To Die Penniless

At the rate the stock market and my portfolio are heading, I am afraid that is a distinct possibility!! To most, the thought of dying penniless is a scary one, for the connotation is that one either has hopelessly squandered one's savings away; or one has never made it in the world; or in today’s parlance, the stock market ate your savings. But look at the bright side (I am "the glass is half full" kind of person) - it could mean that one has lived life to the fullest by spending every hard earned penny the way one wants; or by giving it away to those one cares about; or better yet, both. Of course the caveat is that you need to be prescient enough to know in advance of your expiry date, and plan accordingly so that indeed you can leave this heavenly depot without any chance of Uncle Sam getting at your next of kin with inheritance tax. By deduction then, only psychics or fortune tellers will know how to beat Uncle Sam at his game??

Come to think of it, Uncle Sam is the smartest business man I know. He makes money off of you whether you are alive (providing you work AND file income tax) or dead (providing you actually have money left over from work), what a bullet-proof business model!

So there must be a business opportunity where I can help people to 1) live life to the fullest, 2) die penniless AND be ecstatic about it?

How Much is Enough?

Over the course of the past year various people have asked me either directly or in camouflaged fashion if I have made enough money to not work for the rest of my life? To which I have often responded by rhetorically asking: how much is enough? A couple of people have graciously volunteered their magic number for retirement. One said if she had US$2 Mil in the bank, she would retire. Another offered the $5 Mil figure. The thought that we need to have millions of dollars saved up before we can retire was never a consideration when I left Wall Street. Getting my sleep back, my sanity back, and my life back, were the dominant considerations.

The answer is the law of relativity. It is a response predicated on relative to whom, relative to what type of life style, and relative to whose expectation.

Relative to someone who lives in a remote mining town in China breaking his back earning US$1 a day hauling coal, I am sure I have made enough. Relative to Bill Gates who made millions per minute just by brushing his teeth (well, at the height of the bull market anyway), I am sure I have not. Relative to someone living in a hut in Ghana, I am certain that I lead a life of opulence. Relative to Donald Trump, no doubt I live the life of a pauper. Relative to my dearest family and friends' expectation, I don't think they question whether I made enough or not, they will just be happy for me. Relative to my worst enemies' expectation, my disposition will keep them guessing but it wouldn't surprise me if they pray that I show up homeless one day! Finally, relative to my own expectation, of which I had none since I lack the mental acuity to set a price on freedom, I can only proclaim that I am at the happiest, most carefree and stress-free junction of my life, and that is PRICELESS and more than enough!

Till I reenter the world of doing something that requires heavy mental lifting, I am simply going to enjoy each precious moment of freedom and not worry about if I have made enough money or not. Money earned is meant to be spent. And I will spend it on acquiring great memories, not on toys. I am reminded that "he who dies with the most toys is nonetheless still dead"!

CARPE DIEM!

Why Did the Chicken Cross the Road?

** Please pardon me for the politically incorrect ones here that may offend some. I did not have the intellect to make these up (a friend forwarded this to me) but the aptitude to laugh at them****

BARACK OBAMA : The chicken crossed the road because it was time for change ! The chicken wanted change!

JOHN MCCAIN: My friends, that chicken crossed the road because he recognized the need to engage in cooperation and dialogue with all the chickens on the other side of the road.

HILLARY CLINTON: When I was First Lady, I personally helped that little chicken to cross the road. This experience makes me uniquely qualified to ensure right from Day One that every chicken in this country gets the chance it deserves to cross the road. But then, this really isn't about me.

GEORGE W. BUSH: We don't really care why the chicken crossed the road. We just want to know if the chicken is on our side of the road, or not. The chicken is either against us, or for us. There is no middle ground here.

DICK CHENEY: Where's my gun?

COLIN POWELL: Now to the left of the screen, you can clearly see the satellite image of the chicken crossing the road.

BILL CLINTON: I did not cross the road with that chicken. What is your definition of chicken?

AL GORE: I invented the chicken.

JOHN KERRY: Although I voted to let the chicken cross the road, I am now against it! It was the wrong road to cross, and I was misled about the chicken's intentions. I am not for it now, and will remain against it.

