After a really wonderful meal of home-cooked pizza and Tiger Beer, Naoko and Zen went off to the airport to catch their flight to Japan on Sunday night (the flight was 1:15 Monday morning), and I was on my own. So sad, so depressing. No time to stretch out and relax and enjoy the quiet, however, I was busy – band practice Monday, and long days at the office for the rest of the week.
But it was an interesting week – on Tuesday woke up at 5:00 AM because I was scheduled to talk live on the BBC’s Asia Business Report at 6:30 about Prudential’s planned acquisition of AIA, which was looking troubled because AIG (which owns AIA) would not renegotiate the $35.5 billion price tag (Prudential was trying to get them to come down to $30.5 after it was running into trouble selling the deal to shareholders and other problems). I went and did my spiel, then went to the office. At 10:00 they called me and told me that they’d just caught the news that Prudential had pulled out of the deal, and asked me to rush over to provide fresh commentary on breaking news. Yes! So I did just that, they talked to me in the TV studio, then they took me over to the radio booth and I did a piece for BBC World Service. Groovy.
The other interesting thing I did this week was to get my latest magazine to print. It was a lot of work, but off it went on Friday morning. I’ll get it back some time next week. Friday night I went for beers with my colleague at the Handle Bar, a Harley Davidson pub on Alexandra Road that is pupular with funky fifty-something foreigners and thirty-something Singaporeans. Good music, and occasionally the growling thunder of a really nice bike.
One of the perks of my job is that I get to meet some very famous people in the financial services industry, like the chairman of the State Bank of India, which is the largest bank in the country. Here’s my interview with him: