Liquid food blogger enrages Sing. Chef

“Mushy Mushy”, the Asian food blogger, (real name Kimberly Li) has infuriated top Singapore chef Johnny Cho.

Li, who through a medical condition can only eat food in liquid form, travels with a blender, reducing meals to a paste or slurry, which she eats, then reviews on her popular blog.

Li described the liquefied version of Cho’s Shrimp Mince, Orange and Tomato Tart as “Like a stale prawn cracker milkshake.”

Cho immediately jumped online questioning Li’s ability to judge food – particularly multi textured dishes. “It’s completely outrageous. You can’t judge a dish like this. She’s an idiot. I tried to have her banned before. I thought I had stopped it all when I wouldn’t let her plug in her blender, but somehow she had a battery powered one made up with the motor from a leaf blower.” Cho’s first attack on Li was quickly removed, as the Chef had included almost a page of French obscenities (learned while he studied pastry in Switzerland apparently,), but copies are already circulating online. The redacted version still contained the phrase, “Mushy Mushy – Merde Merchant.”

The blogger responded to Cho’s criticism, saying “I didn’t need the solid version to tell that he’d completely burnt the garlic.”

Cho’s tart before and after.

 

Singapore admits, “National Service all about shooting Malaysians.”

Asia’s worst kept defence secret is finally out in the open, as a senior official admitted to journalists that Singapore’s compulsory military service (NS) was really only concerned with “shooting Malaysians.” Chan Chun Sing, the island’s Second Minister for Defence, said in an interview ostensibly concerned with his role in the Family Development ministry, said, “National Service is all about serving a higher purpose. And that higher purpose is shooting Malaysians if necessary. Who else are we going to shoot? Germans? LOL*”

Relations between Singapore and Malaysia have traditionally been on a basis of mutual suspicion, reaching low points in 2010 when it was discovered in that groups of Malaysians had been urinating into Singapore’s drinking water imports for decades. Relations fell further that same year when Malaysia claim to have invented Singapore’s iconic drink the Singapore Sling.

A spokesperson for the Malaysian Defence ministry told the Asia Beat. “It’s not like we didn’t already know that.”

*Sing later claimed to have said “Lah” not “LOL”.

Asian brides shun NZ Eco toilets

New Zealand has long been a favourite destination for Asian weddings and honeymoons, but recent legislation has all but killed the environmentally friendly honeymoon market. Requirements that resorts and hotels using the term “eco” must use composting or “long drop” toilets, has left high end honeymoon suites largely empty.

“We love New Zealand’s clean environment.” a Singaporean bride told The Asia Beat, ” but we are not used to this. How can you have romance, when your waste is composting next door?”

“Uggh, it’s the sound,” a Japanese bride said. “You do your business, then, a long, long time later, you hear the sound when it hits. It’s that terrible silence in between, as it drops…I just couldn’t take it. We left for Australia’s Gold Coast right after breakfast. No long drops. Never!”

New Zealand Tourism Board head, Kerry Prendergast, said, “There are no plans to change the laws. Although there may be slightly fewer Asian visitors, this has been more than made up by the increase in German honeymooners. They love the whole process! They even ask if they can spread it on the gardens themselves.”

Tiger Beer taste stops local drunkenness

Singapore. Asia Pacific Breweries today confirmed beerdom’s worst kept secret – that Tiger Beer’s insipd and slightly unpleasant taste is a deliberate ploy to discourage local Singaporeans from drinking. Asia Pacific’s marketing manager Larry Boon-Hin told The Asia Beat, “We were in a difficult position. The Singapore government wanted an iconic beer that would be drunk by foreigners but not the locals. They wanted to discourage their own people from “lazy, work shy drunkenness” , while still pulling in the high alcohol taxes from foreigners.”

In 2004 in desperation, the company turned to New Zealand brewers to help gradually remove the flavour from Tiger. They turned not to DB, (Brewers of Tui), in which they had just bought a stake, but to Dunedin’s Speights, which has a strong tradition of brewing tasteless insipid lagers to the present day.

“We wanted something worse than Fosters, and Speights brewers delivered in spades!” Boon-Hin said. “And the beauty is that Australians haven’t noticed the difference.”

Critics defend Ai Wei Wei’s “meta” vandalism

Controversial Chinese artist Ai Wei Wei received surprising support from art critics for what UK police are calling “straight vandalism”.

