e*toile

The Boy had planned and organised a richly packed and highly detailed weekend for 24-25 January to French and Spanish Basque country. The plan was to fly into Biarritz early on saturday morning (we got up at 4am to catch the flight!), drive to San Sebastien in Spain (30 minutes from Biarritz) and have Saturday lunch and dinner and Sunday lunch at three among the top restaurants in Europe (Arzak #5, Martin Berasategui #3, and Akelare #29 respectively), take in some sight seeing of the Basque coast/countryside in between, and end the weekend by visting the Guggenheim museum in Bilbao, before flying back to London from the Bilbao airport.

But the biggest storm in France since 1999 completely ruined the Boy’s best laid plans - our plane was re-routed to Limoges, about midway through France and c.400km from Biarritz near the Spanish border. We had to rent a car and spend all day driving down to San Sebastien, sometimes having to slalom between trees that had fallen on the road and making several detours necessitated by road closures because of fallen trees. And, to add insult to injury, we were stuck in a 2-hour traffic jam just near an hour from our destination. So instead of fine dining at martin berasategui, we arrived starving in san sebastien at about midnight, and had greasy Argentinian empanadas at a local joint which had football on TV.

Happily, we managed to get a new reservation for Martin Berasategui for Sunday lunch, which was the only thing that saved the weekend from being a total and complete fiasco. I was particularly keen to try Martin Berasategui because of his reputation for innovative food (which I strongly prefer to traditional food). And I was completely blown away by the food- taste-wise, it is the best I’ve had so far, and very innovative too (though not as experimental/intellectually engaging as Fat Duck)! Furthermore, Martin Berasategui, was actually in the kitchen - at most of the other places we’ve been to that had big name chefs, the chefs were either away travelling, or not in the kitchen. And, to top off an amazing meal, we actually got to meet Martin Berasategui, the man himself, in the flesh - he shook our hands and we even took a picture with him, and got a tour of the kitchen!

I’ll write more about the food and experience another day. In the meanwhile, Happy Chinese New Year of the Ox!

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!

Hmmm… so I have a feeling this 小人 (literally “small person”, a Chinese phrase signifying a mean, petty, underhanded person) B has been successful in his petty plot… and these guys have bought into his story. I suppose they have to, since they have just hired him (and want to believe that their decision was right) and having been there for only 2 months, he hasn’t had a chance to f*ck up yet, or show his true colours. *sigh*

I hate it… it’s depressing when such small and mean people can triumph, however temporarily. But I am patient, and life is long. On verra (”we will see”).

I suppose it’s not a bad thing, not getting another job. This will force me to resign from my current job, which is so enervating and life-sapping. It’s just that, I’m scared… never having been unemployed post-graduation. But my current job is petrifying me… I’ve been in the same job and same team for almost 5 years now, which is an Age in banking.

This will push me to take my year out to travel, as I’ve wanted to do anyway. And what better time than this, perhaps the deepest, most global and potentially longest recession in living memory? And afterwards… who knows? As I said, I’m terrified of the unknown.. the financial insecurity… that job-hunting will entail once I come back from my travels. But, tomorrow is another day, and I should seize this one. And after all, maybe this will turn out to have been the better choice… if, as it so often does, one path leads to another, and new opportunities open themselves up to me. My life has taken many an unexpected turn before, often on sudden whims, and I have been very happy with my life to date and have no regrets.

Alors, on verra.

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.