Bobby Kang

Bobby, a maltese, died on Sep 11, aged 15

There comes a time in any dog's life where the expectation of being Man's Best Friend will surely weigh down on the pet. Many pets achieve this by simply being the cutest thing on four legs, with owners being constantly proud of the fact that their dog can chase a ball or not use the table leg as a toilet.

In the 10 years that Bobby lived with his owner Candy Kang, he did not fulfill that expectation in the conventional sense. He would sit idly by as other dogs run like they have rabies after small animals and balls, and in his later years, would treat anything that he could stand on as a toilet, so much so that in his final few months, he had to wear a diaper everywhere he went.

Bobby did far more to exceed whatever expectations has ever been placed on the canine population. He was no ordinary dog. Unlike his butt-sniffing species, Bobby has inspired a line of merchandise, aptly named as whitedogbobby (http://www.whitedogbobby.com/) and prompted Candy's rebellious streak which led to her, and other street artists, tagging images of him all over Singapore (you can still see him on a wooden board at Marina Square at the pathway leading to the Golden Village cinema, and outside the 1st floor toilet wall of Red Dot Traffic at Maxwell Road), and in cities such as Kuala Lumpur, Bangkok, Bali, Hong Kong, Macau, Tokyo, Sydney, London, Paris, Groningen, Wurzberg, Toronto, Ottawa, Washington D.C., Philadelphia and New York City.

His merchandise, which includes notebooks, stuffed toys, head cushions, pendants, T-shirts, doggy T-shirts and many others have warmed hundreds, if not thousands, of hearts and have been sold in cities as far away as London. Cartoonized paintings of him, together with his real-life brother, Italian Greyhound Hungry, and imaginary friend Wabbit, were on exhibition in Singapore, Hong Kong, Tokyo, Perth and, if you can wrap your head around it, Jerusalem.

Indeed, it is his popularity that saw him and Candy being featured quite a fair bit in the local media, as well as media as illustrious and distant as Australia's Vogue magazine. For all of Bobby's achievements, which is too lengthy to regurgitate here, check out www.flickr.com/photos/whitedogbobby/.

His passing away ("Has to be on Sep 11, that stupid dog," said his teary owner just minutes after his passing) saw an outpouring of emotion and condolences. In the few short months that he set up a Facebook account, he has 233 friends. His wall on Facebook is littered with well-wishers when he was sick, and messages of grief after he passed away, many of whom are from strangers who do not know his owner.

All that is just the public Bobby. Privately, he was a Herculean pillar of strength. When Candy went through a troubled marriage, Bobby would sit by her side and watch her as she quietly broke down. When Hungry came into his life, Bobby would become big brother. Ever so often, when Hungry was fearful of other dogs or humans, Bobby would rush to stand in between Hungry and the aggressor, despite being the smaller and physically weaker dog.

While his intelligence cannot be said to be of Einsteinian proportions, there was little doubt that Bobby had character in abundance.

Non-dog owners would wonder what the fuss is all about. He is, after all, just an animal. Surely this is being blown out of proportion. They are, perhaps, right. His death really is a passing in the physical sense. His spirit, in many forms, lives on.

Man, no pause

A recent online poll by http://www.myecitizen.sg/ of 581 Singaporeans showed, amongst other things, that men still have not developed the much required survival skill of lying at polls.

It is a skill which other nationalities, such as the French, have honed to an art, which is why they top Durex's Sex Survey every year for having the most number of sex in a year. We know this cannot be true because if you know French men, you know that they are smelly.

I know this to be true because I work in the building where French bank Societe Generale is located. Every time the French bankers get into a lift together, the elevator smells like it just ferried my week-old socks, and trust me, you do not want to smell that.

And any woman without a deformed nose will tell you that one of the sexiest thing about a man is a good smell. Hence, ensuring that you smell nice goes a long way in instilling confidence in men.

Which is what Singaporean men on the poll said they have a lack of. This is sad, but true. One can only hope that with time, Singaporean men will learn that it doesn't hurt their reputations if they were just to bend the truth a little when it comes to polls about their attractiveness.

I mean, how hard can it be when answering a polling question such as, how many times do you have sex a week, that instead of putting down a zero, you add a one in front of the zero. Technically, it's not lying if it's a typo error.

Of course, it is also sad that Singaporean men have no confidence. My extensive research tells me that this is by and large due to a few reasons.

