In usual Sheylara fashion, I am now publishing a three-day-late report.

It’s kind of a protest against jumpy journalists whose lives are solely driven by the need to publish news that haven’t even happened yet. (As a former journalist, my official stance is that I hate being a kan cheong spider, thus the former journalist status.)

(Note to non-Singaporeans: “Kan cheong spider” is a Singaporean colloquialism roughly describing someone who is so anxious about things and results that it borders on obsession.)

Anyway, last Saturday, Pingsters from Ping.sg held a competition at Miss Clarity Cafe to determine, once and for all, who the slackiest latecomer of all time is.

There were many strong contenders for the ultimate title of Slackiest Latecomer, whom I shall introduce in ascending order of strength.

For starters, this following group of people were utterly disgraced and disqualified from the competition by arriving at the venue within 30 minutes of the stipulated contest time.

Claudia and Chillycraps sadly took themselves out of the running by actually being punctual. Shocking.

Nanny Wen and Qiaoyun thought they stood a good chance at grabbing the title by arriving 10 minutes late. But, alas, it just wasn’t late enough. In fact, it was too early. When they arrived, only Claudia and Chillycraps were present, so they went to join them at the “disqualified” table.

(Qiaoyun is represented by a red and white Mickey Mouse handbag in the picture because she can’t humanly possibly be in the picture and taking the picture at the same time.)

As a result, Nanny Wen was quite disappointed and tried to hide behind a very colourful and cheerful menu, thinking that people could be fooled into believing that she’s a happy girl if she has a cheerful menu for a face.

Qiaoyun decided to show her the absurdity of her logic by doing a live demonstration, so Nanny Wen could see for herself how ridiculous it looked. That’s what friends are for.

To ease Nanny Wen’s pain, Qiaoyun tried to distract her by pointing out some tourist attractions in the cafe.

The two ladies spent a good many minutes enthralled by the cafe’s creativity. It was a good way to pass time while waiting for other contestants to show up.

And then, the “disqualifieds” discovered that an even better way to pass time was to eat.

What a eureka moment!

And they ordered.

And it came.

FOOD!!!

The stock answer for the day appeared to be “not bad”. Whenever a question was posed to a fellow contender that went along the lines of “How did you like your abcdefg?”, the answer was always: “Not bad.”

(Singaporeans can be so lazy and uncreative in their speech.)

The prices were pretty reasonable for food that’s graded “not bad”. Main courses were mostly less than $10. And there’s always the pretty wall attractions to pacify your soul should the food fail to do so.

But food is secondary and wall decorations are tertiary.

There is a competition going on so we need to get back to that.

The first mildly strong contender appeared while the disqualifieds were in the midst of stuffing their faces with their “not bads”.

At 35 minutes, DK was the first to clock an acceptable time to be in the running for the Slackiest Latecomer award.

It’s a well-known fact that latecomer contestants are mostly humble folk who shy at having their photographs taken, therefore we see DK represented by his hand instead of his face.

However, the next contender, by virtue of being the founder of Ping.sg, is probably very used to media exposure and therefore affably agreed to have his photo taken. Uzyn the man beat DK by a whopping 16 minutes. What an achievement!

Spectators were quite amazed and cheered loudly for Uzyn, which accounts for his satisfied smile.

In the middle of the competition, this reporter got tired of tracking the contestants so she slacked off to do other more fun things.

She trained her camera on Nanny Wen while Nanny Wen was having a conversation with some random person. And then she started snapping away.

It made Nanny Wen very self-conscious, to the amusement of this reporter.

Nanny Wen tried to foil this reporter’s photography endeavours by covering her face with her hands, but it didn’t work. Her impish face refused to be covered up.

By this time, more contenders had arrived. Here’s a group photo because this reporter was too lazy to take so many individual contestant photos.

Suffice it to say that the ones sitting on the three tables (yellow, red, green) nearest to the camera are in the running for the award. Their times range from 35 minutes late to 75 minutes late. The others further back are the disqualifieds.

Everyone thought that was it. People were ready to determine and announce the winner.

And then one more contender sauntered in nonchalantly at 85 minutes, to the chagrin of certain individuals who thought they would be winning the award.

“Neh neh ni boo boo,” said Ethan. “I win!”

What a ruckus that generated. It was such an emotional moment that forks and knives flew fast and furious and people got victimised for no apparent reason.

In times like these, it’s always best for all involved parties to retreat and calm down.

After all, this was supposed to be a friendly competition.

Food was once again used as a distraction.

Petty thefts were committed with Nanny Wen stealing DK’s potatoes after she finished stealing Arzhou’s potatoes.

Friendships were made with a pretty, smart PhD student called Simply Jean.

Uzyn was terrorised by DK.

And Miccheng showed the world that not only girls are capable of acting cute.

But but BUT!!!

All these happenings were merely distractions to the most important event of the day — the unveiling of the winner of the Ping.sg Slackiest Latecomer Award.

Long after the winner was thought to have been determined and medals were already getting printed in anticipation of an award presentation ceremony, the ULTIMATE winner showed up.

