Some pictures from our in-office celebration of Niccolle’s birthday. Also a good opportunity to post some snaps of my unsuspecting colleagues and, unfortunately for everyone, myself.


Edmund - New business development and Italian chef extraordinaire.


Niccolle – Birthday girl and part-time spoon model.


Karen – Traffic controller who looks like she’s trying very hard not to puke… at the sight of me.


Eunice – Circulation (I think) and aspiring “unlikely food combinations” endorser. We thank Edmund for politely averting his eyes.


Me – Unlikely copywriter and chief microwave oven operator. This after Karen, in a stroke of genius, set the timer at 2 seconds leading to, well, nothing.


I have a tendency to be mesmerized by people working hard in front of me.


Milk has the same effect.


Karen venting her anger on an innocent hotdog.


“Mmmmm… Otah….”


Eunice waving the severed end of a banana leaf at me. This probably meant something to our prehistoric ancestors but I haven’t for the life of me figured out what yet.


Contrary to expectations, the dish in the centre wasn’t freshly regurgitated by a marine mammal.


Despite turning twenty-(I’m gonna keep my mouth shut), the happy birthday girl’s got only one candle.

The rest of the pictures are here.

Acronyms abound where I work. All this computerization has forced us to tag every item in each direct mailer with a code so that production (or pohduction, as some would have it) can pick it out from among the thousands of other items my company has produced over the last 80 years or so.

And so we're constantly stricken with ENSBs and STs and WPs and GEUMMs and CBs. “We've gotta promote our CBs very strongly this quarter.” “Great discounts on our CBs!” “Get a CB now and receive a special gift.” I ain't no pimp man. (You have to know Hokkien in Singapore to understand what that was all about. Take it as a blessing if you didn't.)

To exacerbate (almost sounds like a dirty word, ahem… never mind) matters, it's us copywriters who, like bright pink 20-pound ducks with the words “cook me” plastered on our downy underbellies, have been arrowed to assign these codes to each item. What happened to our minions, otherwise known as account servicing?? Oh yeah, they've leaped out of existence where I am now. Dammit. Thus I find myself opening MS Excel documents and cursing the fact that they actually work on Macs. Excel! I've never touched Excel in my life and suddenly here we are getting all intimate with macros and all that rubbish.

For the first time too, I have a use for a ruler.

“Here's your ruler.”
“I don't think I'll be needing that.”
“Oh yes you will. You WILL.” *fiendish laughter*
“Noooooooooooo.”

And they don't measure things in centimeters. They insist on doing it in inches. Good grief. “What's a quarter of an inch?” “Why is each inch separated into 8 parts?” “I can't divide by 8.” “I'm Singaporean lar! I think in metric units!”

One good thing is that I've gotten my namecards. All 200 of them. Time for card castles and card blotters and card ant-killers.


I know I'm bored

[This Fashion] has no clothes for us lar. They have no upsize.

Someone: “She's always the last to leave. Every night sole survivor.”
Someone else: “Yeah. It's tough. After survivor, you have Amazing Race and then all those horrible things on Fear Factor.”
Someone: *blank stare*

He was moaning for his dog. (mourning)

In response to her design that came out of the printer.
Someone: “Where are my four dots?”
Me: “Stop talking about your dots!”
Someone: “I'm not a cow ok!”

“You wanna go to Starlight Cinema?”
“I prefer Star Movies.”

(via email)
Dear Colleagues, I brought some sweets from Bangladesh. Please stop by the panty and have them (they are in a golden box)
All this talk about boxes (golden or not) in panties isn't very appetising. Or maybe it is.

Click to feed

For all of you low-involvement poverty fighters, visit The Hunger Site.

Every click helps feed the hungry with the value of 1.1 cups of staple food.
You can, of course, volunteer to donate more.

Recently, I have become associated with bananas. Needless to say, being affiliated with a fruit of such phallic proportions has been disastrous for my reputation and has all but obliterated my ambition of becoming Prime Minister. (I know my surname isn't Lee, but hey, one is entitled to one's dreams.)

Episode One
It started one morning when Tanty offered me a banana. No girl had ever offered me one before and I told her so.