1) Most Singaporean men are Chinese;
2) Chinese men have short dicks;
3) They have forgotten how to have sex properly because they have fucked too many China girls, whose re-enactment of the "girlfriend feeling" makes them think they doing something right in bed. Which they realise is an illusion when they go home to fuck their wives.

Fortunately, this is not a big problem, because "short" is always subjective.

All Singaporean men have to do is to feed their girlfriends and wives a staple of Japanese porn. One look at their dick sizes, usually just about big enough to fit into a pencil sharperner, and your partner will appreciate what they have in you. Or in them, as the case may be.

Of course, this could still be a problem if by comparison, your dick is actually just about the same size as the ones on display. For that scenario, there is one simple solution.

Move to Japan.

Note: In my previous post, I said that one of key things to a rising fertility rate is to watch more porn. While this is in principle correct, allow me to add one qualifier. Please don't follow the porn clip action for action. Well and good to engage in the kama sutra every now and then, but for goodness sake, if you want to have babies, don't come on the girl's face.

Make Babies, Not War

Over the years, when I was still writing for The New Paper, I repeatedly called for Singaporeans to have more sex.

One reason, of course, is the fact that we are a graying population, meaning there are more deaths than births. The more important reason is that every year, we keep winning the Durex survey, where we consistently have less sex than the rest of the human population, as well as dogs.

Which is really pathetic, if you think about it, because dogs don't have real sex.

Take the two I have at home. Both males and unspayed, they hump anything from other male dogs (I'm open-minded), table legs, human legs, arms and ever so often, thin air. Strangely enough, they have not learned to hump female dogs. They sniff the females' nether regions alot, but never get round to actually doing the deed.

I reckon this is because they are gay, but that doesn't really explain the table legs, human legs, arms and thin air.

PM Lee, in his National Day Rally, called for Singaporeans to have more babies. I often say things like this in my blog to make myself look like I'm in touch with current affairs. I almost considered cutting-and-pasting the relevant portion of the speech here, but I was frightened that someone who has a lot of free time on their hands might write a blog as long as Homer's Odyssey and call it The Many Lies of The Lah Lah Times.

Haha, that in itself was, of course, a lie. If someone were to write that blog, it would only be as long as a Japanese dick for the following reasons:

1) This is only my fourth post;

2) I have only lied once (including the one two paragraphs ago);

and

3) I have the online presence of a peanut.

Back to making babies. I blame the Government for the lack of babies. I see many of you nodding your head in agreement, because you think I'm referring to their way too successful campaign of Stop At Two back when policemen wore shorts.

That, however, is a myopic view - which is not surprising, seeing that 95% of our population suffer from myopia.

The real reasons as to why the Government is to blame for our lack of babies is as follows:-

1) They have a silly monogamy law.

It's a simple equation. The more people we are legally allowed to marry, the more babies we will have. I urge all the artistes of Singapore to get together and make a video of how we should repeal this law, much like how you did for the infamous 377a. Repeal it, I say.

2) They blocked Youporn.

The second one is particularly damaging. Educational sites such as Youporn should never be blocked. Without them, we would never have learned important things such as threesome and gangbang. Both these activities, with the correct male-female proportion, greatly increases the risk, ah, I mean, chances of pregnancy.

There are many things one can also learn. For instance, I learned Japanese. I never knew bukkake meant facial.

There you have it, my blueprint of how to have more babies. Talk to your MP today.

Stop Hitting Cab Drivers ... Pretty Please?

You got to love Singapore.

It was revealed yesterday in Today newspaper that assaults on cab drivers are on the rise.

Whilst I perfectly understand the need to plonk one on their heads every now and then, especially the cab driver who wears a cowboy hat and boots and goes "yee-hah" each time he overtakes (truly, I did not make this up), it is generally a bad idea to do so, especially when they are driving. Trust me, they do not need any help getting into accidents.

So what is the solution in curbing these attacks? In Australia, they raised penalties for assault on taxi drivers, as well as installing protective shields and cameras in the vehicles.

In London since the 70s, they've had protective screens shielding the driver from the passengers, as they do in New York.

But not us.

Our Uniquely Singaporean solution? Have a campaign.

Because protective screens are aesthetically ugly and "we want our drivers to be approachable, interactive and provide a service to the passengers", said Smart Taxi's general manager Niki Ong.

Yes siree. We have our priorities right over here in the Lion City.

