To be fair also, it is that time of the year. After several weeks of getting appraisals of oneself and others written, chased up, put into the global cauldron and signed off, all that remains is to see how the grade now closely and privately held in one's own hand would translate into a deposit entry in one's bank account in another few weeks' time.
The Business Times helpfully and unfoundedly inflated expectations further last Friday by running an article that the House of M is the pack leader of investment banks in Singapore with a 300% increase in revenue year-on-year.
It's been an exacting year at work, sure, since the Asian markets went completely ballistic, subprime woes notwithstanding. But then again, I can't really remember a year in which it didn't felt like that towards the end. But by most counts, it has been a good year in the overall aspect. While I worked one or two socks off, I still managed to paint some, read some, and hung out meaningfully with a few good people.
Still, the ordinary human way of judging rightful recompense is somewhat more narrow. It involves lunch time trips to sleek car showrooms with colleagues (and not even the front-line bankers) who are there to assure you (and you them), that upgrading to another newer and better car, is eminently equitable reward for the obnoxious late night phone conferences one has had to endure throughout the year.
The Chase is not specifically about cars of course. (Indeed, the impetus for that specifically is more shortlived that I pretend it is - after only two trips to the showrooms, I was bored. I am only able to appreciate cars for their aesthetics, and there are not that many out there to sustain a focused interest). But still it is inexorably material - a Kolinksky brush set, Le Cruset crockware, a rare vintage map, a Mount Faber apartment.
It was checked only in part by a casual conversation with my part time domestic helper, a study-mama from China, a very honest and hardworking lady who is raising her son here as a single divorced parent. She was lamenting quietly about how rents have skyrocketed in Singapore, and that the room that she lives in with her son is now $500, compared to $300 a year ago. And the old lady landlord that she was renting the room from still did not have a washing machine in their Tanglin Halt one-room flat.
The amount of loss I would incur by selling my current two year old car and buying the one that caught my eye last week, would pay for her rent for 5 years as well as her son's polytechnic education.
It's a complex question, of course, how much guilt one should or should not feel towards money, whether or not in the face of need. But I wonder what will make us stop chasing cars.
