The “Botak” in Botak Jones, and now director of Big Bern’s American Grill, talks to Samantha David about his disdain for money and how, even after 20 years in the industry, he isn’t ready to quit.

Money is my biggest pet peeve. It’s been so manipulated throughout time and now it’s taken on such a sense of necessity and importance that other things seem to fall by the wayside.

Before I got my citizenship, as an expat back then, I was a little ashamed. The locals’ perception of foreigners isn’t as welcoming as it could be.

Singlish is one of the few truly Singaporean traits. Unfortunately, there’s so much effort to rid the country of the “language” and I think it’s sad.

I have a lot of empathy for hawkers here. Nowadays the children don’t want to work as hard as their parents did and they don’t have the same reasons to do so.

I wish I could get on the MRT, wave my senior citizen concession card around in the air and be like, “Hey! I’m 62! I need a seat!” People like me feel exasperated when the reserved seats signs are right there, and yet people still tend to not freely give up their seats.

When I was a kid I was skinny and I was beat up quite a lot by others. I was quite athletic, too. Growing up, I wanted to either be a baseball, football or a hockey player.

I suffer from anxiety and bipolar disorders. They’ve caused a couple of ups and downs, but I try to talk to people going through the same thing and at the end of the day, I know that there is a light at the end of the tunnel.

I used to go to places like Timbre and Crazy Elephant and jam with blues and jazz bands in my free time.

My guilty pleasure is to spend a lot of time in bed and channel surf all day.

You can’t keep a good man down. There have been a couple of times where I’ve been tripped up by people. Once you let one of them stop you, that’s the end of the game. And I’m not ready to end my game yet.

My sole purpose in life is to make sure my wife laughs once a day.

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