Joss and Gold

Three

Three Wma pow"house like BioSyne,gy-m BioSyn, "" " was better known-a weekly bulletin was not simply a newssheet , it was a hot document studied by investors, shareholders, and the Monetary Authority of Singapore for clues to the company 's health and future. Ang Swee, the executive chief, had compared BioSyn-SignLi An had come up with the title three years ago, a creative feat that helped win her the job of editor in chief-to the fortune almanacs so popular with certain classes of Singaporeans. "You see these almanacs?" he asked. "Cheap print, mass production , but they provide the key to matching actions, images, numbers, and meanings. You dream of a car crash. That's the number eleven, meaning a big strike soon. A crash like a strike, two ones amounting to a big win. You see a horse any place, whether it is an ornament on a car hood or Tang porcelain in a shop window, and then suddenly you think of pigeons? Look up the section on flying horses and you learn that four is the number for you. In any combination you pick, four is sure to appear among the winning numbers. A death next door or an unexpected visit from a male cousin from a distant town can signal either good or bad forces, but, depending on which month it is, the almanac can give you different correspondences." "Studying these almanacs," he continued humorously, "does not ensure that gamblers always pick the winning LANDING horses at the Singapore Turf Club, for they have to understand what the hidden meanings signify in order to calculate the correct sequence of numbers. And, as in any enterprise, there is always the element of luck, the propitious moment. Taking good care of your ancestors is also necessary in creating auspicious conditions." He jerked his sparse eyebrows in play. "It doesn't matter that BioSynergy is a wholly researchoriented company, staffed by some of the best-trained scientists that money and top facilities can attract," he explained to David King, visiting executive officer from Birmingham, at an interview Li An was supposed to report but could not use. "We Singaporeans invest our Sing-dollars cautiously, and every good omen and sign is needed to keep us loyal to the company." BioSyn-Sign's double naming had come to mean the doubling of the value of shares. But the newsletter remained a prickly venture for the company: an indispensable tool for investor confidence, it also risked losing this confidence with a misjudgment in content. "Remember," Ang Swee warned her, "the company's shareholders are both extremely literal and extremely sensitive to hidden meanings. They've called incessantly to check on the intentions of your figures of speech. No Singaporean believes that there is such a thing as unintentionality in language, especially once your language becomes fixed in printl" When she shared her impatience at carrying such financial responsibility with her title of communications vice director, Abdullah, then special assistant to the Ministry of Information in Malaysia, laughed. "Semua nasib! Everything is luck! Nasib. Singaporeans and Malaysians, all of us are fortune-tellers. If we don't believe in future fortune, how to stay satisfied?" "But isn't it strange that our satisfaction depends on dissatisfaction with our present condition? Why can't we enjoy today and not be driven by superstition?" "What is the difference between your Singaporean, thinking the year of the rooster is a good time for buying stocks, and you and your poetry reading, eh, Li An? You were also looking at signs for meaning-only your reading got no money 177 JOSS and GOLD reward, maybe it did not even make you happy. What is the purpose of all the literature they're still teaching in the university ? Malay literature, Chinese literature, English literature -no practical use. Better to teach communications, public relations, like you are doing now." Again she thought with a pang of envy that Abdullah's two years at Harvard as a Niemann Journalism Fellow had really changed him. He was even more confident than when he had been writing for the new paper years ago. Moreover, she had to admit, he had grown much sharper. It was harder for her to believe she was right and he wrong. "Well, Abdullah, minister-to-be," she said lightly, unsure if she would flatter or irritate him with this prediction, "maybe that's...