It has to alternate bewteen first and third person. Read the first part and you’ll see what I mean.
Humor/Satire / Caffeine Man - continuation
3
The company sent me First Class on my flight to Singapore, which was extremely comfortable and made me feel awfully important. The truth of the matter is I’m used to travelling business class, which is comfortable enough on short-haul flights. But First was something of a new experience.
My seat was in a little booth of its own that opened out into a bed. Then again this was a long-haul flight, so the bed turned out to be really useful. In fact after a double-whisky I cheekily invited a pretty young stewardess (sorry, “flight attendant”) to initiate me into the Mile High Club. She smiled tolerantly, like she’d heard it a million times before and asked me if I wanted anything else. I suggested another flight attendant, but she explained that the choice was limited to coffee or tea – unlike New Labour, they didn’t offer a Third Way.
I arrived feeling remarkably refreshed. That was my caffeine gland kicking in at what would have been seven in the morning in London. Here it was just about mid-day, which meant that I was okay for the time being. But I had to make sure I got a good night’s sleep, otherwise I’d be in trouble the following morning.
I was met at the airport by a Chinese man called “Lee” from the bank who was to be guide and driver during by stay here. (75% of the population in Singapore are Chinese, but I’m not sure how many of them are called “Lee”.) He put my suitcases in the boot (or should I say “my bags in the trunk?”) and drove me to the hotel, taking me by the scenic route. As this was a courtesy car supplied by the bank rather than a taxi, I didn’t mind this in the least. In fact, I quite enjoyed it.
I have to say that I was most impressed by the city that bears the same name as the country. Its skyline was filled with some of the most breathtakingly modern skyscrapers I’ve ever seen, and the city was incredibly clean. High fines for litter (rigidly enforced) are a small price to pay for such cleanliness. I wish we could do something like that in London. (Dream on!)
Anyway, Lee took me back to my hotel and told me that meetings had been scheduled for eight, nine thirty and eleven the following morning. The one at eight with the staff at the bank, the one at nine thirty with the Chief Financial Officer and the one at eleven with the Chief Executive and man from the Ministry of Finance.
Singapore is a capitalist country – but it’s a kind of regulated free enterprise, so to speak.
Before leaving me at the hotel, Lee asked me if I’d like him to arrange anything for me by way of personal services. I was surprised by this and told him so.
Lee’s smile was a tolerant, as if reluctantly acknowledging the innocence and naivety of the foreign visitor. He told me, in the patient tone of a tour guide explaining the reality to an ill-informed tourist, that although this was Singapore he could arrange – through his extensive network of contacts – any kind of exotic personal service that I could possibly want (within the bounds of conventional morality). That meant, he went on, “anything from a bath full of strawberries and cream to a Thai massage.”
I thanked him, but explained that I was on the Atkins diet and wasn’t wearing a tie.
4
Lana was in the public cafeteria of the Public Records Office when her beeper beeped. This wasn’t one of those general beepers like people used to use before the price of mobile phones fell so low as to make beepers obsolete. This was an internal beeper that the PRO gave out to researchers, so that they could be paged when the documents that they had ordered were ready for collection from the desk. (This place was invented by bureaucrats, don’t forget!)
You could only order up to three files or bundles of documents at any one time at the PRO. Every “customer” was assigned to a specific table within a specific area and after picking up the documents from the ordering counter, they were expected to take the documents to their assigned desk for viewing. The only real choice they had was at which seat to sit at the relevant table. The tables had three to five seats and because the PRO was seldom full – except at the beginning of the year when newly declassified documents became available to an eager and scandal-hungry press – every researcher had a table to themselves.
Lana finished her chicken and potato salad quickly and made her way to the counter to pick up her two files. The wiry, half-bald man who handed them to her appeared to stare at them with a curious interest instead of the usual dispassionate boredom, as if he had seen something interesting, or at least unusual. Lana thought nothing of it as she walked back to her table with the files.
She didn’t notice the frantic scrambling, as the wiry man reached for the telephone, hesitated for a moment, then changed his mind and went into the back room to make the call in private.
5
“So it’s just a practical matter of people getting under each other’s feet?” I asked. They giggled like school girls – even though they were men… at least I think they were. We’d been talking about some of the petty practical matters – like the placement of the water coolers and coffee machines in the trading room. The consensus seemed to be that they needed more of these and strategically located in the centre as well as the periphery – even if this meant taking out some of the work stations.
We were in the plush, rosewood panelled, conference room – about twenty of us, all sitting in white leather high-backed swivel chairs. We couldn’t hold the meeting in the trading room, because they were all… well… trading. So I was meeting the workers in the conference room, in batches of twenty at a time. I think they were enjoying themselves, like schoolboys who get to commandeer the staffroom.
The giggling subsided. I think it was English that they found so amusing. They spoke the language, but weren’t entirely familiar with figures of speech. Or rather, they were familiar with American expressions, but left somewhat confused by British venacular. At one point I’d said something about being “caught between the devil and the deep blue sea.” They had giggled at this too, and looked somewhat embarrassed when I tried to explain it. Finally one of them grasped the nettle (don’t even go there Lee!) and said: “Oh so it’s a bit like being caught between a lock and a hard place.”
