To Mumbai with Love from New York

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I never had much interest in going to India until today.
 
This morning, a glowing Saturday in Beijing, I treated myself to watching to Ric Burns’ 16 hour long eight-episode New York documentary.  I had gotten up to the final episode, which chronicles the rise and fall of the World Trade Center.  I had seen this episode before, and it’s not the best of the series, so while the steel symbols of a globalized world were rising and falling on one window on my laptop, I was reading the news on another.  News of a city on the other side of the world that I had never been interested in, until a friend shared a story of her parents driving past Cafe Leopold seeing people streaming out, and watching the fire on the rooftop of the Taj as the army rolled in.

The terrorist attacks on Mumbai felt familiar, but this one Op-Ed by Suketu Mehta, a professor at NYU, really nailed down why. The Mumbai he describes has a New York soul. 

And his suggested response is a New York response:  “…the best answer to the terrorists is to dream bigger, make even more money, and visit Mumbai more than ever… Make a killing not in God’s name but in the stock market, and then turn up the forbidden music and dance; work hard and party harder.”
 
Dear Mumbai, as a New Yorker who has marveled at our own great city rise from the ashes of an incomprehensible terrorist attack, I have confidence you will overcome this too.  As Mayor Giuliani said on 9/11, “Tomorrow New York is going to be here. And we’re going to rebuild, and we’re going to be stronger than we were before.”

So will you.  New York is cheering for you.

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We expats are proud to be American today

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Tonight I went out to celebrate Obama’s victory, and the end of an administration that history has already judged as a failure in so many ways.  As an American living abroad, no failure has hurt me more than America’s loss of esteem in the world’s eyes.  Why did I feel I needed to slap Canadian labels on my luggage all these years?  Why have I been so embarrased to let people know I’m American?

But tonight, it finally hit me what today’s election meant to our country — and to me — when I overheard a young woman raise her glass and toast proudly, “I’m an American!”  Tomorrow, I’ll go back to being skeptical of “change” and critical of the new administration too (as always), but for now, it feels great to be an American.  I am proud of the democratic process, proud of my fellow Americans, proud of Obama and his team, and proud of this moment in history.

And I’m not the only one.  Here’s a video I took (endure the first 5 seconds of static please) of a spontaneous outpouring of patriotism that erupted on the rooftop of the Saddle in Sanlitun, a bar district in Beijing, so you can see for yourself what this means:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c9l6nQsnHYA

Congratulations, America.

As always,

Liz

Not just because Obama’s name also has two As and a B

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I still don’t know what Obama’s voice sounds like.

I don’t watch foreign television here in Beijing, and for whatever reason, haven’t caught Obama clips on Chinese TV, though I am sure they have them.  When I realized my pretty unique situation half a year ago — how many non-deaf eligible voters in the whole world don’t know what Obama sounds like? a hundred?  — I started to make a concerted effort to avoid videos of him speaking until I could read his policies and platform objectively.  I basically ran out of time, unfortunately, and now only have 15 minutes to share my thoughts, so apologies for the haste.  In a few minutes, I’ll bike over to a restaurant in Beijing where I can watch CNN.  If Obama is elected
president, I’ll hear his voice for the first time when he gives an
acceptance speech.

But before I do that, I wanted to write down why I felt it was
important to not hear him in the first place:  when asking people what
they liked about him (most Americans living in Beijing are Democrats),
almost everyone pointed to a time they heard him speak — the 2004
convention, or a key debate.  And it had me wondering: was this just a
charismatic guy, who could work a room better than a “beady eyed” and “grouchy” McCain?  Were his supporters getting swept up by his
charisma more than by his policy stance?

In broad strokes, I do agree with Obama’s policies on most topics —
though his seemingly protectionist stance concerns me and I’m not
clear whether an Obama administration will be able to fix the key
problems in America’s health care system.  And there are bigger things
that worry me about McCain, including his choice of Sarah Palin for
VP, that had me cast anti-McCain absentee ballot more than I was
casting a pro-Obama one.

