What about us...

Aarwen woke up at dawn but her clock showed 7am. Someone had told her that even though Singapore is a 2 hour flight from Hongkong they have still chosen to have the same clock so their stock exchanges are aligned.
'They must be freaking crazy!’ she thought to herself ,’who in their right minds aligns the time schedule of an entire country on the whim of the investment banking industry!’
‘umm…well look who’s talking’ she smiled to herself.
Still on India time, it was unimaginable for her to start so early. She put on her music to loud hoping Nickleback’s ‘Rockstar’ would drive away the demons in her head. Back to office and back to reality. She spent the day calling the broker and fixing the house hunting bit as well her employment papers, bank accounts and other utilities. She caught up for lunch with Archie (who we have all met earlier haven’t we?)who gave her a download on the south Asian markets and the still recovering United States of America from the credit crisis. She played with her ramen noodle soup and wondered if it was the right thing to do to relocate to another country in the middle of the world’s largest economic crisis.
The day was uneventful for her though Lehman formally stopped existing that day. She caught up with the India team, there was such a furore. It was an institution and who would have thought that her kids (whenever she got married and had some, if at all) would grow up saying ‘Lehman who/what?’
Its employees were packing their stuff and the world was taking down the signange of one of the oldest financial institutions. It was so sad.
‘Why didn’t anyone save it?’ she asked innocently as she met a colleague for coffee. His name was David. He was medium height, round head and had sharp guarded eyes. Fitness had become his latest obsession. He had married his college sweetheart and moved to Singapore a year back. Aarwen had known him when he was just a campus grad. Remind me later to tell you exactly how she knew him.
‘It was just a broking firm,’ David looked up from his mug of hot chocolate,’ why would the government save it? If it was retail bank or AIG, it might think twice.’
‘How can you be so cold about it?’ she looked at him with distaste.
‘It is only logical. It has to be a decision to save the masses at the cost of a few’, he replied candidly.
‘Still a good hire,’ she thought to herself pleased that her decision made 5 years ago to hire him for an analyst role stood its ground even today.
Yeah, once a recruiter, always an interviewer. We know by now that it is very hard for her to stop constant analysis irrespective of the circumstances. And obsessive, which is the typical investment banking profile (overrated and over paid for high egos I tell you).
‘But still don’t you think it’s sad? So many people who had no role in that extreme leveraging and decision-making are now jobless because a few teams within the business wanted to achieve their targets?’ she asked him, still persistent.
‘Don’t you think that it’s sad that their targets were so steep that they were ready to go to any limit to meet them? It’s a sum total of collective greed and hence a collective blame’, he concluded calmly running a finger circling the edge of his latte.
‘ Who decides and who draws the line?’ she countered,’ Two can play this game. Still… its interesting how small the world has become that the actions of one part can impact the whole world and drive it to recession.’
She eyed him warily absorbing every bit of the sunshine in the backdrop, ‘ Those people on TV can be you and me tomorrow carrying our cartons of office stuff. I am sure you won’t feel that we shouldn’t be saved then’.
He answered in the age old human cliché ‘ It won’t happen to us. At least not today, not in this crisis.’ His smile was sheepish.

As she walked back home from the MRT station that evening, she went over the conversation in her mind as Daughtry sang ‘what about now’ on her iPod.
‘What about now? What about today? What if you are making me, all that I was meant to be? What if its lost behind, words we could never find…before it’s too late?’

She mused, ‘Call me a dreamer but I think the worst thing to happen to anyone is not getting help when one is crying out for it. To be saved from disaster just when you need it the most is one of the rare moments in life that we take for granted.’

Touchwood.