lyrics, breathe and sing, all at the same time.

Like one of those compartmentalised KTV rooms, our friendship is self-contained. Now and then, one of us would go out, to use the loo, to have a smoke, to take a call, to make contact with the outside. We only existed in the present, even though we had not seen each other for more than a year. We barely even looked at each other, concentrating as we were on the large fonts on the screen and tiny buttons on the remote.

He asked, what happened with the guy you were involved with, and I gave a bitter, oh he got married. He went, oh. And that was that.

There was no need for more explanations, just like there was no need for me to ask, where's your girlfriend tonight? How's she coping with you being based in Hong Kong? Are you going to get married?

Details seemed superfluous. They didn't exist within the room.

And when we part, we make vague plans -- yeah, let's meet up again next year, sure I'll let you know if I go to Hong Kong -- but nothing firm. No past, because that's too complicated. No future, because that's assuming too much. We are just happy to enjoy each other's company -- in the present.

Footnote: Since that night, we've karaoked together three times? Seven times? The number doesn't really matter because each time is not unlike the other. Yet, it's never dull or repetitive. Even though we even sing the same old songs.