Which superhero should you go as if you were taking part in the first DC Justice League Run 2015 in Singapore?
Superman is faster than a speeding bullet, but is the caped alien faster than the Flash, the fastest man alive?
Batman is not fast at all without his Batmobile. Green Lantern was a failed 2011 movie.
Wonder Woman is not even a movie yet and the 1970s TV series was high camp with cleavage.
Pick your superhero and you get a running singlet resembling the costume of that comic-book character. Kids get a T-shirt with all five characters.
The Wonder Woman singlet comes only in the woman's cut. The others are unisex. So women could choose from all five superheroes whereas men got only four. How is this fair?
Amyway, I picked Green Lantern because I wanted something to match my green Altra Superior running shoes, which itself sounds like a name for superhero.
But like true superheroes (or supervillains), a few among the more than 5,000 runners at Sentosa yesterday morning wouldn't let themselves be limited by the apparel offered by event organiser Pink Apple.
There was Robin, Green Arrow, Catwoman, Bane and the Joker. One guy ran the 5km in a complete Spider-Man suit even though - gasp! - the webhead is not part of the DC universe.
Halloween came two months early for these folks.
It cannot be confirmed, however, if any man ran as Wonder Woman.
The DC Justice League Run is also held in Malaysia...
Which is similar to Saturday Night Fever except Polling Day is on a Friday and the soundtrack is getai music. No Bee Gees.
I wanted to start this column with a surprise appearance by Kit Chan singing Home, but I couldn’t find the minus-one track.
So Tosh Zhang will be rapping Lingo Lingo instead. Feel free to stand up and rap along if you’re swept up in the moment, blocking the view of the annoyed people behind you. #StyloMilo.
Even before Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong’s National Day Rally speech last Sunday, the election has been all that everyone is talking about. (Well, that and the sinking ringgit.)
Polling Day will be on the 14th anniversary of 9/11. The alternative was to have Polling Day on the 74th anniversary of Pearl Harbour, but that’s in December and too close to Christmas.
Parliament was dissolved on Tuesday like an Eno tablet in a glass of water, which explains the amount of hot gas coming out of politicians in recent days.
But my wife needs Panadol and not Eno as it appears she has the fever too. She is oddly excited about the election. What she’s looking forward to is our Member of Parliament visiting our block to win our votes because there are things she wants to say to him.
I’m not even sure he’ll ever visit our block as we’ve lived there for 17 years and never seen our MP in person.
But my wife believes that he has to visit us because of the election and is worried that she might not be home when he does. She even made me promise to tell the MP what she wants to tell him in case I get to meet him and she doesn’t.
So what’s this earth-shaking thing my wife wants me to tell the MP that’s so important?
Is it to reduce the number of foreign workers in Singapore? Return our CPF? Fire the Transport Minister. Oh, wait, he already quit.
No, what my wife wants me to tell the MP is to get our lift fixed.
What?
You see, one of the lifts in our block sometimes doesn’t close properly the first time when you board it on the first storey. It will open and close again a few times before it finally goes up. It doesn’t happen all the time, but it can be very irritating when it does.
It irritates my wife enough that it’s the one thing she wants me to tell the MP during his improbable block visit.
I asked her if she had called the town council. She said she had given up on the town council after the otak man incident. (See my column from a year ago.)
I said I’m not going to squander my time with the MP by complaining about the lift. That’s just dumb.
Quick lesson here: Never call anything your wife says “dumb”.
She retorted angrily: “Then what are you going to say when he asks you if we have any problems?”
Uh... I had to think about that.
Hmmm, what should you say to your MP when you’re given the chance? You don’t want to be frivolous or over-demanding. You also don’t want to sound dumb.
Since my MP, Mr Alex Yam, is just an MP and not a minister, I shouldn’t ask for anything on the national level, like, say, greater press freedom or a ban on public burning.
I should just ask for something more related to our constituency.
Okay, since I live in Choa Chu Kang, I wish the Government would standardise the spelling of “Choa Chu Kang” and not spell it “Chua Chu Kang” sometimes. It’s confusing.
But the thing is, I won’t be part of the Chua Chu Kang GRC (note the spelling) for much longer as my Yew Tee area has been gerrymandered, I mean, redrawn into the newly-formed Marsiling-Yew Tee GRC with Mr Yam remaining as my MP.
