Check out those puppies.

I was all for putting myself into amusing, comfortable positions and watching moies till I fumbled drowsily for the pause button and rolled over. Very much like sex. But then I got an actual request to write, albeit in a, "See you, godspeed," kind of way. Also very much like sex. But, I digress. So, this one is for you, damp apple.

Having a dog come into your life in adulthood is different from growing up with one as a small child. As an adult, you have hopes, expectations, dreams. Ah, the day I can throw a stick and have this half-retarded demon dog from hell bring it back without eating most of it on the way. The day I can have him off the leash on a walk without him dashing off to hump the nearest old lady. As a kid, all you know is - drooly thing. Does not talk. Plays. AWESOME.

You also make different observations as an adult. A child with a dog may simply observe that yes, it is indeed a dog. But like any other adult, I've come to the conclusion that having a dog is much the same as having a nice pair of breasts.

Personal Similarities
Admittedly, I have very few clues about what women do with their breasts in private. This is all based on conjecture, and probably wrong.

Worry
Is he big enough? Small enough? Are there strange epidermal changes? Feel him up a bit...does he feel normal? Is he the correct shape? These are things you worry about, with both dogs and breasts. Admittedly, the last one is less generic. Your dog may not change shape dramatically overnight – but if you wake up with boobs shaped like guitars, you have problems. And then you remember, "Ah, it was because he insisted on using the novelty ice-cube trays last night." Relief.

Sleep
Going to bed with them, also quite the same. I start off comfortably, spooning my dog. And then I wake up in the middle of the night and there's this compact, furry lump in my stomach and I freak out for a bit. And then again, when I kick something that shouldn't be there, and it's the dog, looking all injured. Like breasts, they migrate southwards while you sleep, and spring back into place with a weird expression when you wake up. Or so I've been told.

Sex
Dogs mirror breasts sexually. At least, this one does. Just as men's bits respond towards breasts, my dog responds towards my bits. I see your WTF face. No, it's not what you're thinking. When I step out of the shower, he stares. He doesn't like to make eye contact, but confronted with bits, he stares like he's afraid they'll vanish if he takes his eyes off them. Which, since I'm Chinese, might actually happen. Especially after a cold shower. And then he sighs and trots off.

Me
There may be no bigger blow to the male self-esteem than a dog sighing at your penis. I chase after him and start making jokes about being neutered, and then he does Pathetic Face on me. Whether it's me against dog or me against breasts, I never win.

Social Similarities
Like dogs, breasts are brought out to meet the public ever so often. You'll find reactions from the general public to be similar, with both.

Women

In Singapore, women do not tend to deal well with dogs or nice breasts. It's always the ones who only start looking good after five jugs of beer. One such incident was with a girl who seemed to have the intelligence of a circus tent. Perhaps coincidentally, she also looked like one. If I were to reenact the scene with you, here is what you would do:

1. Spot dog that is approximately 1/15 of your size. FREEZE, MUTHAFUCKA. Start edging along like you walk a lonely road, on the boulevard of broken dreams. Do not take your eyes off the dog. He might start tap-dancing, and you wouldn't want to miss that.

2. Uh huh. Uh huh. It's coming closer. LEAP onto the grass. Freeze again.

3. As the dog and its person walk past you, lift up the leg nearest them so there is less area for vicious predator beast to target. Close your eyes and start flailing wildly in the general direction of your ankles while making strangled noises, as if you were being sexually assaulted by a smurf. No, it doesn't matter if either the dog or person show the slightest bit of interest in you. YOU MUST DEFEND YOURSELF!!!11

4. Carry on with your sad, sad life, feeling unloved.

The women who want to play, or even smile in passing at my dog are always the sweet, articulate ones. Run a chopstick over them repeatedly and you would get candy floss. And they usually tell me they have, or had a dog. It seems only women with dogs take well to dogs. Just as it seems only women with nice breasts can take to someone else with nice breasts. Otherwise, it's this mixture of envy and fear. I imagine the have-nots would bitch about both in exactly the same way.

"Aiyoh, how can expose us to that one like that? Take out so publicly. Very dangerous, you know."

Men
Male reactions to dogs are more universal. After all, we do react the same way to breasts across the world.

When encountering either dogs or nice breasts, asshole men may whistle or coo. "Oh yeah, I know all about those, come on, give me some." And then they're all taken aback when my dog shoves himself in their face. Learn, people. If you cootchie a dog, it's likely to shove himself in your face. Don't give me dirty looks after that. Also, if you cootchie breasts, it is unlikely they will get shoved in your face. In both cases, please stop doing it.

