8th August…started writing this at the airport before taking off to Bali. Warning: Up ahead – a colossal, verbose rant that rolls on like hills in a shitty fantasy novel.
Last night may have been the worst first date of my life and I didn’t even have to leave the house for it or put on underwear. No, it’s not what you’re thinking. Believe you me, even a rendezvous of that sort has potential to turn into gold with a capital O (chuckle). No, this was a phone date and it was a phucking phontastic disaster.
Why a phone date? Because my darling mother, relentless like a salmon swimming upstream, found 4 more boys for me via the great arranged marriage network on the interweb. Why God Why? When does it end? (and don’t you dare say “With your nuptials, Jups”). After I recounted my disastrous date with that other Indian boy, mom asked if I wanted to meet boys in Singapore. I don’t know what I was thinking. Actually I do know, and it was this pigheaded idea that maybe there were guys in Singapore that were tired of the city and wanted to move and what better reason to move for than a lovely girl in a lovely city like Hong Kong?
I paid for that pigheadedness with a date that put me at risk of severe brain damage and I am not talking about a brain tumour from microwave radiation from the mobile phone itself.
You see my date was an avant-garde twat with a severe case of braggadocio and presumably a penis not visible to the naked eye. But that’s the verdict so let’s get into the gory details of the crime first so you can be the judge.
Name: Twatface McBraggy
Age: 34
Education: MBA (India- unknown colleges)
Work Exp: India and Singapore / Banks
Profession: Reigning Warlord of his bank – all the other banks want a piece of him but they can’t have him, ha!*
Net Worth: One Gazillion Bajillion dollars excluding the value of his sheer awesomeness because you can’t put a price on that shit.*
(* – He has had several job offers, offers to move to New York, London and Hong Kong and he just said no. Why? Because he da man. Also he may consider moving to London for a salary of 200,000 quid. If you’re a recruiter/employer in London, this is your chance. You’re welcome)
As I relive my horror from last night, I struggle to put into words what I went through. Mostly because he had all the words and I couldn’t get a word in sideways. I could do a headstand on a candlestick and not get a word in with Twatface.
It all started innocently. He rang at 10.15 p.m. He had a soft voice and asked if I was planning to stay up. I said yes because I needed to pack as I was flying to Bali. This somehow very quickly plunged into a discussion (and by discussion I mean competition) on how much annual leave we get. He got 30 days. I had 18. And children, that’s how the enormous wankfest of a phone call began. Twatface spoke with a very Bombay accent but in a rapid-fire kind of way and I was pushed into front of the fast train of his monologues, leading to the painful death of many braincells. (The survivors wrote this post which as you can see is NOT my best work).
Twatface launched into a full-on discussion of his CV – from where he’d begun his career to where he was now. It would seem that he started his career as head / managing / lead warlord of an entire motherfucking bank. Or at least that’s what it sounded like. He jumped from bank to bank blitzkreiging everything and everyone with his sheer awesomeness. And now he works in a Japanese bank in charge of several continents (CONTINENTS!) and several products (M&A? I haz it! Trade? I haz it! Structuring? bitch I haz it!). Some fifteen minutes in, I said “ah you’re a relationship banker” (i.e. simple way of deglamourizing and simplifying what he’d said).
He also name-dropped all over the place like a horny pigeon on the terrace of my brain. No I don’t know Nigel or Akash or Chetan or whoever the fuck. And yes, I know that in banking people move in the same circles and from bank to bank because bosses take their minions with them. Never mind that this is hardly a first-time type of topic but fact of the matter is I don’t have those networks. I am not gargling balls to get ahead at work and some point I did snap and say to him “that’s okay, the Indians in banking have their own little boys’ club and I don’t have a sugardaddy.” He was slightly taken aback. He was also slightly taken aback 90 minutes later when I said ” I work in the same industry and I have literally never had a conversation this long inside or ourside work about the markets). He fumbled and mumbled at that.
