Who: Mr Andy Ong Li Mun, founder and managing director of oral care brand Pearlie White. Mr Ong, 47, is married to a senior brand manager, Cheryl, who is in her early 40s. They live with their six-year-old daughter Bree in Ang Mo Kio.
“I practise intermittent fasting on weekdays, which means that I eat only at 7pm every day. But I break that routine on Friday evenings and through the weekends, so Friday dinners with my family always has to be spectacular and full of tasty and unhealthy food.
One of my favourite restaurants is Como Cuisine in Dempsey Road. I love its spring greens linguine and lobster briyani.
I would love to use my weekends to catch up on sleep, but Saturdays are still ‘work days’, when I change my occupation to full-time family driver. I ferry my child to music lessons, to meet her friends, or to any other activity that makes her happy.
As such, breakfast is a quick affair at home, where I usually clean out the week’s leftovers from the fridge. Lunch is similarly hurried, often fast food consumed in the car while we scoot from place to place and event to event.
We try to keep to a ‘no cooking on weekends’ policy, so we can be spontaneous in our food choices – although we tend to just go with what our daughter wants to eat – and to minimise any time and effort on our part in terms of preparation and cleaning up.
I also try not to engage in sports on weekends – I cycle for 45 minutes every weekday. In any case, shepherding my daughter to her various activities means that my weekend step count ends up five times higher than on weekdays.
In the evening, after my daughter goes to bed at about 9pm, my wife and I open a bottle of wine and catch up on shows via streaming services such as Netflix, Disney+ or HBO Go. We tend to watch lots of action, and recently enjoyed the 2022 action-comedy film Bullet Train, starring Brad Pitt as a hitman trying to complete an assignment on a Japanese bullet train.
Sunday sees us attending a dance, drama or miscellaneous cultural event that the whole family enjoys, or just lazing around at home. If it is the latter, I tend to catch up on news and help my daughter build or decorate some virtual or toy homes in the Animal Crossing video game or with Lego bricks.
Sunday dinners are always spent at home to encourage family bonding and so we can recalibrate for the week ahead.
If I manage to stay awake after my wife and daughter have gone to sleep, I will sneak in a few hours of computer gaming with the Fallout series of action role-playing games.”
