Of course, it all started with the movie “Julie & Julia”, surely the year’s most gastronomically entertaining movie starring Saint Meryl. All that outrageous flirting with French food for two hours must have short-circuited my good judgement because as soon as I emerged from the cinema, I was suddenly seized by the urge to bake a chocolate cake.
Don’t ask me why a chocolate cake, because as far as I can remember, while there were any number of soles, chopped onions, lobsters and boeuf bourgignons, no actual cakes were involved in the movie.
On the way home, I stopped by Cold Storage and stocked up on the ingredients I thought might go into a chocolate cake. Chocolate was a given, but I spent a long time in the baking aisle trying to decide if it was plain or self-raising flour I needed. And then just when I had finished tossing a coin, I saw a row of all-purpose flour which confused me even further. I ended up buying all three on the assumption that it was better to be safe than sorry.
“You’re baking?” Saffy said when I arrived home with my grocery bags. “Do you even know how to bake?”
“I’m sure it’s very simple!” I said airily as I got onto the internet to look for recipes.
The River Café recipe got my attention if for no other reason than the fact that it was called ‘15-minute chocolate cake’.
“I like that it only takes 15 minutes to cook!” I told Saffy as she peered over my shoulder at the laptop.
“Do we even have a bain-marie?” she asked.
I paused. “The more important question, I think, is whether we even know what a bain-marie is?”
I think it would help at this point to note that I grew up in a household where the boys were not encouraged to step foot into the kitchen. To this day, I think my father only has a very vague idea of just where the kitchen is in our house. But I’m nothing if not an optimist. “How difficult can this be?” I asked Saffy. “You just follow the instructions!”
So, I calmly set a bowl on top of simmering water. All while wondering what ‘simmering water’ looked like. “I guess it means it’s not boiling,” Saffy hazarded. By now, and much against her better judgement, she was absolutely involved in the whole crazy project.
First, I mixed half a kilo of chocolate with nearly an entire block of butter.
“Oh my God, there’s so much butter in a chocolate cake?” Saffy breathed in horror. “Is that why it tastes so good?”
In a separate bowl, I whisked six eggs. (“Six!” Saffy shrieked. “This is a cholesterol nightmare!”) Or at least, I tried to whisk. Most of the eggs went spraying all over the walls.
At one point, I stared at the yellow mess in the bowl. “The recipe says firm peaks. Do these look like firm peaks to you?”
Saffy leaned in to look. “Does that sound rather sexual to you? Or is that the whole point of chocolate cake?”
I decided to wing it and began folding the eggs into the chocolate, while Saffy boiled a kettle of water.
“This is a really complicated recipe!” she complained as she watched me laboriously scrape the mixture into the cake tin, set it into another baking tray and then pour the hot water into the tray. “Are you sure we haven’t misread it?”
“Don’t stress me, Saf,” I instructed as I covered the tray with some tinfoil and popped the whole thing went into the hot oven. We closed the door with a satisfying thud, set the timer for 15 minutes and waited anxiously.
At one stage, Saffy said, “Seriously, wouldn’t it be easier to just call Awfully Chocolate and get one delivered?”
“We followed the recipe exactly!” I said. “It’s gotta work.”
And of course it didn’t work. This was why my mother never allowed boys in the kitchen. Something about our DNA completely ruins all food. Including chocolate cake. Because at the end of 15 minutes, we pulled the cake out and stared at it. After a while, Saffy said, “Is there supposed to be a thick layer of oil on the top? And why does it look like gravel?”
We drained the oil, cut a piece and tentatively had a bite. And spat it out.
As I tipped the whole sorry mess into the trash, Saffy reached for the phone and hit speed dial. “Hello, is that Awfully Chocolate?” she announced crisply before adding to me, “So much for Saint Meryl!”
Wednesday, September 30, 2009
Thursday, September 24, 2009
Mandarin Oriental
The other day, Amanda and I were on the 105 bus when a group of secondary school students hopped on.
Yes, Amanda, in all her Gucci and Prada glory, was on the bus, on account of the fact that she’d left her wallet at home, and I had all of five dollars to my name. “How do you even know which bus to take?” she’d asked earlier with great admiration as I lead her out of the Orchard MRT station to the connecting bus stop. “This is a whole other world for me! And you and Saffy do this every day?”
Eventually, she fell silent, somewhat overcome by the novelty of sitting on a real bus while I, lulled by the gentle motion of the bus, fell comfortably asleep.
One minute, there was the kind of complete silence on the bus that can only be achieved by a group of strangers doing their complete best to ignore each other. And the next, I jerked awake. It sounded like Madonna had dropped into your local wet market: screams and shouts, high-pitched nattering, and everyone practically squinting out of thick glasses.
“Oh, no,” Amanda murmured. “What’s going on? Why are there so many children? And why are they all shouting at each other?”
Midway to Toa Payoh, it occurred to both of us that there’s some law somewhere in Singapore which says that it’s illegal for five or more people, or some low number like that, to gather without a permit. I sometimes think that this particular piece of legislation should apply to school children, if for no other reason than to preserve the sanity of those of us who no longer are.
Like a physical wave of sound, the young teenagers swept down the bus, annoyingly secure in their youth and brazen in the safety of their number. To say the least, the conversation was riveting.
Apparently, one girl had just been in a fight with her brother who had called her a bitch. “And then, hor,” she said, her glasses fogging up with indignation, “wo gen ta jiang, ‘Ay, ni bu ke yi anyhow say one, ok?’ Just because ni bi wo da yi shui, cannot, right! You wait I tell our mah-dur!”
“Jialat, lah!” agreed her friend.
“I really hate boys, you know!”
“Maybe he is a gay?” her friend wondered with all the nonchalance of people talking about the weather.
At this point, I whipped out my notepad and began transcribing furiously. You just can’t make up this sort of thing.
“Ay, wo wen ni, hor, this weekend ni yao qu Mary de birthday party, ma?”
“Where?”
“I think is in Bishan.”
“Yao mai present, ma?”
Amanda, noticing that I was busy taking notes, tugged at my sleeve. “What language are they speaking?” she hissed.
“Seriously, Amanda, please don’t tell people that you know me.”
For days after, it was all she could talk about. “It was like I was in some foreign language movie but someone had forgotten to put in the subtitles!” she told our cleaning lady in Mandarin that was, thanks to many summers in language camp in Beijing as a child, pitch perfect. “What are they teaching these kids at school?”
“You need to get out more, Amanda,” Saffy advised severely.
“It’s a scandal!”
“Write to the prime minister,” Saffy said in bored tones, as she flipped her latest issue of Vogue. “He might bring it up at the next G7 Summit. Or whatever,” she added hurriedly, as Amanda opened her mouth to point out the obvious.
“But doesn’t anyone care?”
“Oh, what’s the big deal? Everyone understood each other, right?”
“But it’s not Mandarin!” Amanda’s voice rose several octaves.
Saffy sighed. “Look at this black top I’m wearing.” All eyes in the room swivelled to Saffy’s heaving bosom. “It looks like one of your Gucci tops, but it’s a cheap Shenzhen knock-off!”
Amanda’s eyes narrowed. “What’s your point?”
Saffy was astonished. “I don’t have a point. I just wanted you to look at my top. No one has commented on it so far.”
“How is this country going to record its history if the next generation can’t even articulate a complete sentence in grammatically correct Mandarin?”
“Don’t worry, Manda,” Saffy said soothingly. “It’ll all be on YouTube!”
I said I didn’t care as it was all giving me such good material to use for my column.
These days, every time Amanda comes across one of those “Huayu Cool” ads, she snorts loudly. “It’s a farce, I tell you!” she exclaimed loudly the other day, leading Saffy to tell her, “Listen, do me a favour. Don’t tell people we live together, OK?”
Yes, Amanda, in all her Gucci and Prada glory, was on the bus, on account of the fact that she’d left her wallet at home, and I had all of five dollars to my name. “How do you even know which bus to take?” she’d asked earlier with great admiration as I lead her out of the Orchard MRT station to the connecting bus stop. “This is a whole other world for me! And you and Saffy do this every day?”
Eventually, she fell silent, somewhat overcome by the novelty of sitting on a real bus while I, lulled by the gentle motion of the bus, fell comfortably asleep.
One minute, there was the kind of complete silence on the bus that can only be achieved by a group of strangers doing their complete best to ignore each other. And the next, I jerked awake. It sounded like Madonna had dropped into your local wet market: screams and shouts, high-pitched nattering, and everyone practically squinting out of thick glasses.
“Oh, no,” Amanda murmured. “What’s going on? Why are there so many children? And why are they all shouting at each other?”
Midway to Toa Payoh, it occurred to both of us that there’s some law somewhere in Singapore which says that it’s illegal for five or more people, or some low number like that, to gather without a permit. I sometimes think that this particular piece of legislation should apply to school children, if for no other reason than to preserve the sanity of those of us who no longer are.
Like a physical wave of sound, the young teenagers swept down the bus, annoyingly secure in their youth and brazen in the safety of their number. To say the least, the conversation was riveting.
Apparently, one girl had just been in a fight with her brother who had called her a bitch. “And then, hor,” she said, her glasses fogging up with indignation, “wo gen ta jiang, ‘Ay, ni bu ke yi anyhow say one, ok?’ Just because ni bi wo da yi shui, cannot, right! You wait I tell our mah-dur!”
“Jialat, lah!” agreed her friend.
“I really hate boys, you know!”
“Maybe he is a gay?” her friend wondered with all the nonchalance of people talking about the weather.
At this point, I whipped out my notepad and began transcribing furiously. You just can’t make up this sort of thing.
“Ay, wo wen ni, hor, this weekend ni yao qu Mary de birthday party, ma?”
“Where?”
“I think is in Bishan.”
“Yao mai present, ma?”
Amanda, noticing that I was busy taking notes, tugged at my sleeve. “What language are they speaking?” she hissed.
“Seriously, Amanda, please don’t tell people that you know me.”
For days after, it was all she could talk about. “It was like I was in some foreign language movie but someone had forgotten to put in the subtitles!” she told our cleaning lady in Mandarin that was, thanks to many summers in language camp in Beijing as a child, pitch perfect. “What are they teaching these kids at school?”
“You need to get out more, Amanda,” Saffy advised severely.
“It’s a scandal!”
“Write to the prime minister,” Saffy said in bored tones, as she flipped her latest issue of Vogue. “He might bring it up at the next G7 Summit. Or whatever,” she added hurriedly, as Amanda opened her mouth to point out the obvious.
“But doesn’t anyone care?”
“Oh, what’s the big deal? Everyone understood each other, right?”
“But it’s not Mandarin!” Amanda’s voice rose several octaves.
Saffy sighed. “Look at this black top I’m wearing.” All eyes in the room swivelled to Saffy’s heaving bosom. “It looks like one of your Gucci tops, but it’s a cheap Shenzhen knock-off!”
Amanda’s eyes narrowed. “What’s your point?”
Saffy was astonished. “I don’t have a point. I just wanted you to look at my top. No one has commented on it so far.”
“How is this country going to record its history if the next generation can’t even articulate a complete sentence in grammatically correct Mandarin?”
“Don’t worry, Manda,” Saffy said soothingly. “It’ll all be on YouTube!”
I said I didn’t care as it was all giving me such good material to use for my column.
These days, every time Amanda comes across one of those “Huayu Cool” ads, she snorts loudly. “It’s a farce, I tell you!” she exclaimed loudly the other day, leading Saffy to tell her, “Listen, do me a favour. Don’t tell people we live together, OK?”
Saturday, September 19, 2009
Plane sailing
I know this week’s column is going to make me very unpopular, but can we talk about babies on planes?
It began with a recent night flight from Singapore to London. I was looking forward to a relaxing flight of meals and movies. Now, I know what you’re thinking, but stay with me.
Some people de-stress on a beach. Some take refuge in a bottle of Johnny Walker. Others lie face down on the massage table. Meanwhile, my flatmate Saffy likes to sit with her feet up on the window sill to, as she puts it, “air” herself.
Me, I like to get on a plane on a long haul flight. For 13 blissful hours, no one can get hold of me and bother me with urgent deadlines, give me bad news, or send me stupid 15MB attachments of their ugly restaurant interior.
I don’t get annoying calls from people who want a few minutes of my time to take a survey. And best of all, I don’t have to talk to anyone. Unless you’re on a flight to America and sit next to an American who will usually want to tell you his/her whole life story within the first ten minutes of the seatbelt sign coming on, in which case the best thing to do, I find, is to pretend you don’t speak English.
Of course, the inevitable happens. Struggling down the aisle towards you will be a woman who appears to be some Indian goddess incarnate. Because there’s no way a normal person should be able to juggle, with just two arms, five bags, a stroller, a baby, a box of toys, and three squirming toddlers.
And usually, it’s just the mother. “Where’s your husband?” I asked the woman on that flight to Singapore from London while watching her struggle to unload her nursery and toy shop onto the seat next to me. This broke my golden rule of never speaking to anyone on the plane unless she’s offering me a choice of chicken or seafood. But I couldn’t help but think if I’d been her, I’d have divorced that sorry-assed husband of mine two weeks ago.
She paused struggling with the seatbelt on her three-year old and pushed a strand of oily hair out of her face. “Oh, he’s working back in Sydney. Katie, please stop yelling at me. I’m talking to this nice gentleman. Yeah, I just took the kids to see their grandparents.”
She looked like she was one Dopamine away from a full-blown hysterical fit. So I tried to distract her with meaningless chit-chat: “So once we land in Singapore, you’ll have a two hour layover, and then another 8 hours to Sydney?” In the throbbing silence, I added, “And all these kids are your’s?”
As Amanda later pointed out, “That’s why it’s all about having a full time nanny. If I had to travel with four children without help…well, I just know that will never happen.”
Saffy’s contribution to the conversation was: “I think people just adopt fully grown children. Preferably just as they’re about to be shipped off to boarding school.”
Meanwhile, back on BA11, I was stuck with the horror that came from sitting next to a mother whose four children had clearly never met an Asian mother with a rattan cane before.
“Are they going to remember the occasion?” I asked after a while of watching the child next to me alternate between screaming at the top of her lungs and chewing the inflight magazine.
“Who?”
“Your kids. I read somewhere that children don’t form any long term memory till they’re about four.”
Her eyes narrowed. “I don’t get what you mean.”
I tilted my head and gave her my best Oprah frown. “Well, it’s just that… I mean, was there any point in them meeting their grandparents at this stage in their lives if they’re never going to remember it? Is it worth the effort?”
For the rest of the flight, every time she clambered over me to get to the toilet, I could tell my probing question was haunting her. Either that, or she was wishing there was some safe way she could push me off the plane.
But I didn’t care. And I still don’t. I paid good money to be on that flight. Children get to scream, throw up, cry and run up and down the aisle through the whole night. If I did the same thing, the crew would’ve sedated me and slapped on handcuffs; and once we’d landed, charge me with disorderly conduct. That’s just plain rude.
It began with a recent night flight from Singapore to London. I was looking forward to a relaxing flight of meals and movies. Now, I know what you’re thinking, but stay with me.
