Team Outing at the Elbow Room

So how many beers does it take to get a person to sing Karaoke?  Well, that would depend on who you are asking of course.  A rich tradition here in the Philippines is to take their American counterparts out for a night of food, drinks and non-stop Karaoke.  The team gathered at a place called The Elbow Room where we had a private room in the back.  For some reason we decided to stop at the hotel before going to meet with the team --- BIG mistake as this caused us to have to swim further upstream against the traffic.  Naturally we arrived about an hour late but the team was too polite to start diving into the food before our arrival, and that only led to me feeler worse about our tardiness.

In addition to the Karaoke machine the room was setup with a pool table and a fully-loaded buffet. It was hard to tell which was more popular because both the pool table and the Karaoke machine were in use the entire three hours that we were there. Most of our team members took turns behind the mic and surprisingly the majority of the music was sappy songs from the 80's.  The team tried very early on to pass us the mic but somehow we put them off until much later in the night.

Our team's ladies are quick to pose when you break out the camera

Dave, David and Ryan enjoying a few laughs

The sofa was always lined up with the next group of singers

Dave showing off the trick shot
(btw - it worked)

Ryan was quite a performer and you could tell that it was not his first time behind the mic

Dave and David discussing "what they would
have done if it was their shot"

Magie living her dream of being a performer

Mike trying to make an excuse in
advance of his shot

Tin wearing her Open-C jacket proudly

It didn't matter if you could sing or not (most could not!) but most everybody took a turn at the mic

Dave's strategy of never coming near the microphone paid off for him in the end

Needless to say the team really enjoyed themselves

The inevitable finally arrived, like a man waiting on death row, and I could no longer escape the grasp of the microphone.  I figured that if I was going to sing a song it was not going to be some sappy 80's love song so instead I went for the crowd favorite - YMCA.  Ryan grabbed a mic and sung along with me while David and Mike led the crown in the dancing and singing - Y - M - C - A.  The team got the biggest laughs of the night from our perform and and so we figured it was a good time to call it a night before we had to sing again.

If you made it this far through this posting then you deserve an opportunity to see the video which the team took.