Confessions of a Cat-holic (197)

I chose to be a bit conservative. If they didn't have an opening for me just yet (I was replacing a senior salesperson on maternity leave), I could try New York. Plus, I was just a sophomore, I could always graduate on time if Lehman didn't want me. So that was what landed me at 1585 Broadway, New York New York, a street address that I could not quite forget. My decision was a joint one, and it really didn't involve any rocket science calculations or human psychology manipulation.

By the way, 1585 Broadway was originally Lehman's properties. Lehman sold its building to Morgan Stanley after 9/11 and I heard that all the billboards on Times Square were also owned by Lehman. You wouldn't notice things like that unless you lived in New York and mingled with the right people. Lehman was known to have very good relationships with this competitor; this could apply to New York, as well as Hong Kong. And Bear Sterns too. (wink wink)

I had a feeling that my internship at Morgan Stanley would be quite goddamn serious; it would be on the trading floor, a real one in the middle of Manhattan. Something was quite unsettling for me. I asked Vic Garber if people had a tendency to die from premature cancers at Morgan Stanley because I had a family friend, Jimmy Fong, whose sister worked as a headhunter and eventually as the HR manager at Goldman in Hong Kong. Jimmy Fong already died from liver cancer unfortunately; but my parents still kept in touch with his sister, who occasionally travelled and worked in Beijing at the time. She told me that she quit her job at Goldman after witnessing too many premature deaths from cancer among the managers she worked with.

I had my sources of course. I had another family friend whose son worked in the fixed income department at Goldman Hong Kong. I applied there freshman year but was turned down because I had no experience. By the time I had working knowledge about Wall Street, I wouldn't want to work there anymore. His name was Chris Sun. That was how I met Wilfred Yiu from SPCC and Stanford/NYU. Chris and Wilfred had a conversation with me together when Goldman invited me for interviews; from there I also met my future boss, Kitty Cheung. Goldman didn't give me an offer in the end; but I didn't want to work there anyways, and this was something Wilfred would never understand. Money wouldn't compensate me for the stress and whatever psychosomatic diseases incurred. Not everyone wanted to be a Sachs worker.

Wilfred always claimed that he had a job lined up for me, as if I really wanted to work under him. So I put up quite a show and tried to hear what he could offer. Wilfred and his colleagues told me sooooooooo much about Goldman's strategies and directions, forgetting that I was literally his competitor; I worked with and for Lehman people. They tried to talk me into ditching my job as a sales for the central banks to try structured products, to get me off a stable career track under a great boss. I was taken as a fool again by dear Goldman.

Wilfred told me he never took a day off to finish his part time MBA when he worked in New York as a junior. Whatever questions raised by City U students on work life balance when he lectured there were total bullshit. We should all work our ass off until death and lived like there was no tomorrow. Fine, I got that he was very hungry after money, living like a hillbilly in Tai Hang as the deputy CEO of Gaohua securities. But my friend Jeff Leung from South Horizons easily afforded an apartment there as a junior trader at CITIC bank in his early thirties. Was that all, an apartment in Tai Hang, to get him slaving himself like a leashed dog?

Nevertheless, I thanked Wilfred's mentorship. I heard he worked under my 師姐 Laura Cha Shih May-lung now. I hoped Wilfred could someday find out what it felt like to try Sparta, offending me or anyone from my alma mater in a war zone against the wolves of Wall Street. Maybe reading Wilfred Owen's poems would do.

While I was reminiscing my conversations with Wilfred Yiu, Vic Garber assured me regarding the cancer chronicles, "You have a summer to find out!"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0U_jGVEKr9s