Should you get the McDonald's BTS Meal even if you're not a fan of BTS?

Dear non-BTS fans,

How do you even exist?

How do you live in this world and not be a BTS fan?

I mean, I can understand if you are a non-MBS fan who does not know Marina Bay Sands is not in downtown Chattanooga, Tennessee.

But a non-BTS fan? That’s like the law of physics in a Fast And Furious movie – you’re non-existent. #JusticeforHan

However, for the sake of discussion, let’s say you do exist and the BTS Army hasn’t hunted you down like the dog that you are yet.

Let’s say you can’t tell Jungkook from Joo Koon MRT station.

Let’s say you think Dynamite and Butter are the same song. Break it down!



Let’s say up is down, orange is black and Robinsons is back – whatever.

Even if you don’t stan the only Korean act to ever top the US Billboard Hot 100 singles chart – three times! – you must have heard that McDonald’s belatedly launched its much-hyped BTS Meal in Singapore last Monday, delayed by some deadly virus that has been going around.



At long last, Singaporeans get to experience what is basically an upsized nine-piece McNugget meal but with two “special” dipping sauces, namely Cajun and Sweet Chilli, allegedly picked by the boyband themselves and inspired by McDonald’s South Korea.

Surprisingly, no butter. A missed cross-promo opportunity? No sticks of dynamite either.

So how special are the “special” sauces?



Let me put it this way. The Cajun sauce isn’t going to transport you to the Mardi Gras in New Orleans. It’s just honey mustard.

The Sweet Chilli, on the other hand, takes me back to my childhood because that was when I used to put Sinsin chilli sauce on everything.

But if you’re ordering the BTS Meal for the food, you’re missing the point.

Remember those bad old days when we used to queue at McDonald’s for the Hello Kitty toys like how people are now queuing for durian and Sinovac? We got our priorities right back then.

The food was just the necessary evil that came with the mouthless cat.

For the BTS Meal, it’s all about the special BTS Meal packaging.



And McDonald’s knows this as it tells you upfront on its app and website: “BTS-branded brown bag is not available in Singapore.”

What you do get is a BTS-branded McNuggets box, a very large BTS-branded cup and I suppose the little tubs for the sauces.

There are hundreds of listings for these items on Carousell. I don’t know how many people are actually buying them though.

At least one person is selling a McNugget that the seller claims is shaped like BTS member Jungkook. Or an MRT station if you can’t tell the difference.

Not to be confused with the McNugget from a BTS Meal that resembled a character from the online game Among Us and was apparently sold for US$99,997 (S$134,000) on US eBay.



It seems that people would do anything rather than eat the McNugget.

One Singaporean managed to craft a pair of shoes out of the packaging from six BTS Meals. That’s quite a feet.



What amazes me is that for all this, the BTS Meal itself is priced at $8.90, just 40 cents more than the non-BTS upsized nine-piece McNugget meal.

The only caveat is that the BTS Meal is only available for delivery to avoid a repeat of the krazy Hello Kitty kueues of yore.

That means a delivery charge of $4 if you use McDelivery or you can use another food delivery service.

As it has been a week since the launch, the hype has died down a bit and ordering online should be easier now.



So even if you’re not a BTS fan, why not?

You may be able to recoup some of your cost by selling the used packaging on Carousell to someone to make footwear with.

The way I see it, you have two options.

It’s either the BTS Meal or the unholy crime-against-nature mutant abomination that is the KFC Cheesy Zinger Triple Down.



And that has even less right to exist than you do.

Break it down!

- Published in The New Paper, 28 June 2021

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A post shared by Shoeman Ong (@sm_ong)

Inspired by Alfian Sa'at, I wrote a poem called McDonald's, You Did Not Have My Pyjamas

Dear McDonald’s,

Look what you made me do.

Last Monday at exactly 6pm, I opened your app to order the $24.90 McDelivery Night In bundle that included loungewear (which is just a McFancy way of saying “pyjamas”).

But all I got was this message: “The service is temporarily unavailable. Please try again later.”

So I tried again a few seconds later and got the same message. So I tried again. And again. And again for the next few hours.

