Once upon A Time

It was a warm and mellow midsummer's evening in a cosy street side cafe.

The setting sun diffused through the hanging wooden trellises, blessing the interior of the cafe with a pale-gold radiance. The sensuous tones of Linda Ronstadt's voice infused the tepid evening with a sultry touch, tenderly caressing the souls of all who listened. The rich, voluptous scents of chocolate, cafe au lait and French vanilla lingered in the air, an ambrosia that warmed the heart.

The girl's slender frame was wrapped by a dark, burgundy tube top that revealed her delicate shoulders and porcelein collar-bones. She wore a fragrance that painted a picture, in the mind's eye, of ripe nectarines in springtime. She sipped slowly from an emerald-green glass; leaving just the faintest hint of rouge at the lip of the glass. A lively smile and a light touch of foundation gave the girl's demure countenance a vibrant sparkle.

The boy had taken great pains to scrub the dandruff away from his somewhat dry hair(while whining about the quality of his conditioner). Unlike the girl, he had chosen a fragrance that was meant to project an image of masculine power and dominance. Sadly, the fragrance reacted badly with his own perspiration and he ended up smelling like an expired fisherman's friend. Thankfully, he had salvaged the situation by slathering a liberal amount of Gilette aftershave. The boy was dressed in a white shirt with three ketchup stains.

The girl looked at the boy with her soft, inviting eyes. She held his hand and softly whispered, "propose to me." The girl's tone was full of yearning, yet with a strand of steely determination.

The boy's eyes betrayed just a hint of the conflict within his troubled heart.

He was torn between the sweetest girl in the world, who was clasping his hand and looking into his eyes, and the hotter, bustier girl who was smoking at the opposite table and cursing her late friend.

The boy was lost for words.

A moment of folly seized the boy and caused him to exclaim, "It's just a joke right? Hahaha!"

And then the boy realised that the girl was not laughing with him. Instead, she looked a bit sad.

And at that moment the boy realised how much the girl meant to him. The boy realised how foolish he was all this time; when he used work to fill his emotional vacuum...when the only thing in the world that could fill the crippling emptiness within him...was love.

The boy wanted to throw down everything he had and run away with the girl. The boy wanted to take care of her, to listen to her problems, to give her a shoulder to cry on, to carry her shopping bags, to drive her around town, to lie down and watch the stars with her.

The boy wanted to love her.

And so the boy held the girl's hand, and said, "I can't afford a real ring now, so here's an imaginary diamond ring...but I want you to know that what I feel for you is far from imaginary."

And as the boy tenderly placed the symbol of his affection on the girl's fingers...

"BURGERS AND FRIES! WHO'S HAVING THE BURGERS AND FRIES?"

Burgers and fries!? What the $%^ was happening?

The boy turned to face a flabby waiter who stank of mouldy cheese and overboiled cauliflowers.

The corpulent sh*tface had ruined the moment!

and the worst thing was, neither the boy nor the girl ordered burgers and fries. It was the hot, busty chick from the opposite table; who was still cursing her late friend.

It was too late. The boy was no longer in the mood for sappy proposals. Despite the girl's desperate plea for a kiss, the boy sulked and grumbled...his mind drifting to the pile of legal theory readings that was waiting for him at home.

The bill was quickly settled. As usual, the girl paid.

The boy marched out of the cafe with a bitter scowl, devising one thousand and one punishments for the villain of the moment, the blur waiter.

The girl struggled to keep up with her heels, but was just too slow.

They parted at the crowded train station.

The boy did not even look at the girl when he said goodbye.

Postscript: This actually happened to...erm...a friend of mine. I absolutely emphatise with him and share his loathing towards the dumbass waiter. At the same time, I wish my friend all the best for his legal theory readings and the upcoming crim law project.

I also think my friend is a sexy beast*.

*I am straight though.

Valentine's day

I'm still deliberating whether I should go for the anti-Valentine's Day dinner at Timbre Bistro.

The main attraction, according to the organisers, is the "beef and chicken" served at the buffet. Of course, wine will be served. Nevertheless, I believe it would be novel spending Valentine's day with friends from my faculty instead of burning my money on some "true-love-of-the-day" whom I won't even be talking to the next Valentine's Day (my fate for the last five years).

To me, Valentine's Day is analogous to the day my parents pay income tax. Within one day, I am bled dry and in the red. When the roses have died and the chocolates have been eaten, the bitter, astringent after-taste of poverty creeps up your tongue.

