- Late arrival -

Finally, an appreciation that a good time can be derived despite the lack of alcohol, RnB beats and migraine-inducing flashlights. An evening of hopping on the same spot and nodding as if in agreement to the gospel as interpreted by the musical geniuses of EIC and Electrico was followed by a fortuitous encounter, and a 6-hour chat ensued.

It is an unspoken rule, a code that is not articulated but nevertheless strictly adhered to by tacit agreement, that no good concert should end at 1130pm. If, for some inexplicable reason, one should actually happen to, then in true University fashion, supper must surely follow closely behind, with the relative comforts of a Prata joint proving a popular choice among many.

So it was that one such shop came to find itself more than acquainted with 5 bored souls (not the most advisable choice of words, given the context of the conversation that passed between their lips between certain hours of the night). To its chagrin, the shop was treated to 5 happy campers who parked themselves near a tree and proceeded to reminisce/discuss certain sensitive issues, and the lady who closed the store at 2 hours past midnight that night must have been quite perturbed to find us still sitting there when she came to open it 4 hours later.

The most amusing part of it all? The issues tabled at the summit were confabulated by 2 chaps who'd not met in 2 years and who proved to be the common link of the group, 2 others who were new to me but more than forthcoming on their insights with regard to nearly everything, and a lady who chose to speak softly and carry a big stick.

You meet the weirdest people in the strangest places.

- Rule Britannia, Britannia rule the waves?
Waive Britannia, Britannia waive the rules -

The fair land of Great Britain. Home to many an established institution. Breeding ground of some of the greatest writers and thinkers in history. Respected and feared the world over for its political and military might.

Also the home to many a drunk, violent yob. Breeding ground of some of the worst diseases, thanks in full to its piss-soaked streets. Feared the world over for its terrorists these days.

Faced, as usual, with a mountain of work today, I ran out of websites to visit, so I decided to snoop around the dark alleys of the LSE website to find out what prizes are awarded to 2nd year students in my course annually.

The Allyn Young Prize
1 @ 100
Outstanding performance in Micro Economics in the 2nd year.

The CS McTaggart Prize
9 @ £300
3 prizes for each of 1st, 2nd and 3rd year BSc or BA students based on exam results in each year, with reference to previous years results for 2nd and 3rd year prizes.

The Rishi Madlani Award
1 @ £100
Awarded to an undergraduate obtaining the top mark in Macroeconomic Principles paper (EC210).

These lay among a host of prizes awarded to students in a variety of courses at the school.

And then I saw the mother of all LSE prizes, the holy grail of LSE awards, the crowning glory of the school's bounty.

The Richard Goeltz Prize
Approximately £2000 (amount varies)
Awarded to UK undergraduates completing their second year in Economics.

The Richard Goeltz Prize. Ah, the Richard Goeltz Prize.
ONLY OPEN TO UK UNDERGRADUATES.

Tony Blair, that champion of free trade and reduced protectionism, would be turning in his grave, if he were dead. But he's not, so he's probably just turning a blind eye and a deaf ear.
Damn the French CAP! Down with protectionist trade measures! Apparently no one's listening at home.

Annual tuition fees cost £1000 for local students and about £10,600 for international students at the LSE. Yet when the government proposed to raise top-up fees to £3000 for international students, a great hullaballoo erupted. This is unfair, they screamed, amid the hue and cry.
They decried the proposal, labelling it a tax on learning.

The Richard Goeltz Prize
Approximately £2000 (amount varies)
Awarded to UK undergraduates completing their second year in Economics.

This is the very reason why spoilt, sheltered Brits grow up to loiter around football stadiums, in one hand a half-full bottle of Foster's that goes in their heads, in the other an empty one which breaks on a rival team's supporter's.
This is why they grow up to believe they rule the world and can go about doing whatever they damn well please with impunity.
This is why Great Britain is no longer.

