Today's word for the day is: "frenulum" (again, do be sure to look this one up:)

Again, I'm still trolling my daily experiences for interesting soundbites which I can display here. As an alternative, however, Gabriel was kind enough to let me know through diplomatic channels that (sic) "Angst is permitted, so long as it isn't the sole content of the post." Shall take that under advisement if I decide to utilise this blog as a more conventional whinge facility.

A friend of mine once noted that Gabriel seems to either have a eidetic memory, or way too much time on his hands to take down the copious notes he does. Certainly the experiences he relates are an acquired taste in literary terms - most of it, when experienced, is perceived as a dull, everyday affair. But when he writes it out in those full-on paragraph after paragraph of obsessively detailed recollection, it takes on a certain dry, whimsical quality to it. Granted, it *does* get terribly hard to read after a while(for which, Gabriel, I commend your clever use of paragraphing to break up the flow into interesting segments), but a lot of the value to readers is divided into:

a) From non-NS people, like myself, who find it a terribly amusing insight into just what a ridiculous institution military life, particularly *conscripted* military life in Singapore is. This rapidly pales after a while though, and I still find it somehow more amusing when related through the oral tradition, as opposed to the blogging one. Still, Gabriel does a pretty good job of keeping the narrative flow and the moments when he lets his personal feelings and prejudices creep into his recollections are often the best part. Actually, you should include some of our discussions about the political purposes of NS into this narrative:)

b) From NS-people who find the raconteur value of shared suffering and empathy. (A phenomenon I have witnessed often as, increasingly, all my Singaporean friends do *nothing* but talk about NS whenever they meet.) But some NS-men I know have said that Gabriel is (sic) "boh liao" for regaling a lot of the pointless details he does. Then again, it's *his* blog, and it makes sense that upwards of 80% of the content in this blog should be his. (I did a proportional word count)

Okay,. now that I've exercised my long-dormant prac crit skills -

Today my department head said that our new motto is "We are the House of Pain." In case anyone wants to know, I'm currently in the Risk Management department of a merchant bank, which basically entails comparing a lot of numbers with a lot of other numbers and setting policies to define the rules by which we compare these numbers. If certain numbers don't match other numbers, we go out and ask irritating questions of the people who actually make money for the bank - the derivatives traders, the treasury desks, the fixed-income instruments salespeople, etc etc. Basically, we're supposed to stop the future Nick Leesons from ruining this fine institution. In the process however, we make a lot of enemies. For instance, there was a time when, in a flash of bizarre literary acumen, the group treasurer quoted Juvenal to us: "Quis custodes ipsos custodiet", in the midst of a particularly heated discussion about the use of funds-transfer-pricing to prevent departments from masking their profits and PDS(private debt securities) valuation. Luckily I was there to translate on the behalf of my beleaguered colleagues, and so help negate somewhat our reputation as ill-educated miscreants bent on interfering with the honest, productive labour of our front-line profit centers. (Incidentally, the group treasurer never got a university degree, but was forced to do his MBA by upper management to maintain a certain professional image)

I previously compared my old job to the camaraderie of being in a distant garrison, fighting off barbarian hordes everyday, and dealing with a relentless, grasping emperor bent on levying harsh profits from our protectorate, while leaving us the dirty job of doing the actual collection and pacifying the natives. Well, in comparison, this job is kind of like being a mathematical Gestapo for the whole empire - quantifying, reporting, monitoring, surveiling, assessing, and interrogating all facets of an integrated empire. Certain similarities abound -most notably the sense of cohesion as a unit that arises from the travail of shared suffering. Not to mention the fact that the people we monitor are among the highest paid in the bank. We're talking twice-a-year salary adjustments here. One of them is even an ex-Miss Malaysia(one of the better-looking ones from the 80s). And how they hate us.

Curiously, the manner of their hatred tells me something about the occasionally paradoxical nature of human behaviour in a professional context. Most of the people in my department get along very well with the people we surveil on a personal level - going out together, having drinks, playing squash(there's a full sports facility on the 7th and 8th floors of this building - but it's terribly unsanitary), but when it falls to the professional context, it's a ruthless, no-holds barred guerilla war comprised of sniping memos, factional squabbling, petty politics and sometimes outright denunciation. Yet all this animus curiously fades away after working hours - I myself often amble in to the dealing room for a chat with the traders to pick up stock tips, watch CNN, or to simply further furnish my meager financial mathematics knowledge.

