being rich. the french politics.

london 2.45pm 15C sunny. sunday 2017

the sunday times got a booklet today listing the richest people this year. it seems quite a lot of britishers have got more money from the rise in the stock market since brexit. i did not bother to look through the list as it has no interest for me. and anyway with so many being so rich, there dont seem to be any cache to being the richest anymore. any tom dick and harry can be rich nowadays. haha.

what is missing are the few who are rich and knows how to enjoy their money. i think there are very few of those people left. they have died off… haha most probably they drank themselves to an early death. 

however, i was wondering is there anything in the world that a rich person can get that is not available to everyone else and that only they can enjoy? so that it makes it worthwhile to have so much money.

what can they have that the rest of us can never hope to get or to experience? i was racking my brain trying all the outlandish situations that a really rich person can experience that is unique to them and that no one else who is not fabulously rich can ever experience.  but i cannot think of anything. maybe some one can tell us.

i dont mean sending off for oysters (or fish and chips)from the other side of the world and have it flown to you… that is just an indulgence, really, as anyone could just walk down to the nearest market, or even just order it online and buy them and have them delivered. so that is nothing unique anymore.  

something or some experience that is uniquely one rich person’s way of showing how rich they are… and i dont mean buying or commissioning the most expensive object… like 2 silly looking yachts.

 any ideas? 

added. 7.05am 8C cloudy 8.5.17 monday. here is an article about the life of a rich family. the usual lifestyle , but nothing there that makes me feel they are doing anything that is special with all that money. perhaps there just isn’t anything. after all, it is not that all that wealth will allow them to make a trip to the moon. or buy them good health. 

added. 9.02pm 15C dry. the french president election results are out, and it seems macron won and very decisively too it seems. it has been predicted and turned out to be correct. i expected it because i cannot see france voting to leave the EU. it is in too deep and also have benefited a lot from being a founding member. not to mention losing your currency is a big factor in keeping you in. that is why i dont foresee france ever leaving the EU.

greece would be better off leaving the eu, but without a currency of its own, it is too scared to take that step. in fact, i would say without a currency of its own, it is impossible for any of those countries to leave the EU. and after seeing the threats the brussels bureaucrats have thrown at uk, it will take even more courage for them to take that final step. 

it will be the first time that a french president is elected without a power base. in the past the president belonged to either one of the two parties that form the govt. its a strange system. maybe the french realise the president is irrelevant, that is why a quarter did not bother to vote. the next important post is prime minister. maybe he is the real power behind it all. who is the prime minister of france now? and which of the main parties does he belong to… he is josplin, a socialist. he is in charge of domestic policy and day to day governing. the president is in charge of foreign policy and defense. in a month there will be general election in france and that is when a president can build his power base… so macron must hope his new party gets a majority. but none of his candidates  have experience of government.

i wonder why rich people ski

london 11.14am 9.1C sunny tuesday 2017

its a sunny morning again. though enjoy it quick, because like yesterday it might not last. it makes it more precious.

anyway i saw this headline saying 30 british skiers buried in an avalanche added, no casualties fortunately

and , completely unrelated to the accident, it just prompted the thought in me that is all… after all i have no idea whether all 30 skiers are rich or not… 

but not for the first time, it occurred to me to ask a rhetorical question…why rich people like to go skiing, when it is such a dangerous sport. you would think rich people have a great incentive to make sure they stay alive for as long as they can. so why take up a sport that is so dangerous?

if u ask why do u assume all those who take up skiing are rich, you dont know much about skiing… haha. even me who dont know much about it, knows that u need to be well to do if u want to go skiing in these european resorts.

of course if u are poor u can go, but as one of the staff who cater to these rich people and do the skiing when u can sneak off from your duties. but these people cannot be the majority who go to these ski resorts , right? or who would be paying for maintaining these resorts! unless and this is a thought , u dont need many of these rich guests, because they are charged so much a few only is enough to make the profit allready. and the rest of the poor can come and be day trippers… enjoy the mountain skiing, for free. oh they still have to pay for the ski lift up to the mountain.

but regardless of how many poor people go skiing, my question why do the rich do so, still stands… why even take up the sport. why even introduce your children to it in the first place. all those parents who are clucking over their kids and wont even let them walk to school alone, and here they are bringing them to a ski resort and let them ski down a slippery slope on their own…where the risk of falling is very high… and they dont mind… oh maybe they can fall, but the risk of hurting themselves on the soft snow is low… 

we have heard of this racing driver who hit a rock whilst skiing and is now in a coma. then i recall an actress, who was from a famous acting family, died when she hit her head and did not go to a hospital to be monitored and died. perhaps they are isolated incident only notable because they are famous. perhaps statistically not many rich people die from skiing. 

