Woe is the Chinese person who doesn’t know Chinese.
Just ask Mr Derek Leung.
The Chinese-Canadian, who was an exchange student at Nanyang Technological University (NTU) in 2015, had tried to register for a basic Chinese language course but was rejected.
He recently posted in a Facebook group that the school said he was not eligible “as this student’s race is Chinese”.
Yes, it was because he is Chinese like one-time disgruntled Gojek passenger and alleged kidnap victim Jovina Choi.
Mr Leung’s post went viral enough that it was reported by several websites including AsiaOne last week.
A Chinese person not allowed to study Chinese in Singapore because he’s Chinese? How ironic is that?
I know of at least a few Chinese people who wish they did not have to study Chinese in Singapore but were forced to, namely my two kids, my wife and me.
Unlike us, Mr Leung wanted to learn Chinese because he was not forced to in Canada. I assume that being Canadian, he was just forced to like maple syrup and ice hockey.
NTU’s policy was based on the similarly faulty assumption that all Chinese people know Chinese, but that policy has since been changed.
The school said: “The previous policy aimed to give opportunities to students to learn non-native languages. Since 2016, ethnicity, race or nationality are no longer considered when signing up for language courses.”
You just have to declare that you do not know the language.
I guess I would not qualify. I can’t say I don’t know Chinese, but I can’t say I know it well either.
For instance, department store Robinsons was mocked last week for its Chinese New Year decorations using Chinese phrases that don’t make sense. I couldn’t tell because most Chinese phrases don’t make sense to me anyway.
AsiaOne reported: “The banners read ‘cai bao dao fa’ and ‘huan le dao xiao’, which loosely translate to ‘wealth treasure arrives prosper’ and ‘happiness joy arrives smile’.”
Which sound okay to me, but apparently they are wrong.
Robinsons later said that a character was inadvertently left out of those phrases and the error had since been corrected. Ill have to take Robinsons’ word for it.
Perhaps NTU should conduct a Chinese language course specifically for local retailers because NTUC FairPrice also slipped up with a Chinese character recently.
The supermarket chain withdrew a Chinese New Year T-shirt from its FairPrice Xtra stores after complaints about the shirt’s design with a Chinese character I can’t even read.
AsiaOne explained the problem: “While the Chinese character means longevity, the term ‘shouyi’, loosely translated as ‘longevity clothing’, refers to the clothes used to dress the deceased at funerals.”
I didn’t know all that. I could have unwittingly bought the red $12.90 shirt and worn it to visit my relatives this Saturday, bringing deathly bad luck to everyone.
Oh well, I see those relatives just once a year anyway. So I won’t miss them that much.
I wonder what FairPrice will do with all the unsold clothes.
Maybe it can send them to undertakers to dress the dead.
Or to Canada.
What about people who did buy the shirt? Can they get a refund?
If you have one, I’m willing to take it off your hands. It’s like a collector’s item now.
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.
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.
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.
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.
You think beating Michael Phelps in the pool is tough?
Try enduring someone insincerely yelling “Welcome to Uniqlo!” every second you’re in the store for 50.39 seconds.
No $39 jogger pants is worth that. Ooh, elastic waistband.
But unlike Uniqlo, some businesses have suffered since the Zika outbreak as people are avoiding crowds and staying home.
This is the opposite of what I would do since I get more mosquito bites when I’m at home.
Also, I would rather be in a crowd so that the insects have other people’s blood to suck besides mine.
It’s every man for himself.
I guess it’s instinctive for people to avoid crowds when there’s an epidemic. Most of us were probably conditioned to do so by the Sars outbreak of 2003 when hell was other people.
But you can’t get Zika from someone coughing on you.
Perhaps people are paranoid that if you are in a crowd, chances are someone in the crowd could have Zika and a mosquito could bite that Zika-infected person and then bite you.
Whereas if you are by yourself, all the mosquito has to bite is you.
