Food court screamer Alice Fong vs the internet

Hi there, I've just returned from Lithuania and as you can imagine, there's a lot of catching up to do after having been away for a while. However, there was one story that caught my attention even whilst I was in Lithuania - I do follow my Facebook feeds and there was one story in Singapore that so many of my friends were talking about, that is of the nasty woman Alice Fong who first screamed at a deaf and mute cleaner then berated the manager of a deaf and mute cleaner at a food court for over 20 minutes and was filmed doing so (see video below). When the story went viral on social media, she has gotten really defensive about what happened, threatening to sue Netizens for harassing her.

Oh really Alice. Bring it on bitch. That's right you big fat ugly bitch. Bring it on. Limpeh is in England, so what the fuck are you going to do to me you fat ugly bitch? Sue me in London? Bring it on, I say, Limpeh is challenging you. Loads has been said already about this story - there will be various hyperlinks posted throughout this blog post for you to read all about it. I will make a series of points about how I feel about such a situation and yes, I think it is deplorable of her to verbally someone who is deaf and mute. I'm about to give her a taste of her own medicine - Limpeh style. I'm a lot more articulate, eloquent and well-educated than Alice Fong and I don't mind stooping to her level, it will be so fun.

What's the point of yelling at a deaf person?

1. The passive Singaporean who films but doesn't intervene.

On one hand, I am glad that someone did capture the incident on film - but what is it with Singaporeans who will gladly stand back and film something like that on their phones but cannot be asked to intervene? This has happened in the past  (such as that MRT incident which I talked about on my blog as well) and if I had been there, I would have stepped in to try to reason with this woman. I have done so in the past in Singapore when I witnessed a Singaporean being extremely rude with a member of staff at the Singapore Zoo and I felt frustrated that amongst a crowd of so many people (a mix of Singaporeans and foreign tourists) I was the only one who had the balls to stand up to a rude teenage girl (who must have been about 15 or 16 years old). Good grief. What were you people afraid of? Oh yeah, I scolded her parents too - when you see such rude children, you blame the parents.

Let me tell you about an incident I witnessed in Kaunas, Lithuania when I was there. I was in a park when I witnessed an accident. A young girl had ran into a cycle path, causing an accident. The cyclist served and braked suddenly, causing the man to lose his balance and crash. Immediately, the mother of the girl ran to the girl to see if she was alright whilst many of us ran to the man to see how badly hurt he was. As I looked towards the girl, two members of the public were already scolding the mother for not keeping an eye of her children and one of them told the girl that she needed to apologize to the cyclist. Now my Lithuanian is very limited, but I understood that the mother was guilty of looking down on her phone instead of keeping an eye on her children playing - so the two members of the public were berating the mother for her lack of parenting skills. That's what happens in other countries - people are not afraid to intervene and talk. Had the incident happened in Singapore, I seriously doubt anyone would have intervened at all.

When I was in Kaunas, Lithuania, last week.

2. "The manager is handling the situation."

An excuse which had been given by one of the witnesses at the food court was that the manager was on hand and seemed to be 'handling the situation'. Thus they did not intervene, as the matter was taken care of by a member of staff. However, I do feel very sorry for the poor manager who was at the receiving end of Alice Fong's outburst because there was only so much he could do - he couldn't just tell her to shut the fuck up or fuck off because he is after all, at work. He too would have a boss who would expect him to deal with the customer no matter how unreasonable she was. We don't know how the manager's boss would have reacted if Alice Fong had escalated the matter and complained further about the incident - what we have witnessed was a poor manager trying hard to contain the situation. Like I said, if I had been there, I would have stepped in to help him tell Alice Fong to go fuck herself with a big durian. Oh believe you me, I have never hesitated from telling off idiots like that.

