Cheap Asian Girls

Only in Singapore does a girl get it so good. There is this beautiful beautiful thing known as Ladies Night, where just by virtue of having two X chromosomes, you get get into clubs and drink yourself till you stagger outside to puke into a drain FOR FREE. Of course, you have to also beat away the very many underaged international school sluts who sneak in by blowing the bouncers to get your watered down tipple, but hey, a free drink is a free drink.

Ladies Night originated as a marketing ploy to boost business on slow nights like Wednesdays when people don't really want to party since they've got work/school the next day. They figured, draw in the ladies, and the men will surely follow. I'm sure other countries have it, but I'm not certain the free drinks thing is available everywhere. It's like the sister of Aircrew Nights, when serving twits at 40,000 feet suddenly becomes a rewarding occupation.

I, unfortunately, am not a fan. I can count the number of Ladies Nights I've been to on one hand and still have fingers to spare. For one thing, it really does feel like some ghetto high school prom where the average pregnancy age is 14 at some places. For another, I've never really been into clubbing.

I just don't see the appeal. You get stuck in some cramped, dark place, where the music is so loud you can't hear yourself think, with a bunch of sweaty people, and you have to pay to get in? I'm sorry, if I want to get drunk, it's a lot cheaper just to hit the hooch section of a 7 Eleven. And it's absolutely ridiculous if you go with friends you've not met for a while and you attempt to catch up there. The music will always fade out when you're trying to say something potentially embarrassing, like, "YEAH, I JUST WAXED!" Nobody's going to believe that you're talking about your car.

What especially gets to me is the sheer desperation that rises from that crowd like the stink of body odour. Or maybe it's just the body odour and I'm anthropomorphizing it. There are so many hungry glances and revealed body parts it's like a meat market. It wouldn't be so bad if the people were at least hot.

Sometimes the attention is sort of nice. It's kinda insulting if you've dressed up to go out and nobody looks at you wondering what you look like underneath. But really, it can be even more insulting when they check you out, then proceed to check out a complete dog with the same level of lechery. Some standards, please. I don't care if we're of a different race. We do NOT look the same, dammit.

That's the thing. The chao ang mohs clogging up our quays like some throwback to the colonial days, when they arrived by the boatload in their jodhpurs and their pip pip tally hos. I'll admit, they add to the decor a little, because it's pretty boring just looking at black hair, black eyes and yellow skin all the time, but seriously, it's like the dregs of the Western countries have come to invade our lands and plunder our riches and diddle our women.

I'm sure there are genteel ang mohs around, and being the civilised people they are, Boat and Clarke Quays aren't quite the sort of place they frequent. No, it's those who can't get laid in their own country by virtue of being butt-ugly, fucked up or complete dickheads that go to those places and make nuisances of themselves. Heck, they're expanding. Kym ran into one the other day at Velvet Underground who got into a fight with the people at their table after shouting, "You lousy Chinese bastard! I'm going to fuck all your women!"

The sad truth is, if you are Caucasian, you can get laid here very easily. Even if you've got Swiss cheese for brains, like this ex-colleague of Elton's. Even if you don't look Caucasian, all you need to do is speak with an accent and you'll find that many doors, among other things, will open for you, like they did for the Spawn with his from the seedy docks of London accent. It's so easy it's scary.

And I look at these women with a bit of disbelief. Have you no QC? The day I sleep with an ang moh guy who wears bermudas with white socks up to mid-calf and white sports shoes will be the day I become a prostitute. Or the day I get Roofied.

I'll admit, I do understand the attraction. It's just something different. To us, the blond-hair-blue-eye thing is exotic, the same way our slanty eyes and darker skin is to you (ok, I'm as pale as a white girl, but I'm talking in general). The accent is intriguing too, whatever it is. Except maybe Australian. Especially Scottish. I had one Scottish passenger who I made a point of serving just to listen to him talk. It didn't matter that I couldn't understand half of what he was saying, it was pretty fun making him repeat himself. And it's nice to have to look up to a guy for once. The number of Singaporean guys I know who are taller than me is three. Andy, and two bouncers. Then again, they're bouncers, so being larger than your average bear is sort of a prerequisite.

Yes, now I know not all ang mohs are tall. Except for maybe the Netherlands, where I just saw a wall of chests, sometimes navels. It does make you wonder if they make the same sound as a felled redwood when they've had a little too much of the magic brownie.

But I've never quite seen the appeal of dating one. I guess because there's so much of me he wouldn't get. Even Elton at times gets lost in translation. Trust me, my writing on this site is as English as I get; in daily conversations, I speak fluent Singlish.

Small digression. If you weren't born overseas and you didn't stay there for an extended period of time, such as over a decade, you have no right to come back and irritate our ear drums with your fake ass accent. Please, for the love of god, stop attacking your tongue with a curling tong before you get out of the house. Four years studying in London does NOT make you sound like the Queen popped you out from her hoochie. And just because the person you're talking to has an accent doesn't mean you have to put one on as well. We once made the mistake of getting Elton to ask this girl at a neighbouring table at Zouk Winebar what was the drink in the jug at her table. Half-white boy got "Vodkar crysters" in response. No, darling, it does not aid in comprehension.

Small digression to my digression. For fear of sounding too Singaporean or unconsciously adopting the other person's accent, I tend to shut up around ang moh people. That, and most of the time they're older and talking about dull stuff anyways. Like art. Or housing. I had problems talking to Elton when we first started dating. Then I got in tune with his half-Chinese side and things became a little easier. Ah, those were the days.

There's just so much of my culture, my food (my favourite kway chap is like Fear Factor for them white people), my life that an ang moh just wouldn't understand or appreciate. Oddly enough, if they do appreciate it or act like they do, I find it rather fake. You know, like those oldish white women who go to India and exclaim how beautiful it is, somehow managing to ignore the shit, the dying children and the flies.

I'll fucking hate having to translate myself all the time, or explain things that are so obvious to me, or realize I can't share certain jokes because it's just not funny in English. And it's even worse when you get to the meet-the-friends stage, because they may have invented English, but they sure don't speak anything like it when they're in a group, and you're standing there like some mail-order bride with a daft smile on your face because the least you could do is look friendly. It's like watching Snatch without subtitles.

And no, I cannot understand Snatch without subtitles. You try making sense of what Brad Pitt is saying.

So it's pretty ironic when my fellow Singaporeans call me a kantang (Malay for potato, our version of a banana) or accuse me of having an accent. Sure, I did go through a stage when everything Western was cool. I was a kid then and McDonald's was god's gift to children. I grew up reading Enid Blyton books, because even my own parents aren't too good at reading Chinese (fact, I read Chinese better than my dad). I wanted my currency to be in pence and pounds and go to boarding school and have midnight feasts and dress up in winter clothing.

But I grew out of it. I'm not sure exactly when the transition began, but I started to really appreciate my roots. I like going to Chomp Chomp for sambal stingray and oyster omelette. I love my Hokkien music. I enjoy the simplicity of Singlish. It's not just being Chinese, it's being Singaporean, and I can't imagine giving all that up to go live in some country where no one will speak my dialect with me. (Seriously, all those Chinese people in San Francisco and London are mostly Cantonese. I do NOT speak Cantonese, dammit.) I still appreciate Western stuff, like American TV shows, but I'm not obsessed with them.

I've got nothing against women who date ang mohs. I have something against women who date men only if they are ang mohs. There is a difference.

Although if we let this rampant mixing go on, Russell Peters might be right.