18 May 2010

Singing karaoke continuously for seven hours

I went to Holiday KTV with three research assistants yesterday morning at seven o'clock, and we stayed there until two o'clock in the afternoon. No joking. We had been singing for seven hours.

It's absolutely great value for money; it cost only NTD 341 (roughly just more than USD 10.00) each person.

A 'KTV' is a type of karaoke establishment which consists of several individual rooms equipped with karaoke machines and audio-visual systems to be rented out for time periods.

Whereas in the West, speaking from my own experience in Britain, people who enjoy singing in public usually use karaoke equipment at restaurants, pubs or other similar venues, in some Asian countries, such as Taiwan, China and Japan, apart from such places, people may go to KTV to sing in a cosier, private atmosphere.

Right, but what does KTV have to do with karaoke? I've done some research and drawn an inference.
Karaoke=kara ( 空 ‘empty’) + ōkesutora (オーケストラ ‘orchestra’)

MTV = Music TeleVision
(originally referring to music video but later on the term for establishments with rooms to hire for watching videos)

KTV = Karaoke TeleVision = Karaoke + MTV
I think this is how the term KTV came into being.

Just like 'google', originally a noun but now a verb, 'K' becomes a verb in Taiwan and 'to K songs' simply means to go singing in a KTV. Thus, we had been K-ing songs yesterday for seven hours from morning to afternoon—what a luxury start of a day.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

nothing better than grabbing your karaoke machine and having a good old sing but seven hours? were u being sponsored?

Wei said...

No, no, no, nobody sponsored us.

Karaoke singing doesn't cost a lot in Taiwan. It's one of the most popular leisure activities here and there are always special offers, particularly in the daytime on weekdays.