Some people de-stress on a beach. Some take refuge in a bottle of Johnny Walker. Others lie face down on the massage table. Meanwhile, my flatmate Saffy likes to sit with her feet up on the window sill to, as she puts it, “air” herself.
Me, I like to get on a plane on a long haul flight. For 13 blissful hours, no one can get hold of me and bother me with urgent deadlines, give me bad news, or send me stupid 15MB attachments of their ugly restaurant interior.
I don’t get annoying calls from people who want a few minutes of my time to take a survey. And best of all, I don’t have to talk to anyone. Unless you’re on a flight to America and sit next to an American who will usually want to tell you his/her whole life story within the first ten minutes of the seatbelt sign coming on, in which case the best thing to do, I find, is to pretend you don’t speak English.
Of course, the inevitable happens. Struggling down the aisle towards you will be a woman who appears to be some Indian goddess incarnate. Because there’s no way a normal person should be able to juggle, with just two arms, five bags, a stroller, a baby, a box of toys, and three squirming toddlers.
And usually, it’s just the mother. “Where’s your husband?” I asked the woman on that flight to Singapore from London while watching her struggle to unload her nursery and toy shop onto the seat next to me. This broke my golden rule of never speaking to anyone on the plane unless she’s offering me a choice of chicken or seafood. But I couldn’t help but think if I’d been her, I’d have divorced that sorry-assed husband of mine two weeks ago.
She paused struggling with the seatbelt on her three-year old and pushed a strand of oily hair out of her face. “Oh, he’s working back in Sydney. Katie, please stop yelling at me. I’m talking to this nice gentleman. Yeah, I just took the kids to see their grandparents.”
She looked like she was one Dopamine away from a full-blown hysterical fit. So I tried to distract her with meaningless chit-chat: “So once we land in Singapore, you’ll have a two hour layover, and then another 8 hours to Sydney?” In the throbbing silence, I added, “And all these kids are your’s?”
As Amanda later pointed out, “That’s why it’s all about having a full time nanny. If I had to travel with four children without help…well, I just know that will never happen.”
Saffy’s contribution to the conversation was: “I think people just adopt fully grown children. Preferably just as they’re about to be shipped off to boarding school.”
Meanwhile, back on BA11, I was stuck with the horror that came from sitting next to a mother whose four children had clearly never met an Asian mother with a rattan cane before.
“Are they going to remember the occasion?” I asked after a while of watching the child next to me alternate between screaming at the top of her lungs and chewing the inflight magazine.
“Who?”
“Your kids. I read somewhere that children don’t form any long term memory till they’re about four.”
Her eyes narrowed. “I don’t get what you mean.”
I tilted my head and gave her my best Oprah frown. “Well, it’s just that… I mean, was there any point in them meeting their grandparents at this stage in their lives if they’re never going to remember it? Is it worth the effort?”
For the rest of the flight, every time she clambered over me to get to the toilet, I could tell my probing question was haunting her. Either that, or she was wishing there was some safe way she could push me off the plane.
But I didn’t care. And I still don’t. I paid good money to be on that flight. Children get to scream, throw up, cry and run up and down the aisle through the whole night. If I did the same thing, the crew would’ve sedated me and slapped on handcuffs; and once we’d landed, charge me with disorderly conduct. That’s just plain rude.
Saturday, August 22, 2009
Flying High
People are always telling me about their hard lives. They really have no idea.
“Oh you know, it's so sad, but my parents just don't understand me,” one friend recently told me at lunch, while I tried hard not to yawn. My parents are frittering away my inheritance playing Black Jack in the south of France, I wanted to tell him. Get over it, I should have said, and while you're at it, you might want to rethink those multiple nose piercings; it’s no wonder your parents can’t look you in the eye. Instead, I told him that it was tough not being understood for your individuality. I'm just that kind of friend.
“Do you think I should get Botox?” said another friend who was worried that her husband was maybe having an affair with his secretary. The thought bubble floating over my head said she might want to start by Botoxing her sharp tongue and then maybe he'd come home more regularly for dinners. Instead, I told her that she might maybe want to think about yoga. Again, I'm just that kind of friend.
What people don't seem to realise that their problems are like butt pimples. They may be painful, but they go away after a while. In the general scheme of things, they are no big deal. Your mother problems, your job dilemma, your financial woes and your waistline bulge...don't waste my time. I have bigger fish to fry.
Like travelling economy class with my two flatmates, Saffy and Amanda. You thought sitting next to the baby was bad.
“I am very uncomfortable,' Saffy groused. Normally, you'd expect that statement from someone who was actually sitting down. Instead, Saffy was trudging down the aisle of the plane, her luggage pulled reluctantly behind her, her fabulous bosom pushed forward even more reluctantly before her.
From behind, a waft of Chanel No. 5 hit me like a dying mother reproaching her son for not coming to see her more often. “Remind me again why I'm in this part of the plane?” Amanda grumbled.
“Because I wanted to stay home and watch bootleg DVDs of Project Runway, while you two wanted to go to New York. Which wouldn't have been so bad,” I added as I waited patiently for the fat auntie in front of me try to decide how to stuff two large suitcases into the overhead compartment, “seeing as for the first time in recorded history, my mother said she'd be willing to fund me a business class ticket, but then Saffy decided otherwise just by showing us her latest bank statement.”
Saffy’s glacial pace came to a grinding halt. Her head whipped around. “Listen!” she snapped, her fabled breasts rising to the occasion. 'For the millionth time, I am not forking over $15,000 just so I can lie flat!'
I was astonished. “You say that like it's a bad thing!”
“I don't understand how people sit back here,' Amanda said when she was finally seated. She rubbed down all the surfaces of her chair and remote control with Dettol wipes. “Just twenty feet away, people are drinking champagne!”
“Which is what my parents are doing right now too,” I muttered. “Drinking away my inheritance. Seriously, that business class cabin was my last chance at the good life.”
“Oh, God, are we there yet?” Saffy moaned to the passing air stewardess.
“Ma'am, we're still on the ground.”
“Oh, God.”
And as I write this, we're into Hour 4 of our twenty four hour journey to New York. It's not been without its little dramas, including a particularly tense moment somewhere over Chiang Mai when Saffy suddenly wondered aloud if anyone had remembered to turn off the gas in the kitchen. By the time everyone had calmed down, Amanda summoned the air stewardess, handed her a Platinum Amex and said, “Move me into First Class. This very instant. Because if you don't, the last words on the black box voice recorder will be 'I'm going to kill her!'
It's incredible how fast people move when confronted with a large amount of money. Within seconds, a grovelling steward materialised and practically air-lifted Amanda into the front of the plane. She never so much as looked back.
“It's so not fair!” Saffy grumbled. “Just because she's a lawyer and earns more than the GDP of a small African nation is no reason for her to abandon her two closest friends! This is turning out to be the worse holiday of my life.”
And, of course, right on cue, the baby in row 26F started to cry.
“Oh you know, it's so sad, but my parents just don't understand me,” one friend recently told me at lunch, while I tried hard not to yawn. My parents are frittering away my inheritance playing Black Jack in the south of France, I wanted to tell him. Get over it, I should have said, and while you're at it, you might want to rethink those multiple nose piercings; it’s no wonder your parents can’t look you in the eye. Instead, I told him that it was tough not being understood for your individuality. I'm just that kind of friend.
“Do you think I should get Botox?” said another friend who was worried that her husband was maybe having an affair with his secretary. The thought bubble floating over my head said she might want to start by Botoxing her sharp tongue and then maybe he'd come home more regularly for dinners. Instead, I told her that she might maybe want to think about yoga. Again, I'm just that kind of friend.
What people don't seem to realise that their problems are like butt pimples. They may be painful, but they go away after a while. In the general scheme of things, they are no big deal. Your mother problems, your job dilemma, your financial woes and your waistline bulge...don't waste my time. I have bigger fish to fry.
Like travelling economy class with my two flatmates, Saffy and Amanda. You thought sitting next to the baby was bad.
“I am very uncomfortable,' Saffy groused. Normally, you'd expect that statement from someone who was actually sitting down. Instead, Saffy was trudging down the aisle of the plane, her luggage pulled reluctantly behind her, her fabulous bosom pushed forward even more reluctantly before her.
From behind, a waft of Chanel No. 5 hit me like a dying mother reproaching her son for not coming to see her more often. “Remind me again why I'm in this part of the plane?” Amanda grumbled.
“Because I wanted to stay home and watch bootleg DVDs of Project Runway, while you two wanted to go to New York. Which wouldn't have been so bad,” I added as I waited patiently for the fat auntie in front of me try to decide how to stuff two large suitcases into the overhead compartment, “seeing as for the first time in recorded history, my mother said she'd be willing to fund me a business class ticket, but then Saffy decided otherwise just by showing us her latest bank statement.”
Saffy’s glacial pace came to a grinding halt. Her head whipped around. “Listen!” she snapped, her fabled breasts rising to the occasion. 'For the millionth time, I am not forking over $15,000 just so I can lie flat!'
I was astonished. “You say that like it's a bad thing!”
“I don't understand how people sit back here,' Amanda said when she was finally seated. She rubbed down all the surfaces of her chair and remote control with Dettol wipes. “Just twenty feet away, people are drinking champagne!”
“Which is what my parents are doing right now too,” I muttered. “Drinking away my inheritance. Seriously, that business class cabin was my last chance at the good life.”
“Oh, God, are we there yet?” Saffy moaned to the passing air stewardess.
“Ma'am, we're still on the ground.”
“Oh, God.”
And as I write this, we're into Hour 4 of our twenty four hour journey to New York. It's not been without its little dramas, including a particularly tense moment somewhere over Chiang Mai when Saffy suddenly wondered aloud if anyone had remembered to turn off the gas in the kitchen. By the time everyone had calmed down, Amanda summoned the air stewardess, handed her a Platinum Amex and said, “Move me into First Class. This very instant. Because if you don't, the last words on the black box voice recorder will be 'I'm going to kill her!'
It's incredible how fast people move when confronted with a large amount of money. Within seconds, a grovelling steward materialised and practically air-lifted Amanda into the front of the plane. She never so much as looked back.
“It's so not fair!” Saffy grumbled. “Just because she's a lawyer and earns more than the GDP of a small African nation is no reason for her to abandon her two closest friends! This is turning out to be the worse holiday of my life.”
And, of course, right on cue, the baby in row 26F started to cry.
Tuesday, July 28, 2009
Weight and see
According to my two flatmates, Saffy and Amanda, guys have it easy. Too easy, in fact.
“It’s true!” Saffy said the other night at dinner as she picked miserably at her salad. “Look at me, I’m eating lettuce leaves while you!”, and here she pointed accusingly at my big plate of pasta, “you are inhaling an entire plate of carbs. Tomorrow, you’ll sit on the potty, and it’s all over! Meanwhile, it’s going to take me a week to digest this carrot stick!”
“We just have different metabolisms!”
“It’s not just that,” Amanda chimed in severely. “Guys have all sorts of advantages. You can roll out of bed and go out the front door looking like a real slob. It takes us hours to look this way!”
Saffy looked at Amanda sideways. “It takes me days to look this way!”
Amanda nodded. “Plus make-up is expensive! So are all our different outfits, handbags, shoes and accessories.”
“Guys think they’re accessorizing if they wear a stupid cheap watch!” Saffy said, her fabled breasts heaving at the injustice of it all.
“And the hair,” Amanda said, tossing her luxurious tresses. “Don’t forget the hair! It doesn’t look like this naturally, you know! I could have sent a child to Harvard with the money I’ve spend on my hair!”
Saffy later said privately that you could have done a lot of things with the money that Amanda has spent on her hair. “I’m sure they could have found a cure for diabetes with just the cost of her conditioner!”
A few days later, again at dinner – this time, in a fancy restaurant out on One Fullerton – we were busy gossiping about absent friends when Amanda choked on her soup.
“My nine o’clock! Nine o’clock!” she gasped discretely into her napkin. I turned to Amanda’s left and drew in a sharp breath.
Saffy immediately looked around wildly. “Where? Where?” she gurgled.
“My nine o’clock, you dumb blonde!” Amanda hissed. “Why do you still not understand directions?”
“That would be straight ahead for you, Saffy,” I murmured.
Saffy’s head swung back and she literally had to stuff her napkin into her mouth to stop from screaming.
It was the Cockroach, Amanda’s on-again, off-again insectile-looking boyfriend. They’ve been in the off-phase now for half a year but in that time, he must have put on at least 15 kilos. As Saffy later told all her friends on Facebook, the only reason she recognized the Cockroach was because of his super thin eyebrows and non-existent lips. “He looked like one of those before shots from Extreme Makeover!” read one of her posts.
Meanwhile, back at the restaurant, what had made us gasp was not so much that the Cockroach had morphed into a truck tyre, but that hanging off his arm was a pretty, little wisp of a girl who gazed up at him with the kind of adoration you only find at a Fann Wong appearance.
“You see, that just proves my point exactly!” Amanda said bravely trying not to look or to show that she cared as the Cockroach and his plaything sat in the far corner of the restaurant. “He looks like a tub of margarine and he’s dating another pretty girl! It’s just so effortless for guys, it’s not fair!”
“How did he get so fat though?” I wondered.
“Imagine if I put that much weight,” Amanda said. “Do you think I would ever find a date in this town?”
“Not unless the guy was blind!” Saffy said, getting into the spirit of the moment. She noticed our looks. “What?”
“There really are two sets of dating rules in this world,” Amanda said, stabbing viciously at her salad. “If you’re a straight and single man, you’re set. Doesn’t matter if you’re ugly and fat. With a woman, you’ve also got to be pretty and thin!”
“And stupid,” Saffy added. “If you’re pretty, thin and can’t string an intelligent sentence together, you’ll always have a date for Friday night! It’s why I’m still single. Men are intimidated by my intelligence! What? Stop giving me those dirty looks! It’s true!”
“Hmm, and his skin is not looking good at all!” I said, pretending to turn around to look for a waiter.
“Did you want me to go over there and accidently spill red wine all over her?” Saffy offered.
“No, we’re going home,” Amanda sniffed, signaling for the bill.
Saffy came straight home and immediately started a Facebook dialogue about ugly fat men and their pretty girlfriends. “Men are pigs!” read one of her posts. “Please tell everyone!”
“It’s true!” Saffy said the other night at dinner as she picked miserably at her salad. “Look at me, I’m eating lettuce leaves while you!”, and here she pointed accusingly at my big plate of pasta, “you are inhaling an entire plate of carbs. Tomorrow, you’ll sit on the potty, and it’s all over! Meanwhile, it’s going to take me a week to digest this carrot stick!”
“We just have different metabolisms!”
“It’s not just that,” Amanda chimed in severely. “Guys have all sorts of advantages. You can roll out of bed and go out the front door looking like a real slob. It takes us hours to look this way!”
Saffy looked at Amanda sideways. “It takes me days to look this way!”
Amanda nodded. “Plus make-up is expensive! So are all our different outfits, handbags, shoes and accessories.”
“Guys think they’re accessorizing if they wear a stupid cheap watch!” Saffy said, her fabled breasts heaving at the injustice of it all.