This year, I resolve to spend Vdae splurging on myself instead of another person. I will pamper myself with a good meal with friends or a round of after-work drinks with my classmates (NOT at Brewerkz again!). Of course, if I am too lazy to make plans or if I am feeling unsociable and crabby, I can always choose to work on my appellate memorial.

In the library.

Alone.

*Postscript: I eventually brought forward my Vdae plans and had dinner with her last night. I really appreciate the fact that she was able to take all the emotional baggage that I was hurling at her. I admit that I was behaving like a thoroughly spoilt six year old.

The long day, the prospect of returning to school during the weekend and the fact that we had to wait nearly an hour for a table at Crystal Jade Palace made me moody and sullen. Moreover, I wanted very much to try the food at Marmalade Pantry@ Palais Renaissance. I was not exactly ecstatic about having Chinese food, even if it was Crystal Jade. Nevertheless, I went on a binge and ordered enough food for a medium-sized family.

Although I ate so much that I got heartburn, we still could not finish the food. She just came from a company function and was not exactly ravenous. I have always had a small appetite.

I ended up carting the leftovers home.

I think I shall have them for lunch today.

I'm back to blogging.

School has barely started and I am already feeling very drained and tired. Endless assignments, research and seminars...What's more, we are doing the most boring topics in law-calculation of damages, statutory interpretation and legal positivism. Suddenly, everything seems so much less interesting. The only consolation is criminal law, but the abstruse and inconsistent judgments are getting on my nerves.

Life has settled into its own steady rhythm.

At 6am every morning, I wake up violently...groping around in the twilight to locate my specs, which are almost always squashed under my pillow or stuck in my armpit. I fight a losing battle with my sister to use the toilet. After a Herculean effort, I manage to secure the bathroom for 15 minutes...I leap into the shower. The heater never works in the morning, so I am almost always cryogenically frozen by the time I emerge from the shower.

Once in awhile, the heater decides to remind me that it is still exists, if only to chalk up electricity bills.

Unfortunately, such occasions cannot be predicted with sufficient accuracy-a scalded bum is usually a good indication.

Breakfast is usually a hasty affair. Instead of dining to the beautiful chirping of birds, I shove food down my oesophagus as my mother screams at me to hurry up. For some reason, the coffee must burn my tongue at least once every five minutes. Now you understand why my speech is slurred even though I've been a teetotaller since the Stone Age.

After breakfast, I slowly make my way to school. On lucky days, I take an hour-long bus ride; squeezing through a menagerie of sweaty and foul-tempered fellow commuters. Most of the time though, I have to endure my mum's nagging and my sister's incessant parroting of my mum's words in the family car.

When I was young, I was under the naive misapprehension thatI could do as I pleased, without giving a $%^$ about others' feelings, when I turned 21....I laugh at my own naivete.

I could go on and on about the trials and tribulations of life in law school. I'd probably need 65 million years to give an accurate account of all the problems faced by blur year ones. Suffice to say, life in school is no bed of roses. It's more like a kuali of hot oil...haha

Last semester, there was one consolation. The girl selling Japanese food in the canteen was quite cute.

She has since been replaced by an auntie. I once asked the auntie where my beautiful Japanese stall girl went. The auntie sadistically replied, "Dunno...but I heard she got engaged!"

I am still recovering from the shock. Even though it has been one month since I last saw her.

Oh well.

Recently, a new character has entered into my life.

Is she good or evil? Or just a neutral character?

Only time will tell.

Christmas is here again.

Which means the holidays are going to end soon.

The thought of going back to school lurks behind my mind like the ghost of Christmas past, even as I am stuffing my face with turkey and honey-baked ham. When I think of the killer traffic along Bukit Timah road during peak hour, I feel very sian.

Plus, I'll be getting back my contracts paper in the first contract tutorial, according to a credible source. That's the paper I did not finish and will probably get a crap grade in. I am sooo NOT looking forward to getting it back.

Oh well, I guess I'll just have to deal with it as it comes. In the mean time, I'll just try to enjoy the festive cheer without worrying too much about the first day of school.

Went to vik's party on Friday night. Great food, smooth drinks and very cute chicks. I loved the party except for the horrid Tenacious D soundtrack that he was playing in the background.

You know that Vik has put in alot of effort to make the event successful when he greets you with a clean-shaven chin. and a decent shirt. The man finally decided to shave! He looks so much better without The Black Forest growing out of his face. He was starting to look like Jack Black, but I never had the heart to tell him that.

I spent most of the party sandwiched between two blokes who were flushed from too much Hoegarden. No prizes for guessing who those two guys were. Suffice to say, I was a bit worried about the state of events, considering that one of them was the D.D. for the evening.

