Sweep Stakes

Saffy’s latest gripe is that just as she was coming to terms with how expensive the iPhone X is, along comes the iPhone XS to blow up that world view. 

            “O. M. G!” she said the other day. “It costs like a milliondollars! Who do they think is going to buy it?”

            “Lots of people,” said Amanda, as she reached for her iPhone X to call her broker to place an order for another lot of Apple shares. “And when they do, my shares will go up in value and I’ll get me one as well as a bonus.”

            Saffy turned to me, her bosom inflated to a dangerous volume. “Are you seeing and hearing this?”
            I shrugged.

            “You,” said Saffy, pointing a chipped fingernail at Amanda, “are the reason why poor people all over the world are revolting! You’re sucking the life out of all of the working class!”

            Amanda arched a perfectly drawn eyebrow. “Says the woman who just got off a business class flight from Dubai!”
            Never one to stay focused on any subject for any length of time, Saffy turned pink. “Oh, Emirates!” she moaned. “Seriously, that was the most amazing thing that’s ever happened to me in my entire life! Well, except for that one time my boyfriend Brian did this thing with his little finger? Oh my God!”

            “Speaking of amazing, how are you finding our new robot vacuum cleaner?”

            Saffy moaned again.

            A few weeks ago, when our cleaning lady Ah Chuan went off on her annual holiday back to Malaysia, Amanda said she was far too busy to lift a mop, never mind scrub a toilet. So, she went online and bought one of those round vacuum cleaners that hums around the house sweeping up dust. 

            The first one we got earlier this year had literally blown a fuse one day and stopped dead in its tracks. What got Saffy mad was that it had only done half the flat when it died, but because she’d not been paying attention, she didn’t know which half was still dirty. 

All of which meant that she had to get out the Kao Magic Mop and do the whole flat all over again, which she said was such a waste of time. “I could be watching Dr Pimple Popper now,” she muttered as she crouched under the sofa, her arm working the mop like a piston. 

            The minute she laid eyes on our new LG Home-Bot Turbo+, she declared she was in love. “It’s way better than that Chinese vacuum we had before,” she tells everyone. 

The other morning, I found her telling Uncle Yuan, our aging security guard downstairs, how life-changing the Home-Bot was. “It was always chatting to me in Chinese and I had no idea what it was saying! I always felt like I was in a Crystal Jade restaurant! Was it telling me it needed to be changed? Or that it had lost its wi-fi connection? I didn’t know! So stressful!”

            You could tell poor Uncle Yuan was completely lost, because he kept nodding helplessly. Every so often, he said, “Issit?” 

Much later, when he caught me coming home, he said, “Ay, your old maid from China, issit? I thought Ah Chuan was from Muah?”

The other feature of the Home-Bot that Saffy has fallen in love with is its built-in camera, which can be linked to the handphone. All of which means that she has spent valuable hours at work, remotely piloting the machine around the flat. Endlessly. From room to room. Like Wall-E in the tropics.

“But what are you looking at?” Amanda asked. “There’s no one home!”

Saffy shrugged. “I don’t know. I just love the fact that I cansnoop around my own flat. And if someone does break in, I’d be there to see it! If only the camera can actually takephotos!”

            Against her better judgement, Amanda asked why. 

            “Well, if your husband was cheating on you, you’d have hard evidence you could give to the divorce lawyer! Oooh, LG should also put in a microphone, so that if there’s a break-in, you can say, ‘The police are on their way!’ while you’re walking to lunch!”

            Which then led to Saffy’s other brain-wave that LG should install a motion sensor that triggers the camera and sends an alert to the handphone if something moves in the flat.

            When she heard this, Sharyn, who is still in post-Ghost Month mode, asked, “What if it can see ghost? Den how?”

            Amanda says that would make a truly terrifying Korean horror movie.

            

Seeing Things

The other day at breakfast, Sharyn suddenly observed how pleased she was that Ghost Month has finally come to an end. 

As comments go, it’s not the most head-turning thing the woman has ever uttered, but still, it did cause Amanda to pause her spoonful of chicken congee halfway to her mouth. Her eyes swiveled towards to Saffy, who merely shrugged.

