In the midst of all my fuming about the great injustice done to me, my work ethic has slipped somewhat. Meanwhile, my spending ways have continued unabated. Today, I finally got around to purchasing tickets for Lady Salsa, a show which I'm quite looking forward to despite the fact that our seats are located along the side aisle. After that, because I left the office on time, I decided to go to Far East Plaza and see if I could find a top from Mazzario featured on this page(it's the uppermost picture) as not only was it nice but it was also affordable at only S$25. Alas, it was sold out, and instead, I found myself at Sunny Ang, trying on a dress which, after a 30% discount, cost S$244 (yes, ten times the price of the top I was initially looking for). As it's a tube dress, something which I don't yet have, it is a tempting buy, especially given that the discount is over S$100. But, unfortunately, the sale ends either tomorrow or Wednesday (or may have ended today seeing as it's the end of January), and given my current state of poverty (damn you again, you f***** of a boss!) and my current state of mind, I don't know if I should be spending that much for a designer dress.

In any case, the spending will continue once the tickets for Norah Jones's concert go on sale. I'm also considering the various performances of the Mosaic Music Festival in March.

My friend has finally sent over our New Year's Eve photos.

Happy New Year! (Wine Bar)

Attempt at an artistic shot of our pitcher of drinks back-lit by a candle.

Okay, I'm over most of my anger now. The challenge, as always, is to keep the momentum of what the still sucky decision of my boss has spurred me to do. I've already dropped a line to a few friends in the industry to suss out potential job openings and am currently trying my hardest to update a CV which hasn't been touched since I graduated from university. While I concede that I had planned on moving on from my current position, I hadn't planned on doing so this early.

As such, I'm a little concerned as to what this will mean for my goals for this year. For instance, both the CFA and the FRM require me to have the relevant years of work experience before I will be permitted to utilise either qualification on my CV, name card, etc. For another, I had planned on using the anticipated bonus on paying for driving lessons which are not cheap. I guess this means I'll have to wait a few more months... or keep on being as stingy as I've been for the last few months!

As it stands, I'm debating between going for a Master's (in what, I've yet to figure out... which is why I had planned on doing my Master's next year), getting a new job in Singapore or getting a new job in London. While all of these paths are not going to be easy, nevertheless, taking a leaf out of Scott Adams' notebook:

• I, Little Miss Random*, will get a good job in either London or New York.
• I, Little Miss Random*, will get a Masters from a good university before the age of 30.

* Well, obviously, substitute my real name here, but give a girl some privacy! :)

I'm boiling mad. It turns out that the first year I'm eligible for receiving a bonus, my (40+ FEMALE UNMARRIED) boss decided to award me nothing. Apparently, she feels that bonuses should be rewards for exceptional performances, thereby implying that my work performance (which met expectations according to my official appraisal) for the previous year is not sufficient grounds for a bonus to be awarded. Moreover, in order to give me the opportunity to prove that I am capable of being exceptional, she has given me more work.

To add insult to injury, she also stated that my base salary is at industry standards, and therefore, does not "need" a bonus in order to prop it up. Given that the salary increments are handed out on a different date than the bonus, I'm forced to assume that this also means I will not be getting a raise this year.

I've sacrificed a hell of a lot ever since joining my current department. I've been working my ass off, putting in investment-bankeresque hours (which also reduced my hourly wage to being barely higher than that of a burger flipper), and all for what? To receive the same reward than if I had turned in a bad performance? What the f***? She's sending out the wrong message, to put it mildly.

My department will be down several people (temporarily) from February onwards with no replacement headcount coming in and the workload being spread among the rest of us. You would think a wise boss would know when not to f*** around. All I can say is... good luck, man. I'm not intending to stick around.

The following article from The Guardian is particularly apt given what I've been going through the past few days. If time permits, I'll elaborate in a later entry, but trust me when I say that despite having been in the corporate workforce for the past 2.5 years, I still haven't a clue on office politics. I'm far too nice a person to play the game... and I'm (was?) guilty of believing that taking on extra work - the mundane work that no one else wants to do - will culminate in my being rewarded as a team player. Bah. Humbug.