I had flashbacks to April when I was traumatised trying to book the Avengers: Endgame advance tickets online.

At 6.55pm, you posted on your Facebook page:

“Thank you for your overwhelming response. We’re experiencing high traffic to our McDelivery website and app at the moment.

“Please bear with us as we work to get it back up as soon as possible.”

That was no help.



After about three hours of clicking repeatedly, I was finally able to order the set on the website, but only the women’s jammies were available. The men’s set was sold out.

And because I didn’t want to go through all that for nothing, I ordered the women’s. I should mention here that I am a man, not to be overly binary about it. So I didn’t get what I wanted.



Inspired by award-winning writer Alfian Sa’at’s poem, Singapore, You Are Not My Country, I decided to write you a poem to let you know how I feel:

McDonald’s, you did not have my pyjamas
McDonald’s, you did not have my pyjamas at all
You are surprising McDonald’s, promo-starved McDonald’s, sold-out McDonald’s of two-piece loungewear in Big Mac-and-fries print.
You apologise, but without compensation, without placating, without Mayor McCheese,
but through your Facebook page,
through your 40 Days of Thank You 1-for-1 deals
and that white chocolate strawberry cream pie I swear
is working voodoo on my body fat percentage.

McDonald’s, what is this “high traffic” on your website?
There are so many pyjamas fans,
You should’ve anticipated the demand.
McDonald’s, I assert, you did not have my pyjamas at all.
Do not thank us for “our kind understanding”,
I am not afraid of your mascot
although the clown is scarier than It and Joker.
And how can you call yourself a restaurant,
you terrible hallucination of queues for Hello Kitty dolls,
My Melody food holders and McGriddles hoodies?

That was as far as I got.

Writing poetry was harder than I thought, even when I didn’t have to rhyme. Props to all poets.

I give the Ministry of Education permission to reprint my poem in future literature textbooks and welcome the Education Minister to quote it in Parliament when your failure to have my pyjamas is brought up for debate.



Yes, I know you started taking pre-orders for the “loungewear” on Friday, but the estimated delivery is the end of next month.

By then, I (and the rest of Singapore) would’ve moved on to the next craze, like KFC underwear or who knows what. Yes, I do want my crotch to smell like fried chicken. Make it extra crispy.

What’s the point of me posting pictures of me in McDonald’s pyjamas on Instagram in a month’s time when no one cares about McDonald’s pyjamas any more?

And I’m not going to pay double for the men’s jammies to some opportunistic reseller on Carouhell.

So what did I do?

I posted pictures of me in the women’s pyjamas.

I was that desperate. Gotta do it for the Gram.

I got 16 likes.

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A post shared by SM Ong (@sm_ong) on Oct 9, 2019 at 9:39pm PDT

Even though the clothes are supposed to be “free size”, the top is a bit snug around my manly shoulders. The shorts, however, are so small that if I tried them on, I would’ve castrated myself. That’s because, if you need reminding, I am not a woman. Hear me rant.

Look what you made me do, McDonald’s.

You turned me into a cross-dresser for 16 lousy Insta likes.

- Published in The New Paper, 14 October 2019

I ate McDonald’s Salted Egg Yolk Loaded Fries and didn't vomit (But someone else did?)

There’s an old saying: One man’s salted egg yolk loaded fries is another man’s dead lizard in a pack of Irvins salted egg fish skin.

That has never been more true than last week, when McDonald’s introduced its Salted Egg Yolk Loaded Fries.



I enjoyed the fries, but for others, they might as well have eaten a lizard.

And it was mostly the latter group that swamped the comments section on the McDonald’s Facebook page.

A sample rant:

“McDonald!!!!!! You call this salted egg?!!! Or do you mean SALTED FISH?!!!!! Not a single bit of salted egg taste!!! It tasted like salted fish instead!!!!!! It tasted sour and salty at the same time? It’s damn gross can!??!! Super duper disappointing!!!”

I think the planet ran out of exclamation points after that comment.

Another compared the fries unfavourably to drain water:

“Remember that time we caught a tilapia and the water from the longkang went in my mouth? Yeah after eating this I think the longkang water taste better.”

