The Aliens Have Landed.

Have assignment, will brb…

Urban legend (fine, some… Guy I Used To Know) has it, there is an old book somewhere out there, probably very limited print first edition, titled How To Avoid Being Abducted By Aliens. This book, as long-time readers of this blog (hi Mum!) might recall, is my proverbial Unicorn Quest – because the author was not trying to be funny.

Technology can do many wonderful things, but still we cannot go back in time. (For the moment. Awhlie ago the late great Stephen Hawking threw a party for time travellers – but in our time line no one has shown up because the party was announced the day after. It’s possible we won’t always remember no one showed up. Or that I wrote this. Or this blog post may no longer exist #TimeParadoxAndOtherNerdthings)

And so, as someone whose former life was in looking for (financial) opportunity preferably in weird places, I get fascinated by how technology colours everything. Demand and supply conditions coloured, magnified, by rapid developments in technology. So. Exciting. Kinda like when Singapore first made selling chewing gum illegal, making sticks of Wrigley’s the number one thoughtful, cool, inexpensive souvenir gift for all your colleagues who covered for your extended weekend in JB (Malaysia). But on steroids. Technology is like steroids for everything. But without kidney failure risk. Available for free to practically everyone. Thank you iTunes, for what you’ve done for vinyl records. No one plays them anymore, but –

Now that we’ve established that everyone hates lawyers (almost as much as they hate bankers), let’s get back to aliens… The elusive author of Aliens is someone who believed and wrote the book during the aliens-who-capture-people-for-purposes-unfathomable-to-human-imaginations era, also of the Men In Black parodies.

Think Michael Jackson issa alien. The weird maybe-dog in the corner pen where you volunteer at the local animal shelter…

(Yo animal lovers, SPCA needs funding for some blood tests… Though… secretly everyone hopes the.. thing they adopted turns out to be Genetically Engineered Alien Super Weapon Who’ll Go Surfing With Them…)

That something weird about one of your teachers from decades ago…. (Geography. For me it was Geography) SHISSA ALIEN. My Geography teacher was this really tall, powerfully built woman who sat uncannily straight in her chair all the time like her spine was steel-reinforced, and BOOMED at us as though in Humans 101: Chapter 1 – Talking To Juveniles she had been briefed that we all flop around on our desks after lunch…. Fine, they did their homework pretty well. 

Also, not forgetting – Elvis isn’t dead, he just went home.

(On an aside, 15 years ago, USD 750 in Vegas got you a real pastor to marry you, a time slot at Little White Chapel, a spin round the strip in a pink (or white) cadillac, some flowers from a fridge behind the counter… and Elvis in attendance. Don’t worry about music, Elvis brings along his own CD player. (What? I was at the time a new Christian of maybe 6 months and Kings was still “searching.” Our families’ attitudes re Elvis Wedding were Ok Very Cute Now Come Show Up To Your Real Family Wedding Banquets Please. We Commit To Not Serving Real Sharksfin. My grandma gets extra credit for supportively declaring Elvis “Very Handsome”.)

Here’s another real one that wasn’t so cute – Halloween 1938, the Colombia Broadcasting System radio network thought it would be a great idea to air an adapted chapter from H.G. Wells’ 1898 novel, War of the Worlds.

The part of the story where news broadcasts describe in detail how the aliens were attacking was however so realistic, it caused mass panic in the streets because listeners thought aliens really were taking over the world. 

So yeah, I’m looking for that book. The one written by someone from that time, and as urban legend would have it, includes wisdoms like Never Stand Around In Cornfields which are basically Alien Spaceship Parking Lots.

DON’T scoff –

Y’all love Superman, right?

S-o, there really be method to the madness, My Love For Self Help Alien Abduction Book Is Real. Until such time we find a Hello Aliens, This Is How To Take Over The World edition. (There is after all a Dear Demon, Here’s How To Steal A Soul – C.S.Lewis’ Screwtape Letters anyone? Uncle Demon writes to Nephew Demon with lotsa advice on how to lead a human to eternal damnation… Before Screwtape was the Divine Comedy (fine, WAYYYY before), which appears to be the most snoresome (long!) old Italian poem ever, until you realise the various levels of hell and punishments for indiscretions tell you a lot about the medieval belief system.)

