A Person’s True Vocation

Vincent Li

Description

In this collection of short stories, a group of young professional men struggle to find their way and survive the absurdities of corporate life in Hong Kong and Shanghai in the turbulent days of 2009.
In 2009, the world is reeling from the impact of a global financial storm. For a series of young professionals in Hong Kong and Indonesia—places somewhat immune to the crash—life isn’t as easy as they had hoped. Now, when nothing is certain, they must find a way to rise above the challenges of life in a soulless corporate world.
Michael’s trying to come to terms with being told he has to leave Hong Kong, thanks to a transfer to Indonesia. Who would have thought the general manager of a recreation club could be this stressed out? Simon has a job that should be relaxing and rewarding, but he has to find a way to outwit a board that wants him impeached. Chris, the ambitious (and slightly overwhelmed) marketing director of a fashion brand-management company, is hoping to launch an extravagant fashion show against all odds of economic downturn and corporate politics. And poor Roy and Joey wish they still had jobs to worry about. But they’ve just been told that they are redundant in their respective (former) workplaces—on the same day.
Success in this world is not only about who you are; it’s also about who you know. Sometimes you are what you do, and sometimes you just do the job. Together, these friends explore their absurd and delicious encounters, and taste the existential anguish of the quest to discover what life truly has in store for each of them.

Sujets

• Short Stories
• Fiction

Informations

• Publié par: Partridge Publishing Singapore
• Date de parution: 03 juin 2014
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781482899153
• Langue: English

Extrait

Vincent Li

 
Copyright © 2014 by Vincent Li.
 
ISBN:          Hardcover          978-1-4828-9914-6
                   Softcover            978-1-4828-9913-9
                   eBook                978-1-4828-9915-3
 
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
 
Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.
 
 
 
Toll Free 800 101 2657 (Singapore)
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www.partridgepublishing.com/singapore
Table of Content
May 2009
Chapter 1: Card-box
Chapter 2: My Angel
Chapter 3: Double-think
June 2009
Chapter 4: Hot Pot
Chapter 5: Avatar
Chapter 6: Godfather
July 2009
Chapter 7: Vanity and the Filth of Power
Chapter 8: The Hidden Jewel in Asia
Chapter 9: Bombardment with Poverty
August 2009
Chapter 10: You have got the look!
September 2009
Chapter 11: True Vocation
 