Excerpts from Work it out
The Guardian
January 26 2005
Jenni Russell

In a world where we are increasingly defined by our work, why do so many of us have such a poor understanding of office politics?

"We go into workplaces with any number of preconceptions about other people's motivations and values, and we're often shockingly slow to adjust our assumptions in the face of reality. Work consumes a huge amount of our time, increasingly defines us to ourselves and other people, and largely determines our standard of living. The difference between getting it right and wrong is life-changing.

"Rose worked, increasingly unhappily, for four different companies in 15 years before being frozen out of her senior job, and retreating to part-time and badly paid freelance work. She realises now that she never understood how to behave in her workplaces. Her education - modest home, grammar school, Oxford - gave her the illusion that the world was a meritocracy. In retrospect she can't believe her naivety. She says she never grasped that getting on with colleagues was more important than doing the job, and she didn't see the necessity of adapting to different office cultures. She was equally out of sympathy with the radical feminism of her first office, and the glamour-obsessed networking of her final one. 'It just didn't occur to me that all workplaces might be an arena for games-playing and manipulation. I thought office politics was something that only concerned people at the top of organisations, who were fighting for places on the board.'"

"'You have to be very ambitious, but not show it - a team player on the surface, but really an individualist. You mustn't be seen to try too hard, or care too much. Urbanity is prized, and so is reserve. When I first arrived, young and green, I addressed my superiors as Mr so-and-so. I was told off for it, told that we don't have that kind of formality here; everyone uses Christian names. But that informality was completely deceptive. We were expected to show a high degree of deference, and to do exactly as we were told.'"

"On the whole, women are less attuned to power relationships, and less concerned by the exercise of power, than men are. The qualities for which they are so often praised - team-working, empathy, openness, conscientiousness - may be very good for the organisations where they work, but they are the opposite of the qualities required for individuals to succeed; single-mindedness, calculation, and an acute consciousness of status.

"Freya is a young academic who made a common mistake; she assumed that it was a mark of special favour when her managers asked her to take on extra work. She agreed to take on the financial management of her department when the full-time administrator left, believing it would demonstrate her commitment and competence. It had just the opposite effect. While her colleagues lunched with contacts, or wrote the papers that would get them their next job, she was staying late every evening to balance the books. 'I was such a fool. I never distinguished between prestigious tasks that would add to my marketability, and the routine stuff that no one else wanted to do.'"

"Why do perfectly intelligent people end up working in environments that don't suit them? It's often because the explicit values of an organisation have nothing to do with the real values - they may even be the reverse. A black administrator I know had the unhappiest time of her life working for a leftwing council with admirable policies. The backstabbing, sexism, bullying and rudeness were intolerable. She moved to a rightwing council, quite out of tune with her political beliefs, and found it a comparative haven of politeness and harmony.

"So many people are frustrated and unhappy because they are working in environments where the real values don't match their own. We would be far happier if we worked in places which respected the qualities we possessed at the time. Perhaps the best way to understand it is to consider that all organisations are meritocracies - it's just that the merits on which people are being judged may be rather hard to discern.

"We are slow to recognise when we're in the wrong place. That's partly because we're averse to too much change, but also because we don't want to admit defeat. Stubbornly, blindly, we go on thinking that if we stay just a little longer or try a little harder, our true worth will be recognised. We couldn't be more wrong."

I think some of the criteria for getting into the class I was in back in secondary school is a heightened sense of self-awareness, possessing hedonistic tendencies and a love of irony, as keenly demonstrated by an ex-classmate in her e-mail to me today.

I suspect we'll never be really happy, 'cos we'll always be busy hankering after the next good thing that we don't already possess. And I feel like I'm wasting lots of time doing absolutely nothing that is making me a better person, e.g. drinking, mundane work...

P.S. Forbidden City is having their grand launch on Saturday! More free food, more free drinks.

View from New Asia Bar

To me, Singapore is most definitely not one of the prettier cities I've seen. However, as seen from the top floor of the world's tallest hotel at one point in time, she still manages to take my breath away.