Lemme do Self Help Alien Abduction Sequel: Guide To Aliens On How To Take Over The World. Here’s suggestion #1: Run for President of a powerful country and then knee-jerk tweet all kinds of incendiary remarks so the press corp don’t notice you cleared out office space in the big white building for human testing. W-ait.

OMG It’s Really All Out There. Best place to test something out? Make a movie and see how people react. Go troll the fan fiction sites not just for ideas for your next storyline, but also how the Smartest Anonymous People In The World who are not driving taxis in Singapore spend countless hours of their free time picking apart, randomly creating, roaming closer to home than we know – government wants to know whether or not to tell the public they developed mutants/ bio warfare/ a singing sheep – see what people say about the movie. Its. Just. A Film! Who’d ever believe we were making something like that for real?  Ha Ha. Ha.. Ahem.

AND that was my way of intro-ing this post, this Let’s Get This Out Of The Way Before I Write Anything Else (when you read further you will understand why this is necessary) <snaps back into character> –

In honour of HN’s current Youtube obsession: Personality tests, Trivia tests, Can You Solve The Murder Mystery tests…. I present the How Good Is Your Rumour-dar Test. How many of these have you heard:

Rumour #1:

Rockstar is Special Needs. N-ot that we’ve ever heard him say 😀 , but I did have an underlying curiosity about Special Needs kids for some years. This is where it stems from – Rockstar has had a friend who is on the spectrum, ever since they first met, aged 4. Through the years, they’ve been in contact off and on. Now, we get told a lot by friend’s mum that her son gets “set off” fairly often, really loses it, gets in trouble… but in the 7 years Rockstar has been in contact with him, by now also including 2 camps that lasted for days, one of which an Outward Bound with canoeing and 4m jetty jump – a full-blown “episode” has not occurred around Rockstar. Why?

For years we assumed this is completely coincidental and just because the two boys knew each other quite well – until one day Rockstar met another SEN boy at an outside activity for the first time… and did something by reflex (switched chairs around) that diffused what was building up to be a huge “episode”. When asked, Rockstar said, “I think he has the same thing my other friend has. I know what they’re thinking before they blow because we think in the same way about some things.“ NOT true of every SEN kid Rockstar meets – couple years ago Rockstar also spent 4 days in a tech workshop with another friend diagnosed with Asperger’s (plus a bunch of non-SEN kids), and said his movements were “completely unpredictable” to him.

Back then it was a learning experience for Rockstar too, observing his SEN friends. He would come home some days saying things like “I think he tried to go without meds today”… Was he different the next day? and Rockstar might say, “Yeah today I think he took them…” Years ago another friend once walked into our home on playdate and said to me, “Don’t worry auntie, I took my meds before coming… I won’t break anything…” Kinda broke my heart a little there.

This is also a very different experience from non-SEN kids who can choose to be mean or not, for real. And the non-SEN grownups around them. All these differences are also powerful learning experiences for my own kids.

Kids with disabilities have something really important to teach all of us, it’s something that was even more powerfully illustrated to me way back before I ever had kids of my own – the second merger of my former career was arguably the most bloody, and it was during this time that the Big Big Boss of Acquiring Institution’s name began to surface, usually spoken with tones of awe and… tinged with fear. Dutch Boss of Fearsome Reputation somewhere out of the Netherlands had used his considerable resources to adopt an HIV-positive child from (I think) one of the African nations. He brought his adopted son/daughter home to live with his 2 or 3 privileged biological children in their family home. One of the bosses in Asia after a long night of entertaining had finally plucked up the courage to asked Scary Big Big Boss about the adoption, to which the man replied, “I want to teach my (biological) children something about life.” The family had had to completely change the way they lived – his adopted child had to undergo blood transfusions, there was medical equipment all over their home, and serious precautions had to be taken regarding any spillage of blood or other bodily fluids. This scary boss wanted his own privileged children to see that. And it cemented his fearsome reputation among all of us.

