Act 1: Scene 6 - The beginning of the end

"The hottest love has the coldest end." - Socrates

A single conversation can change everything. Similar to the beginning of my romance with banking, the end of the affair was preceded by a seemingly normal chat with an unusually wise man. I was now 28 years old and battle hardened with almost 6 years of banking experience. The discussion proceeded as follows:

Wise Man: So what brings you to this country?

Tendo: I am here to attend two weddings

Wise Man: When will you get married?

Tendo: Perhaps when I finally make Managing Director (MD) at the bank 

Wise Man: Why do you want to make MD?

Tendo: So that I can be rich

Wise Man: What makes you think that making MD is the best return on investment for all the money that your parents put into your education?

Tendo: (Stunned silence)

In the simple Q&A that followed, the wise man broke down my previously held assumptions about employment, wealth creation and purpose. In essence, he cut through the fat of the illusion to reveal the muscle of truth.

The illusion of banking (and perhaps employment in general) is that life gets better as we rise through the ranks. The truth of the matter is that, if you enter a career with the sole intention of arriving at a particular destination (i.e. becoming rich), the journey itself will kill you before you enter the promised land. However, as I later came to realize, if you enter a career for the love of the journey, you will be open to multiple destinations and have a higher probability of fulfillment.

Question: Is money an important thing in your career?
Answer: FALSE! (It is everything)

For those of you who have similar stirrings in your soul, you will probably be familiar with my line of response during this dialogue with the wise man..

Wise Man: Have you ever thought of starting your own business?

Tendo: Yes, but the problem is that I have no ideas.

Wise Man: What do you mean?

Tendo: I don't know what business to start. However I think I would be good at executing someone else's business idea

Wise Man: Well then, you should team up with my son. He is all ideas and no execution.

All ideas and no execution. I think that phrase sums up the reason behind the still born nature of most corporate escape plans. In the 8 years that I worked within banking, I heard many of my peers talk about business plans that they almost did/were about to do/are currently working on/could potentially be launched. The similarity behind all these states of quasi-activity is that very few if any of these ideas actually took place. Perhaps it was fear that held them back from launching.

Once I make a million dollar bonus, I will be free. Wait...maybe 10 million dollars.

It reminds me of a quote I once read about going out to pursue your dreams and having to leave a place of familiarity:

Behind the glory everyone wants to attain is a degree of discomfort nearly everyone wants to avoid.

Ideas sound great until the reality of executing upon such an idea hits you. I loved the idea of leaving the bank to become my own boss until I started hearing horror stories about entrepreneurs who couldn't pay their rent. As I used to tell my friends: "broke isn't a good color on me".

So I began to hatch a grand escape plan that would simultaneously free me from the micro-management hell of employment and also grant me a six figure US dollar income. Of course, I would later learn that there is virtually no start up that you can self fund and also derive a six figure income within the first 1-3 months. Unless of course you launch a recreational pharmaceutical manufacturing plant.

Drugs are one hell of a business

Given that I had no special aptitude for the sciences, I decided to brain storm business concepts that I could launch while still working for the bank. The first thing I did once I returned home was to register a company whose specific focus would be: general trading. It sounded all-inclusive enough for me to explore just about every idea I could conceive. The greatest challenge I faced was devising some business which would operate as  follows:

Morning Hours:
5 am - 8 am

Afternoon Hours:
5 pm - 8 pm

These hours would of course work perfectly for the following professions:

A. Celebrity fitness consultant
B. Traffic policeman
C. School bus driver

I was back to square one. I had the execution capabilities but lacked the ideas. Just when I was about to give up I remembered one of my favorite clients from my stint in the tropical west African country. He too had once been a corporate slave but had managed to open his own trading company. He seemed as smart as I thought I was, and his business appeared to be simple enough. After all, just how difficult could it be importing crude oil from the Middle East and selling it locally at a premium? Ignoring the $20 million start up capital that he had managed to raise, I decided that I would emulate this man. Thus began the adventures of Tendo: banker by day and trader by night.

It was a short lived and humorous adventure.

