What a Croc!

As anyone who has ever gone on a date will know, it’s a mine-field out there.

With girls, it’s like preparing for World War 3. There are endless discussions with girlfriends about what to wear, what not to wear, the decoding missions (“What do you think it means that we’re going to Blah-de-blah restaurant? Does he expect me to put out on the first date? Because I want to, but I also don’t want to send out the wrong message.”) and the four hours of prep time before the date (hair, makeup, outfit, shoes, accessories, perfume).

Guys have it relatively easy. They just have to make sure they wear a nice clean shirt, comb their hair, bring some flowers, compliment the girl on her outfit (but never the shoes) and remember not to pick their nose between courses. Well, at least that’s what I thought this was all we had to worry about.

A few days ago, my flat-mate Saffy introduced us to Mike, her current boyfriend. They’d met at an office function. Saffy said she was attracted to the fact that he was tall, could string a sentence together and wasn’t constantly checking his phone for messages. “And he’s got the cutest ass I’ve seen in a long time!” she reported breathlessly after the first date.

“Oh, that’s very important!” Amanda said with approval. In the world according to Amanda, a man with no ass is a man who is also very likely lacking in other departments. And now after a few dates, Saffy decided that it was time to introduce Mike to her friends, to get their stamp of approval. I begged off and said something urgent had happened at work.

“I hate that stage when you’re meeting the girl’s friends,” said Karl over dinner at Chomp Chomp. “It’s so stressful because if her best friend hates you on sight, it’s over.”

I looked up from my char kway teow and stared. “What do you care?” I asked. “You’re married.”

Karl shrugged. “I’m just saying.”

Right about then, across town, Saffy was introducing Mike to Amanda. By all accounts, it was very civilized, but Saffy said that she could tell that something was wrong. “Amanda had this pinched look, you know, like she’s about to pee out a kidney stone!” she told me later that evening when we had all regrouped in our apartment.

“You cannot possible date that man!” Amanda said without her usual sugar-coating.

Saffy’s famous breasts heaved in alarm. “What is your problem?” she demanded. “He’s single and straight! He’s perfect!”

“He wears Crocs!” Amanda said with devastating pity.

I swiveled my head around and frowned. Saffy’s mouth automatically opened to retort, but to everyone’s astonishment, no words came out. She tried again. And again. Eventually, she managed to squeak out, “What?”

“Mike wears Crocs!” Amanda repeated.

I hesitated. “Uhm, but what does that have to do with the price of eggs?” I asked, utterly bewildered.

“I also say!” Saffy said, her bosom trembling.

It was Amanda’s turn to look surprised. “Crocs!” she stressed again. “He wears Crocs!”

Saffy still looked lost. “So what?” The penny eventually dropped. I piped up, “Are you seriously telling me that you would rule someone out as husband material just because he wears Crocs?” On hearing this, Saffy sucked in her breath.

“Are you seriously telling me that you wouldn’t?” Amanda retorted.

“But Manda, they’re just shoes!” I protested. “Actually, they’re not even shoes, they’re more like slippers!”

“They’re Crocs!” Amanda said firmly. “Crocs are ugly. And if Mike thinks it’s acceptable to wear them, who knows what other kinds of bad taste he’s going to exhibit?”

As Saffy later complained to Barney Chen, “It’s totally unbelievable! I never even noticed what Mike was wearing! Would you hold it against a guy who wore Crocs?”

“Sweetie,” Barney said kindly, “I don’t care what the guy wears, as long as he holds something against me! I’m very low maintenance that way.” Saffy pursed her lips. She was clearly dissatisfied with this unexpected bump in her dating prospects. “The worst thing is that now whenever I see Mike, it’s all I can think about. And I still don’t even know what the problem is! They’re not even that ugly.”

“I hear they’re very comfortable,” Barney said vaguely. “Apparently, it’s like walking on air.”

Saffy wasn’t listening. “Amanda is crazy! Mike is perfect. He’s a banker, he’s smart and he’s got a car. Oh,” she suddenly remembered, “and he’s straight. Do you know how hard it is to find someone like that in this town?”

Barney sighed and patted Saffy’s hand. “You’re preaching to the choir, girl!”

Like I said…mine-field.

It's getting late

It really bugs me when people are always late for appointments.

“Maybe she’s stuck in traffic,” my flatmate Amanda said recently as we waited for Saffy like two tired old hookers outside Orchard Towers. She looked around her, nervously taking in the passing traffic of curious tourists and lecherous ah-peks who kept giving her casual glances. “And can you tell me why we agreed to meet here on a weekend?” she said eventually, and added, “I will just die if anyone asks me what my rate is!”

“Stuck in traffic, my foot,” I grumbled. “That Saffy was late for her own birth!”

And just like that, Saffy emerged from the crowd, a pint-sized dynamo in a mini-skirt, platform shoes and a tube-top (emblazoned with the words ‘No Money, No Honey’) that barely managed to qualify as a top by a mere two inches of material. “Goodness!” she trilled. “Where are all these people coming from? I was stuck in traffic!”

