Finally, a post!

It’s been almost two weeks since I have made an attempt at writing something for either myself or for anyone else . The account of my stay at Singapore that I had so fervently hoped to maintain has got lost somewhere in the muddle of time, fleeting as it always is. Maybe I have just been too lazy or maybe too consumed of thought and feelings that have flooded my being in the last two weeks. Reading what someone else writes about oneself, about rap music, about rainy days and if you get lucky, about yourself as well has just seemed so much more fun and exhilarating all of a sudden. Or is it just the last two weeks? To be honest, that is what I have been doing since mid-March when on an otherwise ordinary day I was introduced to the world of delirium and delight and how seamlessly one can look at one as the other. Life hasn’t quite been the same ever since.
Doubts start creeping in often enough as to whether I am making too much of what there is in an attempt to dream about what I would like it to be. But that’s the best thing about thoughts. You seldom have any control over them. So, when they take you on a ride into a world where everything is exactly as you would like them to be, you just don’t wanna get off. Reality kicks in soon enough and you are left with the knowledge that the gateway to the “perfect world” is yet to open. Just keep standing in the queue, you seem to tell yourself. The time will eventually come! The taste of the fruit is not always in eating it but in pining for it, you see.
So, to come back to what I have been upto . Work and food have been the most prominent features. Laboriously working at something that you just know isn’t your cup of tea is an experience in itself. I won’t say I have been loving it because it teaches you how to overcome obstacles in life and all the crap that I parroted in the interview. I just look at it this way. I am here to do a job and I will do it to the best of my ability. The money I am being paid and all the amazing experiences that I am having out here more than makes up for the moments of self doubt and sheer disgust that creep up often enough. It’s Economics at play. Whether the remuneration of labour is more than the cost of it and in my case it surely is. I won’t bore you anymore with the philosophy and economics fundas . So let’s talk about Singapore, about Clarke quay, about Turkish ice cream and Chilean wine and futsal at the beach.

Starting in reverse . It all started with ours bumping into a senior from college and ended with an hour of sweat soaked ball chasing at the beach. We sucked at the game, all of us and it was shame that guys twenty years our senior appeared so much more agile and adept even at their age. Then the counsellor’s voice in my mind came to the rescue. I was having fun at the end of the day feeling proud of the fact that I was here, at Singapore , on the beach , playing with seniors from a college where the fact that you area a KGPian is all that it takes to bring you together. The age, the place, the time doesn’t matter. Who cares if I sucked? I suck at so many others things as well. Football is just one of them. How easy is it to rationalize with oneself, isn’t it?
Coming to Chilean wine , margaritas, chocolate chip muffins, prawn fillets, mega mac burgers, ………the list is endless. What a gastronomic delight my stay has been at Singapore which I can safely anoint as the food capital of Asia. You ask for any cuisine that comes to your mind and chances are high that a restaurant within a one kilometer radius serves it! Not only do they serve great food, the entire experience is what makes it even more memorable right from the ambience to the courteous service. They almost make you feel embarrassed by the number of times they say “thank you” for each and every little thing! And yes, how can I forget the Turkish icecream. Facebook bears testimony to what a katwaing experience it was but I would recommend it to each and everyone who visits this place even at the cost of making a fool out of yourself in public. The taste’s worth it, I guarantee!
And so it has been ! Time has really flown, just to use a cliché. It’s been three weeks in a new country and it seems like yesterday when we landed at Changi , a little dreamy eyed. The rest of our ten week stay is going to pass even faster as each of us gets involved in more serious work and with our planned trips to Malaysia and Bali taking up the weekends. But yes, to be honest there have been moments even in this fastlane that have made time stand still. Moments that made the heart skip a beat, that made an otherwise boring day appear magical. When the fullmoon cast a spell in the sky , when sun signs started acquiring a meaning of their own, when discussing allergies over ISD seemed fun, when all that mattered was just the realization that Life for, all it’s miseries and disappointments is just too precious to whine and grumble about.

The Weekend

Yeh, so I haven’t been able to keep at maintaining my diary as I had expected. Primarily because of the addiction that free high speed wi-fi connection in the comfort of one’s bedroom brings with itself. And partly due to the fact that I have been busy discovering the sights and sounds of Singapore to the fullest. It’s ironical that I have managed to find out time in the middle of office hours to write this blogpost but then workload has been almost inexistent for the past week or so. Barclays surely does treat it’s interns like toddlers helping them to figure out the A,B,C’s of the investment banking world with a lot of care and freedom.