Women always at least make a show of askance before playing with my dog. Just as they do with breasts, men just, "COTTCHIE COOOTCHIE COO. OOH GA GA. OOOH LA. Ok, I'm done. Your problem now." Or worse, they'll give me advice on how to look after him. Insulting in the same way as when they flip to a breast enhancement ad in the papers and leave it meaningfully on the table.

Also, a man was the only one to ask how much my dog cost. "He looks very expensive." Perhaps not the same level of assholery as when posed to a woman with nice breasts, but I found it insulting. And indicative of national psyche. "Oh, very nice. How much?" With some things, you don't do that.


Overall, it's just galling, how many men want to assert themselves and then go, "OH WTF ITS EATING MAI FASE." And you have to prevent the face-eating, too. Or you'll be a bad dog owner. Bad. Government fine you.

A group of uncles at a coffeeshop had a field day clucking and cooing at my dog while I was trying to eat. And they had with them a budgie, who seemed to have had its wings clipped. "Aha look my bird see it make noise at you hahaha you want you want but you cannot has hahaha." I had such fun eating, having to pull my dog back every...second.

It was very tempting to release him. I know for sure he can jump that high, very quickly. And that there's nothing wrong with his teeth. Bye bye budgie, hello savings on next dog meal.

Conclusion

Fine, so they're not exactly the same. But it's curious how both dogs and breasts can be gauges of people. People who treat dogs properly are less likely to be serial killers. Or something.

For me at least, their absolute common ground lies in both being attractive and admirable from afar. Then, up close in your face, they become fascinating, and a lot more fun.

Brolly Folly.

One of my earliest memories is of the time a weathergirl made the news because the forecast was for rain, and she told everyone to, "Bring your brollies!" That must have been a whole two weeks ago.

Well no, I'm not in the terminal stages of Alzheimer's yet, as old as I am. I think it was when I was a teenager. Everyone was all RARGH RARGH BACK TO RUSSIA at her for sayings brollies. An interesting example of the national psyche, I thought. Having thrown off the yoke of yonder, we're all anti-angmoh, but secretly still in love with them, like that creepy kid you met in kindergarten who calls you ten years later.

Being able to contain more than a single thought at a time, unlike certain PR managers I've met, I also thought more about it. Why the hate? Brollies seems a charming way to shorten umbrellas. And the people who rage against it have nothing against shortening. "Yah you take the ECP then turn to the PIE, then at the TFL at the end you turn left again, and at the end of the road is the FBN, very good one."

TFL and FBN stand for traffic light and fishball noodles. Yes, I made those up. But, true story, an ex's sister once said she was going to HV. Holland Village. After PP. Pasir Panjang. That kind of stupidity, you can't make up.

But yes, umbrellas. Now that I'm older and uglier, I've realised that perhaps the rage back then wasn't so much, "brollies". It was the mere mention of umbrellas. Because umbrellas are the work of the devil, these days.

If you're above 30, or pushing it, you may not have heard of this song. Like a lot of the songs these days, catchy catchy, dancy dancy, umch umch. But don't get too close to it. Because then you'll realise the chorus is:

Under my umbrella...ella...ella
Eh Eh Eh
Under my umbrella...ella...ella
Eh Eh Eh

Seriously, WTF? It's true that rap can make you dance to anything, but aren't there people out there getting their groove on to the song and then going, "Wait, I'm dancing to...one word. And it's 'umbrella'. What am I doing with my life?"

Still, I can run for cover when the song plays. Stuff socks in my ears. Order ten more gin tonics so I won't be able to make out the words. But, now that I walk my demon dog from hell to work every day, I cannot avoid the physical aspect of umbrellas.

What, does it rain here every day? Depends on the time of year and whether it's been unusually NO IT DOES NOT. IT IS STILL VERY SUNNY HERE MOSTLY. Yet every day, umbrellas. Wielded by delicate office flowers like an autistic chimpanzee wields his own poo - unpleasantly.

You see, when you open an umbrella and stand under it, regardless of its size, you extend your personal space three times. It's been scientifically proven. By scientists. Walking along the pavement, it's not so bad. You can kind of scoot to the side. Traffic lights is when I begin to lose it.

Like bowels, traffic lights regulate the flow of waste material. Release, flow, wait for buildup. I have to walk past these buildups. Three girls wielding three umbrellas, with the intelligence of a snail between them, take up the space of nine people. And I have a demon dog from hell, who insists on straying as far from me as possible. Add twenty-seven normal people, not carrying umbrellas because IT IS NOT RAINING, into the mix, and you have a sticky situation. Kind of like having to walk past Michael Jackson if you're a nine-year-old boy. Also, though I'm not very tall, I'm taller than most women here. So the flaming spikes of death that are the points on these cutesy Pikachu strawberry-flavoured umbrellas are right at the level of my eye.

