IS or IS NOT

The Lexus IS 250

1.1. With all the baby investment bankers dead, and businesses slowly tanking as we slip deeper into recession, I would think that this is an excellent time to buy a car. The sales staff are like heroin junkies in severe stages of withdrawal. Some need a sale like they need a fix of Bolivian Marching Powder. Warren Buffett says “Be fearful when others are greedy, but be greedy when others are fearful”. THIS is the time to be greedy. Cars are going at $15,000-$20,000 discounts and you can bargain for all sorts of freebies thrown in. That sais, I’ve been going round to car showrooms because there is no longer any sense of alienation (the way you feel you do not belong in that Porsche showroom because you don’t turn a seven figure income every year). I drove a Volkswagon Beetle last week, keeping with the “two doors good” policy and while it was certainly cheerful and chirpy looking, the drive was horrid. The comfortable driving position made up for it but the brakes were truly terrible.

1.2. This week, I moseyed on down to the Toyota showroom and made a beeline for the black Lexus IS250. This is a car that I have been interested in for a while. It suffers the stigma of being a Toyota under its Westernised skin but it sells for the same price as a base BMW 3 series, yet has more bells and whistles and as good an engine as the BMW. It is good-looking, but a glance at the headlight design will tell you that it is Japanese. It has good fuel consumption, full safety features and low insurance. It is not a banker car, doesn’t have the individualistic flair or that tug on your heartstrings. It is angular, an engineer’s wet dream because it is all lines and no curves. It is as straight as an English Premier League player in a room full of naked writhing supermodels.

1.3. The interior is not bad too. You have a dock for your ipod, the cabin glow is decent, and for a hot tropical country, you have a cooling unit under the leather seats that turns on when the engine starts, so your bum is first scorched by the sun, then chilled by the cool air wafting up at your gentlemen’s regions. It’s fantastic. I thought it felt like having a prostitute lick your balls while she was sucking on a cube of ice. But I hated the fake wood paneling. That would have to go. And the fact that it had four doors. But I could not find fault with the way it drove. It handled curves like it was supposed to, and it comes with paddle shifters so you can indulge in a bit of racing fantasy if the need aroses. There is adequate power for driving in a congested city, as 200hp is delivered quickly when you engage the accelerator. Very good for popping in and out of traffic. The steering was sharp and responsive. For city driving, with no real place to tear up and down, this is a brilliant car. It runs full rings round everything in its price range. It is a sensible tool for a sensible man. A man who takes minimal risk, who marries the sister with bunned hair and wide child bearing hips, who takes care of his wife and kids and squirrels his money into a million dollar trust fund for each child and who is as interesting as photocopying paper. This is the car for the wallflower who is a millionaire. Just not for me.

1.4. Pricing: SGD 143,000 for the luxury model, SGD 131,000 for the standard.
Discount: SGD 17,000
Moody Rating: 4 stars out of 5 (lost a star for being too sensible)

Sensory Aggravation

1.1. I'm a racist. Or a chinese chauvinist. Or diversity resistant or what ever the nancy mollycoddling PC brigade call it these days. Well, actually I'm selectively racist. This is because there are ah nehs that I am friends with to a reasonable extent, I have no problem with people of African origins and I like golliwogs as a toy.

1.2 Now those people who claim to love the ah neh have clearly not had the ah neh Experience. This is an experience with the ah neh race that may consist of taste, touch, sight, sound or smell. Feel free to test for yourself. This is the only known race that can offend all the 5 senses. Skunks and wolverines are lovable cuddly creatures in comparison.

Wolf in Sheep's Clothing

1.1. CBDBoy has not given up on remaking himself into a derivatives structurer. The trip to London Business School and the horrific interview with MagicCircle Banker taught me that (i) I need to clock up another 3-4 years of working experience and (ii) I need to get a job scope and title that sounds impressive. Returning to the primeval law firm ooze is out. Legal counsel it is then.

1.2. It’s down to LocalBank and PrivateBank. LocalBank lets me specialize in derivatives, so when market recovers in 3-4 years, I’ll be well placed to make a jump into HK banks or Magic Circle firms to be a derivatives transactional lawyer. Pay is decent, linked to Business and will train. But in a finance program perspective, I don’t think it’s enough to make the cut because the name isn’t international enough. Privatebank is European, has the branding and glam factor. I’ll do the entire range of work, they will train and pay is decent. Not Ebichu-ish (I’ll introduce Ebichu another time) but pretty good in the Real World. It looks more persuasive for the MBA program.

1.3. I’m competing against other legal counsels who are deserting the investment banks like rats on a sinking ship. Fortunately, I cost less, don’t have a notice period and I’m not a mercenary. Yet. In the end it took an opinion from Mother of Godson to stop the paralysis by analysis. Foreign is always better. Nuff said. After all, that’s why I bought an LLM from London. So hello for a few years, ForeignBank. I think a replica of a Banksy should look quite nice in my cubicle.

Welcome to the Jungle

1.1. So this is it, the inaugural post of CBDBoy. Who am I? Well I’m certainly not going to tell you, but I will document my life working in a bank. Having returned from London three weeks ago, life has been a series of eating, sleeping and taking calls from recruitment firms. This is not the best of times, but it is not the worst of times yet. Three days after I returned, Lehman Brothers went into liquidation, Merrill Lynch was bought by BoA and AIG had to be bailed out.

1.2. Ah but despite the reports of job losses, investment bankers are still alive. UBS was still able to hold a private party at the Ivy, so clearly the people out on the street are a lot of middle office and back office staff. The excess and opulence still continues. Sure, the old portfolio takes a 20-30% hit, but when you have a net worth of over a million, you won’t die – the poor suckers who bought into the here and now to taste the tip of your life will. Bankers still saunter around with the laissez faire of Marie Antoinette. If people are too poor to buy bread, “let them eat cake”. Don’t lose your head now.

1.3. There has been a constant indulgence of satay from the Singapore Cricket Club but I do miss the fresh oysters and newly-baked bread from the Cramer Street Market on Sundays.