"What's so great about the truth? Try lying for a change, it's the currency of the world."

Just watched Closer. It's a movie with exquisite conversations, and not much deeper meaning; the best kind to watch given that these days I find it difficult to look past the immediacy of instant gratification. The conversation between Clive Owen (of Privateer 2: The Darkening fame, heh) and Natalie Portman is particularly brilliant, and for the less verbally inspired, she looks great as a stripper.

"I hate retro. I don't believe in the future. So where does that leave me?"

I hope to have a similar break-up conversation to this one day:

"I'll sign [the divorce papers] on one condition. We skip this, we go to my sleek new surgery, and we christen the patient's bed with our final fuck. I know you don't want it, and I know you think I'm sick for asking, but that's what I'm asking. For old times' sake. Because I'm obsessed with you. Because I can't get over you unless - Because I think on some small level you owe me something for deceiving me so exquisitely. For all these reasons, I am begging you to give me your body. You be my whore, and in return I will pay you with your liberty. You do this, I swear I will not contact you again.

I'm going to the bar. I assume you still drink vodka tonic?"

"I'm doing this because I feel guilty, and because I pity you. You know that, don't you?"

"Yes."

"Feel good about yourself?"

"No. But I know you love a guilty fuck."

I like conversations. Snappy, witty dialogue, perfect, back-and-forth lines, that glimmer of shared understanding, an intimate verbal sympatico, the perfect moment when a line is delivered that makes absolute sense only to the people talking. A pity that real life isn't so exquisitely scripted; but in some ways it enhances the value of a good conversation when you get it - it was brought forth, spontaneously, crystallizing from context and circumstance (catalysed by alcohol, more often than not), like the first self-replicating macromolecule that rose from the primordial porridge.

Those few moments that work are almost enough to compensate for all the faux pas, the solecisms (solecisii? solecissa? what the fuck IS the plural of solecism), the uncomfortable silences, the embarrassing gaffes, the stammering, the breathing and the grasping for words that never quite fall into place until the conversation's over and you're walking away with your ears burning.

Almost.

"Depressives don't [want to be happy]. They want to be unhappy to confirm they're depressed. If they were happy they couldn't be depressed anymore. They'd have to go out into the world and live. Which can be depressing. "

It's always fun to see someone take pride in their work.

To wit re Gabriel's sentiments on institutional commentary as opposed to genuine cathartic diarizing: Why am I being taxed 20% - sans permissible deductions - just because I worked more than 3 but less than 6 months in Singapore in 2004? I'd have to be earning at least $160k to be hit with that kind of rate. Damn it, haven't I contributed sufficiently to the local GDP over the last year?

Well, at least in the entertainment sector; even Geylang whores pay taxes & draw CPF. The legal ones, that is. I'm told they get a special type of employment pass, a yellow card. And apparently this pass is only extended to ASEAN migrants, not PRCs. I suppose this is in line with the government's policy in enhancing cross-regional trade to fight off a flood of cheap Chinese imports. Furthermore, for males to work as pimps, apparently there's a plethora of requirements to do with age, education (probably the only job where you have to prove your formal education is insufficient before they take you on), and absence of alternate means to support your family. Or so I hear, of course.

My team at work comprises of an Ecuadorean, a Belgian, a South African, several Singaporeans, two Malaysians, several Indians^2 (ie. India Indians), a Canadian, a Lebanese and we have a Scottish boss. When I first joined, I was told: "We're like the UN, only with the unimportant countries."

Ironically, I speak more Mandarin in the office now than I ever did my whole working life; the Singaporeans like to assert their cultural identity I guess. The other Malaysian barely speaks Cantonese.

After a few years of working in the industry of lubricating Mammon's hind tit; of helping the obscenely rich get obscenely richer; of contributing to a system that is dedicated to the relentless accrual of meaningless increments of fabulous wealth, it occurs to me that I enjoy my work not in spite of its absence of redeeming moral value, but because of it.

However, you would think that, working in an international financial institution, I'd be surrounded by right-wing, conservative workaholics on eternal power trips and high living and a disdain for the working class. Not so - most of my colleagues despise Bush, we've had lots of frank conversations about how the system we work for essentially helps MNCs set up sweat shops in cheap labour countries, circumvent taxation regimes, obfuscate regulators and reduce human lives to units of productive labour; lines in a balance sheet, all in the pursuit of enhanced shareholder value. But no one really lets the moral qualms get in the way of a bonus; philanthropy is a luxury. Whereas alcohol is a necessity.

"At the end of the day, I think I do more good than harm. What other measure have I got?"

A couple of us actually went to Eritrea with Habitat For Humanity to build prefab housing. Bankers doing virtue.

