These pages contain my thoughts on life in East Asia — Taiwan above all — on the people I meet here and the things I experience. I was always a closet Orientalist. I want exotic countries to be exotic. After all, what else is the point of them? Since I’ve read Edward Said, however, I’ve learned to be ashamed of this approach to the world. So, I promise, I’ll hold off on the exotica. In particular, there won’t be many references to mangoes. Too many references to mangoes are a sure sign of travel writing gone wrong.
But there will also be observations on other places where I’ve lived — Sweden, the UK, US, Japan, Italy. And there will be other themes: my family, life in academia, politics, and reports on things that I’m writing and thinking.
yours always,
林瑞谷/Erik Ringmar
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February 22nd, 2007
We are finally off on vacation. It’s been a long and very difficult year, but now it’s time to relax and be happy. Or rather, since we are going both to the US and Sweden, it’s time to spend time with our families … People have died, gotten married, divorced and remarried, and we’ve only heard about it through emails. Diane hasn’t been in the US for seven long years, and the American family hasn’t even seen Rima, our youngest.
As you can imagine, moving 6 people from the South China Sea to Europe, to the US and then back again, is both costly and complicated, and trying to make the trip cheaper only adds complexity. Thus the following itinerary:
- June 26, Taipei-Singapore, hotel in Singapore.
- June 27, night train Singapore-Kuala Lumpur.
- June 28, flight Kuala Lumpur-London, hotel at Stanstead.
- June 29, London, staying with our friend Vicky.
- June 30, flight London-New York.
We’re staying in the US some three weeks and then we’re going to Sweden via London. After a month in Sweden we are flying back to East Asia, reversing the itinerary above. We will, as Saga points out, do more than our share for global warming. Apparently it’s 290 dollars per person to offset the carbon emissions. Such arguments, however, don’t work with mothers and mother-in-laws.
I will miss Taiwan. Strange to take time out from our oriental adventure to visit that other, all-too-familiar, world. I’ll keep my Chinese lessons on my mp3 player. We’re back here at the end of August.
Reports will follow.
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June 25th, 2009
Saga, my oldest, is cramming for exams. She’s looked drawn, white-faced and far too thin for more than a month now. No, we don’t, consciously at least, put pressure on her. Instead it all comes from her school, the other kids and their mad mothers. It’s terrible! She is only 13 for heaven’s sake!
The girls’ school has an extraordinary record of placing students at first-rate American universities. This year two kids in a graduating class of about 60 got scholarships to Harvard and the rest were evenly sprinkled between NYU, UC Berkeley and similar brand-name places. It makes quite a change from the school the girls attended in London where they were slotted in to become the servants of the British class system — learning to cut hair, drive a bus, care for children, sell clothes or their bodies …
It would be OK if Saga wasn’t doing so well. She is no 2 in her class (yes, they keep track of these things). She had seven A pluses last semester, including, wait for it, an A plus in Chinese! Clearly, she’s trying everything to defend her record. But I’m more worried than proud. She’s not eating anymore, and she hasn’t had any fun for months.
Our other kids are doing equally well, although the big exam stress hasn’t hit them yet. I’ll worry about them too in due course.
I think we are going to have to take them out of this school and put them in something more average. A school where they don’t have a snowball’s chance of making it into the Ivy League. I refuse to believe that Harvard is the key to success and happiness in life. Good schools aren’t good for you. I want to see Saga happy again. I want her to start eating again. To have time for fun, her writing and herself.
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June 21st, 2009
There will be a book launch party for my blogging book coming Saturday. I just created a Facebook event for it. 
. This is the write-up:
Erik Ringmar will give a talk about his new book 部落客宣言 (”A Blogger’s Manifesto”). We will also invite senior local bloggers, including 工頭堅 Ken Worker (in video), 鄭陸霖教授 Jerry Cheng, 曾昭明 Jerome “Poiesis” Tseng, 黃小黛 Debby Huang, and 鄭國威 Portnoy Cheng (and others), to share their views. The talk will be in English/Chinese. We expect a fun bloggers’ meetup.
