Surgical Strike

For years, I’ve had a cluster of tiny cysts growing on my left forearm. Just little nubs that could be anything, really: extra soft tissue that happened to decide that they wanted to live close together. That’s what Dr Chan, my long suffering dermatologist, told me when they first started growing and I was convinced that I was about to die some horrific agonizing death involving complications arising from a botched amputation. Actually, his official diagnosis was, “You do know that your hypochondria put my kids through private school, don’t you?”
The thing was, like the doddering old lady who rents the flat down the hall from us, they never really bothered me. And I live by the motto ‘Live and let live’, so I let it go and pretended they were mosquito bites. “They’re mosquito bites,” I would tell people when I caught them looking out of the corner of their eyes. They always looked unconvinced.
“They’re really disgusting!” cooed my flatmate Saffy with a delicious thrill of horror the first time her eyes lit on them. This, after we’d only just been introduced. She looked up and stared at me. “Have you had them looked at? I saw this show the other night about someone who had a whole nest of worms living inside one of his boils.”
“It’s not a boil,” I said, even as I inched away from this obviously crazy chick. “It’s a mosquito bite. Please step away from me.”
Recently though, I was looking at the cysts and finally decided I was going to get them taken out. I made the announcement at dinner with my flatmates, Karl and Barney Chen.
“It’s about time,” Amanda exclaimed. “They’ve got to be the yuckiest things I’ve ever seen in my life. And I’m a lawyer!”
“It’s so butch of you to go for elective surgery,” said Barney with deep admiration. “I faint when I even think about a scalpel!”
“I’m coming with you to Dr Chan’s!” Saffy announced.
“What? Why?” I said automatically.
“Because he’s my future husband, that’s why!”
I sighed. For years, Saffy has carefully nursed the fantasy that one day Dr Chan will look at her and realize that he’s been wasting the past 15 years of his life with his current wife – the very sweet gynaecologist, Dr Chee – and that he must have Saffy at any cost.
“I swear, I’m so hypnotized by those lush lips of his,” she would say. “They’re begging for me to kiss them!”
“You are wasting your time,” Barney once told Saffy kindly. “If he’s going to leave his wife for anyone, it’ll be for me! I’m so obviously his type!”
Even Amanda has tried on several occasions to break up that marriage, making up the flimsiest dermatological condition just so she could have an appointment and flirt madly in her sheerest Blumarine chiffon dress.
“I don’t know what the attraction is,” Karl once said after a visit to remove a rather unattractive mole from his right shoulder blade.
“Are you mad?” Saffy said, her fabulous bosom puffing up. “He’s like the love child of Takeshi Kaneshiro and Ken Watanabe!”
“And Teo Ser Luck!” Barney growled, his eyebrows knitting together at the sheer improbability of such a sensational genetic union.
“I just don’t understand why he’s not responded to my charms!” Saffy wondered, while peering down at the deep caverns straining beneath her tight tube top.
“Because he’s happily married to a wonderful woman and has four beautiful children!” I said.
“Because he’s never seen me in a swim suit,” said Amanda. I noticed Karl shift a little uncomfortably in his chair.
“Because he’s obviously thinking about me,” said Barney.
“Who are you people?” Karl exclaimed.
And so, I’ve made an appointment with Dr Chan. “It’ll take about an hour to get it all out and you shouldn’t have any scars by the time I’m done. I’m rather good with my stitches,” he said modestly, as he peered at my extended arm. “By the way, how’s your friend, Saffy?”
My eyes narrowed in suspicion. “Why do you ask?”
“You told him you might have leprosy?” I yelled at Saffy later that night.
“Oh my God! He told you that?” she shouted back. “What ever happened to client-patient confidentiality?”
“It doesn’t apply to made up skin diseases!”
“Well, I might have had leprosy!” Saffy sniffed, still clearly appalled at the ethical breach. Later, Amanda said that Saffy was good. “I would never have thought of leprosy,” she said with approval.
Barney says the girls had better watch their backs. “And not in a good way, either,” he adds.