After all, campaigns have worked so well in Singapore in the past, haven't they?

Let's take a look at past campaigns.

Stop At 2 campaign - a campaign to tell Singaporeans to stop having babies after their second one. This was so successful that Singaporeans not only stopped having three or more babies, they stopped having babies altogether. The evolution of this campaign went something like this: Stop At 2 ----> Stop At 1 ----> Stopped by Condom (which is basically where we are at now).

Courtesy campaign - who can forget that jingle ... courtesy is for free, courtesy is for you and me ... look at what a courteous nation we've become. Every lunch time, people are leaving tissue packs at Lau Pa Sat and other food centres so that the less fortunate who can't afford to wipe their mouths after food can get it free. It warms my heart.

Speak Mandarin campaign - never mind that most of my friends can't speak Mandarin to save their mothers' lives, they are in the minority. Just visit Dragonfly any day of the week to see how successful this campaign has been.

Anti-Drink Driving campaign - don't be fooled by Traffic Police's report that drink driving arrests are on the rise. This does not mean that the campaign didn't work, it just means that law enforcement has gotten better. Truly.

By past evidence, the Stop Hitting Cab Drivers campaign is the right direction for us to take to lower assault incidents. Right here, on this blog, I am going to do my part for campaign.

So to all five of you reading this blog (I'm trying to stay positive here), stop hitting cab drivers, pretty please.

Why I stay at Redhill

Not that I've ever patronized it. Really. I've got a girlfriend.

You don't know Jack

Don't get me wrong - I love Jack Neo as much as a dog loves smelling the nether regions of other dogs (and the world would be a better place if this was a socially acceptable behavior for humans).

After all, Jack is the most prolific filmmaker in Singapore's history, having made some 11 films in 10 years. A remarkable feat considering slightly more established filmmakers such as the late Stanley Kubrick made about 11 minutes of one film in just about the same amount of time.

But I'm wondering, because I've got too much time on my hands since the authorities blocked Youporn, has Jack run out of ideas?

I mean, after the massive hit Money No Enough a decade ago, the second highest grossing film in our cinema history ever, he has gone on to make many socially-biting movies, and never straying from a consistent theme.

I mean, just look at all the movies since.

1) Hormone No Enough (I don't know how else to describe Liang Po Po);
2) That One No Enough (because we couldn't say sex or shagged in movie titles back then);
3) Study No Enough (not that I'm stupid);
4) Iran No Enough (what other reasons could he have had to make a local version of possibly one of the best Iranian films ever);
5) Luck No Enough;
6) Jail No Enough;
7) Love No Enough;
8) Study Still No Enough;
9) Body No Enough;
10) Fann Wong No Enough.

And yet, after all that creativity, we're back to money again.

I mean, sure, it's timely. I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one who is feeling the pinch in my pocket, and it ain't because my girlfriend's feeling frisky.

Look at how much more we have to pay for things nowadays, such as a taxi ride. It was just a few months ago that they upped the peak hour surcharge, the CBD surcharge and the Empty-Cabs-Drive-Pass-You-While-You're-Flagging-Frantically surcharge (or as taxi drivers would say, Taxi No Enough surcharge) so much that my daughter no longer has a university education, now they even added a fuel surcharge.

What are they - planes?

Of course, it's not really their fault, since the oil price has gone so high that it is now officially a member of Mile High Club (Oil No Enough lah, the Saudis would say).

On top of all that, there are now so many ERP gantries in the CBD that if I spit, my saliva would bounce off one and hit me back on the face.

So yes, money is really still not enough, but truly, in our current climate, we hardly need reminding.

But never fear, Jack, for I am here. If you need more ideas for movies, feel free to take from the suggestions below. All I want is my own trailer with a jacuzzi and my own nubile personal assistant.

a) Good Channel 5 Sitcom No Enough (have you seen The Yang Sisters? No, I didn't think so);
b) Singapore Girl No Enough (a lesson the makers of the new Singapore Airlines ads really has to learn);
c) Charity No Enough (I mean, if you can't trust a flying monk, who can you trust these days?);
d) Chio Bu No Enough (so much so that even Mediacorp couldn't bear to broadcast Miss Singapore Universe this year);
e) Baby No Enough (it's a fact, there are less births than deaths each passing year, a valid case to legitimise bigamy).

I could go on, but my head is hurting from thinking so much.