Read the first chapter of the book in Chinese here and the whole book in English here.
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June 16th, 2009
I’m leaving Paris in a few hours. It’s been a fun week. I’ve given lectures and talked to lots of people. The Parisians have a very high quality of life. Gorgeous architecture, food and wine, and thousands of cafés where beautiful people are trying to pick each other up. (In fact, even middle-aged people here look really good. Sexy even. I guess it’s because the French have such a lot of extramarital affairs. They can’t let themselves go. Well, good for them).
But since it’s June, North European and American tourists have already started their invasion. Sweaty-looking people in T-shirts, covering big bellies, always carrying water bottles. No surprise real Parisians flee the city in the summer!
What I hear about French academia is less impressive. Making a career here seems not to be about being smart and publishing a lot. Rather it’s who you know. The universities have a small fraction of full-time professors and endless cadres of part-time teachers. The part-time teachers teach, but above all they spend their time kissing the full-time professors’ asses. Not my idea of a good time. In fact, that pretty much rules out France for me. I don’t kiss ass very well.
Happily it turns out I can still speak French, although I keep on calling the currency “francs,” to everyone’s amusement.
Yet Paris still leaves me with a strange feeling — memories of the early 90s when I lived here for a while and my life was filled with a million possibilities. I’m not actually nostalgic for that time. Instead it’s purely a vicarious sensation. Today I relive the excitement and despair of that boy as though I was reading about him in a novel. Life always takes on a path, that’s nothing to complain about. I’m very happy with mine.
I bought some chocolate in the end, and some goat’s cheese and wine, but above all I bought French manga posters. A lot more fun than stupid Monet waterlilies. I hope they will make acceptable presents.
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June 15th, 2009
I’m in Paris! I feel like a resident of a foreign galaxy who temporarily is back visiting his home planet. It’s all familiar yet at the same time really weird. The sidewalks are unbelievably broad here and there are no masses of motorbikes; girls are blond or brown-haired and have broad hips and smoke cigarettes on the street. Above all, it’s terribly cold. Everywhere is like a broken air-con stuck on “refrigerate.”
Paris has changed a lot since my time here in the early 90s. Basically the Parisians seem finally to have given in to American tastes. The hotel where I’m staying has no bidet for foreigners to wonder at, and they don’t have those long, sausage-like, pillows that all French hotels used to have. Also, you can no longer buy Mental in the vending machines in the metro. Mental was a menthol candy that came in a small tin box (and I used to imagine as an instant cure for depression). Now the vending machines sell only Snickers bars.
A strange think about Paris is how uniform all buildings are. I know Baron Haussmann imposed rules on every builder when the city was reconstructed back in the 1860s, but why did they all do what he said? It would never have worked in Taiwan! As a result the familiar East/West stereotype is turned upside down: the Europeans seem conformist and the Chinese individualistic. But admittedly, Paris is far, far more beautiful than any city found in the East.
Their conformism doesn’t stop Parisians from being very expressive: people talk more loudly here than in Taiwan; there are noisy street musicians in the subway trains and graffitti everywhere. I met some of Francois’ students last night and they are very expressive too, and self-confident and beautiful and full of idealism. They will make the world a better place and they’ll have a good time trying. I’m glad some Parisian traditions never change.
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June 9th, 2009
Paying taxes in Taiwan is a great joy. First of all they are only about 10% which to a Swede is nothing more than spare change. More importantly, the people in the tax office are exceedingly cheerful and friendly. We got in there at the last moment, as always, stressed out, tired, and with various documents and photo copies in badly organized piles. The woman on the other side of the counter just smiled and said “I’ll help you!” — which she proceeded to do. And the best thing of all — I’m getting money back! Not a lot, but enough to go totally crazy buying fruit and veg in the local market.
