Drawing to a Close Today, 30 June 2008, marks an ending of one of the most significant and prolonged phases of my life. Today, after 20 years, I finally stop cartooning for The New Paper. It was a complicated decision, the details of which I don’t have time to go into at length at the moment, but let’s say for the moment that it was bittersweet. Here is my final strip: Share on Facebook Sunday Times: Much Ado About How Much The following was published in the Sunday Times on 29 June 2008: Much ado about how much by Colin Goh We Singaporeans like to say that we greet each other with “Have you eaten?”, whether in Malay, Mandarin or Chinese dialects. It tells others what kind of people we are, namely, food lovers. But I have to say that in my personal experience, “have you eaten?” was a greeting my parents only exchanged with their peers or elders, and never with me. (Maybe it’s because I was a “fatty bom bom”, so people felt that the answer to that question was rather obvious.) Meanwhile, my generation must have appeared to outsiders like stereotyped Red Indians (i.e. “native Americans”) in an old-fashioned Western film, because we would always greet each other with a brusque “How?” The typical reply to that question, however, was unmistakably Singaporean: “Lai dat, lor.” I used to chalk this existentialist response up to mere humility – that we Singaporeans somehow felt it impolite to suggest that we might be happier than others in our company. So when I first moved to New York, I adapted my reply. When people would ask, “How’re you?”, I would answer “Surviving”, or at most, “Okay.” If people asked, “How’s it going?”, I’d say, “It’s going.” (To be honest, to this day, I have no idea what “it” is, and where “it” is supposed to be going.) After a while, it occurred to me that the impression I was giving people wasn’t one of modesty, but of grumpiness or depression. Because the New Yorkers I met would always reply, “Good!” or “Fine!” whenever you asked how they were, even if they were in the midst of wading through six feet of sewage. I guess both the Singaporean and American responses could be characterised as insincerity, but I was beginning to prefer the one that radiated positivity over the one which suggested I needed Prozac. Then a few months ago, I encountered a greeting that was extremely sincere, but not necessarily polite. I might have mentioned this in a column last year, when I wrote about moving to the town of Flushing in the borough of Queens, which is home to New York’s largest Chinese community. When the Wife and I first met our next door neighbour, a fellow from mainland China, his greeting wasn’t “How are you?” or even “Hello” or “Nihao”. Instead, his first words to us, said while jerking his chin in the direction of our house, were: “Duo shao qian (How much money)?” We were to encounter “duo shao qian” as a common salutation over and over again in the ensuing months. It was said in lieu of “good morning” by the cab driver who’d arrived at our place to drive us to the airport. It was the second question put to the Wife by her foot reflexologist, immediately after “where do you live?” Meanwhile, a Singaporean friend who also lives in Flushing reported how he was flying his model airplane in the park, when he was suddenly aware that a mainland Chinese gentleman was standing right next to him. The gent’s first words? You guessed it. “Duo shao qian?” “It’s crazy,” said our friend. “Just the other day, I saw a guy walking his dog, when a Chinese woman stopped him, pointed to the dog and asked, “duo shao qian?”, because she wanted to buy a similar breed for her kid.” No less than the New York Times corroborated our experiences, in an article last week about the city’s growing number of mainland Chinese tourists. According to Jane Soong, a guide who leads tours of Manhattan in Mandarin, Chinese tourists are often curious about the values of the real estate they see. Said Ms Soong, “They’ll ask, ‘How much would that building cost?’ And when I give them an estimate, sometimes they say, ‘That’s not so expensive.’ ” Some of our American friends think this inquisitiveness about monetary value is intrusive and gauche, but I’m more ambivalent. To me, it’s less offensive than those Singaporeans we occasionally meet at gatherings in New York, who invariably ask, “So back home, what district you live in?” or “what secondary school you went to?” Because when the Chinese ask “duo shao qian?”, it’s just gathering information to help them make a financial decision, and not to assess where you are in the social hierarchy. How we greet people can say a lot about who we are, but then, so can how we choose to interpret it. Being asked ‘how much’ all the time seems a bit too much, but when you think about it, it’s much ado about nothing. Share on Facebook Sunday Times: Chicken and Duck Talking The following was published in the Sunday Times on 15 June 2008: Chicken and Duck Talking by Colin Goh One sweltering evening last week, the Wife and I were watching TV when the doorbell rang. Opening the door, we were surprised to see a short Hispanic man with craggy features that made him look like he’d been invented by Tolkien. It was Lou, our gardener. Well, not exactly our gardener, and technically not a gardener either. We’d rented a house that came with a garden, which Lou had been hired by our landlord to mow. After several months, however, our landlord decided we should take over paying for Lou’s services. The Wife and I thought this was fair. We’d been using the garden for backyard barbecuing, and also enjoying watching the wildlife passing through it daily: numerous cavorting squirrels, different species of birds, fireflies in the late summer, and a mangy old tomcat we’d nicknamed “Rapist”, as we’d once caught him in flagrante delicto with a very nervous-looking young tabby. So, we agreed. “Great! I’ll send Lou your way!” “said the landlord. But Lou didn’t show for several weeks, and we promptly forgot all about our new mowing obligation as we went home to Singapore for our annual trip. When we returned to New York, however, we got a pointed reminder: our yard was now overgrown, with weeds reaching up as high as my thigh. It had also become a KTV lounge for cats: every night, Rapist and friends would treat us to their rendition of the soundtrack to ‘881’. Not coincidentally, I suspect, Lou picked that time to reappear. “Buenuthardthhhh,” he said, and I looked at the Wife. We were suddenly reminded that negotiating with him wasn’t going to be so easy. Not because he was difficult – Lou was an amiable chap – but because he was completely incomprehensible. Firstly, he always spoke extremely fast, and secondly, his tongue was fatter than Jamie Oliver’s. Between the speed and the spit, one could only assume he was speaking Spanish. We’d once seen him arguing with the landlord, and it was a classic demonstration of the Cantonese idiom “gai tung aap gong”, meaning a chicken and duck trying vainly to communicate with each other. In fairness, we were probably as unintelligible to him, as he couldn’t speak English while our Spanish was limited to a few niceties - “cómo estás?” (how are you?), “muchas gracias” (thanks a lot) – and some salty invective stashed away for emergencies – “besame el culo, cabron!” (kiss my butt, you goat!). But Lou came prepared for the linguistic difficulties. “Vrrrm, vrrrm?” he mimed pushing a lawnmower. “Vrrrm, two weeks, cuanto?” I asked, raising one hand and rubbing my thumb against my fingers (the universal sign for “how much?”). “Nono, patellapattellapatellaquarthththth,” he said (or at least that’s what I heard), raising four fingers, followed by “hunnardollththth.” “I think he wants to mow four times a month for a hundred dollars,” said the Wife, flipping open a Spanish dictionary. “That’s a lot. It’s not a big garden,” I said, turning back to Lou, and re-raising two fingers. “No, no, dos! Uno mes, dos vrrrrm! Forty dollars, one month, two times?” He shook his head. “Nonono! Cortelthéthththpedquarthththth!” “That’s already more than the landlord pays you,” I said, which was the truth. The Wife and I had already agreed to give Lou a raise, as the summer promised to be punishingly hot. (That and the fact that on several occasions, Lou had referred to the landlord behind his back to us as “El Cheapo”.) “No dos, no,” Lou gesticulated, indicating the height of the grass by raising his hand to the level of his nipple. “Hierbapthththth, el gato patellapatellapthth!” To our alarm, he then adopted a crouching posture and started meowing, “Raaoww! Raaaow!” and next proceeded to wiggle his fingers around his backside. “Poot! Poot! Poot!” “I think he’s saying that if the grass grows too high, the cats treat it like a toilet,” whispered the Wife. I was just dumbstruck. “Uno mes, tres vrrrrm, fifty dollars?” the Wife raised three fingers, counter-offering a compromise. Lou paused, then smiled. “Hokay! You… friend! Amigo! Cortelthéthththped, todoththlothth thábadoththth, carécarécaré, feefty, friend!” “No El Cheapo?” I asked. Lou grinned, spreading his arms wide. “Nonono! Amigo!” We wrote a short note recording our understanding, got him to sign it, and we shook hands. The next day, our grass was back to normal, and the cats were gone. I couldn’t help but think: everyone keeps banging on about how we must all speak perfect English for international business, but Lou managed to secure improved terms from an ex-lawyer with qualifications in three jurisdictions without a word of it. Admittedly, he did so by impersonating a defecating cat. There’s got to be a message in there somewhere. Share on Facebook Sunday Times: Wanted and Unwanted The following was published in the Sunday Times on 1 June 2008, with the mention of TalkingCock.com omitted: Wanted and Unwanted by Colin Goh The Wife and I zipped into Singapore last week for a very short business trip, and we were surprised to find that a little bit of New York had preceded us. The bit was a feature I always took note of whenever I had to mail something – a very common item in U.S. post offices, but completely alien to Singaporeans, at least until now. I’m talking about a ‘Wanted’ poster. Whenever I’d step into the post offices in New York, the Wanted posters tacked to the bulletin board would always pique my curiosity: a simple letter-sized sheet of paper, bearing a mugshot of the fugitive and sometimes a still from a security camera, together with brief details of his offence (“wire fraud”, “possession of child pornography”, “mailing an explosive device with intent to kill”) and a line or two of “miscellaneous information” such as “works as a butler at casinos” or “flight risk, known to travel to Europe, Israel and Caribbean Islands. Subject may have fled to another country. Please refer to INTERPOL.” They were snapshots of an exciting Hollywood blockbuster that was taking place for real, but which brushed against my mundane life only when I was buying stamps. Occasionally, when browsing them, I’d imagine myself as some FBI agent in a Kevlar jacket with a shoulder-holstered pistol, flipping down my aviator sunglasses and addressing my similarly macho team-mates with Tommy Lee Jones’ Oscar-winning schpiel in the 1993 movie, The Fugitive: “What I want from each and every one of you is a hard-target search of every gas station, residence, warehouse, farmhouse, henhouse, outhouse and doghouse in that area. Checkpoints go up at fifteen miles… Go get him.” So seeing the posters of Mas Selamat Kastari everywhere in Singapore was an eye opener. I mean, I knew that keeping a lookout for him was a national priority. I could gather that from how the ‘Escaped Terrorist Spotter’ cartoon I did for TalkingCock.com, featuring MSK in a variety of disguises, has already exceeded 80,000 downloads and even been picked up by the international newswires. But I really didn’t anticipate the ubiquity of his official ‘Wanted’ poster on the ground. They were everywhere. Tacked to the tree outside my parents’ place. Pasted in shopping centres. Pinned two to a board at Ghim Moh Hawker Centre in what I can only call “4D” configuration: one big, one small. While re-entering Singapore after a visit to Johor, I saw several displayed at the immigration checkpoint, perhaps on the off-chance that he’d escaped the country and now wanted to come back. We also didn’t expect to hear so many MSK jokes, but they were present in virtually every conversation we had. People were referring to him as “Mat Alamak” and “Masi Lemak”, and a friend told us that she’d met a child who’d renamed her lost hamster after Singapore’s most wanted man. His escape is clearly a grave national security crisis, but it had also, perhaps inevitably, become a cultural phenomenon. Was the ubiquity of his image somehow undermining the seriousness of looking for him? Things were put in perspective for me at, of all places, the National Library. I was there to do some research at the