But as I’ve talked to people about my “charisma concern,” I realized
that actually, for a president, personal character SHOULD matter, a
lot.  Other legislators in D.C. should be, well, people who legislate,
and so when you vote for them, you should be voting for a set of
policies.  But a president is special;  he (or one day, she) needs to
be a leader, someone who can react to problems that we can’t
anticipate, build consensus to get things done, make prudent decisions
under pressure, listen when it makes sense to listen, and speak when a
clear voice needs to be heard.

More to say (always), but my 15 minutes are up.  Obama’s 15 minutes,
though, look like they be far from done.

Happy 2008,
Liz

On the financial crisis, from my time at Lehman and in China

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It didn’t really hit me that this financial crisis was bad until I got an email from the president of ING Direct, where I have an online savings account, telling me not to panic.  I’m still digesting the news, the policies, the politics, and the implications, but in the meantime, I thought I’d share my perspective from the two places I’ve been which are relevant to this story:  the trading floor of Lehman Brothers, where I sold derivates several years ago to US corporations looking to manage currency risk from 2002 to 2006, and China, where I spent a year in Chengdu, China’s equivilant of middle America, before coming to Beijing where I am now a business strategy consultant for US multinationals.   The story I lay out below is based on my personal experience, and obviously misses a lot of pieces of this immensly complex puzzle. 
 
But from where I sit now and where I’ve sat, I see two fundamental reasons for why the financial world has unravelled:  (a) that banks and the financial markets are run by actual human beings, and (b) that Chinese people don’t have the financial protection that would allow them to feel comfortable spending their savings.  If I’m right, this mess may self-correct itself as talented financial managers leave the rubble of New York to help build up China’s consumer financial network — but before we get there, first here’s how we got here.
Disclaimer:  I haven’t worked at Lehman Brothers in several years, was never involved in management or oversight, and cannot in any way comment on the financial strength of that company.  In no way, shape or form should this Aabservation be seen as any sort of investment recommendation.
  

Continue reading →

(Repost) Bullet Points on Working in Lehman Brothers FX

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The following is a “dispatch” I wrote for my friend Catherine Price’s e-zine, Salt, back in 2004, after having worked at Lehman Brothers on the Corporate Foreign Exchange (FX) desk for 2 years.  It gives a brief sense of what it’s like to work there, and thougt you might be interested: 

Originally posted in August 2004 on Saltmag:
http://saltmag.net/search_results2.php?searchstring=bullet+points&article_id=36
With apologies that my reflecting pool is never still enough to see
clearly what we look like on the trading floor, I am sending you a
dispatch written in the only language that can survive the choppy
waters of short-attention-spanned corporate America — bullet points:

* My job at my investment bank (the “Firm”) is to help multinational
corporations manage their foreign currency risks Continue reading →

24 Questions

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This week the Beijing 2008 Olympics-Paralympics period ended, and my
former employer, Lehman Brothers, filed for bankruptcy.  The
historical implications of these two events will no doubt be written
up in history books — but they are topics for a separate
Aabservation.

More importantly, when I look over the top of the newspapers, I see a
lot of you going through significant personal change right now, in
jobs, geography, love and life.  So here are 24 questions which I once
drummed up for a friend who was trying to figure out what to do next
as well.  Thought it might be helpful:
24 Questions

1) What will I regret not doing right now?
2) What can I only do now and no other time?
3) A well-respected investor once said his secret to success was
following a simple rule: “when something is working, do more of it;
when it stops working, stop.”  So: is this working?
4) Where have you been where you liked yourself the most?  Where you
liked who [your name here] represented?
5) What would you do for fun; what do you get sucked into?
6) What opportunities have crossed your path that you have overlooked
in the past few months?
7) Who are you mentors?
8) A friend once said, “Liz, my goal in life is to be an interesting
person.”  Is being interesting important to you?
9) Are achievements important to you? (Honestly, now…)
10) Whom do you love?
11) Who brings out the best in you?
12) When things or people felt wrong in the past, or feel wrong now,
what about it feels wrong?
13) Are you ambitious?
14) Do you care what other people think about you?
15) If so, whose opinion do you care about, and how can you please them?
16) What skills or talents do you have that you would definitely want
to use in whatever job etc you’d be doing next?
17) What skills and talents do you wish you could develop?
18) What jobs etc use and develop those skills/talents?
19) Do you want to make money?
20) How much? Yes, in dollars (or renminbi, pounds or whatever)
21) Whom do you admire?  What about that person do you admire?
22) How did that person (or I guess people) get to where they are,
become the people they became?
23) What are you favorite foods?  (I’m serious, I simply couldn’t live
in a place without ready access to bananas.)
24) Do you want to settle down, or uproot? (Actually maybe that’s the
first question to ask?)

