Friday, July 25, 2008

Ewwphony of the Night

"If you have nothing to do tonight, I invite you to go sing to singing room with us together." This message was sent to me by my 1st semester Korean buddy Kim JinHyeong. It was April; I am very fresh in Korea, Korea is fresh to me. I didn't know what a singing room is but I gladly obliged. I went with the other ASEAN students to meet JinHyeong downtown. He was with two other Korean buddies, Chaehun the Taekwondo champ and YeongHun the Shy Guy.

This room was unlike what I've seen before. We don't have a singing room with an interior like this in the Philippines. I thought it was uniquely Korean.

Alas, inside the sound-proof walls of the Noraebang I sang like I have never sung before. It was a wild night! And I am not showing the photos!

1 hour later, the ajjoshi (mister) entered the room to announce a "free service". Koreans broadly use the word "service" to mean freebies, extras, and discounts. The mister was kind enough to give us 20 more cacophonous minutes for free. But we were kinda worried about the curfew actually; the dorm closes at 11pm and we started walking back at 10:30. The dorm is 20 minutes away from the Noraebang by foot if we walk leisurely.

"Horeb, gwenchana", says YeongHun. I asked him what "gwenchana" means. He said that Koreans say gwenchana to mean "It's okay. Don't worry." YeongHun told me that the dorm administrator would let us in because they're friends. haha.

Ooh. I learned three Korean words today, aside from discovering my hidden talent worth hiding: noraebang, so-bi-su (service), and gwenchana. ^^; The boon of informal learning begins here.

We made it to the dorm on time, yearning to go back again to the Noraebang.