A friend sent me a local blogger's entry on his reservist experience where the blogger was receiving training on how to handle hostage negotiations. I'm really glad that defence takes up the largest portion of the national budget because this is how the training went.

Tired and frustrated from climbing the stairs, and perhaps also from having problems at home, the 'hostage negotiations' were opened by a member of the section and it went something like this:

What the fuck you want, ninabehcheebye motherfucker?

I want an airline ticket!

Airline ticket?? Cheebye! Simi airline?!

Emirates!

Cheebye! Emirates?! Ki tolo?! (go where?)

Anywhere!

Fuck you! Kaninabuchowcheebyemotherfucker! Limpehshootjitliaphorliseeeee!

And then there was a burst of automatic gunfire. After which, the slack-jawed trainer declared the simulated hostages and their simulated captor dead.

Attempts at translation (i.e. links to the Coxford Singlish Dictionary) have been added by me.

The entry can be read in its entirety here.

I'm terrified that what I feel for my friends is more than what they feel for me. I'm worried that I'm not as witty and interesting and as good company as what they're looking for and that one day, they'll look at me for who I really am and choose to break off their relationship with me and move on. It may sound incredibly silly for someone like me to think like that, but I really do worry about this.

Excerpts from What are friends for?
The Guardian
January 24 2005
Jenni Russell

You choose your friends, not your family - and for many today, the former have become the most important people in their lives. But are you sure your friends really like you as much as you like them? And how do you know they will still be around in five years' time?

"Friendship has been given a special status in our society. It is contrasted with all those relationships over which we have so little control; the families we can't change, the neighbours who irritate us, the colleagues we have to put up with. Friends are thought of as the joyous, freely chosen part of our lives, and it's assumed that those relationships are always pleasurable. If asked how you're spending the weekend and you say staying in or seeing your family or your colleagues, people may think you're a little sad. Say you're seeing friends and there's an assumption that you too are desirable, connected.

"On one level, friendships are very simple. They are the bonds between people who enjoy one another's company. But probe deeper and it's evident that there is no consensus about what it means. Start talking to people about friendship and it becomes clear that while people value it and seek it, there is also much confusion, hesitancy and disappointment about friends in many people's lives. Friendship is one of those areas full of hidden assumptions and unspoken rules. We only discover that our friendship doesn't mean what we think it does when those assumptions clash."

"Most of us feel a certain pride about our friends, pleased that they have chosen us, and that we have chosen them. We tend to believe that they reflect some important truths about who we are. Yet making friends isn't an exercise in free choice, any more than buying a house is. We buy houses according to what we can afford, what happens to be on the market when we're looking, and whether a capricious owner decides to accept our offer. Friendship is rather similar. We can only choose our friends from among the people we meet, in circumstances where making a friendly overture would be appropriate, and who show a reciprocal interest in knowing us."

"Often, we don't know where we fit into friends' lives. We may like them enormously, but not know whether they'd like us to get any closer. Are we in the first dozen, or the remotest 90 in their circle? If they ask us to dinner once a year, is that an honour because they only entertain twice, or a sign of our unimportance, because they hold dinners every week?

"This degree of uncertainty exists partly because many of us now lead lives in which we are the only connecting thread. It is perfectly possible for much of our lives to be opaque to anyone who knows us. They may only ever encounter one particular facet of our existence, because we can, if we choose, keep parents, past acquaintances, old partners, colleagues, friends, and neighbours in totally separate boxes. Many people value the anonymity and freedom that gives them. The flip side is that just as we are not known, so we cannot really know others."

"Does it matter that we can distinguish between deep friendships and transient or superficial ones? Talking to a wide range of people, it was clear that few of them are really happy with the friendships they have. Many of them feel privately wistful about the lack of depth, or in tensity, or number of their relationships. People with consuming jobs are sad that they haven't had the time to build stronger bonds, and wonder whether it's too late to develop them; mothers with time to spare want to find new friends but don't know how. Many people would like to have more friends, or deeper, warmer, more reliable relationships than the ones they have now, but don't know how to go about it."

