Before the big storm hit, I was looking forward to posting about our night on the town in Port Barton. I can’t remember if I mentioned that our weekends here are Friday and Saturday with a half day on Thursday. Thursday rolled around, and it was not only the beginning of the weekend, but it kicked off a month of birthday celebrations. There are three of us with birthdays in November and up first was Jack (Kirsty’s son). Jack turned 7 and wanted to go to karaoke which was perfect because we wanted to experience karaoke in the Philipines!!
One thing I love about Filipinos is that they love to sing. Families have karaoke parties, people are always belting out a tune walking down the street, the girls working here at Deep Gold often have sing-a-thons, etc. Spontaneous singing like this makes B-Rod uncomfortable, but I’ve found that I really like it. They are not always good singers (sometimes they are down right bad), but I feel like if someone is belting out a tune it’s because they are happy, and they are expressing themselves in this way. It makes me feel a little bit bad for telling my dad to stop singing when I was a kid because I felt he couldn’t carry a tune. What if he was just trying to express his joy and happiness? Sorry for hindering your creative expression dad : )
Paolo was busy for the evening, so the rest of us got dolled up and along with David and his partner and the two Brits (Jenny and Rich – the ones staying beside me who came up to David’s with us on the night of the storm) celebrated Jack’s birthday by having birthday cake and going to the karaoke bar. Kirsty (who is an amazing cook) made a raw chocolate banana cake for Jack’s birthday. It was amazing!! We have started calling her Mama Spice as she wants to have some kind of restaurant or cafe one day and Kai (her other son) came up with this name for her restaurant. A “healthy” cake may not sound appealing, but trust me it was awesome – nothing like those black bean brownies I tried to make once : )
After cake, we headed to the “7170 KTV Bar & Resto” which is a bit outside of town. Like us, you probably assumed that “Resto” means restaurant. Well, let me inform you that it does not!! Maybe it means come to sing and then have a resto, or the resto your friends should come and join you here. Our plan had been to eat supper there and karaoke. Instead, we ended up having a bunch of beers, not having supper at all, singing and gettting pretty “happy”. Not exactly living by the yogi code of conduct, but it was a riot, and it was nice to let go, let loose, share some laughs and just have fun!
Got back to Deep Gold around midnight where we snacked on bananas and graham crackers (or whatever people had to eat), then headed off to our own cabins. I ended up just sitting on the beach for awhile and enjoying the night as the sky was (ironically) clear and the stars were super bright. I was just super thankful for the new experiences, and the night in general. Thanks for the great birthday party Jack!!
The birthday boy getting high on sugar. He’s not usually allowed candy, but the girls at Deep Gold got him 2 bags of suckers for his birthday.
Mama Spice’s amazing raw chocolate cake.
The amazing sunset view we enjoyed as we had cake (not knowing that this would be supper!)
Arriving at the karaoke bar.
Take your pick. Songs were 5 pesos each.
Up first was Renalyn (David’s partner) as us whitey’s were too shy! You sing a song, then the computer gives you a score out of 100.
Unfortunately, they had no mantras on the song menu, so I think we started with the standard “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun”
Believe it or not this was before I even had a bunch of liquid courage. I sang “La Isla Bonita” (and did some substitutions to include Port Barton), and . . . . . .
. . . . . I scored 100!!! The only perfect score of the night (but who’s counting . . . yogini’s aren’t competitive!)
It took awhile, but we finally got David up there.
While David sang, we had a dance party!
They didn’t have any songs Jack wanted to sing, so he sacked out after about an hour. Everyone else had tons of fun at your party Jack!!
Our program includes an element of dance. We had just done a dance meditation in class that day, so Danielle and I incorporated that into karaoke (I think we should get bonus class points)
I guess the staff wasn’t as entertained by our singing as we were. They just seemed plain bored.