Wei used tar to paint a penis and scrotum on the penis and scrotum of the heritage listed Cerne Abbas Giant, a massive chalk image in Dorset depicting a naked man. The image is believed to be centuries old. Wei entitles his piece, 递推， (Recursive). He also claimed that his addition had added “billions” to the value of the giant.

Critics have hailed the piece as “mandelbrotesque”, “Magritte worthy”, also saying that it “disrupts centuries of thinking about the depiction of C&B (cock and balls).”

Malaysian “Gay and lesbian warning signs” seem to describe Singaporeans.

The Asia Beat Kuala Lumpur. Guidelines to identify gay and lesbian symptoms published by the Malaysian education board as a guide to parents, seem to describe Singaporeans according to Asian gay acitvists. Malaysian Education ministry spokeman Deputy Education Minister Mohd Puad Zarkashi describes the similarities as “Coincidence.”

The guidelines, designed to help Malaysian parents stamp out incipient homosexuality in their children list several symptoms of gays:   Symptoms of gays:

Gay apparatus

Living in Singapore.
Being from Singapore.
Studying graphic design in Singapore.
Having a father who ran away in 1964 and didn’t stand up like a man to be macheted to death by a mob.
Stylish male clutch bags.
Orchard Rd.
Orange Julius.
Saying “Lah” particularly during male sexual congress.
Saying “Lah outside sexual congress.
Drinking Singapore Slings.

Schapelle Corby to Marry Matthew Newton

Convicted drug mule Schapelle Corby will marry celebrity offspring Matthew Newton no matter the outcome of her parole hearing, sister Mercedes told The Asia Beat. “The pre-nup is the only sticking point. I’m getting a random Indonesian lawyer to draw it up. It should be fine.”
Bert and Patti, Newton’s star parents were said to be overjoyed. “He just needs some stability, and Schapelle can give him that,” said Patti. “How much more stable can you get than a 20 year prison sentence? He feels like he’s coming home when he visits her. I had the same comforting sense of reliability with Bert for decades. I always knew where he was – at the casino with my purse.”
“We are just glad that he’s getting his sense of humour back,” said Bert Newton. “Matthew was joking that he could really relax and take it easy with Schapelle – the guards do all the beatings. He has a wicked sense of humour. I think it has a lot to do with hanging round with Don Lane on set when he was a boy.”

Hipsters hit Mekong Delta

UK hipsters are deserting the capital for Vietnam’s Mekong River area en masse, leaving  whole streets of South London deserted. “Little Shoreditch” in the centre of Cần Thơ in South Western Vietnam is the latest hotspot. Although some hipsters ave been unable to make much of a visual impact, almost blending in too easily with the bad moustaches, cheap sunglasses, skinny legs, bad fashions and 80s music of the locals, authentic viet chicken dishes only a minute’s walk in any direction have made the difference. A knockoff Pabst brewery and several cardigan factories have sprung up around the town, ready to dismantle and rebuild if fashion decides a change of location is necessary.  Reuters.

AiYa! 3rd most tweeted.

With Asians now overtaking Americans as the world’s biggest tweeters, it is no surprise that AiYa, （哎呀！), the Chinese based phrase indicating surprise, shock or admiration has also overtaken, “dude” “fucktard”, “Dog”, “hole” and “Beiber” on the list of the most tweeted “words”. “AiYa!” is also rapidly closing in on LOL and ROFL.

SocialMedia World Forum Asia, spokesperson Nicholas Aaron Khoo when asked about the rising popularity of the phrase, told The Asia beat, “Ai YA!”

SocialMedia World Forum Asia will be held in Singapore on the 22nd and 23rd of September.

Malaysia – We invented the Singapore Sling

Malaysia has outraged Singaporeans (yet again) with claims that the iconic drink the Singapore Sling was in fact a Malaysian invention.

Originally made from Palm oil, rice vinegar and “the blood of a Chinese,”  Malaysians claim that the Malacca Sling recipe  was stolen by Raffles bartender Ngiam Tong Boon 嚴崇文 in 1913, who subsequently substituted the blood component with Grenadine.

“The Singapore version is a drink for graphic designers,” said Najib Tun Razak, Minister of Culture, Youth & Sports, who although not a drinker himself being a Muslim, was keen to extoll the virtues of the “original” concoction over the cross straights rival.

The Singapore Government failed to respond before deadline.

(c) The Asia Beat 2010