We must have discussed banking for about 2 hours – 2 hours where I listened and he talked at me incessantly. He asked me scant three questions – 1. Which bank I work for. 2. Whether I like Singapore or Hong Kong (answer: HK did not work in my favor) and 3. What my dad and brother did for a living (no, not my mom, because heaven forbid a woman work).
Twatface also had some kind of weird Tourette’s because he would repeat the same sentence / thought incessantly for about 5 minutes till I went completely quiet or changed the subject. For instance, he was telling me how he lives alone.
“So you know, I live alone in Singapore. I have my own place and I live by myself. I live by myself in my own place in Singapore. I had my parents visit me and stay for 3 months because I mean, they’re alone and I live by myself, I have my own place so they can come stay with me.”
Big fucking deal you are 34 years old! You should be living alone! Are you actually bragging to me about having your own place? Join the club, it’s called ADULTHOOD!
We also reached a deep dark place during our telephone call where he decided it would be okay to give me unsolicited career advice. Oh yeah, he went there. And I made the mistake of challenging him. He started by telling me how so many of his friends are unable to find jobs despite trying really hard, the market is poor blah blah. So I quipped “yeah, sometimes they can sniff desperation, if you’re looking too hard, it just won’t happen”.
“No no that is not true. If you don’t try too hard, you won’t get anything. You always have to be on the block. I am always on the block, you know. I mean, you HAVE to be on the block. I meet heads of banks, managing directors, I know everyone. I meet them for lunches and dinners but we don’t discuss work. I just meet them because I am on the block. You HAVE to be always be on the block”
Whatever this block was, I wanted to put my head against and have a steamroller roll on it and put me out of my misery.
(I later found out that “on the block” is an expression used in relation to hookers. Fabulous!)
Several times I would attempt to steer the conversation away from “the markets” and fail miserably while Twatface cruelly u-turned back to how awesome he was/his job was. For example, a conversation about my upcoming trip to Singapore to see the F1 race turned into a comparison of my cheap tickets versus his annual rumpus of getting grand stand tickets, giant LCD screens, commentary, champagne and free flowing appetisers like kebabs (yes he mentioned kebabs) and how there was no other dignified way of seeing the race. Woe is me and my downtrodden ways. Buying your own tickets (airline, race or whatever) is no way to live.
And there is more bragging. He talked about how Singapore Permanant Resident status is very hard to come by now and that his friend was a director at Microsoft (like all his friends, hello) got rejected for resident status but Twatface, lord god of awesome, had his application approved in 15 days even though he was doing it as a gag. But of course! And that he was going to apply for citizenship this year or next and was pretty confident that it would come through. I could learn from him – I am not even confident that my morning dump will come through.
I am sure I should have been much more offended at his behavior than I was at the time. It’s dawning upon me now that more than just being a showoff, Twatface was a patronizing jerk who was wantonly underestimating my intellect and my knowledge of my own bleeding industry. I’ve worked in this industry too, so don’t patronize me with your long-winded explanations, dipshit. Never mind that his inflated opinion of himself was grossly misplaced considering he had tier 2/3 education at best and both the banks he worked/works for are regional/tier 2 names. More than that, he was looking to find a wife via a phone call without investing so much as five minutes to find out about what I liked or cared about. And this is probably the most irritating thing that he was able to do on a phone call but would never have been able to pull off on a real date because my eyes would roll as obviously as a Spaniard’s R — the few occasions that I got to talk, he would swiftly interrupt me and cut me off with something unrelated.
At five minutes to 1 am, nearly three hours since the call began, his battery ran out. I must have jumped up from my windowsill and screamed Hallelujah! Ten minutes later, he rang again and my patience, like his battery, had finally run out. I swiftly said hung up after saying I was tired and I had a long day and flight ahead. We ended by saying I should look him up in September.
No sir, I would sooner turn tricks on the block than subject myself to five more minutes of your wretched, self-indulgent machismo. Do fuck off.
Juice 