LEE HSIEN YANG sat cross-legged in the witness box, jiggling one foot up and down in what was presumably a way of relieving the tension, boredom or frustration generated by the courtroom proceedings.
As his counsel, Jules Sher, led him through a gentle line of argument, Mr Lee looked more akin to a schoolboy just before break time than the chief executive of a multi-billion-dollar communications corporation fighting off its regulator.
To his apparent relief, the questioning petered out and the head of Singapore Telecommunications (SingTel) left the witness box after a day and a half on the stand.
Next up was former SingTel chairman Koh Boon Hwee.
The scenes come from Wednesday's proceedings in the court battle between Southeast Asia's largest telecoms group and its regulator, the Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore (IDA).
At issue is S$388 million (about HK$1.66 billion). That is the amount the IDA said it overpaid government-linked SingTel when it compensated the group S$1.5 billion for the early termination of its monopoly. The IDA says the disputed figure is the tax component of the package.