“And the hair,” Amanda said, tossing her luxurious tresses. “Don’t forget the hair! It doesn’t look like this naturally, you know! I could have sent a child to Harvard with the money I’ve spend on my hair!”
Saffy later said privately that you could have done a lot of things with the money that Amanda has spent on her hair. “I’m sure they could have found a cure for diabetes with just the cost of her conditioner!”
A few days later, again at dinner – this time, in a fancy restaurant out on One Fullerton – we were busy gossiping about absent friends when Amanda choked on her soup.
“My nine o’clock! Nine o’clock!” she gasped discretely into her napkin. I turned to Amanda’s left and drew in a sharp breath.
Saffy immediately looked around wildly. “Where? Where?” she gurgled.
“My nine o’clock, you dumb blonde!” Amanda hissed. “Why do you still not understand directions?”
“That would be straight ahead for you, Saffy,” I murmured.
Saffy’s head swung back and she literally had to stuff her napkin into her mouth to stop from screaming.
It was the Cockroach, Amanda’s on-again, off-again insectile-looking boyfriend. They’ve been in the off-phase now for half a year but in that time, he must have put on at least 15 kilos. As Saffy later told all her friends on Facebook, the only reason she recognized the Cockroach was because of his super thin eyebrows and non-existent lips. “He looked like one of those before shots from Extreme Makeover!” read one of her posts.
Meanwhile, back at the restaurant, what had made us gasp was not so much that the Cockroach had morphed into a truck tyre, but that hanging off his arm was a pretty, little wisp of a girl who gazed up at him with the kind of adoration you only find at a Fann Wong appearance.
“You see, that just proves my point exactly!” Amanda said bravely trying not to look or to show that she cared as the Cockroach and his plaything sat in the far corner of the restaurant. “He looks like a tub of margarine and he’s dating another pretty girl! It’s just so effortless for guys, it’s not fair!”
“How did he get so fat though?” I wondered.
“Imagine if I put that much weight,” Amanda said. “Do you think I would ever find a date in this town?”
“Not unless the guy was blind!” Saffy said, getting into the spirit of the moment. She noticed our looks. “What?”
“There really are two sets of dating rules in this world,” Amanda said, stabbing viciously at her salad. “If you’re a straight and single man, you’re set. Doesn’t matter if you’re ugly and fat. With a woman, you’ve also got to be pretty and thin!”
“And stupid,” Saffy added. “If you’re pretty, thin and can’t string an intelligent sentence together, you’ll always have a date for Friday night! It’s why I’m still single. Men are intimidated by my intelligence! What? Stop giving me those dirty looks! It’s true!”
“Hmm, and his skin is not looking good at all!” I said, pretending to turn around to look for a waiter.
“Did you want me to go over there and accidently spill red wine all over her?” Saffy offered.
“No, we’re going home,” Amanda sniffed, signaling for the bill.
Saffy came straight home and immediately started a Facebook dialogue about ugly fat men and their pretty girlfriends. “Men are pigs!” read one of her posts. “Please tell everyone!”
Sunday, June 14, 2009
Out of Date
My flatmate Saffy says that she is sick and tired of people telling her how wonderful it is that she’s young and single.
“The next person to tell me that gets punched in the face!” she threatened the other day after coming home from a visit to her dying aunt in the hospital. Apparently, Auntie Rosie had reached out with a bony, shaky hand to pinch Saffy’s cheeks and murmured weakly how she wished she was young and single again.
“What a thing to say!” Saffy huffed, her bosom puffing up. “I had to physically restrain myself from reaching for a pillow!”
“Old people can be so insensitive,” Amanda said while arching a perfectly drawn eyebrow.
“I’ll say!” said Saffy, completely oblivious to the sarcasm.
In the world according to Saffy, being young is one thing. But being single is a completely different kettle of fish. There’s nothing fun about being single. Especially if you’ve been single longer than you’ve ever been in a relationship. Being single, in Saffy’s books, is practically a death sentence.
“You do not want to be single!” she told her parents when they told her they were getting a divorce. “You have to go on a lot of dates when you’re single, and let me tell you that they are all dogs out there! And not the good kind either! You have to stay married.”
“But your father and I have grown apart! We have nothing in common anymore,” her mother said.
“Get over it,” Saffy advised. “It’s hell out here for singles. You’re always made to feel like a loser if you’re single.”
“Oh, that’s not true!”
“Spoken like someone who’s not been to a Chinese New Year gathering recently,” Saffy said, bitterness oozing from every syllable. “Or wedding invitations that are always to ‘Saffy and partner’, and if you don’t have a date, they stick you on the loser table of rejects from society.”
“You know, I was single once too and it really wasn’t that…”
Saffy’s bosom inflated to a dangerous volume. “The last time you were single, people still went to the library to look things up! Listen!” Saffy told her mother urgently. “You have got to stay married. It’s bad enough that I have to fight off people like Amanda for men, I am not about to have you competing with me too! No, I am not,” she added, shaking her head firmly.
Saffy’s mother laughed and it wasn’t a pretty laugh. “Dear, do you seriously think that I’m even thinking about dating again? I’ve spent half my life with your father and if I never sex again for as long as I live, it will be too soon!”
“Choy, choy, choy!” Saffy shouted piously and knocked on wood three times. “What a thing to say!”
As it turned out, Saffy’s mother got the divorce she so desperately wanted and within three months, she’d eloped with her divorce lawyer to the Bahamas where they got married on the beach.
Saffy was fit to be tied when she found out. “How the hell did that happen?” she screamed. “That’s not how it’s supposed to happen! That’s so not fair!”
“And your new step-father is cute too!” Amanda said, sliding the dagger in a few inches deeper.
Saffy spent the next few months writing to the Law Society demanding that her step-father be disbarred. He eventually found out about it and said if she kept this up, he was going to get an injunction against her. And when she was told that there was no rule against marrying one’s client, she threatened to write to the Prime Minister. Apparently, the Law Society sent her the PM’s mailing address together with a stamped envelope.
That night, Saffy went to a wedding dinner alone and told all the aunties who said how lovely it was to be young and single that they should just curl up and die. She’s been fuming ever since.
The other day, I came home to find Saffy at the dining table, tapping away at her laptop. “I’m writing a book!” she said without looking up. “It’s going to be about how once you’re married, you can’t get divorced ever. Or remarry. You made your bed, now you have to lie in it. You don’t get to double dip into the dating pool!”
“I think the Roman Catholics got to that rule before you did,” I said, but Saffy wasn’t listening.
“I’m thinking of calling it ‘Back off, Bitch!’ What do you think?”
I hesitated. “Uhm, it’s catchy.”
“And I’m going to dedicate it to my mother!” Saffy said, pounding the keys just a little too hard.
“The next person to tell me that gets punched in the face!” she threatened the other day after coming home from a visit to her dying aunt in the hospital. Apparently, Auntie Rosie had reached out with a bony, shaky hand to pinch Saffy’s cheeks and murmured weakly how she wished she was young and single again.
“What a thing to say!” Saffy huffed, her bosom puffing up. “I had to physically restrain myself from reaching for a pillow!”
“Old people can be so insensitive,” Amanda said while arching a perfectly drawn eyebrow.
“I’ll say!” said Saffy, completely oblivious to the sarcasm.
In the world according to Saffy, being young is one thing. But being single is a completely different kettle of fish. There’s nothing fun about being single. Especially if you’ve been single longer than you’ve ever been in a relationship. Being single, in Saffy’s books, is practically a death sentence.
“You do not want to be single!” she told her parents when they told her they were getting a divorce. “You have to go on a lot of dates when you’re single, and let me tell you that they are all dogs out there! And not the good kind either! You have to stay married.”
“But your father and I have grown apart! We have nothing in common anymore,” her mother said.
“Get over it,” Saffy advised. “It’s hell out here for singles. You’re always made to feel like a loser if you’re single.”
“Oh, that’s not true!”
“Spoken like someone who’s not been to a Chinese New Year gathering recently,” Saffy said, bitterness oozing from every syllable. “Or wedding invitations that are always to ‘Saffy and partner’, and if you don’t have a date, they stick you on the loser table of rejects from society.”
“You know, I was single once too and it really wasn’t that…”
Saffy’s bosom inflated to a dangerous volume. “The last time you were single, people still went to the library to look things up! Listen!” Saffy told her mother urgently. “You have got to stay married. It’s bad enough that I have to fight off people like Amanda for men, I am not about to have you competing with me too! No, I am not,” she added, shaking her head firmly.
Saffy’s mother laughed and it wasn’t a pretty laugh. “Dear, do you seriously think that I’m even thinking about dating again? I’ve spent half my life with your father and if I never sex again for as long as I live, it will be too soon!”
“Choy, choy, choy!” Saffy shouted piously and knocked on wood three times. “What a thing to say!”
As it turned out, Saffy’s mother got the divorce she so desperately wanted and within three months, she’d eloped with her divorce lawyer to the Bahamas where they got married on the beach.
Saffy was fit to be tied when she found out. “How the hell did that happen?” she screamed. “That’s not how it’s supposed to happen! That’s so not fair!”
“And your new step-father is cute too!” Amanda said, sliding the dagger in a few inches deeper.
Saffy spent the next few months writing to the Law Society demanding that her step-father be disbarred. He eventually found out about it and said if she kept this up, he was going to get an injunction against her. And when she was told that there was no rule against marrying one’s client, she threatened to write to the Prime Minister. Apparently, the Law Society sent her the PM’s mailing address together with a stamped envelope.
That night, Saffy went to a wedding dinner alone and told all the aunties who said how lovely it was to be young and single that they should just curl up and die. She’s been fuming ever since.
The other day, I came home to find Saffy at the dining table, tapping away at her laptop. “I’m writing a book!” she said without looking up. “It’s going to be about how once you’re married, you can’t get divorced ever. Or remarry. You made your bed, now you have to lie in it. You don’t get to double dip into the dating pool!”
“I think the Roman Catholics got to that rule before you did,” I said, but Saffy wasn’t listening.
“I’m thinking of calling it ‘Back off, Bitch!’ What do you think?”
I hesitated. “Uhm, it’s catchy.”
“And I’m going to dedicate it to my mother!” Saffy said, pounding the keys just a little too hard.
Friday, March 27, 2009
Spring Clean
I live in a pig-sty. The last I checked, I wasn’t a pig, but I live in a pig-sty. And I live in a pig-sty because my cleaning lady has very selfishly decided that she needs to go on a holiday.
A week ago, I came home to find Ah Chuan standing in the lounge room screaming at Saffy.
A complete stranger walking into this scene would have immediately dialed 999. But Ah Chuan is from Canton and having met Ah Chuan’s relatives, I can say with authority that the Cantonese never speak at a volume less than a parade of F16s. Especially if they’re excited and happy. It’s only when they speak in what the rest of the world considers a normal conversational tone that you need to be worried and slowly back away.
Which explains why Saffy’s reaction that morning was not one of fear but plain politeness. That, and a conviction that repeating something very slowly would make the incomprehensible completely understandable.
“I. Don’t. Understand. A. Word. You. Are. Saying,” she told Ah Chuan patiently. “Do. You. Understand?”
Which only served to make Ah Chuan even more excited as she increased the volume. Saffy later said that if I hadn’t show up at that moment, Ah Chuan would have gone silent on account of the fact that she was approaching a volume audible only to God and dogs.
As it turned out, Ah Chuan was taking her 80 year old mother back to Canton to visit her relatives for the last time. “How long will you be away?” I asked her in my fractured Cantonese.
“FOUR WEEKS!” Ah Chuan screamed. “I’M SO SORRY TO LEAVE YOU ALL ALONE LIKE THIS, BUT IT’S THE LAST TIME MY MOTHER WILL SEE HER SISTER IN CHINA.”
“Four weeks?” Saffy said when I translated. She let the news sink in for a moment. “She’ll be gone for four weeks? But, but who’s going to do our cleaning? Oh my God! Is she allowed to do that?”
Ah Chuan was distraught at Saffy’s reaction. “OH, PLEASE TELL YOUNG MISS NOT TO FEEL UPSET! IT’S OK!” she shouted at the top of her voice. “MY MOTHER IS VERY OLD AND SHE’S HAD A VERY LONG LIFE.”
By now, Saffy was in a right old panic mode. Her legendary bosom heaved like overworked pistons. “I haven’t picked up a mop in the entire time she’s been working for us! I don’t even know where the mop is! No really, she can’t go! Tell her she can’t go!”
I blinked and it occurred to me that maybe I’d translated the wrong thing. So I tried again. “Her mother is going to see her sister for the last time, and…”
“OH, IT BREAKS MY HEART THAT SHE’S SO UPSET!” Ah Chuan screamed.
As I later told Amanda, it was like telling a joke to an approaching tsunami. “Someone needs to tell her that it’s not always about her!” I complained.
“I don’t see why we can’t just hire another temp cleaner. There are so many unemployed people out there now,” said Amanda, who’s always believed that there’s no problem in the world you can’t solve if you throw enough money at it.
“Saffy doesn’t want anyone else to clean the apartment,” I reported. “She doesn’t trust them not to go through her underwear drawer.” Amanda looked grim.
Which was why on Saturday morning, the three of us found ourselves standing before a bucket of water, a mop and a vacuum cleaner which I was sure we’d attached the wrong way.
It was an odd moment. Like Saffy, I couldn’t remember the last time I’d picked up a mop. It had taken twenty minutes to find the broom closet and another ten to recognize the mop.
Saffy broke the silence. “I don’t know what to do now,” she said in a small apologetic voice. Somehow, she managed to look – while wearing a tee-shirt that declared ‘Make it work!’ – both defiant and embarrassed.
“We’re so pathetic,” I said.
“Clearly, this is not happening,” Amanda decided, as she adjusted her expensive and wildly mopping-inappropriate D&G blouse. “I’m calling a temp.”
That was two weeks ago. Saffy vetoed the first five candidates as potential underwear perverts, while my beloved adopted mongrel dog Pooch vetoed the last two by growling very fiercely at them. “He’s a very good judge of character,” Saffy told the candidates as she shut the door firmly in their faces.
Our flat is now a pig-sty. I’m sleeping over at Karl’s, Amanda has moved to a hotel, while Saffy – in true Alamo spirit – is staying put to guard her underwear. Two weeks to go.
A week ago, I came home to find Ah Chuan standing in the lounge room screaming at Saffy.
A complete stranger walking into this scene would have immediately dialed 999. But Ah Chuan is from Canton and having met Ah Chuan’s relatives, I can say with authority that the Cantonese never speak at a volume less than a parade of F16s. Especially if they’re excited and happy. It’s only when they speak in what the rest of the world considers a normal conversational tone that you need to be worried and slowly back away.
Which explains why Saffy’s reaction that morning was not one of fear but plain politeness. That, and a conviction that repeating something very slowly would make the incomprehensible completely understandable.
“I. Don’t. Understand. A. Word. You. Are. Saying,” she told Ah Chuan patiently. “Do. You. Understand?”
