Bending My Ways

One of the things I love most about the internet is YouTube. If I could go back in time and give one piece of advice to my younger self, it would be: “Buy shares in YouTube, Apple and Amazon.” If that had actually happened, I’d be so rich right now, I wouldn’t be writing this weekly column. Instead, I’d be hanging out with other rich people, and Woffles Wu would be writing about my fabulously cool art collection.

            People are always going on about paying for content on the Internet and I usually tune right out, usually because I’ve just spent a lot of money on Amazon and that season 1 DVD of Wonder Woman I bought counts as content in my books, so I don’t need to listen to a lecture.

But I would so pay for YouTube. It’s my window to the world, my very own personal library. There isn’t a single thing that’s happened in my lifetime, or even that’s happening right this very instant, that isn’t available in a clip somewhere on YouTube.

Especially things that have never happened to me.

Like this clip I saw the other day of a guy doing yoga. Except this was the kind of yoga you’d expect someone like, I don’t know, Bruce Lee to do. He started off doing a plank, and then suddenly, his legs were resting on just the back of his biceps, then he was up in a handstand while his back bent backwards, followed by a dolphin and suddenly, he was back in a plank. And he did this same routine for about five minutes.

As Saffy pointed out, he wasn’t even breaking a sweat. “You know, these days, I have difficulty getting off the couch!” she said, looking very dissatisfied by the state of her physical condition. “And can I also say something? I have been to a lot of yoga classes, but I’ve never been to one where there’s a hot shirtless guy who looks like this guy!”

Amanda peered at the laptop over Saffy’s shoulder. “There are a few guys like that in my hot yoga class.”

Saffy’s bosom inflated and blocked our view of the screen. She turned her head to look up at Amanda. “Seriously?”

“Yes, but you wouldn’t survive five minutes in there. Bikram is really only for super fit people.”

“Who’s Bikram? Is he the teacher?”

As Amanda later pointed out, it’s incredible that in this age of information overload, when it’s just physically impossible to claim ignorance about anything, it’s astonishing when someone like Saffy comes along and completely skews the median IQ in the room. “Down to the low end!” she added, in case I’d missed the point.

I grunted something, on account of the fact that I was unable to say anything since I was struggling to get myself into a headstand. Yoga Guy had inspired me to be more serious in my practice. “If this guy can get into this kind of shape from just yoga, I’m in!” I’d posted on Facebook.

Amanda looked at me in silence for a while. From between my tangle of arms and legs and upside down vision, I could tell she was struggling to say something.

“What?” I said eventually.

“Well…” she began reluctantly. “It’s just that watching you reminds me of those YouTube clips of little short legged dogs trying to get up onto the sofa!”

“Oh my God,” I gurgled from an upside-down position. “I love those dogs, they’re so…owww!”

Amanda screamed as I crashed flat on my back with a loud smack. One moment I was entertaining visions of my rippled muscled self and the next, I was staring up at the ceiling, silently praying I’d not damaged anything vital, like my spine. Amanda’s face hovered into view.

“Are you ok?”

I caught a whiff of Chanel No. 5. “Well, I can still see. Oh, and smell,” I told her.

“Can you move?”

I wiggled my toes and shifted my neck. “I think so….”

Later that night over dinner, Saffy said yoga sounded like it was far too dangerous an activity for the likes of her. “Imagine if I had fallen like Jason! I might broken my neck!”

Sharyn spat out her char kway teow. “Choy! Why you must always say such ting, one?”

Saffy was unrepentant. “YouTube should link every video of some hot shirtless guy to a video of Jason falling! Like a safety message!”

I turned to Amanda. “You didn’t film that, did you?”

“It was actually quite funny, how you fell. Imagine the number of hits you’d get!” she told me.

Hair Apparent

The other night, Saffy’s phone pinged.

            She and I were at home, comfortably sunk into the sofa with the air-con on full blast and Dr Sandra Lee’s latest procedure streaming from my laptop onto our big screen.

