Reunions

This week has been a memorable one for 2 back to back reunions with friends I have made over my 28 years of working life, of which I spent the bulk of it with one company alone.

During those 19 years in the American bank, I worked in 3 different roles and headed the teams for 2 of them. The people I have had the pleasure of working with had become good lifelong friends whom I cherish and look forward to meeting up, to laugh over the good old times and the crazy things we used to do then when life was simpler and less complicated.

One of the senior Treasury guys had been organizing a get-together since 2012 and this Wednesday was the 3rd one. Thanks to the power of Whatsapp, a few of us were able to spread the message relatively widely by adding in more interested parties over the weeks. You can now create groups of up to 299 people!!

In the end, about 50+ people turned up that evening and what a blast it was. With the free flow of drinks, we all became old buddies again pretty soon. It was nice to relive the times where we went through so much together in the financial crisis of Asia (1997/98) and the GFC (2008) periods. We estimated that the combined Treasury work experience we had in Citi that evening easily exceeded 500 years!

Amazing how we managed to pull through all those years, none the wiser but supremely stressed out and thinking (a few times) that the world might end then. Somehow, these experiences made us stronger, to become who we are. And experiencing them with these people made the memories even more intense. We laughed hard at the silly things we did, the ridiculous antics we saw which are now mostly defined as career ending events in this compliance and whiter than white environment we worked in now.

The 3 hours passed by very quickly. I decided to skip my evening classes tonight because this is a once in 3 years event which I really looked forward to. I connected with people I have not seen for more than 15 years. One regular theme was that though we are all much older now, most of us looked better now (tanned and fitter) except for a few that mother time was not too kind to.

All of us figured that we need to stay happy and that a job is just a job. Most of us have since left Citibank, except for 4 remaining souls. Though we have moved on, the common thread of shared work experience in this wonderful bank continues to pull us together.

The following evening, another good long time Citi friend invited me to join his table at the ACI FX Gala dinner event. Once again, it was like a mini-Citi reunion as we met old colleagues over a nice dinner and copious amount of drinks again. We belong mainly to the Treasury marketing unit and have the battle scars to show for it.

Most of us do admit that the finance industry was good to us, having participated in Singapore’s growth over the last 50 years as kids and then as adults in our careers. Our parents’ generation started from a low base, so any incremental was a big jump. My generation benefited the most, just as the country was ready to take off from the efforts of our founding fathers.

I will aim to stay happy and healthy all the time while I remind myself to count and cherish all my blessings.