Build up to the proverbial tiki bar

My Out of office reply on my last day at work, set right after I sent out my farewell email -

"Hi, thanks for your email. I'm already out of the office, making a beeline for the tiki bar. Please contact dotdotdot."

Its been over a week since, and I havent made it to the tiki bar yet, but I will. Have been sifting through mounds of disorganized mail, renewing old friendships, and squealing with delight when Matthew proposed to Mary in the Christmas special of Downton Abbey. Making sure I've got my international license for that drive up and down California wine country and the coast, doing the visa check, and scouring for hotels in various cities.

When I make it to the proverbial tiki bar, sometime hopefully in the next week or so, I'll send a pigeon.

Stay, get paid.

The 3 magic words.

My mid year review has been done, and I'm ranked in the top 3 of my class. Given the recent promotion into this class and new competitors from Australia, I'd say it's a fairly decent job. That pay adjustment helped bollocks. Hehe. At the very least, I still get to sleep at night knowing I do decently meaningful stuff, even though it still tires the hell out of me. All this doesn't negate the fact that I'm truly tired, and pacing is key.

The only thing to remember when one is cranky and wants to throw in the towel is that, at least they pay you, right?

Getting sent off to hong kong tonight to see clients, but the only thing I'm looking forward to is the Yung Kee duck and sharksfin.

in 2 and a half months...

1) The world (or the stock markets, at least) still can't make up its mind whether it wants to go back into a recession or not

2) I turned down an internal opportunity because I realized I might go out of my mind if I took it - it meant more work. It has since gone to my colleague. I'm not sure if I should have took it and brought my career further faster, with infinitely more travelling, but I know then that if I took it, that would have spelled the end of my sanity. Pacing myself is new, but I reckon I can learn it.

3) Have broken my back traipsing around Europe on a marketing trip to see investors - we made a fairly good team hunkering from airport to airport and city to city every day - team meaning my colleague carried the presentations while I decided what cab we took, what meals we ate, and where to dump the extra presentation slides. Now I know Paris Charles de Gaulle has the cheapest Longchamps but the most idiotic taxi drivers and Stockholm's Arlanda has fantastic salmon roe and stuffed moose. Copenhagen, Dublin and Edinburgh airports are but a blur. And London's Terminal 5 VAT desk only opens at 630am.

4) I got my car park amen hallelujah after 20months of waiting. Its reserved parking too so it means no jostling or racing for the limited first come first serve parking. Only catch? Its in the basement. Basement's creepy.

5) And this one's really random but amusing - Forbes Asia did a piece on the Popiah King and to quote them, he managed to "tap into the informal Chinese lending community" for 16,000 dollars. Seriously, thats what tai ee longs are called nowadays???!
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What went down in Europe:-

Got to stay at the Langham for 2 nights

Saw London from the back of a cab (actually same can be said for the other cities too)

The morning walk in the Tuileries was probably a nice highlight of the trip, as was the Goyards

SOmetimes you just can't win, you know?

But sometimes, you can. Getting to a place in life where you get to see this, is winning enough for most of us.

CPO Boy Said

We just took off from KLIA on the KL-SIN shuttle, about 8 hours ago. CPO Boy, lounging across the aisle from my seat, leaned forward and said,

"Someone told me that being an investment banker is like going to heaven without ever having to die."

I retorted,

"Oh God, no. It's more like being able to have airconditioning in hell."

Welcome to June

Used to love June. The school holidays where we could do nothing but cycle around the village. How silly I was to be dreaming of growing up.

Now I'm all 'up' and older, I would give anything for a school holiday again. Heading to Singapore .. again. Makes me wish the island adjacent to our fair nation is Bali (like where my Indonesian colleague went for a coal conference), so I can attend my IATA conference there.

But as they say, what is, is what is. And so I make the dutiful trek down.

The only consolation being I can stay at my home away from home. I have tried Marina Bay Sands, and its impersonal coolness, sometimes loud and tacky (thanks to the Chinese tourists) and definitely touristy vibe is frankly not what a weary person wants to come back to after a long day.

