Food to be missed

I could never identify with friends who went overseas and say that they miss Singaporean food. After all, Singaporean food is just a huge mix of food from different places, and we often choose to eat foreign food while we’re in Singapore anyway.

I enjoy food, but not to the extent of traveling long distances to hunt for the best eating places and spending a lot of time and effort to prepare a meal. My conservativeness towards what I fill my stomach with also limits my food experiences (some exchange students may have tried more local food than I did). With food, I go for the most convenient, and the most familiar. There is also no particular type of food that I can’t live without.

But now, I’m beginning to understand why I might miss Singaporean food if I were to work overseas. It all came to me tonight, over a bowl of bad fish beehoon.

I realize I picked up one favorite local dish at every work place I had. The most recent one being fish beehoon, something I have never ordered on my own before I ate with colleagues who brought me to good fish beehoon hawkers. It’s acquired taste - the more I ate, the more I liked it, and now, it’s something top on my list to order, even if I know it’s not the best stall for it.

Before that, it was nasi lemak, because there was a good hawker nearby which my colleagues often patronize so for convenience’s sake, I asked them to pack the same thing back for me. I hated nasi lemak, but after eating it 5 times a week at a go, I kind of like it. Then there’s the yong tau hoo because it’s the best stall at the hawker center near where I worked at, and the duck kuay tiao because it’s my favorite colleague’s favorite.

Maybe it’s not the food, but just the experiences and the people that the food reminds you of. Combined with the familiarity of the taste, the people you ate with and the places you ate it at, the food becomes a major craving when it becomes as far away as everything else you’re used to.

Studying Wrong

When the work piles, the flesh gets weaker. Flesh being that piece of flabby thing in my head.

Flesh gets distracted too.

Games I would otherwise not be interested in, compulsive desire for new music, irrational want of new audio equipment, the tastiest, most unhealthy food, the silliest tv programmes… any and all types of distraction.

I’m really trying to enjoy the very last bits of my education. But it has gone wrong. The topics I’m studying now are much more challenging, and much more interesting, yet all the tests and assignments coming all at once before I even have a weak grasp of the concepts is too much to handle.

These 2 weeks has been worse than schooling 2 days and working 3. I’m just wasting away, procrastinating everything and feeling terrible for wasting so much time and not being in the panic mode I should be in.

Combine all this with the bleak economic outlook while I’m preparing for full-time work, the apprehension of applying to banks (will it still be there tomorrow, after I send in my application today?), and the fears of finding myself jobless or stuck in a job I hate.

This shouldn’t be the way I spend my second last schooling semester.

I’m missing the pre-university days when I have 2 full years to complete the courses. 12 weeks is too little time for anything. I’m just scrapping the surface, making believe that I learned something, when really, I can barely explain anything I’m learning now clearly and in depth.

All this is making me feel extremely inadequate.

Running Dumb

It’s the time of elections for student groups. This means that there’s plenty of funny nonsense to pick up around school, nonsense in the form of election posters. Most posters are stupid, with silly slogans or none at all. Others are just plain weird. It’s time to fire some marketing managers.

If you’re the marketing manager coming out with a slogan to catch the eyes of bimbos who just needed some cosmetics and can’t be bothered about the chemical make up of such products, a catchy slogan like “Because you’re worth it.” is clever and effective. But if you’re running for office as leader and representative of the student population, it’s plain dumb to put “Because you deserve the best. =) ” (yes, smiley face included) under your name. Well I’m sure I deserve the best, but your poster is really not convincing me that you are the best. I don’t even freaking know what you stand for, other than some egoistic idea about you being better than everyone else.

If you’ve got a strange name that can relate to words with meanings, it’s not exactly the most intelligent thing to form slogans that play with your name. “If you wonder if there’s more to life than mugging, wonder no more.” just keeps me wondering about what plans you have. Do you mean that the “more to life” means living my life through you as you hold some office? Other slogans about adding drama and wonder into my life is just plain weird.

The worst type of posters are those that has only a professionally taken picture and no slogan or information except “Vote for XXX” and “Support YYY”. Such posters does nothing but scream “Support me because I’m so good looking!” Then there’s a dim-witted one that says “I’m running!” Well, I pretty much figured that out since you have an election poster. So do you mean I’m suppose to be so thankful to you for running that I simply have to vote for you even if you have no plans at all?