- All your base are belong to us -

New recruits to my Prison, I mean, workplace (I kid) suffer an indignation that infringes every chapter in the UN Human Rights Charter. It is a public and ostentatious humiliation no single human, primate or marsupial should have the misfortune of enduring, and one that nothing and noone can come out of with nary a shred of dignity left in his being.
They're made to write a little about themselves. To make matters worse, a picture of the subject accompanies each piece.

While not daring to insult my colleagues and with all due respect to them, the process of reading some of the pieces is equally painful. The articles all seem to adhere to a particular template, so much so that on occasion it seems as if they were written by one Central Scribe. My name is soandso, I studied yadayada at hereandthere, my hobbies are watching my nails grow and I hope to learn a lot from everyone here! Yay!
You can almost hear the jubilation with which they end off their write-ups.

Unsurprisingly I failed to avoid this unpalatable task and on my 2nd day I had to write about myself. Unsurprisingly I had more than enough time to agonize over it.

Weirdly enough I received plaudits for my write-up, goodness knows why:

Writing about oneself is always a daunting task, one nigh on impossible in my opinion.
There is always the risk of sounding boastful should one decide to trumpet his achievements ( I would, if I had any ) or putting one's audience to sleep by painstakingly expounding every last facet of one's life ( no one wants to hear about my cat, fish and recently deceased other fish ).
What is there to say in 10 lines or less that would succintly describe me, yet not subject the reader to abject boredom?

That despite my 1.86m-frame, my passion lies in football (Newcastle, thank you) , not basketball?
That I blog as an avenue down which I direct the pent-up emotion of everyday life?
That 2 years reading Economics at the LSE, that bastion of student politics, followed no knowledge whatsoever of the subject in JC, where triple science tormented my every waking moment?

No, for that would not be of interest. But then other more juicy details would be a tad out of place here on the staff directory, wouldn't they?

"You write very well!" "It's one of the best pieces I've read on the staff directory!"

Errrrrrrr. Thanks. But errrrrrr (again) it's just a write-up. And a very boring one actually.
Let's visit the library more.

- Hullo, you got speak Chinese? -

So I've started work again, this time for a longer duration. I've only been here a week, but it's felt like a year. But fraternising with the people here has brought me closer to my roots. Less academics, less hoity-toity, less affected accents.
And so the more Hokkien me (as opposed to Hokkien mee) comes out.

I came to work last Monday all eager to shape the fiscal strategies of the nation. Must increase employment. Must reduce taxes. Must increase corporate governance.

Then they put me in the Finance section, so I geared myself up for some analysis of figures, some good ol' number-crunching. I rubbed my hands in glee... until I realised Finance was super technical, and it primarily involved other people coming to claim money for expenses. I stopped rubbing my hands and started wiping the tears away.
Plus I'd only arrived back in Singapore from London, the land of the 7-hour time difference, a day ago, and my incessant yawning was irrepressible. So the tears were real.

Must.... stay... awake.

No matter, I can learn something from everywhere I go and everything I do, I told myself (and I believed it).
There was always some great life lesson of a higher order that I failed to see initially, but which I would miraculously understand at the end as all the pieces came together.
There was always some underlying purpose for my presence everywhere, some value I would be able to extract from every situation.
This time was no different. This time I learnt something they cannot teach you elsewhere.
I learnt how to fall asleep at work without getting caught.

For an entire week, my boss decides not to give me any substantial work to do. I think it's mostly because I can't do any of it anyway.
So for one whole week I dress nice nice come office and sleep. Ni nao hyar lah.

There's a recreational room on my floor with a pool table and table football in it. For some funny reason the other interns, who happen to be on other floors, are all even freer than me, so they're perpetually in that room dunno doing what. They keep bugging me to go and play with them.
Eh, people working leh. Correction, people supposed to be working leh.
Problem is, here the dividers separating cubicles are all very low, and it just happens that my boss is seated behind me, so every time he stands up he can see what I'm doing. Or that I'm not around. Ah thanks ah.
I decide that it would only be prudent for me to at least appear to be at my cubicle as much as possible. So I end up sitting in front of my computer every day doing absolutely jacks***, with an Excel spreadsheet open in front of me, trying not to nod or let anything come out of my mouth while my eyes get acquainted with the back of their lids.

