INTERVIEW WITH YEE KAM ONN, KING DRINKER AND WASTLINE EXPERT
By Sze Tho Kong Chian
(As many of you may not know, Yee Kam Onn and I are regular drinking partners at
some of the pubs near his office. In Seremban, he used to live over River Road
which was just only a stone throw away from Carew Street from my house, so we
are, in fact, bosom buddies from the same hellhole. Son of a carpenter, Kam Onn
has always been considered listless by those in ACS who did not know him. Nothing
is further from the truth. He is actually a very intelligent person with a very
knowledgeable outlook about life. Amongst his close friends, he is often considered
an expert on losing weight, beers and understanding women. In this article, listen to
what he has to say, and how he says it: you’ll soon understand how good he is in
savouring the finer points of life. To the uninitiated, especially beer drinkers, take
heed: he knows his beer stories better than any of you! )
“BEER is often the most misunderstood drink! It is dismissed by connoisseurs of fine
wines, champagnes, brandies, cognacs, and other distilled spirits as a beverage for
the common people,” alleged Kam Onn.
“Actually, only Kings drink beers in the olden days,” continued Kam Onn, as he
poured more into my cup. “Idiots who don’t know much about beers should shut up!”
“Why is that so? Kam Onn?” I was hoping I would not be one of those that had to
shut up. But since he was paying and I was drinking free, I had to pander to his
Lordship’s harsh tirade about uneducated beer drinkers.
“Well, Sze Tho, it is like this. Since beer first came into existence, beer has been one
of the most popular and most requested beverages.”
I said I knew that because it is my favourite drink too. There was nothing new in what
he said, I thought. Maybe this bloke is ranting over nothing after all. But I paused for
his Lordship as he gulped a whole cup straight in, as if he were a fish taking to water.
“History suggests that beer has been brewed for as long as civilization has been in
existence, dating back to at least 7,000 BC. In fact, the birth of beer was first
recorded in Sumeria, though many other civilizations of their day began to appreciate
the unique qualities of beer in and around about the same time.”
“So they were drinking all the time, these ancient buggers?” I asked to be sure.
“Of course, that’s why those stupid buggers were always fighting each other. It is the
same then and now. Only now, we fight after the football match, that’s all!” said an
excited voice.
“Oh,” I said, “I didn’t know that.” It then became obvious to me that Kam Onn had a
lot of knowledge about beers; I had always misunderstood him as being unintelligent
about anything, other than about women running around in tight skirts. Or no skirts.
Or no nothing.
“You know, Sze Tho, wherever man was, be it Asia, Africa, America, Europe or the
Middle East--the great civilizations—they all created some kind of brew that could
technically be called beer. Did you know that in Asia, people made beer with rice, in
America with corn, in Africa with millet and sorghum?”
‘Millet and sorghum?’ What are these, I thought to myself? Well, I’ll be damned if this
bugger does know a little more about beers than I credit him for. As he went on, I sat
back, this time to enjoy a good yarn from a raving beer worshipper.
“In fact, Sze Tho, beer was used by the first established cultures to denote civility and
distinction, and has always been attributed with both mystical and medicinal powers.
It was also once regarded as a divine fluid used to fill the holy grails at sacred
rituals.”
“Is that a fact, Kam Onn? And can you slow down on these high flowery words. You
making this topic too difficult for me to understand,” I pleaded. I have heard about
priests in US drinking at the altar, then screwing their choir boys but none drank beer
but wine. Maybe these scoundrels started with beer then but got civilized and high
class over the centuries and turned to wine instead.
“Let me make this easy for you to understand. Did you know that the first beer
makers were women and the first bar owners were women, too? Even the first gods
of beer were women, though a priestess who brewed beer was not permitted to
consume beer outside of religious ceremonies. And only priestess with large tits were
chosen, you know.”
My mind immediately flew back to faces like Cecelia Ong and Chan Siew Pheng.
How in the years, women had changed, if all this is true. If what he claimed was true,
then these two women had betrayed their own kind today. They are double crossing
snakes to their own gender and should deserve to be burnt as heretics.
But then can you imagine Cecelia or Siew Pheng dressed as Goddess and drinking
beer? That would choke the insides of me. Their mothers would have tore their hairs
off and be bald as eagles. Their boyfriends who believed in their purity would have all
committed themselves to standing near the cliffs of Dover and debated a chilly dive
down.
He continued. “In fact in ancient Egypt, beer was the solution for just about
everything; children were baptized in beer, wages and taxes were paid in beer, and
beer was even placed in the tombs of the dead in the belief that it would help them in
their passage to the next world!”