Rumour #2:

 

My blog is job-related. About 7 years ago that was kind of how it started – straight out of banking, I would otherwise never have blogged, let alone submitted it for a competition. For a significant amount of time I wrote daily market commentary distributed to HSBC Singapore’s corporate clients when I worked in Singapore, and then products/market commentaries at Dryden (owned by Prudential, then bought over by Fortis) and Standard Chartered private bank here, but a personal blog on parenting choices is SO not the same thing, particularly in HK.

In fact Southeast Asian blog advertising giant Nuffnang back when Kings had partnerships with them explored this to quite some extent – unlike in SEA, English language personal blogging here does not take off the way you might see elsewhere, as a “job”, because people are incredibly cynical, come from wayyyy too many different views and backgrounds, are horribly competitive, and just very, very critical and vocal about it in general – to the point that traditional risk-reward (for eg blogging for money or credit) no longer makes much sense. That’s why far fewer people keep it up here.

My hub back then maybe 8 years ago tried to build a blogging platform combined with Facebook-like functions (no, neither of us can write actual code, but Kings does have quant skills he chooses to neglect in favour of selling large quantities of property today because he always says that’s what makes money. Which is true.) and they needed a guinea pig blog they could slice and dice with impunity. That’s this blog. Ditto when we raised the traffic/readership at one point – it was to see if the original platform/servers could handle traffic. (Sometimes they couldn’t.) Without the requirement to raise traffic for testing, I simply didn’t/ wouldn’t. This blog has died, completely disappeared, been hacked at (and I don’t mean by my husband), and has survived the demise of its original platform and business ventures. This blog is an old friend.

My old friend keeps my mind from atrophying – gonna lose it if I don’t use it 🙂 There are parts of my former life, the action, the stimulation, that I really, really miss. Anyone is welcome to look for inspiration while I ramble about testing my own thoughts – that is still something positive. There’s always gonna be people who mean much worse than that stumbling upon it anyways. The pressure from knowing my words can and likely will be picked apart by anyone any time pushes me to think harder, crystallise what I read #realNassimTalebfan. 

Rumour #3:

 

I see a counsellor. Christian counsellor, fully trained and qualified in all the regular areas for counselling both grownups and children as well. This is predominantly from a few years ago, not too long after HN was born. If you went from a relatively high earning dual-income family to zero income, your husband quitting his investment banking job to take on a massive amount of personal financial risk (I had savings from my own banking job but had quit the market 2 years earlier) and see his lifelong dream to fruition shortly after you had a second child by emergency C-section (Rockstar was partial emergency C btw), I totally recommend you see a counsellor too. It’s the responsible thing to do. There should not be a stigma attached to this. They tell you to get the oxygen mask on yourself first, before you start trying to help any dependents on the plane.

(No reward without corresponding risk. We have much to be grateful for. Kings pretty much has his empire now…

Oh, what was my dream? A home to raise kids in… And lotsa stimulation. I hit my first small structured products team head position aged 29. Along the 12 years and 3 mergers – 2 of em ugly, the third not very pretty either, I’ve also been enclosed in small dealing rooms where I am the only female and some of my huge colleagues are just bellowing the most horrific things like angry bulls, when Compliance blocks their trades. (Interestingly, what earned them a severe dressing down was not that – it was once refusing to humour the lion dance lion during CNY season, because it messes up the “juju” of the place 😀

“Juju” is very important in dealing rooms (another reason I leaned even more heavily on my own Christian faith – because the seriously superstitious culture can make you seriously vulnerable otherwise) – Kings once got called back urgently at 3pm on a Sunday to remove a statue his team at a French investment bank known for technical expertise had put up “for fun.” It was a cheap replica of a Chinese Terracotta Soldier, purchased at Friday team lunch in Stanley market, and brought back to decorate their area of the large dealing room. An Asian (but non-Chinese) senior Sales from a completely unrelated team was returning from a business trip, dropping stuff off at the office before going home, when he clocked the statue facing where his team sat far across the room. He freaked out so badly that he dug up all the admin desk staff to locate the owners and change the position of the statue immediately. (Note that he would not touch the statue himself to simply turn it to face away, instead spending considerably more energy and “precious” time to find someone else to turn it.) That guy’s freak-out then freaked Kings own team out (even though they had simply purchased the thing from the market) so badly they put the statue somewhere on an abandoned hill and never went back there #potentialmoviescript

