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.

The Bitch is Back

My friend Barney Chen called this morning. He'd just returned to Singapore after a trying three days working on a project in Phuket.

JH: Hey, you're back! How are you?
BC: I hate my clients! I swear the Dalai Lama would be a total bitch if he had to deal with my life!

Holy Hell

This morning, I came out of my room to find my flat-mate, Amanda, sitting on the lounge room floor. Around her was spread a whole pile of magazines, newspapers and catalogues, all brightly festooned with coloured Post-It notes and carefully penned notes.

“Ugh!” I said in greeting as I schlepped into the kitchen. Mornings are never a good time for me. As I made myself a strong cup of coffee, Amanda began nattering about something. Ten minutes later, as the caffeine kicked in and her annoying mosquito whine took shape into words that my morning brain began processing, it finally occurred to me that she was talking about presents and wrapping paper.

“There’s so little time left,” she was saying. “And I suppose we should also think about getting a tree.”

“Tree, what tree? Owww!” That was Saffy, coming out of her room with her eyes sealed shut with sleep-crust and promptly banging into the dining table.

“The Christmas tree, of course!” Amanda huffed, tossing her lustrous hair. Even at that time of the day, the woman looked like she’d just stepped out of a page from Vogue.

Dead silence. I blinked, my brain suddenly feeling very heavy. Saffy peeled open one eye and stared at Amanda in horror.

“Are you talking about Christmas?” she whispered in hushed tones. “But it's only September. Why are you talking about Christmas?”

Amanda looked prim. “I like to get an early start!”

I felt faint. Christmas? I don’t like Christmas. The thought of shoving through the throngs of aggressive shoppers, wait in line, panicking that I’d exceeded my VISA limit, hauling bags of useless junk back home. And then, when I had a lovely pile of presents nicely wrapped and ribboned, it would always occur to me to wonder if I’d left the “For Sale” stickers on the coffee mugs I’d so carefully wrapped.

As for Saffy, Christmas is always an opportunity for her to open the bottom drawer in her cupboard and drag out all the presents that she’s been given the previous Christmas and then spending a stressful few days trying to decide how to recycle the presents.

“Oh God! I can’t remember who gave this to me,” she said last Christmas, holding up a coffee mug (with the words ‘I can’t be fired! I’m a slave!’). “I want to give this to Amanda, but I think she gave it to me in the first place! What’s with people and coffee mugs anyway? It’s such a senseless gift. And look, it’s still got the “For Sale” sticker on the bottom!” I carefully looked the other way.

It’s little wonder that every year, both Saffy and I erase the entire month of December from our memories, until Anal Amanda reminds us. Meanwhile, Saffy, both eyes now firmly open, glared at the pile of newspaper clippings and catalogues around Amanda, as if hoping that everything would just burst into flames and Christmas would be called off.

“I was thinking of getting Pooch a dog-collar from Gucci!” Amanda said brightly.

“Are you mad?” Saffy exclaimed, her formidable chest rising sharply. “That dog leads a better life than anyone else in this flat! Jason feeds him foie gras. He sleeps all day in an air-conditioned room. And now you want to get him a Gucci dog-collar? Are you mad? Oh, hello, good morning, Pooch!”

My beloved adopted mongrel dog trotted into the room, attracted by the rising voices of panic. I scooped him up and took him into the kitchen for his breakfast. Standing there in the dim kitchen, the sun slowly creeping over the neighbouring hi-rise buildings and watching Pooch bury his face into his bowl of roast chicken, it occurred to me that maybe a Gucci dog collar would actually look quite good on him. It’s hard buying presents for dogs. Especially since they don’t drink coffee in the first place. And certainly not from coffee mugs anyway.

“Look!” Saffy moaned to Amanda in the living room. “How about I pay you to do my Christmas shopping for me? Oh, go on. You like shopping after all. How about it?”

Wu's The Man?

These days, you can’t spin a simple pirouette without twirling to a stop in front of someone jogging down the road. Every day on the bus, I spy a caravan of people, in various states of distress, pounding the pavements. After careful observation, I’ve managed to group these joggers into two categories.

Group A are the super-fit freaks who subscribe to Men’s Health, eat nuts and worship Dr Atkins. You can spot them a mile away because they’re usually wearing nothing, all the better to show off their tight abs and sweaty skin. If you were to interview them, chances are they will tell you that they used to be fat kids.