Lee Kong Chian Reference Library on the 7th Floor, and the security guard was checking my bag. On his table was a little slanted plastic signboard. On its outer face was a series of rules for what could and could not be brought into the Library. On its inner face, visible only to the guard, was the mugshot of You-Know-Who. “Uncle,” I couldn’t help myself from asking. “Do you really think Mas Selamat is going to come to the Library to borrow books?” “Well, maybe he needs to check email and here got free internet,” the Wife chipped in. The guard’s previously serious face broke into a grin. “This is not just for the Library lah,” he replied. “It’s to help me remember even outside. Like that sure catch him, one.” “Well, if anyone can do it, it’s you, Uncle,” I smiled, giving him a thumbs up. “You’re very focused!” He nodded, switched back to his game face, then waved us in. From a publicity point of view, I guess the campaign is fulfilling its objective; awareness is awareness, no matter how it manifests. So I don’t think we should get our knickers in a twist over all the levity. In fact, it may actually be performing a valuable function: dampening any potential paranoia or panic. In other words, it’s good the campaign is giving us more than we’d wanted. Share on Facebook Sunday Times: Feeling Singaporean in a Chinese Restaurant The following was published in the Sunday Times on 18 May 2008: Feeling Singaporean in a Chinese Restaurant by Colin Goh in New York Growing up in a half-Peranakan household that spoke mostly English and just as much Malay as Hokkien or Teochew, and being educated in a mission school (then) famed for churning out bananas, I never really pondered the fact of my Chinese ethnicity to any great extent. Sure, we observed the usual traditions, but mainly around the time of festivals. Being Chinese in Singapore for me was just like, oh, having a mole or something. It’s there. So what? I started to think much more about being Chinese after I moved to New York. But it wasn’t some fit of “Joy Luck Club” angst from suddenly finding myself in an ethnic minority or being inundated by the dominant Western culture.  Ironically, it began when I found myself being surrounded by other Chinese – “real” Chinese at that. A few months ago, the Wife and I moved to Flushing in New York’s borough of Queens (video gaming fans will know it as ‘Dukes’ in Grand Theft Auto IV), the biggest Chinatown on America’s East Coast. Here, many stores don’t bother with English signs; aunties and uncles share their phlegm freely with the general public; and at night, itinerant chuanr carts emerge on the sidewalks, just like in Beijing. But Flushing is also Chinese in a quintessentially New York way.  Every weekend, in front of the steps of the Flushing Library, young mainlanders sell Olympic ‘One China, One Dream’ t-shirts and shout, “Support China!” while right next to them is a stand operated by the Falun Gong, displaying gory pictures of alleged torture suffered by their devotees in the motherland. Meanwhile, across the road, a street vendor peddles suspiciously cheap branded handbags and iPod Nanos, just below the offices of the “Global Service Center for Qutting Chinese Communist Party, Inc”. (Whenever friends from Beijing visit us, they all can’t resist snapping photos of themselves making ‘V’ signs under its signboard.) My supermarket distributes free copies of the propagandist China Daily, the possibly just as propagandist Epoch Times and even the Manchu Monthly. The Chinese here come from all over China, not just the cosmopolitan cities, and the diaspora is also amply represented: there are Hong Kongers, Taiwanese, Malaysians and even a smattering of us Singaporeans. Immersed in the sheer variety of Chinese-ness, one can’t help but ponder one’s position along the spectrum. I was forced to contemplate this recently when the Wife and I were trying out a new Northern Chinese restaurant, a small and cramped joint packed with all-Chinese diners. The manageress was trying to recommend the deep-fried songshu yu (“squirrel fish”), while we were nervously trying to figure out a polite way to inquire whether there was actually any squirrel in it. Just then a diner at another table piped up and asked, “Hey, anybody here knows a good travel agent?” Instantly, recommendations came from the other tables. The manageress added her two cents, “Better buy your ticket early, while the US dollar is low!” Everyone laughed. She didn’t stop there. “Better buy property too!” she continued. “Property prices in Flushing have tripled since 2000!” “I’ll wait for the dollar to drop some more,” moaned another diner. “It’s too expensive for me now.” “Ask your friends!” ventured a fellow from a table in the back. “They might cut you good deals.” This brought an immediate rebuke from yet another customer.  Dropping his chopsticks with a clatter, he barked, “No! Always buy from strangers, especially laowai, because you can negotiate without awkwardness!  If you buy from friends, it’ll cost you 20 percent more!” A low murmur of “you daoli, you daoli” (“that makes sense”) reverberated through the restaurant. Being there in that small room, conversing in differently-accented Mandarin, sharing insider knowledge for personal profit, labelling Westerners “laowai” (foreigners) even in a Western country… there was a cosy, conspiratorial air that made me feel a heightened sense of Chinese community – perhaps for the first time in my life. It was, however, short lived. When another diner said he was confused by the distinction in New York real estate between condominiums and co-operatives, the Wife decided to offer a brief explanation. I tried to simplify it further by saying, “Condos are easier to rent out, unlike co-ops, where you need permission from the board.” At this, the manageress smiled. “Not in Flushing. You just bribe the building superintendent. $1000, and no problem!” Everyone else guffawed, nodding away. I blinked, wondering why this possibility never even entered my mind. Then someone smiled pointedly at us, “You aren’t from China, are you?” “We’re Singaporean,” I replied, sheepishly. And I never felt more so. Share on Facebook Sunday Times: A Comic Recollection The following was published in the Sunday Times on 4 May 2008: A Comic Recollection by Colin Goh Two weeks ago, I trudged across midtown Manhattan to meet some folks concerning a future project.  (Sorry, can’t reveal details yet.) Their designated meeting place was the Jacob Javits Convention Centre, which, in some ways, represents the convergence of two aspects of my life. The Javits was where, some years ago, I took the New York bar examinations to qualify as an attorney.  It was the hardest exam I ever took, not because it was intellectually challenging, but because it required memorizing several phone directories’ worth of material. For once in my life, I was grateful for Singaporean rote training, a fact emphasized by the candidate seated next to me, who moaned “Oh! My! God!” every few minutes. This time, however, the Javits was hosting the New York Comic Convention, which, though second in size to the one in San Diego, has the distinct advantage of being in the capital of the comic world: Gotham City itself. I grew up on American comics. My parents were very enlightened about what many dismissed as a corrupting influence on children; they felt that as long as I didn’t read comics exclusively, it was fine. More than any other form, comics taught me how to read, write, draw, and thanks to their depictions of different kinds of vernacular dialogue (compare, say, the Thing’s speech patterns with Thor’s), the ability to “code-switch”, something that many language teachers say is the preserve of an elite few.  Phooey, I say to them (or whatever the Hokkien equivalent of ‘phooey’ is). I learned it from possibly the most low-class artform of all. I really loved the darned things. And like all things you love, they can break your heart. In JC, I started a small comic shop, fueled by pure hubris: I hoped to share my beloved medium with others through judicious curation. But the vast majority of comics buyers at the time weren’t interested in reading:  they only wanted to buy multiple copies of special issues, slip them immediately into protective plastic bags, and then resell them for a profit. On shipment day, the store often felt dispiritingly like the floor of the stock exchange, except the traders had more pimples. Most of the really innovative work remained unsold, and unappreciated.  After closing the shop, I gave up collecting comics and read only the barest handful of titles.  Much of the content by then had become saturated with increasingly nihilistic superheroes and gimmicky storylines anyway.  It seems I wasn’t the only one to turn away from comics – by 1996, industry leader Marvel Comics had even gone bankrupt. But visiting the Con, I learned that the industry had turned a corner over the past few years. Better writers, artists and editors have regained control, and though superheroes still dominate, the content is much more diverse. There are works out there which rival any prose novel – Alison Bechdel’s literate and nuanced ‘Fun Home’ is the best thing I’ve read all year. Graphic novels (storylines contained within a single volume, as opposed to single issue ‘floppies’) are also a real growth area because they can access regular bookstores, who are devoting more space to them too. In 2007, they became a US$375 million market. But chope: if you’re thinking of jumping into comics hoping to make big bucks, here are some reality checks – part of the buzz about comics comes from being able to translate them into games, toys and movies, and cross-pollinating audiences. This usually only works with established characters. So unless you’ve created Spider-Man, moderate your expectations.  One of the most depressing things you can do in life is visit the Con’s artists’ alley, where legendary creators are willing to doodle for you for $10. Guess who doesn’t have contractual entitlements to merchandising and adaptation royalties? Also, although more profitable than in the past few years, readership is still generally depressed compared to, say, thirty years ago. But that’s the case for all periodicals, not just comics. People just aren’t reading as much as they used to. The industry is also afflicted by the same problems that the digital world poses to all other media, including piracy and speculative revenue models. Still, despite the challenges, it was nice to see my old passion evolving and widening. As the Cons are usually assemblies of male nerds, I was especially happy to see more women and girls attending. (I’m not counting those hired to walk around in Princess Leia bikinis to flog Star Wars merchandise.) But I was also glad one thing hadn’t changed at American comic conventions: I’m never the fattest guy in the room. Heng ah! Share on Facebook Sunday Times: Swearing? Who Gives a Bleep? The following was published in the Sunday Times on 20 April 2008: Swearing? Who Gives a Bleep? by Colin Goh By now, many of you must have seen that YouTube clip of a man’s cellphone recording of his altercation with a taxi driver.  Apparently, things were ignited when the cabbie, asked to move his vehicle, responded with the f-word. “The F Word” is also the title of one of several food-related TV shows that I follow religiously that star British chef Gordon Ramsay, who is famous not just for his cooking skills, but his ability to unleash creative expletive-laden invective. (Sample quote: “You moved like a [bleep] tortoise giving birth!”) And according to a much-circulated New York Times article last Wednesday, the culinary world resembles nothing so much as a US Marines barracks: a recent New Yorker magazine profile of New York’s hottest chef at the moment, David Chang, are littered with his profane utterances, while vulgarities are sprinkled like bacon bits on a salad in any given episode of the highly popular cooking competition ‘Top Chef’, not to mention anything involving Anthony Bourdain. I was a little surprised by the article – mainly because the bad language never really registered with me.  “We’ve been watching these shows for years!” I said to the Wife. “What the heck is wrong with me that I never really noticed the swearing?” “Who the heck cares?” replied the Wife, who, unlike me, actually used ‘heck’. I paused to ponder this.  I came from an all boys’ school, so cussing was never new to me, but I do remember being stunned on my first day of national service, when arriving at my assigned company, the duty corporal greeted me by substituting Hokkien obscenities whenever punctuation marks were called for. To this day, whenever I hear a military person speak of a strategy of ‘shock and awe’, I think back to that first day at Nee Soon Camp. But I wasn’t offended. In fact, this new benchmark of cursing amused me, and I actually began to archive profanity I found especially innovative. Naturally, the army was a treasure trove. I guess it’s only natural to be curious about anything that’s seen as taboo.  