Following in the footsteps of democracy-loving leaders like Richard Nixon, our caring caretaker premier is rumored to have recorded all of his phone conversations. After minor editing, the story goes, the Dolby digital recordings (with full surround sound) will be archived in the newly christened Thai Rak Thai library for posterity. Some hypothetical excerpts:Caller (Unidentified 50-Something Male Voice Speaking in Thai-Accented English With a Slight Texas Twang): Ni hao, Premier Wen! This is Thaksin. How’s it hangin’?Receiver: Uh, “hangin’”? Low?
I can’t believe I-S Magazine is 10 years old. When did it start?
Our first issue came out on Aug 7, 1995.
If you started in 1995, how come you’re just doing this issue now?
It’s very un-Singaporean of us, but we decided to take a non-kiasu approach and celebrate our anniversary at a leisurely pace. We did our 10th Anniversary Readers’ Choice Awards in September, our 10-year retrospective issue now, and stay tuned for a big, upcoming, celebration event happening soon. Hell, we’re 10 all year long, so what’s the rush?
Don’t you guys ever get in trouble for the stuff you write?
Absolutely not, unless you count the time we got our publishing license taken away for a month due to personals ads which were said to “promote alternative lifestyles,” or the time we got taken to task for a story criticizing the development of Pulau Ubin, or the time we were the victim of a letter-writing campaign against Dan Savage’s raunchy sex advice, or the time we were advised to tone down our coverage of gay issues, or the countless letters and phone calls we’ve gotten from restaurants who received a less-than-stellar review. And let’s not even talk about the people who spew venom over Terry Ong’s film and theater commentaries. Basically, it’s just another day at the office.
How did I-S Magazine start?
Like any successful business venture, it grew out of a genuine market need. In our case, the need to get invited to a better class of cocktail parties.
I love your Restaurant Guide. How can I get a copy?
Friend, you’re in luck. The latest edition of the Restaurant Guide has just been published. You can get one (or 10, they’re great for gifts) by sending $5 per copy to: Asia City Publishing Pte. Ltd., Restaurant Guide 2006, I-S Magazine, #13-01 Bangkok Bank Bldg., 180 Cecil St., Singapore 069546.
Will you write about my (choose one): restaurant; nightclub; product launch; sure-fire-hit show; fading career; revolutionary business idea that is destined to change the world?
See below.
All the other magazines write about us when we buy ads. Why not I-S Magazine?
We love to write about our advertisers, and very often do. The difference with us is that the decision of when and how to write about advertisers (and non-advertisers, for that matter) is made by our editorial department, not our ad department. Sometimes this gets us into trouble. Sometimes (shock! horror! break our hearts!) it costs us ad contracts. Very often it makes our sales team pull their hair out, smoke far too many cigarettes and have collective nervous breakdowns. Why go to all the trouble? Because our readers are smart enough to know an honest opinion from a fake one, and because letting advertisers control the content of independent publications is ultimately not good for either the advertiser or the publication.
Who writes the Page 3 editorial?
Various members of our senior editorial staff have contributed over the years, and it’s usually a joint effort. But most of the credit has to go to the many wacky people who say and do such outrageous things. We see ourselves more as scribes or diarists recording the news of the day, with just a little twist.
Is the media environment in Singapore opening up?
Yes, but progress is glacial. There does seem to be more room for political commentary these days, but less for content related to non-traditional sexuality. Change in Singapore occurs through a process of three steps forward, and two steps back. Right now, we’re in the two-steps-back stage.
Who writes your restaurant reviews? Do they really go undercover?
They are written by our super-sneaky team of reviewers who go, order, eat, pay and digest without the knowledge of the restaurant they are reviewing. We choose which places to review and when, always trying to stay on top of new spots and returning to old favorites regularly for an update. Reviewers include our edit staff, plus some trusted freelancers. We write from a typical diners’ perspective, and cover the gamut from fine dining to local holes-in-the-wall. Restaurants do not pay for reviews (and, frankly, some would probably pay us not to come).
Why can’t I ever find you? and Do you do subscriptions?
You’re obviously hanging out in the wrong 365 groovy restaurants, cool coffeeshops, hip health clubs, sophisticated arts venues, and trendy retail shops every Friday, or else you’re just too slow off the mark. Get with the program. Copies go fast, you snooze you lose. No, we don’t offer subscriptions. It’s survival of the fittest.
Gosh, when did you go weekly?
July 2004.
Do you know there’s a magazine in Hong Kong that looks like a rip-off of I-S Magazine?
Yes, we do. And if we’re doing anything at all right, there’s also one that looks like us in Bangkok, and even Shanghai. We all belong to the same company and actually talk to each other (though not enough) and sometimes even plan regional stories together. Like our recent sex survey which revealed that 53% of male and 25% of female readers across Asia have masturbated at work. Where else would you get such vital and riveting facts?
