A Bored Singaporean

Chapter 29: Who is Cooking?

2009-04-03T11:01:00.000+08:00

Evolution is amazing. The man’s role has been changing with time in order to be a survivor. From mammoths hunting using spears made of sticks and stones, to fighting a war using bows and arrows, to killing hundreds using armor tanks, to destroying a whole city using atomic bomb, then to chopping up a rack of pork ribs in the kitchen. Yes, the man has exchanged his role with his woman, so that he could do the cooking while she continues with her overtime. In appreciation, the woman has even granted him a nice appellation – the new age man.

The woman said that a new age man should be understanding and romantic. He should be gentle to her and always be there for her not only physically, but also mentally. If a new age man is able to cook well, that will earn him enough brownie points for the woman to marry him.

The woman is too busy with her career to cook for her family. There are endless meetings and never ending overtimes to deal with and it will be too much to ask for if the man expected her to cook after she returns from work. The meals, house works and kids can be taken care of simply by employing a maid.

That is why we have Chen Hong from Taiwan and Jamie Oliver from England to teach the man how to cook. To teach him how to brew herbal soup for his wife who is so tired from her overtimes. To teach him how to surprise his girlfriend with a nice New York cheesecake when she was so angry with him. And to teach him how to teach his female colleague how to bake walnut brownies for her boyfriend. That was the reason why Sally was at my kitchen on a Saturday afternoon.

“Beng, is it going to be very difficult?” Sally asked while staring at the ingredients.
“No, brownies are one of the easiest cakes to bake,” I replied as I took out the baking tins from the cupboard.
“Will it take very long?”
“Yes it will, if you continue to just stand down there and stare at the ingredients.”
“Okay, what should I do first?”
“Line the baking tin with the greaseproof paper,” I said as I handed Sally a shallow rectangular baking tin and a roll of greaseproof paper.

I sipped on my coffee as I watched Sally put the baking tin on the greaseproof paper to estimate the size, then using a pair of scissors, cut up the greaseproof paper. She then attempted to press the greaseproof paper into the baking tin. As she squeezed the greaseproof paper to fix a corner of the baking tin, the greaseproof paper was torn. Sally stared at the paper, then at me. I sighed.

“Sally, before you fit the paper into the tin, you can try to fold the sides so that the paper can fit easier into the lengths and widths of the tin.”

Sally cut another piece of greaseproof paper out and folded the four sides of the paper according to the lengths and widths of the baking tin. She then pressed the greaseproof paper in lightly and cautiously. This time, the greaseproof paper was safe.

After I switched on the cooker to heat up the steamer, I turned the dial on the oven to hundred and eighty degree Celsius to preheat the oven. Then from one of the shopping bags, I took out the bar of dark chocolate and butter and passed them to Sally.

“Use the weighing scale there, weigh the butter and cut out a piece that is the same weight as the chocolate bar. After the water in the steamer has started to boil, put both the chocolate bar and butter onto a bowl and put it into the steamer. While the mixture is melting, make sure you keep stirring them,” I instructed.
“Hey Beng, why make such a big fuss? Why don’t we just put the chocolate and butter in the saucepan and boil them directly?”
“Because if you do that, the chocolate and butter will dry up.”
“Geez, this is so troublesome,” Sally sulked.

While Sally was stirring the mixture, I asked her: “Why are you baking walnut brownies for you boyfriend? Is it his birthday?”
“Yah, and when I asked him what he wanted for a present, he said that he wishes to have a birthday cake that is baked by me.”
“Is he aware that you can’t cook?”
“Nope. I didn’t tell him that. So I guess he just presumed that I could bake.”
“And he asked for brownies?”
“No he didn’t specifically say what kind of birthday cake he wanted, but I like brownies,” Sally grinned.

Just as I suspected. It was not really common for guys to like brownies. I would have chosen a tiramisu or a coffee cake.

After the chocolate and butter mixture was melted completely, I helped Sally to take the bowl of mixture out from the steamer. Under my supervision, she used an electric mixer to beat together the sugar, vanilla essence, salt, eggs, and nearly some egg shells. Sally had accidentally dropped a substantial amount of egg shells in the mixture when she cracked open the eggs but luckily I was there to scope them up. I then instructed her to sift the flour while I stirred in the chocolate and butter mixture.

“Sally, did you take home economics as a subject during secondary school times?”
“Yap, I did.”
“And didn’t your teacher teach you how to cook?”
“Yes she did, but I was not interested,” Sally sighed. “Do you know what they taught in school? Rock buns, sultana biscuits, fried noodles, stir-fried eggplants… argh, if I don’t even like these foods, why will I be interested to learn how to cook it?”
“Hey, you can’t be learning strawberry shortcake, English shortbread, fried rice with X.O. paste and grilled salmon steak at that level right?”

Sally showed me the sifted flour and I instructed her to fold it into the mixture. From one of the shopping bags, I took out the packet of walnuts and passed it to her so that she could add them into the mixture as well. I then helped her to pour the brownie mixture into the prepared baking tin and spread the mixture evenly.

I took another bigger shallow baking tin and filled it halfway with hot water from the kettle before putting the tin into the oven. Then cautiously, I placed the tin of brownies mixture into the tin of hot water. After that, I closed the oven door and set the timer to thirty minutes.

“Beng, what is the purpose of that tin of water?” a wide-eyed Sally asked.
“If we don’t do that, your brownies will have an ugly crack on the surface. The purpose of this tin of hot water is to spread out the heat in the oven,” I explained.

While waiting for the brownies to be baked, we sat down in the living room to have some coffee.

“So how did you pass your exam since you can’t cook?”
“Oh, I managed to have a borderline pass,” Sally giggled. “I knew that my practical tests will score badly so I tried to push up my marks by doing better in theory.”
“But did you really score very badly for the practical tests? What were you tested on?”
“There were two practical tests; one was sewing and the other cooking. For the sewing part, my mom did the skirt for me and I just handed it up.”
“Then you should have scored well right? Unless your mom’s sewing skill is just as bad?”

For that comment, Sally hit me on my arm.

“No, the skirt was fabulous. But the sewing test had two portions. In the second part, everybody was supposed to thread the sewing machine one by one and show it to the teacher.”
“And you didn’t know how to thread a sewing machine?”
“Yah,” Sally blushed.
“Then how about your cooking test?”
“We were supposed to bake ginger bread for the cooking test and we did the test in the school kitchen so there was no way to cheat,” Sally stuck out her tongue. “My ginger bread turned out to be a total failure. I mistook the salt as sugar and I forgot to put baking powder into the mixture. Worse still, the ginger bread was burnt.”
“Erm… and I assumed that your teacher had to taste everybody’s ginger bread to give marks, including yours?”
“Yah, poor teacher,” Sally giggled.

“Anyway, I don’t see any purpose in taking home economics classes,” said Sally. “I don’t see any need to learn how to sew or cook at all.”
“I could understand the sewing part. But you do need to learn some basic cooking right?” I disagreed.
“Well, I can cook Maggie noodles,” Sally grinned.
“Hey girl, after you got married, you can’t expect your husband and kids to eat Maggie noodles for lunches and dinners right?”
“Huh? Why must I cook after I got married?”
“You can’t be expecting your husband to do all the cooking right?” I raised an eyebrow.
“No, silly! Of course not! I think my future husband will kill me for that!” Sally laughed. “There’s always the maid right?”

Thirty minutes had passed. I took out the baking tin from the oven carefully and put it on the table to cool. Sally and I looked happily at the brown and fragrant brownies that looked simply delicious.

“Can I cut it now?” Sally asked.
“No, let it cool first. If you cut now, the brownies will stick to the knife.”
“Hey, baking is not that difficult after all!” Sally realized. “All it takes are some mixing and then just shove it into the oven!”

Yeh, baking or any kind of cooking is never rocket science. Maybe somebody should tell the woman that cooking together with her man can actually be fun.

Chapter 28: The War of the In-laws

2009-04-03T10:23:00.001+08:00

The tension between mother in-laws and daughter in-laws has existed for centuries all over the world. Movies and books have been written based on this unique relationship between two women. These stories can be comical, depressing or even horrifying. And everyday, the same drama is actually happening in somebody’s family somewhere out there. Perhaps the tension is created because somebody has to accept a stranger into the family and share her son with this person, and somebody has to treat a stranger like an elder and respect her wishes just because she is related to her husband.

When I stepped into the house after work and saw just my dad alone at the dining table, I knew that something was amiss. It was unusual for my dad to take dinner alone.

“Dad, where is mom? Has she gone out?”
“No, she’s in the bedroom. She has got no appetite for dinner.”
“Is she sick?”
“No,” my dad put down his chopsticks and continued. “Her old school mates called her up today for a chat, and they asked about Ah Hao.”

That was a very valid reason for my mom to lose her appetite. It was a taboo to talk about Ah Hao, her youngest grandson. It never failed to sadden my mom and made her cry upon the mention of Ah Hao. At the beginning of the year, my younger brother had walked out of my mom’s life, taking along his son Ah Hao, under the command of his wife.

My younger brother Charlie had met his wife Alice in his first job and she became his first love. Alice was a very independent gal with a strong character. She had left her family after she graduated from the polytechnic, due to some disagreement with her father. Since then, she had not been visiting her family except for the Chinese New Year. On the other hand, my younger brother Charlie was a quiet guy with a soft character. Among the three of us, he was the most pampered since young and my mom would always give in to him. With such combination, Alice was destined to be the one who dominated.

Alice was never willing to share Charles with anybody else. Even before they were married, Alice had restricted the amount of outings that Charlie had with his friends. Eventually, Charlie lost contact with most of his friends, even his good friends since secondary school times. After they were married, the couple got a flat at a distance away from our flat and Charlie shifted out, out of my mom’s sight for the first time in his life. Becoming Charlie’s wife had caused Alice to be increasingly possessive. Whenever Charlie was not working, she wanted him to spend all his time with her. Their weekly visit to my parents became monthly, then eventually quarterly.

Then one day, Charlie called my mom up and told her that Alice was pregnant. My parents were exhilarated and they tried to help out in any way that they could. Those were the happier moment that my mom remembered because the couple would pay a visit almost every month. My mom would then brew some herbal soups for Alice, hoping that the soups would make her and the baby healthier and stronger.

Nine months later, Alice gave birth to a baby boy who was named Ah Hao by my dad. Alice was very weak after giving birth and her legs were so swollen that she could hardly walk. Although Charlie took annual leaves to take care of her and the baby, he was not experienced enough and it was also too knackering for him. To help out the couple, my dad traveled everyday to their house to cook lunches and dinners for them. As for my mom, she stayed at their house to take care of Ah Hao. She would wake up and feed him at night so that the couples could sleep. It was a very tiring task but she did it without complaint.

Eventually, Alice’s leg was not swelling any more and she recovered adequately to take care of Ah Hao. One day, she suddenly remembered that Charlie and Ah Hao only belonged to her and nobody else, and hell just broke loose.

My mom was preparing lunch in the kitchen while Ah Hao slept in the baby cot in the living room. Suddenly, he woke up and cried. My mom rushed out to the living room and saw Alice holding Ah Hao, trying to calm him down with a pacifier. However the pacifier did not seem to work as Ah Hao only cried louder.

“Come, let me hold him,” my mom stretched out her hands to take over Ah Hao.
“No!” Alice shouted at her and held Ah Hao back. “Ah Hao is my son! Why should I give him to you?”
“What are you talking about? I’m not trying to take him away. I’m thinking of calming him down and stop him from crying!”
“I can stop him from crying! I’m his mother!”

My mom was stunted. But she was even more shocked when she heard the next sentence from Alice.

“Please leave my house. You’ve been too busybody and influencing Charlie too much. I want you to stay away from my husband and my son! I don’t want to see you anymore!”

And that was the last day that my mom had seen her son and grandson. Charlie had not been calling my parents, let alone visiting them. When my dad called him and asked him to come back with Ah Hao, he refused and said that he did not want to agitate Alice. When my dad suggested that my mom and he wait at the void deck below their flat and Charlie could take Ah Hao downstairs for them to take a look, Charlie refused and said that Alice might not like the idea. Since then, my parents had lost a son and a grandson.

Rose had another different sad story to tell. She met her husband in their university times back in India. Eventually they fell in love and he proposed to her. In India, both couples are required to have the same social and financial status before they could be married. Both families must be as rich, or as poor. In Rose’s case, the two families were as rich and well respected. Thus there was no opposition to the marriage and the both of them were married under the consent of both parents.

After they were married, as a traditional India wife, Rose stayed at home as a housewife. And because it was a traditional Indian family and her husband was the only son, her in-laws stayed with them. There was a honeymoon period when everybody appeared to be friendly towards each other and quarrels were unheard of. Then one day, Rose’s father in-law passed away, leaving her mother in-law behind. That was when Rose’s nightmare began.

Since her husband’s death, Rose’s mother in-law became cantankerous and thoroughly disagreeable to live with. While her husband was at work, Rose would prepare lunch for her mother in-law and herself, just like what she did when her father in-law was around. However, though her cooking skills had not changed, her mother in-law had.

“What is this?” Rose’s mother in-law asked as she stirred the bowl of red substances with her spoon.
“Vegetable masala, mom” Rose replied as she put the next dish on the table.

Her mother in-law took a sip of the vegetable masala then spited it out on the table. She then took a morsel of chicken from the chicken bemisal that Rose had just put on the table. After a few bites, she spited it out too.

“Your masala and bemisal taste so terrible! How do you expect me to eat these kinds of food?” she berated at Rose.
“But mom, you used to like these dishes!” said the shock Rose.
“No! I didn’t used to like these dishes. I just didn’t want to let you know.”

Rose’s mother in-law then left the house, probably to have her meal outside, and returned about an hour before her husband returned from work. During dinner, her mother in-law complained to her husband that Rose was so lazy that she did not cook lunch for her and did not do much housework as well.

The same drama repeated almost everyday, but luckily for Rose, her husband chose to believe her. Though he just nodded his head when his mother raged on and on, he apologized to Rose privately and told her to hang in there.

A few years later, Rose’s mother in-law passed away. Till the day that she died, she still disliked Rose and did not stop complaining about her to her son. Rose was glad that it was finally over, but she was also sad that her mother in-law still had not accepted her till the day she died.

On the other hand, Ju was a very fortunate woman. Because her husband was the eldest son, her mother in-law was staying with them. They had been living in harmony and arguments were few and easily forgiven. Though they had a maid to take care of the house work, her mother in-law would cook occasionally for the family. During Ju’s pregnancies, her mother in-law even brewed expensive bird’s nests and herbal soups for her. Similarly, Ju treated her mother in-law with respect and care. When her mother in-law was sick and weak after a surgery, Ju applied for a month’s leave to take care of her personally.

Once, Rose asked Ju how they managed to love each other.

“Hahaha… it’s actually very simple,” replied Ju. “The two of us treat each other as friends more than the relationship of mother in-law and daughter in-law. In this way, we are both more forgiving to each other’s mistakes, and we respect each other’s opinions.”

Just as Ju had proven, it is not impossible for a mother in-law and her daughter in-law to live in harmony. They just have to understand that one is not there to snatch away the son’s love and the other is not there to possess the husband’s time. Hopefully one day, Alice could understand this theory.

Chapter 27: Sorry, We Are Fully Booked

2009-04-03T10:17:00.000+08:00

With our mind set on going to South Korea, the next step would be to book our air tickets. Nicky searched the Internet and noted down the telephone numbers of two major travel agencies. He picked up the phone and dialed the first number.

“Hello, SD Travel. How may I help you?”
“Hi, I would like to enquire on the flights to South Korea.”
“Hold on while I put you through to ticketing.”

Nicky was put on some call waiting advertisements and a few minutes later, a guy with a husky voice answered the phone.

“Hello, can I help you?”
“Hi, I would like to enquire on the flights to South Korea.”
“Which airline are you looking for?”
“Singapore Airlines.”
“How many people are going?”
“There are five of us.”
“Which day do you want to depart on?”
“On the twenty-second of December.”
“On which day do you want to return to Singapore?”
“On the third of January.”
“Okay, hold on a minute.”

Nicky was put on some more call waiting advertisements again and a few more minutes later, the guy with a husky voice returned to the phone.

“Sorry sir, the flights on Singapore Airlines are all fully booked for that period.”
“Erm… then how about Cathay Pacific?”
“Also fully booked.”
“Quantas?”
“We don’t have any Quantas flights going to Seoul.”
“Okay, so which are the airlines left with vacancies?”
“You can take GE Airlines. Anyway it is cheaper.”

It seemed like we were defeated by the quick Singaporeans again. Singaporeans’ favorite pastime for December is to travel with their friends and families. With the school holidays and Christmas season, it is a good time for the parents to bring their kids out to see the world. Tour packages to popular destinations like Japan, China, Australia, New Zealand, Europe, Hong Kong and of course, South Korea, can be easily snapped up pretty early. That means you have a higher chance to see a Singaporean than Mickey Mouse in Tokyo Disneyland in December.

I remembered that when I was a kid, my parents used to take me overseas for the holiday break as well. However those were simple and inexpensive bus trips to the various parts of the nearby Malaysia, like Genting Highlands, Cameron Highlands and Penang. Kids nowadays are so much more fortunate. Due to fierce competitions and opening of air routes, air tickets are getting cheaper and Singaporeans are traveling further. In the past, traveling to the United States of America was a privilege reserved only for the rich. In fact, if you could afford a trip to Bangkok, you must be earning quite a bit. Now, most kids would have already been to Thailand, Hong Kong, Japan and some even Europe. My little nephew was only nine years old, and he had already seen the snow in Toronto. But this kid had no idea where on earth was Cameron Highlands.

When Choi finished his conference call and walked over, Nicky told him that we had managed to book our flight on GE Airlines. Choi’s eyes opened real wide. His look definitely did not bode well for the airline.

“Why are we flying on GE Airlines?” Choi asked. “Can’t we take other airlines?”
“Nope, the rest are already fully booked,” Nicky replied.
“All fully booked? Even Singapore Airlines?”
“What’s wrong with GE Airlines?”
“My friend had been on Korean Airlines before. Their seats are freaking small! And you won’t have your personal television panel! You’ve to watch your in-flight movies on the shared projector screen with the other passengers and you can’t switch channels!”
“What? No personal television?” Sally hollered.
“Nicky, are you sure that all flights on Singapore Airlines are fully booked?” Choi asked Nicky again.
“Yeh, that’s what the travel agency guy told me!”
“Maybe it is because of the vast number of tour packages going to South Korea? I heard that most tour packages have been fully booked,” Kah Leng suggested.
“No, I don’t think so,” said Choi. “Our travel agencies are not that generous. I don’t suppose they will allow their customers on those tour packages to travel on Singapore Airlines. That will eat too much into their margins.”

Choi closed his eyes, lowered his head, and folded his arms. A minute later, he looked up at us and said: “Maybe we should try our luck on the Singapore Airlines website directly.”

With a few typing on the keyboard and a few clicks on the mouse, Nicky launched the Singapore Airlines website. He keyed in our traveling dates, the number of passengers and clicked on search. About a minute later, a table appeared with several dates, timing and prices on it. There were vacancies on the Singapore Airlines flights.

“Geez, that travel agency guy lied to me!” Nicky was miffed.
“I don’t think he lied to you though,” I said. “I believe that Singapore Airlines has allocated certain number of seats to the different travel agencies in the country and saved some for its direct sales on the Internet.”

With the website, we were glad that we could choose our departing and returning dates and times comfortably, without having the travel agency staff to put us on hold while he did the checking.

“Let’s take this one that departs Singapore at 11:45p.m. on the previous night and arrives at Seoul at 6:55p.m.,” Kah Leng suggested. “In that case, we won’t waste our day time flying.”
“But that’s the most expensive flight!” Nicky objected. “Look! If we were to take this night flight, it’ll amount to S$1,200 per person. However, if we were to take the morning eight o’clock flight instead, it’ll only cost us S$750!”
“Wow, that’s a five hundred dollars difference!” Choi exclaimed.
“Yah, I think it is not worth it as well,” I commented. “I could give up the five hours lead time to save five hundred dollars. And anyway, the problem about night flight is that, even if you could reach the destination earlier, you’ll most probably be too exhausted from the night flight to enjoy yourself in the morning.”
“Oh… I thought we could save some time,” Kah Leng mused.
“Hey girl, relax! We’re not on the Amazing Race! We’re there to rest and relax! Why push yourself so hard?” Nicky patted Kah Leng’s shoulder.
“Okay, let’s take the eight o’clock morning flight then,” Kah Leng gave in.

“Then how about the returning flight? Which timing should we take?” Nicky asked.
“Take the latest one!” Kah Leng insisted. “If I can’t reach there early, I want to leave there late!”
“Hahaha… Okay, I’ll tick the latest one at 16:20pm,” said Nicky as he continued to book the tickets.

Finally, we had booked our air tickets to Seoul successfully. It was then the time to talk about accommodation.

“Hey guys, let me tell you this before you book our hotels,” said Kah Leng. “I don’t like small hotel rooms. There was this once when I was given this free hotel stay in Hong Kong when I booked a flight that had a stopover in Hong Kong. That hotel was so small that I could not breathe in it! Just a few steps from the room door, my feet could touch the bed! There was no wardrobe to put my luggage and there was only this fourteen inches television that was built into the wall! And that’s not the worst part. The bathroom was so small that I could barely turn when I showered! Choi, I think you’ll be stuck in that bathroom cum toilet for sure!”
“And I assume that you checked out of the hotel immediately by the next morning?” I asked.
“Of course! I gave up the one more night free stay in that hotel and checked into Ritz Carlton!” said the exasperated Kah Leng.

Kah Leng had this obsession over Ritz Carlton hotels. Her preferred hotel to stay in every city was Ritz Carlton. She had stayed at the Ritz Carlton hotels at Philadelphia, Dubai, Hong Kong, Bali, Kuala Lumpur and of course Singapore. When she was in London for holidays last year, she wanted to stay at The Ritz. However she was forced to give it up because the room cost four hundred pounds, which is equivalent to over a thousand Singapore dollars.

“By the way, I heard that there’s a Ritz Carlton hotel in Seoul,” said Kah Leng.
“Yah, there is. And my friend had stayed there previously,” said Choi. “But the room rate is rather expensive. It’s about four hundred Singapore dollars for a night.”
“That sounds reasonable to me,” said Kah Leng.

The other four of us stared at Kah Leng with our eyes wide opened.

“Erm… Kah Leng, we’re not really thinking of a luxurious tour in South Korea,” I said.
“Oh…”
“We’re actually thinking of staying in some three or at most, four stars hotels,” Nicky added.
“Oh…”
“But don’t worry though. We’ll try to get those whose rooms are not as small as the one that freaked you out in Hong Kong, okay?” I tried to console her.

Kah Leng pondered upon our words for a while, and then smiled and said: “It is okay, guys. I’ll stay in Ritz Carlton Seoul when I tour Seoul again with my boy friend in the future.”

Nicky picked up the phone again and dialed the number of the second travel agency on the list. That agency was known to have pretty good deals for accommodations.

“Welcome to CZ Travel. Please press one for packaged tours, two for free and easy and three for ticketing.”

Since there was no option for hotels booking, Nicky pressed three.

“Please press one for U.S., two for Europe, three for China and four for South East Asia.”

Nicky pressed four.

“Hello, how can I help you?”
“Hi, I would like to enquire on South Korea hotels, in Seoul.”
“Okay, hold on a minute.”

While on hold, Nicky heard some typing on the background noise, followed by the lady on the phone asking somebody about hotels in South Korea.

“Which day do you want to check in?”
“On the thirty-first of December.”
“On which day do you want to check out?”
“On the third of January.”
“How many rooms?”
“Two double occupancies”
“Okay, hold on a minute.”

A few minutes later, the lady returned to the phone and said: “Sorry but there’s no more vacancy at the Seoul hotels in that period.”

Chapter 26: Good Feng Shui for Offices

2008-02-26T08:41:00.000+08:00

I was having a very bad morning. Some critical issues with a new FX fund had surfaced suddenly and its launch date was around the corner. I had been on four conference calls with the Singapore, Thailand, South Korea and China country managers respectively for the past four hours, repeating the same things over and over again.

Just when I put back my headset and took a first sip on my already cold coffee, my MSN Messenger popped out. I had got a message from Nicky.

“hey, ur product got prob? u sounded exasperated on ur conf calls”
“yeh, got surprises at the wrong timing.”
“do u think everybody has been rather unlucky lately?”
“is it?”
“ur product got prob, Choi’s report was handed up late”
“erm… Choi’s reports are always handed up late”
“ok, Dawn’s project got stuck”
“Nicky, Dawn’s project is never destined to be successful”
“Sally has been scolded by Ju for a few times in a row this month”
“it’s their event period. It’s normal”
“ok ,Rose has been falling sick”
“hmm… true. She has been having migraine quite frequently these days”
“and my shares has been dropping”
“so wat are u trying to tell me?”
“i think our office’s Feng Shui has got prob”
“are u sure it’s our office’s Feng Shui?”
“yeh. I tell u wat. I’ll bring my stuffs here tomoro”
“wat stuffs?”
“my Feng Shui tools. I need to take a look at our office’s Feng Shui and see wat’s wrong”

Geez, to Nicky, all misfortunes lead to Feng Shui. But he was not being too paranoid though. It was true that all of us had been down on our luck lately. Nothing seemed to work and anything that could go wrong went wrong. Maybe it was really the Feng Shui.

As promised, Nicky appeared with an ancient Chinese Feng Shui compass, a.k.a. Luo Pan, in the office on the following morning. It was a small compass embedded in a huge movable copper disc with lots of Chinese writings on it and this whole thing was then housed in a red square box. There was even a tiltmeter with a liquid bubble inside a chamber that indicated if the compass was tilted. The only time I had seen this kind of compass was in a Chinese movie about zombies and Taoists.

Nicky walked to our office door, turned and tilted his compass then noted down his reading on a piece of paper. He then did the same action at the other three corners and the center of the area that belonged to our department.

“Dude, I was right,” Nicky looked at me solemnly. “Our office has got bad Feng Shui.”
“Then why did it only affect us at the end of the year?” I was not convinced.
“Because then it was not time yet. But now, my friend, the bad luck has finally surfaced. We need to counter it or else more misfortune will be expected.”

If I was not standing in front of Nicky and looking at him, I would have thought that I heard those words from a Feng Shui master who was trying to tell me that we needed to buy some thousands dollars Feng Shui cures to end our bad luck.

“And what are we supposed to do, our dear Feng Shui Master?” I teased.
“Our office door is facing the West, which is where the Grand Duke Jupiter is situated this year. That is very bad because all the movements at the door have created too much noise.”
“Oh, so this Mr. Grand Duke Jupiter is a quiet guy like KZ, huh?”
“Beng! In Feng Shui, Grand Duke Jupiter is very well respected. And misfortunes will fall upon us if we create noises at where he is seated!”
“Okay, so what’s the cure?”
“We need to buy a Pi Xiu,” Nicky continued. “This Pi Xiu should be placed at our door and facing West where the Grand Duke Jupiter is. It’ll then get rid of the bad luck due to the conflict.”

Oh, so that guy with a horn, a face that looks like a mix between a lion and a dog, hoofs at its feet, two little wings and a tail would scare that cantankerous and sour old soul away.

“Will this Pi Xiu stops people from treating me as a receptionist as well?” asked Ju who sat at the desk nearest to the door. “I’m so sick of having delivery men and guests asking me where is who seated, where is the wash room and where is the exit.”
“Erm… I’m not sure about this part.” Nicky admitted. “But I know that it’s bad Feng Shui to sit facing the office door directly. It means that you’ll be out of the company soon.”
“Out of the company? Does it mean that some headhunters will look for me and some companies will offer me higher pay?”
“Err… I’m not sure if it can be translated to that.”

“Nicky! Maybe you should look at my Feng Shui problem as well!” shouted Sally.
“You’re not under any exposed overhead beam, and your facing direction seems okay. What’s wrong?” asked the puzzled Nicky.
“It is bad Feng Shui to face the copier machine right?”
“What?”
“You know, everybody who discovers that the copier machine is out of paper will turn around and ask me whether I have any papers,” Sally complained. “There was once, this guy even told me that the copier machine was spoilt and he just stood in front of me and expected me to do something about it! What did he expect? Do I look like I can repair a copier machine?”
“Erm… Sally, I’m afraid I can’t help you on this. The Feng Shui books did not mention anything about what to do when you sit facing a copier machine.”

Before Sally could ask him anything, Nicky hastily walked to the back of our department area. He looked at the vertical blinds covering the windows then turned to me and said: “I’ve found another problem.”

