.Originally, the accompanying visual was a photo of Michael Palmer. It was then replaced with a photo of Eric Khoo, which was finally replaced with a cartoon of me that you see above.
I had no say in any of these decisions.
The artist who drew the cartoon is my New Paper colleague, Chng Choon Hiong.
He's the guy who drew the cartoon of the pandas which went viral a couple of months ago when Jia Jia and Liang Teh came to Singapore.
(UPDATE: Chng has won the 2012 SPH EMND Illustration of the Year award for this cartoon.)
He also drew the little cartoon of me at the top of this blog, which I took from this in-house ad he created for a mock advice column that Paik Choo and I (we are the "humorists") did a couple of years ago in the paper.
You can see more of his work here.
Anyway, back to me.
I want to point out a few things about this cartoon.
First of all, my hair doesn't look that wild. Okay, I try to prevent it from looking that wild. But I can accept that Chng drew it that way for effect.
What is not so acceptable is the depiction of me using a pen and paper to write. Hello, I use a computer.
Also, I hope my face doesn't really look that fat, but that may be a fat hope.
Finally, what I find most troubling of all is that Chng drew me with my mole still intact on my face after all the money (about $300) I spent to get it removed more than a year ago.
If you look closely, you can just make out the tiny grey circle below my left eye in the cartoon.
I understand that he probably drew it based on an old pre-mole removal photo of me, but then he sees me practically every day in the newsroom.
You mean he doesn't notice I don't have that mole any more?
I guess I wasted 300 bucks.
At least the look of anguish on my face is pretty accurate.