I know!
If I see him, I would tell him to get the GRC name changed to Yew Tee-Marsiling GRC because Yew Tee must always come first.
Only then, he’ll get my vote.
That’s how deep my love for Bee Gees, I mean, Yew Tee is.
That’s dumb, my wife said.
Hey, it’s election time. Anything is possible.
Or maybe it’s the fever talking.
Where’s my MC?
- Published in The New Paper, 30 August 2015
Hello Sir
Referring to the Irritating lifts on the 1st storey which just refused to close - this is un- un- un-believable, but the lift on my block behaves exactly as you have mentioned. I'll vote you in if you can get it fixed.
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If you want your own 15 minutes, here is where to go:
What I find amusing about Darryl David becoming a PAP candidate recently is not just that he was a TV personality, but for the first time, a PAP candidate is someone I've actually worked with before.
Most people know him as a host of The Pyramid Game, but because he was a full-time MediaCorp "artiste" at the time, the company couldn't just let him host one lousy game show. It had to get its money's worth.
So MediaCorp made him act.
The first TV series I worked as a scriptwriter for was Shiver in 1997. I wrote eight out of the 30 episodes.
And David appeared in three of them that I wrote.
So in a way, you can say that Darryl David was the Leonardo DiCaprio to my Martin Scorsese. (Not really.)
I also had small roles in the episodes I wrote, which was how I got to be in a scene with the future PAP candidate once.
That's me at the back.
Fortuitously, I just discovered that Shiver is now available for streaming on the MediaCorp website, Toggle.
So here is the episode, called The Lift, in full. (Video may not work on mobile.)
The interesting casting choice in this episode is that David's mother is Chinese, which reflects real life, but the actress playing his wife is not.
Another episode, called Miss Singapore, is the first script I ever wrote. In it, David plays a photographer opposite Jamie Lee. 'Memba her?
Here is the episode in full.
In the episode called Inside, David appears alive briefly in the beginning but is a corpse for most of the episode. As an additional bonus, the episode also features Tan Kheng Hua in a rather skimpy costume.
Here is the episode in full.
Before Shiver, David was a regular cast member in the sitcom Happy Belly.
1965, a movie about Singapore’s struggle for independence, produced by a former MediaCorp executive who gave us Liang Po Po The Movie.
The problem with all these projects, apart from them being written and directed by foreigners or produced by a former MediaCorp executive who gave us Liang Po Po The Movie, is that they are about Singapore in the past.
Wouldn’t you like to see something that is about Singapore in the 21st century at least?
And that was why I bought a ticket to see the movie, Hitman: Agent 47, on Friday.
It might as well be called Hitman: Agent SG50.
Shot partly in Singapore last year, the movie stars Rupert Friend and Zachary Quinto.
Actually, because of these two actors, Hitman: Agent 47 could also be called Hitman: Clash Of The Eyebrows.
At first, I was reluctant to see the movie because I haven’t seen the first Hitman movie starring Timothy Olyphant, or played any of the video games the movies are based on.
It would be like watching The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 2 without watching The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 1 or any of the Hunger Games movies, or having read the books.
Or watching 1965 without watching 1964 or 1963.
Or watching The LKY Musical without watching The KJX Musical.
(I’ll give you a moment to figure out that last joke. I’ll still be here when you do.)
But I went to see Hitman: Agent 47 anyway because, you know, SG50.
Ironically, the first shot of Singapore in the movie is of a CGI building that is not actually in Singapore. I only know it’s supposed to be Singapore because it says so in the subtitle.
But the most SG50 scene in the movie is not even set in Singapore but in Berlin.
In the scene, Quinto and the girl are trying to figure out where a missing man is.
The man is 72, has money and is most likely to be somewhere warm.
He has cancer. So he also has to be in a place with the medical facilities to treat his cancer.
He speaks English, Russian, Mandarin and Tamil.
Wait, what? Why specifically Tamil? Why not Hindi? Why would an angmoh person speak Tamil?
Someone actually asks this in the movie. The answer is the man was married to a woman from Sri Lanka. Whatevs.
The final clue is that the missing man is an expert on orchids.
I wanted to shout at the screen, “He’s in Singapore, you idiots!”
They might as well say he likes this strange fruit called a durian and has a taste for chicken rice and chilli crab.