“What’s that?”
“The three of us, you, me and Choi, we are seated with our backs to the windows. That’s bad Feng Shui!”
“Because there’s another disagreeable guy situated there?”
“No! In Feng Shui, if you are seated with you back to a door or a window, it means you won’t have the support from your bosses and colleagues in work. No wonder Rose rejected my last analysis report!”
“Err… Nicky, I heard that she rejected that report because you made some mistakes in some of your charts.”
“Never mind, I know how to cure this,” Nicky ignored my comments and continued. “We can place a Dragon Tortoise here to give us the support that we lack of.”
“Dude, is it a dragon or a tortoise?”
“A Dragon Tortoise.”
“Yah, so which one? Dragon or tortoise?”
“A Dragon Tortoise! A Dragon Tortoise is a Feng Shui animal with the head of a dragon and the body of a tortoise!” explained Nicky, slightly miffed with me.

Nicky then turned and pushed away the vertical blinds as he opened one of the windows. He stuck his head out for a few minutes, looking up and down, left and right, then came back in and closed the window.

“I don’t really see any sharp corners or protruding parts outside our office windows.”
“Well, that’s great then.”
“But in order to play safe, I think we’d better increase the yang chi in our office.”

I had heard this from a television program before. People who believe in Feng Shui believe that our environment is consisted of yang chi, which is positive aura, and yin chi, which is negative aura. When the yang chi is weaker than the yin chi in an environment, the people staying in that environment will be very unlucky. And when the yin chi in an environment is too strong, that place could be haunted. I wondered if that was the reason for Sally’s spiritual experience.

“How are you going to increase the yang chi in the office?” I asked Nicky.
“There are these five-coin amulets that are made of five I-Ching coins tied together with a red string. I’ll get five of these amulets and we can hang four in the four corners and hang the fifth one in the center.”

“Hey bro! Since you’re at it, is there anything you can do to the Feng Shui here to make our wealth luck stronger so that we can win some lottery?” Choi asked.
“Hmm… actually there might be a way.”

Nicky walked back to his table and took out several Feng Shui books from his document bag. One by one, he flipped and read through some pages. A couple of minutes later, he put down a book and walked over to Choi’s desk.

“Choi, there is one way to enhance our wealth luck. But it’s a bit troublesome though.”
“Well, if I can win the first price for lottery, I don’t really mind doing something that is troublesome,” Choi grinned.
“We need to take a porcelain bowl, put in five I-Ching coins and fill it with water. Then we need to place this bowl of coins and water at the corner diagonally to our office door.”
“That doesn’t sound too troublesome.”
“We need to change the water every week.”
“That’s not a problem at all. I can do it,” Choi committed.
“And we can’t use normal tap water.”
“Then what? Use mineral water?”

Nicky took a breath, and then said: “We need water from the heaven, from the sky to be specific. We need to collect rain water to fill the bowl.”

Choi raised an eyebrow and said: “Forget it. It’s really too troublesome.”

During lunch time, I accompanied Nicky to the Feng Shui shop that he usually patron at The Bencoolen to get the Pi Xiu, Dragon Tortoise and five-coin amulets. After we left the shop, Nicky mentioned that we needed to bless our Feng Shui cures in the Kwan Im Tong Hood Che Temple.

“How do we bless these stuffs?” I asked.
“Oh, just circle the cures three times around the main joss-sticks urn in the temple and ask the Goddess of Mercy for her blessings,” Nicky explained.
“Okay, I presume that you’re doing that because you’re a Buddhist. But Dawn is a Christian. Will these animals and amulets protect her as well?”
“Err… I’m not sure. It’s not stated in the books.”

After we returned to the office, we could not place those Feng Shui cures yet. Nicky said that the only auspicious hour for that day was at five o’clock and we could only place those cures by then.

Finally at five minutes past five, Nicky placed the Pi Xiu and Dragon Tortoise at their respective places while Choi and I helped to hang the coin amulets on the lamp holders. Dawn watched in amaze as we hung the coin amulets.

“Hey, what are you guys doing?” Dawn finally could not control her curiosity and asked.
“We’re hanging some Feng Shui coin amulets,” I replied the obvious.
“What is that amulet for? What is it supposed to do?”
“Err… bring us good luck.”
“Okay… these coins look pretty eerie. Will it affect me negatively? I’m pregnant, you know?”
“Erm… I’m not very sure actually. Why don’t you ask Nicky? It’s his idea.”

Immediately, Dawn walked over to Nicky who had just finished adjusting the Pi Xiu’s position and asked him a series of questions. Nicky frowned as he tried to answer her questions and I could see that he needed to read more Feng Shui books.

Actually, maybe Nicky should find a Feng Shui cure that could stop Dawn from bothering him.

Chapter 25: Small Shops with Great People

2008-01-27T18:27:00.000+08:00

When we talk about shopping in Singapore, we would naturally think of Orchard Road. With a slew of major shopping centers flanking both sides of the road, from Wheelock Place to Wisma Atrium, to Ngee Ann City, to Paragon, to Centerpoint, to Orchard Point, to Plaza Singapore, the temptation of buying is hard to resist. All the labels like Louis Vuitton are there; all the luxurious restaurants like Lawry's are there; all the supermarkets like Carrefour are there. It is easy to spend the whole day there just eating and buying.

With the development of public housing estates, smaller shopping centers like Jurong Point are also built in the area to serve the residents in the estates. These estate shopping centers are usually situated just next to the MRT station and/or bus terminals. They would have the usual fashion shops like Giodano, healthcare shops like Body Shop, fast food restaurants like McDonald’s and even major electronics and electrical appliances stores like Harvey Norman. To the residents, these estate shopping centers are more convenient than Orchard Road and usually less crowded. But of course, the range of products and services would not be as comprehensive.

Going deeper into the housing estates, you will find two-storey flats, usually situated near dry or wet markets, with small shops on the ground floor. These small shops, usually owned by families, provides convenient shopping for the residents who live a distance away from the estate shopping centers. Due to their cheaper rents, the products and services found in these shops are priced even lower than those found in the estate shopping centers. However, reasonable pricing is not the only factor that attracted the residents to these shops. These shop owners are good at handling customer relationships.

My mom had sent me to the video rental shop to return her rented VCDs which were one-day late. The video rental shop is run by an old man and several young ladies, probably his daughters. It is a small shop with shelves of movies and TV serials, in VCDs and video tapes formats, from the Western countries, Hong Kong, Taiwan and China. My mom would usually rent Hong Kong TV serials from this shop. Though the local television station screens TV serials from Hong Kong regularly, those serials are normally at least one year old, whereas the serials that she rented from the shop could be as new as one month old. Furthermore, she preferred to watch her TV serials in Cantonese because she felt that after some sentences were translated from Cantonese to Chinese, some native language humor could be lost.

I handed the box of VCDs to the old man at the counter.

“What’s your card number?”
“Err… I don’t know… let me check with my family.”

Gosh, my mom forgot to tell me her membership number.

“No, it’s okay. Just tell me your phone number.”

I gave the old man my house number which he keyed into the computer beside the cashier. Seconds later, he retrieved my mom’s membership number and took out her rental card from a box of other rental cards. He opened the box of VCDs, checked it and signed on the rental card.

“Okay, that’s all,” the old man told me as he kept the box of VCDs.
“Erm… I think we’re a day later than the return date,” I reminded him. “How much is the late fine?”
“Yeh, I know. It’s okay. Don’t worry about it.”

How forgiving. Perhaps our credit card companies and that major telecommunications service provider should learn from this old man and stop sending out warning letters when my cheques were late by a day or two.

There are two hairdressing saloons and a Malay barber shop below these two-storey flats. These hairdressing saloons are not as elegantly renovated as the REDS, Vive or Peter & Guys, and their hair stylists are not as highly paid. They do not provide you Cosmopolitan or Men’s Health for your reading pleasure while waiting, and they do not serve you Evian mineral water, tea or coffee. However, their hair stylists are friendly and committed to help their customers. Oh, and they charge a much cheaper rate.

One afternoon, I was going to one of those hairdressing saloons for a much needed hair cut. Before I reached the saloon, I could hear screams coming out from it.

“Boy, I won’t hurt you… come on, let aunty cut here…”
“Wahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!”
“Baby, don’t be so scared… let the good aunty cut your hair, then you’ll look nice nice…”
“Wahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!”
“Okay… don’t move, okay? Just a while more…. “
“Wahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!”
“Baby, you let aunty cut your hair and I’ll buy you ice-cream okay?”
“Wahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!”

A lady was sitting on the saloon chair and hugging her little boy close to her, while two hair stylists tried to cut his hair. The freaked out little boy was crying and screaming till his face was all red and full of perspire. The mother tried to coax him with colorful hair clips, sweets and small toys, while the hair stylists stood on both sides of the little boy and tried to steal a cut or two when his head was still for the few split seconds.

The commotion lasted for about an hour and the hair stylists finally managed to finish the little boy’s hair cut. When the lady was leaving the saloon, she felt so embarrassed for the commotion caused that she kept apologizing to the two perspiring hair stylists.

“No worries, Mdm,” the hair stylists assured her with their understanding smiles.

After the lady and her little boy left, the hair stylists went back to work. One of them smiled at me and apologized for the wait, then took me to a seat. I had a quick and simple hair cut that was finished in about fifteen minutes and it cost me ten dollars.

In recent years, a slew of ten dollars cut saloon have opened in Singapore. These small saloons with three to four hair stylists are originated from Japan, based on the concept of “ten dollars for a ten minutes cut”. Instead of washing your hair after the cut, they will ‘vacuum’ the loose hairs from your head using a tube that sucks in air. The hair stylists do not talk to their customers except for the mechanical “good morning” or “good afternoon” greetings in Japanese that are shouted at the customers as they entered the saloon. I wondered are the uncles looking for cheap hair cuts puzzled by the string of unknown language shouted at them.

Usually we could find a bakery shop among these neighboring stores. The bakery shop at my neighborhood does not sell costly fusion breads like those pork floss breads, sweet potatoes breads and tuna breads sold in new age bakeries like BreadTalk. In stead, they have the traditional breads like cheap char siew, a.k.a. BBQ pork, breads, red bean breads and curry chicken breads. All of these traditional breads look like a plain round bun regardless of their fillings and it is not easy to differentiate which is which without looking at the name tags. They do not look as artistic as those fusion breads and they are not as finely baked. However, when I bite into them, it made me reminisce about my childhood, about those days when a char siew bread for the recess break could satisfy me so much.

Besides traditional breads, there are also traditional cakes sold in the bakery shop. These are simple sponge cakes with butter cream toppings. Butter cream, unlike fresh cream that is light and puffy, tastes thick and buttery. One small rectangular piece of these traditional cakes and you will feel full immediately. These traditional cakes were used to make huge and colorful birthday cakes in the past, with shapes like Mickey Mouse, amour tank or simply numbers. When I was still a kid, I remembered that you could tell the age of the birthday boy or girl just by looking at the birthday cake, because the cakes will be in the shapes of their age.

Two shops after the bakery shop is a hardware shop. These typical hardware shops sell cheap baking tools, kitchen utensils, working tools, plumbing tools and parts, and lots of plastic containers and pails. Before festive seasons like Deepavali, Hari Raya Puasa and Chinese New Year, the hardware shop will sell lots of baking pans in different shapes and sizes for the housewives to bake their festive goodies. But the hardware shop acts primarily as a life saver for the residents during emergency situations…

“Beng! The flushing button on the toilet bowl’s flush box is spoilt! After I pressed it, it just stays down and the water just flush non-stop!”
“Mom, I think the enclosed spring for the flushing button is spoilt.”
“Then hurry up and get a new spring from the hardware shop downstairs!”

“Beng, the kitchen light is spoilt. I suspected that the starter is spoilt.”
“Okay Dad, I’ll get a starter from the hardware shop.”
After my dad changed the starter, the kitchen light still refused to light up.
“Maybe it is the light tube that’s spoilt. Beng, could you go downstairs to get a new light tube?”

I could not imagine my life without that hardware shop in the neighborhood.

To me, these shops definitely meant to me more than the big departmental stores at Orchard Road. I knew I could trust those shop owners and I could definitely use their advices. Their ranges of products might not be as rich as those offered in big departmental stores, but at least the essentials are there. And though they might not know my name, I know these uncles and aunties know me.

Chapter 24: Take a Break, Have a Holiday

2008-01-23T23:45:00.000+08:00

Choi, Nicky, Sally, Kah Leng, business development manager from the Singapore Capital Markets team, and I had been talking about making a trip together for quite some time. With the Christmas season break just one month away, we decided to work on a concrete plan.

“So where can we go for a week’s break?” Choi asked.
“Should we go London?” Nicky asked. “I’ve got some friends there and we can stay at their places and save on accommodation.”
“But Nicky, I think most of London will be closed during the Christmas season,” Choi objected.
“I’m sure not all places will be closed right?”
“Let me check from the Internet.”

After a few typing on the keypads and a few clicking and scrolling on the mouse, Choi turned his notebook screen to face us.

“Dude, almost all shopping centers will be closed from twenty-fourth to twenty-sixth of December, most of the museums like the National Gallery will be closed, and even the Tower of London will be closed! What are we going to do there? Sit at Hyde Park outside Hard Rock Café and feed the pigeons?”
“Maybe even the pigeons are not around,” I added.
“I guess not everywhere is going to be closed right?” Nicky was skeptical. “Then how about those tour groups going over from Singapore? The tour guide must bring these tourists to somewhere right?”
“Erm… I think in most Europe tour packages that touch on London, our tour agencies only arrange visits to the Big Ben, along the House of Parliament, at the gate outside Buckingham Palace, Trafalgar Square, London Bridge and Tower Bridge. So they’ll never have any opening or closing problem.” I explained.
“Anyway, London will be too cold for me,” Sally added.
“Okay, fine. Let’s go somewhere else then,” Nicky sulked.

“Guys, I read from the newspapers that there is this Icehotel in Sweden where the whole hotel is built using the mountain water from Torneälven River. Every thing there, even the furniture is made of ice. Pretty cool huh?” I suggested avidly.
“You meant pretty cold,” Kah Leng commented.
“Beng, I know Ms. Xiao Long Niu from Louis Cha’s Chinese wuxia novel, The Return of the Condor Heroes, slept on ice. But she had very powerful inner strength, a.k.a. nei gong, which we commoners don’t have,” Nicky mocked.
“Hey, you’ll be provided with a sleeping bag with liner!” I argued.
“Erm… if you don’t mind, I’ll prefer to sleep on a white goose feather and down featherbed,” said Kah Leng.
“Anyway, it’s not worth going to the Scandinavians in winter, when the days are short and the nights are long. Too much time wasted sleeping,” added Nicky the typical Hong Konger that believed that time is money.
“Okay, let’s go somewhere else then,” I gave up.

“Since most places in the western countries will be closed for the Christmas season, and their days will be rather short, why don’t we stay in Asia Pacific instead?” I suggested.

Besides the issue of having shorter days, we could have problems finding our meals as well. Most restaurants in the western countries will be closed during the holidays. This meant that we would have to either take ridiculously expensive dinners in the hotels, or settle with cheap but almost inedible Chinese food. The hardworking Chinese businessmen do not believe in closing for holidays. In fact, knowing that most western cafes and restaurants will be closed and hungry souls will be awash on the street, most budget Chinese restaurants are happy to remain opened for even longer hours during the holidays. However the problem with these budget Chinese restaurants is that most of them only serve gong bao chicken, sweet and sour chicken or beer or pork, deep fried chicken or beer or pork and fried rice or noodles, and most of these dishes taste, well, funny.

“How about Gold Coast or Cairns?” Sally suggested.
“Err… Sally, Australia and New Zealand will be having their summers during that period,” Choi said. “And I’m not very keen in getting sunburn.”
“You can always put on some sun block lotion what.”
“I don’t really like the feeling of perspiring so much under a layer of sun block lotion,” Choi still rejected the idea. “It reminds me of those national service days when I had to wear camouflage face paint and scout around in the hot forest, with houseflies trying to land on my face all the time. Oh, that reminded me. There are tons of houseflies in Australia during their summers.”

Okay, our destination should be in Asia and not Asia Pacific. Anyway, it might not be a good idea to walk beside a constantly perspiring Choi for a week.

“Let’s go to Taiwan. None of us has ever being to Taiwan right?” Kah Leng suggested.
“Hmm… Taiwan sounded good,” I agreed. “There are a couple of scenic national parks in Taiwan, like the Taroko National Park and Yangmingshan National Park.”
“Erm… I was thinking more of the shopping areas there,” Kah Leng admitted. “And Taipei 101.”
“Yah! I heard that the crystal jewellery there is stunning! And their fashion is also very ahead of us! Wow, so many things to buy!” said Sally, the other shopping queen.
“And the night markets there! Like Shi Ling night market!” Choi exclaimed. “I heard they’ve got this super-sized chicken chop there that is simply delicious!”
“Err… guys,” Nicky interrupted our excitement. “I’m not really into Taiwan. To me, Taiwan seems to look like another Hong Kong. And I would rather return to Hong Kong since I prefer the food there.”
“Oh…”
“Hey, you guys can still go ahead without me. It is okay, I don’t mind! I can always return to Hong Kong and spend the holidays with my friends and relatives there.”
“No, no, no. We won’t just desert you like that. Let’s think of another destination then,” Kah Leng gave up Taiwan though she seemed to be disappointed. Well, if we said we will travel as a team, we will travel as a team.

“How about Japan? Like Hokkaido?” Sally asked. “I’ve just seen Globe Trekker on the Discovery Travel channel introducing Hokkaido and it seems interesting. They have a musical box museum where you can choose the tune that you like and make your own musical box, a white chocolate factory, and the Kitaichi Glass Shop reputed for its unique and elegant hand-blown glassware.”
“Good idea! Then we could try their snow crab and king crab which are as big as lobsters! We could have crab sashimi, crab tempura, yaki crab, crab miso soup, baked stuffed crab shells and crab hand rolls! Hahaha…” Choi thrived at the thought of food again.
“Erm… Choi, I heard that these crabs are expensive,” said Sally.
“Hey girl, you could only get them there. You’ll regret if you don’t try!”
“Wait… though the thought of Hokkaido with snow flakes floating down from the sky seems romantic, I must remind you people that Hokkaido is also famous for being very very cold,” I reminded.

There was nothing wrong with my language. I had used two ‘very’s intentionally to emphasize on the extreme coldness of Hokkaido. Winter temperatures in Hokkaido are known to remain well below zero and can even drop to as low as minus fifteen degree Celsius. The occurrences of heavy snow and gusty winds are also common.

“I’m more worried about you girls. Nicky should still be okay with the cold weather because Hong Kong could be pretty cold sometimes too. Choi, I’m not so worried too because he has got a think insulation layer…”

Choi raised an eyebrow at me and folded his arms.

I continued: “But are you girls sure that you can stand the harsh weather? Are you aware that the temperature could drop to as low as minus fifteen degree Celsius?”

Both gals pondered upon what I had said, looked at each other, and then nodded their heads to indicate that they agreed with me that Hokkaido was a bad idea.

“Then how about South Korea? It won’t be as cold as Hokkaido and it’s just as interesting,” Kah Leng suggested.
“Oh yes! South Korea! Why didn’t I think of that?” Sally blurted. “Then I can visit the filming sites for Winter Sonata and Jewel in the Palace!”
“What’s Jewel in the Palace?” Choi asked.

Kah Leng, Sally and Nicky stared at Choi as if he was saying that pigs can climb trees as good as cats.

“Jewel in the Palace is the most popular Korean drama in South Korea, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore and even Malaysia!” the shock Nicky hollered.
“What is it about? Some kind of Korean Tomb Raiders show with smart and armed thieves stealing hilariously expensive crown jewellery from the royal palace?”
“No!” This time, Sally hollered at Choi. “It is about how Jang-Geum the heroine fought through a feudalistic society with serious sexual discrimination, defeated all the male doctors in the palace and became the first female head physician of the Joseon Dynasty! It is based on a real story!”
“Not your type of bimbos kicking action movie,” I nudged Choi.
“Okay, fine. But why are we going to those Korean TV serials filming sites?” Choi protested.

This time, Kah Leng and Sally stared at Choi as if he was saying that pigs are more intelligent than women.

“Err… but I kind of have problem with those spicy Korean kimchis,” said Nicky.
“Don’t worry, Nicky. They’ve got other non-spicy food like claypot rice, stew beef, seafood fermented in salt, BBQ beef and ginseng chicken soup,” Kah Leng consoled.
“Ginseng chicken soup? I like it!” Nicky grinned.
“And we mustn’t forget that South Korea has got a cheap and good skiing resort,” Kah Leng grinned.
“And breath-taking scenery at Jeju island,” I grinned.
“So do you have any objection to South Korea, Choi?” Kah Leng asked.
“Well, with lots of pretty Korean girls surrounding me, and lots of delicious food, I’ve got no problem,” Choi grinned.

Gosh, finally the five of us had agreed on our tour destination. Since South Korea was a popular tour destination among Singaporeans, we needed to quickly decide on the tour details.

“Should we go on a packaged tour or a free and easy one?” I asked.
“Beng, we can’t go on a packaged one. Sally’s Chinese is pretty bad and Kah Leng can’t even write our company name in Chinese,” Nicky commented.
“Yah, and most of these packaged tours have Chinese speaking tour guides,” Kah Leng agreed.
“Okay, which means that we’re going free and easy…” I agreed, and then suddenly realized that something was amiss. “But which one of you speaks Korean?”

Chapter 23: My Morning Jogs

2008-01-19T12:41:00.000+08:00

I liked jogging in the morning, before seven, when most people were still in their dreamlands. When the sky was still dark, the streetlamps were still on, the street was still quiet and there were still dews on the grasses. The initial reason for jogging so early was because of the distance between my house and my work place. I needed to start early so that after the jog, I had enough time to bath, take breakfast, get changed and reach my office by eight thirty. But as I got used to waking up at six for the jogs, I realized that I had begun to like the tranquil environment at that hour.

It was a good time to jog because the pavement was mostly empty except for some passer-bys and, well, some motor bikes that were parked illegally. Those guys figured out that if they parked their motor bikes on the pavement, they could save on their seasons parking at the multi-storey carparks. Luckily our pavement was not wide enough to fit even the smallest 1,000cc car.

Some of those passer-bys were people on the way to the bus stops, workers standing by the pavement waiting for their company buses, parents waiting for the school buses with their children and a couple of other joggers like me. Maybe most of them were really only half awaken, like me, thus nobody said a word. They just walked, waited or jogged quietly. Well, except for once. A plump middle-aged woman, in her faded blue pajamas dress and carrying a pink school bag, was striding towards me, while a little girl, in school uniform and carrying a pink water bottle, was running behind the plump middle-aged woman.

“Just hurry up, would you?” the plump middle-aged woman turned and shouted at the little girl. I could swear that all residents staying from the second to fifth floor of the nearby flats were awakened by that stern command. The little girl lowered her head and struggled to keep up.

“How many times have I told you to check your bag before you sleep? Why must you be so forgetful each time? Why must you either forget this or forget that? What if the school bus has gone off? Why don’t you ever listen to me?”

After the plump middle-aged woman threw a series of questions at that little girl, she lowered her head even lower and tried to run in order to keep up with the pace.

What a sad way to start the day. For the mother, and even more so for the daughter.

There were two types of passer-bys which I hated to meet on the pavement. The first was the Pathblocker. These people could only walk straight. Though they could see from far that I was running on the left side of the pavement, they would not shift to the right and they expected me to give way to them. The second was the Smoker. As the name indicated, these people would smoke as they walked on the pavement, leaving a trail of second-hand smoke for me to breathe in.

There was this particular man who liked to walk his dog every morning and let it urinated freely by the trees flanking the pavement. It could have been a refreshing and healthy morning walk for both the man and his dog, but he chose to smoke. Thus while the dog was busy contaminating the land, the man was busy polluting the air.

It was a good time to jog before seven because vehicles on the road would be scarce. One hour later and there would be big tracks and motor bikes from Malaysia spouting dark smoke into the air. Not very lungs-friendly, I would say. However, jogging before seven had another kind of danger. Cars and motor bikes were usually more daring in that kind of hours because they had a near empty road to speed on and they bet that nobody would be there to catch them. Giving way to joggers when coming out from the car park was never an option on their mind. In fact I had escaped death narrowly in one of my morning jogs.

I was jogging on my usual route and was approaching a cross junction. Usually I would jog on the spot at the traffic light pole while waiting for the light to turn green. But just before I crossed the pedestrian crossing that led to the traffic light pole, I realized that my shoe laces were loosened. So in stead of crossing the pedestrian crossing, I stopped and half squatted to tight my shoe laces. Immediately after I finished tying my shoe laces, I heard a “tzzz” followed by a “bang”. I looked up and saw a red Honda crashed onto the traffic light pole. I took a glance at the traffic lights and realized that the car had beaten the red light.

The driver, a young man who seemed to be in his twenties stepped out from the car, followed by his front passenger stepping out from the other side, another man who looked just as young.

“Hey man! What the hell were you trying to do?” Mr. Passenger berated at Mr. Driver.
“I think I’ve braked too hard so the car skidded,” replied Mr. Driver who was more interested to check the damage of his bonnet than the injury, if any, of his passenger.

It appeared that the traffic light pole was more damaged than his bonnet. His front bumper had concaved at the point where it hit the pole, but it had also saved his bonnet from being seriously crushed. In fact, his bonnet had only curved up slightly as compared to the traffic light pole which had bent into an ‘L’ shape. Poor traffic light pole. All it did was standing at the wrong place at the wrong time.

“Damn it! Now I’ll need to get this car to a workshop,” Mr. Driver swore.
“Do you think the car can still move?”
“I’m not sure. I just hope that the damage is not that bad,” answered Mr. Driver as he opened the curved bonnet to check his engine. “Yeh, the engine is pretty far in so we didn’t crash it.”
“Great, at least we don’t have to call a tow truck at this hour.”

Then Mr. Driver realized that he forgot to ask his passenger a question: “Hey, are you okay?”
“Yah! My shoulder hurts because of the seat belt, but I guess I’m okay.”

At that instance, Mr. Driver also realized that one stunted jogger was half squatting behind the pedestrian crossing and staring at them.

“Err… I think we’d better get going before anybody calls the police,” Mr. Driver nudged his passenger.

Then the red Honda drove off, the traffic light pole remained bent and I came to my senses to stand up. After that accident, I kept a distance away from traffic light poles for as long as one month.

Though it was considered slightly early to jog before seven, there were other walkers and joggers who liked morning exercises as much as me. Most of the time, I met grandpas and grandmas who swung their arms as they did their morning walks. Sometimes, I met some gals jogging with their headphones. The male joggers were more seasonal. For all of the guys that I met in my morning jogs, I would see them for a period of time and after that they just disappeared. Perhaps that special period of time was their last minute training period for their IPPT. Perhaps that was also the reason for their heavy pants which were rather unusual for regular joggers.

I learnt that jogging outdoors at such early hours required some planning. When I switched my morning jogs from the indoor gym to the outdoor, I thought all I had to do was to simply ‘go downstairs and start jogging’. Well, I was so wrong.

On the first day that I jogged around my house, I went too far away. A half an hour jog ended up to be a forty-five minutes and very tiring one. On the next jog, I managed to maintain the duration within half an hour but the route was not right. There was one long leg where I had to pass by a very quiet construction site where several Bangladesh workers sat by the road and stared at me. Though I could be too paranoid to think that they would be even interested to rob a jogger, I believed in been safe than sorry. Following that jog, I chose another route that happened to pass by a temple. That popular temple was crowded and noisy in the day time, but in the dim morning, it was so dark and quiet that it felt kind of eerie when I jogged pass it. That leg was too hard on my heart.

Jogging in the gym was so much easier. There was no planning required as all I had to do was to step onto the track mill and press some buttons. The television in front of the track mill might not be showing something I was interested in but at least watching news was still better than watching a long and quiet pavement.

The other advantage of jogging in the gym was that I did not have to worry about the weather. Rain or shine, I would still be in the air-conditioned environment. However when I jogged outdoors, the weather could be sabotaging at times.

Six o’clock, alarm clock went off. I woke up, got out of bed and looked out of the window. It was raining. I was pissed and I went back to bed.

Six o’clock, alarm clock went off. I woke up, got out of bed and looked out of the window. It was not raining and the weather was cooling. I washed up and changed into my running gears, went downstairs and found that it was drizzling. I underestimated the drizzle and carried on with my jog. I perspired in the drizzle, went home for a hot bath, and caught a cold.

Six o’clock, alarm clock went off. I woke up, got out of bed and looked out of the window. It was not raining and the weather was cooling. I washed up and went downstairs to proceed with my jog. Five minutes later, it started to drizzle. At the half way point, it started to rain heavily. I went home all drenched and caught flu.

