Karaoke, which in the Philippines is often called videoke, is a National past time for Filipinos. While Americans are eating apple pies and watching baseball the Filipinos are perfecting a musical craft while drunk off their ass.

Like most Filipinos, Jenny can sing. As you well know, I can’t.

I won’t embarrass her with praise, but her singing voice is one of my favorite things about her. Another favorite is how she always remembers to flush the toilet. Our family is batting .500 in that aspect. Speaking of bats, you should have seen the latest present I left. And when I say bats, I mean both the baseball kind and the night stalking ones.

A few weeks ago Jenny mentioned how much she missed singing and wanted to do karaoke. So, we looked up some local places. One was right down the street, but unfortunately it was Saturday at the time and they only have karaoke on Fridays. If I had a calculator, I’d tell you how many days she was forced to wait. Instead, know it was about a week.

I stopped in the day prior to find out when karaoke took place. This restaurant has a website that hasn’t been updated since the 1970s. I had to rely on good-old-fashioned talking to strangers.

I was told karaoke begins around 9:30 or 10. Knowing we’d get big meals there and wanted ample time to eat, we arrived around 9:15. You should never sing on an empty stomach. Just ask Adele before she got really famous and shamed into losing weight.

The meal was great and the anticipation for karaoke to begin loomed. It was almost 10:30 when the first song began. Frighteningly enough, the karaoke MC sang the first and it was all in Spanish. So were his announcements. So was the menu. Were we stuck singing La Bamba all night?

We should’ve known something was up when the waitress greeted Jenny with a buenos noches then proceeded to tell her about the specials in Salma Hayek language.

Fortunately, this wasn’t a Spanish exclusive karaoke machine. Although, you’d never know from the musical choices. The only other English song performed was by Selena. I think the title was “Don’t Trust Your Fans” but I’m uncertain.

After a few Spanish songs, Jenny rocked the house with Don’t Stop Believing because it was the only English song the MC probably knew. A few turns later, Jenny got to sing Listen to Your Heart by Roxette. I was amazed they had it since it hasn’t been popular in almost three decades. Jenny loves the song because I too haven’t been popular in almost three decades.

This was the end of singing for the night. However, the weekend remained a funtastical musical event. Jenny has been singing ever since and gone back to one of her favorite past times: putting on headphones and drowning out my existence.