“You want banana?”, she had enquired.

“No girl has ever asked me that before!”, was my honest reply.

For some reason, this elicited much mirth from Valentia and subsequently most of the creative department.

Episode Two
When two girls launch into a lengthy discourse on the merits of various types of bananas within earshot of an immensely bored male copywriter, it is akin to entrapment.

It suffices to say that the statement that brought me to my knees in tears (and into the trap) was “I like Del Monte bananas. They're long and firm.”

And then there were the usual accusing looks, the blatant disregard for my counter-arguments and disparaging comments about my state of mind.

Episode Three
The bananas were four days old by now and growing splotches at an alarming rate. We thus endeavoured to finish them. This is when I made the mistake of offering Tanty one. “I don't want those bananas now. They're soft already.”, she scoffed. Naturally, I laughed.

Repeat last para of previous episode.

Stuck
Anyway, everything's gone bananas now. Literally. I say I'm hungry, they say “You want banana?” I say I don't want candied ginger, they say “Too bad. We don't have any bananas.” I attend a cocktail party, they politely enquire “Banana with your punch?” Soon they'll be offering me grapes by the pairs just to see what'll happen.

I attended a direct marketing seminar today. One of the speakers was from Hong Kong. This list of mispronunciations is the natural result. (I’m sorry, John)

Potion: as in "a large potion of consumers". (portion)

Dimishing: as in "market share is dimishing". (diminishing)

Haycher: as in "this haycher is due to spamming".

Bitchin’: as in "the customer is caught bitchin’ privacy and service". (between)
Welephant: as in "direct marketing is still welephant today". (relevant)

Popper: as in "prim and popper". (proper)

Con-cushion: as in "they came to this con-cushion". (conclusion)

Freshened: as in "direct marketing may be old-freshened". (fashioned)

Fof: as in "my fof point is". (fourth)

Faxable: as in "this strategy is very faxable". (flexible)

Pee-selected: as in "the customer base is pee-selected". (pre-selected)

Wizard: as in "every wizard will earn you linkpoints". (visit)

Twitch: as in "we must twitch the customer with respect". (treat)

Digititital: there’s something subliminal in this. (digital)

Discunt: this is just disgusting. (discount)

Twisted Toyfare Theatre

All these familiar toys in unfamiliar positions doing unfamiliar things to each other! No, that's not what I meant. There's actually a storyline for these. We've found three. There’re probably more.

TTT #1

TTT #2

TTT #3

I played football yesterday night with John's colleagues and among the gang was a guy who was wearing a Star Wars T-shirt. He somehow made me think of this Top Ten List from years ago. The fact that John's super hi-tech stare-at-me-and-I'll-burn-your-retinas-out sports goggles reminded me of Boba Fett didn't help either.

Top Ten Star Wars Fan Euphemisms For Not Having A Girlfriend

10. Camping alone outside the theater.

9. My force is no longer with me.

8. The Death Star is not yet operational.

7. The Empire's striking out.

6. Shaking hands with the wookie.

5. Darth Vader has no place to put his helmet.

4. Oiling the droid.

3. Unable to set coordinates for the planet Babe.

2. Spending the night with Han Solo.

1. Tractor beam not powerful enough.

"Singapore is very fake. There's this veneer of artificiality everywhere you go." That was the observation of an expatriate colleague.

She's been here for a few months now, having moved from New York, and she still feels that living in Singapore is like living in Disneyland. "You're just surrounded by all this spanking new stuff and everything's so pretty and everything actually works. That's the scary bit. There are no idiosyncrasies unique to Singapore."

Digression: This really screws up STB's Uniquely Singapore campaign which, in my view, totally sucked anyway. Surely you know something's wrong when one of the visuals you use with the Uniquely Singapore tagline is some asshole dancing on a bar-top which is neither unique nor Singaporean. The bottom line is that Singapore isn't unique at all and we shouldn't position ourselves as something we're not. We should instead tout ourselves as the planet's first democratic dictatorship/monarchy. And then we could build monuments such as the Esplanade or that ridiculously huge ferris wheel in worship of our leaders (all voted into office by our long-suffering people, of course) and then THOSE would be suitable for a Uniquely Singapore campaign. End of digression.