Safe travels, and drop me a line to let me know how and where you are.

Yours, Liz

www.lizaab.com

The View from Workers Stadium

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(I had written this on August 16th, but just got it off my Palm and into an email — sorry for the time lag.)

I am writing this on my Palm Treo outside Workers Stadium, drawn here by the occasional sound of cheering lifted up into the lit sky above an Olympic soccer match — according to the chinese, french and english announcements I just heard, apparently italy beat belgium.  I have heard this sound before and remembered where: 1990, when I was playing SimCity on a computer so slow it took 10 seconds for the screen to refresh when you scrolled across.  If your city was doing well, from time to time you would hear the simulated roar of fans screaming from football stadiums that would pop up across the city. It sounded exactly like Workers Stadium does now.

From time to time, societies get to lay out their visions of themselves so everyone can see.  In 1939, General Motors had a futuristic exhibit at the New York World Expo, at that time between the Depression and World War II, when mainstream America was still on its first awkward dates with the automobile.  In the GM exhibit, visitors could ride a little train around a scale map of the America of the future: wide open plains, covered with highways that didn’t yet exist — but one day would, as the visionaries proved true (or probably more accurately, ensured became true).  When I first saw the clips of excited spectators, I too became thrilled with the concepts of freedom and independence, of exploring the country and experiencing America’s natural beauty, in these awesome and powerful automobile machines.  But then a wave of sorrow passed over me: how this vision has evolved into suburban sprawl and stripmalls, fractured communities and energy crises, environmental devastation and solitary commutes that gobble up 10 pct of people’s working years.

In a few weeks, the flood of journalists that washed up on Beijing’s shores will recede back to Denver to cover the Democratic National Convention. This summer, first China and then the US will get to define their visions, build their futurama expos.  Here at the Olympics, I want to understand what is it that this ‘one world’ (and ‘One China’) cherish as its ‘one dream’? In Denver, what will Obama and the Democratic party themselves say they ‘hope’ for?
As for my dream: I hope that Beijing becomes the city it is today, this lovely August 16th.  The sky is blue with poofy white clouds. The flowers smell like honey and the grass smells freshly cut. People of every banner are here, cheering on themselves, and cheering China too.
The soccer game is over now and the crowds are gone. I am watching a man in a dirty orange jumpsuit with a broom made of straw sweeping up the Coke bottles and Tsingdao beer bottles, while a mosquito is biting at my ankle now.

It itches.  Anyway, it’s time to go.

Liz

Olympic Buzz

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No time for editing and composing — here’s what it feels like to be
in Beijing now:

THERE’S SO MUCH ENERGY IN THIS CITY.

I am writing this at 12:45:07 am because it’s the second time in two
weeks I’ve been home before 1 a.m., fueled less by caffeine than by
pure adrenaline, the pace of the Olympics.

Here’s the thing:  for so long, so long, I’ve been thinking about the
Beijing Olympics as the BEIJING Olympics — this platform, this stage
for the world to get to know China.

But now that it’s here, it’s clear that this is just as much about the
OLYMPICS as it is about Beijing.  Now every day is riddled with
spectating Games in person, or listening to friends recount their
tales of Games they’ve seen, or meeting athletes on bars and in the
street and online, and hearing stories of people, these real live
people, and their families, that came here, to experience this week —
not China really — but this MOMENT IN TIME, to watch the flags of the
world collide in potpourri, a galaxy born out of cheering and
jiayou-ing and friendly rivalry, to feel the temperature drop in the
stadium as people go home after the first match of a double header
ends at 10:30 pm, to feel the heat and humidity of the Opening
Ceremony, to breathe in the welcome aroma of fresh cut grass and
blooming flowers under a blue sky, to feel out of step but secretly
glad at the emptiness of car-cleared streets, and welcomed by teams of
super friendly Olympic volunteers, and adorable Fuwa mascots.  These
weeks, the Beijing I write about has taken a back seat, and some sort
of international netherspace has arrived, a ground where people are
happy, and competitive, and excellent, and friendly, and curious, and
driven, and carefree, all in one.  So much fun!!!

