Karaoke

I was invited by a family I met in Chaozhou to go with them to an island off the south-western coast of Taiwan. I thought it might be fun and exciting. We took a cool boat to get to the island. It was a small passenger boat and about four people threw up because they got sea-sick. A friend of the family that invited me worked for the government and had some official business on the island. Therefore, we all ate lunch with the mayor. I never would have thought that one day I would grow up to eat lunch with a mayor of a small island off the coast of Taiwan. He told me that he wanted me to meet one of his daughters who was a student in the US somewhere. He said that if I married her, he wouldn’t have to sell his blood anymore for her schooling. He thought he was pretty funny. I said, “no can do, bub”. He told me to have some beer. I politely refused and said that I would drink water. He kept asking and said that if I drank beer, everything would be free. If I drank anything else, I would pay for everything. Again I told him that water is what I wanted. By then he was bored with the conversation and started talking with the other people at the table.

We only had one scooter with us so we needed to do something about that. The mayor (prefect might be a better word) offered a scooter. It was an electric scooter and they said it was great. Well, the electric scooter only went about 10 km/h. 10!! It was a rainy day and so we couldn’t go to see much. The family was going to stay overnight on the island and I was going back with the government guys. Every time I saw them, they were drinking. The last boat left at about 5 o’clock and at about 4 I was already waiting to go. With the rain there was nothing I could do. We went to find the guy I was going back with and he was in a bar singing karaoke. So I went to wait. They wanted me to sing a song. Finally I thought, “what the heck, they are all drunk anyway.” I sang a couple of songs. They had about ten songs in English. I didn’t really know the songs but I figured it didn’t really matter.

When I got to Taiwan, I got a lot of tourist brochures to find out what things were must dos and must sees. I never found the one that said sing karaoke with drunk government employees.

But then there was the drive home. After we took the boat back we got in the car and the guy drove like a maniac. He drove like a Brazilian taxi driver. He broke pretty much every traffic law I know.

I guess it was a pretty rare experience. At least I got some squid jerky out of the deal.