Word of the day: "theodicy"

Today, I was once again flagellated by the terrible wrath of the Lord. As I was smoking in the stairwell outside my office (riding on the theological principle of: "vicarious atonement"), I received a phone call from another prospective interviewer - Credit Suisse First Boston.

Immediately I leapt to my feet and proceeded to a quieter corner to converse. The interviewer this time was a dulcet-voiced lady, who proceeded to ask me the usual range of questions: "why are you leaving", "describe your current job", etc etc. Just as I felt that the interview was getting on fine... the phone cut off.

Now, Malaysian mobile phones don't show caller ID for international calls, so you can imagine my howls of rage and frustration that would have echoed along the corridors, if I hadn't been constrained by the desire not to attract attention from passers-by and colleagues.

After half an hour, with no call returned, I wrote a restrained email to the interviewer (thankfully I had acquired her address earlier) asking if she would be so good as to call me back. As controlled and professional as I tried to word it, I have this sneaking suspicion that a hint of insane hysteria could be discerned between the lines.

A morose hour later, and I'm here typing this blog entry in my office, with no response either on the email or phone front.

Once again, the terrible wrath of the Lord has smote down my dreams. Nonetheless, I am merely beaten, not broken.

"What is a man? He is one who, when the floods have destroyed his harvest, shakes his fist at the heavens - and then returns to plant anew. He is one who remains undismayed by Fortune's fickleness."

And in the immortal stanzas of Rudyard Kipling:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breath a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on";

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings - nor lose the common touch;
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run -
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And - which is more - you'll be a Man my son!

Bring it on, God. Having being laid so low these days, any cataclysm that can drive me deeper into the abyss will certainly be an aesthetically pleasing and darkly humourous one.

On a more bleakly amusing note, today I was performing some of my usual patented Enron Lite(tm) techniques for enhancing the Bank's profitability. As I discussed a particularly elegant maneuver my boss and I had worked out, this conversation arose.

Me: "So after we finish setting this up in the system they (business end) can do CERTAIN THING right?"

(CERTAIN THING being an amazingly elaborate accounting/business sleight-of-hand to move certain numbers to the right part of the P&L column)

Boss: "Yup."

Me: "And it means they can like jack up their profits forever right? Or at least until the regulators catch us, by which time we'll all be long gone?"

Boss: "Yup."

Me: "And it means our group profits go up, our share price goes up, our shareholders are happy, our bosses earn more from their options, and the business end gets more massive 12-month bonuses right?"

Boss: "Yup." (my boss isn't as garrulous as I am)

Me: "And we still get the same pitiful pay and kacang bonuses that we always get, even though if we've just helped the bank make shitloads more money right?"

Boss: "Yup. I'm glad to see your chain of reasoning is so good. So when do you think you can finish it up?"