And then, if this unparalleled atmosphere weren’t enough, Continue reading →

Migrate

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At 8:20 am on Tuesday, June 24th, a train pulled out of Penn Station in New York heading north at 35 mph on an eleven hour journey through cornfields, cows and rainbows to Montreal.  On this train, my sister, 14 bags of her stuff, and me, completed the next stage in a story of immigration that, as family lore would have it, includes Genghis Khan, a potato famine in Ireland, fleeing from Odessa to Athens with only a baby carriage after overhearing some revolutionary sailors in a park, friendly USSR-Cuba relations, a cheap-season trip to Club Med and a fateful sunburn, and British poetry.  But this newest leg in the story of how my sister ended up migrating to francophone Canada was driven by a much better reason than some of the wars and famines that have moved the Aabs and Hawrylkos in the past:  some Canadian guy named Marc, who, after June 28th, I have been happy to call my brother-in-law, and whom my sister is happy to call her Happily Ever After.
 
But even with rainbows and misty gondola rides through mountains glimmering with fireflies and the Power of Love (yes, my sister’s wedding was indeed amazing), migrating ain’t easy.  It’s not easy for those who go, schlepping their strange accents and rice bags of shoes to countries that count kilometers instead of miles.  It’s not easy for those they leave behind, who wonder how long they have to store their high school textbooks.  And it’s not easy for those who were already there, who somehow have to make room in their closets and cities and subways for these strange new newcomers.
 
Because it isn’t easy, there has to be something really darn good about the place people migrate to, in order to make it worth all that disruption.  (And not every place is lucky enough to have a Marc.)  So come be awed with me for a moment at the march of the humans, more powerful and romantic than Morgan Freeman’s penguins ever could be.  Be awed with me at the ability and willingness of a population to get up and leave home to pursue a better life — a hallmark of significant societies throughout history. And the places these people go:  they have become the greatest civilizations of our time.  If you want to understand where the world is going next, look where its people are going.
 
Back now in China (as all Aabservations eventually migrate…), Continue reading →

Today we are all Sichuan people

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Being here in China, now in the aftershock of the May 12 earthquake, has shown me proof that human beings are fundamentally good.  I have been floored by the outpouring, from my friends, my colleagues, my clients, of a compassionate and sincere desire to help in whatever way possible.
 
Whenever news of the earthquake has come on public TVs in Beijing, people gather round to watch — stopping mid-step in shopping malls, huddling together around the monitors on the bus.  Jo Kent has done a brilliant job in describing the tremendous generosity that Chinese people themselves have had, so just take a second to read her article here.   
 
As Jo notes, the Red Cross is one of the organizations tasked with disaster relief.  Another friend who studied with me in Chengdu in 2006 has done some digging and recommends donating through their international website at http://donate.ifrc.org/.

There’s much more to say, and much that has been said better by others, so I’ll stop here.  I just wanted to let you know how to donate, and give you a hint of how much people here have come together around this tragedy.  There’s a palatable sense of compassion, perseverance and hope — one I remember feeling in New York City in the days just after 9/11.
 
Stay well,
Liz

Becoming American-Asian

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Growing up a cultural immigrant mutt, not European enough to smoke nor American enough to drive a car, I have spent the better part of the past two decades looking for a culture to latch on to.  When I was in high school, I tried to be Jewish.  My effort entailed spreading peanut butter and jelly on matzoth at Passover, singing hymns in Hebrew in front of 400 people, and, when required, kvetching.

I’ve tried other cultures since then of course.  Eating tofu and speaking C++ in California during the dot-com boom and drinking Cosmopolitans and speaking financial “greeks” in the derivative days of Wall Street.  So when I showed up in Beijing, I was ready for the next next thing:  I was determined to become an Asian-American. Continue reading →