Sharyn, who raised three children and therefore notices everything, noticed Amanda’s look. “Is true, what!” she said. “Every Ghost Month, I get visitor! Damn sian!”

Amanda put down her spoon. “Wait, are you talking about your perio…”

Sharyn waved her hand in exasperation. “Aiyoh, no lah! Got ghost visit me!”

Amanda’s eyes popped. “Like in ‘The Nun’?”

“Not so scary,” Sharyn offered, “but same same!”

Amanda stuffed a clenched fist to her mouth. “Shut up!”

According to Sharyn, every year during Ghost Month, she gets at least one night of disturbed sleep when someone – or to be precise, something – physically molests her and not, in her words, in a good way.

The first time, she says, she woke up to the sensation of someone shaking her shoulder, as if to say, ‘Wake up!’

“At first, I thot is my husband or maybe my chil-ren, but den I remember, ay?, dey are all at my mudder-in-law, so cannot be dem!”

“Oh my God!” Amanda moaned. “Then what happened?”

“Naah-ting!” Sharyn drawled. “I keep my eyes shut and say a few Hail Mare-lee, and then he stop shaking me.”

            The next year, she said she woke up to the sensation that there was someone at the end of her bed. “And den, hor, I feel he get on the bed and crawl up over my body! Aiyoh!”

            Amanda turned to Saffy who was still casually slurping up her zhwee kueh. “How are you not reacting to this?” she demanded. 

            Through a full mouth, Saffy mumbled, “I’ve heard it all before. Why do you think my bedroom is covered with crucifixes and Buddha statues? I couldn’t sleep for days when she first told me this!”

            “And den, one year,” Sharyn went on, “I wake up and someone is sitting on my chest and I cannot breathe! Lagi cannot open my eye or scream for help. I so scare! In my mind, I shout and shout! Den sah-dun-lee, he go away. But wah! My heart! Tum tum tum!”

            “And this happens every year?” Amanda asked. As Saffy later remarked, if her face had been any whiter, SKII would have come calling to make her their newest spokesperson. 

            “Some year, no one disturb me, but most year, got! Dis year, dohn have, but I tink maybe is because I go to St Ignatius every day for a month before Ghost Month and ask for blessing!”

            “You know, I always thought you were Buddhist!” Saffy said.

            Sharyn shrugged. “I am, lah, but I try every ting! Last year, I go to Kuan Yin temple for blessing. This year, I go to St Ignatius. Next year, maybe I go to Sri Mariannam!”

            Later, back in the apartment, it was all Amanda could talk about. 

            “I swear, if a ghost visited me every year, I would just die!”

            “So would I,” Saffy said. “I know they can’t really hurt you, but still, it’s all so creepy! And I love how Sharyn is so practical about the whole thing. ‘Oh, this year, I got blessed at St Ignatius! Oh, next year, I’m getting blessed at Sri Mariannam!’ I mean, seriously, that woman is my absolute hero!” Saffy’s eyes shone with admiration. 

            A thought occurred to Amanda. “So have you had any visitors? During Ghost Month? You never talk about it, so I’m assuming all the charms in your bedroom are working?”

            Saffy knocked twice on our dining table. “Touch wood, no! But I have to say that they may be blocking not just ghosts, but also potential boyfriends! I’ve just realized that I’ve not had any luck dating since I started putting up all those crucifixes!”

            “I don’t think crucifixes repel potential boyfriends, Saf,” Amanda told her. 

            Saffy was unconvinced. “You don’t know that. I mean, who’s to say that boyfriends aren’t really bad spirits? That last guy I dated? Tim whatshisface? Three great dates and then suddenly, he doesn’t reply to any of my messages. He basically ghosted me!”

            “Well, I don’t have anything in my room and I’venot had any dates recently!” Amanda pointed out.

            “Our rooms are next to each other. Maybe my charms are so powerful, they’re affecting your love life, too!”

            “Wah lau!” Sharyn said when she heard this.

