Crush

 I'm a bad boy. I sometimes do things knowing I shouldn't be doing them. 

Things weren't that great at work. I had gone back to the place that I used to work for, and for some reason they decided to just offer me a contract, and ask me to work for a permanent position. The reason is simple: I left the company before I had risen to a managerial level, and now they they didn't want a guy who wasn't up to these expectations.

So it was stressful to be working in a job where I had to prove myself. To compound that, I was in a gig that wasn't the easiest thing. We had to work for a government agency who wasn't the easiest client to deal with. But there was an upside to this: I could just deliver a competent solution, and if I could impress them with my strengths, there would be an upside to all this.

A few months in, they assigned a younger lady in to be the team leader. There was a bit of friction at first because we both started to assert ourselves, but eventually I gave in because I saw that she had better organisational skills than I did, and I just focused on what I did best at.

She was from a UX background. And she was good a presentations – in a way that I wasn't. In fact, if I were better at UX, I wouldn't have had to return to Singapore. I could continue working for the company I worked for.

It was an almighty struggle for me for the first few months. My mind was not in a good place. I was out of work for quite a while, and it always played on me that I would never be a tech worker again. It was hard to motivate myself, to climb and reach any form of heights. My bosses were worried that I was a dud.

And something happened. I could feel myself morphing back to being something useful again. I could never regain the vitality of my youth, but some kind of breakthrough was being made. I could sense that the hesitancy was going away – those struggles I had, where I would stare at my work for hours without achieving anything, was going away. I was always a little weak at being able to organise my work, but this was becoming a little less so.

Then little by little, I could feel the charm of that young lady working on me. She was growing lovelier and lovelier and I wasn't sure I could look her in the eye without her blushing. Sometimes she would order me around, and there would be this kinky dominatrix fantasy side of me who would get triggered. I would feel this wild, mercurial joy flow through me.

I'm largely immune to all this: this is the first crush I've had in more than 10 years, maybe even 20 years. It was coming to the point where I was wondering if I would ever get another crush in my life. Even when I went out with another colleague, I never felt that feeling I got with her.

Suddenly I got that big crush on her. It happened one night, on the eve of what was going to be an important presentation which had the potential to make or break my career. And she was helping me to polish off my slides, and working late into the night. Then the thought came to me: I wanted a girlfriend who would fight for me like that.

I'm in my 40s, and she's in her 30s. The age gap was quite considerable, it might even be too much. She's in her prime: I'm a fading force. I'm not even sure we're a match for each other, even when you say that she will never match my level of intellect, her industriousness and her higher levels of functioning and – let's face it – her physical beauty will more than make it up for it.

There were times when I'd see her in the office, and there would be this crazy, unreasonable surge of joy. Every now and then, I know you're in the same room as me and my heart just starts pounding like crazy.

But there are barriers, and they are so formidable that I don't even know if we'll overcome them. We're culturally different. I've mainly gone to elite schools. She's from a neighbourhood school and she probably rose to the top and ended up studying computer science at one of our big public universities, which probably takes a bit of mettle. She's a Chinese speaker, I'm an English speaker. She doesn't eat grated coconut or spicy food, which is pretty – let's say that I'm southeast Asian and she's northeast Asian. And she's a doer while I'm a thinker.

Most pertinently, I'm a guy who may not be up to it. I wanted to expand my horizons 10 years back, but I didn't do that much of it. She might be drawn to somebody who's more driven and capable. I feel like I'm only starting to crawl out of a hole, and she might have already seen the worst of me. She might be pitying me more than being kind to me.

I don't really know what to make of this. It could turn out really badly – my sister already warned me that crushes in the workplace are risky, and I'm already in a bit of a precarious situation where my future with the company is far from assured.

My MBTI type is INTP. But I have a side of me which is an INFP: I have always done well in artistic endeavours. I heard that Johnny Depp is an INFP, and so is Bjork. They are romantic, quirky souls. Johnny Depp doesn't have problems with attracting the most beautiful women – Vanessa Paradis, Winona Ryder. Tragically, Amber Heard. And Bjork has become involved with Tricky and Goldie – all great artists. But they can be pretty bad at managing their lives.

So I was in INFP mode for a few days, building castles in the air, sighing and daydreaming. But then the work just comes in in torrents and you have to get on with it and face reality.

And then I started to consider the practical realities. I realised that I had already won. People with crushes want to be with their crush all the time. And I get to see my crush in the workplace. I just need to be disciplined enough not to smother her, and I'll have that little hit of flowers and sunshine as a mood brightener all the time. And who's better at concealing their inner self than INTPs or INFPs?

I feel life is a little bit more joyful, more meaningful. I have two faces – more than two actually. I could be the crabby, snide, nihilistic guy cracking cynical jokes about everything. Or I could be this warm hearted guy who's a bit of a romantic on the inside. She just makes me want to be a better person in some small way. There's nothing more to do. I just want some of that good stuff, that little jolt of adrenaline.

What's she like? There is this shiny hard veneer of hers, being that go getter, being the person who puts that extra effort into everything. She's organised and hates a mess, probably not going to over think things and intellectualise too much like I do. But there's this tender side to her, and there's some kind of warmth in that beautiful smile that ... and she's a UX person, so she's highly artistic, even though she's a visual artist while I'm more into writing and music.

I guess there's something that I could do to align everything together. I'm going to have to move up a bit in my work. I can't be worrying too much about people saying that I'm pussy whipped. But it could be great... how many situations do you get where you could indulge in lustful thoughts and those are actually somewhat good for you work? I want to be at a certain distance from her, and in order to get close, I have to be effective at what I do and not give her headaches.

