Popping Out

News that Dr Sandra Lee – aka Dr Pimple Popper – is about to debut her very own television show has filled our little apartment with joy. 

Amanda says it’s amazing how an obscure dermatologist in an equally obscure Californian suburb has been able to get 2.5 billion views of handphone videos of pimples being popped and then piggy back off that into a TV show on a major American channel.

“Well, to be fair, what really got her famous were the epidermoid cysts and lipomas,” said Saffy, Dr Sandra’s No. 1 Fan.

“I just love that she’s Singaporean slash Malaysian!” Amanda said, her heart still warm from the glow of pride that of all the countries in the world that could have hosted the North Korean and American nuclear summit, Singapore had scored the winning goal.

Personally, I said, it’s a crying shame the Singapore Tourism Board hasn’t hustled over to California to sign up the woman for its campaigns. 

Saffy nodded grimly. “Yes, and before the Malaysians get to her. That would be the absolute pits. They’ve already got so much good press since their last elections, they don’t need to also get her.”

“She doesn’t sound Singaporean though,” Amanda said doubtfully the other day as we watched the latest YouTube installment of a particularly gruesome extraction of a humungous lipoma from a Filipino guy’s back. “Her accent is so strongly American.”

“Well, so are the accents of half the radio DJs in this town,” Saffy pointed out. “At least her’s is authentic!”

Meanwhile, when the trailer for the new show hit the airwaves, Amanda was in her office, supposedly working on complex legal documents for a case that she swore was giving her hives. Her phone pinged with a message from Saffy: ‘U have GOT to watch this!’

Amanda tapped the attachment. Two minutes later, she was speed-dialing Saffy.

“Isn’t it just the best?” Saffy said immediately. 

“Oh. My. God!” Amanda moaned. “Did you see that guy’s nose? It was literally coveredin bumps! What the hell are they?”

“Probably an extreme case of steatocystomas!” Saffy diagnosed. “And the guy with the massive lump on his knee! How that thing doesn’t burst every time he puts on his pants, I don’t know.”

“Where does she findthese people?” Amanda wondered to the world at large. “I mean, how do you go through life with that kind of stuff growing on you?”

“There’s a guy in my office?” Saffy said, lowering her voice. “He’s got this bald patch at the top of his head with a bump the size of a longan growing on top of it! You can see it from a mile away!”

“Oooh, a pilar cyst!” Amanda said immediately.

Saffy sucked in her breath. “Totally! But here’s the thing. Sharyn says his fengshuimaster said to him that he can’t get it taken out as it’s bringing him good luck!”

“Is it?”

“Not that I can tell,” Saffy sniffed. “Sharyn says his appraisal is coming up and management has noted him down for no bonus orincrement!”

“Ouch!”

“I know. So if that cyst is bringing him any luck, it’s sure not happening in the office.”

A few days later, over lunch at Din Tai Fung in Paragon, in the middle of biting into a particularly juicy xiaolongbao, Sharyn was prompted to suddenly remember the latest piece of office gossip. Huffing through her open mouth because of the hot meat and soup, she announced that Pilar Cyst Man had won $50,000 at 4D.

“Huh!” Saffy said, putting her soup spoon down. 

“Yah, and den, hor, dur nexday, his condo go en-bloc!” Sharyn went on, chomping noisily on her dumpling. “You know how much or not? Two poin tree million!”

            There was a collective silence as we sat there, imagining what it must be like to suddenly have $2.3m in our bank account.

            “And den, hor,” Sharyn went on, ‘today, he come and tell me he give his fengshui master fiethousand dollar as bonus and he oh-so tender his resignation!”

            Saffy’s bosom inflated like a life-raft. “Wait, what? Eng Leong has resigned?”

            Sharyn nodded solemnly. “Now must hire new systems manager!”

            Saffy says it’s just not fair that Eng Leong’s good fortune means she has to go through the whole tedious process of interviewing for a replacement. “I’m so busy as it is!” she pouted this morning. 

            “And all because of that pilar cyst of his!” Amanda said, half jokingly.

            “My God! How many millionaires has Dr Sandra Lee bankrupted?” Saffy wondered. 