Some posters are much better, like the one with pictures of the candidate making funny faces and captions that include “crazy” and “eccentric”. The idea was that she’s funky, fun-loving and would spice up your SMU life. This is good because at the very least, I get a glimpse of who you are and what you stand for from your posters. There’s also a well thought out one with a list of values important to him. Many talk about change, nothing in specific but at least it’s not some meaningless and dumb slogans.

If we want to avoid becoming a university producing students who are “all fluff/looks/talk and no substance”, the least we could have are some good student representatives. From what I see in the posters, there’s no hope. Running for office means you need to show some plans, some ideas and something that you stand for. Catchy slogans are fine, but slogans that makes us wonder where your intellectual capabilities stand or what sort of personality you have is really, not helping.

Make a list of tomorrows

This is a list of trouble I might find myself in for the rest of the 21st birthdays in my life, some wishful, some plausible and all bleak. If my life was a movie idea, it would sound like one of these possibilities.

(1) The Loveless Corporate Bitch

Pin everyone down with 4-inch stilettoes, stack the bodies and climb on them to the corporate throne. Live a life driven by greed and schemes, have a bank full of money I have no time to spend and wake up one day realizing I’m a person who knows everybody but has no friends.

(2) The Luck-addicted Corporate Slave

Muddle through the first job I get, get stuck in the same entry-level administrative position for 20 years and spend all my free time watching korean soaps. Struck lottery one day after faithfully buying tickets every week for all my life, snag an interview and be asked to give a brief autobiography. Stammer like an idiot on national tv.

(3) The Religious Banker

Dash to Wall Street sleep-deprived and grumpy. Have a life ran by the exchanges and mood swings as volatile as the market. Live by the words of the financial gods.

(4) The Dissatisfied Accountant

Emotionally imbalanced after balancing accounts for 20 years. At a stroke of creativity and with a spark of unburnt youth, decides to balance my personal bank account with the company’s. Makes it to the headlines and fulfills a life-long dream of joining the hippies in the cage.

(5) The Noble Philanthropist

Pool a sum of money from over-earning entrepreneurs, overpaid executives and bad pop stars. Set up a fund for micro-financing, save 10 families from poverty, squander the rest on 2,000 drug addicts and retreat into a life of defeat, dejection and hate for humanity.

(6) The Wife With Too Many Children

Clean after little bitches and bastards who stuff their faces using their hands and poop in my bed. Deliver them to school and have them return as rebellious teenagers who got pregnant or impregnate someone. Clean after their little bitches and bastards who stuff their faces using their hands and poop in my bed. Repeat ad naseum.

(7) The Rich Wife

Stuff my own face with all the foie gras I hate and pretend to like Loser’s Vehemence and Mahjong. Be proficient in small talk to the point of enjoying tea parties and cocktail parties without alcohol.

(8) A Combination of Number 2 and Number 6

Er, did someone say college fees? To hell with that, they’ll find a Korean prince.

(9) A Combination of Number 3 and Number 6

There are simpler ways to kill myself.

(10) Everything else

A football coach, an astronaut, an architect, an explorer, a museum curator, an academic… Waking up to find myself in the wrong profession.

Survival of the Sappy Hearts

“But it’s not who you are underneath, it’s what you do that defines you.”
- Rachel Dawes, in Batman (2005)

I have a new understanding of the truth in that statement.

Because it is only what you do that is seen, what you say that is heard and what you express that can earn you support and sympathy, that’s why it’s all that you do that defines you. Only those who cry out for help and those who display emotional weakness are pitied and cared for, because it is only when you see the pain in a person and when the crying for help gnaws at your conscience that you will be spurred to help.

For the rest of us who choose to deal with pain ourselves, we are seen as the poker-face and emotionless – the ones who are incapable of caring and who do not need empathy because there does not appear to be any hurt in our lives. Why should anyone bother to dig deeper when everything seems to be working fine and when the broken pieces are not bothering anyone. After all, sympathy and words of comfort are easier to give than true understanding and empathy.

It is what you do, which can be viewed by others, that will be used to define you. What is underneath, the pain and broken pieces that have already been cleaned and swept away, will always remain unseen, and something that no one can see, no one can define. The strong is always sacrificed.

Just because I do not wear my heart on my sleeve does not mean that I do not have a heart to break.

Classy Biscuit Tins

The Gold Man’s Sacks remain full, while the Bear’s Stoned, the Layman Blunders and the Merry Leaks.

How many bank runs will you live to see?

