But I guess it was my own fault for stupidly thinking anyone would pay $1,001 for something you can now get for maybe 10 bucks.
So the My Melody holder is still in a box gathering dust at home.
Along with my McDonald’s SG50 Hello Kitty Collector’s Set, which includes six plushies.
And my SingPost SG50 Hello Kitty Plush Collectible Set, which has five toys.
And my six-piece McDonald’s Hello Kitty Bubbly World collection, which I bought in 2014.
And the 40th anniversary Hello Kitty Run medal I got the same year.
I wore the Hello Kitty Run T-shirt to my first death metal concert recently. (Cryptopsy rules!)
But apart from the T-shirt, all the other stuff is pretty much useless.
Am I actually going to use the My Melody food holder to hold my food? Not if I can’t even bear to take it out of the box.
They’re all just sitting there, competing for space with my Star Wars merch, Marvel merch and 125 pairs of running shoes in the Choa Chu Kang flat I share with three other people, also known as my family.
Marie Kondo would commit seppuku if she saw the way I live.
So when McDonald’s announced that Singapore would be the first country where your carrier would be launched, I said no, thanks.
I don’t know where I found the strength.
Initially, there was a fear of missing out. But now, just over a week later, no one cares.
And I realised I don’t have to waste money on every overhyped piece of dreck with your face on it to be happy.
You no longer spark joy. Just maybe some buyer’s remorse.
I’m sorry to say it’s over between us. We had a good run.
Please don’t be sad (not that anyone can tell whether you are since you have no facial expression whatsoever).
You still have millions of real fans, unlike ironic bandwagon jumpers like me.
It’s not you. It’s meow.
If you really must know, yes, there is someone else.
I had never heard of Pestilence or Metal United World Wide. The shows were last month.
But I have actually heard of Cryptopsy. I own one of their albums, The Best Of Us Bleed.
You know how we all go through a phase where we seek out music that would annoy our parents? I went through that last year. I was 51.
I wouldn’t say I “stan” Cryptopsy, but I enjoyed the album.
After news spread that Cryptopsy was added to the Rachel Chan petition, the Canadian band responded on their Facebook page to the “potential banning” in Singapore:
“We as a band have no say or opinions when it comes to any sort of religion. We believe that everyone should choose their own paths in life.
“The lyrical & visual content in our music is a parody of the extremity of our music. It is a theatrical representation of the brutality and has been created to shock and awe as much as the drumming, guitar & bass riffs.
“We are in no way encouraging our fans to act out any of the content our art depicts.
“For us, our music and visual imagery is in no way worse than most of the Hollywood movies that are available today.”
Way to throw Hollywood under the bus, guys. Could a petition to ban horror movies about killer dolls be next?
Annabelle and Chucky in the same week? Come on, Hollywood, space them out!
To show my support for Cryptopsy, I bought two tickets to their concert at The Substation last Friday night. I paid $75 each, which is still much less than a U2 ticket or so I keep telling myself.
I forced my 19-year-old daughter to go with me. She prefers Bastille and K-pop.
She sported a black Snoopy T-shirt from Uniqlo while I rocked a white Hello Kitty Run T-shirt because wearing black to a metal concert is so basic – even though neither of us had been to one before.
There were more than 100 paying audience members in the small Substation theatre, mostly men in black T-shirts and only a few women. No seats. We all stood.
As expected, the music was very loud and the singing consisted mainly of growls without any discernible words. I couldn’t tell the songs apart. The repetitiveness made my daughter sleepy even though she used ear plugs.
But I enjoyed myself, watching the fans stage dive, crowdsurf and wince in pain when they crash to the floor. I just had to be careful not to let any metalhead land on me.
My daughter and I got violently jostled a few times by slam dancers as we were standing too close to the mosh pit, but we’re okay.
In between doing the windmill with his buttock-length hair, Cryptopsy frontman Matt McGachy alluded to the petition when he urged Singapore not to let anyone tell us what we can and cannot listen to. I’m giving you the censored version of what he said.
After the hour-long performance, I queued up for the meet-and-greet with the band to get a picture with them.
No one commented on my Hello Kitty T-shirt.
I asked if they were told not to play any songs like Watain were. Cryptopsy drummer Flo Mounier shook his head and joked that nobody can understand what they are singing anyway. So at least they have some self-awareness.
Asked whether they were worried that the concert could have been cancelled like Watain’s, Mounier said that Watain and Cryptopsy are very different bands.
