I blame 2020 for Robinsons and Sean Connery

A 74-year-old Robinsons sales associate at the Raffles City outlet said: “I’m very sad… When I see the empty counters...

Posted by TODAY on Friday, October 30, 2020

Dear 2020,

You nasty.

And there are still two more months to go.

If only we can cancel you like the Raffles Hall Association cancelled the authors of the PAP Vs PAP book.

We should’ve agreed to a safe word before the year started, like “circuit breaker” or “wap”.

Is it too late to cry Uncle Roger?

Never mind SafeEntry. We need a SafeExit and quick.



It’s not enough that more than a million have died from the pandemic this year and Manchester United introduced its ugliest kit ever, you just killed off two beloved decades-old institutions within days of each other – Robinsons and Sean Connery.

The former announced on Friday that it was closing shop after 162 years in Singapore.

Already queueing for the TraceTogether tokens, Singaporeans are now also lining up to get into Robinsons before the doors are shut for good.





Where do I get my extra firm bamboo charcoal memory foam pillow after that?

I mean, besides Tangs, Metro, OG, Isetan, Takashimaya, BHG, Courts, Harvey Norman and the Internet.

I almost feel guilty for partially causing the closure of Robinsons by cancelling my OCBC-Robinsons Group credit card in March.

I already have too many cards in the wallet in my back pocket, which ruins the smooth curve of my perfectly shaped buttock.

And I realised that lately, I used the Robinsons card only to get a member’s rebate when paying for my all-butter Viennese milk chocolate-dipped finger biscuits at Marks & Spencer.



But no, it’s not really my fault that Robinsons is joining John Little and Oriental Emporium in the great megamall in the sky.

I blame you, 2020.

Don’t you see a pattern here?

Eddie Van Halen, Helen Reddy, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Chadwick Boseman, Olivia de Havilland, Regis Philbin, Charlie Daniels, Carl Reiner, Ian Holm, Vera Lynn, Little Richard, Irrfan Khan, Bill Withers, Kenny Rogers, Max Von Sydow, Kirk Douglas, Kobe Bryant and Toots of Toots and the Maytals – you took Toots!



Do you have a bucket list of famous names you want to end before you end?

And as if knocking off two iconic Bond girls – Diana Rigg and Pussy Galore, I mean Honor Blackman – isn’t sufficient villainy, you did what Dr No, Goldfinger and Blofeld couldn’t. You got to the man himself.

Connery was 90 years old.



I remember back in the mid-70s, my father once told me he was taking me to see James Bond. I thought we were going to see Roger Moore as he was the only Bond I knew then.

But the movie my father took me to see was this bizarre post-apocalyptic psychedelic fantasy with near-naked women and a giant flying angry stone head.



Traumatisingly unsuitable for children, the movie had an existential ending that haunted me for many nights to come.



Needless to say, it was nothing like James Bond at all with no Roger Moore in sight.

Why did my father lie to me?

It was only decades later, after he died, that I found out that the movie of my childhood nightmares was called Zardoz.



And the reason my father said he was taking me to see James Bond was that the movie starred Sean Connery.

At the time, I didn't know who Connery was, much less knew he was the original Bond. Eight-year-olds are dumb. I also didn’t know how to pronounce “Sean”.

My plan was to share this poignant anecdote with the Oscar-winning Scottish star if I should ever meet him – and also rag him about the red diapers he wore in Zardoz.

But that possibility is no more, thanks to you. Even 007 was no match for 2020.

Contrary to the title of the much delayed new Daniel Craig-starring Bond sequel, this year has been the time to die for too many.



My only quantum of solace is that I still have my all-butter Viennese milk chocolate-dipped finger biscuits. They’re for my mouth only.

Oh, and stay away from Sheena Easton.

- Published in The New Paper, 2 November 2020

How I survived the $4.50 durian buffet

A durian buffet for $4.50?

That’s less than the price of a Mala Burger meal at Burger King.

Even though I’m not a durian lover (we’re just friends), it was an offer I couldn’t resist.

But, of course, there was a catch.

