Campaign Trial

So, the very exciting 2011 elections have come and gone. It all feels slightly anti-climactic, if you ask me. All that fuss on Twitter and Facebook about rallies and the regrets of certain winsome candidates, and it suddenly feels like it’s back to business as usual.

Or as our friend Sharyn recently posted on her Facebook wall, “Now, no more erection to get gun zheong about every day, how?”

To which Barney Chen posted, “Girrrrl, which constituency are YOU at? I must move!” His response attracted 12 Likes.

Sharyn posted, “Sorry, lah. My English not cheem enuf!”

Meanwhile, Saffy says that not running for office this year is shaping up to be her biggest regret. “I might have won a seat!” she said the other night while slowly chewing on her slice of pizza. (She’d read somewhere that if you chew each mouthful of food at least 40 times before swallowing, you’re guaranteed to lose weight. When she spoke, she’d been chewing, according to the watch I was surreptitiously keeping time on, for at least ten minutes.)

Amanda snorted back a laugh. “And which party would you have represented?”

Saffy looked surprised. “My own, of course! The SAP! Saffy’s Amazing Party! Talk about great branding! Imagine my campaign flyers – ‘Looking to change your life? Saffy’s Amazing Party is the answer!’ My party colours would be Dolce & Gabbana gold and Tiffany blue! And I’d probably get the majority of the male vote simply on the basis of these twin assets!” she said as she stared down at her chest with the kind of pride you normally see on the face of a mother who’s just delivered miracle IVF triplets.

Which, of course, led to a heated debate about party policy. Amanda said that ‘No More Strange Names Like Talvin’ was not a serious election platform to which Saffy replied stoutly that as the SAP was her political party, she could jolly well do as she pleased.

Amanda said it was precisely this kind of crassness that landed you on YouTube and earned you endless ridicule on Facebook.

“Well, what would you campaign on then, Miss Smartypants?” Saffy demanded.

“Well, immigration for starters…”

“What’s wrong with it?” Saffy interrupted.

“It needs to be adjusted. There is a strong community feeling that perhaps there are too many foreigners who are taking away jobs from Singaporeans.”

“Like what kind of jobs?” Saffy wanted to know, adding, “because as far as I can see, they’re all doing the jobs that I really don’t want to be doing anyway, so I say, let them! Like waitressing. Can you imagine me waiting on tables at Tung Lok?”

“Uhm…”

“Oh my God! Customers in this town can be so rude! Just the other day, I was at Crystal Jade and I saw this tai-tai tell scold the poor Chinese waitress for bringing her the bill when she hadn’t asked for it. If Lulu wants to wait on tables all day, give her citizenship, I say!”

Amanda paused. You could tell she was mentally rewinding the conversation. “Who the hell is Lulu?”

“The Chinese waitress! That’s not her name, of course, but she looked like a Lulu. She had that wild hair Michelle Chong has!”

Amanda later said that she should know by now never to engage in a conversation with Saffy on any topic more advanced than the current Gossip Girl plot line.

“She just skips all over the place!” she complained. “But the infuriating thing is, what she says actually makes sense! I mean, the only reason all these foreign workers are coming into Singapore is because there are all these jobs that local Singaporeans don’t want to do! So, somebody’s got to do it! But if you bring in outside help, you get roasted. If you don’t bring someone in, the work piles up and everybody gets unhappy, and you still get roasted. You can’t win!”

I said I couldn’t imagine having to deal with anything more difficult than trying to decide which movie to watch tomorrow night, a comment that led Amanda to conclude that you couldn’t get her to run for politics if you paid her. “What a horrible job!” she said, her admiration for the Prime Minister ratcheting up in multiples.

Meanwhile, Saffy says she’s putting her political ambitions on hold for the moment. After being glued to the TV watching the election results, she says that she’s now torn between running with the PAP or with the Workers Party. “I don’t think I’d look good in all whites, so that kind of rules out the PAP, and the WP have such boring dress sense!”

Amanda says she worries for this country’s future.