Cheryl Tan: Sarong Party Girls

That wasn’t even one of the funniest things he did. I still remember when I first started six years ago, he was a bit more daring then. One day, he was walking around the newsroom—slow news day, nothing happening, so he was feeling bored lah. He sent out an email calling for a meeting in the middle of the newsroom. Since he rarely does that, of course we all took it damn seriously. I even wondered whether he was going to announce his promotion! Everyone had been waiting for years for him to become the publisher of the company. But that day, when the meeting started, Albert just started naming people. If you got arrowed, then you had to come to the middle of the news hub. Of course we started to realize something was going on when we noticed that he was only calling girls’ names—moreover, he was calling up all the girls who were wearing a skirt that day. Once there were about ten girls up in the front he asked them all to turn around and said, “Eh, look at this. We have some of the most chio girls in the country working for us. We must show some appreciation—come, let’s vote. Tell me who you think has the most happening legs!” OK, even I have to admit it was just a little a bit weird, but Albert is such a good-natured guy that we all knew he meant no harm. It’s all good fun after all. So, the girls were all good sports, and in the end the whole thing was quite fun. (I don’t remember who won but we all had a good laugh about it at happy hour that night. That Albert really knows how to get everyone in a happy mood lah.) But these days, with more and more girls showing up like that NUS grad, even Albert knows he has to watch it a bit. So, life in the newsroom is not so much fun anymore.

Usually at the start of the day though, Albert is in a very good mood. After spending the night and early morning with his wife and their daughter doing all those boring-as-fuck family things, Albert always cannot wait to come into the office and bother all of us. Sometimes he’ll even take the lift to the skywalk and cross over to the next building to flirt with the bimbo girls in circulation. He has such a big title at the New Times that even though he’s not good-looking (mouse eyes, flat backside, a bit too skinny and walks a bit funny) the circulation girls always laugh at all his jokes and flirt back lah. I think one or two of them are a bit like his spare girlfriends, even though no one dares to talk about it too much. (No matter how good-natured he is, Albert is the boss after all. We should never forget that.) Girls in the newsroom—Albert knows they probably are a bit too smart for him to mess with. If you start going out with them, confirm will have trouble. When things don’t work out (and hallo, you know that is usually what happens), you still have to see the guniang’s face in your department every day. Like that, where’s the fun?

Plus, especially now, when we all have to go to sexual harassment seminars and all, trying to pok girls in the newsroom really is a lousy idea. But the circulation girls—they’re not as smart or bossy so you can count on them to not want or expect very much. (And I guess since they are technically not directly his staff members, it’s a bit more OK.) And his wife also doesn’t really seem to notice or care. He makes big bucks after all—and has the atas title along with it. So when he tells his wife he has to work really late, she also knows she doesn’t have anything to say. That’s why from Monday to Friday—those are Albert’s days for being really happening.

Even though I was his assistant, he had so much to catch up on—he always has to do a lot of hello hellos to the guniangs all over the building lah—that he didn’t even notice me that much until after tea. “Wah, Jazzy, tonight hot date is it?” he said, suddenly appearing next to my chair. He must have meant it because his rubba-ing then was not just my neck—I could feel his hand going down the back of my red silk blouse. “No lah,” I said. “Hot date? As if!”

“Good,” Albert said, continuing his rubba-ing. “By the way, on Monday, wear something nice like this. That night, I have to entertain some people at Front Page—you come along too. Don’t worry, this will be early. I just need some pretty girls there for them to look at. Just drink, smile, listen, don’t interrupt—you know how to do it lah. Just be yourself, Jazzy.”

Even though Albert would never say so, I know that part of the reason he’s kept me on for so long is that I actually bother to show up at work looking nice. Before me, his assistants were all young young cute cute ones—they’ll join him at twenty-two years old; by the time they hit twenty-four, Albert will have already moved them on to some bumfuck job somewhere else at the New Times. No one seems to know where they go because nobody ever sees them again. It’s not as if they mattered before, when they were Albert’s assistants, but after he shoved them off somewhere else, they really didn’t matter to anyone anymore. The point is, Albert was done with them. And they were now out of the way.

Everyone knows that Albert likes his assistants young—partly because he likes to bring them to all these industry things he has to go to, or when he’s entertaining visiting media types, having a chio little girl to smile and laugh at all these bosses’ stupid jokes, is a confirm win situation. But this guniang here actually likes this job—and I know how to dress. And no matter how expensive those SK-II creams are, I always buy them—it’s an investment, after all. If I actually start getting wrinkles anywhere on my face, aiyoh, I know my job will be gone already. Also, whatever Albert asks me to do, I’ll always do it. No questions asked. I make sure that no matter what happens, he always knows that I have value.

Of course, it also helps that I am actually good at being his assistant. Guniang may not be smart enough to be a lawyer but I am very organized. And Albert always has so many appointments, so many people to think about, he knows that if he doesn’t have me around to help him keep track of everyone, his life will be one big problem.

“This week, you have a lot of things on, Albert,” I started to tell him.

“OK come come come, let’s talk inside,” he said, finally stopping the rubba-ing so he could quickly walk into his office and wave for me to follow. He’s very impatient, so whenever he moves I know I’d better fasterly move behind him. So I quickly grabbed my pen, notebook and his printed schedule and ran behind him.

“Close the door,” he said after sitting down in his black fake leather big boss chair and leaning back a bit to get comfortable.

Oh. It’s that kind of meeting.

I closed Albert’s heavy door and went over to the wide bookshelf by the sofa. It’s quite funny that Albert has such a big bookshelf with so many serious books because everyone who works with him knows that he hates to read. “That’s why I went into newspapers,” he always tells us at Front Page after he’s had a few. “The stories are all short!” In fact, since he took over as editor of the New Times ten years ago the stories in the paper have only gotten shorter and shorter. (Except for the sensational ones—anything involving politicians, rich men and sex, he’ll let reporters write as much as they can and he’ll put the stories all over the top of the front page.) But his strategy clearly works lah—circulation has only gone up and up since he was in charge. I can only imagine that his salary is also the same story.

I guess even though Albert doesn’t like books, he is the editor of the New Times after all, so his office must look respectable a bit. That’s why he has this gigantic bookshelf in his office with all the important books—Margaret Thatcher’s collected speeches, Quotations from Chairman Mao Zedong, and of course right in the middle, displayed facing outward, is Lee Kuan Yew’s The Singapore Story . One time, someone tried to give him that book that Hillary Clinton wrote about helping children or some shit but he just laughed and said to them, “Please. She’s a wife.” People should really know better lah: hallo, the editor of our country’s newspaper cannot look like he’s too open-minded. Display this kind of ladies’ book on his office shelf? He might as well start wearing panties.