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I share all my sporadic and toilet thoughts in here, because I am random like that.
Taking the stage with Elea
Adventures in San Francisco, 29th February – 17th March 2012
Imagine knowing a fellow blogger online, but she’s thousands of kilometers away. But yet, there’s still this sense of closeness because we’ve been sending the occasional encouraging messages to each other, on top of reading each other’s blogs since 2005. (That’s 7 whole years.)
So the opportunity to (finally) meet comes along, we seized it! I finally met Elea during the last few days of my trip to San Francisco.
It was an awesome night out … in fact, possibly the latest we’ve ever stayed out throughout our entire US jaunt. (We were quite wary of staying out too late because it was just us two girls travelling together.) It began with dinner at South Park Cafe. For the life of me, I can’t seem to remember what I had there, but they had beyond decent food and I’d definitely return if I am in San Francisco again.
Then, Elea lowered the boom. Well, we did plan to have a karaoke night … but the sly one decided that it’d be at an open-stage karaoke joint instead of the usual closed-door, individual-room karaokes we were used to!
My jaw fell all the way down to the centre of the earth.
Weeeelll, part of me felt a bit of trepidation at the prospect of performing in public (unprepared, no less), but the other part felt excitement. Based on my past experiences, I always experienced a strange high when on stage (despite bombing big time nearly 100% of the time thus far). I didn’t mind experiencing that high again, but was (naturally) worried of making a vocal mess of myself.
What I needed was a little push. And Elea provided that push. :P
Later within the karaoke joint, I was further consoled by the fact that hardly anyone else in the vicinity could sing well. I’ve heard mangled versions of “Barbie girl” and “Rolling in the deep” among many others, save for about two girls with decent voices. Considering that, I highly doubt the audience would care to judge any further. I felt emboldened.
So, Elea and I took the stage together.
Performing “Bad Romance” by Lady Gaga.
(Apologies for the quality, this is a screen grab from a video.)
Followed by a solo round by each of us. The wait for our turns were tremendously long, and we practically had to bribe the deejay to bump our songs to the front of the queue. Despite that, we waited for close to an hour and a half to take the stage.
Definitely a night I’ll never forget, though! Thanks for everything, Elea, and hope we’ll get to meet again! (This time, in Singapore? (;)
Oh hai, neighbour!
There’s a really sweet lady who lives next door. Quite young too. She’s a property lawyer, if I recall correctly and rarely do I see her at home. (In fact, I rarely see her at all, because she travels pretty often.)
Needless to say, I was startled when mum opened the front door while we were on our way out a day ago … only to find the neighbour seated outside her unit, reading the newspapers.
I was startled for two reasons.
Reason number one being, the queerness of the situation. The last few times I’ve met her, she was usually in power suits, looking all poised as she makes her way to (or from) her car. Whereas here she is, slumped in front of her door, newspapers in hand with no power suit.
Apparently, one of her family members had taken her usual set of keys, leaving her with another incomplete set. As such, she was only able to unlock her main door but not her gate. The main door was slightly ajar, with Lady Gaga’s music emanating from within – possibly her only other source of entertainment apart from the newspapers she was reading.
Ah well, I am not in any position to laugh because likewise, I’ve been locked out of my home before … albeit five years ago. A much worse situation than her’s too, I imagine – because it was a cold day, I was running a high fever and still had to wait slightly more than an hour for someone to arrive home and let me into the damn house.
Reason number two as to why I was startled?
I was in midst of a very bad rendition of Twinkle Twinkle Little Star (The Indian Version) as I was making my way to the front door earlier and even while mum was opening the door. (For the record – if you hadn’t known already – I break into strange songs when I deem the coast clear … or so I thought.)
As such, my eyes grew wide and my voice trailed off when I spotted the neighbour. My rendition of the ridiculously bad song (yes, complete with my faux Indian accent) was most definitely audible from where she was.
Thankfully, she said nothing about the singing and simply greeted us in her usual cheerful manner. (Although she was looking at me a little strangely. Then again, it could also be just my imagination.)
Thankfully, I regained my composure fast enough to attempt inviting her into our home to wait – although methinks mum did most of the talking. (I was still … pretty speechless.)
It is going to be hard to ever behave normally again the next time I meet her.
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