Which is bad but also good because unless you already have Zika, you’re not going to give yourself Zika.
And that’s your excuse for being alone and not that you don’t have any friends.
But Singaporeans have not been advised to avoid crowds or stay home because of Zika.
Though one of the doctors who first raised the alarm about the disease in Singapore, Dr Chi Wei Ming, did advise on Facebook last week:
“Unless you live or work in Sims Drive, Aljunied Crescent, Kallang Way and Paya Lebar Way, avoid these areas. Please do not go to these areas to hunt for Pokemons!”
Hey, doc, thanks for helping us fight the spread of Zika and all that, but, please, the plural of “Pokemon” is “Pokemon”. There is no “s” at the end.
Just like the plural of “sheep” is “sheep”. There is no “sheeps”.
As in “To the mosquitoes, we are all just sheep for the slaughter.”
To avoid getting Zika, basically all you have to do is avoid getting bitten by a mosquito. Of course, that’s easier said than done, even as insect repellent becomes the eau de parfum du jour. (Pardon my French.)
It’s not like before Zika came along, we were letting mosquitoes bite us for fun. It’s not like we suddenly realised, “Oh my god, you mean like having unprotected sex with strangers, getting bitten by a mosquito can actually be bad for us?”
Before the war on Zika, we were already having a war on dengue, both of which are essentially the same thing — a war on the Aedes mosquito.
It’s like waging a war on crimson when we are already at war with the colour red. It’s kind of redundant.
And meanwhile, Selena Gomez is at war with lupus, another disease in the news last week I had to Google.
But the fact that we have to have a war on Zika is an indication of how terribly the war on dengue is going.
Being the hot new disease in town, Zika is hogging the headlines, but dengue remains a more serious problem.
We have had 11,247 dengue cases since Jan 3 the last time I checked www.dengue.gov.sg, which can be easily converted to a Zika website by just replacing the dengue stuff with Zika stuff. Most of it is mosquito stuff anyway.
Can our war on Zika turn out any better than our war on dengue?
If not, I know one place I can go to escape from Zika-and-dengue-ridden Zikapore — Brazil for the Rio Paralympics, which starts on Thursday.
No, not the white kimono outfit. I’m talking about the skimpy red and black number where I’ll get to show off my midriff.
Say hello to my belly button, everybody!
That’s just my tasteful way of commemorating the conclusion of the marathon City Harvest Church (CHC) leaders trial that began on May 15, 2013.
It was so long ago most people didn’t even know what the word “selfie” meant then, much less the ugly “wefie”.
It was so long ago Wong Li Lin was still married to Allan Wu.
It was so long ago I was still using the iPhone 5, not even 5s.
When the trial started, you could still drink any time you liked in Little India.
CHC founder and Ms Ho’s husband Kong Hee along with five others were accused of diverting church money to fund Ms Ho’s singing career.
On Wednesday, all six were found guilty of all charges, including criminal breach of trust. All that’s left is sentencing.
For many, one sad consequence of the end of the trial is that we won’t get to see former CHC finance manager and Ms Ho’s occasional back-up singer Serina Wee arriving and leaving court in her Outfit Of The Day any more.
Some are even sadder that the photogenic Wee could go to jail.
But while Wee is getting all the attention, another woman involved in the case has quietly gone through a striking transformation over the course of the trial.
When we were first introduced to Sharon Tan after her arrest in 2012, the former CHC finance manager could have been described as the duff, which stands for Designated Ugly Fat Friend, to Wee.
A duff doesn’t necessarily have to be fat or ugly or female. He or she is just the less attractive friend.
The Duff is also the title of a Hollywood movie that came out earlier this year. Although it was never released in Singapore cinemas, I saw the trailer on YouTube.
According to the trailer, in a group of friends, the duff is “the one who doesn’t look as good, thus making their friends look better”.
And Tan certainly didn’t look as good as Wee. I mean, who can?
