The Curious Diary of Mr Jam

by Nury Vittachi

  This caused a bit of a problem the first week, since my voicemail had not yet been set up. I realized this when I overheard the receptionist saying to the boss’s secretary, “Do we have a new post in the editorial department called The Lord of Darkness? What extension is he on?”

  I interrupted them. “This company has a great many lords of darkness,” I said. “But you’d better put those calls through to me.”

  As the days turned into weeks, the bosses got into the habit of looking at me as if I was from a different planet. But they soon found that they couldn’t sack me. My page went straight to the top of the popularity charts with the readers and stayed there. I was safe.

  Until one grim day some years later when a Man from Head Office in New York arrived to check out their Asian holdings and do some reorganizing. He called me into his office. “I notice you used the word ‘toilet’ in your column today,” he said, wringing his fingers together so violently that I’m sure he dislocated his pinkie.

  “Yes, sir. They’re very popular in Asia. Many people have their own.”

  “Not any more,” he said, oddly (and, surely, inaccurately).

  He recited a secret list of things that I was no longer allowed to mention. (This action would cause a walk-out in newspapers in the west, but is normal behavior from bosses of newspapers and magazines in Asia.) On it were toilets, linguistic errors, dating, funny signs, disgusting foods, etc. Uh-oh. His list of “Things Which Can No Longer Be Mentioned” exactly matched my mental list of “Things Readers Are Interested In”.

  “Did you obey?” Pushpa asks.

  “Sure. For about an hour.”

  “In other words, no. You got the sack again?”

  I nod. Looking back, I realize that I didn’t mind. It was the right time to move. It was clear that with people like him in charge, the publication would die. The readers would leave with me. Besides, Zarkon, Lord of Darkness, can only exist among Company Men for so long.

  Monday, February 4

  Amazing news. I have been given a WEEKLY HUMOR COLUMN in a biggish Asian newspaper. After the past few months in the wilderness, maybe I am considered rehabilitated. How did it happen? A banker friend named Sze Sze Tan met some media investors who were re-launching a paper and he gave them my name.

  Your unesteemed narrator starts work immediately. My first column will be edited tomorrow and published the next day. So today I work for two hours on a pin-sharp column and send it in. This could be the start of an exciting revival in my stalled career as a superstar humor columnist!

  Tuesday, February 5

  The phone bleats. A voice introduces himself as Hendrick Mong, deputy chief sub-editor. “Hi. I’m editing your new column, and I’m looking at the first bit. Where are the names? We need names, ages, occupations, etc.”

  I flip to my copy of the text. “But the first bit is a joke. An American, an Indian and a Chinese guy walk into a bar. People in jokes don’t normally have names.”

  “But in our newspaper we ALWAYS have names, and usually ages, occupations and so on. It’s in our style book. You have to conform.”

  “Okay. American stay-at-home-dad Josh Spelunk, 43, Ravi Das, a 51-year-old Indian car salesman, and, er, Huang Fa Xin, 26, a Beijing tour guide, walk into a bar. Is that better?”

  “Hang on, let me write that down.”

  As he rings off, a feeling of foreboding starts to grow in my stomach. Perhaps this new column will not revive my stalled career as the 21st century vidushak of the printed page after all.

  Wednesday, February 6

  Loitering with intent in Central this morning (intent to kill time), I see people standing in a cluster on the pavement, looking at a television screen. Another big stock market crash is under way. A serious, global economic downturn could be starting, the TV newscaster warns. I can’t help but smile. Yes, I know it’s wicked of me, but look at it from my point of view, Dear Diary: Levellings are rather pleasant events when you’re at the bottom of the heap.

  Thursday, February 7

  After taking the kids to school, I go and look for Mr. Mong’s newspaper at a stall which has publications from all over Asia. It’s there. The lead story bleats about the stock market tumble.

