Back at home after a stint in Melbourne

It's good to be back in Sydney again.
I couldn't take much more of the sterile environment in Melbourne.

All in all, it was a good trip, I managed to run a project team to produce and present a well designed scheme. Our clients seemed pleased with what we came up with.
I worked on this project in the company's Melbourne office and presented our masterplan together with the big boss, who flew in from Sydney the day before.

Hung around for a few days, then I attended a planning conference organised by Malaysians and Australians. Network, network!!!!! The Convention Centre in Melbourne is opposite Crown Casino, Hotel and Entertainment Complex.


Met up with my parents. Dad was in town because he had some business meetings and was also here to hit the fairways with his golf buddies. Mum tagged along for the shopping.... well, of course they were also here to see their daughter. My parents then flew to Sydney to stay for a week. While they were here, they were chauffered around in a limo and stayed in a hotel owned by one of Dad's golf buddies.
The CD catalogue at the back of the limo. Spot the typo?

My parents also shopped around for a 2nd piece of real estate while in Sydney, in addition to their inner city harbour view apartment which I currently live in. Lots of overseas VIP fought over each other to take Dad and his equally important travel companions out to dinner at restaurants ranging from The Establishment to Golden Century every night.
My husband and I were with them every where they went, acting as their property investment experts and as porters (we carried their shopping).

I think their favourite meal was at the Sydney Fish Market in Pyrmont, though....

Anwar Ibrahim is free at last

I remember the day they seized Anwar.

I was in Australia at the time, in my final year of university.
All we have here is foreign TV, where they only show images of anarchy and chaos breaking out.
I anxiously called my parents' home in KL, not far from Anwar's residence, because I was genuinely worried for my family.

That was the moment I decided that I would NEVER return to Malaysia again.
The recent events have changed things, given me hope.
Viva democracy!

The Global Blog Community

Blogging is new to me, this is my first ever blog.
I've been looking around, checking you bloggers out.
So many interesting people, so many bright, bright sparks on the net.

I went for a blog tour: country by country.
First, Australia and Malaysia......
Then Singapore...
Then Asia....
Then USA....

I want so much to leave a comment or link, to know you.
BUT I'm particularly afraid of the loss of privacy all bloggers seem to have experienced, at one time or another.

I'm worried about opening a can of worms in Malaysia.
Unfortunately, that's where the brightest sparks in the blogging community are.

Just a lighthearted post for once.

Thank God it's Friday, eh? Eh?

Hubby and his wanker banker colleagues are having drinks with the regional head of corporate banking division who has flown in to Sydney from Hong Kong this week. So here I am, alone at home at 7.30pm on a friday night, typing away on my laptop. Everyone else I know is out having drinks. SIGH.

OK, OK- I've already stated that this was going to be a lighthearted post.
And it WILL be, dammit!

Today, I was given a Masterplan that another architecture firm had designed- The client approached us and basically asked us to "tweak" it. The client is confident we can do a better job. Our reputation is in our Renzo Pianoism. So, I'm travelling to our Melbourne office in three weeks' time to participate in a presentation together with the director from our Melbourne office.

That's fabulous news. I love that snobby city. All things cultured and arty farty just LIVES in that city. I notice that more than a few prominent Malaysians spent their tertiary education years there, thanks to the Colombo plan. And I've met them too, in many a conference and many an international airport. (Yeah YOU people- you know who you are- who kiss my arse in front of my face because you know who my father is and who I work for and then stare daggers in my back for being the only *ahem* attractive *ahem* young asian woman amongst older white men.)

What are my plans this weekend? Oh, I dunno......
I'm going to chill and catch up with my assignments. I am way behind in my MBA units. Someone like me, who never studied a business unit in her whole life, is now, at 31, finally doing first year Bachelor of Commerce units like Accounting, Legal Framework of Business, Macroeconomics and Organisational Behaviour- which are the core units for any MBA degree.
Thank God for my husband, who is a finance whiz. (He's asian. He's got the natural talent with numbers. He deserves some nookie this weekend for helping his wife!)

My Very Chinese Mother in Law. (This will not be a pretty post)

She has never liked me, the hussy who stole her oldest and favourite son away from her. I have mentioned in previous posts that she worships him. She thinks the sun rises and sets with him. She takes all his financial advice and lets him control their family assets.

She thinks of me as the person responsible for stealing him away from the sleepy little town they call home, to live in Australia. I can see that she is terrified that he will never end up taking over their family business (why the hell would he want to do that when he is capable of so much more. He has Masters of Finance and a CFA, he works in the finance world, he will never be the one who “takes care of them in their old age” (Confucianism based mentality? Not my cup of tea).

I have tried being nice to her.

Spending my holidays during the festive seasons with their family (instead of being happy she simply brushes it off, saying: "that's the way it should be."), I have explained to her that my husband does not want to take over their business, he has his own ambitions (she responded by pouring her heart out to his younger brother, who wrote a long email, pleading him to "come home" and be responsible), I have tried to tolerate her long distance calls to him every other day (she simply calls him on his mobile to avoid talking to me), I tolerate her daily pleadings with him to "come home" and her uneducated insinuations the pay is better there in Malaysia, XYZ’s daughter or son is getting paid $$$$, the economy is changing etc. etc.