Then last year, Tan discovered bangs and with the help of trendy clothes from the blogshop she opened with Wee to take advantage of the publicity generated by the trial, Tan suddenly didn’t look so “duffy” any more. She was like a different person.
And when she showed up in court for her guilty verdict last week with new eye make-up, I wasn’t the only one who noticed the makeover.
As someone tweeted on Friday:
So even though the 40-year-old once looked like she could have been a scary Halloween costume herself, she is now a “chiobu”.
It took only three years.
But so far, no one is volunteering as tribute to go to prison on Tan’s behalf.
I guess once a duff, always a duff.
At least she would fit into the red and black China Wine costume better than I can.
May the odds be ever in your favour more than the judge who found you guilty of all charges.
Amen.
- Published in The New Paper, 25 October 2015
This article says nothing more than "At first I didn't fancy her but then I did". That's not "humour" - it's just a...
Posted by AWARE Singapore on Tuesday, October 27, 2015
Just three years ago, I couldn't imagine running 10km. Yesterday morning, I completed the half marathon in under three hours at the 2XU Compression Run.
I can now cross that off my bucket list.
My first 21km run was actually the Safra Singapore Bay Run and Army Half Marathon in 2012, but I botched that one up by drinking water during the run and making myself feel bloated. I walked a quarter of the way and ended up with a timing of three hours and 36 seconds, just 37 seconds over my target of under three hours.
I promised myself not to make the same mistakes for the 2015 Compression Run in March. I was all psyched for it.
And then LKY died.
So the run, originally set for March 29 (day of LKY's funeral), was postponed to Aug 2, more than four months later.
In those months, I learned about "natural" running (land on your mid-foot, not your heel) and bought eight pairs of running shoes, auditioning for the perfect footwear for the half marathon. Damn my freakishly wide size 12 feet!
In the end, I wore the Altra The One2 yesterday. Not perfect but they are the shoes I paid the most for because they're hard to find in Singapore.
The flag-off time was 4.30am and the starting line was at Marina East Drive, which is across the bridge from the Marina Barrage. I was in the third wave.
By the time I crossed the starting line, it was 4.50am.
The random first song I heard on my iPhone for my historic half marathon was Ain't That A Lot Of Love by Tom Jones and Mick Hucknall.
The first 8km or so running along the East Coast beach in the dark was great. I avoided the Pocari and water points, and was overtaking people left and right. It felt so good I even told myself that I should sign up for a full marathon next.
It was a case of counting my finisher's tees before they hatch as after the U-turn near the 9km mark, I was brought back down to earth.
I couldn't keep up my earlier pace and everyone else was overtaking me left and right, including barefoot runners and members of the pioneer generation.
By the 15km mark, I was jogging so slowly, even people who were walking were passing me.
Might as well take a selfie.
I decided that I also might as well get a drink at the next water point since I couldn't go any faster any more, thus breaking the promise I made myself two years earlier.
I broke another promise to myself when I started walking intermittently in the final few kilometres of the race.
My eventual timing was two hours and 42 minutes, which was good enough for me as long as it was under three hours.
To celebrate, I drank alcohol-free beer for the first time. And I hate beer.
The real reason I joined the 2XU Compression Run: The finisher's tee reminds me of the X-Men movie costumes.
Even the medal is an X.
I'll be 50 next year. No more marathons, half or otherwise, for me.
No, no, I’m not calling you dumb. That’s just what it says on my T-shirt.
I bought it more than two decades ago in the US. The shirt is from The Onion, the Peabody Award-winning American satirical newspaper that has fooled a number of readers with its parody of news reports, including the Chinese Communist Party and former minister Lim Hwee Hua.
Despite having the shirt for so many years, I have worn it out maybe once. Why? Because I don’t want to get beaten up.
My feeling is that not many people appreciate or care that the shirt is from an award-winning satirical newspaper.
Or that the shirt itself is a parody of shirts.
Or that by wearing the shirt, I am satirising dumb guys who wear dumb shirts.
