Category / Books

by Eileen 配仪

History

Describe an item you were incredibly attached to as a youth. What became of it?

I never thought I would stop loving Grahame Greene, honestly. He was my first real love. I had an earlier “boyfriend” John Irving. Irving was a middle school romance. I was attracted to how funny he was. I was smitten by his jokes and how absurd he makes everything seem. I hung around Irving’s friends like Kurt Vonnegut and Gunter Grass and pretended to laugh at their jokes and filled their beers when they cried. I never really did clicked with the three of them. Vonnegut I could never get – his jokes were not funny. Grass was sooooooo super cool. Always bringing his pets or toys around – a dog, cat, fish, drum. I loved being part of the cool crowd. At the height of my coolness, Grass introduced me to Thomas Mann. I felt so fancy when I met Mann. He was suave, cool, handsome, funny but never overly cerebrel as if one of those Oxbridge people who have the mythical combination of bright, smart, kind and funny. It was disappointing I wasn’t invited back after a few times. I suppose I wasn’t cool enough.

I was totally obsessed with Graham Greene. I have forgotten how we met. There was no big moment. No meet cute. Just a book store and random really there are so many others, you know. Definitely nothing in romance novels or “that it was fate that drew us together”. I didn’t think it would be a lengthy love affair and such an obsession. I even flirted Dostoevsky when we drifted apart. (So worldly wise and so trustworthy. Over the years, Dostoevsky and I became good friends. I cannot always understand what he says when he rambles on but when I need some sorting out, Dostoevsky answers my telephone calls. ) I also remember another in between guy Thomas Hardy. (So many Thomases!) I stuck to Hardy for quite a long while. But throughout this time, it was only Greene who filled my soul. I was drawn to his melancholy, his inner drama. Greene drove to the hilt my intellect and emotions. There was no drama, no shouting, no declarations of love. Just a quiet intensity of emotions. When he dropped me, I was devastated.

Margaret Atwood rallied around. We drank tea and talked about men. Later, I must have been introduced to Peter Carey by someone. He was brilliant – too brilliant. I called Dostoevsky and this time, it was a voice message. Over time, peace and calmness returned. I no longer think about Greene at all. I wonder at myself why the intensity then.

Lately I’ve met a mentor Hilary Mantel. She is so experienced being in the corridors of power. She terrifies me actually. Once you get into the boardroom, she knows your P/L and Balance Sheet, not only your secrets but the secrets of others and she knows how to use them. She is at the same time empathetic yet cunning. 100% scary. I can never have long sessions with her. I don’t tell her about Greene when I talk to her. She has already known and dismissed him.

(I gave away a full collection of Greene’s books a few years ago.)

by Eileen 配仪

Dwelling on status

A status non winner – by that I mean average persons who wins some and lose others – may deal with the whole thing in a sour grape manner: “Not playing that particular game because it not my kind of game.”

A status winner will strive for greater grandiosity to elevate his or her position from the other winners. Their requirements of others and themselves get more and more specific bordering on ridiculousness. He also includes religion as a status game which makes sense from his perspective since his belief appear to be just status games.

I don’t know. His view he paints is strangely depressing.

The players of status game also never ever feels satiated by the amount of status earned which sounds a lot to me like plain ol’ suffering. The kind of suffering that is depicted in Haw Par Villa, of neverending hunger.

by Eileen 配仪

The Status Game by Will Storr

The full title of the book is “The Status Game: On Human Life and How to Play It: On Social Position and How We Use it”. This is a fabulous read. Highly exciting and intensely argued by the author. I was very much persuaded by his theory that status games are a basic need. If denied of status in a sudden manner, we implode.

I have been wrestling with humiliation and envy these few weeks. Wrestling is a big word that brings up imagery of two giants hugging each other. My wrestling is more like a parrot shouting long paragraphs of curse words at inappropriate moments. Like when I am in the middle of a flux of instructions coming at me left and right. Or trying to learn my presentation. (“Stop it! Concentrate!”, I would admonish myself.) Humiliation and envy are also big words. My feeling is more like rage against my circumstance and wishing I was lying down somewhere else.

Reading this book it worked for me to figure out why I was having these feelings. Humiliation is just a louder volume of the kowtowing that we engage in at home, school or at work. It is a means of socialising to ensure alignment. Envy came from wanting to receive a high enough status to avoid having to kowtow. What totally blew away these feelings was my recognition that I didn’t actually want to be a high status person. All I wanted was to drift away and disengage.