And everyone knows I'm wayang-ing. But no one says anything because no one has any alternative for me. So we maintain our unspoken agreement -- we agree that they won't speak to me in case they wake me up.

My counterpart somewhere else Chows tells me it's normal for an intern to have a slow start. He tells me he's already finished two books. I tell him that's cos his boss doesn't sit behind him.

Well actually my boss did give me something on my second day, a project I thought I could handle until he told me to liaise with 2 ladies upstairs who're doing the same work. So I call one of them to arrange for a meeting.

Fine, she says, the more people the merrier, the less our work.
Good, let's meet up.
NEXT WEEK. On Monday.
AT 5.30 PM.

Siah lah, then what you want me to do for the rest of the week??
I put down the phone and let my eyelids come down again.

The other interns even more power. Here's a summary of a routine day for them:
8.30 - come to work to wayang
9.30 - go play pool
10.30 - mid-morning coffee break
11.15 - go back office, wayang some more
12.30 - lunch break, which is supposed to last one hour
2.00 - return to "WORK"
3.00 - call Jonathan. "Jon, can you come and open the door to the pool room for us."
4.00 - stop playing pool, go for tea.
5.00 - go back to wayang-ing
5.30 - go home

Anyway the work here is so technical and requires so much expertise that I can't help them, despite my most heartfelt pleas to them to give me a bit of work so I won't go out of my mind. And believe me, I HAVE been begging them.
Besides, they're all so busy that none of them has the time of day to teach / humour / babysit me. So I humour myself. Don't think dirty.

At least the people here have been nice and friendly and I spend most of my time talking rooster with them. Interestingly enough, since my arrival there have been rumours and comments zipping around the workplace. Thanks a lot, sincerely, but I hate to say that once again, as has characterised the last 21 years, you're the wrong damn crowd. Blardy hell.
Somehow everywhere I go that has a large group of Singaporeans, people have an incredible knack of breaking into Mandarin. We sound like a gaggle of geese, nattering away in rapidfire Chinese. And my boss is Indian.

Thanks ah. Damn sensitive, man, you all.

And as is always the case, I'm shot a fusillade of questions.
Eh, boy, where you study?
What year? You how old? Eh? How com- oh, neh serve army ah? Why?
Wah, that one score-lar leh. Score-laaaarrr. Score-laaaarrr.
Score your lam par lah.

By the end of the week I suppose my boss had caught on to the fact that I'd actually been taking up valuable oxygen in the office and while I was at it I may as well get some stuff done.
So I got an assignment, but one which is IMPOSSIBLE to do.
It's not difficult, but I have little data, and am not allowed to go around asking people because it involves sensitive issues.
I know it's quite sketchy for you, he says, so you really have to go into the whole process and imagine it happening.

DAMN RIGHT IT'S SKETCHY. You think I what, Professor X ah?
But actually he's really a very very nice and hardworking chap, merely a victim of circumstance and misfortune. The misfortune of having an intern that he doesn't need. Or want.
So I go back to trying to get myself adjusted to London time.

I come to work and sleep so much, then go home cannot sleep. Nar hyar lah.

Later that day, a temp staff member Shon and I decide we can no longer take the abject boredom (does the phrase ~cruel and unusual punishment~ mean anything to you?) and decide to head out to a neighbouring building for some coffee.
Where got workers go Coffee Bean for half an hour in the middle of work one?? Nar hyar lah!