The following evening, I went to Mingwei's house.

We dined alfresco in the soft glow of scented candlelight. Micheal Buble was singing "The Christmas Song" in the background. The girls cooked fabulous fettucine Marinara...The best part must have been the wine and cherries! And the other gorgeous desserts which the host plied us with!

It was a wonderful Christmas dinner...Definitely one which I will remember for many years to come.

I'll be throwing my own party this evening. I've discharged most of my obligations and delegated most of my duties. The food should meet the standard of the reasonable man. I'm crossing my fingers that there would not be a shortfall in presents and that my guests would enjoy this evening's event.

After the party, I hope I have some time to spare to go for drinks with Ken and the rest.

Anyway, here's wishing everyone a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. Let's hope that everyone has a meaningful and fulfilling Christmas:)

Mistake and the D word

Talk about mistaken identity!

Was at Orchard yesterday when I mistook someone else as my sister. Really embarassing situation. Especially since the person was a guy with long hair.

This mirrors an incident that happened a couple of months back when I mistook someone else for Galvin. The person I did not intend to contract with was a Caucasian man with a haircut that was similar to Galv's. Worse, I actually said something instead of simply mumbling an apology. If I don't recall wrongly, what I said was,

"Eh? How come you're ang moh?!"

Or some other question with no simple answer.

One of my 897,546 New Year Resolutions for 2007 is to avoid subjecting myself to similar incidents of public ignominy in the future. Such incidents seem to occur with alarming regularity, especially at the most inconvenient times (e.g. when I'm busting my veins trying to portray myself as the suave, uber-cool hybrid offspring of George Clooney, Rain and William Shakespeare in front of some random girl in a public place.)

Recently, I was strolling around VivoCity when a kid's stupid balloon burst. My friend insisted that I had, quote and unquote, "screamed like a girl", even though the only thing I recalled doing was drawing a sharp intake of breath. Having said that, I admit that I may have let loose a minor expression of surprise while inhaling. After all, a sound similar to a TIME BOMB GOING OFF is the last thing you would expect in a family mall. Luckily, the occasion did not require me to apply what I learnt during BMT...

Oh well, we all have our weak moments...

And moments when we feel that we are getting old...

Like last night, when I was having dinner with Junyi. You know you've grown up when your dinner time discourse revolves around gender issues and financial management. After spending considerable amounts of time debating and distilling the issues involved in these extremely broad topics, we emerged triumphant with two brilliant hypothesises (is this the plural of hypothesis?)

1) There are a lot of Chio bus in Orchard.

2) We are short of money.

Sometimes, it takes much thought and analysis to come to a simple and logical conclusion. Anyway, I think the both of us are really getting old lor. Especially me. Because I keep on repeating what I have already said. It's a bad habit lar. It stems from my belief that the more you say something, the more likely the other person will agree just to satisfy you and stop you from repeating what you have previously stated n times...Not too sure this would work in court though.

Actually, there were really alot of chio bus in Orchard (Here I go again!). Unfortunately, most of them were either too young or were walking with their boyfriends. Junyi claimed that he saw this damn sexy babe at Wisma...

Who was talking to her friend about her O level results.

Gosh...O levels...that's young enough to be my...erm, sister la! Even my sister is not that young. Or maybe I'm just getting old (got to make a conscious effort not to repeat used points). On the issue of boyfriends, there is an age-old adage,

"even if there's a goalkeeper, that does not mean you cannot score!"

Or in the warped logic of an ex-army buddy,

"stead can break, married can divorce!" (sounds like iambic pentameter to me)

Maybe that's what's eating Britney Spears these days! The D word.

I actually read the Straits Times this weekend.

On Saturday, The Straits Times featured a special report on the plight of middle-aged PMEBs who were retrenched during the structural economic changes that occured over the last couple of years. Some of these poor guys can't find a job because they are over-qualified and too old. The lucky ones settle for jobs as taxi drivers, security guards or MLM salesmen. One of the interviewees lives out of cardboard boxes in a one-room rented flat because he has been jobless for 12 years.

The next day, the front page story was about young private bankers who earn hundreds of thousands of dollars per year. These dudes are on call 24/7 and handle millions of dollars worth of transactions (that's alot of contract law involved le!) on a daily basis. However, banking is a crazy profession that is fraught with pressure and tension (like LAWR binder season). One of the guys talked about how he was back at work two hours after undergoing nose surgery.

Usually, I try not to think about serious stuff in my free time. I reserve my RAM (and you can bet it is random!) for stuff like "what's eating Britney Spears these days?" and "If you eat antipasta and pasta do they cancel out each other?"

