You may remember Dirty Keith from Singapore Non Sequitur Number 4?
Well Dirty Keith is back.
For the past month I've been working with DK on a client proposal and yesterday he had to do a demo.
Apart from being the target of my childish smut, Keith is also is an expert in databases. Something like that.
There he was yesterday showing people all sorts of things, various bits of data moving around Indonesia. Something like that.
Part of the presentation included showing a typical customer scenario. In this part of the world, Joe Bloggs doesn't work as a sample customer name. Keith used Ronald Chan. I assume he is the Joe Bloggs of Singapore, where Ronald Chans are as common as skinny arms and rudeness.
Keith is a diminutive Chinese Singaporean who uses his bad haircut to camouflage a sharp brain. He parts his hair on the side, pulls his light grey pleated trousers up a little too high and swings his skinny arms out from an ugly golf shirt. The shirt itself is from a 2008 database conference in Bangkok: sponsor logos are sewn onto each sleeve.
Keith's age hints at Generation Y but his styling screams 1940's Chinese nerd convention. He doesn't wear glasses but if you had to draw him from memory you could be forgiven for including them. His presentation style is friendly and animated - compensation for the dreary content:
"It is proven to scale almost linearly. Therefore Job estimation of end time can be extrapolated based on previous run time and volume."
Srsly. You can't make this stuff up.
"The challenge with semi on-line storage is decision how the data can be aggregated for longer retention periods."
Keith flicked around more grey screens. He was big smiles and flailing arms - but it wasn't enough to compensate for this boring shit.
"I will now demonstrate the job monitoring features: please refer to the process' CPU consumption" here.
After a while my mind started wandering. That while was 53 seconds.
I noticed that Keith's trousers were the same colour as the OK buttons on his demo screens. I pondered whether it was intentional.
"Data lineage is demonstrated in how the changing formula will show analysis of the impacted report"
My eyelids were heavy and his golf shirt was blurring into the projector screen.
"De-duplication is challenging. Common names can appear many times in the database but you don't know if it's the same Ronald Chan."
I was starting to fall asleep.
Then it happened.
"I don't know if and of you remember my name?"
My eyelids sprung into life. I became alert but contained. Anticipating a kill like a cat spotting a cockroach in the corner.
"I'm Kum Yeung Kok."
And scene.
I'd never heard Kum Yeung pronounce his full name before. People usually call him "Koom" or "Koom Yoong" to avoid going all Benny Hill on his ass.
Kum Yeung, on the other hand, has no such hang-ups. His pronunciation was perfect. Every. Word. Of. His. Name. Was. Enunciated. Precisely as it is sniggered.
"There are not many Cum Young Cocks in the world", he declared again quite loudly. Indeed.
This got me wondering how I could transition my pronunciation of Koom Yoong closer to his own, more accurate yet Benny Hill version? The disobedient side of my brain was grappling with being able to use a socially acceptable norm, and was intimidated.
"Because Cum Young is quite rare," he continued. Deary me.
This was all so inappropriate. So Dirty Keith.
I wondered whether Keith was having the last laugh, with his skilled poker face.
Surely someone else must find this amusing? The eyes of my own poker face swept the room, looking for signs of recognition or wry. I maintained the stiff composure of a toddler who has stolen a shoe.
But there was only one person sniggering and it was me. I imagined him doing this in Australia and chuckled along with my imaginary friends.
"So you can find my name here very well. See? I'm not like Ronald."
No you're certainly not. You dirty bastard.