Now this information is out of this world! This was getting interesting, hearing all this
about beer from a beer guru, and not knowing anything about the origins of what I
had been drinking all these years. Why if it were all true I would surely like to pay my
taxes in the beer I vomit out to the Income Tax Department! That would have been a
wonderful feeling, paying taxes with my vomit.
“Sze Tho, did you know who held the highest ranking position in Egypt after the
Pharaoh?” Kam Onn poured me the question.
“The prime minister?” I asked.
“No you idiot, in Egypt then, where got Prime Minister! You blur like a sotong!”
“Can’t be the beer drinking priestess with tits?” I said. It would have been a disaster
for old Egypt if the second in command had beer and outsized tits. Then female
mummy coffins will all have provisions for huge hollow areas around the breast so
that these sacred tits will be able to breathe, even in death.
Can you imagine how crooked the pyramids would look like today if these big
breasted beer drinking women were whipping you as you were dragging those large
stones, and men were shouting, “more...more...please whip me some more?”
What’s more, if Moses (who was like a Prime Minister then) had beers for breakfast,
beers for lunch and beers for dinner? He would have thrown a bottle of beer on poor
Pharaoh’s floor and said, “Pharaoh let my People go!”
Pharaoh would probably have replied, “you are too damn drunk, Moses. You are
supposed to throw a staff or a stick, or something. Damn bottle of beer cannot
frighten me, you kernel!”
The Red Sea would never have parted then. The Jews would all have had their
history changed forever and now still be just slaves, over a bottle of beer.
But what if Pharaoh had also been drinking beer instead of wine? Well, I suppose he
would have imagined the bottle of beer to be a staff that turned into a snake and
history would have stayed intact. Such devious thoughts penetrated my tousled mind
but I was afraid lightning would strike from above, so I never allowed this thought to
be shared with my old friend, Kam Onn. I kept this wayward thought only to myself.
After all, as I remember it, Charlton Hesston was a teetotaler and never touched
beer, only hollow-headed women. So I kept quiet and allowed my friend to feed me
with his theory about old Egypt. He continued and I stayed silent. Who was the
second in command in Egypt if not Charlton Hesston?
“Well, it was the Chief Beer Inspector. He was a very important fella. Members of the
royal family, high-ranking officials and warriors all drank the best beers, while
common folk had to be content with the ‘less than perfect brew’. Such a glorified
beverage it was, that even the consumption of beer was rationed by social class.
Only high class people could drink the perfect brew like Carlsberg, for example. Bet
you didn’t know that?”
“You not bullshitting me with all this, Kam Onn are you?” as I looked him in the
eye. Obviously he was very comfortable with the subject.
“Unlike you Sze Tho who bullshits a lot, you know I never do.”
That comment hit me on the head like a hammer on a nail because it was the truth.
Usually it is I who would be bullshitting after a few cups of beers. Be it that Kam Onn
was holding up to his sixth glass—he was always able to balance his tongue and
liquor, you bet--he never bullshits when he drinks, unlike Sing Kow, Thai Seng or I for
that matter. The 3 of us are real bullshitters after beers, with Thai Seng being a class
of his own.
“Through the centuries, the love of beer has never wavered. As a matter of fact, great
chefs around the world have been cooking with beer longer than they have been with
wine. As a man once said, ‘Wine gentrifies, beer unifies’--so whether it's soups,
sauces, dressings, meats, fish or desserts, beer has been a culinary pleasure for as
long as humankind has been cooking. Many beer enthusiasts simply substitute beer
for wine in their favorite recipe,” went on an obviously half drunk Kam Onn by now.
This got to be true. The bloke does have a rhyme to his poetry and he was obviously
ranting a lot of information that made sense as I had read about that somewhere. All
my life I had mistaken him as merely the son of a carpenter. He was in reality, highly
educated--at least about beers.
“Let me tell you a bit more about the history of beer. In Europe, every country has its
signature beers and many a town are world renowned because of their brew. In
America, only the best brewers survived the toughest of times. The truth is today you
can't be a real country unless you have a beer and an airline; it helps if you have
some kind of a football team, or some nuclear weapons, but at the very least you
need a beer," declared Kam Onn.
Yes, yes all this makes sense. As a council member of the Asia Pacific Branding
Foundation, I understood him about national branding. A country without a brand is
like Helen of Troy without a thousand ships. Malaysia would be nothing if not for the
Twin Towers. Just imagined if we also have a beer...
