as administrative as administrative law
asinine similies (go on, pronounce it "similais" so it'll sound all matchy-matchy) is the name i've given to a game invented by the turtle and yuchang (cui lian's boyfriend). mind you, these boys were being groomed to run the country in the future - for some strange reason, they were even made to wear all-white uniforms which only served to further reflect their school's already thinly disguised intentions towards them.
anyhow, there was as courteous as a curtain and as annoying as an annoyance, and although shawn poon spent only two years in all-white, he came up with what i think's the best one of all, so far: as transparent as a transparency. which works, because it's the only one i think, that really makes sense. why don't you give the game a go?
as administrative as administrative law's my contribution; jon says it's just awfully annoying, but it came to me last night when we were at the airport seeing lukas off to japan and one of the chinese orchestra teachers was bustling around seeing to various administrative matters. which thought i had was rather out of point i suppose, but you get the idea.
today - yesterday, rather, i received the impact of administrative law first hand.
i think i've mentioned before that i'm currently a slave to the government. until the end of next week, anyway. but i realised that civil servants aren't actually slaves to the government. they ARE the government, and they're slaves to the people. what makes it worse is that there are different levels of civil servants, beginning at the top with the prime minister, who delegates work to people down the line and so on and so forth, all the way down to the lowliest clerks.
the people who have the least spark in their eyes as they jostle their way onto the train in the morning, who have to sit in rooms and record, word for word, what's being said in a particular courtroom, who prepare those endless sheafs of documents for filing, type data into computers, all day long. actually, i think even us interns don't have it so bad.
daniel (year 3 intern) and i had to attend a legal clinic with our mentor at four. lin wasn't around, so we didn't realise that it was on our schedule - she's usually the one who tells us what we're scheduled to do. at 3:50 our mentor came to look for us, and when we heard that we were leaving the office for the family courts we willingly did so, hoping that we'd be able to get off earlier.
fat chance. FREE legal advice leh. who don't want to make the best use of the time given? if can go over allotted time also, why not? after all, i pay tax what. the person in the room paid by ME, ohkay??.
even though i wasn't the one giving the advice, just being there in the room made me feel exploited on our very nice mentor's behalf. but more of that later.
***
i think i've been able to cope pretty well with things this week. when i was first taken to the family courts as a year 1 intern, i went home and cried because it was simply awful, realising that court rooms weren't just those wood-pannelled ones you saw in chinese shows where the accused sat in the docks, and lawyers slugged it out for the rich and famous or the poor and condemned. no, courtrooms came in all shapes and sizes, as did the plaintiffs and defendants. the worst thing was, i realised with horror that almost 95% of the people lounging about at the waiting area were waiting to finalise the dissolution of their marriages and they were simply milling about like they were on a trip to see the dentist. every so often, a policeman would pop his head around the doors of the court and yell for a particular person, just like a dentist's assistant would have. the sheer normality of the situation and its absurdity got to me then, as it did for my first few days at (insert name of the top secret government place i'm working at now).
but this week, when we went for a second round of uncontested divorce hearings, i brought lord seow along with me because he couldn't take being in his once-a-storeroom-no-windows room at the *********** courts (aiya put asterisks you also know where already). we sat there being rather guiltily voyeuristic, craning our necks every so often - we'd gotten lousy seats - to look at any party who seemed remotely interesting, from comments made by the judge. who was rather fiery, and probably made that morning in court extremely entertaining for many people there, the both of us included. and we'd make rude comments about the lawyers who couldn't speak properly, and he told me about how some of the written submissions he's read are terrible.
which led me to tell him that we should set up a law firm, just like HOH LAW CORPORATION. give the masses GOOD legal advice and service. when i told jon about it later that night, he suggested that we call it HOPE LAW CORPORATION. i think HOPE ought to be spelt HOHPE though.
alright, not funny.