Btw, I made 1,856,845 NT last year. That’s 57,368 dollars US, 35,018 pounds, or 427,502 krona. That’s about 2/3 of what I made in London, but since taxes are lower and Taiwan is only about half as expensive, we are actually much better off than before (at least as long as we don’t engage in any foreign travel). Did you think professors were better paid? Yes many people with a similar level of education make more. However, professors never really have to work very much. Ha, ha.
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June 3rd, 2009
My blogging book is finally out in a Chinese edition. This is its web page. Tsungyi and his wife have done a great job translating. Thanks a lot to them!
This is the blurb:
「言 論自由是現代西方社會的基石之一，長久以來西方人已經把言論自由視為理所當然。人權、民主與個人自由表達的權利界定了西方人的模樣。所以我們幾乎很少停下 來問：『言論自由真正的意義為何？言論自由是否真的存在？』本書就是要指出西方言論自由的實際情況和西方人所認定的言論自由理想有一段不小的差距，他們對 自己有相當程度的誤解。」「言論自由是一項需要人們長久奮鬥與犧牲生命來爭取的權利（當然，中國的抗爭還在持續）。東亞的學生比其他人都還了解言論自由的重要性與急迫性。諷刺的是，西方文明的理想掌握在東亞年輕人有力的手裡，遠比落在西方中年人顫抖的雙手還要安全。」
It will be interesting to see what Chinese readers make of the book. After all, it’s about limitations of freedom of speech in the West. Yes that’s right, not China for a change.
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June 3rd, 2009
I am going to Paris after all. My arm was twisted, a gun was held to my head. And more importantly, I think I came up with something worth talking about. This is my schedule:
- June 8th, very early: arriving in Paris. If I’m not too tired, I’ll try to make it to the Bibliothèque nationale for some research.
- June 9th, 9.00-12.00: research seminar at Sciences-Po. I will talk about my recent paper on “How to Fight Savage Tribes.” 14.00-18.00: lecture at Sciences-Po (with Bruno Latour). I will talk about “Governance of Globalization” — something about traditional East Asian ways of organizing international relations.
- June 10, 14.00-18.00: lecture and seminar at the University of Antwerp. More governance and more globalization.
- June 11: back to Paris; Bibliothèque nationale.
- June 12, 13:30: lecture at Sciences-Po. Something from my article on “Inter-textual Relations.”
- June 13-14: sightseeing and hopefully some research.
- June 15: back to Taiwan.
A pretty action-packed program in other words. Mostly I worry about not being able to eat anything much — where is my next bowl of oatmeal going to come from? But they have soup in France, don’t they? Of course they do.
If you’re in Paris or Belgium any of these dates, we can meet up.
This, btw, is the globalization talk I’ll give (written up as a research paper):
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May 28th, 2009
The best thing about teaching at the LSE were all the students. Not only smart, but creative and fun. People who will go on to do great things. Of course, I’m proud of them all. However, it makes me particularly proud when students dare to stake out their own lives for themselves. Take Caroline, for example. She just dropped out of a very prestigious PhD program to pursue a career as a painter. That’s her Colosseum above. I’m not a major art critic, but I know that an easily identifiable personal style is key to success. And she’s got it. No question. What a waste if she had been locked up in a dusty educational institution somewhere. The world has too many university professor but not enough painters.
Or take Benjamin. Instead of defrauding savers and small foreign governments as a trader in the City, he went back to Wales and began a career as a writer. He recently had a program on BBC Radio 4. He’s a stand-up comic too, and together with some friends he’s performing on the Edinburgh fringe this summer. Like Caroline, he’s poised for greatness.
We don’t have more than one life and we must live on our own terms and not on somebody else’s. Why be ordinary when you can be extraordinary? Yes, I’m very, very proud.
