e*toile

My team at work is especially “yellow-friendly”. Not only are there 3 chinese girls in a team of only c.20 bankers, but, of the remaining bankers, an italian senior is going out with a canadian chinese girl, a french moroccan junior is dating a chinese girl, an ex-senior (german) is married to a korean wife, and an ex-junior (french) had dated two chinese girls recently. We had christmas drinks at my boss’ house tonight, and I couldn’t help but be amused at how many chinese girls there would have been if all the 3 chinese bankers (one was ill) and the other halves had turned up. One could be entirely forgiven for being alarmist about “le peril jaune” of ‘evil slitty-eyed yellow people’ taking over and subverting Western culture, especially given I’m going out with a french boy and the second chinese banker is marrried to a german (the third chinese banker is single).

Although, having said that my team is yellow-friendly, in reality, my team is just extremely diverse and almost incidentally supportive of all sorts of “minorities”. We have an exceptionally high proportion of girls in our team vs. investment banking average; we are racially diverse (although we were even more so in the past); and there are many mixed couples in our team:
- danish/french + greek/irish
- french + british indian (and married against the wish of her parents who boycotted the wedding!!)
- german/iranian + english
- english + french
- chinese + german
- myself + french
- italian + canadian chinese
- french moroccan + chinese

That’s one thing I like about London - this exuberant mixing of cultures, nationalities and races. The openness and willingness to share, interact, intermarry, love, hate and mingle in joyous abandon. Those who come here tend to be sufficiently adventurous and open. London, as I mentioned before, is a port for dreamers, a gateway of dreams. - Well, at least it was before this silly super tax that is rapidly making us all reconsider our future plans.

Nonetheless, I sometimes almost wonder if there is too much mixing… isn’t it a shame that there will be no one who is culturally “pure” anymore. There’s something to be said for being able to say, unequivocally: “I am Chinese [or whatever]“, without feeling confused and conflicted, as many mixed-culture kids are, especially since life is confusing enough as it is. But, funnily enough, growing up, I remember thinking, even as a child, how boring it was that I was “pure Chinese”, that there was nothing much more to say besides both my grandparents were from China - no mixed parentage or deeper heritage to understand or explain. I guess that this was written, that I would end up going out with someone from a different culture, because I’ve always wanted to do and be, something a little bit different (although, as mentioned, inter-cultural relationships now seem to be the norm), and because I always thought that inter-culture relationships and marriages would contribute towards ending racism/prejudices/religious differences, and hence, a baby first step towards world peace. Yes, very “Miss Congeniality”, I know. But wanting some simple and naive, isn’t always a bad thing. In my book, it is called idealism or optimism.

I just found out from that wonderful social newswire, Facebook, that my Ex, the first love Ex (MTB) is getting married over Easter weekend. It’s unexpected (he had told me before that he was supposed to get married after the age of 30, according to a fortune-teller) and depressing (if he’s marrying the not-even-b!tch - he deserves so much better). Wow… I can’t believe he’s decided to do it. That his mom has finally accepted a girl that is worthy of her boy, or that the not-even-b!tch’s mom is open minded enough to let her over-protected previous daughter out of the country, perhaps permanently in Vietnam?

In other news, my life’s a bit of a mess. I didn’t get the job that I was applying for. So now I’m stuck… kind of caught between a rock and a hard place. Hating my job, wanting to go to Africa or maybe move to Paris in pursuit of a sudden opportunity, yet wanting to stay to get naturalised and needing a job to pay the bills in the meanwhile. The best thing would be for me to stick it out another 15 months or so. It’s the most boring option, but even the Boy agrees it makes sense not to throw away my 5 years of arduous waiting. But it seems to painful to bear. Like pulling out my finger nails, one by one.

Also, trying to get restarted on my path to computer literacy. Wondering if I should start with Perl, Java, or PHP…

Yesterday was a historic day for 2 reasons:

1) Barack Hussein Obama was inaugurated as the President of the United States. The historic significance of which has been reiterated ad nauseum. On balance, I am more of a supporter than a detractor. I don’t expect him to perform miracles, but I do believe that he is our brightest hope, and the best man for these times. Primarily because of the confluence of economic environment, his racial/birth heritage, and the fact that the world has been traumatised by Bush, I believe Americans and the world will be more co-operative, give him greater leeway/leverage, more benefit of the doubt, and take a longer time to become cynical and disappointed than with any other President. Which is not to detract from the fact that he is highly intelligent, has proven to be very capable and impressive to date (if a bit aggressive), had chosen strong advisers during his campaign and continues to appoint highly qualified and intelligent staff, nor to diminish the significance of his message of bi-partisan politics, reconciliation and reaching out, responsibility and hope. I watched/listened to his inauguration speech (the first time I have heard him speak) and was very impressed and happy with the text of his speech, the highlights of which, for me personally, were the following: addressing the environment within 5 minutes of his speech, making a deliberate effort to reach out the Muslim world, emphasising the importance of science, partially exonerating bankers of the current economic crisis by reminding of the “collective failure to make hard choices..”, and remembering the poor

