A Person’s True Vocation - Softcover

Li, Vincent

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1482899132 ISBN 13: 9781482899139

Publisher: Professional Services Press, 2014

Synopsis

In 2009, the world is reeling from the impact of a global financial storm. For a series of young professionals in Hong Kong and Indonesia―places somewhat immune to the crash―life isn’t as easy as they had hoped. Now, when nothing is certain, they must find a way to rise above the challenges of life in a soulless corporate world.Michael’s trying to come to terms with being told he has to leave Hong Kong, thanks to a transfer to Indonesia. Who would have thought the general manager of a recreation club could be this stressed out? Simon has a job that should be relaxing and rewarding, but he has to find a way to outwit a board that wants him impeached. Chris, the ambitious (and slightly overwhelmed) marketing director of a fashion brand-management company, is hoping to launch an extravagant fashion show against all odds of economic downturn and corporate politics. And poor Roy and Joey wish they still had jobs to worry about. But they’ve just been told that they are redundant in their respective (former) workplaces―on the same day.Success in this world is not only about who you are; it’s about who you know. Sometimes you are what you do, and sometimes you just do the job. Together, these friends explore the absurd, delicious, existential anguish of the quest to discover what life truly has in store for each of them.

About this title

About the Author

Vincent Li has lived in the UK, Japan, Korea, the UAE, Canada, and Indonesia. A veteran of the aviation and travel industry, he is a blogger for the education post of South China Morning Post, among other online publications. He was born in Hong Kong and now lives in Shanghai.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

A Person's TRUE Vocation

By Vincent Li

PartridgeSG

Copyright © 2014 Vincent Li
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-4828-9913-9

Contents

May 2009, 
Chapter 1: Card-box, 17, 
Chapter 2: My Angel, 29, 
Chapter 3: Double-think, 41, 
June 2009, 
Chapter 4: Hot Pot, 57, 
Chapter 5: Avatar, 70, 
Chapter 6: Godfather, 81, 
July 2009, 
Chapter 7: Vanity and the Filth of Power, 99, 
Chapter 8: The Hidden Jewel in Asia, 111, 
Chapter 9: Bombardment with Poverty, 125, 
August 2009, 
Chapter 10: You have got the look!, 141, 
September 2009, 
Chapter 11: True Vocation, 155, 

CHAPTER 1

Card-box

Roy worked for a publisher of local magazines, which mostly featured the local paparazzi and lifestyles in Hong Kong. He categorically belonged to the "professional" community of gossip-trailblazers, the "hounds", who basically made their living out of tracing the celebrities' footprints and making the most spectacular drama possible out of every single exposed incident—or even just vague hint to an incident—concerning their targets, like prey. He enjoyed and took pride in his job. If he was ever asked to pass any judgment on the trade, it was with a sense of honour—without any tinge of iniquity—that he considered it contributing substantially to the value chain of vanity making, which he believed was what the show business all about.

"Don't the artists want exposure and fame after all? What extra miles many of them would not go to for getting featured under the spotlight?" Roy was totally convicted of the mission of his trade. Of course, more often than not, it tends to be patronizing, if not ruinous, rather than glorifying in reality. But besides the celebrities' stories of fame and success—and decadence, sleaze, or downfall—as a media journalist, Roy also covered other topical stories for suiting the public tastes, sating their gossip-hungry appetite. Other than the chief editor's judgment, basically, he had to follow his own instincts for picking the right trends and hitting the right spots—though a published post turning out as a hit or a miss is anybody's guess.

Incidentally, the mission of his news-hunting excursion on this particular day was to cover a breaking episode of an alternative nature. It was about a bankrupted business closing its shop. Why Roy judged the breaking news to be relevant to his publication, and what made it particularly media-worthy in his view, was the bankrupted company itself: Tou Pao, another paparazzi publisher, literally translated as "First Canon". Intuitively, it should be a melancholic kind of story to be covered, as yet another incident of a business going down seemingly as a victim of the prevalent economic recession. But Roy was ambivalent about the approach with which to cover and feature the story.

As Roy received the phone call of tip-off from his clandestine informant about the commotion breaking loose at the publishing office of "First Canon" upon the sudden arrival of official receivers and security guards in abundance, he did feel a mixed sensation of sympathy and schadenfreude. Indeed he was also consciously aware of his own self-serving smirk. As he was listening, he even began to conceive various sardonic angles of feature from which to make an attractive story out of the otherwise deplorable incident, with spontaneous choices of catchy headline for captivating the potential readers' attention toiling in his head, readily translated as "First Canon no more; First Canon goes under; First Canon's bolted". He was convinced that the story would sell, never mind being by way of a cheesy headline—and its apparent lack of sympathy.

Feeling excited with his own creative initiatives, Roy spontaneously pumped up his fist, doing so in such an aggressive manner that even his surrounding colleagues were startled. But without giving away any hint as to what was the matter to anyone, while still holding his Blackberry phone to his ear with one hand, he swiftly picked up his camera and gear of the other photography tools from his messy desk with another and dashed for the exit from his stuffy office. Notwithstanding the contemporary digital age when data and information were long supposed to be conveniently managed and stored in their soft formats, it was still a typical printing office—one packed with piles of all sorts of papers—where Roy worked in. More often than not, anyone dashing for the door through the narrow lanes between closely-parked journalists' desks fluttered up flying papers from the vicinity on his/her trail, as Roy did on this particular occasion.