The most on-trend comment:

“Food review: McDonald’s salted egg yolk loaded fries tasted like YouTube rewind 2018.”

The most meta comment:

“Muahahaha... reading all these comments tastes much better than the food itself.”

I was taken aback by how angry some of the posts are. It’s almost as if McDonald’s killed their dog in its pet boarding facility or something.

That people paid over $4 for the Salted Egg Yolk Loaded Fries (a la carte) probably didn’t help.

It’s more expensive than the Golden Salted Egg Milk Foam Tea from Gong Cha but cheaper than the Salted Egg Lava Brown Sugar Pearl Fresh Milk from Liho.





Yes, salted egg is in everything now. And they don’t all come with lizard.

Still, some who ate the McDonald’s Salted Egg Yolk Loaded Fries claimed the food made them nauseous.

One wrote:

“Just had this 10 mins ago at AMK branch in AMK gardens. I vomited at the carpark outside. Feeling sick after eating this.”

McDonald’s actually replied to the comment:

“Thanks for highlighting this to us and we’re sorry to hear about your experience. Could you please share with us via private message your contact number and e-mail address? We’d like to look into this and get in touch.”

Another person just compared it to puke:

“Is it supposed to smell and taste like vomit?”

Not passing up a chance to throw rocks at a rival drowning in salted egg yolk sauce, Burger King also joined in the comments:

“We know, the clown did it again. Yet another blunder. Here at Burger King, we never mess with our fries. That is why you should totally get our Cheesy Fries for only $2.50.”

To which someone responded:

“Burger King Singapore comment totally uncalled for, tasteless n only jeopardizing ur reputation no matter how bad the sauce is. It is alright for consumers to express their discontentment but not u, commenting bluntly on ur competitor’s page.”

But another commentator defended BK:

“This happens all the time between the fast food outlets in the US though. Carl’s Junior will poke at BK or McDonald’s, Jack in the Box will poke at Carl’s and so on. It’s quite funny when they do it right.”

Surprisingly, the biggest winner in the McDonald’s Facebook fries fracas is not the King but the Colonel, who stayed out of the fray, thanks to customers’ posts like this:

“Ordered KFC cheese fries and it tastes sssoooo good!! just to counter back the horrible Mcd salted egg fries.”

Another winner is McDonald’s itself because one thing the comments also highlight is how much people really miss the restaurant chain’s usual festive offering this time of year:

“Cancel all that and just BRING OUT THE PROSPERITY BURGER & CURLY FRIES EARLY. No need to wait for Chinese New Year.”

To bring it full circle, the most ironic comment may be this:

“Please give me back my money, Mcdonalds!!! If you don’t know the real taste of salted egg yolk, go and buy a packet of Irvins salted egg and know the real taste of salted egg!!!”

But perhaps this final comment best explains why people are so salty over McDonald’s Salted Egg Yolk Loaded Fries:

“Secret ingredient not there... no gecko taste.. no wonder everybody is so pissed off.. haha.”

- Published in The New Paper, 7 January 2019

Hare-brained? I'm selling my McDonald's My Melody holder on Carousell for $1,001

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”.

Remember when queuing for Hello Kitty merch at McDonald’s was a tradition as Singaporean as ridiculing the Miss Universe Singapore national costume?

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.

So far, my listing has 23 Likes.

Woohoo! I’m on my way to making a profit of $993.10 on one lousy holder.

Who’s rolling on the floor laughing now?

My Melody might just become my new favourite character. So cute.

- Published in The New Paper, 10 December 2018

EARLIER: I queued up at 4.30am for McDonald's My Melody holder this morning

UPDATE: Someone on Carousell wanted to buy my My Melody holder for $1,001? Real or not?

It's no Hello Kitty: I queued up at 4.30am for McDonald's My Melody holder this morning

McDonald's announced that it would start giving out the My Melody holder on Dec 6 at 4am.

I went to the McDonald's at Yew Tee at 2am to see if there was a queue

There wasn't, but it looked like McDonald's was preparing for one.



So I decided to go home and come back later. I overslept and got there at 4:30am.