AL SHARPTON: Why are all the chickens white? We need some black chickens.

DR. PHIL: The problem we have here is that this chicken won't realize that he must first deal with the problem on his side of the road before it goes after the problem on the other side of the road. What we need to do is help him realize how stupid he's acting by not taking on his current problems before adding new problems.

OPRAH: Well, I understand that the chicken is having problems, which is why he wants to cross this road so bad. So instead of having the chicken learn from his mistakes and take falls, which is a part of life, I'm going to give this chicken a car so that he can just drive across the road and not live his life like the rest of the chickens.

ANDERSON COOPER, CNN: We have reason to believe there is a chicken, but we have not yet been allowed to have access to the other side of the road.

NANCY GRACE: That chicken crossed the road because he's guilty! You can see it in his eyes and the way he walks.

PAT BUCHANAN: To steal the job of a decent, hardworking American.

MARTHA STEWART: No one called me to warn me which way that chicken was going. I had a standing order at the Farmer's Market to sell my eggs when the price dropped to a certain level. No little bird gave me any insider information.

DR SEUSS: Did the chicken cross the road? Did he cross it with a toad? Yes, the chicken crossed the road, but why it crossed I've not been told.

ERNEST HEMINGWAY: To die in the rain, alone.

JERRY FALWELL: Because the chicken was gay! Can't you people see the plain truth? That's why they call it the 'other side.' Yes, my friends, that chicken is gay. And if you eat that chicken, you will become gay too. I say we boycott all chickens until we sort out this abomination that the liberal media whitewashes with seemingly harmless phrases like 'the other side.' That chicken should not be crossing the road. It's as plain and as simple as that.

GRANDPA: In my day we didn't ask why the chicken crossed the road. Somebody told us the chicken crossed the road, and that was good enough.

BARBARA WALTERS: Isn't that interesting? In a few moments, we will be listening to the chicken tell, for the first time, the heart warming story of how it experienced a serious case of molting, and went on to accomplish its lifelong dream of crossing the road.

ARISTOTLE: It is the nature of chickens to cross the road.

JOHN LENNON: Imagine all the chickens in the world crossing roads together, in peace.

BILL GATES: I have just released eChicken2008, which will not only cross roads, but will lay eggs, file your important documents, and balance your checkbook. Internet Explorer is an integral part of eChicken2008. This new platform is much more stable and will never reboot.

ALBERT EINSTEIN: Did the chicken really cross the road, or did the road move beneath the chicken?

COLONEL SANDERS: Did I miss one?

The Best Wedding Toast

I have been to no less than 50 weddings thus far in my life. I have heard countless of toasts given at these weddings, they ran the gamut of being so politically correct that they can be utterly bland or unmemorable; of having the ability to render one with side splitting laughter pain; or on extremely rare occasions, of producing a sense of cringe when a speaker inadvertently recounts an all too embarrassing incident that someone would rather dig a hole and hide under the table than be reminded of the details.

Today I attended a wedding where one of the toasts being given brought an altogether different reaction to the audience and to the recipient of the toast. To me, it was a stupendous demonstration of a heartfelt understanding of a child’s emotional path by an adult. The toast was given by the father of the groom and it was broken into 3 parts: the first part centered on the joy that his son has brought to his life and how happy he was for the son knowing that he found true love; but he quickly alerted the audience the toast was not meant for the son. He then went on to discuss the virtues of the bride and how she embraces his son with all her heart and soul and how grateful he was for that; and again he quickly reminded the audience that the toast was not intended for his daughter-in-law. And finally he turned to someone in the back of the room, the 12 year old daughter of the bride (from her first marriage), and thank her for accepting and welcoming his son as a stepfather into her world and the toast was intended for her!! I think she was utterly shocked that the toast was meant for her and fidgeted a bit before nodding in acknowledgement (amazing composure for a 12 year old)! How often do adults acknowledge that children are integral part of the family and that decisions made by adults do impact them? I applaud the father of the groom for the extraordinary insights exhibited in his toast. This is one toast that will be etched in my memory til the end of time.

To Work or Not to Work?