When learning any language, we always want to find out a few choice expletives. I remember when hosting a Japanese exchange student during secondary school, his first question to me was, “Colin-san, what is ‘[very inflammatory Hokkien expression concerning the anatomy of one’s maternal parent]’?” But I might have been particularly perverse during the interregnum between NS and university, when I dated a girl precisely because she swore like a fishwife, giving me personal insight into the persuasiveness of the venerable exhortation, “Talk dirty to me, baby.” The conversations during our dates often resembled the dialogue in a Quentin Tarantino movie, and my parents were certainly displeased when in their company, I’d inadvertently leak some of the vocabulary I’d absorbed. I’ve since stopped swearing so much, except for the occasional outburst, but I can’t say it’s because I suddenly re-acquired civility. I’m one of the few who doesn’t buy the notion that employing vulgarities are, as we Singaporeans say, ‘so L.C.’ (for ‘low class’). I know people from every economic strata who curse – from Geylang durian sellers to Wall Street CEOs. In fact, my salty ex and, as I also learned, my corporal, actually came from very ‘H.C.’ backgrounds and went on to graduate from top universities. I think for most people, it’s a phase we grow out of, largely because it gets boring after a while. Yes, yes, yes, swearing leaves an unpleasant impression, risks misunderstanding, is intellectually lazy, blah blah blah, but you know, it’s been around for eternity (it’s even in Shakespeare), and people should just shrug it off and deal with much more offensive uses of language – like incitement to hatred, or lying.  In fact, I’m much more annoyed by disingenuous people who employ substitutes like ‘sugar’, and (I’m not making this up) ‘grasshole’. Am I out of touch with popular sentiment? Maybe, though I take some comfort from the fact that online commenters on the aforementioned YouTube clip seem to be heaping much less opprobrium on the foul-mouthed cabbie than on the clip’s recordist, for his hyperbolic comparison of being sworn at to a seizable offence under the assault provisions of the Penal Code. And do I wish people would curse less on my favourite TV shows? Yes, but mainly because their expletives get bleeped out, and I want to hear what they’re actually saying instead of whatever the networks have hired R2D2 to dub over. That’s my honest opinion. I swear. Share on Facebook Sunday Times: The Slippery Slope between Prodigy and Tragedy The following was published in the Sunday Times on 6 April 2007: The Slippery Slope between Prodigy and Tragedy by Colin Goh It’s terrible, but when I read about how Sufia Yusof, the mathematics prodigy who was admitted to Oxford at the age of 13, had been found prostituting herself in London, the first thing that popped into my head was an old BBC comedy sketch. It was from the radio show Knowing Me Knowing You, where the idiotic host Alan Partridge (played masterfully by Steve Coogan) was interviewing “Simon”, a child prodigy, who at 9, was Oxford’s youngest ever Fellow. Partridge set the tone for the entire programme when his first question to the prodigy’s father was, “When did you first realise that Simon was abnormal?” To which the father replied, “Gifted, you mean,” only for Partridge to concur, “Abnormally gifted.” I find Sufia Yusof’s story tragic, but I can’t say I’m entirely surprised. I had the same feeling some years ago when I attended the New York premiere of a documentary on perhaps Singapore’s most famous GEP student: Grace Quek, better known as Annabel Chong. For those of you unfamiliar with Ms. Chong, she rocketed to worldwide notoriety with The World’s Biggest Gang Bang, a pornographic video of her having non-stop consecutive sex with 251 men (later revealed to be actually “only” around 70). “Annabel” turned up for a post-screening Q&A session, which I thought she fielded deftly, and I was left with the impression of someone extremely smart, but so full of hurt and rage that she felt compelled to respond in an extreme way. Some have suggested that the entire exercise was a way to exorcise her trauma after being gang-raped while studying law in London, while she herself has said it was an artistic statement questioning the unfairness of lauding men as “studs” for having multiple sex partners, but not women. I guess – though while watching the documentary, I mostly remember thinking: how uniquely Singaporean of her not to be content just making porn, but trying to break a record while at it. I’m not suggesting in any way that the pressure of excelling academically automatically leads to risky sexual behaviour, but I do think that growing up in artificially-constructed circumstances can really screw you up. The Wife, an assistant professor in the field of education here in New York, says that quite a number of her fellow academics are increasingly ambivalent about ‘gifted’ programmes. While the goal of helping each child develop his or her own gifts at his or her own pace is laudable, often the kids are assessed on very artificially-drawn criteria, and set up with expectations that can never be realized when they eventually leave their hermetic existence and rejoin the real world. Also, the benefits of (1) exploring different possibilities rather than committing to one path at such an early age, and (2) mixing with people of diverse abilities and backgrounds, invariably receive short shrift whenever we talk about “giftedness”. What does it say about us that we aren’t as worried about creating elite, uncaring sociopaths as we are about Boy-Boy not being one up over our neighbour’s children? Here in the US, there’s definitely an industry devoted to stroking parents’ egos about how Junior is actually a genius, and playing on their status anxieties to sign up for expensive programmes to help him get a notional leg up over the riff-raff. It gets even more ridiculous when this competitiveness is taken to early childhood (Baby Einstein DVDs) and even pre-natal stages. (BabyPlus Womb Songs, anyone?) According to Alissa Quart’s book, Hothouse Kids: The Dilemma of the Gifted Child (Penguin Press, 2005), “Designating children as gifted, especially extremely gifted, and cultivating that giftedness may be not only a waste of money, but positively harmful. The overcultivated can develop self-esteem problems and performance anxiety.” She cites the case of Brandenn Bremmer, who entered college at 10, and then committed suicide at 14, after complaining of having “perfection” demanded of him. When the news of Sufia’s admission into Oxford first broke, I met a gentleman who said he wished his son could be just like her. “Isn’t it be great to have such a head start over your peers?” he asked me. I thought back to my hormone and alcohol-fueled undergraduate experience and said that for a 13 year old far away from home and mixing with much more mature people, it could be both terrifying, disorienting and lonely. Being great at sums doesn’t mean much then. What’s the hurry anyway? I asked him. Is it worth the psychological trauma just to get a few years’ seniority, which is ultimately meaningless in the working world? He didn’t seem to understand then. I wonder if he still wishes his child were like Sufia. Share on Facebook Sunday Times: It’s Easy to Be Sleazy The following was published in the Sunday Times on 23 March 2008: Sunday Times 23 March 2008 It’s Easy to be Sleazy by Colin Goh Sometimes the political coverage here in America’s newspapers can make FHM look like my old church bulletin. Just over the past few years, I’ve read, inter alia, about how New Jersey Governor Jim McGreevey confessed to having a gay relationship with his security adviser; how Idaho Senator Larry Craig was arrested after allegedly soliciting sex by playing footsie with an undercover policeman in an airport toilet; how Republican Congressman Mark Foley sent kinky emails and IM messages to his teenage pages; and the latest bombshell: how New York Governor Eliot Spitzer had trysts with really expensive call girls. Then just a few days back, Spitzer’s replacement, David Paterson, confessed to “several” extra-marital affairs, and worse, McGreevey returned to the headlines with revelations that he, his now ex-wife, and his driver used to engage in “threesomes”. And hanging over all of them, the Buaya-in-Chief himself, former President Bill “I-did-not-have-sexual-relations-with-that-woman” Clinton. “Piang eh,” I said to the Wife. “I knew politicians played dirty, but this is ridiculous.” “What’s also ridiculous is how after the scandal is blown open,” she replied huffily, “they always have this press conference where they make their poor wives stand next to them to ‘show their support in this trying time for the family’ or donno what nonsense.” “You mean you wouldn’t stand next to me and support me at my press conference if I was discovered to have, I donno, an erotic cupcake habit?” I asked, hypothetically. (Very hypothetically.) “You mean you’d hold a press conference to admit you have an erotic cupcake habit?” she answered, her look of disgust shortly becoming one of suspicion. “Just… saying only, lah,” I smiled, not particularly convincingly judging by her reaction. (Note to self: better lie low about cupcakes over the next few weeks.) The Spitzer scandal has certainly set many tongues wagging, from op-ed columns to talk shows and the blogosphere, over a whole range of issues, including: whether men are just inherently horndogs; why should we care about personal indiscretions as long as they don’t prevent the guys from doing their job; how come the Europeans would have just shrugged all of this off; why their spouses should just dump them immediately; why their spouses should give them another chance; hypocrisy and hubris; yadda yadda yadda. But to me, what’s most puzzling about these scandals is why would such powerful, influential men (and they seem to be always men) with so much to lose, still indulge in such high-risk behaviour? I mean, is the urge to engage in such activities so overpowering that they can’t wait till they’re out of office? Or is it some form of death wish, a secret longing to bring the charade that is their life to an end? Conservative New York Times columnist David Brooks suggests that high-achieving men often snap under what he calls the ‘rank-link imbalance’ – they suddenly realize how lonely they’ve become, after having spent so many years clawing their way to power. This “boo-hoo-hoo, nobody understands the real me” epiphany is felt even more acutely when contrasted with their mighty public personae. And so they do dumb things to restore some level of intimacy. Why dumb things? Because in the process of climbing up the greasy pole of success, they’ve lost touch with ordinary people, and also notions of common sense. Maybe. But it could just be that high achievers are risk takers, and that attitude applies even to their social lives. Or maybe powerful men simply like being powerful, and nothing is ever enough to satisfy their need to dominate; having a secret double life is just possessing another level of power over others. And when I think about it: this sordid stuff isn’t confined to the high muckamucks either. I’m sure all of us know regular joes who’ve led secret existences too – those ‘entertaining-the-client’ trips to the KTV ‘launge’, late night porn-surfing, the second families in Bintan, secret photos of the maid, erotic cupcakes… (okay, maybe not that last one). And for the rest of us, maybe it’s not that we’re wired more correctly, it’s just that our fear of shame trumps our temptation. “I mean, how do you know I won’t be another Eliot Spitzer and you’ll kena stand next to me at some rostrum in the future?” I asked the Wife. “I know what you make as a writer, dear,” she patted my cheek and smiled consolingly. “You can’t afford call girls.” Heng ah! And maybe that’s what entitles us to heap scorn on leaders who fall below our own standards: we know how easy it is to be sleazy, so we put them in office and pay them the big bucks to be better than us. Share on Facebook Sunday Times: Finding My Own Voice The following was published in the Sunday Times on 9 March 2008: Sunday Times 9 March 2008 Finding My Own Voice by Colin Goh There’s an article from Salon.com that’s making the rounds, about whether Barack Obama’s baritone voice gives him an edge over Hillary Clinton, who has occasionally been dubbed “Shrillary”, especially when she gets excited. If that’s true, it’s depressing. Not that I prefer any particular candidate (Al Gore, come back!), but the notion that people can be swayed by delivery over content, and also that gender stereotyping is alive and well in the 21st century should