“Exactly,” I replied, recognizing the American expression that they were apparently familiar with. The man who had pinpointed the analogy, quickly obliged by translating it into Singaporean (or whatever they speak there), for the benefit of his colleagues.
One of the others looked up at me and said: “please excuse my fwiend. He means a wok and a hard place.”
Again they fell about laughing.
Finally I looked around and realized that they were laughing at me and realized I’d been well and truly had.
“Sorry man, said one of them, apologetically. We always like to wind-up you Brits when you come over for the first time. We actually speak the queen’s English bloody well – Cor Blimey Guv’nor!”
This time the room rocked with their hysterical laughter.
The trouble was, I was too tired to appreciate the joke. To them it was eight thirty in the morning. To my biological timepiece it was half past midnight. I felt my eyelids drooping.
6
Lana had taken the files back to her table and was now busily thumbing through them, her excite met growing as she realized what she had stumbled across. This wasn’t just a whiff of scandal; this was dynamite!
A scientist employed by the government had been breeding mutants. This was the X-men in real life! Green men, caffeine men, men who were good at sport…
Hold on a minute, thought Lana, as that last one entered her head. Good at sport? Codswallop!
If the government had been breeding people who were good at sport, where were they now? Where were all these Wimbledon champions, super-agile dribblers and hunky athletes?
Britain wasn’t exactly noted for its huge tally of Olympic medallists. Nor had its national football squad brought home any silverware since these experiments were carried out. So where had it all gone wrong?
Then she looked at the other report on her table and remembered. It was the destruction report. The government had ordered all the samples destroyed. It was a realization that was tinged with regret. Yes it had been a rather unethical experiment to begin with and she was never one to be interested in such frivolous diversions to the more intellectual pursuits. But the thought of a man walking around somewhere with a Viagra gland was kind of… heart-warming.
But as the saying goes: ce la vie!
She closed the scientist’s report and opened the destruction report to see the fate that had befallen those poor innocent zygotes that never had a chance. Unlike the scientist’s report, it was a straight listing of the samples and their destruction date. Lana skimmed through it quickly, noting with sorrow each “destroyed 6-08-74” or whatever. When she got to the end, she had an uneasy feeling and went back to the beginning. There were a couple of interesting ones in the original file where she hadn’t seen the destruction date. She couldn’t remember which but she was sure they were there.
She went back and again got to the end with that uneasy feeling. She opened the scientist’s report and looked at it carefully. She went to the photocopier and paid for a copy of the destruction report and the experiment list in the appendix to the scientist’s original report. Then took it back to the desk and began marking off on her copy, the destruction of each of the samples listed in the scientist’s report.
When she got to the end, she noticed that although all the items on the destruction report were crossed off, one of the items on the experiment list remained.
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oknapp reviewed Version 1 -
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I was totally engaged, totally interested. The humor drew me in and the end hooked me. All i can say is where is the rest of this well written work? You have such a natural flow. Oh, you mean i ‘m not in Singapore? I actually feel like i have just come back. I wanted to stay. You make writing look easy. I know its not. I cannot wait until the next installment. SANDI. ALL 10’S AND 1 9. I gave you the 9 because its not finished, darn it!
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DCAllen reviewed Version 1 -
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The beginning of this reads like a travel diary rather than a thriller. It’s entertaining (except that odd bags-in-the-trunk aside in American English out of nowhere for what reason?). At about 80% through, I’m enjoying this but can’t figure out why you’ve called it a comic thriller. It sounds like a travel anecdote to me. Ah, in section 6, here it is. It would be wonderful to get there more quickly. The tone changes near the end to be more like a novel. Before you get too far with this it might be a good idea to experiment telling this in the third person. You might find the first part sounds more like a novel and less like a travel log.
That said, your prose is very fast and clean.
. . . like schoolgirls . . . at least I think they were. Good line.
venacular = vernacular
debberdoo4 reviewed Version 1 -
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I read this and found this section to be in a “first draft” form. I don’t critique grammar, my summation stems from the sparseness of many of your paragraphs. I.e…First Class travel is a big deal, the character is used to coach. So, within the difference of these two themes is a great deal of room for detail and humor.
Dialogue w/the Flight Attendant is also an excellent opportunity for contrast/comparison humor. The character uses the oldest ‘line’ in the book. Rather than stating the obvious: “She smiled tolerantly, like she’d heard it a million times before…” either the Flight Attendant needs to come up with a whopper of a retort, or, I would be more creative in the manner the character comes on to the Flight Attendant. The reader would probably appreciate a surprise.
I feel the most potential for humorous dialogue existed in the scene 5. You have the storyline, you have the outline, now all you need to do is add the details of what you want the reader to envision, and work your humor subtly into all of it, dialogue and description.
To me, this is a novel treatment that you will read, rewrite, read, etc for a long time. But, it will payoff because it is a conversational flow and the details that take an okay story and make it great. Good Luck
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