Colin Goh and Woo Yen Yen

The following was published in the Sunday Times on 24 February 2008:

Sunday Times 24 February 2008
I May Have to Take the Cake
by Colin Goh in New York

A friend recently emailed me to ask, “Eh, is the US economy really that bad, ha? Should we be worried, not?”

My response was: you ask me, I ask who? I’m hardly the best person to ask about the economy. When I first read some months ago that America was re-entering an economic downturn, my initial thought was: you mean it left?

Maybe it’s because the Wife and I feel like we’ve always been in a recession. We came to New York during Singapore’s last economic crisis, and we entered the media industry now when it’s experiencing historical flux and record falling revenues. And when the average price of one bedroom apartments in Manhattan soared past US$1 million, we were living in rough Brooklyn neighbourhoods, where our Chinese takeout guy would warn us, “After 8 pm, don’t come here or you will die.”

So as far as we’re concerned, the bad economy never really left, never mind whether it’s back; it’s just been like Kramer in ‘Seinfeld’, always hanging around nearby and popping in every so often to mooch from our fridge.

Also, New York’s economy isn’t always representative of the rest of America, and that’s doubly so if you live, like we do now, in the town of Flushing in the borough of Queens, a growing Chinese/Indian/Russian enclave with a parallel transport system, restaurant culture, as well as job and real estate market. So while my lawyer landlady moans about how the housing market is so bad that all her conveyancing deals are drying up, at the same time, we’re also seeing mainland Chinese millionaires buying up houses here with cash.

But we’re finally seeing the subprime fallout creeping into our neighbourhood. It began when the waiter at our local Malaysian restaurant started sighing loudly over the state of his stock portfolio.

“But at least I’m not as bad as my friends in Nevada,” he consoled himself as he served us our char kway teow. “They each bought several houses with subprime mortgages, which they serviced by taking on extra jobs. Things were okay when times were good and they could find tenants. But now, the places are all unoccupied, they’re still stuck with the mortgages, and getting more credit is impossible. They already work three jobs, how to take on another?” He shook his head and clucked his tongue like a chichak.

The state of things became even more apparent when some of the Wife’s Shaolin kung fu teachers started having to take on extra jobs as busboys at Chinese restaurants. (Note to self: tip them properly or get hantam-ed, Drunken Monkey-style.)

“Whoa,” said the Wife. “Time to standby the taxi driver’s licence leow.” This was a running joke of hers whenever we faced a potential blip in our finances. Her late father always maintained a cabbie’s licence just in case his contracting business went under – a true Singaporean in his pragmatic kiasuism.

Likewise I thought I’d better email my Singaporean friend back and tell him to prepare contingency plans. If it’s started hitting even the Shaolin monks in a pocket universe like Flushing, it could very well hit people overseas too, no matter what the experts say about ‘decoupling’ and how emerging markets like India and China will cushion any impact from America’s downward slide. (I mean, if these guys are all so smart, how come, as the former governor of the Bank of Israel said at Davos this year, “Last year, nobody mentioned subprime”?)

It then hit me that perhaps I’d better have a backup plan too. But what? I guess I could get myself reinstated as an attorney, assuming anyone would hire me after so many years out of practice, but this was the nuclear option, because of cost and liability.

“Is there any sort of part time work I can do, that would still allow me to continue with our media projects?” I asked the Wife as I clicked through the classifieds on Craigslist – JFK baggage handler, Starbucks barista, telemarketer, nude art model…

“You could do what so many people did during Singapore’s last recession,” she replied. “Email everyone your sob story and tell them you’ll bake cakes for money. You won’t even have to leave the house.”

I remembered those mass emails. I’d even bought some of those cakes, literally baked with tears, so they must have been effective. Certainly, I think people would pay me more for cakes than to pose nude.

And so, friends, if one day you get an email from me touting my pandan chiffon cake, you’ll know exactly how bad the US economy is.

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