I suppose she means that Singapore has no character. And she's right as well. Singapore has lost much of its charm in the name of urban redevelopment. I'm not talking about HDB upgrading. Redevelopment does have its advantages when it's done in the right places but it seems like the G has been playing too much Sim City.

Take Chinatown for instance. It used to be a true, if not exactly a great, cultural hub. The chaos, the streetside stalls, the cramped pathways, narrow alleys, all those tiny shops packed to the brim, even the dirt and grime all combined to bring you back 30 or 40 years. But look what's happened to it. It's been given a 'facelift' as the G likes to put it. Everything's so watered down now we might as well buy our bak kwa from a shopping center. Anything of cultural importance that the G has touched has become like how the Golf GTI was described in Top Gear. It's a newer, better version of the original. Just not as important.

Perhaps that's why my recent trips to Taipei, KL and Hong Kong have left me feeling that something really is missing here. Over there, the stuff that's old is REALLY old. The stuff that's Chinese is REALLY Chinese. The stuff that's Malay is REALLY Malay. And that's the way it should be. I don't wanna live in some ultra-modern metropolis where everything's the same everywhere. But that's the way that Singapore is increasingly becoming. It's no coincidence that locals complain all the time that there's nothing to do here. There're no mamaks that we can fall back on, no night markets like in Taiwan and the shops close so damn early unlike in Hong Kong.

I know we're a modern city and efficient and all that bull but sometimes life's a little more fun when things go wrong here and there. But then again, “fun” has never been a priority, has it?

This is my workspace. Pardon the mess around the edges. Oh, and don’t mind that gleaming white technological marvel sitting somewhere in the middle. It’s merely a G5. Absolutely useless.

And this monstrosity below is what happens when a Mac mousepad meets gonorrhea.

Hong Hong Kong Kong

As some of you may know, I have just switched jobs and this new job, unfortunately, can get a little bit technical. And so they sent me to Hong Kong for TRAINING. Note that the meaning of the word “TRAINING” differs from, and indeed is rather the opposite of, the word “HOLIDAY”. This vocabulary lesson is for the benefit of those who have repeatedly been telling me how lucky I am.

Just to reinforce my point, over the five days that I was in Hong Kong, I arrived at work at the usual time and left at the usual time. I woke up at 7.30am, as usual. I walked to the train station, as usual. I popped pimples to stay awake at work, as usual. The only difference is that I lived out of hotel room 1711.

Hong Kong seems like the type of place I’d enjoy. It’s like having Bugis Village IN Bugis Junction, if you know what I mean. There’s a kind of structured chaos to the whole place that I find irresistible. Take Mongkok for example. Thousands of people literally swarm the place every night and yet there’re no human traffic jams. You’ll find roadside stalls all over the place hawking their finger foods alongside gigantic shopping malls. Public transport is never far away, giving you an outlet from the confusion any time you want.

Most large cities have this quality. Singapore isn’t one of them. We’re overloaded on the structured side much like our government. There’s no charm to the place anymore. The closest we have here to what London, Kuala Lumpur, Taipei or Hong Kong have is probably Geylang and even it pales in comparison. We seriously need a sprinkling of disorder.

Courier Boy

The next time I go abroad, I will keep my mouth shut. In my excitement, I announced the good news to quite a few friends only to be saddled with requests both to bring stuff back and to bring stuff THERE. Being Mr. Congeniality at heart, I naturally acceded. Hence, on departure day, this humble blogger stumbled into the airport laden with 11 packs of instant noodles, a photo frame, 3 bottles of balm and a small library of documents. I quickly found that, unlike FEDEX, I don’t live to deliver which meant that I was soon wishing that I was dead but that’s another story.

Plane Rides

Remember when you were a kid and plane rides were the coolest things around? At departure, you’d plaster your nose onto the glass at the viewing gallery staring at YOUR plane - that huge hunk of gleaming metal that could somehow carry you across continents and over oceans. You’d dream of playing those super cool SNES games or drinking endless glasses of Coke. You’d salivate at the thought of the in-flight lunches (only applicable to problem kids). The point is, plane rides don’t seem to fly with me anymore. Gah.