“And now this, you probably won’t know too, Sze Tho. There are basically two types
of beer, ales or lagers. The difference is in the fermentation process. Lagers, such as
Tiger, are brewed using bottom fermentation yeast which works at low temperatures.
Whereas ales, which are generally stronger and more assertive in taste than lagers,
are fermented with top-fermenting yeast.”
I found the education about beer enlightening. And I understood yeast better than
most as I am also a baker. Back in those days, I used to bake a lot and yeast was the
magic trick in choc cookies to make them rise to the top.
Yet I was worried about Kam Onn as he took his eighth cup of Tiger. I was brought
up that drinking to excess is unacceptable. Like many Malaysians, I will go red in the
face whenever I so much as come within whiffing distance of a glass of brandy, and I
usually fall asleep after two glasses of wine. So I inquired of him, “Did you ever get
drunk, Kam Onn, did you? Tell me the truth?”
Not being a paragon of virtue, he laughed out loud. "Of course, I did. Well, as a
matter of fact, I had been drunk on too many occasions. I was young then and didn't
know my own limitations, but all it took was a few enormous hangovers to knock
some sense into me."
“So what do you do when you are drunk?” in curiosity I asked.
“When you are drunk or after you know you are drunk?”
“Whatever lah,” as though it mattered, I said. What an idiot question.
“On waking up, the first thing you will be aware of once the priceless boon of
consciousness has been restored to you will be all of the symptoms of an alcoholic
overdose. Don't panic. These symptoms will pass after about 12 hours.”
He took a large sip and continued.
“For the abstainer, a hangover is when your tongue tastes like a train-driver's glove.
Your stomach spins slowly on its axis and your head gently swells and contracts like
a jelly in a tideway. Bright lights hurt the eyes, and jeering, gibbering people from the
night before seem to whisper in your ears, and then fade with mocking horrible
laughter into silence. Your throat is cracked and parched like the bottom of an old
saucepan that has boiled dry. The next moment the symptoms change, and your
mouth is stuffed with warm cotton wool. When you comb your hair, you are certain
that there is no top to your skull, and your brain stands naked and throbbing in the
standing air. Lights flash and crackle before you and innumerable little brown
dwarves start tapping just below the base of your skull with tiny, dainty hammers
made of compressed rubber.”
Hey, Kam Onn all this is very poetic. When after 9 cups of Tiger, there’s poetry to his
words. It is a far cry from Tiew Seng who could only manage, ‘Tiew nay mah this and
Tiew nay mah that!’ Kam Onn does not lose his tongue when he is high; in fact, pure
poetry flows from his lips. They sound like golden brownies fried, served with
toppings.
“Here are some more tips, Sze Tho,” he offered.
“Don’t make breakfast! If you have to get dressed, choose a shirt with no buttons. In
your condition, what with a curious humming noise in the front lobe of the skull, shirt
buttons will assume the magnitude of manhole covers and each buttonhole the
abstract unreality of a slit in a marshmallow,” he bellowed like some crazy Scotsmen.
Then he continued.
“The greatest hazard, however, is that exhausting operation, the Putting on the
Shoes. There are some reckless fools who court instant insanity by sitting on the
edge of the bed and bending forward to perform this feat ... with the result, of course,
that the head falls off and rolls under the bed. Correct procedure is to step into the
shoes from an upright position. If the shoes are too tight-fitting to be stepped into, go
barefoot for the rest of the day.”
Then he looked at me. He knew I had one leg so he was curious: “Sze Tho! How do
you put on your shoes when you are drunk?”
“I don’t put on my shoes. I put on my leg.” Then we both laugh some more as it
sounded witty. What was not funny was that I did not tell him that sometimes I put it
backwards when I am drunk and thus walked like Charlie Chaplin, with one foot in
front and the other facing the back.
“Sze Tho. If you take off your leg, how you make love?”
“They make love to me. I just lie back and enjoy it. Sometimes we hop around. It is
fun, you should try it!!” Then I quickly changed the topic so as not to court more
disaster about my love making: “Did you say barefooted for the rest of the day?”
Kam Onn said nothing. All he did was to hold up one smelly foot for me to examine.
There were callous all under his big toe and some hardening at the base of the foot,
suggesting it was often he walked around barefooted.
“And what about going to the toilet, Kam Onn. It must be damn difficult walking
barefooted to the toilet? Particularly in your shop where you sleep, when the toilet’s
outside and you’ve got to climb?” I asked.
I knew Kam Onn slept where he worked. His office and bedroom were beside each
other but the loo was outside and he had to leave the shop and climb a flight of stairs
in the dark. The journey there can be treacherous to someone as crossed-eye as
Hock Lye or as clumsy as Chee Keong.
