An Important Announcement

I’m not sure of the best way to tell all of you, so I think I’ll tell the story of how I told B’s parents.

It was lunch time, and the four of us (B, parents, boyfriend) were sitting down to a casual lunch. It was standard fare – both the Singaporean noodles and the chit chat about weekend plans to rest up before taking naps. But I was speaking more from memory than the present, because most of my mind was frantically rehearsing a new script.

I searched in vain for the perfect time, but it was elusive. So finally, just as everyone was getting ready to move the dishes to the kitchen, I decided I had to settle for this final lull.

I cleared my throat and took B’s hand, while my eyes moved from her neck, to my thigh, to my plate.

“Mr. and Mrs. Liu, we have something important we’d like to tell you.”

Mr. Liu couldn’t (made no attempt to?) suppress a guttural and startled “What?!” Mrs. Liu gasped and leaned in from her seat to my left, leaving her face less than a foot from mine. In light of their obvious shock, bordering on horror, I was tempted to reverse course. But at this point a simple “Nevermind” would have not been enough to excuse myself from the table. So I pressed on.

“Well, uh, I know we’ve mentioned this to you before” – because we had – “and so you know that we’ve been considering this for a while.” Mrs. Liu’s breath has quicker on my cheeks.

“And so we’ve been thinking and praying about it, and, uh, we think the timing is right,” I continued. The words lurched from my throat, afraid of the piercing stares they’d meet in the soft glow of the early afternoon.

“We know that it’ll take a lot of work, and a lot of preparation, but we think we’re ready to make that kind of commitment.” I kept searching for more ideas to lengthen my halting preface – perhaps a contrast of the development of marriage in Asian vs. non-Asian countries, from antiquity through the next millennium? – but nothing could keep the inevitable at bay.

I adjusted my grip on B’s hand and looked to her for some sort of encouragement. She looked blank, as in colorless. “So I’ve asked Bea, and she’s accepted.”

By this point the announcement would not sit still any longer, and it just barely squeaked (literally) past every repressive thought that was welling from within. “We’re running the Standard Chartered half marathon.”

It took a moment for everyone to make sense of my faltering voice. And then they breathed. The back legs of her parents’ chairs thumped as they returned to the floor, and they slumped back, eyes half-closed, reveling in the sensation of rescuing mercy.

“So when is the marathon?” B’s mom asked as she straightened up – back to business. We discussed the details of the race and our training regimen. Her dad explained that he could not run such a long distance because of his knees. And then we resumed our afternoon schedule as planned.

Not such big news after all.

Office fun

Few of my American readers have heard of DBS Bank, but it is well-known across Asia. It is the largest bank in Singapore and a leading bank in Hong Kong. (This line comes straight out of its corporate information.) It is also the source of my monthly paychecks. And recently, it has been a consistent villain in HK’s critical – and at times sensationalistic – headlines.

I’m not sure one could find a more challenging start to a career in marketing and communications. Less than two weeks after I signed on permanently with the bank, the financial world began its spectacular unraveling, leaving many DBS (and other HK banks’) customers with worthless Lehman-related investments. Outraged customers blamed the government’s lax regulations and the banks’ mis-selling. Legislators quickly sided with customers (voters), and led protests against the banks. Banks, unable to blame customers, tried to chalk it all up to “the unprecedented financial crisis”. This failed. Now they’re collectively dousing the local wildfires with billions in repayments.

Just as the “Lehman incident” (as we called it) was wrapping up its fifteen minutes of infamy, our senior management in Singapore announced that 900 of the bank’s 15,000 jobs would be cut by the end of November. Though other banks had made similar moves, we seemed to take a large helping of the newspaper negativity because of our prime role in the Lehman debacle and the forward nature in which we made the announcement. Our bedraggled communications team – cut from 7 to 5 because of a resignation and a lay off – was back on the frontlines.

I could reflect for several entries on what (I think) I’ve learned from the last two months, and even venture a few novice opinions, but that may be better left for the non-public domain. The point is that our small team has been in a frenzy, and with the departure of my two closest working partners, I’ve been sprinting to stand still. I entered the corporate world more for learning than a career; God decided to make the best of it by granting me a crash course with a once-in-a-career crisis.

But it’s not all beating back flames. There are times when the wind is blowing favorably and the office is a place to laugh out loud (in amusement or joy, not manic delirium). Here are some examples:

• One of my officemates was planning to vacation with a friend in Japan. I insisted that she bring me something back; she hesitated; I insisted further; she protested, and gave in half-heartedly (we have that kind of relationship). Later that day, I spotted a box of cookies on her desk. I happened to be hungry, so I asked her for one.