What’s your circulation?
OK, here are the numbers: our average audited pick-up rate per issue currently stands at 28,605 every week. (We are audited by Media Circulations Services of Singapore.) In addition, we mail out or hand out another 865 copies each week on average. That means 29,470 copies are getting into the hands of readers. We print a total of 30,000 copies each issue, so there are only about 500 copies left over at the end of the day – that’s less than two percent of our total print run.
Why do you use American spellings?
In pre-George W. Bush days, we were actually proud that all three founders of our company were from the US (plus, we had already bought the dictionaries). Now we are considering changing the official language of all our magazines to Albanian.
Why is your magazine so big?
Why are the others so small?
Why is I-S Magazine free?
Because the best things in life always are.
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But what do the letters I-S stand for? Awash in the alphabet-soup acronymland known as Singapore, where PMEBs leave their HDB, UDMC or HUDC flats and take the PIE, CTE, ECP, SLE, BKE or AYE to the CBD every DAY, we admit there are moments when even we get confused about what our magazine’s initials mean. … We settled on In Singapore. (Vol. 1 No. 1 August 7-20 1995)
Singapore is actually chock-a-block with opportunities for learning.… ANTHROPOLOGY: Rush hour on the MRT. Observe human behavior as it devolves to its basest forms. See “survival of the fittest” principles put into action each time an empty seat opens up. Keep an eye out for the missing link that boards daily at Novena Station. Special essay topic: Would Homo erectus have been able to navigate a transfer at Raffles Place? (Vol. 1 No. 8 November 20-December 3 1995)
CREDIT CARD: Don’t give us that song and dance about the convenience. How convenient can it be to pay 20 percent interest on all those flash clothes and that mega-stereo system? Think about that the next time you whip out that plastic for the plane tickets to Bali, dinner at Prego for your friends, a new wardrobe at the Great Singapore Sale. (Vol. 1 No. 21 June 10-23 1996)
When PM Goh proposed a return of snake charmers, he opened up a real can of worms, so to speak. You can’t have snake charmers without grit and grime, and you can’t have grit and grime without seedy-looking characters roaming around possibly trying to pick your pocket. But let’s not dirty all of Singapore for the sake of a little exotica. Confine the grit, grime and low crime to a single, contained area—Boat Quay, for instance—and rename it Little JB. (Vol. 2 No. 11 Jan 6-19 1997)
By all accounts, this cloning business is still open to improvement, and the margin for error at this early stage is clearly pretty high. So don’t try this at home, kids. It falls into the wrong hands, and who knows what could happen? We could live to see the day when we walk into our favorite restaurant to be greeted warmly and shown to our table — by a sheep. (Vol. 2 No. 15 Mar 10-23 1997)
Once we caught our breath, we realized maybe our expectations were running a little too high. We thought that March 23, 1998, the debut of the—GASP!—new The Straits Times, would go down in history as a date to remember. A day when we got a collector’s item to rival Princess Di margarine tubs, when we got more fashion tips from Cat Ong about what can be done with a ½ meter of masking tape and a pair of breasts, when we got enough world-class information and entertainment to beat a Disney-Microsoft merger. But as we were reading the new Straits Times, we realized that we were reading—GASP!—the old Straits Times. (Vol. 3 No. 17 Apr 3-16 1998)
Disney is embracing Asia with all its might. Next up: Animal Kingdom Asia. Included are whitewater rafting, some really scary Asian animals and a jungle trek. … If Disney goes with the Asian theme park, we say at least get with the times, play up the urban jungle and launch New Asia World. The buzz of cicadas is replaced by the shrill of mobile phones. … Garfield, Mao and now Snoopy leer down from our restaurant walls. The crowning glory to New Asia World? Imagine this: Habibe’s Hamburgers, Deng’s Diner and Pol Pot’s Claypot. (Vol. 3 No. 20 May 15-June 4 1998)
Top Ways to Tell that [insert the Southeast Asian city of your choice] is Turning into Singapore… The Christmas lights go up before Deepavali. • Snoopy toys (dressed as the Merlion) are given away with Happy Meals. • If it works properly, it’s “World Class.” • People run screaming into an Ah Mei concert and then sit down in an orderly fashion to wait for the show to begin. • Low fines don’t mean no fines. (Vol. 5 No. 6 Oct 15-Nov 4 1999)
Need we go further than the headline: “Seven hurt in rush for Hello Kitty toys”? The facts are depressing: A crowd clamoring for stuffed dolls waits in the early morning outside a fast food restaurant, which boasts a regular door. Made of glass. The crowd is so eager to part with hard-earned cash for trashy food and cheap toys that individual Kitty fans push and shove as hard as they can against the aforementioned glass. Hello Kitty. Goodbye door. (Vol. 5 No. 12 Jan 21-Feb 3 2000)