Rumours had been spreading about the demise of "First Canon" for quite some time—which it narrowly escaped once. Its core weekly magazine was forced to have its name changed in the wake of a scandalous blunder a few years back. A cover story which exposed the life-struggling history of a popular movie star, and victimized her with repugnant pictures of nudity, was immediately proven to be crossing the threshold of the society's tolerance of crassness and vulgarity upon its publishing. The publisher was immediately labeled as villainous out of the sheer outrage of the general public and, of course, the show-business artists in particular. With the celebrities' missionary and cohesive calling for the common cause of fighting against the devilish infringement of privacy, and with their natural attraction of star's power, large-scale assemblies and parades of protest under their leadership were swiftly formed across the city and extensively reported through all local media channels. Publishing of the weekly magazine was immediately terminated, until it was re-launched under a new name some months later after the antagonistic sentiment died down.

Crueler than the industry's relentless urge to expose and sell the third persons' privacy to arouse and satisfy the sate of public curiosity, it was not any ravaging scandal but the destructive force of economic reality—if not the digitalization and commoditization of cheap gossips—which gored the infamous publisher this time. It was a cold and hard accounting matter of hemorrhaging cash flow that eventually brought it down. So its day of inevitable reckoning perhaps came as no surprise to anyone, it was just a matter of timing. Yet, Roy was excited about the breaking news for his own reason.

Although, in a split second, it crossed his mind that he should first check with his boss whether he should follow this breaking story up, Roy was too excited to slow himself down. It was only two years ago when his application for a position of journalist at "First Canon" was coldly turned down. What made the experience of failure particularly hurting was the condescending interview given by the publisher's chief editor. Roy successfully joined Xin Lang Chao, literally translated as "New Wave"—his current employer—afterwards. Not entirely out of any vindictive intent but simply by virtue of the trade, he had always been in the heat of loggerhead competition with "First Canon" for readership of more or less the same type of gossipy cover stories. With the competitor whom he personally and progressively took as his foe eventually going down then, Roy was feeling triumphantly vindicated, that the humiliation of rejection turned out to be a blessing in disguise; that he auspiciously escaped getting on board a sinking ship. He was sensing victory and was eager to show up and witness the final moments of the capsized wreck. He wanted to have the last opportunity to stare down at the vanquished and was particularly keen to capture a vivid photo shot or two of the predicament concerning his adversary, Mr. Young.

Mr. Young was the chief editor of "First Canon". Since the day Roy walked off from the corner office of "First Canon" feeling humiliated two years ago, his impression of the chubby face, its squinting eyes and the shiny egg head—but for a long clump of black hair bridging over from left to right, or perhaps the other way round—had never faded for a bit. The reverberation of the condescending jest, "there is no place for the amateur here," also lingered on.

Alongside the prospering growth of the local cinema and TV industries, "New Wave" was among the first few locally bred publishers launching into the entertainment business in the 70s, and since then has been witnessing Hong Kong's history in the making. It had aptly ridden over generations of cultural new wave, and survived previous rounds of economic crisis—most notably the Asian financial turmoil around 1998 and the SARS plague in 2003—in reasonably good, if not totally unscathed, shape. Since its inception almost four decades ago, the publisher's office has been remaining in the same premise, though, on a couple of occasions, was expanded to its neighbouring vacant space on the same floor of a rather shabby factory building—one of the few remaining in their dilapidated forms—in Quarry Bay. Over decades of progressive development, along with the spread of the city's Mass Transit Railway (MTR) line, the district has become no more a remote landscape of worn-down factories it once used to be but a modern town with clean thoroughfares of glaring commercial high rises. These attractive buildings of the new century are mostly in an uniform style and conveniently connected through a network of glass-enclosed sky corridors a high level up from the ground floor, which efficaciously protect the pedestrians from the harsh weather of pelting rain or scathing sun outside—if not the prevalent economic storm then. Commuting between his anachronistic factory building and the nearest MTR station, Roy liked to transcend through the maze of modern lobbies of these hi-tech buildings and stroll or dart through these sky corridors, from where he could smugly catch a commanding glimpse or two of the action on the streets below; and he enjoyed the surreal sense of cross-over between generations of the old and the new.

Rushing to the Quarry Bay's MTR station to take the underground tube for Kowloon Bay, where the office of "First Canon" was located, Roy had neither time nor mood to eye on any hustling and bustling scenes down the streets on this particular day, which were all rushing past him like meaningless trailers before the real show time. But before stepping down into the underground station, a cynical thought struck him suddenly: "what a nice day, indeed too nice a day to turn jobless!"

It was indeed a sunny day with an oddly refreshing breeze, which was preciously invigorating given the usually polluted air in Hong Kong.

