From Wee Cheng's Son We Learn Vice-President Biden Is In Singapore Buying Fresh Lime Juice

On the left you are looking at a screen cap from Facebook. A screen cap of a posting by Wee Cheng that amused me.

Wee Cheng is a Singapore native of Chinese descent. Wee writes and speaks English, in addition to Chinese. Singaporean English is known as Singlish, due to the way the locals mix Singapore in to their version of English.

My lessons in Singapore culture came from Wee Cheng back in the last century.

My first website was birthed in the mid 1990s. In either late 1994 or 1995. My first website was called Dialing Doctor Durango. At that point in time Doctor Durango was sort of a know it all blowhard soliciting questions from people seeking answers to any type of question. Being a know it all blowhard was a real big stretch for me.

Most people got the satirical sarcastic nature of Dialing Doctor Durango. But, two things happened that caused me to stop being Doctor Durango and change my website in to The Durango Files.

One of the things that happened was a Munich, Germany medical university's website listed Dialing Doctor Durango among the Top Ten medical websites on the Internet. Soon after that I got a very earnest, very serious gynecological oncology question from a lady in the UK.

After the gynecological oncology question I decided it was time to shut the Doctor Durango clinic.

Now, what does any of that have to do with Wee Cheng?

Well, back when I was still enjoying  being Doctor Durango Wee Cheng emailed me asking for lovelorn advice. Lord knows I am the go to guy for that type advice. Wee Cheng's former boyfriend, Teck Seng, was returning to Singapore from an assignment in London. Teck Seng wanted to see Wee. Wee was reluctant. Wee's mother thought she should give Teck another shot.

I agreed with Wee's mom.

During the course of the following years Wee and I exchanged emails constantly. Wee asked for my phone number and called me a couple times while I still lived in Washington and once or twice after the move to Texas. Wee mailed me cool stuff, like antique Singapore postcards, that I webpaged. Those postcards must be in this abode, somewhere. Wee mailed me a cool silk sarong type thing she got in Japan.

When Wee was in Japan she went into a Walmart where she got something called Easy Cheese. Disgusting fake cheese sprayed from a can. This delicacy was not available in Singapore, so Wee asked me if I could ship her some Easy Cheese. I bought 3 cans of the stuff and shipped it to Singapore. If I remember right it cost about 10 times more to mail than the Easy Cheese cost.

I don't remember if it was before I moved to Texas, or after, but, I got an invitation to Wee and Teck's wedding. I did not make it to Singapore for the wedding.

Wee continued emailing me until just before George Bush invaded Iraq. Prior to that Wee told me if America invaded anymore Asian countries she was done with all things American. I then asked if that meant she'd be giving up using the Internet.

After that exchange I did not hear from Wee again for years, not til she sent me a Facebook friend request. After Wee Facebook friended me I was quite pleased to see that she was now a mother with two boys.

It was one of those boys who provided me Facebook amusement this morning with the following...

Yap Wee Cheng
Son:  Mum, do you know US Vice President is in Singapore?
Mum:  Yes. Not bad yah, you know about it. Do you know the reason for him to be here? 
Son:  For good food lah, he went to hawker center to buy fresh lime juice. 

Mum can't help but laugh hysterically.

"yah" and "lah" are examples of the aforementioned Singlish.

The 2nd Tuesday Of February Dawns Bright White After A Night Of Too Much Repartee

When I looked out my primary viewing portal on the outer world at the pre-dawn darkness on this second Tuesday of the second month of 2012 a bright flash of white temporarily blinded me.

When the temporary blinding abated I could see that the sun was beginning to light up what appears to be a partly cloudy sky.

Last night, when I turned off my TV, Mitt Romney was leading in Colorado. By morning Rick Santorum had won Colorado. And Minnesota and Missouri. And not by a small margin.

Methinks the Republicans are messing up real bad and the result will be 4 more years of Barack Obama.

Last night, for the first time in a long time, I exchanged multiple messages with Wee Cheng in Singapore. Wee asked me if Obama was a Republican or a Democrat. Wee said she likes Obama.

Last night, in addition to Wee, I had multiple messages going from various sources. Both my monitors were popping up with messages. Facebook  messages, Facebook comments, blog comments and email.

It can get confusing. When making rapid comments I tend to go short, succinct and snarky. And try to be a bit amusing and possibly witty.

Trouble is, if it is multiple messages going on to multiple people I lose track of who I need to be totally literal with and who can handle obtuse humor. With the non-literal, banter is more easily exchanged, With the literal I can go off the rails, with those earnest types confused.

By 11, last night, I was tired of too much messaging and went to bed, where I think nightmares caused the erratic messaging to continue.

I am looking forward to today being a message free day. If you email me, Facebook me or comment me and I do not reply, that is why.