Like a ‘detour’ in the Amazing Race, indoor and outdoor jogs had their own pros and cons. To me, I would still prefer an outdoor jog. At least I got to see people who were more interesting than the newscaster.

Chapter 22: Where the Tourists Go

2008-01-17T10:22:00.001+08:00

Our two Shanghai colleagues Zhang Qin and Xiao Di were coming over to Singapore to join us in a Six Sigma training course. The course would be ending on a Friday and they had got a full Saturday to tour Singapore before departing on Sunday afternoon back to Shanghai. Rose had gathered the team to brainstorm on where we should bring them around.

“Guys, this is their first visit to Singapore, and they’ve only got one free day. We’ve to make that day worthwhile and memorable,” Rose reminded.
“Rose, I think Sentosa Island is the best choice,” suggested Sally. “We can take them to the island by cable car, which is quite cool. There is a new attraction called the Sky Tower that’s supposed to offer panoramic views across the island and Singapore, and some said even Indonesia…”
“That Sky Tower is not worth it, Sally,” Nicky interrupted. “I took my Hong Kong friends there previously and really regretted about it. The whole ride up and down was only about fifteen minutes, so by the time you figured out a famous building, you’re going down. And that ride cost me ten dollars! It was way too expensive!”

“Okay, maybe not the Sky Tower. But there is still the Fort Siloso and that museum that shows some wax British surrendering to the wax Japanese…”
“I thought it is some wax Japanese surrendering to the wax British?” Dawn interrupted Sally this time.
“Whatever! Anyway they’ll get to see some wax guys surrendering to some other wax guys.” Sally grunted.
“Actually those old cannons at Fort Siloso and the Prisoner of War artwork are pretty cool as well,” I added. “And there is also the famous Underwater World. I actually quite enjoyed that long moving travelator tunneling underwater through those sting rays, sharks, squids, huge groupas and other fishes.”
“Yah, they do look delicious,” Choi commented.

Everybody raised an eyebrow at Choi.

“Personally, I quite like the beaches there. Both the Siloso and Palawan beaches are pretty and their sand is soft and white,” Ju brought us back to Sentosa.
“And I like the Musical Fountain! So romantic!” Dawn exclaimed.

“Okay, so Sentosa Island is one good choice. Any other suggestions?” Rose asked.
“How about Haw Par Villa?” Choi suggested. “There we have statues and figurines that tell stories of Chinese mythology and legends. And that Ten Courts of Hell is my favorite! We can scare these gals with those tortures that the ghosts go through, like hooking their tongues out, boiling them in a pot of oil and cutting their bodies into pieces!”
“Choi, No. First of all, I think they’ve got enough of Chinese mythology and legends. And secondly, I don’t want them to have a sleepless last night in Singapore,” Rose chided.

“Jurong Bird Park?” KZ suggested.
“Yah, great idea!” Sally agreed. “There is this part where the whole area is enclosed with some sort of big net over the top and…”
“Erm… you meant the walk-in aviary” I corrected.
“Yah, the walk-in aviary. There you’ll have those birds flying all over you so freely. And they also have this world's largest man made waterfall somewhere inside and a simulated natural freshwater river habitat that has ducks, fishes and turtles. The whole place is so unlike Singapore!” Sally continued avidly.
“And with that Penguin Parade enclosure in a re-created Antarctic setting, with more than 200 penguins of different species, you’ll feel like you’re in Philips Island right?” I teased. “Why are we taking them to somewhere that tried not to look like Singapore?”
“Err… guys, with that bird flu spreading all over the world, I don’t think Jurong Bird Park is a good idea,” Rose raised a valid concern.

“Hmm… why don’t we take them to the Botanic Gardens?” Dawn suggested. “There is this National Orchid Garden inside the Botanic Gardens, which has lots and lots of beautiful orchid plants on display! They are so enthralling you won’t even want to leave there! And sometimes they even have musical concerts at the serene Symphony Lake!”
“But walking in the hot and humid Botanic Gardens is a real torture. Furthermore, I think we bound to have mosquitoes in a park. Are you sure we are safe from dengue fever already?” Nicky objected.
“Don’t worry. There are the Mist and Cool Houses where the temperature are dropped to a cooling level,” said Dawn.
“You mean there’re air-con places where you see air-con plants?”
“Not air-con plants!” Dawn hollered. “Those are delicate flowers, like some special orchids, that are grown in cold climate countries and in the Mist House they are constantly sprayed with a mist of water to keep them humid and cool!”
“Okay, flowers from cold climate countries. But the point is, if they’ve got only one day to tour around Singapore, why waste the day in a park looking at some flowers?” Nicky argued.
“We’ll reserve the Botanic Gardens as a second choice and ask the gals if they’re interested in flowers, okay?” Rose intervened.

“Hey Rose, which attraction would you recommend then? Let’s hear from you!” I was curious where Rose would recommend.
“Actually, personally I like the Night Safari. Do you know that it is the first wildlife park in the world that is built and dedicated for night visits? I feel that there's this mystery about seeing the animals at night, when you have all kinds of nocturnal creatures, from pumas to snakes, and owls looking at you in their light reflective eyes. It’s a really very special experience.”
“Err… Rose, won’t the tigers and snakes scare the hell out of those girls as well?” Choi asked.
“Well, if they’re scared of walking the trails, they can always choose to take the tram ride,” Rose argued.
“But they’re not allowed to take pictures right? I heard that no flash photography is allowed in the Night Safari,” Dawn commented.
“That’s not a problem. The girls can visit the zoo during the day time to take their pictures and scare themselves to death in the Night Safari during the night time. And that settles their one day tour in Singapore!” Nicky giggled.
“Good idea! Let’s put the Night Safari down as our third choice!” I suggested.
“Okay, so our third choice is the Singapore Zoo and the Night Safari and we can check with the gals if they’re interested in animals,” Rose wrote ‘Singapore Zoo and the Night Safari’ as the third choice on her notepad.

I wondered did our local travel agencies have such headaches when they were planning those N-day tour packages for the tourists. But then again, they could fill in the slots with visits to the souvenirs stores and expensive but not very delicious meals at those conservation shop houses. And talk about conservation shop houses…

“Rose, how about we take them to Chinatown?” I suggested.
“Erm… Beng, I don’t think our friends from Shanghai will be very interested to see a stretch of artificially and flamboyant conservation shop houses selling expensive souvenirs and even more expensive local seafood,” Choi rejected. “And why will someone from China be interested to see our not-so-Chinese Chinatown?”
“But they can visit the Sri Mariamman Temple along South Bridge Road, which will be quite an unique experience for them,” I argued.
“Then why don’t we just bring them to Little India?” Nicky commented.
“But they can taste the nice food at the hawker center above Chinatown Complex!” I still tried to argue.
“Yeh, actually Beng is right. After taking their lunch at the hawker center, they could get some cheap parallel import music CDs from the shops downstairs,” Dawn supported.
“Err... Dawn, do you know that those cheap music CDs are parallel imported from China?” I had to correct Dawn though I appreciated her support.
“Oh…”

“Yah, Chinatown doesn’t really sound like a good idea,” said Rose. “In fact, I’ll rather take them to Kampong Gelam. At least they get to see a totally different kind of culture.”
“Rose is right. I don’t think there’re that many Malays in Shanghai right? So that place should be pretty exotic to these girls,” Dawn supported. “And we can even bring them to the Malay heritage Centre that showcases the history and culture of Singapore’s Malay community.”
“True, and the restored architecture there are more authentic than and not as artificial as Chinatown,” Choi agreed.
“We can also show them the Sultan Mosque which is the largest mosque in Singapore. I’m sure they’ll love taking pictures there,” even I agreed with this idea.
“And we should also take them to Bussorah Mall and Arab Street. With the slew of traditional Muslim clothings, artifacts, handicraft and jewellry available there, I’m sure they’ll be able to buy some souvenirs home.” Rose grinned as she wrote ‘Kampong Gelam’ as the fourth and last choice on her notepad.

A few weeks later, Zhang Qin and Xiao Di arrived at Singapore for the Six Sigma training course. On the last day of the course, we asked the gals where they would like to visit for their Saturday free day.

“Girls, we’ve singled out a few places that are worth visiting. They are the exciting Sentosa Island, the scenic Botanic Gardens, the natural Singapore Zoo and Night Safari, and lastly, the exotic Kampong Gelam,” Rose passed the flyers of these four attractions to Zhang Qin and Xiao Di.

The two Shanghai gals flipped through the flyers, pondered over the choices for a moment, then Zhang Qin said: “Rose, actually we have some other places in mind.”
“Oh, where would you girls like to visit?” the surprised Rose asked.
“We’ve heard of this big twenty-four hours shopping center called Mustafa Centre where the prices are very cheap.”

Geez, it had never occurred to me that Mustafa Centre’s fame had already spread from India to China. Talk about globalization!

“And we would also like to visit Chinatown…”
“Chinatown?!!” the whole team shouted.
“Erm… is there anything wrong with Chinatown?” the shocked Zhang Qin asked.
“Err… no, nothing’s wrong with Chinatown,” Nicky explained. “But why would you girls want to go to Chinatown?”
“To buy BBQ pork slices” the two Shanghai gals grinned.

Chapter 21: The Battle between Choi and the Weighing Scale, Round Two

2008-01-16T10:54:00.000+08:00

I was packing up to leave the office when Choi appeared in front of my desk with a pair of sorrowful eyes.

“Hey Beng, I need your help.”
“Sure, dude. What is it about?”

With Choi’s ego, it was uncommon for him to ask for help. So whenever he requested for my assistance, I would not hesitate to see what I could do to help. I stopped packing and sat down with him.

“You remember how I managed to lose about five kilograms and my blood pressure went back to normal after those workouts and the organic apple cider vinegar?”
“Wait… Are you trying to tell me that you’ve gained back all those five kilograms and your blood pressure had rebounded like the STI again?”
“Yeh, I’ve gained back my five kilograms. In fact I’ve gained more, and I haven’t measure my blood pressure yet,” Choi sighed.

With all the ala carte dinner buffets and eat-all-you-can high teas that he had been telling me about, perhaps I should not really be surprised by the return of his old friend fat and the friends it tagged along.

“Nowadays when I walk up the stairs I could feel myself getting out of breath,” Chai said wryly. “I suspected that my blood pressure is up again but I’m not measuring it till I lose a few kilograms.”
“So how can I help?”
“I know you’ve learnt quite a bit from your physical trainer friends in the gym regarding the right food to eat. I need you to guide me on my diet.”
“Yeh, I can do that. But you’ll still need to exercise.”
“No problem. I’m planning to swim once a week during the weekends.”
“No Choi, just swimming alone won’t work. You’ll need to do some cardio exercises like jogging.”
“Okay, I’ll jog.”

Choi had that unyielding determination look on his face that told me that the diet program had to work. I just hoped that his determination could hang in there for at least a few months this time.

“Okay Choi, I’ll tell you more about eating the right stuffs tomorrow. I’m slightly late for my appointment already and I’ve got to run”
“Cool! Thanks dude!”

That night, my mind went through all the unhealthy food that I had seen Choi taken and I tried to note them down so that I could warn him about them. He would have to bid farewell to his pig trotters, stuffed crust pizzas, fried banana fritters, char kway teows, chicken rices, laksas, nasi lemaks, chendols and nasi branis.

On the following morning, I saw a dazed looking Choi working into the office.

“Hey dude, are you okay? You look so blur!” I asked in concern.
“Yeh, I think I’m okay. Just hungry,” Choi replied in a tired tone.
“Hungry? Didn’t you take your breakfast?”
“Of course I didn’t! Beng, I’m serious about losing weight this time. I’m sure I can make it without breakfasts.”

Okay, it seemed like we had to start from the basic.

“Erm… Choi, I think your concept of dieting is all wrong,” I pulled a chair to sit next to Choi. “Look, it doesn’t mean that if you eat less you’ll be able to lose weight.”
“Why not? The less I eat the less fat I store right?”
“No Choi, it doesn’t work that way. Our bodies work in such a way that if we attempt to starve them, they will store more fat so as to protect our organs. Conversely, what we lose are actually lean muscles.”
“Gosh, the less I eat the more fat I stored, the more I eat the more fat I stored! Then what am I supposed to do?” Choi exclaimed in shock.
“Okay, maybe I should start by explaining to you how your body works. When you’re hungry, your blood sugar goes up. When it reaches a certain elevation, insulin is secreted to drive the sugar out of your blood stream and into your cells, where it is used as fuel for running your body functions. When these cells had enough sugar, insulin will re-route the excess sugar to your liver where it will be converted into fat and stored in your muscles. If you don’t exercise enough to loss the fat stored in your muscles, you gain weight.”

“Which means that if I don’t get hungry, I don’t gain weight?” Choi looked at me with a puzzled face.
“Err… Sort of. And since your body gets hungry in every three to four hours, you need to feed it every three to four hours so that your blood sugar won’t spikes to high level. In average, you’ve got to eat about five times a day.”
“Eat more to lose weight? You’ve got to be kidding!”
“No, you don’t eat more! You just eat more often. Instead of the usual three big meals, you’ve got to divide your food into five small meals.”
“Oh…”
“And you’ve got to eat right. Take out those refined carbohydrates from your diet and put in more fiber.”
“Bro, you’ve lost me.”
“Okay, I tell you what. I’ll send you some articles to read.”

That afternoon, I downloaded some articles from the Internet regarding the differences between simple and complex carbohydrates, the benefits of fiber and protein, and what are the high fiber and low fat food. I sent the articles to Choi and carried on with my work. Minutes later, my MSN Messenger popped out. I had got a message from Choi.

“hey, those stuffs tat u sent me are not easy to digest”
“but u’ve got to know those in order to eat correctly”
“actually I’ve got a better idea. Why don’t I follow u for lunch and u just pt out the stuffs I can eat?”
“oh, ok!”

During noon, Choi, Nicky, KZ and me lunched in the food court at Suntec City. Before Choi proceeded to buy his lunch at the mixed vegetables and rice store, I advised him to select more vegetables and instead of his usual pork dish, take chicken or fish. I also reminded him to take a smaller portion of rice.

When Choi returned to the table with his lunch, I saw see a small mountain of rice with overflowing vegetables and a large piece of fried chicken chop.

“Erm… Choi, when I said chicken, I was not thinking of something that’s deep fried.”
“Oh yes… I forgot about the frying part.”
“And is your portion of rice, erm… already reduced?”
“Yeh, of course! This is half of what I usually eat!”
“Okay Choi, from now on, your single serving of rice has to be reduced to a quarter of your usual portion.”
“What?!! Oh… Okay,” Choi stared at me as if I was asking him to stop eating for a week, but still agreed with my suggestion.

After lunch, I advised Choi to get a piece of fruit for his afternoon snack. Knowing how my instructions could be mistaken like the case of his lunch, I followed him to the fruits stall.

“How many slices of water melon can I have?” Choi pointed at the red slices of water melon.
“None. There’s too much sugar content in water melon,” I was so glad that I followed him.
“Oh… then can I take the mangoes?”
“No! Too much sugar content as well!”
“Hey, why don’t you get the fruits for me instead?” Choi sounded miffed.

I picked up an orange, paid for it and passed it to Choi. Choi stared at the orange as if his stare could kill it.

“Beng, I don’t like oranges.”
“Choi, oranges are high in fiber and low in sugar content. Say ‘hi’ to it. It’ll be your fruit of the day from now on. ”

Back in the office, I briefed Choi on what he should and should not be eating. Fried food like fried chicken and fried pork chop were ‘no’, sweet food like green bean soup and ice cream were ‘no’ as well. Choi was glad that at least he got to drink his daily coffee. Since he took his coffee black and without sugar, and the caffeine could help him burn some fat, I did not take coffee out of his diet. However I did reminded him to drink more water to prevent water retention due to the coffee’s dehydration effect.

As we left for the day, I told him to take two slices of wholemeal bread with tuna for breakfast, and bring a small pack of low-fat milk to work for his morning snack.

“How about my dinner then?” Choi asked while we waited for the lift.
“Ask your mom to cook you fish or chicken porridge for your dinners.”
“Argh! I hate porridge!”
“Well, you’ve got to start liking them now, pal!” I patted his back as we entered the lift.

On the following morning, I saw a dazed looking Choi walking into the office again.

“Hey Choi, did you take your breakfast?” I hoped he did not skip his breakfast again.
“Yeh, the horrible wholemeal bread and tuna,” Choi sighed.
“Oh… and you’re still hungry?”
“Sort of. Never mind, I’ll look forward to the morning snack,” Choi mused as he took a pack of low-fat milk out from his bag and put it on the desk.

But that pack of low-fat milk did not look right. It had a brown packaging.

“Erm… Choi, about this milk…”
“It is low-fat right?”
“Yeh… but it is chocolate flavored.”
“You’re not telling me that…”
“Yeh, you’re not supposed to take chocolate flavored low-fat milk because chocolate is high in sugar.”
“Argh!!!”

In the few weeks that followed, Choi followed my diet instructions strictly, though with grumbles included. For breakfasts, he took wholemeal bread with tuna sometimes and peanut butter on other occasions. For lunches, he switched between yong tau fus, roast chicken sandwiches and mixed vegetables and rice without pork and fried dishes. For dinners, he took chicken and fish porridges. He also had low-fat milk for his morning snacks and oranges for his afternoon snacks. Suppers were taken out from his diet totally, with more grumbles included.

With the controlled diet and regular jogging sessions, Choi managed to lose six kilograms this time. He then made an appointment with the doctor to check his blood pressure. The fact that he returned from his appointment with a wide grin boded well for his blood pressure examination result.

“Beng! Guess what? My blood pressure is normal!” Choi shoved a piece of paper in front of my eyes.
“Great! Congratulations! You’re healthy again!”
“Thanks to you, Beng! Your diet plan worked!”
“No, you should thank yourself for following through the diet plan and jogging sessions.”
“Yah! Let’s go celebrate! I know of this Chinese restaurant at Tanjong Pagar that has black pepper crabs in its ala carte buffet menu…”

Chapter 20: KZ’s Wedding

2008-01-14T09:15:00.000+08:00

There I was standing in front of a modest light blue two-storey bungalow that sat unobtrusively in between two other brightly colored ones. The gate was unlocked so I unhooked the latch and walked in. Small pots of jasmine and other flowers sat quietly on the left side of the front patio. A brown wooden bench, like the ones we found in school canteens but shorter, and a short pine wood cupboard, apparently for shoes, kept each other company on the left side of the main door. I knocked on the door. Minutes later, I heard steps running down a staircase, and then the door was unlocked and opened.

“Come on in,” said KZ.

About a month ago, KZ approached me to have a talk. I had known KZ since university days and whenever he talked more than his usual ‘two words in a sentence’ in a conversation, it must be about something that mattered a lot to him. We had such conversations when he told me about Laura and how he thought she might be the girl in his life, when he had received a good result for his Masters Degree, and when he had found a job for me at this current company. With the happy look on his face, I was sure he was going to tell me about something good and which meant a lot to him.

“I’m getting married, you know, the traditional ceremony,” said KZ with a grin.
“Oh finally! It’s about time huh? How long have you been ROMed? Three years?” I said avidly.
“Haha… no, two years.”
“So what made you decide to go through the traditional ceremony now?”
“Well, Laura and I have been staying together for about a year now, so we’re thinking it’s about time to really start a family.”

ROM is one of those ‘verbs’ that Singaporeans invented. ROM is actually the acronym for Registry of Marriage. The Registry of Marriage is the place where Singaporean couples sign on that piece of paper that changes their marital statues from ‘single’ to ‘married’, and swear to take care of each other till death do them apart. Well, legally, the couples are already married to each other by their signatures on that paper, but to the Chinese, they are not. There is still the traditional ceremony that they have to go through before their parents, relative and even some of their conservative friends can consider them as married. This also means that theoretically they are not allowed to have sex until they have gone through the traditional ceremony.

“Beng, would you like to be part of my brother gang?” KZ asked.
“Hey, of course! Of course I’d like to be! In fact, I’ll be pissed if you don’t ask!”
“Hahaha… okay. Let’s go tell Rose that we’ll need to apply leaves then.”

So that explained why I was at KZ’s parents’ bungalow early in the morning at seven o’clock. KZ made me sat at the living room while he went into the kitchen to get me something to drink. It was not my first visit at this bungalow, but it was the first time that the television was not on, his parents were not chatting with his father’s friends at the sofa and his sister was not chatting on the phone. For the very first time, I could hear the birds chirping on the trees outside the bungalow.

KZ walked into the living room with a glass of water. It was then that I realized that KZ was still in t-shirt and shorts.

“Hey KZ, what time are we supposed to reach Laura’s house?”
“Erm… before eight,” KZ replied calmly as he sat down on the sofa next to me.
“What? Before eight? It’s already ten minutes past seven! Why aren’t you dressed up yet?!!”
“Hey Beng, relax…”

KZ was interrupted by the honk of a car. He opened the door and looked out. It was KZ’s wedding car, a white Merzcedes decorated with champagne roses, pink ribbons and two wedding bears at the front. Following behind the Merzcedes was a white Honda decorated with the same champagne roses and pink ribbons but less elaborated. After both cars parked on road outside the bungalow, the white Honda’s driver walked over to talk to the Merzcedes driver. The white Honda driver and best man was our university friend, Chang Dek.

Knowing that Chang Dek would brief the Merzcedes driver on the day’s schedule, KZ finally went upstairs to change into his suit. In a surprisingly short moment, KZ came back downstairs, all dressed up in his black suit and holding a tie in his hand. After he took out the champagne roses hand bouquet from the fridge, we proceeded to Laura’s house.

In every Chinese traditional wedding ceremony, there is a part where the bride’s sister gang will be so excited to try out their smart ideas and the groom’s brother gang will feel so stupid to be the recipients of those ideas. It is the part where the groom and his brother gang have to go past the sister gang defending the bride’s doorstep. As compared, it will be so much easier to kill all enemies and proceed to the next level in Quake.

“Eat these up!” a plump lady in the sister gang handed Chang Dek our best man a plate of ten red chilies. After some coughs and tears, the five of us including KZ finished the plate of chilies and Chang Dek handed the empty plate back to that plump lady.

“Now do a hundred push-ups!” another skinny lady requested. Lucky for us, twenty push-ups was an easy task for each and every one.

“Okay, now I want you to…”
“Hold on,” KZ interrupted the lady with curly hair and pointed to his watch. “With any more delay, we’ll be late for the praying ceremony.”

Lynn, Laura’s sister and bridesmaid, then came to the door and said: “Let’s talk about the price then.”
“Good. How much?” KZ asked.
“Nine hundred and ninety-nine dollars.”

KZ stepped aside while I walked up to the door with a big red envelope, took out some notes from it and started counting in front of Lynn.

“Hey, what is this currency?” Lynn asked when she realized that the notes I was counting did not look familiar.
“Philippines pesos,” I replied calmly, still counting.
“No! We don’t want Philippines pesos!”
“Oh, then how about Indonesian rupiahs? Or do you prefer China renminbi?”
“I want it in Singapore dollars!” Lynn folded her arms.
“We’ve only got three hundred and eighty-eight Singapore dollars, Madam,” I showed her the pile of Singapore dollars.

Lynn counted with her fingers and pondered a while, then grumbled: “Okay, okay. We’ll take your three hundred and eighty-eight dollars. I told Laura you finance guys are cunning and I’m so right!”

With that, we managed to pass through the door and KZ stepped into Laura’s bedroom to find a beautiful bride waiting for him. KZ flipped up the veil and kissed Laura before holding her hand and leading her out of her bedroom. They then bided Laura’s parents goodbye and proceeded to KZ’s parents’ bungalow again.

Back at KZ’s parents’ bungalow, the praying ceremony began with the worship of the heavens and the earth then paying of respect to KZ’s ancestry. After the praying, Laura changed into a traditional Chinese wedding dress known as ‘kua’. Laura would be wearing that for the tea ceremony.

As a sign of respect, KZ and Laura knelt as they offered tea to KZ’s parents and elder relatives. For the younger ones, they just bowed as they offered the tea. In return, they received lots of ang baos and some gold jewellery for Laura. By the end of the ceremony, Laura looked like a Christmas tree with her gold necklaces and gold bangles.

It was then already noon time and KZ’s relatives had already cooked dishes of delicious vegetarian food to be served as lunch. Vegetarian dishes were served because both KZ and Laura’s families were vegetarians.

KZ, Laura, Lynn, Chang Dek and I finally had to chance to sit down and chat.

“Hey Laura, how do you feel? Tired?” asked Chang Dek.
“Not really tired. But I’m feeling very happy. Happy to be officially married to KZ,” Laura grinned with a happiness-filled smile and a pair of happiness-filled eyes looking at KZ.
“So we’ll be looking forward for a dozen of little KZs and little Lauras in the near future?” I nudged KZ.
“Yeh, don’t make my little cousin jumped for nothing!” said Chang Dek.

Chang Dek was referring what happened a few days ago when the bridal bed was set. The Chinese believed that a new bed must be used by the wedding couple on their wedding day, thus although KZ and Laura had been staying together in their flat for the past one year, they had been sleeping on their mattresses in two different bedrooms. Their new bed was only purchased about a month ago. On that auspicious day when the bridal bed was set, a red tray of dried food like lotus seeds, dried longans and red dates was placed on the bed. Chang Dek’s nine-year old cousin then jumped on the bed to bless it with fertility. Once that ceremony was over, nobody was allowed to touch the bed except for KZ and Laura on their wedding night.

That night, the wedding banquet was held at a famous vegetarian restaurant in town. Instead of the usual shark fins soup, fish, chicken and prawns, we had rice vermicelli and mushroom soup, mock fish, mock chicken and lots of vegetable dishes. Though vegetarian, the dishes were delicious.

Because it was a vegetarian restaurant, no alcohol was served. Traditionally, tiers of champagne glasses would be stacked up like the shape of a wedding cake and the wedding couple would fill the glasses by pouring a bottle of champagne from the top. Even that champagne was replaced by a bottle of sparkling juice.

After the sparkling juice filled champagne glasses were distributed to KZ and Laura’s families for toasting to the friends and relatives, KZ gave a touching speech to his and Laura’s parents, thanking them for the upbringing of the both of them. That was the first time that I heard so many words coming out of KZ’s mouth. The wedding couple then went around table by table to give everybody a toast. At that point, I felt that KZ must be feeling really lucky to be a vegetarian. Conventionally the groom would be sabotaged by his friends and made to drink glasses and glasses of liquor till he got drunk. Because it was a vegetarian restaurant, the joyous KZ had no problem drinking glasses and glasses of sparkling juice.

By ten o’clock, the banquet was finally over and the wedding couple and their parents stood outside the restaurant to shake everybody’s hand and thank them for attending the banquet. After the last guest had left, KZ thanked his brother gang for all their help.

“So dude, you can finally sleep on a real bed tonight,” I teased.
“Yeh, that’s the one thing that I’m looking forward to now,” KZ grinned with a pair of tired eyes.

Chapter 19: Appraisal, We Wrote

2008-01-12T12:15:00.000+08:00

The National Novel Writing Month event is a yearly novel writing challenge which participants from all over the world try to write a 175-page or 50,000-word novel from scratch within the month of November. It is a difficult task that is not easy to accomplish and only the bravest writers take up the challenge. However, this event is just an elf standing next to our company’s yearly writing event.

In this yearly event, all employees participate to write a 5-page or 2,000-word non-fictional report from scratch within one week. The report must be based on real life story where all characters are real and all facts are traceable. Some might try to sneak in some office politics while some might try to exaggerate numbers. But they know the judges are strict and the consequence of lies is serious.

And it was that time of the year again. The clock started to tick when we received an email from Rose. The appraisal writing event had started.

We needed all the concentration we could have in order to put all the work we had done for the year down into a 5-page report. We booked a small meeting room for half a day and our team brought our notebooks into that seclusion to write the report. We needed a tranquil environment, away from the endless phone calls and rantings in the office. Almost the whole team was there, except for Rose and Nicky. Rose was in Chennai for a business trip, while the sulking Nicky could not unplug his whole desktop computer, including two monitors, and shift it into the small meeting room, so he had to write his report at his desk.

“Sigh… this is so difficult to write! I don’t even know how to start!” complained Dawn.

It was indeed a difficult writing task for Dawn. For the past one year, she had been busy thinking of where to go for lunch, looking for people to lunch with her, dropping by Ju’s events which had nothing to do with her projects, attending meetings without preparations, sending out long but pointless emails, and starting projects without finishing them. How was she going to write a 5-page report on those?