He’s right. Watain is a black metal band while Cryptopsy is a death metal band.
You may ask, aren’t black metal and death metal the same thing?
That’s like asking if Katy Perry and Taylor Swift are the same person. In case you don’t know, they’re not.
Well, at least the concert wasn't cancelled.
The Rachel Chan petition has since been deleted. Could it be because of a petition asking Mr Shanmugam to “get Rachel Chan deported from Singapore”? Who knows?
I wonder whether I should go to the concert by Swedish death metal band Soilwork if it does not get banned.
My daughter says she never wants go to another metal concert. I’ll have to ask someone else. My mother may be free.
I admit, before last week, I had never heard of My Melody.
But when McDonald’s posted on Facebook last Monday that the My Melody holder “that took Japan by storm” was coming to Singapore on Dec 6 and that you should “grab yours before it’s too late”, I knew I had to grab mine before it was too late.
It was only later I found out that My Melody is a rabbit born in the forest of Mariland, wherever that is, whose favourite hobby is baking cookies with her mother.
Her favourite food is almond pound cake, which she enjoys eating with her best friend, a mouse named Flat, according to Sanrio.com.
My Melody is also the best friend of Hello Kitty, who is the much more famous Sanrio character, which made me wonder why McDonald’s isn’t offering a Hello Kitty holder instead.
Probably because it wasn’t a Hello Kitty holder “that took Japan by storm”.
The queues got so out of hand in 2013 that the next year, McDonald’s started selling the mouthless feline online and the queues disappeared like Robin Thicke’s career.
The tradition was no more.
So why didn’t McDonald’s sell the $6.90 My Melody holder online too?
One reason could be that My Melody is no Hello Kitty and McDonald’s wasn’t expecting the same demand.
Yet when I went to the 24-hour McDonald’s outlet in Yew Tee at 2am last Thursday, a My Melody queueing point had been set up.
But there was no queue.
So maybe people are just not that into the cute bunny after all.
McDonald’s had announced that it would start selling the holder at 4am and I was two hours early. I was being kiasu for nothing.
So I decided to go home and come back two hours later. But I overslept and by the time I returned at 4.30am, a queue had formed.
Dammit. If I had stayed, I would have been first in line.
Instead, I had to queue for half an hour for my My Melody holder.
It felt like old times when I used to queue (unsuccessfully) for the black Singing Bone Hello Kitty doll back in 2013.
It was also an expected communal experience, waiting in line at an ungodly hour for a children’s novelty item with my fellow Yew Tee residents, which I would have missed out on if I could order the stupid thing online.
Each customer could buy up to five holders, but I bought only one. By 11.30am, it was sold out islandwide, according to McDonald’s.
To show off my achievement, I posted a selfie with my hard-earned My Melody holder in a WhatsApp group of my ex-secondary school classmates.
One of them commented: “OMG. U woke up and Q but only bought one piece?”
Just to make sure that he really hurt my feelings, he included a Rolling On The Floor Laughing emoji.
Another ex-classmate added: “They are being sold on Carousell from $20 - $50.”
Oh yeah?
I’ll show them by selling my My Melody holder on Carousell for $1,001.
Someone else had already listed it on Carousell with the asking price of $1,000, “hoping” it would be mentioned in the newspapers.
That’s why I’m charging $1 more – so that mine is the most expensive.
Naturally, I got both the SingPost and McDonald's sets. Which set should you get?
This is what the packages looked like when they first arrived.
The McDonald's package came with six Extra Value Meal vouchers worth $5 each.
The SingPost package came with a glossy 16-page booklet with gorgeous photos of the collection.
I'll show the inside of the booklet later.
The McDonald's set has six Hello Kitty plushies:
SG50 Parade
McDonald's Crew
Samsui Woman
Trishaw Uncle
Orchid Lover
Durian Lover
The SingPost set has only five:
SG50 Outfit
Colonial Postman
Cheongsam
Baju Kurung
Saree
However, the SingPost Hello Kitties are bigger than the McDonald's Hello Kitties.
I also prefer the designs of the SingPost Hello Kitties. They seem better thought out.
First, we have the obligatory SG50 costume.
Then, of course, SingPost would have one Hello Kitty in a postman's uniform and McDonald's would have one in a crew uniform.
Hands down, the colonial postman uniform is much cuter than the McDonald's uniform.
The remaining three Hello Kitties in the SingPost collection are in outfits representing Singapore's three main ethnic groups. This makes sense.
By comparison, the designs for the other four McDonald's plushies seem wildly random. Haphazard almost.