I work much lesser hours compared to my previous job, and my colleagues are more interesting to talk to on most levels compared to my previous job - Hasan being the notable example. Incidentally, Hasan, whom some might remember me regaling as an ex-money-launderer and arms smuggler, appears to have resigned his security guard position as well and gone back into his old trade. He emailed me from Amsterdam a week ago describing his experiences with hash cafes and making vague references to the Tora Bora region(I kid you not). I wish him all the best. Digression aside, however, the people here are mostly in the young-ish, educated yuppie mould - from the guy next to me who has his own elaborate Excel spreadsheet model for futures trading, to the British-educated LTTE-supporting(he showed us a rather disturbing Tamil Tigers fund-raising promo video which featured suicide bombers going for their last supper with the LTTE leader Vellupillai Prabhakaran) middle-aged Ceylonese guy who speaks a bit like Nehru.

My exact job focus is to automate many of the (extremely) manual processes by which all this number-crunching, comparison, and reporting is currently done. There's a good deal of sophisticated technology here, actually, but it's woefully under-utilised and the IT people downstairs are running ragged becuase they perform their function for the whole financial-services-conglomerate of which the merchant bank is the largest(by far) component. Unfortunately, the people in my department seem to have overestimated my IT skills(at least when they hired me, I think) - or at least my Microsoft Office skills, and thus far I've done a reasonable job of shooting down those expectations when they come to be with some obscure formatting issue. As a side-note, my Excel skills have shot up exponentially since working here - I live, breathe, and eat in a world of macros, charts, and formulae. A lot of my job thus far involves stating the obvious - along the lines of "we could do this faster if we wrote a macro for that." or "maybe we could do this step before that step." Still, the pace is pretty slack most of the time, and I've been given a list of projects and the liberty to pick and fulfil them at my own pace. This lassiez-faire attitude prevails mainly because there is this constant, messianically promised technological change over the horizon that will solve all our problems - so in the interim we carry out minor fire-fights and pot-hole filling. A colleague who has been working here for 17 years says that as long as she remembers, almost all of her projects and assigned work has fallen into the latter category, constantly living with the promised utopian hope of a killer new system....and failing to deliver. Pretty much like the role of religion in my life.

Overall, as I mentioned, the pros outweigh the cons of the jobs here, if it only weren't for the horrific traffic. It takes me half an hour to move 250m from my office during peak hour(the building abuts a major trunk road in the heart of the city).

Am basically living the life of a freshie in the city, with a reasonable career prospects, occasional late nights of work, regular pub-crawls, and mid-afternoon karaoke sessions. (There's a 10RM a head lunch-time special in this karaoke lounge next door.) Another advantage now is that I have access to a far greater variety of food now(*shitloads* of good cornershops, stalls, restaurants, within walking distance), and I no longer have to take my meals alone. For the last two weeks, I've actually had different things for lunch everyday - a totally novel experience so far.

Other little eccentricities of city-living including parking in an unpaved open lot run by a toothless old man whose idea of parking spaces is to point your car in the direction of any open space. This space, I might add is near one of the densely forested pockets you can still incongrously find in and around downtown KL, and it's next to a bunch of deserted pre-war shophouse lots which seemed to have served as a storyboard for Mambo(the Australian fashion label with the .. weird .. surrealist aesthetic - you should know what I'm talking about, Andrew)-inspired graffiti. As a result, walking to my car after 8 pm can be a slightly morbid experience, particularly when I park near the wall that boasts a lovingly distorted, Rorschach-type mural of anatomically-correct pelvises.

I seriously wonder where my life heads from here. (WARNING: This is the bit where the angst comes in). I did a lifestyle audit the other day, and checked against it for compliance with my goals as of a year ago, when I started worrying about graduation, work, and that terrifying thing called a future. Here's how far reality complies with my intended aims:

Pros:
a) I have a stable and reasonably well-paying job(by local standards for a fresh graduate with mediocre grades)
b) I have a(reasonably) interesting job in the finance industry with (reasonable) career prospects if I work hard.
c) I have a job with acceptable hours(get up at 7:30am, usually home around 7:30pm)
d) Weekends off(!) - compared to the previous horrifying experience of spending weekends at apartment showrooms trying to scavenge for loans from wealthy customers who pay for expensive condominiums in cash.
e) I have greater access to movies, animes, vcds, games. The sole exception to this happy state is *books*, which are decidedly cheaper, but with a much more limited range. Still, I generally can find most of what I'm looking for, and the local Kinokuniya is pretty good with orders - although I do miss the specialist and antique bookstores in Australia. Surprisingly, the VCD pirates here pirate an *astonishing* range of movies - I've found Sundance and Cannes-nominated indie flicks at roadside stalls, and ironically, these tend to be of better quality rips than the usual head-bob-shadows that most blockbusters comprise of. Am gradually making the transition to DVD, but mostly for selected titles in which I *really* want to get into in terms of production, thematic commentary, etc etc... prime examples to date include the Matrix Special Edition DVD, Fight Club, and Memento. Incidentally, Fight Club and Memento are my absolute hands-down favourite movies of all time.
f) I have a reasonable amount of time in the evenings to do what I want, and reasonable privacy within limits
g) I have a car. Better still, I have a CD-burner(after years of being harangued by everyone for not getting one:), and I can equip my car with my own compilations at last! There is a curious emotional investment into creating the perfect compilation for the perfect occasion - ref: Nick Hornby's High Fidelity.
h) I have credit cards. Actually, this may be a major con in the long run. *glumly*
i) I am in a functional, albeit emotionally and financially trying, long-distance relationship with a significant other who understands(mostly) and respects(barely) me and my numerous issues.
j) Food is way better here, and cheaper too.
k) Much living expenses subsidised by living with parents(notable exceptions being long-distance phone bill, and car petrol:)
l) (Afterthought) Easier access to cheap pornography
m) (Afterthought x2) Mother kindly paid for a subscription to The Economist. Its dry wit and insightful handling of esoteric, yet significant topics have provided much good reading material over the past 6 months.