Upps. Late for flight.

OHMAYYYYGODDDDD!

A month since my last post. A lot has happened, I got a job offer, I lost a job offer (well, not lost, but the role substantially changed to something entirely different and I wasn't sure I wanted to 'downgrade' myself). When you have been in investment banking, commercial (or horror upon horrors, SME) banking ain't really your cuppa tea.

I got notified of my bonus, or whatever there is of it, and went on a mental MIA for days as I took out my bonus frustration on quest upon quest of Sims Medieval - at least in the Sims I get Sims coins and wealth when I complete a quest well, I thought sadly, but I killed myself for a year for THIS SORT OF PAYOUT?!

I wasn't the only one, believe me. A certain sector head completely disappeared for days. You see, you have sacrificed, allowed your personal life to deteriorate, friends to dwindle, tempers to shorten, all in the name of chasing the payout, so you tend to take it very badly when the bonus comes out short of expectations. I wasn't the worst hit, I got promoted at least. And given regional coverage. (which means more trips to Europe and USA)

Management is in damage control mode, but although I have the best A class bosses (and I really mean A star, not @$$ class), I can't help but feel they were powerless to do anything in this case. Some idiot traders lost an unfathomable amount of money; the only small hint that anything was wrong was a tiny news paragraph on our bank closing down a certain prop desk in March.

I can technically still buy my sports car, but the tinge of excitement isn't there anymore. Because he bought a house over the weekend, and I'm wetting my pants thinking about the housing payments, although he has told me not to worry about a thing.

But a RM1.8mn house before renovation? OHHHMAYYYYGODDDDD.

Yes, exactly the same reaction when I checked into my bank account from Marina Bay Sands Singapore tonight to see my post-tax bonus amount. Can't wait to move to Ritz Carlton tomorrow. Marina Bay seems really ... pedestrian. We had to queue to check-in, and S has been threatening to tell me what the mainland Chinese that practically haunt that place do in the nice infinity pool at the Skypark. That on its own put me off going to the pool, so we just stuck to Ku De Ta.

what happens when the old becomes the new again?

Just when I thought I could wind down after a Singapore marketing trip last week, I find out I have to go to Jakarta and Bangkok next week. I guess this fully justifies my trip extension in Bangkok to go raid Chatuchak again.

Funny how as you get older, you get fairly set in your tastes and ways and you keep going back to the same places. I have a very specific set of things to do in Bangkok - where I've trekked to every year for the past 3 years to pay homage to Chatuchak, Platinum Mall, the tailor at Amari Watergate and my favourite Thai restaurant.

Similarly if I ever go to Singapore, it will be a beeline to that Singapore seafood restaurant at the Singapore Flyer and Takashimaya's Nespresso for my coffee pods. In Paris, it will be the food hall at Galeries Lafayette, that quirky colorful shop at the base of the Sacre Coeur and the signature Laduree on the Champs Elysees.

So, in that respect, how would you view a possible decision of going back to a familiar place in your career? Arguably, most things are different, but some things will likely be the same. Would you deem it as mere nostalgia, a sure sign that what you actually should be doing is keep moving on and away?

We grow as human beings. I am still too young to have learnt the lesson that sometimes you may grow back into a place which you thought you have outgrown. But I am learning about it, and I hope I will make the right choice when it boils down to crunch time.

There are a lot of things I miss - it's now just making sure I can handle facing the things I don't like which I'm positively sure are still there, in addition to returning to the good that has changed much, and to be (hopefully) instrumental in charting a course that goes nowhere but upwards and onwards.

Or in an oft-quoted wise man's words with almost always a solemn look on his face - "To infinity and beyond"

Good Morning Sunday

It never fails to amaze me how different things can get in 5 years.

5 years ago, a person I never thought would cheat, now suddenly has put some doubts in my mind about his integrity.