Who knows, “Don’t Mess With The ‘Juju'” could have had alien roots 🙂 I have a couple stories too – including one where a night trader called my beloved Brisbane then-boss practically hysterical that the wind chimes hanging in the dealing room for fengshui kept ringing late one night. He refused to ever work that shift again. Our boss said when he arrived next morning at 5 (as he is wont to do), the chimes were lying on the floor, having apparently rung so hard they came undone. My boss, half-Caucasian Aussie, completely re-arranged the dealing room following that incident. He told us, “It doesn’t matter what I think really happened – the night traders were so upset (no one would follow that seating arrangement anymore)”. When I remember that story I think: Even highly educated quant traders who are grownups sometimes still require certain quirks like this “validated” in order to function optimally. As for Brisbane boss’ dealing room – they didn’t have another incident after the re-arrangement. They never figured out what happened that night either.

So here’s to the many weird, wonderful – sometimes, wacky personalities who provided so many stimulating experiences in my former life. And – Joanna (on the first small team I headed and is a mum now too, I love her) AVERT YOUR EYES –

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J gets really creeped out by this but it is a cute dog 🙂

I began downsizing on heavier positions after Rockstar was born (and then went to jump out a plane instead, to take the edge off. 12,000 feet. Kings was not pleased, so I am not supposed to do that again :D) What I mean by this is – HAD my kicks. Solid, for over a decade. I would have had very different priorities if I didn’t have kids (and boy are these two a helluva extreme sport anyway, as they grow up), but. Nurturing another mind, another… soul, is a terrible responsibility. Whatever I write now, do now, is first and foremost to keep my mind sharp.

Rumour #4:

 

I’m looking for a job. Have a part time job. They are aware of this blog. They also offered me more money than I felt I deserved, because an important albeit implicit part of the job is after-office-hours drinks, dinners and days-long overseas events. I cannot fulfil this requirement, and so I insist on paycuts. Being around when the kids get off school is very important to our current family dynamic. It doesn’t have to be that thing, it’s just ours. Rockstar at age almost-11 has also never had a birthday party in his life. He’s been away for up to a week at a time on at least 3 camps without missing us (loves adventure sports)… until the bus is pulling up home. But when he does come home, it’s very important to him for a parent to be there. It’s why even if we come home very late at night, he always stays up so he can see us walk in the door. Which brings us to –

Rumour #5:

 

Rockstar takes drugs. To get to sleep or whatever. (Get high? Get smart? What? Bradley Cooper did a movie about a smart pill sometime back..) Loud and clear: Rockstar. Takes. NOTHING. Not even non-drowsy Mannings cold meds if he can simply not take anything and let the cold blow over on its own.

While we’re on the subject though – some years ago, I hired a helper who had been through a couple maid shelters because of pending tribunal cases. (We once paid 3 times the usual processing fee thinking to give a helper a fresh start, and hoping to instil some sense of loyalty – this did not work out for us because the moment she was “free” she just really wanted to get a better job than as a helper.) But one thing she told me from being in the shelter stuck – medications. Pills. That she said the other maids there discussed – how to purchase the stuff from each other in Causeway Bay etc on their days off, when they’re coming back from leave they bring it in with them… so the kids under their care (I assume maybe also old folk) would nap or sleep better/longer. I have no idea if this is true, it’s only something my then-helper told me several times. I never thought to ask my other helpers because this was while I was still working very long hours.

Several years ago though, there was an actual reported case in the Malaysian papers of a “professional” nanny in Malaysia who was doing such a good job of taking care of 3 young kids and looking for more. The kids never fought nor bickered, hardly fussed, appeared to nap well…. until one parent noticed the behaviour of her kid appeared to be… somewhat altered. That’s when they realised Super Nanny was perpetually giving the kids cough medicine – the drowsy kind.

My two kids are pretty active. They sleep the absolute minimum acceptable for kids their age and some days drive me so batsh*t when they insist on bickering over ABSOLUTELY NOTHING that I want to pop them with one of those tranquilizer guns they use on African safari to tag the lions. And they’re my kids. Sigh OK for the record – I-do-not-shoot-my-children-with lion-tranquilizer-guns. I am so anal retentive about what these things do to developing livers and neurons that I went completely cold turkey on meds and alcohol for the duration of both pregnancies even after being told a little champagne is ok. This makes me feel justified somehow, in calling my kids annoyingly active @ssholes.  

