I’m having dinner on Sunday when Kenneth, whom I’ve not seen, heard from, nor so much as thought of in a year calls.

Kenneth: “Hey Joe, Merry Christmas!”
Joe: “Ah, it’s a bit late.”
Kenneth: “I wanna fuck you upside down! Why the fuck got financial planner call me?!”
Joe: “Oops”
Kenneth: “Pretty or not? If pretty then I meet her.”
Joe: “Eh… Ok lar. Not babe not ugly.”
Kenneth: “What the fuck answer is that?!”

At this point, I manage to scald my tongue on some soup.

Joe: “You will find out when you meet her. I gotta go.”
Kenneth: “Fucking hell. Never see you for one year talk a bit also cannot?”
Joe: “I burnt my tongue lar!”
Kenneth: “What? Lick pussy?? Lick pussy can scald tongue or not?”
Joe: “I think you’ll know better.”
Kenneth: “Basket.”

From here on, the conversation topic somehow turns to girlfriends.

Kenneth: “So you attached now or not?”
Joe: “Yes. The same girlfriend.”
Kenneth: “Sure or not? Heard from Tay, Weiming and Teo that you quite hiong in NUS one.”
Joe: “No lar. I’m very shy one.”
Kenneth: “My ass also very shy.”
Joe: “You shit.”

And then he goes on to recap some of the stuff he’s heard about my supposedly babe-filled university days all of which is pure conjecture. Where these army friends get their news I’ll never know. But anyway, the moral of the story is never give your friends’ contacts to financial planners no matter how much they beg.

Note: I did not utter a single vulgarity because my mom happened to be sitting beside me.

Karaoke really isn’t my thing. In fact, I don’t think it’s most people’s thing. Not that that’s stopping them. Yesterday’s company function was only the 2nd time I’ve found myself trapped in a karaoke session. (I regret not inserting a “NO KARAOKE!!!!” clause in my appointment letter) And, since we were in a room that just happened to be in a mazy building that just happened to be perched atop a hill, my chances of escape were remote. Add to that a bunch of moderately inebriated colleagues and you could say I saw my chances executed by firing squad.

Anyway, in my hour and a half there, I managed to get away with singing only half a song which, unfortunately, was Michael Learns to Rock’s 25 Minutes. Good grief.

As inevitably seems to be the case, most of the songs chosen were either in Chinese or Cantonese, and I was familiar with none. My colleagues were having a ball of a time though. Tragic songs were sung with a smile and much screaming, laughing and clapping. There were the odd Beatles or Elvis songs which I managed to sing along to (such as Na na na-ing to Let It Be) but that was about it.

In the end, the madness lasted till 12.30am when everyone abruptly decided to leave. The herd instinct is amazing at times.

I know this entry sucks but I still feel half drunk and my plans for tonight have just been screwed. Dammit.

The Year in Verse

As another year comes to a close
Let us take a break from prose
For 52 weeks of good, bad and worse
The Economist now recaps in verse

It’s about time I wrote something here.

In the last two weeks, I’ve been to Taiwan and back, gaining about a kilo in the process. I did nothing but eat over there so I’ll spare everyone the tedium of reading yet another travelogue. One thing though, it felt kinda weird to be a Chinese who didn’t really speak Chinese in a thoroughly Chinese country. As a fruitseller amusedly asked Pat in Chinese after I’d failed to understand a word of his rapidfire introduction of what looked like a green armadillo, “is he Japanese?”. This, of course, led to much mirth for Pat and much frowning for me. If our dear MM Lee thinks we’ll ever be able to match their standards, then he’s got his head in the clouds.

There’s something beautiful about walking down a busy city street on a cold drizzly morning with I Wanna Hold Your Hand filling your ears. Even if work’s a bitch, even if you feel lost, even when life seems to hold nothing but tedium, it makes one (or at least me) feel better.

Still, there’s only fleeting comfort to be drawn from a song. At least I’ll be in Taiwan in less than a week. Maybe that’ll help some. I’m looking forward to it. Some time alone with Pat and away from this shithole is bound to be good though I dread the backlog of work that will inevitably await.

But why am I thinking about work already? I’ve had more than I can take and a bit more. The people that sign my pay cheque don’t understand the effort that goes into every single piece of work that we do. All they see are the figures. And so the work keeps coming. Hour after hour. Day after day. But what’s most disappointing is that they don’t understand that good work takes time to produce so when the shit hits the fan, it’s the creative department that gets a disproportionate share of the flak.

It’s time I got out. But how? I don’t know what sort of agency my book will get me into. Creative houses are so competitive that they unnerve me. But is there really any other place I wanna be? Maybe a small creative-led agency but I had my chance and blew it, though it wasn’t entirely my fault. Still, it nags at me every once in awhile. When my next chance will come, I don’t know. But I hope it’s soon or I may have already left the industry altogether.