            

Like and Cher

Well, clearly, this one is a historical post, but just pretend it's current affairs, ok?:

News that Cher is about to drop an album of ABBA covers has been greeted by my friend Barney Chen with the kind hysteria one normally reserves for the sighting of, say, Cher’s first scene in Mamma Mia 2.

            “September 28!” he said the other day at Toast Box. Fresh from a two hour work out at the gym, he was looking impossibly buff as set down a bowl of ten eggs that he then proceeded to crack open, carefully separating the whites from the yolks. 

            “How are you eating that stuff?” Amanda said frowning.

            “Honey, you don’t think I look like this…” he paused to clumsily gesture one hand, currently clutching half an egg shell, up and down his torso, “…by eating that, do you?” With his head, he nodded towards her stack of kaya toast. “It’s all about the protein, my darling!”

He noticed Saffy watching his biceps bounce up and down beneath his tight black tee-shirt. “You can touch them, if you like.”

            Saffy shook herself out of her hypnotized state. “It’s just such a shame I’m not your type,” she sighed. 

            Barney leaned over and laid a hand the size of a Subway sandwich over Saffy’s. “Yes, it’s a shame you’re not Bradley Cooper…Speaking of, oh my God, have you seen the new trailer for ‘A Star is Born’ trailer?...”

            “Seriously,” Amanda exclaimed, “have you always been like this? It’s like you’re on speed or something! Rewind, rewind! What’s this about September 28?”

            Barney sucked in his breath and put down his bowl of ten egg-whites. “That’s when Cher’s new album is being released! Can you imagine it? ABBA covers! Cher and ABBA! It’s like all my Christmases are happening at the same time!”

            “All your Christmases happening at the same time would be if Cher and Barbra Streisand did a duet of ‘I Will Survive’ and Bette Midler was singing back-up,” I said reaching for another tile of kaya toast. 

            “That would just killme,” Barney promised.

            Later that day, back in our apartment, Amanda put on the soundtrack to the new “Mamma Mia 2” soundtrack, which was basically just an excuse for her and Saffy to dance and sing at the top of their lungs in the middle of our lounge. 

            Eventually, they collapse onto the sofa, eyes shining, faces flushed, and voices hoarse from the multiple key changes in ‘Dancing Queen’.

            “You know,” Amanda said, breathing heavily, “they just don’t write songs like that anymore.”

            “Nope,” Saffy said, her face a bright shade of pink.

            “I mean, I tried listening to this guy Troye Sivan the other day? Because Apple Music said I should? All I could think of was, what is going on? What is he saying?”

            Saffy turned her head to look at Amanda. “What do you mean? It wasn’t in English?”

            “I have no idea! I couldn’t understand a word he was singing. All I kept hearing was ‘seventeen’ and everything else sounded like mumbo jumbo!”

            “Well, Sharyn’s kids introduced me to this guy called Blac Gangsta?”

“Black gangster?” Amanda said. 

“No. Blac as in black with no k, and gangster but spelt with an a!”

Amanda closed her eyes to work out the spelling. 

“It was so rude and full of swearing! All I could think of was,” Saffy went on, “do you talk like that to your mother? Seriously, I would be mortified to play that song in public!”

Amanda nodded. “Whereas you could play ‘Waterloo’ at your aunt’s funeral and it would be perfectly appropriate!” 

Sharyn, when Saffy told her about her children’s inappropriate song choices, barked out a laugh. “Not Blac Gangsta, lah, aiyoh! Is call Blac Youngsta!”

“Oh my God, you’ve heard him?!” Saffy shrieked. 

“Aiyah, nowaday, ah, my chil-ren oh-nee listen to this kind of music!”

“But he’s so…so rude!”

Sharyn shrugged. “What to do? They say they like, so they listen, lor! Early on when I complain, my mudder say, when she young dat time, she love the Beatle, but her mudder say, why must listen to ang moh with long hair and take drug? So I tink, yah hor…every generation sure got people sing song that their parent dohn-like, one. Is liddat, lah! As long as dey go to university and become doctor can, orredi. Who care if they like Blac Youngsta!”