The next week, I finally get to meet the 2 ladies who could potentially kickstart my 6-week career (or whatever is left of it), to discuss the thing we're supposed to discuss (I sleep so much, sleep until forget discuss what also). I let them get the ball rolling, and wait for my chance to give my input. I wait and I wait, until I see my window of opportunity to show I'm not just a space-waster. But no.

They talk talk talk talk talk. I try to talk, they refuse to let me talk. They talk some more.
I never knew such tiny girls could talk so much.
You big. You good. I scared you.
I only intern. Neh mind.

- Don't panic. Or at least try not to. -

Oh, we're sinking like stones,
All that we fought for,
All those places we've gone,
All of us are done for.

Guardian Unlimited, 24 July 2005 --
Bloodshed in the city of peace : Toll of at least 88 dead in Egypt holiday resort
Within minutes three rapid explosions [in Sharm El-Shiekh] killed at least 88 people and injured nearly 200, and the city of peace lay in bloodsoaked ruins.

We live in a beautiful world,
Yeah we do, yeah we do,
We live in a beautiful world,

Straits Times Interactive, 25 July 2005 --
'Mystery group' runs insurgency in Thai south: Militants, who do not know who their leaders are, fight based on ideology
PATTANI - YOUNG militants who are killing innocent people and in turn being killed in southern Thailand are not even aware of who their leaders are.

Oh, we're sinking like stones,
All that we fought for,
All those places we've gone,
All of us are done for.

BBC News, 24 July 2005 --
China mystery illness kills nine : Health officials in western China are urgently investigating an unidentified illness which has killed nine farmers and put 11 more in hospital.

We live in a beautiful world,
Yeah we do, yeah we do,
We live in a beautiful world.

Straits Times Interactive, 22 July 2005 --
Marina Bay the new brand name
The URA paid brand consultancy Interbrand $400,000 to come up with an ideal brand for the area.

And they came up with.... Marina Bay. We're really all done for now.

Oh, all that I know,
There's nothing here to run from,
And there, everybody here's got somebody to lean on.

Mostly because you can run, but you're still gonna get shot. 5 times.

BBC News, 23 July 2005 --
Shot man not connected to bombing: A man shot dead by police hunting the bombers behind Thursday's London attacks was a Brazilian electrician unconnected to the incidents.

- Rare social commentary -

I blog today in an irate manner, having been rubbed the wrong way while in an irritable mood born of sleep deprivation.

I picked up my lunch from KFC today, fully intending to join my colleagues back at the office before catching a quick lunchtime nap, the labours of intense hand-waving last night at Kim Seng Road taking their toll on me. I was, however, waylaid by other interns as I was making my way back to the office, and under extreme duress I found myself succumbing to their insistence that I join them for lunch, my past absences at their lunch jaunts apparently having incurred their annoyance (I exaggerate a little, but in my defence, a lack of sleep nulls the brain).

I followed them thus to Kosma food court in the basement of Peninsula Plaza, 2 buildings away from our common workplace and guarded the table as they made their orders. I had just begun picking at my cheese fries when an, officious, self-important prick came up to me waving his hand, but not in the manner of one who has recognised a long-lost, thrice-removed cousin. His wave was accompanied by a "Sir you cannot eat owside foot heer."

But I'm with 5 of my friends, I reasoned, and they're all customers of the food court.
"Still, is the same. Yar not suppose to eat owside foot heer."
He proceeded to stare at me, albeit from a distance, but he maintained a watchful, almost reproachful, and (or so he hoped) intimidating gaze in my direction.
So what was I to do, sit there and watch them eat while I starved? Observe the way their larynxes rose and fell in near-unison as they savoured the food deemed acceptable at the food court while my choice of lunch seemed to desecrate the hallowed, yellow, peeling walls and the uncleaned-in-3-days floors of the food court, the tables of which had evidently seen a lot of laksa-spillage in the 5 hours since they were last haphazardly cleaned? I was unworthy.
I hope it is understood that I rant here not about the cleanliness of the venue, which I honestly couldn't care less about.
Are we such an inflexible society today that one person cannot join a large group of his friends in consuming food purchased from another location?