That is the question that is plaguing my tiny but very relaxed brain of late. Actually that question popped up most prominently in May of this year when I felt extremely restless and simultaneously guilt-ridden about taking time off to smell the roses. I was brought up to believe that I should work until I die, or so several of my “fortune tellers” have told me in my 20’s when I paid them a lot of money to tell me what the rest of my life will hold. A side digression – how come none of the fortune tellers knew my name if they could tell fortunes??? Suffice to say I stopped handing my hard-earned money to these soothsayers long ago and charted my own future by not working for over a year now. I have NO regrets whatsoever about taking time off to reconnect with people; to learn about them as true human beings instead of business prospects; and most of all, to rediscover what I really enjoy in life. This will be the one period of my life where I will always remember in full technic color and in minute details of the things I experienced and time spent with friends and family.

But let’s be honest, if I live to 100, I can’t live off Uncle Sam’s measly social security check; nor will I have enough savings if I continue to travel or dine the way I have been doing so unless I move to a hut (the downside of Wall Street is that it instills in one a terrible habit of wanting to live it up). Common sense so far dictates to me that I only travel high end once every few months, during my downtime I eat $.99 per pack instant noodles or leftovers, and sponge off my friends for lodging in cities where I have friends.

The question now I am confronted with isn’t so much to work or not to work, but rather what kind of work should I do in the next chapter of my life? Isn’t it remarkable that after a year off I actually fear that I have no skills other than being able to tell someone what stock to buy or sell (though that isn’t exactly a skill in today’s market environment)?

My choices:
1) Continue to travel until I run out of money (within my control, but by then will I have any skills left for any job?)
2) Go back to the Street or somewhere in the finance arena, either do the same thing I did or work for a client (Not within my control, it will be market driven)
3) Go do something else completely different – like writing – one of my passions (within my control but will I get published?)
4) Start my own business (within my control, though I am utterly clueless as to what business)
5) Keep buying my weekly Lotto ticket and hope I will win and truly retire (Not within my control, up to a higher deity)

Good thing that at least #1,3 and 4 are within my control. So I guess that should help me decide what to do next? Stay tuned, when I finally grow up I will let you know what my next chapter will look like…….

Looking for Mr. A

No, this is decidedly NOT a Match.com or eHarmony ad. This is a call to locate my junior high school (CIS 166) home room teacher Mr. A, who irrevocably altered my life when I was in 8th grade, and inspired me to be the best that I can be!

One night last week over a bottle of Melbac at a Persian restaurant, my next door neighbor, R, his friends D & D and I engaged in a discussion on the state of the NY Public school system. R is a very successful paint contractor who hails from the UK; D & D, a couple working in the education arena (their company sells educational software to schools), and I, a product of the worst and the best NY public school system that has to offer. Our conversation began with how R got into the contracting business and it all harkened back to (according to R's humble recollection) his having failed just about every course in the UK school system except for history. His criticism with the UK system is that it did not allow one to learn and absorb the materials as one is learning them by giving periodic exams, but rather, the “stuffing the duck” method (in Cantonese parlance) of brain cramming all subjects into annual exam for each subject. One’s fate for advancement onto the next grade is predicated on the successful passing of all these annual exams. So suffice to say unless one has enormous brain cells, one is destined to fail. I sympathize with his observation that such a system isn’t perfect, but having gone thru a similar system up to the age of 12 in HK when HK was still a colony of the UK, I have a base for comparison of the pros and cons between the UK and the US system.

