Last Tuesday I went to a Korean karaoke place with some of the guys from my Japanese class. 好了好了好了・・・ (Why am I posting this late Sunday night instead of early Wednesday on the 15th? I suggest you take a look at one of my other entries!)
The ride there
I was picked up by Terry at around 8:30, and it took us another 10 minutes or so to pick up Winnie. I already forgot the way there, but at least now I know that her place isn't within "walking distance" (although I have walked some crazy distances before). That effectively eliminates the possibilty of a da- ...uh, "day-event". Anyway, I almost regretted not bringing along my pack of Gackt CDs, but Terry had a great mix of Utada Hikaru songs (also gave us something to talk about). For some reason she kept changing the songs - and skipping traveling in favor of Final Distance? Craziness!
Parking adventures
None of us could find the place (having the place's name changed probably didn't help) so we ended up parking pretty high up at some at some nearby building. Four dollars and a scary elevator ride later, we found Bertha and a place where we probably could have parked for free.
Ok, I'll admit it was nice escorting two lovely ladies. Sure, you can bring up the fact that I'm a guy, it was dark, and it was unfamiliar territory, pretty much making it my responsibility... but I prefer my phrasing.
Not nearly as nerve-shattering as I thought
Karaoke was pretty interesting. We discovered (the hard way) that you have to be a little careful entering songs or the previous songs will get erased. At least, that's my understanding. We got to sing songs in Chinese, Japanese, and Korean (oh yeah... there were English songs too). Pearl was nice enough to bring print-outs of the romaji lyrics of j-pop songs we should all be familiar with - that alone made her cuter than... I dunno... 100 Pokémon (...not that I watch that show, of course)! She was also the only one smart enough to bring a pen, because not only was finding the songs really hard, but we'd lose track of the numbers.
How did I fare? Maybe it was the fact that there was one "good" microphone and one "bad" microphone, or the fact that I have a low, hard-to-hear, and generally unpleasant voice, but (luckily!) my performance was pretty forgettable. I was only prepared to sing Malice Mizer's Le ciel (I have that pretty much memorized), but I couldn't find that, so I looked around for some Gackt stuff. I saw a lot of familiar songs, but those weren't the songs where I really tried to memorize the words or learn the kanji (hiragana was only available sometimes), so I tried １２月のLove song with varying success. Looking back, I probably should have tried 君のためにできること instead. Next up was Malice Mizer's Au revoir, and once again I found I could only handle the refrain. I could "read" the Japanese, just not at any decent speed. At least people liked the music. The strangest part of it all is that I sound great in the shower! I don't know what's going on...
I just wish I didn't have to go at it alone. Gackt's Last Song wasn't there, and that was the only Gackt song Pearl had in romaji. Also, I only knew the first three words of the Hotman theme song; after "きっと Shining Days...", I'm lost.
Other than the "good / bad" microphones and the fact that our song selection got erased, the only things that dampened the mood were other technical oddities such as the background videos (imagine slow, depressing songs being sung to colorful, exciting images like racecars and people waterskiing), the scoring device that didn't score (either that or we were all worse than we thought), and the surprisingly expensive room (we weren't serviced at all... and no, that one time some guy came in describing a car didn't count).
Quote of the day: "What does that mean??" (--Fioré, after hearing V6's Feel your breeze)
So hungry and cold I could puke
We paid the $80 or so (about $12 per person I think), and after a good 10 or 15 minutes deciding what we could and should do this late at night (considering it was a Tuesday), it came down to a boba / coffee shop thing. The mango smoothie I had was easily the best I had, although I only had one before, and that was over a year ago. After some pics, we decided to go back, and we were all too tired to pay attention to the "gentleman's club" billboard or the "adult videos" store.
The ride home
I don't know why I was so tired, especially when I've been going to bed well past 2:00am in preparation for this. It was probably depression, too; I realized there's still a lot I need to do - not just for school, but life in general. It makes me want to jam my mouse into my brain to embrace the satisfying sweetness of death... but hey, there's always next year. Winter break couldn't come fast enough, but now I can't wait to get into a rut again at school so I can at least pretend I'm busy.
Other stuff:
My new website is at http://www.underactive.net/justin. My brother's "rustedmind.net" domain expired so now I'm using underactive.net. That means re-uploading my sites and re-linking my pics and avatars on forums... joy.
I've never been one to list the "currently listening to" or "my mood" details (both change too frequently), but I think I should mention the Ireland OST, which you should be able to get here.Ireland is a Korean drama that recently ended here in SoCal, although like in Korea it was beaten out by the more popular KBS dramas airing at the same time. Still, the soundtrack is all great stuff. I haven't enjoyed a soundtrack this much since the OST for the k-drama Stairway to Heaven.
I'm also getting around to looking at my "Stuff from Pearl" DVDs. Three episodes of Peace Maker Kurogane a day is the plan, but tomorrow I think I'll just go for Korean movie 100 Days With Mr. Arrogant. Very, very curious about that one.