5 years ago, a guy who used to hate *with a capital H* going clubbing or for any club events - is now making a living attending those parties.

Few years ago, A and I were seated in the grandstand, equipped with caps and flags in the F1 spirit. This year, I just want to rest and rest ahead of the busy on-the-road schedule again. Yes, Singapore Tues to Thursday - the only saving grace is we have managed to book ourselves the Ritz Carlton instead of dodgy Fullerton and cheap ass looking Swissotel.

*shakes head*

And have I changed for the better?

God only knows.

Waiting for our compensation announcements is what I do now, rather than waiting with bated breath to see whether I got a Distinction or Credit in International Trade and Investments.

If the money's good, I'm allowing myself a "reckless"-type purchase - having rationalized that I don't want to work so hard and make it to my mid-30s and THEN only have a mid-life crisis and spend WAY more money - so might as well buy that sportscar now.

He he he. Cross fingers?

Heading to Bodega for brunch with S on cloudy Sunday morning. Spirits are up, and determined to enjoy the day before the terrible week starts.

Have a good Sunday!

Nusajaya needs bees

The not so sexy part of my job involves travelling long distances to poke around dusty construction sites or view millions of boring scale models which start to look the same by the time you see Semi-D Phase 20 of the n-th housing development.

Avoid such a visit I can't, because its exactly what my job depends upon.

So it was that I found my bleary-eyed self in the back seat of the car in the wee morning hours, clutching a pillow in one hand and a coffee tumbler in the other, bracing myself for a long drive down to Johor.

Besides getting diarrhoea and having to make a pit stop in Pagoh, the journey to Nusajaya was a fairly uneventful one.

The interesting part really, was how much of nothing there was in all those catalytic developments in Nusajaya. While the residential part is slowly coming up, they still remain far out of the average Johorean's price range, and depending on Singaporeans to turn their noses towards this end of the Causeway to sell your houses sounds just a tad bit too high beta for me. If Singaporeans come, they come like bees. How many times have you just seen one bee buzzing around with no hive nearby? To be fair to them, their houses are actually very good and well-designed. If I were working in Singapore, I wouldn't think twice about buying a house in Nusajaya.

In all, the client I accompanied was a bit let down, he had hoped to see people, but all we saw most of the time was land. Clearing land, plantation land, dusty land, undulating land, golf land, land under construction, but seriously very few people.

I pray for my stock coverage sake that those catalytic developments in 2012 do not get derailed by change of government, change of heart, or change of economic winds.

We left at 5, stopped to have tea in Pagoh, and then arrived back in the city by 8pm. If my driver hadn't insisted he wanted to stop for tea and chat with a fellow driver he bumped into whose from an office building near ours in KL, we could have got back earlier. I think he fancies himself a pilot, the way he sped down the highway.

Luckily I was asleep otherwise I might have freaked out.

Lucky my boss wasn't in the car too - the driver might have gotten fired. Boss thinks he drives too fast.

the whole world is up in the air

So Gaddafi is still hanging on, while Portugal's PM quit in a row over the country's messed up finances. Germany is reiterating its vows to go nuke-free and leaning towards renewable energy, while the paranoid Swiss have been warned NOT to take them iodide or iodine pills to avoid jeopardizing their health in the absence of a speck of radiation.

Meanwhile some market punters are advising people to buy timber stocks on a reconstruction theme for Japan - a very good fact pointed out was that a good number of people are dead and more likely than not the survivors would be getting their asses out of Sendai and Fukushima faster than you can say Jack Sprat once they actually get their hands on some petrol. So who exactly would you be building houses for?

But I've shed tears for Japan, not because CNN's Anderson Cooper or BBC did a particularly good job of covering the poignancy of the situation there, but because the truth stood out even when no words were said. And today I cried again because I thought Elizabeth Taylor was beautiful.

I suspect its PMS but whatever.

Credit Suisse is taking clients to the Sevens in Hong Kong, while we're trying to work on upping our market share. My friend in UBS got a 60% pay rise last year and he still complained about a bad bonus.