Rumour #6:

 

I want a teaching job. Uh…. I JUST made a joke about drugging my own children with animal tranquilizers WHO is ever going to freaking hire me?? For real though, a year+ ago I wanted to get a teaching qualification for possible future use, someday if I don’t know what to do with myself after the kids are grown and well, I miss the kids. (MAYBE. Miss the kids. HN just booked me to take care of her future kids and my knee-jerk reaction was Are You Freaking Kidding Me, Like You Rats Weren’t Torture Enough. <calms down a bit> Ok but no promises. You might not even want kids. Think carefully. Can’t stuff ’em back in once they’re out…(“Unfortunately” though, HN doesn’t touch toys like dolls, but perpetually mothers live animals, her friends… So it’s not looking very good for me right now.. <cringe>))

For real though, to inspire creativity, I believe there is no substitute for the mental stimulation of another human mind pulling, “sparring,” with yours – Deep Blue, the computer program designed to play chess, beat then-World Champion Garry Kasparov at the game it was designed for – but apparently cannot beat a 4yr old at tic-tac-toe (I think that was from Life 3.0). It’s why I’m very supportive of my kids partnering others to study. Spar with. Game against. Say stupid things to. The randomness of where another human mind might take you is practically irreplaceable. If you have any kind of creative interest on the side, I think the chance to have so many randomly questioning minds around yours is invaluable for your own development.

I had initially budgeted that getting some teaching qualification would be a massive re-train that took me several long years. (THIS also seems to get conveniently left out wayy too often.) The particular qualification I was recommended required a host school first putting down on paper that they will be your mentor school, without which you cannot even apply to get into the program and start down this road. A large part of the study program was teaching full-time no-pay for a year as a trainee. (Probably more, if slowed down by the caring for my own kids when they’re home after school. And no I DON’T want to teach my own kids <MAJOR CRINGE> just not our family chemistry. Ever 😀 SOMEONE ELSE PLEASE TAKE THEM, I scream at them see them enough at home, thank you.) A-nyway, I considered it a very big ask on any potential host school and always thought it was a very long shot. I have only ever asked one school this, a year ago. 

Mostly, I wanted an excuse to meet professionals who were teachers, that was not in a NOW, WHAT CAN YOU DO FOR MY PRECIOUS AWESOME CHILD kind of way. A then-friend told me something that stuck – that there was “always” a distinction between whether you are a “staff”, or “a parent (who is not also a staff).” Professional work thing, I guess.

BUT… we can always hope that instead, it’s:

The series also has teachers who practice magic and spend summer vacations on a trawler and in the aborigine rainforest. HN’s favourite however is Mad Basher Molly – sweet lovable teacher by day… one of the most hated professional wrestlers in garish stage makeup by night – on purpose. Molly and her best friend whose alter-ego is lovable crowd-pleasing Pretty Polly (huh.. I think Mad Basher is way more fun) put on a huge staged match each week with lotsa dramatic fake action.. after which they unwind with tea and a laugh and arrangements for more theatrics next week.

This is so much fun! I’m very fascinated by jobs. From all the way back when I once applied to be an air traffic controller (not… that different from where I ended up in a dealing room vocation that requires hedging stuff in pieces traded by different desks. You have to mind what the different desks in their different seating areas around the room are doing, sometimes also on the phone if the main desk for that currency is overseas..) Before college my dad once suggested a gap year as an air stewardess rather than backpacking because you’re k-ind of still “backpacking” but on a plane, and they teach you all kinds of interesting flight stuff. I got thru the first round at Singapore Airlines but then had to start a new study program and couldn’t pursue it.

Also once tried some kind of local stock photo job – that was to better understand what all the local gossip magazines my Chinese-literate colleagues kept buying back from HK and Taiwan to Singapore were about (BIG CAVEAT if you try this for the experience – some of em write seriously crazy stuff. What the agency texts you to show up wearing is a big indication – there was a “t-shirt and jeans” one where I held up an iPhone not-yet-available-for-general-sale, for a picture… and a few months later a waiter at Peak Lookout showed me where the local gossip magazine that bought the picture had captioned it, “Mum Fries iPhones.” I AM NOT KIDDING.