It got worse.

When the other 5 came back and began to eat, I figured it was only logical that I should join them in eating. So I began picking at my fries once again, and before I could so much as stick one in my mouth, Pricky had returned, and this time he'd sidled up to me noiselessly, before launching into a "Sir, I hope you unnerstan, you cannot eat owside foot heer."
The effort must have tired him out.

Clearly I was allowed to sit there with my friends and take up space, my friends slurping away at their wanton mees wantonly. Yet, since the sign said that consumption of outside food was prohibited (well, they put it rather less elegantly, but that was the idea nonetheless), I could have my food in front of me, as long as I shouldn't have the audacity to even think about eating it.

A few of the others raised their objections to the absolute ridiculousness of the situation.
They decried his deplorable intransigence.
Emboldened by this power in numbers, the girl opposite me did the unthinkable: she tried to reason with him.
"It's just one of us not eating from here, the rest of us bought food what."
To which Pricky replied with a sneer, "You try and bring our food to KFC and see they let you eat or not?"
"I'm sure they would." I was enraged by his condescending tone.
"You so swer? I use to work in fass foot, you know?"
No wonder, then, that you're so self-important now. The step up from fast food boy to food court status evidently went to your head.

It is heartening to see that we have progressed as a society to one so open and flexible, where the rigidity that typified the Singapore of yesterday has dissipated, and in its place understanding and case-by-case analysis now rule.
The millions invested in Courtesy campaigns with a smiling Prof Tommy Koh helping little old ladies cross the road have also paid off, their fruits manifesting themselves as the attitudes of food court attendants islandwide. It brings much cheer to know that all our efforts to improve civil society have not gone to waste.

- Mortovia: A first glimpse -

Deep in the bowels of Mortovia stands El Torre Centro (The Central Tower), a massive building that stands tall, erect and proud, not unlike the Chairman of Flatuo, providers of gas to the capital, whose headquarters the tower houses.

From afar, it is hard to believe that Tortro, as the masses affectionately call it, is no more than an office building. Its apex reaching high into the clouds, it resembles a huge marble monument, the scale of which is normally reserved for an edifice to commemorate the war dead, or a skyscraper in honour of the living dead - like dictators.

In the distant memory of those now deemed too old for gainful employment (some of whom border on dementia), Flatuo once hired proper telephone operators , the type with manners and courtesy, their 'please's and 'thank you for calling Flatuo, we hope you have a pleasant day using our gas's coming fast and furious. But in an era too long ago to remember, these operators were replaced en masse by ferrets, who delight in being the absolute bane of their customers. These abominations pride themselves in ruining the days of those who phone in, by gleefully despatching them on mery-go-rounds that always land the sorry customer right back where he began.

In truth, the ferrets take no greater delight than in hearing the same voice over the phone twice on the same day. A third time is regarded as admirable, and a fourth time earns you a star. The stars are glittery gold things, all of them wrapped in red tape. The awarding of stars is a rare occurrence in Flatuo; by the third call, the customer would have given up, broken down or jumped off a building. Or given up, broken down, and then jumped off a building.

The company's no-hands policy was strictly adhered to. 

Distinguished diplomat. And next to him is High Commissioner Michael Teo. 

Look who's in town...... 

..... and look what we ended up doing 

I thought of a caption for this, but it's amusing, which makes it cruel, so just read the blog entry will you. 

- Unprecedented bomb blasts sweep through London -

This is budding intern Jonathan Ng reporting from London, where 4 bomb blasts yesterday ripped through the Northern fringes of the capital. The BBC can provide you with the details, such as that 3 bombs went off in the underground tunnels and one took off the top of a double decker bus at Tavistock Square, killing 33 people in all. The news will tell you that an arm of the al-Qaeda terrorist movement has claimed responsibility for the blasts, but they will question the credibility of such claims. But what I'll give you is the sentiment on the street, the pandemonium among the people.

