Kings has a work desk in our living room. It is a black hole into which the consciousness of the man of our household often gets sucked, leaving behind for his family a warm body that grunts at the Rockstar and occasionally also swallows the produce of the Nespresso machine sitting next to the tv.
On it sits the Pierce Brosnan James Bond Laptop.
Beside it is a book case that contains a book with flying pigs on the cover below a dubious title and so many internet startup books and China books that Kings keeps giving and lending them out in shopping bags.
All these personify my husband and his dream.
(Haha. You thought i-banking was his dream? Kings likes to say, “If making chicken rice is what pays the bills, I will go get really good at making chicken rice.” But when he is not making chicken rice, he does not Golf. He does not Sail. He Basketballs, but mostly he Internet Startup Books.)
Flying Pig Book has never been read. I try to show it to as many visitors passing thru Rockstar’s bedroom-cum-guest-room as I can. Kings constantly tries to run distraction. We’ve been playing this game ever since I found out about FPB, shortly after we became a couple, almost 9 years ago. We’ll never get rid of FPB, but Kings keeps rehiding it among the shelves and shelves of startup tomes.
When we first met, we were two banking newbies – he fresh from a relatively glamorous (to me) position on the options desk of a large British bank in London, I looking at a banking career by way of compromise after the unpalatable (again, to me) degree in accounting my parents wanted for me. (It took us a few years to make up and I got hooked to dealing rooms but that’s another story.)
Back then I still had “what-if” dreams of having studied literature and economics. Kings figured that meant I liked story books. So after our first meeting and long phone call, he marched off to a bookstore, and bought a bunch of story books, thinking then we would have more in common. (Seriously. That earnest. <swoon>)
That’s how Flying Pig Book came about
Last weekend Kings left for the Web 2.0 Summit in San Fran. At ~HKD 30,000 a ticket, some manner of queue-ing to wait for a place to become available, and the opportunity to rub shoulders with Internet Billionaires From The West, The Founder of Baidu and The Kid Who Dropped Out Of School, Bought A Laptop (yes, really, that’s what he wrote) to name a few, my husband is living his dream. (And I have new respect for the Stay At Home Mum I met who used to organize these.)
If there’s anything I learned from previous church Date Nights with the relationship counselor speakers on occasion, it’s to be supportive. I’ll always remember the picture painted by a speaker couple years back, of the old-ish couple where the husband talks enthusiastically about all these dreams, and the wife is standing there rolling her eyes. <Flinch>
I don’t want to grow old with someone who’s fine with me talking him out of a big dream today, and then 15, 20 years down the road he looks back and regrets not having taken the shot and gets bitter. No one wants to grow old with a grouchy old goat. But then if you helped make him one, it might be kinda hard not to stick around…. No, no cannot dig this hole.
I on the other hand always wanted to write. Except I don’t have a book in me at the mom, all I really want to write about for now is Rockstar-related. I missed so much when I was working. So I figured could kill two stones with one bird – be supportive by letting this be their guinea pig blog and well, still write. Content gets sliced, diced, once all the upper case “R”s went missing (which I still find really bizarre) so yeah I do get sad when after another period of the site being down when it comes back it looks like a spin-off from the Poltergeist series. Every time it goes down, I wonder what I’m gonna lose when it’s back up again.
But I offered and I’m fine with it.
Cows Can Sing.
On Word, of course.
Thinking of you while you’re 16 hours away darling. Ha Ha Ha.
Well. Surely Supportive can have a little fun.
Ps: Yeah, Kings is still an investment banker. He’s doing this on 3 months’ Gardening Leave. And writing on Word can be a silver lining…
Stay tuned for pictures from Silicon Valley…
