God Punishes You by Giving You Everything You Want. – Mike Tyson

 

In my decade in the insolvency business, I’ve had the privilege of meeting a very interesting class of people known as the “minus millionaires.” As the term implies, this group of people once had a lot of money but then lost it all and more.

Everyone has a story. Of the many stories I’ve seen in the last decade, there’s a common thread. The founder/director of the company built up a very successful business. Then a bad decision or two was made and instead of changing course when things started going south, they proceeded to dig their heels in and throw in personal money, which eventually brings them to personal bankruptcy along with corporate insolvency.

Why do minus millionaires do what they do? One of the best quotes on the subject comes from a video about Mike Tyson, the former heavy weight champion of the world, who was sent to prison in 1992 after being accused of rape. In that video, Mr. Tyson states that “God punishes you by giving you everything you want.” At time of his conviction, Mr. Tyson was one of the most famous men in the world. He had literally everything a man could desire – wealth, fame, women and so on. Then, it was all gone and he was a convicted felon.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LkNeY9bs3WQ

 

 This statement by Mr. Tyson reflects one of the most under looked point about the capitalist system, which encourages just about everyone to look for success – the fact that many failures don’t come from the lack of success but the abundance of it.

Why is that so? Look at it this way – when you’re not successful and striving for success, you are very aware of your weaknesses and failures. When you are a nobody, you are very aware that its very easy to get squashed.

However, when you become wildly successful, you start believing that you’re in charge of a blue print of how to get there. You start believing that different rules apply to you because you’re somebody and the world loves somebodies the way that it doesn’t care about nobodies.

I think of the owner of a very successful business that was shut down by order of court. We moved in and tried to explain that we had a job to do. The owner actually told us, “Sorry guys, I got meetings to go to and a business to run.” It took his friend, an Australian lawyer to tell him, “Mate, you haven’t got a business anymore.”

Then there’s the fact that the path that a successful person takes to success, becomes seen as a sacred text rather than something to be analysed. There are times when certain actions and thoughts worked for a certain period but may not necessarily be right for the current context. Not many “get it.”

Interestingly enough, one of the people who got it, was my 70-plus-year-old dad. When business at his production house started tanking, he started teaching himself how to use software that made films. He put it this way, “The kids these days are doing things this way and getting the jobs.”

In a way, the one person who best explains it, is Mr. Tyson himself. In his book, “The Undisputed Truth,” he puts down his first professional defeat to James Buster Douglas to the fact that he was busy partying the night before the fight, whereas his opponent was preparing for the fight of his life. He then makes the point that Mr. Douglas lost the title in his first defense against Evander Holyfield because for the same reason that Mr. Tyson lost – he was too busy enjoying the good life instead of training.

Getting successful is only part of the journey. Staying successful is another story. Think of the lottery, where people buy the lottery in the hope of striking it rich in an instant. However, as one source states – nearly 70 percent of lottery winners end up broke. Why is that so? The simple answer is because they’ve not been conditioned to prepare for actually winning.

Everyone wants to be a winner. So, we work hard in the hope that we’re going to end up as winners. However, for those of us who become winners, we need change our focus and stay winners. Getting there and staying there are two different things.

The Things You Shouldn’t Have to Say

 I ended up having a discussion last night with someone who was trying to tell me that I was beneath her. In her efforts to show me that I was her inferior, she made the point that she was “high class” unlike me and the people associated with.

It was at that point that I realised that the discussion was going nowhere and had this been a rational debate, I would have won. So, I just kept quite and allowed her to berate me and until she grew tiered of repeating herself. It was this simple, the fact that she had to say she was “high-class” was the point where she admitted that she was anything but.

There are, as they say, certain things that shouldn’t need to be said at all. One of my favourite examples of this comes from across the border where there is chain of restaurants in Malaysia called “Sedap,” which is Malay for “Delicious.” Why does a restaurant need to call itself “delicious.” A restaurant by definition should serve “delicious” food because that’s the very reason why people go to restaurants in the first place.

 

 Are they called “Delicious” because ……?

Social class is like the restaurant that calls itself delicious. Why do you need to call yourself “high class” if you are? Social class is one of those things that’s very easy to tell. The most usual often evolves around things like your job. For example, are you a technician or a working professional. These days, your profession is also an indication of how much time you spent in school

Beyond the obvious criteria like what you do for a living, where you went to school, your zip code and how you get around, there are other often overlooked criterion for “class.” One of them is good manners. People of a certain class tend to have manners, particularly in the area of how they treat other people.