"It isn't easy, because friendship is a subtle dance, and no one wants to be explicitly pursued when it's unwelcome, or explicitly dropped when they are not wanted. Nor does it come with any guarantees. People are unpredictable. But we need to play the game of friendship. Evidence shows that people with close friends live longer and are happier than those without. And friendship defines what it means to be human. As the Greek philosopher Epicurus observed: 'Of all the things that wisdom provides to help one live one's life in happiness, the greatest by far is the possession of friendship. Eating or drinking without a friend is the life of a lion or a wolf.'"

Returning to my critique of Shall We Dance, the movie didn't translate well from the Japanese original. The original worked because of Japanese culture. The Japanese are not a physical people. It's almost taboo for there to be body contact between a man and a woman who is not his wife. In the American version, this obviously couldn't be the case. Instead, the director chose to make the taboo that of a man who, despite living the American dream (a loving wife, a car, a house, a good job, 2.5 kids), yearns for more. While I understand that, seeing as I am guilty of that particular taboo, it doesn't make for a great movie.

The acting, as mentioned earlier, was mediocre at best. Richard Gere was John Clark, a shy (yeah, right, give me a break) lawyer in his 40s who discovers the joy of ballroom dancing. Susan Sarandon is disappointing as Beverly, John's wife, though she does have some bright moments such as her monologue on why people get married (see below). Jennifer Lopez plays Paulina, a beautiful dance teacher at the dance studio who first catches John's eye. Her acting was okay, though in the first few scenes, she seemed to believe looking sad and wistful meant a teary-eyed gaze and heaving bosom. Stanley Tucci, as always, was magnificent as the nerdy lawyer who becomes a crazy Latin dance lounge lizard on the dance floor. In fact, the movie's worth catching just to see him dance. Comedy in dance usually isn't done well but Tucci is hilarious.

The quality of the dancing is good. You can tell everyone's having fun, but then, as a die-hard dancer, I'm biased. The soundtrack is nice too. One song which stands out during the show is Gotan Project's Santa Maria, which is a fantastic Argentinean tango piece, and also appears on their album, La Revancha del Tango. The Pussycat Dolls' cover of Sway is great as well. It's incredibly sensuous.

Memorable Quotes:
Beverly: We need a witness to our lives. There's a billion people on the planet... I mean, what does any one life really mean? But in a marriage, you're promising to care about everything. The good things, the bad things, the terrible things, the mundane things... all of it, all of the time, every day. You're saying 'Your life will not go unnoticed because I will notice it. Your life will not go un-witnessed because I will be your witness'.

Shall We Dance is a watchable but unspectacular movie which will appeal, oddly enough, to non-dancers, or at the very least, the un-fussy movie viewer. Unfortunately for me, I belong to neither category. All the same, in spite of the lacklustre acting, it did make me want to return to dance.

There. I said it.

These last few months, I've always maintained that I've been taking a break from all the dance classes that I used to take and that I'll return to them someday, but in effect, I'd resigned myself to placing work over dance, my one true passion in life other than travelling, which is something of a travesty. But after watching the movie, I feel inspired to make time in my life for that one thing which brought me so much joy and taught me how to be free, how to be myself without worrying so much about what other people think. It's true that I've taken some dance classes on and off, the most recent being the Salsa Hip Hop workshop I'd signed up for a month ago, but the experienced members of the class made me feel so embarrassed by my obvious inability to grasp quite a number of the steps.

I don't quite know how to sort out everything I want to achieve this year but I'm determined, after devoting 2004 to surviving work, to do the following:

• Get my driver's license
• Return to dance - salsa, swing, ballroom, anything
• Go to the gym at least three times a week (and hopefully get my bottom half down to a size 10 by end-April-05)
  
• Learn a new language or continue French
• Work on my resume and interview skills
• Take my GMAT in March
• Get a professional qualification - CFA Level I or FRM
  

These all clearly require a lot of time and monetary investment and I am concerned about that, but God willing, I'll be able to get all of these done this year.

This is the first song I ever sang in front of a whole bunch of people. My classmates and I had learnt this song when we were Primary 1 and one day, my teacher pulled two friends and I up on stage to sing the song for everyone... without prior warning. I remember feeling vert nervous and just refusing to sing while up there. The same thing happened to my friends. All the same, this song is very cute and I still have a soft spot for it in my heart.