Unless her report was going to be based on her research on places where pregnant women could go for lunch, statistics of the number of people who she tried to lunch with but was rejected and a list of their excuses, statistics of the number of times that she was blocked on our team members’ MSN Messengers, observation on the happenings in Ju’s events, grading on the food served in Ju’s events, and of course, complaints about how others had hindered her projects from completion. If that was the case, she should not have any problem writing at least fifty pages.

“Don’t worry, Dawn. Just edit your previous year’s report and add in your newer projects and it should do,” Ju advised. “And guys, I’m going to email you the template for this year’s appraisal report. There’s a slight change in the format.”

Fortunately for us, Ju was always there to take care of the formatting of our appraisal reports. With that template which she created, all we needed to do was to concentrate on the content part.

“Why do you guys hate writing your appraisal so much?” Ju asked.
“Because it’s a big stress on my brain for it to recall what I’ve done for the whole year, within one week,” I replied.
“That’s only because you guys don’t keep a diary of what you do everyday!”

Well, Ju was right. She was the only one in the team who refused to use the online calendar that was embedded in the Outlook. Instead, she used a leather-and-paper organizer to keep track of her events, meetings, tasks and lunches. Yes, Ju put her lunches in the appraisal report as well. As a marketing manager, she had regular lunch meetings with vendors, magazine reporters and event organizers. Of course these lunches will take place in hotel cafes and posh Chinese restaurants, not the food courts and hawker centers that the rest of us frequented. That was the best part of her job which we admired.

“Do you know that your appraisal is the most important document in your whole working life in the company?” Ju chided. “Your appraisal will tell Rose what you’ve been doing for the whole year, and whatever you write will be the bullets that help her to fight for a higher bonus for you from the department head! And that’s not all. Your appraisal will also be kept in our company HR database so that if any other higher profile department is interested to snatch you away from our department they can look up on your capability. So you see, how can you neglect such an important document?”

Ju’s logic was impeccable. That was the kind of knowledge that she had accumulated in her twenty over years of working experience in the marketing field.

“Err… Ju, can I take a look at your event calendar?” Sally asked. “So that I can recall what I did for the year?”
“Sally, why don’t you take a look at your to-do list instead? You could just write those tasks in your appraisal.”
“Oh…yeh, you’re right. Thanks!”

Sally’s appraisal should not be too difficult to write. All she did for the year was assisting Ju in the logistics matters in the events, like packing goodie bags and liaising with vendors for collaterals production. Furthermore, Ju had made it mandatory for Sally to update a to-do list monthly. With that list, Ju could keep track of the outstanding tasks that Sally was working on, and decide if Sally was too overloaded. That to-do list would really help Sally in her appraisal writing.

“Okay, done,” said KZ.

As usual, KZ was the first in our team to complete his appraisal. He had used less than two hours to finish a 5-page appraisal. I took over his appraisal to take a look. It was written succinctly in points form. For every task mentioned, the details were written in short and clear bullet points. All necessary elaborations and facts were given and no adjectives were used unnecessarily. That was KZ’s style. In everything that he did, he would never stray away from the focus point.

“Hey, I thought we’ve got one week to do this report?” Choi asked.
“Yeh, we’ve got one week. But judging from the way we work, we’ll end up doing it on the last day anyway,” I replied.
“And as for you Mr. Choi, your appraisal will end up on Rose’s table only a week after the original deadline,” mocked Ju.

Ju was right. Last year, Choi’s appraisal was late by two weeks by the time he submitted it. And that was already after some chasing emails from Rose. Choi had a very different approach to date and time. His works were always late for a couple of days, or sometimes weeks. However he was never late for any official or non-official appointment. In fact, sometimes he could arrive at a conference fifteen minutes before the starting time. At times, I wondered if he had a different calendar from the ones we were using. Maybe the November 15th on our calendar was only November 1st on his?

“Yo guys, are you done with your appraisals? Let’s go for lunch!” said Nicky as he entered the room.
“Yes, good idea! Let’s go Paragon! I feel like taking sushi!” Dawn exclaimed avidly.
“Give us another fifteen minutes or so,” Ju replied, ignoring Dawn.

Nicky pulled a chair and sat next to Choi.

“Bro, have you finished yours?” Choi asked.
“Still working on it. Hoping to finish by the end of the day,” replied Nicky.
“Okay, I’m done. Do you mind helping me to go through and see if I’ve got any grammar mistakes or missed out anything?” Choi pushed his notebook towards Nicky.
“Choi! How can you show Nicky your appraisal? It’s supposed to be private and confidential!” asked the surprised Dawn.
“Relax, Dawn! Nicky is our products analyst! If I’m already submitting my products’ revenues and stuffs to him every month, there’s nothing in this report that Nicky can’t see!” Choi argued.
“Okay, if you say so. Anyway, it’s your appraisal.” Dawn went back to her typing and kept quiet.

“Choi, now I know why your appraisal is always the longest one in our team,” commented Nicky.
“Hahaha… now you know the vast amount of work I’m doing right?” Choi grinned.
“No, it’s not the amount of work. It’s the way you wrote your appraisal.”
“Yeh, I tend to put in more details.”
“No, it’s not the details. It’s your elaboration! It’s like as if I’m reading a novel!”

The rest of us stopped typing and looked up. We were very interested to know how Choi managed to write a novel out of an appraisal.

“Look at this!” Nicky took a deep breath, and then read: “The borrower’s stricture hindered our proposal like the sea current trying to stop our ship from moving forward to discover the new land ahead of us. But with a zealous devotion, I managed to convince the borrower that among our cash management strategy, there must be a liquidity management solution hidden somewhere that best meets his needs. The borrower was enthralled by the undisputed solution that I proffered to him. He knew that he was looking at the solution that he had been searching for. The one that he had been waiting for had finally arrived. With tears in his eyes, he shook my hand. He could not thank me enough. Finally, we had been mandated to invest our borrower’s excess balances to yield a return that is based on the overnight market driven rate.”

After Nicky had finished reading that dramatic paragraph, all of us looked at Choi, some of us with an eyebrow raised.

“Hey, I’m just trying to show my determination in selling a solution, okay?” said Choi.

Chapter 18: The Filter is Too Big for the Tank

2008-01-11T23:14:00.000+08:00

“Dude, are they swimming backwards?”
“Yeh… do you think it’s because the water current is too strong?”
“Erm…guys, can it be… the filter is too strong?”

Nicky, Sally and I were standing in front of the tank of Bettas that Sally bought previously. We had just installed a new filter system in the tank. It was a power filter comprised of a completely submersible motor and a filter cartridge. Nicky and I had chosen this filter because of two descriptions on its box. It could support a tank capacity of up to ten gallons and it provided water flow up to the speed of 85g/h. Though we had no idea what the unit “g/h” meant, we assumed it should be akin to “fast”. We knew this power filter could rock!

And our 85g/h ten gallons power filter was indeed rocking the one foot fish tank. The small pot of water plant in the tank had fallen, the flakes we fed to the Bettas were whirling at the water surface and the two Bettas were swimming backwards. Okay, they were not swimming. They were swept backwards by the water current as soon as they stopped moving their fins. Maybe the 85g/h ten gallons power filter was too powerful for the fish tank.

“What are you guys doing?!!” Rose hollered in shock. She had just finished her meeting and had walked over to find out why the three of us were gathering round Sally’s fish tank. She was apparently not prepared to see what she saw.
“Err… checking out the new filter,” replied Nicky.
“This filter is too strong for the fishes! Look at the poor fishes! Please stop the filter!”

Under Rose’s command, I switched off the power supply to the filter. The two struggling Bettas finally caught up with the flakes and started to eat them.

“Why did you guys buy such a strong filter for such a small tank?” asked Rose who was still horrified by what she had seen.
“Because these guys liked this cool and powerful filter so much that they forgot about the size of my fish tank,” Sally replied with a mocking tone.

After the Bettas had finished the flakes, they suddenly remembered what they were doing before the new filter was introduced – playing catching. Adam the aggressive male Betta opened his gills, spread out his fins and went after Eve the panicky female Betta.

“So it’s not our filter’s fault! It’s the tank!” Nicky blurted.
“Yes! Your tank is too small, Sally. We need to get a bigger tank!” I agreed.
“I’ve read from the Internet that in order to breed Bettas, you need a bigger tank, preferably one that is two feet long,” said Nicky.
“Are you sure?” asked Sally skeptically.
“Yes! I’m sure Nicky is right! Anyway, with a bigger tank and more plants, Eve might be able to hide herself from Adam instead of running around everyday like a mad woman,” I assured.

In the following lunch time, we went to the aquarium shop at Clementi again. I approached the shop owner and told him that our power filter might be too powerful for the one foot breeding tank. His reaction told me that our guess was right.

“What power filter? And what breeding tank? What are you trying to breed in a one foot tank?” the concerned shop owner asked.
“Erm… weeks ago, we bought this pair of Half-moon Bettas from your shop and we’re trying to breed them…”
“In a one foot tank? No, it’s too small! You need a bigger tank!”

The shop owner then walked into the stack of varies types and sizes of fish tanks in front of his store and searched. Minutes later, he emerged with a weird tank in his arms. The plastic fish tank was approximately one and a half feet wide but had the height of less than a foot. Sally’s eyes stared like a goldfish when she saw how enormous her Bettas’ home was going to become.

“You need a tank that’s at least this wide in order to breed Bettas,” he explained. “Anything smaller than this, your male Betta will chase and bite your female Betta like crazy!”

That explained the catching games that Adam and Eve had been playing.

“Erm… okay, we’ll get this tank then,” said Nicky. “Is there any tips you can give us for the breeding?”

The shop owner pondered for a while, then said: “You must first prepare the pair by feeding them good frozen food, like the frozen blood worms that I’m selling at two dollars a pack, at least twice a day. Place the male and female in a container with divider to separate them, like the Betta Show Tank that I’m selling at four dollars, and let them look at each other for three to four days. Remember, see only, no touch.”

Some how, the shop owner’s advice sounded like we needed to spend more money…

“Then you’ve to prepare this tank for breeding condition. After you’ve added water, place a heater in the tank, like the sensitive and break resistance heater that I’m selling at twenty dollars, and set the temperature to twenty eight degree Celsius. That’s the breeding temperature for Bettas. Add some plants, like the Elodeas that I’m selling at a dollar each, for the female to hide. Also, add some of those brown leaves that I’m selling at a dollar for a packet so that the male can build his bubble nest under them.”

And more money…

“Now you can add the male first to get him accustomed to the surroundings. About two hours later, add the female and gently place her in a small floating breeding tank, like the one that I’m selling at three dollars, so that they’re still separated. After the male has begun a bubble nest, and the female has displayed dark vertical bars across her body, you can release her to join the male. Within the next one or two days, they’ll breed. There’ll be some fights and fin tearing, but don’t worry. It’s normal. After the breeding is completed, remove the female from the tank.”

“And when do we add in the power filter?” Nicky asked.
“No! You don’t use filter when breeding Bettas!” the shop owner looked at us in horror. “The water current produced by the filter will burst the bubble nest that the male built!”
“Oh…” Nicky and I sighed in disappointment.

Then what should we do with our 85g/h ten gallons power filter?

“Uncle, how many eggs will we be expecting?” asked Sally.
“Erm… A typical spawn is anywhere between fifty to three hundred eggs,” answered the shop owner matter-of-factly.
“What? Three hundred?!!” the three of us screamed at the shop owner who stepped back in horror.
“Relax! Don’t worry! Usually only about fifty percents of the frys will survive,” the shop owner wiped the sweat off his forehead as he replied.
“Err… Sally, fifty percent of an average of one hundred is still as many as fifty. What are you going to do with so many baby Bettas?” I asked Sally.
“Oh… I don’t know. Erm… why don’t we just breed first then see how it goes? Maybe I’ll just give some away?”

After listening to the shop owner’s advertisements filled advice, Sally followed him around as he gathered the items she required for her new Bettas breeding tank.

“Hey Beng, we can’t just throw away our 85g/h ten gallons power filter right?” nudged Nicky.
“No! Of course not! The filter has got to stay!” I insisted.
“Hmm… since we can’t use the filter in Sally’s Bettas fish tank, maybe we should get our own fish tank for the filter?” Nicky rubbed his chin and pondered.
“Yeh, good idea!”

Having decided to get a fish tank for our 85g/h ten gallons power filter, Nicky and I went out of the shop again to look at the varieties of tanks available. We fell in love with a state-of-the-art three feet tank but thinking that having a one and a half feet and another three feet tank in the office was kind of inappropriate, we gave in and selected a two feet tank instead. Not the kind of cheap fifteen dollars plastic fish tank that Sally was buying, but a cool strengthened glass fish tank with round corners. There was even a hooded lamp attached at the top of the tank! The fish tank will set us back with almost a hundred dollars but it was definitely worth it.

“Okay… what should we put in this tank besides our filter?” Nicky asked.
“Hmm… how about some fishes?” I suggested.
“Oh yes, but I’m not really into Bettas.”
“Yeh, me too. We should get something that’s as cool as our filter.”

The two of us walked around the aquarium shop to shop for some fishes for our fish tank.

“How about guppies? They look pretty colorful,” I pointed to some mosaic and tuxedo guppies cramped in their respective small tanks.
“Nah, guppies are too cheap for our filter.”
“Oh…”

“How about getting this baby arowana?” Nicky pointed at a sixty-eight dollars baby arowana swimming gracefully in its tank. “Arowanas are very auspicious, you know?”
“But this guy will outgrow our two feet tank right?”
“Oh…”

“How about goldfishes?” I pointed at a group of lion head goldfishes swaying their butts as fast as Robbie Williams.
“Beng, I’ve already got eight of them in my house! Can we have some variety around here?”
“Oh…”

“How about having a discus? They look so elegant. Look at the colors and patterns!” Nicky pointed at the tanks of stationary discuses.
“But Nicky, why are we rearing roti pratas?”
“Oh…”

As we walked over to look at some cardinal tetras and Agassiz corydoras, Sally walked over with her mobile phone on her left hand and a big plastic bag of tank and stuffs on her right.

“Guys, Choi is on the line,” Sally handed me her mobile phone.

“Hi Choi, what’s up?”
“Beng, I heard from Sally that Nicky and you are intending to get another fish tank?”
“Yap, we’re choosing the fish now.”
“Hey, I don’t think it’s a good idea. I’ve got insider news that our department will be shifting in about three months’ time. Just heard about it from the meeting this morning.”
“We’re shifting?!!”
“Yeh, but of course you guys can still go ahead if you don’t mind shifting the fish tank. By the way, how big is the tank going to be?”
“Erm… Choi, you know what? Why don’t we talk about it when we’re back?”
“Oh… okay, sure.”

I gave the mobile phone back to Sally and said to Nicky: “Do you think your eight goldfishes will mind another filter?”

Chapter 17: Bosses and Their Subordinates

2008-01-10T22:14:00.000+08:00

I had an unexpected visitor at my desk when I reached the office in the morning. Kah Leng was sitting at my desk and playing with my crystal globe while waiting for me.

“Beng! You’re finally here!” she pulled my right arm as I put down my document bag.
“Hahaha… I’m not really expecting an early guest,” I jested.
“Accompany me downstairs for some coffee, will you?” she winked at me.

Obediently, I followed her to the lift. Kah Leng was a business development manager from the Singapore Capital Markets team which was seated in the office area next to our team. She was a very gregarious gal equally flamboyant in dress and speech. She had only joined the company six months ago but she seemed to have made friends with ninety percents of the staffs in this Suntec office already.

We walked to the Coffee Bean and Tea Leaves café on the other tower. The café was flooded with office workers taking away their first cups of the day. The counter crews were busy preparing cups after cups of cappuccinos, lattes and espressos. We found a table at a quiet corner and Kah Leng made me sit down.

“Just tell me what you want. My treat,” she smiled.
“Erm… okay, just give me a short white then.”

Minutes later, Kah Leng returned with a tray of latte and short white. As she stirred a pack of sugar into the coffee, she said: “Beng, I’ve already decided. I’m going to quit.”

What news to receive first time in the morning!

“Why? What happened?”
“It’s Carol. I can’t stand her anymore,” she sighed.

Carol was Kah Leng’s direct supervisor and Kah Leng had been having problem working with her since day one. That was not a surprise. Kah Leng was a loud person who would greet everybody when she reached the office in the morning, who loved to socialize and joke around, and who loved to join different groups of people for lunches. While Carol was the quiet one who would enter the office with a stoned face every morning, who hated socializing and talking to others, and who usually chose to lunch in. These two women came from two utterly different worlds.

“She did that email thing again!” Kah Leng raged.
“Oh, she scolded you via email again?”
“Yes! And as usual, she cc’ed our boss in that email! Can’t she just turn around and tell me the problem instead? I’m just sitting next to her, for Christ’s sake!”

I agreed that was not the best way to communicate. And I was also not sure if their boss really read every single email of minor matters that Carol sent.

“Have you communicated the problem to her?” I asked.
“You mean the problem I’ve got working with her? Yes! Of course I had! I told her that I prefer her to tell me my mistakes or any unhappiness that she has with me straight into my face instead of through those emails. Each time she’ll say okay, and she did try to talk to me for a period of time, then after some time, she’ll repeat the whole damn process again!” said the exasperated Kah Leng.

I sympathized with Kah Leng. Difficulties in work itself could be solved with accrued experience and time. But difficulties in working with the boss could probably never be solved, especially if communication is a problem.

Ju and Sally were the opposite of Carol and Kah Leng. Though Sally worked in our team with Rose as the team lead, hierarchy wise, she reported to Ju. Ju was a leader who believed strongly in verbal communication. When a job was needed to be done, she would ask Sally over to her desk with pen and papers so that they could go through the tasks together and Sally could ask her any queries on the spot. Ju believed that if you explain a job to your subordinate face to face, he/she will feel more motivated than if you were to assign the job to him/her via email.

Almost once in every month, Ju would also take Sally out for lunch and have some causal talks with her about non work-related stuffs like what were the new restaurants in town. This little gesture had actually made Sally more comfortable in bringing up to Ju the problems she faced in her work.

I guessed we were pretty fortunate to have Rose as our team lead as well. She scored pretty well in motivating everybody with those inspiring talks about our team’s future. And mostly importantly, her “walk the talk”, not her enthralling speeches, made those talks worked. Rose was also a strong defender for the team whenever we were facing outsiders. When the businesses had some issues with the work that we did or mistakes we made, she would apologize on our behalf then followed by sound reasoning to argue for the things we did. She believed in talking to us in private rather than making us look bad in front of the businesses.

There was one problem with her enthusiasm in work though. Rose believed that the best way to solve problems and improve processes was to get all affected and related parties into meetings and conference calls to discuss the issues. That was why our team’s calendars were so full of meetings and conference calls almost everyday.

Our team was fortunate because we had a leader like Rose, but the same could not be said for Rose when it came to her boss, Karen. Rose was directly reporting to Karen, the head of our department. Karen was a cantankerous middle-aged American woman and thoroughly disagreeable to deal with. She was not easily pleased and she wanted to oversee everything and everybody, even for those in the lower level of the hierarchy, like us.

“KZ, could you show me the AP revenues chart for last month and your analysis?”
“Choi, where’s last month’s product report? And where’s the product report for the month before last month?”
“Nicky, have you sent your analysis to the e-newsletter team? Show me that analysis!”
“Dawn, how’s your project? What’s the status now?”
“Ju, show me the marketing events calendar you’ve planned for next quarter!”
“Sally, have all the vendors been informed of our new branding? Show me those new collaterals!”
“Beng, I want to see the Yen, Renminbi and Singapore dollar markets performance charts!”

And being the one directly under her, Karen expected more from Rose. Every morning, Rose was required to call Karen to discuss about any new plans and outstanding issues. Once a week, Karen would come all the way to our Suntec office from her comfortable office in the headquarters so that she could have a meeting with Rose that usually lasted a few hours. For every agreement that Rose had made with the businesses, a detailed report had to be sent to Karen. For every Marketing event that Ju initiated, Karen would require Rose and Ju to walk her through the event plan. If anybody needs to know the meaning of ‘control freak’, forget the dictionary. Spend a day with Karen.

Eventually Kah Leng stayed and tried to make things work. However, I was pretty sure she would throw in the letter the moment she spotted a higher paying job somewhere else. In another department, another nasty boss did drive his staff away.

The FX department had a change in their department head. The original head was promoted and moved up a level and a British guy was transferred over from the Hong Kong office to take over the job of leading the department. Months before this new department head Alex stepped onto Singapore, the staffs tried to find out more about him from their Hong Kong counterparts. From all the phone calls and emails, they gathered that Alex was an adamant guy who will not be easily influenced once he had made up his mind. In fact his unyielding firmness was the quality that the higher management praised about, which meant that the department could look forward to launching more high profile projects. But the Hong Kong staffs missed out one important point. Alex was a guy who was only interested to work with people he was familiar and felt comfortable with.

When Alex arrived in Singapore, he brought with him a couple of his direct reports, including Betty, his public relations manager in Hong Kong. As Amy was already the existing public relations manager for the FX department, Alex assigned Betty to Amy as an assistant instead. Amy assumed that since further expansion had been planned for the FX department, Alex could have placed two public relations managers in the department to share the work load. Unfortunately, a couple of months later, Amy realized that she had mistaken Alex.

“Dude, did you hear about what happened to Amy, that public relations manager from the FX department?” Nicky asked me during lunch.
“Why? What happened?”
“She’ll be leaving the company by the end of the month.”
“Leaving the company? You mean she quitted?”
“No, she didn’t,” Nicky shook his head. “She was asked to leave.”
“Asked to leave? By Alex?”
“Yap! And Betty is going to replace her as the public relations manager for the FX department.”
“Ha! So that was the reason for the department to have two public relations managers!”
“Yeh, it’s a cruel world right?” Nicky sighed.

Chapter 16: Let Me Sell You This

2008-01-09T21:13:00.000+08:00

It was already eight o’clock by the time I stepped out of the office. For the past two weeks, I had been seeing the moon on my way home. Yes, I had been working for twelve hours a day. I remembered that during my interview, I asked Rose what were the working hours like. She laughed and replied “Eight thirty to five thirty. By right”. It did not take more than a month for me to figure out what the laughter and “by right” were supposed to mean. To leave the office at six was a luxury; to leave at seven was normal.

From Suntec City, I walked through the City Link underground shopping tunnel to Citihall MRT station. It was in utter chaos as usual. The crowd rushing from City Link split into two crowds – one towards the MRT station and the other towards the Raffles City shopping center. The crowd who had just alighted from the train split into another two crowds - one towards City Link and the other towards the Raffles City shopping center. The crowd coming down the escalator from Raffles City shopping center split into yet another two crowds – one towards the MRT station and the other towards City Link. If a coin was dropped onto the ground, it would be kicked and lost in the blink of an eye.

I barged through the chaotic crowd and walked briskly through the MRT station gate. I then took the escalator down to the station platform to join other kindred souls who were rushing home with an empty stomach and an empty brain. A few minutes later, a crowded train arrived to throw out an excited crowd rushing to shops and dinners, so that it could be refilled by an enervated crowd who just wanted to find a seat and sleep all the way home.

I had never considered myself an agile or lucky person, so I was not surprised that I could not find a seat on the train again. Well, the Health Promotion Board recommended that thirty minutes of exercise a day is good for health right? Hopefully the act of balancing in a moving train for thirty minutes could be considered as a good exercise. Just when I was going to plug in the earphones and listen to my MD player, somebody tapped me on my shoulder.

I turned around to see a guy neatly dressed in an ocean blue wrinkle-free long sleeve shirt and a pair of black trousers, and holding a black document bag. His smile was as slick as his greased-back hair and Giorgio Armani spectacles. When such a fresh and energetic guy was found in a train leaving town area on a weekday evening, he was either on the way to propose to his girlfriend, or to sell something.

This guy looked familiar and I guessed we must have known each other at some point in time because he was calling my name.

“Beng! Have you forgotten about me already?” Mr. looks-familiar grinned.
“No, how would I? How’s life? You are looking better than you used to!”

That was a safe line. Everybody believes that at any point in life they are always looking better than how they were previously.

“Yeh, glad I left the company. Too much pressure. How about you? Are you still there?” said Mr. seems-like-an-ex-colleague.
“Yap, nowhere to run.”
“So how’s everybody at the Latin America FX team? Is Simon Hatcher still the head?” asked Mr. so-and-so-from-Latin-America-FX-team.
“Yeh, he’s still there alive and kicking asses. So what have you been doing?”
“Oh, I’m now in Marketing. Here’s my name card!”

The card read “Peter Sim, Marketing Consultant, Livelife Inc.” So he was not on his way to present a marriage proposal.

For the next fifteen minutes, Mr. Sim was very concerned with the water that I entrusted my life to. He was worried that the unclean water that passed through dirty and rusty water pipes before reaching my tap could cost me my kidneys, lungs and livers and put me in a grievous old age. And with the reservoirs opening up to water activities, he could not bring himself to believe the government’s claim that those water activities will not affect our drinking water. He thanked God that it was really my lucky day because I had to meet him on the train. This grave peril of losing my organs because of drinking water could be averted easily by purchasing a water filter that cost merely over a thousand dollars from him. In fact, if I were to join his company as one of the marketing consultants, I could have further discounts that already very reasonably priced water filter.

“Beng, think about it. If you join our company as a freelance marketing consultant, not only can you buy our products at great discounts, you can earn substantial commissions!”
“Err… Peter, you know how busy my work can be right?”
“You don’t have to worry about that at all! As a freelance marketing consultant, you can always work only when you’re free and there’s no pressure in meeting any quota at all!”
“Err… I really don’t think I’ve got the time to do any freelancing.”
“Oh… well, never mind, I tell you what. Since we’re such great pals, I must get you the discount for the water filter. Just between the two of us, I’ll pretend that I’m the one buying the water filter, and you can get the member’s privileged discount for it! How about that, pal?”

I told him that I was very grateful, however very unfortunately, I had already bought a water filter just months ago. Of course I did not tell him that my water filter was a simple one that cost me less than a hundred dollars. Instead, I told him that I paid a few hundred dollars for that new water filter and I could not just throw it away. I did not expect him to get even more concerned and more worked up.

“No, you don’t understand. Those water filters that are selling in the market are dangerous! They can’t do a clean job in removing the debris from the water! And worse, sometimes the chemicals that are used in these filters actually pollute the water further!”
“Erm… but the one that I bought was certified by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency as a Microbiological Water Purifier.” I knew I read these terms somewhere in the Forbes magazine.
“But Beng, how can you trust something that is certified by the U.S.? Everybody can be certified by them! As someone working in the water treatment industry, I can tell you the standards set by these U.S. agencies can’t be trusted. That’s why our water filters are more superior. Our company’s water filters are certified by the United Kingdom!”

Before he could continue to brag about how the new desalination plant had initially wanted to use their company’s water filter, but because their filters were so out of stock they had to reject the plant, I told him that I had reached my station and I needed to go.

“Hey Beng, you have forgotten to give me your name card!”
“Oh, I ran out of name cards. But no worries, I’ve got yours.”
“Oh yes, call me okay?” Mr. Sim reminded me before the train door closed.

I waved him goodbye as the train moved away from the station. I looked up at the station sign. Yio Chu Kang. Not so bad, I was only a few stations away from my destination. Patiently, I waited for the next train.

Partially due to the trend of retrenchments a few years back, more people had joined the multi-level marketing workforce. The marketing consultants from these multi-level marketing companies will recruit new people to either buy into the program or to buy products that are totally unheard of but grossly overpriced. The new recruits will then recruit additional people who will also buy into the program or buy the products. The whole process just goes on. That is where the word ‘multi-level’ comes from. As for the word ‘marketing’, they might be using the wrong word.

All marketing consultants are promised that if they could create multiple layers of sellers under them, the amount of accrued commissions could lead them to riches that they could never dream of. But the sad truth is only the big boss who started the program is really making loads of money. All others have spent their commissions buying bulks of those overpriced products themselves.

Finally I reached the station I had intended to alight. As I walked down the escalator, I was approached by a well dressed lady holding a notepad and pen on one hand, and a cup of colored straws on the other.

“Hi, could you spare me a minute?” the lady asked politely.
“No,” I had already spared somebody else my minutes.
“Just a quick one, okay? We’re offering a free lucky draw!”

‘Free’ lucky draw? Since when must we pay for lucky draws?

“What is it about?”
“I’m from ABC Insurance and we are having a road show promotion on our latest insurance products. If you managed to draw the lucky straw among these other straws in the cup, you could win yourself free accident cover for a year!” she said avidly.
“It’s okay. I’m already covered by other insurance policies.”
“But why don’t you give the lucky draw a shoot? Just draw a straw from this cup! It’s free anyway!”
“No, really, it’s okay. Thanks!” With that, I walked away briskly before she could continue.