Ghosts in the head

Sometimes, I feel the need to pick up some things I dislike, just so that I can understand why I like the things I like so much. Because absolute is too abstract and almost impossible to determine. Relativity is simpler. I’ve begun to accept that just because I enjoy something doesn’t make that thing good in the absolute terms. And sometimes I don’t even understand why I enjoy it and am really not trained to objectively evaluate the item. But just by subjecting myself to something I hate, I quickly learn the reasons for liking the other, and I can appreciate what I like better, making me like it even more. Knowing why I like the things I like also prevents me from accepting things that are similar, liking them even though I wouldn’t have if I knew what makes the first item so special to me.

—

If you ever find yourself getting too arrogant or if you’re feeling unchallenged, pick up quantitative finance. It’s guaranteed to make you feel worthless (unless of course, everything math and finance is your forte in the first place). Yet it is so impossibly interesting to me. Or maybe it’s because I only understand 10% of it and I have a tendency of lusting over something that I can’t understand easily. In any case, I just feel like studying it now, in the academic sense, in the go-away-real-world,-I-live-in-the-risk-neutral-arbitrage-free-dreamt-up-world way. That means that whatever I’m studying (and am interested in) could well be useless in any job that I get into in less than a year’s time, which will guarantee my dissatisfaction and misery. Damnit.

A Greed for Learning

The craziness that is work will end for a while. No tearful farewells, havoc parties or emotional speeches, just plain lifting a load off my shoulder; both metaphorically and literally - the Dell computer with its humongous charger is a real big burden.

It has been fun. Tough, lots of complaints, lots of problems and work impossible to do without some superpowers. But I learned a company, heard much about an industry, met lots of people and made my first trips to Korea and Japan. I dined with management, presented at corporate meetings and even got to demand work from people I shouldn’t be ordering around. This company is crazy, they forgot that I’m only an intern, while other less enlightened companies forget why their criterias for picking scholars are different from those for administrative clerks.

There will be no break though, until I’m successfully jobless after graduation. There are things planned for the rest of my time in school. Looking back, I realise that ever since I started working at the age of 18, I’ve worked (intern/temporary/part-time) in 4 companies and for 3 individuals (on separate occasions), all within the span of 4 years while being a full-time student. People ask, what do you work so hard for? Are you that hard up on cash? Do you know you’re never going to be able to enjoy yourself once you start working full-time?

Actually, I don’t really think I work that hard. I complain a lot but I really do secretly enjoy loading on the responsibilities and cramming my schedule to the point that I’ve not had a break for almost 3 years. It’s really just plain greediness. I want to do everything and learn everything at once. And mostly, I just want to keep myself occupied – most of the jobs I’ve taken up are really quite menial, I’ve never had anything important enough that my decision can cripple a company, but I still pick them all up anyway.

What have I learnt? Nothing that I can immediately list down or elaborate into paragraphs.

Still, I have learned much. I know, because sometimes I realize that ideas come to me and I’m able to understand concepts and the deliverables expected from me much easier than people who have less work experience. Coworkers and bosses who belong to the older generation are sometimes surprised by what I know because they never did know such things when they were my age, at a time when internships were not as common for undergraduates.

I don’t have the delusion that I’m better or smarter than others. All that I know, I have simply, very accidentally and naturally applied bits of skills and knowledge picked up from experience. I happen to think of things and understand things faster because I’ve had some rather diverse work experience and have interacted with people from various backgrounds and with different specialties.

I’ve realized that, no matter what the nature of the job, whether or not it challenges you intellectually, does not limit your ability to learn from it. I don’t say this merely because it’s difficult to fault logically. I say it because I’ve personally experienced the effects. And because of this realisation, I know that I will continue to pick up small job opportunities, however “irrelevant” it is to what I really want to do, so long as it doesn’t take up too much of my time or affect my priorities.

Small jobs aside, I disagree with people who think that expectations for something more than the norm is too high an expectation for our full-time jobs. Sure, opportunities may be limited by the job market. But how will we find better ones, if we settle for what is the market average. Aren’t all of us money-savvy finance students obsessed with getting that alpha and beating the beta? Shouldn’t we demand even more from the investment of our time – time that we can never earn back?

Whenever there’s an opportunity for a simple part-time work experience that will take up part of my free time but not affect anything important, I’m not picky, I can be adventurous about what I do. After all, it won’t be a bigger waste of time than idling. But if it’s a full-time job that will prevent me from doing what I really want to do, I don’t want to settle for the average alternative. I believe that I should know and maintain my expectations, and find something close to them. If there are really no opportunities, then I’ll have to plan something and work towards making it possible.