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May 23rd, 2009
I just got a royalty statement from Routledge. I wrote a book with them in 2005, The Mechanics of Modernity, and last year I made exactly 16.58 pounds from it. Why isn’t the book selling better? It could be a question of quality of course, but it could also be that it costs 180 US dollars. Only libraries can afford to buy it. Good thing we don’t have to make a living from my income as an author. The book is out in paperback next year, but I don’t expect to make any money from that either.
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May 14th, 2009
Part I of this mini-series really attracted a lot of attention. I got close to 300 hits in one day. I haven’t had that many hits since my notorious days as a blogger in London. What does this show? That people like to read about sex. Most of the readers who come to this page are university related. The students want gossip about their teachers, and the teachers want tips on how to get students into bed. You ought to be ashamed of yourselves!
But it also shows that there is a real issue here. I got a number of emails from students dying to tell me their stories. Some, harassed by teachers they used to look up to, told me how disappointed they were. Others, genuinely in love with a professor, felt disgusted and cheap when they realized that the person in question already had moved on to another conquest. There were also stories about how awkward seminar discussions suddenly became once everyone realized the professor was sleeping with one of the students. And favoritism: how some students get preferential treatment since they offer sex to the teacher, and how unfair this is to everyone else.
I have a suggestion: someone should set up a web site where professors who sleep with their students can be outed. A bit like Don’t Date Him Girl, which does the same for notorious dates, or Rate My Professor (although that rating refers to lectures). In that way, at least students will be thoroughly warned beforehand. Would Facebook host such a page? Probably not.
So which student did I sleep with? It was a girl at Stockholm University back in 1995. In my defense, I must say that I wasn’t a regular teacher at the university. I had another job, but I was giving a once-a-week seminar. Also, I didn’t pursue her, she pursued me. (Yet, as I pointed out at the time, I do believe in being accessible to my students). But it gets worse: she got pregnant while the class still was going on. How scandalous! I don’t know if the other students knew, but I suspect they did. Again, to defend myself, I gave her a B minus although she probably should have had at least a B plus.
I won’t repeat the mistake. Why? Well, I have now been married to the student in question for 14 years and we have had another three children. With screaming kids and a nagging wife, I’m paying for my mistake every single day.
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May 9th, 2009
I have now been on Twitter for two weeks (see the right sidebar), but I’m still not sure how to use it. What can you say about yourself in 140 characters or less? And what is it that my audience — some 25 humans and 25 spam machines — wants to hear? The Twitter prompt encourages users to tell the world “what we’re doing,” but how uninteresting is that? Reports regarding everyday routines soon get tedious.
So far I have mainly Twittered reports on things I’m reading and writing. This is potentially an interesting use of the technology. To the outside world professors are just sitting in armchairs all day long, and for all intents and purposes they may as well be dead (some are). But put a Twitter feed into their brains and they can start reporting about all the things that happen in there. Twitter gives us a chance to finally explain ourselves.
So this week I’ve mainly twittered about Chinese gardens, about the dress code of American diplomats, and the Jesuits at the Imperial court in Beijing; I’ve also linked to pictures of pagodas and to books I’m in the process of transferring to the web. Sounds like a sad life? Hell no, it’s really, really exciting!
But Twitter is never better than the friends you keep. I’m following a great crowd –they’re funny! — but I wish more people in my field were using it. I’d love to hang out with other Chinese-garden-US-diplomatic-dress-code researchers, and pick up whatever crumbs that fall from their intellectual tables.
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May 7th, 2009
I don’t think my Taipei-book idea will fly. My plan was to enlist the help of some NCTU colleagues but also to include outsiders, people who actually do research on Taipei. But, since outsiders are included, my colleagues have decided that the project isn’t for them. And the outsiders don’t understand why they should be writing a book with me.
Compare this with another book I’m editing, on theories of international politics. I and my co-editor just sent around emails to people we wanted to include and within hours they got back to us. Amazingly, even really, really famous people said yes. But these were scholars in the United States and Europe, not in Taiwan.