Which only served to make Ah Chuan even more excited as she increased the volume. Saffy later said that if I hadn’t show up at that moment, Ah Chuan would have gone silent on account of the fact that she was approaching a volume audible only to God and dogs.
As it turned out, Ah Chuan was taking her 80 year old mother back to Canton to visit her relatives for the last time. “How long will you be away?” I asked her in my fractured Cantonese.
“FOUR WEEKS!” Ah Chuan screamed. “I’M SO SORRY TO LEAVE YOU ALL ALONE LIKE THIS, BUT IT’S THE LAST TIME MY MOTHER WILL SEE HER SISTER IN CHINA.”
“Four weeks?” Saffy said when I translated. She let the news sink in for a moment. “She’ll be gone for four weeks? But, but who’s going to do our cleaning? Oh my God! Is she allowed to do that?”
Ah Chuan was distraught at Saffy’s reaction. “OH, PLEASE TELL YOUNG MISS NOT TO FEEL UPSET! IT’S OK!” she shouted at the top of her voice. “MY MOTHER IS VERY OLD AND SHE’S HAD A VERY LONG LIFE.”
By now, Saffy was in a right old panic mode. Her legendary bosom heaved like overworked pistons. “I haven’t picked up a mop in the entire time she’s been working for us! I don’t even know where the mop is! No really, she can’t go! Tell her she can’t go!”
I blinked and it occurred to me that maybe I’d translated the wrong thing. So I tried again. “Her mother is going to see her sister for the last time, and…”
“OH, IT BREAKS MY HEART THAT SHE’S SO UPSET!” Ah Chuan screamed.
As I later told Amanda, it was like telling a joke to an approaching tsunami. “Someone needs to tell her that it’s not always about her!” I complained.
“I don’t see why we can’t just hire another temp cleaner. There are so many unemployed people out there now,” said Amanda, who’s always believed that there’s no problem in the world you can’t solve if you throw enough money at it.
“Saffy doesn’t want anyone else to clean the apartment,” I reported. “She doesn’t trust them not to go through her underwear drawer.” Amanda looked grim.
Which was why on Saturday morning, the three of us found ourselves standing before a bucket of water, a mop and a vacuum cleaner which I was sure we’d attached the wrong way.
It was an odd moment. Like Saffy, I couldn’t remember the last time I’d picked up a mop. It had taken twenty minutes to find the broom closet and another ten to recognize the mop.
Saffy broke the silence. “I don’t know what to do now,” she said in a small apologetic voice. Somehow, she managed to look – while wearing a tee-shirt that declared ‘Make it work!’ – both defiant and embarrassed.
“We’re so pathetic,” I said.
“Clearly, this is not happening,” Amanda decided, as she adjusted her expensive and wildly mopping-inappropriate D&G blouse. “I’m calling a temp.”
That was two weeks ago. Saffy vetoed the first five candidates as potential underwear perverts, while my beloved adopted mongrel dog Pooch vetoed the last two by growling very fiercely at them. “He’s a very good judge of character,” Saffy told the candidates as she shut the door firmly in their faces.
Our flat is now a pig-sty. I’m sleeping over at Karl’s, Amanda has moved to a hotel, while Saffy – in true Alamo spirit – is staying put to guard her underwear. Two weeks to go.
Monday, March 09, 2009
Age Defying
One of the most disturbing things about the passing years is that you suddenly realize that you’re not the youngest person on the bus. There I was on the 105 to Toa Payoh the other day when it occurred to me that I was a good deal older than half the bus population.
“Oh, I can’t stand her!” cooed the 14 year-old SCGS girl to her owlish bespectacled friend. (I know she was 14 because before I really tuned in to eavesdrop, she was regaling one and all about her recent birthday bash at Carls Junior.) “She’s so old, like my grandmother and she’s still jumping around like that. And I think it’s so weird that she can wrap her right leg around her neck!”
“I think she’s amazing!” said her friend.
“But act your age lah, aiyoh! You’re a mother now, you know!”
It took me a few more bus stops and enormous concentration to realize that they were talking about Madonna. I couldn’t wait to get home to tell everyone.
Amanda was outraged. “Madonna is not a grandmother!”
“Seriously, you get the best public transport conversations!” Saffy said, shaking her head. “I just get dirty old men who accidentally brush against me on their way off!”
“And not in a good way, either,” I said. Saffy squealed with delight at my feeble double entendre.
“She’s a role model for all of us!” Amanda said, steering the conversation back to Madonna, and still clearly incensed at the insensitivity of 14 year olds.
I thought of this for days afterwards. I remembered my first tutor at law school was 22 years old. And at the time, I thought, with the insufferable smugness of an 18 year old, how old even that was. And now, here I was well past 22 and still feeling 18.
When did this shift happen? When did our role models start shifting from the teenage, cruxifix and torn lace rebellion represented by the likes of Madonna and Cyndi Lauper, to young Lily Allen and Amy Winehouse? More importantly, when did Madonna become old?
I still remember when her “Papa Don’t Preach” came out and there was all that fuss about what a terrible song it was, how it promoted promiscuity and glamorized teenage pregnancy. I would sit at the back of the bus trying to concentrate on my homework while that crazy Goth chick from my Chemistry class Janet Wella belted out the chorus at the top of her voice. “Papa don’t preach, I’ve been losing sleep! Papa don’t preach, I’m in trouble deep!” she screeched. (Janet, if you’re reading this, are you on Facebook?!)
All this seemed like only yesterday and we were all clearly the youngest ones on the bus. Now, a continent away, I’m listening to my childhood being cruelly dissected and thrown away by pimply young girls who weren’t even born when Madonna first struck her Vogue pose.
“The little bitches,” Amanda said.
A few days ago, Trevor, a friend from law school, emailed me. “Oh God, I just bumped into Pete the other day. Remember him? He was in our crim law classes. Always walking around in summer with his shirt off to show off his body. Well, he is now HUGE and I mean fat!! FAT face...fat fat...He was with Anna. I went to their wedding a few years ago. She’s so haggard with bad bad skin. I can’t believe they were the glamour couple in school!”
Of course, I immediately Googled Pete and Anna on their law firm’s website. For half an hour, I sat there, mouth open.
“It was like a train wreck!” I skyped Amanda. “I started with their firm profiles and then I just kept clicking on our other classmates. I couldn’t stop. They all look terrible! The guys have started losing their hair and have huge eye bags and the girls look like they have three-dimensional make up on.”
She immediately went online to have a look. “Goodness!” she said after a while. “What happened to these people?”
“It’s stress!” said Saffy later that night. “Your face is the first place it shows. You sit in the office all day and see if the fat doesn’t all congeal around your butt!”
Amanda looked worried. “But, that’s what we do too. Surely, we don’t look like that?”
“Choy, choy, choy!” Saffy spat. “They’re all unhappily married. We’re unhappily single, so the stress doesn’t show. Just in our spirit. Outside, we’re still young and gorgeous.”
Amanda says she’s not taking a chance. The last I heard, she was investigating Botox. “You’re never too young to start,” she reasoned.
“Hail, Madonna!” Saffy intoned.
“Oh, I can’t stand her!” cooed the 14 year-old SCGS girl to her owlish bespectacled friend. (I know she was 14 because before I really tuned in to eavesdrop, she was regaling one and all about her recent birthday bash at Carls Junior.) “She’s so old, like my grandmother and she’s still jumping around like that. And I think it’s so weird that she can wrap her right leg around her neck!”
“I think she’s amazing!” said her friend.
“But act your age lah, aiyoh! You’re a mother now, you know!”
It took me a few more bus stops and enormous concentration to realize that they were talking about Madonna. I couldn’t wait to get home to tell everyone.
Amanda was outraged. “Madonna is not a grandmother!”
“Seriously, you get the best public transport conversations!” Saffy said, shaking her head. “I just get dirty old men who accidentally brush against me on their way off!”
“And not in a good way, either,” I said. Saffy squealed with delight at my feeble double entendre.
“She’s a role model for all of us!” Amanda said, steering the conversation back to Madonna, and still clearly incensed at the insensitivity of 14 year olds.
I thought of this for days afterwards. I remembered my first tutor at law school was 22 years old. And at the time, I thought, with the insufferable smugness of an 18 year old, how old even that was. And now, here I was well past 22 and still feeling 18.
When did this shift happen? When did our role models start shifting from the teenage, cruxifix and torn lace rebellion represented by the likes of Madonna and Cyndi Lauper, to young Lily Allen and Amy Winehouse? More importantly, when did Madonna become old?
I still remember when her “Papa Don’t Preach” came out and there was all that fuss about what a terrible song it was, how it promoted promiscuity and glamorized teenage pregnancy. I would sit at the back of the bus trying to concentrate on my homework while that crazy Goth chick from my Chemistry class Janet Wella belted out the chorus at the top of her voice. “Papa don’t preach, I’ve been losing sleep! Papa don’t preach, I’m in trouble deep!” she screeched. (Janet, if you’re reading this, are you on Facebook?!)
All this seemed like only yesterday and we were all clearly the youngest ones on the bus. Now, a continent away, I’m listening to my childhood being cruelly dissected and thrown away by pimply young girls who weren’t even born when Madonna first struck her Vogue pose.
“The little bitches,” Amanda said.
A few days ago, Trevor, a friend from law school, emailed me. “Oh God, I just bumped into Pete the other day. Remember him? He was in our crim law classes. Always walking around in summer with his shirt off to show off his body. Well, he is now HUGE and I mean fat!! FAT face...fat fat...He was with Anna. I went to their wedding a few years ago. She’s so haggard with bad bad skin. I can’t believe they were the glamour couple in school!”
Of course, I immediately Googled Pete and Anna on their law firm’s website. For half an hour, I sat there, mouth open.
“It was like a train wreck!” I skyped Amanda. “I started with their firm profiles and then I just kept clicking on our other classmates. I couldn’t stop. They all look terrible! The guys have started losing their hair and have huge eye bags and the girls look like they have three-dimensional make up on.”
She immediately went online to have a look. “Goodness!” she said after a while. “What happened to these people?”
“It’s stress!” said Saffy later that night. “Your face is the first place it shows. You sit in the office all day and see if the fat doesn’t all congeal around your butt!”
Amanda looked worried. “But, that’s what we do too. Surely, we don’t look like that?”
“Choy, choy, choy!” Saffy spat. “They’re all unhappily married. We’re unhappily single, so the stress doesn’t show. Just in our spirit. Outside, we’re still young and gorgeous.”
Amanda says she’s not taking a chance. The last I heard, she was investigating Botox. “You’re never too young to start,” she reasoned.
“Hail, Madonna!” Saffy intoned.
Sunday, February 01, 2009
Clothes Call
The other day, in a rare burst of perceptive insight, my flatmate Saffy observed that you could tell there was a credit crunch going on because our other flatmate Amanda was now picking up her underwear and other delicates from M&S.
“If I hadn’t seen the packaging in her rubbish bin myself, I wouldn’t have believed it,” Saffy said, nodding to herself with satisfaction as she scanned the TV guide.
From the comfortable depths of the couch, I looked up from my book (Eckhart Tolle’s A New Earth, an Oprah Book Club selection if you must know). “I suppose there’s a perfectly good reason for this, but what were you doing going through Amanda’s rubbish bin?” I asked.
Saffy waved her hand around. “Oh you know,” she said vaguely as she continued to read the TV guide. “Someone needs to explain to me what the hell the big deal about Little Nonya is. I don’t know any Peranakans who speak Chinese so well.”
“You don’t know any Peranakans,” I pointed out.
Just then, Amanda emerged from her bedroom. “Has someone been going through my rubbish bin?” she asked, lifting a perfectly drawn eyebrow and staring straight at Saffy who immediately bristled.
“What, what? Why are you looking at me? Just because –, ” and because it always took a while for anything to register on her consciousness, she paused and blinked. “What are you wearing?”
Amanda beamed. “You like it? I got it today at This Fashion. It cost less than a Starbucks cappuccino!” she said, though I couldn’t help but think that these days, most things cost less than a Starbucks cappuccino.
As Saffy later said, “It was like she wearing a zipper!”
I said technically, Amanda was wearing a dress but Saffy replied that that would be really stretching the idea of a dress, like saying that Cheezels is a food group.
But for the moment, she was shaking her head wildly. “Wait a minute, wait a minute. You were at This Fashion? How do you even know about This Fashion?”
“Excuse me, I wish you would stop making me out like I’m a fashion snob or something!”
“But you are!” Saffy said.
“Well, I was just passing by after my meeting and I happened to notice the dress on the mannequin in the window. Why have I never ever noticed that shop?”
“Because your ensuite bathroom leads directly into Gucci’s dressing room?” Saffy suggested.
Amanda trilled with laughter and disappeared back into her bedroom.
“If that dress was one millimetre shorter, the world would have been her gynaecologist,” Saffy said later to Karl over afternoon tea. She pursed her lips with disapproval while his eyes turned moist.
“You guys lead the best lives!” he said earnestly. “I miss being single!”
“Seriously, you are one bedpan from turning into a dirty old man,” she told him severely. “But the more shocking thing is she’s now actually shopping at This Fashion! She can go on as much as she likes about how great that dress is, but I can sniff a money-saving strategy a shopping mall away. What is the world coming to?” Saffy said, shaking her head.
“It’s a credit crunch,” I said, reaching for another pressed sandwich. “We all have to make sacrifices.”
“Yes, but still. And she’s wearing M&S underwear!”
Karl choked on his scone. “How do you know?” he asked goggle-eyed.
On our way home, Saffy said that Karl must really not be getting any from his dreadful harpy of a wife, Marsha. “Did you see how hot and bothered he got just by the mention of Amanda’s underwear?” she sniffed as she stared down, with affection, at her fabulous bosom as if to point out that Karl had clearly been getting hot and bothered about the wrong woman.
Meanwhile, the kitchen cupboard where we store plastic bags is growing with bags from This Fashion which leads us to wonder if Amanda is single-handedly keeping the store in business.
“I just happen to like their stuff,” she said stoutly the other day. “I wish you’d stop making such a big deal about it.”
But what is annoying Saffy no end is just how good Amanda looks in a $15.95 dress. “The other day, I told her I really liked her skirt, thinking that it was a Miu Miu or something and that she’d let me borrow it and she said it was This Fashion! I bet you if I got into it, I’d look like that woman who sells me fried beehoon! Or, ” she paused and thought, “a cast member from Little Nonya.”
“If I hadn’t seen the packaging in her rubbish bin myself, I wouldn’t have believed it,” Saffy said, nodding to herself with satisfaction as she scanned the TV guide.
From the comfortable depths of the couch, I looked up from my book (Eckhart Tolle’s A New Earth, an Oprah Book Club selection if you must know). “I suppose there’s a perfectly good reason for this, but what were you doing going through Amanda’s rubbish bin?” I asked.
Saffy waved her hand around. “Oh you know,” she said vaguely as she continued to read the TV guide. “Someone needs to explain to me what the hell the big deal about Little Nonya is. I don’t know any Peranakans who speak Chinese so well.”
“You don’t know any Peranakans,” I pointed out.
Just then, Amanda emerged from her bedroom. “Has someone been going through my rubbish bin?” she asked, lifting a perfectly drawn eyebrow and staring straight at Saffy who immediately bristled.
