The Apprentice and the Dowager

This is a tale about an apprentice and a dowager set in the Chink dynasty. While the best-intentioned SL LLG may have warned the apprentice that there lies a Dowager who breathes down the neck of anything called Humans different from her own kind, the apprenticen had already heard of this proverbial Cixi even before he started in January.

It does not require one to be a politics wunderkind to know that to engage in any form of confabulation with THE Cixi, tactfully diplomatic or otherwise, is akin to walking with a time bomb. And yet to use a time bomb as an analogy would have been fallacious, for the Dowager's modus operandi is never as straightforward as an explosion in front of its victims, preferring to claim the victim's life only after taking a circuitous route and boomeranging those who are even vaguely connected to the target.

That was exactly what the apprentice encountered. While taking a stroll in the expansive imperial gardens, the hapless one was accosted, almost being pounced on, by the DOWAGER. To say that the apprentice has dug his own grave would be gravely (no pun intended) immature, an accusation that stems from the dearth of experience that Dowager will not be called Cixi if she had been less sneaky.

When asked how much practice the apprentices had attended hitherto, his reply that it was one almost quickly led to the gathering of the darkest yin clouds on the Dowager's head. Without any signs of disapprobation except to advise the apprentice to do a lot more, it seemed that there was no further room for any parley of necessity.

It wasn't until the next two days that the apprentice realised that the Dowager had sent her missives to inform everyone about the apprentice's perceived misdemeanour, irking all but those who felt the Dowager had created not just a storm in a teacup, but more aptly a cyclone Nigris in a sewing thimble. What set the apprentice at ease was the level of empathy and support these people had garnered for him, with SL LLG being one of the most ardous apologist as evidenced in the sms exchange between the apprentice and him:

THE APPRENTICE: That @#$ sent emails to Mr A and Miss B that I should be doing more. Luckily they were most understanding towards me.

SL LLG: Humph! She is a Micro Manager Best Kept in A Miserable Manger.

THE APPRENTICE: I imagine what she will teach her children when she tells them Aesop Fable - The Dog in the Manger. She will arm-twist the moral of the story by concluding "The b!tch's right in sitting on the hay, for at the end of the day, she will have the final say, yay!"

SL LLG: Never realise you could write such poem about b!tches. You are indeed a Bard with a capital B.

THE APPRENTICE: If I am really a Bard, and if I may add on to your poem, it would read,
She is a Micro Manager Best Kept in A Miserable Manger.
But still pose a Menacing Danger,
To Even the Mightiest Ranger!

SL LLG: Aiyo, you should out this in your blog.

Alors.
Voila!