make anyone groan. It’s also personally depressing for me to know that voice can be a determinant of one’s perception. This goes back to the very first time I received a telemarketing call in the USA, shortly after I’d arrived. Here’s a dramatic reconstruction of how it went: Me: Hello. Telemarketer: Hello, ma’am, I’m calling about your credit report. Me: (stunned, awkward silence) Telemarketer: Ma’am? Me: (voice suddenly dropping two octaves) Sorry, wrong number. My voice had never been mistaken for a woman’s prior to this, and I thought the telemarketer must have had some form of auditory dysfunction. But this embarrassing situation was repeated in virtually every subsequent call, which naturally led to a lot of personal anguish. That can be a lot of anguish, especially in the US, where one is guaranteed to receive at least one telemarketing call every day. I began to wonder about the correct solution to this recurring annoyance. Should I bother correcting the party on the other line? Or would that just make them apologise and render the conversation even more awkward? Or should I just ignore their mistake and lower my voice with my next line, and just carry on as if nothing happened? Or should I just accept my fate and pretend to be a woman? The Wife soon twigged on to my private hell. “Why do you use a different voice when you answer the phone?” she asked. “You sound like a RGS girl at a sports match.” “Arrrrghh!” I cried. “You mean even when I try to sound manly, I sound like a schoolgirl?” “No, no,” the Wife replied, explaining how RGS girls adopt a low, masculine growl whenever they have to cheer at sports meets, allegedly to stave off hoarseness. (That it scares the living daylights out of the opposing teams is a plus.) This case of mistaken gender never used to happen to me back in Singapore or anywhere in Asia, and I was a little relieved to learn that some Asian male friends had had similar experiences in the US too. So perhaps it was just that Americans aren’t familiar with the range of Asian voices. I did some quick research which suggested that Asians have slightly higher pitched voices due to a range of factors, both cultural and genetic, but that even within Asia, there is variance. I’ll confess that while working in Thailand, I sometimes felt I sounded like Barry White in comparison with many of the guys around me. But it didn’t mean they were any less masculine – I’m sure every one of them could have Muay Thai’d my ass seven ways to Sunday if they wanted. And contrast the voices of Singaporean ladies (not just growly RGS girls) with the cutesy squeals of Japanese women. In other words, voice doesn’t tell you very much, unless you’re ignorant of context, which is a criticism often leveled at Americans. But over my years in the States, things got progressively better, which puzzled me. Why were telemarketers mistaking me less often for a woman? Had my voice cracked again in some instance of second puberty? It all began to make sense when I learned that the majority of the cold calls I was receiving were now coming from call centres in Asia. Globalization was restoring my mojo. But every now and then, I still feel like I’d gladly trade my reedy tenor for an authoritative baritone. You know, like the guy who does all the voiceovers for Hollywood blockbuster trailers, who’s always intoning lines like, “In a time of savage battle…” or “in a forgotten land…” or “one man stands up for everything he believes in…” I wonder how my life might be different if I sounded like James Earl Jones rather than Eric Tsang. Returning to the issue of the US presidency, it struck me that sounding good isn’t such a dispositive factor after all. I mean, being unable to pronounce ‘nuclear’, making constant grammatical mistakes, and having a laugh that’s been compared to Beavis’s pal Butthead didn’t stop someone from winning the White House. Share on Facebook Comment on Musical Musings and Purple Poetry by Colin Goh and Yen Yen Woo Well spotted! Anyone who has the Chinese characters for that line, please let us know! Comment on Musical Musings and Purple Poetry by wangchong Siang kah lang choo tay has no chinese character. overseasingaporean.live.windows.com in November 07 also has a page about Bong Chun Hong. He even has his daughter (3 yr old) singing it. Sunday Times: I May Have to Take the Cake The following was published in the Sunday Times on 24 February 2008: Sunday Times 24 February 2008 I May Have to Take the Cake by Colin Goh in New York A friend recently emailed me to ask, “Eh, is the US economy really that bad, ha? Should we be worried, not?” My response was: you ask me, I ask who? I’m hardly the best person to ask about the economy. When I first read some months ago that America was re-entering an economic downturn, my initial thought was: you mean it left? Maybe it’s because the Wife and I feel like we’ve always been in a recession. We came to New York during Singapore’s last economic crisis, and we entered the media industry now when it’s experiencing historical flux and record falling revenues. And when the average price of one bedroom apartments in Manhattan soared past US$1 million, we were living in rough Brooklyn neighbourhoods, where our Chinese takeout guy would warn us, “After 8 pm, don’t come here or you will die.” So as far as we’re concerned, the bad economy never really left, never mind whether it’s back; it’s just been like Kramer in ‘Seinfeld’, always hanging around nearby and popping in every so often to mooch from our fridge. Also, New York’s economy isn’t always representative of the rest of America, and that’s doubly so if you live, like we do now, in the town of Flushing in the borough of Queens, a growing Chinese/Indian/Russian enclave with a parallel transport system, restaurant culture, as well as job and real estate market. So while my lawyer landlady moans about how the housing market is so bad that all her conveyancing deals are drying up, at the same time, we’re also seeing mainland Chinese millionaires buying up houses here with cash. But we’re finally seeing the subprime fallout creeping into our neighbourhood. It began when the waiter at our local Malaysian restaurant started sighing loudly over the state of his stock portfolio. “But at least I’m not as bad as my friends in Nevada,” he consoled himself as he served us our char kway teow. “They each bought several houses with subprime mortgages, which they serviced by taking on extra jobs. Things were okay when times were good and they could find tenants. But now, the places are all unoccupied, they’re still stuck with the mortgages, and getting more credit is impossible. They already work three jobs, how to take on another?” He shook his head and clucked his tongue like a chichak. The state of things became even more apparent when some of the Wife’s Shaolin kung fu teachers started having to take on extra jobs as busboys at Chinese restaurants. (Note to self: tip them properly or get hantam-ed, Drunken Monkey-style.) “Whoa,” said the Wife. “Time to standby the taxi driver’s licence leow.” This was a running joke of hers whenever we faced a potential blip in our finances. Her late father always maintained a cabbie’s licence just in case his contracting business went under – a true Singaporean in his pragmatic kiasuism. Likewise I thought I’d better email my Singaporean friend back and tell him to prepare contingency plans. If it’s started hitting even the Shaolin monks in a pocket universe like Flushing, it could very well hit people overseas too, no matter what the experts say about ‘decoupling’ and how emerging markets like India and China will cushion any impact from America’s downward slide. (I mean, if these guys are all so smart, how come, as the former governor of the Bank of Israel said at Davos this year, “Last year, nobody mentioned subprime”?) It then hit me that perhaps I’d better have a backup plan too. But what? I guess I could get myself reinstated as an attorney, assuming anyone would hire me after so many years out of practice, but this was the nuclear option, because of cost and liability. “Is there any sort of part time work I can do, that would still allow me to continue with our media projects?” I asked the Wife as I clicked through the classifieds on Craigslist – JFK baggage handler, Starbucks barista, telemarketer, nude art model… “You could do what so many people did during Singapore’s last recession,” she replied. “Email everyone your sob story and tell them you’ll bake cakes for money. You won’t even have to leave the house.” I remembered those mass emails. I’d even bought some of those cakes, literally baked with tears, so they must have been effective. Certainly, I think people would pay me more for cakes than to pose nude. And so, friends, if one day you get an email from me touting my pandan chiffon cake, you’ll know exactly how bad the US economy is. Share on Facebook Sunday Times: Superbowl v. Super Tuesday: what’s the diff? The following was published in the Sunday Times on 10 February 2008: Sunday Times 10 February 2008 Superbowl v. Super Tuesday: what’s the diff? by Colin Goh Last Sunday, a Singaporean friend emailed me to ask if I was watching the Superbowl (the American football finals) and whether I understood the game at all. I told him I didn’t get everything – looks like rugby, except with body armour and more commercials – but that I’d tuned in to the halftime musical show, hoping to catch another “wardrobe malfunction” like Janet Jackson’s infamous booboo at 2004’s Superbowl. However, when I learned that this year’s performer was 57 year-old rocker Tom Petty, the malfunctioning of whose wardrobe didn’t seem particularly appealing, I switched to CNN to watch Hillary Clinton locking horns with Barack Obama. As it turned out, it was like a political debate, except with body armour and more commercials. By this I mean that both candidates had their defences up and set on ‘high’, and yet were trying hard to transmit appealing signals past their own shields. My impression was of two people straining to say a lot without actually saying much. Of course, all politics is like that to some extent, but in America it’s heightened because of the way the media functions, with pundits and blogerati picking over every utterance like some episode of CSI. I also got a flurry of emails from Singaporeans asking me whether I preferred Hillary to Obama. My perplexed reply was: you care for what? As a non-US citizen, I can’t vote. Not that I wouldn’t like to. Because everyone in the world will (not may) be influenced by what happens in the US. To us foreigners stationed in the States, it’s doubly frustrating because you’re actually in the country and being affected directly, and also can’t ignore the politics. When the Wife and I first moved to New York, we were surprised that elections of some sort were going on almost all the time. Every few months, New Yorkers were choosing somebody for something – whether it was the President of the country, one’s Senator or Congressman, the Governor of the State, the Mayor of the City, one’s State Assemblyman, the State Comptroller, the City Comptroller, one’s City Council representative, district attorneys, judges, yadda yadda yadda. And then there are the primaries where you choose who you want to put up for other people to choose, just like those on so-called ‘Super Tuesday’, when various state chapters of the Republican and Democratic parties select their presidential candidates, a process whose rules are almost as incomprehensible as American football. Then there are the elections in whatever organization you belong to – your company, your union, your condo management committee, your co-op board … And all these elections come with campaigns, cheerleaders and commentators, dissecting every action just like in sports. “Piang!” exclaimed a fellow Singaporean expat. “Waste time only!” Not to mention being unnecessarily divisive. The New York Times recently reported how many American families are at war with each other because the kids favour Obama, Mom prefers Hillary and Dad’s dithering over McCain. All for what? After all, rhetoric soon meets realpolitik, and today’s so-called change agents often wind up just treading the waters of the status quo. Certainly, a recurrent complaint from the American electorate is that ultimately, Republicans and Democrats aren’t really that different in office. So if all this eternal politicking just produces acrimonious chatter which doesn’t go anywhere, Super Tuesday has no more significance than the Superbowl. But a friend of ours, a refugee from a former Communist country, disagreed, recounting the first time he stepped into an American supermarket. When he saw the shelves lined with cartons of 2 percent milk, 1 percent milk, skim milk, reduced fat milk, low fat milk, less fat milk, fat-free milk, and lactose-free milk, he broke down in tears. “In my country, we would have been happy with just ordinary milk!” he said. “Americans are too lucky.” “Their system only seems frivolous when things are going smoothly,” he continued. “Compare that with Putin in Russia, exploiting his position to block all challenges to his power. It may be okay now because he’s capable. But who knows if he’s really capable, because he’s the only one telling you that? And what about those after him? The jabbering forces Americans to keep thinking about the forces that shape their lives, so they can make changes when it’s necessary. And you know what, after Bush, it’s necessary.” I couldn’t come up with a response that wasn’t cynical or which didn’t denigrate our friend’s deprivation. Imperfect choices are better than having none at all. To those who’ve never truly experienced it, democracy really is a different ballgame. Sunday Times: In Defence of Our ‘Dumb’ Kids The following was published in the Sunday Times on 27 January 2008, with some editing (if you’ve seen the published version, amuse yourself by spotting the differences!):  Sunday Times 27 Jan 2008 In Defence of Our ‘Dumb’ Kids by Colin Goh Two weeks ago, this august newspaper polled 60 Singaporean students about the US elections, and discovered that - shock! horror! – most couldn’t care less, and that some didn’t even know who Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama were.  