It wouldn't be so bad. I could just be annoyed and get on with my life. I'm fine with that. But I'm a thinking person. I'm hitting the office lunch crowd, and I can see the buildings these failures of evolution have exited from. It is a minute from the traffic light. I know the area well - I know all the places they can possibly go to eat. They are...on the other side of the traffic light, give or take thirty seconds. I'll be generous - ten minute's journey total, to and from. And that's if you have no limbs.

You know, you need those ten minutes. You need to be in the sun to for your body to manufacture Vitamin D. Which is essential for hregboegrboe. For ten minutes in the sun, you feel you need to be sheltered the whole way? No wonder Singaporean men are marrying abroad.

I'm a fair person. You need to go an hour in the sun, maybe more, you carry umbrella on hot day, ok. These people seem to take their umbrellas out at the slightest sign of daylight. It's like the people who wear sunglasses indoors: you look retarded. And you've only avoided stabbing me in the eye because I'm all ninja like that. It doesn't help that you're too engrossed in your conversation about how you're not wearing the right eyeshadow to match your shoes that you don't notice I'm directing a half-retarded dog. And then you go eek, ahhh, eeyur. It's not cute. It makes me want to punch you in the face.

There is, indeed, an idiot born every minute. They now sell umbrellas with SPF. Advertised boldly, and proudly, in a, "See what else we've come up with to take your money, suckers," way. And you should see the number of women who throng the bin like sharks at a feeding frenzy when these umbrellas are on sale. I think it showed how mature I've become when I didn't set the bin on fire when I first saw it. "It was for humanity!!!" I would cry, as I was being led away by security.

This makes it even more difficult for me to date. I would meet someone, it would be fantabulous, and the moment she excused herself to go powder her nose but in reality call her girlfriends to tell them how creepy I am, I would be rummaging through her bag. And I would be caught, umbrella in hand. She would be all shock shock horror horror, and I would be able to offer in my defense is...

"Um. I was just checking for SPF. Please believe me. I really like you, Celine. I mean, Jane."

Spooky Synchronisation.

It's the Lunar Seventh Month. The advent of the Hungry Ghost Festival, here in Singapore. It seems to be so indigenous to this region that even Wiki has very little to say about it. A drawn-out, bitter explaination can be found here.

In short, during the Hungry Ghost Festival, the gates of hell open and creepy dead spirits that are of course conveniently invisible wander the earth. Among them somewhere are your dead relatives, who no matter how often or how far you move, will know where you live. They stalk you on Facebook, you see. So you have to put food out and burn stuff for them. And also, hold concerts that are very loud and annoying downstairs of the block so you can piss off the non-Chinese.

But no, this will be short. Angry ranty bits get me going quite a bit, but I'm sick of being the dude standing around going RARGH ARGH YOUR MOM. I think, here, I will just point out little things I've noticed, and leave you to draw your own conclusions.

I just found it interesting that the calendars finally caught up. 45 years ago, we held our first National Day parade on 9 August. And it was depressing. Everyone was in a mixed frame of mind, because we actually gave a shit about politics in Singapore back then. And it rained. And I think everyone stood without an umbrella during the national anthem, except for one sick MP who had an umbrella. It was all very touching and Les Miserables like that. But as the song goes, "There was a time when shit seemed too much to bear and we should all go back to China and stop trying to make it here...but we deeeeeeeeeeed."

Now, 45 years later, at the height of the Our-Government-Gets-Paid-HOW-much??? drama, we have our National Day parade. The little box in the stands that's our government, mouthing their way through the anthem? That's something like three trillion dollars a year, right there. Ok, I don't know my figures and I don't want to get arrested. It may be forty-five trillion.

And the very next day, the gates of hell open. Coincidence? Maybe.

...or IS IT?

'Twas only a flesh wound.

You see what happens when you fall asleep in the middle of the day, just because you can? 3am in the morning, you toss yourself about a bit in bed, eternally optimistic. You pull the blankets up. You swipe the blankets off. You idly plot your future, thinking that something that futile will surely, surely put you to sleep. When you get to what toy to buy your third grandson on his fifth birthday, you finally give up, and sit up. Who're you kidding? With that amount of masturbation, you'd be lucky to have any left to inseminate a slug by the time you're thirty.