“What, what? Why are you looking at me? Just because –, ” and because it always took a while for anything to register on her consciousness, she paused and blinked. “What are you wearing?”
Amanda beamed. “You like it? I got it today at This Fashion. It cost less than a Starbucks cappuccino!” she said, though I couldn’t help but think that these days, most things cost less than a Starbucks cappuccino.
As Saffy later said, “It was like she wearing a zipper!”
I said technically, Amanda was wearing a dress but Saffy replied that that would be really stretching the idea of a dress, like saying that Cheezels is a food group.
But for the moment, she was shaking her head wildly. “Wait a minute, wait a minute. You were at This Fashion? How do you even know about This Fashion?”
“Excuse me, I wish you would stop making me out like I’m a fashion snob or something!”
“But you are!” Saffy said.
“Well, I was just passing by after my meeting and I happened to notice the dress on the mannequin in the window. Why have I never ever noticed that shop?”
“Because your ensuite bathroom leads directly into Gucci’s dressing room?” Saffy suggested.
Amanda trilled with laughter and disappeared back into her bedroom.
“If that dress was one millimetre shorter, the world would have been her gynaecologist,” Saffy said later to Karl over afternoon tea. She pursed her lips with disapproval while his eyes turned moist.
“You guys lead the best lives!” he said earnestly. “I miss being single!”
“Seriously, you are one bedpan from turning into a dirty old man,” she told him severely. “But the more shocking thing is she’s now actually shopping at This Fashion! She can go on as much as she likes about how great that dress is, but I can sniff a money-saving strategy a shopping mall away. What is the world coming to?” Saffy said, shaking her head.
“It’s a credit crunch,” I said, reaching for another pressed sandwich. “We all have to make sacrifices.”
“Yes, but still. And she’s wearing M&S underwear!”
Karl choked on his scone. “How do you know?” he asked goggle-eyed.
On our way home, Saffy said that Karl must really not be getting any from his dreadful harpy of a wife, Marsha. “Did you see how hot and bothered he got just by the mention of Amanda’s underwear?” she sniffed as she stared down, with affection, at her fabulous bosom as if to point out that Karl had clearly been getting hot and bothered about the wrong woman.
Meanwhile, the kitchen cupboard where we store plastic bags is growing with bags from This Fashion which leads us to wonder if Amanda is single-handedly keeping the store in business.
“I just happen to like their stuff,” she said stoutly the other day. “I wish you’d stop making such a big deal about it.”
But what is annoying Saffy no end is just how good Amanda looks in a $15.95 dress. “The other day, I told her I really liked her skirt, thinking that it was a Miu Miu or something and that she’d let me borrow it and she said it was This Fashion! I bet you if I got into it, I’d look like that woman who sells me fried beehoon! Or, ” she paused and thought, “a cast member from Little Nonya.”
Friday, January 16, 2009
I Do?
Our friend Muna recently got married to her long time boyfriend Nasruddin.
“Seriously, it’s about time,” Saffy said as she inspected the wedding invitation the day before. “They’ve been dating like since before Mariah’s breakdown. And I’m loving the paper stock of this invite. See, this is what wedding invitations should be like!” she said, her ample bosom heaving with approval.
Recently, another set of friends John and Sook Heng had sent out an email invitation which scandalised Amanda. “I hope this isn’t the actual invitation!” she said. In a rare meeting of minds, Saffy also refused to attend the wedding dinner and sent the happy couple a snapshot of her lying on a beach in Phuket and a note that said, “Just prop this picture of me on the seat!”
To all her friends, she complained, “Well, if I’m not even worth a hard copy invite on proper stationery, then they’re not worth the real me showing up.” Which led her best friend Sharyn to wonder to me, “Wah, like that can, meh?”
I sighed and said that weddings always made the girls weird. “Remember that time Saffy poured a whole bowl of sharks-fin soup down the chief bridesmaid’s dress because she made that joke about single women being desperate?” I said happily. “I’m just dying to see what happens at Muna’s. It’s their first void deck wedding!”
A few days later, the three of us piled into a cab to head to Bedok. “I’m not sure I understand the romance of a void deck marriage,” Amanda said, as she delicately adjusted the lace on her latest Prada outfit.
“I think we’re overdressed,” Saffy grumbled as she adjusted her bra strap. I spotted the cab driver flick his eyes back and forth his rear-view mirror. “Please watch where you’re going, Uncle,” I said.
Just then an SMS arrived from Barney Chen on all three phones: ‘I am trying very hard not to slap my cab driver who has CLEARLY taken the long way! Will be late!’
The thing I love about Malay weddings is the whole informality of it all. You usually hear the noise long before you see the actual gathering, but there’s a stream of people in colourful tudungs and sarongs milling around handsome kids clinging to their patient parents. People come and go. Struggle through the sea of aunties and grannies to say hello to the bride and groom sitting on the stage in their finest silks and extravagant make-up. Grab a plate, get served, find the nearest empty table. Sit, say hello to a complete stranger, eat, get up and go home just in time for a repeat of American Idol.
I’ve found that if I don’t dally at a Malay wedding, I can be done in an hour.
Which can be disconcerting to those used to the tedious drawn out drama of Chinese weddings with their ridiculous costume changes by the bride, business card exchanges and endless rounds of half-hearted yum-sings.
“Have we actually missed the ceremony?” Saffy asked as she stood at the foot of the stairs of block 13 and surveyed the organised chaos before her. “And is that Muna over there on that dais? Good lord, her make-up is three dimensional!”
“This humidity is ruining my outfit. We need to sit under a fan!” Amanda instructed as she stepped smartly towards an empty table. I headed to the buffet table. I’d spotted mee rebus.
The novelty of a Malay wedding kept everyone happily engaged, though at one stage, Amanda completely forgot where she was and asked one of the passing maciks if there was a chance she could get a gin and tonic.
“You know,” Barney Chen said as he idly stroked the plastic table covering and stared at the distant couple, “I’m happy for Muna and Nas and everything, but I just can’t imagine beginning my married life under a pink and white tulle tent in a Bedok HDB void deck!”
“I think it’s great. It’s so festive! And think of all the money you save,” I said.
“Meanwhile, it’s only just occurring to me that Malay men are seriously hot!” Saffy said suddenly, as she sat up to concentrate and look around the concrete hall. “Look at the beautiful eyes on that guy over there!”
“Back away slowly, bitch,” Barney warned. "I saw him first."
“How could I,” Saffy said, by now completely in a parallel universe, “with all my extensive dating history, have missed an entire demographic?”
Leave it to Sharyn to be practical when she heard about this. “She eat rendang every day, her constipation how?”
“Seriously, it’s about time,” Saffy said as she inspected the wedding invitation the day before. “They’ve been dating like since before Mariah’s breakdown. And I’m loving the paper stock of this invite. See, this is what wedding invitations should be like!” she said, her ample bosom heaving with approval.
Recently, another set of friends John and Sook Heng had sent out an email invitation which scandalised Amanda. “I hope this isn’t the actual invitation!” she said. In a rare meeting of minds, Saffy also refused to attend the wedding dinner and sent the happy couple a snapshot of her lying on a beach in Phuket and a note that said, “Just prop this picture of me on the seat!”
To all her friends, she complained, “Well, if I’m not even worth a hard copy invite on proper stationery, then they’re not worth the real me showing up.” Which led her best friend Sharyn to wonder to me, “Wah, like that can, meh?”
I sighed and said that weddings always made the girls weird. “Remember that time Saffy poured a whole bowl of sharks-fin soup down the chief bridesmaid’s dress because she made that joke about single women being desperate?” I said happily. “I’m just dying to see what happens at Muna’s. It’s their first void deck wedding!”
A few days later, the three of us piled into a cab to head to Bedok. “I’m not sure I understand the romance of a void deck marriage,” Amanda said, as she delicately adjusted the lace on her latest Prada outfit.
“I think we’re overdressed,” Saffy grumbled as she adjusted her bra strap. I spotted the cab driver flick his eyes back and forth his rear-view mirror. “Please watch where you’re going, Uncle,” I said.
Just then an SMS arrived from Barney Chen on all three phones: ‘I am trying very hard not to slap my cab driver who has CLEARLY taken the long way! Will be late!’
The thing I love about Malay weddings is the whole informality of it all. You usually hear the noise long before you see the actual gathering, but there’s a stream of people in colourful tudungs and sarongs milling around handsome kids clinging to their patient parents. People come and go. Struggle through the sea of aunties and grannies to say hello to the bride and groom sitting on the stage in their finest silks and extravagant make-up. Grab a plate, get served, find the nearest empty table. Sit, say hello to a complete stranger, eat, get up and go home just in time for a repeat of American Idol.
I’ve found that if I don’t dally at a Malay wedding, I can be done in an hour.
Which can be disconcerting to those used to the tedious drawn out drama of Chinese weddings with their ridiculous costume changes by the bride, business card exchanges and endless rounds of half-hearted yum-sings.
“Have we actually missed the ceremony?” Saffy asked as she stood at the foot of the stairs of block 13 and surveyed the organised chaos before her. “And is that Muna over there on that dais? Good lord, her make-up is three dimensional!”
“This humidity is ruining my outfit. We need to sit under a fan!” Amanda instructed as she stepped smartly towards an empty table. I headed to the buffet table. I’d spotted mee rebus.
The novelty of a Malay wedding kept everyone happily engaged, though at one stage, Amanda completely forgot where she was and asked one of the passing maciks if there was a chance she could get a gin and tonic.
“You know,” Barney Chen said as he idly stroked the plastic table covering and stared at the distant couple, “I’m happy for Muna and Nas and everything, but I just can’t imagine beginning my married life under a pink and white tulle tent in a Bedok HDB void deck!”
“I think it’s great. It’s so festive! And think of all the money you save,” I said.
“Meanwhile, it’s only just occurring to me that Malay men are seriously hot!” Saffy said suddenly, as she sat up to concentrate and look around the concrete hall. “Look at the beautiful eyes on that guy over there!”
“Back away slowly, bitch,” Barney warned. "I saw him first."
“How could I,” Saffy said, by now completely in a parallel universe, “with all my extensive dating history, have missed an entire demographic?”
Leave it to Sharyn to be practical when she heard about this. “She eat rendang every day, her constipation how?”
Monday, January 05, 2009
Back to Basics
When it comes to technology, I’m a right old dinosaur. I’m the sort of person who will show up at a SingTel shop and ask if they’ve a phone that dials out and receives phone calls. “That’s all,” I tell them firmly. “I don’t want anything with games, GPS, music, alarm, camera, diary, calculator functions, nothing. Nothing,” I repeat.
“Please don’t tell people that I live with you,” Saffy once begged me after a particularly painful visit to the SingTel shop during which I must have looked at every single model they had and said no to every single one. The one I wanted had been discontinued. Four years ago.
I don’t care what people say. A phone is just meant to make calls. That’s all. If it does anything more than that, it’s got no business being called a phone. “It’s the same with a vibrator,” I told Saffy recently over breakfast, trying to look for an example that would make sense to her. “Why, for instance, would you want one that also has an alarm clock function?” I asked.
Saffy sat up straighter, eyes wide open. “Shut. Up. They make them with alarm clocks? Oh my God, that’s perfect because sometimes I fall asleep while using mine!”
Amanda looked up from her Hello! magazine and stared at Saffy who shifted a little under the strength of the gaze. “Do not tell people that I live with you,” she said which led Saffy to later complain privately that it’s no wonder Amanda is still single. “She’s so bossy!”
My point is, technology is not my best friend. It took me the longest time to get an iPod and even longer to work out how to load songs onto it. Of course, once I got the hang of it, I sat up all night loading music and, at last count, I had over 4000 songs on it.
But leave it to some kill-joy to rain on my parade.
“Hey, how often do you back up your iPod?” my best friend Karl asked me the other day. We were walking from Borders to lunch at Paragon. I stopped in the middle of the road, causing a little human traffic jam to swirl around me. As often happens when the conversation turns technical, my heartbeat went up a little. “Back up? What do you mean?”
Karl walked back and pulled me along. “You know, like you back up your computer so all your documents are safe. How often do you back up your iPod?”
I was astonished. Though now that I think about it, I’m astonished that I was astonished in the first place.
“How do you back up an iPod?”
“Well, I normally back up my iTunes to an external hard-drive,” Karl said. “But I guess as long as you’ve got all your songs in the library, that should be fine. You’re looking at me funny. Why?”
“I know you’re speaking English because I recognise the words, but really, I have no idea what you just said.”
“What don’t you understand?”
“Well, for starters, I don’t have iTunes,” I said patiently. “I have an iPod.”
Barney Chen said that that night, Karl rang him to wonder how I ever managed to get out of the house. “He was going on and on about how easy it was to sync this and do that, it made me very dizzy to be honest with you. He’s so butch!” Barney said adding thoughtfully, “He’s almost more of a man than that dreadful harpy he’s married to.”
I’ve not stopped complaining since then that not only have I had to learn how to load my songs, I now also have to learn how to save them. “It’s ridiculous!” I said to Saffy.
“I don’t understand why you don’t have all your songs on your laptop anyway,” she said, patently pretending that she knew what she was saying, which aggravated me even more.
“Because I didn’t want to use up all that space. I thought 4000 songs would take up a lot of space. So I deleted them!”
“Not if you just use the laptop for word processing. It’s not as if you use a lot of applications or do a lot of programming,” Saffy said fluently. This, from the girl who, until recently, was seen trying into attach an alarm clock to her personal lifestyle device, as she’s decided to call her vibrator.
“If this works, I’ll be so rich I’ll never have to work another day in my life!” she said as she fiddled with bits of wire.
Amanda says that if Saffy electrocutes herself, we’re evicting her.
“Please don’t tell people that I live with you,” Saffy once begged me after a particularly painful visit to the SingTel shop during which I must have looked at every single model they had and said no to every single one. The one I wanted had been discontinued. Four years ago.
I don’t care what people say. A phone is just meant to make calls. That’s all. If it does anything more than that, it’s got no business being called a phone. “It’s the same with a vibrator,” I told Saffy recently over breakfast, trying to look for an example that would make sense to her. “Why, for instance, would you want one that also has an alarm clock function?” I asked.
Saffy sat up straighter, eyes wide open. “Shut. Up. They make them with alarm clocks? Oh my God, that’s perfect because sometimes I fall asleep while using mine!”
Amanda looked up from her Hello! magazine and stared at Saffy who shifted a little under the strength of the gaze. “Do not tell people that I live with you,” she said which led Saffy to later complain privately that it’s no wonder Amanda is still single. “She’s so bossy!”
My point is, technology is not my best friend. It took me the longest time to get an iPod and even longer to work out how to load songs onto it. Of course, once I got the hang of it, I sat up all night loading music and, at last count, I had over 4000 songs on it.
But leave it to some kill-joy to rain on my parade.
“Hey, how often do you back up your iPod?” my best friend Karl asked me the other day. We were walking from Borders to lunch at Paragon. I stopped in the middle of the road, causing a little human traffic jam to swirl around me. As often happens when the conversation turns technical, my heartbeat went up a little. “Back up? What do you mean?”