As I walked past their booth area, I saw a couple of tables and some people really talking to those insurance agents. But who knows? They could be only interested in getting that one year free accident cover. Perhaps I was just been too skeptical, but I could not understand how a tired and hungry person who had just finished work and was on the way home suddenly had an urge to buy insurance from somebody he/she had just met for the first time, on the street.

Then my mobile phone rang.

“Hello?”
“Hello, is that Mr. Tan Ah Beng?”
“Yes?”
“Hi, I’m Larry calling from Relax Resorts and I’ve got good news for you! You’ve just won yourself a free trip for two to Phuket from our lucky draw!”
“Another lucky draw?”
“Huh? Sorry?”
“Never mind, so what’s the catch?”
“Oh, there’s no condition attached. You’ll just have to attend a short travel presentation at our office and…”
“I’m not interested,” I cut him off and hung up the phone.

It was one of those timeshare companies again. They will lure you to their holiday resorts presentations that last for hours and pressurize you to sign up a twenty thousand dollars package that allows you to stay in holiday resorts that are usually far away from all amenities and attractions.

After dinner, I switched on my notebook. I was planning to get into eBay. Since everybody seemed to have something to sell, maybe I should try selling some of my old VCDs as well.

Chapter 15: People Who Have Problem Communicating

2008-01-08T20:12:00.000+08:00

Maintaining relationships in a company is not an easy task, especially if you have got hundred over colleagues. It is true that not everybody can be the gregarious one who has no difficulty talking to anybody about anything. Not everybody can be the handsome/pretty guy/gal who is admired and liked by most. Not everybody can be the charismatic one who has the power to influences and motivates. However, we should at least try not to be the one that is loathed, avoided, or worse, cursed by all.

In a large company like ours, it is almost unavoidable to have some fellow colleagues who like to do things that allowed them to be loathed, avoided or cursed by others. The slick ones did those things due to office politics, the insensitive ones did those things because they thought that something that works for them will work for others as well, while the blur ones did those things because they just did not know what they were doing.

Organizing meetings and conference calls is one place where these people go wrong. They are usually organizing meetings and conference calls at the wrong time like nine o’clock (which means the participants have to be at the office before their usual time), one o’clock (which means that the participants have to rush through their lunches) and five o’clock (which means that the participants have to go home late). Unfortunately, there were two culprits in our team who were guilty of organizing meetings and conference calls at the wrong time. They were Rose and Dawn. Both loved to organize meetings and conference calls at one o’clock.

One day, I received an email meeting invitation from Dawn for a one o’clock meeting. She followed up with a message on the MSN Messenger, as usual…

“hi, I’m organizing a meeting tomoro for the completion of the online trading project”
“yeh, I saw ur email”
“the meeting’s FYI only, but I think it’s good for u to attend. And anyway, big boss is attending.”
“but why is the meeting scheduled at one?”
“oh, becos big boss has another meeting at two”
“are everybody busy attending some other meetings the day after tomoro?”
“no, everybody seems to be rather free the day after tomoro”
“then why didn’t u arrange the meeting to be on the day after tomoro?”
“oh, becos the project has finally been completed and so I thought it’ll be great to let everybody know more abt it asap”

If Dawn was bad with her time management, Rose was worse. She loved to organize a meeting or conference call that ended at twelve o’clock and another one that started at one o’clock. To make matters worse, most of the time, she would have talked so much that the twelve o’clock meeting or conference call would end at twelve thirty. This meant that we had only got enough time to grab a bun for lunch before the one o’clock one started.

And Rose loved to organize meetings and conference calls. Any product launch, any change management, any other matters warranted a meeting or at least a conference call. To Rose, emails were not the most efficient way to communicate. She believed that meetings and conference calls would have allowed all parties to ask any queries that they might not send via emails.

One day, Ju emailed the team regarding the new branding that the company was incorporating in a few months’ time. As usual, Rose requested her to organize a conference call to explain to everybody about the new branding. So during the conference call…

“Hi, everybody, let’s start a Netmeeting. My IP address is 25.120.140.34,” said Ju.
“Okay, I’ve shared my desktop. Could everybody see my screen?” asked Ju.
“Yes,” replied by some.
“What you see now is the new branding that we’ll be using starting from March. As you can see from the screen, these are the new colors and fonts to be used in your PowerPoint slides. And this is the new font and size to be used in your Words documents. Any questions?”
“What’s the difference between the PowerPoint slide that you show here and the one that has been emailed to us?” asked Choi.
“It’s the same slide,” replied Ju.
“Oh…”
“Any other questions? If no, let’s end the conference call now.”
“No questions?” Ju asked again. “Okay, thanks everyone for attending, bye!”

Attending a meeting or conference call scheduled at the wrong time of the day, or attending one that is not even required, may leave you feeling miffed. However, when some people have problem complying with email etiquettes, it can really make you feel exasperated.

Some people may be highly educated and holding a high post with great responsibility. However, they could be dafter than you can imagine when it comes to using emails. One day, a Capital Markets colleague sent out an email to a distribution list which was believed to comprise of email addresses of all colleagues whose job were related to FX. But apparently, some colleagues were mistakenly included in the list, so these colleagues replied to this Capital Markets colleague that they should not be included in the distribution list. The problem was, these colleagues had chosen to click on “reply to all”…

Colleague A replied all: “Please remove me from the distribution list. I’m not working with FX products and this message does not concern me.”
Colleague B replied all: “Please just reply to the sender instead of clicking on reply to all.”
Sender of the email replied all: “Colleague A, you have been removed from the distribution list.”
Colleague C replied all: “Please remove me from the distribution list. I’m not working with FX products and I don’t need to know about these messages.”
Sender of the email replied all: “Colleague C, you have been removed from the distribution list.”
Colleague D replied all: “Please do not click on reply to all! You people are jamming everybody’s mail!”

Usually, the process would be repeated till everybody in the distribution list had received more than a hundred emails and they will be busy deleting these emails throughout the whole day in order to clear their mailboxes.

There are others who are not jamming mailboxes due to their stupidity. There are the people who do it in the name of office politics. These are the ones who will email to his/her boss, everybody else in his/her department and anyone else who is loosely related to his/her works about every single piece of task they have accomplished. These are also the ones who will email you about an escalation due to your mistakes or your inability to notice the problem, and cc the email to his/her boss, your boss and every other person in your department.

One day, both KZ and I had a meeting and a conference call back to back. By the time our one o’clock meeting finished, we were fifteen minutes late for a two o’clock conference call. And sitting in our mailboxes was an email from the conference call organizer…

“Hey KZ and Beng, where are you? We are waiting for you guys!”

This email was cc’ed to everybody who was attending the conference call, including our boss.

Then there are some people who love to email out queries and tasks five minutes before they log off for the day. I had received emails at six o’clock from people who had queries for the following day’s nine o’clock meeting. Apparently they expected me to stay back to answer their queries so that they could read them in the morning before they attend the meeting. These type of things happened even if the meeting invitation and agenda were sent out a week ago.

There was also this colleague from another department who loved to delegate jobs to her subordinates via email minutes before she left the office. I was skeptical about the kind of work quality produced when her subordinates had to stay back to finish the jobs. Besides the problem of low morale, because she was not there to guide her subordinates when they had doubts while doing the jobs, wrong assumptions might have been taken.

Using MSN Messenger the wrong way could cause a person to be loathed or avoided too. There are some people who acted like mosquitoes. If you ignore their presence even after they have circled and make noise around your ears, they will sting you. These are the ones who are unable to understand that you are too busy to reply to their messages, so they will send you a nudge once in every few minutes. But if you could bear with the shaking screens, these people are only pure annoying.

There are another group of people who acted like houseflies. No matter how hard you try to ignore their presence, they will continue to make noise around your ears, or worse, fly around your nose. These are the ones who are determined to send you a message against all odds. Dawn was one such person.

One day, I set my MSN Messenger status to “busy”. But Dawn still sent me a message: “are u busy?”

Another day, I set my MSN Messenger status to “be right back”. Dawn was working from home, but she still sent me a message: “hey, where are you?”

And another day, I set my MSN Messenger status to “away”. Dawn was working from home, but she still sent me a message: “hey, are you away?”

Yet on another day, I set my MSN Messenger status to “on the phone”. Dawn was in the office and she could see my headset on my head, but she still sent me a message: “hey, are you on conf call?”

Finally, I blocked Dawn from my MSN Messenger. A few minutes later, my phone rang and I picked up. It was Dawn.

“Hey Beng, is there something wrong with your MSN Messenger? How come you’re offline?”

Chapter 14: Surviving Outsourcing

2008-01-07T19:11:00.000+08:00

Our company had decided to outsource the maintenance of one of our B2B transaction platforms to a Chennai vendor. This maintenance was originally contracted out to a vendor located in Kuala Lumpur and they had been doing a good job for three years. However, with a projected saving of almost two hundred percents, the upper management could not find a reason for not transferring the maintenance contract.

Both onshore and offshore outsourcing seems to be a key business strategy in most MNCs. I remembered a few years back, slightly after the Internet Bubble burst, companies were skeptical about outsourcing important functions to others. They were uncertain about the financial payback and the quality of the service providers’ work. Now, quality is no long a big issue, with companies focusing on managing remote resources effectively.

Outsourcing is inevitable in the process of globalization. More manufacturers had moved their labor and land intensive production and processes to neighboring locations such as Indonesia to take advantage of their lower costs there. Singaporean workers are urged to train and retrain in order to move their knowledge up one, or a few, levels. This is to ensure that they could remain in the company as the middle management who will be managing and controlling the job quality of their vendors.

The first function that our company had outsourced to Kuala Lumpur was our IT help desk. Before the outsourcing, whenever my mischievous notebook decided to disable some of its functions for the day, I just had to call up our IT department and within approximately fifteen minutes, somebody would be at my desk to do a health check for my notebook. After the outsourcing, I would call up the IT help desk situated in Kuala Lumpur and note down a given request ticket number. The IT help desk will then put my request ticket on a queue, with the priority depending on the urgency of the request. When it was finally my turn, the Kuala Lumpur IT help desk will call up an IT guy in Singapore, in the IT department five stories above my office, to be precise. This IT guy will then come over to my desk to service my notebook. The whole process would normally take a few hours.

In those few hours that I could not work on my notebook, I would wander off to a nearby café to get a cup of coffee and read some newspapers. Some people viewed this as a total waste of time but I begged to differ. Having a few hours to relax my mind could give me some breathing space and the ability to think more clearly and work more efficiently for the day. There was this inflexibility that I disagreed with though…

“Mr. Tan, your IE problem was due to some spywares residing in your computer. I’ve already cleared it. But there’s another problem…”
“Yes?”
“I found that there’s some problem with your Outlook as well.”
“So could it be solved?”
“Yes, but you’ll need to raise another ticket for it.”
“What?”
“You’ll need to call the help desk and raise another ticket for it, and then either I or another colleague will come over to solve it.”

Our company then carried on to outsource the Finance’s Claiming department to Chennai. As expected, after the claiming function was outsourced, the staffs’ claiming process for transport and travel allowances etc. took longer, but it was still bearable. However, the invoice payment process was also made more complicated, with more forms to fill and longer waiting time. That was unbearable to some.

In the new process due to the outsourcing, after an invoice had been received, a couple of taxation and declaration forms had to be filled. The whole stack of document will then travel around the company to be signed by various authorizing managers. With all signatures gathered, the stack of document had to be photocopied to duplicate one more copy to be tagged together, and another copy to be filed up. The stack of original and duplicated documents will then be sent by courier to Chennai. Chennai’s Claiming department will then put the invoice on a queue to be processed. When the invoice was finally processed successfully, our Singapore office will receive instructions to issue a cheque to the receiving party. The whole process would normally take one to two months.

Most of the time, Ju could bear with the extended waiting time to pay the vendors. However, there were exceptional…

“Rose, I’ll need you to talk to Chennai about the Emirates Towers invoice,” requested Ju.
“Why? Is there a problem with the invoice?” asked Rose.
“The hotel has just called me and the reservations manager was threatening to release our booked rooms if they don’t receive the cheque by tomorrow.”
“The event is supposed to be two weeks later right?”
“Yes, but remember we need to pay a fifty percents down payment two weeks before the actual day, as stated in the reservation contract?”
“Oh… and Chennai is not releasing the cheque?”
“Yes.”
“When was the invoice sent to them?”
“About three weeks ago.”
“Okay, let me give them a call. What’s the number?”

Ju gave Rose the phone number and Rose made a call to Chennai to request them to speed up the payment process for that particular invoice from Emirates Towers. After a much heated conversation, with Rose having to give hundred and one reasons for speeding up the payment, and a faxed request letter signed by her, the Claiming department in Chennai had finally promised to instruct our Singapore office to issue a cheque.

With that promise from Chennai’s Claiming department, Ju had to give our Singapore Finance department a call to request them to escalate the issuing of the cheque and courier it to her within a day. On the same day, Ju would have to courier the cheque out to Dubai. Shifting our Claiming function to Chennai had made Ju’s work very painful indeed, but she was not alone.

Sally had been grumbling about the invoices that she had sent to Chennai but got lost in the Bermudas Triangle on the way. In every few months, a vendor will call her up to ask about a much delayed invoice, which will prompt Sally to call up Chennai’s Claiming department to check the invoice’s status, and the department will usually inform her that the invoice was not received by them, a.k.a. the case of a missing invoice. The infuriated Sally will then have to request for a new invoice from the vendor again.

With the IT help desk and Claiming department outsourcing deemed as successful, our company sent a team to Chennai to explore on the feasibility of outsourcing the maintenance of one of our B2B transaction platforms. After determining that it was an economically right thing to do, the contract was signed. I was then assigned the responsibility for reviewing the business transaction knowledge of the Chennai team.

Before the Chennai team could maintain the B2B transaction platform, it was mandatory for them to have full products knowledge. My job was to make sure that they had the adequate FX products knowledge to serve our clients well. My nightmare started from there...

“Beng, you stated in the product sheet that the global liquidity fund is not offered to British citizens,” asked the FX lead in Chennai team.
“Yes, you’re right.”
“But where did you get this piece of information from?”
“It’s written in the brochure.”
“But I can’t find it. I’ve searched through the whole brochure but I still can’t find it.”
“Did you check page two?”
“Yes, definitely!”
“Did you check the disclaimer?”
“Oh…”

Besides the inability to read disclaimers and foot notes, the Chennai team had another problem. They were unable to understand and apply the same theory from one scenario to another…

“Beng, could you tell me more about the currency swap?” asked the FX lead in Chennai team.
“Okay… a currency swap typically involves an exchange of coupon payments and principal. For example, Singaporean Company S would like to borrow pounds, and British Company B wishes to borrow Singapore dollars. Let’s assume Company S has a lower Singapore dollars borrowing interest rate than Company B, and Company B has a lower pounds borrowing interest rate than Company S. It means that if Company S borrows Singapore dollars in Singapore and Company B borrows pounds in the United Kingdom, but then they swap their obligations, each company can benefit from the other company’s superior borrowing rate in its domestic currency,” I explained. “Do you have any query on this?”
“Erm… so this is what it meant by ‘Sin and Pound’ currency swap?”
“Yes, you’re right.”
“Then can you explain to me, what is the meaning of ‘Yen and Dollar’ currency swap?”

After going through all the questionings in two months, the training for the FX lead and members in the Chennai team was over. I went through the post-training report sent to me from Chennai. There was only one conclusion after reading it. With that B2B transaction platform outsourced to the Chennai team, my job had just become more challenging.

Chapter 13: A Day without the Network

2008-01-05T17:09:00.000+08:00

Disaster always strike you at the back of your head when you least expected it. In this case, it had selected one fine Monday morning. The moment I stepped into the office, I had a feeling that something was amiss. Rose, Ju and Choi were talking loudly on their phones, Nicky was typing furiously on his keyboard, Dawn and Sally were nowhere to be found, and even the usually calm KZ was flipping anxiously through a document file.

Preferred not to intervene into such chaos situation, I sat at my desk and tried to start my day. After my notebook was booted up and Windows had started, I discovered that something was not very right. I could not get myself connected to the network. I looked up and asked Nicky: “Hey Nicky, can you log into…”

“The network’s down!” Nicky shouted at me before I could finish my question.

That gave the reason for the unruly behavior of the team, and the reason for me to start my day with a disagreeable mood.

I had three conference calls scheduled for the day. With the network down, it meant that I could not use the Netmeeting application for my presentations. And that translated to, I need to arrange for proper sit-in meetings to replace those conference calls. I launched my browser only to realize that I could not access the online meeting room booking system when the network was down. Damn. Without losing a second, I walked over to look for Jessie, our department secretary. For the first time in my work life in this company, I saw a queue forming outside her cubicle.

“When is your meeting?” Jessie asked the first guy in the queue, with her eyes fixed on the monitor screen.
“Er… I’ve got two meetings, one from ten to eleven, and another from four to five,” replied a chubby colleague.
“How many people are attending?”
“Six for the first one, four for the second one.”

After a few clicks on the mouse and a few taps on the keyboard, Jessie turned and said to the chubby colleague: “Caesar One from ten to eleven. No more small room for four to five.” The chubby colleague scribbled on a post-it note, mumbled a ‘thanks’ and left hastily.

Three other colleagues later, I had to cancel off the two morning meetings due to the unavailability of meeting rooms. When it was finally my turn, I crossed my fingers behind my back as I said: “One meeting room for ten people, from two to three.”

“Okay, Pompeii Two from two to three,” replied Jessie monotonously.

I rushed back to my desk and launched my Outlook just to be reminded that I could not access the company phone book when the network was down. Damn. I searched through my drawer for the name card holder. Nearly having to overturn the whole drawer, I eventually found it sitting comfortably below a stack of useless papers.

“Hello, Sam? This is Beng. It’s regarding the conference call we are supposed to have this afternoon… Yes… Yes, the network is down… Yes, but don’t worry, I’ve managed to book a meeting room… Yes, it’s still from two to three… Pompeii Two on the fifth floor…Yes, can you do me a favor? Could you tell Soon Teck and James as well? Okay, thanks! See you then!”

I then flipped through my name card holder again to call the others, including one colleague from Hong Kong and another from South Korea, about the postponing of the two conference calls. When everything was settled, it was only ten o’clock. With my morning conference call postponed, I spent the time looking through some presentation slides.

“Yes! Please help me to monitor FTech for the day, my company’s network is down and I can’t access the internet! ... Yeh, I know it has been dropping but I thought I could wait till today after it announced its results… Yes… Yes, let me know if it falls below sixty-five cents! ... No, I’ll need to cut loss! Okay, sure! Thanks pal! Thanks a lot!”

The flustered Nicky put down his phone, stared at the monitor for a while, then typed furiously on his keyboard again. The inability to monitor the stock market had dealt him a blow. I looked over to Sally. She had already arrived at the office and was on the phone as well.

“Yes, we need to send the brochure for printing by today… Yes, you need to send the draft to me by this morning so that I can vet… No! Don’t email me the draft, fax it to me! ... Yes, I know there are thirty over colored pages … No, we don’t have another choice. Just call me before you fax, okay? Thanks!”

Without emails, the vendor would have to fax Sally the brochure pages so that she could vet and scribble her remarks on the faxed pages before re-faxing them back to the vendor. This same process would have to be repeated for an N amount of times before the brochure could finally be sent for print. It was going to be a long day for Sally.

A fazed Ju brisk walked into the office with her notebook. Apparently she was returning from a meeting. She put down her notebook and checked her phone for missed call, and then she picked up the phone.

“Hi Veronica, you were looking for me? … Yes, we’ll need to create three pull-up banners for the coming event… Yes, fourteenth of December … Yes… Yes, give me a minute while I check my computer…Oh my God! Oh no, I’m afraid I can’t give you our hi-res logo. No, it’s stored in the network drive and our network is down today… No, I don’t think so… Okay, I’ll send it to you as soon as the network is up… Okay, thanks! See you!”

Rose seemed to be out for their meetings. Without the capability to do conference calls, she would have to rush to our other office locations for their meetings. However, Choi did not seem to be affected by the inability to launch the Netmeeting application. Against all odds, he was still on a conference call.

“Yes, the graph on the report showed that India had the least amount of loans… Yes, I know, I know you guys can’t see the graph. Why don’t you try to sketch one out as I speak? ... Yes, Australia fifteen, China twelve, India eight, Indonesia sixteen... no, not fifteen, sixteen. One six. Yes… Japan twenty, Singapore twenty-six… no, not twenty-eight, twenty-six. Two six…”

The other survivor from this disaster was KZ. He had dug out some old and dusty document files and was flipping through them while typing on his notebook. Without the access to the databases, these document files were all he could find to do his research report. Fortunately he had insisted on keeping hard copies of those documents.

Dawn seemed to be the least affected of us all. She had been making casual calls on the phone and flipping through the newspaper. When she had enough of those, she walked over to Ju’s desk and took a few cookies, then walked to the pantry for coffee. She even walked over to Sally’s desk and tried to talk to her, but was rejected coldly by Sally who told her that she was rushing her brochure and was too busy to chat. Dawn then made a couple of calls to her friends to arrange for an early lunch appointment. By eleven, she was out of the office for lunch.

I was getting rather bored looking through my presentation slides, so I launched the iTunes application to catch some latest podcasts, only to remember that without the ability to update my iTunes, I could only listen to the old podcasts already saved on my hard disk. Damn. Luckily I brought along my MD player.

Then my mobile phone rang.

“Hello? Oh, hi Babe… yeh, the movie today, of course I remembered… Yeh, I think it’ll be crowded because it’s the first day of screening… No, I’ve not booked yet… yeh, I’ll be booking online… Damn! No, sorry, not damn you… no, my company’s network is down so I won’t be able to book the tickets online… Yeh, sorry Babe. Why don’t you book it then… Yeh, luckily you called… Okay, call me after you’ve booked the tickets… Okay, bye!”

After I had finished the call, I found Nicky standing in front of my desk. I had never seen his hair in such a mess before.

“Beng, let’s go for lunch.”
“Hey, you don’t have to walk all the way here. You could just have messaged me through MSN Messenger… oh… I forgot that’s down.”
“Yeh, everything seems to be down today.”
“Well, looking at the bright side, at least it means we could have a long lunch today,” I jested.
“Can we go to that Internet café a few blocks away after lunch? I’m worried for my FTech shares and I’m thinking of checking out its price and volume.”
“Oh… sure! Let’s walk over to call KZ, Choi and Sally.”

After lunch, the network was back to working order and all of us were as happy as striking a lottery. Through this incident, I came to realize how the Internet, which we had taken for granted, could be so important in our lives.

Chapter 12: Some Fishes Called Betta

2008-01-04T16:08:00.000+08:00

We had just finished our lunch and were walking past an aquarium shop when Nicky decided to walk in to buy some aquarium plants for his fish tank. Nicky had a three feet fish tank in the “wealth sector” in his house with an auspicious quantity of eight goldfishes. Every few weeks, he had to replace those dying potted aquarium plants in his tank with fresh new ones. I had advised him to lay a layer of gravel on his tank and grow the plants directly in the aquarium instead to save cost, but he said that those hyper active and super curious goldfishes of his would dig the plants out within a few days’ time. Furthermore, he resisted the thought of using gravel because he preferred to use citrine crystal stones which made his fish tank even more auspicious.

While Nicky was choosing his aquarium plants, the rest of us wondered around the shop. This shop at Clementi was a very popular shop among fish hobbyists in Singapore. It looked old and overcrowded, in fact so overcrowded that some of the tanks and equipments had to be stacked outside the shop, however they sold a good variety of fresh water fishes. Whenever I accompanied Nicky to the shop, be it on a weekday afternoon or a weekend evening, it was always crowded with young and old men.

Yes, most of the fish hobbyists in Singapore are men. Maybe it has got something to do with the look and feel of the aquarium shops around here. A typical local aquarium shop is usually small with tanks of fishes stacked on the shelves all around the shop. The names of the fishes with their respective prices are roughly scribbled with marker on the fish tanks. In the left over space of the shop, you can always find aquarium plants, confusing fish medications, fish foods and aquarium equipments like filters and pumps. And on the last piece of space where you thought you can walk on, an empty fish tank with a “Sale: $128” label on it may block your way. Our local aquarium shops are just too “insensitive” for our local ladies.

Perhaps somebody should start an aquarium shop catering to our female population. First of all, it should be air-conditioned. Instead of cement or tiles, the shop should have carpet flooring. Proper labels should be hung from these fish tanks, like the ones used in IKEA. These labels should tell the names of the fishes with their prices, where are they from, what should they be fed with and which are the other species that do not get along with them. The labels should also be color coded to indicate the level of difficulty in handling these fishes. For example, “fishes for beginners” like guppies and goldfishes should be labeled sweet pink; and “fishes for experts” like parrot fishes and discus should be labeled bright red.

The shop should also be staffed with friendly and neatly dressed staffs with their name tags. They will be stationing themselves around the shop to answer any doubts that the customers might have like “will this fish food gives my fish a better color” and “do you think this aquarium plant goes well with my red guppies, or should I take that red plant instead?”. Piped-in music like jazz should be used to cover the monotonous humming of the pumps, and as much as possible, this music should also complement with the bubbling sound from the fish tanks to give a soothing effect. Lastly and most importantly, the shop should offer free delivery with a minimum purchase so that some strong male staffs could help the ladies to delivery their fish tanks to their houses.

I walked around the shop and found Sally staring at some Bettas, a.k.a. fighting fishes.

“Don’t you think they’re beautiful?” she asked, still staring at the miniature tanks of Bettas on the shelves.
“Yeh, I’d always find their bright colors pretty fascinating.”
“Look at the way he spreads his fins! So beautiful!” she was pointing at a blue Betta which was agitated by her finger resting on the tank.
“Don’t tell me…”
“Beng, do you think fighting fishes are easy to rear?”

Okay, she was really thinking of rearing these Bettas. So can I classify this as a case of “love at first sight”?

“They should be right? I heard that you can just use a jam bottle to rear one, and you don’t even need to put in a filter!” Sally insisted.
“Well, yes, it’s true that you don’t need a filter because they could breathe through the air at the top of the water level, but no, you can’t use a jam bottle because it’ll be too small for the fish to maneuver.”
“But these tanks are as small as jam bottles right? And if you look over there, they even have some fighting fishes packed in small plastic bags!”
“Dear Sally, the boss expected you to get a proper tank for these fishes after you’ve bought them, and throw away the jam bottle or plastic bag.”
“Oh…” Sally pondered upon it and then said: “Why don’t you help me to choose a tank then?”

With that, Sally looked around and pulled me to the section where some small tanks were displayed.

“What do you think of this? Cute right? There’s even a mini tank inside this small tank!” she exclaimed avidly.
“Sally, this seems to be a breeding tank for pregnant guppies and that mini tank is used to separate the mother from her young.”
“Why must they be separated?!!” Sally hollered.
“Because if you don’t do so, the female guppy will eat up all her babies!”
“Eee! So cruel!”
“That’s nature’s way of doing things, Sally. Welcome to this cruel world.”

After some more searching, we found a six inches plastic tank that could be used as a new home for her new Betta. Okay, found the house, time to get the owner.

“How many fighting fishes do you think we can fit in this tank?”
“One.”
“One? I think the tank is big enough for at least three!”
“Do you happen to know that fighting fishes actually fight?” I realized that I forgot to tell her this important bit of information.
“Yes I know! That’s why they’re called fighting fishes right?” Sally held her waist and stared at me. “But only two males will fight right? Which means that I can put a male and some females together in the tank right?”
“That’s only if you intend to breed them.”
Sally paused a while, then said: “Hey, breeding fighting fishes could be fun!”

In order to do the Bettas a favor and save some lives, I decided to tell Sally my friend’s experience in breeding Bettas.

“Okay, listen. Breeding Bettas is not as easy as you think it is. First of all, you should only put a male and a female in the tank. Having more than two females will excite your male to death.”
“Well, he can always schedule his females for 1-3-5 and 2-4-6 right? Then he can rest on Sundays,” Sally giggled.
“Uh-ehm…” I ignored her and continued. “You have to feed them regularly so that you don’t starve them, because once they get hungry, they'll start to bite each other. Place some plants in the tank so that your female could seek refuge whenever necessary. If everything goes well, a bubble nest will soon be created by the male. If mating is successful, you’ll see the female releasing some cream-colored eggs. At this time, you’ll need to move the female to another tank otherwise the male will bite her. The male will then dive down and pick up all the eggs with his mouth and spit it into the nest. A couple of days later, the eggs will hatch and you’ll need to remove the male as well. And all these are only the breeding part.”
“And then?”
“Then you’ll need to prepare some baby foods like Liquidfry to feed the fries.”
“And then?”
“Then you’ll just have to pray and wait for the fries to grow up safely.”
“Wow…” Sally mused. “That sounds cool!”