Naturally, a lot of hand wringing ensued over the apathy and ignorance of our chewren. Upon reading the report, my immediate thought was: how many American students would know who Lee Hsien Loong or Sylvia Lim is? Okay, so maybe that’s not entirely fair.  After all, the fate of the USA doesn’t really depend on the Singaporean government to any great extent, unlike the other way round.  (At least not until we finish buying up all their banks – and then it will be too late! TOO LATE! Bwah-ha-ha!) But I’m betting that most American kids also have no idea who Wen Jiabao is either, and China really, really matters. My next thought was: how many ordinary Singaporean adults, neh’mine our chewren, would actually know who Barack Obama is, or Mitt Romney, or Mike Huckabee, or John McCain? (Why did the pollsters seem to assume a Democratic victory? Also, Clinton and Obama aren’t that far apart policy-wise, but there will be stark differences with a Romney presidency.) I wouldn’t be surprised if the grownups’ responses didn’t differ too much from the kids’.  I must also confess that I find it difficult to ridicule youngsters for their putative ignorance – because I was a pretty dopey teen myself.  When I was 17, I couldn’t have named a single member of the Reagan Cabinet, but I could rattle off every single member of the X-Men.  I don’t think I was alone in this, whether here or in the US. In the end, I’m skeptical what these polls really prove. I’ve seen them crop up every now and again, in different forms and in different countries, with different questions. Scaremongering “look-how-stupid-American-kids-are” surveys also pop up in US newspapers regularly.  I recall a similar brouhaha some years ago, where prospective NUS undergrads were pilloried because some couldn’t name the country located between Thailand and Singapore. But I’ll bet that if you go now and call up a bunch of youngsters and ask them the same questions, you’d probably get similar results, despite years of intervening education reform.  Heck, I’m even willing to bet that it’ll be the same twenty years from now, and that we’ll be gnashing our teeth over how come our kids still can’t name all the MPs in their Mega-GRC, or that they have no idea who Goh Chok Tong is, never mind Goh Keng Swee, or why so few schoolchildren know who invaded who and sparked off the Asean Haze War. Again, I’m confident that adults will yield similar responses to such polls too. Why? Because often, these polls are not designed to fulfil a genuine research objective, they’re cooked up to fit in with a particular agenda and provoke a certain response, usually outrage, at how inferior the masses are to the poll-commissioners.  I’m not in any way suggesting it happened with this particular poll, nor am I excusing apathy or ignorance. I just think we should always question our questioners. Further, such polls run the risk of giving a very incomplete, even distorted picture of the participants’ actual intelligence or ability, and also of privileging certain kinds of knowledge.  This is unfair.  Girl-Girl may know more about handbag design than she does about the geopolitics of oil. But so what? So long as when the price of oil begins to affect her handbag business, she knows how to research and analyse the issues and deal with them. Knowing who the President of OPEC is at any given moment is just trivia. And in many ways, it irks me that kids are invariably the target of these polls, because they can rarely answer back.  Why not poll, oh, a bunch of civil servants which countries comprise NATO, or quiz a group of actuaries on what APEC stands for? Yes, a greater interest in world affairs should be encouraged, but in the age of information overload and Wikipedia, we really need to value higher order skills like curiosity, skepticism, research and empathy. Lastly, I’m not surprised that so many students told the pollsters they didn’t care about US politics.  When confronted by strangers trying to put you on the spot and judge you about how smart you are on a specific topic, it’s a perfectly understandable kiasu response to pretend you don’t care, rather than don’t know. That’s not being apathetic. That’s being Singaporean. Duh! Share on Facebook Sunday Times: Henry & The Keropok of Death The following was published in the Sunday Times on 13 Jan 2007: Sunday Times 13 Jan 2007 Henry and The Keropok of Death by Colin Goh Those of you who are pantang about the Year of the Rat might want to skip this column. New York City is famous for its rats. According to some statistics, there are between 6 to 12 rats for each resident. Last year, a video of rats cavorting inside a KFC/Taco Bell in Greenwich Village turned the outlet into a temporary tourist attraction, and triggered a health crackdown that resulted in the closure of many eateries, including celebrated restaurants like Serendipity 3 and Brasserie La Cote Basque. Two years ago, I’d also written about finding a dead mouse when we returned to our Brooklyn apartment after spending a year in Singapore – sort of a ‘welcome back’ gift from the City. And a few weeks after we’d moved in to our new place in Queens, I wasn’t surprised when another turned up, skidding about our sink like some Disney on Ice performance – after all, 2 of our neighbours were doing construction, and the weather was turning cold. “Optimal mouse conditions,” said our landlord, not particularly comfortingly. After disposing of our furry intruder (humanely), we plugged every hole we could find and set various traps, and we saw no further signs of any more pesky guests. Until last week. We’d fried up a batch of keropok for a party, and I’d stashed some away for (ahem) later private consumption in a Ziploc bag. The next morning, however, there was a coin-sized hole in the bag, and chew marks around some of the crackers. The Wife and I simultaneously yelled, “Ee-yurr!” and immediately went to buy traps – glue traps, snap traps, rodent ‘hotel’ traps, you name it, we bought it. And we came home and baited all of them with – what else? Keropok. The next morning, however, we awoke to find that our verminous visitor had not only not triggered any of the traps, he’d also managed to make off with every single piece of bait! We figured we hadn’t been clever enough with how we’d placed the traps. We also noted that he’d ignored all the other possible sources of food in the kitchen. This meant that despite the risk, he’d ignored the bread, the cookies, the chips, and headed straight for the savoury prawn crackers – a ringing endorsement of the superiority of our cuisine. The next night, we laid the traps in an even more elaborate fashion. I was rather impressed by one configuration the Wife devised, with a single piece of keropok ringed by a series of glue and snap traps. But the next morning was the same result – none of the traps triggered, and all the keropok gone! “What the fish,” I said to the Wife. “Did the fella rappel down from the roof like Tom Cruise in Mission Impossible or what?” Over the week, we continued to come up with even more Byzantine trap formations, but none of them worked. The Wife had also started to refer to him, for donno what reason, as “Henry”. “Why did you give him a name?” I groaned. “It’s more difficult to kill someone once he has a name! This isn’t ‘Ratatouille’, okay! He’s not in our kitchen preparing boeuf bourguignonne or canard a l’orange!” But the last straw came when we returned from dinner one night and not only saw that Henry had swiped the keropok yet again, but also heard him brazenly scrunching away from somewhere behind the fridge. It felt like he was taunting us. “Henry must die,” said the Wife solemnly. We did further research and learned that the best strategy was to bait the traps but not set them for several days. This way, the rat would get complacent. Then one night, we’d set the traps, and bingo! “I can’t believe we’re using psychology on a rat,” I told the Wife. But we did it anyway. Night after night, we baited the unset traps, and every morning, the keropok would be gone as usual. After a while, we began to wonder if we really wanted to kill Henry after all. He was fast becoming a pet. We began toying with non-fatal traps. The Wife even experimented with one she’d made out of an old Tupperware container. Then one evening, while leaving keropok out for Henry, we finally saw him. A mouse, not a rat, he’d fallen victim to an old snap trap we’d forgotten to disarm. It had been a quick death. We felt kind of sad, though we also noted that the keropok bait was nowhere to be found. Sorry, Henry, it just wasn’t your year, but at least you didn’t die hungry. Share on Facebook Comment on Resolution, R.I.P. (Rest in Pengat) by jlienx Interesting. I know the SF-area Ranch 99s get once-a-year fresh Monthong — do y’all get that too? Did I mention we’re off to Penang for nyonya food for the next four days? :) :) :) :) :) Jen Resolution, R.I.P. (Rest in Pengat) So enough of you have messaged me about my Facebook status update concerning my attempt at making durian pengat, which effectively derailed my New Year’s resolution to lose weight. So here’s a photo: I’m not sure why I’m on a nyonya dessert-making binge at the moment… two weeks ago, I made tau suan, and I’m now itching to make my own kueh salat and apom berkuah. Is this due to the cold weather, mild home sickness or just my inner bibik kicking in? Answers on a postcard, please. And to those of you who asked, yes, we can get durian in New York. Most Chinese supermarkets carry frozen Monthongs from Thailand - which aren’t as tasty, but also aren’t as smelly as the ones from Malaysia. We find that if left to thaw overnight, the frozen Monthongs turn out to be pretty decent. Also, the husks become soft enough that you can just cut them open with scissors! Anyway, the recipe follows after the jump, just in case any of you want to abandon your resolutions too. COLIN’S RESOLUTION-DESTROYING DURIAN PENGAT 300 g mung beans 50g sago 150g sugar 80g palm sugar (gula melaka) 200ml coconut milk 100g durian pulp 1 cinnamon stick 2 pandan leaves, knotted 1.5 litres water A pinch of salt 1. Wash mung beans and soak for 2-3 hours. 2. Boil gula melaka and sugar in 150 ml of water over low hear until sugar melts. Strain the resulting syrup. 3. Boil pandan leaves and cinnamon stick in 1.5 litres of water. Add drained mung beans. Simmer till beans are soft. 4. Add the sago pearls and keep stirring the pot to prevent sago from sticking to the bottom. 5. Add the coconut milk, sugar syrup and salt. Cook till sago is transparent. 6. To serve, scoop the pengat into a bowl and top with durian pulp. Stir, so durian melts into a glorious goop. Share on Facebook Sunday Times: A Kung Fu Casino Christmas The following was published in the Sunday Times on 30th Dec 2007: Sunday Times 30 Dec 2007 A Kung Fu Casino Christmas by Colin Goh So the Wife came home last week from her Shaolin class, and asked if we could host a Christmas party for the monks. “They’re very poor thing, lah,” she explained. “They’re so young, new to America and far from home, so a bunch of us students thought it would be nice to cheer them up. And since our place is closest to the school…” “Well, okay,” I said, sucking air through my clenched teeth as I wondered how to fit the 15 or so people into our puny place. “I understand it’s really bad karma to say there’s no room at the inn around this time of the year.”  