“Frying” is Cantonese slang for… trading? punting? When the iPhone first came out, people would queue for hours and buy like, five, so they could re-sell them higher (that’s apparently one way to “fry.” The phrase was taught to me by a local dealer I once sat next to… who previously worked between bank jobs as a HK taxi driver.)

It’s not just tech, there are many websites that allow you to buy/sell hard-to-find branded items – I replaced a Chanel brooch of great sentimental value (lost off my t-shirt when I rushed dying JD to a veterinary emergency room) through the website Buyma. The seller in Tokyo whom I contacted told me she eventually got another friend in London to pick it up. They don’t buy and hold this stuff – so no monetary risk, just legwork, and if you’re a mall-crawling kid on a weekend it’s so easy to window shop a few – sellers post a large variety of items and the price they want for (sourcing) it, and then go try and get it if you indicate interest. No commitment – one or two who didn’t have a friend in London simply cancelled my “order” saying “sorry cannot find”. My point being there are so many more interesting things to do with your cell phone than open chatrooms. 

It’s potentially quite good money, because in cities that have the branded-item cult, stuff sells out very, very fast – the markup is maybe 20-30% above retail – that’s about HKD 2000 gross a pop for say, sourcing one Chanel brooch. The fancy term for that is “arbitrage opportunity” – when you can sell higher or buy lower than what others are selling or buying for, thereby making a profit. But with branded goods instead of stocks, property or various other assets. Well technically two select Hermes bags require easily as much capital as your average equity linked deposit. (Chanel costume jewellery brooch is my recommendation if you want a branded item though – it dresses up anything, from cheap tees to coats and bags, to sweaters and hairbands – and it keeps resale value. If you keep the tags you might even re-sell at a profit. Just be sure to check the original listed price. Some people brazenly try their luck by posting seriously crazy high prices.)

That’s one thing the internet and PayPal and all manner of tech apps have done for the marketplace today. Instead of EasyBake nowadays, we have EasyApp Everything 🙂

How ’bout a Starbucks barrister job, there’s a mum from Taiwan killing time and chilling at one very occasionally. (But personally I’m scared of the elaborate order buttons in Chinese on the register 😀 Even in English is bad enough –

Rhett and Link do coffee orders, ladies and gents. Dads of 5 kids between them, former engineers, Link I believe had a “fulfilling” job at IBM….. until he discovered Youtube. Think what Youtube et al does for the secret lives of teachers. They could be… pretty good amateur musicians. Inna band. (Wasn’t Justin Beiber once a 12yr old Youtuber? Yuck. Nvm.) Cartoonists. Movie producers.<pause> W-ait. Are you sure your friendly neighbourhood teacher doesn’t already have a double life?

Rumour #7:

 

Rockstar is gay and within his chest beats the suppressed heart of a genuine Ballerino. And his parents, particularly Dad, are in denial when Son just wants to be himself and pirouette and leap gracefully across the stage like a gazelle. Just as nature really intended, for him.

<pause>

<crickets chirping>

Y-eah I got nuthin’. Just. Speechless.

O-KAY folks, how many did you score out of 7 on our little Rumour-dar Test? Did we manage to entertain?

Here’s a bonus recommendation:

BUT I try to please. You guys play an important role keeping my mind on its toes (wait, what?) So this one’s extra –

Rumour #8:

 

I have Friends In High Places. This. Is. TRUE. Like, out of this world ok. Here’s a few (you have to watch the first intro to understand the second clip):

I especially like how the kid is the Seasoned Intelligence Specialist.

He gets into trouble like a regular kid. Kind of.

https://youtu.be/iOzbo8E9wHo

(Recognise Joseph Gordon-Levitt (Kid Intelligence Specialist) today? Got into Columbia University, and aside from a long list of notable acting roles also won a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Creative Achievement in Interactive Media and is now a dad of two boys.)

Epilogue: Been laying low most of last weekend and beyond because –