but you catch my drift, right? i'm not becoming apathetic or anything, i'm just Getting Used to Grown Up Life and the fact that it's Just Like That. no matter that i felt Perfectly Awful at the end of last week, especially since the horrible truth began to dawn on me that being stupid and human, we'd actually chosen to take ourselves further and further away from paradise. which stupid and human thing to do began with adam (NOT EVE OKAY - but this is no time to get all feminist and start quibbling over this trivial matter).
so the next thing i think i'll have to get used to is being exploited by people, which is bound to happen in The Working World. and so i will pray for the strength and courage to face each day with grace. what's so daunting about that isn't so much that you could end up being treated as a doormat - which is a horrible feeling, even if you ultimately decide to stand up for yourself, which i probably would. what's daunting is the knowledge that you have to CHOOSE to want to treat everybody with respect and kindness. EVERYBODY, simply because Jesus did. it's a choice, really, with us, to pray and decide to put aside ill-feeling. like i said in the preceding paragraph, the horriblest thing is the knowledge that the choice lies with us, whether to pray and ask God to help us make what we instinctively know is the right thing to do (even more so when we're christians because the holy spirit dwells in us) or to just ignore Him and do otherwise.
we've chosen to distance ourselves from paradise, chosen ungrace, keep on choosing ungrace; how much more foolish can we get?
***
okay i think i'm starting to sound slightly ranty and disillusioned, but bear with me please. i'm ending soon.
i really do think these people need help, need someone to talk to, really. but i was selfishly thinking of myself and my scheduled run and the fact that the women who attended the clinic kept rattling on and on, milking their time with our mentor for all it was worth. she was even pressured, in the end, to dispense advice she wasn't even supposed to dispense. advice you should only have been getting from a lawyer representing you.
and that thought scares me, because next time i'll have to put up with these incessant questions, either because i'm being paid to answer them, or simply because i don't know when i should say no i cannot do this for you - and when i do, it's too late.
and then i'm tired and exahusted and i want everyone around me to shut up because in that frame of mind i become convinced that what they need is a good spanking and nothing else. and it'll be then that someone comes along, who won't exploit any form of human kindness because they just don't know how to, these people who really need someone to represent them, i'll be grouchy and unhappy and i'll make all the excuses i want to myself about pms and hormones, about having things of my own to do.
but i think the fact of the matter's that it all comes down to basic human kindness and whether we're willing to invest in other people. and not mind, even if they exploit your kindness and take it for granted. because it does make a difference, albeit a small one, and even if we only make a difference to one person's life, it'll be well worth it. we've talked about this, jon and i, and he's right. if we haven't got our idealism, what else do we have?
how tiring i am.
***
the first person who came to see us today at the legal clinic was pretty, in a rather old-school chinesey sort of way. she was dressed in a black fila polo t-shirt, khaki pants, and she even wore one of those canvas belts with metal rimmed holes. but if you'd given her a nice cheongsam, did her hair up a bit, she'd have been as pretty as a picture, even though she must have been approaching her mid-fifties.
she spoke quietly, politely, came straight to the point as best she could, in broken english. she talked about how her husband had many ladies, doing her best to keep her voice even. but everytime she said ladies or other lady - usually preceded by i don't think i want to stay married to him any longer because he has or other words to that effect - the tip of her nose turned red, along with the rims of her eyes, and tears gathered in them although they never quite fell. and when she said those words, lady, ladies, there was an ever-so-slight trace of bitterness in her tone, an asking, wasn't i good enough? her broken english made the whole thing harder to bear, somehow. and her use of those words - she couldn't even bring herself to say girlfriend. lady, ladies; as if they were somehow better than her because her husband had chosen them. and she didn't want to initiate divorce proceedings too soon, just in case they had to move out of the matriomonial flat and her daughter's studying for a levels would be disrupted.
she left after fifteen minutes or so, the stipulated time for all attendees.