Happily, Sally selected one male Veil Tail Betta and another female Single Tail Betta. Though cheap, the male Veil Tail Betta looked rather pretty with its pinkish body and purple tail and fins. Together with the small plastic tank, she bought a potted sword plant and a bottle of Anti-chlorine solution as well.

Upon reaching the office, I helped the joyous Sally to set up the aquarium. I cleaned the tank, filled it up with tap water, poured in a small amount of Anti-chlorine solution and put the potted sword plant in. Then we got a problem.

“Sally, didn’t you compare the height of the plant to that of the tank before buying the plant?”
“Eh… no. I just chose the one that looks nicest and freshest. Erm… can we place the plant horizontally instead?”

Sally tilted the plant to make it lay horizontally on the floor of the tank.

“Okay what! It still looks nice right? The plant can still grow right?” Sally asked.
“Yeh, I suppose so.”

Sally then took over to perform the most important task – releasing the fishes into the tank. She released the packet of female Betta into the tank followed by the male Betta. For a while, the two fishes swam around to get themselves used to the new environment. Like in a Hindu movie, they swam around the horizontally lying sword plant and played hide-and-seek with each other. When the male Betta finally managed to swam to the front of the female Betta, it pecked the female Betta, who then swam away hastily in shock. The whole process repeated for a couple of times and Sally sat in front of her tank and witnessed every single shocking meeting those two fishes had. Suddenly, she gasped.

“Oh my god!”
“What?” I rushed to her and looked at the tank. The fishes looked fine to me.

“I forgot to buy fish food!”

Chapter 11: Ghosts and Their Fears

2008-01-03T15:07:00.000+08:00

I had just finished my conference call when my MSN Messenger popped out. I had got a message from Dawn.

“hi, do u find anything wrong wif Sally today?”

Sally was behaving strangely indeed. Usually she would be either talking avidly on the phone or typing stodgily on her notebook with her eyes glued to the screen. But when I turned and looked at her, I found her staring into blank space instead of into the Euromoney magazine that she was holding.

I replied Dawn on the MSN Messenger.

“yeh, she seems strange today. Why dun u ask her whether she’s ok?”
“ok, I’ll msn her”

After I finished writing one slide for my presentation, Dawn sent me a message.

“hi, I think we better go to her desk”
“why?”
“she said she had some spiritual encounter last evening”

Before I could relate “spiritual encounter” to “ghost”, Dawn, Nicky and Ju had already gathered at Sally’s desk. Dawn had once again proven that her mass communication skill was undisputed and uncontested.

“So what exactly happened?” the concerned Ju asked.

Sally clasped her hands together nervously and took a deep breath. With a pair of watery eyes, she stared at Rose and said: “I think there was a ghost here in the office last night.”

This time round, everybody else around Sally took a deep breath.

“Sally, are you sure it was not an illusion?” a wide-eyed Ju asked.
“No, I don’t think so,” Sally shook her head.
“What did you see?” Nicky asked.
“You know, last night I worked late to prepare for the coming Marketing event right? So after all of you went back, I was all alone in the office at eight plus. Then suddenly I heard some papers flipping sound at the other side of the office behind that partition there. I thought some document files fell so I walked over to take a look. But even after I walked all the way to the furthest end of the office, I could not find any document file or paper on the ground. And I didn’t hear the flipping any more as well.”
“Maybe you were too tired and you imagined that flipping sound,” suggested Ju.
“No, it can’t be! After I walked back to my desk and sat down, that flipping sound started again!” Sally hollered and clasped Ju’s arm.

Everybody stood frozen and stared at Sally.

“So I tried to call my boyfriend on my mobile phone but there was no signal strength.”
”No signal strength? You kidding me? My mobile phone’s reception here is great!” Nicky blurted.
“I’ve never had any reception problem with my mobile phone too, but last night I just couldn’t get any signal strength at all! And you know what? When I tried to use my desk phone to call him, it’s engaged! He has got a waiting line service on his mobile phone but I got an engaged tone!”

By then, Ju’s right hand was clasping Sally’s hands which are on Ju’s left hand, and Dawn was clasping Nicky’s sleeve.

“I was really very scared, so I packed up and ran out of the office as fast as I could! When I was outside the building, I tried to call my boyfriend again, and I was so happy to hear his voice on the other line!”
“And he came over to pick you up?” Ju asked.
“Yeh, and when I asked him why his mobile phone was engaged, he said that he was not using the mobile phone, and it didn’t ring at all!”

A small pearl of tear rolled down Sally’s left cheek. Her right hand struggled out of Ju’s hand to wipe off the tear quickly. Realizing that they were clasping each other too tightly, Sally and Ju let go of each other. These two ladies were really freaked out.

“But I’d ever worked here till nine plus and nothing happened,” said Nicky.
“Nicky, you’re different,” I explained. “You’ve got two dragons, one cock and one weird fish surrounding you. Those ghosts are scared of your pets!”
“Hey, my Feng Shui animals are not that scary okay? And besides, that’s a dragon carp, not a ‘weird fish’.”

“Nicky, do you think the spirits in the office are unhappy because we didn’t have any offerings for them during the seventh month?” Ju asked.

The “seventh month” referred to is the seventh month on the Chinese lunar calendar. This month-long period is also known as the “hungry ghost festival” and the Chinese believed that this is when all the dead spirits are released from hell back to the mortal world. On top of offering roast piglets, roast ducks, roast pork, fruits and other festive food stuff, the Chinese will also burn paper monies, paper clothes, paper cars, paper mahjong sets, paper cigarettes and other paper gifts to their dead relatives.

The copious paper gifts that are burnt for the dead are really fascinating but confusing. There are paper credit cards. Do these come with free ‘deadtime’ subscription? And if a spirit failed to pay his/her bill, will he/she be declared bankrupt? There are paper DVD players. But where will the DVDs come from? Are we supposed to get some DVDs from HMV and burn them? And here is the best part - paper mobile phones. What if this happens…

“Hello Beng, is that you?”
“Er… yes, may I know who’s that?”
“Beng, it’s me! Your grandfather! How can you forget my voice? I’ve only been dead for five years! You unfilial grandson!”
“Er… oh… hi, grandpa! What’s up? How’s life down there?”

Perhaps we should learn to think twice before burning anything.

“Yeh, you may be right. We didn’t even offer them any joss-sticks,” Nicky mused.
“But why will there be any spirit in the office in the first place?” I questioned. “Before you can have a spirit, somebody must die right? So how will anybody die here?”
“Hey, you never know!” Nicky disagreed. “Maybe somebody did die working here? Like having a heart attack while flipping through a financial report?”
“Or died working too much overtime,” Dawn added.

“Why don’t we get an army badge from the army store at Beach Road?” Choi joined in the conversation.
“An army badge? What for?” asked Dawn.
“Because spirits are scared of it,” Choi explained solemnly. “When I was serving my National Service at Pulau Tekong, my platoon stayed at one of those seven-storey barracks. When we looked out of our room’s windows, there was this unused blank space. Then in the middle of one night, my whole platoon was woken up by the sound of people marching. Initially everybody thought that some unlucky platoon had been punished to march around the block. But when they looked out of the windows, they saw the apparitions of Japanese soldiers marching around that unused blank space and one that looked like the commander even shouted some commands in Japanese!”

At that point, Sally, Ju and Dawn screamed. Ju and Sally clasped each other again.

“But what has that got to do with the army badge?” I asked.
“Oh, before I went to Pulau Tekong for my training, my older friends told me to sleep with my beret beside my pillow, which was why I didn’t wake up to see those Japanese soldiers.”
“Are you sure it’s not because you’re too deeply asleep?”

Choi folded his arms and stared at me.

“Beng, Choi might be right,” Ju sided Choi. “My hubby used to be in the Navy and he swears that the badge worked as well.”
“Your husband’s platoon saw some Japanese divers swimming onto the shore?” Dawn asked.
“No, they didn’t! But something else happened. At that time when they were staying in, three to four of them shared one room…”
“Wow, that’s luxurious! We have more than twelve of us sharing!” Choi protested.
“Erm… Choi, my hubby was an officer.”
“Oh…”
“Anyway, my hubby slept with his officer cap beside his pillow as well and thanks to it, he’s still alive.”

Ju took a deep breath before continuing.

“Together with two other guys, they had their beds against three walls in the room and the remaining wall was the exit to the balcony…”
“What? They even had a balcony?!!” Choi protested again.
Ju ignored Choi and continued: “So one night they were sleeping as usual when suddenly my hubby was waken up by somebody shaking his arm. When he opened his blurry eyes, he saw one of his roommates shaking him with one hand, and another hand holding something that looked like a rope. He was telling my hubby to ‘pass the rope’. Immediately, my hubby closed his eyes, turned away from his roommate and started to say prayers. After some time, he could feel his roommate’s hand moving away from his and he didn’t hear his voice anymore. The next morning, my hubby asked this roommate if he remembered the previous night’s incident, and he said that the only thing he remembered was the other roommate waking him up and asking him to pass a rope.”

“So what’s the thing about this rope that they’re trying to pass?” I was confused.
“My hubby said that one guy actually hung himself to death from the ceiling fan in the middle of that room during training. And tales went around that people sleeping in that room will wake up in the middle of the night to ask his roommate sleeping in the next bed to pass a rope. Once all the guys had passed the rope and the rope made one round in the room, one of them will die. That was how one guy died in that room a few years before my hubby’s platoon stayed there.”

Geez, that was one close shave.

“Okay, then let’s go get some army badges during lunch time!” said the exhilarated Sally.
“Hang on, the army badge might have worked because they were in a military camp,” Nicky analyzed. “But this is an office.”
“Then what shall we use?” asked the distraught Sally.

Everybody tried to think of something that could scare office spirits. Suggestions poured in like making a pile of unfinished documents, the CEO’s name card, and even a calendar marked full of meetings. Then I thought of something that might really work.

“How about a letter that says ‘we regret to inform you that you have been made redundant’?”

Chapter 10: The Battle between Choi and the Weighing Scale

2008-01-02T14:05:00.000+08:00

There was an increase in the number of overweight and obese working adults in Singapore. Worried that this scenario will translate into an increase in the number of diabetes, high blood pressure and stroke patients, the country advised companies to step in to promote a healthy working environment for their employees.

The Health Promotion Board was organizing a programme known as Fitness @ Work in the Financial Business District, which consisted of forty minutes of workout sessions one evening every week, at the Singapore River Promenade. That was one great venue for working out where participants could enjoy the vista of the Singapore River while trying to bend over and reach their toes, and tourists could marvel at the sight of our men and ladies hopping and stretching while they enjoy their coffee by the river.

Our company sent out mass emails to everybody about this healthy programme and urged all to participate. In the email, it had a italic note stating that the generous Health Promotion Board will be rewarding participants with goodies such as sports towels and sports bottles for every four sessions of participation. Oh, limited editions of Fitness @ Work sports bottles! How motivating!

“Hey Beng, do you want to join me to the Fitness @ Work workout session this evening?”
“Yah, okay Choi.”
“Okay, I’ll give you a shout one hour before the event to remind you.”

Five minutes before the workout session, my MSN Messenger popped out. I had got a message from Choi.

“hey, can’t go for the workout. Gotta finish a report by today. Sorry”

For the next few weeks, Choi made the effort to invite me for the workout session every week but failed to reserve some effort to actually attend it.

As part of the nationwide Workplace Health Promotion Programme, our company had collaborated with a healthcare group to provide free health screening for all employees. From the conversation among the secretaries that I heard while making coffee in the pantry, it seemed like the participation from our company for that Fitness @ Work workout session was pathetically low. Apparently our company felt that since the limited editions of sports towels and sports bottles could not motivate us, perhaps we needed somebody to tell us straight into our faces how dangerously unhealthy we were so that we could start exercising.

Rose marked a morning on our calendars for the free health screening. Obediently, our whole team, except Dawn who was pregnant, exchanged our breakfasts for the chance to find out how unhealthy we were. When we entered the huge office reserved for this health screening exercise, we saw a couple of tables with white table clothes and each seated with a stern looking lady dressed in white next to a cold looking equipment. It was amazing how this medical group had successfully decorated an empty office and transformed it utterly to look like a hospital.

After a simple registration, and visits to the washrooms to return with our urine samples, we were all set to be examined.

From table to table, I answered some questions, got my finger pricked and achieved a couple of scribbles and ticks on my health report card. Blood glucose level? Okay. Blood pressure? Okay. Cholesterol level? Okay. Then I arrived at the last table. I stood on the scale while the plump lady took down my height and weight readings carefully. We sat back at the table and she did some furious tapings on the calculator, and then looked up at me. Solemnly.

“Mr. Tan, your Body Mass Index is twenty-four, so you’re slightly overweight,” Ms. Plump Lady chided. I wondered how she will look at our Choi and his paunch.

“I suggest that you should exercise more.”
“Er… but I’m already running and doing weights three times a week.”
“Oh… then are you eating a lot of rice and meat?”
“No, not really. I’m a light eater and I take more vegetables than meat.”
“Oh… okay… then could you please proceed to my colleague standing over there so that she can take your body fat percentage measurement?”

Standing at one corner was a slender lady holding on to a black clipper that looked like some kind of torture equipment that will release electric current to burn any fat it detected. She tried her very best to pull as much flesh as she could from my triceps, held on to them using the black clipper and noted down the reading shown on a panel on the black clipper. This painful process was repeated for my back and waist.

“Mr. Tan, your body fat percentage is eighteen,” Ms. Slender Lady smiled.
“So am I good?”
“Yes, you’ve got a healthy body fat percentage for your age.”

When everybody was back at the office, we exchanged and looked at each other’s health report card.

“KZ, you sure are healthy!” exclaimed Nicky.
“Eat vegetables,” replied KZ.
“Hmm… my cholesterol level is slightly high. Maybe I should take more vegetables as well,” mused Rose.
“Wow Nicky, you’re pretty healthy for a sedentary guy,” commented Sally.
“Of course girl, I swim every week!” Nicky grinned.

Then I realized that Choi was looking slightly uncomfortably at his health record card.

“Choi, you okay pal?” I nudged Choi.
“Yeh,” Choi managed a tepid smile. “Just got a slightly high blood pressure.”
“Don’t worry. If it’s not very high, you can still try to bring it back down.”
“And a slightly high Body Mass Index, and a slightly high body fat percentage.”
“Friend, these are the testimonies to your voracious fondness for good food.”
“Haha… right. And my lack of exercise.”

For the next few weeks, Choi tried to include less meat and more vegetables in his diet. He finally made the effort to run once a week too. But only for that few weeks.

Following the free health screening, our company sent an email to every employee regarding a corporate discount programme it had started with the popular CF Gym. The CF Gym was offering each employee a two weeks free pass to its gym near to our office, and an attractive discount for its membership if we decided to sign up. From the conversation among the secretaries that I heard while making coffee in the pantry again, it seemed like the free health screening revealed that majority of the employees were considered overweight. Apparently our company was concerned with the unhealthy image it was portraying to the public.

“Hey Beng, aren’t you a member of CF Gym?” Choi asked avidly.
“Yah.”
“How about I join you to the gym for the next two weeks?”
“Sure, why not?”

On the first evening that we went to the gym, a physical trainer was assigned to take care of Choi. Choi looked slightly discomfited going through the same body fat percentage and blood pressure measurement again and having somebody telling him how unhealthy he was again.

A fitness consultant, a.k.a. sales manager, then joined the physical trainer and tried out his entire repertoire on Choi with all the talks about how risky it was to be overweight and all the talks about how joining the gym will help him to lose weight safely. Eventually, after an hour, Choi was convinced that he needed a new gym membership to start a new healthy life so he signed up a year’s membership.

A couple of free training sessions with that physical trainer were thrown in for Choi, and for about a month, Choi had a chance to reminisce the Basic Military Training during his National Service.

“Okay, let’s add another ten pounds!”
“Mr. Choi, let’s do one more set of squats today!”
“Nine… ten… come on, just five more! You can do it!”

For the first two months, Choi religiously had his workout at the gym a couple of times each week. Then for the next one month, he went for his workout once a week. Then he went for his workout once a month. Then once every few months. Then he stopped.

One day, Choi came over to my desk with a glass of yellowish colored water.

“Dude, try this!”
“I’m not trying anything until you tell me what this is,” I rejected.
“Organic apple cider vinegar.”
“And I’m supposed to become even smarter after drinking this?”
“Yeh right,” Choi raised an eyebrow. “It’s a popular diet drink that’s tried and proven by Hollywood stars.”
“I don’t suppose this piece of information comes from any medical journal?”
“I heard it from the conversation among the secretaries when I was making coffee in the pantry. They said it’s totally natural and there won’t be any side effect, so I guessed why not give it a try?”

For the next few weeks, Choi went on a low fat diet supplemented with that organic apple cider vinegar. For that few weeks at four o’clock everyday, Choi walked around grumbling about his hunger, Dawn tried offering him some biscuits, and he rejected it and insisted on staying on his diet program. Then another few weeks later, Choi stopped walking around and grumble about his hunger. The bottle of organic apple cedar vinegar on his desk disappeared too.

From the Fitness @ Work workout sessions to the organic apple cider vinegar, Choi managed to lose five kilograms and his blood pressure was back to normal. Not a bad achievement after all, I would say.

Chapter 9: Sorry, am I late, or early?

2007-12-07T02:36:00.000+08:00

It was a challenge going to work each morning. Not because of the part where it was difficult to pull myself out of the bed so early in the morning, nor was it because of the part where I had to barge my way through the crowd blocking the MRT train exit and if failing so will face the danger of alighting the train one stop later. It was the challenge of boarding a punctual feeder bus.

Singapore is divided into different new, young and matured estates like Punggol, Jurong West and Toa Payoh respectively. Usually, a couple of feeder buses will service the residents in the estates and bring them to the nearest bus interchange. A feeder bus will circle only around the estate itself as compared to normal buses that travel from estates to estates. The distance is shorter and the normal duration for a feeder bus to travel from the bus interchange to around the estate and back again is usually less than thirty minutes.

The feeder bus system is a resounding success in connecting people around the country. Conversely, every bus interchange’s scheduling system for its feeder buses is an utter failure. The expected behavior of a feeder bus is to arrive at each bus stop at an interval of approximately five minutes. However the actual behavior of the feeder buses in the country are to arrive at their respective bus stops in pairs or threes, after making the commuters wait for fifteen to twenty minutes. All these years, commuters have been writing complaint letters to the bus companies, and all these years, the bus companies’ official explanations are always “due to unforeseen traffic conditions”. Either the roads in a little estate are too complicated for our bus companies, or there have been too many dead dogs lying in the middle of the roads.

My flat was three bus stops away from the bus interchange and served by a single feeder bus route. The journey would usually take me fifteen minutes, inclusive of ten minutes waiting time. The bus stop was usually overflowing with people so whenever the wait exceeded ten minutes, the bus stop could become rather noisy.

“Penny, please tell boss that I’ll be slightly late today. Yeh, the bus is late again.”
“Ah Loh, I’ll be slightly late. Sorry about that. The bus again.”
“Hello? Yes, I’ll need a cab now. From Seng Kang to Tanjong Pagar.”

There are other areas where punctuality is a problem too. Singaporeans are never on time for Chinese wedding dinners. The starting time of a wedding dinner is usually stated clearly on the invitation card as 7:30p.m., for formality purpose. The actual starting time of the wedding dinner will range between 8:00p.m. to 9:00p.m.. It is largely dependent on the time that majority of the guests have arrived, or when a certain highly respected VIP has arrived. That is the reason why most people will take a bite before attending a Chinese wedding dinner…

“Hey Beng, should we leave early at six today?”
“Why?”
“Have you forgotten? We need to attend Peter’s wedding dinner tonight!”
“Oh, okay. So where should we have dinner?”

Besides Chinese wedding dinners, our concerts and theatres start late as well. An 8:00p.m. concert will usually start at about 9:00p.m., probably so that the audience have amble time to digest their dinners before cheering furiously for their idols. You know, it could get rather dirty if these jubilant fans throw up onto the people sitting in front of them. The theatres are slightly better, where they are usually late for only about fifteen minutes. So are the cinemas. Yes, Singaporeans are usually late for their movies because they know that the movies themselves will be late…

“Daddy, where is Harry Porter? When will he come out?”
“You’ll see him soon after this advertisement, okay?”

Ten minutes later…

“Daddy, why isn’t Harry Porter coming out yet?”
“He’ll be soon, after this advertisement, okay?”

Punctuality has become such a common problem that Singaporeans have accepted lateness as their way of life. Heinous local companies are late in paying salaries to their employees; users of services are late in paying up their bills; service providers are late in refunding their users when discrepancies are found; and office executives work late though they are not paid for the overtime.

With the shutdown time of Orchard Road’s ERP gantry extended, our daily activities have just become later too…

“Nicky, why are you still here? It’s already seven!”
“Oh, I’m just reading up some candlesticks charts for an IPO tomorrow.”
“Ha, I thought you were rushing some urgent jobs!”
“Hahaha… no, I’m waiting for that Orchard Road ERP gantry to shut down at eight. I need to go to the Top of the M for dinner tonight.”

After Nicky had jammed into Orchard Road, waited to park his car, waited for a table, waited for a waiter to take his order, and waited for the chef to cook up the meal, by the time the food arrived at his table, it was already renamed “supper”.

Because our daily activities are late, we are also late in reaching the milestones in our lives as well. We are so busy with our career that by the time there is a letup in the tight schedule that allows us to get married; we are already in our late twenties. By the time we give birth to our babies, we are already in our late thirties; by the time our kids grown up, we are already in our late fifties; by the time we have the time and money to enjoy life, we are already in our late sixties. That is why the average life span of Singaporeans is eighty years. We need more time to finish what we need to do before we can go.

Talking about punctuality, the efficient ministries and authorities are always early. Before the people could react to the fare hike proposals from the transportation companies, the council had already approved them. Before the Integrated Resorts have been built, the ministry has already envisaged being among the top treatment centers in Asia for gambling addictions. Before the people had heard of the new movie in town, the authority had already taken down the posters and banned them. No, they had no problem with the motion picture itself. They only had an issue with the static picture shown on the poster.

The other guys who are always early are the banks. While you are still queuing up to pay for a new pair of shoes by credit card at the shopping complex, the credit card bill for the month is already sitting in your letter box. And because they are early, they could not tolerate people who are late…

“Hi, I’m calling in regards to my credit card bill.”
“Can I have your credit card number?”
“Sure it’s 1111-2222-3333-4444.”
“And your card’s expiry date?”
“December 2005.”
“Your mother’s maiden name for security reasons?”
“Lim Ah Lian.”
“Your hidden sexual fetish?”

Okay, I made that last part up.

“How can I help you, Mr. Tan?”
“I have this ‘late charges’ item on my bill.”
“Oh, it’s because you failed to settle your bill by the payment date.”
“Yes, I know. I was on business trip so by the time I returned to Singapore and I sent out the cheque, it was late by a day. Could you waive off the ‘late charges’ and also the interest added to my bill?
“But sir, you were late. We have to punish you and make you feel the pain, so that you won’t be late again next time!”

Yes, I did make the last part up again. But I will bet that it was definitely the banks’ intention.

Sometimes, even the commoners could be early, or too early. The parents who are registering their kid into the popular primary schools are queuing up outside the schools as early as the night before the registration opens. The customers who are getting the limited 50 sets of $500 plasma televisions are queuing up outside the electronics mall as early as six in the morning. The kids who are attending their idol’s mini concert cum autograph session that starts at seven in the evening are queuing up as early as seven in the morning.

In offices, there is one thing that happens pretty early too.

One day, Rose, Nicky, Choi and Dawn were gathering at KZ’s desk and staring at his notebook screen.

“Hey, what’re you guys looking at?” I asked as I walked over.
“Oh, it’s the 2006 calendar,” Dawn replied, still staring at the screen.
“What’s wrong with this calendar? It has got only 364 days?”
“Public holidays,” KZ replied.

“So if I take three days of annual leaves from the first to third day of February, it’ll give me eight days of holidays!” calculated Choi.
“Cool! Let’s apply for the leaves!” said Nicky avidly.
“Hang on guys, please remember that we’ll need a skeleton crew here to support the business,” said Rose.
“I suggest that we look through the public holidays for 2006 and allocate accordingly,” suggested Dawn.

KZ scanned through the whole 2006 calendar and wrote down the periods where long holidays are possible.

“We’ve got the January to February Chinese New Year period, the October Deepavali and Hari Raya Puasa period, and the Christmas, Hari Raya Haji and New Year December period,” Nicky read from the note.
“Okay guys, please discuss among yourselves and choose the periods that you’re going to take leaves. And let me have the list by next week,” said Rose.

“Hey Beng, do you mind standing in for me during the Chinese New Year period?” asked Nicky.
“Yeh, okay. No problem.”
“Great! In that case, I’ll take the Chinese New Year period and fly back to Hong Kong! Talk to you later, I’ll need to call the travel agency to book the ticket. Have to book early, you know?”

Chapter 8: Crabs, Coffee and Cantonese Opera

2007-11-15T00:35:00.001+08:00

One of our colleagues from the London branch office was in town. Bruce was an account manager from the UK Corporate Finance team and he was in Singapore to attend a training session on “Prevention of Money Laundering”. Nicky, KZ, Ju and I had known this guy for two to three years. He was a humorous gentleman who was very interested in Chinese culture. So Nicky suggested taking him to somewhere memorable on the night before his departure. A Cantonese opera performance.

The opera was held at the famous Esplanade. This durian-shaped theatre house is the place to watch free but “difficult to understand” performances by symphonic bands, musicians and vocalists who are not so well-known, affordable but “not easy to appreciate” contemporary dances, not costly but “very cultural” performances by famous musicians together with the Singapore Symphony Orchestra, and expensive but “easily accepted by the public” operas and musicals, like Mama Mia.

Since the opera was starting at eight o’clock, we reached the Esplanade early to have our dinner. Ju suggested having a seafood dinner at a popular seafood restaurant there.

“Hey Ju, have you forgotten that KZ is a vegetarian?” I nudged.
“Oops!” Ju realized then.
“Don’t worry. Got vegetables,” said KZ calmly.

So we proceeded to have our dinner at that popular seafood restaurant. The four omnivores could not decide on whether to have chili crabs or black pepper crabs, so Ju ordered both. She ordered one more steamed fish and two vegetarian dishes for KZ, one stir-fried greens and another tofu on hotplate, and reminded the waitress sternly not to add any garlic or onions into these two dishes.

When the two plates of crabs arrived at the table, the exhilarated Bruce blurted a “Wow!” so loudly that the patrons on the next table turned around and looked. He explained to us excitedly that he had never seen such enormous crabs in the United Kingdom before.

“Are all Singapore crabs so big?” Bruce asked Ju avidly.
“No, Singapore crabs are small,” explained Ju. “These crabs are from Sri Lanka.”

Yes, Singapore relies heavily on foreign talents. We had a Malaysian to climb the Everest for us; we formed a national table tennis team with China Chinese and gave them permanent resident status so that we could compete with China during the Olympics; we even employed a Caucasian to develop our Sentosa island. We will stop at nothing if we could make use of foreign talents shamelessly to impress the world. Including crabs.

Bruce was indeed impressed by the size of the crabs though they were not locals. He was happy posing and taking pictures of the plate of crabs, the crab claws and the crab shells with his digital camera. He even requested a waitress to take a group picture of five human beings and four crabs.

“Why is he so excited?” Nicky whispered to me. “Hasn’t he seen any crabs before?”
“Hey, who posed and took picture with a plate of fish and chips in London?” I replied softly.

Nicky pretended he did not hear me and continued digging and eating the meat from the crab claw.

Our dinner finished early and we even had time to stroll by the expensive shops in the Esplanade. Bruce had been looking forward to the opera for the whole day so while most Singaporeans were late for five minutes, the five of us were already sitting in the Recital Studio fifteen minutes before the starting time. As expected, most of the audiences were old Cantonese uncles and aunties who were dressing up for a wedding dinner. What we did not expect was to see quite a number of Caucasians who were dressing up to watch The Phantom of the Opera. It was ironical that while more young Chinese Singaporeans were struggling with speaking and writing basic Chinese, more Westerners had learnt to appreciate the Chinese culture.