The weekend was pretty colourful as expected. Clarke quay, where I stay , has an amazingly vibrant festive feel to it . With restaurants serving exotic seafood, bars with live bands playing,discos blaring out foot tapping numbers and the young crowd out to let their hairs down, the place is a tourist’s delight. Tired after our visit to the Marina Barrage, worthwhile though it was, we settled for a can of beer and our first tryst with the cigar. It turned out to be quite an intoxicating concoction!

After waking up at around 12 noon on Saturday, we decided to try out the Robin Hood movie at Plaza Singapura. To put it very mildly, both the multiplex and the movie was a disappointment. Only the hot dogs that we had at the Cineplex seemed like value for money. It was now time to head for the famed Night Safari which thankfully brought an otherwise lousy day to an exciting end. A trip to the Amazon rain forests, the grasslands of south east Asia, the Savannahs all at once was more than we could have asked for. Highlights would include spotting the snow leopard, the Malayan tiger, the giant ant eaters & the Asian Lion. The night safari tour on the tram with that typical sound of frogs quacking and crickets buzzing around us as we made our through swampy marshes generated a lot of excitement and ooohh and aaahs among us. The only dampener, so to say, was the fact that we could not capture the animals on film with flash photography prohibited. On our way back we were almost on the verge of being forced into a night safari of a different kind with us managing to lose our way to Clarke Quay. It was a miracle that we happened to board a bus which was to go to Clarke Quay and thus we were saved from burning a major crater hole in our packets.

I visited Little India yesterday and it really did feel like being back in homeland. Traffic jams courtesy no traffic rules, loud music, bright lights, hawkers and most certainly more people per square foot area. My heart soared with pride when I saw hoardings in Bengali and Bengali music playing on the speaker. Little India has this significant Bangladeshi population who run these grocery shops and restaurants where you get things really cheap. We had a bottle of water for $1 and Aamras for $2. Nice deal, I would say. Mustafa’s, the famed shopping mall is huge. You can step in owning nothing in this world with just your credit card and walk out ready to start a household. As for us, we bought GoGo sunglasses and some basic food stuff to last us the week. I promise to be back here before my internship ends for all the shopping that I need to do for people back home.

Other highlights would be the amazing two day training we had at 7city educational services. I only wish it would have stretched on a little longer. Sean King, the burly American guy who was taking our classes is one genius joker. He managed to keep us awake through the 7 hr lectures for two consecutive days, which when one s the fact that the class consisted mainly KGPians, is a big achievement. Raffles place where we had the classes can give downtown Manhattan a run for it’s money when it comes to skyscrapers. And our intimate relation with flesh and meat continued unabated with turkey being the latest prey. My Oh My, is the turkey and bacon grilled burger at Burger King sumptuous? Just have it and you’ll forget Mcdonalds and Subway.

And so my first week at Singapore came to an end. It’s been amazing to say the least. I have discovered so many places, tasted a plethora of gastronomic delights in such a short of a span of time and done so little work at office.! What more can one ask for. I only hope that the coming weeks are as enjoyable as the first with some real work at office interspersed in between though!

10th May, 2010

The complementary breakfast was anything but that… A lavish spread of juices, fruits, bread, ham, sausages, mashed egg, quasedillo & cornflakes.
My friends had all of a sudden become my colleagues. Everyone looked every bit the corporate guy with their formals on. I looked at myself in the mirror. The face was still the same but the boy had graduated into a man, ready to take on the world.
This was to be our induction as interns into Barclays Capital. We reached SMU where another group of bright eyed “young adults” greeted us. People from diverse backgrounds- Pakistan, Srilanka, Malaysia, Australia and of course Singapore itself. It had the colours of a mini Asia Pacific Commomwealth summit. Over the course of the day, we got to know the organisation we were going to work for and each other better through various lectures and group activities that had been arranged . Some a little less interesting than the others as usual but it was fun at the end of the day simply because we felt so welcomed into Barclays Capital right from day one. I just hope that I am able to say the same in my last blog post. Btw, one very interesting and for us a humbling piece of information: Barclays is the first bank in the world to have introduced ATM’s . Not a bad place to intern at, heh.
The day finished off on an absolutely mindblowing note with the networking drinks session at the posh Raffles Hotel. My line manager unfortunately could not turn up but his representative was there. To tell you the truth, it really didn’t matter whether I got a chance to meet him or not. When you have unlimited free wine at your disposal and a host of exotic snacks to dig into, who cares. I just drowned myself into the pleasure of the moment. Had some nice conversation though with some of the other MD’s and VP’s getting a glimpse into what it means to be at the top of the investment banking business and what it takes to get there.
Office starts tomorrow at 9 am. It’s already pretty late and I have to sleep on an empty stomach. I don’t mind, though. Just looking forward to my first day at office tomorrow.

