monsieur hairspray, cars with newspapered windows, moonlighting with kumar and the quest for 80 curry puffs



so on wednesday evening i got arrowed to support a route march which my company's ocifers, just recently back from ocs, were doing at east coast. i was part of the ration party, which wasn't bad, in that we got to go outside to the real world to buy their meals.


dinner - 4 of us walk into the east coast macdonalds ( tonner couldn't fit in the drive-thru lane ) and i discover the man who is to singapore's hairspray sales what don king and macy gray are to america's - monsieur hairspray.

near shoulder length hair, painstakingly combed and sprayed into place, and the piece de resistance - an extra long cowlick, given a fashionable s-shape and tamped down with another canister or two of industrial strength hairglue - even after hours of work in this greasy outpost of the McEmpire, nary a strand of hair had the audacity to stray out of position in the carefully choreographed static hair ballet - you know what, screw this, but let me say it was all we could do to stop ourselves laughing while we ordered more than 200 dollars worth of McWhatWouldMrAtkinsSay.

there was also this guy queuing to order when we came in and as soon as he saw us he crossed his arms over his chest - almost as if he was wearing a fake commando tshirt and was scared that the 4 of us ( wearing real commando tshirts ) were going to take him outside for a little uc ( unarmed combat ) practice. i can't speak for myself, but at least one out of the four of us looked like someone who could and would do just that.

and wouldn't you know it, turns out he was!
as gomer pyle would say, surprise surprise surprise...



after dropping off dinner the tonner parked at carpark h for a bit. we soon noticed a surprising amount of traffic for that time of night. add that to the fact that the occupants were usually a couple, and that none of them got out of their cars after parking - well, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to put two and two together and come to the obvious conclusion - they were sitting in their cars eating macdonald's drive-thru and listening to the news!

it bordered on the ludicrous, quite frankly - every time a new car drove past we'd all dive for cover inside the tonner in the hope that they'd park next to us, thereby affording us a ringside ticket at the backseat olympics. but they never did. and when we finally got tired of waiting, we got the driver to switch on his headlights and circle the carpark a few times, occasionally pausing at a particularly ( there were many ) promising looking car. i estimated that no more than half the cars parked there had newspapered-up windows - the poor man's tinted glass. or the law-abiding citizen's tinted glass, in singapore's case, anyway.

for all that effort though, we didn't even catch a token glimpse of gearstick or hubcaps.
c'est la vie.


a couple hours later we set off on a quest to procure 80 curry puffs for night snack - no mean feat at 1 in the morning. after making 2 circuits of changi village in its entirety ( luckily not a very large entirety, as entireties go ) we eventually had to settle for 60 assorted, reheated paos. while we were waiting for the buns to be steamed to the optimum temperature for them to cool, harden, not be eaten and subsequently thrown away the next morning, in walked kumar! he/she/it was in full boom boom room regalia - black bra, see through top, denim hot pants and platform sandals. he/she/it stormed into the coffeeshop, heading straight for the toilet, then he/she/it emerged and barked at the elderly drinks uncle "milo peng!" in a voice that i imagine sounded like what gravel going through a blender would sound like ( if i had gravel, a blender, and a grudge against aforementioned blender ).

i theorised that he/she/it had propositioned some greasy fat old lorry driver in the carpark directly opposite where his/her/its colleagues like to hang out. said greasy fat old lorry driver took a look at him/her/it, took an obvious step back and exploded, "holy flaming underpants! by my great grandaunt gigi, you look like kumar! take this twenty and buy yourself a milo peng or something! just get the hell away from me!" ( i apologise for the lack of verisimilitude but i have no idea how to say all that in hokkien )

anyway, having obtained the night snack we were on the tonner heading back to east coast when this car pulled up behind us at a traffic light. to our excitement, in the front passenger seat was a fantastic rack in a bikini. none of us saw the face which belonged to the bouncy-bouncies ( hah! ) ( and only because we simply couldn't due to our viewing angle, mind you! not because we were staring at said ta-tas! ) but the driver was an elderly indian gentleman. while i am hardly one to condemn inter-generational, inter-racial relationships, this leads into one problem with changi v - when you see a babe there, you can't help but wonder, is she a she? or is it a milo peng? ( our new slang for the frankly tired term 'bapok' )



breakfast was macdonalds again - mcmuff(if only)in meal plus a banana walnut muffin and macchiato from mccafe for me. mccafe coffee is crap, incidentally - ever heard of sour espresso? the ocifers had their breakfast on an open patch near mac's, where the p.a.p. was having a convention.

or at least we assumed they were the p.a.p., dressed in all whites as they were. we did find it a little curious for p.a.p. cadres to have so much free time as to be able to spend a weekday morning doing taiji or whatever at east coast park, but, well, when there isn't any opposition to your dictatorsh - democratic government, then i guess one can afford to come in late some mornings, eh?



well there wasn't anything much else eventful to speak of for the rest of the day. or perhaps i was too sleepy to notice, anyway, not having gotten any sleep worth speaking of, what with constantly having to leapfrog the ocifers to set up water points ( 100plus points, actually ) every 4 klicks or so.

but it certainly was one pretty cool night, yeah.

pity i never did get round to asking kumar for her/his/its autograph...