On Friday, I met with P and her boyfriend V at Bugis. I finally had delicious chicken rice! "We've ruined it for you," V told me solemnly, "because this is some of the best. The rest just won't compare." They are both perfectly lovely and fun to spend the afternoon with. We wandered around Bugis shopping a bit and I managed to acquire a pair of shorts and two dresses. Not a bad haul, though at some point in the future I need a bag (something to haul my school stuff in that is less heavy) and potentially a belt...
Friday night, I finally went on the night safari and the Singapore zoo! I went with F and it was pretty fun; there were lions and tigers and bears, oh my. There were bison and giraffes and foxes and wolves; tapirs and rhinos and hippos as well! My only complaint is that all mass public transit in Singapore shuts down around 11 or 12 at night, which is...difficult, I feel. But the cabs are all really cheap (or else it's just that Singapore is so small that you can't really rack up the meter unless you drive in circles), so it's all right. We met with J and A at a hawker center afterwards and chilled a bit with some Carlsberg (Danish! I only know because of its LFC associations) beer.
Saturday, I met with Dean P of our school for lunch, along with A and E (from WashU) and M (who'd done exchange with WashU previously). We had really good laksa, mmm. I'm a fan. We'll have to see if other places do it as well as Penang Kitchen. Anyway, Dean P invited us to an alumni dinner that night at the Marina Bay Sands hotel, so of course we took him up on it. Free food at a swanky restaurant with a chance to schmooze? It is only our obligation as poor, jobless law students.
So we got fancy: boys in suits and me in a really classy red dress, if I do say so myself. I wish I had pictures but you can't pull off upscale classy while brandishing a camera around like a tourist, evidently. Marina Bay Sands evokes Dubai-style opulence and is not so much classy as it is just ostentatious. It is designed to impress and be the very opposite of subtle; it is designed to get as much money from rich foreigners as possible. To that end, I feel as though it's very successful.
Our restaurant, Ku De Ta (I don't think the Singaporean government realizes that said aloud it sounds remarkably similar to coup d'etat), was on the top floor of the hotel (57th). At dinner was Dean P, our school's international relations dean, as well as the dean of the law school, Dean S (and his wife). There were two attorneys from a pretty big Singaporean firm (KCP) who were WashU grads, a former attorney now a client at KCP who was also a WashU alum (and his wife), and three students who had been on exchange at WashU for their LLM.
Dinner was fancy, to say the least. Dean S basically ordered a tasting sample for the table - an assortment of cold dishes and then a stream of hot dishes. Lobster, squid, fish, scallops, beef, pork, chicken, vegetables, etc., all prepared in tiny dishes with careful plating (as seen on Top Chef!). Dessert was strawberry sorbet with a (maybe) passionfruit mousse type thing. It was a little surreal, I thought, but not as surreal as post-dinner, which I'll get to in a bit. Dinner conversation was pretty good, though due to my seating I mostly spoke to the former LLM students (one a current NUS law student, two now associates at KCP).
After dinner, the group got invited to the KCP client's house for - get this - whiskey and cigars. Two of the girls begged off, so in the end it was a group of guys at one of the largest houses I have ever been in (period, not just in Singapore, though who owns houses this big in Singapore?! Everyone lives in high-rise condos!) with their cigars and cigarettes and whiskey. And me and one other girl.
Nothing impressed upon me more than those two hours on that deck of someone clearly rolling in more money than I will ever see in my life how much law (especially in Asia) is still very much a good ol' boys club. We girls were little more than decoration or an ear for an occasional clever quip; entertainment and fond, almost paternalistic amusement when the other girl tried a cigar. How cute, you could practically see the attorneys thinking. I'm not so cynical as to think all law is still this way; I don't want to diminish how far women have managed to come in this profession. But here in Asia and especially at firms specializing in corporate law and litigation, this is the sense I got: Privilege, wealth, and men in charge.
I'm positive the female associates are smart, sharp, capable, and respected. I'm positive it's still the (often though not only white) guys calling the shots at the end of the day. (The client with the million dollar house and the Cuban cigars and fine aged whiskey was Singaporean.) I'm positive all of these people are extremely hard-working. I'm positive they all still enjoy the fine things in life, which is fair - what is life worth if you can't find enjoyment in it?
But these kinds and standards of "fine things" are, I realize, not something I could ever appreciate properly. I can blame my middle-class roots and upbringing, perhaps. For all I moan and joke about finding a rich man to marry myself off to, I'm not sure I could really revel in the luxury of standard "upper class" fineries. (I could enjoy a lot of money, absolutely, but I would enjoy it by buying a lot of food and cute clothes and traveling. I am positively awful about caring about brands.)
I still get defensive about law as a profession because it is not as evil as mainstream culture makes it out to be, but at the same time I have seen facets of what it can be as well, and some of the criticisms have root in truth. I also say, fairly casually and despairingly these days, that I hate law and I don't know why I'm doing it. It's not true. There is a lot of law I dislike, there is a lot of the legal profession I dislike, but there definitely remain areas of law that truly fascinate me (see every topic touched on by my entertainment law class). My interests lie closer to issues touched by public interest law. I don't begrudge the people who enjoy tax law or corporate merger law or what have you, but that is not a life I could have for myself. So I'll miss out on the six figure salaries and the filthy rich clients and the diamond cuff links. It's all right. I couldn't ever be happy in a good ol' boys club anyway.
Maybe I'll go into academics. I made an appointment to pick the brain of my Entertainment law (fashion photographer) professor next week.
1 comment:
oh, by the way, if you stay out after midnight, check out the night riders. they start from about midnight and run till 3 or 4 am. the fee is a flat rate of $3 and they usually go to mrt stations. what i used to do was take the NR to bedok mrt (since i live in bedok) and then take a cab from there back home. saved me a lot of money :)
also buses tend to run till about 1am, since the last bus leaves the interchange around midnight. i've gotten on a bus at 12:45 to 1am before.
hope this helps!
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