  But feeling unaccountably nervous, I don’t open the paper. Instead, I go to the Quite Good Noodle Shop and ask a friend to read my column and pass judgment. Ah-Fat is the nephew of the main chef, if one can use that word to describe a person who pours boiling water over packets of instant noodles.

  “Your column’s there,” he says. “But I don’t understand a word of it.”

  I take a deep breath and have a look.

  Later, I phone the sub-editor. He hasn’t arrived at work yet. I wait impatiently until I have collected the children from school to call again, and this time I get him on the line. “Is that Hendrik Mong? Look, I don’t want to complain or anything, but I just thought I would point out that you took out the punchlines of all the jokes in my column.”

  “Yes.”

  “Jokes work better with punchlines, generally. It’s just one of those curious things.”

  “We usually ask for more words than we need, then we trim the last line or two from each paragraph. That’s how we edit things. We don’t have time to read everything.”

  “But you can’t use that method when a column is liberally dotted with jokes.”

  He gets defensive. “Look, if a line is important, you shouldn’t leave it until the end of the paragraph. Put it at the beginning. Then we are less likely to cut it. Okay?”

  “Put the punchlines before the jokes?”

  “Exactly.”

  I promise to consider it.

  Lowering the phone, I should feel irritated for several hours, but luckily my life is filled with delightful distractions. Who can feel down when they have time each day to spend walking down leafy lanes, taking three gorgeous, funny, sticky children to after-school activities? There’s much truth in that old saying, “Children are a poor man’s riches.” If only I could be paid to sit around being unemployed. Thinks: Must remember to check the possibilities of finding work as a registered philosopher, creator of maxims, aphorism-composer, etc. Maybe eastern words like vidushak and kamishibai man are too Asian for employers in this modern, globalized world? I picture myself holding a business card saying “Epigrammatist”. I like the sound of that. Must upgrade my philosophizing skills.

  As evening falls, I make a list of the top metaphysical mysteries of life, with a view to creating some sort of portfolio.

  Instead of me, why is there a creepy bald guy in the mirror?

  How come you can keep vomiting long after you have finished?

  How come the questions women ask have no right answers?

  How come forecasters cannot accurately predict the weather but my left elbow always gets it right?

  Do weather forecasters not have left elbows?

  Friday, February 8

  The phone bleats. It is Pushpa again. She is writing up her notes and has one last question. “Will you ever go back to being a satirist?”

  I think for a long time before responding. “I don’t know,” I eventually say. “I think it’s not really my decision.” Should I tell her about my new weekly column? Maybe not.

  Later, I pick up a local newspaper and find the news pages full of gloom. Thousands of jobs are disappearing every day. Maybe I shouldn’t be gloating over the stock market crash. Checking my email on a coffee shop computer, I find a note from a friend in New York. “Lots of people have been sacked at my place. And those of us who are left, well, the bosses are unilaterally adjusting our contracts, if you can believe that,” he grumbles. “It’s outrageous.”

  I write a sympathetic reply. But thinking it over, I realize that I don’t really feel sorry for him at all. So five minutes later, I write him another email. “Count your blessings. In Asian firms, we get sacked all the time, sometimes several times a day,” I write. “There are no negotiations or contracts.” I tell him the t
rue story of a Singaporean firm which sacked scores of people by setting off the fire alarm, ushering them outside, and then locking the doors. “Sorry,” the company official said through a megaphone. “You’re all fired. We thought this was the easiest way of getting everyone out.” I wrote: “And those are the nice bosses.”

  On the way to pick up the kids, I mull over the issue. In western companies, employees are protected by unions and laws. In the east, it’s different.

  Sacking people western-style: “I’m terribly sorry but we’re downsizing and have no option but to let you go.” Sacking people eastern-style: “You, you and you: out.”

  Hiring people western-style: “After the second round of interviews, Mr. Jam, there will be a four-hour aptitude test followed by a panel interview.” Hiring people eastern-style: “You, you and you: in.”

  Overtime, western-style: “Can I have volunteers to stay an extra hour or two? We’ll pay you double time, of course.” Overtime, eastern-style: “Big order, lock the doors.”

