Recently i got dragged by my parents to a Chap Goh Meh dinner. It was actually a charity dinner hosted by the Holy Spirit Cathedral in order to raise funds for the building of the Sungai Ara Divine Mercy Church.

I had earlier indicated that I was not interested in going, but my parents had anyhow bought a ticket for me, which resulted in:

A desperate attempt to sell the ticket

Having no luck with selling the ticket, I found myself transported there around 6.30. The whole place was by then fully packed. My seat was next to the main aisle, and my chair became a punching bag for all the human traffic moving around.

After slacking my way through a typical 8 course chinese dinner, (It was not bad, but not as good as the one I had at Raffles Town Club, SG!), the real fun began.

The first performer of the night was Dato’ Leonard Tan. Most of us may not heard of him before, but he is actually the producer of about 50%  of RTM’s advertisments. He sang, did stand-up comedies and impersonated celebrities like Louis Armstrong and Bee Gees.

Dato' Leonard Tan

After that, Francesca Peters also sang a few songs, and then it was the Phua Chu Kang hour!

Note: Its, really, Phua Chu Kang, not an impersonator or something

Phua Chu Kang!

I will not attempt to reproduce the jokes he has said, because the way he said them, the cadence, the parlance, are beyond the constraints of the written word. Indeed, nothing will do justice for his sense of humour.

Phua Chu Kang was nothing short of hilarious; being explosively loud and rude, yet never failing to tickle everyone’s mouths to the extent of filling the hall with a solid 60 minutes of laughter. The sight of a homo sapien with curly hair, and a pair of yellow boots stomping around the stage while scratching his chest, would surely amuse even an alien.

After going through quite a few of his trademark jokes, Phua Chu Kang decided to sing! Immediately there seemed to be collective sound of dread from everyone in the hall. Nobody believed that PCK could sing properly.

But we were all wrong.

His singing voice was totally different from his normal tone. Mandy by Scott English was rendered by him in perfect vocals.

After that song, he decided to walk down the main aisle, touring the floor. As luck would have it, the seat next to me was empty, and PCK jumped right on the chair and started singing a chinese love song! I was 20 cm away from his pair of yellow boots and that mess of curly hair on his head.

Close up shot of PCK's yellow boots!

Phua Chu Kang Cam-whoring

From that close encounter I learned 2 things:

1. PCK’s yellow boots are not really that clean. (Note the black scratch marks visible in the photo.)
2. PCK’s lips are thicker than Cien Zen’s.

Happy Chap Goh Meh!