By then, there was a queue but not crazy long like the Hello Kitty queues of yore.



A McDonald's worker was giving out this queue ticket for the My Melody holder.







I waited about half an hour for my turn to order.



Other people got multiple My Melody holders.



It took another 5 minutes to get my order, a Sausage Egg McMuffin meal with black coffee and My Melody.



This was what it was all for?






UPDATE: I'm selling my McDonald's My Melody holder on Carousell for $1,001

Return of the rendang burger death match: McDonald's versus Burger King

It's back!

The last time I wrote about the rendang burger death match was five years ago when McDonald's pulled off an upset victory after Burger King scored an own goal by adding mayonnaise to the burger it originated.

This year, thanks to National Day, the death match is back as McDonald's has brought back its rendang burger at the same time as BK.





But this year, McDonald's takes its rendang burger to the next level by using angus beef, adding a fried egg and charging more for it while BK sticks to the classic and wisely leaves off the mayo.



I tried them both so that you don't have to.



And the winner of the rendang burger death match 2018 is... the classic.

The King is back. Long live the King!

There's a reason the BK rendang burger was once named one of Travel+Leisure magazine’s global top five burgers.

On the other hand, McDonald's overstuffed Rendang Sedap Angus Beef Burger is just too try-hard. I also found it too salty.

Crispiness is not a factor.


EARLIER: Never mind the Minions, here’s the rendang burger death match

Why 2017 has been a cheesy year in food (and how to pronounce Llaollao)

Dear food,

We need to talk.

Looking back at 2017 and all we’ve been through together, I think now is a good time to re-examine our relationship.

We can’t go on like this.

It’s not me. It’s yogurt.

Frozen yogurt, to be exact.

To be more exact, it’s Llaollao frozen yogurt.

Is it leaving or staying?

I already said my goodbyes when it was announced that all the Llaollao outlets in Singapore were closing down just as I was getting used to pronouncing Llaollao as “Yaoyao”

You know, because apparently it’s Spanish.

Then last Tuesday, Llaollao Singapore announced on Facebook:

“The company (D+1 Holding) with which we have been developing our brand in Singapore has unilaterally decided to close all the establishments in the country and reopen them under the Yolé Frozen Yogurt brand...



“We would like to emphasise that we have absolutely nothing to do with Yolé Frozen Yogurt.”

Llaollao Singapore added: “We will be back with new stores soon, much sooner than you can expect.”



What’s with this yoyoing between Llaollao and Yolé?

Quit playing games with my heart. It’s not a toy.

Of course, Llaollao wasn’t the only one that cheated my feelings this year.

It’s not yogurt. It’s tea.

Bubble milk tea, to be exact.

To be more exact, it’s Gong Cha, which was replaced by Li Ho in May and then returned to Singapore a couple of weeks ago.



In mathematical terms, Llaollao=Gong Cha and Yolé=Li Ho.

Remember the long queues for the Li Ho cheese tea when Li Ho first opened?

Who knew Singaporeans are such cheeseheads?

So much so that McDonald’s had to respond to complaints last week that its Cheese Loaded Fries turned out to be more like Cheese Lite Fries.



The fast food chain said on Facebook:

"We know that sweet dreams are made of cheese (and sour cream) and it's nacho fault. We've relooked our processes to ensure that we load up the right amount of sauces so you won't get cheesed-off."

It was gouda McDonald’s to address the negative cheddar about its Cheese Loaded Fries, but ricotta done without the cheesy cheese puns.

This wasn’t even the first time McDonald’s cheated my feelings this year.

In July, the company launched the nasi lemak burger to celebrate National Day only to have the burger sold out weeks before National Day and then brought it back weeks after National Day.



So even though it was supposed to be for National Day, you couldn’t actually get the nasi lemak burger on National Day.

That was just brie-liant, McDonald’s.

Of course, McDonald’s wasn’t the only burger restaurant that disappointed me in 2017.

In June, Burger King introduced the gingery Hainanese chicken burger, which made me ashamed to be Hainanese.