But everyone eventually ends up on our island, resulting in plenty of car chases and gunfights, which don’t reflect very well on the enforcement of our nation’s traffic safety and anti-gun laws.
I’m surprised the Media Development Authority hasn’t classified Hitman: Agent 47 as a political film because apart from its politically charged theme about being your own person despite what you’re programmed to be, the movie also includes a cameo by a former local politician.
Ex-Nominated Member of Parliament and actress Janice Koh appears in a lift scene for maybe half a second.
Toggle has reported that actress Carole Lin has given birth to her first child:
Despite being told by a gynaecologist that conceiving at her age would be difficult, 42-year-old Carole Lin successfully got pregnant after just two months of trying for a baby with her American-born Korean husband David Lim.
On August 19, the actress gave birth to an SG50 baby girl, five days ahead of her August 24 due date. The child was delivered via C-section due to low amniotic fluid.
“David and I are excited to announce the birth of our beautiful daughter, Brooklyn Lim, today. Brooklyn was born on 19 August 2015, at around 6.48pm, weighing a healthy 3kg at Mount Elizabeth Hospital. I had a smooth delivery and am recovering well,” Carole shared in a statement, also thanking well-wishers, the hospital staff and Dr Ann Tan, who was also Vivian Hsu’s obstetrician.
She continued, “We appreciate all the advice and recommendations offered by our friends and family; and with chiropractic care by my husband, I truly enjoyed a healthy and smooth pregnancy. We have been eagerly looking forward to embarking on the special journey, and are so happy that little Brooklyn is finally here. She is such a blessing to us and we hope that she will be a blessing to the people around her as well.”
Carole and David, 39, met at a social gathering for chiropractic care specialists. After about four years of dating, David proposed to Carole, who had just returned from filming her last drama The Journey: A Voyage overseas, with a painting of his own. The couple exchanged vows in an intimate, spring-themed ceremony at W Singapore on June 22 last year.
In addition to being husband and wife (and now father and mother), David and Carole are also the Director and Creative Consultant respectively at Wellness for Life Chiropractic, which David co-founded in 2007. This is her third marriage since 1999.
Lin's second marriage was to a Frenchman named Bertrand Gouge from 2008 to 2010.
David's date was a woman named Lynette Pang, who was a stage actress and had co-hosted a Channel 5 music video programme called Vidz.
I liked her. She was friendly to me. She's now Assistant Chief Executive of Group Marketing at Singapore Tourism Board.
So later, when I heard that David was getting married, I assumed it was to Pang. But it was to another woman, Georgina Chang.
Here's The New Paper report of the wedding in 1999:
IT'S true. Pyramid Game host Darryl David just got married.
Whoa, you exclaim. Why was there no news about it? Why no big newspaper story or footage on Showbuzz?
Because that's just the way Darryl and his wife, Perfect 10 programme director Georgina Chang, wanted it.
"I felt that a wedding was a personal thing, which should be shared with family and close friends. I've been to many celebrity weddings and I didn't want to have something like that," said Darryl, 28.
"I didn't want it televised, didn't want sponsorship or free wedding gowns. There's always some payback along with those things," he added.
Georgina, 28, was more blunt.
"Frankly, I didn't want it to become a bitch fest," she said.
She explained that after attending many celebrity weddings, she discovered that many people started bitching about everything and weren't really interested in the bride and groom.
"A wedding is a special day and we wanted only people who wanted to celebrate with us to be there," added Georgina.
As such, the newly-weds threw a dinner in a garden marquee at Fort Canning Park on April 9 where they invited only family and very close friends.
Which was ideal for Georgina, since she always wanted a marquee wedding.
For Darryl, it was also great not to have a wedding in a big ballroom.
"A ballroom reminds me of work. I host a lot of functions. I've practically been to almost every ballroom in Singapore. I definitely didn't want my wedding to be in one," he said.
They tied the knot at the Registry of Marriages on Sept 9, last year.
Darryl and Georgina met in university and quickly became good friends.
Georgina then left for Hongkong to work in Channel V in May 1994.
On one such trip home in 1996, Darryl and Georgina went out on a date - for the first time as single people.
"We've always had boyfriends or girlfriends before. That was the first time we were both single," she said.
Something special happened since it was a date that lasted till 5 am, said Darryl.
