The older I get in this day and age, I have the inescapable sinking feeling that my parents raised me wrong. They raised me to earn an honest living. Yet, every day I see how the corrupt, the dishonest, the cheats end up with power, prestige and sick amounts of money. They are lauded in spite of their utter moral bankruptcy and callousness. There is no sense of personal shame or guilt anymore. They raised …
When I was fourteen, my father passed me a draft essay he wrote; he was entertaining the thought of submitting it to the News Straits Times. Even though I was regularly reading books then I lacked sophistication or depth in my reading. I read books but I was not a reader of books. There was no nuance or refinement to my reading; I simply chased through pages to know what happened. At the time, I …
This is an old chestnut from my father. I heard this from college all the way into practice. It is a cliché to me because I have so absorbed it to the point I enjoy reading around a subject more than reading about the subject itself. Some call this procrastination; there have been times I was tempted to agree. This advice has led me to discover delightful warrens of legal esoterica and broaden my horizons. …
That was my father’s first piece of advice for me after I started practice. He gave that advice to every pupil that went through his firm. I don’t know whether he still does it anymore. “Bank it in, note when to pay it out, then forget about it. Those that keep looking at it or thinking about it are the ones that get into trouble. Even if you go bankrupt, or your family is starving, …