"PartyWorld!"

Another Christmas party! This time, it's just the American group (although I think they should call it North American as half are Canadian) of the International Education Department at WUT. All of us Westerners working for the Department were invited to join the festivities. The evening's agenda was dinner and karaoke. So, all the people I work with on a day to day basis in the office and my apartment mates and those living in East Campus housing jumped into cabs at 6:30 Thursday evening and headed for another party! Our hosts are most gracious and enthuiastic about the season!

We arrived at a multi-story, modern building that seemed like a hotel. At the elevator bank a TV screen monitor lay flush with the elevator buttons. Hum, interesting. The elevator whisked us upward and we disembarked at our floor. Similar to a hotel, thus far, the dramatic difference announced itself when we entered one of the two rooms set aside for us.

This was karaoke on steroids! Each of our two rooms—there must be endless numbers of them in this huge building—was a sound and video maven's dream come true. The room Kate, Serge, Paul and I joined our Chinese hosts in was about 12 x 12 and featured an L shaped couch with some sort of master computer panel at one end. To the right were four bar stoods on either side of a raised bar and another computer panel inset into the wall and across from that a chair with a computer panel freestanding. The wall that contained the doorway featured an entire video complex with four speakers hanging from the ceiling aimed at the seating area. Four microphones connected to each computer panel sat idle. Volume was no problem.

The whole point wasn't to have the microphones remain mute. To start off the party, we all took the stairs down one level to fill our cafeteria-style plastic plates with an assortment of food (when I say food, you must always assume Chinese) and a selection of fruit drinks. We hauled our food upstairs to our room, ate and chatted and as the empty plates were cleared away the festivities began to slowly escalate.

On the way over Serge asked me if I had brought any Frank Sinatra music on my computer. Alas, I was without Frank. He said the song, "Strangers in the Night" had been going through his head. Well, that was the first song out of the chute. With the title punched in to the computer system the music along with a video—like MTV—appeared and the lyrics in English and Chinese. Serge grabbed a mic and began "karoke-ing" (is that word?).

Paul and I, being the older folks in the crowd talked incessantly—sharing how we arrived in Wuhan and our parallel universes of company layoffs—he in Canada and me in America—and how our careers had 'flipped'. (there seems to be a theme here with 'older' folks I talk to here). Anyway, before long Paul had been persuade to join the song fest and he started belting out an Elton John and Beetles tunes...but brought the crowd to its knees with a wonderful rendition of the German song from the Sound of Music that I can't spell, Edilwisee (I have butchered its spelling).

Our Divisional head and hostess of the evening called the party over at precisely 8:30 and we all descended the elevators and awaited the ritual of the "hailing of the cabs." On our exciting cab ride back to campus Paul remarked about the time with Jon (you'll love this Jon) and he shared a cab ride that they called "Indy 500". I related to a similar experience "Nemo" in Mexico with my friend Peggy. Although this cab ride was memorable, those two memories for both of us still rank as #1.