The relationship progressed - long-distance, over the next few years. Darryl went to Hongkong when he could, and Georgina came home as often as she could.
Finally, in February 1997, Georgina decided it was simpler to come home.
In April 1997, Darryl popped the question.
"One night, he just drove me to East Coast Beach, where we went on our first date, stood next to a huge canal, dropped to one knee and asked me to marry him. It was quite romantic. There were even romantic sandflies all around us," revealed Georgina.
The most recent newspaper report I could find that indicated Chang was still married to David was in September 2001 just after 9/11:
PERFECT 10 DJs Jean Danker and Jamie Yeo were worried - their good friend and ex-boss Georgina Chang is in New York!
Georgina is holidaying there after she quit her job as Perfect 10's programme director.
What a relief when she called hubby Darryl David late Tuesday!
He told The New Paper: "I know tourists usually don't go to a spot like the World Trade Center that early (she'd just woken up when the attacks took place). But I was still worried sick. Asking her to fly back may not be a good idea."
There were no news reports of their divorce.
At least, I assume David and Chang must have divorced because he has since married a lawyer named Christina Sim in 2006 and has two kids with her.
What I find curious is that despite all that has been written about David since he was announced as a PAP candidate on Saturday, so far no mention has been made of his marriage to Chang, who is now the Vice President of English Programming (Music) at MediaCorp Radio and can still be considered a minor local celebrity of sorts. (Like me, ahem.)
It's akin to Glenn Ong becoming a candidate and all the write-ups about him don't mention that he used to be married to Kate Reyes and Jamie Yeo (not at the same time).
I mean, David and Chang were a somewhat famous couple back in the day, regularly photographed together not only in the newspapers but also on at least one magazine cover, and I bet some people still think they're married to each other.
Even in this fluff-filled 2010 article in a magazine called Real Love Works (published by the Ministry of Community Development, Youth & Sports) specifically about David's marriage to Sim, there was no acknowledgement that this is not his first marriage:
It almost seems like everyone is now pretending David's marriage to Chang never happened. Was it all just my imagination?
No, it wasn't.
For online proof, here's a blog post by Mr Brown from 1997:
You may ask, why should the love life of a political candidate be a concern of the electorate?
A long time ago, I met Mr Lui Tuck Yew when he was nobody.
Okay, he wasn’t exactly nobody at the time. He was the outgoing Chief of Navy.
But this was long before he became Transport Minister and even longer before Mr Brown wrote a song named after him.
So as far as most Singaporeans were concerned, Mr Lui was nobody.
Actually, even I didn’t know who he was — and I was an NSman in the navy that he was chief of.
But it was because I was a navy NSman that I got to meet him.
In 2003, I got a call from my coxswain (which is the term for the guy in charge of the ship’s crew who’s not an officer), asking me if I wanted to go to some sort of navy function.
He said the magic words — “free food”.
And that was how I found myself in the Chinese restaurant in the Mount Faber Safra clubhouse at Telok Blangah Way some days later.
I still wasn’t sure what the occasion was. All I knew was that my commanding officer (CO) had bought three tables for the crew and my dinner was paid for.
But I got restless waiting for the food between courses and to make small talk, I asked what exactly we were doing there.
That was when I found out I was attending the farewell dinner for the Chief of Navy.
“Who’s that?” I asked.
And I heard the name “Lui Tuck Yew” for the first time.
Who?
Someone pointed out the man of the hour to me.
“That’s him?” My first impression of Rear-Admiral Lui was that he was one ugly guy. I’m sorry, but he reminded me of the awful Asian caricature Mickey Rooney played in the old movie Breakfast At Tiffany’s.
Someone said there were rumours RADM Lui would run for office.
By then, the next dish had arrived and I stopped paying attention. I had already forgotten RADM Lui’s name.
Which made it a little awkward later when RADM Lui went around to visit every table like a newly-wed couple at a wedding dinner.
I hoped he wasn’t expecting a hongbao.
“Thanks for coming,” the future ex-Transport Minister said to me as he enthusiastically shook my hand like a long-lost acquaintance.
I wanted to say he should thank our CO for buying three tables, but RADM Lui had already moved on to enthusiastically shake the hand of the next person like a long-lost acquaintance.
Despite the rumours, he didn’t run for office immediately after leaving the navy.
He became the CEO of the Maritime and Port Authority of Singapore and later, Deputy Secretary (Land) in the Ministry of Transport.
