There are certain assumptions one makes about a woman who has been leading her friends and family for over 20 years on a mission to help the needy, but within minutes of meeting Madam Fion Phua, she shatters every stereotype.
Anyone expecting a serene Mother Teresa-type would be surprised at the sight of this 40-year-old club membership broker, striking in a leopard print outfit accented with jewellery.
She exudes the aura of a general at rest at the Tee Up Marketing office at Holiday Inn Atrium, fielding calls, cracking salty jokes and even offering dietary advice.
'What's your blood type? Then you better don't take chicken,' she advises in Singlish.
Nothing and no one is safe from being the butt of her humour, least of all herself. Pointing to the mole on her forehead, she says: 'Do I look Indian? A lot of people think I'm Indian.'
Two walls of her office are covered with framed newspaper articles on club membership prices. Racks of golf clubs and bags lean against the third.
The only signs of the unpaid service that has taken up much of her time since she was 19 are a Good Samaritan Award from the Rotary Club of Singapore and some clippings from The Straits Times as well as local-language newspapers with photographs that show her and other volunteers with bags of food or appliances for the needy.
Convincing her to pose for the camera is no easy task. Not only is she concerned about looking fat, she also has the patience of a child, asking after every shot: 'Can? Can already?'
There is a reason for her haste. As soon as the interview is over, she plans to drive around Singapore and check out blocks of rental flats where the needy are likely to live. It takes several hours as she stops and talks to residents and members of grassroots organisations, as well as people at places of worship, to find out whether there are families or elderly folks in the neighbourhood who need help.
She also asks children at play, saying: 'Children will never lie to you, they will always tell the truth.'
After settling on a block that she thinks could use help, she will return with volunteers to give aid. This could be food, groceries or other essentials, or appliances and furniture donated by individuals or organisations.
Last week, she and nine friends handed out 550 packets of food to residents in rental flats in Block 92 and 93 in Henderson Road. They also gave hongbao to some. The $3,000 cost was borne entirely by Madam Phua and the other volunteers, some of whom have been going on such rounds with her for 20 years.
In January, she helped Novotel Clarke Quay hotel dispose of unwanted beds by organising a team of lorry drivers to deliver them to needy families in one- or two-room rental flats around the island.
Some months earlier, she approached South West Community Development Council (CDC) to help identify needy residents in the area. She then assembled a team of volunteers, put together 600 hampers of groceries, including rice, noodles and toothpaste and delivered them to these residents. The cost, about $30,000, was split among the 80 volunteers.
During such 'door-knocking' events, the volunteers ask the residents about themselves, noting down some of their needs and problems. These are passed on to the CDC, says a spokesman for the council, who adds that it is following up to help residents who may need 'financial, social and employment assistance'.
'Madam Phua's kind actions are appreciated and well-received by the residents. The group's visit also brightens up the day for the elderly living at the rental blocks,' says the CDC spokesman, urging other 'passionate individuals' to explore such partnerships with the council.
For Madam Phua, charity and volunteer work is a habit as natural as breathing. She is not a member of any charitable organisation or religious body. Yet she has been knocking on strangers' doors to offer aid for more than 20 years, starting with visits to old age homes and orphanages at the age of 19.
Asked why, she shrugs and says: 'If I have time, no harm in doing this. Just do what you can do within your means. Tomorrow I may be the one in need.'
Questions about her family and loved ones hit the talk button, setting off a stream of anecdotes about her childhood. She is no stranger to hardship.
Born Phua Geng Hoon, she changed her name to Fion during a brief flirtation with modelling in the 1990s. She is the middle child of three, with an older sister and younger brother.
Her father was a factory supervisor at chocolate producer Van Houten and drinks company Yeo Hiap Seng. To supplement the family income, her mother worked night shifts at a newspaper printing centre in Genting Lane. One of her earliest memories is helping her mother fit inserts inside the newspapers and attending classes at the former Mei Chin Primary School the next day with hands stained by ink.
Any spending money she wanted, she had to earn. By the time she was in Huayi Secondary School, she was working the breakfast shift at McDonald's before school started.
She started to work full-time after her O levels. 'My mum always tells me not to regret it,' she says with a laugh.
'But schooling is not important to me. I can still earn the kind of money many people can't earn.'
She juggled up to three jobs at a time, usually at cafes or restaurants, often sleeping only four hours a night.
'I don't count how much I sleep, I count how much I earn,' she jokes. 'I don't think I save much, but I definitely was not short of money to spend.'
She was a 17-year-old waitress at the Furama Riverfront Hotel when she met her future husband Danny Ngeow, who was then a bartender there.
Now 44, he laughs when asked if it was love at first sight. 'What can I say? It was fate,' he says.
They married some months later, with parental consent, and now live in a five-room HDB flat in West Coast Road.
The couple had their long-awaited child, a daughter named Ashley, early last year, and he gave up his job at an insurance firm to stay at home full-time with the baby.
With Madam Phua running her own business, it is easier for her to balance work and quality time with the child. Mr Ngeow often takes the baby to the office for a visit.