Eventually, she noticed my stare and shifted uncomfortably. Her bosom trembled with guilt. “What?”

“You took the MRT. What possible traffic could there be?”

“Oh, alright!” Saffy burst out. “Stop torturing me! I was trying on make up at MAC, ok? Give me a break, I’ve had a tough week!”

“But we’ve been standing here for half an hour!” Amanda said. “Why didn’t you call?”

“I got caught up!” Saffy cried. “And I’m only half an hour late!”

Amanda says that next time, we're meeting at Borders. Meanwhile, I've decided to get me one of Saffy's t-shirts in my size.

Miss Match

The first time I tried to match-make someone, it ended in a big fat fizzle. Barney Chen had been thoroughly miserable and going through a slump – which in his world was defined as not having had a date in three weeks. As it happened, one of my clients had just come off a long term relationship when his boyfriend had decided to go home to Rome – without Peter. Perfect, I thought. So I held a dinner party at my place and invited Barney and Peter without telling either it was a set up.

They barely registered each other’s presence. Barney immediately curled up on the sofa with my beloved adopted mongrel dog, Pooch while Peter spent the entire evening talking to Saffy’s breasts, a state of events which cause her tremendous excitement.

“I think I turned him!” she whispered to me in the kitchen, her eyes burning with the kind of light one normally associates with religious fanatics just before they press the trigger. She stared down at her bosom in awe. “They’re magical!” she breathed in awe.

The next day, Barney called and asked why I’d invited “the midget” to dinner, while Peter emailed to ask if Saffy was single because he was currently in lust with the brother of a friend and this brother swung both ways (“If you know what I’m saying and with women, he’s really into boobs!”) and he thought that if he could introduce this brother to Saffy, he (the brother) might consider getting into a threesome with Saffy and Peter. “He’s talked about it before. This is a great way to get in bed with the brother, don’t you think?” Peter asked. He added a smiley face at the end of the sentence.

When I reported this to Saffy, she had to pull out a piece of paper to work out the proposed arrangement. Eventually, she looked up from her scribbles and asked, “Is it just me, or is that a little sick? And is it even sicker that I’m also a little intrigued by what this brother looks like?”

Where's the ROM-ance?

The idea of marriage does funny things to different people. I personally can’t walk past a magazine rack brimming with bridal magazines without thinking, ‘Honestly, how many different ways can you do a party favour?’

My best friend Karl, who is unhappily married, says he considers it a good day if he doesn’t think about divorce more than three times each morning; while Barney Chen looks forward to the day when Vera Wang will make him a dress for his marriage to Wentworth Miller.

“Don’t you think this whole marriage thing is just a big con?” I asked my flatmate Amanda the other day at our local Starbucks.

She looked up from her cappuccino and blinked. “You’re asking someone who has kept every single issue of Martha Stewart Wedding since 1937?”

“It’s not even romantic anymore!” I said stirring my latte as I told her the story of Geraldine who’d been dating her boyfriend for two years now. And recently, in the middle of the commercial break for Ugly Betty, he’d turned to her and asked casually, “Do you think we should have a look at some HDB flats?”

Amanda rolled her eyes and groaned. “Ugh, I hate that! Can guys please learn to propose properly? Applying for public housing permits is not romantic!”

Which got me thinking. I grew up with some rather, admittedly, dated concepts of romance. Girl meets boy. They fall in love. They part and rendezvous in Paris. They kiss and The End. Not anymore. These days, it seems to me as if standards have fallen (and not in a good way either, as Barney Chen would say).

I blame it on shows like ‘The O.C.’ and MTV. Everything has become tacky and cheap (and not in a good way). Invitations to wedding dinners arrive by email (if you’re lucky) or SMS. Nobody dresses up properly to celebrate the happiest day (supposedly) of their friends’ lives: I once sat next to someone at a dinner at the Four Seasons who wore a black polo shirt from Warner Bros Movie World Gold Coast. He was also an hour late – “Aiyah, I had a nap. I overslept!” And I honestly can’t remember the last time I received a thank you note for all the very expensive wedding presents I brought.

Whatever happened to the romance (and manners) in our lives? Whatever happened to the carefully planned marriage proposal? Since when was a commercial break considered the right moment to ask someone to spend the rest of her life with you? More to the point, if this is going to be the highwater mark of your romantic life, what do you have to look forward to after the wedding?

“Aiyah,” said my friend Sharyn. “After you marry, hor, no more lo-mance, lah! Anyway, what for you want lo-mance? I tell you ah, once you ROM, it’s the end, ah!”

At a clip

It's simply bewildering what some people consider acceptable behaviour these days.

This morning, Barney Chen sent me an SMS: "Someone on the train is using nail clippers on himself and his family. Honestly, some people are just animals!"

