Conspiracy of Fools

Newspapers around the world reported on October 24th that the former Enron CEO Jeffrey Skilling, aged 52, was sentenced to 24 years for frauds. If no parole was to be given, he would be locked up in jail until he was 76 years old.

Just 6 years ago, who could have believed the most powerful executive in the biggest blue-chip energy trading company in the US would end up his career like that?

According to the non-fiction 'Conspiracy of Fools' by Kurt Eichenwald, Jeffrey Skilling graduated as a Baker Scholar (the top 5% of the class) from Harvard Business School in 1979. He was soon offered a position at McKinsey & Company (the cradle of many super-egoistic top executives) renowned for "arrogance that matched his own" ~ to paraphrase Eichenwald's words~ before he met his future mentor and boss at Enron, Ken Lay, on a client's meeting when Skilling was about to present his recommendations as a management consultant. His assignment: should the client move its headquarters from Omaha in Nebraska to Houston in Texas (I wonder how much McKinsey would charge for such consultancy work!)?

Skilling came from a modest family. His father was happy-go-lucky but his mother was a chronic complainer, putting all the blame on her husband for a life that didn't go her own way. Even when her son got a stellar report card from school, she would tell him, "You think things are going well now? Just wait. Things 'll fall apart. Sooner or later, they'll get you!" Sometimes I'm amazed how terribly insightful a mom could be about her offspring's future.

I haven't finished reading the book 'Conspiracy of Fools' yet. But when you read from the news, or on TV, about what's the latest happening in real life to the characters portrayed in the book, you'd get a feeling that the characters' lives were unfolding to you. And you couldn't help but think aloud: "Oh, Christ! Is it that real?"

Beginner's Luck

Wiyono came to pay me a visit after lunch today. He was remarkably thinner than before, as I could remember when I last saw him. Having graduated from our uni last September, he has been working at a small IT firm in Braehead writing software programmes for mobile phones. His direct boss, a Singaporean, is more like a high-pressure cooker than what one could expect a reasonable manager to be. Wiyono told me that, under the scrutinizing management style of such an unreasonable team-leader, the members of his team had been quitting their jobs one after the other, some being with the company for less than a year. I wouldn't be surprised at all if Wiyono quits his job after Christmas when his annual bonus will be available, given such horrid a working atmosphere prevailing in his own team.

Anyway, I was pleased that he came. And so was he. We went together to the driving range at Drumchapel, which was at the far west end of the Great Western Road. I told Wiyono that it'd take at least 45 minutes to go there by bike. He said it was OK for him. He hadn't been riding a bike since his bicylce had a problem with the bearing in April, and I thought he must be longing for that cycling experience again.

We left my place at 2:20 pm. It was starting to rain then. By the time we got to the driving range at Drumchapel, I could see his hair was fully soaked. I had my base ball cap on all the time during the ride, but Wiyono had only the hood of his raincoat to cover his hair. Given the wind speed and the bicycle speed, there's absolutely no way to keep his hood on for the entire journey. I guessed he hadn't anticipated the rain at all.

It was 3:05 pm when we arrived at the World of Golf. And Wiyono reminded me that my forecast was right -- it took 45 minutes to ride there. I gave him a good laugh, cracking a joke that we're probably the only ones who rode a bike, without a car, to play golf on a rainy day. In fact, I could sense some wierd looks from the customers at the entrance there.

Golf was new to Wiyono (and so was to me). He confessed that he'd never played golf before. I reassured him that I was no better -- I'd just begun to practise and it was the 4th time I'd been there. In fact, I got a feeling he'd be quite natural in playing golf, given he's so good at basketball.

I paid 6.5 quid for 100 balls. Like me, Wiyono was surprised that we didn't need to become members of the club first. You just simply walk in and play, and take whatever length of time to finish the balls. They don't charge you on an hourly rate. We both liked the idea.

The golf centre runs a very effective system too. You pay for the balls at the counter. The staff will issue a receipt, on which there is a code. Then you go to the dispensing machine, hang a basket underneath the spout, and key in the code on the keypad. The machine will churn out the exact number of golf balls that you've paid for. If you are willing to buy a pre-paid card -- ranging from 20 quid to 100 quid--the machine will give you some balls extra as bonus for your faith and cash-in-advance support to the Golf centre.

We shared the 100 balls between ourselves. I showed Wiyono how to hold the grip, from what I'd just learnt from the student coaches over the past few weeks. He picked it up very quickly, and practised the swing several times without using the ball first. From the way he moved his limbs, I could tell he's just a natural at golf -- he knew how to switch his centre of gravity as he swung the club along a plane. And he knew it's important to follow through the swing with both hands, but never with the right foot. I'd made that mistake unconsciously many times, only to be told later that it would reduce my prowess in the hit and would most likely bend the ball towards the wrong direction. I guessed I must have long been under the influence of my past experience with tennis and table-tennis playing.

Then we started our practices. To my amazement, Wiyono was able to hit the balls into the nearest hole -- not once but twice! I was beginning to doubt if this was his very first lesson at golf. I told Wiyono that he should buy me a drink for such accomplishment. He laughed heartily.

I was eager to show my colour as well. But the more intending I was, the worse my hit rate became. At last, I stopped playing at all and decided to observe Wiyono's play. I just wanted to know how he managed to coordinate his movements in so graceful a manner.

