Author’s Note:
Thanks to all once again for the very kind comments and encouragement!
After the super-long flashback than sheds some light on the main character’s time with Adeline, I think the Adeline story arc will take a pause for now.
So what’s coming up is the more corporate side of the story, with some shit hitting the fan. But I won’t make the plot too convoluted. Hard to plan and keep track with limited time.
The relationship with Elise will build up slowly. So apologies if readers are expecting her to be bedded anytime soon.
Hope the jumping around from year to year is not too hard to follow.
Thanks for the encouragement once again!
Friday, 7 August 2009
11:04am
Day 4
My little office, a.k.a. “The Cave”, Allison & Omari
When you have a gathering of Bros working together, it’s not surprising that we’d all talk nonsense. Rai, Chong and Benjamin, in consultation with Sally and Seha, had earlier decided to unofficially name their meeting room the “Base”.
The two ladies just didn’t get why the guys were so into giving places of work silly names. I thought it was alright: it helps to break the monotony of work, and give a sense of belonging once you’ve planned a flag on a location by naming it.
After all, the ultimate boyhood fantasy thing Darren, Nuruddin and I did was to name our organisation after a mythical creature - the manticore.
Naming my room, on the other hand, was a fun little debate that I didn’t really want to intervene much in. It’s their fun, let them have it.
The team’s suggestions such as “HQ”, “Stronghold”, “The Keep”, “Fortress”, and “Saferoom” were eventually shot down amongst themselves.
Sally suggested “The Stage” - where a Conman performs his tricks. Sigh.
Benjamin threw in “The Love Nest”.
“Because word’s spread within the turnaround teams about how you’d literally fucked Tak Shing into submission. The lady owner in particular,” grinned Benjamin.
Sally and Seha threw me a scandalised look after Ben’s revelation. I shrugged my shoulders at the ladies and waved off Ben’s suggestion with a “Next suggestion please”.
Seha put forth her contribution: “Batcave”.
I simplified it to “The Cave”.
So this was Day 4.
Any acquired company must continue on a business-as-usual mode. And over the last few evenings, I noted with great irritation that the highly-disruptive practice of hauling editors off on sales pitches was still alive and healthy.
This has simply got to stop. But the practice is just too ingrained - it was management endorsed laziness taken to the maximum.
To enforce a mindset shift, management has to walk-the-talk.
Whether they like it for not.
“Elise, one more thing before you go, could you fix another meeting with us and Sales Director Hubert?” I requested.
She nodded and dutifully noted this into her growing to-do list, her hair bobbing around her shoulders.
Fridays were casual days in the office for the admin and back-end staff. Elise had a light yellow spaghetti strap top with a dark navy blue cardigan on to cover the bare shoulders and upper arms. Her jeans were very from-fitting, revealing the shapeliness of her bum and curves of her legs. A simple pair of low heels showed off her pretty feet.
Elise’s outfit made it very clear that she was armed with a pair of C-cup cannons. At least a C - mind you. The spag top must have been made of pretty resilient material, as it was stretched so taut across her chest that anything of a lesser quality would have given way. No visible bra lines, a very well chosen (and fucking strong) T-shirt bra must be hiding in there.
“You… Seem distracted,” came her voice.
My face flushed with embarrassment, I thought she had caught me looking at her boobs. So instead of quickly looking back at her face, which would make it more obvious where I was gazing, I leaned back into my chair, and looked at my hands. Then after a short pause, I met her eyes.
“What makes you think that?” I asked.
Elise leaned closer in her chair, and counted off three points with her slim fingers: “Well… I saw you on the train this morning, and you had this glazed look. You almost stepped into oncoming traffic when the lights were still red. And I knocked on your door a few times before you realised I was standing there.”
Last night’s dream of Adeline had affected my mood somewhat, I admitted inwardly.
“It’s OK, no big deal. Won’t impact my work performance,” I said mechanically, as though reporting to a boss.
Elise raised her eyebrows at me.
“Well, I didn’t mean to pry… Just something I noticed. Didn’t need my time in HR to teach me how to discern moods and temperament of colleagues who seem… troubled.”
I said nothing.
Elise relented, not probing any further.
“… Anyway, I’m sure Manticore HR has a comprehensive support framework for staff…” she said as she rose from her chair."
“Well, depending on a few factors, you may eventually end up as part of Manticore HR,” I pointed out.
Elise paused with a hand on the doorway, the delicious profile of her curves facing me. “I’d like to handle the staff wellness portfolio then, if I had a choice.”
And very innocently she said, “It’s a privilege to be able to help anyone out with their… needs.”
Day 4 is also asset tagging day.
Allow me to explain my chee bye idea:
So remember I said that Mr Chiang had been walking around trying to remind us of his position in Allison & Omari? Then I sent off the email to all Allison & Omari staff to emphasise that they were now part of Manticore?