“You may have one,” she said. She paused, then looked up. “I bought them from Japan.”
“Really?”
“Yes, it’s from the future, for you,” she said, visibly unburdened.

• On October 30, I got a call from a secretary of one member of the senior management. She’s very kind and soft, though not stereotypically shy.
  

“Ryan, I have a silly question,” she said.
"No problem, those are my favorite kind.”
“Uh, ok.” Pause. “Which day is Halloween?”
"Halloween is tomorrow, Joey.” (Joey is an office lady, not a baby kangaroo).
"Oh…so will kids come to my house asking for candy tonight or tomorrow?”
Suppressing a giggle: “They should come tomorrow.”
“Oh thank you thank you. I knew you’d be the right person to ask!”

• In Hong Kong, most people choose their English names. In the bank alone, I’ve discovered some excellent pairings of Western given names with Chinese family names. For example:

a. Lone Lee. (Poor fellow. Is he married?)
b. Human Lu. (She’d have an especially crappy time in England.)
c. Zero Shum. (My personal favorite, because the ‘h’ in her last name is virtually silent. I bet she’s an economist who invents games.)

On missing mandates

On three separate occasions over the last couple weeks I have eaten in the exclusive company of men. I haven’t had this since July, and doing so felt like I had found another lung on a smoggy day.

Hong Kong has surrounded me with women. I work in a field (marketing and communications) where the corporate world has been especially accepting of women. Before I joined, our department was one of two in the bank without a y-chromosome; that honor now lies solely with the Secretariat. In addition, DBS (my employer) seems to be quite progressive when it comes to gender in its hiring and promotion practices (especially for a bank). My boss, and her boss, and both of her bosses are all women (these include the head of our department and the Hong Kong CEO).

In addition, one of the main reasons I moved to Hong Kong was to see what God had in store for my relationship with B. I’ve naturally tended to spend most of my free time with her. (I can think of no girl so willing to spend time with me, let alone one as pretty as she; I want to make the best of it while it lasts.)

The female world is not completely foreign to me. In high school, a majority of my friends were girls, largely because I found them easier to talk to, and because I was attracted to some of them (or their friends). My experience has prepared me to approach my current circumstances with traces of both empathy and dispassionate understanding, though I would hardly say I’m a model for either. I have at least survived the following situations, though they are not the toughest of them:

• A couple weeks ago, one of my colleagues’ ex-boyfriends was in town with his newborn child, so after lunch we went clothes shopping for a baby whose age and gender we didn’t know. I picked out both items that she ended up buying.
• The other day my boss offered to treat me to lunch, and bought me a McDonald’s Happy Meal. She was in a determined search for the complete set of current Happy Meal toys, which are fashioned after a Japanese comic book character, and needed two to complete her set. The lousy finger foods just made me hungrier.
• This same boss has taken to addressing me as “dear” in her emails. After sending these emails, she walks over to my desk and verbally recites them.
• At least three colleagues have commented on my hair(cut). The head of our department asked if I was having a bad hair day when I wasn’t.
• Sometimes B cries when I hug her. She claims it’s because I “break down her defenses”, but I wonder at how euphemistic that may be. I have started wearing more deodorant.
  

Women are truly marvelous creatures, and I am quite glad that they deem me worthy of their time and presence. To be honest, I’m not sure whether I’d rather work in an office of all men or all women. For example, at lunch this past Friday, they spent lots of time jabbering away while letting me (with no male rivals) clean up the leftovers. On a more serious note, I’ve found an openness to talk about heart issues and the Gospel with many female colleagues that I can’t imagine broaching with men in the workplace. And, of course, I’m certainly glad to be dating a female. I am just now beginning to appreciate the richness of studying Scripture, singing, and praying with B, and all the femininity she brings to it.

But I need men. College introduced me to the inimitable joy of shared manhood, and revealed the parts of my heart and life that had been woefully underdeveloped in high school without a strong network of males. Now that I am in danger of slipping into this kind of disrepair, God has begun to lure me out with a hint of the sweetness of guy time (and some helpful paradigm-shifting via Eldredge’s Way of the Wild Heart). At the meals I mentioned in the first paragraph, the conversations themselves weren’t spectacular – but they were a start. We bantered about tennis, family, careers, girls, computers, isolation, etc. But most importantly, the usual pressure of inter-gender dynamics was replaced by the positive testosterone feedback loop of jovial man time.