Next week: Act 1: Scene 7 - The middle of the end

You are (not) what you do

"To be or not to be, that is the question." - Hamlet, Shakespeare

I recently went through a 'fish out of water experience' when a new acquaintance asked me a routine question: "So, what do you do?". I froze in silence. All I could mutter was: "I am a former banker". I felt like a combat veteran reduced to fighting high cholesterol. Just how did I reach this pitiful position in which I equated the loss of my staff pass to the loss of military security clearance. I can distinctly trace three stages in the evolution of my personal identity.

Pre-Banking:

These were the days of my schooling. Education is what I did, but it certainly wasn't what I was. One of the benefits of youth was that questions of identity (asked by adults) were centered on your future career ambitions.

However, questions of identity (asked by my peers) were primarily defined by my quirky personality and bizarre interests.

If I recall correctly my bizarre interests included the following:

1. Being the greatest ever piano-playing/ classical-music-composing, kick-ass investment banker
2. If number 1 didn't work out, I would settle for being the greatest ever piano-playing/ classical-music-composing, corporate lawyer
3. Failing numbers 1 & 2, I would settle for simply being the greatest ever piano-playing/ classical-music-composing, President of the republic

I had a precocious understanding of the fact that the sound of money is music to the ears of struggling artists.

Despite my corporate/political leanings, I never thought my future ambitions defined my present identity. This was largely because my career plans were liable to change on the whim. This was until I met the investment banker who changed everything. Suddenly, I had a concise response to all the adult interrogations of future identity.

The earliest peek into identity-as-defined-by-occupation occurred at the tender age of 19 years old when I purchased the following shirt:

  
  My mentor shook his head worryingly and warned me against dressing like a banker while I was still a teenager. I took this as the highest complement.

In Banking

I didn't notice the loss of my personality-driven identity when I first entered the brotherhood of banking. Instead I quickly learned that those who describe bankers as one generic type, are akin to those who think of Africa as a country. This is because bankers are a loosely knit collection of tribes with subtle distinctions. I present to you an example of 4 unique identity traits of bankers:

A banker is identified by their job role:

Cash Management Specialist (version African)

Cash Management Specialist (version American)

A banker is identified by their employer:

Rural Frontier Markets Focused

Urban Emerging Markets Focused

A banker is identified by their car:

Recent bank-hired former college student still on probation

Recently promoted former college hire now on bank staff loan

A banker is identified by their primary residence:

Expatriate Banker in 3rd world hardship country

Expatriate Banker in 1st world home country

Post Banking

Once outside of the bank, I faced a short-lived existential crisis. If I wasn't a banker, did that mean that I lacked an identity? I had spent years defining myself by my employer, my corporate title and my lifestyle. It often felt that society as a whole enjoyed mental shortcuts which pigeonholed individual identity to career choice, and I willingly went along for the ride.

In a most remarkable coincidence, life has come full circle. My identity is once again defined by who I am and not what I do.

Recent counter-intuitive life choices are perhaps best understood as the result of my quirky personality and bizarre interests.

Finally I am free to just be the greatest ever piano-playing/ classical-music-composing/blog writing former banker.   

Love in the time of Banking Part 2: Romance is in the air(port)

"A journey is best measured in friends, rather than miles"

- Tim Cahil

As a college student, romance and travel were inexplicably married in my imagination. So perhaps it was no surprise that cupid struck me on one of my 24 hour commutes between home and school. Public transport and private adventure were the name of the game in the days of my youth. The end goal was to shift this onto private jets once I entered the kingdom of investment banking.

Total Travel Time Elapsed: 00 hours: 01 minute

Ladies and gentlemen, the Captain has turned on the Fasten Seat Belt sign. Please take your seat and fasten your seat belt. And also make sure your seat back and folding trays are in their full upright position.

Travelling economy class on a long haul flight would momentarily convert me into a small village child observing big city kids.  My bone of contention was the inhumanity of having us walk through the space-shaped cocoons of first class and flatbed hammocks of business class before we reached our cattle-class economy seats.

A seat in economy is an automatic guest pass to an urban symphony of unnatural scents and sounds. It is, plainly speaking, a sensory overload of crying babies, toxic stomach gas emissions and home cooked food in pressure sealed plastic.

I must have had my eyes closed, envisioning another reality in which I wasn't a broke college kid, when she took her seat across the aisle. The symphony paused and the duet began. 

Sir, is there anything we can do to make you more comfortable?