Why do Taiwanese people have to be like this? So kind of cultural? It’s like something straight out of a sociology text-book: people of Chinese descent, famously, don’t interact as individuals with other individuals. They interact only with people in their network. The problem with my book idea is that it fell between networks: it was too much of an external project for the insiders and too much of an insider’s job for the externals.
Chinese culture is alive and well, and my book project is doomed. Too bad, I could almost smell the fresh ink of a newly signed book contract. But I’m OK, I have other books to write, I was just trying to be helpful.
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May 2nd, 2009
There is something perfectly sick about universities — filled with fat, balding, middle-aged men (and women) and a constantly replenished crop of gorgeous 20-something girls (and boys). Like the Catholic church, with its scheming pedophiles and innocent choir boys, it’s a recipe for disaster.
Why would an intelligent female ever sleep with a disgusting professor? Well, of course some professors are famous and powerful. In New Haven I would sometimes run into Harold Bloom at the Atticus bookstore on York Street, always in the company of a pretty, star-struck, and very blond PhD student. Maybe they were helping him carry his books? But then again, those girls had only themselves to blame — Bloom is a notorious philanderer.
Paul Thompson at Essex University sleeps with his students too, but he is not as notorious. Well, Diane didn’t know; she hadn’t heard the stories before she applied, and she was very happy when he accepted her to do a PhD. Paul Thompson had a whole stable of PhD students in various stages of grooming. Apparently he simply considered it a perk of his office. Once he made up some strange excuse to come and visit Diane at home in the day-time. He was very angry when he found out I was at home too. Bastard! Diane was disgusted, humiliated, but she couldn’t just quit her PhD. It took months before another professor rescued her. Funny thing is, Essex University knows about him, but there is, apparently, nothing they can do.
Student-teacher sex wasn’t very common at the LSE, mainly, it seems, since the teachers are too ugly and the students too self-confident. Still, I recently heard a story about an esteemed colleague who apparently used to have afternoon romps with students on the desk in his office. Man, I used to sit by that desk when we graded exams! The horror! the horror! how can I ever exorcise that image from my mind?
As for me, I’ve only had sex with one student — but I’ll tell you about that some other time. Ha, ha!
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April 29th, 2009
I have an idea to edit a book about Taipei, and there is a book series at Routledge that would fit perfectly. I emailed the editor and she got back to me with a very cheerful reply (how often does that happen?). I’d like to put in a proposal.
Wouldn’t it be great to read about the history of Taipei and the Japanese occupation; the culture of shopping and retailing space; a chapter on night life and the criminal underworld; another about a traditional neighborhood; and of course something on Taipei 101, the tallest building in the world (until the sheiks in Dubai overtook us).
The only problem is: in Taiwan getting a book contract is a resource which should be distributed in order to maintain your social relations. You hand out writing jobs to your friends, not to whoever is best suited. But nepotism makes for bad books. I don’t want to write bad books. Well, we don’t even have a book contract yet. Maybe the issue never arises.
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April 24th, 2009
I’m spending a lot of time these days typing up the tales of early Western visitors to the Chinese court. It’s great fun to hunt down the old books and transfer them to the web. The idea is to build an on-line library of easily accessible texts (which, in addition, I can use for my own research). Besides, this is hard-core pornography for us self-confessed Orientalists. Compare John Barrow’s description of the entry of the Macartney Mission into Beijing in 1793:
All was in motion. The sides of the street were filled with an immense concourse of people, buying and selling and bartering their different commodities. The buzz and confused noises of this mixed multitude, proceeding from the loud bawling of those who were crying their wares, the wrangling of others, with every now and then a strange twanging noise like the jarring of a cracked Jew’s harp, the barber’s signal made by his tweezers, the mirth and the laughter that prevailed in every groupe, could scarcely be exceeded by the brokers in the Bank rotunda, or by the Jews and old women in Rosemary-Lane, Pedlars with their packs, and jugglers, and conjurers, and fortune-tellers, mountebanks and quack-doctors, comedians and musicians, left no space unoccupied.