perhaps we humans all like the thrill of danger. even rich people. after all many have died in an accident involving porsche car. that car is a death trap, it seems. but they still buy it. maybe it still have its racing car origins and so built for speed that an inexperienced driver can lose control of it very easily without realising it. 

in the end, i guess, even if u are rich, you are still a human being, you still have to live your life. being rich is merely an extra factor that luck or circumstances have given you. you are still a risk taker, like most humans.

but i still maintain skiing is one sport that is too dangerous for my liking… and not a sport i would deliberately introduce or encourage others to take up… no matter how thrilling it is. 

luxury, cars

london

Digital StillCamera

the colourful pens that i have in my flat that i use. i just love these fat pens and their colours.

london 4.28am 7.8C cloudy saturday 2016

i slept last night at 10.30pm and so woke up around now and usually i will browse the internet for about an hour and then go back to sleep. so i happen to come across a post by mr money moustache about his test drive of a tesla which he used to cross country.

i have heard of that car of course, an all electric car, and of its founder, elon musk (the name itself is an attention getter)but did not know it is also self drive as well, nor that the company have installed a lot of charging stations all over america, and they are all free to charge as they use solar energy. it is a very interesting post that makes me aware that the era of the electric car may come quicker than i thought possible. 

but what make me take note is something he said in another post, which he linked to , and it is this

Lower-income people can lose their envy of the rich by learning that a life of constant luxury is not any better than a life of simplicity punctuated by the plentiful novelty that Life automatically invents for us. And rich people can lose their slavery to their own wealth by learning that seeking out constant luxury is like listening to a radio where someone flips from one station to the next every few seconds. Listen to the whole damned song! Then listen to the whole album, and if you can handle it, try making some of your own music! link

what he said about luxury is very true. it is only fun right at the beginning. 

though his analogy to listening to the whole music may not be all that accurate. haha. it is more fun to just listen to one song in the album, rather than the whole album, it is that novelty again… it is fun only at the beginning and for that one time.

listening continuously to a album by the same band or singer is only great if it is a best of compilation of his songs. 

though, i had a look at my picture of the pens, and realise that i get a lot of joy when i use them, though i have to admit i get even more joy when i chose a different one to write with and thus ring the changes. and it is correct that the rush is just for the first initial short period each time… so his thesis that the big rush of pleasure is only at the beginning holds true. 

things are not what they seem

london 7.29am 13.2C (sunrise 7.46am) thursday 2015

can’t believe it is 13.2C. yesterday’s high was 14C. low 12.5C. such small variation throughout the 24hr period. there was  a south wind, which might explain it.

you may have heard of the CEO of a credit card processing company called gravity giving all his 70 employees $70,000 a year salaries. well, this article tells us there is more to it than is apparent. he got a writ from his brother, who is a minority partner saying  he paid himself too much before he announced the pay rise to his staff.

so u can ask  is he being generous to  his staff at the expense of his brother? and to pre-empt that writ?

which brings in the question are businesses there to benefit the customers and employees, or to benefit the shareholders/owners?

there was in the news a vietnamese owner of a restaurant in london who decided to donate 40% of their profit to charitable works in vietnam. so far it came to £250,000.

someone made the comment how about if they first pay their workers a good wage from the profits. bring the charity home  first before spreading it to vietnam. the owners say the money goes further in vietnam.  

so it would seem owners are being generous and gettng all the kudos by doing charity donations from the profits, whilst the staff pays for it in  both being worked hard and not getting generous pay. but isn’t that what is always the case. u get the rockfellers , who donated a lot to charity and have their name linked to it, on the backs of years of exploitation of their workers and suppliers… and countries from their exploitation of oil where their wealth derives.

though there is the exception in bill gates and more recently facebook founder whatisname. (i know my memory is bad, his name escapes me for the moment) and i am too lazy to google it. haha. but i am sure there are tax advantages to it.

dgive it all to charity, and u dont have to pay tax on it. and still be able to use it like your own money to spend on whichever charity u decide. not to mention all the good kudos u get for your gesture. win-win all round. right? 

added 12.52pm i am wondering what if he offers to pay off greece’s debt? that would help so many people won’t it? let greece start off with a clean slate and dont have to pay all those interests charges and the debt itself.

 i am indulging in a pipe dream as the greek debt is huge. about 300billion euros.