***
one shouldn't leave undergraduate female interns with files containing details of all the hdb eligibility requirements (usually there because divorcees need to re-apply for flats if the matrimonial home is sold), especially undergraduate female interns who can be bothered to search in the entire thick stack of papers for - alright, i shan't continue. not that i've been bothered to do so, though. i can see jon making his eyes glaze over and purposely seeing "page not found."
asinine similies (go on, pronounce it "similais" so it'll sound all matchy-matchy) is the name i've given to a game invented by the turtle and yuchang (cui lian's boyfriend). mind you, these boys were being groomed to run the country in the future - for some strange reason, they were even made to wear all-white uniforms which only served to further reflect their school's already thinly disguised intentions towards them.
anyhow, there was as courteous as a curtain and as annoying as an annoyance, and although shawn poon spent only two years in all-white, he came up with what i think's the best one of all, so far: as transparent as a transparency. which works, because it's the only one i think, that really makes sense. why don't you give the game a go?
as administrative as administrative law's my contribution; jon says it's just awfully annoying, but it came to me last night when we were at the airport seeing lukas off to japan and one of the chinese orchestra teachers was bustling around seeing to various administrative matters. which thought i had was rather out of point i suppose, but you get the idea.
today - yesterday, rather, i received the impact of administrative law first hand.
i think i've mentioned before that i'm currently a slave to the government. until the end of next week, anyway. but i realised that civil servants aren't actually slaves to the government. they ARE the government, and they're slaves to the people. what makes it worse is that there are different levels of civil servants, beginning at the top with the prime minister, who delegates work to people down the line and so on and so forth, all the way down to the lowliest clerks.
the people who have the least spark in their eyes as they jostle their way onto the train in the morning, who have to sit in rooms and record, word for word, what's being said in a particular courtroom, who prepare those endless sheafs of documents for filing, type data into computers, all day long. actually, i think even us interns don't have it so bad.
daniel (year 3 intern) and i had to attend a legal clinic with our mentor at four. lin wasn't around, so we didn't realise that it was on our schedule - she's usually the one who tells us what we're scheduled to do. at 3:50 our mentor came to look for us, and when we heard that we were leaving the office for the family courts we willingly did so, hoping that we'd be able to get off earlier.
fat chance. FREE legal advice leh. who don't want to make the best use of the time given? if can go over allotted time also, why not? after all, i pay tax what. the person in the room paid by ME, ohkay??.
even though i wasn't the one giving the advice, just being there in the room made me feel exploited on our very nice mentor's behalf. but more of that later.
***
i think i've been able to cope pretty well with things this week. when i was first taken to the family courts as a year 1 intern, i went home and cried because it was simply awful, realising that court rooms weren't just those wood-pannelled ones you saw in chinese shows where the accused sat in the docks, and lawyers slugged it out for the rich and famous or the poor and condemned. no, courtrooms came in all shapes and sizes, as did the plaintiffs and defendants. the worst thing was, i realised with horror that almost 95% of the people lounging about at the waiting area were waiting to finalise the dissolution of their marriages and they were simply milling about like they were on a trip to see the dentist. every so often, a policeman would pop his head around the doors of the court and yell for a particular person, just like a dentist's assistant would have. the sheer normality of the situation and its absurdity got to me then, as it did for my first few days at (insert name of the top secret government place i'm working at now).
but this week, when we went for a second round of uncontested divorce hearings, i brought lord seow along with me because he couldn't take being in his once-a-storeroom-no-windows room at the *********** courts (aiya put asterisks you also know where already). we sat there being rather guiltily voyeuristic, craning our necks every so often - we'd gotten lousy seats - to look at any party who seemed remotely interesting, from comments made by the judge. who was rather fiery, and probably made that morning in court extremely entertaining for many people there, the both of us included. and we'd make rude comments about the lawyers who couldn't speak properly, and he told me about how some of the written submissions he's read are terrible.
which led me to tell him that we should set up a law firm, just like HOH LAW CORPORATION. give the masses GOOD legal advice and service. when i told jon about it later that night, he suggested that we call it HOPE LAW CORPORATION. i think HOPE ought to be spelt HOHPE though.
alright, not funny.
but you catch my drift, right? i'm not becoming apathetic or anything, i'm just Getting Used to Grown Up Life and the fact that it's Just Like That. no matter that i felt Perfectly Awful at the end of last week, especially since the horrible truth began to dawn on me that being stupid and human, we'd actually chosen to take ourselves further and further away from paradise. which stupid and human thing to do began with adam (NOT EVE OKAY - but this is no time to get all feminist and start quibbling over this trivial matter).
