I am the TV commercial queen this month.

Okay, so mine aren’t big brand award winning commercials, but we all have to start somewhere.

It seems, though, that I am doomed to be typecast as a pregnant woman, young mother or teacher — I’ve done so many of those in the past year.

I don’t get it. Directors and producers keep complaining that I look too young, but they continue to cast me in older roles, and then go on to complain that I look too young.

Why aren’t I cast in younger roles more, then?

Not that I’m upset. A role is a role and I’m happy as hell. Like I was telling Vamp the other day, it’s okay if I get typecast as an auntie as long as I get many good jobs. There are popular aunties in Singapore wat.

Yesterday, I filmed my third commercial this month. I’m on a commercial roll!

I hope the roll rolls on into 2006.

So, yesterday, I was teacher to a bunch of pre-teens for this product called Toyo Klic Correction Pen.

According to the storyboard, I was supposed to be this stern-looking teacher with short hair and specs (a bit like my “I Not Stupid Too” look) but I don’t know why they changed their minds and made me look like this, instead:

Not much different from my regular self.

The kids complained to the producer that I don’t look like a teacher. I look more like their elder sister.

But I don’t think they really minded.

I think I have a look that says to kids: “Please climb all over my head.” Because they always do just that.

Yesterday’s bunch was no different. They just wouldn’t quit making fun of me.

“Teacher! Your handwriting very “nice” hor?!”

“Teacher! How come you don’t know how to write the maths formula?!”

“Teacher! Why you don’t look like teacher one?!”

One of the girls kept calling me a barbie doll.

But, you know, I think they love me because I play along with them and I don’t scold them. And I can make them laugh without even doing a thing.

I can be standing still and soundless in front of them, but with my back towards them so I’m facing the whiteboard, and they can still find it funny.

Kids are really weird people. Honestly, I don’t remember ever being that weird. But I do remember making fun of my teachers. Poor teachers. Thou art noble!

Yes. It was very bright yesterday. Fake sunlight.

Heatless, fake sunlight, which didn’t help much when we were freezing our butts off from the morgue-temperature central airconditioning.

By the way, we filmed that at NAFA Campus 3 and my car park ticket was almost $17.

Major ouch. I should have taken the MRT.

You know how people always say they need a holiday to recover from their holiday?

Those are the kiasu people who try to cram every single activity possible into their short holiday, at the expense of sleep, just to get their money’s worth.

And end up feeling so shagged out by the time they get home that they just want to go to sleep for the next 48 hours without waking up.

But they can’t because they have to go to work the next day, which is like five hours away.

So, my friends and I kind of fell under this category of people when we went to Kuala Lumpur over the Christmas weekend.

The nine of us started the drive up at three in the morning and arrived at eight. Over the following three days, we ate four meals a day and packed the hours between with shopping, clubbing and driving (lots of driving around to get to places with to-die-for food).

For three days, we did nothing except rush from point A to point B to buy everything we wanted to buy and eat everything we wanted to eat.

We were so pressed for time that we even missed the Christmas countdown. At 12 midnight, we were all still in our respective hotel rooms scrambling about to wrap our Christmas presents for each other for our Secret Santa game.

People are so funny, you know, the way we stress ourselves over nothing.

In retrospect, though, our stress was well worth it because, in between, there were many pockets of fun.

We laughed, we cried, we suffered the usual holiday ailments of sore throat, gastritis, diarrhea and impatience, we chewed each other up over punctuality (men, tsk), we laughed some more, and we bonded.

One of the most powerful simple pleasures in life is laughing at inane things with people you love. And I mean the kind of laugher that makes you cry because your stomach hurts from laughing too much.

Despite all the crazy rushing and lack of sleep, this is one of the best Christmas celebrations I’ve ever experienced.

Except that it’s not the Christmas. It’s the people.

To my delinquent friends of Studygroup, thank you for everything.

Christmas is kinda pathetic in Singapore.

It’s never like in the movies. Snow, cosy fireplace, heartwarming Christmas dinner with loved ones, all very sweet and touching. Spirit of Christmas and all that.

Christmas in Singapore is last-minute squeezing in the malls, traffic jam on Orchard Road because every dog and his grandmother wants to see Christmas lights (never see before ah?), and people ringing bells in your face because they think that will move you to donate to charity.

It’s all stress.

Christmas was something I looked forward to as a kid because my brother and I would find big heaps of presents at the foot of our beds when we woke up on Christmas morning. And there’d be a lot of hooha, which was kind of fun.

That tradition stopped when we grew up and outgrew all that Santa Claus nonsense. Now, Christmas is just another public holiday. Another chance to hang out with friends and do something no different from what we already do most weekends.

So, I don’t know. It feels weird getting excited over Christmas now because when Christmas finally comes, you find that there’s nothing there to justify all that excitement.

You go to a disco, you dance like you do every other weekend, you count down, you wish everyone around you a merry Christmas. That’s it.

Or you have a dinner party, you wine and dine like you do every so often, you count down, you wish everyone around you a merry Christmas. Maybe you exchange presents and find that you’ve received yet another photo frame. “Oooh just what I wanted, darling!”