But what is it with Singaporeans who simply expect these people like the manager to handle such situations, without even trying to offer any kind of help? Are they genuinely afraid of Alice Fong - like is she that scary? Or are they plain selfish and do not want to get involved? Or do they expect the manager to deal with crap like that as part of his job - he's being paid to deal with unreasonable cunts like Alice Fong whilst members of the public are not? What is it about the Singaporean mentality that always defaults to people in any kind of position of authority, rather than trying to take any kind of initiative when presented with a situation like that in real life? What has caused this problem in Singapore?

Why didn't those around her intervene? What were they thinking?

3. You want five star service? Go to a nice restaurant. 

Alice Fong kicked up a big fuss about the man who tried to clear her dishes away before she had finished her food. Where did she think she was, a five-star restaurant? You're in a fucking food court for crying out aloud. What did you expect, five-star VIP treatment from elegantly dressed waitresses? If you want that kind of dining experience, there are plenty of restaurants in Singapore which do offer not just exquisite food, but the finest service. But with that kind of five-star service comes a five-star price tag. If you are too cheap to go to such a fine restaurant, then by all means eat at a food court but don't complain when you don't get five-star service. You get what you pay for: you wanna be treated like royalty, then you jolly well go to an expensive restaurant and pay for that kind of service.

4. Excuses rather than apology

Now Alice Fong claimed that it was her cold and flu medication which caused her to "not think straight" as the "chemicals have affected her". OMFG. She talks like a ten year old kid, make that a fucking stupid ten year old kid - you know, the kind of dumbfuck who has no chance of passing her PSLE. The most common side effects of cold and flu medicines is to cause drowsiness and sleepiness - that is why some cold and flu medicines come with a warning not to drive or operate machinery after taking the medicine. Cold and flu medicines do not cause you to become as agitated and aggressive as Alice Fong had behaved in the food court - in fact, they would have had the opposite effect on her if she was really affected by the medication. Alice Fong - your excuses do not make sense, not unless you drank ten cans of Red Bull to treat your fatigue, then perhaps that may have caused you to turn very aggressive.

Alice Fong is still trying to deflect blame at this stage.

In a court of law, when you present any kind of evidence or defence to a judge, the judge would verify if that evidence/defence/excuse makes any sense. If a judge heard Alice Fong's excuse, he would have dismissed it as not credible - any pharmacist or doctor will confirm that. This is medical science 101.Whilst Alice Fong is not actually on trial for what she did, the fact that she offered a lousy excuse that makes not only makes her look like a total idiot, but it shows that she is unrepentant for her outburst at the food court. As adults, we should always take responsibility for our actions - only immature children trying to find silly excuses to avoid taking any blame.  Furthermore, it has emerged that Alice Fong and her husband are petty criminals who have established quite a routine for fleecing tuition teachers and estate agents - so if you want to go down this route of criminality, then I would have at least expected someone like her to have come up with a more convincing excuse than blaming her cold and flu medicine. Please lah Alice, if you're not smart enough to lie convincingly, then don't try to be a criminal. Aiyoh. Like seriously.

5. 平生不做亏心事，半夜敲门不吃惊!

Let's not lose perspective on the issue here - what Alice Fong did at that food court was despicable, but it was not criminal. Immoral perhaps, but not illegal. However, all this media attention did uncover a long list of other petty crimes that they have committed over the years - these have been clearly catalogued in a piece written on Alvinology. Their attempts at fraud have not been that successful - especially since estate agents around Singapore have already blacklisted them and circulated photos of them as petty fraudsters after a free meal. Their attempts at cheating parents of a month's fee in swimming lessons and tuition fees is hardly lucrative as they may have at best pocketed a few hundred dollars - oooh, hardly enough for them to run away to Brazil and buy that luxury villa on Copacabana beach. Besides, such attempts at fraud can only be attempted at best a few times, because Singaporeans who have been cheated aren't just going to walk away quietly - they have kicked up quite a fuss about it and with all this attention on Alice Fong and her husband Steven Chong, they have dug up all so many of these sordid tales of their dirty deeds.