  Saturday, February 9

  We have a family party to celebrate my wife’s birthday. I quote the Qu’ran: “Wealth and children are the adornments of life,” and add: “One out of two ain’t bad”. Mrs. Jam counters with a quote from Socrates: “The secret of achieving happiness is not in seeking to acquire more, but in developing the capacity to rejoice in less.”

  “Socrates was definitely Asian,” I tell her. “Probably Buddhist.”

  Monday, February 11

  Ah-Fat and other regulars at the Quite Good Noodle Shop are placing bets as to how long my new column will last in the newspaper. The longest estimate is eight months, the shortest eight weeks.

  Tuesday, February 12

  A scribble on my calendar tells me that it is time to send in a new column. As I write, I cleverly add semi-superfluous extra lines at the end of each paragraph so that Hendrick Mong can sub them out without killing the jokes. Ha ha, suck on that, Mr. Sub-Editor. I attach it to an email and press “send”.

  An hour later, Hendrick calls with a question. “We got your column, thanks. But I have a question. Where did all this take place?”

  “Where did what take place?”

  “You mention a desert island, but you don’t say where it is.”

  “It’s a joke. About two people on a desert island. Er, their names are Reginald and Millicent.”

  “And their surnames?”

  “Er, they’re Canadians, and Canadians go by first names only, like Indonesians. Look, it’s just a joke. I think you can print it without fact-checking.”

  He suddenly sounds suspicious. “You mean it didn’t actually happen? This is a newspaper. We can’t print things that didn’t actually happen.”

  “I didn’t say that. What I mean was that, it, er, took place on one of those rocks off the coast of East Nusa Tanggara, Indonesia, last week, on Tuesday.”

  “Thanks. Oh, and in another part of the column, you talk about some guys walking into a bar. Which bar was it?”

  “Harry’s Bar in Paris. On a Wednesday. At, er, 11.03 pm.”

  “Okay. Try to remember to put in all the details next time, will you?”

  “Of course. And if I do a knock-knock joke, I’ll be sure to include the full address of the door, plus a note about what sort of wood it was made of.”

  “Thanks.”

  I wonder if one can get medical help for people suffering from a severe irony deficiency?

  Wednesday, February 13

  Hendrick massacred my column again but oddly enough it doesn’t hurt so much this time. How quickly one becomes desensitized to having one’s name printed over a column of incomprehensible ramblings.

  Having a regular column has got me back into the newspaper-reading habit. Would you believe there’s a report printed today saying that the average jobless person is slimmer, fitter and healthier than the average employed person? People with no jobs spend less time eating executive lunches and more time exercising, the writer suggests.

  At first, I think: that’s a nice bit of ironic serendipity. Must get into the habit of working out. Then I think: Is this article a cunning plant by the bourgeoisie so they can do less to fix the global financial system? I ponder the issue as I phone Sze Sze, who, though gainfully employed, is seriously into the whole exercise thing.

  When it comes to working out, you can divide people into two categories. The Spender applies to the World Bank for a US$100 billion loan so he can buy equipment, a gym membership, designer sports shoes, hi-tech clothing and a heart monitor. The Non-Spender just strips off his clothes and jogs out of the house in his boxer shorts. Sze Sze is the first. I am the second. We arrange to meet for a jog at the crack of dawn tomorrow, a public holiday.

  On the TV news this evening, I note that the new Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has apologized for his country’s past injustices and human rights violations. However, he didn’t say anything about Kylie Minogue.

  Thursday, February 14

  The sun shining through the curtains wakes me early. I slip on my ancient boxers (Jurassic era), singlet (Mesozoic era) and shoes (pre-Cambrian), and step outside.

  Seconds later, Sze Sze arrives in a brand new skin-tight aerodynamic suit. He looks exactly like a Marvel superhero, if you can imagine a small, bald, Singaporean Marvel superhero. (No, I can’t either.)