Singapore Diaries

8th-9th May,2010
So, where do I start from? Let’s begin from my one hour wait at the lobby at the NSCB Int’l airport. Excited co KGPians all around bubbling with energy at the prospect of waking up in a new country, a new home , albeit a new life. While some were busy discussing JAVA and UNIX, others of my ilk were out with the cameras posing for photographs so that we never run out of Facebook uploads. The flight was pretty decent especially the food what with lamb marinated in red wine and apple flan at our mercy. Although it took some time for me to figure out the channels on the TV screen in front, I finally settled for some light jazz music and then for some much needed sleep. The air hostesses were a big disappointment, though.
The first thing that struck me when we landed was the weather, very Kolkata like, hot and humid. The sun rises pretty late at Singapore although logic tells me otherwise but I was just too tired to inquire any further. Changi airport is HUGE…… that’s the best way to describe it. There must be around 20 flights leaving every hour and yet it seems to sort of scatter all the travelers by it’s sheer size. The travelletors are smooth as silk and the shops tend to hold you back just to stare in wonder. Wines, jewellery, accessories, electronic goods… you ask for it and they have it here.
And so we were on our way to the Riverside Village residences. The roads in Singapore kind of scare you at first glance if you have grown up in India with our unique brand of civic sense. You get the feeling that your car is zooming past a runway or a formula one track. I was simply stunned by the kind of discipline that these people have managed to instill in themselves. It’s a showcase town really, very unreal at first but then you tend to soak it all in.
After having settled down in our comfortable apartments, Pritam and I went out for a walk by the Singapore River. The architecture of each and every skyscraper in Singapore is so exquisite that it makes you marvel at man’s genius in creating such a lovely portrait out of brick and mortar. People jog here at 11 in the morning some even with their little ones on the pram. We managed to spot dog shit lying on the pavement at one remote location though. Thinking of mailing the pics to INDIA TV back home.:)
It rained in the afternoon. We had a mini explosion in our kitchen trying to light the gas. All elements were at play together. And now finally as I write the last few lines of a day of evening river cruise and double cheese burger courtesy Mc Donald’s, of cigarettes bought for 10 SGD and countless things not bought , I feel a sense of gratitude for all that this day has brought along it. There was heartbreak at the end of the day too but I don’t wanna ruin the mood by talking abt it now. Such is life. For all the joy and excitement that you think you can absorb, there’s always a tinge of disappointment that tags along to make you realize that you are at the mercy of feelings and emotions that always have their own script in mind. So always value what you have but learn to let go…

A Good day

It’s been a good day, that I have to say. Lovely weather, that heady feeling of dollars in your wallet and of course a pleasant meeting with a very interesting person that left me with a lot to think about. Coming to the elements first. A gentle breeze carrying the smell of the moist earth kissing your face as you drive down Chowringhee at 8 in the evening on an otherwise humid May day. How often does that happen? It’s when you realize that for all the air conditioning you have available in today’s age, nothing can beat the pure magic of naturally cool air. It rained yesterday too and pretty heavily at that. My street wears a new look this year though with no waterlogging and no having to wade through knee-deep water. In a sense, I kind of miss the not-so-good old times when even a short but heavy shower would mean all life paralyzed for atleast a few hours. It afforded me a justified pretext to bunk school the day after. Now I guess, there’s no school to bunk and no waterlogging anymore too.
I finally have the arms and ammunition with me to shop at Changi airport’s duty free haven. I have had to wait for it a little longer than I would have liked. But it’s worth it!
It went well- that’s what I’ll say about the meeting. We talked, we walked, we walked and talked. We ate, we listened to music and we listened to each other. We debated, we disagreed. We laughed, we joked. I wondered, I thought and then I realized there’s no point in thinking. So, I just let it be. I guess the other person did the same.