So today’s asset tagging exercise saw a horde of Manticore Finance staff coming down to audit and re-tag
all
Allison & Omari assets using the Manticore system.
This is a damn obvious way of saying: “We. Own. You.”
But I chose a Friday to perform this exercise to lessen the psychological impact for the rest of the staff. My main targets for mind-fucking really were Mr Chiang and the Sales Director, and whoever else thinks Allison & Omari is their playground. With it being the Friday before the National Day long weekend, not many were in the mood to work (except the editorial staff) so the tagging teams would not pose too great an inconvenience.
I left my Cave shortly after Elise, and went to be a busybody and join the Manticore Finance team as they approached staff to check PC and other equipment asset tags.
Passing by Elise’s desk, I saw her bent over and rummaging in her drawer for a tagged item. This time, I got an eyeful of her heavenly cleavage. So did the two Finance guys.
My god, I thought, they should tag Elise’s boobs as
crucial, non-expendable capital assets
. I chuckled at my own lame joke.
The Finance guys gave me a friendly wave, and I returned a salute. Elise looked up and smiled, seeing me in a seemingly better mood, then resumed her search.
Walking around the rest of the office, the sales team desks were mostly empty, so the tagging and audit went quite smoothly, save for portable items that the sales folks carried with them. Heading to the editorial staff desks, most of the editors were still hard at work. The tagging crew did their best to be unobtrusive as possible.
Long weekend or no, the deadlines were still impossible and it had come to the stage where weekends and public holidays were seen as obstacles to a deadline.
I’ve been there before, I thought. And I hoped that since I’m back, I can help make things better.
Then, on a crazy whim, I thought I’d go disturb Mr Chiang with a tagging team.
I turned back to the admin department to rustle up the two Finance guys.
“Hey, Conman,” they greeted. “Did you see that lady just now? She. Is. Hot.”
I’ve been known to be quite easygoing and chill with fellow Manticore staff, but when it comes to work, well, I try to be more professional. “Try” being the operative word.
“Gentlemen, need your eyeballs to audit the President’s equipment,” I said.
The two guys laughed their heads off.
I then realised what I had said came across quite… gay.
“You- you need a short ruler… or long ruler… to gauge extent?” they choked between bouts of laughter.
I rolled my eyes. “Fuck lah, let’s go.”
Mr Chiang’s PA was nowhere to be seen, but I could see his shadow seated at this desk.
Hoping that I had caught him mid-wank, I rapped on his door loudly 3 times.
A pause. No reply.
I knocked again, harder this time.
“Ugh, coming. I mean come in,” said Mr Chiang in a flustered manner.
I heard stifled laughter from behind me. Fuck, the word ‘coming’ made these two jokers laugh again.
The consummate professionals I work with.
I took a deep breath, put my hand on the knob and opened the door.
I was half expecting Mr Chiang to be pulling his pants up or sweeping soiled tissues into his wastebasket, after banging his PA. Instead, he was seated placidly at his desk with some documents waiting for his attention.
“What do you want?” he said curtly as he saw me open HIS door.
“Good day Mr Chiang,” I said as politely as I could put on, “These fine gentlemen are here on the asset tagging exercise, as scheduled today and informed to all staff by the Corporate Services email dated-”
“Fine. Get on with it and finish fast,” he butted in before I could finish.
“Certainly, Mr Chiang, we won’t be long,” I replied in an English butler tone of voice.
He stared daggers as me as the Finance guys went in to check and re-tag Mr Chiang’s PC, desk, chair, cabinets, artwork, Raspberry phone, etc. I remained standing at the threshold of the room, not stepping in.
This irritated Mr Chiang. “This isn’t the principal’s office. Come in and supervise all you want, if that’ll make you get done faster.”
“No thanks, the… air’s fresher out here in the corridor,” I smiled.
Mr Chiang looked like he was going to retort, when one of the Finance guys asked, “Mr President sir, is that MacBook missing an asset tag?”
“Of course not, it’s mine!” he said defensively.
I looked at the closed MacBook half buried amongst a pile of papers, and noted that the half-eaten Apple logo still glowed - it was not shutdown yet.
Ahhhh… A personal computer for personal wank sessions. Not abusing company hardware. Very laudable, I thought.
“OK, that’s all folks,” announced the other Finance guy.
We departed, and the Finance guys both did a little head bow as they retreated from the room. They really must be deprived of humour at the Manticore Finance division.
I sighed as the Finance guys high-fived each other after the door to the President’s room shut.
“OK, where’s next for you guys?” I asked as I massaged my temples.
“The server room,” they replied.
And to the server room we proceeded.
A pair of long-suffering contract IT staff slid open the door to the server room, and we coughed as a musty smell assaulted our noses.
Oh my god, I thought, as I saw the antiquated servers parked sadly on a rack.
