And on Saturday…

By Felix Cheong

DO YOU take everything at face value? Or do you check it out for all its worth?

Well, one Singaporean man has honed this to a fine art, so much so he got away with more than $4,000 worth of goods.

Over two months last year, provision store owner Zhang Bobo, 27, printed his own barcode stickers, stuck them on items at supermarkets like Giant and Cold Storage, and then went on to self-checkout counters to pay (for the items at a lower price, so he can resell them online). And before you can say “ownself check ownself”, he once nearly got away with paying $6 for three tins of milk powder worth around $500.

Enterprising? I thought so. But the judge was not convinced and, on Wednesday (March 30), convicted Zhang on four charges of cheating. And so he paid the right price, finally – six months in the scanner…scammer, err, slammer.

I’m sure the G will be pleased with how this case checks a couple of boxes of the Singapore ethos, like frugality: Why not maximise what we already have, like a label printer, to do more for less? It also goes to show no matter how much of a stickler you are, there’s no payoff for some labels. Just watch the wayang kulit (some call it Malaysian politics) playing out across the Causeway.

On Sunday (March 27), Dr Mahathir Mohamad surprised no one but himself when he admitted he was a “dictator” during his 22-year term. He claimed he had been a benign dictator because his people had not rallied against him, unlike calls now for Prime Minister Najib Razak to resign.

With all due respect, Dr M, you must have torn off quite a few pages of your 1998 diary and forgotten the Reformasi movement that year, when thousands took to the streets to protest the sacking and arrest of your deputy, Anwar Ibrahim. So we shouldn’t take what you say at face value, huh?

After all, it’s all water (which you kept threatening to cut off from us) under the zigzag bridge (which you once insisted on building to replace the Causeway).

Perhaps Dr M could’ve picked up a tip from former MediaCorp actor Xie Shaoguang. The once-popular star, ordained a Buddhist monk more than two years ago, was spotted by Lianhe Wanbao (the last bastion of wuliao investigative journalism) working at a café in JB.

Trying to coax him for an interview, the reporter quoted what Xie had once said: “People who understand will understand even if I don’t speak. People who don’t understand won’t understand even if I speak.”

And Xie’s priceless reply? “Yes, you know too.”

Days after reading it, the density of his Zen message is still stuck in my head. Surely, this must rank up there with Donald Rumsfeld’s “known-things-unknown-things” speech?

Equally bizarre is American label Urban Decay whose cosmetic products with odd names are now sold here. Fancy Road Stripe on your lips? How about Gash?

In an interview with The Straits Times, the company’s co-founder, Wende Zomnir, explains: “When creating new products…we see what is relevant to each market and come up with new products from our point of view.”

So, by her reckoning, women in Singapore would probably love some Mildew around their eyes, as relevant to their daily face as Acid Rain.

And finally, a J-pop girl band has found a novel way to save face – by hiding behind masks. Kamen Joshi, or Masked Girls in Japanese, is made up of 18 members in three separate groups based in several cities.

As if that’s not absurd enough (imagine three sets of The Beatles with interchangeable Liverpudlians whom you can’t tell are male, female, or lip-synching behind their masks), one band member says: “By wearing this mask, we become invincible. We can’t live without it anymore.”

Thank goodness the group’s fan base is gullible enough to buy into such hogwash. One fan even says: “It is unique that even though they are idols, they perform while hiding their faces with masks.”

Time to bring out my N95 mask, what with the haze coming on strong and all. Maybe I can be somebody’s idol too. As long as you take me only at face value.

 

Featured Image by Guet Ghee Pang.

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The post And on Saturday… appeared first on The Middle Ground.

- Felix Cheong