Chinese New Year: The Prequel
A few days before the actual Chinese New Year, the company I work for threw a banquet. The Annual year End Banquet is a pretty big deal, and the head of the company and his wife's parents come to make a few speeches and hand out awards. The entire banquet lasted about 4 hours and involved two hours of awards presentations, one hour of the Imiation Show, and then a raffle for big bucks.
A few weeks ago, I was asked to help out for a friend's skit in the Imitation Show. I hadn't heard much more about it, but then suddenly a script appeared and I realized that while I had orignally agreed to "help out" I had been given the largest role and needed to buy a costume A.S.A.P. It was a total dud of a comedy piece that involved superheroes in some sort of recovery program and I was to play the counselor. It had potential, but it was pretty lame overall. Luckily, the day before we were to perform, I found out it was cancelled because too many people had dropped out and we couldn't replace them. I wasn't really all that disappointed by the news, but I had put together a fantastic costume and had been looking forward to wearing it. Oh well...maybe I'll find another occasion!
I was still going to be involved though. My supervisor asked me to read the English translation of some Chinese for a game she had arranged for the Ten-Year Employee Award. So, I still had to be there a little early to do some soundchecks and whatnot. While I was sitting there waiting, I saw what would have been our competition. It was a hilarious skit about the first day of teaching for the new teachers. Someone calls you and lets you know five minutes before class that you will be teaching a lesson different from the one you'd prepared. Then you arrive in class and accidently say something in English that sounds like a funny word in Chinese (Ex: Once in my class I said "Counterclockwise" and the kids all started to laugh because my pronunciation of it sounded like "your butt looks weird" in Taiwanese). You have a showdown with the CT over class procedure (in the skit they had an actual showdown complete with music and kung fu!). The CD player doesn't work right, and generally the day is a complete bomb. It was perfect and they won hands down! It was hilarious and I'm so glad we didn't have to compete for the prize money!
Afterwards there was a traditional lion dance. This was something I was so excited to see! It was something I actually recognized from pictures of Taiwan! Men dressed in lion costumes that fought with each other and then threw gold coins into the audience.
It was a great introduction to Chinese New Year and a nice start to the vacation!
A few weeks ago, I was asked to help out for a friend's skit in the Imitation Show. I hadn't heard much more about it, but then suddenly a script appeared and I realized that while I had orignally agreed to "help out" I had been given the largest role and needed to buy a costume A.S.A.P. It was a total dud of a comedy piece that involved superheroes in some sort of recovery program and I was to play the counselor. It had potential, but it was pretty lame overall. Luckily, the day before we were to perform, I found out it was cancelled because too many people had dropped out and we couldn't replace them. I wasn't really all that disappointed by the news, but I had put together a fantastic costume and had been looking forward to wearing it. Oh well...maybe I'll find another occasion!
I was still going to be involved though. My supervisor asked me to read the English translation of some Chinese for a game she had arranged for the Ten-Year Employee Award. So, I still had to be there a little early to do some soundchecks and whatnot. While I was sitting there waiting, I saw what would have been our competition. It was a hilarious skit about the first day of teaching for the new teachers. Someone calls you and lets you know five minutes before class that you will be teaching a lesson different from the one you'd prepared. Then you arrive in class and accidently say something in English that sounds like a funny word in Chinese (Ex: Once in my class I said "Counterclockwise" and the kids all started to laugh because my pronunciation of it sounded like "your butt looks weird" in Taiwanese). You have a showdown with the CT over class procedure (in the skit they had an actual showdown complete with music and kung fu!). The CD player doesn't work right, and generally the day is a complete bomb. It was perfect and they won hands down! It was hilarious and I'm so glad we didn't have to compete for the prize money!
Afterwards there was a traditional lion dance. This was something I was so excited to see! It was something I actually recognized from pictures of Taiwan! Men dressed in lion costumes that fought with each other and then threw gold coins into the audience.
It was a great introduction to Chinese New Year and a nice start to the vacation!
posted by CJ at 9:00 PM
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