The Open Road, Karaoke, and Comfort Zones

The Journey

The road is empty, until my car rattles from the crossover to the tarmac. It is just after 5AM on one of the last days of December in 2023, and I'm heading to Melbourne.

Melbourne is about a nine hour trip by car from my home, which means that if everything goes well, I'll arrive by 3PM, and transition to a new time zone. My wife sits beside me. She's the reason we're going. Her sister is turning 40, and we were going to surprise her.

That surprise was spoiled a few weeks before the travel, but that is entirely okay, because she's actually going to be there when we arrive, instead of making other plans.

The streets are empty, and the journey to the South Eastern Freeway is uneventful and dark. The street lights go out one by each, and I drive onward into the rising sun.

We're not the only car on this journey, and not the only ones to make this trip in the early hours of the morning in a bid to avoid the "rush", and to make the most of the daylight hours where Kangaroos are not so keen to leap into the path of your moving car when you're travelling at 110 km/h.

I settle in with the cruise control on, and we make excellent time for a first stop to stretch our legs in the aptly named Bordertown. It is not quite the border between South Australia and Victoria, but it is close enough.

The Police

I fuel up the car, have a drink of water, use the toilet, and get moving again. I don't get very far at all before there's a bunch of police cars directing traffic into a random breath testing station.

I've never been breath tested before. I throw the car into neutral, and oblige. In Australia, we don't have a field sobriety test like they do in the US. You just exhale into a tube, which goes into a machine, which detects your blood alcohol level. I'm cleared to go in the time it took me to place the hand brake into the one position and take my foot off the clutch.

I set off again, to the East.

Podcasts about the history of automotive personalities keep me entertained and awake, as the sun glaringly arrives at eye level. My sunglasses are my best friend as the scrubland, grasses, and open farmland start to give way to wooded areas, trees, and the view of mountain ranges on the horizon.

The rest of the journey is largely uneventful, and I see less and less licence plates with "South Australia" written on them, and more and more with "Victoria". This comes to a head on the West Gate Freeway, as I head into the CBD proper to our accomodations in suburb of Carlton.

The Arrival

I park the car, we go and dump our things in the room. I need to stretch my legs, so we walk to my sister in law's apartment, and go off to get an early dinner and wander around a bit.

I have the best piece of beef I've ever eaten in my life, and I learn about the plans for New Year's Eve, and when she wishes to celebrate her birthday. Karaoke, drinking, food, fun, and family.

The Anxiety of the Plan

It'll be the four of us. Me, my wife, my sister in law, and my mother in law, who made the trip from a different part of the world. I have a few days to prepare myself. I don't drink (anymore) and I've never done Karaoke (before). However, I have complete comfort, trust, and adoration for the people I'm going to be doing these things with.

In those few days, there's a lot of walking, shopping, exploring, and thee incessant travel requirement: a search for a reliable and convenient Toilet. There's lots of excellent food, lots of terrible coffee; (which I also don't drink) - and a few ad-hoc (and planned) catch ups with friends, and introductions to others.

The Eve

Having dinner with an old work colleague, and close friend, she learns of the plan for me to belt out Karaoke and demands documentary evidence of this. It was a good dinner. It was delicious and in a popular district. It was Lygon Street.

I saw a lot of exotic cars.

The Sundry

My sister in law loves music. She plays guitar, and so does her partner. There's three guitars on the wall in the apartment, and at least 6-7 metres worth of Vinyl records across two shelves. All genres are represented; but for favoured bands; there's a lot of familiarity between she and I.

The fact that my Wife and Mother in Law are also going to be present means that there's going to be some "hits for the girls" and music that I'm not all that familiar with planned for Karaoke.

We've got a booth booked, so we don't need to embarrass each other n front of other people. We also get the complete freedom to choose each and every song that we go through, in the veritable bliss of being enclosed in a room together for a few hours, with pounding music.

The Experience

Karaoke is just like playing guitar hero or rock band, but you're in a purpose built, mostly sound-proofed room, where your shame can't leak out into the exterior world. As a result, this is a great experience, particularly if you take a party-mind set into the room, and no concrete plan.

First, we were disappointed at the collection of songs available, but then we discovered that we were not looking in the right places.

Once we found the right places, we were throwing song suggestion after song suggestion out to the group with reckless abandon.

The girls sang stuff from Adele, Madonna, Pentatonix, Cat Stevens, and tons of other bands. I got involved when the likes of Evanescence (Bring me to Life) became involved, and then it was my turn to find some songs that had mutual meaning and appreciation among the group.

We found KoRn. We played Linkin Park. We belted out several Pearl Jam songs. We did "The Kill" by 30 Seconds to Mars; and we ended on stuff by System of a Down, Garbage, and so many other bands.

It made me really appreciate that singing in the shower is great, and how complex and difficult vocal sections of things that you perceive to be otherwise "simple" really are.

As a family, it brought our already close and deep relationships even closer; and most importantly, it was fun. I got accused of being not exactly tone deaf, and I'm told I can sing like Serj Tankian in some of his songs. This was by a probably very biased Mother in Law who has never actually heard Serj Tankian's studio recordings.

In any case, this Karaoke booth thing is something that I long to do again in the future with loved ones, to not only share music, but to also throw away inhibitions in the most delightful environment.

But don't worry; I won't be hitting a stage any time soon.

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Want more content from me?

Witness my futile efforts to play my Steam Game collection in alphabetical order.

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If you prefer sleeping in your designated time zone, go watch replays on YouTube.

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Thanks as always for your time!