Guinness Karaoke
On Saturday night we left expat-land for a Guinness-sponsored karaoke night in one of the hawker centres. One of my colleagues’ boyfriend is a marketing manager for Guinness and one of their wheezes is to tap into the Chinese psyche by cunningly interlinking Guinness and karaoke (pinacle of entertainment) in local minds.
When we arrived, the warm-up was well under way. A helpful Guinness roadie found us a table and chairs and a scantily-clad waitress in foot-high boots plied us with Guinness mixed with Tiger, which goes down surprisingly well. Better than Guinness and coke, which was the sophisticated man’s drink of choice when I was in Nairobi.
Unlike normal karaoke, the common man (or woman, though there weren’t many out on the town that night) doesn’t get much of a look-in. A karaoke diva in red chinese silk knickerbockers and a bolero jacket does the singing, weaving in and out between the tables of increasingly intoxicated men, bellowing out the latest Chinese pop tunes. Happily for Guinness marketing managers, drinking here is apparently about getting as battered as possible. You stack the bottles on the table to prove your manliness.
Every now and then there were special treats, where 3 girls would run on to the ‘stage’ and jump around enthusiastically in a variety of outfits (the common thread being micro-minis and big boots) while the crowd cheered along. See here for some grainy footage.
As the only whiteys there, we came in for some attention early on. Knickerbocker woman shouted “this one for you”, grabbed one of the guys from our table and started strutting about, seizing him by his t-shirt to make him dance. He did a grand job of pulling off the tricky balancing act of being as flirtatious as the occasion demanded, without ever actually putting a finger on her, which he was acutely aware would have gone down very badly with the crowd (looking somewhat put out that someone else was dancing with the knickerbocker siren) and a grumpy looking security guard propped up against a pillar within bashing distance. Plus according to Andy’s new football mates, squeezing a Singaporean lady’s bum is an arrestable offence.
We were hauled into the limelight again later to partake in a special Chinese New Year salad, where you all gather round a table, say wise things in Chinese, then grab your chopsticks and fling the salad all over the table. Jane spotted Andy from the other side of the table, and he was plucking bits of carrot out of his ears for the rest of the night.
After the karaoke, we were befriended by a kindly 70 year old dude, who chatted happily on for the best part of an hour to whoever he could corner. I got about 25 minutes of it, and given his English stretched to about 15 words and my Chinese is a bit rusty, the conversation was a bit limited. I managed to distract him eventually by handing him a large mug of Guinness and running away and he turned to his other side to address some remarks to one of our friend’s boobs.
It was good to have a night out in the ‘real Singapore’ though I’m relieved we steered well clear of the Pig’s Organ Soup stand.
Photos from Crazy Guiness hawker night
Jo 11 February 2007
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