Netizens have dug up a lot of dirt on Alice Fong and her husband.

If you were to look at what they have done in the past, quite frankly, losing her temper at the food court totally pales in comparison with some of the awful crimes they have committed in the past. What I see are two people aspiring to be criminals, but who are simply not educated and clever enough to attempt anything more sophisticated than their pathetic attempts at fraud. What we have found out is only from the people whom they have successfully cheated? Do these two actually have a criminal record? How much more dirt will we find on these two if we go on digging? Given how unsophisticated their attempts at fraud have been, I won't be surprised if they have actually been arrested and dealt with by the criminal justice system. As the Chinese saying goes: 平生不做亏心事，半夜敲门不吃惊 and in the case of Alice Fong, if you have a criminal past, you would want to keep a low profile and not draw attention to yourself like this. Unless you do not use social media at all, we all have an internet footprint, so it is always easy for people to hunt you down if you do something really despicable. This is 2016 after all; seriously, what did you expect?

6. The link to the PAP and allegations of being a PA grassroots leader

As this story developed, there was a rumour that Alice Fong was actually a PAP grassroots leader - this was based on photos found on social media about her being present at various grassroots events, posing with Nee Soon MP Lee Bee Wah. At this point, I actually feel sorry for MP Lee because she can't actually say no when some stranger wants to take a selfie with her - but when that stranger turns out to be Alice Fong, then you are forced to distance yourself from her in a polite manner. MP Lee couldn't just say, "this xiao char boh wanted to take a selfie with me, I cannot just push her away right? I bo pien let her take selfie loh, I am MP what. I have no idea whom she is, please don't associate me with her." Netizens have actually found Facebook posts where MP Lee had posted comments on Alice Fong's Facebook photos - there are even photos circulating on social media, showing MP Lee embracing, hugging Alice Fong - they appear to be friends. So it seems that whilst Alice Fong wasn't a PA grassroots leaders as originally alleged, she was at the very least, active in her local PAP grassroots activities and fraternized closely with her PAP MP.

Why would a criminal like Alice Fong want to get close to the PAP?

Many netizens on social media did go out of their way to attack her because of this PAP link which turned out to be tenuous at best in the end, but nonetheless, this still raises many questions. Why are people so keen to heap their anger and hatred on her once this PAP link was mentioned? Is this the tip of the iceberg about the anti-PAP sentiment? Would they have felt less angry, if say, she was an SDP or WP supporter? More to the point, I wonder what Alice Fong was hoping to gain from taking part in these PA/RC activities - special favours from her local MP perhaps? Someone as uneducated and unsophisticated as her couldn't possibly have any political ambitions in a place like Singapore. I don't doubt the fact that she has indeed contributed her time and effort in some of the activities organized by those grassroots organisations - so what was her ulterior motive then? Given that she has proven to be a petty criminal who scams people for a few hundred bucks at a time, it certainly wasn't altruism. Was this some kind of 放长线钓大鱼 scheme, a long con involving getting chummy with people in power? Who knows? Given how uneducated she is, I doubt she is capable of anything that sophisticated, but the problem with people like Alice Fong is that she probably doesn't realize how stupid she is. Perhaps you have heard of this saying: when you're dead, you don't know you're dead but everyone around you notices. It is the same when you're stupid. #obliviousduh The same way she probably looks into the mirror and doesn't realize how incredibly fat she is, which brings me to my next point.

