3:44 p.m. - 2009-05-22
uob centre
Mom and I went to UOB centre today at Raffles Place.
We walked through the glass doors into the lobby, there were four security guards, two of them were directing visitors towards empty queue railings, one sat with mouthmask and gloves at a desk with a ear thermometer and record book, and one stood on the left with folded arms. We walked towards the lifts and as we passed the left guard, he looked at me from top to toe and up again. i stretched the corners of my mouth to make a closed-smile.
Mom pressed the button for the 17th floor in the stainless-steel lift while a man who entered before us pressed 15th. The buttons glowed red from the numbers where light shone through.
We waited a while before a polite man with many white hair parted in a fringe, sat us in front of his neat desk and helped us fill in the joint trading account form. Behind him was an open shelf with many compartments holding various forms and papers.
A short middle-aged man in short-sleeved shirt and pants, came in and talked to a young man. He asked the young man for some forms to transfer shares from his trading account. The young man started to elaborate more but the middle-aged man cut him off loudly, just give me the forms, no need to tell me all these.
Our polite man turned around and asked the middle-aged man what kind of forms do you need. The middle-aged man said, just give me all the forms. The polite man said again, no there are different kinds of forms, there's for local shares and there's overseas shares, what kind do you need? The middle-aged man got angry and said, just give me all the forms! What's so difficult about it? Give me all the forms! What's your problem? Why can't you just give me the forms?
The polite man stared at him silently for 7 seconds and asked, who is your remiser? There are different forms.
Just give me the forms! What's so difficult!
His voice tensed and hardened like a tightly-turned tap, we only have local share forms. The polite man took out a pad of forms and tore a few pages out and passed to him.
After that, the polite man turned around and continued helping us with our form, please sign here, this is for opening the trading account, this is for linking your account, this is for acknowledging that you understand the risks involved in trading.
Mom and I respectively signed and collected our papers. We waited for the lifts. They took a while to arrive. The middle-aged man was there too, he complained angrily to a friend, that bastard in there, can you believe it? i just wanted some forms, he don't want to give me, that fucking bastard, these singaporeans, no fucking brains, got head no brains, fucking ask me who's my remiser, fucking bastard, these people got degree no brains, my son tells me, Pa got degree so what? no brains these singaporeans.
The lift came and everyone went in.
He continued to rant.