It's about 1:00am now and I promised myself I'd start waking up at 6:00am so I'd better end this.
The ride there
I was picked up by Terry at around 8:30, and it took us another 10 minutes or so to pick up Winnie. I already forgot the way there, but at least now I know that her place isn't within "walking distance" (although I have walked some crazy distances before). That effectively eliminates the possibilty of a da- ...uh, "day-event". Anyway, I almost regretted not bringing along my pack of Gackt CDs, but Terry had a great mix of Utada Hikaru songs (also gave us something to talk about). For some reason she kept changing the songs - and skipping traveling in favor of Final Distance? Craziness!
Parking adventures
None of us could find the place (having the place's name changed probably didn't help) so we ended up parking pretty high up at some at some nearby building. Four dollars and a scary elevator ride later, we found Bertha and a place where we probably could have parked for free.
Ok, I'll admit it was nice escorting two lovely ladies. Sure, you can bring up the fact that I'm a guy, it was dark, and it was unfamiliar territory, pretty much making it my responsibility... but I prefer my phrasing.
Not nearly as nerve-shattering as I thought
Karaoke was pretty interesting. We discovered (the hard way) that you have to be a little careful entering songs or the previous songs will get erased. At least, that's my understanding. We got to sing songs in Chinese, Japanese, and Korean (oh yeah... there were English songs too). Pearl was nice enough to bring print-outs of the romaji lyrics of j-pop songs we should all be familiar with - that alone made her cuter than... I dunno... 100 Pokémon (...not that I watch that show, of course)! She was also the only one smart enough to bring a pen, because not only was finding the songs really hard, but we'd lose track of the numbers.
How did I fare? Maybe it was the fact that there was one "good" microphone and one "bad" microphone, or the fact that I have a low, hard-to-hear, and generally unpleasant voice, but (luckily!) my performance was pretty forgettable. I was only prepared to sing Malice Mizer's Le ciel (I have that pretty much memorized), but I couldn't find that, so I looked around for some Gackt stuff. I saw a lot of familiar songs, but those weren't the songs where I really tried to memorize the words or learn the kanji (hiragana was only available sometimes), so I tried １２月のLove song with varying success. Looking back, I probably should have tried 君のためにできること instead. Next up was Malice Mizer's Au revoir, and once again I found I could only handle the refrain. I could "read" the Japanese, just not at any decent speed. At least people liked the music. The strangest part of it all is that I sound great in the shower! I don't know what's going on...
I just wish I didn't have to go at it alone. Gackt's Last Song wasn't there, and that was the only Gackt song Pearl had in romaji. Also, I only knew the first three words of the Hotman theme song; after "きっと Shining Days...", I'm lost.
Other than the "good / bad" microphones and the fact that our song selection got erased, the only things that dampened the mood were other technical oddities such as the background videos (imagine slow, depressing songs being sung to colorful, exciting images like racecars and people waterskiing), the scoring device that didn't score (either that or we were all worse than we thought), and the surprisingly expensive room (we weren't serviced at all... and no, that one time some guy came in describing a car didn't count).
Quote of the day: "What does that mean??" (--Fioré, after hearing V6's Feel your breeze)
So hungry and cold I could puke
We paid the $80 or so (about $12 per person I think), and after a good 10 or 15 minutes deciding what we could and should do this late at night (considering it was a Tuesday), it came down to a boba / coffee shop thing. The mango smoothie I had was easily the best I had, although I only had one before, and that was over a year ago. After some pics, we decided to go back, and we were all too tired to pay attention to the "gentleman's club" billboard or the "adult videos" store.
The ride home
I don't know why I was so tired, especially when I've been going to bed well past 2:00am in preparation for this. It was probably depression, too; I realized there's still a lot I need to do - not just for school, but life in general. It makes me want to jam my mouse into my brain to embrace the satisfying sweetness of death... but hey, there's always next year. Winter break couldn't come fast enough, but now I can't wait to get into a rut again at school so I can at least pretend I'm busy.
Other stuff:
My new website is at http://www.underactive.net/justin. My brother's "rustedmind.net" domain expired so now I'm using underactive.net. That means re-uploading my sites and re-linking my pics and avatars on forums... joy.
I've never been one to list the "currently listening to" or "my mood" details (both change too frequently), but I think I should mention the Ireland OST, which you should be able to get here.Ireland is a Korean drama that recently ended here in SoCal, although like in Korea it was beaten out by the more popular KBS dramas airing at the same time. Still, the soundtrack is all great stuff. I haven't enjoyed a soundtrack this much since the OST for the k-drama Stairway to Heaven.
I'm also getting around to looking at my "Stuff from Pearl" DVDs. Three episodes of Peace Maker Kurogane a day is the plan, but tomorrow I think I'll just go for Korean movie 100 Days With Mr. Arrogant. Very, very curious about that one.
It's about 1:00am now and I promised myself I'd start waking up at 6:00am so I'd better end this.
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