On Monday, I visited the former Poor Suffering Substantive Third Sergeant, shortly before that a Poor Suffering Local Third Sergeant, the Self-Proclaimed 'Master of Office', Top Bio Student in NJ in His Year, the Master of the Chair, He Who Cackles Evilly, the Hawker of Evil Torture Devices (more on that later) - (name removed by request).
Since his glorious ORD day, he has been deprived of his lucrative slave penance, and due to his various extravagances (among them a $50 Nike lycra shirt which he never wears in front of me anymore since I kept making fun of his fondness for it), he has found himself in a state of penury and thus been reduced to finagling innocent visitors to the World Book Fair on behalf of a company that shall remain unnamed. Of course, but for the odd commitment (eg Monday's "An Evening With Friends" - the ACJC choir concert, and incidentally an all too common name for various products/events), a general preference for bumming and my not having gotten my IC back yet, I might be joining him in foisting unwanted products onto fair visitors.
Ironically enough, Ban Xiong has not seen the fair, and likely will not, since he is stationed outside the exhibition hall. He thus asked me to serve as his eyes and ears, and in an act of beneficence, I assented to his not unreasonable request.
The World Book Fair is grossly misnamed. I was entertaining vague notions of reading Skaldic poetry, but they were mercilessly crushed upon my entrance into the halls, for it soon became apparent, from the preponderance of Chinese signs, products and displays (just possibly outnumbering those in English), that this was a Chinese Book Fair (now, to be fair I did see a "Malay/Muslim" Book Section, but it was tiny), with mainly Chinese companies from China, Taiwan and Singapore setting up shop. This is what happens when naming is left up to people with a Sino-Centric world view who take China (the middle of the world, after all) and the Chinese diaspora to represent the world. We see something similar happening across the Atlantic with the "World Series" (Baseball).
There was also a surprising number of publishers of religious books that put in an appearance: Ahmadiyya Muslim Mission, Bethesda Book Centre, Ch'an Yun Buddhist Handicrafts & Trading, Deva Crown Trading Pte Ltd, Fo Guang Shan (Singapore), Guangxi Publications Imp & Exp Co, Jen Chen Buddist Book Publisher, Popstar Media, Shalom Christian Media, Shun Da DIY Handicrafts & Trading, Singapore Soka Association, Still Thoughts Cultural Services, Supreme Master Ching Hai Asso, True Buddha Publications, Vaidurya Media House, Xi-An Bookstore, Yuen Jue Zheng (Singapore) c/o Kang Bao Lek Vegetarian and Zen Buddist Culture Services Center (from the official website). As could be predicted from the Chinese character of the fair, most of the religious content was Buddhist in nature. I would stop here, but I saw at one booth something that I never thought I would have the misfortune so see in Singapore - a banner advertising the book, Answers In Genesis.
Now, matters of religion are debatable, but Answers In Genesis holds that the bible is literally true down to the last word and infallible. It affirms the obviously suspect traditional authorship of the Pentateuch. If that isn't ridiculous enough, it asserts that the earth is only a few thousand years old. To its credit, it pooh poohs some of the more ludicrous Creationist arguments, but retains many more, so it remains a collection of fudges, false information, disingenuous arguments and rhetoric disguised as evidence (eg: We know that the earth is less than 10,000 years old because the bible says so!). I would have bought the book, if for nothing else, then to laugh uproariously and work myself into a stage of righteous moral and intellectual outrage, but my slave penance will be cut in less than 2 weeks, so I cannot afford (too many) frivolous purchases.
Thus, with my hopes dashed, spirit distraught and head down from the double blow, I then trekked across the length and breadth of the exhibition halls to seek out the Useful, the Interesting, the Educational and the Grotesque, and was struck dumb by the abundance of the last.
For a Book fair, there was a surprising amount of non-book items: music CDs, educational CD-ROMs, toys, videos, handicrafts, herbal supplements, exercise equipment and assorted accessories. In one corner was a stall extolling the benefits of the "Shichida method" of mucking with your children's minds. At another side was a booth selling transparent rattles containing luminous, rotating neon strips (I kid you not) - the perfect party toys for Ah Bengs. A prominent sign at another area preached the benefits of their "Musk Hemorrhoid Suppository".
And near an exit was sold "body slimming wear" using "the special lycra spandex", which the banner claimed was widely used by doctors. A closer look at this dubious sounding claim revealed that the "special lycra spandex" is used by doctors to cover post-surgery wounds so no scar will form on the wounds' healing. What that had to do with slimming, I could not figure out. Perhaps the most amusing thing was the "no bra" feature that was touted as enhancing the bustline. Presumably, if your body shrinks after being clad in lycra shrink wrap, but your breasts stay the same size, your bustline will appear relatively larger.
At another part of the hall was a booth with 5-in-1 air processors, the 5 functions being:
1) "Ice cooling effect" (the air coming out of the contraption didn't feel very cold to me)
2) Air purification
3) Humidification (local air is already dreadfully humid, and if you use it in an air-conditioned room, the air will already be cool and pure)
4) Essential oil diffusion
5) Ionisation, releasing 10,000 ions (or thereabouts) into the air for a "waterfall fresh air environment" (wth?! More likely you'll get zapped by the ions)
Dazed by the sheer perversity of all that I had witnessed, I stumbled back in a daze to where Ban Xiong was happily conning innocent souls and related some of the horrible sights that I had witnessed. I then noticed that there were some suspicious looking items in a glass case beside Ban Xiong's counter. Inside were 2 evil torture devices, which he informed me would be mine with a one year subscription to a SPH newspaper. The more sadistic looking of the two was the "Owell eye massager model OW-700". The display claimed that the massager brought a panoply of health benefits, but I noticed the proliferation of qualifiers like "can" and "may", eg: "The OW-700 can help stimulate eye acupoints" (emphasis added). The only claim to which no qualifier was tacked was about benefits which could be due to the placebo effect; among others, reduced eye fatigue. Sneaky, the way they pre-empt disputes about the device's claims. Intrigued, yet simultaneously disgusted, I took a closer look.
From the outside, the device looks like a pair of futuristic, if bulky-looking, glasses, reminiscent of the visor worn by Georgi LaForge in Star Trek and possibly worth wearing for a stroll down Orchard Road. The device is strapped to the head with velcro straps that attach to moulded plastic, which forms the frame of the device. Above where the eyes would be, holes have been drilled in the plastic, to be covered by thin black perforated sheets. A control unit with 2 slide switches (yes, I actually went to check out what they are called) to control the device is mounted above the bridge of the glasses. So far, it seems an innocent, if odd looking contraption. However, turning it over so you can see what the plastic frame conceals, you divine the true purpose of the device! Protruding from the reverse side of the devices' frame are numerous white appendages - when the device is turned on, they vibrate and drill incessantly into acupoints on the face, turning your brains into mush and making you susceptible to the dubious claims Owell makes about its products.
In a moment of folly, I tried the damn thing on, and felt my brains pulverising, but luckily I retained sufficient presence of mind to wrench the device off my head before it was too late. After that I considered having my nails painted at the counter beside the Evil Torture Device's (NB: The two events may not be entirely unrelated). However, Ban Xiong sadly revealed to me that this required a year's/month's subscription to some crummy magazine, so I sadly walked off to meet David for the ACJC Choir Concert (more on that in a later post).