If I Were A Butterfly
(The Butterfly Song)
Words and Music by Brian Howard

If I were a butterfly,
I'd thank you, Lord, for giving me wings;
And if I were a robin in a tree,
I'd thank you Lord, that I could sing;
And if I were a fish in the sea,
I'd wiggle my tail and I'd giggle with glee;
But I just Thank You Father, for making me - ME!

Chorus
'Cause you gave me a heart and
You gave me a smile
You gave me Jesus, and
You made me His Child
And I just Thank You, Father
For making me - ME!

If I were an elephant,
I'd thank you, Lord, by raising my trunk;
And if I were a kangaroo,
I'd hop, hop, hop, right up to you;
And if I were an octopus,
I'd thank you, Lord, for my good looks;
But I just Thank You, Father, for making me - ME!

Chorus

If I were a wiggly worm,
I'd thank you, Lord, that I could squirm;
And if I were a crocodile,
I'd thank you, Lord, for my big smile;
And if I were a fuzzy-wuzzy bear,
I'd thank you, Lord, for my fuzzy-wuzzy hair;
But I just Thank You, Father, for making me - ME!

Chorus

I watched Being Julia a week ago. It wasn't a spectacular film but Annette Bening singlehandedly redeemed the movie by turning in an incredible performance as the ageing stage actress, Julia Lambert. Poised, calm, overwrought, hysterical, controlled and vindictive - all in the span of two hours... she was brilliant. She thoroughly deserved her Golden Globe, though it must be said out of the other four nominees, I've only seen two, and those two - Ashley Judd in De-Lovely and Kate Winslet in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind - were great as well.

Ha ha! I can't believe I only discovered Engrish today!

Oh look. Singapore's first dating marathon... with a special bonus if you're the first couple to announce your marriage.

Give me a break.

Meltykiss chocolates from Meiji are smooth and delicious. They're as good as Royce' chocolates and a quarter of the price.

Too bad they only come out once a year.

And on more coffee-related matters, this photo just makes my day.

Why you shouldn't post your picture on the Internet.

This month's National Geographic cover story is one after my own heart - Why We Love Caffeine.

The cover photo is really pretty too. It reminds me of Coffee Lovers, a terrific coffee place we went to in Phuket.

Just back from Groove-ing to half of the Armada - Tom Findley. Not too bad at all, especially considering that I've been ill with the flu for the past five days and was disappointingly sober throughout much of the night. As a result, I was bored despite the quality of the music. That (sobriety at Zouk, not the flu) is an experience I would not care to repeat. At least with the flu I can get a day off work.

Highlights of the night: shaking my ass to I See You Baby and jumping up and down to Superstylin', one of the best songs ever for getting a crowd going,

Essential Listening:
The Best of Groove Armada

Oh dear. I guess I'm screwed.

The Sunday Times
January 2 2004

Clever devils get the bird
Roger Dobson and Maurice Chittenden

IT REALLY is brains not brawn that women look for in a man. An exhaustive study of people from primary school to middle age has proved that clever men are much more likely to marry than those with lesser intelligence.

But for female high-flyers, the reverse is true. Their chances of walking up the aisle are considerably lower than those of classmates who left school at 16.

The study, based on 900 men and women, measured their IQ at the age of 11 then revisited them 40 years later to find out whether they had ever married.

Academics at the four British universities who carried out the survey said the schoolgirls with high IQs later witnessed a dramatic decline in their marriage prospects. But the brighter schoolboys found it easier to find a bride.

For boys, there is a 35% increase in the likelihood of marriage for each 16-point rise in IQ. For girls, there is a 40% drop for each 16-point increase.

Dr Paul Brown, visiting professor of psychology at Nottingham Law School and an expert on relationships, said: “What we are finding is that women in their late 30s who have gone for careers after the first flush of university and who are among the brightest of their generation are finding that men are just not interesting enough.

Read more here.

Reading List

Most recent books added at the bottom.

