TALES FROM THE TOP

In celebration of Singapore’s 43rd year of nationhood and my seven years in Singapore here are the seven things that make me almost, but not quite, a native.

You be the judge.

1. I can now speak Singlish. I think I have mastered the use of lor, lah, meh, mah, can, cannot, though I still sound un-authentic at times.

2. I enjoy the kick of sambal and the thrill of chilli sauce everything. Thinking about it just makes my mouth water in delight!

3.I learned to love mee siam and laksa, nasi lemak and mee reebus, teh halia and teh tarik, prata and everything else in between. I also gained 8kgs in the 7 years living in Singapore.

4. And eating the above mentioned as “supper” after dinner or after work.

5. I learned to be comfortable going out of my home in nothing but flip-flops, berms and a t-shirt. Somtimes it is just to hot and humid to be wearing anything else.

6. I exchanged my loyalty to Cathay Pacific for that of Singapore Airlines. The Singapore girls and boys just know how to make their guests feel right at home. And I am booked to be away for a holiday while the fireworks light up the Singapore skies.

7. The other day at the grocery, a vegetable auntie even convinced me to exchange  the Malaysian grown romaine lettuce in my basket, for a Singaporean one “this one better” she said. So I just believed her. Are there farms in Singapore?

Am I good enough?

Ok one last thing, I even have a jacket that looks very much like the Singapore flag.

My mom called me up long-distance sometime last week to tell me I am fatter now than the time I thought I was fat.

That was when I was shooting in Orlando and being fed huge tasteless portions of what they call “food” in America. But one must eat to keep going so I had no choice. 4 days in Orlando and I gained 3 Kgs even before I reached Seattle for the second half of our trip.

When my mom said this, I took a good look at myself in the mirror, afterall, mothers are the ones who keep feeding us and making sure we eat well at all times. And when a mother says you’re fat, you take it seriously.

Thursday afternoon, a fitness instructor in the gym yelled from across the locker rooms “Tim you are fat!” as I was entering the showers. Later on, I told him yes I am gaining weight but he won’t get me to sign up for a training scheme to beef up and trim down.

The man said I am on TV therefore I must look trim!?!?!? Wait just a minute, are TV folks put on a different weighing scale than the rest of humanity?

So I reminded him that I do the news. I don’t have to take my shirt off for anything I do on tv. I don’t have to look like a beef-cake.

But here is a scary thought, some doctors actually think the combination of home and work stress is making people fat.

A recent study done in Canada found that fatigue caused by too much work contributes to Canada’s obesity problem. The study revealed that workers who are tired tend to eat more.

I’ve been in Singapore for almost 8 years.  I started eating more when I was doing Primetime Morning. It was just natural then to have an early breakfast since we would wake up earlier than most of humanity, and having dinner just before we went to bed happened almost every night.

When I was in my twenties, any weight gained was easily disposed of after an extensive gym session or two.

Now that I’m nearing the so called middle-age, burning the accumulated fat around the middle will take a month of gym sessions and a lot of dieting.

So what about making sure I eat healthy low-fat, low-carb meals?

NO WAY, I wont give up the most basic of pleasures just to look the way some people expect us to look on TV.

So I am what some friends call “chubby-perfect” — I know they are being sweet and nasty at the same time, and I am OK with that.

No one will and can make me feel insecure by telling me I am gaining weight.

Traveling for work can be a fun adventure. And for That’s IT, it’s always a new experience.

Tuesday’s Season 9 premier of That’s IT took us to the US south-east coast, a place so far away that I don’t think any man, woman or child should even attempt to venture without at least a 24 hour stop-over or two.

My flight took me from Singapore to Hong Kong to Toronto and then to Orlando, total travelling time being 28 hours. And this I calculated based on the moment I stepped onto the plane and out at my final destination – transit lay-overs included.

But seriously, by the time you get to your hotel, you won’t even know what day it is. Still, it is not so bad. 20 years ago, such a trip would have probably taken 40 hours. come to think of it the guys travelling with me spent about that much time because they just chose a bad airline with bad connection timings and they missed a few connections.

So I arrived in Orlando at 1AM EST. Checked in, tried to unwind and unwind and unwind but I just couldn’t sleep. I was seriously tired and in need of sleep and there I was watching the news because I couldn’t sleep. And I had interviews and meetings to attend bright and early in the morning. I was like a bad PC that wouldn’t shut down.

When I finally shut down for the night — the sun was rising in the east.

I’m usually not one of those who would get jetlag so I got up at an appropriate time and got dressed for the series of meetings and interviews set up for the day. It was alright for most of the day but half way through the media dinner that night, I was falling asleep.

The hardest part for these trips is having to look good and awake for the cameras when deep inside all I really wanted to do was crawl back to bed.

When we wrapped up in Orlando after 3 days of interviews, media sessions and on-location shoots, it was time to pack up again for another journey west — to Seattle.

That trip took all of 6 hours, but on board any US carrier, it felt as though it went on forever.

We were in Seattle as guests of Microsoft for a learning tour of its mobile OS operations.

It is also where I met my “rival” Spencer, from the BBC’s IT show Click. Rivals we may be but he offered us some of his footage when he learned that our camera died a sudden and unexpected death in the middle of an interview.

We had an interesting talk about how small our teams are. He says his small team consists of 8 full time producers and reporter putting the show together.

I told him my small team consists of one semi part-time producer and me working on That’s IT. And sometimes we are lucky to get one or two more producers helping us out.

Still, we always manage to have fun putting our show out!

That’s IT’s new season begins, and it is on every Tuesday at 20:30 and 23:30 SIN/HKG/MNL

Check your TV listings for repeats throughout the week.

Politicos in the US are dissecting and examining the voting paterns state by state, county by county trying to predict what so far has been a very unpredictable US race to the White House.

From various national polls I’ve seen so far, Barack Obama is leading or is statistically tied to John McCain.

But of course all these polls wont really give an indication of who will succeed George W Bush in the oval office.

The US has a complicated election process where the candidate who wins the most number of electoral college votes from all states, wins the presidency. And this is not necessarily the same person who wins the most number of popular votes.

So the way it goes right now, Obama looks set to win the popular vote by millions, but McCain will end up sitting in the Oval Office — a repeat of the 2000 election when Al Gore won more votes than W Bush, but didn’t win the White House.

Now the same scenario may happen again in November where the Red States will remain solidly behind McCain, the Blue States behind Obama and the swing states leaning towards McCain.

Wouldn’t it be ironic then if McCain wins the White House and Obama loses it despite more people voting for him — the exact same scenario that saw Hillary Clinton bowing out of the democratic nomination race despite winning over 1 million votes against Obama?