life on planetm

sucking it up to make the world a better place :)

Yesterday I was at the bank trying to figure out how to transfer euros to a German bank account.  The purpose of this mission was to pay my share of the fees related to my German divorce.  It is one of the most amicable splits in history so it was a little shocking to see how much it was going to cost me.

But Germans are good at logic so it was explained to me that we were not paying for the actual time incurred by the professionals to deal with our actual situation.  Instead, we were subsidising other couples who had made less sensible decisions.  The fees to be paid are based on a schedule determined by the net worth of the divorcing couples.  The concept behind this is to make sure that even couples with few assets and lots of anger can afford to get a divorce and don’t have to stay together because they can’t afford to be apart.

I am a socialist at heart.  So happy to pay a little more than my fair share for the greater good of the entire social framework.  It’s a concept that doesn’t go down so well with the average Republican.  I just don’t get it.  HOW rich does anyone really need to be?

I like to live my life all over the map.  I purposely tried to spend time in my room at the Four Seasons because, hey, I was staying at the Four Seasons!  And my mom and I postponed our visit to the National Gallery because they offered us free champagne when we checked into Claridge’s – and who says “no” to free champagne???  One of the best meals of my life was my private five course chef’s menu dinner at the Meridien in Shanghai with the cute French chef taking my order and then popping out to check on me after every course.

So I appreciate how enjoyable it is to have a little cash to throw around 🙂 But I enjoy it more when there is someone there with me to spoil.  And most of the best memories of my life cost less than $100, sometimes less than 10.  Most of my happiness comes from interacting with others – and that is free.  Too much money can lure you away from actually living your life.

Why I became a socialist.  It all started when I was about 12.  I was always good with my allowance and have those strong fiscal Scottish genes.  So I was a young conservative, a Republican wrapped in the Canadian flag really.  I thought my father shared all my views.  But one day I said something and his response shook up my world.  He said we did not all start with the same advantages so it was unfair – and wrong – to adopt that great conservative stance that a social safety net was not required. Making it hard would make everyone try harder.

Right now I am reading two fantastic books about money, Niall Ferguson’s The Ascent of Money and Roger Lowenstein’s Origins of the Crash.  You will be hearing more about them in future posts.  Lots of information to support my arguments 🙂  and food for thought.

Last night I was reading about the origin of the welfare state.  Not surprisingly, Germany invented it!  German society runs really well.  Having seen it in action, I am happy to pay the fees for my divorce.  Sucking it up, paying your share and contributing to the greater good of your society really is a lot more rewarding than a pair of Jimmy Choos…

if you can’t join the club, try being a rebel :)

Thursday night was the monthly alumni networking session for Ivy Business School.  I never really thought I would be someone who would go to business school, let alone become part of a business school alumni organization.  But I really like the organizers so I go to chat with people – and cause trouble 😉

This week I said inflammatory things about executive pay levels and expressed the view that Quebec is the equivalent to a whiny spoiled brat within confederation (of course, part of that audience included French Canadians – otherwise it would have been boring 😉

No one kicked me out of the club though.  And since it’s principally men I think they secretly like the fact that I normally show up in short skirts and flirt with them.  Because I don’t have a proper job so am rarely coming there from an office.

But I turned out more business school than I would have ever thought possible.  I may not have a proper job but I have a decently successfully consulting practice that I am hoping will allow me to semi-retire by 55 and keep bringing in a little cash flow as long as it’s entertaining.

So I did learn a thing or two at Western… as the business school was known back in my day – before the rebranding and corporate sponsorship.  In those days, it was the most famous business school in Canada and trying hard to be the Canadian version of “Harvard Business School.”  We used the case study method and a lot of the cases we discussed had been written at Harvard.

This was the 80’s, people.  You’ve seen Wall Street?  The 80s were actually a really interesting time.  The world was full of poverty and protest.  We were well past the glories of the post-war renaissance and everyone was trying to come to grips with what to do with the western world.  Somehow Germany and Japan had lost the political war but won economically.

So everyone in North America was trying to figure out how to kick start the economy.  Some things worked.  Some things didn’t.  It was a decade filled with both serious recession and economic excess.  It was actually a pretty interesting time to be in business school with academics trying to figure it all out.

I’m not entirely sure how I got into Western Business School in 1983.  I had to work every minute to pay for it so managed to convince them I didn’t need to do the requisite courses and would parachute in from a Bachelor of Commerce program at the University of Manitoba to third year business school at the University of Western Ontario.

I had planned on the challenge being the academic part of my life but that was pretty easy.  What I was completely unprepared for was the fact that I was now part of one of the “country club” university choices made by children of privilege from Toronto who had attended private schools in the great British tradition.

I felt like a complete alien.  I had no idea what to say and no chance of blending in.  Luckily, I spent the summer between third and fourth year in Calgary at the lucrative summer job in an oil company I had secured from my University of Manitoba connections.  The summer of 1983 will remain one of the most important periods of my life.  I still have a number of friends from those four months.

But what changed my Western experience was meeting Mike.  He was from Toronto.  He had gone to private school.  He was impossibly sophisticated to a country bumpkin like me.  I spent the first party we threw together in the kitchen cutting fruit cause I had no idea how to talk to his friends.  It was as though I had been transported into the Bloomsburg circle without a manual.

Mike taught me a lot about life – and was the catalyst for my conversion to city girl and eventually to globe-trotting adventuress.  But what was most important for me that summer was Mike introducing me into his world of “faux punks”.  He was obsessed with music so that was the crux of it.  But the people he knew dressed funny.  We tried to be shocking.  We wanted to shake up society.

There is a lot more to say about the 80s.  But what changed for me at the country club is that I went back into fourth year not caring about trying to fit it anymore.  I didn’t have the background.  I didn’t have the cash.  So I wouldn’t be Eliza Doolittle.  I would be Siouxsie Sioux.

It was a wonderful lesson.  If you don’t care about fitting in and don’t try, people will gravitate to you.  They will be fascinated.  Nobody kicked me out of the Ivy Alumni.  I think they like that I liven up the events a little 😉