This woman tried dictate (“just a suggestion only”) to my mother who to put on the main table at the wedding dinner that my parents were paying for. She had always been insecure that we (me and my family) were "looking down at them" during our wedding. Jeez. I can't think of anything LESS classy than trying to interfere in somebody else's dinner. She made him break up with his ex girlfriend because she didn't come from a good enough family for him. I am confident I will not sound like I'm bragging in real life, if you knew my family, we're the ones who should think he’s not good enough.

His father is just as bad. He managed to get a minor title (again a Malaysian title bestowed by the King of Malaysia) for himself and paid for full page newspaper ads to tell everyone about it. He tried to stick his Rolex in front of our faces and telling us in detail how much it cost him. I've since had many chances to observe his behaviour: That seems to be something he likes to do: tell people how much his things cost. 

She makes me feel like an outsider when I am in their home. She'll only talk to me when her son is looking. The TV is constantly on this inane and completely insipid Chinese pop and variety channel. No Bloomberg, no CNN, no Discovery..... damn.
Her own husband's mother and her have a long running feud, they are at each other's throats all the time. BUT she makes sure she uses her children to fight her battles for her. She pours out her heart to them and makes them try to defend their poor mother. Thanks to her, my husband hates his own grandmother. He can't explain why, he has just grown up hating her. Thanks to her, my husband's younger brother and sister hate me.

My husband is a nice person. But getting bitter about having to “go against” his parents because that makes him a bad son in their ingrained Confucian style family values. 

Given, there are obvious cultural differences, but still, his mother is an insecure person. 

She needs to do all this stuff.

And yeah. Sometimes I have to retaliate. 

Fag Hag

That's been my second name as long as I can remember.
Half the people I call my close friends bat for the other team. Maybe I gravitate towards them. Maybe they gravitate towards me. I don't know.


When Duran Duran played 3 gigs in Sydney last year, I went to them all with a gay male friend.

I have to admit I dislike the company of straight men because:
a. They just have to be "the man". A lot of them can't handle it when I want to be "the man". And the straight men who don't mind being "the woman", I have zero respect for- I mean, where's the fight in you, boy?
b. Sexual tension. I hate it when they want to get in my pants or even think of getting into my pants.
c. They're just so dorky.

OK. I admit I'm grossly generalising, out of boredom.....

Ah, marriage...

Well, we've been married for 5 years now. Our anniversary just passed a few weeks ago.


Let me just crap on a bit about marriage.

I met my husband the week after the final semester of our university degrees, at a "Thank God It's All Over!" party. He looked amazing. He's tall, lean but not thin, broad shoulders and he's got strong features for an asian man. His eyes are the prettiest thing about him. Eyes that any asian woman would give their firstborn for. Long eyelashes and big goo-goo eyes. He has a sharp nose and high nose bridge. A cheeky little boy's smile.

In the next six years: We fell in love, we dated for a year, we lived together, he proposed, we got married. We concentrated on our careers. He did a Masters degree, I became a registered architect, he did his CFA exams.

I'm a notoriously negative person, so I want to talk about how hard it is to live together with someone.

You bring totally different values together.

• I was raised very differently from him. I was a rebellious free spirit- one of those spoiled kids driving big cars and unlimited pocket money that you love to hate. My parents were liberal, sometimes absent and raised me with a lot of trust. I turned out OK. Eventually. He was a studious overachiever (but not nerdy) who was responsible, a prefect, a star athlete in school. His parents worshipped the ground he walked on. He turned out OK. I think.
• I always had servants tidying up my room and picking up after me when I was growing up- so you can imagine I am hopeless at keeping a house clean. We live in Australia, so we don't have maids here, mmmkay? Not unless you're willing to pay AUD$20 an hour for a nanny and AUD$40 for a cleaner. My husband is a neat freak who can't stand seeing a layer of dust on anything. He gets frustrated not because he expects a woman to do dusting, vacuuming, cooking and all that shit, but because he has to do it all.
• My husband's mother thinks he's a the messiah, so she raised him to think that he deserves to be worshipped in the same way by the lucky woman he marries. He has a problem when I tell him he's wrong.(Ppppthhfft! That's the sound of surpressed laughter)
• I'm an expressive person who feels confrontation is healthy.
• My husband prefers to remain silent and avoids confrontation.
  
  That's only a few of our problems, but there you go.
  Married life ain't all rosy, folks.
  
  

You've come a long way, baby

I had a staff review on Thursday last week. Just when I returned from a business trip with one of our directors to my least favourite city in China.
OH GREAT- after dealing with demanding clients, now this.
The last review I had was in 2002....
There I was, face to face with one of the directors in our Sydney office.
I was positive about the whole thing and my growth in the company- heh.
When you're positive, it makes other people positive too.