It's in the bag

I was at a dinner the other night with a bunch of friends. It was one of those gatherings where it was quite possible to slip in the background and let the flow of chatter wash over you. Happily munching my deep fried calamari, I slipped in and out of the different conversational tides. At the back of my mind, I was just wondering when it would be a good moment to leave and head back to American Idol when Vera piped up, “Can someone explain to me why men in this town carry their girlfriend’s handbags?”

My good friend Anne immediately yelped, “Aiyoh, I can not stand guys like that!”

“I know! Have some balls, I say!” exclaimed Vera with force. And on it went for a bit. Of course, the guys at the table stoutly denied that they’d ever carried their girlfriends’ handbags while the girls looked at us sideways, clearly wanting to give us the benefit of the doubt, but holding out on a final judgment till they’d spoken to our respective partners.

It eventually occurred to me then that Carly, sitting to my side, had been unaccountably silent the entire conversation. I swiveled my head around to her and lifted a questioning eyebrow. She looked at me nervously and, under the pressure of my furrowed brow, finally blurted out, “Well, I’ve actually asked my boyfriend to carry my handbag! But only sometimes, lah,” she added hurriedly.

In the ensuing deafening silence, you could have heard a mosquito fart. Much like a python moves in slowly as it surveys its helpless prey, Anne leaned forward and stared at Carly, turning her head slightly. “Uhm, why?” she finally asked.

“Well, sometimes, it’s heavy! What’s the big deal?” poor Carly said, by now clearly regretting ever opening her big mouth.

“Well, that’s your fault, what!” Anne exclaimed. “Who ask you to put gold bars inside? Right?” She looked around the table. Several heads nodded enthusiastically in response.

Under the verbal onslaught, Carly looked desperate. “But it’s a Fendi!”

“Oh my God, Fendi, Prada. Who cares!” Vera cried. It occurred to me in the dim lighting of the restaurant, she looked a little Uma Thurman did just before she went on her murderous rampage in Kill Bill.

“But what if he doesn’t mind carrying it for me?” Carly bleated.

“That’s not the point, lah!” Annette snapped. “A guy should never carry a handbag. Not even if he’s gay.”

From the other end of the table, someone said firmly, “A handbag is a handbag! If you’re going to make the guy carry your handbag, put it in a big plastic bag. Then I think that’s OK.”

“But even then,” Vera said, clearly dissatisfied with this flagrant attempt to create a loophole in the No Handbag If You’re a Man (Not Even if You’re Gay) Rule.

This is all such good material! I thought happily to myself as I busily committed the key points of the dialogue to memory. Later, back in the little apartment I share with Saffy and Amanda, the girls were unanimous in their disdain.

“Oh, I’m seriously going to have to reassess my friendship with Carly!” Saffy said, her voice heavy with disappointment and her famous breasts heaving with judgment. I frowned at her and pointed out that she didn’t even know Carly.

“That’s so not besides the point!” said Saffy, effortlessly dismissing logic with polluted grammar.

Amanda tossed her luxurious shampoo-ad hair and said that there was something very wrong with a world where it was acceptable for a man to carry a handbag. “A man-bag, I understand, but not if the immediate owner is female. It’s just wrong!” she said, her pretty eyes flashing. Then a thought occurred to her. “Unless, of course, he’s just bought her a handbag from say Gucci and is just bringing it to her. Then that’s perfectly acceptable,” she said with approval, while looking at me.

“Why are you looking at me?” I asked nervously.

“It’s my birthday next week.”

“I’m a writer,” I said. “I make less than 30 cents a word. I can’t afford a piece of thread from Gucci.”

“I couldn’t afford to pee in Gucci!” said Saffy, a miserable look settling on her face.

“There’s a toilet in Gucci?” Barney Chen asked me the next day. He was impressed.

“Would you carry a handbag for a girl?” I asked him. He gave the matter some thought. “Only if there was something in it for me,” he said eventually. “Like backstage passes to see Barbra. But otherwise, no.”

“See?” Amanda said. “Even the gays won’t do it! And they’re usually up for anything.”

“That’s so true,” Barney said proudly.

Amanda Unplugged

Amanda recently came back from a work trip to London. “It was the worse flight in history!” she immediately exclaimed the minute she opened the front door and rolled in her Prada luggage. She bent down to coo sweet-nothings to my beloved adopted mongrel dog Pooch who’d rushed to the door at her arrival, his fat tail wagging furiously with happiness at seeing her again.

"It was awful. I was so gassy!” Amanda exclaimed as she trudged to her bedroom, Pooch faithfully trailing behind, apparently convinced that there had to be a biscuit treat for his enthusiastic greeting. At the dining table, Saffy looked up from her cereal and pulled a face.

“It must have been something I ate in the business class lounge before the flight!” Amanda’s voice floated out. “I farted all the way from Heathrow to Changi. It was like an atomic bomb went off in the Raffles Class cabin!” I choked on my tea.

“Well thank God, the airplane is so noisy and I was keeping everything tightly under wraps with the blanket!” said Amanda as she came out of her room and sank gratefully into a seat at the table. Saffy and I leaned backwards gently.

