June 30th, 2008 by Colin
Today, 30 June 2008, marks an ending of one of the most significant and prolonged phases of my life. Today, after 20 years, I finally stop cartooning for The New Paper. It was a complicated decision, the details of which I don’t have time to go into at length at the moment, but let’s say for the moment that it was bittersweet.
Here is my final strip:
June 28th, 2008 by Colin
The following was published in the Sunday Times on 29 June 2008:
Much ado about how much
by Colin Goh
We Singaporeans like to say that we greet each other with “Have you eaten?”, whether in Malay, Mandarin or Chinese dialects. It tells others what kind of people we are, namely, food lovers.
But I have to say that in my personal experience, “have you eaten?” was a greeting my parents only exchanged with their peers or elders, and never with me. (Maybe it’s because I was a “fatty bom bom”, so people felt that the answer to that question was rather obvious.)
Meanwhile, my generation must have appeared to outsiders like stereotyped Red Indians (i.e. “native Americans”) in an old-fashioned Western film, because we would always greet each other with a brusque “How?”
The typical reply to that question, however, was unmistakably Singaporean: “Lai dat, lor.”
I used to chalk this existentialist response up to mere humility – that we Singaporeans somehow felt it impolite to suggest that we might be happier than others in our company.
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June 15th, 2008 by Colin
The following was published in the Sunday Times on 15 June 2008:
Chicken and Duck Talking
by Colin Goh
One sweltering evening last week, the Wife and I were watching TV when the doorbell rang. Opening the door, we were surprised to see a short Hispanic man with craggy features that made him look like he’d been invented by Tolkien. It was Lou, our gardener.
June 1st, 2008 by Colin
The following was published in the Sunday Times on 1 June 2008, with the mention of TalkingCock.com omitted:
Wanted and Unwanted
by Colin Goh
The Wife and I zipped into Singapore last week for a very short business trip, and we were surprised to find that a little bit of New York had preceded us.
The bit was a feature I always took note of whenever I had to mail something – a very common item in U.S. post offices, but completely alien to Singaporeans, at least until now.
I’m talking about a ‘Wanted’ poster. Continue Reading »
May 18th, 2008 by Colin
The following was published in the Sunday Times on 18 May 2008:
Feeling Singaporean in a Chinese Restaurant
by Colin Goh in New York
Growing up in a half-Peranakan household that spoke mostly English and just as much Malay as Hokkien or Teochew, and being educated in a mission school (then) famed for churning out bananas, I never really pondered the fact of my Chinese ethnicity to any great extent. Sure, we observed the usual traditions, but mainly around the time of festivals. Being Chinese in Singapore for me was just like, oh, having a mole or something. It’s there. So what?
I started to think much more about being Chinese after I moved to New York. But it wasn’t some fit of “Joy Luck Club” angst from suddenly finding myself in an ethnic minority or being inundated by the dominant Western culture. Ironically, it began when I found myself being surrounded by other Chinese – “real” Chinese at that.
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May 4th, 2008 by Colin
The following was published in the Sunday Times on 4 May 2008:
A Comic Recollection
by Colin Goh
Two weeks ago, I trudged across midtown Manhattan to meet some folks concerning a future project. (Sorry, can’t reveal details yet.) Their designated meeting place was the Jacob Javits Convention Centre, which, in some ways, represents the convergence of two aspects of my life.
The Javits was where, some years ago, I took the New York bar examinations to qualify as an attorney. It was the hardest exam I ever took, not because it was intellectually challenging, but because it required memorizing several phone directories’ worth of material. For once in my life, I was grateful for Singaporean rote training, a fact emphasized by the candidate seated next to me, who moaned “Oh! My! God!” every few minutes.
This time, however, the Javits was hosting the New York Comic Convention, which, though second in size to the one in San Diego, has the distinct advantage of being in the capital of the comic world: Gotham City itself.
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April 20th, 2008 by Colin
The following was published in the Sunday Times on 20 April 2008:
Swearing? Who Gives a Bleep?
by Colin Goh
By now, many of you must have seen that YouTube clip of a man’s cellphone recording of his altercation with a taxi driver. Apparently, things were ignited when the cabbie, asked to move his vehicle, responded with the f-word.
“The F Word” is also the title of one of several food-related TV shows that I follow religiously that star British chef Gordon Ramsay, who is famous not just for his cooking skills, but his ability to unleash creative expletive-laden invective. (Sample quote: “You moved like a [bleep] tortoise giving birth!”)
And according to a much-circulated New York Times article last Wednesday, the culinary world resembles nothing so much as a US Marines barracks: a recent New Yorker magazine profile of New York’s hottest chef at the moment, David Chang, are littered with his profane utterances, while vulgarities are sprinkled like bacon bits on a salad in any given episode of the highly popular cooking competition ‘Top Chef’, not to mention anything involving Anthony Bourdain.
I was a little surprised by the article – mainly because the bad language never really registered with me. “We’ve been watching these shows for years!” I said to the Wife. “What the heck is wrong with me that I never really noticed the swearing?”
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April 6th, 2008 by Colin
The following was published in the Sunday Times on 6 April 2007:
The Slippery Slope between Prodigy and Tragedy
by Colin Goh
It’s terrible, but when I read about how Sufia Yusof, the mathematics prodigy who was admitted to Oxford at the age of 13, had been found prostituting herself in London, the first thing that popped into my head was an old BBC comedy sketch.
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March 23rd, 2008 by Colin
The following was published in the Sunday Times on 23 March 2008:
Sunday Times 23 March 2008
It’s Easy to be Sleazy
by Colin Goh
Sometimes the political coverage here in America’s newspapers can make FHM look like my old church bulletin.
Just over the past few years, I’ve read, inter alia, about how New Jersey Governor Jim McGreevey confessed to having a gay relationship with his security adviser; how Idaho Senator Larry Craig was arrested after allegedly soliciting sex by playing footsie with an undercover policeman in an airport toilet; how Republican Congressman Mark Foley sent kinky emails and IM messages to his teenage pages; and the latest bombshell: how New York Governor Eliot Spitzer had trysts with really expensive call girls.
Then just a few days back, Spitzer’s replacement, David Paterson, confessed to “several” extra-marital affairs, and worse, McGreevey returned to the headlines with revelations that he, his now ex-wife, and his driver used to engage in “threesomes”. And hanging over all of them, the Buaya-in-Chief himself, former President Bill “I-did-not-have-sexual-relations-with-that-woman” Clinton.
“Piang eh,” I said to the Wife. “I knew politicians played dirty, but this is ridiculous.”
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March 9th, 2008 by Colin
The following was published in the Sunday Times on 9 March 2008:
Sunday Times 9 March 2008
Finding My Own Voice
by Colin Goh
There’s an article from Salon.com that’s making the rounds, about whether Barack Obama’s baritone voice gives him an edge over Hillary Clinton, who has occasionally been dubbed “Shrillary”, especially when she gets excited.
If that’s true, it’s depressing. Not that I prefer any particular candidate (Al Gore, come back!), but the notion that people can be swayed by delivery over content, and also that gender stereotyping is alive and well in the 21st century should make anyone groan.
It’s also personally depressing for me to know that voice can be a determinant of one’s perception. This goes back to the very first time I received a telemarketing call in the USA, shortly after I’d arrived. Here’s a dramatic reconstruction of how it went:
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