another world
7:45pm at the far end of a deserted floor 2 of Feng Shui Towers. I spot a cluster of balloons tied around a chair.
“A birthday celebration,” I think. “Set up for tomorrow morning.”
There’s a banner. I can only read part of it, ’cause it’s wrapped around a pillar. Fare, it reads.
“Fare?”
…Well is on the other side.
“Farewell? For a birthday?”
I check the baloons. They read Happy Retirement.
I have never - in almost twenty years in investment banking - known someone retire. Everywhere I’ve worked has been staffed by people who were either too young or too transient for retirement to be anything but a dim future possibility.
But here it is: Tomorrow morning, as I end the second week of my new career direction, someone else will be retiring from investment banking.
There’s a series of photos of, I assume, the guy posted up around the other pillars: Retiree at desk. Retiree in tuxedo at office Christmas Bash. At department Go-Karting day. And, for a reason totally unknown to me, dressed as a six foot tall, sixteen stone banana.
He doesn’t look that old. maybe it’s early retirement. I wonder if he can afford it? I wonder if he had a choice?
It’s odd: lives crossing over each other like this. I’m getting older. Will I, I wonder, eventually retire from this industry I was only supposed to be in until I figured out what to do with my life.