By Toh Hsien Min

I couldn't ever be a deejay. It's not just that my musical tastes are such that I don't have a single album by an artiste or band who has emerged in the last five years. It's just the thought of having to natter constantly about everything under the sun. Already I come to this column every issue wondering what to write about. Sure, the art of chatter can be cultivated, just as the only reason I have the luxury of moaning about tapping this out is that I don't do this as a job. Rather, I do this as something for which I have to dig out reserves of energy after whittling my mind to bluntness on stepped logistic regressions and Monte Carlo simulations during the day.

There are days when I can't stand working in risk analytics, and there are days when I feel that I've lucked out. Fortunately, the latter outnumber the former, and within a matter of months this will become the job I've held the longest. Besides a mention in this column when I first joined my current employer, and the odd surfacing of Basel II and off-balance-sheet risk, I haven't really talked about my work, let alone set down an answer to the question I get asked all the time within literary circles: what is a writer doing working as a quant? (At work, the question is reversed.) If you've guessed from the preceding paragraph that dry math leaches the creativity out of me - well, it's the complete opposite. My work is creativity with numbers, it is fun, intellectually challenging, impactful and fulfilling. I provide solutions to problems that are only beginning to be asked within the field, which of course leads to more problems coming my way ("This hasn't been done before in the organisation. We need an answer tomorrow."). Underpinning all this is the same meticulous synthesis that goes into all good writing. The misfortune is that risk analytics clashes with writing in competing for exactly the same energies.

This may not be entirely coincidental. When a recent conversation I had on personality types turned from Myers-Briggs to Clifton StrengthsFinder, I reeled off what had been identified to be my top strengths over email. One of them was:

Deliberative
You are careful. You are vigilant. You are a private person. You know that the world is an unpredictable place. Everything may seem in order, but beneath the surface you sense the many risks. Rather than denying these risks, you draw each one out into the open. Then each risk can be identified, assessed,and ultimately reduced. [...] Life is something of a minefield. Others can run through it recklessly if they so choose, but youtake a different approach. You identify the dangers, weigh their relative impact, and then place your feet deliberately. You walk with care.

The reply from my correspondent was, "reads like a jd for a risk analyst". Touché.

This issue is a slightly lopsided one. We have more poetry than there has been for some time, mainly because I couldn't say no to any of the delightful pieces in this issue. Worth highlighting is new work by Yeow Kai Chai and Cyril Wong, as well as pieces from Hong Kong poet Arthur Leung, Australian poet Jill Jones, Filipino poet Monica Macansantos and American poet Erik Ta. We also have our second largest crop of short stories, even though Kai Chai was probably already trying to be strict. Unfortunately, the critical offerings are slim. Our essays editor has recently undergone a job change of her own, and didn't manage to find something workable, although there is a review of Simon Tay's new novel. Extra Media is defined by painting rather than theatre this time round. Hope you enjoy the job we've done.

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