Of the three manly meals, the richest was a nearly 4-hour ordeal with a fellow DBS employee named John. John traveled far out of his way to introduce me to a notable hot pot buffet that I never would have found on my own. We found that our sisters troubled us with similar mood swings and that our girlfriends both live inconveniently far away. We drank beer, and ordered about 25 plates of meat. After he let slip that some of his male colleagues get together to play basketball after work, I nearly forced myself into their next game. It was a wonderful date.

As we were parting ways, I jokingly asked if his girlfriend (actually, fiancée) would be jealous about our evening.

“No,” he said. “I treat her much better.” Lucky girl.

I laughed aloud. “Ok, well, we should do this again then.”

“Sure, any time, let me know,” he said, and then disappeared down the steps into the train station.

And that’s how I think things should be. His woman will get his best, but he’ll need some good men to help him give it.

Breaking and entering

I am hunting for a new place to live, and I'm finding that apartments tend to be like men: the good ones are all taken.

What looked to be a promising flat - convenient location, no shower head connected to the sink hanging over the toilet, less expensive than my current room - took a turn for the worse when the landlord discovered that someone (should I be afraid that he didn't seem to know who?) had locked my bedroom.

"Stupid," he muttered, over and over, as he jiggled the handle and banged the door. "Stupid."

Ah, but then he got smart. 'The best way to convince this young foreigner to stay in my apartment,' he must have thought, 'is to demonstrate that I can break into his room even if he locks it.' He brushed off an old ID card and began to wiggle it into the lock. The card began to fall apart under the pressure, so he dug around and pulled what looked like a new card from a plastic sleeve.

"Uh, I don't think you should ruin your card for this," I cautioned as he began to shape it into a fine accordion.

"No no; just can't break it," he assured me. The mangled card already looked worse than broken.

Because he couldn't show me the room itself, he invited me to get as close as I could - helping him break into it. By this time B had already headed home, and church class was at least 45 minutes gone, so yeah, why not? We alternated between thrashing the door and jamming the card, but the lock did its job. Now that I think about it, perhaps this was all some sort of reverse psychology - 'See how safe this room is? Not even we can break in!'

"I'll just come back later," I said, sweating from the humidity and the guilt.

"Yeah," he replied, as he kept on working. "Here, you try again."

More failure. He finally relented and collapsed, defeated, onto his low, blue couch. Perhaps to save some face and pretend my visit was worth my while, he invited me to sit down and watch TV with him. I sat down, if only because I couldn't just walk out on my accomplice; but I escaped at the first commercial break. "I have to go knock over a liquor store," I wanted to say.

Let's just say this was better than the place I saw earlier in the afternoon - the one on the 8th floor of an elevator-less building. After all, I'm going back tomorrow when he finally vanquishes the lock. Or uses a key.

Things I've remembered for more than 16 years

By a stroke of poor design, our office shares its doorbell mechanism with our neighbors. That is, when someone rings either one of our bells, both sides hear it. There is a solid wall separating the offices, so it seems odd (with room for a good explanation) that this feature exists. It seems odder (with far less room for a good explanation) that it cannot be disabled to allow notifications to be funneled only to the appropriate side of the solid wall.

In order to prevent both offices from getting the door with each ring, we agreed to activate two sets of chimes. The standard ding-dong notes that our neighbors have a guest; we head to the door when we hear the first four bars of a classic American nursery rhyme.

A quick poll of my co-workers reveals that none of them have heard these songs before. I wonder what it’s like to listen to a stunning masterpiece like “Row, row, row your boat” and not even know you are witness to the pinnacle of genius. I pity them.

For the culturally refined, here is a list of my doorbell songs (and make good use of the links to relive your childhood!)

Do You Know the Muffin Man?
Oh My Darling, Clementine
BINGO
Mary Had a Little Lamb
Hush Little Baby
Whistle, Whistle, Little Bird
Home on the Range
Row, Row, Row Your Boat
Did You Ever See a Lassie
Farmer in the Dell
London Bridge
There’s one more, but I haven’t figured it out yet. And I only get to hear it once every twelve times someone comes to our door, so it may take some time.

I’ve also stumbled upon catchy American kids’ tunes when holding on the phone. It makes me wonder if elevator music and door chimes in the US are actually Chinese nursery rhymes.

Perhaps the constant playing (and mental replaying) of these songs accounts for the unshakeable sensation that it should be naptime soon, or at least recess.