Why should “superior” people need to announce the fact that they are “superior” or to remind everyone else that they are “inferior.” A superior person, should behave in a manner that is “superior” to other people if they are really superior. I think of an Indonesian girl that I once had the privilege of going out with. She asked the taxi driver to take us to “Boat Quay.” However, the taxi driver took us to “Clerk Quay.” When this happened, she told the guy, “Bro, I said Boat Quay, this is Clerk Quay. But OK, we all make mistakes, I’ll still pay you for this.”

Instead of going into a tirade about how the taxi driver was trying to cheat her, she made the point that a mistake was made but it was OK. This lady was of a certain breading that it was beneath her to get angry over a few bucks.

Let’s put it this way, a person with class treats everyone with a certain amount of dignity. All of us know how to treat those with money and power very nicely. We either want something or need something from them. What counts is how we treat the people who can give us nothing.

David Ogilvy once said that one of the most important things about promoting people to the top jobs was character.

 

 One of the key drivers in determining a leader’s character is by how he or she treats the underlings. The moment you have someone who starts talking down to people and proclaiming that they are high class or announcing that they have a great character, you know that they are not people or class or character.

Be Careful of Who You F**K for they May have the Means to F**k You Back

 

I’m detest Donald Trump and his numerous copycats from around the world. However, whilst I do detest what he promotes, I got to give him credit for proving to the world that men have an awful advantage in life – namely the fact that men, no matter how awful, are forgiven many sins if they are seen with a beautiful chick by their side. Donald Trump has encouraged the removal of a woman’s right to choose what to do with her body than just about anyone else in the modern era and yet, we’re too distracted by Melania by his side. Even when he’s totally sleazy, we actually forgive him for being sleazy with something good to look at. Stormy is a porn star. She’s in the business of creating fantasies and how do you not envy the guy who gets the fantasy. Stormy, like it or not, was better looking that Monica Lewinski.

However, whilst men can be forgiven for taking advantage of the women who add value to their persona, many men take it a bit too far and get the impression that they can treat the woman like a disposable condom. Think of the guys who happily visit prostitutes to live out their wildest fantasies and then don’t pay and think it’s perfectly acceptable because the girl in question is a “whore” and therefore not worthy of human treatment.  

I guess you could argue that life is tough and getting f**ked over is part and parcel of life. It’s almost considered acceptable to be f**ked over by someone whom the rest of society regards as higher than you on the proverbial social ladder. Think of the recent Parti Liyani affair. It literally was a case of one party being “just a maid” and the other being “Chairman of the Airport.” Had Ms. Liyani not been represented by a tenacious lawyer and a host of other organizations fighting for her, this case would literally have been everyone believing the other side because it was the more powerful side.

However, whilst power and money carry a lot of weight in the practice of daily life, there are two problems.

The first is that one day, you’re bound to meet someone richer and more powerful. At that stage, you’ll find that the people who backed you will desert you and head for the bigger power.  

The other, more serious problem is the simple fact that being rich and powerful doesn’t mean you’re telling the truth or that you’re right. The weaker party can find weapons to hurt you in ways that can surprise you. This is particularly true when you’re talking about people that polite society would prefer didn’t exist.

Let’s go back to Mr. Trump and Ms. Daniels. There is a power disparity. One of them once held the most powerful job on the planet and even before that, he plenty of resources at his disposal. The other, is, as mentioned earlier, in the business of providing fantasies, particularly the type that you keep to the screens of your TV or the printed pages of the magazines on the top shelves.

However, Ms. Daniels did have one major advantage over Mr. Trump. The ability to damage his self-inflated image of being a “macho” man. Mr. Trump’s lawyers did their best to portray as her as “Just a Porn Actress” who would not be a credible witness. So, what did Ms. Daniels do? She proceeded to spill all the juicy details about her intimate encounters with Mr. Trump, which were, well, how do you say, not the type of things that a man who seems himself as being able to just “grab em by the p***y” would want coming out. As far as the jury was concerned, there was really no reason for Ms. Daniels to lie about it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SmpC1Ws9xyU

 

 Mr. Trump is officially the only US president to become a convicted felon. Much of the credit is being given to Ms. Daniels for being a credible witness. What’s probably more damaging for Mr. Trump on a personal basis, is the fact that his cultivated image of raw masculinity has been damaged. A man who talks about “grabbing em by the p***y” and they “just let you kiss them” has been shown to be somewhat less than stud like. Yes, you can say the judge and jury were politically motivated but can you say the same for someone who actually slept with you?

