Best Of #SingaporeShadesOfGrey: A Long Hard Entry

Before this, I was a virgin. A Twitter trend virgin, that is. Being fairly new to Twitter I’d just not got into the habit of checking trending topics, but happened to spot #SingaporeShadesOfGrey as it was gaining momentum and realized it was right up my alley.

Kudos to the inimitable Mr Brown for starting the hashtag and providing some of its funniest examples. He’s collected his tweets and some others (including one of mine!) at his blog already, but when I read the list I felt a little dissatisfied that others I’d enjoyed hadn’t been included. Well, as many women know, you need to take charge of your own pleasure rather than always relying on a man to do it for you. So I made my own list.

The tweets I personally found funniest tended to be the ones with recognizably Singaporean references in them rather than generic double entendres which could be made about life in any other country. Unsurprisingly, two of the things that Singaporeans talk about the most (no, not Fiona Xie’s boobs) emerged as major themes in the trend, so I’ve presented them as collections here. However, some magnificently filthy non-Singapore-specific ones did also manage to squeeze their way in.

Read more to see how filthy Singaporeans can get!

Food Styling Fail

I made this Lemon Tuna Avocado Snack for my lunch the other day, and when I had finished preparing it I decided to take a photo of it for fun. While I didn’t agonize over the plating (hungry!), I arranged the elements of the dish in what I thought was a visually pleasing manner, positioned the plate for the shot, got my camera, fiddled with the settings, looked through the lens to admire what I felt sure to be a quirky yet appetizing composition, and saw…

…an abstract rendering of the female reproductive system.

I put away the camera and ate my lunch.

P.S. This has happened before.

Hardcore Fail

I like using the voice search function of the Google iOS app when I’m cooking, so that I don’t have to spend time typing in stuff like “convert 400 Fahrenheit to Celsius”. Earlier this week I was using panko for the first time, and was wondering whether I could freeze the remainder of the packet. So I intoned “freeze panko” into the app. Here is what it searched for:

Unintended pornographic consequences

CBEO

Alec: What’s that Hokkien way of describing a business tycoon again? Tau huey? Tau kwa?

Me: Um, I think you mean “towkay”. The other things you’re mentioning are forms of beancurd.

Alec: Ah.

Me: Also, you should be aware that for some reason, if this big boss person is female, they might be called a “towkay neo”. But the term I hear used more these days is “ladyboss”.

Alec: That’s actually quite refined for a Singlish term.

Me: True. If it were left to someone like me I’d probably have come up with “cheebye-E-O”.

Alec: ……

Somehow my attempts to teach Alec Singlish always end up in the same place. I don’t think I’m a very good teacher.

Marquee Goon

This blog has suffered from update FAIL over the past few weeks due to a lovely Californian road trip, my obsessive tweaking tendencies with respect to brand new laptops and my still-rampaging Simon Cowell fetish, specifically the not-insignificant likelihood that Simon Cowell and Paula Abdul are doing all sorts of unspeakably naughty things to each other off-air. STOP JUDGING ME! I will return to my life as a perfectly level-headed, well-adjusted adult who is able to distinguish between real life and TV as soon as this season of Idol is over! (Unless I start watching season 3 of Dexter, in which case, based on the raaaaaaaage that made season 2 rule my every hour until I saw the bitch get her come-uppance, I make no such promises.)

So anyway! Please enjoy this marvellous FAIL as a space filler while I get things back on track! [Via where else but failblog.]


Ho Selecta

Alec is in Sydney on a business trip, and is spoiling me as usual by offering to buy me some records. While he did a pretty decent job of choosing stuff on his own the last time, picking music for someone else really is a tough job (even when that someone isn’t the picky, snobbish bitch I am) and I wanted to make it easier on him this time by giving him a usable list. A little Googling led me to The Record Store, which usefully lists some of its inventory online, so I looked through what they had, made my list and emailed it off to him.

I looked through the list again today, and suddenly realized that I’ve inadvertently set Alec up for a Simpsonsesque conversation with the record store staff, like so:

Hee. I do feel a bit bad about this, but I figure he should just be grateful I’m not into DJ Assault. Also, not all the records on my list have such loaded titles. Some are totally un-embarrassing to ask for, like Humpty Dance.

What My Mama Gave Me

My mum recently learnt the Singlish phrase “half past six” and has taken to dropping it into her conversations. I never thought much about this until Alec mentioned she’d asked him (innocently) if he knew the phrase too, whereupon I remembered its actual etymology and OMIGOD.

Then while writing this up to share with you (yeah I know, you’re all like “Well cheers for the thought Michelle, but any conversation involving your mum talking to your husband about floppy dicks should only be shared with us on a NEED TO KNOW BASIS”) I remembered that I used to record mum quotes here when they particularly amused me, but hadn’t done so for ages. Here’s one that shouldn’t slip through the cracks:

My mum, returning from her church group’s Christmas party a few years back: We exchanged gifts. Look at all my booty!
Me: Er, mum, people use that word a bit differently now.
Mum, preoccupied with all her presents and not really listening: Yay, I have so much booty!

Love In The Time Of Online Dating

It’s not clear why the guy trying to sign up for online dating in this short skit confines his prospective dirty screen names to authors only, but I still laughed loudly and childishly.

And then of course, I had to come up with my own list of cuncontenders. Feel free to add yours!

  • Walt Clitman
  • Edith Whoreton
  • David Spreaddings
  • Don Dedildo
  • Henry Wadsworth Shlongfellow
  • Saul Bellowjob
  • Honore de Ballsack
  • John Bangville
  • Rideher Haggard
  • Doris Lezzing
  • Haruki Murakumming
  • Alexander Bushkin

Edit (29 Jan): More additions, contributed by John’s Jamie!

  • Whoris Lezzing
  • Salman Bushdie
  • Bram Stroker
  • Iain M Wanks
  • William Ernest Fuckeray
  • Franz Kafcock
  • Edgar Allen Pube
  • Vagina Woolf
  • Cunter S. Thompson (my personal favourite)
  • Wet Pissed-On Ellis

Bizarre Must Awesome Want

For the hell of it, an old friend and I made a pilgrimage to This Fashion, an extremely cheap chain of clothing stores in Singapore where we used to shop ten years ago. I was hugely amused by this T-shirt but managed to talk myself out of actually buying it. Picked up a cute LBD though!