24 Jul Meeting Inspiring CEOs & Industry Experts
I’m starting to get the weeks confused. I don’t know if I forgot to mention this part, or whether it happened this last week, but we have this really inspiring Career Speaker Series that’s part of Absolute Internship and the Hong Kong Internship Program.
The first industry expert was a CEO of a Wallstreet listed finance firm. It’s not that he was bad or anything, he just didn’t really hit me with any new insight to be honest. But a lot of the other interns found him really inspiring!
The second speaker though resonated a lot better with me. He’s really great: started as an intern in Bloomberg’s Solomon Brothers, worked there for more than 30 years up until Citigroups acquisition of Solomon brothers, then went to Oppenheimer Investments Asia, and then started his own investment and private equity firm. On the side, he has a record label and sells celebrity guitar string bangles for charity. Pretty amazing. He gave some good advice, like ask for an exit interview, keep your relationships with your intern employers, and if you don’t ask, you don’t get. Also, the idea of women in finance and learning Indonesia really got me going. Not that they’re at all related, but moral of the story:
1) if I’m thinking of going into finance, which is a possibility, it’s going to be some tough times
2) I’m going to learn Indonesian next year. 6th most spoken language, next big tech market, only takes a year to learn. Sounds like a good deal to me.
I can’t tell whether I’m getting too sappy, but I’ve started really getting into this whole inspiring people trend. I mean before, my tennis coach would stick those books in my face about like self-improvement and finding yourself and whatnot, and I’d just be like pshh, please. Also, I feel like it’s totally a thing that like dads in mid-life crises do. But in my spare time here, I’ve been reading Marc Horowitz’s blog from the seed-stage venture firm Andreesen Horowitz, and it’s really insightful. Also these TED talks are really good. I mean they’re semi-industry related, and I found them on the tech blog Mashable’s Top 15 TED talks, so that’s fair game to watch at work right?
But before I start going on about like the technology behind how Stephen Hawking talks or other completely random, useless knowledge, let me tell you about the fun stuff.
Here are some highlights of the past week:
1) Wan Chai for Henry’s birthday
2) Horse race in Happy Valley – actually here’s what happened. We get there, wait for my friend Jun to get his hot dog, lose him for like an hour, people-watch until the horse race, see like 2 seconds of the horses, and then get a free shower by another random thunderstorm, but still fun I’d say
3) Ozone bar at the Ritz Carlton (highest bar in the world) – if you’re there, you HAVE to to try the dragontini. It’s only made there and invented by their own bartender… I know, I’m a really easily-persuaded consumer.
4) Ocean Park – super fun, and a really good view of Hong Kong. Super tiring but worth it… even greater than Disneyland.
5) Wong Tai Sin Temple and the New Territories – a nice cultural experience to you know, get back to my roots. I have to say, I took some really artsy photos.
Well, I’d say that sums up my life here so far. My parents are coming on the 25th, and I’m leaving 3 days early. It’s going to be sad, but then again, some things I’m kind of happy about leaving. Like our fridge. It smells really suspicious.
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