“Oh, I’m fine now,” Amanda sighed, “but I think I need to go get some colonic irrigation. I may be all gassed out now, but I still feel really blocked up. I read about it in Woman’s Day on the plane. Apparently, it works miracles!”

As I later complained to Karl and Barney Chen, I just didn’t understand why some people found it perfectly acceptable table manners to discuss such obviously private cleansing procedures at breakfast. “I think she’s hot!” Karl said firmly. “And she can discuss anything at my table!”

At the Bus Stop

One of the great things about living in cramped Singapore is just how much rich material you can pick up just by standing still. I’m surprised no one has gone around recording people’s conversations. It’s a mother-lode out there. And let me tell you that it’s riveting stuff.

Just the other day, while waiting for the 105 bus, I had my nose buried in a book when I automatically tuned into the handphone conversation next to me where a school girl was updating her friend on her day’s agenda.

“And tomorrow, I have three hours of drama!” she moaned. I wanted to ask if she was being literal, but there was a pregnant pause on her end. “Yeah, he’s in my class also. Do you know, hah, in his boarding school, he played someone called Paul the Rapist?”

And just as my eyes started to refocus on my book, Drama Girl then asked – she didn’t even bother lowering the volume of her voice – her friend, “And what’s the term for when people, like, have it off with dead people? You know,” she went on in a patient tone, “when people boink dead people!” By this stage, I was riveted. I inched nearer while pretending to turn a page. “It’s neuro-pharmacy or something! Neuro-what, ah?”

And no, I'm not making any of this up.

MIA with MIW

Hola, happy people...In addition to the regular 8DAYS column (and books - buy more, buy more!), I now have a monthly column with www.miw.com.sg It's all under the "Hear Me Out" link. Check it out for more of my rants.
Schuss!
JH

Porn Free

I don’t know what other people discuss at the dinner table in their homes, but in the little apartment that I share with Saffy, Amanda and my beloved adopted mongrel dog, Pooch, the topic du jour is porn. To be more specific, it’s a topic near and dear to Saffy. Amanda, who went to a Swiss boarding school, usually leaves the table as soon as Saffy broaches the subject.

“You encourage her!” Amanda hissed at me recently as we were in the kitchen washing up after Saffy had spent the entire evening alternately discussing the merits of spaghetti carbonara and the relative strengths of Italian versus Israeli men. She then promptly disappeared into her room with her latest DVD acquisition (‘Angela’s Weekend’) leaving us with strict instructions not to disturb her.

“Excuse me!” I said stoutly as I loaded up the sink with hot water. “I am as mortified as you are! I just find it very hard to get a word in edgewise once Saffy starts talking. And I notice,” I continued, squirting more dishwashing liquid into the sink, “I notice that you’re always very quiet when she’s going on about, uhm, equipment sizes!”

“Well, what am I supposed to say? That I loved the cinematography in ‘Pearls of the Orient’?” Amanda muttered as she vigorously wiped a cup. She paused and frowned as a thought occurred to her. “It’s also a little disturbing to think about what’s going on in her room right now.”

I clattered the dishes loudly in the sink and tried to think about my grocery list.

The next morning, at breakfast, Saffy announced that ‘Angela’s Weekend” was a complete disappointment. At the other end of the table, Amanda sighed, which Saffy ignored.

“I mean,” she went on, “it was just sex, sex, sex! What’s that all about?”

Goggle-eyed, I peered at Saffy over the rim of my coffee-mug. “It’s porn, Saf!” I spluttered. “What do you expect to see – Wimbledon?”

Saffy sniffed. “Well, I know what it is. I just think that they could break up all that sex with something else!”

“Like what?” Amanda shouted, unable to contain her outrage. “A fundraising message from the Dalai Lama?”

Welcome to my new year...

Army Fatigued

A few days ago, I called my friend Alex at his office. His secretary, Sarah, answered the phone and said, “Sorry, but Mr Alex is on reservist!”

I was astonished. “Again? But he just went!” I could almost feel Sarah shrug over the phone.

The call raised a question that had been bothering me for a long time now.

“What exactly is it that people do when they’re on reservist?” I asked my flatmate Amanda over lunch at Lau Pa Sat. “And, more importantly, why do they need to go so many times?”

Amanda sniffed and said that they probably did whatever a bunch of men would do whenever they get together. “Like not wash their underwear for days on end!” she clarified quickly when Barney Chen looked up from his laksa with interest.

For her part, Saffy thought reservist was just an excuse for getting out of work.

“I swear to God, but every time I need something done in the office, someone will always say, ‘Oh, cannot. I got reservist all of next week!’ I mean really!” Saffy complained. “How big is this island? How much defending do we need anyway? And it’s so unfair that girls don’t get to do reservist! I wouldn’t mind some quality me-time of my own away from the office!”