Class System

A few weeks ago, Saffy was at the airport in Beijing, waiting patiently to check-in for her flight home. It had been a long business trip. She was tired and cranky. The Economy line stretched on and on and everyone had on their ARBF. 

            “Their what?” Amanda had asked when she’d first heard the term. “What’s that?”

            “Airport Resting Bitch Face,” Saffy translated.

            Amanda put down her cup of tea to give the matter her full attention.  “And what does that look like?” she asked.

            “Like this.” Saffy’s face went slack. The spark in her eyes dimmed and then died. The lines on the side of her face slid downwards, and the muscles in her forehead tightened. The effect was remarkable.

            “You look like you’re on Day 25 of a carrot stick diet!” I told her.

            Saffy turned pink, and looked pleased. “It’s my new party trick!”

            “I’ve never seen that look at the airport!” Amanda said.

            Saffy sniffed. “That’s because you only ever travel Satay or Wedgewood Class!” she pointed out.

            To her credit, Amanda shrugged, completely unapologetic about her One Percent Frequent Flyer Status. “I guess.”

            “Trust me,” Saffy added. “This is how people look when they travel Bee Hoon Class.”

            Anyway, there she was waiting in the Bee Hoon line in Beijing, well aware that her face has also slacked into a first-rate, Meryl Streep Oscar-winning impression of the ARBF when she suddenly realised that somehow she’d actually made it to a counter.

            “Good afternoon,” the steward said as she tapped a few keys on her keyboard, eyes flicking back and forth between Saffy’s passport. She paused and stared, then tapped again with the kind of great efficiency that had led her ancestors to build the Great Wall.

            She looked up. “Miss, our economy section is fully booked, so you’ve been upgraded to our first class cabin.”

            Within micro-seconds, Saffy’s ARBF morphed into the look of someone in Oprah’s audience who’s just been told she’s won a car.

            “Better than sex,” she later told us.

            “What’s it like in Wedgewood Class?” I asked, completely envious. The closest I’ve ever come to First Class is when Amanda comes back from a trip and hands me the pyjamas and toiletries kit.

            “Ohmygod,” Saffy said in a rush. “It’s a whole different world! The lounge is like a hotel. The lighting is so sexy. There’s champagne and wine and lovely showers. And the cabin! Ohmygod, the cabin! When I die, I want to be buried in First Class!”

            This being Saffy, it all went wrong an hour into the flight. She had reclined her seat to forty-five degrees, put her feet up and selected a movie when there was a sudden commotion in the seat across from her.

            Stewards ran up and down the aisle and there was a lot of urgent whispering. Saffy poked her head around her seat and gasped.

            “The guy was just sitting there, shaking in his seat,” she later reported. “His head lolled to the left and his eyes stared straight ahead. Then suddenly, he started vomiting thick green goo! I swear, it was like one of Dr Sandra Lee’s epidermoid cysts being squeezed.”

            Amanda moaned and pushed her breakfast congee away from her.

            I was agog. “So what did you do?”

            Saffy’s bosom inflated. “That’s the thing! He was clearly having a seizure, but I’m not a doctor so there wasn’t any point me hovering and freaking out. So, all I could do was go back to my meal and movie, but then how can you sit there and watch Hugh Jackman sing and sip champagne when the guy next to you is dying in a pool of muck?”

            Both Amanda and I gave the matter some thought and agreed that it was a conundrum.

            “God, I was so angry that he’d put me in this moral dilemma,” Saffy huffed, oozing dissatisfaction. “His seizure totally sucked the joy out of flying Wedgewood Class!”

            Ever practical, Amanda asked if the plane was diverted.

            “No, because after fifteen minutes of fussing, he was fine and laughing with everyone!”

            Amanda was astonished. “What kind of a seizure is that?”

            “Exactly!” Saffy rolled her eyes at the poor quality of medical ailments suffered by First Class travellers. “By that time, my Lhasa Apso had gotten so cold, I had to get a new cup.”
            Amanda rewound the sentence in her head. “Lapsong souchong,” she said.

            Saffy blinked. “That’s what I said.”

            “Lhasa apso is a breed of dog.”

            Saffy later complained to Sharyn they even change the name of their teas in First Class.