As far as most people are concerned when they see my shirt, I’m just calling them dumb.
If I wear it on the train, another passenger could get offended and ask me whether I want to fight.
Since I’m a lover and not a fighter, I would avoid eye contact and shake my head in response.
Then the passenger would say something like “Oh, shake your head. Shake your head enough, it could come off.”
He would then offer to beat the shirt out of me.
When the train stops at Ang Mo Kio station, he would threaten: “Are you going to get off or am I going to throw you off?”
And because Mr Muhammad Hanafie isn’t there to come to my rescue, I would be shoved out of the train and the other passengers would cheer because the shouting would finally stop and they could go back to sleep or looking at their phones in peace.
Oh, you know who Mr Hanafie is, right? That’s the muscle-bound guy who was lauded by Law Minister K. Shanmugam for standing up to a “bully” who threatened to beat up a train passenger wearing an obscene T-shirt in a viral video.
Came across this video. Unacceptable bullying conduct. People like this are sick in their mind. And try and take it out...
Posted by K Shanmugam Sc on Tuesday, July 14, 2015
What is it with trains nowadays? They’re either breaking down or someone is threatening to break you on one.
In this case, it started with a shirt.
You just can’t win. You don’t wear clothes, you could be arrested for public nudity. You wear the wrong clothes, you could be thrown off the train.
But is it illegal?
My embattled New Paper colleague, Mr Melvin Singh, has pointed out that “it is an offence to cause harassment, alarm or distress to another person through the use of threatening, abusive or insulting words or make any threatening, abusive or insulting communication”.
That could include wearing a T-shirt that says “You are dumb”.
But the only time I could think of that anyone in Singapore has actually gone to jail for his sartorial choice was in 2008. Three Singaporeans were sentenced to between seven and 15 days in jail for wearing T-shirts with a picture of a kangaroo dressed as a judge near a court building.
A kangaroo wearing clothes? So cuuuuuute!
I believe it was satire. It was also contempt of court.
Which brings me to why I’m writing to you, dear MDA.
So far, you’ve done a bang-up job shielding us from obscenities in newspapers and on TV and radio.
But I think it’s about time MDA also recognises the T-shirt as a mass medium.
At least we can choose not to read the papers, or turn on the TV or radio.
But we could be sitting on the train, minding our own business, and suddenly, some guy boards the train wearing a shirt that says “I’m fucking special.”
Amos Yee’s mother shouldn’t have been allowed to wear the #FreeAmosYee banana shirt because she has ruined the Beatles’ Yellow Submarine for me forever.
I know you don’t hear this very often, but we need more censorship and regulation.
You have to protect us from ourselves since Mr Hanafie won’t always be there to save us.
Otherwise, we will never stop wearing dumb shirts.
Why?
Because we are dumb.
Regards,
S M Ong
- Published in The New Paper, 19 July 2015
Yes, indeed we are Mr Ong!
We are so afraid in speaking up to challenge the Establishment. In everything we embark on, we have to be so cautious.
Is this what Life is all about?
It is time to take stock and to protest in Silence by wearing T Shirts which speaks our thoughts, empathy, feelings highlighting our trials and tribulations on life in Singapore.
Dumb as it may sound, let us not be dumber by speaking up through the Icons on our T Shirts.
To The Mother of Amos, thank you for the Yellow Submarine which symbolizes the Banana depicting Amos's Struggle with the Establishment!
Yes we are dumb!
Derek without Prejudice.
To SM Ong
If the F word is obscene and a criminal offence, a lot of people uttering it every day should be sued when used on others.
Stand outside a secondary school, and you can hear the f word used by some students on each other. Go to the wet market. Go to cyber cafes.And that t-shirt user was using it on himself even if the f****** can be interpreted as that obscene word.
And how is Section 4 applicable to the case of the f****** t-shirt. Could f****** means 'funnily' even if Section 4 treats displaying f****** as a cause of probable offence?