Barney said it was also very unfair that he held a British passport. “I have so much to contribute to the Singapore army!” he rumbled. “For starters, I’d completely redesign those uniforms! Jazz them up a little. And everyone would wear Prada boots! How chic would that be?”

Amanda muttered that letting Barney into the Singapore army would give new meaning to the phrase, army camp. Barney turned pink with pleasure and sipped harder on his sugar cane juice.

Ab-solutely Fabulous

Just the other day, I was at the dentist, flipping through a men’s magazine and trying hard to ignore the piercing whine of the drill that flooded the waiting room in full stereophonic splendour, when I came across a full page ad of a man’s stomach muscles. Ordinarily, I would immediately flip the page on point of principle. I mean, what kind of a sick world do we live in that people actually have to torture themselves and do sit-ups just so that they can have funny looking bumps on their stomachs?

But this ad was different. Next to the picture of the bronzed stomach, glistening with sweat, was a small bottle of lotion. “Ab Rescue!” it said proudly on the ad. It promised firmer, tighter, smoother looking abs in just 8 weeks. Just by rubbing the stuff on your stomach, Ab Rescue promised a 20% immediate improvement in skin tightness. All thanks to the product’s special thermogenic formula. I had no idea what a thermogenic formula did – the ad didn’t say – but it sure sounded impressive.

I'm ordering a bottle as we speak. Hopefully in two months time, I too could be on the cover of Men's Health in all my airbrushed glory.

Laugh Tracks

Complete strangers are always accosting me at the bus-stop and demanding to know when the 8DAYS column will be turned into a sit-com. "Should be very funny, what!" exclaimed one stalker. "We want to see Saffy's breasts!" another one told me recently.

"From your lips to God's ears!" I always mutter to them as I shield my eyes from the bright flashing pops of the paparazzi lurking in the bushes.

Ahh, the price of fame.

Not.

The truth is, discussions about turning the Saffy and Amanda saga into sit-com have been going round and round since time began. Amanda wants to have nothing to do with the project, but Saffy is insistent that only she can play herself. Meanwhile, draft scripts have been written, rewritten, rejected, tinkered with. Potential actors have been mooted.

And on it goes. It's painfully dull. I just want to skip the whole process and fast forward to the Emmys red carpet.

For a sneak peak at the draft script, watch out for the upcoming issues of 8DAYS. Just stop bothering me on the bus!

Turning Japanese

I'm a big fan of Japanese supermarkets. If it’s one activity that I look forward to all week, it's shopping day on Sunday. I park my beloved adopted mongrel dog, Pooch, with our neighbour, the melodious Lydia Kumarasamy, for a few hours of mutual spitting and growling at her evil black cat, Achar. And then it’s anchors ahoy for Isetan’s basement supermarket.

For a few happy hours, I wander down the brightly lit aisles, fingers trailing along the boxes, bottles, packets and assorted tubes. Picking up. Examining. Sniffing. The fruits section alone has me pinned to my tracks with their dainty melons and beautifully boxed apples. The hand-baskets start to overflow.

I've been coming here for years now and I guess one of these days, I'll finally understand just what it is that I'm actually buying. Because everything in here is labelled in Japanese. Other than the fruit and vegetables, I have no idea what we’re buying. Sometimes, if I'm lucky, there’s a special promotion and they play a very helpful video. In this way, Saffy was once saved from potential mishap after she’d bought something in the mistaken belief that they were hi-tech facial cotton pads, but on close scrutiny of the accompanying video, it transpired that she’d actually bought a powerful brand of kitchen scourer. “Well, it’s all white and fluffy looking!” she exclaimed later, delicately wiping down our oven with said scourer. “This stuff is amazing! They really should do something similar for the face!”

And since everything is written in Japanese, it means that the girls are spared the dreaded caloric count and fat details of assorted food products. Firmly subscribing to the view that what you don’t know can’t possibly be fattening, they fill baskets with assorted packets of chips, chocolate and soft drinks. As Amanda once pointed out with penetrating insight, “I personally don’t know any fat Japanese! Do you?” To which Saffy agreed that she too didn’t know any, all of which meant that if the food product was Japanese, it followed that it must also be slimming.

Meanwhile, being the hypochondriac that I am, I can usually be found in the household section, marvelling at the amazing spread of cleaning agents and chemical solvents. Endless rows of bottles, slick, streamlined tools, boxes of powders – each beautifully packaged, the only clue to their contents being a cutesy picture of a smiling doll or a porcelained skinned Japanese lady, a mop in one hand and product in the other. The instructions are in Japanese, and so too, I happily imagine, are the warning labels.

I sometimes way-lay unsuspecting Prada-clad Japanese tai-tais (how long does it take them to get dressed each day?), presenting them with a bottle of chemical solvent and a questioning look. After a few minutes of confused sign-language and very fractured conversations that involve a lot of Hai’s and Domo’s, we will establish that we are actually talking about a bottle of sesame seed mayonnaise and that we are not, as I had previously believed, in the household section, but rather the salad aisle.