Nevertheless, reading these two articles really set me thinking.

From the top of my head, I can think of two issues.

Firstly, why are we discriminating against workers on the wrong side of forty?

Secondly, why are we glorifying the success of a group of people who obviously do not lead healthy and balanced lifestyles?

It appears that age is a liability in our society. Despite Life Long Learner Awards being periodically "bestowed" to deserving senior citizens, ageism remains a very real evil in our society. Employees above forty are perceived to be slow, rigid and inflexible. In a "dynamic" (I hate this word!) and increasingly globalised world, this adversely affects the competitiveness of the business. Moreover, many of these employees are perceived by their employers to be "overpaid", to quote the Straits Times. When the company is undergoing re-org or streamlining, HR never fails to notice this issue, to the detriment of these employees. As a result, they are usually among the first to go in a retrenchment exercise. Even government scholars and senior civil servants are not spared. Reading The Saturday Report, it seems that the Iron Rice Bowl is not so solid after all.

To its credit, the government has recognised this problem and has taken active steps to engage older workers in the workforce. Subsidies, training grants, Life Long Learner Awards, Senior Citizen Of The Year Awards, you name it, we've tried it. At the same time, the media has been extolling the virtues of older workers through newspaper articles and TV programmes. The older worker has been portrayed as a mentor figure who is able to add value to an organisation through his years of experience.

Unfortunately, businesses are not buying that. Ironically, there is little the powers that be can do to solve the problem except doing what they are currently doing. Seriously, anything else would hurt our competitiveness in the long run. Can you imagine Parliament passing legislation to make it mandatory for firms to hire older workers? I can't.

In reality, firms tend to perceive the older employee's ability to add value through experience to be overhyped. I'm not suggesting that experience counts for nothing. Yet what is the worth of twenty years of experience if everything that has remained constant for the last twenty years has changed completely in two years?

In the last decade, the roles of various professions have expanded drastically to meet the increasingly sophisticated demands of clients in the global market. Lawyers have to do arbitration, accountants do financial planning...even engineers have to be actively involved in business development, sales and marketing. New modes of communication have also emerged. Consequentially, working life has encroached into the personal lives of employees. Today, an employee is expected to be contactable, willing and able to solve the company's problems 24/7. Even as he or she is playing his role as a parent or friend after office hours. Sadly, loyalty to the company is seldom rewarded. When the company is forced to cut costs, older workers face a higher risk of being given the golden handshake. Often, retrenchment has less to do with their performance on the job and more to do with changes in the economic cycle. For instance, many middle managers in IT firms were retrenched in the dotcom crash in the late 1990s for reasons that were not related to their individual job performance.

Sometimes, a supervening event that happens without the default of any individual can lead to much frustration.

Is it fair to expect each and every older worker to keep abreast with all these changes? Even if so, how many actually have the means to keep up? What worries me is the fact that many of these retrenched workers do not even have the chance to find gainful employment because of their age and last drawn salary. In Singapore, it is dangerous to be on the wrong side of forty. Worse, if you were formally a PMEB who previously earned a respectable salary (I don't want to get bogged down defining this...) From what I observe, many middle-aged ex PMEBs were willing to take a pay cut when they were hunting for a job. Yet many employers refused to take this into account when considering the job application.

Frankly, I'm worried. After all, I'll be forty some day. What happens then?

Do I have to earn my keep by collecting empty drink cans from the dustbin? Simply because I am overqualified and too old to sweep the streets?

One hour and fifteen minutes later...

We parted one hour and fifteen minutes ago.

I shan't lie to myself and tell myself that I won't be missing her.

I missed her the moment we said goodbye.

Nevertheless, dinner tonight was simply great. We've known each other for a long time. Yet each time we share our thoughts, she never fails to teach me something important about life. From her, I've learnt so much...

I've learnt not to take myself too seriously, and to let go of the heavier things.

I've learnt not to take the people around me for granted.

I've learnt the importance of being sensible.

I've learnt that you can be true to yourself even as the world around you compels you to change with it.

Tonight, she taught me to be patient. In the months ahead, patience is something that I'd need.

There's something wise about her words that makes you look at yourself and try to change for the better. But I don't think she realises it.

When she leaves, I'll be both happy and sad. It was not easy for her to earn the opportunity to live her dream. I pray that God lights up every step of her journey. I'm sure she has the courage and faith to overcome the obstacles that stand between her and her dreams. She has always been strong and sensible.

At the same time, I'll stay right where I am and wait.

Not for her to come back quickly, but for her to fulfil her dream.