And you certainly wouldn’t want to upset guys who can fly through the air and kick you into the middle of next week. “Merry Chris’muh-ssuh!” chimed the monks in their accented English when they arrived on Christmas Eve, the other students behind them, a motley crew of different races and ages. “You cook really well!” said one of the monks to me in Mandarin, handing me his plate for a second helping of our bee hoon. (We had decided to fall back on our heritage and prepare two out of the three items forming the Singaporean party menu trinity: char bee hoon and chicken curry. There’s some dispute as to what the third item is: fried fishballs on a skewer, or chicken wings?) “Well,” I replied. “When the Wife is away learning her drunken monkey gong from you, I’m at home practicing my mi fen gong.”  He seemed to find this hysterical. There were four monks, all in their early 20’s, who’d come to New York with a big performing troupe all the way from the legendary Shaolin Monastery in Songshan in China’s Henan province, and got arrowed to stay behind to form a sort of quasi-diplomatic mission, performing at various cultural events and also teaching locals their moves - a rather shrewd long-term P.R. exercise. (Imagine if the STB sponsored K.F. Seetoh to start a Singaporean food centre in Manhattan.) They also weren’t strictly monks, despite their bald pates.  As I learned, the Shaolin Monastery operates both a temple for ordained Buddhist monks and martial arts schools for wushu performers, like where Jet Li got his start.  But both arms share the same Master-Disciple mentorship system and (presumably) the same hairstylist. Their lives were pretty rough. The wushu schools they attended were boarding schools where training began at 4.30 a.m. and which let them out to visit their parents only once a year. And here in their NYC ‘mission’, they weren’t living the diplomatic high life either – apparently, there’s no heating in their shared apartment, a huge incentive to turn up early for work everyday. I was quite moved by these earnest young men’s story; the golden opportunity they’d been given to experience New York vitiated somewhat by the whiff of exploitation. Despite their hard lives, they were also innocent in many ways – a fact amply demonstrated by how they were now playing ‘Uno’ with some of the students, a game most Singaporeans associate with secondary school. “They’re working so hard to share their culture,” I told the Wife. “What of our culture do we have to share with them, besides bee hoon?” She thought for a moment, then asked the monks, “Any of you know how to play blackjack?” The monks immediately turned away from the Uno. Blackjack? I stared at the Wife. “Singapore wants to be Southeast Asia’s casino hub, mah,” she said, smiling.  And so were the monks. “I wan’tuh to learn,” beamed one, to the others’ enthusiastic concurrence. And that’s how we wound up spending Christmas Eve teaching a bunch of innocent warrior monks to puak kiao. I felt a little guilty, but frankly, what’s more quintessentially Chinese than gambling, especially on holidays? In some ways, we were merely acquainting them with their own heritage. The monks were certainly getting into it.  At one point, one of them yelled, Vegas-style, “Hit’tuh me!” and the others took him literally and slapped him, Shaolin-style. By night’s end, after five straight hours of playing, the monks emerged the main winners.  Or maybe we got hustled. Who knows? Who cares? Nobody was going to begrudge these hardworking guys a few bucks. “Pee-suh ou’tuh,” said one of the monks, flashing me a hip-hop sign as they took their leave. I winced. Had I glimpsed the ghost of Christmas yet to come? A jumbled future where Chinese people peddle their ancient ways to the rest of the world using modern marketing, while simultaneously reprocessing their culture? Not to mention gambling in a Singaporean venue? Peace out indeed. Colin would like to thank all his readers for their mail and well-wishes this past year. Happy 2008! Share on Facebook Sunday Times: All I want for Christmas is to stop shopping The following was published in the Sunday Times on 16 Dec 2007: Sunday Times 16 December 2007 All I want for Christmas is to stop shopping by Colin Goh Since this is my last column before Christmas, I thought I’d write something apropos of the season. There was a time when the highlight of Christmas for me was going for the candlelight service in church.  I was born into a Christian family, studied in a mission school, and for a brief period in my life even voluntarily attended theological classes during my spare time, which may come as a surprise for the not inconsiderable number of you out there who believe I’m the devil incarnate. But as I grew older, and especially since coming to the US, I’ve become increasingly disenchanted with religious groups, even my own.  The wilful ignorance, hypocrisy and even hatefulness peddled by the fundamentalist religious right in America have made it really difficult for me to participate in any church activities. (I realize that this in itself may be contributing to the problem, but that’s a whole other thesis beyond the scope of these pages.) Anyway, a couple of winters back, while ducking from the cold at a Starbucks in New York’s East Village, I encountered a preacher whose message hit me harder than a month of Sunday sermons.  His name was Reverend Billy, and he was from the Church of Stop Shopping. Dressed like a televangelist, he startled the baristas and latte-sippers by proceeding to exorcise the cash register in the name of the mom-and-pop coffee shops that once populated the neighbourhood, but which have since been wiped out by the Giant Green Mermaid.  After he was forced to leave, he went outside the store and led a choir in singing carols with irreverent lyrics such as the following, sung to the tune of ‘Joy to the World’: “Joy to the world! In the form of goods! Consume! Consume! Consume! Bright plastic this and thats, For screaming little brats, Take the SUV to the mall! Take the SUV to the mall! And buy, buy, buy, buy, Buy, buy, buy, buy it all!” Reverend Billy is, of course, a fictional character, played by an activist comedian named Billy Talen, who targets megacorporations like Disney, Wal-Mart and Starbucks for inequitable practices.  He is also the subject of a new documentary by Morgan Spurlock (who made the Oscar-nominated ‘Supersize Me’), covering his nationwide campaign to persuade Americans to consume less. Last month, on the day after Thanksgiving – which is known in the US as ‘Black Friday’ because it is usually marked by an orgy of spending – Reverend Billy mounted ‘Buy Nothing Day’, a vigorous campaign featuring credit card exorcisms, people dressed as Santa’s elves ‘striking’ outside malls, and a parade by the ‘Four Horsemen of the Shopocalypse’. It may seem frivolous, but his mission may have a sound theological basis: Reverend Billy’s character was crafted with the help of an actual Episcopal minister, and some Christian organizations have also backed his work, saying that the rampant consumerist culture that reaches its zenith at Christmas has cheapened Christianity. Personally, with or without religious endorsement, and regardless of the possibly questionable taste of some of his antics, I find his basic message extremely appealing. I must admit that Christmas has always been a time of anxiety for me – worrying what to buy for people and how they will judge me based on what I bought them (or didn’t buy them).  And I’ve always been disturbed by greeting cards and wrapping paper – stuff that’s so expensive but whose effects last only for a few seconds.  Then there’s the cultural colonialism issue: singing in the tropics about walking in a winter wonderland, Styrofoam/cotton wool/soap-sud ‘snow’, Asians donning the disguise of obese bearded Caucasians, and having to eat turkey, the blandest meat in the world. Finally, toss in the fact that a lot of our bargain hunting is also built on sweatshop labour, low wage retail jobs, and unfair trade practices, and one really wonders why we think Christmas is so merry to begin with. Of course, I’m also anxious about sharing any of my Grinchy misgivings with friends.  Who wants to be a party pooper? So maybe Reverend Billy has the right approach after all – start a party, just without the poop. Maybe more of us should disassociate ourselves with the crass commercialism of the season and just get together to enjoy each other’s company, perhaps in promoting a worthy cause (which may or may not be the same as Reverend Billy’s). Now that’s something I could buy this Christmas. Share on Facebook Sunday Times: Betrayed by My Darling Maling The following was published in the Sunday Times on 2 December 2007: Sunday Times 2 Dec 2007 Betrayed by my darling Maling by Colin Goh It now seems like every week, some made-in-China product is being recalled or banned for reasons of toxicity or unsafe manufacture. So far it hadn’t really affected me: dog food, Thomas the Tank Engine toys, Shir toothpaste and kohl eye shadow aren’t generally on my regular shopping lists. But things finally hit home a few days ago, when I read how Singapore’s Agri-Food and Veterinary Authority, after having detected traces of a banned antibiotic, had suspended the import of pork products from the Chinese factory which produces the Maling line of canned piggy comestibles. “Noooo! Not Maling too!” I wailed to the Wife, adopting a pose very similar to the anguished soldier on the poster of Oliver Stone’s 1986 film, ‘Platoon’. Maling had saved my life during my undergrad days in immediate post-Thatcherite England, when British cuisine bordered on violating the Geneva Convention. It was my first semester in London, and I was living in a students’ hall bordering Kings’ Cross, which at the time was known more for its community of junkies and hookers than being the place to catch the Hogwart’s Express. I remember the night very clearly: it was around 11 pm and a bunch of us Singaporeans were itching to engage in that quintessential Singaporean pastime of ‘siu ye’ (late night supper). In our area, however, that meant either walking nearly half an hour in the cold and/or drizzle to Chinatown in Leicester Square, or patronizing the nearby kebab stands and chippies for greasy packages of mystery meat and fries that smelled not unlike the locker room at Wembley Stadium after the FA Cup. We began reminiscing about Adam Road, Newton, Geylang and all the places back home where one could get a nightcap of prata or Hokkien mee. This didn’t help matters, as it only made us hungrier. Then one of us stood up and sighed, saying, “Okay, enough. I’m invoking the nuclear option.” In response to our puzzled frowns, he opened up his wardrobe to reveal an entire shelf filled with cans of Maling stewed pork trotters and luncheon meat which his parents had mailed him. The rest of us felt like Indiana Jones uncovering the Lost Ark of the Covenant. With some boiled rice, the salty, porky contents of those humble cans were like an airdropped Red Cross Care Package. My pantry has never been without a standby can of Maling since. Now, however, instead of saving my life, it seems consuming Maling might actually jeopardize it, if consumed in significant amounts over many years – which is, um, precisely what I’ve done. I couldn’t help but feel a little betrayed. I understand that the suspension in Singapore has led to reduced imports of other Chinese brands as well, not just Maling, and consequently, the hoarding of whatever pork products are left. But in New York, where I’m now working, there are still many cans of Maling on the shelves of my local Chinese supermarket – winking at me like some Jezebel. I also began to feel angry at Chinese producers for being so cavalier about consumer safety, but then I started to question that impulse. It’s not that I don’t believe that many Chinese products are toxic or defective. I’m pretty sure they are, and that we should expect many, many more scandalous revelations in the pipeline. So putting pressure on Chinese manufacturers is unequivocally a good thing. But many American goods are also routinely found to be unsafe – certain pharmaceuticals and fast foods, for instance – and yet the outcry is far less vitriolic. To what extent this double standard is due to jingoistic, tactical or conspiratorial reasons, I don’t know. Certainly, part of the problem is that US corporations squeeze manufacturers to keep costs low in order to maintain low prices for domestic consumers – the so-called Wal-Mart strategy. But this also puts pressure on manufacturers to cut corners on product and labour safety standards, so they can preserve their margins. However, with the US presidential elections coming up, I doubt any of the candidates will be confronting the electorate with their complicity in global trade injustices. It’s far easier to blame foreigners. “What’s a consumer to do?” I asked the Wife, also a Maling maven. “We can’t really rely on corporations, the media or politicians to tell us the whole truth about what