            “Honestly,” Saffy said, her hands diving into the bowl of popcorn I had made for the occasion, “this is the best thing ever. I should get a tee-shirt made that says ‘Cysters Forever’!’”

            “She’s got such incredible technique!” I said through a mouthful of popcorn. “I mean, look at her snip around that cyst! How she doesn’t nick it, I don’t know.”

Saffy never took her eyes off the screen as she reached for her phone. “I love epidermoid cysts! Actually, I love all types of cysts. Maybe for my next career, I could work as her assistant!”

“You’d have to move to Oakland, California though,” I told her. Out of the corner of my eye, I watched Saffy read her text message. “Do you want to live in Oakland, California?”

“Amanda says Prince Harry is giving a speech right now and that her ovaries are exploding.”

I dropped my handful of popcorn back into the bowl. “Well, that just put me off eating for the rest of the night!”

For weeks after Amanda had been invited to the St Regis for a gala dinner for a charity Prince Harry is patron of, and which he’d be attending in person and not through a stupid pre-recorded video, it consumed her waking days. She dropped a small fortune on a new black cocktail dress for the occasion, and two days before, she skipped down to Strip for a wax.

“You’re waxing?” Saffy had asked. “What’s the point? You know they’re not going to let anyone within two metres of him, right?”

“Oh I know, but you always want to be prepared!” Amanda said without specifying quite what she wanted to be prepared for.

And when the big night finally arrived, she behaved in much the same way Saffy does when confronted by an all-you-can-eat seafood buffet. That is to say, with religious gratitude.

“Don’t wait up for me!” she murmured as she glided out the front door.

“OK!” I said loudly over the hum of the microwaving popcorn.

“I honestly don’t know what the big deal about him is,” Saffy said, her lips pursed with dissatisfaction. On screen, Dr Sandra was slowly lifting the cyst sac out of the cavity, as she carefully snipped away at the membranes tethering it to underlying muscles. “I mean, he’s just so scruffy, with all that orange facial hair and wild hair. What’s the attraction?”

“You’d have to ask Amanda,” I said, and remembering something, added, “and also that ‘Suits’ chick.”

“Oh, Meghan Markle?” asked Saffy, life-time subscriber to every gossip website on the planet. “Yeah, see, I can understand the attraction with her. I mean, that woman is really gorgeous, but going the other way? Not so much.”

When Amanda came home later that night, she practically floated through the front door. She was radiant.

“Oh God, he’s gorgeous!” she sighed as she dropped her handbag on the side-table, kicked off her heels and leaned against the door.

“You don’t find him a little, well, scruffy?” Saffy asked.

“Oh, not at all! I think that’s what makes him so attractive! He doesn’t try too hard. Every man I’ve dated this month has been so obsessed with his looks. Harry is such a refreshing change!”

Saffy and I exchanged a glance over the bowl of popcorn. Eventually she coughed. “So, did you get a picture of His Royal Scruffiness?”

“No. They banned photography in the ballroom which, by the way, I have got to get the number of the person who styled it. It was just glorious! Huge flowers on every table and just the most gorgeous lighting! It really was like a fairy-tale!”

“Did you get to speak to him?” I asked.

“No. I didn’t dare. But I was two tables away and got a really good clear view of him. Mmmm! So hot! And then he got up to speak, which is when my ovaries exploded!”

“Hmmm….” Saffy began.

“No, really. He has a deep sexy voice and his accent is so posh!”

“Well, he is royal,” I pointed out.

“And third in line to the throne!” Amanda added. “Which really is the best thing, because then you’re still a big deal but you don’t have to deal with the prospect of actually being king which would put too much spotlight and stress on you!”

“You should update your Facebook relationship status,” Saffy told her.

Porky Prig

Walk into any bookshop or go online, and you’ll find more books and articles on vegetarianism than you could shake an organic carrot stick at. Any question you may have about the pros and cons about being vegetarian, what it is, why you should do it, what are the medical benefits and drawbacks, how to cook it, what to eat, where to eat it, how to eat it…somewhere out there, someone has written about it.