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April 24th, 2009
Everyone’s twittering these days and so am I. If you follow me on:
you’ll soon realize that my life mainly consists of papaya milkshakes and bibliographical databases. Whooppee!
Btw, Twitter is vastly easier to do in Chinese. I mean, you can cram an entire novel into 140 characters. Too bad my Chinese isn’t better.
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April 22nd, 2009
My kids are gorgeous. Not just cute, but truly beautiful. This is a universally acknowledged fact, but people here in Taiwan are particularly gaga over them. Yes, they are tall and blond too. When we’re out together people always stop to comment on their looks. It was fun at first, and flattering, but for a long time now it’s been pretty annoying. They just go on and on.
I’ve found a great way to shut people up. “They aren’t my kids,” I say, “they are from my wife’s first marriage.” After that, people just walk away. For a while I tried “They aren’t my kids, you know, they are my wife’s lover’s.” But that was just too weird.
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April 20th, 2009
An old student of mine, who just has begun what no doubt will be a five-star academic career, has invited me to come and give a lecture in Paris. All expenses paid! Imagine, they are flying me from Taiwan to Paris to give a lecture!
It’s very flattering to be asked and of course I want to go, but at the same time I can’t help being in two minds about it. There is absolutely nothing I can say that is worth their money. I’m an OK lecturer, but I’m not that good.
The problem is that they want me to talk about “globalization.” No one, and I mean no one, can talk about “globalization” in an interesting way (as proven by David Held among others). I’ll have to think hard and try to come up with something.
Ah Paris! I got married there once — well, kind of — I’ve lived there for a while; and there is no city like it on earth. But I know I’ll feel like a complete fraud. I know I won’t respect myself in the morning.
Well, maybe I’ll go if I can combine the lecture with some other business. Maybe see some friends or do some research … (but why on earth should the fancy university pay for that?)
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April 16th, 2009
This week too I’m talking about marriage with my laoshi (the chapter we’re doing in my Chinese book is on this topic).
It strikes me as very odd that there are such a lot of people in Hsinchu with foreign degrees — usually Master’s and PhDs, earned after years of studies in America or Europe — but very, very few foreign spouses. Why don’t more Taiwanese people studying abroad come back with a foreign wife/husband? Is it because they, or their parents, find it hard to accept a foreigner into the family?
Most students who go abroad seem to leave a boy/girlfriend behind in Taiwan. For years they stay faithful to each other and when the wretched foreign studies are over they finally get married. What poor lives these Taiwanese students must have in their foreign exile! How can you live alone abroad for so long without ending up in bed with one of the locals? Do they find the locals too intimidating?
And imagine how much the Taiwanese students are missing out on — having a local boy/girlfriend is by far the best way to get to know a foreign culture. They would learn much more, and have more fun, if they only dumped their partners before they went abroad. In fact, dumping the boy/girlfriend should be a requirement for getting a scholarship for overseas studies.
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April 15th, 2009
My laoshi, my Chinese teacher, asks me what kind of boy I would find suitable for my daughters. Should he be handsome or should he be smart? Should he have money? Those are interesting questions, and just difficult enough for me to deal with in my broken Chinese. But what’s the best answer?
Looks don’t matter, I’m starting to say, but that’s not right. If the personality is strong enough it will always shine through in the way a person looks, talks and moves. You cannot easily separate the inside and the outside. Of course a bit of money is good, but money is not where the action is at.
What matters more than anything is that the person has a goal for his life — a 目標, a mùbiāo. Without a goal, you have no dreams, nothing to strive for. A person without a 目標 is no fun. What the goal is matters less — racing cars, collecting stamps — as long as the person is someone with a passion, and the drive to pursue it.
One of my first serious girlfriends was from Alaska. We dated for years — flying between continents to be together. One day I asked her about her goal in life and she proclaimed that all she really wanted to do was to “make a beautiful home for our family.” “Which family?” was my first thought. Our relationship was never the same after that. As far as goals go, that’s just too pathetic.