Total Travel Time Elapsed: 00 hours: 53 minutes

Passengers connecting onward to other destinations are requested to check their boarding gates at the flight transfer desk upon arrival. We wish you a safe onward journey. Thank you for flying with us this morning

I changed planes and it just kept getting better. Mystery passenger and I were on the same flight (again). Sadly romance doesn't typically occur at 6 am while connecting between flights in African airports. Therefore this next flight left me with exactly 8 hours to make something happen. 

Just what could I possibly conjure up in 8 hours? This mission impossible was further complicated by her middle seat position in the center of a 5 seat row. In a post 9-11 world, all suspicious behavior exhibited by a passenger on a plane, would have had me restrained and deported by an undercover air marshal. The prospect of a cancelled US visa was all I needed to sit tight and watch the in-flight entertainment versus creating it.

Luckily, a random trip to the bathroom restored all hope when I caught her staring at me. I smiled. She looked away.  She smiled. I looked away. Our mute call-and-response signaled the commencement of the mating dance. Hope, sweet hope.

Total Travel Time Elapsed: 09 hours: 10 minutes

For your safety and comfort, we ask that you please remain seated with your seat belt fastened until the Captain turns off the Fasten Seat Belt sign. This will indicate that we have parked at the gate and that it is safe for you to move about.

The wheels touched down and jerked me forward. It was now or never. I eyed her across the plane and impolitely moved in front of the other passengers to ensure that we would reach the exit door at the same time. Once I got out of the plane, I glanced back and found her walking confidently in my direction. She smiled, I smiled and then it was awkward. 

If my memory serves me right, I believe she asked me what time it was. While I subconsciously mouthed some sort of response, my consciousness inhaled her in thirsty detail.       

As if often the case whilst paying attention to everything but the matter at hand, I found myself willingly led to a breakfast date at the airport McDonald's  It was going to be a very good morning.

Tendo transit time hours remaining: 4

Mystery girl transit time hours remaining: 3

Seemingly impossible objective(s) in mind: 1

A community of those who love while travelling

Total Travel Time Elapsed: 10 hours: 40 minutes

Ladies and gentlemen, the Captain has turned off the Fasten Seat Belt sign, and you may now move around the cabin.

Ronald McDonald would have been proud of our fast paced flirtatious banter as we tucked into a happy all-American meal in that nondescript European airport. Perhaps it was the novelty of it all, but before I knew it, the waters of inhibition parted and we raced across the gulf of anonymity.

I have always felt that a certain distance from home permits one to push the boundaries of socially acceptable behavior and so I moved into what my parent’s would summarize as scoundrel-like ease with the mystery girl. After all, a well behaved African boy shouldn't talk to beautiful strangers, let alone go on a breakfast date within 5 minutes of meeting a girl. I reasoned that what happens abroad, stays abroad.

Total Travel Time Elapsed: 12 hours: 01 minutes

Ladies and gentlemen, the Captain has turned on the fasten seat belt sign. We are now crossing a zone of turbulence. Please return to your seats and keep your seat belts fastened. Thank you.”

Its going down like a frown

I had never been to Vegas but I fancied myself a betting man. Odds were that this was a once-in-a-lifetime personal connection between two passionate but travel-weary strangers in a foreign land. This serendipitous outcome would have to be sealed with a memorable ending.

I thanked the good Lord above for the folks who designed and managed this airport. Specifically the divine foresight of creating a quiet place of rest and relaxation for those whose backpacker-like bank balances would never see the inside of a business class lounge. We accidentally stumbled upon this mecca of darkened windows and flatbed chairs and sighed a breath of relief.

I scanned the sparsely populated room and judged the terrain sufficient to pitch tent and explore the contours of our respective islands. Nervous anticipation gave way to steady discovery and I blame the rest of what happened on caffeine, sugared pastries and youth.

As I settled onto my final flight, I closed my eyes, reclined my seat and smiled. For whether quantitatively or qualitatively speaking, it was surely one of the best 24 hours of my life thus far.

Conclusion: Public transport + private adventure = timeless memories  

Total Travel Time Elapsed: 24 hours: 00 minutes

On behalf of this airline and the entire crew, I’d like to thank you for joining us on this trip and we look forward to seeing you on board again in the near future.