The BIG BOSS doesn't actually do reviews. He's famous, he's an international architect, his name is revered and university students study his works as one of the greatest post modern architects of all time. NEVERMIND that he likes me, thinks I have balls and never gives me the same type of savage thrashing he reserves for designers whom he wants to put in their place, I have to earn the respect of the Managing Director of our Sydney office. And that equals making money, money money.......

It's sobering when you put a dollar sign to how much you make for the company. And I gotta say, last year, I made more money for the company than the raise they're giving me. I guess I should count myself lucky still- I get to travel, I get to work on a variety of projects from high rise high density residential to low density golf course resorts. I get to work on international projects which make it into architecture magazines. I will forever carry the name of this master architect on my resume. My future is pretty much set in architecture.

BUT the director did an about-turn when I mentioned my MBA.
Boy, did I regret mentioning a friend of mine who has since left our office for six figure per annum salary after her MBA.

MBA = seeya later, losers

Nah, I said. What I'm gonna do with that is I'm going to run one of your asian offices for you. Two more years at the most. I already pull in loads of contacts because I come from a country that says "It ain't what you know, it's WHO you know."

The country that tries to lure people like me and my CFA investment analyst husband back in their fold.

*LAUGHS FOR AN INORDINATE AMOUNT OF TIME THEN GIVES THE MIDDLE FINGER TO THE MERE THOUGHT OF FALLING FOR THAT BULLSHIT*

Meanwhile back at the ranch.........

The family home is in an affluent hilly suburb of the modern thriving asian metropolis Kuala Lumpur.

The hallmarks of asian wealth adorn this house. A six bedroom two storey bungalow on a hill. The other home is away from the city, near a slightly quieter but newly planned and developed city. This is the weekend house, where we gather for important events.


This is about my family. The most precious thing to me.

My father is an extremely busy man- he's in the newspapers almost every day.
He got to be the kind of successful man that features in magazines, the kind of man people address by his honorary title (an honor bestowed by the King of Malaysia), the kind of man people immediately recognize... all because of his drive, determination and hard work. I don't know how he keeps up his schedule- he flies across the country several times a week and manages to squeeze in a game of golf here and there. Bet you anything he will visit his alma mater.
My mother is a fun loving lady. She has graced the pages of T*tl*r a few times.
My sister is a busy corporate type in an international company. She is smart, attractive, single and successful. She's also got an amazing sense of humour. We are only a few years apart and we're very close.
My brother- he's a guy who gets along with everybody and everybody wants to be his friend. He is highly intelligent, analytical and cautious.

DVDs and in-flight movie suggestions.

It's grey and dreary outside in Sydney, a cold front has hit the city and has even dumped snow in the Hills district.
It's DVD marathon time.
I've seen Jack Black's School of Rock when I was on a plane enroute to an asian airport- one good thing about travelling constantly because of work is that you get to see a lot of movies during those hours you have to kill.

The firm I am in has quite a few high profile projects in Asia, some completed and some underway. So we travel to our branch offices in asian cities. I will be leaving for Singapore and Shanghai in the next week. Many big Australian firms are concentrating their efforts in China. This is where the majority of our current design projects are.

I have seen a blog post by a certain young Malaysian based aspiring architect literally gushing about our design projects in China. I thought he was a pathetic little yuppie wanna be- If he could only begin to know what we do to grab those projects and the “quality” of design we give them. But I digress, I am veering off on a tangent.


Back to movies. Lost In Translation, I saw earlier in the year.
It seems to be more about alienation and especially about the city of Tokyo.
It's a brilliant piece.


Going back a few years, another movie I loved is Four Rooms
A joint effort between four amazing independent film directors Allison Anders and Quentin Tarantino. Enough said.
Just because I like borderline indie films doesn't mean I'm not motherf**king yuppie scum.
I am yuppie scum. Right from my black turtleneck to my square black architect spectacles.




My apologies. I am veering off on yet another tangent, as one is expected to do, on days like this.

Attack of the Little Men from Planet Petty

Welcome to my neurosis
(e.g: The thing that's bugging me today)

Anyone who gripes about work to me just bores me.

Nobody is going to read my blog in its stages of infancy, so here we go:
There are a handful of people at work who have been there for, oh let's say: an average of 10 years between them. They're not directors or associates, none of them hold any particular amazing position at work.

They're the people who treat office politics like the be all and end all of their life. They scheme for pettiest things like the best seat in the open plan office. They're the ones who make sarcastic comments out loud. They're the ones who take other people out to lunch and asks them what they've heard A say about B behind their back. They plot and scheme to get the tall poppies fired. They all talk behind each others' backs. They all hate each other but they hang around together and squabble.



They won't leave their mediocre positions because they've been there too long, they're too scared of what's outside.
They're insecure because they've been sidelined and bypassed for promotion by people who have been there for much less time than they.
They pick people whom they think are weaker to build their little empire.

They'll be bitter to the very end.
Watch your back, because they live in EVERY work place all round the world.

The Maiden Post

I think therefore I am.

I am fearless on the outside.
I am a neurotic mess inside.
I am a professional.
I am restless.
I am into my 30s.
I am reaching a burnout.
I am a sociopath.