Karl walked back and pulled me along. “You know, like you back up your computer so all your documents are safe. How often do you back up your iPod?”
I was astonished. Though now that I think about it, I’m astonished that I was astonished in the first place.
“How do you back up an iPod?”
“Well, I normally back up my iTunes to an external hard-drive,” Karl said. “But I guess as long as you’ve got all your songs in the library, that should be fine. You’re looking at me funny. Why?”
“I know you’re speaking English because I recognise the words, but really, I have no idea what you just said.”
“What don’t you understand?”
“Well, for starters, I don’t have iTunes,” I said patiently. “I have an iPod.”
Barney Chen said that that night, Karl rang him to wonder how I ever managed to get out of the house. “He was going on and on about how easy it was to sync this and do that, it made me very dizzy to be honest with you. He’s so butch!” Barney said adding thoughtfully, “He’s almost more of a man than that dreadful harpy he’s married to.”
I’ve not stopped complaining since then that not only have I had to learn how to load my songs, I now also have to learn how to save them. “It’s ridiculous!” I said to Saffy.
“I don’t understand why you don’t have all your songs on your laptop anyway,” she said, patently pretending that she knew what she was saying, which aggravated me even more.
“Because I didn’t want to use up all that space. I thought 4000 songs would take up a lot of space. So I deleted them!”
“Not if you just use the laptop for word processing. It’s not as if you use a lot of applications or do a lot of programming,” Saffy said fluently. This, from the girl who, until recently, was seen trying into attach an alarm clock to her personal lifestyle device, as she’s decided to call her vibrator.
“If this works, I’ll be so rich I’ll never have to work another day in my life!” she said as she fiddled with bits of wire.
Amanda says that if Saffy electrocutes herself, we’re evicting her.
Wednesday, December 10, 2008
Angelic Behaviour
People are always asking me what my favourite past time is. Well, OK, that’s not strictly true. What they actually ask me is: “What do you do all day?” Which is a rather rude way of saying they think I’m incredibly lazy. But I’m the sort of guy who says my glass is half-full anyway, so really, it’s all water off a duck’s back.
So when people ask me what my favourite past time is, I always say that I wait for the arrival on YouTube of the latest Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show. “I spend my year looking forward to it,” I say without the slightest sense of embarrassment.
What’s that you say? You don’t see what’s so great about the show? It’s just a bunch of women in their underwear?
That’s like saying tennis is just two people hitting a ball across the net. That a Maserati is just a car. Or that Gisele Bundchen is just a girl with two legs.
In the little flat that I share with Saffy and Amanda and my adopted mongrel dog Pooch, the excitement of a Victoria’s Secret Show is a bit like the announcement that Oprah is coming to dinner.
“I wish I looked like Alessandra,” Amanda once said wistfully. She’d just come back from a trip to America where she’d raided the Victoria’s Secret store and brought back a haul of little bikinis, bras and other delicates. I remember she sat on her bed in a sea of pinks, polka-dots, reds and blacks, a little afraid to try any of it on. For at the back of her mind was the certainty that even when she slipped into the sheer silky camisole and tossed her hair, she would never look like a junior Victoria’s Secret Angel, let alone Her Holy Bodyness, Alessandra.
Leave it to Saffy to be practical. “Well, of course we will never look like an Angel!” she huffed, her bosom heaving. “Those girls have an army of people to do their hair, do their make-up, apply body glitter and put on wings for them! God, if I had all that attention, I’d wipe Adriana Lima off the catwalk!”
It says something for Saffy’s immense sense of confidence that not even the facts that she is a good 3 inches shorter than Ms Lima and she currently had a bad case of dandruff (Saffy, not Adey) factored into her world view. Meanwhile, thank you God for YouTube, otherwise it would be months before the show made it to TV.
“Where do these people have so much time that they will tape a show and then upload it to the net!” Saffy said a few nights ago as we gathered around the lap-top at home as she tapped in the keywords.
My best friend Karl had brought popcorn. “I’m just grateful someone does! Really, this is the highlight of my year. I love Selita. I wanna have children with her.”
Barney Chen patted him on the back. “Way out of your league. Stick to your nasty wife.”
This year’s show took place in Miami on a giant crescent shaped stage and it was a doozy. There were great music, lots of gorgeous girls in underwear, wings of twigs and cobwebs and slinky costumes. There was Usher. There was a rainstorm of red rose petals. And Heidi Klum.
“Someone needs to lock her up and throw away the key,” Saffy said at one stage. “It’s unnatural that she’s had ten kids and still looks like that!”
“She’s a freak of nature!” said Amanda.
“I love her,” said Saffy.
“Me too,” Amanda conceded. “I want to be her!”
“But I’m not having Seal though,” Saffy added.
“I’ll take him,” Amanda said, effortlessly tearing apart Heidi’s happy family unit.
“I love Selita’s new hair!” Karl mumbled, slack-jawed as one long limbed goddess after the other strutted across the confetti-strewn runway.
“That is such a gay thing to say,” Barney growled. “I want Tyra back. That girl could really work a runway.”
“Are Marisa Miller’s boobs real?” Amanda asked as we all leaned in to get a better look.
“Karolina’s got too much make-up on,” Amanda said. “She looks like she’s in drag.”
“But in a good way,” Barney said loyally. He’d once shown up at a fancy dress party as Karolina Kurkova. At a Victoria’s Secret themed party of course. In certain circles, that outfit – complete with glittering wings – is still talked about in reverent hushed tones.
That night, we watched the show five times. And we’ve already made it a date for next year’s show. As Karl said when he left, “Seriously, who needs religion?”
So when people ask me what my favourite past time is, I always say that I wait for the arrival on YouTube of the latest Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show. “I spend my year looking forward to it,” I say without the slightest sense of embarrassment.
What’s that you say? You don’t see what’s so great about the show? It’s just a bunch of women in their underwear?
That’s like saying tennis is just two people hitting a ball across the net. That a Maserati is just a car. Or that Gisele Bundchen is just a girl with two legs.
In the little flat that I share with Saffy and Amanda and my adopted mongrel dog Pooch, the excitement of a Victoria’s Secret Show is a bit like the announcement that Oprah is coming to dinner.
“I wish I looked like Alessandra,” Amanda once said wistfully. She’d just come back from a trip to America where she’d raided the Victoria’s Secret store and brought back a haul of little bikinis, bras and other delicates. I remember she sat on her bed in a sea of pinks, polka-dots, reds and blacks, a little afraid to try any of it on. For at the back of her mind was the certainty that even when she slipped into the sheer silky camisole and tossed her hair, she would never look like a junior Victoria’s Secret Angel, let alone Her Holy Bodyness, Alessandra.
Leave it to Saffy to be practical. “Well, of course we will never look like an Angel!” she huffed, her bosom heaving. “Those girls have an army of people to do their hair, do their make-up, apply body glitter and put on wings for them! God, if I had all that attention, I’d wipe Adriana Lima off the catwalk!”
It says something for Saffy’s immense sense of confidence that not even the facts that she is a good 3 inches shorter than Ms Lima and she currently had a bad case of dandruff (Saffy, not Adey) factored into her world view. Meanwhile, thank you God for YouTube, otherwise it would be months before the show made it to TV.
“Where do these people have so much time that they will tape a show and then upload it to the net!” Saffy said a few nights ago as we gathered around the lap-top at home as she tapped in the keywords.
My best friend Karl had brought popcorn. “I’m just grateful someone does! Really, this is the highlight of my year. I love Selita. I wanna have children with her.”
Barney Chen patted him on the back. “Way out of your league. Stick to your nasty wife.”
This year’s show took place in Miami on a giant crescent shaped stage and it was a doozy. There were great music, lots of gorgeous girls in underwear, wings of twigs and cobwebs and slinky costumes. There was Usher. There was a rainstorm of red rose petals. And Heidi Klum.
“Someone needs to lock her up and throw away the key,” Saffy said at one stage. “It’s unnatural that she’s had ten kids and still looks like that!”
“She’s a freak of nature!” said Amanda.
“I love her,” said Saffy.
“Me too,” Amanda conceded. “I want to be her!”
“But I’m not having Seal though,” Saffy added.
“I’ll take him,” Amanda said, effortlessly tearing apart Heidi’s happy family unit.
“I love Selita’s new hair!” Karl mumbled, slack-jawed as one long limbed goddess after the other strutted across the confetti-strewn runway.
“That is such a gay thing to say,” Barney growled. “I want Tyra back. That girl could really work a runway.”
“Are Marisa Miller’s boobs real?” Amanda asked as we all leaned in to get a better look.
“Karolina’s got too much make-up on,” Amanda said. “She looks like she’s in drag.”
“But in a good way,” Barney said loyally. He’d once shown up at a fancy dress party as Karolina Kurkova. At a Victoria’s Secret themed party of course. In certain circles, that outfit – complete with glittering wings – is still talked about in reverent hushed tones.
That night, we watched the show five times. And we’ve already made it a date for next year’s show. As Karl said when he left, “Seriously, who needs religion?”
Tuesday, December 02, 2008
Career Trajectory
When we were small, people were always asking me and my siblings what we wanted to be when we grew up. It was as if the question occupied their every waking moment. “So what do you want to be when you grow up?” my aunt Ai-Ling would ask as she handed me a red packet at Chinese New Year. In her tight red cheong sam, she bore an uncanny resemblance to a lap cheong.
“Not look like you!” my sister Michelle would mutter under her breath while Jack, just five years old, would snigger.
Our mother, of course, harboured the fantasy of every Chinese mother since the dawn of time that her brood would become a doctor, lawyer and engineer. Imagine her distress when Jack suggested, with a very straight face, that he might like to become a nurse. She never was able to get a handle on his sadistic sense of humour.
Still, the question “What do you want to be when you grow up?” came up with increasing frequency and after a while, the pressure began to tell on us all, especially my sister. At university, Michelle dated in rapid succession, a medical, law and engineering student and then announced that she’d never been more bored in her life and that she would rather die than to end up like “those jerks”. And much to everyone’s confusion, she decided she wanted to be an accountant.
As Jack would ask me more than once, “That’s not boring?”
Years later, Mother has resigned herself to the fact that her wilfully stubborn children will never amount to much. I’ve quit being a lawyer to write magazine articles for 5 cents a word, Michelle is a reluctant (and often very angry) accountant while Jack spends his time trekking across the Himalayas and smoking bong to keep warm. And whenever anyone asks our Mother what we do, she changes the topic.
The other day, Michelle rang and complained that she hated her job. “Oh my God, it’s so boring!” she moaned.
“Try writing for 5 cents a word!” I said. We’re a competitive family.
“I’ve just spent the past three weeks auditing this company that’s gone belly-up and all I could think of was ‘Who cares?’ It’s a financial meltdown. The world as we know it is coming to an end and there I was, stuck in a dingy room in the basement surrounded by boxes and boxes of dusty accounting records. It was awful!”
My flatmate Saffy thinks Michelle needs a complete career change. “It stands to reason,” she said, her bosom inflating firmly. “Only someone who is emotionally lobotomised would ever become an accountant and your sister is slowly waking up from the nightmare!”
Amanda stared at Saffy for a bit.
“What?” Saffy asked.
“Do you just make these things up?” Amanda demanded.
“So I mix up my metaphoricals, but they make sense!” Saffy replied stubbornly.
“But what’s she going to do?” I asked. “She’s spent her whole life as an accountant, it’s not something you suddenly just give up.”
“Sure she can,” Saffy said easily. “People do it all the time. Especially married couples. Look at my father and Wicked Evil Stepmother. He spent 20 years putting up with her nastiness and then one day, he gets up from bed and files for divorce. What? Stop looking at me like that, Amanda! It makes sense!”
I immediately Skyped Michelle. “Oh, I’m too old for a career change!” she groaned.
“Saffy says her father is very happy now,” I reported.
In her little Skype window, Michelle blinked. “What?”
When Mother heard about her daughter’s mid-career crisis, she was ecstatic. She’d never gotten over the fact that her precious child had ended up being a “book-keeper” and now there was hope. “People have career changes all the time!” she said happily to me over the phone. “Your uncle Martin was just a pharmacist before he decided to become a dentist!”
“Mother,” I said patiently, “Uncle Martin is a dental assistant! He’s the one who moves that tube around in your mouth to suck up all the saliva and blood.”
“Well, he’s not going to be doing that for long. He’ll be a real dentist soon,” she said loyally, completely ignoring the fact that Uncle Martin is 62 and he works for his wife who’s the real dentist.
“Maybe, I’ll just take time off and join Jack on his treks,” Michelle said last night. “Or maybe I just need a break, clear my head and get my Mojo back.”
“Or maybe she just needs to get laid,” Saffy said, to which Amanda added wearily, “Join the queue!”
“Not look like you!” my sister Michelle would mutter under her breath while Jack, just five years old, would snigger.
Our mother, of course, harboured the fantasy of every Chinese mother since the dawn of time that her brood would become a doctor, lawyer and engineer. Imagine her distress when Jack suggested, with a very straight face, that he might like to become a nurse. She never was able to get a handle on his sadistic sense of humour.
Still, the question “What do you want to be when you grow up?” came up with increasing frequency and after a while, the pressure began to tell on us all, especially my sister. At university, Michelle dated in rapid succession, a medical, law and engineering student and then announced that she’d never been more bored in her life and that she would rather die than to end up like “those jerks”. And much to everyone’s confusion, she decided she wanted to be an accountant.
As Jack would ask me more than once, “That’s not boring?”
Years later, Mother has resigned herself to the fact that her wilfully stubborn children will never amount to much. I’ve quit being a lawyer to write magazine articles for 5 cents a word, Michelle is a reluctant (and often very angry) accountant while Jack spends his time trekking across the Himalayas and smoking bong to keep warm. And whenever anyone asks our Mother what we do, she changes the topic.
The other day, Michelle rang and complained that she hated her job. “Oh my God, it’s so boring!” she moaned.
“Try writing for 5 cents a word!” I said. We’re a competitive family.
“I’ve just spent the past three weeks auditing this company that’s gone belly-up and all I could think of was ‘Who cares?’ It’s a financial meltdown. The world as we know it is coming to an end and there I was, stuck in a dingy room in the basement surrounded by boxes and boxes of dusty accounting records. It was awful!”
My flatmate Saffy thinks Michelle needs a complete career change. “It stands to reason,” she said, her bosom inflating firmly. “Only someone who is emotionally lobotomised would ever become an accountant and your sister is slowly waking up from the nightmare!”
Amanda stared at Saffy for a bit.
“What?” Saffy asked.
“Do you just make these things up?” Amanda demanded.
“So I mix up my metaphoricals, but they make sense!” Saffy replied stubbornly.
“But what’s she going to do?” I asked. “She’s spent her whole life as an accountant, it’s not something you suddenly just give up.”
“Sure she can,” Saffy said easily. “People do it all the time. Especially married couples. Look at my father and Wicked Evil Stepmother. He spent 20 years putting up with her nastiness and then one day, he gets up from bed and files for divorce. What? Stop looking at me like that, Amanda! It makes sense!”