A post shared by SM Ong (@sm_ong) on Jun 13, 2017 at 8:12am PDT

Then in October, the company unleashed the Stacker, a burger that was touted to have as many layers of meat and cheese as you wanted.

But as I discovered, the tallest Stacker that Burger King would pre-stack for you was only five layers.

If you wanted more, you were provided with the additional meat and cheese separately, and you had to build the more-than-five-layer Stacker yourself.



Hey, Burger King, I just want a burger. Not play Jenga with my food.

Not to be left out, KFC also broke a few hearts with the Chizza, which got me most excited in February.

It was like a Hawaiian personal pizza but with fried chicken as its crust.

For people who think pineapple on pizza is a crime against nature, the Chizza would probably be a capital offence.

In other chicken-related news this year, Ikea stopped selling its fried chicken wings in May because “our chicken wings have not been meeting our customers’ satisfaction recently”.

But like the nasi lemak burger and Gong Cha, the wings were back soon after.



Did absence make the stomach grow fonder?

Or just created bogus pent-up demand?

I like you, food, but I just can’t take much more of this emotional ping-pong.

I wish I knew how to quit you.

Just when I thought I was out, you pull me back in with the Long Cheesemas Burger.



Because of you, I’m getting feta every year.

I guess no one wants to provolone.

Good thing I’m not lactose-intolerant.

So it’s adiós (that’s Spanish for goodbye) — until the next meal.

- Published in The New Paper, 18 December 2017

Not infinity and beyond: How high can the Burger King Stacker go? I found out

It’s like 2008 all over again.

But infinitely bigger.

But not quite.

In November 2008, Burger King introduced the BK Quad Stacker, a burger with four layers of beef patty and cheese plus some turkey bacon.

It would have been the tallest burger I had ever seen except that McDonald’s stole Burger King’s thunder by introducing at the same time the Mega Mac, which was basically a Big Mac but with four patties instead of the usual two.

And because the Mega Mac had the layer of bun between the meat, it was actually taller than the BK Quad Stacker.

I wondered at the time, why did Burger King stop at four?

Why not a BK Quin Stacker? Or a BK Sex Stacker? No, wait, that sounds like something NSFW.

Because of that restraint, the Home of the Whopper got whopped by the home of Pennywise in the Great Mega Burger Battle of 2008.

That was nine years ago.

This time, Burger King is not repeating the mistake it made in that historic food fight.

You might even say the fast food chain is overcompensating a bit.

Forget the Quad Stacker. Kid’s stuff.

Last week, Burger King announced the return of the Stacker with pictures of burgers as tall as 10 layers high!

One ad suggests that you can get as many layers of patty and cheese as you want at $1.50 per additional layer.



So in theory, you could order a burger with an infinite number of layers — an Infinity Stacker, if you will ­— which just blows my mind.

Could this be fake news? Like Stefanie Sun’s death? Or the overly optimistic additional travelling time SMRT tells you to add every time there’s a train fault? (That is, unless it’s a flooding-in-the-tunnel fault.)

As a fake journalist, I had to find out for myself.

So I went to the Burger King outlet in Novena Square last Friday.

First, I tried using the electronic self-order kiosk, but the tallest burger I could find on the onscreen menu was the quadruple. What was this? 2008?



So I went to the counter and asked a human being whether I could get a 10-layer Stacker.

I was told I could order as many layers as I want, but the tallest burger they could make for me was a five-layer Stacker with the remaining layers of meat patty and sliced cheese packed separately.

Some assembly required.

I was crushed.

What was the point then?

Was I buying a burger or Ikea furniture?

I felt so disillusioned that I just ordered a five-layer beef Stacker with onion rings and a small Fanta Grape to go.

But as I was leaving, I thought to myself: “No, I came here for a 10-layer Stacker. I’m not leaving without a 10-layer Stacker even if I have to assemble it myself.”

So I went back to the counter to order what I guess you could call the Deca Stacker.

True enough, I was given a Quin Stacker with the five extra patties packed separately in a flat plastic container and the five extra slices of cheese wrapped in wax paper.



Of course, I realised that if I included the first Quin Stacker I bought earlier, I actually have the ingredients to build a 15-layer Stacker.