Part Three?

Thank you to everyone for their encouraging comments. I've been a little lax in the past year or so. Blame it on a lot of time spent in the airport. The easiest way to keep up to date though is just to follow my misadventures in 8DAYS. I'm there every week.

And to answer the persistent questions about a third book...Sorry, that's not going to happen for a while yet. Who knew that those thin books would take so much effort and time to produce? I really don't have the range at the moment.

Anyway, in the next post is a new one. Again, with my apologies for the late show.

Woof!

JH

Fog this!

Yesterday morning, I drew open the curtains and peered out the window. I cocked my head and blinked, turned around and shuffled out to the kitchen. My flatmate Saffy was already up, her head buried deep in the fridge as she snuffled around for something edible.

“Is it me,” she began without so much as a ‘good morning’, “is it me or are we living in the war? There is nothing in this fridge to eat! Just some mouldy cheese and half a carton of milk.”

“First of all, that cheese is meant to be mouldy!” I said. “And I can, from this angle see bread, kaya, eggs and some cereal.”

“Yuck, carbs, sugar, cholesterol and bleagh. In that order!” Saffy replied smoothly, straightening up and adjusting her nightgown.

“Is that the haze that’s hanging around outside the window?” I asked.

“I think so. It’s just foul! I’m surprised I’ve not dropped dead from a respiratory ailment!”

Just then, came a low roar from outside the window. It took a while to register what it was.

“Oh crap!” Saffy groaned as she schluffed out of the kitchen to shut the lounge room windows. “Is it Tuesday? They’re fogging again!”

As one, we hate Tuesday mornings and try to make it a point not to be in the flat. For an hour, the entire condominium is blanketed in a heavy, smelly, diesel-smelling fog. Sometimes, the stuff creeps in through cracks into the window and we need to take another shower to clean the stench off us.

Saffy peered out the window as she watched huge white clouds puff up through the bushes and trees. “I’m sorry, but someone needs to explain to me how it is that the stuff can kill mosquitos and yet apparently it’s completely safe for me to breathe in!”

“Write to the Prime Minister,” I suggested as I closed the kitchen windows. “They’re very encouraging about feedback these days.”

Saffy paused. “Who’s ‘they’?”

“They. The feedback people,” I said vaguely.

“I don’t want them to open a file on me,” Saffy said. “They might decide to fill it up with other things that I don’t necessarily want them to know about me.”

“Too late for that, Saf,” I said, as I imagined the contents of Saffy’s security file.

“I’m sure he doesn’t go around his home shutting his windows when they fog his home,” Saffy went on, by now thoroughly grouchy from the combined effects of hunger and fumigation.

“Anyway,” I said. “Just say that you hope that the Prime Minister isn’t being unduly inconvenienced by the Tuesday mosquito fogging. I’m sure they’ll like you for being such a concerned citizen. Maybe they might even reward you with free CPF for life!”

Saffy brightened. “You think?”

“You never know!” I said cheerfully, while wondering how Saffy ever managed to graduate from primary school. Later that day, I received an SMS from Saffy: “God. I am very itchy n my throat is hoarse. Do u tink I’m falling sick? N can we talk about how stinky dis taxi is?”

“I should go get a medical check-up,” she told Amanda that night. Our flatmate had just come back from an overseas trip and was looking impossibly glamorous for someone who’d just spent 20 hours on a plane.

“You two are just so ridiculous!” Amanda exclaimed. “Why don’t you just not be in the flat when they fog if you’re so worried? Do you honestly think the Feedback Unit is interested in this kind of rubbish?”

“Well, if you’re going to be so selective, what’s the point of asking for feedback then?” Saffy said stiffly.

“There are so many other things to talk about,” Amanda said, giving her glorious shampoo-ad hair a vigorous toss. “I’m going to write in and say how much I adore Changi! The plane touched down at 8pm, and here I am back home at 8.40pm. Which other airport in the world can do that? It’s fabulous! And I love all that greenery along the highway!” she gushed. “We passed through dodgy neighbourhoods and ugly concrete flyovers in New York to get to the airport. I had to lock all the taxi doors!”