I immediately Skyped Michelle. “Oh, I’m too old for a career change!” she groaned.
“Saffy says her father is very happy now,” I reported.
In her little Skype window, Michelle blinked. “What?”
When Mother heard about her daughter’s mid-career crisis, she was ecstatic. She’d never gotten over the fact that her precious child had ended up being a “book-keeper” and now there was hope. “People have career changes all the time!” she said happily to me over the phone. “Your uncle Martin was just a pharmacist before he decided to become a dentist!”
“Mother,” I said patiently, “Uncle Martin is a dental assistant! He’s the one who moves that tube around in your mouth to suck up all the saliva and blood.”
“Well, he’s not going to be doing that for long. He’ll be a real dentist soon,” she said loyally, completely ignoring the fact that Uncle Martin is 62 and he works for his wife who’s the real dentist.
“Maybe, I’ll just take time off and join Jack on his treks,” Michelle said last night. “Or maybe I just need a break, clear my head and get my Mojo back.”
“Or maybe she just needs to get laid,” Saffy said, to which Amanda added wearily, “Join the queue!”
Saturday, November 22, 2008
Jog Strap
Among the many great mysteries in life (why people insist on noisily dragging their feet when they walk being the least of them), the one that stumps me most is this whole business about jogging.
Really, it’s the most absurd activity. Never mind the fact that the guy who made jogging a world-wide phenomenon actually died of a heart attack while out jogging (which in itself should be a clear warning about how dangerous it is), but if God had ever intended us to jog anywhere, he’d never have invented the car.
The subject came out recently when my flatmate Saffy started dating Madison.
“Wait a minute,” Amanda had interrupted the first time Saffy brought up the subject. “His name is Madison? This is a guy?”
Saffy had the grace to look embarrassed. “I think he chose it himself. But I’ve got no choice! I can’t not date a guy just because he’s got a girl’s name!”
“Yes, you can!” Amanda yelled.
“I’ve not been on a date since Independence!”
I looked up from my cereal and piped up. “Isn’t Madison the name of that mermaid in ‘Splash’?”
Saffy turned around to look at me, her eyes narrowed into slits. I went back to concentrating on my cereal. “Are you sure he’s straight?” Amanda asked. “I don’t want to be the one to bring this up, but you’ve had quite a few dates with guys who really should have shopping at the MAC counter with Barney Chen.”
“Oh, who knows these days?” Saffy sighed. “The world has just turned upside down. Every guy I’ve dated this year has offered to carry my handbag for me in public. And the ones who don’t, love to play mah-jong with their aunties. At least with Madison, he does manly things like...like jogging. That’s gottta count for something right?” she asked, with a pathetic plea in her eyes.
“Totally!” Amanda and I chimed loyally, though I secretly thought that anyone who voluntarily jogs has his own special set of mental problems, and judging by the look in Amanda’s eyes, I could tell she was thinking the same thing.
Things went well for a couple of weeks. Saffy and Madison went on a few dates. They went dancing at Zouk though Saffy came home complaining that everyone on the dance floor was a foetus and she felt like she was 102-years old. “It was awful!” she pronounced, her formidable bosom heaving with embarrassment.
One weekend, they visited his parents (“They live in a pig-sty!” was Saffy’s horrified verdict) and went to midnight movies. They made out in the back seat of his car, ate supper at hawker centres and did all the usual things that dating couples do. And then, a week ago, he finally popped the big question.
“Oh dear God!” Saffy said the minute I walked in the front door.
“Yes, my child?” I blasphemed as I took in the wild look in her eyes.
“Madison asked me to go jogging with him!” Saffy said in a rush, as if saying it quickly might help erase the full horror of the moment. I blinked several times and then reached for the phone.
“I’ll be home in twenty minutes!” Amanda said crisply. She made it in eighteen. “What do you mean he asked you to go jogging with him? What happened?” she demanded immediately as she marched through the front door, barely pausing to toss off her Prada sling-backs.
“Well,” Saffy began miserably. “We were just hanging out in Paragon window-shopping and then suddenly he turned and asked me to go jogging with him this weekend.”
“That’s just sick!” I said firmly.
“Who does he think I am?” Saffy asked, a little spirit creeping back into her posture.
“Do you even know how to run?” I asked.
“Can’t remember the last time I walked faster than a crawl,” Saffy replied. “But I was thinking that it can’t really be that bad, can it? I mean, lots of people do it every day. Barney Chen jogs every day and he’s...oh...” she trailed off.
Amanda and I exchanged glances.
“Well, I guess if you look at the bigger picture,” I began, “it’s really not that bad. You guys get on really well. You even hate his friends and you’re thinking about letting him carry your handbag, so it’s all looking quite good.”
“But now he wants her to go jogging,” Amanda pointed out.
“And I don’t want to!” Saffy pouted.
And so, right now, they’re in the lounge room breaking up. I can hear them through the thin door. “I’m becoming a nun!” Saffy tells Madison.
I strain to hear his reply.
Really, it’s the most absurd activity. Never mind the fact that the guy who made jogging a world-wide phenomenon actually died of a heart attack while out jogging (which in itself should be a clear warning about how dangerous it is), but if God had ever intended us to jog anywhere, he’d never have invented the car.
The subject came out recently when my flatmate Saffy started dating Madison.
“Wait a minute,” Amanda had interrupted the first time Saffy brought up the subject. “His name is Madison? This is a guy?”
Saffy had the grace to look embarrassed. “I think he chose it himself. But I’ve got no choice! I can’t not date a guy just because he’s got a girl’s name!”
“Yes, you can!” Amanda yelled.
“I’ve not been on a date since Independence!”
I looked up from my cereal and piped up. “Isn’t Madison the name of that mermaid in ‘Splash’?”
Saffy turned around to look at me, her eyes narrowed into slits. I went back to concentrating on my cereal. “Are you sure he’s straight?” Amanda asked. “I don’t want to be the one to bring this up, but you’ve had quite a few dates with guys who really should have shopping at the MAC counter with Barney Chen.”
“Oh, who knows these days?” Saffy sighed. “The world has just turned upside down. Every guy I’ve dated this year has offered to carry my handbag for me in public. And the ones who don’t, love to play mah-jong with their aunties. At least with Madison, he does manly things like...like jogging. That’s gottta count for something right?” she asked, with a pathetic plea in her eyes.
“Totally!” Amanda and I chimed loyally, though I secretly thought that anyone who voluntarily jogs has his own special set of mental problems, and judging by the look in Amanda’s eyes, I could tell she was thinking the same thing.
Things went well for a couple of weeks. Saffy and Madison went on a few dates. They went dancing at Zouk though Saffy came home complaining that everyone on the dance floor was a foetus and she felt like she was 102-years old. “It was awful!” she pronounced, her formidable bosom heaving with embarrassment.
One weekend, they visited his parents (“They live in a pig-sty!” was Saffy’s horrified verdict) and went to midnight movies. They made out in the back seat of his car, ate supper at hawker centres and did all the usual things that dating couples do. And then, a week ago, he finally popped the big question.
“Oh dear God!” Saffy said the minute I walked in the front door.
“Yes, my child?” I blasphemed as I took in the wild look in her eyes.
“Madison asked me to go jogging with him!” Saffy said in a rush, as if saying it quickly might help erase the full horror of the moment. I blinked several times and then reached for the phone.
“I’ll be home in twenty minutes!” Amanda said crisply. She made it in eighteen. “What do you mean he asked you to go jogging with him? What happened?” she demanded immediately as she marched through the front door, barely pausing to toss off her Prada sling-backs.
“Well,” Saffy began miserably. “We were just hanging out in Paragon window-shopping and then suddenly he turned and asked me to go jogging with him this weekend.”
“That’s just sick!” I said firmly.
“Who does he think I am?” Saffy asked, a little spirit creeping back into her posture.
“Do you even know how to run?” I asked.
“Can’t remember the last time I walked faster than a crawl,” Saffy replied. “But I was thinking that it can’t really be that bad, can it? I mean, lots of people do it every day. Barney Chen jogs every day and he’s...oh...” she trailed off.
Amanda and I exchanged glances.
“Well, I guess if you look at the bigger picture,” I began, “it’s really not that bad. You guys get on really well. You even hate his friends and you’re thinking about letting him carry your handbag, so it’s all looking quite good.”
“But now he wants her to go jogging,” Amanda pointed out.
“And I don’t want to!” Saffy pouted.
And so, right now, they’re in the lounge room breaking up. I can hear them through the thin door. “I’m becoming a nun!” Saffy tells Madison.
I strain to hear his reply.
Wednesday, November 12, 2008
Back in Vogue
I don’t know about you, but in the little apartment that I share with Saffy, Amanda and my beloved adopted mongrel dog, Pooch, the biggest news right now is not the state of the world’s financial markets or even if the new American president should have surgery to pin his ears back.
No, the news that grips the fevered imaginations of my flatmates is Madonna’s divorce from Guy Ritchie.
This is how Saffy broke the news as Amanda walked in through our front door. “Oh God, Madonna!”
Amanda later said that for a confused minute, she thought that Saffy was having a mystical vision. As she said, “You never know with her.”
In this increasingly cynical world we live in, it says something that all of us so thoroughly bought into Madonna’s apparently fairy tale married life. Here was this rough New York girl with the unshaved armpits and the freakish ability to wrap her legs around her head (“Imagine sex with her!” as Saffy once observed with penetrating insight) who got married in some Scottish castle and basically packed up home for cold, drizzly, grey London where she then proceeded to have a multitude of children with the buff, no nonsense Guy Ritchie.
“He’s hot!” Amanda has said, with approval, on more than one occasion.
For her part, Saffy couldn’t get over how good Madonna was at multi-tasking her life. “How does that woman do it? A career, bazillions of dollars, abs of steel, Shambala and a great husband!”
“Kabbalah!” I said.
“Bless you!” Saffy replied from her parallel universe.
Not even the gossip that the Material Girl had been having an affair with that baseball player could tarnish her reputation.
“It’s all tawdry lies!” Saffy exclaimed at the time.
“Where got?” her good friend Sharyn said over a teh-o at Lau Pa Sat. “I read on Yahoo, you know. Must be true, lah!”
“You can’t believe everything you read, you numbnut!” Saffy said uncharitably, while hoping that Sharyn wouldn’t notice the latest copy of US Weekly peeking out over the edge of her handbag.
“You know for sure, is it!” Sharyn said whose coke-bottle glasses rarely allowed her to see anything beyond a feet anyway. On a clear day.
“It’s all lies. Madonna would never cheat on Guy!” Saffy replied with the kind of authority that hinted that she’d just that morning had coffee with her best friend Maddie.
The calm that followed the little storm with the baseball guy was, to the girls, proof that it was all the media trying to cause problems in a stainless marriage. “I swear, some people have nothing better to do!” Amanda said, as she stretched out on our lounge one Sunday afternoon and scrutinised the Enquirer’s report that Guy’s mother was denying that there was trouble in paradise. “They’re just jealous that some people can have a happy marriage. Such bad karma!” she pronounced.
Of course, shortly after came the official announcement that the Ritchies were splitting up.
For a few days, Saffy was convinced it was a late April Fools day joke and refused to believe a word she read in US Weekly. Even Amanda, normally so unflappable, had the same wide-eyed wild look that Miss Venezuela normally has a split second after she’s been announced Miss Universe.
“How did that happen?” Saffy asked.
Sharyn was triumphant. “You see, lah! Yahoo was right!” Saffy told her that if she kept this up, she was going to be pushed down the nearest flight of stairs and then struck off the Christmas card list.
Barney Chen, who’s always had a major crush on Guy, announced that he was buying plane tickets to London. “I know it’s probably blasphemous to steal the Goddess's husband, but I think I just might have a chance with him!” he growled happily. “I’ve always had my doubts about that marriage!”
“How could you? Poor Lourdes!” Amanda cried.
Our best friend Karl, who’s been unhappily married to the unlovely Marsha for years, says he wishes he had to the guts to get divorced. “I don’t think Marsha will let me,” he said the other night after listening to Saffy and Amanda mourn about the end of an era.
“I could push her down the stairs,” offered Saffy, who’s never liked Marsha. “It’s a little crowded at the bottom right now, but I’m sure I could make room.”
“Seriously,” Amanda said. “If Madonna, with all her fame and money, can’t make a marriage work, what hope do the rest of us have?”
That night, she programmed her iPod to play ‘Vogue’ on reloop and popped a sleeping tablet.
No, the news that grips the fevered imaginations of my flatmates is Madonna’s divorce from Guy Ritchie.
This is how Saffy broke the news as Amanda walked in through our front door. “Oh God, Madonna!”
Amanda later said that for a confused minute, she thought that Saffy was having a mystical vision. As she said, “You never know with her.”
In this increasingly cynical world we live in, it says something that all of us so thoroughly bought into Madonna’s apparently fairy tale married life. Here was this rough New York girl with the unshaved armpits and the freakish ability to wrap her legs around her head (“Imagine sex with her!” as Saffy once observed with penetrating insight) who got married in some Scottish castle and basically packed up home for cold, drizzly, grey London where she then proceeded to have a multitude of children with the buff, no nonsense Guy Ritchie.
“He’s hot!” Amanda has said, with approval, on more than one occasion.
For her part, Saffy couldn’t get over how good Madonna was at multi-tasking her life. “How does that woman do it? A career, bazillions of dollars, abs of steel, Shambala and a great husband!”
“Kabbalah!” I said.
“Bless you!” Saffy replied from her parallel universe.
Not even the gossip that the Material Girl had been having an affair with that baseball player could tarnish her reputation.
“It’s all tawdry lies!” Saffy exclaimed at the time.
“Where got?” her good friend Sharyn said over a teh-o at Lau Pa Sat. “I read on Yahoo, you know. Must be true, lah!”
“You can’t believe everything you read, you numbnut!” Saffy said uncharitably, while hoping that Sharyn wouldn’t notice the latest copy of US Weekly peeking out over the edge of her handbag.
“You know for sure, is it!” Sharyn said whose coke-bottle glasses rarely allowed her to see anything beyond a feet anyway. On a clear day.
“It’s all lies. Madonna would never cheat on Guy!” Saffy replied with the kind of authority that hinted that she’d just that morning had coffee with her best friend Maddie.
The calm that followed the little storm with the baseball guy was, to the girls, proof that it was all the media trying to cause problems in a stainless marriage. “I swear, some people have nothing better to do!” Amanda said, as she stretched out on our lounge one Sunday afternoon and scrutinised the Enquirer’s report that Guy’s mother was denying that there was trouble in paradise. “They’re just jealous that some people can have a happy marriage. Such bad karma!” she pronounced.
Of course, shortly after came the official announcement that the Ritchies were splitting up.
For a few days, Saffy was convinced it was a late April Fools day joke and refused to believe a word she read in US Weekly. Even Amanda, normally so unflappable, had the same wide-eyed wild look that Miss Venezuela normally has a split second after she’s been announced Miss Universe.
“How did that happen?” Saffy asked.