            “So cheem, hor?” Sharyn marvelled.

Mother Knows Best

One of my mother’s favourite dinner table stories is how she literally did not know how to boil water till the day after she got married. “I walked into the kitchen in the morning, turned on the tap and then I just stood there because I didn’t know what I was supposed to do next! Can you imagine that?” she will ask and burst into peals of laughter.

            My brother once whispered to me, “I’m surprised she even knew how to turn on the tap!”

            Which more or less describes my mother’s privileged cocooned life in a nutshell. And it also explains why, over the years, her less than enthusiastic attempts to cook invariably ended with Father packing us all up in the car and taking us out to lunch at the Goodwood Park hotel.

            As children, we were never encouraged to cook, much less step into the kitchen for fear that we would get in the way of the cook. We knew where the kitchen was, but we knew this in the vague way that you know which direction is north, but you never really want to bet your life on it. 

            I remember once wandering into the kitchen, attracted by the noise and wonderful smells. I stepped in to find the whole place bustling with activity. Pots clanged and fires blazed. At the big marble bench top, Ah Ying the cook was busy rolling out what looked like a thin sheet of dough. She then cut out neat circles and scooped up a teaspoon of filling from a big pot of minced pork perfumed with shaoxin wine. (Even aged seven, I could tell my wines.)  

            When Ah Ying caught sight of me loitering at the door, she told me to go away. “You’re in the way! Get out!”

            Later at lunch, as we wolfed down the steaming baskets of pork dumplings, I remember wondering by what strange magic that unappetizing sheet of dough and pink meat had miraculously turned into this wondrous parcel of soft textures and flavours.

            You know how this story ends, I think. 

            One day, we all grew up and moved out of home. I ended up in Australia where I woke up one morning and realized that I didn’t know how to boil an egg. I couldn’t bear the thought of McDonalds. A lifetime of good home cooked meals had instilled in me a horror for fast food. But I also knew that I couldn’t subsist on a diet of Maggi mee, or a ham and cheese sandwich even if it was made with Provolone and honey-baked ham.

            And that’s how I learnt to cook. I bought a Delia Smith cookbook, turned to page one and started from there. I learned how to boil an egg. After a few tries, I progressed to an omelette and then scrambled eggs. The day I attempted my first soufflé goes down in history as a culinary triumph greater than the invention of the bread machine.

            When I’d exhausted Delia, I went out and bought Jamie Oliver. Then the Joy of Cooking. I’m currently working my way through The Silver Spoon. 

I became more confident. I peeled, chopped, sliced, and diced and then I stirred, opened and shut oven doors, lifted lids and tasted. Many times, I threw out entire pots of food that turned out to be duds and, once, an entire cake that didn’t rise because I’d forgotten to add baking powder. 

            To my surprise, I love cooking. I love the magic that came from taking all those different raw ingredients and turning them into something hot and fragrant. I love the simple pleasure of eating dinner at the kitchen table, while reading a book or Skyping a friend. 

Sometimes, friends drop by for a meal. I love their surprised smiles as they arrive, expecting a pizza takeaway and find, instead, a steaming pot of beouf Bourgignon with buttered pasta on the table. 

At the end of a long day staring at the computer screen, nothing spells comfort and relief more than the idea of a pleasurable hour or so in front of the stove, letting the simple act of slowing stirring the pot release the stress of the day at the same time as the sweet smell of sautéed onions fills the apartment. 

The other day, Saffy looked up from the bowl of spaghetti carbonara I’d made for lunch and sighed with pleasure. “If your Mother could only see you now.”

“She’d ask where I learnt to boil water.”

Careless Whispers

Amanda’s good friend Cecilia has a shih-tzu. Bonbon is 12-years-old which apparently is very old and lately, he’s been moping about the house. 

            “He’s not eating!” Cecelia told Amanda over tea at the Ritz-Carlton. Her eyes moistened.

            “Well, he is12,” Amanda pointed out. “That’s like almost 90 in human years.”

            “Yes, but still. He just looks so sad all the time!”