CPO Boy and I were lunching at Shangri-La when both our peripheral vision picked up on Jacob Yeoh, heir apparent to everything under the sun. We had initially been speculating about the table he subsequently approached, wondering if those were the Rothschild bankers.

I was of the opinion they looked more 1MDB than Rothschild, but CPO Boy said they had an air about them. I still think they're 1MDB.

At this point I need to categorically state that our lunchtime conversation is in no way a reflection of our professional selves - in fact, we spend 13-14 hour weekdays working hard not to drop the ball, speaking to clients from New York to Tokyo, pouring our soul into writing kickass and classy reports that we're not even sure anyone reads, to be honest.

But its a tough life.

I realized how bad it had become and how involved I have been in work when I decided I wanted to have a little night out with friends this Saturday at Velvet and found that I could only call one person.

The rest would probably scream at me and say where have I been for a year.

It's been so long since our days at Velvet - I clearly remember our episodes of downing Moet (looking back, who the hell downs champagne?), becoming totally best friends with people you just only met and seeing them week after week. I certainly do not miss it, but a work-imposed hermit-like existence isn't very ideal either.
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Oh bollocks. A reporter just called me and asked what I think about a new acquisition and I realized I forgot to check the stock exchange today after market close.

yeah, life is bitchin'. -_-

its a love-hate thing

Today I scream and whine and moan and bleat about having to call the two most idiotic clients on earth - and slink away for a corporate lunch feeling absolutely depressed.

But suddenly as a result of that lunch, I get sent to... guess where....

Tokyo!!!!!

Again. For the 2nd time in 5 months. The reason why I'm so excited is because:-

1) Yesterday's cursory check for a 5 night holiday package for two in the cheapest option hotel in MASHolidays website cost RM22,906. Flying economy too.

2) I get to hunt down the fantastic sharks fin broth in Tokyo Station and whack and whack as much as I can

3) I get to go to that back lane alley in Tsukiji market and have that bloody fantastic sashimi rice.

4) Head to Laduree and Nenrinya at Ginza and buy back boxes and boxes of macarons and baumkuchens

Dammit I'm drooling already.

Oh, well and of course, there's work too.

Yeah.

square one

It's funny how you can go round the world but end up coming back to square one, right where you left off not awhile ago.

Case in point - The contractors, after hacking about half the kitchen floor, hacked right back to the doorstep of the entrance to my home, and realized the leak was less than 20cm away from where they started digging. If only they had dug 20cm in that direction, they would have found that leak 3 weeks ago.

Case in point number 2 - I keep telling myself I do not need a coffee machine after spotting the sleekest black and aluminum Nespresso machine in Hong Kong 6 months ago, on my first marketing trip. I go everywhere, unable to put lingering wants to rest, and end up buying the coffee machine and 25 sleeves (of 10 capsules, ie 250 cups of coffee) in the same shop in Hong Kong's IFC mall where I first saw it.


A splurge definitely. But a splurge I've worked hard for this year. And anything that helps me wake up in the morning helps me work better too.

*rationalizes the exorbitant purchase well*
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I start work tomorrow. Bring on the 2 and a half month countdown, baby!

Nothing can derail this conviction, ever.

on the road again

What is it about travelling that can be quite lonely? I used to aspire to be one of those fast-walking, always in a hurry executives with a Berry in one hand, swiftly maneuvering their Tumi carry on case through the airport crowd.

Now I am one of them, but I sometimes dread it. The social chatter, company dinners, the facade one puts up in the many hushed conversations in hotel lobby lounges. I especially hate foreign hotel rooms, and can hardly sleep well. That's been a problem since I was a child, this inability to fall asleep in a foreign place.

And tomorrow I face a room full of more questions on the 3 reports I'm going to talk about.

The Fullerton hotel is surprisingly not as impressive I thought it would be. The room is small, the size of my room at home, which I'm happy with at home, but not for a 5-star hotel. But I'm just happy with the small things - finding a nice enough laundry bag and toiletries to hoard and take back home.