After observing a few shots from him, I re-started my swing again. I told myself to relax, and let my arms swing in a most natural way towards the tee. Bingo! I hit the ball squarely and I could see it go up a parabola, then fly off straight into the sky and fall down towards the hole with a yellow flag within. Then a strange incident happened: the golf ball dropped straight into the hole, and bounced out from the hole and ran down the slope. I simply couldn't believe my eyes!

I looked at Wiyono. He was amazed too. He was smiling at me. As if he could read my mind, he said, "Yeah, that's YOUR ball. It looks like it's got zero gravity. First it fell vertically down into the hole and then bounced out straight from it."

That must be the beginner's luck to me, and hopefully not to a natural player as Wiyono. Maybe the twin rainbows that I saw when we arrived at the driving range were a good omen for that?

New Chair

Patrizia is going to move to London School of Economics to go on with her PhD there. Before she left Glasgow for good, she came back to the department to tie up some loose ends. To her surprise, she could still receive her stipend for October 2006. A German true to her bones, she said to me: "What am I going to do with this money? I've got GBP 1,000 in my bank account but in actuality I'm broke."

"Why don't you use the money first and then send a cheque back to the department when you've got paid from your tutoring in London?" I proffered an interim solution.

"I got paid every 2 weeks alright," she said. "But I'd really want to set the records straight here. I just wanna everything clear-cut."

Then I saw her carrying a huge backpack full of books that she had borrowed from the library. "I'm going to drive to London tomorrow and I'd like to return all these damn books today." She had taken all these books to London just 4 days ago for her pilot visit there, hoping to use them for her MRes dissertation on her way to and from London. Eventually she managed to finish her MRes dissertation, but had not had time to submit it. She gave me a call, but since I had not switched on my mobile for days, she couldn't get in touch with me. In desperation, she sent an email to Linda, attaching the dissert file with it, and asked for her help to print it out using the department printer. Then she requested Linda to help her bind the thesis in hard covers, promising to pay her back when she returned from London.

Now that everything was settled, she still had one thing bothering her. "Would you like to have my leather-faced black chair?" she asked in her text message to me. "I don't want to leave it behind to the next occupant of my flat. You can have it for free."

But the problem is: I already had one, in fact, an identical one with the same brand and colour in my room. In fact, we both bought our chairs from the same retail outlet: the Staples.

"How much did you pay for it?" I was curious, as I knew she had bought it much earlier.

"About 50 quids," she said. "The original price was about GBP90. I bought it less than 6 months ago."

"That's quite a bargain," I said, although mine was even cheaper. In any case, I had just bought my chair in mid September. Staples must have been liquidating the stock for some time now. "OK, take it to my place and see if I can find someone in my block who needs a chair then."

Then to my place she drove her car, with the black leather-faced, high back, chair tucked in the back seat. Now I understood why she didn't want to take it down to London: there simply wasn't enough space in the Toyota for her other belongings if the chair went in as well.

I tried her chair. In all honesty, it was more comfortable than mine. Perhaps the seat was a bit used to her body shape after 6 months to make itself more ergonomically agreeable to any human body shape now.

But there was a small problem: there was a residue of cigarette smell all over the chair. I know Patrizia is a chain smoker. She must have been sitting on this chair, smoking her cigarettes one after another, and another...

I kept her chair in my room for just one night. During that night, I could detect the cigarette smell even in my dreams.

The next day evening, I chanced to meet some of my flatmates in the kitchen.

"Hey, do you guys fancy a black-leather comfy chair in your rooms?" I asked, jokingly.

Yannis, the Greek, shot me an apprehensive and dubious look, half-expecting me to offer something for sale at a price much higher than its true value.

"I've got a chair whose owner is going to London. It's an office/study chair which is exactly what I'm having now in my room," I explained.

"But we've got our study chairs already," smiled Max the dental student. "Anyway, there's not enough space in our rooms for so many chairs!"

"Oh yes there certainly is!" I argued. "I got 4 chairs in my room now."

Max was the more daring one between the two to try. "Well, let's have a look and see how your 4th chair looks."

I returned to my own room, and fetched the chair back to the kitchen.

"Ahh... it looks quite good," said Max.

I wasn't surprised by his reactions. In fact, I knew it for sure that anyone would like the chair once they cast an eye on it. I kept my cards to my chest.

"Try it and see if you like the feeling, " I encouraged Max to sit on the chair, which he did.

"It's quite comfy too," he exclaimed.

"Well," said I. "If you like it, you can have it ... for FREE." Immediately I could detect Yannis's jaws falling. He was wearing either his surprise or remorse on his face.

"My friend gave it to me free. So you can have it for free too, if you like it," I explained. I remembered the sermon this morning at church: Ubi caritas, et amor. Ubi caritas, Deus ibi est.

My dental friend was apparently overjoyed for such a gift. "However," I cautioned him, "the only concern with this chair is: its former owner is a chain-smoker. So it has the smell of cigarettes all over the place."

"There's a little indeed,"Max agreed. He didn't want to relinguish such a nice chair. "But it's no problem. Maybe some freshener will get rid of the smell alright." I almost forgot Max had been immune to pungent smells, as he had been spending days in days out at the anatomy lab dissecting corpses and dead fleshes.

Gleefully, he pushed his new gift back to his room. "Thanks!"

While his last word echoed in the kitchen, I could only hear the sermon that I had received from St. Simon's this morning: Where there is charity and love, our Lord is also there.