I’m a lucky guy — I’ve achieved most of my 目標. Now I only have one left — to learn Chinese! I might never reach it, but I’m very passionate about trying.
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April 7th, 2009
The English-language web pages of Taiwanese universities are really terrible. It’s embarrassing to be introduced to the world in such poorly written prose. Say, for example, that an old colleague of mine from London asks him/herself what Erik is up to these days and googles my name. Arriving at a page like this, will surely tickle his/her Schadenfreunde: “Poor Erik has really come down in the world!”
Diane has been tearing her hair out over the web pages she has been translating for Qinghua University. The original version was obviously the product of Google translator rather than an actual human being. And yet no one ever used her corrections. Maybe they felt she didn’t stay close enough to the verbose original. Yet what’s needed is not only a linguistic translation, but a cultural one. The pages have to communicate in a vernacular that makes sense to an international audience.
A big reason why Taiwanese university web pages sound so hooky are all the aspirations they express. The universities are invariably “aiming to achieve synergy,” “planning to become a focal point,” or “striving to be a gateway.” It’s just a bunch of buzz words strung together. All the earnestly expressed aspirations only underline the fact that the universities aren’t there yet.
Universities in Asia too need to communicate with students in much more direct and informal language. The pages have to be informative and fun. Above all, we should stop “aiming” and “striving” — blur the “focal points” and dismantle the “gateways” — and instead do more real academic work.
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April 2nd, 2009
This is the introduction to a book I’m editing with my friend Thomas Lindemann. The theme is the role of identities in international politics and the importance of recognition in relations between states. There are all kinds of super-famous people involved in this project, so it’s really exciting. Anyway, the article is here:
In contrast to other papers I have on the web, this is very much a first draft (reasonable writing throughout, but some weird footnotes and a couple of pretty underdeveloped arguments). But there is a reason for this untidyness: I need your feedback. If you read the chapter and email me comments, we will acknowledge you in the first footnote in the printed version.
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March 21st, 2009
The current economic crisis, and the scandalous behavior of many bankers, makes me think of my uncle Richard. He was the head of a bank in Uppsala, Sweden, but his real vocation was singing. He would have made a great tenor, but with three kids and bills to pay he picked the safer career of banking. Still, he loved to dress up in period attire and to break out in song. I remember him once, dressed in drag and with plenty of make-up, performing on Uppsala’s main city square. And he sang for the Crown-Prince and Princess of Japan when they visited Sweden back in the early 1990s. Afterwards the Crown-Princess turned to him and said: “Are you a banker? You should be an opera singer!”
It wasn’t that my uncle didn’t care about money, but he was always convinced that material things were pretty unimportant. He drove an ugly, beat-up, Peugeot until the day members of the Board of Directors complained that his car was bringing the bank into disrepute, and forced him to buy a BMW. Once I asked him how he could be a banker with such an attitude. “Easy,” he said, “I employ people who like money. That way I don’t have to think about it.”
What really mattered to my uncle were instead relations with other people. He always seemed to have five cases of wine, and two dozen clean wine glasses, ready for impromptu celebrations. When he turned fifty, he invited 500 of his closest friends to a party in the Uppsala University auditorium. At his funeral in 2003, the church was jam packed with mourners all very grateful to have known him.
In the early 1990s, all Swedish banks suddenly collapsed. They had staked too much on high-risk gambles and in the end they had to be rescued by the government. But my uncle’s bank was fine. He had been busy making sure that his customers and employees were happy, and that the people of Uppsala, and visiting Japanese princesses, were properly entertained. He never had time for casino capitalism.
My uncle Richard is my hero, and if only the world’s bankers had been more like him we wouldn’t be in our current mess. Btw, Amazon.com has a CD of his:
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March 16th, 2009
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Expecting some posts from there… And pictures