we’re buying anymore, assuming we ever could to begin with.” “We’ll just have to follow that fundamental law of nature,” she replied, a little sadly. “Everything that tastes good is probably bad for you.” Share on Facebook Sunday Times: Maid in Japan The following was published in the Sunday Times on 18 November 2007: Sunday Times 18 November 2007 Maid in Japan by Colin Goh “A what café?” I said to my friend Ichi-san while visiting Tokyo three weeks ago. (‘Ichi’ is not his real name. To avoid potential embarrassment, I’ve had to fudge certain bits to protect the identities of those involved.) “A maid café,” replied Ichi-san. “A café where the waitresses are dressed like French maids, with short black dresses and white frilly aprons. And address you as ‘Master’.” I’d asked Ichi-san to take me on an insider’s tour of Tokyo: no touristy museums, temples or designer malls. I wanted to see where regular Tokyoites go – and perhaps glimpse the source of how they’ve managed to inspire and influence so many people worldwide, myself included. Now I was wondering if I’d be biting off more than I could chew. Thus far, Ichi-san had taken me to the wonderful Ghibli Museum in Mitaka, the giant Mandarake manga store in Shibuya, and a 24 hour manga café in Kabuki-cho, where one can rent a private booth to read comics, surf the net or even stay the night. (There are similar establishments which rent out adult DVDs instead of comics, who advertise vibrating seats to enhance the viewing experience.) Then he shifted gears by showing me a DIY doll boutique, a doll love hotel (both recounted in my last column), a seven-storey porn emporium thronged by very normal-looking salarymen thumbing through very abnormal-looking titles; and a ‘Soapland’, an establishment which, since this is a family newspaper, I can only describe as being very dirty and very clean at the same time. Then came the maid cafés – which managed to combine east and west, chaste and kinky, as well as the bizarre and logical, all in one stop. I say logical, because the maid cafés fulfill a market need. The vast majority of these establishments are located in the electronics/anime hub of Akihabara, the preferred hangout of the “otaku”, a Japanese term applied to geeks who stay at home and play video games, watch cartoons and read comics a little too much for their own good. (Not unlike many of my friends, and, um, me too, actually.) And after a hard day’s hunting for games/robots/comics/schoolgirl uniforms, otaku need to eat. Now, what kind of establishment might prove attractive to them? Perhaps a place where they can act out their confused colonized fantasies with the assistance of cute chicks? But make no mistake: maid cafés are not disguised houses of ill repute. “You can get the maids to play with you,” said Ichi-san. “But like video games. Or jankenpon (Japanese for ‘scissors-paper-stone’). I hear at some joints, if you pay extra, they’ll clean your ears, or give you a foot massage. But that’s it.” “Let’s go for dinner at one!” said Ni-san, another pseudonymous Singaporean friend visiting Japan. “With Japanese culture so popular, maybe I can start one up in Singapore.” “I hear there’s one already,” replied Ichi-san. “But I don’t know what it’s like.” “I wonder if Singaporeans have the same ‘maid’ associations as the Japanese,” I mused. “Maybe a Singaporean maid café is one where the waitresses speak Tagalog, call you ‘Sir’ and ‘Mum’, and go outside to clean the windows while you eat.” Our first choice, the magnificently-named ‘Little Beauty’s Satanic Dining’, where the maids also wear devil’s horns, had already closed for the evening, so we headed to ‘@Home’, a discreet café on the fifth floor of a building off Chuo-dori, Akihabara’s main shopping avenue. The special of the day, according to a menu in the lift lobby, was rice wrapped in an omelette, with a smiley face drawn on it in ketchup. Clearly, the cuisine was not the main attraction here. When we arrived at the cafe, we saw a big sign at the entrance prohibiting photo-taking, and that the customers were all male, mostly sitting alone. It felt rather sad. A maid with furry cat’s ears on her head, bounced to the front, an apologetic look on her face. “Sorry, Master, last orders have closed,” she said in Japanese. “Come back tomorrow.” We tried pleading in half-past six Japanese that we were tourists on our last day, but she stood firm. “Cannot doing ne,” she responded reciprocally in half-past six English. “I donno which is more loser,” I said to Ichi-san and Ni-san on the way out. “Wanting to go to a maid café, or being turned away by one.” Returning to the train station, I noticed a sign for an ‘Imouya’. “What’s that?” I asked Ichi-san. “A little sister café,” he replied. “Where the waitresses call you ‘big brother’ and….” “Let’s not go there,” said Ni-san. “In every sense of the phrase.” And we didn’t. Share on Facebook Comment on Sunday Times: Distant Reflections on Reunion by ahmed sherif ahmed sherif Man i just love your blog, keep the cool posts comin.. Singapore Dreaming Opens in Taiwan this Friday! Hello friends, We are proud to announce that our multiple-award winning Singaporean film, SINGAPORE DREAMING 美满人生, is premiering on Friday, November 9th, 2007 in Taipei and Kaohsiung. SINGAPORE DREAMING 美满人生 is the first Singapore film to have a commercial release in Taiwan since ‘I Not Stupid’ in 2002, and is a great opportunity for Singaporeans based in Taiwan to experience a slice of home, as well as share it with their Taiwanese friends. SINGAPORE DREAMING 美满人生has been compared favourably to the works of the great Taiwanese directors Ang Lee and Edward Yang, and has won three major international awards to date, including the prestigious Best Asian/Middle Eastern Film Award at the recent Tokyo International Film Festival. In Taipei, it will play at the Shin Kong Multiplex 長春戲院 新光影城 In Kaohsiung, it will play at 喜滿客夢時代影城 Screening times and details can be found at: http://blog.yam.com/dreaming1109 If you have friends or family in Taiwan, please let them know about our premiere! It’s an extremely rare event for an indie Singapore film to open commercially in Taiwan, and we want as many people as possible to see it! Thanks! Share on Facebook Sunday Times: Playing With Oneself in Tokyo The following was published in the Sunday Times on 4 November 2007: Sunday Times 4 Nov 2007 Playing With Oneself in Tokyo by Colin Goh So I was recently in Tokyo for the Tokyo International Film Festival, and I really must thank everyone out there who sent the Wife and I your congrats on our very unexpected win. In this regard, I was amused to note that many of you sent us virtual drinks. While grateful for the generous (?) sentiment, I must admit that, in this age of Second Life and online avatars, I did spend a few seconds wondering whether it was advisable to drink while driving down the information superhighway… Now ordinarily, like most of you, I would have found the preceding statement not just corny, but retarded. After visiting Japan and witnessing the commingling of fantasy and reality, however, I’m not so sure. It began when a friend very kindly volunteered to show me around the Akihabara district. Many Singaporeans like to compare Akihabara to Sim Lim Square on steroids, as it’s a mecca for electronic gadgets. To do so would be a gross understatement. ‘Akiba’ (as it is often abbreviated) not only sells doodads that aren’t available in most countries, it also has stuff most people haven’t even thought of yet, and probably never will. (An electronic stress toy-cum-keychain that simulates popping bubble wrap, anyone? No? How about a scotch tape dispenser cum USB hub?) Akiba is also, in some ways, a window into the modern Japanese psyche, and some of what you’ll see can be pretty disconcerting. At the Rajio Keikan building, for instance, you can find toys for sale that go way beyond Hello Kitty and build-it-yourself models of Mobile Suit Gundam. On several floors, you can buy the little collectible figurines that are often sold in plastic spheres from coin-operated dispensers. Except the figurines include not just the usual robots and cute animals, but also cute animals and realistic plastic depictions of their poop, and schoolgirls in various stages of undress. Perhaps the strangest of all was the entire floor devoted to dolls, including life sized ones. Here you can buy clothing for your dolls – not just gowns, dresses and shoes, but also eyes, hair, teeth, and breasts. In one corner, a mother and daughter team was sitting down with a consultant, the daughter unfurling a portfolio of drawings to show exactly what she wanted in her new acquisition. There were also guys browsing through the selection of angel wings and lingerie. (I guess Victor, and not just Victoria, has a secret.) For some, collecting is not enough. The ‘cosplay’ phenomenon, where grown people actually dress up as anime characters, was evident everywhere on the streets too. Sometimes collecting and cosplay collided, as in Doll@Cafe, which is like a love hotel (those convenient Geylang-esque quickie joints), except you’re booking some, ahem, quality time with anatomically accurate mannequins. Sex doesn’t come safer than this. There are also email services where you can sign up for regular cutesy-but-raunchy emails from a virtual girlfriend (probably crafted and sent out by some sweaty, pimply dude from his laptop). I guess at the heart of all of this is some form of struggle with identity in a world whose boundaries and mores are not just tested by globalization, but also cyberspace. The desire to create or immerse oneself in imaginary worlds is a confused assertion of self. How can dressing like a character from Sailor Moon be an assertion of self, you ask? It can be if you really, really like Sailor Moon so much that you’re not content to just watch it, you want to claim a part of its world for yourself too. Some essays have described such blending of fantasy and reality as ‘creative’. I guess, but it’s also a retreat from the stresses of regular life. In an online gaming universe, you may be a macho warrior rather than the speccy nerd you are in ‘real life’, but how empowered can you really feel, when you’re actually hiding? Tokyo has always been a trendsetter for young people worldwide, and it may very well be auguring our future: one where our energies are devoted to the ephemeral – like cosplay, deciding on your doll’s couture, or building your zombie army on Facebook – rather than more pressing issues, like world hunger and climate change. Actually, we’re already seeing it now – many of us are only too happy to sign online petitions, but less willing to do on-the-ground campaigning and lobbying, the kind of efforts that actually bring about change. Creating imaginary friends sounds cool – but really, isn’t it just playing with yourself? Share on Facebook Wah Lau Eh Yet Again - We Won in Tokyo! So there I am, back in NYC, comatose from jet lag when I get a phone call at 5.30 am in the morning… I panic. At this hour, what kind of phone call can bring good news? But it’s Alice Lim, who plays ‘Ma’ in Singapore Dreaming… she’s saying something in Mandarin, but my jet-lag addled brain and condemned Mandarin can’t entirely parse it. Then it seeps in… She’s saying congratulations. Barely 16 hours after I’d left Japan, I’m being told that Singapore Dreaming just became the first ever Singapore film to win the Best Asian/Middle Eastern Film Award at the Tokyo International Film Festival. As I’d already flown off, the Festival asked if we had anyone in Tokyo who could represent us at the awards ceremony. As it turns out, Alice’s daughter Leng Yeng is stationed there… perfect! (That’s her above, holding our award. Yen and I think she looks so glamorous, she should represent us at every awards ceremony…) We’re still reeling from the news. We can’t believe our little film had a hope of winning over all the other tua liap directors! (SGD was competing in the Winds of Asia-Middle East category, which included films like ‘Exodus’ by Hong Kong director Pang Ho Cheung and starring Simon Yam; ‘Breath’ by South Korean auteur Kim Ki Duk; ‘The Wall Passer’ by Taiwan’s Hung Hung; ‘Mad Detective’ by Hong Kong’s Johnny To; ‘Cut and Paste’ by Egypt’s Hala Khalil; and ‘A Few Days Later’ by Iranian superstar Niki Karimi. If we even suspected we had a chance, I’d definitely have hung around for the end of the Fest… Thank you, Tokyo jury! Thank you, TIFF! Thank you, audiences! Thank you, investors, actors, crew, distributors, sales agent and everyone who helped make our dream come true! Now we shall go eat sushi in celebration… Share on Facebook Great Premiere in Taiwan! We had a great full-house premiere in Taipei, as the closing film of the Women Make Waves Film Festival, ahead of our commercial run on November 9 in Taipei and Kaohsiung! Our star Yeo Yann Yann (recently of ‘881′ fame) flew in to add some glamour to the screening and was mobbed for autographs for an hour afterwards! Singapore singing superstar Tanya Chua also very generously came to say some nice words about the film and share some Singaporean pride. Everyone, please go and buy her great new album “Hello and Goodbye”! More great reviews from the Taiwanese press here Thank you, Taiwan - for all the great hospitality and friendliness you’ve shown us! We’ll be back for sure! Singaporeans, if you have friends in Taiwan, please tell them to see our little film when it opens on 9 November in Taipei and Kaohsiung - we’re the first Singapore film to get a commercial release in Taiwan since 2002’s ‘I Not Stupid’, so we need all the support we can get! Share on Facebook Sunday Times: A Tale of Twisted Tongues in Taiwan The following was published by the Sunday Times on 21 October 2007: Sunday Times 21 Oct 2007 A Tale of Twisted Tongues in Taiwan by Colin Goh The Wife and I are in Taipei, where tonight, our film, Singapore Dreaming, will be having its Taiwanese premiere at the Women Make Waves Film Festival, ahead of a commercial theatrical release in a couple of weeks.  