            But one thing nobody writes about is just how much more difficult it is, if not impossible, to travel when you’re a vegetarian.

            Last weekend, Saffy, Amanda and I scooted up to Penang for a long weekend. The official excuse was that Amanda had a Friday meeting, but as Saffy pointed out, it’s difficult to take any meeting seriously when it’s held in the lobby of a hotel.

            “I mean, who does that, unless you’re in a Hollywood movie set in Washington D.C?” she said, her impressive bosom threatening to burst out of her new Marni sequined tee-shirt like one of those chest-busters in ‘Alien: Covenant’.

            Amanda rolled her eyes. “He’s the CEO of one of my most important clients and he’s literally heading straight to the airport from the meeting, so it makes sense to just meet in the lobby!”

            Saffy was unimpressed. “Has he heard of Skype? Anyway, whatever. Jason and I are coming with you. I am dying to have some char kway teow!”

            “But that’s got prawns and cockles in it,” I pointed out. “You’re vegetarian now.”

            Saffy’s bosom inflated. “Yes, but I’m not blind! I can pick out the seafood and just eat the noodles!”
            Which is how, as Amanda sat down in the lobby of the E&O hotel in downtown Penang, Saffy and I settled in at Ah Leng’s with a plate each of steaming, fragrant, garlicky char kway teow.

            After the obligatory Instagram snap, we tucked in. “My God, this is so good!” Saffy moaned as she delicately picked out the fat prawns and little brown nuggets of cockles and dropped them onto my plate. “There’s just so much flavour and wok-hei!”

            “What should we have for lunch?” I mumbled through a mouthful of noodles.

            A cone of silence dropped over our table. Saffy stared hard at the ceiling as her mouth chewed rhythmically. She frowned and cocked her head. “Huh,” she said eventually. “I’ve just realized that everything that I love to eat in Penang has meat in it. Nasi kandar. Bah kut teh. Lor bak. Fish head curry.” Her fingers ticked off the offending foods.

            “Rojak! You can have rojak!” I said helpfully.

            “That’s got shrimp paste, no? And anyway, I can’t just eat fruit salad the whole trip.”

            “Oh.”

            “Kueh pie tee, babi pongtay, assam laksa, chicken buah keluak…My God. There’s meat in everything! And if I pick out the meat, there’ll be nothing to eat except gravy!”

            When we swung by the E&O to pick up Amanda for lunch, Saffy was practically hyperventilating.

            “Surely, there’s something we can eat!” Amanda said as she struggled with her seatbelt.

            “There’s nothing!” Saffy insisted. “It’s all got meat in it! There’s only char kway teow!”

            As if on cue, Saffy’s phone pinged with a notification on Instagram. Sharyn had posted a comment on Saffy’s picture of the glistening curls of Ah Leng’s char kway teow: “How can you eat this? Got pork lard, you know!”

            Saffy immediately dialed Sharyn’s number. “No, it doesn’t!” she began hotly.

            Sharyn’s amplified voice boomed out on the speaker. “Aiyoh, you so bodoh! How you tink so tasty? Where got vegee-tuh-ble oil fry, one? Confirm it’s pork lard, lah!”

            “Well it may be lard,” Saffy said, her face turning pink, “but it’s not pork!”

            As Amanda later pointed out to me privately, sometimes Saffy made Donald Trump look like a genius.

            “I think she’s devastated,” I told her. “She was thinking she could just eat char kway teow the entire trip.”

            “You know,” Amanda said. “I just had a horrifying thought. You know how we’re going to Paris in September? What the hell are we going to eat? No coq au vin, no boeuf Bourgignon, no steak tartare, no oysters, no cassoulet…I can’t just eat croissants for a week!”

            When Saffy heard about it, she literally started shaking. “But what would be the point of being in France then?” she cried. “Oh my God, why does every dish that I love have meat in it?”

            On cue, a message from Sharyn pinged on Saffy’s phone: “Who ask you become vegetarian?”