In the midst of choking haze I cabbed down to the Brit Council for the interview.
Looked like a nice place, especially when compared to the American Embassy next door. The Embassy looks like a blinking Nazi Fortress. Just add Swastika banners and you've got Castle Wolfenstein or Hitler's Raven Lair or something like that.
Anyway I went in and registered for the interview. Lots of posters about English language courses around. There were a bunch of jabbering Chinese nationals having one such course in one of the rooms. Sounded like they were having fun, from the loud hoots of laughter that erupted from their room every few minutes.
There were two other people waiting for the interview with me. One was a very formally dressed Chinese guy, who began reading some big ass library book as soon as he sat down. The other was a Malay girl in a headscarf, who fiddled with her cell phone.
Eventually I was given a passage to read. It was an extract from Nicolo Machiavelli's The Prince. They didnt put the title on the paper, but it sure was Machiavelli. It reeked of him. The signs were all there- an instructional tone, a dim, contemptous view of the common people, the sharp distinction between the Ideal and the Real, the need for deception amongst the various tools of statecraft. Though I wasnt expecting it, it sure wasnt surprising either.
Then came the good Dr Kennedy herself. My first impression was that of a solid block of oak, formidable and ancient, with much knowlege stored deep within that wood-coloured hair of hers.
It was kind of awkward. She offered her hand as I was closing the door, and I had difficulty with the door, so she had her hand out for a good half minute. Oh well. Hope she wasnt too ticked off by that minor faux pas.
It began with a talk about National Service (invariably) and gradually progressed as to whether Singapore should obtain a nuclear bomb. I said yes, if Singapore's geograhical size was much bigger, enabling it to sustain a limited nuclear exchange with similarly armed neighbours.
Then she asked me about Kim Jong Il and his nuclear designs. And so Kim Jong Il became the mainstay of the interview. To my eventual detriment.
I could hold out for some time against her questions. She kept applying the same tactic to catch me: first she would ask a simple, innocuous question, and I would give a simple, intuitive reply. Then she would hit me in a classic pincer stroke with a maddeningly hard question that gave me no room to manoeuvre except by contradicting what I had said earlier. And it always revolved around the same subject: Kim Jong Il and his government. I held out against such questions quite well at first. Managed to bring in a bit of the heavy artillery-what I had read from Fukuyama and Huntington. And it was a relief that she didnt ask me about Hobsbawm or history- I'm sure I would have stuffed that.
But gradually the feeling of floundering and drowning began to overtake me. And then, near the conclusion of the interview, she caught me flat-footed with one such master stroke.
In a daze, the interview was ended.
I stumbled out the doors into the haze.
Called Jiv to tell him about it, messaged the good people who prayed for me, and then went home.
The best part about it was that I had a real slobberknocker answer to her tough-ass question at the end, but it didnt occur to me until I stepped out into Napier Road. Crap! If I had given her that reply I probably would've ended her obsession with Dear Leader Kim. It's always this thing I have with interviews, I can't seem to muster the ownage answer until after the interview has ended.
Oh well.
God's Will be done.
