Proudest Moments

This week we are having our annual Staff Reflection Retreat in a town on the southern coast, and this is what it's included so far: two hours of introductions with a 30 minute tea, coffee, and friend banana break; a day of debauchery at the beach where people got so hammered that the receptionist bit the executive director on the shoulder (apparently her father was a friend of his so it's really no big deal); a night of song and dance torture where I was called up to participate in a pre-programmed dance competition that no one had told me about (it was traditional khmer dancing, which looks like salsa dancing in slow motion and with a lot more wrist action, and at which i am completley inept), and a singing contest whose proceedings easily constitute the most embarrassing moment of my recent life.

What happened was that Jude asked me to sing a song with him (and he can actually sing, which he conveniently did not mention) so we settled on Journey "Don't Stop Believing" because all the karaoke places here have it so we figured if a live band (we had a live band to accompany us) was going to know any American song, it would probably be that one. I asked beforehand to make sure they knew the music, and was assured that all was in order. Well of course it wasn't. We got up there and they asked us to sing the music to the keyboardists so that they could "improvise". So we tried, frantically, for a few minutes, before the Team Building Coordinator/MC got impatient and shooed us onstage, where we belted out a version of the song that was half a capella and half to the tune of plinkity-plink the Khmer piano song, and Jude didn't even really sing because he had the good sense to be too self conscious, so it was pretty much me soloing to an audience of 50 or 60 coworkers who just met me and think, with good reason, that I am a complete and total freak. The worst part is when they did the scoring, jude and i received an X (which is not even a real score, in case anyone was confused, in fact it is the exact opposite of a score--that's how bad it was). And when everyone went to claim their prizes, which included fancy soaps and lotions and the like, they decided not to give us one, until at the last minute the lady judge felt bad and gave us each a bottle of iced tea. As if that were less humiliating than nothing.

Needless to say, I escaped at the first possible moment to hide in my room and watch CNN in shame, and today no one has mentioned the incident at all. That's how you know you have really embarrassed yourself, when people are too embarrassed for you to even bring it up in jest. So it's not like a funny icebreaker that we can all chuckle about and bond over, it really is just an utterly humiliating moment with no redeeming qualities.

Next time I think I will elect to get drunk and bite my boss, as that appears to be more acceptable party behavior than anything I can come up with. Oh, the joys of cultural exchange.