Cons:
a) I have virtually no friends here, save for my roommate from Melbourne, and seeing each other day-in, day-out for three years made us resolve to start seeing other people when we got back here. Nothing to do with personal animosity or our little domestic squabbles such as his horror at the bathroom tiles turning from porcelain to sepia in the month he was away at Ayers Rock. But we simply have different lives now. He works in one of the Big Four accounting firms, and hangs out with a bunch of equally young, CPA-hungry auditors of the same age demographic. They go hiking, island-resort trips, watch movies, etc... In contrast, I'm the youngest person in my department, the only fresh graduate they've hired in years, and one of the three unmarried people. Not exactly much room for socialising there, other than steadily exploring together all the various mamak and corner coffeeshops of downtown KL during lunchtime.
b) Am still living with my family, and all the attendant complications, restrictions, demands on time, intrusions on privacy(particularly between 8-10pm), sharing of my PC with mother, issues with freedom of movement, squabbles over behaviour accountability, and various vestigial adolescent neuroses too pathetic to mention here.
c) Absence of broadband(!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!) I HATE SINGLE DIGIT KB/S DOWNLOAD SPEEDS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
d) Financial independence still crippled by slowly servicing existing massive Australian-dollar denominated debts.
e) Can't smoke in bedroom any longer(a strange amenity I never really appreciated until I got back home)
f) I have a difficult relationship with a far more successful Significant Other which encompasses a vast social, academic, and future-potential gap.Not to mention the geographic one, which looks to be maintained for at least a few more years.
g) Lack of sex. (it IS one of the basic human needs, you know.)
h) TRAFFIC. The relationship between the time I leave home and the time taken to get to work is NOT a linear curve. It's a dizzyingly exponential upward line in which leaving the house by a difference of five minutes can add up to 20 minutes extra travel time. I kid you not - I have done studies.
i) Still can't afford the killer PC I had lovingly planned to build once I had an income.
j) No more opportunities for killer alcohol binges with friends(no big loss, though, when measured against the puking, the cleaning up, the waking up next to a dead cat with your hair shaved off and your whole body reeking of soya sauce, Dijon mustard, Singer lubricating oil, and vinegar....)
k) Major internal psychological issues with attaining "ZEN". Recently I've tried to cast my life in terms of attaining little, interim, context-specific victories as opposed to larger, more futile dreams for abstracts such as happiness, success, etc. "As Good As It Gets" thinking. For the most part, I have had a pretty good success rate (hacking my DVD-ROM to be region-free, adding a few trinkets like an embossed pewter mug as decor for my Spartan bedroom...), but for some reason I still find it difficult to still my transient cravings for things such as a BMW M3, being able to regularly afford dinners at Kingfisher(a top-notch seafood restaurant in the region of 400RM a head, but well worth every sen!), having a philosopher/lingerie model life-partner, having stacks of cash piled up in drawers(which I am told my former employer's younger son has in his apartment), and other base cravings, some of which are antithetical to the kind of person I like to think I've pruned myself to be. This kind of wild, endemic dissatisfaction with one's state in life is seriously hampering my ability to deal with people(and was made far, far worse in my previous job when I had to attend to customers opening 200K trust accounts for their 2 year old children). Am still fighting a struggle to re-hit being (sic) "fucking Zen" about my whole life. Stillness within!
l) My writing skills and vocabulary have noticeably degenerated.

(Incidentally, anyone ever heard of the republic of Bashkortostan? Sounds like something from an issue of Mad magazine.)

And, finally, in response to Tahara

I like Rahxephon for the aesthetics, but it falls too much into the archetype pioneered by Neon Genesis - big semi-organic mecha(oh, how many people forget that Guyver was the first truly semi-organic mecha that made it big:), depressed whackos, mysterious surreal shit, etc etc. It works sometimes if they have good production values(such as Gasaraki), or take the comedic approach(which Dual Parallel does), but often it fails - which is why you get draggy rip-offs like Argento Soma.