Sharyn was triumphant. “You see, lah! Yahoo was right!” Saffy told her that if she kept this up, she was going to be pushed down the nearest flight of stairs and then struck off the Christmas card list.
Barney Chen, who’s always had a major crush on Guy, announced that he was buying plane tickets to London. “I know it’s probably blasphemous to steal the Goddess's husband, but I think I just might have a chance with him!” he growled happily. “I’ve always had my doubts about that marriage!”
“How could you? Poor Lourdes!” Amanda cried.
Our best friend Karl, who’s been unhappily married to the unlovely Marsha for years, says he wishes he had to the guts to get divorced. “I don’t think Marsha will let me,” he said the other night after listening to Saffy and Amanda mourn about the end of an era.
“I could push her down the stairs,” offered Saffy, who’s never liked Marsha. “It’s a little crowded at the bottom right now, but I’m sure I could make room.”
“Seriously,” Amanda said. “If Madonna, with all her fame and money, can’t make a marriage work, what hope do the rest of us have?”
That night, she programmed her iPod to play ‘Vogue’ on reloop and popped a sleeping tablet.
Thursday, October 16, 2008
Death Becomes Him
A few Sunday mornings ago, my neighbour Chen knocked on my door – an act that led my flatmate, Amanda, to complain afterwards that it’s just such bad manners to show up unannounced at someone’s home. “Especially on a Sunday! I hadn’t even put on my face yet!” she said, giving her vibrant tresses an indignant shake.
My only complaint was that Chen looked annoyingly chirpy for that time of the morning. “Ay, sorry hor, but have you notice how dirty our floor is? The condo cleaner is not mopping!” she said while looking accusingly around the corridor.
I peered out and confessed that I’d not paid much attention to the state of our flooring, but now that she mentioned it, it did look a bit grubby.
“Yar loh,” Chen chirruped. “Every week, hor, I go down to management office and complain. Now they see me, they get scare! So, this week, you go down complain, can?”
I promised I would and was about to shut the door when she suddenly said, “Oh, also, hor, my father-in-law pass away yesterday!”
Which came as both a surprise and a complete shock. I’d rather liked the old man and enjoyed his company. He was always wandering around the grounds in slow shuffling steps, dressed in a scrappy t-shirt and pajama pants. That’s all he ever wore. I often passed him on my way back from walking my beloved adopted mongrel dog Pooch and we’d stop to chat for a while – him in stuttering Mandarin, me in appalling Cantonese, yet somehow we managed.
What surprised me was his death. What completely shocked me was that he’d not died earlier. As Saffy pointed out, he must have been a hundred and ten. “At least,” she added.
But what was even more shocking was how cheerful Chen seemed about the whole thing. My first reaction to the news was dismay. “Oh!” I remember gasping. “I’m so sorry!”
“No, lah!” Chen beamed, waving her hand. “Is OK! Is OK! He very old or-redi!”
“It was like we were talking about the Great Singapore Sale or something!” I said later to Saffy and Amanda. “It was all so casually cheerful!”
“I so don’t want people to talk about me like that when I’m dead,” Amanda declared.
“What I don’t understand,” Saffy said, “is why she thought it was more important to knock on our door on a Sunday morning to talk about how dirty our corridor floor was, and then so casually add that the father of her husband had died just yesterday! Shouldn’t that be the first thing you tell people?”
“That’s why people don’t like daughters-in-law!” Amanda said firmly, a statement that caused even Saffy to turn around and stare.
Which is how, a few days later, we found ourselves sweltering in our condo carpark, under a big white tent with a coffin. We carefully selected a table under a fan, but it only seemed to be moving the hot air around. Saffy, never at ease at a funeral, managed to look everywhere but the coffin at the other end of the tent.
“Someone please tell me that the old man is in a refridgerated coffin!” Amanda said after she’d scrutinized the flower arrangements and what everyone was wearing. Saffy frowned as she mentally replayed Amanda’s words and it was clear she was not liking the ending of this episode.
Just then, Sushila, another neighbour a few floors down from us, arrived and sat down with us. “Aiyoh, that poor old man!” she said, as she peered down at her cleavage peeping out from beneath her low cut dress. “I really liked him. Never understood a word he said, but we seemed to have such wonderful conversations!”
I asked about her children. “Oh, they’re fine. They’re having exams now. But hey, can I ask you guys something?” Sushila said as she leaned forward. By instinct, Saffy and Amanda leaned in.
“Do you notice anything different about me?” she asked. The girls cocked their heads and stared.
“Your hair?” Saffy asked.
“New lip gloss?” Amanda said.
“No!” Sushila whispered dramatically. “I’ve just had a boob job!”
Needless to say, three pairs of eyes shifted south to examine her breasts. “I didn’t want to get them too big, but what do you think?” Sushila asked.
Saffy later said that it had taken all her self control not to reach out to poke Sushila’s breasts. “I’ve always wanted to see what they feel like,” she explained, to which a scandalized Amanda said that she was this close to moving countries.
“We were at a funeral, for Chrissakes!” she blasphemed.
My only complaint was that Chen looked annoyingly chirpy for that time of the morning. “Ay, sorry hor, but have you notice how dirty our floor is? The condo cleaner is not mopping!” she said while looking accusingly around the corridor.
I peered out and confessed that I’d not paid much attention to the state of our flooring, but now that she mentioned it, it did look a bit grubby.
“Yar loh,” Chen chirruped. “Every week, hor, I go down to management office and complain. Now they see me, they get scare! So, this week, you go down complain, can?”
I promised I would and was about to shut the door when she suddenly said, “Oh, also, hor, my father-in-law pass away yesterday!”
Which came as both a surprise and a complete shock. I’d rather liked the old man and enjoyed his company. He was always wandering around the grounds in slow shuffling steps, dressed in a scrappy t-shirt and pajama pants. That’s all he ever wore. I often passed him on my way back from walking my beloved adopted mongrel dog Pooch and we’d stop to chat for a while – him in stuttering Mandarin, me in appalling Cantonese, yet somehow we managed.
What surprised me was his death. What completely shocked me was that he’d not died earlier. As Saffy pointed out, he must have been a hundred and ten. “At least,” she added.
But what was even more shocking was how cheerful Chen seemed about the whole thing. My first reaction to the news was dismay. “Oh!” I remember gasping. “I’m so sorry!”
“No, lah!” Chen beamed, waving her hand. “Is OK! Is OK! He very old or-redi!”
“It was like we were talking about the Great Singapore Sale or something!” I said later to Saffy and Amanda. “It was all so casually cheerful!”
“I so don’t want people to talk about me like that when I’m dead,” Amanda declared.
“What I don’t understand,” Saffy said, “is why she thought it was more important to knock on our door on a Sunday morning to talk about how dirty our corridor floor was, and then so casually add that the father of her husband had died just yesterday! Shouldn’t that be the first thing you tell people?”
“That’s why people don’t like daughters-in-law!” Amanda said firmly, a statement that caused even Saffy to turn around and stare.
Which is how, a few days later, we found ourselves sweltering in our condo carpark, under a big white tent with a coffin. We carefully selected a table under a fan, but it only seemed to be moving the hot air around. Saffy, never at ease at a funeral, managed to look everywhere but the coffin at the other end of the tent.
“Someone please tell me that the old man is in a refridgerated coffin!” Amanda said after she’d scrutinized the flower arrangements and what everyone was wearing. Saffy frowned as she mentally replayed Amanda’s words and it was clear she was not liking the ending of this episode.
Just then, Sushila, another neighbour a few floors down from us, arrived and sat down with us. “Aiyoh, that poor old man!” she said, as she peered down at her cleavage peeping out from beneath her low cut dress. “I really liked him. Never understood a word he said, but we seemed to have such wonderful conversations!”
I asked about her children. “Oh, they’re fine. They’re having exams now. But hey, can I ask you guys something?” Sushila said as she leaned forward. By instinct, Saffy and Amanda leaned in.
“Do you notice anything different about me?” she asked. The girls cocked their heads and stared.
“Your hair?” Saffy asked.
“New lip gloss?” Amanda said.
“No!” Sushila whispered dramatically. “I’ve just had a boob job!”
Needless to say, three pairs of eyes shifted south to examine her breasts. “I didn’t want to get them too big, but what do you think?” Sushila asked.
Saffy later said that it had taken all her self control not to reach out to poke Sushila’s breasts. “I’ve always wanted to see what they feel like,” she explained, to which a scandalized Amanda said that she was this close to moving countries.
“We were at a funeral, for Chrissakes!” she blasphemed.
Friday, October 03, 2008
Money Talks
My mother rang me the other evening, right in the middle of “Survivor”. As a rule, I never answer the phone after 8 pm on the principle that if it’s urgent, there’s nothing I can do about it since I’m already in PJs and sipping herbal tea while watching TV. And if it’s not urgent, then why the hell should I be bothered? But this caller was persistent. The phone would ring and ring and stop. Twenty seconds later, it would ring and ring again. It was like listening to a dripping tap. It drove me up the wall. I grabbed the phone and stabbed the answer button.
“Can’t you take a hint?” I snapped. “Who the hell is this?”
“Really, is this what your expensive education has come to?” my mother began, her utterly and maddeningly serene voice floating across the continents.
“I was just…”
“Listen dear, I just wanted to check that you have put a sewing kit in your bank safe deposit box!”
“What? Sewing kit? Who is this? Is that you, Jack?”
“Oh, speaking of which,” my mother went on, “do you know where your brother is? I’ve been trying to call him for hours! He’s not picking up. And neither is your sister! What is wrong with you children? What if this was an emergency?”
“But it’s not an emergency!” I moaned. “I have no idea what you are talking about! What sewing kit? Why do I need a sewing kit?”
Mother sighed. “Because the financial markets are collapsing! Do you not read the newspapers? Really, I don’t know why your father worked so hard for so many years to send you children to such expensive boarding schools and…”
Michelle later rang to complain that as the years went by, she was more convinced than ever that we are all adopted. “I refuse to believe that I am in any way related to that woman!” she ranted.
My flatmate Saffy, on the other hand, has always been fascinated by my mother. “I’m just so amazed that she is able to find her way out of bed each morning,” she said the first time they met.
“Let alone give birth to three relatively normal children,” I’d added.
And now, the issue of the sewing kit. “What’s that all about?” Saffy wanted to know.
“It’s for when World War 3 hits and we’re running for our lives. She’s imagining that I’ll be dashing down to the bank vaults and be busy sewing gold bars into the lining of my pants,” I said.
“There’s going to be a war? When? No one told me! What does your mother know?” Saffy asked, her eyes widening and her breasts beginning to pump pneumatically.
“She’s just saying that we need to be prepared for some economic catastrophe,” I sighed. “The saddest part is that for years, she’s been hounding us all to buy little gold bars as a monetary hedge and I just don’t have the heart to tell her that my safe deposit box just has my first edition Batman comics in it!”
“That’s going to be really useful when you’re trying to barter for rice!” Saffy observed, immediately getting into the spirit of things.
Leave it to Amanda to take the nightmares of an old woman in her stride. “Oh, I totally get where your mother is coming from,” she said later that night after dinner. “I’ve got $50,000 in cash in my safe deposit box!”
Saffy coughed into her cappuccino. “What? Wait, you have a safe deposit box too?” she managed to splutter.
“I think you’re completely missing the point here, Saf,” I said gently and turned sharply to Amanda. “You have $50,000? In cash? How is that humanly possible?”
Amanda shrugged. “It’s my emergency cash fund. A few years ago, I figured that seeing as there’s still no husband on the horizon and between the two you, there might be fifty cents to go around, I figured that the only person who was going to look after me was me!”
I was still trying to wrap my head around the idea of $50,000 cash. Briefly, I tried to imagine what that must be like and what I would do if I had that much money sitting around idly in a safe deposit box. I decided that I’d probably go visit it every other day, just to keep it company.
Saffy looked wounded. “I do have more than fifty cents to my name, thank you very much!”
A few nights later, Mother rang again, this time advising me to store some cash in a Milo tin and store it under my bed. “We must change our names,” Michelle urged.
“Can’t you take a hint?” I snapped. “Who the hell is this?”
“Really, is this what your expensive education has come to?” my mother began, her utterly and maddeningly serene voice floating across the continents.
“I was just…”
“Listen dear, I just wanted to check that you have put a sewing kit in your bank safe deposit box!”
“What? Sewing kit? Who is this? Is that you, Jack?”
“Oh, speaking of which,” my mother went on, “do you know where your brother is? I’ve been trying to call him for hours! He’s not picking up. And neither is your sister! What is wrong with you children? What if this was an emergency?”
“But it’s not an emergency!” I moaned. “I have no idea what you are talking about! What sewing kit? Why do I need a sewing kit?”
Mother sighed. “Because the financial markets are collapsing! Do you not read the newspapers? Really, I don’t know why your father worked so hard for so many years to send you children to such expensive boarding schools and…”
Michelle later rang to complain that as the years went by, she was more convinced than ever that we are all adopted. “I refuse to believe that I am in any way related to that woman!” she ranted.
My flatmate Saffy, on the other hand, has always been fascinated by my mother. “I’m just so amazed that she is able to find her way out of bed each morning,” she said the first time they met.
“Let alone give birth to three relatively normal children,” I’d added.
And now, the issue of the sewing kit. “What’s that all about?” Saffy wanted to know.
“It’s for when World War 3 hits and we’re running for our lives. She’s imagining that I’ll be dashing down to the bank vaults and be busy sewing gold bars into the lining of my pants,” I said.
“There’s going to be a war? When? No one told me! What does your mother know?” Saffy asked, her eyes widening and her breasts beginning to pump pneumatically.
“She’s just saying that we need to be prepared for some economic catastrophe,” I sighed. “The saddest part is that for years, she’s been hounding us all to buy little gold bars as a monetary hedge and I just don’t have the heart to tell her that my safe deposit box just has my first edition Batman comics in it!”
“That’s going to be really useful when you’re trying to barter for rice!” Saffy observed, immediately getting into the spirit of things.
Leave it to Amanda to take the nightmares of an old woman in her stride. “Oh, I totally get where your mother is coming from,” she said later that night after dinner. “I’ve got $50,000 in cash in my safe deposit box!”
Saffy coughed into her cappuccino. “What? Wait, you have a safe deposit box too?” she managed to splutter.
“I think you’re completely missing the point here, Saf,” I said gently and turned sharply to Amanda. “You have $50,000? In cash? How is that humanly possible?”
Amanda shrugged. “It’s my emergency cash fund. A few years ago, I figured that seeing as there’s still no husband on the horizon and between the two you, there might be fifty cents to go around, I figured that the only person who was going to look after me was me!”
I was still trying to wrap my head around the idea of $50,000 cash. Briefly, I tried to imagine what that must be like and what I would do if I had that much money sitting around idly in a safe deposit box. I decided that I’d probably go visit it every other day, just to keep it company.
Saffy looked wounded. “I do have more than fifty cents to my name, thank you very much!”
A few nights later, Mother rang again, this time advising me to store some cash in a Milo tin and store it under my bed. “We must change our names,” Michelle urged.
Monday, September 08, 2008
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.
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
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
Thursday, June 05, 2008
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.
“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.
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