Glamour/ Class

When I first started work almost 30 years ago, I was an accountant with a small but fast growing trading/manufacturing company run by a family of brothers (all professionals who left their jobs to help their eldest brother run the company). Eventually I left the company and moved on to a statutory board to learn a more structured system of doing things. My ex-bosses however requested that I helped them keep account of their personal investments. So for a few months, every alternate Saturday I made my way to their huge bungalow at Katong to help them keep track of their investments. I would have lunch cooked by their mother. The brothers adored and respected their mother because she toiled to bring them up under very difficult financial circumstances. After what seemed like an effortless task, she would sit at the marble table in the big kitchen,fanning herself whilst the maids did the cleaning up. She was the kind of old lady whose calm countenance and unruffled temperament must have given her children much strength in their growing up years. Her food was honestly very delicious and it did not need much pretense on my part to compliment her cooking. This image of her somehow etched in my memory.

This image could have given rise to some wild dreams (those which you sometimes indulge like jetting around the world in a private jet kind). I told my children how good it would be if one day they become CEO or something and have a open house. (Must really be as senior as CEO to ensure people bother to curry favour.) I would then whip up some dish and urge their subordinates to eat, saying it is cooked by me. I would then relish the compliments, lies and superfluous praises endowed on me. I would stay to banter and see them struggle with small talks with me, (hahaha, funny and half-sadistic dream).But alas my children will never be CEOs. They are more likely to be poor writers of unknown journals or some eccentric academics pondering about where the world is going.

Anyhow this is part of what glamour and 'class' is all about, and I am not surprised most people have some desires to be glamorous or classy albeit ranging from slight to raging. It can be achieved in various forms. So it was when Wendy Murdoch gave a twirl on the red carpet to show off her beautiful outfit for the paparazzi at a gala event (whilst Rupert Murdoch stood to one side giving his young Chinese wife the amused look). It is also the kind of feeling when people give you the second look, even though really it is at your wrist with the expensive watch or the branded bag on your shoulder or even your dainty pedicured toes on Jimmy Choo slippers (sorry don't know which watch and bag is most expensive!). It is also the SIA girls mollycoddling to ensure your comfort in business class (incidentally my daughter just swore she won't travel by SIA anymore because of the marked disparity in service for locals and foreigners even for economy seats). It is when you are a VIP at a business function and your host and his minions throng around to welcome you or when you are made to believe you are special by the private bankers (or deceived to feel special by priority banking executives). The list is endless varying for different age group and different social hierarchies.
Hmmm...as for me, being the Scrooge that I am and aiming for a career that only gives intangible rewards at most, I must think of some other means to get the glamour kick that I may need occasionally.