Walking the Path

I was catching up on the December issue of GQ today at Munchies when I came across the magazine’s personal finance column.

I’ve been paying a lot of attention to the column recently. With the financial crisis — and the fact that I was without a job for almost a month — I was, and still am trying to watch how much I spend. In the December column, the writer was complaining about how he was seeing thousands and thousands of dollars disappear from his investments. And even though this money was theoretical (it wasn’t really his until he took it out of the investment), he still felt the pain.

 The writer was also a little dismay and annoyed at the guys on Wall Street who put him in this position. So he called up a financial planner on Wall Street. Who toold the writer should have some sympathy for those Wall Street bankers. They were going through a period of really low self-esteem. Their sense of success and self-esteem was really set by how much money they made and since they weren’t really making any money at the moment, they were pretty down in the dumps. 

Well, I’m sure that a lot of those bankers will still get through the financial crisis okay (but I also know that a lot will also lose their jobs and may spend some times unemployed). I can really identify with their sense of failure though, especially if those bankers aren’t performing the way they want or if their jobs have met with the axe. I know that I didn’t really how much I defined my identity by my job until I wasn’t working anymore. I felt an extreme sense of failure even though I hadn’t done anything to put myself in that situation. I was just unlucky. 

It took me about two weeks to get my head around that fact and then after I did that I was able to really concentrate on building my self-esteem by making sure that I got another job. The day I received the offer for the job that I really wanted was probably the day that my self-esteem got to it’s highest level possible and has now settled a very high and stable level. 

I hope the bankers regain their self-esteem too.

J.

After five years in China there is one thing I don’t understand, Chinese store keepers reluctance to change 100 kaui notes. This morning I paid for my RMB 20 breakfast with a 100 kaui note. The waitress response was “YI bai kuai ayah!” It was like I presented her with an impossibly large amount of money. She did change though without much fuss which is more than I can say for the ayi at my local C-store.

I could see this if the notes were rare, but this is the standard denomination of notes that you get when you go to any ATM in China. It’s the equivalent of getting CDN$20 from an ATM in Canada. You would think that stores would be prepared to change a 100 kaui note because of this. And I think the worst thing is that I will buy more things sometimes to get around the store keeper’s whining particularly if it is an old lady as she seems to make feel as though I am personally responsible for the Opium Wars and the century of humiliation the Chinese endured just because I brought a 100 kaui note with me.

Any one else experience this?

J.