We’re all for diversity in the media, but we’re not sure we follow the logic of newspaper people thinking they know TV, and TV people thinking they know newspapers. It seems a little like the folks at Jurong Bird Park applying for a license to open an airport, just because they know something about flying. (Vol. 5 No. 22 Jun 16-Jul 6 2000)
It struck us that our talent for moaning and groaning—instead of being cause for concern—could be just the thing to put us on the map academically. … Here’s a prospective Course Catalog for the degree program: Dissatisfaction 101 … Advanced Groaning … Comparative Grumpiness … Tai-tai Tantrums … Philosophy of Moaning … Holiday Humbug. (Vol. 6 No. 10 Dec 15 2000 – Jan 4 2001)
The Scotts Road underpass, which seems to be the epicenter of buskerdom in Singapore, is already the Seventh Level of Hell. Imagine if you had to listen to a steady stream of Air Supply hits as you struggled with your shopping bags through the dark, crowded tunnel. (Vol. 6 No. 18 Apr 6-19 2001)
In case you haven’t been appointed to one of the five sub-groups, the Remaking Singapore Committee is being set up to look at all aspects of life here and redefine the Singapore Dream. The idea seems to be that we should no longer only be working for the five Cs. Now we should be concerned with quality-of-life issues like personal space, family bonding, finding individual fulfillment through (ohmigod) risk-taking, and creativity in our work. (Vol. 7 No. 14 Mar 1-14 2002)
Still there may be a way to satisfy both stayers and quitters. Since we’ve already reclaimed what looks like a quarter of the island, what’s stopping us from reclaiming whatever we can, or until we hit Indonesia? … We could build enclaves: miniature Sydneys, Londons, New Yorks, Batu Pahats, whatever. Stayers can stay put on Singapore Major; quitters don’t even have to surrender their CPF to hit Reclaimed Singapore for a taste of life on the other side. (Vol. 7 No. 24 Sep 6-19 2002)
Even as we speak, the new Singapore has chalked up many successes. We have recently set many world records: for the longest stick of satay, the longest popiah, the largest mountain of bak changs, the longest chain of used brassieres.… These are not achievements to be sneezed at. Rather, they demonstrate the determination of Singaporeans to achieve something monumental and significant in the history of mankind. They make a difference. (Vol. 8 No. 24 Aug 1-14 2003)
Fine, fine, fine. We certainly support everyone’s right to have their own beliefs and make their own choices regarding personal behavior. But it’s ironic that the virginity bandwagon is taking hold in Singapore, where a public movement saying there should be less sex is sort of like a public movement in Bollywood saying there should be more song-and-dance numbers packed into every Shah Rukh Khan movie. We already rank near the bottom of the Durex Global Sex Survey (on average, bonking a lowly 96 times a year)—and for years have been told we need to reverse declining birth rates and do something about all those older single women who seem to be perfectly happy with their lifelong, committed, monogamous careers. (Issue 201 Dec 20-Jan 2 2003)
Exhibit C: Another scientist added Viagra to a vase of wilting flowers — they stood upright for seven days longer than they should have. Singapore version: Maybe they should try this experiment to keep people awake at the next feedback dialogue.
(Issue 231 Nov 19-Nov 25 2004)
It’s the New Year, and we would like to take this opportunity to wish all our readers a very happy and joyous one. Of course, you realize that we are just being polite in doing this. In reality, we see very little hope of the New Year being either very happy or very joyous. This is due in large part to the emergence in Singapore of a new species of humans that makes cooperation and consideration impossible (even in principle). This new species of human is the Solipsist. What is a Solipsist? She (to be understood as including he) is someone who believes she is the only person that exists. In colloquial terms, she believes in “me only.” This must be clearly distinguished from the “ugly Singaporean,” who believes merely in “me first.” (Issue 238 Jan 14-20 2005)
Singaporeans’ notoriety for being bo chap (“disengaged” in Hokkien) from their work apparently has some form of psychological basis. … Says Dr. Bruce Avolio, the main author of the study, “If people don’t feel like they are using their best skills; if their strengths are not developed and their views not heard, they will switch off and channel their energies elsewhere. … We did our own informal (unscientific) poll and found that another reason for Singapore workers’ seeming bo chap-ness is that they are loathe to raise criticisms about (flawed) systems (and behavior) in the workplace for fear of being blackmarked by their Singaporean bosses. Hence, their open-armed acceptance of mediocrity. (Issue 241 Feb 4-17 2005)