That's the one thing. The other thing is that I suspect that she's starting to date another guy in the office. There was this guy, he came to the office late one evening for a meeting. And for some reason, I got this intuition that he was an intruder. This guy seemed to be some kind of an alpha male. There were guys in the office who had status, and other guys who had charisma. This guy had both. Then I saw him downstairs and decided to go chat with him and say hi. Then my team leader came down, saw us talking and asked us if we already knew each other. I said, “OK maybe now we do.” She did a brief intro and they left together. And then it occurred to me that I had seen something that I better not speak of again. I can never be sure, until things are made public, that they're seeing each other, but I suspect they are.

And he's the problem. You're not going to avoid hostility when there's a romantic rival around. I'm going to have to manage my emotions about him well when I next see him. And I'm going to have to rein in the excessive daydreaming so that this doesn't lead me down a stray path.

But if I can keep things up, this will be a welcome development. Work will be more fun, life will be more colourful. I can deal with romantic rejection, and I should make this very clear to myself right from the beginning. But I cannot and should not deal with her losing respect for me, and I'm going to have to keep on fighting hard in order to earn it.

There were a few interactions with her that I just thought were so cute. There were those times alone with her when we stayed back after meetings to trash out one or two issues... and things we slowly heating up and I wasn't even consciously aware of it.

There was this time when she was walking by my cubicle, and I side-eyed her. Then she laughed and said that I was like the Mona Lisa. I didn't think much of that, but I just realised: she noticed that I have a sphinx-like demeanor about me. Yes, I'm hiding something from the rest of the world. I don't really want to let the world know that I have a crush on her.

There was this other time when I gave out beer cans whose brand was thematically related to the project we were doing. This proved to be some kind of a hit with my teammates. And I gave the beer can to her. She came back and gave me something that spelt out “100”. Which was a bit corny for me, but it was such a warm fuzzy feeling when she came over to do it.

There was this time when I was looking up from my desk – which is facing a corridor – and I was side-eyeing her. It was just a spontaneous thing.

And I can feel myself morphing into something else: I don't even want to be some kind of adolescent anymore. Maybe I don't want to indulge in my baser instincts anymore. I can't even go back to jacking off over porn on the internet because it can't be compared to basking in the glow of being close to the subject of your affections. Yet I think about some kind of future where I wake up and snap out of this and realise that I don't get to connect with her on some deeper level, or she just turns out to be somebody I used to love. And that will be sad because you have only so many health points when it comes to being able to love someone, and every time your heart is broken, you will lose some of those health points.

The most profound change is this: I've started to think about what it's like to have a girlfriend, and to share my life with somebody like that. I've rejected these thoughts in the past. But I'm going to have to find a stranger and fall deeply in love with that stranger. That doesn't happen – that person needs to hang out with me for quite a bit before I develop feelings for her. It takes that long for the magic to happen. And how much do I have to get my life in order before I feel ready to deal with the logistics of being somebody's boyfriend? It almost feels like a second job.

It's just a little crush (crush)
Not like I faint every time we touch
It's just some little thing (crush)
Not like everything I do depends on you

Qatar 2022

 I said that I was going to boycott this world cup. When I was younger, I talked to my older relatives, and they said that they were big Malaysia Cup fans when they were younger, but it didn't last. It was something that wore down as the years went by. After all, I would have seen all the stories over and over again, and I'd have tired of them. 

World Cup 94 had some romance because it was the first post backpass rule world cup, when football improved in quality and became a faster and more athletic game. There were the fairy tale runs – Romania, Sweden and Bulgaria, even though it was the two giants that contested the final – Italy and Brazil. And there was the great narrative of Roberto Baggio scoring crucial goals to drag Italy to the final, only for him to fail to convert his penalty and score the most important goal of his life. 

1998 world cup had Beckham's sending off and the England team's subsequent failure to progress. It had France winning for the first time on home soil. Memorable goals by Michael Owen and Dennis Bergkamp. There was Ronaldo's meltdown on the morning of the World Cup. 

2002 was the world cup of upsets, of Argentina, France, Portugal, Spain and Italy having unexpectedly early exits. There was Japan advancing to the second round, and South Korea advancing to the semi-finals but with the help of dubious refereeing. And there's also that hot Korean chick who was in the stands. 

2006 was a little boring: Argentina was and up and coming team, but knocked out by Germany. And funnily enough, both of these countries were finalists in 2014. There was the infamous Zidane headbutt, the last act of his professional career. 

2010 was the last world cup that I truly cared about. There was Paul the Octopus, the Luis Suarez handball, the vuvuzelas, and the marvelous Spanish team, although I don't know if they were really great in that particular world cup. 

I remember that 2014 was a goalfest, and I can't remember much about it other than that hilarious 7-1 drubbing of Brazil by Germany. They went to win the World Cup but I think that one day they will be punished for that. 

2018 and 2022, I don't really care for that, although England's march to the semi-final in 2018 was something to be celebrated. 

But then some interesting things are taking place in the World Cup. There were a few upsets: Saudi Arabia upsetting Argentina, Japan beating Germany and Spain, Morocco beating Belgium and Spain, South Korea beating Portugal, and finally Croatia beating Brazil. I don't know if this is going to be like 2002 with all the upsets, and right now Morocco is the last dark horse remaining in the World Cup. But many of the favourites have been dumped out – Belgium, Brazil, Germany, Spain. Is it possible for Argentina to go all the way to win the tournament? 

Up next will be Portugal vs Morocco and England vs France.