“Ah, so!” Mariko-san will declare, beaming with pleasure that we’d got that sorted out. There’d be a bit of low bowing and embarrassment on my part. Later, as she’s having lunch at Les Amis, I imagine Mariko-san regaling her girlfriends about her ridiculous encounter. “I know that guy!” exclaims her best friend, Sakura-san, laughing behind her manicured hands. “Were there two women with him? They’re always buying boxes of oven scouring pads!”

“Ah, so desu-ka!” Mariko-san tinkles. “They’re so strange! I think one of them is called Sarfie. I once saw her inhale an entire packet of taro chips at the check-out counter. Can you imagine the fat? More salad, Sakura-san?”

Fat Chance

In the continuing saga of dating in the third millennium, nothing gets both men and women more worked up than the question “Do these [insert item of clothing] make me look fat?”

It looks very innocent, this question. A simple sartorial inquiry that invites a flippant, off the cuff response. A simple Yes or No answer. But oh foolish is the person who believes this. Because, and you heard it here first, there is no right answer! And along with “Have you stopped beating your wife?”, it’s certainly not a question that can be answered with a simple Yes or No. A lot of footnotes and appendices are required.

And note that the question is only ever asked by a woman or a gay man. In the entire history of humanity, no straight guy has ever looked at his bum in the mirror and wondered, “Do these pants make me look fat?” It’s just not a question that figures large in the straight universe.

Saffy once asked me this very question. "Do these jeans make me look fat?”

In my defence, I was very distracted at the time, so I wasn’t really paying much attention. I looked up briefly, looked at Saffy and replied casually, “Uh. No. You look fine.”

“You hesitated,” Saffy said, her face a little strange.

“No, I didn’t.”

“Yeeees,” Saffy drawled. “You did. You said, “Uh”.”

“Which is a word.”

"That conveys the impression of hesitation,” Saffy said, her bosom slowly inflating.

And much as one barely senses the moment that one has taken a wrong turn somewhere on a dark deserted road, it occurred to me I had, quite without intending to, ventured into very unfamiliar territory. I hesitated and tried a little back-pedalling.

“Well, you look fine,” I said encouragingly and gave Saffy my most winning smile before turning away, hoping she'd go away.

"I may look fine,” Saffy began from the back of my head, “but you still haven’t answered my question. Do I look fat in these jeans?”

“Absolutely not!” I said firmly.

Saffy huffed. “But you didn’t say no the first time I asked! I do look fat in these, don’t I? Oh dear God.” She turned on her heels and marched to her room. A few seconds later, I heard Amanda ask, “Why aren’t you dressed yet?”

Saffy’s reply rang through the apartment. “I was dressed, but then Jason said my bum looked fat in these jeans, so now I have to change!”

“I said that she looked fine!” I yelled. “I never said anything about fat or bums!”

“You hesitated!” came Saffy’s voice.

For days afterwards, it was all I could talk about. “Ooh, you should never attempt to answer that question!” cooed Barney Chen. “Don’t go anywhere near the bum unless you know what you’re doing. Like I do,” he added with a loaded look.

“You hesitated. Fatal mistake,” said Karl, my best friend. “It’s like a legal contract. Clause 16 – Hesitation shall be taken to imply fatness and unattractive bums and no further correspondence shall be entered into. The second worse question is ‘What are you thinking about?’”

“Well, all I know is that I’m never going to answer that question ever again. Saffy hasn’t spoken to me for days. It’s ridiculous!”

“Which isn’t necessarily such a bad thing,” said Karl, unhappily married man.

Wrong Number

I really don’t care how many people I offend out there, but…I loathe telemarketers.

There. I said it. The world didn’t come to a crashing halt. The phone lines haven’t rung off the hook with irate companies complaining. In fact, I with they would call to complain because I’m so ready to give them an earful.

This is how it always turns out. After a beastly day dealing with unreasonable editors and ungrateful flatmates, I crawl into bed, relieved that until dawn, I can finally have some peace and quiet. I plump up my pillows with a happy sigh. I reach for the TV’s remote control and flick through all the shows I’ve taped on Smart TV. I’m two minutes into “Smallville” when the phone rings.

And this is how the conversation normally goes…

Me: Hello, Jason speaking.
Caller: Ah, hello? Hello?
Me: Yes?
Caller: Can I speak to Mr Jason please?
Me: This is he.
Caller: Ah, hello? Mr Jason please!
Me: This is Jason speaking.
Caller (sound of paper shuffling): Ah, I want to speak to Mr Jason Hahn. Not Mr Jason Speaking.
Me: Are you trying to sell me something?
Caller: Ah, Mr Jason, ah. Did you fill in a competition form at Uzbekhistan Shopping Centre recently?
Me: Why?
Caller: Is your IC number S4939393Z?
Me: Maybe. Why?
Caller: Ahh, congratulations Mr Jason! You’ve just won a great prize, but to claim it, you must come down to Uzbekhistan in the next one hour, hor and then…
Me: Well, if I’ve won something, why don’t you just send me the voucher.
Caller: Uhm, sorry, hor Mr Jason. You must come down to claim this prize.
Me: It’s nine o’clock at night!
Caller: So you don’t want to claim the prize, is it?
Me: Well, it’s not that I don’t want to. It’s just that…
Caller: OK. [click].