When the opera finally started, KZ, Ju and I were delighted to find English and Chinese subtitles flashed on the narrow white screen above the stage. I would not expect our Hong Konger Nicky to have any difficulty understanding the opera so the subtitles should be optional for him. True indeed, he did not even take a glance at the subtitles. As for Bruce, he was busy nodding his head so that he could read the subtitles above and watches the actions below. Suddenly I realized that he looked like the Hidamari No Tami Japanese toy on my desk that moved its head up and down in slow motion.

The whole performance was actually consisted of six mini operas, which Nicky said were classic Cantonese operas. The first one was about two famous warriors during the epoch of The Three Kingdoms, Zhang Fei and Ma Chao, who had to quarrel for half an hour before finally engaging in battle. The two warriors were played by two aunties dressed in modern clothing. I heard Bruce whispering to Nicky: “Geez, I had long mistaken Zhang Fei to be a guy!”

The second opera was about Wang Zhao Jun, one of the Four Beauties of ancient China, who was also one of Emperor Han Yuan Di’s concubine. The king of Eastern Xiongnu, a.k.a. some kind of barbarian state, requested to marry a Han Chinese princess on the basis of “peace marriage”. Wang Zhao Jun volunteered and so in the opera, it related how she rode a horse and left for the border with an imperial official, one soldier and two palace maids. One part where I felt very illogical in the opera was the way these people traveled. The soldier would scout the land before Wang Zhao Jun and the imperial official followed in their horse, and the palace maids followed behind, with one of them carrying Wang Zhao Jun’s famous Pi Pa, a kind of Chinese musical instrument that looked like a guitar. Either the horses were moving very slowly, or we had got three potential Olympics long distance runners there.

There was some problem in the English subtitles as well. There was a part where Wang Zhao Jun sang that she would be leading her life somewhere so far away from the country, and she was worried that nobody would know of her death in the future, and that nobody would be there to bury her bones. The translated English subtitle was “Today I go far away not knowing who would bury me when I die tomorrow”.

The third opera was about an unfaithful wife who forced her husband, a poor scholar, to divorce her so that she could marry a rich man. The unfaithful wife sang and nagged at the poor husband about how she had suffered with him, while the poor husband sang and envisaged on how they should make it through the hardship together. Finally, the unfaithful wife admitted that she had an affair with a rich man and the infuriated poor husband signed on the divorce paper.

“Poor guy,” Ju whispered softly to me.
“Yeh, but the story could’ve been more interesting. The script’s too simple.”
“How?”
“Like say, the affair could rankle the husband so much that in a fit of anger, he takes up the axe besides the pile of woods there and slash the wife from the back. Then he drags her behind that wooden frame and after a while comes out with lumps of rocks wrapped up that symbolizes the wife has been chopped into pieces. There could be a few long pieces of moving blue cloths at the back of the stage to symbolize a river, and the husband walks toward it and throws the chopped body parts of the wife into the river.”

Ju stared at me so hard that her eyes were like two torch lights shining on my face in a dark cinema.

“Have you been waiting too much Hong Kong triads movies?” Ju hissed.
“No, but I’ve been watching the news,” I whispered back.

The fourth opera was a part taken from the Dream of the Red Chamber. This time, Nick was quick enough to tell Bruce that the young master Jia Bao Yu was played by a female, before Bruce mistaken that Jia Bao Yu was a gay.

The fifth opera was about how Diao Chan, another one of the Four Beauties of ancient China, who seduced Lu Bu the warrior during the epoch of The Three Kingdoms. Together with Lu Bu, all of us except Ju had our eyes fixed on Diao Chan as well. She was the prettiest, slenderest and youngest female performer in the whole night. Especially the part where this pretty lady in pink dress and shining head gear performed a fan dance for Lu Bu.

The last opera was about the romance between a water fairy and a poor scholar. Well, they sure had lots of poor scholars in ancient China, not the rich ones we had in present days. By then, Bruce had finally understood that most of the male roles in Cantonese opera, especially those poor scholars, were played by women. Then I heard him whispering to Nicky: “Why don’t they employ more guys to play the male roles?”

After the Cantonese opera, we were rather hungry due to the early dinner so Nicky suggested that we go head towards the couple of cafes at the Fullerton One. Ju pointed out that one particular café was rather famous for its cakes, like its strawberries shortcake, so we decided to give it a try. We chose to sit by the river instead of in the air-conditioned cafe because Bruce wanted to “feel the natural air”. It was one against four, but he was the guest.

We ordered a couple of cakes and desserts, and Bruce asked the waitress if he could have a glass of iced water.

“Sorry sir, we don’t serve iced water,” replied the waitress coldly. “We have different coffees and teas on the menu, maybe you would like to take a look?”
“Isn’t now a bit late for coffee?” asked Bruce.
“Er… we have Evian mineral water too.”

Bruce pondered for a while, and then replied: “Just give me a cup of coffee then.”
“Do you want a cappuccino, latte or …”
“No, just a normal brewed hot coffee. Thank you.”
“Oh… okay, thank you sir. Let me repeat your orders…”

After the waitress had done repeating our orders and left the table, Bruce turned to me and asked: “I thought the New Water and desalination plant have already solved the water shortage issue in Singapore?”

Chapter 7: Missing Food Scene Investigation

2007-11-14T00:28:00.000+08:00

“This is so disgusting!” Ju hollered from her desk in aghast.

Rose, Choi, Nicky and Sally rushed to her desk and looked at a blank space in the basket where Ju’s finger was pointing.

“What happened? I don’t see any ants or cockroaches,” said the puzzled Sally.
“Somebody stole my cookies!” berated Ju. “I put a new unopened package of butter cookies here yesterday and now it’s gone!”

The basket on the corner of Ju’s desk had been used as a “food basket” by our team. Everybody in the team would contribute some food regularly, like biscuits, chocolates, chips and other snacks, and put them into the basket. As and when any of us decided to take a bite, we would just walk over and “pick and munch” from the basket. A very simple idea that kept us from getting hungry and allowed us to socialize at the same time.

However, it appeared that somebody had been stealing from this “food basket” of ours.

“Urgh… first it was my pack of potato chips, now it’s Ju’s cookies,” complained the miffed Choi.
“I think this thief is getting daring,” noted Ju. “I know he used to pick up a couple of biscuits every now and then, but now he’s taking the whole pack!”
“Maybe you guys can start to hide those unopened food below Ju’s table instead of placing them so openly in the basket?” suggested Nicky.
“No, no use. My pack of potato chips was placed under Ju’s table,” Choi shook his head.
“I just don’t understand! Why must this guy steal food from the office? I don’t believe anybody who works around here can be so poor and underprivileged!” Ju screamed again.

I could easily make a safe guess that the lowest paid executive on this floor was drawing a monthly salary of at least two thousands dollars. How poor and underprivileged can this person be? The nearest foods available were the chicken pies from the café downstairs and the food court in the building across the road. Even if he/she had not taken any meal since the night before, I was certain that he/she could make his/her way safely to these foods. How weak from hunger can this person be?

“Maybe we should try to build a profile of this thief so that we know who is the suspicious one?” suggested Rose.
“This guy definitely has a sweet tooth. I know he drank from the bottle of Terik Pepsi that I put in the fridge in the pantry,” said Choi.
“What’s a ‘Terik Pepsi’?” asked Nicky.
“Oh, it’s coffee flavored Pepsi.”
”Yak… that’s a taste for weird stuff, not sweet,” commented Sally.
“I agree he has got a sweet tooth! He ate from the tub of ice-cream that I put in the freezer as well!” remembered Nicky.
“And three pieces of chocolates that Beng got for me from London,” said Ju.
“Hang on… that thief might not be a ‘he’ after all,” analyzed Nicky. “Ju, you’re talking about those berry jam-filled heart shaped chocolates that Beng bought back? Then we should be looking at a ‘her’.”
“Why?” asked Ju.
“Because most straight guys will not appreciate eating berry jam-filled heart shaped chocolates. Well, unless he’s a gay, of course. But I’m not aware of any gay on this floor” Nicky said solemnly.

“KZ, have you ever lost any food from your table?” asked Sally.
KZ looked up from his notebook and replied, “Cereal bar.”
“Hang on…,” analyzed Nicky. “Why will a sweet toothed gal eat KZ’s low fat, no sugar, no taste cereal bar?”
“Because she was trying to neutralize the sweetness in her mouth after eating those sweet stuffs?” answered Sally.
“No! I think it’s more likely that there is more than one thief!” exclaimed Nicky.

Nicky had once again proved that he was the uncontested and undisputed product analyst of our team, with unbeatable experience in analyzing financial products, stock markets and… food stealing thieves.

“Beng, have you lost any food before?” asked Ju.
“Erm… I guess the thieves are not very keen in taking mint leaves?”

Yes, mint leaves. Because the only thing edible on my desk was the small pot of mint plant. I had chosen a pot of mint plant over the typical office plants of money plants and cactuses because I liked the fresh smell emitted from its leaves. It was easy to handle and grew fast too. Not like the three-tired bamboo plant on Nicky’s table that had a specific number of bamboo sticks on each tier. It could only be watered a specific amount of water during some specific times of the day, and it hardly grew from the time that Nicky had bought it.

After Nicky had finished writing the food that had been stolen on a piece of paper, he read from it.

“Okay, so these thieves liked weird Pepsi…”
“Terik Pepsi,” interrupted Choi.
“Terik Pepsi, ice-cream, berries-filled heart shaped chocolates, tasteless cereal bar…”
KZ looked up from his notebook and raised an eyebrow at Nicky’s description of his cereal bar.
“Potato chips, digestive biscuits, chocolate biscuits, yogurts, dried vegetable snacks and butter cookies.”
“Wow, that’s a lot of food they’ve stolen!” exclaimed Sally.
“They disliked and thus did not touch Rose’s green apples, carrot sticks and celery sticks; KZ’s wheatgrass powder and green tea bags; my preserved prunes, preserved lemon skins and preserved century eggs…”
“Nobody will steal your preserved stuffs,” interrupted Choi.
Nicky raised an eyebrow to Choi before continuing: “and Beng’s mint leaves.”

Geez, I supposed none of us would have expected such long list of food that the thieves had been stealing from us. I could understand the greed of those who stole hand soups from hotel rooms or even those who queued up twice for free food samples given away at MRT train stations. Those were simply greedy. But the greed of those who stole food from their own colleagues working in the same company? These were amorally greedy.

“What do you think we can do to prevent our food from being stolen again?” Ju asked Nicky.
“Paste a ‘do not steal our food’ sign near the basket?” suggested Nicky.
“No, it won’t work,” commented Choi. “Remember how motorists love to park next to the ‘do not park’ sign and on the double yellow lines? Pasting the sign will only prompt them to steal more.”
“How about we wrap the packets and boxes of food in newspapers as camouflage?” suggested Sally.
“Haha… you’ll find the food missing and the tore newspapers in the nearby wastepaper basket!” Choi laughed. “The more you try to cover, the more interested they will be, and the more they’ll try to find out.”

Choi was right. Warning signs never worked. Just like you can always find smokers smoking near the “no smoking” sign, like in the lift or at the bus stop. Just like you can always find people fishing near the “no fishing” signs at reservoirs. Just like you can always find people munching their burgers on the bus, standing next to the “no eating and drinking” sign.

“Stupid thieves!” Sally blurted. “Why don’t we get hold of some expired food and place them in the basket for these thieves to steal?”
“No, some people are not allergic to expired food,” Nicky mused. “We should put some itchy powder on the food packages instead!”
“Or superglue!” exclaimed Choi.
“Or put some mini mousetraps inside the food packages!” exclaimed Rose.
“And I can also ask a Taoist to write a ‘fu’ and paste it on the food basket, so that whoever that steals from us will be cursed for seven years!” Nicky suggested avidly.

Everybody stopped to stare at Nicky. His brain was running too fast again.

“Hey guys, why don’t you just lock up the basket of food before going home?” I suggested.
“It’s too troublesome!” Rose, Ju, Choi and Nicky shouted at me all at once. Talk about unity for the wrong reason.

“Actually I think I’ve got the perfect solution that will work for sure,” Choi grinned and rubbed his chin.

Everybody looked at him quietly. Even KZ looked up from his notebook.

“Why don’t we put the food basket at Dawn’s desk?” Choi suggested.

Everybody then turned and looked at Dawn’s empty desk. She was on medical leave, which explained her absence from this whole conversation.

“Though she hardly contributes, but she hardly eats these snacks as well!” interrupted the puzzled Sally.
“That’s why it’s safe there!” exclaimed the excited Choi. “And knowing how busybody she is, she won’t mind having the basket there!”
“But why won’t the thieves steal from the food basket if it’s on Dawn’s table?” asked the still puzzled Sally.
“Because Dawn will use her communication power on the MSN Messenger to ask around and find out who stole from the basket. And for those not in her contact list, she’ll walk up to their desk and ask them one by one. Imagine you’re one of the thieves and Dawn comes over to your desk to ask ‘do you know who stole from the food basket?’ everyday…”

Good Choi! That was one good method to drive the thieves mad and away.

Chapter 6: Cheating the Old folks, Foreigners or Lowly-educated Ones

2007-11-07T00:59:00.000+08:00

It was just another morning at the office. After I had booted up my notebook, I habitually walked to the pantry to get a cup of fresh coffee. There, I saw the three cleaning aunties in our company mumbling softly and solemnly in a corner.

“Morning aunties,” I greeted as I walked past them to the coffee machine. They paused to greet me back before continuing their mumblings. While waiting for my coffee to be made, I could not help myself eavesdropping their conversation. No, it was not because of me being too busybody. It was because hard as they tried to keep their voices down, their conversation was still audible in the small pantry.

“So how long has the boss being cheating him?” asked the youngest looking cleaning aunty.
“He said six months,” replied the fattest cleaning aunty. “When his son checked the transactions on his CPF account via the internet, he discovered that starting from April, the boss has not been depositing his CPF contribution into his account.”
“Gosh, I guess I’d better ask my daughter to check my CPF account as well,” said the worry looking cleaning aunty with short hair.

It appeared that one of the cleaning staffs has been cheated by their employer again. Yes, I said ‘again’ because the previous cleaning company had cheated these cleaning staffs before. The cleaning contract for our company was awarded to a different cleaning company every year, probably depending on who was the lowest bidder. After a new cleaning company has won the contract, it would employ the same cleaning staffs from the previous company. When these cleaning staffs were employed by the previous cleaning company, the company failed to deposit its share of employer CPF contributions into their CPF account.

All of the cleaning staffs were kept in the dark for about eight months till the daughter of one of the cleaning staffs discovered that her mother had been cheated of CPF contributions from her employer. When the rest of the cleaning staffs checked on their CPF accounts, they realized that none had been receiving their employer’s CPF contribution. Companies in Singapore are required to pay the employer’s and employee’s share of CPF contributions monthly for all of their employees at the rates set out in the CPF Act. The contributions payable were based on the employee’s actual wages earned for the month. By cheating on the employer’s share of CPF contributions, the cleaning company could save a substantial amount of money from its operations.

Furious that the cleaning company had cheated on them, the cleaning staffs wrote complaint letters to the CPF Board, which started investigating on the company. Even after being probed by the authority, the cleaning company did not pay up the owed CPF contributions to its employees and eventually it was being sued. The cleaning staffs did get their CPF contributions from the cleaning company, but the full amount was only credited after a period of six months.

After the current cleaning company won the cleaning contract, the boss informed these cleaning staffs that he would definitely deposit its share of employer CPF contributions into their CPF account, under one condition. He explained to them that due to the low price that the company had quoted to win the bid for the cleaning contract, he would need to deduce an amount equivalent to the company’s share of employer CPF contributions from their existing salaries. This meant that, if a cleaning aunty’s existing salary of six hundred dollars required a sixty dollars employer’s CPF contribution, her salary would be reduced to five hundred and forty dollars. He also threatened that any of the cleaning staffs were unhappy with their reduced salary, they could always resign. Unhappy but unable to negotiate on the conditions, the cleaning staffs accepted the boss’s proposal. Never did they expect to be cheated again.

“But I think we’re pretty lucky already,” commented the fattest cleaning aunty. “One of my friends is working as a cleaner in a school, and you know what? She has not been paid for half a year!”
“What? You mean her boss has not been paying her for six months and yet she’s still working?” asked the shocked youngest looking cleaning aunty.
“Yes, she’s still working there. Because on every month’s pay day, her boss promised the staffs that all the salary that he has owed will be paid to them on the following month. But of course, on every month, there’s another next month.”
“Why don’t the staffs complain to the Ministry of Manpower?” asked the cleaning aunty with short hair.
“Hey, that smart boss has thought of that!” exclaimed the fattest cleaning aunty. “He threatened them that if they complain to the authority, he will declare bankruptcy and they won’t get a single cent from him!”
“So scheming!” the cleaning aunty with short hair sounded miffed.

The local cleaning industry is indeed full of cheats. But these cleaning aunties are definitely not alone. Slick bosses are thriving in the construction industry and among maid employment agencies as well. There are rampant tales of bosses abusing the foreign workers in the construction industry like not paying their salaries to them on time (no, not late for a few weeks, but late for a few months), requiring them to pay for their own meals (at a price that is twice the actual cost) and requesting for rentals for their stays at the cramp and dirty containers at the construction site.

As for the maid employment agencies, these bosses are constantly thinking of ways to save more operation costs as well. Somebody had recently reported to a local newspaper about the lady boss of a maid agency who made her maids slept exposed in her terrace house’s backyard. These maids spent their day at the employment agency's office and only returned to the house at around 9p.m. to sleep. They would lay huddled on the cemented backyard, sleeping on thin mattresses, mats and newspapers underneath the zinc roofs. When questioned by the newspaper, the lady boss claimed that the arrangement was only "temporary" until a new boarding house was ready. Of course, only the maids knew whether there was a new boarding house at all.

One commonality between the cleaning companies, construction companies and maid employment agencies is that their employees are usually old, foreigners or lowly-educated. These people are the best victims to be cheated because they might not even be aware that they are being cheated. Even if they do, they might not know the correct channel to lodge a complaint. Even if they do lodge a complaint successfully, the authorities could take months to investigate into the matter. By then, the company could have already closed down and started afresh as a new company.

Besides cheating on salaries and CPF employer’s contributions, the companies could shortchange their employees on other matters as well…

“Ah Leng Aunty, I might be taking a week’s leave during the December,” said the youngest cleaning aunty.
“Are we allowed to take leave? I thought the boss has said that we need to work for one year before we can apply for any annual leave?” asked the cleaning aunty with short hair.
“I know, but my son’s getting married! I’ve got to take leave!”
“I think you can talk to the boss about it. Anyway, I think this regulation about working for a year before applying for our annual leave is crappy,” commented the fattest cleaning aunty.
“Yeh, remember our previous boss?” reminded the cleaning aunty with short hair. “He didn’t allow us to take any leave till we’ve worked for one year as well, then when he didn’t win the bid for renewing the cleaning contract and this new boss took over, this new boss said we can’t claim the annual leave we’ve brought over from the previous year!”

Geez, these cleaning aunties were only allowed to apply for their annual leaves after working for a year? And what if their boss loses the cleaning contract to another company next year? When will these cleaning aunties ever get to see their annual leaves?

“Peng, do you still have Aunty Sun’s contacts?” the youngest cleaning aunty asked the fattest cleaning aunty.
“Are you going to look for her to be your replacement?” replied the fattest cleaning aunty.
“Yeh, I hope she’ll be free around that period.”
“Susan, how much are you paying your replacement?” asked the cleaning aunty with short hair.
“Thirty dollars a day,” replied the youngest cleaning aunty. “That’s my daily salary.”
“Okay, I’d just like to let you know that sometimes these replacements will ask for a few dollars more.”

What kind of working life were these cleaning aunties having? Not only were they expected to look for their own replacements while they were on their annual leaves, they would also need to pay their replacements’ salaries out of their own pockets? Is this even a legal regulation that is recognized by the Ministry of Manpower?

“Erm… hello aunties, where’s that old aunty who only speaks Cantonese?” I interrupted after realizing that one of the cleaning aunties seemed to be missing from this conversation.
“Oh, you mean Aunty Lim? She’s hospitalized.”
“Hospitalized?” I was shocked because I thought I had just seen her in the pantry the day before.
“Yes, she fell down last evening when mopping the floor,” replied the youngest cleaning aunty. “But don’t worry, she’s okay. Just a minor fracture on her right leg.”
“Poor thing, I heard that the hospitalization bill is pretty high,” commented the fattest cleaning aunty.
“Hospitalization bill? I thought she was injured at work? Won’t the hospitalization bill be paid by the company then?” This comment was even more shocking than the hospitalized part.

At that point, the three cleaning aunties laughed at me as if I had just told them that a camel can swim.

“Young man, we are not insured by the company, and no, we don’t have any medical benefits.”

Chapter 5: What are we having for lunch today?

2007-11-06T00:23:00.000+08:00

A pregnant woman tends to have all sorts of cravings for certain types of food. Their imagination could affect their cravings so wild that they can crave for curries in the middle of the night, durians in the early morning, or worse, assam laksa in Penang. For the assam laksa craving, the husband might have to make a quick and painful decision on whether he should endure his wife’s non-stop grumbles about how little he understands a pregnant woman’s misery, or to make a grueling drive up to Penang. And usually, the intelligent husband will choose the latter, which is less painful.

Some experts suggested that a pregnant woman’s cravings could be caused by the chaotic hormone progesterone in her body. A pregnant woman will support this theory when she argued that her craving for a bowl of Vietnamese beef noodles came from deep inside her body in a manner that she could not explain, and had absolutely nothing to do with the host on the gourmet food show on television who had just eaten a bowl of Vietnamese beef noodles and exclaimed how delicious it was.

Other experts suggested that the cravings could be due to the culture in a society that expects this type of behavior with every pregnant woman. In this situation, she might be subconsciously complying with tradition. This theory is applied when a pregnant woman chided her husband for not being sensitive to her needs and cited that the pregnant Mrs. Wong next door had such a caring husband that he drove all the way to Penang to get her assam laksa.

Whatever the reasons for a pregnant woman’s cravings, it is a common practice that husbands will try to fulfill their wives’ desire at all cost and all time. However, what is not disclosed is that, colleagues can be pulled into this quicksand of never-ending pregnant woman cravings as well. Just like how our lunch venues were related to Dawn’s cravings.

As a pregnant woman, Dawn faithfully exercised her “thou shalt obey pregnant womens’ cravings” right. But luckily for us, she did not request for assam laksa lunch at Penang. Her cravings were ‘normal’ food like pork porridge, sushi, dim sum and fish soup, which could be easily found in our dining venues. One problem though. Her cravings will persist for a long period of time.

When she craved for sushi, she urged us to accompany her to a Japanese restaurant for every lunch and each of our lunch budgets busted for that month. When she craved for dim sum, all of us scheduled our meetings and conference calls during our lunch time because we knew that a dim sum lunch at a Chinese restaurant everyday for a month could bust our lunch budgets further. However, when she craved for fish soup, we did not reject her lunch invites initially because we were thinking that since fish soups can be found in most hawker centers and food courts, and lunching at these places were kind to our pockets. But we did not expect her to fall in love with one specific fish soup stall in one particular hawker center, which led to similar messages on our MSN Messengers everyday…

“lunch together later? Wat do u wanna eat?”
“anything”
“I feel like taking fish soup. Let’s go to Telok Blangah hawker center, ok?”

“lunch together later? Wat do u wanna eat?”
“feel like having a burger”
“I feel like taking fish soup. Let’s go to Telok Blangah hawker center, ok?”

“lunch together later? Wat do u wanna eat?”
“I wanna have the western food at Clementi coffee shop”
“I feel like taking fish soup. Let’s go to Telok Blangah hawker center, ok?”

After one whole man, every single one of us had tried the food offered by every single stall in Telok Blangah hawker center. Except for KZ. Because KZ was a vegetarian, he had been eating the same food from the same vegetarian food stall in the hawker center.

In Singapore, hawker centers around the whole country sell almost the same kind of food. You can always be sure to find fish soup (yes, again), fishball noodles, fried carrot cakes and char kway teow (some kind of flat noodles), prawn noodles, duck rice, hot and cold desserts, yong tau fu (tofus and vegetables stuffed with minced fish), vegetarian food and of course, chicken rice. Chicken rice is a mandatory food that must exist in every single hawker center and food court because it is the most popular food among Singaporeans. So how does our team choose which hawker center to go to for our lunches? It’s still the food, stupid! Citing from the kind of messages running around in our MSN Messengers…

“hey Beng, feel like eating fried kway teow today?”
“ok, let’s go Bukit Merah!”

“Nicky Nicky! Wanna eat some roast duck rice?”
“cool! Let’s go Bukit Timah for lunch!”

“Dawn, shd we go for some dumplings noodles today?”
“ok! They’ve got dumplings noodles at Telok Blangah! And even better fish soup!”
“oh…”

Hawker centers could be selling the same but different food. The chicken rice in hawker center A and hawker center B might contain the same ingredients – chicken and rice. However, due to some secret recipes, the chicken rice in hawker center A could taste better than hawker center B. So when our team felt like taking chicken rice, we would rush to hawker center A, but we will go to hawker center B another day for their delicious prawn noodles.

Food courts are another story. There is one food court in every shopping complex in Singapore. Food courts are the air-conditioned and cleaner versions of hawker centers. The range of food that they sell is akin to the ones offered by the hawker centers, though in some food courts, they tried to sell lower quality Japanese food with prices that could compete with those served in most Japanese restaurants. The main difference between a food court and a hawker center is that you pay more for food that are lower in quality and quantity. However in a hot and humid country like Singapore, our team does appreciate some air-conditioned dining at times. But since most food served in the different food courts are as tasteless, and the chicken rice in food court A could taste as tasteless as the one offered in food court B, how do we choose which food court to go to for our lunches? It’s the distance, stupid!

Typically, this happened in the office on a daily basis…

At about 10a.m., my MSN Messenger popped out. It was Dawn.

“wat do u wanna eat for lunch later?”
“dunno. Haven’t decided yet”
“ok, lemme see wat are the rest planning”
“I feel like taking fish soup”
“I’m busy with something now”
“oops, sorry!”

Fifteen minutes before lunch, Nicky sent a message to KZ.

“hey, let’s go for lunch! got 2pm meeting or conf call?”
“yes”
“who’s tat inconsiderate idiot tat planned the meeting?”
“Rose”
“oh…”
“will packet”
“ok then, I’ll see where r the rest going”

So Nicky sent another message to Choi…

“Choi! Let’s go for lunch! got 2pm meeting or conf call?”
“of course not! Where shd we go?”
“how abt the yong tau fu at the Arcade?”
“I think the one at People’s Park is better”
“ok, we’ll go there then, call the rest!”

And Choi sent another to Sally…

“we’re going to People’s Park for lunch today”
“People’s Park very stuffy, can go somewhere else?”
“like?”
“how about Raffles City food court? Got air-con”
“but wat’s there to eat?”
“sure to have something you can eat wat, the food court’s so big”
“ok then, call the rest”

And Sally sent another to Ju…

“Ju, we going Raffles City food court, you coming?”
“tat food court very crowded and not much to eat”
“wat do u suggest then?”
“how abt the Marina Sq food court? It has just been renovated”
“sounds great. Can you ask Beng if he’s joining us?”

And Ju sent another to me…

“Beng, u joining us for lunch at Marina Sq food court?”

Before I could reply, Dawn sent a message to me as well…

“Hey, let’s go for fish soup at Telok Blangah?”
“no, got meeting soon”
“oh, ok. I’ll ask the rest then”

Without losing a second, I replied Ju…

“Ju, Dawn asking to go Telok Blangah again”
“ok, I’ll send out evacuation to the rest”
“see u at the 1st floor lobby”

And Ju sent out a message to all except KZ and Rose, who will be having meeting and thus will be packaging their lunches, and of course, Dawn.

“evacuate now! Dawn looking for ppl to go Telok Blangah again!”

In five minutes’ time, we gathered at the lobby and left for Marina Square food court. As for Dawn, she found colleagues from the other team who were willing to join her for lunch at Telok Blangah hawker center, while wondering why most of us were having meetings during the lunch time.

Chapter 4: Respect and Responsibility

2007-11-04T17:32:00.000+08:00

I stepped out of the cab and walked into the lobby area of the Grand Copthorne Waterfront Hotel. It used to be a rather quiet and unheard of hotel, and then in 1998 it was bought over by Millennium & Copthorne Hotels plc. With the super power of renovation, marketing and most importantly, rebranding, this previously four stars hotel is resurrected. Now it is one of the largest five-star conference accommodation properties in Singapore.

I took the lift up to the Conference Centre, where the conference was held. The sponsoring companies had set up spectacular exhibition spiders at their booths to impress the conference participants. Wow, JM had a plasma TV on to showcase their products. Impressive. Most companies had brochures and advertorials at their booths; one even had little dolphin soft toys for giving away. I walked down the corridor flanked with booths and finally reached our company booth. We had brochures and financial reports on our table as well. Except that something vital was missing from this booth. The person manning the booth was missing.

