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March 17, 2005

Inertia

Whirlwind The crisp white shirt hung un-ironed on the knob of the wardrobe door. The crisp beige-coloured tie hung untouched in the wardrobe. On a different day in probably a different universe, they would spell the first throngs of hope of a “getaway passport”.

I told them last evening about how I would see my “market value” (scares the life out of me when I consider myself more of a product and less of a human) plunge within the next decade if I still did not do anything about enhancing my resume. In a different society and in a different country, this would be of no consequence at all to people there.

One of them immediately remarked that ten years from now was a considerable length of time. A part of me echoed her sentiments and I thought about where I possibly could be ten years back. Probably I was still wearing jungle green and was looking forward to the day when I could collect my pink identity card. Back then, the prospect of going to university seemed so remote to me due to a few reasons. Little did I know…

So can history repeat itself once again? Am I on the verge of getting a supersonic push (for the better) in my career such that ten years from now, I would flash a satisfying smile when I thought back about this particular milestone of my life, which turned my career 180 degrees back on track?

We ended the night with them praying for me. Originally I did not want the whole session to be centered on my rants about how I was being treated like a commodity at work, but somehow they seemed interested. I was grateful for their concerns, yet I was never comfortable with always being in the centre of attention in these circumstances.

I examined the crisp white shirt I bought last evening. It was well-made and designed with cuts which attempt to enhance the average Asian male figure. Yet, I knew that at the moment, I was far from having the average Asian male figure, but one, which according to the headlines splashed across the first page of our national rags today, put me on the “obese” category. So much so that I could picture my ballooning paunch protruding when wearing the white shirt and the beige-coloured tie flowing round my belly area and unofficially making me the prime example of obese Singaporean male mentioned in the morning papers.

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There were times when the thoughts of how much better life would be if I were born in a different (and arguably) better place, where there would not be much gnashing of teeth while calculating and calculating over and over again the dreaded points system to be eligible for secondary citizenship in another land.

Last evening, I received a call from a couple I went on a road trip with not so long ago and from the brief conversation I had with the nice laddy, it seemed as though he was trying hard in adapting to the fact that any non-air-conditioned place here would surely guarantee a thick film of sweat and dust sticking on your skin perpetually. I asked about their attempts at applying for secondary citizenship in another land and he mentioned about how they realized that they were ineligible. So their plans now would be to look for employment and adapt back to the life here.

The words “been there, done that” flashed in my mind, but until now, I was still unable to determine if I was out of this whole cycle of feeling displaced.

Proofs of the pudding? Those little blue-and-white pills and those little comments made by people around me who had seen the carefree and joyful D W on holiday back Down Under and the brooding and depressive D W on this little speck of an island.

***

Posted by D W at March 17, 2005 02:57 PM