Who can sleep after such an aggravating phone call? It's hateful. Just hateful!

Arty Farty

Recently, the little apartment that I share with Saffy and Amanda has been filled with the soaring strains of Puccini’s famous opera, Madame Butterfly. Amanda had decided that seeing as we were all going through a very dry dating patch (“It’s a desert out there!” she declared. “I’m this close to becoming a nun!”), this was as good a time as any to brush up on our culture.

“We’re not getting any younger,” she pointed out with penetrating insight. “Besides, I’m so sick of Saffy’s Boney M CDs. If I hear ‘By the Rivers of Babylon’ one more time, I’m going to scream.”

Which explains why Maria Callas is blasting her lungs out on our tiny stereo, causing poor Pooch to spend his days cowering under my bed. As Saffy once observed during a particularly strident aria while peering at the CD cover, “I wouldn’t want to get into a fight with this woman! She scares me. But I’m loving her eyebrows!”

“She’s dead!” Amanda exclaimed.

“I’m not surprised,” Saffy replied smoothly. “You would be too if you had to hold a note this long!”

A few days ago, Amanda came home waving tickets to a performance by an experimental dance troupe. “They got rave reviews on the Internet! They’re cutting edge and avant garde! Ooh, what should I wear?”

It always worries me when something is described as avant garde. From experience, this usually means that you won’t understand a thing that’s happening, but you never admit this as other people will look at you sideways, pitying you for your lack of appreciation for the fine arts.

As it turned out, I was right. The theatre in the Arts House was half filled with people I immediately recognised as art snobs. The women came wrapped up in shawls while the guys wore all black and looked like Hugo Boss sales assistants, trying to look important by constantly checking their handphones, just in case President Bush was trying to call them for an urgent meeting. Meanwhile, Saffy was fidgeting with her underwear.

“Remind me never to wear G-strings ever again!” she hissed loudly. “Who the hell invented these things? Is this thing going to start soon? I want to get home in time for Amazing Race!”

Thankfully, the lights dimmed and the show began. Well, I use the word ‘show’ very loosely, because even now, I’m not quite what happened.

Eight women in white flowing dressed came on stage. The soundtrack started playing some weird sitar twanging music that vibrated so deeply my teeth hurt. Then the women swayed while a guy dressed in pyjamas weaved in and out of them. They swayed some more and then the music stopped, the lights dimmed and the next group of dancers came on.

“What happened?” Saffy asked bewildered. “Is that it? Is the show over?”

“Shhh!” Amanda hushed, looking rapt.

The second act involved the dancers walking very quickly around the stage while little white pieces of paper floated down from the ceiling. This time round, two guys in scrappy T-shirts came out and sat on boxes and played electric guitars; but it wasn’t anything I’d heard recently on the Top 40.

“Are they supposed to be here?” Saffy whispered urgently. “I’m not getting this at all!”

And so it went. Two hours of women either swaying on the spot or running breathlessly around the tiny stage, accompanied by tuneless twanging music. I tried to find a plot. Maybe the girls were waiting for a king? So who was the guy? Maybe he was an elf? Was Pooch OK? I worried. And when it was finally over, no one clapped. This was because we weren’t sure if it was actually over. Maybe the silence was also part of the show.

“Well!” Saffy announced as we emerged into the warm night. “That was without a doubt the biggest waste of my time! Ever! I’m not paying you for those tickets, Amanda!”

“I thought it was brilliant!” Amanda said stoutly. “It was incredibly moving!”

“Moving, my ass! It was incredibly stupid!” Saffy huffed pulling at her G-string as she struggled into the cab.

Later, back in the flat, as I gave Pooch a cuddle and Amanda got on the Internet to post her glowing critique of the show, Saffy defiantly inserted her Boney M Greatest Hits CD into the player and turned it up full blast. “What a stupid waste of time!” she muttered as she skipped to her favourite track.

“Ra-Ra-Rasputin!” she began singing off-key happily, “lover of the Russian Queen!”

And just like that, I think we’ve heard the last of Maria Callas. God rest her soul and her eyebrows.

The Money Shot

In the ever shifting seasons that we call life, one question continues to haunt me on a daily basis: Just how the hell am I going to make a million bucks and retire before forty?

It’s a question that occupies much of my waking hours. I plot when I brush my teeth. I scheme as I plotz my way to the bus shelter. I concoct elaborate plans as I schluff into the office along with the multitude, and my brow furrows with effort as I schlep home with the rush hour crowd.

My flatmate Amanda has been giving some serious thought to the matter of early retirement funds.

“But do you think that one million dollars is enough?” she asked the other day at breakfast in our little apartment, her pretty oval face wreathed with fiscal concern. “It won’t buy you a loaf of bread these days!”

