The owner of old Western-style barber shop Hounds of the Baskervilles gets forthright with Hidayah Salamat about Singaporeans, religion and his wild past.

When I was studying in New Zealand for four years, I was exposed to a lot of things that were unfathomable to a 14-year-old mind, like drugs and sex and all the other crazy sh*t.

People in Singapore are very spoilt and sheltered. They’ve been pampered from the day they were born.

They grow up in a bubble… the bubble that is their parents’ house.

I first pestered my mom about getting myself a tattoo when I was 18. Of course, she scolded me. When I decided to get it done a year later, she didn’t speak to me for a grand total of one and a half days after that.

I couldn’t get an apprenticeship because of National Service so I ended up teaching myself and started tattooing halfway through it.

Seeing Hounds come together before me was crazy. It has become a lot more than I thought it would be. I’d always wanted to open my own shop because working for somebody was just not working for me. It took me a long time to save up.

I thought about setting it up in Australia but the traditional barber concept was already being done to death there. I’m not the kind of person who will open a shop in a saturated market and take away other people’s business so I decided to start up here, where I was raised.

Local people’s reaction to Caucasians is crazy. Every time people saw a white guy cutting hair, they’d freak out.

Singaporeans lack good morals. The people here stab each other’s backs and climb all over each other, and it’s truly dog-eat-dog.

There’s so much animosity and hate in our society.

I know people that can date their friends’ ex-girlfriends with absolutely no guilt. They just don’t care about friendship.

Everyone here’s just crazy and yet they claim to be religious, which is retarded.

I’m not religious at all. I feel like somebody who’s a good person without the influence of religion is  better than people who behave well because they’re scared of going to hell.

I don’t believe in love. Real love is a bond between two people that doesn’t involve sex. It’s like the relationship between yourself and your parents, best friend, dog or even Vespa. Anything other than that is just lust and obsession.

Freedom to do anything I want makes me happy. Going to the beach, visiting Universal Studios and hanging out after hours at the shop with the boys, a couple of cigars and glasses of whiskey—though I don’t smoke or drink.

I get drunk on vibes.

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