For Richer For Poorer

If I didn't care for fun and such
I'd probably amount to much
But I shall stay the way I am
Because I do not give a damn - Dorothy Parker ( 1893 - 1967)

You know the poaching war has spiralled into something surreal when you are sitting across one of its newly-minted prize catches. When a 30 year-old like him switched masters for nothing less than seven-figures.

We were having lunch at one of the deceptively understated Cantonese restaurants in town, where we just ate the equivalent of a Furla tote ( Ok, so I think in bags, so sue me).

I couldn't help but notice the monogrammed cuffs on his bespoke shirt, and the blindingly shiny cufflinks. Or that his hair had turned an eerie shade of salt-and-pepper grey. Is this the same guy I knew when we were both 17 years old, sneaking out of a Beijing hostel in deep winter to eat steamboat at midnight? He is just as witty and hilarious. Now we are several tax brackets apart, and he dresses and talks like someone several years older, too.

"You cannot work in finance and think, oh I've lost or gained the equivalent of a house. Otherwise I'd have gone nuts at the number of bungalows I've seen change hands. They're just numbers, numbers," he said while gulping down the sharksfin soup.

He's one of those who started with zero and made it up, up and away through plain hard slog. You've gotta respect that. But I wonder what it is like to devote your life to racking up those ... numbers.

I have never spent time thinking of ways to get bizzarrely rich. Which is probably why I will never get there.

Me? I just need enough, um, numbers in my bank account to be comfortable. To fulfil my dreams of travelling to Morocco and Eastern Europe. And to have nice dinners whenever we feel like it. And to own a place with a BIG kitchen (the living room can go, but I cannot cook osso bucco in a teeny nook meant for milo and instant noodles). And most importantly, to have the time to finish reading the books I've started, and then start new ones. Right now, I'm in the middle of a book on the Crusades' history, Hanif Kureshi's social essays in The Book and The Bomb, a murder novel called Perfume and the deviantly pornographic The Bride Stripped Bare ( is it sexy because it is banned, or vice versa?)

You don't need many cars because - look, how many bottoms does a person have? Ditto palatial houses. How many places can you be at the same time?

Books, though, are a different matter. My plan this Christmas is to give everyone books as pressies. Heavy reads, light reads, naughty books, nice books. Why? Because you can never have too many books, and a book can only make you feel richer. All it asks for in return is your time.