In fact, in an impressive show of dedication, this winner showed up after the event was already over. Which just all the more makes her the champion.

JENG JENG JENG…. presenting…

Ping.sg Slackiest Latecomer, clocking an amazing record-breaking time of 206 minutes!

Rinaz at first shyly declined to have her photo taken and but finally caved in from massive peer pressure.

Rinaz deserves a standing ovation! Woot woot!

And thus concludes the day’s events.

The organiser of the competition thanks all participants for their hearty participation and sportsmanship.

See you at the next competition!

Categories: Food Files, Regular Blogs
28 Comments »

I was working on an entry yesterday. Spent about an hour writing and saving intermittently (using the Save and Continue Editing button).

Then, after one particular save, the page suddenly returned to me empty. And the post totallly disappeared. It’s not even in my draft list, which has drafts that I saved since like three months ago.

Zzz…

Oh well. Start from scratch again!

BBIAB.

Categories: Regular Blogs
12 Comments »

Honestly, free movie tickets aren’t that big a deal. It’s like, what, less than 10 bucks a ticket. Big deal lah.

But these particular tickets are a big deal because they’re also admission tickets to what I think will be one of the coolest community events this year — Nuffnang Singapore’s first sponsored bloggers’ gathering!

There will be food, goodie bags, a movie screening of Rush Hour 3 and prizes for “most patriotic blogger”. ALL FREE! Best of all, attendees will be celebrating National Day with some of the most prominent bloggers in Singapore. Sounds good or not?

They have sort of a campaign going on now. 200 movie tickets will be given to Nuffnangers who post a blog titled “The things I do for free tickets”.

But I did better than just write a silly blog.

I went personally to the Nuffnang office to hound the hell out of the big boss himself.

There, I found Ming gleefully holding more than $2,000 worth of movie tickets in his hands.

Because he’s such a nice guy, he gave them all to me.

Wahahahaha!! All mine!!

That means everyone must now bribe ME for the tickets!! Bwahaha.

I’m just joking, of course.

Seriously. Don’t run off and hound Ming because I don’t want to be responsible for 500 bloggers suddenly turning up at his office to demand for tickets.

BUT TICKETS ARE STILL UP FOR GRABS FOR NUFFNANGERS!

If you haven’t already, hurry up and write your “The things I do for free tickets” post and e-mail Nuffnang your link. It doesn’t even have to be a fancy post and you don’t even have to mention the word Nuffnang, but you’ll stand a better chance of getting a ticket if you manage to impress or humour Ming.

Ming should be quite an easy guy to humour because he has space invaders on his office wall.

I don’t know what’s the connection but I’m sure you can figure something out.

Ming was quite stressed because I wouldn’t keep my camera after camwhoring with the tickets. I managed to get this picture of him looking very stressed. Hahaha.

I think his stressed look goes very well with his avant garde wall background.

Anyway, the event is on National Day so there’s not much time left. Post your entry to secure your tickets quick!

For more info on the event, read here.

Categories: Regular Blogs
8 Comments »

Hahaha.

I dunno what’s her name but I think her hair colour is all wrong.

Ok, I’m rushing off to watch movie now. Not sure what we’re watching tonight cos I’m not the one booking the tickets. Maybe The Simpsons!

Bye!

Categories: Regular Blogs
13 Comments »

Here’s taking a look behind the scenes of a segment in World of Laughs (搞笑至尊), the Jack Neo comedy variety programme showing 8pm on Monday nights.

Part of this segment was filmed at the old and allegedly haunted Changi General Hospital.

Every other person I know has a personal scary tale to tell about it, but it doesn’t look all that scary in the day.

Perhaps the colourful graffiti liberally sprayed on the walls serve as a foil to the gloom and doom of the crumbling rooms.

It’s a perfect setting for fight scenes in gangster movies.

Hui Ge wears a fake nose and a wig for his Jackie Chan spoof.

I don’t have many scenes in this show because it’s mostly about the men and their fighting.

So I wandered around to take photos of the graffiti.

And the giant ants. Which I think are the scariest things in the place.

Eek. Even looking at the picture gives me the creeps.

One of the actors advised us not to take any photographs in this place because, you never know, something unexpected might appear in the picture later.

Another actor said, “But what about the crew? They’re filming in here. They have cameras all over.”

“That’s their problem. Hahaha,” said the first actor.

And then everyone rolled around laughing.

But I didn’t want scary things to appear in my photographs, so I stopped taking so many pictures.

Final photo: JTeam artiste Andy Wong and me.

Working on this show was a barrel of laughs. I have not encountered such an amazing level of cohesion between cast and crew. Jokes fly fast and furious. Every minute was full of laughs as cast and crew make fun of one another mercilessly through light-hearted bantering.

It was my first time working on the World of Laughs set, so I didn’t know anyone, but it was very easy to feel right at home because every member of the cast and crew were so genuinely funny and personable.

One of the most enjoyable shoots I’ve ever done.

Categories: Acting Journal
21 Comments »