Shopping

The thing about Hong Kong is that there doesn’t seem to be much else to do there. On the 2nd night, I went to Causeway Bay and proceeded to shop my ass off. The very next night, I picked it right off the floor and went at it again, this time at Tsim Sha Tsui. And the night after, despite leg cramps and a nagging desire to get to know my bed better, I found myself stalking the streets of Mong Kok for a decent buy.

How women can actually enjoy such expeditions is beyond explanation. In fact, some proponents of Intelligent Design have claimed this phenomenon as proof of God’s existence.

Requests

As mentioned above, I was beseeched (I use this word in jest. In truth, various parts of my anatomy were threatened.) to bring a few items back from Hong Kong.

#1
Eunice wanted 5 (preferably 10) tubes of some snow thingie handcream from Sasa. She even gave me a picture of the tube and bribed me with MP3s to boot. Thus compelled, I boldly stepped into the first Sasa I spied, showed the printout to the salesgirl (who greeted me in Cantonese and was rewarded with a stare so blank you could paint on it) and was promptly informed that they were out of stock (this time, thankfully, in sign language). Undeterred, I persevered.

Four Sasas later, I only had two tubes. I was seriously starting to believe that this cream did indeed possess magical qualities. Anyway, it wasn’t till the sixth Sasa that I got my, by now, grubby paws onto the remaining eight tubes. This particular outlet had a whole basket of the stuff. I profaned.

An aside: You know those little shopping baskets that Sasa has? Have you ever seen a guy holding one of those? Did you think he was gay? Mine was filled with eight freaking tubes of bleeding anti-wrinkle cream. Never mind.

#2
John (Mr. I-don’t-speak-like-a-honkie-ar!) Chan wanted, of all things, a roasted goose. Now, of all the various poultry available, my considerate friend had to choose what is undoubtedly one of the largest birds that humankind has tried to devour. Unfortunately for me, I too wanted a taste of this fowl. And so with help from my Hong Kong colleagues, four of whom accosted an innocent poultry chopper, pelted him with Cantonese of which the only words I understood were siu ngor, or something like that, and demanded that my goose be nice packed in a nice box, I finally got my bird. (Despite first appearances, the previous sentence is grammatical.)

As compensation for my troubles, John, you will post a picture of yourself in those ultra-cool sports goggles on this blog.

Cantonese

After 5 days of living in a Cantonese country, I’ve gotten used to the language. It’s beautiful really; almost as appealing as Japanese but in a different way. Cantonese has roughly 450 million words by my rather modest estimation which explains why I haven’t been able to learn it while its melodiousness comes from its 8 tones, as compared to 4 for Mandarin and 1 for English.

Unfortunately, Cantonese speakers don’t sound quite as musical when it comes to English. Like when I was arranging the transfer from the airport to the hotel – “Mr. Ken (Kang)! We tiao (tell) you when your bus rare-dee (ready).” By sheer strength of will, I managed to keep a straight face though I could do nothing about the involuntary twitches around my lips.

It seems that Cantonese speakers also can’t pronounce the “dle” sound. “Middle” becomes “meedoh” and “poodle” is “poodoh”. “R” sounds are often mutilated as well. “Production” is “poh-duction” and “product” somehow becomes “porduck”. The list goes on but I’ll stop here.

Training

I almost forgot about this. Over the past 5 days, my job scope has become clearer. It’s more than just copywriting. I’ve become familiar with the procedures we have to follow and the consequences that will follow if we don’t. The production briefing is a good example. The production manager started by impressing upon us how important his job was e.g. “The peenting (printing) will not be done at all without us.” This was followed by a rant about how complicated the production process is e.g. “We have to coordinate with many many parties.” (no, there were no pronunciation errors, much to my dismay.) He then finished off by singling out the creative department as the one which always screws up his schedule and hence weekends. By the end of this tirade, I was ready to fling myself out the nearest window.

Still, it was a fruitful trip. Part of the purpose was to enable us to put a face behind the voices or… well… email addresses that we’re so used to. It worked in a sort of expensive way.

I’m lazy to end this properly. Heck.