“Lost in Puppydom: Rory Dylan Stephen’s Puppydom”: THE ABDUCTION OF RORY DYLAN STEPHEN: MURDER ON THE EASTERN & ORIENTAL EXPRESS?: THE INVESTIGATION BEGINS

The Singapore Times Exclusive: THE ABDUCTION OF RORY DYLAN STEPHEN: MURDER ON THE EASTERN & ORIENTAL EXPRESS?: THE INVESTIGATION BEGINS

We arrived back in Singapore Woodlands Train Station. All train staff and passengers were prohibited from leaving the Eastern & Oriental Express until all were questioned by a joint team of investigators from Malaysia and Singapore. I was not included as a “detainee” as the official view was what on earth could a cute little 14-pound dog have to do with the demise of Sir Reginald Nicomshire! Having no place to go I remained on the train with Bobby Fong Jr. my counterfeit owner.

The “fatality” or “murder” occurred in Malaysia but Nicomshire the deceased was a citizen of Singapore hence the joint authority of Singapore and Malaysia in the investigation.

Nicomshire’s body was removed from the train for an autopsy as soon as we arrived at Woodland’s Train Station. Will it confirm the Coroner General of Singapore’s on-board comment Nicomshire was poisoned? Or was it from natural causes perhaps even a heart attack as a result of the Malay Tiger attack earlier in the day?

The entire train including all passenger accommodations were immediately searched upon arrival at Woodland’s Station

I am a West Highland Terrier puppy without any formal police interrogation skills but being a Westie am highly opinionated. In my humble opinion the prime suspect is Madame Fong as the night before Nicomshire’s last breath she slapped him in the face and kicked him in the testicles. Hardly a friendly relationship. Kind of obvious…but too obvious?

Bobby Fong Jr., as much as it pains to me to say, is also a prime suspect as the son of Madame Fong and didn’t I overhear him say he was arranging for the poison!

I ventured to also contemplate a conspiracy between Bobby Fong Jr. and Madame Fong as let’s face it they acted jointly in my abduction and in planning my “mission”.

The two gun toting Budweiser beer swillers loving their ketchup and burgers are awfully suspicious and that North Korean “diplomat” too.

And that question stuck in my brain. Why did the Fong’s want me to get close to Sir Reginald Nicomshire as my “mission”. Answer that question and I feel Nicomshire’s fate can be better explained.

The head investigator from Singapore was Meng Ping from Singapore’s Police Intelligence Department and from Malaysia U Po Kin of the Special Branch.

So here all of us marooned on the luxurious Eastern & Oriental Express.

Keep reading on. You will not believe what you are about to hear.

RKS AMERICAN LITERATURE: Do You Cast the Right or Wrong Person for a Movie Role? (Andy Warhol)

“If I ever have to cast an acting role, I want the wrong person for the part. I can never visualize the right person in a part. The right person for the part would be too much. Besides, no person is ever completely right for any part, because a part is a role is never real, so if you can’t get someone who’s perfectly right, it’s more satisfying to get someone who’s perfectly wrong. Then you know you’ve really got something.”

Andy Warhol, “Fame”, 1975.

RKS AMERICAN LITERATURE: How to Make America More Beautiful (Andy Warhol)

“The most beautiful thing in Tokyo is McDonald’s.

The most beautiful thing in Stockholm is McDonald’s.

The most beautiful thing in Florence is McDonald’s.

America is really The Beautiful. But it would be more beautiful if everybody had enough money to live.”

Andy Warhol, “Fame”, 1975.

RKS AMERICAN LITERATURE: Talkers vs. Beauties (Andy Warhol)

“I don’t really care that much about ‘Beauties’. What I really like are ‘Talkers’. To me, good talkers are beautiful because good talk is what I love. The word itself shows why I like Talkers better than Beauties, why I tape more than I film. It’s not ‘talkies’. Talkers are doing something. Beauties are being something. Which isn’t necessarily bad, it’s just that I don’t know what it is their being. It is more fun to be with people who are doing things.”

Andy Warhol, “Fame”, 1975.

RKS AMERICAN LITERATURE: Committing Faux Pas When Talking to People in Love (Andy Warhol)

“It’s very easy to make faux pas when you’re talking to a person who’s in love, because they’re more sensitive about everything. I remember once I was at a dinner party and I was talking to a couple who looked so happy together and I said, “You are the happiest looking couple I’ve ever seen.’ That was okay and then I went that little bit further to score my nightly faux pas. ‘It must have been like a storybook dream story. I just know that you were childhood sweethearts.’ And at that point their faces fell and they turned away and avoided me for the rest of the evening. I found out later that they had deserted their husbands and wives and families to go after each other. When people are in love all their problems are in strange proportions and it’s hard to know when you’re saying the wrong thing.”

Andy Warhol, “Fame”, 1975.

RKS AMERICAN LITERATURE: Fantasies Giving Rise to Problems (Andy Warhol)

“People’s fantasies are what give them problems. If you didn’t have fantasies you wouldn’t have problems because you’d just take whatever was there. But then you wouldn’t have romance, because romance is finding your fantasy in people who don’t have it. A friend of mine always says, ‘Women love me for the man I’m not.”

Andy Warhol, “Fame”, 1975.

“Lost in Puppydom: Rory Dylan Stephen’s Puppydom”: THE ABDUCTION OF RORY DYLAN STEPHEN: MURDER ON THE EASTERN & ORIENTAL EXPRESS?

The Singapore Times Exclusive: THE ABDUCTION OF RORY DYLAN STEPHEN: MURDER ON THE EASTERN & ORIENTAL EXPRESS?

