The wealth of English Vocabulary

English is such a wonderful language that is so rich and colorful. I often encourage my students to widen their vocabulary so that like a good artist, they can choose to "paint" with just the exact wordings that bring out the essence of a description. "Elly is big-hearted too" is one of my favourite articles, written by ex-Straits Times reporter, Nancy Koh. She used such vivid phrases and adjectives to describe Elly in her article. Enjoy the article!

SINGER ELLY IS BIG-HEARTED TOO

She was panting and sweating profusely."Wah! Very hot, very tired!" Elly Ang announces and plonks down on a chair, her mass of flesh spilling out all over the edges.

Elly, a singer from Indonesia, has just waddled 100m from her flat to the Golden World "Live" Theatre where she is appearing on a three-month contract, which ends next month. This colossus of a woman shakes my hand daintily and encourages in Mandarin, "Never mind, ask me anything. I'm used to being grilled about my bulk."

Coming face to face with a woman of such megalithic proportions can jolt one's senses. You even have to swivel your head to take in all that expanse. She is not plump but podgy, not fleshy but meaty, not chubby but corpuluent. Her eyes appear like little dashes, her nose a tiny button and her mouth is like a rose petal in that bloated face.

A prominent chin and high cheek bones serve notice of what could be, if all that flesh was pared off. A missing canine to the left makes you wonder if the tooth-fairy ran out of stock. Billed as the "500 pound singer" Elly actually weighs 190 kg and with vital statistics of 148 cm - 138 cm -173 cm, has the combined girth of three thin girls. And if you stare hard enough, she will proudly declare to you that her ahem, thighs are 85 cm and her biceps are 24 cm.

"I think I'm the fattest woman in Indonesia. I hope I can be the world's biggest one day, so that they will write it down in the record books and people will remember me," she says with a wistful sigh. Her other ambition is to record cassettes and break into Hongkong films. "After all, I'm much bigger than Fei Fei (comedienne Sum Tin Har).

Elly thinks that her largeness is due to her low metabolic rate as she eats normally. Fruits and vegetables are her favourites and she takes meat sparingly "as it makes me giddy and feel like throwing up". She loves chilli and soft drinks, and sips 20 to 30 glasses of Chinese tea a day. She likes eating out at restaurants and watching shows at the cinema but doesn't care for exercise of any sort.

Neither does she envy the shapely figure and famed 20inch (46cm) waist of Taiwanese singer, Lo Yen Li, who performed at the Golden World till yesterday. "As long as I'm healthy and happy, nothing else matters", she asserts.

Elly, 35, who is the eighth in a family of two boys and eight girls (her mother is the only other one who is jumbo-sized) told of how she started swelling to 70 kg at the age of 11. She was teased, taunted and used to cry herself to sleep as she knew the nickname they gave her, Fatty -Bom-Bom, fitted her to a tee.

"It took me a long time, but I finally came to forms with my obesity and simply ignored the stares and insults," she says softly, breaking into her native dialect, Fujian. By the time she was 17 years old, she was 90 kg. With the birth of her two sons, now aged 13 and 9, she bloomed to her peresent weight. It has remained constant for the past few years.

Both her sons are, in her words, nicely rounded. Her younger son, she adds with a hearty laugh, is already 25 kg. "Very healthy", she insists. Together with husband, Herman Thio, she adds happily, they are fiercely protective of her. "They will scold anyone who dares poke fun at me". Fifteen years ago, Elly followed her two musician brothers into show business, after winning the Chinese talentime in Indonesia in 1968. Soon after meeting Herman, an ex-musician, she learned to play the guitar under him.

Back home in Medan, they run a coffee house-lounge, BJ, where the manageress never fails to make a guest appearance. Herman, who has accompanied her here on her first overseas stint, brings her a glass of Chinese tea. He looks on lovingly while she takes graceful sips. Herman weighs only 68 kg and is a forehead taller than her. But it is more than her bear-hugs which have sustained their marraige for 13 years.

He explains, "We understand each other very well. I like her singing and her sense of humour. She makes me laugh all the time." To him, beauty is skin-deep. What matters is the person inside that hulk who, he adds, has a heart of gold. Elly grins coyly and whispers, "He has four wives, you know."

"Really?" Embarrassed, Herman walks away. Elly has the last laugh. "Huh, if he does, I'll sit on him and suffocate him to death, ah!"

by Nancy Koh
ex-Straits Times Reporter
,