            Later, Saffy said she’s always wondered why people have shih-tzus as pets. “Don’t you think they look really snooty? And they’re so yappy! Snooty and yappy! That is not a good combination for a dog.”
            “You just don’t like them because they remind you of your mother,” Amanda said. 

            “Yes, that’s very true. That woman,” Saffy sighed, her bosom trembling like a freshly baked castella cake. “Talk about snooty and yappy!”

            Meanwhile, Cecilia had invited a dog-whisperer to her house. Jane came highly recommended from another mutual friend Pei-lian whose Alaskan Huskie had gone missing from their Binjai Rise home a few weeks ago. Apparently, Ralphie had wandered out the open front gate when the helper was accepting delivery of champagne for a party Pei-lian was hosting that evening. 

            Amanda said Pei-lian alternated between screaming at her hapless helper and dissolving into floods of tears as she sent out the entire household to scour the neighbourhood’s narrow streets. Eventually, her daughter remembered that her school-friend’s mother Jane was a dog-whisperer.

            “Maybe she can help find Ralphie, Mummy?”

            Which is how Pei-lian found herself WhatsApping Ralphie’s picture to Jane. After a few minutes, Jane called back.

            “I’ve made contact with your dog,” she reported in her clipped Katong accent. “He’s very frightened but I’ve managed to calm him down. Seriously, Pei-lian, you have to stop crying! It’s very hard to focus when you’re this hysterical, you know!”

            It took a while, but once Pei-lian and her daughter had stopped screaming tears of joy, Jane said Ralphie said he didn’t know where he was, but he was outside a red house which amazed everyone, not least Saffy who, when she heard the story, wondered how that could possibly be. “I thought dogs were colour-blind!” 

            “Apparently not,” Amanda said.

            “And all this happened by canine telepathy? Amazing. So what happened then?”

            “Well, Pei-lian’s maid got in touch with the local Maid Mafia and one of them said that about three blocks away, her neighbour was renovating his home and had just painted one of the front walls red!”

Saffy’s eyes were saucer-shaped. “Oh my God!”  

“I know, right? So everyone rushed over and there was Ralphie sitting in front of the house with the red wall!”

“Seriously,” Saffy sighed. “That is just the most amazing thing I’ve ever heard! But imagine if Ralphie had said he saw a whitewall!”

“That’s why Pei-lian says it was impossible for Jane to have made any of that up. How could she have known about the house renovation let alone guess that Ralphie would end up there?”

Which is how Jane, now famous amongst the SCGH Old Girls network, found herself in Cecilia’s home speaking to Bonbon about his lack of appetite. After a few minutes of stroking the dog’s head and staring gently into his eyes, she turned to the anxiously hovering Cecilia and said, “Your helper!” she said. “Bonbon says she’s injured her left elbow!”

Apparently, Maria who was also hovering, gasped and immediately crossed herself and dropped to her knees. She scooped up the dog and clasped him tightly to her chest. “Mother, Mary and Joseph!” she moaned. “Bonbon!”

“You never told me!” Cecilia said, frowning. 

“It’s not too bad, mum!”

“Bonbon says,” Jane went on, stroking his head as he struggled to escape Maria’s bosom, “he’s very sad he’s getting so old. He’s worried about leaving you guys alone. He wants you to get another dog so you won’t be lonely! Also, he wants to be put down.”

At which, Cecilia began wailing, and Maria dissolved into full-blown Filipino hysterics, invoking every saint she knew and shouting, “No! No!” It took a while for Jane to make it clear that she meant Bonbon wanted to be released from Maria’s embrace and not be euthanized. 

For days, it’s all we’ve been able to talk about.

“That is just so amazing, isn’t it?” Amanda said. “First Ralphie, and then Bonbon!”

“The best part is,” Saffy said, “you can actually make a career out of it! Imagine the huge tips you’d make.”

“You tink?” Sharyn said. “Singaporean so kiam siap. They ask you for discount, ah!”

“Oh, that’s so true,” Saffy sighed. “You really are the Singaporean Whisperer!”

Sharyn preened. “I oh-so say.”

Wedding Favours

Even now, months after the event, it's difficult for us to accept the fact that Rachel Zane finally married her Prince Charming. For real, too, and not that pasty boy wonder, Mike Ross. 