But the question was, should I?

A 10-layer burger seemed reasonable (because of the nice, round number) and maybe a little too predictable even, but creating a burger with 15 layers of meat and cheese felt wrong.

It felt like a crime against nature. An affront to god. A blight on humanity.

It certainly went against everything Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong said in his National Day Rally speech about eating healthily.

But I did it anyway.



Behold, the Pentadeca Stacker!

That was what I called it.

Even the name sounds like the devil’s work.

No wonder after eating the monster, I felt like I was going to hell.

Your move, McDonald’s.

- Published in The New Paper, 9 October 2017

Sorry, Michelle Chong, I heck care — but at least Khaw Boon Wan has pride in his work

Dear Michelle Chong,

I’m sorry. You were right.

I saw your viral Facebook post.

It’s like what you said — people in Singapore don’t “have any pride in their work and just have a ‘pass up homework’ heck-care attitude”.

You wrote:

“They don’t check their work, don’t care about how it turns out, don’t take that extra step to value-add or think about how to make it better, don’t want to improve etc.

“It’s a ‘why should I bother? It’s not like I’m getting paid very much for this job’ or ‘please lah it’s just a job right?’ or ‘do extra for what? I’m still getting the same salary right?’ attitude.”

When I read that, I felt like you were scolding me directly.

Even though we haven’t spoken to each other since we worked together on that failed TV pilot at Mediacorp 10 years ago, you still know me so well.

Writing this column is like homework.

I have such a “heck-care attitude” that I can’t even bother to do this column every week any more. It’s now every two weeks and I still don’t care how it turns out.

Like in my last column, I didn’t care that I used the word “boobs” way too many times.

And I’m still getting the same salary!

Instead of taking that extra step to value-add, I’m taking that extra step to value-subtract.

It’s not like I’m getting paid very much for this job.

That’s why I don't check my work. I expect my editors to check my work for me. After all, they are paid more than I am.

But apparently, they too don’t have any pride in their work because they let me use the word “boobs” in my last column way too many times.

However, I doubt that everyone (or even most people) is as “heck care” as me and my editors.

So to say that “people here generally don’t care about what they do” is an unfair generalisation.

In your Facebook post, you cited examples of “shoddy work” by a post-production house and an interior design firm you hired, but I don’t know their side of the story.

For instance, some have criticised McDonald’s for launching the Nasi Lemak Burger for National Day only to run out of the burger two weeks before National Day, which kind of defeated the purpose of launching the burger for National Day.



But as McDonald’s explained, the burger sold out due to “overwhelming demand”.

So it’s actually the people’s fault for buying too many Nasi Lemak Burgers. I bought four myself. I apologise for my overwhelming patriotism.

Many have also been unhappy about the frequent MRT delays in recent weeks.



But as Coordinating Minister for Infrastructure and Minister for Transport Khaw Boon Wan pointed out on Thursday, the MRT has become three times more reliable in the two years since he took charge.

That’s one man who has pride in his work.

Too bad he doesn’t count the delays caused by the testing of the new signalling system because they happen only “once in 30 years”.

Like “ponding”.

The minister blamed the press for “frightening” readers.



Mr Khaw said:

“If it were so simple, they don’t need us. We can ask the reporter to run the train system.”

Having written one or two or half a dozen articles about train delays (even though I’m not a “reporter” per se), I was afraid for a moment that I would be asked to run the MRT.

But then I thought, hey, could I do much worse?

Even with my “heck care” attitude.

You know what’s the first thing I would do?

Change a few station names.

We have too many stations with “Tuas” in their names — Tuas Crescent, Tuas West Road and Tuas Link.

As if we’re not confused enough by Marina Bay/Marina South Pier and Farrer Park/Farrer Road, which aren’t even on the same line!

You know what I’m talking about, right? You take the MRT all the time.



So I do agree with you, Michelle. At least, partially.

Yes, there are people — such as whoever named the MRT stations — who don’t have any pride in their work.

Not just me.

But not everyone.

Would it be too abrupt to end the column here?

Aiyah, heck care lah.