Things I've remembered for 16 years

Ms. Liz was my second grade teacher, and my only teacher who followed her title with her first name. (I suppose “Mrs. Seligman-Bravo” would have been a cruel imposition on a class struggling with thee-syllable words.) She was also one of my few teachers cool enough to pull it off. She had wildly curly hair and the spunk to match, and I wouldn’t be surprised if the author of the “Magic School Bus” series patterned Ms. Frizzle after our own uninhibited and unpredictable classroom leader.

Ms. Liz had two sons named Michael and Jordan. For a 7-year-old boy who jealously guarded his set of 29 NBA team logo pencils, using them one at a time from least to most favorite teams (I found the Bulls, Celtics, and Mavericks still unsharpened when I was cleaning out my desk drawer in May 2008), this was reason enough to love her.

Her interest in basketball extended from her sons to her classroom, where she kept the class behaved and engaged with a game called Learnball. Learnball was the best external motivator I have ever encountered. Two teams competed for Friday candy handouts. Points could be earned in a number of ways, but I only cared about “shots”. Students who had earned the right to a “shot” for good behavior or a perfect test score would attempt to toss a Nerf ball into a trashcan on a chair. Shooters could choose from 5 positions worth 1-5 points from correspondingly difficult positions. After complex expected-value calculations, I always shot from 3 or 4. Lining up for these shots made for some of the most thrillingly nervous times of my life, surpassing job interviews and coming up just short of asking out B. Thankfully, I usually did well for my ego, and for my team. I recall one classmate (NHHS friends: it was Patrick Shea) who always shot from 5 and made it at an alarming rate. The hot-handed daredevil is now performing with Cirque de Soleil.

Ms. Liz probably liked basketball so much because she was a vocal UCLA fan. In retrospect, I’m surprised I didn’t have a major crush on her.

Ms. Liz had a bathtub in the back of her classroom. She said it was there for anyone who wanted to take a break in the middle of class and just relax and read a book. By second grade, my sense of proper behavior and overachievement were both well-developed, and I could not imagine getting up in the middle of class without express permission to sit in a tub while the rest of the class proceeded without me. Also, the tub smelled funny and I’m pretty sure its colorful paints covered up stains (but not the grossness) left by previous reclining deviants.

Ms. Liz protected my boogers (or was it my health?) like they were national treasures. On multiple occasions she stopped mid-sentence and shouted “Ryan, don’t pick your nose!” and then told me to go wash my hands. I began to perform my operations more subtly, pretending to drop my pencil so I could dig with my head under the table. But Ms. Liz was smart, and she caught me there too.

Ms. Liz always called us “smart cookies”, and I usually believed her (at least the “cookie” part). While it is usually best to encourage youngsters by complimenting their efforts instead of their talents, Ms. Liz had a special right to praise us because of how much she taught us. Of all my teachers, I think I have spent the most time musing over and using the content of her classes. Here are some examples:

• The numerical values of every letter of the alphabet – Ms. Liz liked to play a game called “100-point words” where we had to find words whose letters added up to 100 (a = 1, b = 2, etc.) I began calculating the value of almost every word I saw (and started to expand and complicate the game), and thus internalized these values. Quiz me. I dare you.
• How to spell manufacture – We had an independent vocabulary scheme where we went through long lists of words with a partner. Only when we misspelled a word would it become one of our weekly ten vocab words. I recall stumbling on “manufacture” partially because my partner said something like “menfcrt…uh…” (though there’s no way I would have gotten it even with perfect pronunciation, an example of usage, and language of origin). I was proud to have made it so far in the list, and to have been humbled by so lengthy a foe.
• Monet painted water lilies – I was assigned to use one 9” x 9” square to commemorate Monet’s birthday, so I tried to recreate one of his water lily oil paintings with crayons. I cannot imagine why, but Ms. Liz liked it a lot, and asked me to try to teach the class. Poor kids. They were all better artists than I was, and I think they knew it. But from then on, Monet was my favorite artist. And if I ever found myself in a conversation about art, I puffed up a bit and asserted, “Oh yes, I really love the way Monet uses light in his water lily oil paintings.”
• Brain teasers (quantagories) – Ms. Liz introduced us to “brain teasers” (which I found out later were only one category of brain teasers, known as quantagories). It involves an equation of abbreviations, numbers, and short words, such as 26 = L in the A (26 = Letters in the Alphabet). We got a new one every week. Oh, what fun!
• The fifty (nifty) states in alphabetical order – Every morning after the Pledge of Allegiance, Ms. Liz would make us sing a very difficult song of the 50 states in alphabetical order. Once memorized, the little diddy is impossible to forget, and I confess that it is one of my most-used intellectual tools (up there with hypothetical thought and deductive reasoning). I don’t think I’m going too far when I say that I think I would be a different man without this song.
  

