Singapore, Jan. 21 -- I
The lao beng - hair combed neatly into two soft-hold waves, in uncle-ish short-sleeved collared shirt - bumbles his way into the open-air karaoke joint.
"Paiseh," he says, in Taiwanese Hokkien. Excuse me. "I'm in a hurry. Let me sing first."
The young dude cedes the mic to him.
"This song is for my beloved," says Lao Beng.
Cue vibraphone chords, Hokkien lyrics: "In this stormy society/ How are we to bloom/Youth falls to the ground/We are all wandering waves because of love... I've decided to become a kind-hearted gangster..."
This, the music video for Taiwanese band Eggplantegg's 2019 song Waves Wandering (Liu Lang Lian), is an ode to that perennial melodrama trope: the world-weary bad-ass trying to get t...