by I’ve just had a lesson with a 22-year-old university student who, when she ties her hair back, looks like Martina Hingis. She also has a part-time job in IT testing; she has ambitious plans for a career in that field. At the end of the session, she said she wanted to drop from two meetings a week with me to just one. I wonder how long before she plumps for zero. How ever hard I try, I find it hard to connect with her. I get a lot of people of around her age – the real millennials, those born around 2000 – and they’re the hardest to build a rapport with. Older adults are easier, as are kids, but with these real millennials we’re often transmitting on different wavebands. It doesn’t help that this particular student is very normal for someone of her age, and I’ve always found very normal people hard to relate to. (I’ve always thought that Normal People Scare Me, a 2006 documentary about autism, is one of the best titles of anything ever.)
My cousin had her eight-hour cancer removal operation on Wednesday. Apart from the extraordinary length of the procedure, I haven’t had any news about how it went.
Tomorrow my brother, his wife and their son are going on a one-week cruise. When I spoke to him on Tuesday he clearly didn’t want to go. (He wife wasn’t there.) When I asked him where he was going, he said he didn’t know. “How do you know it isn’t Somalia?” I asked. He had been to Somalia, or at least past it, on one of his army excursions or missions or whatever the right word is. I do know that at some point he’ll need to attend a black tie dinner. Not his thing at all, nor mine. His wife would dress the little one up in a black tie too, given the chance.
This week I’ve sent two letters to Barclays, first to the CEO, and then (changing the wording slightly) to their complaints team. Each letter ran to 2500 words, so it was a big effort. I’m glad to get that out of the way.
The biggest news story of the week has probably been the catastrophic implosion of the Titan submersible near the wreck of the Titanic, killing its five occupants. They were all super-wealthy men, aged from 19 – tragically, a boy really – to 77. Because it operated in international waters, the Titan could bypass all safety regulations. (It was controlled using a modified game console.) If you ponied up US$250,000 and signed a long waiver that mentioned death three times on the first page, you were good to go. This incident reminds me of conversations we had when I worked in life insurance. As well as administrative cost savings for larger policies, people who insured themselves for larger sums were wealthier and, on average, in a better state of health. We priced our policies accordingly: $1 million of life insurance did not cost five times what $200,000 did. However, when you got to really large amounts – say, $10 million – you were into the realms of Learjets and adventure tourism. Also, rich people often get into that position by taking risks that pay off. They’re risk seekers by nature.
It’s hot. A top temperature of 35 is forecast for today. I went to the market before my lesson with the real millennial, and that will be my only venture outside.
