Atas

Recently I joined a small group of acquaintances I newly met to a 'business dinner'. A weird series of events landed me in that spot. They were all C level professionals, boss positions. The experience mingling around with such 'atas' group happens very rarely, hence uncommon to me, so i got extra mindful of things to see so that i can (hopefully) tactly react.

First is the things they talked about...were proper BFM-esque (if you listen to the radio u'll get the idea), even their 'small talk' is not absolutely small.

Second is the kind of humor they enjoy (it's mostly about tactful comments relating to a subject, plus clever word play and vocabs and expressions), the kind of humor that definitely requires some background knowledge and considerable commad in English to understand in order to find them amusing.

I think I managed to fare pretty well and reciprocate the social energy in the room. One thing that interest me most was; for a group of people that earn a lot (minus yours truly lah) - they eat so little! The spread on the dining table were modest albeit the high price point, must be the quality idk. Portion of food was smaller than average in normal place i frequent to eat. Come to think of it, they lead pretty active lifestyles too, gym, yoga, etc. So there were rich people that owns excess wealth but woke to see through temptations and exercise self control to be in good shape. And i find the display of moderation despite high purchasing power very inspiring.

Afterall, the goal is to be rich, not to look rich. Really rich people whose also rich in values and substance doesn't just unnecessarily flaunt their wealth for show or get easily enslaved by their primal desires to follow consumerism agendas and needing validation from strangers.

I remember Syed Mokhtar Al-Bukhary said in an interview that went along the line of "We can only eat so much food, we can only perceive so much pleasantries as our senses allow us with food or other materials, that kind of pursuit for indulgence will never ends furthermore more often than not, it skews one's priorities..which is not right."

So yeah.