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My phone rang. I went into Daniel’s office and sat in the chair opposite his big desk.

“Ah, Derek.”

“Good morning, Daniel. How are things?”

“How do you wash your hands?”

“I use soap.”

By now I knew resistance was useless.

“Many people use soap. But just using soap isn’t enough.”

“Yes, I see.”

I started staring at my nails again.

The next week we got news that Yung Kao was going to do a Taiwan joint venture with Peregrine Securities in Hong Kong. Peregrine at the time was Asia’s most successful homegrown investment bank. They were opening offices right across the region and doing deals everywhere. They had a “can do” attitude, were in all the hot deals and everyone wanted to work there. This was seriously good news. I couldn’t wait for it to happen so I could call clients and say, “This is Derek, from Peregrine, Taiwan,” rather than “Yung

I found an apartment to share through an ad in the Taiwan English newspaper. A Canadian girl had one roommate and was looking for another for an older walkup that had three bedrooms. The price was reasonable and it was in a neighborhood just down the noisy road from my new office. We met and hit it off right away. Carol and I had a brother sister-like relationship. She had come to Taiwan to learn traditional Chinese painting. Her area of focus was small birds on branches. It is harder to do than it sounds. She kept two small budgies in a wooden bird cage to study them and how they moved. I was cool with that.

Three’s Company

My other roommate was “Miss Lee,” a Cathay Pacific flight attendant. We all lived platonically and kept radically different schedules. I was at work

The Singaporean fund manager at the end of the line was more than a little surprised to hear from me. I didn’t know anything about broking or what to say to a real client so I introduced myself and once he determined I was calling him from Taiwan, he became very excited and spoke very fast.

“Ok. Ok. Here is what you do. You are the first person to call me, ever, from Taiwan. Please call me every day. Bye.”

With that missive I had my first client! Well, we still had to open an account with him and get him to trade but I was now a “salesman.” My new exalted status required me to move my desk out of research and into “sales” – about ten feet away. My daily routine didn’t change very much, however.

Johnny took me under his wing and taught me

As a young man, I went to Taiwan and Japan for several years to study and meet chicks. However, the misadventures of those times are beyond the scope of this story. At the end of it I finally escaped to Alaska in 1992. I satisfied my dream of becoming a commercial fisherman and worked on a salmon seiner for a season on Kodiak Island. For adventure, this was a good move. For money, it was not. Someone had alerted the fish to my plan of cleaning up in the industry and they mostly avoided the boat I was working on. Alas, it was time to try my hand at something else.

Easy Riding Down to Costa Rica

Since I had arrived on my motorcycle, a Suzuki 650 DR, I departed the same way heading south with the birds to leave Alaska to the real Alaskans