Does it come with the box?That’s what I want to know.
I want very much to bid for the Kate Spade bag that Ms Tin Pei Ling is donating to an Association of Women for Action and Research (Aware) fundraiser for auction on Sept 10.
But I’m actually interested only in the box that Ms Tin posed with in the photo that Aware described as “one of the defining images of the 2011 General Election”. (By the way, it was a watershed election.)
No one really knows what - if anything - was in the Kate Spade box. It could be a Kate Spade bag. It could be a dead raccoon.
It doesn’t matter. It’s the box that is famous.
I don’t mind paying the $500 reserve price for just the empty box - though another dead raccoon would also come in handy.
But why stop at Ms Tin’s Kate Spade bag (or box)?
Being a citizen of the current and future richest country in the world (according to the 2012 Wealth Report compiled by Citibank and Knight Frank), I’m flushed with so much disposable cash that I’m also looking to acquire other local cultural flotsam and jetsam drifting out there in the vast ocean of Internet memes.
Here is my wishlist:
Alex Ong’s scarf
Mr Ong is famous for the viral video of him pushing an elderly woman off a stationary bus. He is also famous for wearing a scarf in the video. Photographs of him also show him rocking a scarf. I want that scarf.
Ah Lian’s earphones
Her real name is Huina. She was called “the most polite ah lian” because of the viral video of her apparently enduring the verbal abuse of another passenger on the MRT train before eventually retaliating. She later told The New Paper that she didn’t react at first because she didn’t hear what the other passenger was saying as she had her earphones on. They look like Monster Beats by Dr Dre, but I'm not sure. I want those earphones.
A piece of “My Grandfather Road”
Artist Samantha Lo was arrested for acts of vandalism that included painting the words “My grandfather road” on the road. I want a piece of that road. I’ll pay for the jackhammer.
The giant Abercrombie & Fitch ad
I’m talking about the four-storey-high hoarding showing a shirtless man with no head outside Knightsbridge on Orchard Road last year. I want to get it as a birthday present for my wife. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.
Saw Phaik Hwa's sedan chair
I want to be carried in this everywhere I go by the shirtless guys from Abercrombie & Fitch.
MRT fire extinquisher
I'm talking about the one that a passenger used to break a train window during The Great MRT Breakdown of 2011. Apparently, it can also be used to put out fires.
NDP 2011 Funpack
They wrote a song about it, stealing the tune from Lady Gaga's Bad Romance. I understand Madonna claims Lady Gaga stole from her. I believe everyone stole from Weird Al Yankovic.
A glass of hot water from Nando's
Not mild or extra hot, but just hot. If I can't get it, I'm going to tweet about it like Joanne Peh did.
Army backpack
If I can't get the backpack the maid is carrying for the soldier, I'll take the maid. My mansion needs some tidying up. You can keep the soldier.
Ris Low's Miss Singapore 2009 tiara and sash
It has been three years already? I miss her.
Tin Pei Ling’s hat
I'm talking about the white baker boy hat she wore in the popular foot-stamping video. I'm surprised this eye-catching item isn't in more demand than the unseen Kate Spade bag.
I think it will go perfectly with my Alex Ong scarf and my Miss Singapore tiara and sash on the sedan chair. The dead raccoon is optional.
- Published in The New Paper, 19 August 2012
UPDATE: Tin Pei Ling's bag goes for $1,600