The lesson is simple. Just because someone works in a certain profession, it doesn’t mean that they’re stupid or that they can be intimidated just like that. Never underestimate someone with less to lose than you and never give them a reason to go after you whilst you hide in a tower believing you are untouchable.

Even People in Awful Professions Have Dignity

 

 

 

I have two lady friends in my life who loath the site of each other. One of them, is my sister from another mother, Fleshball, who used to be Singapore’s Bounciest Prostitute to walk to streets of Geylang. The other is a lady that we should dub, the Mother Hen, who claims that she was once a Hot Chick and informs me that should she put effort to seduce, few men of worth would be able to resist.

These two ladies hate each other. As far as Fleshball is concerned, the Mother Hen is a pretentious little “b***h” with no manners, whilst the Mother Hen is convinced that Fleshball is a venomous little prostitute who is jealous of the Mother Hen’s better looks, despite the fact that the Mother Hen is significantly older (Fleshball is eight-years younger than me, and the Mother Hen is eight-years older. I’ll be 50 in November).

They’ve met all of once. Then, they had an accidental reunion at an event where I usually invite just about everyone to on my contact list. It was obvious to all and sundry that there was bad blood between the two. Mother Hen tried to befriend a few people there and suddenly went into a mode that the people she was trying to befriend were avoiding her because Fleshball was spreading “Venom” about her. She spent two hours on the phone telling me that Fleshball was jealous of her and spreading “venom” because she was merely jealous and Mother Hen hadn’t done anything to her.

I tried to explain to the Mother Hen that she had started her relationship with Fleshball by insulting her. Asked her what size her feet were and offered to give Fleshball her shoes she had worn. The Mother Hen could not understand why Fleshball would feel insulted because her shoes were branded and, well these days people actually sell used shoes online. As far as the Mother Hen was and is concerned, she was being kind. She told me, “If she has pride, why does she work as a prostitute.” Many months later, Fleshball would get her own back when she found the Facebook page of the Mother Hen with a photo of the Mother Hen posing showing off her midriff. Fleshball sent her a message telling her that nobody would look at her even if she was naked. The Mother Hen reminds me constantly that we didn’t speak because I chose Fleshball over her.

I’m not going to delve into the emotions of the two ladies. However, what I will say is that the grounds of this incident are placed in the ability of two people who refused to empathize with each other.

With Fleshball, everyone had a good laugh when I told them what had happened. However, to be fair to the Mother Hen, it was probably scary to receive one of Fleshball’s unsolicited messages. Think of it as someone you barely remember coming up to you and telling you all sorts of things.

As for the Mother Hen, its amazing how many people from “privileged” backgrounds seem to blind when it comes to the feelings of the less fortunate. It got tough trying to explain to the Mother Hen that whatever her initial intentions were, her offer came across of “patronizing” and “condescending.

She had known Fleshball for all of ten minutes when she made the offer. It came across as “You poor thing – take my hand me downs and be grateful I’m willing to give you, my things.” When I told a lawyer friend, I had introduced both women to, his reply was “Why did you insult Fleshball by introducing her to the Mother Hen.” My mother said, “You mean you actually know people who speak like that?”

There is nothing wrong with “hand me downs” per se. I work in the insolvency trade, where the best part is dealing in used items and taking items that might otherwise be destined for the scrap heap. For the longest of times, I actually used a “hand me down “phone from Huong.

However, Huong and I happened to be married for a decade when I took her phone. During liquidation sales, its about looking for value. The Mother Hen had met Fleshball for all of ten minutes when she made the offer and it never occurred to her that what she was offering was insulting.

It boils down to this, just because someone earns less, it doesn’t mean they are dependent on you. People who work in what can only be described as “awful” professions are entitled to have a certain amount of dignity – they buy their own cloths and feed themselves. As a Pinoy friend explained “I am a proud man, I am willing any job to feed my family rather than beg from you.”

In Singapore, pride is often used to justify sloth. I think of the number of long-term unemployed who refuse to take menial jobs because, well, they can’t afford to be seen working in menial task. However, they have no problem asking friends for handouts to maintain their status. This needs to change. We need people who are willing to humble themselves in order to survive. A society that encourages people to have pride in what they do, no matter how menial is society that produces winners.

Who Are You? What Are You?

