The Karoke Professors

A group of people I instructed in a course invited me to a dinner. An innocent forenoon beer binge with random plates of food littered across the table. Like a parish hall disco from my youth, the lads are to one side and the lasses to the other. With myself, like a spectator at a ping-pong match stuck slap bang in the middle. I try my best to be enveloped by the women so as to chat pleasantly about the trivalities of love, death and marriage but over the course of the dinner the men get increasingly drunk and start to strain acorss the table to suck me into toasting and guzzling booze. They stand up like primary scholl students who want to go to the toilet as they clink and slurp. Quite soon the faces are red and their bositerous and cheeky side is unleashed.

The loudest and silliest student, who may also be the oldest, and by virtue, considered the funniest, is the first to get to the point.

“Do you know how to get to Karoke… (pause for effect) by hand?”
He bursts into laughter to such an extent that you’d think the whole restaurant was laughing. As his own biggest fan he chuckles away for a minute or two. The women smile politely and nibble on. Their untouched drinks curdling. I sit expressionless. I think about cracking a reposte: Does that mean you cartwheel to Karoke? But the joke, like all plastic things at sea, would be lost . I sigh and eat on.

Then one man beside me reaches for my arm, pulls me closer and whispers to my ear. “If you like Karoke, you should let me invite you, I am … something of an expert.”

I look at him. He’s a nerdish sort of fellow. Not the type you can imagine in a sleasy embrace in a red-lit leather-couched back room. I think about the grammar, ‘you should let me invite you.’ I stare into space. There I picture a hoard of spotty undergraduates following tutors and professors into seedy Karoke bars over bridges away from the heart of the city.
"Rule 1! Don't be ridiculously obvious!"
Then after two hours of field study they return to the libraries and lift wieghty tomes from high shelves and study the birth of Karoke. Learn how the Japanese invented it. How it means 'Empty Orchestra' in Nipon. They'll learn by heart diagrams, theories and formulas. They'll study how to sing, guzzle beer, cradle a lady and peel oranges simultaleously. The High Art of Karoke is a dextrous affair. Then after three years of intense study they'll sit the examinations which will include a practical assessment by the experienced madames themselves, where theory is put into practice. They'll be assessed on fluency, rhythm, tone and duartion. Most pass with flying coulours. On graduation day the Professors will apllaud and make grand speeches about how the graduates were once boys and now they are men, and how they are ready to enter the world and take their places in Karoke booths all across the nation. They'll cheer in unison. Mortarboard hats will be tossed in the air. And then like a swarm of busy bees in summer one and all shall start cartwheeling off to the North, East, South and West in search of the nearest place to sing and snuggle.

All of these thoughts flash past my mind when I rememeber where I am. The nerdish fellow is still daydreaming, perhaps reminiscing on a particularly fine piece of singing and fondling from his youth. A performance worthy of adulation. An a+ routine where his professor nodded in appreciation and a madame breathed deeply, her heart a flutter, flushed with surprise at his powerful presence. Like Pavarotti with a hard-on stuck in a tin box, he literally burst into song.

“Yes” He continues proudly, pushing his glasses up his nose, repeating for emphasis. “Something of an expert”
"I hadn’t realised it was a field of study," I tell him as if embarssed by my amateurism. "Tell me, how much study goes into this sort of thing?"
“Oh I’ve studied for a long time”
“And your wife, does she like to sing?”
“Oh no”, He says suddenly very seriously, taking the dig in the ribs to be an honest change of subject. “She’s too busy looking after our children”
“Right”
“Yes,” He finally adds before getting stuck into a fresh beer, “We are very concerned about our childrens future”

I lean back and silently raise my glass and toast.

God speed future. You can't come too soon.

The Bao Ve and I set sail

Today after three years of a running pitched battle with the bao ve xe may (parking attendant), at my favourite bun cha restaurant, we finally buried the hatchet.

There is a relief that comes with the end of any war, there is a sadness too. I'll miss the sadistic pleasure of it all. There is fear also, a fear that now I am stepping into a new era yet to be furnished, yet to be thought of.

After three long hard years of subterfuge, deceit and spite comes a ship a'sailing across a calm sea that once swelled with wrath and fury. That ship is friendship. It is a beautiful, if unexpected sight. As if a 16th century Spanish buccaneer strolled into your local cafe and ordered eggs benedict and a rum-cokie-cola.

These long years started from the smallest of sparks. A long hot day had had the better of me. As I arrived to park my bike I saw him, sitting atop of a bike, chewing a toothpick, completely ignoring me. He grumbled, without looking me in the eye, to move the bike behind the tree where a mother is holding her child to pee in the gutter.

After leaving the bike there, I strolled back, a little hot, a little bit bothered, when suddenly I was blinded by a flash of light as a stately bike arrived with two young hip, rich ladies.

The two girls wearing tight pants and enormous sunglasses, slipped off the bike on to their high heels, the bao ve had already leaped into action and without a glance or an acknowledgement from the girls, he whisked it away. The two girls click-clacked inside to take the last two seats remaining.

I now had to wait or leave. The bao ve delicately parked the bike, preciously, pride of place in front of the restaurant, so one and all could admire it as they ate. Then he leapt back on top of his bike and got back to chewing his toothpick while I stood sweating on the street.

The next time I arrived I came with one single purpose: Revenge. I arrived and put my not-so- trusty steed up on its centre stand and bee lined to grab a seat, leaving the bike in place that mant he had to park it for me. I glanced to see the expression on his face as he tried to move my ugly East German 2-stroke. He was disgusted. I enjoyed my lunch. Touche buddy.

The next time I arrived, though, he wasn't there. The ladies all smiled from behind the smoking meat and told me to park the bike behind the tree where the rubbish is stacked during the course of the day.

As I strolled back into the restaurant the bao ve stepped out from behind the bathroom door smiling like a smug villain. He had heard me coming and hid. Sneaky-sneaky.

Three years of jousting followed. Three years of bitterness. I would leave the bike in the middle of the road and block the traffic. He never covered my seat in summer so I burnt my arse. I left the bike in front of the mad lady who sells che next door and protects her space like a wild hyena so he would get a bollicking. He 'accidentally' broke my kick stand and my clutch. I told him straight to his face he was a good for nothing. He told me right behind my back that I was a tay ba lo (backpacker). If I could have parked it upside down with the front wheel locked, I would have, just to see him drag it, just to see him sweat, just to see him work. If I burst into a ball of fire he wouldn't have pissed on me to put it out, but would have lit a cigarette off the flames. We were foes. Adversaries. Sworn to thwart and torment till death do us part.

Or so I thought. As then, out of the blue, a truce was called, just today, when I pulled out and drove away from the restaurant he emerged from behind the tree where the country bumpkins lean their bicycles and the buckets of fat sit, and where he had been hiding from work.

He smiled as I approached him. What ruse was this? He stepped out and as I passed him he pretended to jump out to make me swerve, crash or fall off, and that, as anyone in this city knows, was his way of saying he likes me. As I didn't flinch, immune to such antics, he patted me on the back with respect and shouted "Smelly bike!" and we laughed like old friends.

So now the war is over. Oh, my nemesis, my Kato, my Moriarty, no more! Together we shall set sail upon the unknown seas of peace and tranquility and learn to fault each other less, and bear the fruits of our friendship, till death, or whenever I leave this country, or you get the sack, do us part.

(2003)