WTFF

I believe everyone is familiar with "TGIF", which stands for "Thank God It's Friday". Here at my office building, we have "What The Fuck Fridays".

That's right, and I blame it all on the "casual Friday" policies of  a large bank which occupies most of the floors and terrorizes the rest of us by constantly having employees jump into elevators at floor 3 only to get off at 4, let in a new batch and let the cycle fester like a cancer eating away at the valuable time you have reserved during lunch to surf for porn.

I kid you. I never surf for porn. At lunch time. Definitely not at the office. Well, unless it's Saturday...

Anyway, there are some appalling standards of business attire on display. Many people have said that Singapore has a more informal business attire code than say Hong Kong, Tokyo or New York. I agree, and thank god it is so, for my aging body's airconditioning system is already half broken, and would be completely if I had to wear a suit every day. Besides it is simply stupid, expensive (think of the dry cleaning) and inconvenient to dress in a 2-piece suit every day. So yay! for Singapore.

I usually wear business casual attire, which, much to my office manager's consternation, comprises anything with a collar (sorry, no batik) and non-denim and non-linen pants. My polo shirts, which I rarely wear nowadays, have enviable logos ("Roland Garrulos", "La Costa Rica" etc) and are definitely not of the tattered kind. This is frankly acceptable by American standards (definitely not by European ones) and a jacket thrown over makes for a business meeting.

But I cannot say the general population - and by that I mean women mostly - have the same punishing standards. Many of them look like they shopped at "Sluts 'r' Us". Some apparently shopped at "Color Blind Sluts 'r' Us". Cleavage, skirts too short, summer collections in blinding colors and floral patterns, and that most hideous combination - some sort of a short dress that was apparently robbed from a 4-year old in a poor part of the world, worn above "tights" stretched so tight, it leaves nothing to the imagination. Frankly, often, one does not want to imagine. This is all patently unacceptable. Ruffles. Laces. Bow ties. Balloons. What the fuck? We are a sunny island nation, but the office is not a beachside villa. I sure wish it were... but it ain't so.

Now before you label me misogynist, I admit the men are far worse, but thanks to our stunted "shopping gene", we dress poorly but within a narrower range of bad taste. You have the old "pleated" or "flat front" debate, and occasionally you see some blokes with triple (or more pleats); the subcontinental boys in "Killer" jeans or "Peter English" pants, which for some reason seems to have begun life with a poor roll of genes - er, I mean spindle of yarn. The Americans in shirts and pants that they oh-so-wisely buy in sizes too large, to brave the inevitable obesity that they stoically accept. The guys, like my colleagues, who recently discovered that belts and shoes should match, even as a different colleague was making fun of guys who didn't know this. My point is, men wear shitty colors and unfashionable stuff, but in general don't turn up like they forgot their destination was the office. They *believe* they are dressing for the office, except apparently in a different era, country or possibly planet.

As for dapper me - I finally have that bottle of dry vermouth, so I can start shaking that martini. Who's in? Dress code: casual. Really ;)