Sure, I get the Samsui Woman and Trishaw Uncle.
But Orchid Lover? Really?
It looks like something from Little Shop Of Horrors.
(The SingPost collection also has an orchid design element with its Hello Kitties all wearing a Vanda Miss Joaquim hair ribbon, which is a nice touch.)
I sort of like the idea of Durian Lover, but the durian costume makes no sense.
However, McDonald's does offer something subtly unique in its SG50 collection that I haven't seen in other Hello Kitties.
Look at the Samsui Woman, Durian Lover and SG50 Parade plushies again.
Can you spot the difference?
The SG50 Parade Hello Kitty's eyes are closed! The Samsui Woman and Durian Lover are winking at you!
In all other Hello Kitties, both eyes are wide open. So McDonald's is doing something pretty revolutionary here.
Apart from the plushies, the McDonald's set also comes with these extras for displaying the collection.
So in terms of value for money, the McDonald's set is easily the better deal, especially after you count the $30 worth of food vouchers.
But in terms of the plushies themselves, the SingPost collection is more "Singaporean".
I just wish SingPost didn't use Times Roman as the typeface for the words "HELLO KITTY" on the boxes. That's unforgiveable.
As you all know - and have probably made plans to leave the country next weekend because you do - next Sunday is National Day.
Very soon (at least one hopes), our long national branding exercise that is sticking the promiscuously all-purpose SG50 logo on everything from fish cakes to Hello Kitty will be over.
I plan to upload my unboxing video to YouTube shortly.
This raises the question: If I’m such a patriot that I can get both the McDonald’s and SingPost SG50 Hello Kitty set, why can’t I see both The LKY Musical and the 1965 movie?
The answer: The LKY Musical and the 1965 movie are no Hello Kitty.
If instead of Adrian Pang and Lim Kay Tong, they had cast the the mouthless Japanese cartoon cat to play Mr Lee Kuan Yew, I would’ve gone online and booked the tickets immediately.
But alas, they cast real people.
Also, watching a musical or a movie requires me to commit at least three hours of my life, commuting to and from the theatre, and actually sitting down to watch the damn thing.
Whereas with my Hello Kitty sets, I just get them and put them on the shelf where they will collect dust until the Earth dies.
So it’s either the musical or the movie. Not both.
To help make my decision, I've read the reviews of both shows and narrowed it to down to four factors:
THE COST FACTOR
Depending on where and what day of the week you want to see the movie, a ticket can cost from $8.50 to $13, maybe cheaper if you’re a Safra member or have the right credit card
But the cheapest ticket for the musical is $50 for a “restricted view” on certain days.
For 50 bucks, I could watch 1965 at least three times with enough change to buy a few SG50 fish cakes. That is, if I were a masochist.
Advantage 1965.
THE STAR FACTOR
The musical stars Pang and Sharon Au.
All the reviews are pretty much universal in their praise of Pang’s portrayal of Singapore’s first Prime Minister. They are also universal in saying that Au pretty much sucks as Mrs LKY.
The Straits Times said that Pang “carries the part with finesse and grace”, but Au is “a shadow of her character, struggling with musical segments and quickly fading into the background”.
Today newspaper said that Pang “carries the show as Lee, capturing the man’s fears, frustrations and unwavering tenacity in pushing for change”.
It added that “Au also proves to be the cast’s weakest link, with brittle delivery and pitiful singing skills”.
By the way, Today is published by MediaCorp where Au also works as an executive in the strategic development department.
“Weakest link”? “Pitiful singing skills”?
Wah lau! How bad do you have to be that even your own company doesn’t give you face?
Two other MediaCorp artists, Joanne Peh and her husband Qi Yuwu, are arguably the biggest stars in the 1965 movie.
But frankly, the only thing involving Peh and Qi I’m interested in seeing is a video of Peh, who is due to give birth soon, delivering the baby shot by Qi.
Unfortunately, Qi has said that although he plans to be in the delivery room with Peh, someone else will be holding the camera. I volunteer.
Advantage The LKY Musical because of Pang. I’m also curious to see just how much Au actually sucks.
THE FOREIGN TALENT FACTOR
The movie is produced, written and directed by Singaporeans.
The musical is directed by a Brit with a book by an American and lyrics by another Brit. That’s not very SG50. (Or is it?)
Advantage 1965.
THE LKY FACTOR
The musical is called The LKY Musical. So you know that it’s all about LKY. And that it’s a musical.