 

social problems.

london 8.52am cloudy 12.4C sunday 2015

today i got this in my email box from the londonist, and it contains some interesting london news.

London news

• This one decision could affect all London renters.
• “We have nothing to fear from people who are different,” says Sadiq Khan.
• Dave Hill gives us the story so far on the redevelopment at Earls Court, while residents whosehomes are going to be demolished say “we’re just in the way”.

there is this constant conflict of interest between those who want to make money out of property and those who just want an affordable place to live in. and people will be kicked out if the land they sit on is more valuable than the buildings that are there.

i was recently in ampthill, a small village but with a large mostly empty cemetary, on a hill. so the dead have a nice view haha. and there are fields round it with cows and horses but right next door to it a developer has built a small village of new houses. my friend told me the church was just over the hill, in the valley, and this is its church grounds.

so even in this small village the hand of the property developer lies heavy. ampthill is about 40miles from london and coming back we saw the other lane going out of london chock a block with traffic , not moving at all. it was a friday but i think this jam occurs every working day.  i see in future poor people will be pushed out , and this willhappen more and more. the dead seem to have more rights than the poor. at least in ampthill, where they occupy a nice site on a hill.

it has a huge waitrose right by the village. unusual that this village welcomes such a big supermarket. but i think it is now a dormitory town and not so much a village anymore. its high street has not many shops lining it anymore. they have all been turned into houses.

what to do about  all the poor being pushed out? i dont know. a socialist type of govt might help but once u have all your social housing full, those living there will block other poor people from accessing it, and you are back to square one. and building more social housing in out of the way places where the land is cheap wont find any of the poor wanting to go there where there are no jobs, no schools, etc to be had.

suger daddy

london 8.26pm 15.7C (its a nice day, cloudy with sun) friday

i have been out with an older friend of mine (he is mid70s yrs old) who recently had his boyfriend (28yrs old) dump him for a woman. they had been together for 14months. he said he cannot live without someone to love him. the ex is bi, and said he wanted children. or that was the excuse he gave for breaking up.

my friend is really heartbroken about it. he is now having to rewrite his will, as he had made the ex  the beneficiary of his will. he told me the boyfriend wanted to be married, but he said he want to wait at least 3yrs before he does it. 

then i came back and read this in my wordpress reader, from reddit who ask users to ask him anything about his relationship; a 24yr old who said he is marrying an older guy 51yrs old £11million wealthy for his money. at least they know what they are getting into. money for sex and companionship. 

and i thought hmm, if my friend was worth that much he could buy someone  to love him, and that would fulfill his desire to always have someone to love him back. he tells me he just feels life is not worth living if he does not have someone to love and love him back. that might be what motivates that millionaire too, enough to buy that love. 

 the fact he cannot find anyone to stick around and provide him with a person who he can lavish his love on and who can give him that loving feeling back is because he is not rich enough to find one. he is a demanding boyfriend. he does not want the boyfriend to work nights, (even though the boyfriend gets paid more for it and he said the boyfriend has been showing him his payslip and lamenting he is not getting paid enough) because he says he provides free housing and board, and that is his contribution and in return he wants the boy to be faithful and  to be with him when he is not working, sharing all the loving and doving moments.

i thought it was a bit unrealistic. haha. for that amount of control, i would expect that person to have a £11 million fortune at least and be generous to me with it too. haha. i have a thought, if my friend is perceptive enough he could write about his experience and it would be a nice novel. what say you eh? i was thinking if he were straight, he would be having children and be able to practise his kind of excessive loving and attention seeking from his children who will have no choice but to do it. perhaps that is why some parents are so eager to have kids… so that they can boss them about and demand their love and generally have someone to be a tyrant over and have complete control over. pity those kids of that kind of parent.

my friend needs people. i think people who needs people are the loneliest people in the world.

life

london 6.59am tuesday 2015

i like my life in london but even then i have found myself wondering what it will be like living another life. perhaps a life where i can have all the luxury of a rich man’s life. and i realise going on a world cruise will be like that.

the reason why this thought came about was a competition draw by the telegraph that i saw last sunday, featuring p&O to enter a draw for the prize of a 115day world cruise on board their ship.

i have been on board such cruisers before, notably the Queen Elizabeth II, crossing the atlantic in 5days from southampton to new york, in sept or oct, i forgot what year, near 2000 i think as it was a celebratory trip to welcome the millenium.

