Mirror world

In William Gibson's book Pattern Recognition, the main character travels a lot between New York and London and always thinks of London as a mirror world to New York. Basically everything appears to be the same, but it's really backwards. It seemed like an interesting concept when I was reading the book, but Friday night I truly felt the meaning of 'mirror world'.

Leo and I went to a pub near his office to have drinks with his coworkers; something we did a lot of in New York. The first difference was everyone was standing outside of the pub. In New York it seems that if you can find a seat, you take one. Here people seem to prefer to stand and drink and mingle. Leo's new coworkers fit the same roles as his old ones - the boss, the flash guy, the loud, crazy guy, etc. and that's how I remember them, since I am terrible with names. After people were significantly pissed (as in intoxicated, not angry), we walked across the street to a karaoke bar where another coworker was having a birthday party. I can't tell you how many nights in New York began at a bar and ended at 3 in the morning in the East Village at Sing Sing Karaoke. But here is where more differences came into play.

1) I think we went to the karaoke bar at around 9:30 p.m., which typically would have been much later in New York, but here with drinking laws how they are you have to get your drinking and partying in before most places shut down at midnight
2) The karaoke bar was more like a dance club - there were no private booths nor any stage for the singer. Here the main focus seemed to be dancing to terrible late 80s and 90s music...like "She's Like the Wind" by Patrick Swayze
3) The original vocals were left on the song tracks, so even if the person singing was completely out of tune, you'd never really know
4) There were some 'tough' looking guys at the bar drinking wine directly from the bottles
5) These 'tough' looking guys led everyone in a drunken version of an Oasis song, and everyone loved it. I don't think I've heard Oasis since 1997 let alone heard it sung at karaoke before
6) There was broken glass on the floor everywhere, and no one seemed to mind
7) In mirror world, Leo danced!

It was just so odd to do something which was so familiar and it turned out to be so different. But different is not bad, just something I'll have to get used to (or take frequent trips back to New York to get my karaoke fix).