Early attempts at having children failed and the couple went through years of going to doctors and places of worship, hoping for a miracle. When fertility treatments at KK Hospital finally worked, neither could believe it.
'She is really a miracle baby,' Madam Phua says. 'The first thing I told her when I saw her was, 'What took you so long to come to mummy and daddy?''
Though they had been hoping for this baby for 20 years, Mr Ngeow recalls how she refused to rest towards the end of her pregnancy in December 2008. Instead, she marshalled 50 friends and relatives to assemble 500 Christmas goodie bags for the elderly and needy living in one-room flats in Chin Swee Road.
'Even one month before the due date, she was still doing charity work,' he says. 'Her determination is very strong. She doesn't care about what obstacles there are, if she wants this thing to be done, she will get it done.'
Her zeal was no real surprise to him. Not long after they married, she insisted they donate all her stuffed toys to an orphanage in Hougang. He recalls her astonishment at how well the children there were looked after and her subsequent desire to find some place that would be 'the right place to help'.
She explains: 'When I saw the kids, I got the shock of my life. They were very well taken care of. The things I wanted to give them were not needed.
'So I thought, Singapore has a lot of homes I can visit.'
She began by visiting homes such as the Sunlove Home for the elderly and mentally ill with her husband, donating food and towels or volunteering to do odd jobs. In 1990, while setting up her company, Tee Up Marketing, she roped in friends and colleagues for a bigger effort, leading a dozen people at a time to offer donations in kind as well as their services to wash bedsheets or feed the residents.
'We can't do anything without these volunteers,' she says. 'Twenty years ago, hardly anyone would go into these kind of homes. People thought you could not go in, it was smelly, you would get ill. Actually, this thinking has not changed.'
One of the first people she called on was a former classmate, Madam Jane Lee Bee Ling, 39, who has been helping her ever since. The sales and marketing officer explains how Madam Phua organises events such as last December's mass donations of food.
Madam Phua sends out a mass e-mail explaining the cause and what each person's contribution will be - one may be asked to provide 600 bags of rice, another, 600 tins of food. She often takes on the responsibility of ordering the food, looking for cheap deals in bulk and asking a volunteer to pay on delivery. Hours before the event, the volunteers will meet to assemble the hampers and are assigned to different housing blocks to distribute them.
'She has very good leadership skills,' says Madam Lee. 'It's not easy. The work behind all these charity events is really a great effort.'
All the volunteers follow orders without complaint, says 35-year-old banker Lorraine Teo, who has a three-year-old son. 'We are at her command at any time,' she adds.
She got to know Madam Phua 20 years ago when they both worked at a food outlet at Haw Par Villa. 'I look on her as my elder sister and the idea of doing charity was a good one so I followed her. She has this power to influence,' she says.
In 2004, Madam Phua tapped on her years of experience brokering golf club memberships to set up a different kind of deal: collecting unused appliances from the public to donate to needy families or organisations.
The idea drew attention from the media and also from the Rotary Club of Singapore, which is part of a worldwide service organisation with thousands of clubs in 160 different countries. The Singapore club gave her its Good Samaritan Award in 2006, to recognise her contributions to the community.
Rotarian and retired civil servant Raymon Huang was on the committee evaluating award nominees that year and recalls being struck by her dedication.
'I think she's a real dynamo of a young woman. In Rotary, we have this motto, Service Above Self. She reflects it,' the 84-year-old says.
'Despite being the full-time boss of a golf marketing agency, she volunteers her time for other people and has been doing it for half a life-time.'
Madam Phua's memory of the award is hazy. Much clearer is her recollection of the odd things that people have offered her as donations to the needy.
'Over the phone, they tell us they have a lot of things to give away, but I get a shock because they give me dumb-bells and hula hoops,' she says. Last year, she was even offered a grandfather clock.
Then again, she knows how easy it is to misunderstand the needs of others.
In 2004, she heard about an elderly woman living in Ang Mo Kio who was partially blind and had a son who was mentally ill. Their flat had no furniture or appliances. She turned up with tables and chairs, plus kitchen equipment.
Within days, she returned to see that the woman had hurt herself on the furniture and was unable to use the kitchen equipment.
Saddened and wiser, she turned to neighbourhood organisations for aid. A church group began visiting the family to take the son on outings. A group of retirees took turns to cook and clean.
'It was the biggest mistake I ever made. She did not need me, she needed a lot of people to go to her,' says Madam Phua, who decided then that she would go from door to door and ask people what they need, rather than impose her own opinions on them.
'You know the purpose of doing this door-knocking and offering food? So they can open their houses and they can tell me what they need.'
She either passes on these requests to social welfare bodies or matches them against the large number of donations offered to her every day.
With so many people offering help, it is quite cheap to do charity nowadays, she notes.
'The very wrong concept everyone has is that charity means money. What is involved is time,' she says.
'But better you come door-knocking with us. You'll see for yourself.'
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This article was first published in The Straits Times.