For my deceased parents in Heavens and my beloved family on earth—my wife, Sally, my children, Kristie and Christopher, and my brothers, Victor and Jerry.
Preface
Sometimes I wonder whether my hometown, Hong Kong, is really a desert in culture, as many people say it is. I am puzzled about what it really means. It may be alluding to the impression that people there are primarily occupied with the economic activities of making money that they do not have much time left for anything else. I find this observation debatable. If, however, the culture of a particular place has to be interpreted and appreciated against its history of civilization, perhaps, there may be some rationality behind the generally negative perception about Hong Kong. I guess nowadays hardly anybody has any idea about its pre-colonial history, i.e., prior to 1842 when it was officially ceded in perpetuity to the United Kingdom under the treaty of Nanking. As such, its better-known contemporary history is relatively short, compared to, say, that of the rest of China.
But sometimes I am even more confused about my national status, in particular, every time when I have to fill in the landing form to be presented to the customs or immigration officer of an overseas country I am visiting. Prior to 1July, 1997, I would claim myself as British by nationality, albeit with a sense of peculiar emptiness rather than pride. After the handover of sovereignty of the last British colony on earth back to China, I always waver between Hong Kong and Chinese every time when I have to state my national identity. Succumbing to nostalgia about who I really am, I usually put down the former. But when I try to show and feel for nationalism for a change, I begin to put down the latter—which I am also conscious as being one letter and one space short, therefore, helps a little when I try to write faster. Yet, at some other times, I may try to be thorough and precise about my existence and put down “Hong Kong Chinese”. In so doing, I am showing my association with Motherland, but at the same time, subconsciously, perhaps wrongfully, also believing that being from Hong Kong is still somehow more different than from the rest of China nowadays—beyond what the different passport may have already conferred on its holder. I wonder whether my fellow citizens of Hong Kong, those born and grown up there crossing the two eras of sovereignty, share the same misgivings in national identity.
Despite the contention about its cultural resourcefulness, its relatively short (known) contemporary history and the possibly confusing identity of its people, I often feel that there are many interesting stories unique about my hometown to tell the rest of the world—other than for sharing with my fellow comrades from Hong Kong and the rest of our motherland. Of course every place on earth must have something unique about it, as I have learnt from all the wonderful experiences of living and travelling in many different countries for the past twenty-seven years, by virtue of my education and occupation. So in trying to tell these stories, it is not just the peculiarities about where I am from but the possible commonalities with any other related stories from anywhere around the world that I am looking for, particularly in the area of work—like how today’s organization men struggle for progress, indeed even just survival, in the testing corporate environments of our contemporary age. In fact, it was when I was living in Indonesia, not Hong Kong, exactly five years ago where I started to make up my mind to seriously write about some of these stories.
But weaving these stories together with a common theme has been a daunting task for me—a family man with a full-time occupation and, at times, further education to attend to. However, my eureka moment came when Hermann Hesse’s writing in his Demian (first published in 1919 and with a prologue added in 1960) came back to my consciousness one day. I recall having two copies of the book at home, though forgetting since when, where did I get them from, and exactly at which places when I first saw them—as I have almost lost track of how many times, perhaps around thirty, I have moved between homes in my life time so far. I also remember having read the book twice over the years, and even written down how I felt about it in my blog (*). Funny enough, it was only until recently that what the then German Nobel laureate wrote about, and which I found so much resonance in, came back to enlighten my mind.
“ An enlightened man has but one duty—to seek the way to himself, to reach inner certainty, to grope his way forward, no matter where it leads  . . .”
Though not offering an absolute answer as such, I also find it providing a bridge of awakening from my earliest quest for the meaning of life during my adolescent ages—some thirty years ago—to my continual search for enlightenment for the unknown days ahead. Besides, the emphasis on “the two realms of living” in the stories of Demian, as epitomized in the god’s name of Abraxas who is at once God and Satan and contains both the luminous and dark world, is readily reminiscent of the Chinese Tai-Ji Yin-Yang’s perspective of all things in life. More often than not, amidst life ambiguities, it is indeed up to our own enlightened mind to define clarity and make sense of the outside reality from within.
While the background of the stories in this book was set in Hong Kong and Indonesia, and the timing was between May and September 2009—when the world was still being plagued by the major financial crisis of the century in one way or another—they were all but incidental and arbitrary. It is my wish that readers will enjoy and find resonance in these stories somehow; and be inspired or reassured to believe that, though everybody’s path is different, no one is alone in his journey of struggle for grappling with life paradoxes and seeking the way to himself.
 
Vincent Li
18 Mar, 2014
 
 
This is a fiction .
Ma y 2009

Chapter 1: Card-box
R oy worked for a publisher of local magazines, which mostly featured the local paparazzi and lifestyles in Hong Kong. He categorically belonged to the “professional” community of gossip-trailblazers, the “hounds”, who basically made their living out of tracing the celebrities’ footprints and making the most spectacular drama possible out of every single exposed incident—or even just vague hint to an incident—concerning their targets, like prey. He enjoyed and took pride in his job. If he was ever asked to pass any judgment on the trade, it was with a sense of honour—without any tinge of iniquity—that he considered it contributing substantially to the value chain of vanity making, which he believed was what the show business all about.
“Don’t the artists want exposure and fame after all? What extra miles many of them would not go to for getting featured under the spotlight?” Roy was totally convicted of the mission of his trade. Of course, more often than not, it tends to be patronizing, if not ruinous, rather than glorifying in reality. Besides the celebrities’ stories of fame and success—and decadence, sleaze, or downfall—as a media journalist, however, Roy also covered other topical stories for suiting the public tastes, sating their gossip-hungry appetite. Other than the chief editor’s judgment, basically, he had to follow his own instincts for picking the right trends and hitting the right spots—though a published post turning out as a hit or a miss is anybody’s guess.
Incidentally, the mission of his news-hunting excursion on this particular day was to follow a breaking episode of an alternative nature. It was about a bankrupted business closing its shop. Why Roy judged the breaking news to be relevant to his publication, and what made it particularly media-worthy in his view, was the bankrupted company itself: Tou Pao , another paparazzi publisher, literally translated as “First Canon ” . Intuitively, it should be a melancholic kind of story to be covered, as yet another incident of a business going down seemingly as a victim of the prevalent economic recession. But Roy was ambivalent about the approach with which to report and feature the story.
As Roy received the phone call of tip-off from his clandestine informant about the commotion breaking loose a