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“Are you sure you don’t need to take off your jacket? I’m asking for personal driving force Henry Ho Kum Kong.
Or we’re on the roof of a two-story car parking lot in Ang Mo Kio, cooking the reflections of the afternoon sun.
Ho, dressed in what can only be described as Singapore kitsch: a red-white blouse and trousers paired with a pair of red loafers; a bright red blazer adorned with stars, rhinestones and charreteras larger than my face, denies with my head decisively.
No, says the 64-year-old man, insisting he’s happy to use it.
Ho’s car is a sight to behold.
The blue-green Toyota Altis is covered with stickers of hearts and stars, the Singapore flag and this year’s National Day Parade logo; stickers on his boot shout “HAPPY SINGAPORE HAPPY DAY.
Singaporeans will have to play their component in the decoration (in addition to hanging the Singapore flag) and celebrate the national holiday, he says, and not leave the ornament to the government.
After seeing a taxi in 2008 covered with National Day stickers and wondered if I could do anything similar.
So when 2009 came, Ho decorated his then-Prime taxi with the National Day decals given out by petrol stations and since then, has never looked back.
“By doing this, I’m also showing other people how we can celebrate the national holiday in a different way.”
It costs more than $1000 S
Celebrating the national holiday is an expensive matter. For Ho, you can charge more than S$1000.
Your coat and suit (which are of their own design, by the way) cost around S$200. Decals and decals for your car between S$300 and S$500.
The festivities don’t stop with Ho’s car. Whenever it arrives on August 1, it also distributes mini Singapore flags to its passengers. You will pay S$300 for 1000 mini flags a year.
“I give them to everyone: children, adults, foreigners and tourists,” Ho says, adding that he even distributed flags to migrants on the sites of the structures.
“The whole organization is waiting for the bus, so I give it to him and then we take a picture. I give it to the mrT, too.”
You’re a patriot from Singapore: this is the ultimate non-unusual reaction from other people who get Ho’s flags.
“Then I say I’m not patriotic enough. You’ll have to be a patriot, too!” Ho laughs.
Has anyone ever told you that your whole outfit is too much?
“No, I don’t think so. It’s up to you. That’s what I have to do because I’m old, and I need to make it a legacy for myself and others,” he toys with his faux diamond-encrusted hat. .
Most Singaporeans are patriots, Ho says, but inside. This is not enough because you will have to express love.
“How do you show your love for your parents? You have to act, what. I can’t just say that I love my parents and yet never buy them cake, never buy them dinner, never buy clothes for them.”
He believes that decorating our houses as a net is a way to express this love for the country. In fact, in recent years, he had bought and hung the Singapore flag for each and every neighbor of his HDB block.
“I hold on to each of them because it’s my neighborhood. Besides, it’s at the crossroads, so wah, if you swee swee (very nice),” he smiles.
An interpreter at heart
The center and the hobby are what drives Ho and chase him, it is clear that his hobby is performance. As we speak, the boy makes loose gestures, as if the total roof parked his stage.
Ho says he participates in the realization of song contests organized through the center of the network, which actually took off in his last fifty.
“From young I love to sing but no chance. I was rejected all the time,” he says.
It was only at the age of 58 that he took back his first singing win — a small consolation prize. It convinced him that he actually had the chops for singing, so he hired vocal coaches and joined singing groups to improve his techniques. Four years later, he took home a championship prize.
“Wah, I felt good! It was what I was looking for and yet they gave it to me!” Radiates.
Ho is also proud to win the most productive dress awards in the song-making contests.
By his calculations, he has won this award 376 times. Ho doesn’t settle for the elegant, casual outfits that attract many artists. Instead, he likes to create characters for his songs and create costumes that make up those characters.
Once, before a competition, Ho shaved hair for Hope’s head. Immediately, he thought it would be a wonderful opportunity to play the role of a boy who lost love and chose to become a monk.
“I had to break my head to find out what songs could suit a monk and I discovered a song sung through this singer named Zhuang Xuezhong in Malaysia.”
Ho called the singer, arranged a meeting in Singapore, bought him the record and found out about the song. During the competition, Ho, talented for drama, took off his hat and threw it at the judges, exposing his bald head just before his song.
The judges went and asked him if he had shaved his head just to sing this song.
“Of course I said yes, lah, ” laughs Ho. And while he won brownie issues among the judges for that, Ho won fourth place.
“I like functionality better than the festival. I don’t care about the festival because, after all, the festival offers you a champion award or a comfort prize. The vital thing is that you can wear a dress that you do, which is what I want,” says Ho, who also plays for other old people with a group of songs.
The 64-year-old estimates that he still has four to five years left as a driving force for personal rental before embarking on his next adventure: making a song in China.
“When I was at a level in China, I looked through 1.4 billion people,” he laughs, estimating that the Chinese market has room for mature singers.
In fact, Ho went to a contest organized through a Chinese doing a songmate last year. It’s a “revealing” experience.
What did he take home from that trip?
“There’s something or someone better,” he says, adding that the contests of making a song in China are bigger and greater than you’ll ever delight in Singapore.
Success as a singer in China is a long possibility and Ho knows it. It doesn’t matter if he doesn’t make it, he says.
“The most vital thing is to faint and stand in front of China’s central television. How can you stand on the Mediacorp stage? It’s bad luck. Here you can spend cash and stand there and sing a song.”
“I can die happy 以 死 以 死 开, “adds.
When we finish our verbal exchange and Ho returns to his car, the rhinestones blink in the sun, I don’t forget anything our verbal exchange said. This screen-palpable pastime, whether on level or in the car, is what drives it every day.
“I’m 64 years old, how long can I live if I don’t do this? I’ll say it’s power that makes you live.”
We are definitely looking forward to Ho’s birthday tribute to Singapore in the years to come.
Stories of Us is a series about the other people of Singapore and the unique tactics in which they live their lives. Whether breaking with conventions, pursuing an atypical passion or the struggles they face, those stories remind us of our individual exclusivity and our collective humanity.