2) I had s*x for the first time and shed my virginity. So now, the UK has lost one of its last few remaining virgins over the age of 25, most, if not all, of whom I know… it is after all quite a (rare) achievement to be so obstinate in this day and age, especially in London. I’m not particularly against pre-marital s*x per se, and my continued innocence was driven more by an accident of circumstance (of not having done it with my ex-boyfriend), my judgement that I wasn’t emotionally ready for it (after all, I took 4 years to get over my first boyfriend) and a refusal for the first time to be random (and I have been single for 7 years since my one and only previous relationship), than by any closely-held principle. So, since I was curious and impatient and thought the time and the Boy were both right, I decided to take the plunge. It was interesting… and certainly different from what I had expected from my vicarious experiences through trashy romantic novels. It was both more and less painful than expected, and the quality of the pain was also different than what I expected. I had expected just a sharp pain which then disappears (*every* single bl00dy romantic novel says that!)… instead the pain wasn’t very sharp at all, but more “rounded” … like it covered a larger area but not acute, and the discomfort lasted for quite a long while! The Boy said that I looked like I was about to faint and/or puke up half the time.. and it was true that I did kind of feel like that ;p And I wasn’t used to all that poking around inside and felt like going to the toilet (!), which was, I suppose, a good distraction, as I had to focus more on not letting it all go than on the discomfort, haha! But overall, I like it. I like that feeling of deeper connection with the Boy, our one-ness. I am, however, definitely increasingly disinclined to have a baby, especially not a natural birth! There’s NO WAY a baby could pass through.. we’re not built for it (no matter that generations of women have undergone it - they were misguided for agreeing to undergo legalised Mediaeval torture!), and it will hurt way too much. CALLING ALL SCIENTISTS: please please please invent an external baby incubator, such that we can create a zygote in a petri dish and incubate the embryo to babyhood in a little external glass incubator, feed it via tubes so that after 9 months, we can open the incubator and voilà.. out comes Mini Me!

I got backstabbed by an ex-colleague recently, which really stunned me.

People tell me it’s normal, and very common even, to be backstabbed by colleagues. Maybe I’ve been fortunate, for not having encountered much of it before. Sure, there has been gossip about the Boy and I, and one of my colleagues has even commented that I’m “technically not a woman” (not sure what is the basis of his conclusion), but those were speculations and personal opinions, which, however misguided or otherwise, they are entitled to express.

This was the first time that someone has maliciously lied about me to another person who had asked him for his opinion on my work performance/ethics. I had had an interview with a couple of guys from the company where this ex-colleague (let’s call him B for “Batard”, a french equivalent of a similar English word) now works (he joined the company just a couple of months ago), and my interviewers had asked him about me. The gist of what he said was that I’m “lazy and care more about going to the gym than working”. I’m particularly shocked because, although I don’t think he’s particularly bright, nor do I like him much as a person (different personalities), I have always been polite/civil to him, especially after I discovered we had common friends. And when he got fired from my team, I even put him in contact with one head-hunter that I was in touch with, just because I thought, well, if I can do something that can help him in his time of need that doesn’t cost me much (it’s true he’s competing in a job market that I would have liked to explore as well, but given he had no job and I had one, I didn’t Need a new job as much as he did, despite being depressed by my job). So, while I’ve never been super nice to him, I’ve always been decent to him, and arguably rather nicer to him than otherwise. And therefore, I was completely shocked that he would slander me thus! WTF… why would he do that?!

I moved to defend myself. I had my performance review on Friday, and the review was very good, despite my manager disliking me and downplaying my strengths. I am thankful that he was fair enough to quote verbatim some of my reviewers’ comments, which were rather more glowing and hyperbolic than I am used to, but mostly representative of the good work I have consistently produced historically (even if recognition has come belatedly, at a lag of about a year). Among other things, there were comments on how super hard-working I am (truer in the rather more distant than recent past), how amazingly motivated I am (my motivation has nose-dived since I was unfairly abused at my last review a year ago), the “state-of-the-art” work I have produced(that speaks for itself, surely.. I’m a junior investment banker, not a rocket scientist), and how helpful I have been to the juniors. —I scanned a copy of my review, and sent it to my interviewers. The ideal outcome, would be for the interviewers to be impressed with my review, and invite me to the next round(s) and for me to eventually get the job. That would be B’s greatest nightmare probably. But if that doesn’t happen, I would be happy if B was discredited, or this plants seeds of doubts in the interviewers’ minds about his motives, or even if they don’t conclude that he is a lying back-stabbing b*stard, that he looks at least a little bit stupid and their opinion of his judgement (of character, investments as well as, hopefully, general judgement) dims a little.

There’s a Chinese saying “井水不犯河水” (”Well water does not offend river water” or “well water does not intrude upon river water”). I generally subscribe to that doctrine, and he should do so too. He should just mind his own business and not be hostile against me. I’m usually pretty relaxed. But if attacked, I will defend myself.