Group B are those who are jogging only because their doctor told them if they didn’t, they won’t make it to the next National Day celebrations. They usually look grumpy, have pale skin, wear tank tops two sizes too big for them and have collapsed comb-overs. They are also usually the ones who wear giant jade and gold rings and drive a Mercedes.

Meanwhile, it’s a no-brainer as to which category Allan Wu fits into.

The other day, I received a frantic call from my friend, Barney Chen.

“Oh my God, oh my God!” he yelled down the line. “You’ll never guess what just happened?”

For those who came in late, Barney Chen is the male version of my flat-mate, Saffy. He loves Barbra, Bette, Cher and Donna and thinks that Britney has flushed her golden career down the toilet. I hope I don’t have to spell it out for you any further.

I stared at my computer screen and hunted for the Spell-Check button, the phone cradled under neck. “Uhm,” I said absent-mindedly. “ABBA is getting back together.”

There was a still pause on the other end of the line. “Don’t tease me like that!” Barney eventually said. “No! Listen! I’m in a cab and we’re zooming down Tanglin Road and suddenly, we passed Allan Wu jogging!”

I looked up from my screen and frowned into space. “And?”

“And he was topless!” Barney breathed into the phone. “Good loooord!”

“Barnes, Allan Wu is always topless!” I said. “Just pick up any issue of 8 DAYS and he’s got no clothes on. Which makes me wonder why they pay for a stylist at these shoots in the first place. What’s there to style?” I mused.

“Well, I think he’s hot!” Barney said firmly. “But it should be illegal for him to be running around naked in public like that! It’s not right. It could cause a serious accident!”

“Maybe he knew you were coming?” I ventured.

“Oh, I was about to, believe me!” Barney said darkly. “He has no fat on his body! That Li-lin is so lucky! Do you think he lives around Tanglin? Maybe I should start stalking him!” he added brightly, his dull day suddenly filled with promise.

Later that night, I recounted the story to my flatmates, Saffy and Amanda.

“I would never date someone who jogs!” Saffy announced, comfortably beached on the sofa while balancing a plate of spaghetti on her stomach.

Amanda snorted a laugh. “Yeah, right. Allan Wu shows up at our door and asks you out on a date and you would say no to him?”

Saffy pursed her lips and lifted her eyes towards the ceiling, clearly thinking of the probability of the event and the different possible reactions. “Well, alright,” she conceded. “If Allan Wu asked me out, I’d go. But we’d have to do something about Li-lin. Pack her off to a nunnery or something. She’s so lucky! But as a general rule, I think there’s something desperately sad about people who jog! It’s like, get a life already!”

“There’s nothing wrong with trying to stay in shape,” said Amanda with the calm virtue of someone who, through a combination of genetics and insanely high metabolism, has never needed to step foot inside a gym in her life.

“Shape, schmape!” Saffy said easily as she spooned a last forkful of spaghetti into her mouth. “Joggers always look miserable! Have you noticed? No one is ever smiling. And their outfits all look terrible! And I’ve never actually gone up close to one, but I’m thinking that they can’t be smelling very good either!”

There was a brief silence as I mentally took notes for this post. This is such good material! I thought to myself. Meanwhile, Amanda and Saffy’s eyes had acquired a distant glaze that had a distinct whiff of sex about it.

Eventually, Amanda murmured, “I’m thinking about how Allan Wu would smell after his jog.”

“I was just thinking the same thing,” Saffy said happily as she held up her empty plate to her mouth and licked off the remaining sauce.

Bag It

Question for the day: Why do so many Singaporean men walk around in public carrying their girlfriend's handbags?

Newsflash...It's not cute. Dump the bag and while you're at it, dump the handbag.

The L Word

I was at a party the other day and overheard this delicious slice of conversation between two supposed happily married men...

Man 1: I think someone said they're lesbians.
Man 2: Get out of here! They're not lesbians. They can't be lesbians!
Man 1: Why not?
Man 2: Well, for starters, they're really pretty!
Man 1: Apparently, they're called lipstick lesbians.
Man 2: Really? Man, I need to get out more.

Six in the City

Hello pets,

Here's a snippet of an email from my publishers...

Hi Jason!

Congrats! You'll be thrilled to know that "Table for Three" is at No. 6 of Singapore's Best-seller Fiction list (as of last Sun, 3 Sep 2006, The Sunday Times)!!

Tell your family, friends and strangers!

Thank you all for your support. Meanwhile, I'm in and out of Singapore for the next two weeks, so my apologies if the reading material is a bit thin on the ground. To tide you over, pick up the latest issue of 8DAYS.

Be good now.

JH