More puzzling thoughts began to form in his mind as Roy was being transported in the underground tube. He had not taken any tertiary education, let alone in any particular discipline related to business studies or economics. To him, how to make money was all about common sense which, however, did not really help him in understanding the mystery of economic recession—how it comes and goes. He did not have any clue beyond what he occasionally read from the news—though probably not many people, not even the garrulous politicians or self-acclaimed economists the world over, truly did. He certainly had not heard of John Maynard Keynes then, or even the contemporary Nobel laureate Paul Krugman—among those commonly considered as the gurus on the subject—let alone read any of their published thoughts. The particular misgivings bothering him as he was inattentively watching the underground passengers boarding and alighting at every stop between the origin and destination of his underground journey was about bankruptcy.

"What does it actually mean? Is it the definite end of a business, or could it be a means for a new beginning? Does an economic slump lead to mass bankruptcies, or do things work the other way round? But other than the dolorous phenomenon of shops getting shut down on the retail level, which is commonplace in any district on the Hong Kong island and the Kowloon peninsula across the fragrant harbour nowadays, what actually happened to all bankrupted businesses? What is happening now at the office of Tou Pao?" He was eager to find out.

The efficient MTR service took Roy exactly fifteen minutes from Quarry Bay, through four stops in between, a passage under the fragrant harbour and a change between two underground lines to Kowloon Bay—which is a district with a combination of industrial buildings, warehouses and residential properties. Getting off onto the street from the underground exit, he needed a leg of taxi ride to his destination. He had no problem catching one from the taxi stand just across the road even at the particular lunch hour, which was supposed to be a rush time for commuting. Indeed it occurred to him—or anybody else—that there always seemed to have an abundance of taxi loitering around or idly waiting for customers in town during those days.

The taxi drivers, however, were hardly idle even without any customer in rear. Many of them were engrossed in chatting away with their fellow drivers either through some self-installed systems of walkie-talkies or their hands-free mobile phones—on soccer scores, horse-betting tips, outstanding debts, unwholesome passengers, the day's revenue, and all the rest of the usual trifles of the trade. Otherwise, someone might be assiduously and nimbly attending to a makeshift work station of two to three or more mobile phones and writing pads lined up on top of the meters' panel in front of the driver's seat, not unlike a trader being occupied at a stock exchange office but short of the computer monitors, taking call orders for discounted services—fifteen to twenty percent off the meter charges—as Roy's driver was busily doing while taking him on a short ride to his destination. With increasing demand to match, the supply of these discounted call services has been proliferating for some years despite occasional outcries of protest against fares undercutting from the ordinary taxi drivers. But Roy could not care less about the industrial conflict between taxi drivers at the moment, as his mind was eagerly set on the approaching scene of imaginable bewilderment brought on by a publishing business being closed down.

The pedestrian street which Roy got off onto was all deserted and quiet, not untypical of any other streets in an industrial district where the buzz of activities is in the buildings, not outside. He suddenly felt like being in the eye of a storm. But he was not entirely certain that he was at the right place, not until he caught sight of a young and trendy-looking lady coming out from a building a few steps in front of him, who was hugging a card-box of files and other office apparatus to her chest. On closer look, the lady was actually not too young, perhaps in her late 30s. Her youthful attire of tight denim skirt and red polo shirt along with her trendy cut of spiky hair surely did its wonder, despite the incongruous card-box in her embrace. It formed such a poignant view so typical of an office scene of someone made redundant in a TV soap opera. Roy also caught a glimpse of her credit-card-size staff badge hung round her neck, unmistakably with the logo and calligraphic characters of Tou Pao on.

Although Roy could not ascertain what was exactly happening to the lady, her disconsolate look along with the card-box in her embrace was telling enough. Until then, he never believed that anyone in the right mind would actually use a card-box, instead of a bag—one of any kind—to collect her personal belongings upon her final departure from any particular office in her working life, even on a sudden-death notice of layoff. Ironically, he was indeed witnessing it right there in front of his eyes, whether the mysterious lady was in her right mind or not.

But Roy was swift in action. No sooner had he shaken off his brooding over the ominous card-box than he launched his camera into its operation mode and clicked its shutter relentlessly into harsh action over the ill-fated lady. No doubt getting so used to the journalistic instinct and reflex, she made not the slightest attempt to dodge Roy's onslaught of grating photo-taking. However, Roy got not one single word out from her closely sealed lips, with no response whatsoever to any of his questions as he swiftly rumbled on—though trying to appear courteous in his interrogating process.

"How long have you worked for Tou Pao? What was your job? Were you given any redundancy package? Was there any proper explanation from the employer on what's really going on? Is it closing down indefinitely? What's happening to the rest of the staff?" Roy was like reciting his lyrics of verse and chorus, so on and so forth.

(Continues...)

Excerpted from A Person's TRUE Vocation by Vincent Li. Copyright © 2014 Vincent Li. Excerpted by permission of PartridgeSG.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

Edition details

• Publisher: Professional Services Press
• Publication date: 2014
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1482899132
• ISBN 13: 9781482899139
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 170