The book was very well argued, thick with terrifying examples of how the lack of status creates killers and the role status plays in the world stage. As I read the book, it felt that the world he writes about are only filled with extroverts who desire to engage in the world they are in and have people know and react to their actions and decisions. As an introvert who drifts in and out of conversations, my world is quite small. I don’t aim to influence my friends and when I want to influence them, my influence is quite weak. I lack the desire to make someone do something. I know that after a while, I prefer to be by myself, doing my own thing.

挥一挥衣袖，不带走一片云彩

by Eileen 配仪

Psychology of Money by Morgan Housel

It’s a daily struggle against instincts to extend your peacock feathers to their outermost limits and keep up with others doing the same.


The Psychology of Money: Timeless Lessons on Wealth, Greed, and Happiness by Morgan Housel

This quote explains for me why new fountain pen or gem enthusiast splurge on ever increasing dollars on inks, new pens and gemstones.

(Both are my interests but I no longer avidly collect them. I am a user more than a collector.)

Curiosity is first and foremost a big factor in hobby spend. For instance, a special new ink colour that we want to try it out for ourselves and talk about it, a new pen, a certain limited collection, a particular colour and cut of a stone – it all piques interest. The show and tell bit doesn’t get involved until the item is owned. The spreading of peacock feathers is not so much to brag about wealth but to show how up to speed, how in the know we are. When in a group of hobbyist, newbies are the biggest spenders, often buying a lot of both low and high value items. When the interest tapers off, there is a huge sell down/trade/give away of their collection. Mainly to limit it to those items that are used and usually without gains.

Another thing that I like is it explains risk management ideas in a layman language. It brings up the concept of uncertainty and explains the need for liquid capital to buffer against uncertainty. It explains that risk is not only something fearful but it is an opportunity as well. It highlights the use of money (ie savings) as a means of flexibility.

There are some bits I don’t agree with eg invest in a company that one is passionate about and the compounding stuff. I love Dairy Farm. I am still holding the loss making stock hoping for a turn around. The management is gromless and can’t figure out how to get the business back in shape but I really love the brand and the business. That is the only reason I am watching it lose more than 60% of it’s share price yet not selling it. The previous CEO left and they got a new guy from Walmart into the office in May this year and the stock continues to slide. The same adage about compounding didn’t always work out for me. I had an European ETF since 2008 and it continues to be loss making. A Chinese ETF made huge profits at first only to reverse and it is still loss making.

I suppose this book is like any investment. Sometimes you lose, sometimes you gain and like good portfolio allocation, this book is mostly gains.

by Eileen 配仪

Libor Scandal

I took out “The Spider Network” from the e-library. (Now that real estate is so costly, I no longer buy books.) The problem is that the Libor is so easily manipulated is surprising to me. I suppose it was one of those things that everyone assumes that it is impossible to collude all the time to fix the rate. Once in a rare blue moon, shit happens.

The People, post GFC, wanted banks to be punished for wrong-doings. So politicians, regulators and the judiciary came after Tom Hayes and locked him away for 14 years. (Hayes was also conveniently unlikeable.)

I feel sorry for Hayes. He reminded me of a poor dauphine in The Lost King Of France. Yes, in fixing the Libor, he impacted the loans, the hedging, and the returns of pension funds over the period of time that he and others were involved in manipulating the rates. But why is the Libor so easily manipulated in the first place?

by Eileen 配仪

Potential film: Indiana Jones X

I am reading Classics: A Very Short Introduction by Mary Beard. (I have heard of her from the telly before I realise she wrote books.) She said that archaeologist no longer dig sites and look for Temples. It seems there was more to be found by just marking out the sites and observing and walking around the sites. I think it is now possible for Harrison Ford to continue this franchise until he is aged and wheelchair bound.

by Eileen 配仪

The Price of Politics

Image result for the price of politics

Woodward did not disappoint. I am extremely impressed by how much tone he manage get out of close door discussions. As the book details the various discussions around the deficit and the various iterations, I was deeply impressed by the senators involved in the work. They were really committed in speaking for their electorate. The democratic leaders, the vice president and republican leaders seem a lot more hardworking, a lot more less mean to each other. They were trying to reach across the divide. Then as the book progresses I noticed that Obama didn’t do much work. He pontificated a lot and was in general hard to deal with. While he managed to capture the imagination of a nation, he seem to be dismissive and lack skills to handle Washington. The Speaker also seemed a decent moderate fellow who perhaps had trouble with his Republican colleagues.

It occurred to me that this book underlined the real difficulties of a democracy. Where there is a real divide due to strongly entrenched ideologies of both sides, it is impossible to bridge that divide. At the end of the book, my conclusion is surprising: it is more efficient to have a line party government. Given that we (in Singapore) are paying so much for the government to run, it is simply too expensive for anyone to spend time arguing about ideals.