"No," I said, responding quickly in case he took my order for that and started at making an awful cup of coffee. "Coke. Ke le."

It was "ke le" that did it. He finally understood.

I was at a coffee shop for my dinner. I had just ordered my shrimp dumpling noodles, and was at the drinks counter to get my shot of empty calories, otherwise known as a soft drink.

In a coffee shop, I would mostly use Chinese, but this guy behind the counter was young, bespectacled and smartly-dressed. Perhaps the son of the proprietor, I would have thought. At around 25, I subconsciously expected that he would have gone through our English-language school system. So why didn't he understand "Coca-cola"? Why did he only understand the Chinese name for the product?

"Are you from China?" I asked him in Chinese, mindful to say it with a smile, in case he took my curiosity the wrong way.

"Yes," he replied. "That's why I wasn't familiar with the name."

"Oh, that's of no consequence," I reassured him.

Demographic change mostly happens under the radar. Migrant numbers increase through tiny, imperceptible steps. Changes to our cultural and linguistic landscape likewise takes place so gradually, we seldom see the processes at work.

To be frank, the above incident was not the first time I have encountered such a situation. Plenty of food outlets nowadays hire staff from China, The difference perhaps was that in most instances, I could spot them. There would usually be something about their looks, complexion or the way they dressed that told me they weren't Singaporean Chinese.

But this guy completely fooled me. He was tanned, with a smart polo shirt and bespectacled, like most Singaporeans. This guy was assimilating into the Singapore mix, yet in the process, he was also nudging our linguistic landscape towards Chinese, for I can anticipate that from now on, I am going to subconsciously adapt. I can see myself slightly less likely to be asking for "Coca-cola" at food outlets, and slightly more likely to open with "ke le". To save time and trouble.

Repeated numerous times in countless numbers of people, such instances will shift, not just the way we refer to a product, but our choice of language when we open our mouths.

Who knows where this will lead? Fifty years down the road, with China as the primary economic power in Asia, Singapore may well be a primarily Chinese-speaking city.

I'm lucky. The queue at the supermarket check-out counter is short; I'm only 4 persons back.

Of the 4 persons, the second one caught my eye. She was obese, morbidly obese. No more than 1.6 metres tall, her hips must have been 0.8 metre wide. Her arms, instead on hanging vertically down, rested on so much fat around her chest that they stuck 45 degrees out, making her look even wider.

Folds of fat flopped over her elbows and ankles. Keeping her hair long -- below the shoulder -- did nothing to counter the fact that there was no more neck.

Like the rising numbers of migrants living in Singapore, the rising incidence of obesity has also snuck up on us with little fanfare.

(And I should stop drinking Coca-cola too).

What I saw is no longer all that exceptional. I'm sure most of my Singaporean readers have seen such individuals at least once within the last week. Some of these affected persons are teenagers -- I just saw a secondary schoolgirl yesterday who must have been over 100 kg with thighs as wide as my mop pail.

Is it just bad diet? Is it a lifestyle that includes virtually no physical activity? We mostly think so, but there's been a curious new report that gross obesity may be the result of a viral infection that screws up the way the body metabolises food.

Whatever the cause, we really should do something about it. This phenomenon has appeared so quickly -- within the last 10 years -- I shudder to think what the average Singaporean will look like another 10 years hence.

The social and medical cost is going to be huge. And then there are costs we hardly know how to count: When it was her turn to pay, the supermarket customer had to squeeze herself into the check-out aisle. It was a tight fit. Too tight, in fact. Those arms that stuck 45 degrees out knocked over the candies and mints that were displayed beside the check-out.

Needless to say, she couldn't bend down to pick them up (and nobody was going to crawl under her to pick them up either). In fact she walked over the candies, squashing some of them underfoot. Now, who was going to pay for that?

To avoid a repeat of that situation, are supermarkets going to have wider check-out aisles? Perhaps rearrange the space to have 4 wider aisles instead of 6 narrow ones? If so, with fewer aisles, would there be longer queues? Who pays for the time we all spend queuing?

Hady Mirza

Obesity has real costs, for all of us. We must do something about it now.

The finals of the 'Live the dream' contest will be next Wednesday, the TV on the bus blared out. There'd be 2 finalists in the solo singing section and 2 groups in the groups section.

It wasn't hard to notice. All the contestants were male -- both the soloists and all the members of the 2 groups. There was no female in the lineup.

I was reminded of how both times we had the Singapore Idol contest, we had all-male finals. In 2004, Taufik Batisah beat Sylvester Sim. In 2006, Hady Mirza beat Jonathan Leong.

Even in the Chinese version of this kind of singing contest, on both occasions when Project Superstar was held, the winners were male. Kelvin Tan Wei Lian won in 2005 and Daren Tan Sze Wei took the prize in 2007.[1]

What are the odds of such a royal flush? Assuming that entrants were equally split between male and female, having eventual male winners in 6 contests in a row [2] should, statistically, be around 1.5%.

Kelvin Tan, the winner of Project Superstar 2005, is blind

It seems rather significant, then, that we have the pattern we have. What are the factors at work? It beats me. One possibility, of course, is that in Singapore, singing may be seen more as a male sport. They just get more practice in karaoke bars and the like, or they get more paid engagements to sing at clubs and various functions.

Another is that these shows are mostly followed by young female fans, who do the bulk of the telephone voting. I recall seeing a comment somewhere that said this was true of American Idol.

Sex appeal may be an important factor; if so, a bias would clearly exist against female contestants. To overcome the numerical inferiority of the male voting base, female contestants would have to do much more to get their male fans to vote enthusiastically for them. Perhaps they'd need a wardrobe malfunction?

© Yawning Bread