Listeners of 93.3 FM, SBC's Chinese pop station, will know who I am talking about.
For the past six months, the radio in my room and car have been tuned to 93.3 zui xin pin dao (the newest station). The chatter of Bao Bao and other deejays wake me up, bring me to work and lull me to sleep.
I have become an avid convert to Chinese pop music, and can tell the difference between the, frankly, nondescript voices of Taiwanese teenage heartthrobs Nicky Wu, Tommy Su and Jimmy Lin.
I try, occasionally, to read Chinese newspapers, and often marvel at the colour of the Chinese language. When Colombian footballer Andres Escobar was killed for scoring an own goal in a World Cup match, for example, Lianhe Zaobao's headline captured my outrage perfectly -- yi shi zu cheng qian gu hen (one wrong move, eternal regret).
For someone who used to cringe at anything connected with the Chinese world, I have come a long way.
Growing up in the '70s and '80s, one of my favourite words was "cheena". It was a term of derogation.
To the unitiated in Singlish, cheena refers to things that are very Chinese. For the English-educated, it also denotes all that is un-chic and outdated.
The cheena list during my teenage years was a varied one. It included anything from speaking Mandarin and dialect to Chinese tear-jerkers, Taiwanese crooner Tracy Huang, the colour red and Chinese-school students with their crew cuts.
And what was not cheena? Basically, anything unconnected with China. Hence, Western music, books and fashion trends. There were exceptions though. While, say, the Jackson Five were definitely un-cheena, Boney-M was rather suspect as the group appealed to many of the Chinese-educated.
Ironically, though, one of the most hip, un-cheena places my friends and I patronised in the '80s was a disco called Chinoiserie.
Why did I, an English-educated Chinese, shrink from my roots?
Mainland China was the reason, I suppose. By the time I was born in the '60s, communism was entrenched in the country. My grandmother used to receive tattered letters from relatives back in Swatow complaining about great hardships under the regime.
The Western media was full of the plight of the men in plain Mao suits and the women with blunt haircuts. To my impressionable mind, China equalled authoritarianism. I did not want anything to do with that.
The English-language school I went to also played a part. It was clear that students from English-speaking homes did much better in class. That was natural, really, as subjects were taught in English. My family spoke English and Teochew. I avoided using the dialect assiduously.
The books I read fed my appetite for all things Western. I grew up dreaming of green meadows, boarding schools, midnight feasts, brownies and elves.
A result of all this was that I hated studying Chinese. But reality won the day. I needed a pass to enter junior college. Through sheer rote-learning, I managed a B3 for the O levels, and scraped through with a C6 for the A levels. I went to university and promptly left behind what little I knew of the language.
My change of heart took place almost imperceptibly, after I started work.
I discovered that colleagues who were bilingual in English and Chinese were better appreciated by the bosses. My poor grasp of Chinese was a handicap. I also befriended journalists from the Chinese media and discovered that they were just as fun as my English-educated friends.
Then came the opening up of China. The world's media no longer painted the country in shades of grey, but praised it as the next economic superpower.
In 1991, opposition politician Low Thia Khiang won a seat in Hougang, a Teochew stronghold, reportedly because he used the dialect. Teochew became the flavour of the year.
There was also the advent of MTV. I discovered that video clips of Hongkong and Taiwan singers were just as stylish as those from the West. Their songs were just as pleasant, and they looked just as nice. At the very least, they seemed a whole lot cleaner than their Western counterparts.
By chance, I caught a TV show dramatising Taiwanese romance writer Qiong Yao's novels. I became addicted to her melodramatic stories and tragic theme songs. By accident, I tuned in to 93.3, heard those songs being played, listened for a while, and became a fan.
Three months ago, I took up Chinese tuition to re-learn the language. A part of it has to do with Mandarin becoming fashionable. It will also help me at work. But I would like to think the main reason was that I realised it was silly to be embarrassed about my roots.
An English-educated friend entered my car the other day. My radio was tuned to 93.3. Instinct led my fingers to change the channel, lest she thought me un-hip. I stopped myself in time. Bao Bao's cheery voice followed us through the journey.