Year of the shirt

I bought this Stussy T-shirt a few years ago because it was unusual and on sale. I didn't even try it on in the shop.

When I finally tried it on at home, it was like the ugliest, most horrifying thing.

I looked like I was wrapped in snake. (Not snakeskin, but snake.) It actually frightened my wife.



It's also in that particularly unflattering shade of brown. So I put the shirt away.

Well, tomorrow is the first day of the Year of the Snake and I finally have an excuse to wear the hideous thing.

Because of this, I'm actually excited about Chinese New Year for the first time in a long while. I can't wait to frighten my relatives.

Gong xi fa cai, everyone! Or rather, gong sssssssssssssssssss fa cai.

'This is our fifth year, baby, and it feels like I'm in jail'

Any Little River Band fans out there?



This month marks my fifth anniversary at The New Paper. This is the longest I've ever stayed with one company.

Yes, I spent 10 years at MediaCorp, but that was over three separate stints.

I was at SBC (Singapore Broadcasting Corporation) for six months in 1994 where I was a research writer and appeared as a movie reviewer with Gurmit Singh on Live On 5.



I returned to TCS (Television Corporation Of Singapore) in 1997 for four years plus a few months where I worked on Shiver, Under One Roof and Phua Chu Kang seasons 2 and 3.



I returned again in 2004 to MediaCorp Studios for another 4+ years where I worked on Daddy's Girls, Living With Lydia, Maggi & Me, Lifeline and the final season of Phua Chu Kang.



So each time I joined (and rejoined) MediaCorp, I would work on a show with Gurmit Singh, which isn't really saying much since everyone at MediaCorp eventually works on a show with Gurmit Singh. But very few can say they worked on his first show, Live On 5.

Also, each time I was there, the company had a different name. So the only chance I'll go back is if it changes its name again, which makes it rather unlikely there will be a fourth time.

So chances are, I'll be staying at The New Paper for a while.

One thing I discovered at The New Paper is how similar it is to working for Channel 5.

Just as TNP is the lesser sibling to The Straits Times at SPH, Ch 5 is the lesser sibling to Ch 8 at MediaCorp Studios.

Because of the sheer volume of Ch 8 productions, they set the standard for production values for Ch 5 in-house productions as well.

Unfortunately, it's harder for local shows on Ch 5 to get away with Ch 8 production values as Ch 5 shows are shown alongside Hollywood productions and will always look like crap in comparison. That is also why some local shows by outside production houses look better than MediaCorp in-house productions.

Anyway, I no longer concern myself with such matters after joining The New Paper in 2008.

Five years later, the paper is now celebrating its 25th anniversary and has a different editor.

But the biggest difference for me personally is that my only real friend at the paper, Paik Choo, left last August.

We knew each other from my second stint at TCS when she was working as a "dialogue consultant" for Growing Up. She would help me get The New Paper job a decade later. She's now freelancing for InSing and others.

I miss seeing her around the newsroom.

Anyway, to commemorate my half decade at The New Paper, here's my first published article as a full-time staffer.



It's the little article on the right, a comment about Mas Selamat, who escaped right after I joined TNP, headlined "Nobody's perfect".

After the article came out, I was stunned to read in an online forum that I was an apologist for the Government. I had no idea.

It was weird to have other people attach some imagined motivation behind what you wrote to fit their conspiracy theories and being so convinced they're right.

Of course, since then, I've been too busy apologising for myself to be an apologist for anyone else.

So far, 17 of my columns have not been published because of political incorrectness and other reasons. One of those rejected columns is about my top five MediaCorp CEOs. You can read why Lee Cheok Yew is my all-time favourite MediaCorp CEO as a prelude to my "fool for stool" column.

Ah, memories.

With dread, I look forward to more columns being rejected at The New Paper for years to come.

Meanwhile, we'll go dancing in the dark, walking through the park and reminiscing.

Population solution: Baby, you can be my car

“It’s all your fault,” he said.

Huh? What I did do now?

I had just bumped into an old friend from the navy while I was jogging and already he was blaming me for stuff.

He was complaining about having to deal with full-time national servicemen in the navy who are permanent residents and can’t speak English.

It’s because of Singaporeans like me who aren’t having enough babies, he said. So we don't have enough Singaporeans doing national service to defend the country.

That was when the magnitude of Singapore’s population problem finally hit me. I felt like running home and procreating with my wife at that very moment.



And then I remembered she might want to cuddle afterwards and I changed my mind. I think Singaporeans would have more babies if women didn’t like cuddling afterwards so much.

Or if men didn’t mind cuddling afterwards so much.

Actually, it’s not even the cuddling that I mind. The problem is I don’t know when I can stop cuddling.

At least for sex, there’s a clear end point. But cuddling can go on indefinitely.

It also occurred to me that if we have another baby, my wife would want me to do the night feeding again and I hate night feeding even more than I hate not knowing when to stop cuddling.

Anyway, we already have two kids, but apparently two isn’t enough for my navy friend, who has three. What is this? A competition?

Moreover, my wife and I are in our 40s and too old to have any more babies as tempting as the recently announced $8,000 baby bonus cash gift for a third child may be.

And then I read that my former MediaCorp colleague Gurmit Singh and his wife are having their third child even though he is 48 and she is 43.

And that was even before the $8,000 cash gift was announced. What is this? A competition?

The baby is due at the end of next month, according to xinmsn. They already have a daughter, 16, and a son, 12.

Gurmit posted on Facebook: “We are gonna have a new baby soon... And I don’t mean a car.”

Was that second line really necessary?

What if the Phua Chu Kang star had just written: “We are gonna have a new baby soon”?

Would people think, oh, Gurmit is getting another Lamborghini?



Yeah, I guess they might.

Wait.

Wheels are turning in my head. (And they are not on a Lamborghini.)

I just figured out how to get Singaporeans to reproduce like rabbits.

You know how the Government has been dishing out monetary incentives like baby bonuses over the years to encourage Singaporeans to have more babies?

Yet our fertility rate remains too low.

On the other hand, the certificate of entitlement (COE) prices for all car categories have risen to over $90,000 and yet, despite the increasing cost of owning a car, the vehicle population continues to grow.

Which means the Government has been going about this whole baby thing all wrong.

Instead of trying to make it cheaper for Singaporeans to have babies, the Government should be making it more expensive!

We just need to make babies more like cars. (Thanks for the idea, Gurmit.)

Forget baby bonuses. The Government should be introducing baby COEs.

There could be a category A for baby girls, a category B for baby boys and an open category for both sexes.

By controlling the supply of baby COEs, the Government could create more demand for babies.

Under this Baby Quota System, children who are three to 10 years old must be certified roadworthy every two years while children over 10 must be inspected annually.

There could be a road tax for each baby, the amount of which is determined by the baby’s birth weight.

To address environmental concerns, hybrid babies could get special tax rebates, not that I have any idea what hybrid babies are or how they’re better for the environment.

I think parents should also be required to pay ERP charges for each child they enter the CBD with, although I foresee some resistance to installing In-Vehicle Units on babies.

But if we stick to the plan and stay the course, I believe there will be a surfeit of babies in Singapore in no time, thus allowing the creation of a used baby market.

So to Gurmit and my navy friend, I may not have any more babies myself, but my proposal would create more babies for Singapore than both of you ever will.

Not that we're competing.

- Published in The New Paper, 3 February 2012



UPDATE: Gurmit Singh welcomes third child