            For reasons that escape anyone, in the little flat I share with Saffy and Amanda, none of us has been able to separate fiction from reality. To us, Meghan Markle, the new Duchess of Sussex and Countess of Dumbarton, will forever and ever be the gorgeous, loyal and feisty paralegal Rachel Zane.

            For the longest time, amongst TV junkies, ‘Suits’ was one of those secret society handshakes. You either watched the show religiously, or you had never heard of it. We’d been fans from the beginning, though for different reasons. 

I love it for Louis Litt, that foul mouthed, twitching, shouting, hurt, open wound of a man who can make me laugh just by raising his eyebrows while he soaked in his mud bath. I also love it for Harvey Specter, a handsome, smooth-talking, charming, smart and ever well-dressed man who never seems to do any work except walk in and out of offices threatening people. When I die, I want to come back as that dude.

            The girls, meanwhile, literally moan every time one of the main women characters come on screen. 

            “Seriously,” Amanda said once. “I work in a law firm and I have never met a secretary who looks and dresses like Donna. I mean, look at her outfits! And don’t get me started on Jessica! I bet she doesn’t eat a thing. Nobody who eats can have a body like that.”

            Next to her, Saffy sighed. “I love the way they walk. They just stride with such confidence and purpose, even if they’re only going to the photocopying room. I want to walk like that. When I walk, I look like I just did a number two in my underwear and I’m trying not to let anything fall out of my undies!”

            Amanda pulled a face. “Seriously?”

            Saffy shrugged.

            So, when news broke that Rachel was marrying Prince Harry, there was a collective sigh. “Another random stranger marrying a prince!” Amanda said. “It’s just so unfair!”

            “Ay, what you expect?” Sharyn demanded. “You tink you can meet han-sum single royal prince when you always have lunch at Maxwell Food Court, issit?”

            “Or work in the HR department of a crappy law firm,” Saffy added.

            Sharyn nodded, her glasses almost slipping off her shiny flat nose. “Hannor!”

            The day of the wedding, the girls threw a Royal Wedding party at home. Amanda catered scones and pressed sandwiches, while Saffy put up Rule Britannia banners all over our living room. One of their girlfriends, Maxine, somehow managed to rustle up life-sized cut-up dolls of the bride and groom for the occasion. 

            “That George Clooney is aging like really expensive fine wine!” observed Saffy as she stuffed an entire scone into her mouth. 

            “Since when did Harvey Specter wear glasses?” Amanda asked.

            “Wait, that’s Harvey? Why’s he so thin?” Saffy said, concern etched in every syllable. 

            When Rachel finally emerged onto the steps of the church, there was a collective moan. 

            “Oh my God, that dress!” Saffy sighed. “It’s gorgeous!”

            “It’s a Givenchy,” Amanda reported flipping through her Instagram account. 

            “Wah, so nice, hor?” Sharyn said. “Ay, I wonder how much this wedding cost, ah?”

            “Forty-three million,” said Amanda, royal accountant. 

            A shocked silence descended on the room.

            “Rupiah?” Sharyn finally squeaked. 

Amanda barked out a laugh. “You-ess dollars!”

            “Wah lau, eh!”

            Apparently, Sharyn went home and told her husband it was an absolute scandal how these ‘xiao ang mohs’ had no ‘cow sense’ when it comes to budgeting for a wedding. “Wah, you give me forty tree million, I trow a wedding for the whole of Singapore, ah, and still got extra to send them on honeymoon! And fly Satay Class, some more!” she added indignantly. 

            “Yah, but, dey must also pay for security, right?” her husband Leong said. 

            Sharyn waved her hands. “Aiyah, you tink Victoria Beckham and Oh-plah don’t have their own security, meh? Dey so rich, confirm got own security, one! What for must pay extra?” 

            Meanwhile, back in our flat, as we were clearing and cleaning up, Saffy announced that she was officially obsessed with Rachel’s wedding dress. “So chic!”

            Amanda who was still flipping through her social media feed whilst picking up cups, paused and looked up. “That dress cost $268,000! You-ess,” she added, just in case it wasn’t already clear.