7. Is it ever okay to bully fat people? 

Look, this was a story about food. A food court cleaner tried to clear a fat woman's food before she was finished, she got very upset about it when most of us would just let the matter go. Now I bemoan the lack of sophistication in the way Singaporeans have attacked Alice Fong on the internet - it seems like the majority of the comments were about her weight, the fact that she was fat and ugly, that she was morbidly obese. Her behaviour at the food court was offensive, but what has this got to do with her waistline or BMI? I had a good read of the comments left on social media - most of the jokes were about her relationship with food - "never get between a hungry fat woman and her food during mealtimes or you will face her wrath." Others have picked up on the fact that her husband is actually rather thin, which meant that Alice Fong the glutton probably ate most of the food at home, leaving her husband just scraps and bones to survive on. But not all fat people should be bullied, indeed, whilst what Alice Fong did was certainly wrong, shouldn't we be berating her for her beavhiour, rather than her waistline? Why are we obsessed with the fact that she is indeed, morbidly obese? After all, Singapore has an obesity epidemic, she's hardly the only fat person in town.

It is a cheap shot to make fun of someone's weight. It's not a particularly clever way to criticize someone but it is certainly very effective because we all care about our appearances. Netizens (like myself) reacted angrily and one way we can make Alice Fong feel pain is by making fun of her obesity. It is a desire motivated by revenge: Alice Fong went out of her way to scream and shout at this cleaner and his supervisor - we want to give her a taste of her own medicine by mocking her, belittling her and making her feel as wretched as possible through cyber-bullying. People are taking matters into their own hands as they don't expect justice to happen any other way. Okay, I have made plenty of cheap jokes at her weight myself (though I admit, I am merely recycling what I have read on social media), but I can fully understand why people want to hurt Alice Fong this way. What she did was very bad and very wrong, we are hoping that in a small way, by giving her a taste of her own medicine, it would deter her (and others like her) from bullying others in the future. By that token, yeah it's okay to make fun of her. But I'm not done yet. Oh no. Far from it.

8. What about the husband then? What's going on? 

As you can see in the video, it was Alice Fong shouting. She had demanded that her husband go bring back the cleaner for her to scold, instead he returned with the manager and she proceeded to scold the manager (details are provided here). What was her husband doing then? What was he thinking? If he agreed with her, why didn't he back her up by dealing with the cleaner and the supervisor as well? If someone has done something really bad to upset your wife, wouldn't you do something about it rather than let her deal with it herself? Or if he didn't agree with her, why didn't he stop her making such a scene then? Instead, he sat impassively and did nothing after having been ordered around by his wife - probably because he knew nothing he said or did would have made the slightest bit of difference if Alice Fong was on the warpath. This tells us that he is probably totally hen-pecked in this relationship, not only does she eat all the food but she also gets to boss him around 24-7. Perhaps he was relieved that she was shouting at someone else, anybody else but him. He may be the husband, but she's the one in charge in this relationship. One does wonder what he gets out of a relationship like that - maybe he has a fetish for very fat women. Look it up on Google - people have fetishes for all kinds of weird shit. But whom am I to judge what another man finds attractive?

Alice Fong on the warpath - stand back!

9. Is this lynch mob (ironically) hope for Singapore?

Perhaps in a strange way, the internet lynch mob baying for Alice Fong's blood is hope for Singapore. After all, Singapore is hardly a compassionate place: maids and other foreign workers are treated like crap, with such disdain from Singaporeans who think they are superior. Even Singaporeans treat other Singaporeans like crap, when they think that they are somehow superior and entitled to abuse them. Singaporeans like Alice Fong treating those in the service sector like crap is nothing new at all. For all the years of the courtesy campaign, Singaporeans are actually shocking rude and selfish - anyone who has ever lived in the West will realize just how much more polite white people in the West are compared to your average Singaporean. It is only the huge number of even more obscenely rude PRCs amongst your midst that convince you that Singaporeans are relatively less rude in comparison. As we say in Chinese, 新加坡人不只没礼貌, 他们没有风度 (Singaporeans are not just rude, they lack social graces.) It is one thing to try to teach someone to be polite, it is another to create a society where social graces are the norm (such as in countries like Japan). As it is, Singapore still has a rather long way to go before we get there.