 I’ve had a couple of interesting conversations in the last week about networking, including a conversation about why I believe its important to network down as well as up and aside. These conversations reminded me of a time that Independent Singapore (As a matter of disclosure, this is a website that has on occasion picked up my blog pieces), interviewed me as an interesting case study as someone who had “fallen through” the cracks and had to work as a waiter. As part of the piece, they wanted videos on my stints waiting tables and I was advised that the videos should be as “pathetic” as possible.

The piece never aired and I wasn’t actually very good at looking pathetic working as a waiter in my late thirties and early forties. If anything, I looked, for the discomfort of most middle-class professionals, probably a little too comfortable doing the job. Yes, the job was effectively a dead end. However, I didn’t think of it as such. If anything, the job turned out to be a necessary part in giving me the stability that I needed to start building some savings and I am grateful that I still have the chance to wait tables.

 

 Washing Cups at Bruno’s Serangoon Branch

The other thing that this job did involve an incident where I ended up working a lunch shift and when I took an order, the German customer actually remarked to his work colleagues that he had never felt “so commanded” before. I remember this incident because the question of what defines social status and success has come into the conversations that I’ve been having in the last week.

 

 Serving Drinks at Bruno’s Serangoon Branch

I’ve been thinking of this incident because the question “Who you are,” and “What you are,” often get confused as the same thing. Since this is the common understanding, I’ll go with it. The “Who” question should be a question of character. For example, if you were to ask me who I am, I’d say that I am an all-round gentleperson who believes that you should speak nicely to everyone. The “what question” should refer to what do you do and what do you have. I am, for the purpose of this, the business development director in a professional firm that specializes in liquidations.

Unfortunately, the who and the what often become synonymous and we start to assume that what a person does for a living or where they live or what car they drive, define them and their character, talents and abilities. I think of someone who tried to rub it in that I was an inferior being because I was competing with people who drove “Ferraris” for her attention.

In a way, it’s what you call, a sad truth of how the way the world works. Hence, we all exaggerate on our CVs because the person judging you will inevitably be impressed with “what you are,” and hire you based on that believing that its “who you are.” I am guilty of it; hence I talk about the “glamorous” parts of who I worked for, which function I was seen in and who I rubbed shoulders with.

Unfortunately, confusing who you are and what you are doesn’t just get you a job, it has a way of deluding you into believing that you are the job you work in, your zip code and the car you drive. One only needs to think of a young lady who talked about her “uncaring; elite face.” What was she? The daughter of a very senior civil servant who made plenty of money. Who was she? A sad brat setting herself up for a kicking.

One of the most difficult moments for a lot of people, particularly the high-powered ones, is retirement. Suddenly, the job with the big title and the swanky office goes. The people who flocked around them start to slink away because they’re no longer useful. There’s an argument to say that men, particularly high-powered ones tend to have miserable retirements because they lose their purpose in life. Shutting up and letting your successor get on with it is not natural for someone who has grown used to being in charge of things (hence the Singapore solution of creating retirement cabinet jobs for senior ministers and dare I say “minister mentors” for Prime Ministers who can’t let go.)

Its best to avoid confusing the two and you find that the people who are genuinely up there, don’t. It usually the sad ones in professional circles who get confused between the two and often do their best to hide impotence by being nasty to those they believe are beneath them because they think that what they’re getting is social respect.

Some of the most successful people that I have the privilege of knowing (people who create listed companies or have access to wealth funds) are the people most willing to take the subway. I think of the way Polaris, now Intellect Design Arena remembers me – the man who got the Chairman to ride in the MRT. These are the guys who have separated who they are from what they are and been successful in both aspects of their persona. Warren Buffet who has made more money than most still lives in the same house he did three decades ago. Surely there’s a lesson there.

Failed Basics – Brain Rotting Bureaucratic Practices and Boring Youth.

 

The first working day of the half way point of the year was a pretty f***ed up day. I guess you could say it started with the fact that I ended up upsetting the Neurotic Angel over the weekend when I told her that I think most 20-year-old guys in Singapore are sad and boring. She attributed it to jealousy and from that moment it seemed it would get cursed by my favourite pet peeves.

The day started with a reminder as why I detest offices and everything associated with them. Walked into an office to read a series of emails between two colleagues who between them had somehow miscommunicated certain information to me and I was effectively responsible for a problem I had no desire to be involved with.

Then, I had to deliver something to United Overseas Bank (UOB). Normally, it’s a simple process. You walk up to the counter, call the person on the pone provided and then the person comes out and takes what needs to be delivered:

 

 A basic phone – that nobody has fixed for several months:

Now, that would be the process except that when you pick up the phone, there’s utter silence. So, I had to use my own phone to call someone. Now, the phone not working on its own is bad enough. However, this wasn’t the first time that this had happened. I remember telling the staff that their phone was not working on two previous occasions in the last six months. Ironically, this inability to fix the phone happened to be in a section that calls itself a “technology” and “operations” section.