so the next thing i think i'll have to get used to is being exploited by people, which is bound to happen in The Working World. and so i will pray for the strength and courage to face each day with grace. what's so daunting about that isn't so much that you could end up being treated as a doormat - which is a horrible feeling, even if you ultimately decide to stand up for yourself, which i probably would. what's daunting is the knowledge that you have to CHOOSE to want to treat everybody with respect and kindness. EVERYBODY, simply because Jesus did. it's a choice, really, with us, to pray and decide to put aside ill-feeling. like i said in the preceding paragraph, the horriblest thing is the knowledge that the choice lies with us, whether to pray and ask God to help us make what we instinctively know is the right thing to do (even more so when we're christians because the holy spirit dwells in us) or to just ignore Him and do otherwise.
we've chosen to distance ourselves from paradise, chosen ungrace, keep on choosing ungrace; how much more foolish can we get?
***
okay i think i'm starting to sound slightly ranty and disillusioned, but bear with me please. i'm ending soon.
i really do think these people need help, need someone to talk to, really. but i was selfishly thinking of myself and my scheduled run and the fact that the women who attended the clinic kept rattling on and on, milking their time with our mentor for all it was worth. she was even pressured, in the end, to dispense advice she wasn't even supposed to dispense. advice you should only have been getting from a lawyer representing you.
and that thought scares me, because next time i'll have to put up with these incessant questions, either because i'm being paid to answer them, or simply because i don't know when i should say no i cannot do this for you - and when i do, it's too late.
and then i'm tired and exahusted and i want everyone around me to shut up because in that frame of mind i become convinced that what they need is a good spanking and nothing else. and it'll be then that someone comes along, who won't exploit any form of human kindness because they just don't know how to, these people who really need someone to represent them, i'll be grouchy and unhappy and i'll make all the excuses i want to myself about pms and hormones, about having things of my own to do.
but i think the fact of the matter's that it all comes down to basic human kindness and whether we're willing to invest in other people. and not mind, even if they exploit your kindness and take it for granted. because it does make a difference, albeit a small one, and even if we only make a difference to one person's life, it'll be well worth it. we've talked about this, jon and i, and he's right. if we haven't got our idealism, what else do we have?
how tiring i am.
***
the first person who came to see us today at the legal clinic was pretty, in a rather old-school chinesey sort of way. she was dressed in a black fila polo t-shirt, khaki pants, and she even wore one of those canvas belts with metal rimmed holes. but if you'd given her a nice cheongsam, did her hair up a bit, she'd have been as pretty as a picture, even though she must have been approaching her mid-fifties.
she spoke quietly, politely, came straight to the point as best she could, in broken english. she talked about how her husband had many ladies, doing her best to keep her voice even. but everytime she said ladies or other lady - usually preceded by i don't think i want to stay married to him any longer because he has or other words to that effect - the tip of her nose turned red, along with the rims of her eyes, and tears gathered in them although they never quite fell. and when she said those words, lady, ladies, there was an ever-so-slight trace of bitterness in her tone, an asking, wasn't i good enough? her broken english made the whole thing harder to bear, somehow. and her use of those words - she couldn't even bring herself to say girlfriend. lady, ladies; as if they were somehow better than her because her husband had chosen them. and she didn't want to initiate divorce proceedings too soon, just in case they had to move out of the matriomonial flat and her daughter's studying for a levels would be disrupted.
she left after fifteen minutes or so, the stipulated time for all attendees.
***
one shouldn't leave undergraduate female interns with files containing details of all the hdb eligibility requirements (usually there because divorcees need to re-apply for flats if the matrimonial home is sold), especially undergraduate female interns who can be bothered to search in the entire thick stack of papers for - alright, i shan't continue. not that i've been bothered to do so, though. i can see jon making his eyes glaze over and purposely seeing "page not found."
No comments:
Post a Comment