才华横溢出新秀

Cultural diversity is never far away in Singapore. The country seems to attract many traveled, multi-lingual individuals who keep a conversation interesting (and a couple of people like me). Tonight, a worldly group of such people (Canadian, German, Singaporean, Hong Kongian, Brazilian, Japanese) (and me) set out to see the Singaporean take on a unproud American tradition: bad TV shows.

The show was Star Search 2007, a spin off of American Idol, except instead of songs, they competed with "talents." These included bad dancing and an Elvis impression. (Does that count as singing?) The contestant we were supporting (we got tickets through a mutual friend) played traditional Chinese drums. It looked like the only talent that required more than couple weeks of preparation. In the second half of the show, the contestants all acted in a comedy sketch, made much more interesting/boring by the fact that it was in Chinese.

In fact, it was a Chinese show - thus, all in Chinese. I was not expecting this. In Singapore, culture strikes when least expected. The bright studio lights highlighted for us that the German and I were the only two white people in the audience. But as the contestants performed talents for us, I was amazed at how much of the show I understood. Then came the skit, and I understood nothing. Those people that say humor is a universal language are flat wrong.

But it wasn't all bad. The cameras and lights took me back to my days of middle school TV production until loud Chinese laughter reminded me where I was. I had company in my sobriety from the Brazilian and the German, equally stonefaced with incomprehension. Our ignorance brought us together, and good thing, too. It took a couple of hours to get home, and I needed some familiar faces as I navigated back through the foreigner-filled trains.