ALAN Tan (not his real name) shakes his head slowly and lets out an exaggerated sigh. Feigning resignation, he says: "What goes around comes around."
"I needed to come in here. I was going mad," adds the short, slight man who, although only 33, is already greying at the temples.
"Here" is Changi's prison complex, in the maximum-security section housing inmates serving long jail terms.
He has a euphemism to describe what landed him behind bars.
"I was messing with other people's minds," he says.
What he did, however, was a lot more diabolical. He was a sex fiend who used the Internet to prey on young girls by offering money as bait.
Many of those who fell for his ruse were raped or captured on film in compromising positions.
Alan began his infernal online exploits in 1999. By the time he was arrested in 2002, he had claimed several victims, the youngest of whom was just 13 years old.
Convicted of several charges including rape, statutory rape and unnatural sex, the former assistant engineer was sentenced to 23 years' imprisonment and given 36 strokes of the cane.
On more than one occasion during this interview, Alan pronounces gravely that he has got his just deserts. But there is also no mistaking the smugness in his voice or the perverse smile on his face when he describes the suffering he inflicted on "the greedy bitches" who fell for his trap.
Perhaps the contradictions are in keeping with a man described in press reports as complex and disordered.
In fact, colleagues at the factory where he worked at the time of his arrest were stunned to learn about this unsavoury side of him.
They described him as "very shy and quiet" and a hard-working "model employee".
Alan, who has one elder and one younger sister, grew up in Bukit Merah. He says he was an "introverted child who didn't talk much".
He describes his bus driver father and production operator mother as strict parents who made him kneel in the kitchen if he fared poorly in his studies.
Bullied in school, he found solace in the computer, and became quite conversant with systems and computer languages.
Alan, who has a diploma in electronics, computer and control engineering, was a frequent visitor to IRC (Internet Relay Chat) rooms while studying at the polytechnic.
"I made friends online. We used to go on social outings. It was all very proper and innocent," he says.
"Proper" and "innocent", however, are not adjectives he could use to describe himself when he was serving his national service.
In 2001, he was court-martialled for attempting to peep into a woman's toilet as well as searching a woman officer's locker for undergarments.
With a greasy grin, he tries to explain the peeping incident: "I didn't open the door of the toilet. I was outside the toilet when it opened."
His forays into chatrooms took an equally sleazy turn when an army mate told him it was easy hooking up with girls online.
"One day, he told me that he once offered money to a girl he was chatting with, and the girl came over and had sex with him," he says.
Intrigued, he went to an online chatroom for teens and dangled $200 as payment for sexual services.
"Some people responded to my offer but they were not genuine. I was about to give up when I started chatting with this girl," he says.
"Angie" was a 14-year-old Secondary 3 student. After a few chat sessions, they exchanged phone numbers and decided to meet at a shopping mall.
"I arrived earlier and saw that she was quite chio," he says, using the Hokkien term for "hot". They walked around the mall, engaging in awkward conversation and ended up having sex in a multi-storey carpark.
"We both didn't know what to do, but she started it and things got too hot. We went overboard. Oh my God!" he exclaims melodramatically, slapping his forehead with his right palm.
He found out Angie was a virgin.
When it was over, he took her home in a taxi. During the ride, she asked to be paid more than double the $200 they had agreed on.
Over the next two hours, Alan enthusiastically takes my questions, often dropping salacious details which he knows will pique my curiosity.
He tells the bizarre tale of how he and Angie became an item when she tried to overdose on Panadol after their tryst.
"I felt guilty so I became closer to her, and we had sex again," he says.
By then, the Internet had become his second home. He gleefully describes girls he bedded, boasting that he would also engage in threesomes with some of them.
But when he found out that Angie had been equally promiscuous, he went berserk.
Unable to get over the "betrayal", he resolved to exact revenge by making "bitches" like his erstwhile girlfriend suffer.
He decided he would dangle money to lure them but not pay them. He also planned to film them in bed and use the tapes to blackmail them into doing his bidding.
He does not believe, he tells me airily, in baiting victims with sweet talk. He would just offer money, sometimes up to $2,000.
"Money talks and money would lure out bitches like my ex-girlfriend. If they were so good, they would not fall for my trap," he says, using the derogatory term very liberally.
"For oral sex, I said I would pay them $200. But they would get $2,000 if they agreed to the whole package."
The whole package, he explains, meant having sex with him, as well as allowing him to film them.
He beams animatedly as he patiently describes the nuts and bolts of his traps, and the care he exercised in luring girls to carparks or hotels where he performed his dastardly deeds.
For instance, he never gave out his phone number and only called from his mobile phone which had an unlisted number.
He always carried a bag containing a video camera, blank tapes and fake $50 notes, which he printed from his computer and stuffed into a red packet.
"This was to make them think I really had the money. I would just flash it so they would not be able to tell that the money was fake," he says.
All in all, he claims to have met at least 50 girls this way.
Some of the girls allowed him to film them. For those who did not, he would try to do so secretly.
"The smart ones would always ask for their tape after the session. But I would swop it with a blank one," he boasts.
Alan would bolt when his victims were busy cleaning themselves up after sex.
"They wouldn't make a police report because they were doing something illegal too," he says smugly.
He bristles when asked if he used the tapes to blackmail for money. "I wouldn't stoop so low," he hisses contemptuously.
"I wanted revenge. You can feel my anger, right?" he asks earnestly. "If you're not happy, you want to spread the misery."
He turns philosophical.
"When you go up the mountain often enough, you will soon run into a tiger," he quips, using a Chinese proverb to explain that it was only a matter of time before his exploits caught up with him.
Alan was nabbed in a dramatic arrest when one of his victims set up a trap with the police.
Doing time, he says, has been a sobering experience.
He says: "I'm actually scared of leaving this place. I don't know if I will do the same things again if I'm out there."