I was in the area of the UK Parliament House listening to a talk when I was told of some chaos on the streets. I realised that the homebase of one of the most perhaps contentious governments in the world was not exactly the safest place to be. Faced with a choice between staying on to listen to some chap's take on US-Lebanon relations or living, I instinctively chose survival (but only just). I bolted. Like a rat deserting a burning ship. But a smart one.

Still unaware of what had transpired so early in the morning, I surveyed my surroundings. There was speculation of a power surge on the tubes. Surely that couldn't be classified as a national disaster, more like "another day in London then".
No sign of chaos, but all around me, sirens were going off as police cars and motorbikes as well as ambulances zoomed through Westminster from every direction. Something was clearly wrong. A passerby I stopped filled me in with what little information she knew, and it seemed the UK's worst fears had materialised. The inevitable was finally happening.

Yet there was no turmoil, no screaming, no one ablaze. For many, it was business as usual.
Mere confusion, yet seemingly in respect only of how to get from the Big Ben to the next tourist destination, as the bus and tube services had all been shut down. It became fairly apparent to me that the terrorists had succeeded in crippling the nerve centre of the city while its Prime Minister was in Gleneagles, albeit only temporarily. The sudden paralysis of the transport links rendered so many immobile.

It is sad, or perhaps a result of careful planning, that such tragedy should so quickly overshadow the jubilant scenes around the city of just a day ago with London's successful Olympic bid. A newsvan zipped past, and I saw that "Olympic success souvenir special" had been replaced by "Terror as bombs go off in London".

My first thoughts lay in allaying the fears of my (maybe) anxious parents, my guests, and the people I knew who were still in London. I attempted to ring my parents up to notify them of or disappoint them with my safety, but the lack of service on my mobile gave me the impression that everyone in London had the same intent.

I'd have to leg it back to the office. The snoop in me led me to enquire a little more along the way about the current situation and whatever was going on.
Were the Russians coming?
Were the Martians going to take me (if you're reading this, please do)?
Were we going to die (then again, results are out next week, so it's just an issue of delaying things, a matter of whether I go out in a blaze of glory or like a disgraced, snuffed-out candle, though I don't know which would be which)?
More importantly, what's your phone number?

I listened in horror as cops recounted tales of 5 bombs exploding simultaneously, of the top halves of buses being blown off, and I imagined how I would embellish it all on my blog to make it seem like I had been there. Slowly, the strain on the common man began to show. They looked stoic, but their calm demeanours belied their tense interiors, the uncertainty that wracked them inside. I looked around and found myself between 2 kinds: those fraught with worry, and those residing in the black hole somewhere between blissful oblivion and naive self-delusion.

I reached the office where, for the first time ever, the telly was blaring rather than blair-ing. We stared, transfixed by the scenes of utter devastation that greeted us, the images of sheer carnage near Liverpool Street, the reports of the woman who had to climb over the limp, lifeless body of the man next to her who had shouldered the blast in order to get off the bus or the man who saw a blinding light and then a space which his arm used to occupy.

We sprang to work, sending hourly situational reports back home and making frantic phone calls to our contacts.
All this while, there was more activity in my mailbox and on my mobile. A flurry of texts, including 2 from Singapore -- all went unanswered. The phone lines were still jammed.
A couple of emails later, everyone was found to be fine. Well, everyone I knew anyway.
And the work began.

I knocked off work 4 hours later, and it was business as usual. The bus services restored, the pedestrians perfuctorily sauntering the streets. I didn't know if I should applaud the their efforts to show they would not be cowed by terrorists or deride their callous, nonchalant approach.

It's funny how the everyday man shrugs off crises so quickly.
In an instant, "Oh, my god, it's a catastrophe!" gives way to "Where you want to meet for dinner? Huh? Ok, steady."