I never believe those who say that taking a longer route is an unnecessary waste of time. I also never believe those who say that there are better ways to spend my time than an “irrelevant” part-time job. Well, maybe you have more important things to do, but for me, I don’t want to go into my full-time job being an ignorant green-eyed graduate with little/no work experience and be mocked by less well-educated coworkers who can do much more than me. I also don’t want to limit the scope of my experience at a time when I can still maintain many roles and responsibilities at once.

You say, you don’t have the luxury of long holidays once you enter the workforce. I say, you won’t have the luxury of enriching yourself and picking up diverse sets of skills once you leave your schooling life.

I’m good, damn you.

I’ve noticed one thing in common between high-level executives, entrepreneurs, HR directors and most bosses. It’s that uncanny ability to give an over-enthusiastic “Hi! How are you?” to just about every person they meet, and the shameless heaping of praises on subordinates – “This is perfect! Just what I want!”, “Wow! You did such a great job!”, “This is REALLY good.”, even though I have the feeling they’d chuck the piece of work out the window the minute I turn my back.

The more of such people I meet, the more convinced I am that I won’t make it up the corporate ladder. There is little more that I detest than answering my phone to an excited “Hi! How are you?”, and having to figure out a way to say “I’m good! How about you?” without allowing my “Just tell me what you want, damnit” thought to affect the tone of my voice.

As much as I have soaked myself in the harsh world of corporate pretense and can sometimes pull off a “I haven’t seen you for so long, it’s so great to see you!” naturally, I really can’t make myself squeal a high-pitched “Hi! How are you?” to someone I really don’t give a damn about. I can’t stand asking a question with full knowledge that the answer can only be “I’m good. How are you?”, and then putting myself through giving an answer that can also only be “I’m good.” even if I’m really breaking apart and bleeding to oblivion.

Small talk is another thing that bewilders me. General comments about the weather really make an exciting conversation. “How was your weekend?” begs me to tell you about my sky-diving, bungee-jumping holiday. Asking “Did I ask you how was your weekend?” after I told you my weekend sob story is absolutely heart warming. And I’d definitely love to hear where you bought your shoes from.

If being friendly and eloquent is all about acting like I care and being able to articulate nonsense, then I’d rather be a sulky misfit.

Get alive

These days I’m feeling the importance of having a passion in life. I don’t mean a past-time or an interest that I can derive some pleasure from. That is to say, I don’t mean “having a life” in its conventional definition of hanging out with friends, watching movies, pubbing, shopping or consuming some form of modern entertainment that I consider to be just plain, silly fun.

If consuming and being entertained means everything that is “having a life” to you, then you must have a very sad and boring life. I mean, how unsatisfying it must be to eat at recommended restaurants, buy advertised products, devour popular novels, groove to radio music and laugh/cry from watching formulaic hollywood flicks. It is entirely different from being a connoisseur, where understanding and having the knowledge allows you to appreciate something – anything at all.

Yet, if you think that being a blind consumer is being yourself and that this is what you really are, then well… suit yourself. Not settling for the popular does not mean that I believe in being the renegade, being different or forcing something out of the norm. It’s silly to think about being different or refusing influence. Being different doesn’t matter. (Which idiot decided that SMU students must be different?) It’s really just the “being yourself” bits and knowing what makes you tick that’s important. 

Liking something and doing something I can bear doing is not enough for me. I demand something so very very important that it entirely defines ”life” in the phrase “having a life”, and that life itself would be empty without it.

For me, I’ve found that music does it for me. Music is not a past-time, not a boredom killer, not even something for relaxation or ambience creation. When good music is playing, I can’t concentrate on anything else other than the music. When bad music is playing, I get emotionally affected, offended and extremely irritated. Music listening excites and rejuvenates me. I like sitting still and listening to music for hours without doing anything else, playing pieces I love on loop, trying out different genres and artistes – and I’m still exploring.

I enjoy work too, but I’m apprehensive about making my “passion in life” my livelihood. With work comes responsibilities and obligations, and the last thing I want to do is to make music some kind of obligation, or to make my work my “passion in life”. I can find myself the most challenging and most exciting job. I can align it to my interest and commit myself to a full-time job only if I like the work involved. But there must be something to devote myself to after work and during the weekends. This thing that will prevent my life from degenerating into a drudgery of survival.

I know what makes me alive, and I’m glad I’ve finally found it.