But Mr Daniel Yun, the executive producer and co-director for 1965, has made it a point to clarify that his movie is “not a biopic of Lee Kuan Yew” but “a dramatic thriller based on historical events”, presumably set in 1965.
Why does Mr Yun feel the need to make this clarification?
Because as far back as 2010, it was reported that he was planning “a political thriller based on Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew’s struggle for Singapore’s independence”.
So now Mr Yun is backtracking? Did Amos Yee get to him?
The Business Times said that as LKY, “Lim Kay Tong steals the show in 1965”, but appears for only a few minutes in the movie.
The review gave 1965 a C+ grade and suggests that “maybe it would have worked better as a biopic of Mr Lee instead”.
So the movie suffers from a case of LKY no enough.
Maybe LKY would have more screen time if Tony Leung were playing him.
Advantage The LKY Musical.
MY DECISION
To celebrate SG50, I elected to see the show that best represents how Singapore achieved the impossible after being forced out of Malaysia in 1965 to be its own nation led by LKY. At least in the title.
I'm glad to know that I'm not alone - feeling this way - overwhelmed by the string of events planned for Singapore's Jubilee Celebration
Long story short
For the past few years, I've spent a considerable sum of money to support local productions, be it Musicals, Dramas etc. I would buy the best tickets, which is usually the most costly since some of these productions are at the Esplanade or Marina Bay Sands and invite my family or friends to watch these productions with me. It was my way of showing support to the local Arts, theater practitioners and even local singers eg Dick Lee, Kit Chan and Xinyao
Yet, this year, 2015, I find it hard to continue or should I say, I'm just put off by some of these productions
And you said it best in your article
Coincidentally, I've also given up trying to choose or decide which production to catch
I went and saw Mission Impossible - Rogue Nation on Friday. It was a simple movie but it gave me what I badly needed - a break from work and all that's on-going
For your info - I'm a primary school teacher and I suppose all the celebration and possible up-coming election talk was really getting to me since I'm also the teacher in-charge of our school's celebration program this week
Living in little red dot is stressful enough with increasing cost of living and other challenges
Sometimes, what we really need is some quiet moments to give thanks for what we have
Best regards
Stone
Hello :)
In your column yesterday, you wrote that you have both the Singpost and MCD Hello Kitties, but you forgot that Singtel has them too.
Just a quick thank you for all the laughter your column has given me throughout the years. I do hope you continue writing columns with your unique sense of humour.
Don't worry for making it to the 50th year mark so your couldn't enjoy all the perks or going AWOL in your camp, and outside the reporting area, you are still a Singapore icon. Very much so like the trishaw uncle and samsui woman hello kitties you see at MCD. Just that you have a further reach since your are in print.
So the Hello Kitty Run happened this morning on Sentosa.
My wife and I took a taxi, but there was a jam near VivoCity. We would've been better off taking the train.
According to the announcer, there were 17,000 people.
Even though the flag-off was supposed to be at 8am, the runners were released only in waves, apparently for safety reasons due to the huge crowd.
I have participated in big runs and this has never happened before. It could be because the route on Sentosa is narrow and many people were stopping to take photos.
Anyway, what this means is we didn't cross the start line until after 8:15.
Actually, it wasn't much of a run. It was more of a walk-a-jog.
And it wasn't 5km as advertised, but around 4km to the finish line.
Fortunately for us, it started to rain kitties and dogs only after we finished the run - I mean walk-a-jog.
This was about as close as I got to the "beach party" because of the rain.
Many stayed under the shelter.
We walked in the rain to the Beach Station to take the Sentosa Express train back to VivoCity at around 9.30.
By that time, the run was put on hold due to the weather "until further notice".
We were lucky that at the beginning of the run, we had made our way to as close to the start line as possible. Because of the rain, I think many behind us didn't get to run (or walk-a-jog) at all.
On the Hello Kitty Run Facebook page, you can find many complaints about poor organisation.
The main one is that there weren't enough finisher medals to go around. Apparently, some people took more than one. There wasn't a system to prevent this, based on what I saw.
My wife and I got ours.
I can understand why many are unhappy with the event. I paid $65 for it. Others as much as $75. That's a lot of money for a 5km run (actually a 4km walk-a-jog).
You got the T-shirt and a plush toy in the race pack, and you were promised a finisher medal. So you want that finisher medal - even if you didn't get to finish the run because of the rain.
And that's why someone went to the trouble to make this.
It's a good thing I only like Hello Kitty ironically.