Ahh the little hobbies that keep life simple.
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Would I date a guy who likes the simple things, and doesn't mind staying at home? Well, I've tried dating "exciting" and all i remember of our times together is hanging out in nightspots with like 30 other people I've never met before. He'd probably stay out late drinking, and after awhile I'd get tired of tagging along, preferring to stay at home, and sooner or later, we'd fall apart.

Not too exciting then, huh? But how do you bring exciting to the guy who likes simple things, mix em both together and find a cocktail mixture for a life together?
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Sleepy already. Time to sink back into the sheets and dream a little dream.

Good night.

all the simple things

I just emerged from one of the worst results week ever. End-February is usually not a good month to pursue anything at all, not even sleep, because that's when almost 100% of companies under one's coverage choose to release their full year '10 results.

And the way those companies approach this is akin to a horde of bargain-hungry old aunties making a concerted beeline for that cheap bag in Chatuchak market.

The last day of the week was finished off with 3 companies reporting and all I did Friday was stay on an adrenaline high pushing out note after note after note. I thank the cheeses that 2 were in line and only one resulted me in having to scurry panickedly to their head office in KL Sentral in a thunderstorm on PUBLIC TRANSPORT to listen to why their earnings were 65% above my forecasts.

By the time all the notes were finished and I handed over to my assistant in India to do the housekeeping and standardizing and formatting, it was 230am. I'd been working for 19 hours.

Then tomorrow I fly out for a week on the road to Singapore and Hong Kong, with my reports and game face in tow.

After an excruciating time, you know what's the only thing I want? A hairwash. Visit a furniture shop. Sleep.

The phrase 'all the simple things' is really underrated.

har, no old newspapers ar?

That was what the incredulous Bangla slash Paki slash I don't really know what race worker from the main contractor's office said to me, crouched by the base of my backyard wall.

This follows two weeks of uncertainty over whether the leaking water from my unit (which caused a dramatic lift breakdown a month back) was due to my renovating contractor's error or the main contractor's (if it was the latter, it meant no huge repair bill on my hands).

After establishing that my own contractor did not hack the pipes in the floor (where the supposed leak was coming from), I was pretty happy to sit back, take leave and let the main con drill / fix / hammer / dig whatever needed to be done. Do not fancy waking up to leaking tiles and smelly water.

The worker asked me for old newspaper and I realized that I had glossies upon glossies of InStyle and Elle Decor, but not a shred of old newspapers anywhere.

Moral of the story, however abstract and meaningless it may seem -
1) Print is going down the toilet in favour of digital media, as the younger population takes over

2) Always doggedly pursue a matter and postulate all avenues of possibilities to ensure you achieve your aim of passing the blame to someone else. I spent days drawing mental issue trees in my mind trying to come up with different scenarios which had the highest likelihood of resulting in me not having to pay for repairs.

So this is what I'm spending Valentine's Day doing. Listening to drilling sounds in my backyard area with my legs propped up on my sofa bench, popping kuih bangkit in my mouth and wondering if I should chop off my hair.

This also means, I am not at work.

Ya-the-HOO!!

some girls actually do have balls

Why is it some girls just have to put others down?

A female client put me through the grill and shredder this week. I have learnt that the client is not always smarter than you (as they have to cover more markets) and probably just want to impress on other people that they are smart.

Because frankly, her line of questioning didn't go anywhere except to contradict whatever I said. It got to the stage where she contradicted me back to the point where we started, and ended up contradicting herself in the process, which I calmly and sweetly pointed out by saying "Ahh, which is back to what I mentioned earlier at the beginning, where blablabla.."

She wouldn't give up, and started a whole new line of questioning which was utterly pointless save to probably drive home the point that 1) she totally doesn't have a life that she has to torment others, 2) she is superior than me cos she's my client and I have to take it and 3) her being fat and ugly must really be a thorn in her backside that she has to overcompensate elsewhere.