 

 Technology and Operations can’t get a phone fixed

The final straw was going downstairs to a “Muslim” coffee shop and hopping to get a cup tea without milk with two limes, which is something that every Muslim coffee shop serves in Singapore. You just have to ask for “Te-h-O Limau Panas.” Except the girl serving me was from Vietnam, who didn’t know what the heck I was talking about. Then, she asked her colleague who was probably from India, who also didn’t know what I was talking about. It took a while for someone to explain that they had no limes or lemon and so I had to settle for tea without milk.

 

 How difficult is it for someone to tell me they have no lime?

By the time I returned to the office, I was actually contemplating whether life was worth ending by ending the lives of the people around me. The heart rate that I had worked so diligently to bring down before leaving for the UK had shot right back up (to be fair, I’ve been drinking more since I was in the UK).

I blame the system and I blame the world’s first “Yuppie,” Confucious who created a Chinese culture that was obsessed with bureaucracy and hierarchy and trying to get people to have a mindset that existed in a past that never actually existed. Confucious’s philosophy worked in theory, except it had one fatal flaw. China became complacent and thought it had everything and didn’t need to evolve. We, as a civilization, built a great big wall to keep outsiders out. The reality was, it didn’t work. The barbarian hoards inevitably found a way round the wall and ended up kicking the crap out of every Chinese army that was sent to stop them. By the time the Europeans arrived in the 18^th century, China was still in living in the 15^th.

If you look at the Chinese societies that thrived outside China, you’ll notice that it was the very people whom Confucius despised – the merchants and entrepreneurs. Hong Kong and Taiwan are built by business people. So, is Singapore. However, Lee Kuan Yew couldn’t accept that and proceeded to turn us into a Confucian wet dream where everything evolved around scholar-bureaucrats.

To be fair, the system has worked brilliantly and I’m still going to make the point that Singapore does measure up pretty well against most places. However, the cracks in the system are clearly showing and the saddest place you see it is in our youth.

Talk to enough of them, and you’ll find that what they’re essentially interested in is money and dare I say voyeurism. You’re not going to get a “Gretta Thunberg” campaigning for climate change or student protestors in places like Hong Kong. A few will try to suck up to you if they think there’s a career advantage for them but that’s really about it. I think of a young lady who was dating a Finnish student I knew but then started getting touchy with me the moment she found out I was an intern at Citi.

Now, you could say that this is the way our system is set up. Young kids are an investment and you want them to start earning fast. Our kids are, to use that favourite word of Confucious – “filial,” or nice people. That in itself is not a bad thing. However, if you look at social changes in just about everywhere in the world, you’ll notice that its inevitably starts with the young.  

Every society needs bouts of change. Yes, young people should listen to the “wisdom” of those have come before them. However, there are times when the young should stand up and show the Old Farts that things can be done differently and actually better.

We’re not letting our youth do that. Instead, we’re pushing them into silos and cubicles because we’ve told them that this is where the cushy life is. We tell them that spending long hours in a cubicle will make you into a somebody and king or queen of the world.

Again, there’s nothing wrong with a cubicle per se. However, the problem with life in a cubicle is that it eventually leads you into thinking that the only thing that matters is you, your social circle and station in life. So, life in cubicle land becomes about protecting your turf and climbing into the corner office. The basic premise of the business you serve becomes secondary to protecting your turf.

Hence, you get a nation of people who have their youthful energy drained out of them by starting at a screen in a space for hours on end. Nobody is going to try and voice a thought different from the mainstream.

In the mean time everyone will then try and show off about how they get this and that. It becomes about having the latest of this and that without any thought as to how it works. In the mean-time, the basic stuff goes to the dogs. I think of the phone at UOB, which like all banks, spends enough to keep portions of the IT industry alive. So much is spent on technology and yet, you can’t get a phone to work.

Our society is so obsessed with showing off that we spend all our time on glitz and glamour and neglect out basics. We’re at a stage where we actually need people from elsewhere to manage the basics for us. I think of the Vietnamese girl and the Indian boy trying to serve me tea.

We just welcomed a new Prime Minister. He will undoubtedly have a lot of grand ideas about where we need to go. For me, I only wish he will go back to what was shown during Covid. Go back, get our young to tell us where they want the country to go. Go back to basics and build from there.