- Published in The New Paper, 31 July 2017

Boob riddance? 10 years ago, Crazy Horse closed down in Singapore — now it's back

It’s like 2005 all over again.

Except it isn’t.

Crazy Horse is coming to Singapore, just like 12 years ago.

No, I’m not talking about Neil Young’s occasional backing band, you dad rock-listening geezer.



I’m talking about the 65-year-old topless cabaret from Paris that is opening at Marina Bay Sands (MBS) in October.

Yes, “artistic” naked European boobs are back.



But unlike in 2005 when controversy preceded the opening of Crazy Horse Singapore in Clarke Quay, this time, no one seems to care.

Well, I care.

I guess most Singaporeans are too preoccupied with McDonald’s nasi-less Nasi Lemak Burger and Miss Singapore Beauty Pageant contestants.



Come back, Ris Low, all is forgiven?

I’m amazed that these contestants are getting so much attention when they didn’t even show their boobs.

Unlike the dancers at Crazy Horse, which endured its own slings and arrows from Singaporeans in 2005 despite being so “artistic”.

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A year earlier, the Government had announced plans to develop casinos — sorry, I mean integrated resorts — to boost the economy.

Gambling and topless women as tourist attractions? No wonder some Singaporeans were concerned that we were living up to the “sin” in Singapore.

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But even before the first casino — sorry, I mean integrated resort — opened in 2010, Crazy Horse Singapore had galloped out of business in 2007.

It lasted about 15 months. Apparently, sex didn’t sell (although gambling still does).

Crazy Horse Singapore was hobbled by advertising guidelines imposed by the Government that forbade visuals of the dancers in the ads among other restrictions.

That was probably why there were no ads touting: “Naked boobs! Now that I got your attention… more naked boobs!”

It was a little sad to say boob-bye to Crazy Horse especially since I had tried to save the show with my own show.

I was working on the Phua Chu Kang sitcom at the time and decided to have an episode featuring the topless Crazy Horse dancers (with the naughty bits digitally blurred, of course) to get some publicity for both shows and put the “boob” back in boob tube.



The big climactic scene had Gurmit Singh as Phua Chu Kang crashing the actual Crazy Horse Singapore stage while the dancers were performing. Of course, I had to be there on location to oversee the filming.

To my disappointment, fearing controversy, Mediacorp downplayed the Crazy Horse aspect of the episode and, unlike this column, avoided any mention of naked boobs in the promos.

So the episode came and went without fanfare — though you can now watch it online at Mediacorp’s video-streaming site, Toggle.

The Season 8 episode is called Crazy Like A Horse, what else?



Two months after it aired on Channel 5, Crazy Horse Singapore fled the barn.

And now, 10 years later, the mentally-ill filly is back — but only from Oct 11 to 29 at the Mastercard Grand Theatre in MBS.

By the way, there’s a non-affiliated Crazy Horse disco pub at Orchard Towers, which is a whole different thing, so don’t pick the wrong horse.



The MBS show is rated R18 for nudity. Well, duh.

Individual ticket prices range from $55 to $175, but senior citizens, NSF and students (yes, students) can get in for $35.

In terms of dollars per naked boobage, that’s a pretty boob deal, I mean, good deal.

Or you can watch the PCK episode online for free and spend the money on Nasi Lemak Burgers instead.



If you put two burgers side by side, they kind of look like boobs.

- Published in The New Paper, 17 July 2017

Celebrating Joseph Schooling: Victory parade accidents, leftover fried carrot cake & free McNuggets

And this is why we can’t have nice things.

When it was announced last week that a victory parade for Singapore’s first Olympic gold medalist Joseph Schooling would be held, some were quick to criticise the move as insensitive to Singaporeans who were still competing in Rio.

As someone commented online:

“Why don’t they wait for all the Singaporean Olympic athletes to return then do it together? They did not put in any less effort to compete for Singapore.

“Oops, I forgot we are a society that focuses on meritocracy. No medal or glory, no talk.”

But did many care? Not the thousands who thronged the parade route and pit stops such that crowd control became a problem.



A parent at the Marine Terrace market pit stop recounted:

“My kids and I were there and we left angrily. There were many kids standing at the front and the adults were the ones pushing everyone.