The buffet was at Plaza Singapura and you had to spend at least $45 in a single receipt at the mall to get one $4.50 durian buffet ticket for an appointed 45-minute session.

Why the recurring number 45? Because it’s Plaza Singapura’s 45th anniversary.

Yes, that’s how many years since Singaporeans first heard of Yaohan.



Anyway, a week before the durian buffet, my daughter managed to spend over $90 on a hoodie and too many T-shirts at the Uniqlo outlet so that I could get two tickets because I knew I couldn’t survive a durian buffet on my own.

But my daughter hates durian. My wife hates durian. My son hates spending time with me.

So I asked my mother. She is 78.

If she dies from eating too many durians, at least she would die happy – and fed.

She even came prepared with her own bottle of salt water because, you know, that’s what you’re supposed to drink when you eat durian.

I don’t know whether she had been to a durian buffet before, but I hadn’t.

The Plaza Sing buffet sessions were spread out from last Friday to yesterday. I got tickets for the Saturday session at 2pm.



To get ready for D-Day, I went on Friday to recce a session and gathered some intelligence.

The buffet was held outdoors under a tent in front of the mall, presumably so as to not stink up the building. Queues had formed more than half an hour before the session started. Plastic gloves were provided.



Each person was given four or five pieces of freshly harvested durian of different varieties on a paper tray.



Once you finished eating, you had to leave the tent and queue again for another tray.



You could queue as many times as you wanted up until 15 minutes before the session ended, because by then you wouldn’t be able to get your durian in time anyway.

If you went early enough, you could easily get at least three trays of durian.



On Saturday, my strategy was to re-queue immediately after getting a tray, leaving my durian with my mother. Repeat until time was up. This way, I could maximise my haul and eat later.

Well, that was the plan anyway. After I got my second tray, my mother offered to re-queue in my place so that I could enjoy the fruits of my labour.

But after she returned with another tray, I realised there was such thing as too much of a good thing.



I didn’t want to eat any more durian and neither did she. Her salt water didn’t help.

I had to force myself to finish the last piece.



So even though there was still time to re-queue, I decided to throw in my yellow-stained gloves and surrender.

It had been only 25 minutes.

I fought the durian buffet and the durian buffet won.

We left the tent and went to Tim Ho Wan to recover with dim sum and Chinese tea.

My mother claimed this was the first time I had ever taken her out to eat. (I guess she didn’t count her birthday meals.)

And all it took was a $4.50 durian buffet. (Terms and conditions apply.)



Thank you, Plaza Sing. For your next anniversary, you should bring back Yaohan.

- Published in The New Paper, 24 June 2019




EARLIER: Forbidden fruit is smelliest: I was cast out because I wanted to eat durians

I bought $3.50 towels from Mr Yoong in Chinatown because of viral post

As Douglas Adams wrote in The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy, the towel “is about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitchhiker can have”.

And for the past few days, the towel has been the hottest selling item at Chinatown Complex, though most of the buyers don’t look like interstellar hitchhikers as far as I can tell.

It’s all thanks to an online post that went viral late last week.

In case you haven’t seen it as you’re one of those heroes who swore off social media because the Internet is evil, this is what the post said:

If you’d like to buy bath and hand towels, floor mats and handkerchiefs, do consider getting them from stall No 183 at the ground floor of Chinatown Complex.

This stall is run by Mr Yoong, who is the sole breadwinner, supporting his disabled twin sisters who have muscular dystrophy and are unable to communicate, let alone support themselves. Mr Yoong has been operating the stall since his parents passed away.

One of the Yoong sisters is in Cheshire Home, a charity nursing home giving full time care to the disabled. The other sister, who used to struggle to move about, is also having mobility problems as her muscles have weakened and she cannot move around. They stay in a flat above the complex.

Chinatown complex will close for 3 months from March 2019 for repair works, and it will be tough for this family of 3 without any income.

CNY is around the corner, so if you’d like to get some new towels, do head down to the shop to get some reasonably priced cloths!

Did the story about Mr Yoong and his sisters bring a tear to your eye?

Because I know a place where you can get a towel to dry it.