At the end of the school year, our class put together a little book to thank Ms. Liz. Each student received one page to decorate however they pleased. On the back of my sheet, I wrote:

30 = SFR8WLML.

Below, the solution:

30 = Students From Room 8 Who Love Ms. Liz.

Letting go

I like beautiful rationales. I spend a good chunk of my thinking hours trying to find the purposes for my actions and my circumstances. My co-worker is taking out her unreasonable anger on me – maybe she will reflect later, become miserably repentant, and look for a savior. There is an extra soft drink from an office party – maybe there will be a day when someone really needs sweet refreshment. I just barely missed that train – maybe it’s going to blow up. (Note that a rationale does not have to be reasonable, and the instinctive ones are pretty self-centered).

To be clear, I don’t think I’m deluding myself by concocting a world of pseudo-science and magical forces (at least not to an unhealthy extent – I think we all probably do this at least a little bit). Instead, a number of my strong beliefs and traits incline me to constantly look for meaning, or how things fit into a larger picture. I’d like to say that a large percentage of this drive is good faith – or maybe just hope – that God is weaving together all of the world’s details for some spectacular exhibition of his sovereignty. Part of it is a Hollywood-esque romanticism, a pining for the charmed life. I have to admit that at least sometimes it is a defense mechanism. Some of it is just a fun way to keep my imagination working. An uglier force is the prideful ache to always be in the know.

Each rationale, of course, may be driven by one or more of these forces, and so the accuracy and motivation of each will vary. But all contribute to the fact that I brainstorm rationales large and small with impressive regularity.

My rationales usually fall into one of two categories: narrative and mathematical. The three examples in the first paragraph are narrative rationales – an exploration of the unseen, unfolding tale of why something had to happen. (I’m talking about “This happened in order that…[future],” not “This happened because…[past].” The latter is an example of a post hoc rationalization, or an excuse.) Mathematical ones are a bit harder to both demonstrate and describe; their explanation lies in the fact that there is some elegant numerical result of the situation. I’ll try to explain by example.

Recently I bought a gift for B. Those of you who have been shopping with me know that my buying strategy is clear and impossible: to scour every last corner of the retail kingdom to make sure that the product I choose is undeniably the best. This assurance is all the more important the higher the cost/value of the purchase. But this time I was looking at a semi-costly investment and had virtually no time to inspect the glut of relevant shops in HK. I did my best (slogged through the entire inventory of all the shops on one particularly concentrated block), but it was far from a guarantee. When faced with the decision to buy, I had prayed hard and then stepped out in (uncharacteristic) faith that I should not shop elsewhere. My conscience demanded an explanation all the way home.

It turns out that B really liked my choice – and that, I know, is most important. But I have to admit that I wasn’t completely satisfied with it until I found that the total price was almost identical to my overtime pay for August. The numbers worked out, and by extension, it was Providence. Some (small) throbbing part of my psyche was finally put to rest.

It’s impossible to “prove” the correctness of a rationale. Nonetheless, I still like to have one on hand for most events that I analyze. Even if I don’t really believe that it is the Truth, at least there’s a story to tell.

(Disclaimer: I do believe there is a difference between reality and my rationales. I do not believe that reality is simply a psychological or social construct, and I understand that all of my rationales may be wrong. That is, the real reason I missed the train may actually be to get me in trouble for being late, so I won’t hit the snooze button three times tomorrow. But being wrong just means I should continue exploring for the right ones. And I think that in particularly (divinely) inspired moments, I can/do actually get it.)

This has gotten longer and more philosophical than I intended, but it sets the context for what I’ve been thinking about these last 24 hours:

Yesterday was the first day I spent in Hong Kong without seeing B. There were two earlier days that, at the time, seemed like they would be “the day”. But in both cases we snuck by with a careful shift of schedule. Interestingly, both fell on days where the mathematical rationale was clear: the first was August 4, the first day of my third month in HK; the second was on September 11, my 100th day in HK. Under either case, the numerical rationale was a compelling argument (to me) that yes, this was the right day to end our streak. But yesterday was day 107 (3 months and 15 days) since I arrived in HK. What a meaningless symbol! I can think of no good reason why our first day apart should be the 107th.

And so, I’m just a little bit disgruntled. Perhaps I should explore the narrative rationales, and all the potential purposes for our separation on 18 September.

Or maybe yesterday was about letting go. Twice.