It was our last night aboard the Eastern & Oriental Express with a gala black-tie dinner planned but given the Malay Tiger battle and the PTSD of Sir Reginald Nicomshire after the tiger attack no one was in a particularly celebratory mood. The buzz of the Singaporean Truth Network news helicopter dogging the train created an annoying atmosphere.

The gala night was a tepid and lacklustre affair. Bobby Jr, and I joined by his girlfriend the beautiful Malay, Amira, had a quiet dinner in our State Cabin, listened to some jazz afterwards and retired early.

Waking up on our final morning there was a great deal of pounding up and down the corridors of the train. In fact, it augmented into a great commotion.

Keith, our bribe taking butler, breathlessly pounded on our door and shouted, “Nicomshire is dead!”

Given the adventures I had undergone of late I had a strong suspicion of foul play. This was confirmed by the Coroner General of Singapore, a passenger on the train, whose opinion, nonofficial at that without an autopsy, that certain telltale marks of a poisoning were evident!

Wait a minute! I recall that telephone conversation in our room at the Singapore Shangri-La where Bobby Jr. had told his mother Madame Fong he was arranging “for the poison”.

RKS British Literature: A Not so Glamourous Parisian Pension (George Orwell)

“How Elizabeth loathed that pension! The patronne was an old black-clad sneak who spent her life in tiptoeing up and down the stairs in hopes of catching boarders washing stockings in their hand basins. The boarders, sharp-tongued bilious widows pursued the only man in the establishment, a mild, bald creature who worked at La Samartine, like sparrows worrying about a bread-crust. At meals all of them watched each other’s plates to see who was given the biggest helping. The bathroom was a dark den with leprous walls and a rickety verdigrised geyser which would spit two inches of tepid water into the bath and then mulishly stop working.

George Orwell, “Burmese Days”, 1935.

RKS British Literature: “Beastly” and “Lovely” Learnt at Expensive English Boarding-School (George Orwell)

“Elizabeth was sent for two terms to a very expensive boarding-school. Oh, the joy, the joy, the unforgettable joy of those two terms. Four of the girls at school were ‘the Honourable’; nearly all of them had ponies of their own, on which they were allowed to go riding on Saturday afternoons. There is a short period in everyone’s life when his character is fixed forever, with Elizabeth, it was those two terms during which she rubbed shoulders with the rich. Thereafter her whole code of living was summed up in one belief, and that a simple one. It was that the Good (‘lovely’ was her name for it) is synonymous with the expensive, the elegant, the aristocratic; and the Bad (‘beastly”) is the cheap, the low, the shabby, the laborious”.

George Orwell, “Burmese Days”, 1935.

“Lost in Puppydom: Rory Dylan Stephen’s Puppydom”: THE ABDUCTION OF RORY DYLAN STEPHEN: BEGINNING TO CONTEMPLATE MY HOME BACK IN TORONTO AND WHAT I MISSED

The Singapore Times Exclusive: THE ABDUCTION OF RORY DYLAN STEPHEN: BEGINNING TO CONTEMPLATE MY HOME BACK IN TORONTO AND WHAT I MISSED

Thoughts of my possible freedom turned my mind to what I missed back in Toronto.

It has been a little over a month since my abduction masterminded by that bitch Madame Fong. Taken from my home in Toronto and smuggled through North Bergen, New Jersey and Hong Kong ending up in Singapore. Can you imagine this experience for a puppy barely in this world to be ripped from it and plopped into Southeast Asia being “cared for” or was it “managed” by strangers.

Madame Fong stole the remainder of my puppyhood. As a puppy it was fair to say I was lost, delightfully for the most part, in my puppyhood. Now as I sit on the Eastern & Oriental Express on the rails in Malaysia I feel my puppyhood was lost or better said stolen from me.

I have been exposed to violence, murder, corruption, beauty contests, exotic foods, luxurious accommodations, threats, battles with tiger, a near fatal spider bite, new cultures and languages, politicians, dog-by-law enforcers and Viking cruise passengers with protruding stomachs.

It would seem I grew up quickly and witnessed and experienced in a few weeks what few West Highland Terriers before me and after me have or will see and experience.

Being mindful there is little sense in lamenting what could have been but rather experiencing what is, trying my best not to be judgemental. Living in the moment is what I did and hoped my destiny would change.

Don’t call me a cad but I have enjoyed my experiences with the exception of certain violent aspects of my kidnapping particularly the threats shoved across my snout in that process such as being forced to sniff for landmines in Cambodia. It was what it was.

I miss Bob and Fay. They gave me the heart and discipline to persevere. They gave me hope.

I miss the daily walks and puppy fighting with Billy and Emma. I enjoyed so much our special walks in local parks and even the car rides to get there.

I miss the disciplinary successes like potty training.

I miss chasing birds, squirrels and rabbits.

I miss my backyard and rolling in the grass.

I miss the simple treats of bagel and whole wheat bread treats. Pieces of meat. Blueberries.

I miss little children asking me if they could pat me.

I miss so many people saying I am so cute.

I miss barking, occasionally of course, like a silly puppy. I loved barking at animals on television.

I miss snoozing and listening to jazz and classical music or just snoozing when the mood presented itself.

Always I knew I would be returned home all fortified by Bobby Fong Jr.’s promise to that effect if I carried up my mission of cozying up to Sir Reginald Nicomshire.

I thought when I return home it will not be the puppydom I left but on the other hand if none of this abduction stuff happened, I would be losing my puppydom anyways.

I couldn’t believe that I was thinking perhaps this misadventure was for the better. It would make me more savvy, worldly and yes even more useful to the world in some way. Perhaps in a literary way my suffering was going to make me a stronger West Highland Terrier.

If you have read “Reggie the Egyptian Rescue Dog” the exploits of dogs there were extraordinary and with my knowledge on how they survived and thrived on adversities made me realize we dogs can dig deep down and surprise not only ourselves but humanity.