That’s it. I don’t know why people make a big deal over that.

So, this year, I’m going away with my friends. Not too far, just a little bit up north because I don’t exactly have a travel budget.

I’m going on a short vacation not because it’s Christmas, but because this weekend happens to be a long weekend for working folks so it’s possible for my friends to get away.

So I’m leaving, like, now.

Which means I won’t be blogging the next three days or so.

Aww.

Anyhow, despite what I’ve said, I do believe there are Singaporeans for whom Christmas is special and enchanting. To you, I say, “Have yourself a merry little Christmas.”

And peace forever more.

Aww… nothing to read for three days.

I changed my name legally recently. Most of you already know.

For that, I had to get a new IC and I quite dreaded it because IC photos always look ugly.

For that matter, those photos you have to take for your IC, passport, job application, etc, always turn out, at best, laughable.

You know it does. That’s why people are always shy to show their ICs and that’s why people always laugh at their friends when they finally manage to steal their ICs when no one’s looking.

Anyway, the good news is that the days of ugly IC photos are over if you own a digital camera and can take your own photo instead of having to rely on photo studio assistants who tell you to smile and then click the camera before your smile is fully ripe, resulting in a photo with a half-arsed expression on your face.

I had to go to such a studio because I lost my digital camera, remember? It cost me $9 for six pieces and I ended up not using them because my fringe was covering my eyebrows.

And I thought people who take your money for IC photo services are supposed to warn you about such things before taking your photo. Especially if they charge you $9.

But it turned out to be a blessing in disguise after all, because since I can’t use those photos, my IC doesn’t look half arsed now, and I don’t have to feel guilty about wasting $9 because it’s not my fault.

I decided to borrow a digital camera.

And I managed to submit a photo that is not too half-arsed except for the kooky 表妹 hair. Well, I have no choice. I have to show off my freshly-threaded brows.

You won’t believe where I took this photo.

I needed a white background, see. ICA regulations. I was at Bugis Junction with my friends and they were supposed to take the picture for me.

But it was night and the whole damn building did not have a white background.

And then, the Goonfather got one of his screwed-up brilliant ideas and brought us to this shop with lots of Neoprint machines. There, we found a machine with a big white, glowy background.

Not exactly what the doctor ordered, but that was the best we could find.

Four of us crowded into the machine and the Goonfather took four shots. I wanted to take more for vanity’s sake, but Elyxia the scout told us that there was a group of impatient teenagers outside waiting to use the machine so we’d better hurry because we weren’t exactly legal.

And the Goonfather, whose brilliant idea it was in the first place, and who usually has careless regard for rules, refused to take more and herded us out of the shop.

Well, I ended up having to edit the background to pure white, anyway, because I didn’t think ICA would be impressed with glowy.

But what’s important is that the photo was accepted so, yay, I have my new IC.

Such trouble over nothing.

So the press had a field day today with new revelations in the NKF saga. I had fun reading the Straits Times today with nothing but NKF reports.

Well, I’m sure everyone has read or heard about it, so there’s no need for me to talk at length about it.

I just wanted to express my amusement over a quote by Mr Durai who, way back when, declined the committee’s offer to give him a $96,000 bonus, opting for $60,000, instead.

“I would not be doing justice to the hundreds of patients whom I have to cajole to pay their fees — which they do grudgingly. I know this will be painful to my wife who has to contend with the little resources I can provide her and the children. However, I believe that someone has to make the sacrifice…”

(It turned out to be a farce anyway because he received a bonus of $126,000 that year, but that’s not really what I want to talk about.)

What I’m actually wondering is whether Mr Durai has ever been poor. Or even of average wealth. Because if he has, statements like that wouldn’t have crossed his mind, much less passed his lips.

So he declines a $96k bonus, asks for $60k instead, and the poor wife suffers.

“I know this will be painful to my wife who has to contend with the little resources…”

Little?

That, surely, is an understatement. Because, you poor things, you’re only getting a $60,000 bonus this year. How can the word “little” ever justify the meagerness of that pithy amount?

Oh, the painful irony.

This is kind of like when a thin person says “Oh, I’m so fat, I have to go on a diet” in front of a fat person.

Or a teenager saying to a prisoner, “I have no freedom at home, you know.”

Or, perhaps, closer to the point, Paris Hilton telling any one of us poor sods here, “Aww shucks, my daddy cut my allowance by a million dollars a month and now I only have five million, how am I ever gonna survive? I hate everyone.”

I know the world is not equal, can never be equal. But it just kind of very rudely jolts one to the harsh reality of life to know that there are people who are living way beyond your means, yet they can still find themselves lacking.

I don’t know about you, but I’d be plenty happy and crying tears of joy and thanking every force in the world from the kitchen sink right to the drops of water vapour on the peak of Mount Everest if my husband (not that I have one) ever brings home a bonus $60,000 cheque.

So I’m a poor sod and $60,000 is huge to me. Bite me.