 it was a long time ago, as the QE II is no more functioning. it has retired. even then, the 5 days was just enough , any longer and i would most probably get restless at being confined to the ship. 

but it did occur to me that living on board a cruise ship for 115days going round the world, u will certainly experience the life of a rich person. sumptuous meals served, waited on hand and foot by the crew, see all the tourists sights of the world and experience them at each stop. but somehow at the back of my mind, i did think it might get a bit boring. it would be nice to hear of someone who did win that prize and see what it is exactly it is like to live that life.

whoever wins that prize should be encouraged to blog, but anonymously, though how that can be done without people guessing correctly who they are and which ship they are on, i do not know. they have to simply say this is a life on board a cruise ship blog, not mentioning they have won the prize so that they wont be identified. this is so they can be honest about their feelings and narration of their time on board, without offending the crew and the people they meet on board. it would make a fine blog i think. daily life and people they meet on board a cruise ship.  or it might be so boring, with nothing and no one interesting to talk of, that it just peters out. i was also thinking it will make a great retirement home for a wealthy widow or widower. in fact, there have been known cases of a few of them who have used it as a retirement home and had died on one of the cruises. though i guess if u are very ill, the ship will refuse u or try to discourage you as it wont look good to have a passenger’s corpse removed from the ship. rather dampening for the rest of the fellow elderly passengers who remain on board, i should think. haha.

maybe that is why we read books to find out what the other side live. and i think most life is mundane, and that is why when people write books they inject some quite unbelievable things happening just to spice it up. or they introduce really prickly characters that would not exist in real life… at least not all in the same person.

an ordinary life with nothing major happening is a nice life. i am all for it. but i know to a lot of people that life is a waste.

to me, i get my excitement from books, that way i dont have to live it, but can enjoy it second hand. haha. it is like watching all those people trudging through mud and snow and god knows what in travelogues, whilst sitting in our comfy sofa at home. haha.

and even more so when it is a lifestyle travelogue, like the ones featured in the tv kevin mcclouds escape to the wild. you look at all those people living that wild life, and realise it is not for you. haha.

added 11am. i remembered to google it , and found this. very useful info for those who go on world cruises. it seems to me u need to establish a routine to while away the hours when the ship is at sea. in my time in the QEII, i found the highlight of the trip was the evening meal, it was a sit down full course black tie event, and the food was really excellent. it saves having to decide what to wear, for the men anyway. i just wore the same black tie dinner suit for all the dinners.  the ladies might find it more challenging to come up with a different dress every time. 

how do the rich live?

London
I am reading this book which I borrowed from the library yesterday. It is ‘crazy rich Asians’ by Kevin kwan.
I was curious to see how he depicts the wealth and lifestyle of these rich Asians.
When u think about it, really rich people don’t really flash their cash about. Their houses are furnished in quite conservative ways. You just have to look at pictures of the queen receiving foreign dignitaries in Buckingham palace and see how ordinary (almost old fashioned) are the sofas and lampshades. There was even a 2bar electric heater in the fireplace. And that got quite a lot of comments. Haha.

So how would the author put the wealth of these rich people in Singapore on display?
Singapore is a small country so land is a premium, so the author put the hero growing up in a huge house in a huge estate in the middle of Singapore, in prime land. It is a description of a country estate in England, but plonked down in Singapore and hidden away so that even those who live there and deal in real estate were not aware of its existence. It is a fairy tale allright, but rather appropriate in the context of the novel.

Now I come to think of it, it really is difficult to show by sight, how wealthy a family is. Short of covering them in diamonds and precious stones the size of hen’s eggs, or drape them head to toe in designer apparel, name dropping like crazy all the well known as well as not so well known designers (unknown except to the elite of course); and even do a reverse snobbery by disowning Gucci and burberry as too common, haha. What else can one do to show how rich people live?

You can throw in the names of all the expensive car marques ,which is all very vulgar really. No wonder the really rich just don’t bother to put on this kind of show and dress very unobtrusively, in custom made clothes rather than branded ones.

It is the nouveau riche who put gold and gilt everywhere. And the author gave a good example of such a family, the Gohs. I think it stretches credibility a bit on the part of the reader to pretend these are really old rich families with pedigree. Singapore is such a young country, (about 50yrs old I think)even the old rich families are not that old rich really. I mean all of them stretches as far back as the great grandfather of these so called old families who would be from poor backgrounds who made their fortunes in the last 30-40yrs.
This context of old family might play better in Hongkong, which has a longer history and has the allure of the big kongsi houses as the origin of the great wealth amassed by the old families. Hongkong has a longer history. 