Alice Tonasket and Wee Cheng

Yesterday I mentioned an email I got from someone who felt I'd hurt her feelings and disrespected her home away from home, that home being Scarborough Faire. I got an email from another person yesterday in which the emailer asked me who my most memorable out of the blue emailers have been. I could only think of two who I actually remember by name, mostly because they both became constant emailers.

One is Alice Tonasket. She'd been at my webpage about Mount Carmel and the Branch-Davidians and somehow thought I had something to do with that debacle. She was rather inarticulate back then so it was really hard to understand what she was asking. It sort of seemed like she was interested in joining my church. So, I replied to her. Told her it cost $200 to join my church. She decided to pass on the offer.

Alice is well known in her local zone for her home brew. Alice makes about 4 kegs worth of beer a month. What she doesn't drink she sells, bootleg style, bottling it herself in classic old beer bottles that she makes labels for. Alice calls her beer, "Alice Doesn't Drink Here Anymore Ale."

Over time I learned Alice has a bit of an amnesia problem. This made it sort of fun to play with her. She is easily confused. Currently she is emailing one of my pseudonyms named Igor and has forgotten that Igor is me. She now thinks Igor is my brother. So, she emailed me yesterday complaining about my brother Igor being mean to her.

Alice lives in a very small town in an isolated part of eastern Washington (the state, not the city), but, even though it is a small town, Alice is surrounded by constant Soap Opera turmoil and drama. A couple years ago Alice's Soap Opera was spinning out of control. I suggested she use her MySpace webpage to deal with various issues. For a slight monthly fee I agreed to create several MySpace characters and write blog postings for Alice. The various characters then opined in with their two cents on Alice's issues.

It did not take long for the targets of Alice's disdain to feel the sting of her pointed tongue. The zenith was reached when one of the targets showed up at Alice's house threatening Alice with the law if she didn't stop telling the truth. Of course, Alice blogged about this the next day, thoroughly chastising the trouble causer. Who is now a meek lion afraid of the Roar of Alice, rather than the other way around. The days of Alice the Meek have long vanished.

Alice now finds herself the recipient of new found respect among all the characters in her cast. It has become common for Alice to hear pleas of "Please don't blog this." To which she warns "Don't do it if you don't wanna read about it."

And then there was Wee Cheng from Singapore. Way back in the 1990's I had a website called Dialing Doctor Durango. It was supposed to be a tongue in cheek know-it-all advice type thing. But, for some reason way too many people took it serious. I finally killed that website when I learned it'd been listed as one of the top 20 medical websites on the Internet on some German university website and then got an email from a woman in the UK asking me for medical advice about her uterine tumor. That was enough. It had to stop.

But, long before I killed Doctor Durango I heard from Wee Cheng. Asking me for relationship advice. Anyone who knows me knows I'm the last person you'd wanna be asking for that type advice. Wee's ex-boyfriend, Teck Seng, was moving back to the island from London and he'd let Wee know he wanted to get back together. He'd broken Wee's heart. Wee didn't know what to do. Her mother told her to take him back, that if she didn't she'd end up like a cuttlefish. This stuck in my mind because I had no idea what a cuttlefish was. Wee explained it's a dried up stinky fish that is used in Asian cooking.

So, I told Wee to give Teck Seng a chance. And so she did. The romance re-bloomed. Wee agreed to marry Teck. I was invited to the wedding. I did not attend.

The Wee Cheng/Teck Seng wedding was probably 4 or 5 years after I'd first started exchanging emails with Wee. She'd send me things in the mail, like antique postcards. One time she asked me if I could ship her some wonderful cheese she had in Japan. It was Cheez Whiz, you know that stuff you spray out of a can. I shipped her 3 cans and some real cheese. Shipping was expensive so I took the cheapest option, basically a slow boat to China. By the time it got there Wee'd found Cheez Whiz in Singapore. I never heard how the real cheese faired.

Wee called me a couple times. She's a teeny little thing but her voice is real deep and very guttural and her English is very hard to understand.

Wee's mom died before she got married and before she had a baby. So, Wee's mom never knew that Wee did not end up like a cuttlefish. The last I heard from Wee Cheng Seng was in 2003. Her husband Teck Seng is very anti-American. He works for some high tech company and was stationed in California for a year. Hated the Americans he worked with and pretty much everything else about America. Why, I do not know.

So, when King George invaded Iraq Wee Cheng emailed me in quite an irate mood, as if I had anything to do with what George did. She told me if America invaded any more Asian countries she would not have anything to do anymore with anything American. I replied, in full umbrage mode, and asked if that meant she'd be giving up the Internet, it being an American invention of Al Gore's, after all.

I never heard from Wee Cheng again. I hope she's all right. I tried to contact her after the 2004 tsunami, she liked to vacation on those beaches in Thailand. But I never heard from her again.