The changing seasons

Summer in Thailand has finally given way to the rainy season. The locals tell me it’s inconvenient and that the roads clog up even more, if that’s possible, and getting around is difficult. For me it’s a welcome relief from April and May where daytime temperatures were usually around 35 degrees celsius and sometimes as high as 38.

Today it was 31 degrees, and from the late afternoon I ventured out to do some flaneuring. Along with the drop in temperature the air quality has also improved a little, from terrible to bearable. As I walked along Sukhumvit Road around Thong Lo station people began to stream out of their offices. Some ducked into the many restaurants that line the streets. I’m a little jealous. I want to be part of it, but every time I try and eat the local food I spend the next few days in discomfort and thinking about how far away the nearest toilet is. I guess I just don’t have the constitution for it.

Some say that you adjust to the food after a while, I’m not sure I really want to adjust to whatever is in there. Early on in my stay here I went to one of those local restaurants. The front was full, so they led me to the tables out the back near the kitchen. About half way through my meal a girl wheeled out a trolley full of dirty dishes, and dumped them food and all into a massive plastic tub the size of a kids pool. They were then fished out and hand washed all too briefly in some soapy water. I’m not sure what I had expected, but the reality was enough to put me off. I’ve since realised that even the fancier restaurants probably aren’t much better. So it’s home cooking for me.

Then there is the nightlife. I don’t like to drink regularly and prefer to get an early night, so that’s out. The girl bars, also not appealing. I don’t gamble. I don’t smoke. Hell, I don’t even drink coffee. So what is there left to do in this place?

Perhaps the only vice that has snuck by me is indulging in flings that have no hope of developing into something longer term. And soon I’ll change that too, since like the season has changed in Thailand, I am also entering a new season in life. While I still have the vigour of my earlier years, my thinning crop of hair reminds me that my time is finite. In my 20’s I really had no concept of time. In hindsight, I felt immortal. That life would go on in the same way forever. I would think nothing of spending a whole day, week or month playing video games. Increasingly reality has caught up with me and I now feel that I’m behind the eight ball. I feel a sense of urgency to accomplish my goals in life. And that moderates my feeling of missing out on the restaurants and bars.

I recently went home for a wedding and caught up with my family. My grandparents are all quite elderly now. It brought home to me that we may live a certain amount of time, but our highly productive years pass quickly. Unless you happen to be someone like Warren Buffet, still working at 93. He is the exception rather than the rule.

I’ve tried to model him in a way. I don’t have his natural abilities, but I do share one thing with him, and perhaps the most important thing; a love of learning. And that really is my job. I have the sense that everything I learn is somehow useful in investing. I feel fortunate, since I haven’t been especially good at much else. Some people, who I envy, show promise in one particular area growing up whether that is sport, music or mathematics. That makes choosing their path easier. I was always decent at many things, but not exceptional at one thing in particular. Additionally my curiosity made it hard to stick to any one thing. I could never fit into an organisation. All that added up to finding it very difficult to find a career path.

So while I can’t say I have a burning passion for picking stocks, I like it well enough and more importantly I think it’s the best way to utilise my abilities. Perhaps at some point, if I become a good investor, the passion will start to percolate. It’s certainly easy to feel passionate when your pick starts to do really well. I imagine enriching others would be even more rewarding.

That though is in the future. And it’s to those longer term goals that I look.

As for Bangkok, it’s never dull. Now that the weather has cooled off perhaps I’ll leave the big smoke a bit more often and head to the mountains to hike.

I came here with a mission. To forge myself into a competent investor. How long that takes and where I’ll head next remains to be seen. The truth is for what I’m doing, whether I live in Bangkok, Tokyo or Paris it comes down to me sitting quietly and learning. And that’s exactly what I’ll do, unless I have the urge to write, like I did tonight.