“Come I show you where I pee. The place is near and safe. Don’t worry.”
I thought I had better follow him before his tripped down some steps and break his
neck, or something. He went to the front of Wisma Stephen, found himself a row of
plants near the main road and let his lizard out for air. Instead of gulping air, the
lizard spat and spat until the stream of yellow venom dried up. Not to make him feel
out of place, I took my lizard out too and did the same.
“You damn good, Sze Tho. You follow me here to pee. That Weng Kwong damn shy
type lah. Just now, I took him here, he could not pee. He very shy type, you know.”
“I know. When you have a cute c**k like mine, it doesn’t mind to show. You’ve got a
cute c**k too,” as I looked over my side. “Only people with cute c**ks dare show, you
know. Yours not only cute but...”
“Say no more, Sze Tho, Say no more. You are embarrassing me!” begged Kam Onn.
“You mean Weng Kwong does not have a cute ‘you know what’?” my half drunk
friend asked, attempting to divert my attention.
“That you’ve got to ask him. He’s got twins you know, so if I am the type who can
produce twins, I don’t think I want to show my secret publicly!”
“You’ve got a point, Sze Tho. You’ve got a point.”
It was a tremendous relief giving up 6 to 8 cups of beers in one jocular gush. We got
back to our small chairs and perched ourselves one more time to discuss about
beers. I was about to change the topic to girls when he continued on beer. But he
was uneasy on that small chair and busily scratching his balls, as if there were mites
harboring there. So, I asked Kam Onn, “Why your balls itchy, huh?”
“Ya lah, Sze Tho. Sometimes, my balls damn itchy. In fact, the whole area around
the genitals sometimes give me this irrepressible itch. As if there are a thousand
butterflies fluffing their wings down there. Don’t you get this problem, sometimes?” he
asked.
“I read it somewhere that it is because of blood sugar. Beer has very high sugar
content, you know? If you drink too much beer, sugar concentrates build up in the
body. Because that area is usually sweaty, it is a sweet place for microbes to grow,
and these microbes bite your balls. I sometimes also get that, but I apply some
alcohol.”
I mentioned that as a matter of fact. It was information I picked up from my own
doctor when I told him I had itchy balls, and he told me as a matter of fact because
my doctor said he also had the same problem. I wondered whether the other
classmate doctors I knew-- people like Faizul, Siew Pheng, Siang Boon and Lai
Cheng: do they itch as much as I do? As I was wondering, Kam Onn interrupted me.
“But don’t applying alcohol near the balls make the balls drunk?”
“Balls got no opening, Kam Onn. But you have to be careful not to put it near your
thing. If you drop a drop even near the tip, it will sing your Johnny, and that fella will
be dead for a few days from being burnt,” I admonished.
“My blood sugar ok, Sze Tho. I walk 10 km three times a week in the morning from
my office to the Twin Towers and back. 10 km, you know. Every bit of sugar burnt
along the way. I ok, you don’t worry. The doctors said I could live up to a 100! But I’ll
remember what you say about being careful when applying alcohol to clean the
place.”
He was silent for a second. Then he asked, “I’ve got no 100% alcohol solution in my
office, but would Clorox do?”
“If you use Clorox, Kam Onn, 99.99% of all the germs there will die, but your balls will
drop off! ,” I laughed.
“You only kidding, Sze Tho!!”
“Try it, then, tell me!!” I could not contain my laughter this time as I could imagine his
balls dropping off from being chemically ostracized!
“I exercised a lot, Sze Tho. Walk morning, sometimes screw same night too. When
you are a bachelor, what else is there to do but to burn and burn, on own or with
women? At least several times a week, at least several times a week...” He spoke as
if he were apologizing for his indulgence or torture; I was not sure which was which.
But I believed him as I had called him in the morning often and he was always in the
Twin Towers. I had thought it was the birds that attracted him there in the morning,
not his desire to burn off sugar. So I let my lecture on exercise go, but he would not
permit me to drop the issue of exercise and beer; not this time. The topic had caught
his rapt attention.
“And don’t think that whilst pondering life over a few beers you think that the
combination of too much beer and zero exercise will lead you up the rocky road to
overweight ruin. Beer does not put on weight for you, don’t you know?” exclaimed my
almost drunk friend by now, still industriously flinching from one side of the chair to
another because his balls were still itchy.
“How’s that?” I asked. This does not seem like normal chit chatting anymore. This
bugger must be drunk by now to make this absurd claim, moving his ass from side to
side on the undersized chair.