“Luckily, I held on to my kids. If not, you would see many kids and people being stepped over!”

And you thought the Pokemon Go crowds were crazy.

Even Schooling couldn’t manage more than a mouthful of his beloved fried carrot cake because of the mob.



So much left over! It would have been a waste to just throw the food away. Did anyone eat it and maybe have a taste of his DNA?

As for the parade itself, which had Schooling on an open-top double-decker bus, it caused two road accidents and Schooling confessed to being responsible for one of them.

The 21-year-old swimmer told Mothership.sg:

“So I was eating a pear in the bus downstairs. I was trying to make funny faces at this lady with her two kids through the glass and they’re freaking out. They’re like ‘oh my god!’

“So this lady tries to get her kids to wave at me and she has her steering wheel turned towards the bus. So when the bus starts moving, she gasses it and her car goes straight into our bus and rams — T-bones our bus.

“And I was like ‘oh my god!’ That just happened. I just caused an accident.”

(For those unfamiliar with the University of Texas student’s Americanisms, “gassing it” means stepping on the accelerator and “T-bone” in this case doesn’t mean the steak but a vehicle colliding with another at a right angle.)



Someone even questioned the wisdom of putting Schooling on top of an open-top bus in the first place:

“The weather is so hot lately. Are you guys trying to ‘barbecue’ him?”

Well, he does look pretty tasty.

And on top of all that, some were unhappy that the parade was on a Thursday:

“So kiasu… want public to support but conduct it on week day. Why no authority to ask companies to give half-day leave to line the street to support a historical event. Really shameful!”

And this is why we can’t have nice things like a victory parade.



When on Monday, Parliament “moved a motion” to congratulate Schooling, it also had the chance to move a motion to declare Thursday (or any other day) a public holiday to honour him even more.

But it passed the Administration of Justice (Protection) Bill instead.

Safe to say, more people would have preferred a Let’s Have A National Holiday Because We Just Won Our First Olympic Gold Medal Bill.

There wouldn’t be a seven-hour debate over that.

Minister for Social and Family Development Tan Chuan-Jin probably spoiled the market by suggesting a National Schooling Day where “everyone will have to go to school” because he couldn’t resist the pun.

And this is why we can’t have nice things like an extra public holiday.



We can only envy Fiji, which did declare a public holiday after winning its first Olympic medal by beating Great Britain in the rugby sevens final to get the gold.

That is, if we can find Fiji on the map.

But even though we didn’t get a holiday, McDonald’s offered six free chicken McNuggets to the first 50 customers at all its outlets (excluding iFly, Resorts World Sentosa, Lido, Gardens by The Bay and institutional stores) on Monday from 11am.



Why free McNuggets, you ask, and not, say, a free Fillet-O-Fish? Since, you know, Schooling swims like a fish.

According to McDonald’s, it was “to celebrate our hero and golden boy Joseph Schooling, on winning his own golden nugget at Rio”.

So now you know why athletes bite their medals when they pose for photographs.

Ummm… because the medals resemble chicken nuggets?



They should start giving out curry sauce with those McMedals.

Trouble is, McDonald’s and other companies promoting themselves while congratulating Schooling are not allowed to do this.

The Singapore National Olympic Council told The New Paper:

“While we celebrate Joseph’s victory, we must also stand guided by the rules and guidelines protecting the assets and marks of the Games.

“Henceforth, we would like to advise commercial entities to comply with these rules and not infringe or exploit the assets for commercial purposes.”

And this is why we can’t have nice things like free McNuggets.



Perhaps everyone took Schooling a little too literally when he said to the crowd welcoming him home at Changi Airport last Monday: “This is not for me. It is for all of you.”

Too bad the International Olympic Council isn’t as generous.

But on his part, Schooling has been true to his word, sharing the greatest moment of his life with all Singaporeans on the victory parade and elsewhere last week with a ready and winning smile.

And that’s a nice thing we do have.

— Published in The New Paper, 21 August 2016

EARLIER: Ode to 5039: I wasn't as fast as Joseph Schooling to buy 4D