            Saffy’s bosom puffed up. “Well, I don’t get it,” she said firmly. “I had to have a shower after listening to two tracks! And not in a good way!”

            

A Shred of Evidence

In my lifetime, I’ve been called many things by unkind people. Usually, they say things like, “You cannot be that dumb! Is that really the best you can do?” or “You are ungrateful! If your grandmother were alive today, she’d turn in her grave.”

            To which I usually say, “Leave me alone, Mother.”

            But the one thing no one has ever called me is a hoarder. Because I don’t hoard. Long before Marie Kondo came along to tell me to throw something out if I bought something new, I was already living her mantra. Hell, I could have written that book of hers because nothing gives me a bigger thrill than to pull something off a shelf and pop it down the rubbish chute. 

            “Where’s that magazine that was on the coffee table?” Saffy once asked.

            “You mean that two-year-old copy of 8DAYS? I threw it out!”

            “Oh my God! I was saving it for that hot Shirtless Guy of the Week!” she shrieked.

            “I cut it out, laminated it, and it’s in your bedside drawer next to your electric, uhm, massager.”

            Safft turned pink and muttered, “I have no idea what you’re talking about. And will you please stop opening my drawers!”

            My bedroom looks like no one lives in it, it’s so empty of unnecessary personal belongings. I have no duplicates of anything. When I run out of shampoo, I buy a new one, unlike my flat-mates who have multiple bottles of everything.

            “I’ll never understand how you use just the one bottle of cleanser,” Amanda said the other day. 

            I was astonished. “But I have only one face. Why do I need two?” It was apparently a question that highlighted what a Neanderthal I am. 

            But the thing that still defeats me are my financial statements, receipts, tax records and bank statements. Every year, I empty my files, neatly bundle up the papers and put them away in my cupboard. Over the years, those piles have grown and multiplied. They now take up over half the shelving space.

            “It’s a fire hazard,” Saffy said the other day. “If you ever lit a match in your cupboard, this whole apartment will just blow up like a Dwayne Johnson movie!”

            “Yes, because paper has such a combustible quality!” I replied in as sarcastic a tone as I could manage. But my heart wasn’t really in it because I knew she had a point. 

            The thing is, I have no idea what to do. I can’t just throw those documents down the rubbish chute the way I would anything else. I’ve read stories about rubbish collectors selling this information to identity thieves. 

            “It’s got all my bank account details and everything!” I told Sharyn. 

She looked at me exasperated. “Aiyoh, you tink you are Bill Gate, issit? You make so little mah-ney! Who want to steal your identity? Or hack your bank data?”

“Wow, way to kick someone when he’s down!” I said. 

Sharyn shrugged. “Is true what!” She paused and gave the matter some thought. “Why you don’t buy a paper shredder?”

“I have financial records going back 15 years, Sharyn. Each year is about a foot thick and shredders do two pages a time. The last time I tried, I got to March, and the machine starting smoking!”

“Professional company, leh?”

“They want big loads, not little piles like mine!”

“And you doh wan to just trowdown the bin?”

“Nope. I’m not risking the karung guni man, either!”

“Aiyoh, how liddat?”

Leave it to Saffy to come up with the solution. That evening she burst into the flat. “It’s Ghost Month!” she announced. “Everyone is burning stuff! We’ll just wait till it’s late one night, and we’ll burn all your papers in one of those bins downstairs in the garden!”

A quiet silence settled into the room as we gave the matter some thought. 

“But,” I said eventually, “you’re supposed to burn stuff that you want to send into the afterlife to keep your ancestors company. You don’t want tax records and bills to go up into heaven! Such bad luck!”

Saffy waved her hands. “No, no! It’ll be bad luck only if we burnt the stuff when you’redead, but you’re not dead yet, so those bills will be someone else’s problem!”

I turned to Amanda for help. She shrugged. “It’s got a certain twisted logic to it.”

“Really? You think?”

“It’s that or run the nightly risk of being burned alive when your stupid tax returns catch fire!” Amanda said.

“You spend too much time talking to my mother,” I told her.