  On the trail at Bowen Path, we see scores of people from the financial industry, strutting around on their hind legs and barking to each other. Sze Sze knows many of them. “Bankers like to work hard and play hard,” he says.

  “And spout clichés,” I add.

  He nods. Wheeeee. (That’s the sound of an ironic line going over his head.)

  As we run along the route, I realize I am still in philosophical mode, noting various principles of male jogging politics.

  The first thing that becomes clear is this: The appearance of any female jogger instantly causes all male joggers to speed up, including those in mid-heart attack.

  A second observation: Any male who overtakes a female immediately speeds up. The pressure of a woman’s imagined gaze on a male jogger’s back seems to act as a tail wind, causing his head to rise, his chest to expand, his stomach to be pulled in and his feet to move faster. This is totally involuntary. Heading up a slope, I get a painful stitch and desperately need to stop. But I accidentally overtake two women and my speed doubles.

  As Sze Sze and I labor up a hill, another observation hits me: Men perform better in clusters. This is how it works. The first runner, let’s call him Sam, spends 90 per cent of the time thinking: “I really, really need to stop but my friend Sze Sze seems to be having no trouble so I’d better keep going.” At the same time his buddy Sze Sze is thinking: “I really, really want to stop but my friend Sam seems to be having no trouble so I’d better keep going.” This explains why, at the end of each run, we end up setting new records for ourselves. The downside is that we are in intensive care, but, hey, you can’t have everything. If there are between five and nine males, the process is intensified significantly. If there are more than 10 males, they will all soon be running close to the speed of light. It is actually illegal for more than 20 males to run together, as their competitiveness would cause them to curve space-time. This would destroy the universe. Some people think this would be a bad thing. At the moment, I could go either way.

  About 30 minutes pounding the pavements, I estimate we are halfway along our planned route. Sze Sze says: “We’ve travelled exactly 4.9 kilometers.” He shows me his global positioning device, which sends a pulse to a satellite and continuously recalculates how far we’ve gone.

  After another 15 minutes, he flicks up his shirt to reveal (above his chiseled stomach muscles) a device which measures his heartbeat. “It tells me that at the fastest point of the run, the slope we just did, I reached 99 per cent of my recommended heart rate, which is 85 per cent of maximum,” he says.

  I explain that I have a simpler way of finding out when I over-tax my heart. I
fall over dead.

  “That could work,” he says.

  We continue to pad along until we reach our destination. Coming to a halt, Sze Sze checks his over-sized wrist monitor. “We ran 9.8 kilometers in one hour, six minutes,” he says.

  He clicks through a series of graphs on the screen to show off his gadget. “That’s my heart rate. That’s my running speed. That’s my distance. That’s my cadence, or running rhythm. That’s my average stride length. That’s the elevation. And that’s my score on the running index.” He explains that the machine will send the data to his home computer for analysis. Sze Sze jumps in a taxi and I decide to jog slowly home.

  On the way back, a woman jogger approaches me. “Got the time?” she asks.

  I look at how far the sun had risen. “It’s about eight-thirty.”

  She notices that my wrists are bare. “Where IS your watch, anyway?”

  “I keep it in the sky, where everyone can see it. It’s low tech, but it works.”

  Friday, February 15

  A project! Someone is offering me highly paid employment. Sort of. Sitting in the Quite Good with this diary, I am approached by a tourism official named Aravind Rai. Eddie gave him my name and “office” address.

  At first I’m thrilled to hear that Mr. Rai has a big assignment for me, and he wants to pay me to be creative and funny. You see, my God-given mission is to prove that here in Asia, just like in the west, a person can make a living telling funny stories. The jester is a valued, key player in the human drama everywhere. This has to be true.

  “You’ve got a reputation as a funny guy,” he says, licking cappuccino foam off his mustache. “Everyone’s REALLY depressed just now because of the economy. Nobody’s travelling. We should get you to write stuff for us so that people see the funny side of the slump.”