Saffy complained that Amanda was being such a kill-joy. “What’s freaking New York’s concrete flyovers got to do with us being gassed?” she demanded. “I wish you would just concentrate on the topic at hand. Now, tell me, do you think the Prime Minister has been working out? He’s been looking quite buff lately on TV.”

The next day, Amanda said she sometimes wondered how Saffy had ever been allowed to graduate from kindergarten.

Disaster

There was an episode of Oprah once where someone asked the question, “If your house caught fire, what would you grab as you rushed out?” Oprah said, I believe, she’d rescue her dogs. It struck me at the time that she never said she’d rescue Steadman, her long time boyfriend, but I guess she figured he had two legs so he could jolly well take care of himself. One of her guests said that he would take a picture of a tree, which made me laugh for days.

Recently, it occurred to me that if the little flat that I share with my two flatmates Saffy and Amanda ever caught fire, I’d first grab my beloved adopted mongrel dog Pooch, and the second thing I’d do would be to unplug my SmartTV.

This might strike many as odd, to take a piece of machinery when there are plenty of things that are far more precious. Like a passport, for instance, or one’s family album, or in the case of my mother, her small collection of gold bars. But I can’t even begin to explain how much I value my SmartTV.

My life has never been the same since it came into my life. Seeing the promotional commercial – pause and rewind live TV, view individual recorded programmes in the sequence you want – is one thing. To actually see how it works is entirely another. I can bookmark a recorded show and skip to another one. I can watch, fast forward and rewind a programme while it’s recording. While I’m watching Project Runway on one channel, it tells me that Lost is about to start on another channel.

My point is, for a TV addict, the SmartTv is life-changing (and no, they’re not paying me to say this, though come to think of it, they should). No more stacks of clunky video-tapes, or worrying about how you’re going to tape all your favourite shows if you go away for two weeks, like I did recently.

There I was on the plane back from London smiling happily at the thought of all the lovely shows I had waiting for me at home. Nigella Feasts, The Sarah Connor Chronicles, Oprah, American Idol… In the taxi zooming away from Changi, I was already planning which show to watch while I had dinner. Even as I opened the door to the flat, still caught in a TV-fueled daze, it took me a while to appreciate that Saffy was staring at me in a mildly panicked way.

“It’s not my fault!” she immediately said while taking a little step back.

Smiling indulgently, I said, “You are such a drama queen! What’s not your fault?”

She hesitated. “Your SmartTV. It’s not my fault,” she repeated.

I stared at her for a while, in the same way you might if someone said, “You’ve just won a billion dollars!”

“I never touched it, I swear, I was just dusting the DVD rack and then suddenly there was a loud crack and then the lights all went out and it never came back on, though I’ve tried turning it on but really, I don’t know why people expect me to know how these things work, so it’s really not my fault, please don’t yell at me,” Saffy babbled.

I felt a little faint and it took a while for the world to stop swaying. “It’s broken?” I finally managed to whisper. “But...how? It was all working fine when I left.”

Just in case I’d missed the point the first time round, Saffy said, “It wasn’t my fault. I’m sorry.” She later told Amanda that I looked as if someone had just told me that Oprah had died.

“The fuse is gone,” the Starhub man said sympathetically. He’d come over almost immediately after I placed a 911 call. “We’ll have to replace it.”

“But what about all the shows I’ve already recorded?” I moaned. “Oh dear God, I had two seasons of Victoria’s Secret on it!”

“Hopefully, the hard drive is intact, lah!” he said. He had the bed-side manner of a schnauzer. It was a great comfort.

The days since have been impossible. There’s nothing to watch on TV, just the local channels and I have to endure all the painful commercials that I normally happily fast forward. And I have to stay up late to watch shows that I normally record. I just can’t help but wonder how other people do it. “They have lives,” Amanda said unkindly this morning.

The next time she’s not looking, I will cancel her Vogue subscription.

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!