Charlie Lim may have gained a reputation as the svelte crooner of neo-soul jams (and that wonderful remake of a National Day Parade classic), but those closest to him would know that he’s a huge geek and gamer. 

The Street Fighter diehard and recently married singer-songwriter dropped by the WELP Tonight studio last Friday for a night of battle royale action in Apex Legends. But before that, a conversation about matrimonial bliss. 

Charlie gushed about the hyper-focused creative intensity of his wife Jeanette Adrienne Wee, a renowned ceramic artist whose acclaimed handmade wares have been showcased across the country. “She’s very inspiring to me,” Charlie remarked, describing how she found her passion in pottery after her plans to study fashion in Japan fell through due to the Fukushima earthquake in 2011.

With the chance to know more about a fellow hitched couple in their age group, WELP Tonight hosts Sezairi Sezali and Syaza Qistina Tan then enquired more about Charlie’s experience with married life — including how he carried out his proposal. It involved a big typhoon in Japan when Charlie and Jeanette were there together; something that the young musician took as a sign of standing strong together despite the stormy weather.

Plans to propose at beautiful places he had in mind were completely botched by the typhoon, but the perfect time to pop the question came when they were at a quaint little zoo when it was drizzling, with no crowds around. Knowing how Jeanette absolutely adores sea otters (she cries when she sees them, Charlie said), he got a friend to craft a magnetic trinket in the shape of two otters holding hands. “I win already lah… (she was) overwhelmed with emotions at that point,” he laughed. 

“It was very awkward and, like, silly — it couldn’t have gone better than if I were to have tried to orchestrate a big thing,” Charlie reflected.

The thing that made it even more awkwardly perfect? “Apparently I knelt on her foot,” he said to the laughter of hosts Sezairi and Syaza. “I can’t even recall this because everything was a blur, but she probably thought at that time that I just didn’t want to get my knee wet.” 

It then led to the WELP Tonight hosts conducting a running commentary on Sezairi’s wedding proposal — an elaborate one that was filmed on the set of 1965.

On the gaming side of their conversation, Charlie described how he and his band just got really into Street Fighter while touring. “You know, when we go on tour there’s a lot of waiting around, even at the airport. So my bass player would have this laptop and we would just hook up controllers and start playing,” he explained. 

In response to a question posed by a viewer, Charlie recalled that his childhood gaming experience was borne out of playing games on the PC with his cousins. He started getting into real-time strategy games to the point that he was even part of a Warcraft clan during his early teenage years, describing his Warcraft 3 prowess as “above average”. Having a perfectionist streak, he even set up multiple accounts just to achieve perfect no-loss records. In terms of more recent gaming titles, he holds the Bioshock series close to his heart. 

The trio then embarked on a lengthy session of Apex Legends, where Charlie really felt the pressure to perform.

This week will see WELP Tonight in their last studio episode playing Overwatch with actor/musician Benjamin Kheng, while the proper finale will be taking place at the Campus Gaming Fest when it hits the Singapore Indoor Stadium on Aug 3 and 4.

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