As an unrepentant bandwagon jumper, I decided to check out the Chinatown Complex stall myself on Saturday afternoon and possibly buy a towel or two to help the guy.

But it seemed the guy didn’t need my help as a crowd had already gathered around Mr Yoong’s stall when I got there.



Was he selling towels or BTS merchandise?

The man had practically become an idol himself because of the viral post. That’s the power of social media for ya.

But his was a one-man operation. What if he needed to eat or go to the toilet? I wondered.



Looking a little overwhelmed but still in good humour, the spindly 55-year-old was telling people that all the big bath towels were sold out, but everyone made it a point to buy something before leaving.

Mr Yoong has told Lianhe Wanbao he didn’t want donations – just buy his towels.

Which was what I was trying to do as I finally squeezed my way to the front of the crowd.

I spotted a pack of hand towels marked $3.50 and indicated to Mr Yoong that I wanted to buy one. I thought it was $3.50 for one towel, but he handed me the whole pack of six.

That’s like 58 cents a towel. I haven’t bought many hand towels in my life, but I suspect that’s a pretty good deal.

Except I’m not sure what I’m going to do with six hand towels.

Well, I am planning to use GrabHitch for a trip to Alpha Centauri next week.

Anyone wanna come along?

I have spare towels.

- Published in The New Paper, 21 January 2019






UPDATE: Chinatown Complex reopened on 1 June 2019 after renovations

Goh Chok Tong in new book: Lee Kuan Yew wanted a nudist colony on Sentosa

“Really?” I said incredulously.

I had searched the Kinokuniya bookstore in Jem for Tall Order: The Goh Chok Tong Story but couldn’t find it. The woman at the Kinokuniya information counter said it was sold out. I couldn’t believe it.

This was on Saturday. Wasn’t the book by Peh Shing Huei officially launched just two days earlier?



I mean, we’re talking about a book about Singapore’s second Prime Minister here and despite the glasses, not Harry Potter.

“Really?” I repeated for emphasis.

The woman chuckled and said the book should be restocked by Monday.

But that would be too late for me.

I needed the book to write about it in this column you’re reading now, which comes out on Monday, i.e. today, so I couldn’t wait.

But I didn’t tell her all that. I just headed for the Popular bookstore in neighbouring Westgate mall. After fighting my way through the crowd at Westgate for the Spotlight opening, I found the book at Popular.

Fortunately, unlike Kinokuniya, Popular had dozens of copies.



And they were not displayed on the Fiction shelf like in the picture posted online by Mr Brown.

He wrote: “Someone shelved Lao Goh’s book under Fiction. I wonder if the bookseller knows something we don’t.”

How dare Mr Brown refer to our esteemed Emeritus Senior Minister as “Lao Goh”?

Surely, the Government will request that Facebook take down the post – a request which Facebook will reject.

Instead, Lao Goh, I mean, Mr Goh shared Mr Brown’s post with a quip: “Bookshop knows that fiction sells better than memoirs.”



“Hahaha!” Mr Brown responded, possibly out of relief that he was not going to be exiled like Francis Seow or Tang Liang Hong mentioned in the book.

As it turns out, Mr Goh also provides a few “Hahaha” moments in the book amid the not-so-funny recollections of Operation Spectrum and the Hendrickson Affair.

For example, he wrote in the Afterword:

“As an aside, Lee Kuan Yew was more liberal than we think. Or more practical. When the tourism sector was down, he floated the idea of a nudist colony in Sentosa or an offshore island to bring them in! The younger ministers vetoed him.”

Was that how we ended up with casinos instead? We don’t mind foreigners coming here to gamble and lose their shirts – but not literally.



Commenting on his relationship with Mr Lee Kuan Yew and Mr Lee Hsien Loong, Mr Goh wrote:

“How did I succeed as a ‘Goh-between’? It was because father and son did not ‘sandwich’ me.”

I’m not sure what that means. Uh... they didn’t put him between two slices of bread?

Earlier in the book, Mr Goh also called himself “a lubricant” between the two Lees and it wasn’t nudist-related.