Kam Onn turned local scientist. “As we all know, it takes 1 calorie to heat 1 gram of
water 1 degree centigrade. Translated into meaningful terms, this means that if you
eat a very cold dessert, the natural processes which raise the consumed dessert to
body temperature during the digestive cycle literally sucks the calories out of the only
available source you have: your body fat.”
“Don’t understand,” I said. “Explain more Kam Onn. This has to be a lot of crab,” I
replied.
“Let me be more scientific. For example, a dessert served and eaten at near 0
degrees C (32.2 deg. F) will in a short time be raised to the normal body temperature
of 37 degrees C (98.6 deg. F). For each gram of dessert eaten, that process takes
approximately 37 calories as stated above. The average dessert portion is 6 oz, or
168 grams. Therefore, by operation of thermodynamic law, 6,216 calories (1
cal./gm/deg. x 37 deg. x 168 gms) are extracted from body fat as the dessert's
temperature is normalized. Allowing for the 1,200 latent calories in the dessert, the
net calorie loss is approximately 5,000 calories. Obviously, the more cold dessert you
eat, the better off you are and the faster you will lose weight--if that is your goal, Sze
Tho,” he added.
“But what all this mumbo jumbo you are talking has to do with beers?” I enquired.
Surely my well informed friend is bullshitting this time.
“Be patient, Sze Tho and listen. This process works equally well when drinking very
cold beer in frosted glasses. Each ounce of beer contains 16 latent calories, but
extracts 1,036 calories (6,216 cal. per 6 oz. portion) in the temperature normalizing
process. Thus the net calorie loss per ounce of beer is 1,020 calories. It doesn't take
a rocket scientist to calculate that 12,240 calories (12 oz. x 1,020 cal./oz.) are
extracted from the body in the process of drinking a can of beer.”
“ You’ve got to be kidding!” I screamed.
“No Sze Tho, all factual. Frozen desserts, e.g., ice cream, are even more beneficial,
since it takes 83 cal./gm to melt them and an additional 37 cal./gm to further raise
them to body temperature. The results here are really remarkable.”
“You’ve got to be kidding!” I screeched once more.
“Only if it is for people who eat pizza as an excuse to drink beer. You see, pizza is
loaded with latent calories and when served above body temperature, it induces an
opposite effect. But, thankfully, Sze Tho--you so smart type lah--you would have
figured out that by now the obvious solution: it is to drink a lot of beer with pizza and
follow up immediately with a large bowl of ice cream,” Kam Onn restated for me.
“We could all be thin if we were to adhere religiously to a pizza, beer, and ice cream
diet. Look at me?” Kam Onn pinched his side to show his ‘zero fat’ zone.
I looked at him. He was thin as hell and looked somewhat healthy. Maybe the whole
night had been a lot of beer talk, but they sure made some sense. He was intelligent
while I had been ignorant. I pondered over to think who amongst my educated friends
from ACS had such a grasp about science and beers. I came out with nobody. In his
world, Kam Onn is king.
I said farewell after this interesting interview. Slumbering back and almost driving the
jeep against the front wall of the house, I tip-toed to the fridge for more beers.
“Here’s one way to live long and be still as skinny as Kam Onn. Cheers!” I cried with
some suppression. I held up my can of Royal Crown and toasted to my good friend,
Yee Kam Onn. “May you live long and sleep with a thousand virgins!”
Then the phone rang. It was 3.30 in the morning.
“Hello?” I answered.
“Sze Tho, is that you?”
“ Yes Kam Onn. What is it?”
“Sze Tho, are my shoes in your car? Gnor yam toew hai ter em kim chor!! Tiew! I
siong gnor liew yee kah, put ghor cheut bin hoo tall teet tiang eh! ( I drink until my
shoes also lost. F**k! Now I want to go outside to pee there’s a lot of nails around the
loo!)”
“Kam Onn, you can wear my shoes.” This came from an almost inaudible voice in the
background.
“Cheh! Lay keh say yan hai kum gkow gokh, tim cheok eh!!” (Your shoes are high
heels, stupid!)
I laughed and put down the phone. I remembered what he said about when not
walking 10 km; he was finding other ways to burnt off sugar.
Twenty minutes later, the phone rang. It was almost 4 am. It had to be Kam Onn,
who else?
“F**k you, Sze Tho. You said alcohol don’t burn. You should see my balls!”
I had told him to dash the area with a bit of alcohol here and there. I had not told him
to pour half a bottle and soak in.
Footnote
Descriptions on the origins of beer and weight loss are based on research Kam Onn and I
found out from a local brewery and is supposedly all true. No kidding