We’re a little chuffed, as it’ll be the first Singapore movie since 2002’s ‘I Not Stupid’ to get a commercial release here, and also because we’ll be sharing a distributor with Hou Hsiao Hsien, one of our filmmaking idols. It’s our first time in Taiwan, and we’re feeling a wee bit strange, because there’s so much that we’re finding familiar as Singaporeans, and yet, the slight variations make the differences really jump out.  For example, the popular oyster omelette that Singaporeans refer to as ‘oh luak’ or ‘oh jian’ is called ‘e-a jian’ here. (Pronounced ‘uh-ah jian’.)  And it’s served with sauce on top.  For overseas Singaporeans like us, Taipei is a refracted view of home. Perhaps the biggest difference is hearing Hokkien (or ‘Hoklo’ as it’s referred to here) spoken everywhere, even in the mass media. Unlike Singapore, Hoklo is not only not restricted, it’s positively flourishing under the current government. But it’s not the same Hokkien that our friendly neighbourhood ah bengs speak.  Hoklo may share the same roots, but according to linguistics experts, it’s become a distinct language by itself, with a unique vocabulary, distinct philology and even sub-dialects of its own.  We had a personal brush with this when we encountered the local equivalent of a seven-syllable epithet involving the genitalia of one’s maternal parent that is well-known to all Singaporeans, especially those who have undergone national service.  The Hoklo counterpart, you might be interested to know, has only six syllables. (As this is a family paper, I won’t tell you which one.) The Taiwanese were similarly intrigued by the linguistic variation in the dialogue in Singapore Dreaming.  In every press interview or event, there was genuine interest about our Hokkien, and especially our Singlish. We were really caught off-guard by this.  We never thought of Singlish as a marketing point, as we’d assumed that Taiwanese audiences would all just be reading the perfectly grammatical Mandarin subtitles, so the Singlish dialogue would be bypassed as mere babble.  But we were wrong.  Everyone wanted to talk about it. When giving a talk at a local university, the entire English and Linguistics department turned up to quiz us about Singlish. Far from dismissing it as inferior, one professor lamented how the Taiwanese equivalent had not evolved as much as Singlish; it didn’t even have a name. “Taiwanglish?” he ventured. “Taiglish?”  In his classroom, he uses vernacular English to make English come alive for his students, and thus make it easier to teach its variance with standard grammar. Another professor also said he felt having a vernacular English was evidence of a creative populace. A few students even expressed jealousy that we had Singlish, just as China had Chinglish, and Latin America Spanglish.  They started talking about wanting to document their very own “-glish”. While we are proud Singlish advocates, when we’re overseas, we are always careful to talk about how Singapore’s emphasis on maintaining grammatical English through campaigns such as the Speak Good English Movement has also helped Singaporeans engage in the global flow of business and people. When we brought this up, however, the academics began debating whether the title ‘Speak Good English Movement’ was, in fact, grammatical. The fascination with Singaporean language continued during radio interviews, where the hosts got really excited about how we don’t use ‘shichang’ for market, but rather, ‘basha’ or ‘pasat’, which we inherited from the Persian ‘bazaar’, by way of Malay.  And everyone got into a linguistic lather when it was discovered that ‘soap’ in both Hokkien and Hoklo is ‘sabun’, which is derived from the Portuguese.  Said one host, “It’s so fascinating that you can trace the history of a people, just by looking at its language.” We’re often made to feel that our hybrid language is something about which we should be embarrassed.  Our unexpected experience here in Taiwan, however, has reinforced my belief that it is actually a cultural asset, because it makes us unique and interesting in a way that say, having very clean streets can’t.  After all, for us, it’s opened doors, initiated conversations and even invited envy abroad.  Not bad for a chapalang tongue, leh! On Tuesday, Singapore Dreaming will be competing at the Tokyo International Film Festival for the Best Asian/Middle Eastern Film Award. Share on Facebook Comment on Paved With Good Intentions by Ladybug I’m not sure how I stumbled upon your blog (because I was searching for something else!) but am sure glad I did. My hubby and I really enjoyed Singapore Dreaming. You were spot on with Singapore idiosyncracies. It was great laughing at myself although I might try not to meet my maker so soon after striking the big win. When I read ‘Paved with Good Intentions’ and Yen Yen’s description of typical teacher characteristics, I nearly fell off my chair laughing (office chair, not a good idea since the floor isn’t that clean!). I used to be a Primary School Teacher. Primary, secondary; no difference. We had the same category of Singapore teachers, semi tai-tais with their ’set’ hair, discussing their next holiday destination or property purchase, ardent newbies (often screaming ’shut up’ and never thinking to give out disclaimer forms for their unauthorised outings with their lovesick wards on NON-work days, mind you), single and older men moonlighting in insurance sales, all-night mahjong kakis, quiet but suddenly fierce and defensive types, bochap kings, bochap queens, what have you. Thank you. At least I know I wasn’t the only one categorising them mentally, years back…. crap, what category did I fall into? The struggling mother of two young kids, trying to find a semblance of family life amidst the chaos. Finally threw in the towel! For now, I’m taking the alternative route as described by Yen Yen…everyday is a NEW day! Every THING is a JOY! Yippee! FALLACIOUS ARGUMENTS We’re urging all of you to sign up to repeal the manifestly unfair section 377A of the Penal Code. Some of my GLBT friends have been bugging me to write about this in my ST column for ages, but I have to keep telling them I can’t. In 2004, before this movement to repeal section 377A began, I wrote about the possibility of decriminalising oral sex altogether (which fell under section 377, not ‘A’ - the one that’s actually being amended), and the State’s Times nixed the piece. I highly doubt they’d allow me to target 377A either. Anyway, below is a peek at the rejected piece, published for the first time here. It’s been superseded by the impending amendment of 377, and doesn’t concern homosexuality at all. It does, however, suggest that the so-called ‘pragmatic’ approach (which is often cited to justify maintaining our conservative ‘values)’ is often hypocritical and divorced from reality, and that to prop up the speculative feelings of some shadowy moral majority, we have to engage in logical contortions that are even more twisted than the physical ones engaged in by Tony Leung and Tang Wei in Lust, Caution.  The piece is dated, but you might find it fun. For a more persuasive and personal appeal about repealing 377A, read this. 29 February 2004 Confused About Fallacious Arguments by Colin Goh in New York First off, thanks for the deluge of mail after my last column, which poked fun at the Romancing Singapore Campaign. As some of you noted, the RSC is a symptom of Singaporeans’ confusion about sex and procreation. Well, our confusion wasn’t helped by Chief Justice Yong’s recent judgment in the notorious case of former police sergeant Annis Abdullah, who was prosecuted under section 377 of the aptly-named Penal Code, for ‘carnal intercourse against the order of nature’. Annis was initially jailed for two years for receiving oral sex from a 16 year old girl (later shown to be 15). Despite the prosecution agreeing that the girl had consented (in fact, she bugged Annis to date her), the Chief only halved his sentence, saying a prison sentence for consensual oral sex wasn’t “manifestly excessive.” He also famously ranted on about how “there are countries where you can go and suck away for all you are worth,” but that “this is Asia.” What’s interesting was his contention that section 377 had come from colonial India and was thus “attuned to Asian conditions by the British Empire.” He also intimated that certain offences (like oral sex, no doubt) were especially “repulsive in Asian culture”. With great respect, I find this, ahem, difficult to swallow. I can’t believe the British Raj bothered to incorporate any local sentiments into their Penal Code, especially since the Kama Sutra, an Indian lovemaking guide dating back to 4 BC, devotes an entire chapter to oral sex. Isn’t the Kama Sutra sufficiently Asian? Let’s send the Supreme Court library a copy! So what are we supposed to do now? Must we really refrain from such a common act of foreplay? The leading authority is the juicy case of Public Prosecutor v Kwan Kwong Weng, where a man duped a girl into believing he could remove the poisons in her body through various sexual acts, including fellatio. I highly recommend that all Singaporeans read it. Besides the hilarious facts of the case itself, the Court of Appeal (which included the Chief) romps through the Indian jurisprudence on unnatural sex, including the case of a man pleasuring himself with a water buffalo’s nose. (No jokes about blowing noses, please.) At some risk of over-simplification, the Court held that: (1) sex is natural even if you don’t intend to procreate (otherwise condoms and the rhythm method would also be illegal); (2) for sexual intercourse to be ‘natural’, there must be the union of male and female sexual organs; (3) technically, therefore, any sexual act which doesn’t involve the meeting of the organs is carnal (i,e., for lustful purposes only) and thus unnatural; (4) BUT (and it’s a big BUT) the Court recognizes foreplay as ‘a fact of life’ and that it sometimes includes oral sex. The upshot is that consensual oral sex as a prelude to heterosexual intercourse is okay. But if you just want to have oral sex without proceeding further, it’s not okay, even if both partners consent. This approach, of course, seems practical. In fact, it ignores reality. It’s ludicrous to suggest any sexual play that doesn’t culminate in intercourse is unnatural. If one need not intend to procreate to have sex, then why limit the ways in which couples can achieve sexual pleasure, if the methods hurt no one and there’s mutual consent? It also seems silly to look to colonial jurisprudence to decide what’s biologically natural when (a) England itself has moved on, and (b) science is showing that even animals such as the Bonobo monkeys engage in it. And we can’t seriously support the ‘Asian’ objection when even the Court of Appeal accepts its prevalence, and research has shown its practice in both ancient India and China. Can we reconcile the legal cases? Sure. In virtually all the Indian and Singaporean cases, the victim was duped or coerced into the act, with the horror of the act itself as an aggravating factor. It’s about protecting the innocent. In Sergeant Annis’s case, however, he’d fooled no one, at least, not an innocent. I can only read the judgment as a valiant attempt to deter men from consorting with sexually precocious but otherwise impressionable young girls. Thankfully, Parliament says they’re considering changing the law. In the meantime, here’s how heterosexual adult couples can continue to have oral sex without fear of conviction. First, intend to have sexual intercourse. If you can’t go all the way, well, that’s human. If prosecuted, simply inform the judge, in all sincerity, “Sorry, your Honour, I tried very hard, but I guess I’m just not as strong… as you.” Share on Facebook