Incidentally, I should clarify - I watched Trigun a while ago, but in Chinese subtitles. Chinese illiteracy is a serious impediment to anime watching in SE Asia, particularly if you don't have broadband to download and actually have to buy pirated box sets from Hong Kong. Also, my first viewing of Cowboy Bebop was *very* disjoint, episodes here and there(same with Kenshin and Slayers), so I finally got all 26 episodes to watch from back-to-back.

I actually watched the first 6 eps of Infinite Ryvius(up to the point where they took off, and Blue got hold of the only gun), and I'm told it pans out like Lord of the Flies meets Red Dwarf. Intriguing way to put it - but it has a very jazzy, dreamy sound-track, and it certainly has a *huge* cast of characters. However, I've put in on hold until I can assemble a full english-fansubbed copy, which may take a while. Need to prioritise.

Prominent animes I enjoyed lately are Vandread 2(arguably the best CGI in the industry) and Full Metal Panic. The latter, at least visually, seems to be an odd combination in neoclassical anime; a strange melange of both You're Under Arrest!(for the female characters particularly) and Nadesicco(the crew of the Tuatha de Danaan - a nice little nod to Celtic myth:). Oh yes- Serial Experiment Lain - which falls squarely into the "weird" category - and is seriously lacking in the translation:) Nonetheless, the idea of homogeneity of ego through Internet interaction strikes a certain bizarre chord with me.

AXN here shows one series I particularly want to watch: Now and Then; Here and Now - mainly because the story sounds fairly intriguing....

Basically, however, I've seriously cut back on my anime watching time, and decided to focus, in this order: computer games, books, movies, anime. These days I only watch anime after quick weekeend trips to Singapore to stock up on burned CDs from my broadband-equipped comrades. With regards to the stuff you watch - I generally don't get off on dramas, sports, or pure comedies or anything too rooted in contemporary reality(which is why, no matter how hard I try, I can't get into Love Hina, His and Hers Circumstances, Golden Boy, GTO, Initial-Z, Slam Dunk, Fruit Basket, etc etc), but I've heard good things about Angelic Layer. Yu Yu Hakoushu.. well - the artwork seems a bit too oddly old-fashioned for me, for some reason, and the story a tad too hokey - I'd rather watch 3x3 Eyes if I want to watch undead heroes:). However, am still actually faintly interested in some classic stuff like the old Captain Harlock OAVs, El Hazard, and even Orange Road Kimagure.

Erm - as for Neverwinter Nights, I'm still squarely in the single-player campaign. Having played computer games since the time when you loaded up MS-DOS first and when PCs didn't have a hard drive, I've found it quite difficult picking up on multiplayer stuff. Even tried Everquest, and never really worked out. In addition, a dial-up connection inhibits my online gaming tendencies even further, and most of my bandwidth is needed for Kazaa downloads of porn and mp3s.

I want a PDA. I want an I-Paq, actually. Or a Treo. Or even an Accompli. I also want a Casio Exilim(digicam AND mp3 player in a *tiny* package - http://www.dpreview.com/news/0203/02031402casioexilim.asp). I have to get over my obsessive fixation with consumer electronics as a metaphor for all the things my life isn't - efficient, high-tech, slick, and shiny.

*mutters Tylerian mantras* "The things you own, end up owning you. Self-improvement is masturbation. Self-destruction is the answer. It's only after you've lost everything, are you free to do anything. May I never be content. Our Great War is a spiritual war... our Great Depression is our lives. Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate, so we can buy shit we don't need. We were raised on television to believe that we'd all be millionaires, movie gods, rock stars, but we won't. And we're slowly learning that fact. And we're very, very pissed off. We're designed to be hunters and we're in a society of shopping. There's nothing to kill anymore, there's nothing to fight, nothing to overcome, nothing to explore. In that social emasculation this everyman is created. Reject the basic assumptions of civilization, especially the importance of material possessions. I feel like putting a bullet between the eyes of every panda that won't screw to save its species. I want to open the dump valves on oil tankers and smother all the French beaches I'd never see. I want to breathe smoke. You're not your job. You're not how much money you have in the bank. You're not the car you drive. You're not the contents of your wallet. You're not your fucking khakis. You're the all-singing, all-dancing crap of the world. You are not special. You are not a beautiful or unique snowflake. You are the same decaying organic matter as everything else."

"Losing all hope is freedom."

As for umami - check out http://www.nature.com/neuro/press_release/nn0200.html

Okay, I've just spent a few hours appearing productive in front of my PC at work. Time to knock off now - and of all the little blessings I've received to date, one of the *best* is finally being in a job with Internet access.