Pulau Ubin, here I come. Damn.

Why is it that people are constantly surprised that I have never been to Pulau Ubin in my life? Is that a place everyone must visit at some point? Exactly what is the attraction of landing on your head after you’ve been flung off your bicycle or jumping off a quarry cliff only to be intercepted before you hit the water by a pleasant outgrowth of rock?

And yet, every single time I tell someone “Ah, I’ve never been to Ubin” their faces contort such that their eyebrows almost touch and they let out this wail of surprise as if I’d just told them that I like to spend my afternoons plucking bits out of babies. The asses.

And so what if I like to spend my afternoons plucking bits out of babies?

Alas, the day has finally arrived. Tomorrow, this blogger will be shipped together with a few other unwilling participants over to that wretched island. Oh no, we haven’t been enrolled in some OBS course. No, that would be unthinkable. We’re just going there to take some pictures and try to produce a nice brochure but that’s bad enough. Danger lurks everywhere on that island. All over the place there are bicycles careening back and forth, people jumping off cliffs and a certain breed of human for whom “belay” has some alternative meaning other than the past tense of “belie”. It takes a brave man to survive such a place. And God, or whatever supernatural being you worship, willing, I will. Wish me luck.

Of course. The past tense of "belie" isn't really "belay". It's "belied".

Backseat drivers

We’ve had Rodney for about a week. And, yes, Jean, I have ridden him; the whole family has. This isn’t any lewd reference to a daisy chain though! Just thought I needed to clarify that. Anyway, ten seconds into my maiden drive, I managed to mount a kerb, much to the consternation of my sister. But what does she know about drifting, even if it’s just out of a carpark.

If there’s one thing I’ve learnt with all this driving, it’s that backseat drivers are, like genital warts, irritating as hell. I’ve been told to “go slower” while travelling at a measly 60km/h, banned from the rightmost lane because it is “stressful” to drive there (for whom I wonder), and commanded not to turn so close to the divider. The adjectives “scary”, “reckless” and “dangerous” have all been applied liberally when I’ve been at the wheel. Not a minute goes by without some warning being issued or some gory scenario being illustrated or someone telling someone else to basically shut up. You know how you often read about drivers who crash and only manage to kill the people at the back? Those aren’t accidents. They’re solutions.

Unfortunately, I haven’t yet mastered the fine art of losing my backend and swinging it into a tree. The last thing I wanna do is yell “Die, you vapid halfwits!”, twist the wheel and impale myself on a branch. So, for now at least, if you see a red Swift crawling along in lane 4 of the CTE at 55km/h, do me a favour and crash into my rear. Hard.

An Interview with Dr Chee

Oftentimes, Dr Chee Soon Juan comes across as a raving lunatic. But this interview reveals his philosophy and his concerns about Singapore’s future, many of which are very valid. Whether or not Singaporeans will warm to his brand of politics remains to be seen but surely one has to respect his dedication to the cause. I certainly see him in a different light now, even if I still don’t think he should be quite as confrontational.

P.S. I don’t know how long this article will stay free but I have a soft copy which I’ll gladly mail to anyone interested.

Sesamin and Schisandra

“Do you have the picture of Sesamin and Schisandra?” I overheard one of my colleagues asking someone else. Quite naturally, my brain started to fill with images of two beautiful women frolicking in a bathtub (I will accept no argument on this). And so I scrambled over to his desk in the hope of catching a glimpse of what I imagined would be May and Choy scrubbing each other down. Except that it wasn’t May or Choy or anything remotely feminine. It was a bottle of health pills.

And so I asked him why it wasn’t two women in the bath together and he said he didn’t know. Then someone else said he ate Sesamin and Schisandra regularly and I laughed heartily and said “Ate?!” and laughed some more. So he proclaimed me an idiot and that was that.

Ok. Back to work.