All rhetoric, of course. Especially the last bit. I'm not confident of many things, but slug insemination numbers among them.

Staring at blinky blinky cursor taunting you to write something, you wonder what you've become. Among other things, the sort of person who owns a filthy keyboard. Ah, the times you gave people shit for that. Now, besides dust, hair and some mysterious sticky stuff, you have dog hair on the keyboard. Well, it must be dog hair - you've never had a blonde in the room before. But it's fine. The main qwerty bits are clean from use. And if you have to touch a function key, just remember not to touch yourself after.

You know who doesn't have these problems? My grocery shopkeeper. Walk down Holland Close and in true, old-school HDB style, the bottom of one of the blocks is a row of shops. There's a clinic, a coffeeshop, even a computer place that will sell you equipment ten years out of date. And there is my grocery shop.

I call it my grocery shop, because beer-and-fags shop sounds so awkward. Although that's pretty much all I buy from there, it sells everything. No, srsly. I once brought a sample of some strange Soviet Russia-age battery, confident that for once, I would win. He rummages behind the counter and produces one. It was in between the cigarette paper and the China-made sex toys. This shop will sell you things to stay alive, die faster and feed your dog. Just don't expect posh stuff. Nescafe instant coffee have. No Richard Simmons Genuine Slave-Picked Roast.

None of this swank organisation business. Black people cannot shop there, because there is no room for them to move. The concept of aisles was introduced to the shopkeeper, yes, but the execution was quite obviously a "Yeah, you happy now?" kind of affair. Aside from the main man, it is run by his brothers – one a bespectacled version of himself, and one retarded. Yes, literally. The shop never closes except for Chinese New Year. All through the year, dialect swearing of the other two brothers at the retarded third one fills the air.

Some time ago, I trot towards my favourite shop with a spring in my step, as I do when I'm expecting breasts or beer. It was closed. Confused at first, I then cried tragically towards the heavens, whereupon a small black cloud formed and rained over me.

It remained closed for three days, maybe more. I don't know, I was so distressed. Sure, there were other places to get beer and fags from, but it just wasn't the same. Nowhere else does the shopkeeper count the change in Hokkien under his breath and then tell you the total in English because you look like a nice kind of lad.

When it finally opened for business again, I casually asked for a pack, and remarked upon the unusual closure. A holiday was it, you lazy bastard?

"Orh. Yah closed. No lah, my wife died."

Very casual about it. Good thing wife doesn't rhyme with dog or goldfish in Chinese. No, it was definitely Wife. And like how you feel when you get harpooned in the left buttock cheek, I was hard pressed for words. Time was running out. Very quickly. Only another 0.1 seconds before it got Awkward. So with my usual elegance with these things, I blinked and said, "Orh."

"She was sick," he added helpfully.

"Ah," I replied, in the tone of someone who suddenly solved a difficult math problem. That explains it. Sick, you say. Well, why didn't you say so in the first place? Tsk tsk.

I felt all that was carried in my really rather stupid reply, but he did not kill me with the cigarette paper, so all was well. Besides, he probably had had to explain the situation several times that day. I picked up my beer and fags and ran for it. In shame, for some reason. There was really nothing I could have done better. It would either have had to have been, "Wife die, no need close shop so long right?" or "Wife die, you close three days only. You not sad ah?"

Business as usual, after that. Yes, complete with yelling at retarded brother. Until the other day, when the shop was closed again. No, say it ain't so. I composed condolences in my head, determined not to be caught unprepared this time. It was open the next day, so I went and asked.

"Orh. Yah, closed. My wife's one year anniversary. So we go and dong."

The coolie breed from which I descend can be succinct like that. Yes, we have words for ceremony and memorials and the holding of thereof. But you have bells you ring at these things, right? So you go and dong, lah.

No, no sarcasm this time. I found the whole thing quite remarkable. As you may have been able to tell by my several remarks so far. Day in, day out, seven days a week. Open shop, shuffle stuff around, collect money, yell at retarded brother. Wife die, ok, close awhile. Wife one year, ok, close to go and dong. Rather than the hand-wringing, mascara-smearing black veil kind of thing other people do, sometimes for weeks, months, years, life must go on. People need their fags and beer. Uncle Tan still owes me $5.30, must remember to collect. Anything other than actual death of self is only a flesh wound.

So no, he probably doesn't have the sort of problems I do, lying awake at night, inventing problems for myself. Heck, he probably doesn't even have a keyboard to philosophize over.

Does he win life, then? Maybe. I don't know. I'll go ask my dog.