I looked at my watch. The conference will be starting in ten minutes’ time. Quickly, I took out my mobile phone and was about to dial when I heard a familiar voice behind me.

“Hey, you’re here!”

It was Choi with a cup of coffee-like liquid on one hand and a document bag on the other.

“Why isn’t there anyone manning the booth?”
“Why don’t you make a guess on who’s supposed to be standing by this booth since half an hour ago?”

I suddenly had a very bad feeling. It seemed like somebody had made a bad choice in selecting the person responsible for the first shift.

“It’s Sally, isn’t it?”
“Yes! Who else could be as irresponsible as our young and promising fresh grad?” said Choi wryly.
“Geez, who put her at first shift?”
“I think it’s Ju,” said Choi as he sipped his coffee. “Why don’t you go grab some coffee and sandwiches around that corner, while I man the booth?”
“No, it’s okay. I’ve already taken my breakfast.”

I took a copy of the financial reports and read it. Among the charts and tables created by Nicky, there was one article that was written by KZ. As a man of one, not few, word, KZ’s articles were always unequivocal and undisputed.

In the next fifteen minutes, more participants arrived at the Conference Centre, received their name tags from the registration booth, took some brochures and reports from the sponsoring companies’ booths, grabbed a cup of coffee or tea and went into the conference room.

At nine o’clock, the conference room door closed. At ten minutes past nine, Sally arrived at the booth.

“Do you know what’s the time now?” Choi berated.
“Why? I’m only ten minutes late what,” rebuked Sally. “I guess the conference had only just started right?”
“But those participants were here early for breakfast and that was the best time to showcase our products to them!”
“I thought the Marketing people were supposed to come early to set up the booth and arrange the brochures nicely on the table?”
“Yes, the Marketing folks did all that, but they’re not obliged to man the booth! Do you know that nobody was manning the booth when I arrived?”
“It’s okay what. The participants can just come by and take whatever brochures and reports that they wanted what.”

I could see Choi’s exasperated face turning into a red balloon that was about to burst. And Sally’s “I don’t care what you said, but I’m not wrong” attitude was not helping the situation. People at the nearby booths were already staring over to our direction.

“Hey, why don’t the two of you sort things out outside while I man the booth?” I interrupted.
“No need to. I’ll only be wasting my breath since our young friend here doesn’t feel that she has done anything wrong,” Choi chastised.

Sally looked at Choi, then at me, and sighed. “It’s no big deal right? Why make such a big hoo haa over it? Okay, I’m sorry that I was slightly late. Okay?”

I stayed at the booth till ten o’clock, when I had to rush back to office for a meeting. Choi left with me as well. Sally was left behind to sit at the booth. She flipped through a brochure boringly and waited for the participants to break for lunch.

In the cab, I could feel that Choi was still miffed with what happened.

“I don’t understand why our company employed such a person!”
“Let’s forget about it. You know Sally’s never punctual.” I consoled.
“I really can’t stand these fresh grads from our local universities. They like to think that they’re so smart and the word ‘respect’ doesn’t mean anything to them at all.”
“Hey, Sally doesn’t represent all fresh grads,” I reminded.
“Beng, I’ve been working long enough. These snobs are everywhere. They like to think that their local university degrees worth hundreds time more than our foreign university degrees, and we are holding a higher position than them simply because we had worked longer in the company.”

Choi snorted and folded his arms. Reflecting upon what he had just said, I too agreed that these fresh graduates from our local universities needed to be taught the meaning of ‘respect’. In fact, previously I had overheard the vendor complaining to Ju about Sally’s rude attitude.

“And there’s this thing I can’t stand about these young punks! They think that they’re always right. You chide them for doing one thing wrong and they’ll give you ten reasons why it’s not their fault!”

The moment we stepped into the office, Rose asked Choi for his product report which was two weeks late. Choi apologized, promised that he will finish by the end of the day and rushed to his desk. Gosh, he should not have gone to the conference since he had got more important things to do. But then, that was our Choi. He just likes to do things in his own priorities, which were usually in the wrong sequence.

After an exhaustive meeting and a quick lunch, I went back to the office, when I saw another commotion happening. An upset Ju was questioning Sally who was back from the conference.

“You mean you just come back like that?” snarled Ju.
“My shift ends by lunch time what.”
“But you should have waited for the Project Financing guy before leaving the booth!”
“But how do I know what time he’ll be there? I can’t wait forever right? I haven’t even taken my lunch!” argued Sally.
“So nobody’s manning the booth now?”
“Erm… nobody when I left.”

The agitated Ju walked away from the argument and tried to dial somebody from her desk phone. Thinking that she was off the hook, Sally walked out of the office, probably to have lunch. Ju spoke to somebody softly on the phone, looking initially flustered, eventually calmed down and finally relieved. After Ju put down her phone, she came over to my desk.

“Sigh… why did our company employ such a person?”
Why did this sentence sound some familiar?

“Has the problem been solved?” I asked.
“Yes, when I called Sam from the Project Financing, he said that his guys were already on the way there and told me not to worry. But still, I’ll go over and take a look later.”
“Did Choi tell you anything about what happened this morning?”
“Yes,” she let off another deep sigh. “Shouldn’t have planned her for the first shift.”
“Maybe she was not aware that she had to be there half an hour before the conference starts?”
“How can it be? I just briefed her on the timing yesterday!”
“Oh…”
“Well, don’t you find Sally quite an irresponsible worker?”
“Maybe it’s because she’s still young and this is her first job?”
“Beng, when I was on my first job after I graduated, I was a more responsible worker than this.”

Yeh, Ju was right. I remembered when I was on my first job, I was a paranoid freak. I triple checked every job that I did because I did not want my manager to blame me for any stupid or careless mistakes. Whenever I was given a task, I made sure I monitored it end to end. Then, I was even younger than Sally.

How did these kids become so self-centered and arrogant? Why are they so different from how we used to be when we were young? What happened along the way? Could it be the new education system? When academic development is more important and more focused than character development? Or could it be their parents who thought that the best way to raise their children is to pamper them and give them anything and everything they desire?

“Ding”
My MSN Messenger popped out. I had got a new message.

“Hi, wat were Ju and Sally quarrelling about just now? Wat did Sally do wrong at the conference?”

It was Dawn.

Chapter 3: The Art of Feng Shui

2007-11-03T14:41:00.000+08:00

“Argh!”
“Bang!”

All our hearts skipped a beat from the sudden noise. I turned my head to my left and saw Nicky with his head resting on the keyboard. I looked at Dawn’s desk. She was not there. I opened my MSN Messenger window and checked. She was not online. Okay, so it was not the “where and what for lunch” harass from Dawn. I went over to Nicky’s desk to find out what was going on.

“Hey, you okay?”

Nicky slowly raised his head from the keyboard and stared at me with a distraught look. My heart skipped another beat. He looked just like that Ju-On ghost from the famous Japanese horror movie.

“I just knew it! I just knew that it’s bad luck! But not this bad!” Nicky hollered.
“Maybe you would like to tell me what’s going on here?”

Nicky pulled me down to stare at one of his two monitors. He was the only one in the team that worked on a desktop computer instead of a notebook. As a product analyst, his job did not require him to hop from meetings to meetings like us, and besides that, he needed a strong processor to render the vast amount of charts. Yes, he did use one of the monitors to monitor his shares most of the time, but that was not its intended function. The two monitors are meant for him to compare charts and tables side by side.

One look at the monitor screen and it did not take long for me to realize what the problem was. The screen was showing a watchlist of shares with their respective prices and volumes. And the screen was awash with red numbers. Nicky must have placed a considerable amount of his assets somewhere there.

“See that bloody STel?” Nicky poked his finger hard onto the screen, so hard that it was as if he wanted to rub away the red number behind the screen. “I bought it at $2.50! And in half a day’s time, it actually dropped to $2.35! I just knew it is coming!”
“You knew that the price will drop?”
“No, not the price! The bad luck!”

I was sure that the irregular pulsating of the purple veins on his forehead was disturbing the functioning of his brain. Nicky was not making any sense at all.

“Erm… could I get you some cold water?”
“No, I’m okay! Lost lots of money but okay,” Nicky sighed. “This bad luck must be due to the broken Pi Xiu.”
“What?”
“The pair of jade Pi Xius that I placed by my shoe rack, facing the main door. I accidentally dropped something onto one of it yesterday and broke its horn.”
“What’s a Pi Xiu? Some kind of Feng Shui animal again?”
“Yeh, it has got a horn, a face that looks like a mix between a lion and a dog, hoofs at its feet, two little wings and a tail.”

That animal sounded like it will scare the hell out of the Beast from the Beauty and the Beast.

“And it’s mad that you broke its horn, so it’s bringing you bad luck now?”
“No, that’s not how it works! You see, in Feng Shui, we believe that if a part of a Feng Shui animal is broken, it can’t protect you or enhance your luck anymore.”

Which means that, due to Nicky’s negligence that caused his Pi Xiu to lose its horn, good luck will desert him, and all shares that he own will start to tumble. For a second, the thought of shorting whatever shares that he had bought crossed my mind.

“I need to take get a new Pi Xiu during lunch time.”
“Isn’t that a bit hasty?” I was astonished at the emergency caused by a broken Pi Xiu.
“No it’s not. I need to replace the broken Pi Xiu ASAP, before worse things happen to me. You want to come along?”
“Where are you going to get a new Pi Xiu?”
“The Bencoolen.”

During lunch time, the two of us proceeded to shop for a new Pi Xiu. Nicky parked his car at the Fortune Center and we walked down the street towards The Bencoolen. En route, we passed by the busy Krishnan Temple and Kwan Im Tong Hood Che Temple.

The Krishnan Temple is a very unique Hindu temple. It is the only Hindu temple I was aware of that had a joss sticks urn in front of the temple so that passer-bys, especially the Chinese, could light some joss sticks and pray for blessings.

The Kwan Im Tong Hood Che Temple is a temple built for the Goddess of Mercy, a.k.a. Kwan Im. If there is a top ten popularity chart for temples, I was certain that this temple would make it to the top easily. The number of devotees barging into the temple to offer joss sticks and pray could easily outnumber the ants that are required to shift a lollipop.

“Geez, if this temple can be so crowded during a weekday, I can’t imagine a weekend.”
“But this temple’s good. The Kwan Im ‘qian’ here is very accurate,” Nicky commented.

A ‘qian’ is a prediction of the future. To get a ‘qian’, devotees would have to rely on some bamboo sticks. On each one of the thirty over little bamboo sticks stuffed in a bamboo container was written a number, and each number represented a ‘qian’. A devotee will get on his knees and shake this bamboo container furiously till one stick fall off the container and onto the ground. With this bamboo stick, he could then get a small slip of pink paper from the ‘qian’ counter. Written on that slip of pink paper will be his fated destiny, the answer to the question that he asked when doing the “Shake’em up” action. And it would be written in both English and Chinese.

“So I presume, you must have gotten one before?”
“No, not one. More than that. Whenever I feel that I need a direction, I’ll drop by for a ‘qian’.”

I wondered was Nicky’s ‘direction’ referring to the ups and downs of the Straits Times Index. I imagined Nicky kneeing on the ground among other devotees and do the “Shake’em up” action, while mumbling “Please, oh Goddess of Mercy, please tell me if I should get the China Construction Bank call warrant or put warrant!”

Finally, after squeezing through the carts selling flowers to the devotees for offering to the Goddess of Mercy, and stands of fortune tellers telling their patrons what their ‘qian’ actually meant if they really read between the lines, we reached The Bencoolen. Ninety percent of the shops in The Bencoolen were Feng Shui shops selling crystals, jades accessories and bronze Feng Shui animals.

Nicky led me straight into a small shop that seemed too narrow for its plump owner. He must be the ‘Si Fu’ that Nicky told me about, the Feng Shui master who assisted Nicky in his apartment’s interior design by placing the appropriate Feng Shui items on specific locations in a very precise manner. The solemn looking ‘Si Fu’ listened as Nicky told him in Cantonese about the misfortune of his Pi Xiu. After Nicky finished his story, the ‘Si Fu’ told him to wait and went into the back of the shop. When he finally emerged, he was holding a beautiful pair of animals craved out of something that looked like jade, lying on a pair of matching wooden stands. From the grin on Nicky’s face, I knew that he was going to bring them home.

After we left the shop, I queried Nicky on the pair of Feng Shui animals that he paid almost two hundred dollars for.

“It’s a pair of Pi Xius”

So that was how Pi Xius looked like. Not as horrifying as the way he described. They actually looked similar to the pair of stone lions in front of the Kwan Im Tong Hood Che Temple.

“But I thought only one of your Pi Xiu was broken?”
“Yeh, but in Feng Shui, when you replace, you replace in pairs. And anyway, nobody sells a single piece of jade Pi Xiu.”
“But what’re you going to do with your old Pi Xiu?”
“Just wrap it in a piece of red paper and throw it away!”

Gosh, not only would people abandon their living pets, they will also abandon their Feng Shui animals.

“Anyway, the previous pair that I’ve got is made of yellow jasper. This pair looks better.”
“And this is some kind of jade?”
“Yeh, it’s called rainbow jade,” he answered avidly.

Somehow, I felt that the jade was not named appropriately. A rainbow contains seven colors. However, the jade had an elegant light greenish grey with random strokes of shades of brown on it. But of course it would have looked horrible if it had seven colors on it.

“So I guess the first thing you’ll do when you reach home today, will be to replace your old Pi Xius with this new pair?”
“No, I’ll do it at 3a.m.”
“What? You’re going to wake up in the middle of the night to replace your Pi Xius?”
“Of course! That’s the auspicious hour of the day!”

After this experience, I realized that believing in Feng Shui was not only expensive, but knackering.

A few days later, Nicky told me happily that his new Pi Xiu was bringing him lots of good luck. In fact, after the new Pi Xiu was placed at his door, the shares of CapLand rebounded for three straight days and broke the cap at $3.30. He had gained back whatever he lost and more.

So the CEO of CapLand should write Nicky a thank-you note because his company shares were up, not due to their successful investment in Shanghai residential properties, but because of Nicky’s new pair of rainbow jade Pi Xius.

Chapter 2: Our Obsessions with Rankings

2007-11-02T15:40:00.000+08:00

The Capital Markets team got our company listed on a couple of top ten charts for Asia Pacific in one of the reputable financial magazines. To celebrate the winning, the team was having free drinks from the head at the Raffles Hotel’s Long Bar. In his jubilant mode, the head of the Capital Markets team was generous enough to invite our team as well.

The Long Bar is the only place in Singapore where you could crack endless supply of peanut, pop the peanuts into your mouth and throw the shells on the ground freely. Yes, most patrons for those neighborhood coffee shops will also throw peanut shells and cigarette butts on the ground freely. But it is different at the Long Bar. It is the proper thing to do there. You will not get disapproving stares from the next table and silent curses from the coffee shop cleaners sweeping the litter that you created. In fact, the waiters in the Long Bar will smile at you with an apologetic “excuse me” before sweeping away the shells.

After a few drinks and some jestings among the team, our team head Rose threw us a question: “Guys, how do I select a primary school?”

Either she had too much of a drink, or she figured out that we had too much of a drink and a solemn question at that point was necessary. Though I could not connect the relationships between a primary school, a bar and a group of finance guys.

“Why?” asked KZ.
“You see, my kid will be getting his primary school education in two years’ time,” Rose explained. “And I’m thinking of selecting a good school for him.”
“Nearest?” asked KZ again.
“We’ve only got one primary school nearby but I heard that it’s standard is not very good,” Rose explained again. “Anyway, location is not a major problem because we can always move.”
“Choices?” asked KZ yet again.

To speed up the questioning, I decided to get Rose out of KZ’s single-word conversation.

“Which are the schools you’ve got on your mind?”
“Oh, I’ve heard about FM Primary, HP Primary and NH Primary. Do you think they’ve got any top ten charts for primary schools?”
“No, not a top ten chart. I can’t imagine what the schools would do to push the students in order to get to top ten,” I laughed. “But they’ve got this Sustained Achievement Awards for Physical and Aesthetics for Primary Schools, where the primary schools will be awarded for their students’ achievement in sports and arts.”
“But that doesn’t tell me how high the standard of the schools will be,” she frowned.

She was right. There must be a way to find out which were the better schools. Those parents who camped overnight outside the reputable primary schools in order to be ahead of the primary school registration queue must know something.

“Ju,” KZ said calmly.

Yes! Why did I not think of that?

“Well, if you insist, there is a proven but unrecorded ranking system for primary school standards thought. All you need is to ask a mother.”
“Ask a mother?”
“Yeh. Judging from the length of an ‘Oh’ when you tell her which primary school your kid is studying in, you could tell whether the school’s good or not. The longer the ‘Oh’, the better the school.”

Rose raised an eyebrow and gave me that “you’ve got to be kidding me” look.
“I’ll show you,” I assured her.

I turned around and tried to search for Ju. I found her talking to a Capital Markets guy by the bar. Judging from the “I’m confused by you but I’ll try to be polite and appear interested” look on her face, I knew she would love to be interrupted.

“Hey Ju!” I waved at her. Sure enough, at the spot of my wave, she apologized and left the Capital Markets guy hurriedly to join our table.

Rose looked at her anxiously.

“Why?” Ju looked innocently at me.
“Hey, I’ve got a nephew who has just got into FM Primary.”
“Oh.”

“Then I’ve got a niece who is studying at NH Primary,” I continued asking.
“Oooh.”

“And a friend whose son is studying at HP Primary.”
“Ooooooooh.”

“Is that school good?” Rose asked.
“Yes!”

With the smile on Rose’s face, I knew she had got the answer she wanted. At that moment, Nicky came over to our table with a glass of vodka on his right hand and a newspaper on his left.

“Hey dude! Guess what? Singapore is ranked 140th out of 167 countries in the World Press Freedom Index!”

Geez, that was not a very good piece of news. Singapore had got this obsession about rankings and anything less than top ten was unforgivable. And now 140th!

I remembered a few days ago when the National University of Singapore was announced to be ranked 22nd out of two hundreds in the World University Rankings, the university president was not very happy. News was that the slip was due to the university’s poor score in the new rankings indicator which puts universities to the test of the job market. National University of Singapore scored 12 out of a possible 100 when international employers were asked which university graduates they prefer to employ. However the president still believed that universities are best ranked by their peers.

What a sore loser. If the purpose of that piece of paper labeled degree was to get a good job for the student, it made all senses to test the university in the job market! What is the point of getting a degree that is respected by other university professors and peers, but not recognized by the potential employer?

“… we’re one place behind the Philippines,” Nicky continued. “And look! We’re way behind Malaysia and Indonesia as well!”
“Reasons?” asked KZ.
“The association Reporters Sans Frontieres said that our low ranking is due to the complete absence of independent newspapers, radio stations and TV stations, the application of prison sentences for press offences, media self-censorship and the opposition's lack of access to the state media,” read Nicky in one breath.

Yes, that long explanation gave more than enough reason to place us at the 140th.

“Actually Singapore should treasure its 140th place, because I think it’ll slip further next year,” commented Nicky.
“Why?” asked KZ again.
“With the kind of close relationship Singapore has with China nowadays and all the friendly visits to China,” Nicky explained. “I won’t be surprised if the Media Development Authority decided to introduce a Great Firewall of Singapore that is akin to the Great Firewall of China.”
“No, I don’t think things will turn that bad,” Rose disagreed. “Singapore is a republic, not a communist country.”

I crossed my fingers and hoped Rose was right. It would just look too ugly if we were to be ranked below North Korea in the following year.

“Hey, back to the school problem,” urged Rose. “Let’s say I’ve decided to enroll my kid into the HP Primary, what should I do to increase his chance of getting in?”
“You would need to stay near the school,” I suggested.
“No problem. I think there’re a couple of condominiums around that area.”
“You could donate to the school.”
“Like how much?”
“Erm… I would think that they’ll prefer you to donate fixed assets like fax machines, copier machines and computers, instead of hard cash.”
“Oh,” Rose pondered. “That sounds so troublesome.”
“Or you could do some volunteer work for the school.”
“What kind of volunteer work?”
“Erm… I’m not sure.”

I wanted to suggest teaching, but I could not imagine a class of primary school kids trying to catch a fighter plane so that they could catch Rose’s every sentence. With the amount of fat on her body and the amount of exercises she did, I could not suggest teaching sports to her. I could not imagine her doing some dirty cleaning jobs for the school either. Hey, she was a team lead in a reputable MNC, for god’s sake!

“I know what you can do!” Nicky said avidly.
“What can I do?” Rose looked at him hopefully.
“You can help the school to launch a million dollars inaugural bond, preferably Renminbi denominated, into the China market! Since Singapore has such a good trading relationship with China, and the Chinese so eager to invest their monies, the bond will sell like hot cake! With the cash collected from the bond, the school could tear down its buildings and rebuild all classrooms and halls!”

It must have been the hypnotizing effect of the rows of slowly moving straw fans above our heads, or the number of drinks Nicky had.

“And if the bond yields favorable returns, the school could even buy some more land and put a fast food restaurant, a swimming pool, a movie theatre and a bowling gallery in it! I’m sure the school will be so eager to welcome your kid!”

Okay. It was the number of drinks Nicky had.

Chapter 1: The Beginning of Another Day

2007-11-01T16:39:00.000+08:00

“kik kok… kik kok…”
“turk turk… turk turk…”

The sound of countless high heels and leather shoes knocking on the ceramic tiles reverberated through the quiet City Link. I wondered did the reverberated sound sounded so loud because City Link is actually an underground tunnel that ran through the sea, just like how loudly I had sounded when I held my breath under the pool.

It was eight in the morning. The owners of the high heels and leather shoes were rushing to enter their office door before their bosses, or in some cases, before their subordinates. Every single man and woman had put up a face as cold as the fish that I took out from the freezer last night, and as hard as the, well, the ceramic tiles they were stepping on. Nobody dared to talk, as if the slightest energy invested in saying “ah” will slow them down. Everybody just tried to walk as briskly as they could down the Link and overtake as many people as they could.

After I made the quick turn, the escalator appeared in front of me. Briskly, I climbed up the escalator just like everybody else and crossed the overhead bridge towards Suntec City. As I walked down the corridor, I suddenly realized how lonely those shops flanking both sides of the corridor looked. It would be four more hours before the first batch of customers will pay their visits to the shops. But right now, they were feeling so, empty.

Finally, I reached the office tower. Together with the rest of my neighbors in the tower, we took the lift to our respective offices.

“Ding… Eighth storey.”

I walked out of the lift and pushed the door into the company reception area.

“Morning, Beng!” greeted our darling receptionist.
“Hey, morning,” I mumbled.

I knew it was rude to mumble a greeting early in the morning, but after holding a cold and hard face all the way from my flat, to the bus, to the train, through the City Link, across the Suntec City shopping area, up the lift, and finally in front of her, my muscles had somehow solidified. And I knew she would understand that. Because part of her job was to hear hundred over mumbled morning’s everyday.

“You’re early today! Got an early meeting?”
“Nope, not meeting, but bad enough. Conference call. See ya later,” I waved before rushing into my office.

I switched on the lights as I walked into the office. Nobody seemed to be there yet, which means that I was the first to arrive, all thanks to that damn conference call. I took out my notebook from the document bag and docked it on the docking station. I took a glance at my watch. Just in time. Briskly, I put on my headset and dialed into the conference call.

While on the conference call, my fellow colleagues arrived at the office one by one.

The first that stepped in was KZ, as usual. KZ was a quiet guy hidden in an unconventional vegetarian body. ‘Quiet’ because from my latest statistics, he would not utter more than ten words a day. But every word he uttered would be more unequivocal than my ten sentences. ‘Unconventional’ because most would have expected a guy whose main stable was greens to look weak. Weighing at 60kg with a strong pair of arms and a ribbed abs, KZ looked more like a feather weight bodybuilder rather than a senior product manager for some financial instruments. Also as usual, he nodded at me and carried on to sat at his desk.

The usual second person who stepped into the office was Ju. Ju was the marketing person assigned to our team. An elegant lady in her forties, Ju was like an orange. When handling clients, she would talk so diplomatically that even her disagreement would not contain sharp edges when voiced. When handling vendors, she would be so firm that the vendors would be so joyous they could celebrate with fireworks each time they managed to change her requirements. Elegantly, Ju waved at me, sat down at her desk and took out her breakfast from the plastic bag. Each morning, Ju’s husband would drive her to get the breakfast she wanted, yes, even if it meant a ‘cross-country’ drive, before sending her to work. From the scent emitted from her desk, I betted it was fried carrot cakes.

Then the pregnant Dawn walked into the office. She was a fair looking lady in her late thirties and still slender though pregnant. Dawn was a project manager in the team as well as our ‘secret weapon’. Due to her capability to make a mountain out of a mole and the ability to delay things, whenever our team head encountered a situation when she could not politically reject a new project requested by the business heads, that project would falls into Dawn’s portfolio. In that case, the business heads would feel chuffed by our head’s enthusiasm and conversely, they would not feel unhappy when the project failed to materialize a few months later, thinking that we have tried our best.

Choi stepped in after Dawn. Weighing at 0.1 ton, it was hard not to notice him as he entered the office. Pearls of perspire were seen rolling down his cheek as he waved at everybody before sitting down at his desk. He was another product manager in our team and a very outstanding one. He knew his products well, so well that he could talk about them non-stop in twenty-four hours. The only problem though, was that he spent so much time talking that the action part was usually left to the end and done hastily, with mistakes thrown in for free.

It was five minutes to nine when the flustered Nicky rushed into the office. He was a tiny guy always dressed in polo t-shirts. Without a second to lose, he took out the notebook from his haversack, docked it on the docking station and switched it on. He then sat down and stared hard at the screen as if his stare would persuade the notebook to boot up faster. Nope, it was not any work he was so anxious about. It was the stock market which was due to open in five minutes’ time. Like any other Hong Kongers, Nicky’s passion for the stock market was as strong as his devotion for Feng Shui.

At exactly nine, the skinny Sally strolled in lazily. Yes, strolled, not walked. In fact nobody had ever seen her walking before. Sally was the youngest in the team, at her early twenties. This was her first job after her graduation from a local university but she was always trying very hard to display a ‘been there, done that’ aura at all time. And she was the only one in the team that would not greet anybody in the morning.

Five minutes past nine, Rose, our team head stepped in. Like her name, Rose always tried start the day as rosy as possible. She was the only one who would step into the office smiling with a subtitle at her feet that said “Today is such a wonderful day!” We were so fortunate to have Rose as our team head. She was the kind of leader who would fight bloody battles for her team and shield them from flying arrows. She was also the kind of person that anybody would also think twice before arguing with her. Perhaps because she was an Indian, it would be almost impossible for anybody to find a letup in her fast and winding sentences once she started talking. Sometimes I got the feeling that her breath could beat a veteran Korean pearl diver hands down.

After one hour and an addition of five entries to my to-do list, the conference call ended. Before I could finish stretching my back, my MSN Messenger popped out. I had got a message from Dawn.

“u on conf call just now?”

No, I was not on conference call just now. I just put on the headset because it looked great as an accessory to my blue shirt.

“yes”
“busy?”

No, the only items on my to-do list were two with deadlines which were yesterday, a couple with deadlines in a few days’ time, oh, and another five new ones. I was so free I did not know what to do with my time.

“yes”

However, to Dawn, ‘Yes, I’m busy’ was never equivalent to ‘Please do not disturb’.

“u got any lunch appointment?”
“no”
“lunch together later? Wat do u wanna eat?”

I looked at the clock on my notebook. Ten a.m. I looked at the watch on my wrist. Ten a.m. Asking me what I would like to have for lunch at this kind of hour? My guess was, Dawn had got too much time on her hands again.

“dunno. Why dun u ask the rest?”
“I feel like taking fish soup. Wat about u?”

Which part of ‘dunno’ did she not understand?

“dunno. I need to prepare for a meeting later. Why dun u ask the rest?”
“ok”

After my cold rejection, Dawn went on to ask Nicky the same question on the MSN Messenger. How did I know? In the midst of his shares monitoring and product analysis report writing, he suddenly stopped clicking his mouse and gave his notebook a “What the?!!” look.

From there on, Dawn would habitually ask everybody, except our team head Rose, on their preferred lunch for the day. And each of us would reply ‘dunno’ before habitually blocking Dawn from our MSN Messenger for the rest of the morning, until after lunch. After lunch, Dawn would habitually complain that her MSN Messanger was malfunction because everybody looked offline to her.