He then became the CEO of the Housing Board in 2005.
It was three years after I heard the rumours that they finally came true and Mr Lui ran for office in 2006 as a People’s Action Party member on the Tanjong Pagar GRC team.
But as Transport Minister, he has been blamed by many for the MRT train breakdowns. There’s even a Facebook page called “Singaporeans Demand Lui Tuck Yew to Step Down Now”.
After Mr Lui called it quits, the people behind the page claimed credit: “We did it!!! Lui Tuck Yew finally stepping down — three years after we made the call!”
Mystery solved. Mr Lui is leaving politics because of a Facebook page with 2,818 likes.
But in the wake of his resignation, many have also come to the Transport Minister’s defence.
Even opposition leader Low Thia Khiang of the Workers’ Party reportedly said: “Despite the problems of (MRT) breakdowns, he inherited the problem from the past.”
I wonder myself why the Land Transport Authority (LTA) isn’t held more accountable for the breakdowns. Isn’t LTA also responsible for our transport system, hence its name?
By the way, the CEO of LTA, Mr Chew Men Leong, is another former Chief of Navy — and no, I wasn’t invited to his farewell dinner.
You may ask, why are two ex-navy chiefs in charge of our transport system?
Because you take a fleet of ships, slap some wheels on them, put them on tracks and what have you got? Trains!
So why isn’t there a Facebook page called “Singaporeans Demand Chew Men Leong to Step Down Now”?
Probably because as far as most Singaporeans are concerned, Mr Chew is still “nobody”, like Mr Lui was when I ate free food at his farewell dinner in 2003.
Twelve years later, Mr Lui is saying farewell again, but he’s not “nobody” any more.
This time, I won’t forget his name.
Partly thanks to that Mr Brown song.
- Published in The New Paper, 16 August 2015
To SM Ong
Indeed, Tuck Yew is a Man Of God.
He unfortunately inherited a Portfolio which was plagued with problems, technicalities and flaws. It was Raymond Lim and Saw Phaik Hwa who caused the Transport woes and debacle and they should have been taken to task.
Tuck Yew had to settle in quickly and without any learning curve was placed immediately in the super hot seat for what his predecessors had screwed up.
My respect for a Man who took up the challenge and walking in the footsteps of Jesus who bestowed him with Wisdom and Knowledge in tackling these pressing issues.
Derek without Prejudice.
Dear SM.
Those big wigs from the Ministry of Defence are "scholars". Since they are so bright they can do practically any big job, and are placed on dual career tracks (Winston Choo not included). I understand they have an armed forces rank and a twinned "elite" Administrative Service rank when in service.
Without these elite warriors and totally meritocratic administrative geniuses where would Singapore be today, I mean, with the exception LKY, Rajaretnam, Othman Wok etc etc. who had a gullible and destitute population, and luck, a broken heart and communists and racists, and a great passion and tiny emoluments to push them on and on?
Like me, even the Opposition who are laying the foundations for a first world parliament ( Japanese? British, Taiwanese, Korean; Israeli, Malaysia? French? German? US?) has a soft spot for resigning geniuses and suspect there must be something fishy.
On my part I really should not worry because there will always be a super job waiting...!
Ironically, the page is also celebrating the demise of its reason for existing.
But then the people behind the page could easily start another page called Singaporeans Demand (Whoever The New Transport Minister Is) to Step Down Now the next time the MRT breaks down again, which it will.
But is the Transport Minister really to blame for the MRT breakdowns? What exactly does he do anyway (besides expressing extreme concern)?
I mean, isn't the CEO of LTA responsible for the public transport system already? Why isn't there a Facebook page dedicated to demanding the LTA CEO to step down?
This Facebook post by Law and Foreign Affairs Minister K Shanmugam may provide a clue to what the Transport Minister's duties are:
According to Mr Shanmugam, Mr Lui "oversaw the announcements of so many major initiatives".
So Mr Lui didn't even oversee the actual initiatives. He just oversaw the announcements of them.
What does that mean anyway?
Mr Lui proof-reads the press releases?
Mr Shanmugam also wrote: "And you knew that with Tuck Yew in charge, the billions the Ministry were spending would be disbursed honestly."
Billions?
That's a lot of money to be in charge of for a guy who proof-reads the press releases.