It is a good read, with the usual mix of unfaithful husbands, and one upmanships and status conscious mentality.

It made me suspect that really the rich dont live any more richer lives than ordinary people. granted there will be more expensive stuff around them, but really like the queen they will still eat their breakfast cereals just like any one of the poorer families. Nobody goes round eating caviar everyday, or drinking champagne like tea. haha. I suppose they can jet off at a whim, to any part of the world for a day or two, but i should imagine it loses its novelty after a bit. 

 

 

 

reblog from mrmoneymustache

london

mrmoneymustache.com

This post by him entitled ‘why should I be frugal when I am so rich’ encapsulates my own motives for living frugally.

I have a feeling both of us dislike waste. Sure we can buy and consume expensively and in excess, but our sense of it being wasteful is strong.

And what also highlighted by him is that we like the fun of doing it, living frugally I mean.
There is not much fun if u are so rich that u can buy anything and everything without a thought.

I know, plenty who are poor will think , ah, if only… if only, I shall be the happiest person …

But it destroys your happiness.

What is the point of it all, when u can get anything u want?
Or be served hand and foot for ever. It is boring.

It is the fun of the journey that makes life wonderful.

I remember one day walking to the gym suddenly dawning on me that I enjoy finding things on the street that I like…it is the fact that it came free… and realising that if I win the lottery it would destroy the extreme pleasure I get from this kind of foraging. Finding things by serendipity make up a lot of the pleasure I get from life.

 

That is why I don’t bother to buy lottery tickets. I don’t wish to get this windfall. It would make my life duller.

http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2013/04/25/why-should-i-be-frugal-when-im-so-rich/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+MrMoneyMustache+%28Mr.+Money+Mustache%29

ignorance, incompetence, indifference

London

I have often said poverty is the result of ignorance. and have stopped at that.

But reading this article,

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/9821278/Its-not-poverty-thats-fattening-its-the-bad-eating-habits.html

It would seem most things in life is caused by ignorance, incompetence and indifference.

Take obesity for eg. It is not because u are poor that u are fat.
In the past, we can tell someone is poor by seeing how thin they look.

But now, it seems you can tell how poor they are by how fat they are.

The rich knows that fat is bad for their health, so they stay thin, or try to, even though being rich they can eat as much as they like.

Whilst what has changed to make poor people fat? It seems Nixon is at fault. He tried to do good by making the manufacturers reduce fat in their products, but as a unintended consequence of this, the food tasted awful without the fat, so they add suger to it… that made it tastier.

And so we get our present situation with processed foods… full of suger.

And that seems to play havoc with our insulin levels, which makes us store fat. The body can make fat out of carbohydrates and store it, so even if u stop eating fatty food, u can still be fat just by eating a lot of carbohydrates, like potatoes.

So ignorance is the main factor here.

What about competence, well u can know all the facts about food, but if u don’t know how to cook, u will still end up buying ready made foods as your own cookng is inedible.

What about indifference, well u might know all about it, and are a competent cook, but if u are too lazy to bother, and are indifferent whether u get fat, your knowledge and your competence wont make u avoid being fat, or poor for that matter.

All these factors can be applied to making u poor or rich.

Firstly, lack of knowledge, ignorance; u don’t know how to be rich. You lack knowledge how to make wealth.

Then even if u do know, u lack competence on how to bring it about.

So u get people starting a business and failing because they just lack competence at running a business.

Finally, indifference; u may like being rich, but u don’t really want to work at it…. You are too lazy to do anything about it. You may like and say u like being rich, but deep down u are really not that bothered about it to do something about it.

Finally, u might really be indifferent about wealth… u just don’t care to be rich. U might say, don’t be silly, everyone wants to be rich. And even those who say they don’t want to be rich, secretly wish to be.

I can tell u , there are plenty of people who have no desire to be rich. By that I mean having so much money all their needs and desires are taken care of, and still have too much money left over.

There are plenty of us who don’t care for that at all.Tthere are lots of things that a lot of people dont want. being famous is another example, u might think everyone wants to be famous, but dont u believe it.

The really clever people are those who are rich without being famous. That way no one knows and they dont get hassled whenever they go out, and no one tries to kidnap them or their loved ones.