The Expat Who Ruled But Did Not Conquer

The Expat Who Ruled But Did Not Conquer by imaginiris


She types all day in her swiveling chair
The lady with uncombed hair
Countless emails
She sends without fail
But only to those she cares

“To get subscribers, sports is super”
She declares, “entertainment’s a bummer.”
As Mummy stays fat
Her babies are not fed
As she only treats directors to supper

As champion of the games, the company hurrah
Her effort accompanied by pizza
In shatters, our spirit
In crisis, the ringgit
With her paycheck, she waves us ta-ta!.

© 1998 Iris Chia

This poem was written during a disenchanted employees' hour of escapade: a poetry-writing competition we held to release our collective colleagues' frustrations against a visionless department head -- an expatriate's -- style of management.

During the year of retrenchment, as economic woes threaten the world of TV broadcasters, in which I was a producer of entertainment programs, those of us "lucky" enough to keep our jobs spent our aimless days loitering in the company compound, surfing the internet, playing UNO, participating in Mad Hatter's Day competition, and writing poems of disgruntlement against the management, basically criticizing them for paying us for doing nothing.