What is clear is that threatening others with serious injury and hurt is an offence. Is madly scolding others for no reason an offence?
I get scolded by other motorists and motorcyclists, sometimes with obscene words and gestures, local or foreigner when there was no clear fault on my part. What to do? This does not happen often because the vast majority of people are not 'ragers' who rage on the slightest 'cue'.
I personally hate the f word which my dad used frequently on me (in teochew) when i was a boy .I have often told my grandsons not to use the f word, heard frequently when they play computer games with their friends or sometimes with strangers.
The two situations of the t-shirt and the other cause for rage are different. Let us not read too much into things based on misplaced sympathy.
If the two rages are offences, journalists should ask the police why they are not prosecuting. And if they are rascist in nature why is the law silent.
It is always easy to sound smart and elegant.
Lim
Dear Mr Ong
I would like to inform you that you have missed out an incident one evening in early June in the KFC at Sun Plaza, Sembawang when I objected to a T-shirt worn by a young lady which had the words "(F**K YOU)" in large letters below a line of script that appeared to be Japanese where FU was the translation.
I said to the lady that I was offended by the words on the T-shirt and proceeded to have an argument with her. She was accompanied by an older man who said he was her father.
I replied that he should be ashamed of himself for going out with her wearing that T-shirt. It is probable that he was not her father.
After they had been served take away and left I spoke to the KFC manager and expressed my opinion that the couple should not have been served with that T-shirt giving offence to his counter staff.
Normally outlets of all types serving the public display signs that staff should not be abused or harassed in any way. In this case the lady was sending a message of offense to the entire population of Singapore let alone the KFC staff and myself.
I doubt if the KFC Manager involved would deny the incident since it was witnessed by his staff and the customers in the queues. He may also have reported it to his Management.
I suggest that broadcasting F**K YOU to all of Singapore is far more offensive than "I am F*****G SPECIAL" both demonstrating the deterioration of standards in what appears to be the pro Amos Yee crowd of young Singaporeans.
Singapore with zero tolerance for graffiti and drugs has a remarkable tolerance for obscenity on tee shirts which this affair has broadcast to the world. The display of these words on T-shirts gives the wrong impression to children that it is permissible to use them among friends, at home and in school.
Friends of mine in the UK, Norway and Finland have seen the postings independently. As far as I know the UK papers have not picked it up yet.
I know the person involved in the "I am F*****G Special" incident. I note that letters in the Emeritus Website are apparently inciting threats to gang violence and to burn down the apartment of his wife who is Singaporean.
The person deliberately intimidating the person on the MRT does not work in Singapore.
Regarding Mr Shanmugam Law Minister comments that he was sick in the head the below incidents show the police can be out of order. He has had two brushes with the law.
In the first in 2000 he was accused by a plain clothed CID policeman of Voluntarily Causing Hurt and using Abusive Language against Public Servant (The CID man). He was detained for 15 hours. The CID officer had phoned a friend to act as a witness to the event that he had not witnessed. CID man was caught out because the call to the witness was on his phone. The person was issued a warning, case closed and was thanked by the police. What happened to the CID man and the witness can only be guessed at unless the case number is followed up.
The Second incident in 2005 was when he warned police of a car abandoned in the bus bay behind Shuttle buses taking Americans assembling at Sembawang MRT Station to the Terror Club for an American Independence Day Party. He was later detained by the police for making a bomb THREAT. He was detained until 3pm next day (18 hours) and his passport was retained by the Attorney Generals Chamber for some six weeks and was only released after pressure from his MP, the USA Embassy, the UK Embassy and Keppel Shipyard Security (ex senior police retired) since he was required to travel to Vietnam for Commissioning Support on an FPSO which was an engineering disaster partly made in Singapore.
Unlike us, Mr Leung wanted to learn Chinese because he was not forced to in Canada. I assume that being Canadian, he was just forced to like maple syrup and ice hockey.