For a book costing the ministerial sum of $39.59, I had expected his whole life story, but Tall Order ends with Mr Goh becoming PM in 1990. I guess that’s why it says Volume 1 on the cover.

Presumably, the next book will be about his PM years and like the sequel to the Guardians Of The Galaxy movie, will be called Volume 2.



Luckily, I didn’t pay full price for the book. My wife is a Popular member and I got a 20 per cent discount. I saved almost $8. That may not seem like much to some, but it sure ain’t peanuts to me.

Yes, really.

- Published in The New Paper, 12 November 2018

Shopping for running shoes? The best place in Singapore to go is...

Last month, it was reported that Nike would stop supplying to smaller shops like those in Queensway Shopping Centre and Peninsula Plaza.

As someone who buys running shoes more frequently than is sane, I shrugged at the news.

A photo posted by SM Ong (@s.m.ong) on Jul 4, 2016 at 11:53am PDT

Despite their reputation, I found Queensway and Peninsula Plaza to be horrible places to shop for shoes. They may have the variety and the latest, but the prices suck.

For me, the best place in Singapore to shop for running shoes is actually IMM, near the Jurong East MRT station.

A close second is Changi City Point (behind Singapore Expo) on the other side of the island.

I love the outlet stores.

Even if you don't drive, it's now much easier to get to IMM from the MRT station by walking through Westgate Mall and using the bridges linking Westgate to Ng Teng Fong General Hospital to Devan Nair Institute to IMM.



Here's how to find most of the popular brands at IMM:

NIKE

I make my pilgrimage to the Nike Factory Store practically every week because the stock moves so fast, I can almost always find new stuff there. (However, I do feel that the similar Nike outlet at Changi City Point is slightly better.)

Look for great deals under $100.



ADIDAS

The Adidas Outlet at IMM is much bigger than the ones at Changi and Velocity@Novena, but the selection of running shoes can still be quite limited. For example, I have yet to see the Ultra Boost at any of the outlets. (UPDATE: In 2018, the Ultra Boost and its variants were discounted for the first time.)



NEW BALANCE

The IMM New Balance Outlet is similar to the Changi one.



PUMA

The IMM Puma Outlet is similar to the Changi one.



SKECHERS

The brand may be popular with housewives, but Skechers have been making some pretty legit running shoes in recent years.

The IMM Skechers Outlet is bigger than the Changi one.



ASICS

June 2017 update: An Asics outlet store has opened here that's bigger than the Changi one.



You can also find a small selection of Asics shoes at Outlet 360.



UNDER ARMOUR

July 2017 update: An Under Armour outlet opened here and I think it's the only one in Singapore.



SAUCONY, REEBOK, MERRELL

You can find these shoes at Royal Sporting House Outlet. (UPDATE: It shut down in June 2019.)



MIZUNO, SALOMON, HOKA ONE ONE

The World Of Sport Outlet has a respectable selection of discounted Mizuno and Salomon shoes.

The Hoka brand was just introduced to the Singapore market last year. So the range of Hoka shoes at the IMM World Of Sport Outlet is still very small but can only grow. (UPDATE: World of Sport stopped distributing Hoka and Salomon in 2019. You can find those two brands at Running Lab in nearby Westgate.)



BROOKS, NEWTON, INOV-8, ALTRA

Sadly, you can't find any Brooks shoes in IMM or even nearby Westgate/JEM malls, but Jurong Point has a Sportslink store with discounted Brooks shoes.

As for Newton and Inov-8, Key Power Sports carries those brands but doesn't have a store in the area.

I got my Altra shoes at Queensway Shopping Centre.

Remember my motto: Never pay full price!


THE NORTH FACE UPDATE:

Buying white people's shoes on Black Friday: New Balance not down with TPP (Yeah, you know me)

I have a question.

Do white supremacists celebrate Black Friday?

I’m asking this because I was at Suntec City Mall two days ago, which happened to be Black Friday, and noticed that the New Balance store was having a Black Friday sale.



Wait a minute, I thought to myself.

Didn’t I just read recently that New Balance has become the footwear of choice for white supremacy?

And it’s not because Hitler wore New Balance. (Or did he?)

