Pop Star

Two notes about tones:

1. I am tone-deaf. Guitar, keyboard and voice lessons have all proven fruitless.

2. Chinese languages are tonal. (I think this is how I accidentally called my friend Ben "chicken" when I tried to pronounce his Cantonese name, much to his buddies' delight.)

Yet magically, on leap-year-night, I was on stage, microphone in hand, singing Cantonese songs. The setting was a hotel banquet hall for our company's annual Lunar New Year event. Now a banquet may sound formal to a Westerner, but out here the dinners are more like a gameshow/variety show with massive amounts of food and wine for the audience. In between What the Funky Taste and Bingo, I was a contestant on the east-meets-west singing competition.

The Westerners took turns wearing oversized DJ headphones and trying to replicate the songs we heard, while the Cantonese-speakers guessed what we were trying to sing. It was hilarious, as the senior executives did improv Elvis tunes when no one could guess theirs, I pantomimed violin and keyboard lovesongs, and my mentor hopped off the stage to serenade the ladies in the front row, Backstreet Boys style.

Maybe it was just leap-year luck, but the audience voted me for second place - better than my mentor but no match for the South African woman whose song was guessed in 5 seconds flat. She won a trophy, and I won a new nickname... Pop star.