As we ventured into the comparative ills of the two systems, I find myself repeating the story of my home room teacher Mr. A and how the value of a great teacher is immeasurable, in spite of an imperfect system. Mr. A was a burley white man who weighed about 300 lbs and over 6' tall. At the time he seem to tower over us tiny 8th graders, yet exuded a gentle but firm tone when he spoke to us. As we were preparing to move onto the next chapter of our lives, we needed to apply to high school. I had applied to Norman Thomas vocational high school specializing in training students to become executive assistants and secretaries. I thought as long as I can type, I will be assured of a job and I won't have to work in garment factories in Chinatown like my parents did, toiling away for 20 years making less than $4000 a year, being exploited by our own people. I had vowed that I will never step foot inside another garment factory once I graduated from high school, and being a secretary was my way out, so I thought. Back in those days our home room teacher had to sign off on the application for high school and I told Mr. Allen that I really wanted to get into Norman Thomas so I can become a secretary. For some reason my application seemed to have gone missing. One day in class I asked Mr. Allen in my broken English about my application, and I recalled his words verbatim to this date: “I don't know what happened to your application, maybe I threw it away, maybe it got lost. Why do you think so little of yourself that you just want to be a secretary? I think you should take the placement test for the 3 specialized high schools - Stuyvesant, Bronx Science and Brooklyn Tech, and see if you can get in". I sobbed uncontrollably in class, because I thought it was cruel of him to throw away my application - my only hope of not having to work in garment factories!! I simply did not think I can get into any of the specialized high school given I had been in this country then for 2 years only, and I was still carrying my bilingual dictionary to class to help me understand what was said to me. But I heeded his advice and took the exam, and the good Lord looked after me and I was accepted to a summer program at Brooklyn Tech - my admission to the school hinged upon the passing of an English preparatory class over the summer. Lo and behold I did pass, the rest, as they say, is history. I went from being able to barely speak English, to placing in AP English classes over the course of the next four years, and writing continues to be one of my favorite hobbies. To have gone from having drug dealers and prostitutes as my role models in the South Bronx, to graduating from Columbia University and Wharton Business School, and then working on Wall Street for 15+ years, I owe Mr. Allen a life time gratitude for his stern and seminal comments made on the sunny wintry day back in 8th grade.

I always wonder what compelled Mr. Allen to teach in a neighborhood where ostensibly there was no hope for the future. But by virtue of his presence and the wisdoms that he imparted to me, he gave me a future, for that I will be eternally grateful. I am looking for him and I hope he is still alive so that I can thank him in person.

Food Therapy

Some people go for retail therapy, some real therapy, and others food therapy, and I belong definitively in the last category. I don’t know whence my love-hate relationship with food began (I love all food and it hates me with a passion by mercilessly expanding my waistline, I can just inhale air and I gain weight, so you can imagine what eating does to my midriff – or lack thereof), but I realize I love dining out NOT so much for the food but for the conversation and the collateral bonding that I share with my guests that make each meal special. Food is a mere tool but it helps if it happens to be sublime.

In the last 2 weeks I have dined out or met with friends and family members for coffee or drinks at 20+ different establishments (sometimes multiple times with the same person), including gorging myself at 7 restaurants throughout Restaurant Week and continuing my foray into others post the expiry of this annual celebration of gastronomy

So what did I learn from the 20+ sessions of therapeutic drowning of libation and food?

I learned about my mother’s curiosity about the décor (how do they make gigantic lamp shades and hang them from the ceiling) and the bathroom (opulent or so and so) in each restaurant, and her wry observation about each. Each time we dined out she reaffirmed my suspicion that she must have been a cheap date when she met my father because she really only needs to eat 3 bites from each course and then she will be full (she has forever declined to go to Per Se with me again on the grounds that no one can possibly eat a 9-course dinner).

I learned more about my 21 year old cousin’s journey thus far through her young and tender years; her fondness for food and her desire to learn everything about wine, French and other finer things in life that will nourish her mind, with a similar upbringing to me, having grown up in the South Bronx. I tried to recall if I had the same passion in learning about such when I was 21, or was I simply trying to find a job to pay off my college tuition? In her I found a younger shadow of me, yearning to learn and spending money on things to acquire memories, just at different stages of our lives.

I learned about many of my new and old friends and former colleagues’ activities: the life in the fast lanes of finance, of running their own businesses, or of being a mom; the angst of watching the global stock markets plummet; the joy of dealing with backstabbers; the constant jetting across the globe; the Hampton vacations; the oft-prolonged renovation of apartments; the children and their camps; the training of a puppy and the lesson of patience learned; the 6 degrees of separation in who we know tangentially; the trials and tribulations of the rites of passage in life; etc. etc. My life seems relatively serene!!

I learned about the dreams and aspirations of a friend who would like to inspire others to be the best they can be.

Now I wonder what is the best that I could have been?