As with many unsettling things happening in the world right now, it started after Mr Donald Trump was elected US president.

Welcoming the outcome, the New Balance vice president of public affairs said in an interview with the Wall Street Journal:

“The Obama administration turned a deaf ear to us and frankly, with President-elect Trump, we feel things are going to move in the right direction.”

This upset a number of anti-Trump New Balance shoe owners so much that they shared videos of themselves throwing their New Balance retro kicks into the rubbish or setting the shoes on fire in protest.



Meanwhile, I still can’t bear to throw my old shoes away even though they’re so worn out that they look like they have already been set on fire.

The New Balance guy has since clarified that the company doesn’t support Mr Trump per se, but is against the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) which Mr Trump opposes — and Singapore die-die must have.



Wait, does this mean as a Singaporean, I should burn my New Balance shoes too? Nah, why bother? They look burnt anyway.

The reason New Balance opposes the TPP is that the US company manufactures parts of its shoes in the US and believes the TPP would doom American factories.

The shoemaker released this statement on Twitter: “Since 1906, we have carved our own path in being passionately committed to making things at our five factories in New England, even when nobody else did. New Balance and our thousands of employees around the world constantly strive to better our local communities.”

pic.twitter.com/biUiwFkNzS

— New Balance (@newbalance) November 10, 2016

Praising New Balance, a US blogger called The Daily Stormer wrote:

“New Balance is making a gesture to support white people and to support US manufacturing. We need to support that.

“I see New Balances now becoming the official shoes of white people...

“This will be fantastic. We will be able to recognise one another by our sportswear.”

Uh... can’t white people already recognise one another just by, you know, being white?

Perhaps worried that something like this might turn off non-white people (which constitutes quite a bit of the world’s population) from buying its shoes, New Balance released another statement on Twitter: “New Balance does not tolerate bigotry or hate in any form…

“As a 110-year-old company with five factories in the US and thousands of employees worldwide from all races, genders, cultures and sexual orientations, New Balance is a values-driven organisation and culture that believes in humanity, integrity, community and mutual respect for people around the world.”

pic.twitter.com/lXtWlCFkIV

— New Balance (@newbalance) November 15, 2016

This is probably why despite being the “official shoes of white people”, New Balance didn’t have a White Friday sale.

But why is it called Black Friday anyway?

It’s not because it’s the day after the PSLE results are released and parents’ faces turn black.

You know how I know PSLE doesn’t matter?

Because when you apply for probably the best job in the world, Carlsberg doesn't ask for your T-score.

You just need to be over 18, have zero experience and really, really like Carlsberg beer.



Black Friday is also not the day when retailers go from being “in the red” to being “in the black” even though this is a popular explanation.

According to History.com, the term “Black Friday” was first used in the 60s to describe the day after Thanksgiving (every last Thursday of November in the US) because of the chaos created by the hordes of shoppers.



Then “in the late 1980s… retailers found a way to reinvent Black Friday and turn it into something that reflected positively, rather than negatively, on them and their customers”.

And voila, the “red to black” nonsense.

Even though Thanksgiving still hasn’t quite caught on in Singapore yet (and why should it? Turkey just tastes like bad chicken), Black Friday is becoming like the year’s third coming of the Great Singapore Sale two weeks after Singles’ Day on Nov 11, the Orchard Road Business Association’s resistance notwithstanding.



Which is why the New Balance store at Suntec is offering 20 per cent off storewide (including sale items) from Friday until today.

I may not be a white person, but I bought a pair of New Balance Zante V2 running shoes for $79 (down from $169) just to be ironic.

What colour are they? Black and white, of course.

- Published in The New Paper, 27 November 2016

LTA shipping defective trains back to China: Returning something you ordered from overseas can be such a hassle

Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in.

I didn’t want to write another column making fun of the Land Transport Authority (LTA).

Really.

The last time was in May. It was about how an LTA ad to promote a “car-lite” Singapore showing a woman riding a bicycle with the tagline “Freedom to come and go” resembled a sanitary pad ad.