I have learnt patience. Yoda. Actually, you can't not have learnt it in this job where you meet literally hundreds of clients. Forced by circumstance, not choice.
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Except today I got so PMS-y I whined and whined about my assistant to my boss. An office-ful of guys sometimes don't get the point, because he said, "This is a problem. It needs to be fixed. Fix it like this. Otherwise, we fire him."

*rolls eyes*

I don't want to get anyone fired. I just want to rant, lah.

asking the world of me

The world, is asking the world of me.

I don't think I'm up for it. Initiating on a whole new company in a week, from modelling to report, is simply.... impossible. Try doing that when you're busy downgrading somebody else, meeting clients, going on conference calls, and having a useless associate who "forgets" to do the work and slinks off quietly from the office.

And has the ballsiness to, on the first day of the job, ask me to put his name together on my reports. And wants to email the big boss directly to ask, as if he's worried I will be selfish and won't ask.

What the *toot*.
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Was so exhausted I just COULDN'T get out of bed today. So here I sit at 9am, waiting for the jam to clear so I can head to the office. Plus a major hangover from a client dinner last night.

Still don't know if it's worth it. I'll check back in when the bonus comes.

Bonjour 2011

It's 2011, and I'm settling down to have my breakfast cum lunch meal of self-prepared seafood fusilli marinara.. at 530pm in the evening. The London sale buys are scattered haphazardly around my sofa and living room, evidence of a pretty disorganized unpacking strategy.

"Oooh these are the shoes i bought!" *tries on* *hmm looks good..* *then gets distracted*
"But what's this? Aaah my 50-pound Karen Millen dress which used to be 250 pounds!!* *grabs dress to try on, and shoes lie forgotten*
Repeat for the next 5 handbags, 2 pairs of shoes, 8-9 boxes of sprungli and laderach chocolates, tea boxes, soaps, accessories.

Flew home from my Europe holiday, and flew right into 2011.

The reality of the matter is, after spending the bulk of last year on sleepless nights, report launches, and killing myself over my job, I have absolutely no idea what to do with myself in 2011. All I know is I do NOT want a repeat of 2010, which explains why I told my boss yesterday I want another day's leave today to spend it curling up with vongole, blogging and distracting my friends who all went back to work today. I had to settle a whole lot of personal admin stuff like paying bills, doing laundry etc, but it's extremely boring to talk about one's laundry.

But shall I tell you about Paris? Yes, I shall. It started on a pretty sad foot (literally!) as I got hit with a bout of rheumatism on my legs. Yeah, shut up. Rheumy Achilles tendons are for 70 year olds apparently, but I've had them off and on since I was 10. It hits every time I sleep without covering my ankles in a blanket, and stupid me slept that way in the middle of a London winter.

Asking to die, seriously.

So we were waiting at the Gare du Nord metro for the train to go to our hotel when an old French dude taps me on the shoulder and starts sputtering away in French, pointing at my limping leg. I started stammering... "aahhh.. Je ne... parle pas..." when he said the word "Massage". So i decided it would be much easier to nod and say "oui, oui" than attempt to carry on a conversation with the ancient old dude who probably lived through the French revolution.

The rest of Paris, minus the bad leg, was breathtaking. Especially the *only* RM3k large Epi leather Noir LV Speedy I managed to bag! Those sort of price tag is unheard of! Oh but yes, the view from the Sacre Coeur was similarly mindblowing, too. This picture does not do it justice.

It was just very cold. Nearly got frostbite waiting at Trocadero to see the Eiffel Tower light up. And my ears nearly fell off in pain wandering around St Germain des Pres on an escargot hunt. The Notre Dame was depressing, mainly because we kept being accosted by people asking for donations and because I secretly am afraid of the Hunchback. And the only thing I remember from visiting the world-famous treasure trove of masterpieces and historical objets d'art, also known as the Louvre, is this picture.

C'est Paris pour vous.