“Especially if you shop at Cold Storage!” Saffy interrupted with a snort, remembering her recent grocery expedition.

I asked Amanda how much she thought I’d need then.

“At least twenty million,” she said without hesitation. Saffy choked into her morning coffee. “No, seriously! That’s like the bare minimum. A nice house these days will cost you at least one million, say. Then a car and driver is half a million. Then you will be traveling first class, so that’s about a hundred grand already, if you assume ten trips a year. And you have what,” her inbuilt brain calculating, “18.4 million left. You gotta have a house in London, so that’s easily five million gone and a little pad in New York, take away another four million. Which leaves you, uh, 9.4 million of spare change.”

By this time, Saffy’s eyes had glazed over and she later said that it bothered her that there were women like Amanda around who could be so ridiculously beautiful and still have minds like steel traps.

“So, say you put that 9.4 into a 5% interest bearing account, and that’s what?” Amanda continued rhetorically, “$470,000 interest a year. How could you possibly live on $470,000 a year? A half decent necklace from Cartier easily costs you that much already!”

Later as we were washing up – Amanda had headed out for her Pilates class – Saffy said that at this rate, chances were she’d be seeing out the end of her days in a trailer park. “If I’m lucky!” she said, her famous breasts trembling with fear. “More likely, I’ll be living in a cardboard box under the Sheares Bridge! Will you come and visit me?” she asked as she put a plate away.

Dirty Talking

A few days ago, my flatmate Saffy was in her office pantry complaining to our friend Sharyn about the taxi-driver who’d taken her to work that morning. I set out, below, the gist of the conversation as reported to me by Sharyn, who’d immediately picked up the phone to call me.

Saffy: What is wrong with the taxi drivers in this country?
Sharyn: What? Why?
Saffy: There should be a law against people like them!
Sharyn: What? What?
Saffy: The taxi driver this morning? Out of the blue, he asked me to guess his age.
Sharyn: Ah! And then?
Saffy: So I said, forty.
Sharyn: Ah! Then?
Saffy: And he says, no, I’m fifty-two.
Sharyn: Wah! So old, ah!
Saffy: No! That’s not it!
Sharyn: Oh. Sorry, ah! And then?
Saffy: So he says, guess how I stay so young? And I said, how?
Sharyn: Ah!
Saffy: He said he ate a lot of ice-cream!
Sharyn: Really, ah! Can stay young like that, meh?
Saffy: I haven’t finished my story yet!
Sharyn: Wah, so long one, your story. I got work to do, you know.
Saffy: So then I said, oh really? Then he turns around and stares at me and actually goes through the motion of licking an ice-cream and then he winks at me! Oh. My. God! The sicko.
Sharyn: If don’t lick, how to eat ice-cream otherwise?

As Saffy later complained to me at home, the Vatican should investigate the inexplicable miracle that Sharyn had ever managed to find her way out of her mother’s birth canal.

Hazing Facts

As I write this, I’m coughing so hard my throat is going to shoot right out my mouth and splatter against the laptop screen. I’m imagining a very vivid tonsil version of “Alien”.

Outside the window, I can normally catch a fine view of treelines and hi-rise HDB flats. But for the past two days, the sky has turned a mucky grey and it’s as if the landscape has been wiped with a fine mist. It kind of reminds me of the time I visited Xi’an to look at the Terracotta Army and we were all marveling at how romantic the silky mist made the whole city. Then the tour guide turned around in the bus and gave us her best gap-toothed smile. “No, not mist. Is smog!”

Of course, what we’re having in Singapore isn’t smog. It’s a haze. And I love the fact that apparently none of it is considered extremely hazardous to our health.

“Will someone please do something about this haze?” Saffy croaked the other morning at breakfast, her eyes red and runny. “My allergies are killing me!”

“You know how the Russian royal family used to have their winter holidays in St Petersburg?” asked Amanda, who is currently reading about the Romanov massacre for fun. “We should go somewhere every October. I can stand it! All my clothes smell of smoke!”

Which led Saffy to later wish that Amanda would, “for just one second”, live in the real world. “We have jobs!” as she so penetratingly observed before dissolving into a fit of coughing and sneezing.

Yesterday, my friend Barney Chen rang. “I hate this haze! My throat is so sore!” he immediately complained, coughed wetly and added, “and not in a good way either! My hot date last night? No happy endings, I could barely speak. I so need to move countries.”

I told him to get in line – Amanda was already on the frontline.

And this morning, Saffy stuck her head out the window as the skies opened and dumped heavy sheets of rain. She squealed and shot back inside. “That smells disgusting!” she croaked. “Tell me this isn’t acid rain!”

“How are our clothes going to dry like this?” wondered Amanda, head of housekeeping, even as she flipped TV channels to Discovery Travel. Her eyes glazed over as she watched an episode on mega-yachts bobbing on a silvery blue ocean, the sky above the colour of crushed sapphires.