Someone said to me: “Come on lah, Smong. Didn’t you just write about LTA? Why do you keep picking on those poor buggers? It’s becoming almost like a form of bullying.”

After that, I told myself to lay off LTA and look for someone else to bully, like Jem or Rui En.

To be fair to me, the previous time I wrote about LTA was in March, which was more than two months earlier.

It was to point out the irony of the Government introducing Car-Free Sundays to promote a greener future even as LTA justified plans to build the Cross Island Line across the Central Catchment Nature Reserve, which could make our future a little less green.

Five months before that, I wrote about how a stray aluminium foil helium balloon could cause a train delay and floated the idea of banning balloons from sale in Singapore, like chewing gum, to prevent any more balloon-related incidents.



In that column, I also called out the LTA for faking a train disruption to conduct an exercise testing SMRT’s and SBS Transit’s readiness to deal with a train disruption a day after there was an actual train disruption.

That was in October last year.

So it’s not like I’m picking on those poor buggers every week.

Anyway, this week, it seems that everyone has already beaten me to it.

LTA is getting whacked worse than McDonald’s new salted egg yolk chicken burger after a Hong Kong investigative news organisation called FactWire reported that defective SMRT trains were wrapped in green covers and “secretly” shipped back to the manufacturers in China in the dead of night last month.



It was the biggest thing out of the Special Administrative Region of the People’s Republic of China to hit Singapore last week, even bigger than Hong Kong movie star Chow Yun Fat, who was in town to promote his new movie, Cold War 2, and take lots of selfies.



LTA just can’t catch a break. When there are train breakdowns, people complain. When there are no train breakdowns, people also complain.

Just as McDonald’s has addressed the salted egg yolk chicken burger issue by promising “extra sauce”, LTA has since addressed the FactWire report by saying the defects are not “safety-critical”.

The Government also explained that the trains were transported in the dead of night “to minimise obstruction and inconvenience to road users”, and the green covers were to “protect the trains, just as how we would bubble-wrap or enclose in boxes and styrofoam-pad electronic equipment and machinery that we want to transport overseas”.

This reminds me of the time I ordered the six-movie Rocky box set on Blu-ray from Amazon last year.

While I was watching the first movie, the picture suddenly froze. I replayed the movie and the picture froze again at the same point.

Aiyah, what should I do next?

I ordered the Blu-ray online from overseas, so it’s not like I could just go back to the shop and exchange it.

The mere thought of going through the hassle of trying to get a replacement or refund from Amazon was enough to make me just want to write it off.

I imagine LTA must have felt the same way when it learnt about the train defects.

Except I paid maybe 30 bucks for my Rocky box set and LTA paid hundreds of millions for the trains.

LTA definitely couldn’t just write it off.

But should I?

Hey, 30 bucks is 30 bucks.

So I steeled myself with the eye of the tiger and contacted Amazon to get a replacement or refund.



I was instructed to return the defective item by securely packing it in a box (which I had to supply myself), printing the mailing label and invoice from the website, affixing the mailing label and appropriate amount of postage for shipping to the US on the parcel, and shipping the package from the nearest post office or shipping company of my choice.

Sure, that is nothing compared to wrapping six trains in green covers and transporting them to the shipyard in the dead of night with auxiliary police officers clearing the way, but sending a Blu-ray box set to the US is not cheap too sia.

In the end, I somehow managed to get Amazon to send me a replacement without me having to return anything.

I don’t know whether LTA could do that too — or should even try.

Now I have two Rocky box sets, one of which is defective.

But at least the defect isn’t safety-critical.

I have The Godfather box set on Blu-ray too.

“Just when I thought I was out...”

- Published in The New Paper, 10 July 2016

Buying a TV at IT Show with Matthew

His only criterion: It must have four HDMI ports.









He was very happy to discover that the Sony model he wanted was $80 cheaper at the IT Show than at Mustafa.





It was a long wait to pay.







He bought us lunch at a restaurant called Grandma's in Suntec.





I carried the TV to his car for him.



I returned to the IT Show on my own, hoping to see some booth babes.



Is that stretch limo always there?



All photos taken yesterday with my wearable Autographer camera.