Thus in that context, I had expected most Singaporeans to simply ignore the plight of this poor deaf and mute cleaner in the food court because of his relatively low social status - but no, so many people have been angered by what Alice Fong did that they went out of their way to berate her, punish her, teach her a lesson, show her that what she did was wrong. People actually cared - and that's a good sign. Maybe Singaporeans are not that selfish after all. The deaf and mute cleaner has already received job offers from other caring Singaporeans. So really, it is not all bad news after all! Whilst I am still disappointed that no one actually intervened at the food court when the incident actually happened, I am glad that people are taking notice, standing up and saying something online, rather than just ignoring it. Nonetheless, this is hardly the first time that something like that has happened, which brings me onto my next point.

Can I see hope amongst all this anger?

10. So you went after Alice Fong, but what about people like Nancy Gan?

Just last month in Singapore, Indonesian maid Dewi Sukowati was jailed 18 years for the murder of her employer Nancy Gan - you can read the details of the case here. But in short, Gan was a psycho-bitch from hell who physically abused her maid from day one for the most minor mistakes and on day six of her employment, after Gan had hit her on the head with a tray, Sukowati snapped under duress and slammed Gan's head against the wall, a series of actions then followed which led to the eventual death of Gan. On the surface, Gan was a socialite to the rest of Singapore: she was known for her work as a porcelain artist and charity work. But in private, she was nothing short of a beast who took sadistic pleasure in beating up her maid. How many such evil crimes has she committed before she was killed? Did the prosecution actually bother interviewing former maids/employees of Gan? 

I felt disappointed by the verdict where Sukowati was sentenced to 18 years in jail - personally, I would have been satisfied with nothing less than a total acquittal and for the maid to be sent home to Indonesia for Gan was nothing short of evil and Sukowati had acted in self-defence under extreme conditions. Sukowati had done Singaporean society a favour by her actions - but there is a huge difference between Gan and Fong. I don't doubt that both Singaporean women are evil, nasty pieces of work: the only difference is that Gan was smart enough to present a very classy image to the media, presenting herself as a socialite and philanthropist whilst carrying out her evil deeds in private. When photographed for society magazines, she always looked immaculate and stylish. Fong on the other hand, is morbidly obese: netizens have been laughing at the unflattering photos of Fong that have been circulating on social media - these are photos that Fong had happily shared on Facebook, The fact that she is so fat has made those photos somehow embarrassing and shameful for her. Unlike Gan, Fong is also not well educated or articulate: she doesn't know how to defend herself in light of all this media attention. But just how different are these two women?

Where is the justice in all of this then? Isn't that what we all want?

Gan was protected by her wealth and high status; if Alice Fong and her husband had any wealth to speak of, they wouldn't be attempting to cheat people of a few hundred dollars here and there. Gan would have probably spent a few hundred dollars on a meal or pair of theater tickets - yet for Alice Fong and her husband, gaining a few hundred dollars from fraud was worth the risk of getting arrested and sent to jail. That tells you on more thing about Alice Fong and husband - they are not only poor, but desperately so. Thus in this context, sure it is easy to go after someone like Alice Fong: she is rather stupid, poor, morbidly fat, has a pathetic track record of petty crime and is a rather easy target for those of you who wish to indulge in some cyber-bullying. In a sense, those of us doing this kind of cyber-bullying (or online vigilante justice) are going for the easy target because it is an easy win. But what about people like Nancy Gan then, who are a lot harder to go after? Why was the story about Nancy Gan's murder largely ignored by social media, but everyone jumped onto the Alice Fong bandwagon within hours? Why are we all simply going after the easiest, weakest target and ignoring the harder, stronger ones? And looking to the future, when this story dies down (eventually), what lessons can we learn from it to make our society a better place for all of us?

So that's it from me on this story. I'm sorry it has taken me a while to get this out as it is a complex story and I've only just returned from my long trip to Lithuania. I'm sure my readers have plenty to say about this whole sorry episode, so I invite you, as always, to leave a comment below and let me know what you think please. Many thanks for reading.