Joi To The World...

Is like plain, o l’ vanilla. But speak to Joi Chua and you'll find out that she’s actually, surprise, surprise, spicy like sambal. We get in tune with the singer (and working optometrist) who opens up to us about her rollercoaster career, working in China and hobnobbing with Asia’s biggest stars (Jackie! Jay! Leehom!). JOI ...

- Jonathan Fam

SEE! SHE’S NOT BORING, RIGHT? says David Gan to us about Joi Chua on this hot April morning. The celeb crimper’s very loaded statement (made, to our horror, within the singer’s earshot though we’re not sure if she actually heard it) punctures the soothing strains of an early ’90s Cantopop ballad now playing over the speakers of Sum Yi Tai, a Cantonese restaurant in Telok Ayer where we’ve just finished shooting the singer for her first 8 DAYS cover.

Okay, so it’s not like Joi was doing parkour during the shoot. But the 39-year-old singer, who now sports a spunky short bob, exuded a kind of confidence and sass that for people who have long thought of Joi as being as bland as zero per cent sugar level bubble tea, would be akin to seeing her speed vaulting across the bar top.

We’ll be the first to admit that we’ve been very guilty of judging the singer by her past album covers. For Joi, that would be that default look of hers, half-smiling as she stares blankly, not at us, but into the distance, her wind machine-swept hair artfully falling on her face. It’s an image so seared in our minds that even before meeting her, we’ve already decided that she’s simply just ‘sweet’ and ‘demure’, or you know, that girl in class whose personality you could only describe as “being good in Math”.

Now, this would be a much easier story to write if all Joi was, was sweet, nice and demure. But truth is, she really isn’t. Okay, let us rephrase that. Joi