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.