Fast forward to day six. Guv thinks, “We need to take a (somewhat) calculated risk so Paradise stays ahead of the game. I will create a casino and it will have bright lights, rolling dice and, oh, also do great things for our bottom line.” Man and Woman are silent. They think, “We are mere mortals. We don’t think we have what it takes to withstand this evil temptation. We don’t even have any clothes for crying out loud!” In his omniscience, Guv reads their thoughts and declares in a booming voice, “Trust in me to safeguard the long term interests of yourselves and Paradise!! I know what is best for you, my children!!!” On the seventh day, Guv creates a gambling rehab center. (Issue 246 Mar 18-24 2005)
Old people are clumsy. Old people are more prone to falling ill. Old people are more expensive to hire. Old people cannot keep up with technology. Old people are stubborn. … Young people are inexperienced. … Young people are impatient. … Young people are easily distracted. … Young people are rude. … Since both Singapore’s old and young people are not fit for employment, we recommend that the entire economy of Singapore be outsourced. (Issue 249 Apr 8-14 2005)
Naturally, no one from the gathering is willing to spill the beans on what they came up with. However, our infallible psychic futurologists managed to have a few Christmas visions of what is to come. … It’ll be a blue Christmas for some careless speakers. … Some people will be dreaming of a white outcome. Many will sing: Let me vote! Let me vote! Let me vote! … Oh what fun it is, to win a one horse open race. (Issue 286 Dec 23-Jan 5 2006)
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TIME FLIES when you’re having fun … or even what passes for fun in Singapore. And so it is with mild amazement (and sometimes amusement) that we have dusted off the archives, plowed through old copies covered in mold and Cheez-Wiz, and put together this retrospective issue which looks back at 10 years of I-S Magazine—the people, the places, the events, the restaurants, the nightspots, the issues and the trends that have shaped our lives, defined our culture, made us happy and driven us crazy.Think about it.
Think you’re so smart, Sudoko-head? Take this quiz and find out.The biggest problem facing Thailand today is:a. No one qualified to lead the country after Thaksin.b. No one remembers what all that trouble in the South is about.c. Protests forcing cancellation of really good sales.d. Food safety / Tamarine’s slump (tie)The biggest problem facing Thaksin today is:a. Self-esteem issues stemming from being called “squarehead.”b. Ungrateful former envoys.c. People telling him what to read.d. Not being able to shop in Soi Lalaisap.Which of the following is not a nickname for the caretaker PM:a.
Dear Loong Maew,Hi! How are u? Do u remember me? Im Daeng, 7. I have been waching u a lot on TV, like befor. But now I can c u at home becaus u are not ownlee on UBC. U are on evree chanel evree day now, and in the newspaper my Dad reads, 2. I think u are even more famous than Tata! Thats so kool! I told my Dad this and he said OK but u arent as smart as Tata. 555. My Dad is so funee!Sorry, but I get confuse again. U said that u are a "simbol of democrasee." Did somethin happen 2 the Democrasee Monumen on Rachadamnoen Avenew? I think that must be near your hous in Bangkok, right?
Good morning, class.(A chorus of voices): “Good mor-ning, tea-cher!”It’s so nice to see so many familiar faces today—and such stylish headbands! You know I also “(heart) Thaksin.”Just to make sure none of you are in the wrong place, this is the songwriting class for Thai Rak Thai candidates and would-be members of the Constitution Court. Usually at least one of the students from the tax law seminar ends up here by mistake. Not today?
So what do you make of all this? Are we witnessing democracy in action—or, to steal from Jon Stewart, democracy inaction? First he said he wouldn’t; then he did. First he said “never!”; now he’s saying “maybe.” Who knows what will happen tomorrow.No one loves long-shot predictions and unsubstantiated speculation more than us, so how ‘bout this one: For as long as we can remember, Dr. T has been expressing admiration for the Singapore model (to the point that you might have thought he was trying to butter them up before a big sale or something).So let’s say our Beloved Leader steps down.
Yes, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, it is once again time to test your knowledge of current events with a brain-twisting, spine-tingling news quiz. And you thought the Rubik’s Cube was challenging….Why was Bangkok Governor Apirak Kosayodhin’s pet project, the Bus Rapid Transit service, shelved?a. Cops didn’t see any money in it.b. Government didn’t see any money in it.c. Apirak admitted to have never actually ridden on a bus.d. It didn’t sound very good when written out in full.In addition to being advisor to Thaksin Shinawatra, Suvarn Valaisathien is the author of which books:a.
It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas, what with all the goodies that were handed out last week to the old, the young, the poor, the sick, the under-paid, the under-educated and the over-worked in the 2006 Singapore budget. Problem is, this isn’t December–it’s February. All we can say is that it’s starting to sound a lot like election season, with bureaucratic cheer being spread among a plump electorate to get everyone in a nice, rosy mood. We’re not complaining, mind you—everybody likes a freebie. And with the budget showing surpluses, hey, why not share the wealth?
