Am I the 'sex pervert uncle' of Choa Chu Kang?

It was vandalism as a public service. Scrawled on the seats at a bus stop near my Choa Chu Kang home was this warning: “Beware of sex pervert uncle in New Paper.”

At first, I thought someone had recognised me from my weekly column in The New Paper on Sunday, which is accompanied by a regrettable photo of myself.



Yes, I look like a human poodle, but how can you tell from the photo that I’m a sex pervert? Is it the caveman hair or the leery grin?

And then I thought, wait a minute, do I look so old in the photo that I’m an “uncle”? To me, that was even more hurtful than being called a sex pervert.

And then I realised the graffiti wasn’t a warning about someone who worked at The New Paper, but someone who was reported in The New Paper.

To my relief, I might not be the “sex pervert uncle” after all.

That is, until I went jogging one morning.

You see, I’m a rather lazy person. So instead of changing into a proper pair of sports shorts, I simply went jogging in my black boxer shorts and a T-shirt I had slept in. I had done this a few times before without incident.

I figured, why add to the laundry my wife had to do? Save the planet and all that.

Yes, basically I went jogging in my underwear, but it wasn’t like they were thongs or briefs. They were long, baggy Goldlion boxers that hid everything that needed to be hidden.

The trouble was that these boxers also came with a button fly.



So I was happily running around my neighbourhood, listening to my iPod and going past a number of schoolgirls when I happened to look down and to my horror, saw that my little penis had somehow slipped out through the gap in the button fly, swinging freely as I jogged.

WARDROBE MALFUNCTION! WARDROBE MALFUNCTION!

No wonder I felt so cool down there.

For how long I was indecently exposing myself, I don't know, but I quickly put the bird back in the cage while I kept jogging.

I tried to remember the schoolgirls I had run past. What were the expressions on their faces? Were they looking at my crotch area?

Were they going to report me to the police? “It’s that sex pervert uncle in New Paper!” they would say.

When I reached home, I immediately told my wife, who surprisingly didn’t seem all that concerned about it. Her reasoning? My penis was so small that most likely no one noticed anyway

But in case anyone did notice, I hereby apologise to the residents of Choa Chu Kang for my shortcomings.

I really don't want to be the "uncle", sex pervert or otherwise.

- Published in The New Paper, 30 November 2008

Dear Ong,

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Cheers,
Desiree Lim
Assistant Manager (A & P)
Goldlion Enterprise (S) Pte Ltd

At long last, a burger as big as my head?

When I was living in the US years ago, a new Mexican eatery opened near my place. I don’t remember the name of the restaurant, but its slogan was unforgettable:

“Burritos as big as your head.”

How could I resist?

All my life, my greatest desire is to eat food as big as my head. And let me tell you I have a pretty big head.

So you can imagine my disappointment when I ordered the “burrito as big as your head” only to discover that the burrito wasn’t really as big as my head.

Yes, it was a pretty big burrito, maybe even the biggest burrito I had even seen – but was it as big as my head? No, it was not.

The burrito was at best as big as a baby’s head. However, it was my fully grown adult head I was concerned about.

I was so grief-stricken that I blocked the painful experience out of my memory for years – until last week.

I was flipping through The New Paper on Wednesday and there it was on page five.

An ad for Burger King's BK Quad Stacker.

In the ad was a picture of a burger that frightened and excited me in unspeakable ways. It was four obscene layers of beef and cheese inside a sesame seed bun, topped with a few slutty strips of bacon.

Suddenly, the memories came rushing back. Was this the head-size food I had been waiting for ever since my ill-fated dalliance with that Mexican heartbreaker?

Frankly, the BK Quad Stacker didn’t look big enough. There is also a BK Double Stacker and a BK Triple Stacker.

Which begs the question: Why stop at four layers? Why not a BK Quin Stacker? Or a BK Sex Stacker? No, wait, that sounds like something else.

How many layers would it take for it to be as big as my head?

I hurried to Burger King to view the BK Quad Stacker in the flesh when I passed by a McDonald’s and saw something that stopped me in my tracks.

The Mega Mac.

Basically, the Big Mac but with twice the beef.

I was dumbfounded and torn. Which one should I choose? The two burgers are virtually alike except that the BK Quad Stacker has bacon and more cheese while the Mega Mac has that slice of bread in the middle.

Then I was struck by an Obama-like epiphany.

There was no Burger King. There was no McDonald’s. There was only the United States of Burgers.

To build a burger as big as my head, I combined the BK Quad Stacker and the Mega Mac to create the Mega Octo Stacker! Behold!

And it still wasn’t as big as my head.

Like I said, I have a pretty big head.

Anyway, I bought some extra bread and managed to make 10 separate sandwiches out of the Mega Octo Stacker, which was enough to feed my family for two days.

And the search continues...

- Published in The New Paper, 23 November 2008

Fellow retrenchees, welcome to Between Jobs Hell

I laughed.

That was my reaction when I was first told that I was being retrenched.

I laughed out of relief because after weeks of speculation among my colleagues in my troubled company, the uncertainty was finally over. It was almost anti-climatic.

This was back in November 2001, two months after 9/11. But even before that, the economy was already reeling from the dotcom bust, and it would get worse with the subsequent Iraq war and Sars.

My company laid off 73 employees, nowhere near the 900 that DBS started retrenching last Thursday. With Singapore now in a recession, more such retrenchments are likely to follow.

I laughed when I was retrenched because I was amused by how my boss managed to retrench me without using the words “retrench”, “downsize” or even “rightsize”.

With an HR woman sitting beside him to make it official, he said: “As you are aware, the company is going through a restructuring exercise and unfortunately, you are one of those affected.”

That was it.

If I wasn’t expecting to be retrenched, I might not have realised I was being retrenched.

Fortunately, the word “unfortunately” gave me a clue that something bad was happening to me.

I laughed because I was in denial and possibly oblivious to the direness of my situation.

A month later in December 2001, Singapore’s unemployment rate of 4.7 per cent was the highest in 15 years. I had become a statistic.

According to the latest Ministry of Manpower figures, the unemployment rate for September 2008 was around 2 per cent. Let’s watch how much this number goes up in the coming months.

To keep myself busy during those long months of unemployment, I created a website to consolidate the links I found useful for my online job search.

I called it BetweenJobsHell.com.

To my surprise, other retrenchees started writing in to the site to share their stories and commiserate.

I learned that the biggest enemy of the retrenched was not that we couldn’t find a job, but the sense of helplessness and hopelessness that threatened to keep us from trying.

There was a need for some sort of support group for the retrenched that provided not just job-seeking advice, but also genuine empathy and moral support.

Sadly, for many at the time, BetweenJobsHell.com was it. I have since shut down the website because, well, I found a job.

But with the way things are going, who knows? BetweenJobsHell.com may be back.

I laughed when I was retrenched to keep from crying, which was what a few of my colleagues did when they received the news.

To them, being retrenched was no laughing matter.

- Published in The New Paper, 16 November 2008