Horlicks

I saunter into the kopitiam and become the first person in 20 years to order a Horlicks. A regular, unhip hot Horlicks.

The youngish coffeeshop assistant from China has not heard of Horlicks, naturally. The old dude at the counter who makes the drinks invokes the inventory list and notes that the last record of Horlicks stock sits on a yellowed page dated January 1986. That particular tin was already 6 months past its expiry date when it was last opened in 1987. If you can’t fathom how long ago that is, it is the same year an English movie called Short Circuit (starring Steve Guttenberg, the actor who looks like Lee Hsien Loong) was released.

He procures the tin from a special place where no expendables are housed. It has long transcended its status as an expendable item and is now a relic, a memento, and a reminder of a time past. He pries it open half-hoping to see fragments of memory but all he gets is crusty, unrecognizable Horlicks.

Horlicks chunks are heaped into the glass by way of a spoon-spade hybrid. Boiling water gives it life. It returns to form. It's magic. He sheds a nostalgic tear and it ends up somewhere in the mix too.

For 90 cents, I get a serving of history. Too easy. I decide to swing by the ice cream shop in Shaw Towers for Horlicks ice cream. Yes Horlicks ice cream.

Overkill, you say. But what's really important to note here is how people have not let the Horlicks legacy wither. Expired Horlicks is not forgotten but made into ice cream. And with the cryogenic treatment, its lifespan is extended indefinitely.

Freaking awesome

Freakhog, defined to a T by the Urban Dictionary:

"Perhaps the finest word ever invented by a cell phone. While trying to write freaking on my phone in its t9word mode, I was blessed with this fine nugget. There were no options, just freakhog."

"Sorry I didn't call you earlier, I've been so freakhog busy."

Hhahahahahahahahahahhahaa.

Removing your blogger navbar is like replacing your toyota harrier badge with a lexus rx300 one.

I wish I lived in television terms. In a Channel 8 drama-type diegetic world.

Not for the artifice of the plastic sets or wonky props, but for the brevity and significance of daily events. With incisive editing, anything that happens happens for a reason. Everything else is cut, cut, cut. Life unfolds fat-free.

No mundane in-betweens like shitting, travelling, sitting through tedious workweeks and dog day afternoons. If they do occur, they occur offscreen. Wherever that may be in the universe. Who knows? Who cares?

Fade in. Work, fade out and then home. No need to finish (or so much as touch) the fake food on the table as long as I keep talking. Talking? Not a breath is wasted. It’s meaningful conversation after meaningful conversation, as long as it drives the story of my life.

Clock face. Elliptical transition. I’ve shed my office wear, I’m in my pyjamas, and though I’ve seemed to have forgotten to wash the gel off my hair it doesn’t matter. I half-rest my bed of hair on my pillow so as to not mess it up too much. I kiss my still heavily made-up wife goodnight. We turn off the lamp, but of course there remains enough light in the room to prevent an underexposed shot on the camera.

The next morning I'm speeding recklessly on Arcadia Road and swerve to avoid hitting an oncoming car (you know as I do that I’ve a lot of things on my troubled mind) and quite surreptitiously, doubtless aided by camera closeup trickery, my Lexus is transformed into a beat-up Corolla stuntcar (so it might better cushion my crash into the lamppost.)

Incidentally, Zoe Tay is driving the oncoming car I tried to avoid. Coincidence? Of course! Believe in the splittings and mergings of destinies, and that life is nothing but a series of miracles and disasters packed into 60 minute blocks. It's television!