From the numerous books that can be found in my home:
Gabriel Garcia Marquez - One Hundred Years of Solitude
Hanif Kureishi - Intimacy
Donna Tartt - The Secret History
Dave Eggers - A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
Iain Pears - An Instance of the Fingerpost
Zoe Heller - What Was She Thinking? (Notes on a Scandal)
Alexandra Robbins & Abby Wilner - Quarterlife Crisis [Too old for this now!]
David Barash & Judith Eve Lipton - The Myth of Monogamy
Howard Schilit - Financial Shenanigans
William Strunk Jr. - The Elements of Style
Imogen Edwards-Jones - Air Babylon [Finished in December 2006]
Jeffrey Eugenides - Middlesex [Finished in March 2007]
Kate White - Why Good Girls Don't Get Ahead But Gutsy Girls Do [Purchased in December 2007]
Natsuo Kirino - Grotesque [Finished in April 2009]
Jed Rubenfeld - The Interpretation of Murder [Finished in March 2008]
Marina Lewyca - A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian [Finished in July 2010]
Catherine Millet - The Sexual Life of Catherine M [Finished in September 2008]

Planning to purchase/borrow:
Natsuo Kirino - Out [Finished in 2006]
Jose Carlos Somoza - The Art of Murder [Finished in April 2006]
John Roberts - The Modern Firm
Bethany McLean & Peter Elkind - The Smartest Guys in the Room [Bought the DVD in March 2007 as book's really thick]
Neil Gaiman - Stardust [Finished in March 2007]
David Shenk - The Immortal Game: A History of Chess, or How 32 Carved Pieces on a Board Illuminated Our Understanding of War, Art, Science and the Human Brain
Daniel Levitin - This Is Your Brain on Music: The Science of a Human Obsession
Brett Kahr - Sex and the Psyche: The Truth About Our Most Secret Sexual Fantasies
Imogen Edward Jones - Fashion Babylon
Jose Carlos Somoza - Zig Zag
Ian Rankin - Exit Music [Finished in September 2008]
Kate Summerscale - The Suspicions of Mister Wicher [Finished in March 2009]
V. S. Ramachandran and Sandra Blakeslee - Phantoms in the Brain: Probing the Mysteries of the Human Mind [Borrowed in April 2008]
Jesse Kellerman - The Brutal Art [Finished in March 2009]

[Last edited on February 20, 2011]

Death, the second of The Endless, you are responsible for ending all lives and taking them to your realm, from which no one ever returns. You are bright, positive, happy, optimistic and enjoy everything about life, but that does not mean you're silly or stupid. You can lay the smack down when you have to! Everyone loves you and they don't know why.

Which Endless are you?

brought to you by Quizilla

On the same day I listed down my top 5 movies watched in 2004, I watched Kung Fu Hustle, an incredibly funny and original comedy.

Directed by and starring Stephen Chow, pioneer of mo lei tau (Cantonese for "nonsense comedy") and director of Shaolin Soccer, this show has everything you could ask for: great slapstick humour, breathtaking martial arts scenes, tastefully done parodies of Kill Bill and The Matrix, romance, Roadrunner-style chase scenes and even old martial arts stars - Yuen Qiu (a popular stuntwoman and kung-fu actress in the '70s) and Wah Yuen (stuntman for Bruce Lee). The movie was hilarious (there was a moment when I laughed so hard I was crying) and the soundtrack great, yet at the same time, contributing to the overall comedic factor.

Regardless of whether you're a fan of Stephen Chow, you'll love this show.

Plot: In Shanghai in the thirties, times are dangerous and gangs rule the streets. The most notorious of these, the Axes, strike fear into the hearts of honest citizens and inspire admiration in one young wannabe, Sing (Stephen Chow). One day, in a nondescript slum on the outskirts of town, he wreaks havoc when he recklessly poses as an Axe member and causes a veritable riot between the real gang members and the denizens of a housing project – who happen to be strangely well-versed in the art of kung fu.

Reviews
Hollywood Reporter
eFilmCritic
Film Threat

Happy New Year!

May all your dreams for 2005 come true!