Er... boobies, anyone?

I am so childish.

To be precise, the kind of child who's old enough to giggle when he/she/it sees a restaurant signboard at Changi Village saying "Seamen".

Yes, my parents raised me well.

Speaking of signboards at Changi Village:


It's so funny, like straight from your (innocently racist) childhood. How did people even come up with the sing-song "singh, singh, baboo singh, go home let your mother cane" anyway? What does it mean??? And isn't it horribly... wrong?

I'm not about to launch into a discussion about latent racism in Singapore but I mean, just imagine a shop sign emblazoned with "PROP. NEH NEH POK".

Moving on, here's how to make good use of your Higher Chinese - "Prostitution Fish Porridge" for sale!


Tee hee hee. Pity it wasn't open.

I'd like to end of this post by stating that Waraku (the restaurant) is really demeaning to women:


It's enough to make you want to shout...


KAMINAAAAAAAAAABEH!!!!!

All too good to be true. :)

Coitus interrupted

I think this is one of the most poignant, yet utterly grotesque, scenes I've ever had the fortune to chance upon in real life.


A pair of cockroaches crushed by a single car tire while in the midst of mating.

It makes me want to throw up, but at the same time, it's so oddly beautiful.

This used to be my playground

Ok, very melodrama I know, in addition to being a lie (since I took this near Changi Village), but just check this out:


It's really rare nowadays to see those old playgrounds with sand and concrete, isn't it?

Alright, true lah, back then got no sand ban ah, granite barge detainment ah, etc etc to deal with....

But HDB has been making their playgrounds the new-fangled, spongy-synthetic flooring, ultra-futuristic metallic kind for some time already.

You know what I mean - the really confusing kind. Sometimes you can barely tell where the kid's hands and legs are supposed to go. You almost think that they're supposed to crawl down the slide upside down on all fours, like that girl in The Exorcist.

One of the most distinctive sounds from childhood, for me, is the sound of slippers grinding sand as you arrived at the bottom of a concrete slide. And also, slippers grinding sand as you scrambled up a concrete slide.

One of the most distinctive feelings is (maybe not surprisingly...) the feeling of having playground sand ground into your backside as you slid to a painful halt.

But, still, WE ENJOYED IT!!!

Why no more? Unhygienic? Dangerous? Attracts dog/cat shit for children to accidentally dig up and eat/make into sandcastle?

Maybe in the future, the only time that kids get to see sand is when they go to the beach.

JTC is the weirdest place

They must be the only stat board with three-eyed people.

Bananas Galore

I've decided to make it my personal mission to document all the condom ads in Singapore.

Unfortunately I don't get out much so I haven't collected many, but give a girl some time...!

This one's a pretty common sight at the moment:


Quite discreet and sweet actually, but I wouldn't be surprised if it manages to get at least one ST Forumer's panties in a knot.

This one is more informative:


So cheap and so effective; my kind of ad. Just write some numbers on a frickin banana and take picture. Although, does "platinum" have anything at all to do with baby-prevention? They are also shooting (haha... shooting) for that James Bond association, as you can see. Men are so weird.

Previously there was another Okamoto ad on the MRT which featured a blown-up condom with a bird inside it and a bee outside it. (It was a lot more tastefully done than I've made it sound.) I commented on it to my conservative boss, who opined that she actually didn't think condom ads were appropriate for kids to see - "there are just some facts of life which you don't want to share when they're so young". I went on my usual rant of how condoms are inherently associated with kids anyway, so really what was the issue, etc. She said "Yah but, still." It was one of those moments when I realised that a lot of young, educated Singaporeans are indeed very conservative, as The Government always says. (Or perhaps, very hypocritical, in a passive sort of way.) It also made me want to document Singapore's condom ads.


Ok this isn't a condom ad but I just thought it was hilarious that they put the banana on the woman's boob. WTF?!

Our Immoral Times

Oh my goooooooooooooood, like, you wouldn't believe what I saw that day k???

I was at the hawker centre and ...


Someone was holding their chopsticks.

WITH THEIR LEFT HAND.

It was absolutely disgusting. I wanted to throw up. It was so... so... UNNATURAL!!! It was so... so... so... IMMORAL!!!

I mean, who uses their left hand to hold chopsticks?!?! Everybody knows, ONLY FREAKS OF NATURE!!!

I'm so appalled that the government is not doing anything about it. What's criminal law for if you don't use it to punish aberrations of nature?!

Left unregulated, this will lead to the destruction of the family unit and the downfall of society as we know it.