            For days, it’s been all Saffy can talk about. “$268,000!” she told the tea-lady at her office. “Can you imagine?”

            “Ay, xiao mei!” Auntie sighed, “I’m very busy, hor! I still go another floor to serve. You want coffee, or not?”

             

Retirement Benefits

In the little flat I share with Saffy and Amanda, nothing preoccupies our waking lives more than the idea of retirement. Now, alert readers out there might pause and think, “But these people are just barely out of puberty! They still have decadesof CPF to contribute to! Why would they be thinking of retirement already?”

            These are all undeniably accurate sentiments, but, nevertheless, they do not detract from the fact that we are all essentially bored with our lives. 

            The other day, Amanda said being a lawyer just made no sense. “I mean. It’s not as if I’m an engineer or an artist. At the end of the day, you’ve got a bridge and a painting to show for your hard day’s work. What do I have to show? A pile of paper.”

            Not to be outdone, Saffy said Amanda should trying being in HR. “At the end of my day, I am surrounded by very unhappy people. They’re unhappy when they join the company because they’re still emotionally scarred and bitter from their last job. And when they leave this job,” Saffy said, pausing to suck in breath, “they’re even more scarred and bitter because they never got that promotion they were promised when they joined in the first place!”

            “It’s almost like dating, isn’t it?” Amanda suggested.

            Saffy’s eyes brightened at the A-Ha moment. “It’s exactlylike dating! You know it’s all going to end in heartbreak, but you go on the date anyway and when it’s all over, you wonder why you bothered in the first place.”

            “And then you go out and do it all over again,” Amanda said, “because if you didn’t, you’d be sitting at home on a Friday night watching an old episode of ‘Grey’s Anatomy’ on Netflix!”

            “So, the solution is to just walk away from it all!” Saffy said, her enormous bosom inflating with enthusiasm. “Give it up and call it a day!”

            “But then, what would you do?” I asked.

            “I would do yoga all day,” Saffy said.

            “But you can’t even touch your toes,” Amanda pointed out.

            “Which is why I would be doing it all day!” Saffy sighed, thinking, not for the first time, that it was an absolute scandal Harvard ever gave Amanda a degree in the first place. 

            “What would you do if you could retire now?” Amanda asked me.

            “Absolutely nothing!” I replied. 

            “Well, you can’t do nothing,” Saffy said.

            “Of course, I can. That’s the whole point of retirement! So you don’t have to doanything! I would just live off my CPF and sit around the apartment all day!”

            Amanda looked astonished. “But you’d be bored!”

            Which, in turn, astonished me. People seem to have this idea that being bored is a bad thing. #Notme.

            Because I read the news. And it’s telling me that it’s a scary world out there. All this excited talk about nuclear wars and trade wars and biological warfare makes me nervous. Today, I was informed that Facebook has weaponized the data it collects. I don’t know what that means exactly, or how anyone could weaponise a picture of my lunch, but I’m glad I’m no longer on it. And apparently, Ebola is back. Just thinking that I could catch Ebola gives me indigestion.

            Apparently, an old Chinese curse is to tell someone, “May you live in interesting times.”

            Which is just a very fancy way of saying, “May you never have a moment’s peace.” And it’s such an effective way of hating someone. Because nobody has ever cursed anyone by saying, “I hope you die of boredom.”

            To my mind, being bored means you’re safe. There is no imminent danger of something awful happening to you. If I wanted that kind of excitement, I’d still be a lawyer. 

            “Well, that’s a very strange way of looking at the world!” Saffy said, her bosom trembling like a pot of simmering soup. 

            “It’s true! Bored people have no stress!” I told her.

            “Yah, is very true, what Jason say!” Sharyn piped up. She pushed up closer to Saffy. “You look at all the line on my face! All cause by my husband and my chil-ren! Before I mare-ly and before I give birth, when I was single and got no ploh-blem, my face smooth like Fann Wong! After I mare-ly and give birth and got mortgage, my face become like Christo-per Lee!”

            “Ooh, he’s hot!” Amanda said with approval. 

            Sharyn sniffed. “Where got? He got so many wrinkle now. Like me, lor!”

            Leave it to Sharyn, Saffy said later, to come up with her own version of #metoo.