They were all old, free-standing boxes - not even rack-mounted or blade servers. Judging from the age of the machines, they’d probably been in service even
before
I joined Allison & Omari as an editor.
Amidst the sad spectacle of obsolete IT equipment being put on life support to work past their useful lifespans, I saw two dusty tape drives.
Something clicked in my head, and I ushered the IT guys back to their room for a quick discussion.
Monday, 10 August 2009
10:48am
Playground near Block 414, Bedok North Road
“KKkkkkkkkiiiiiiiiiiiittttttttyyyyyyyyyyy!!!!! " came the excited squeal of a toddler.
I had just finished a run, and was cooling down at the playground near my place. I had the usual friendly white, silver and grey neighbourhood cat on my lap. But our peace was disturbed by a hyper kid with a seeming attraction for felines.
The cat, however, decided to run for its life and sprung off my lap, leaving a few superficial scratches on my thighs that drew blood.
“Oh my god, Sorry sorry sorry! Beebee! Beebee! Stop! Don’t chase the poor cat!” implored a feminine figure who whizzed past me in pursuit of the speeding child.
I chuckled, recalling how I’d used to terrorise the neighbourhood cats around the block when I was a kid. I looked down to examine the scratches, no big deal. Compared to the bigass fucking needles that we used to poke into each other during my combat medic NS days, the scratches were nothing.
“I’m so sorry! Did the cat scratch you? Oh my god, it did! I’m so sorry!” said the voice, now sounding familiar.
I looked up, and… Wow.
“Conman!” exclaimed Elise with a bright smile, “What a surprise! You live nearby as well?”
There stood Elise, with a giggling little 2-year-old girl in her arms tugging at her hair that was pulled back in a ponytail. With her hair swept back, and illuminated by the morning sun, every little detail of Elise’s face were stamped with perfection. She had a light cyan coloured spag top on, a dark purple bra strap had fallen off a shoulder as she chased after the little girl. Wrapped around Elise’s bum was a pair of short, and I mean short, ratty cutoff jean shorts. Her long smooth legs ended with a cute little pair of sky grey canvas shoes with white laces that shod her feet.
I am not a religious man. But at that moment I shot a sincere word of thanks to all gods and demons for the invention of the spag top.
Elise’s boobs looked absolutely massive for her frame.
A random thought: was she breastfeeding?
Was she the little girl’s mum? Wow, what a MILF.
Her husband is one damn lucky sod.
The girl chuckled again, “Kitty!”
Elise was still waiting for my response.
“I, uh, yeah,” I blurted in an inarticulate manner as I gestured to the block in front of the playground.
“Poor you, must be really tired from your exercise. Age catching up?” she teased.
“I’m not that much older than you, Elise. So if you think I’m old, then…haha, pot calling the kettle black,” I grinned. “Is that your girl? She’s quite a handful, no?”
Elise laughed, and pressed her cheek against the side of the girl’s face, eliciting a squeal of delight from the toddler.
“Looks like me, right? But no, Beebee here is my cute little niece.” Elise planted a sloppy kiss on her niece.
“So what brings you and Beebee to this neck of the woods,” I asked.
“My sis and her hubby moved to that block a few months ago,” said Elise as she pointed to the block of flats next to mine. “Usually they’d leave Beebee with my parents and I on Friday nights and pick her up on Saturday mornings. But with it being National Day long weekend and all, we had Beebee over for a longer time. I’m here to deliver Beebee back to her mum and dad.”
Elise looked at her watch. “We’ve gotta go, see you!”
I smiled and waved goodbye to them, watching the spectacle of Elise’s lovely legs and the hypnotic swaying of her hips as she departed. Her ponytail swayed merrily from side to side as she walked.
Seems to love kids, I thought. Elise will make a great mother, I suppose.
I headed back to my flat to clean up, wondering what I would do for the rest of the day.
I got out of the shower, and saw a flashing message indicator on my Nokia.
Assuming it was work related, I took my time to dry myself off before turning the screen on. One missed call from an unknown contact.
If it was urgent, the caller would have left an SMS message. But curiosity got the better of me and I dialled the number.
I heard Elise’s voice: “Hey, wanted to ask you if you knew anything about buying laptops. Convenient to talk now?”
Computers being a favourite subject of mine, I went on a long monologue about first determining what one was going to buy a laptop for, whether weight was an issue, if a CD or DVD-ROM drive was needed, docking options for workstation conversion, etc.
Elise acknowledged each point with an ‘ah’ or ‘uh-huh’, before finally saying, “I think I’ll need someone to accompany me. You up for a spot of tech consultancy today?”
“Consultancy? To which company and which cost centre do I charge my services to?” I teased, not wanting to sound too eager.
“Pfftt. Spoken like a true conman. I’ll buy lunch. OK?”
How can anyone say no to a free lunch?