THE GOVERNMENT MUST NOT FALL SWAY TO THE PRO-LEFT-HANDED-CHOPSTICK AGENDA!!!

Spot the punchline

This is the view from my cube:


Funny right?

Ok, we get the message

I have nothing against choping seats with tissue paper packets. It's a cute practice that spontaneously arose from our national values and circumstances, i.e. overcrowding + need for orderliness + most cost effective solution.

Also, it follows the basic rules of economics. From the picture below, for example, we can deduce that the person on the left wants his/her seat at least 8 times as much as the person on the right. Now that's what I call huge-ass tissue paper!!!

The good ol' days for bums

What with the mini-fiasco on slippery seats and slipperier "bum-rests" at bus stops and MRT stations recently, I thought that this made for a nice blast from the past:


Yes, those "orbid" orange bus stop seats of yore. Often featuring flaking paint and cigarette burn marks, and goodness knows what stuck onto the concave underside. Whatever it was, there was no chance in hell that you'd slip off.

I also remember when these seats were coupled with the equally orbid (ok, "retro") orange and beige striped bus shelters, which really didn't look that bad, until you took a double-decker bus and saw all the shit lying on the roof.

This photo was taken outside Central (at Clarke Quay) a few months back. I doubt the seats are still there...

My take on sexy books

(Get it? Not "I'm bringing sexy back", but... ... nevermind)

I took this some time back in Borders:


My phone camera is not the best in the world, so unfortunately I can't remember nor make out what it says on those green stickers. But I do remember being shocked that all the sex books were completely shrink-wrapped and had warnings on them.

So funny. It's like they're wrapping the books in condoms. MUST KEEP ALL THE BAD STUFF IN!

The other books in Borders are all unwrapped and thoroughly fingered and rifled through. (Yes, they're all sluts.)

My point is, why? These are actual, proper sex books (by "proper" I mean more words than pictures). If it's porn, ok - I understand if you wanna wrap it up, black it out, cover it in gold foil and put it on the top shelf (where only the young kids who happen to have hyperthyroidism will be tall enough to reach it). But these are really just like any other books devoted to a subject.

I know people will say - Oh, the Singaporean public is very conservative. Oh, they are not ready... etc etc.

Fine - maybe that boils down to that generation gap between the people making the policies, and the people who will change the policy one day but who are currently more busy making good use of university dorm rooms, and Hotel 81s (Hotels 81???), and perhaps even their handphone video cameras and internet connections for... oh, sorry I cannot say... you are not ready yet lah, paiseh.

That covers the premarital sex part. But what's up with all the morality from parents?

How disgustingly hypocritical is it when they protest to condom ads on MRT trains and ovulation test kit ads at bus stops, with the familiar cry of "what values are we trying to teach our children?!"

Tell me again what was that thing you did before that kid of yours was conceived?

Also, if you're going to shrinkwrap sexy books, why don't you shrinkwrap Her World and FHM and all those magazines too? (I don't know for a fact that Borders doesn't do this... I'm just being antagonistic.)

Jesus...

I was walking towards City Hall MRT that day when something appeared:


This was on display at St Andrew's Cathedral's Welcome Centre. I couldn't help but stop and gape in horror.

Ads like these really do nothing to inspire respect for religion.

Firstly, they're premised on the ignorance of their audience - i.e. the ignorance of evolution. (It's even worse if the ignorance is deliberate.)

Secondly, they rely on the arrogance that stems from this ignorance - i.e. the arrogance that humans are not animals, that we are the most important things in the divine creator's eyes, etc.

And (this is a really cheap shot I admit), the ad even shamelessly rips off the aesthetics of those cool i-Pod ads.

Even if we dropped the marketing savvy bit...

Ignorance + Arrogance. What a superb combo. Who cares about educating themselves or being humble anyway? It's us versus them crazy monkey-making people man... don't ever let them get to you!

Swastikas on the MRT

Call me a prude, but I feel a bit uncomfortable when people flaunt Nazi symbols in public:


I believe the above would be cause for arrest in Germany.

(I know that the swastika is actually a spiritual/religious symbol. This intent seems more apparent in the clothing of the guy below:)


But like that?


Don't get me wrong - I'm not trying to profile anyone. I'm just wondering, would I get away with the same thing if I emblazoned my t-shirt with "CHINESE ARE THE SUPERIOR RACE" (or a symbolic equivalent)? I bet those lime-green shirted NEL officers would be "escorting" me very politely out of the station in no time.

Or... does this mean that Singapore implicitly subscribes to the notion of white supremacy? Hahaha.