Sitting in his plush executive office, Mr. Johnny Lee was just finishing his work for the day. He stared at the mirror across the room and admired his reflection. He was wearing the best clothes money could buy, pinned onto his shirt was a blue badge that stated, “Johnny Lee: CEO of Ocean Blue Aquarium”. Behind him was an enormous aquarium, filled with exquisite marine life and brightly lighted up by fluorescent lights to give it a shade of blue.
Just then, his wife walked in with their two children. He knew many of his co workers envied him because of his wife. She was extremely beautiful with blonde hair and blue eyes. They met each other in the United States while he was there on official business. She agreed to come back to Singapore with him and now they live happily together in their two million dollar penthouse. His children were just as perfect, they were twins, and both of them were gifted with extraordinary brain power. His twin sons, Joel and Noel, were the top VS boys in their year. They had inherited their mother’s blue eyes and his Asian features. They looked very handsome.
Looking at everything around his office that was blue, he wondered how he had hated the colour when he was young.
His parents were highly successful business people, maybe the most. Both of them were in banking and were earning a lot, and I mean a lot, of money. They lived in a huge house with security guards and guard dogs. They also had many jewelery and antics which were surrounded by alarm triggering motion sensor beams.
His father was a national swimmer and had won couple of gold medals in the South East Asian games. He also was a marathon runner when he was in secondary school and was captain for the tennis team. He was very popular with his peers and is still in contact with many of them even now. His mother was no different. Her school was table tennis champions four years in a row while she was in secondary school and she played golf very regularly and had a zero handicap.
So, being their only child, Johnny was pressured to follow their footsteps. They put him in a soccer training facility when he was only five years old, hoping he would develop an interest in sports. He did not. Every time he showed up for training in his blue jersey he would be teased and humiliated. His teammates always called him fat and said that he was round enough to be the ball. Johnny was very blue. When his dad saw how he played, he hired a coach to train Johnny personally. However after a year with no improvement, his father finally allowed him to drop soccer.
At six years of age, Johnny was told by his father that he has been signed on for swimming lessons. Every morning his father would wake him up at five a.m. and bring him down to the blue pool to practice. The water would be freezing cold and after swimming Johnny felt that he was too tired to do anything for the rest of the day. He would often say to himself, “is there a heaven somewhere that can save me from this hell?” He thought his prayers were answered when his dad finally gave up after two years of no progress.
However, his mother still had hope that Johnny could make it. She bought a blue table tennis table for her son and hired a China coach to coach her son. Johnny would be made to do physical after every lesson because of his weight and laziness, and he hated physical training very much. After another year of no progress, his mother had no choice but to drop the coach and threw away the table.
His studies were just as horrible. He had scored a miserable 189 for his Primary school Leaving Examination and had just made to the express stream in secondary school and his teachers always called up his parents to tell them bout their lazy son. For his Ordinary Levels, he got thirty six points. So, like everything else he took up, he drop his studies.
With no future in sight, he took a job of cleaning fish tanks for his neighbour, who happens to be the CEO of a very big company: Ocean Blue Aquarium. He came to Singapore as the weather is good all year round and he could enjoy himself more here. He often got compliments from his employee and this encouraged him to do well. When the owner was free, he would sit beside the tank and talk to Johnny. He would teach Johnny about the marine life, and about the business he ran. Johnny found all this very interesting. He started researching over the internet very soon he was very knowledgeable about marine life.
The owner was extremely impressed by Johnny that he hired him to work in the company. Johnny rose through the ranks the next few years and found himself second to the only the CEO and owner of the company, and his neighbour.
Soon the owner died due to kidney failure, and since he had no living relatives left, he left the company to Johnny, whom he thought had the skills and knowledge to run the company.
So, now here he is, bringing his wife and kids home in his blue Ferrari, never feeling blue again….
Sunday, January 20, 2008
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