So it's a Saturday morning, and my damn IRAS PIN doesn't work, so I'm collating my disjointed thoughts into a bunch of random paragraphs and whiffling. Scribbled thoughts:

-What's so great about moving on? I've got all the cigarettes I need, a decent place to stay, and hopefully I'll be able to upgrade this PC soon.

-Darwinia: retro gaming at its finest

-Is it worth paying $80 for a meal at Garibaldi's when $5.50 buys you the same level of sustenance at Maxwell Food Court?

-Had scattered my mail all over the living room in small piles. Realised that it has grown into a huge stack. Thanks to the auspices of GIRO however I don't really need to read any of the ones pertaining to household affairs like bills; and I don't get snail mail anyway. But I suppose I should at least see if there are eviction notices or the like

-I miss you.

-What is it with the private banking paradigm? I may be wrong on this, but on the one time I saw them in action, it was essentially one big fucker in a suit and brilliantined hair, and several exquisite Norns/Graces/Furies/Erinyes behind him managing his wardrobe, powerpoint presentation, and handing him documents. Magician's assistant, only without the sequins.

-Girls will almost always beat boys in the retail banking industry. There's a unit trust sales girl at Citibank whom I am told averages over a $0.5m sales a week purely by phone. Apparently she has the ideal phone sex voice. It's the same principle why the top mortgage and credit card contractors are almost always women - you're more prone to tell a guy to fuck off when he cold calls to suggest refinancing your housing loan (and, let's face facts, even in our modern society, these decisions are still predominantly made by men, although that is thankfully changing), but you'll at least give a girl the polite time of the day, particularly if she approaches you in person, with that starched power suit and wafting of Chanel. (okay, there's the horrible bank polo t-shirts they wear at roadshows in apartment showrooms and shopping center concourses)

-was told at a bar in Tanjong Pagar by a semi-drunk waitress/PR-type personage that wearing Y-front underwear inhibits penile growth. And that the large dicks of white guys are overrated because they go flaccid faster.

-should I be drunk at 1:30 in the afternoon? why do the effects of alcohol on the psyche seem to vary so greatly depending on whether sunlight is present?

-the MPH at Citylink Mall sucks. they have one tiny pitiful shelf for fantasy/sci-fi, and half of it is goddamned franchise crap from Dragonlance or Forgotten Realms. unfortunately it's the only bookstore on the way home from work, and it's a measure of my indolence that . these days it's hard to start relationships with books, so I stick to Terry Pratchett for easy reading. Unfortunately i'm running out of Terry Pratchett books to buy

-it's even harder to start with computer games. That's why I'm not going to play KOTOR 2 until I'm ready to enter into a meaningful relationship, to devote the time and care it merits. World of Warcraft taught me the dangers of jumping headlong into a passionate fling that dies out into emptiness after a while - it just wasn't the same after I got my horse.

-the Hooters at Clarke Quay is a joke. What's the point of a Hooters when the waitresses barely have hooters? Jalan Kayu roti prata is overrated. The owner at Thasevi's tried to pull a Soup Nazi when I asked for sup kambing - "NO SOUP!"

-menthol cigarettes don't kill sperm!!! Proven conclusively! My friend's friend who smokes a pack of Texas 5 menthols is expecting his first child. At least, I was able to use the phrase: "May your first child be a masculine one." in conversation

-why am i writing again? at this rate i'll end up posing - I mean posting - on the Young Republic list if I'm not careful

-surprising level of welfare at work. Boss has been ordering us to go home at 7pm. Whenever he walks out of his room in the evening and sees us slogging away there, he tells us: "stop. Go home." or "this is a marathon, not a sprint." hahahahaa. Not the attitude I expected from an investment banking environment!

-if they ban smoking from clubs, going to Zouk becomes fucking surreal. I can't imagine it without the perennial haze. and banning it from coffeeshops is as good as passing a death sentence on the hordes of ah peks who sit there with a bottle of ABC stout watching Stephanie Sun on the rack-mounted televisions

-cosplay is scary shit

-Someone was asking me why I seem to have so many Singaporean uni friends (well, it's not a large absolute number, but it makes up a large relative proportion of my tiny coterie of friends) Shouldn't I be developing peer groups who are working professionals? Networking and all that? Ease of conversation? Facilitated understanding? If nothing else, it makes me pretty lonely around exam time.

In memorial Wall 'O Quotes. Too difficult to maintain, too lazy to print out, nowhere to paste it on the wall without driving the paterfamilias into a cacophany of nagging.

Along with the last stanza from Tennyson's Ulysses, the only quote I have kept in my cubicle:

"The dignity of work comes less from its ideal promise than from the way we show, through it, a determination to endure what is difficult for the sake of discharging our responsibilities and contributing to society."
-Russell Muirhead