"Don't buy me the things you wish you'd had growing up, teach me the things you wish you'd known growing up"
The ninth day of the Chinese New Year is the birthday of the Jade Emperor. The Jade Emperor is the supreme god worshipped by the Taoists. The Jade Emperor rules all Heaven and Earth. In China the number nine is an auspicious number. When number nine is pronounced, it sounds like the word for “long lasting”.
(with Deng Xiaoping, 1986, Beijing. Mom, Dad, and me all on far left)
When multiplied 9 always reproduces itself…
Nicholas February 19
Alexander December 9
Annika July 29
When I was growing up my Mom, Alvina Bartos Balog, owned a travel agency named Watchung Hills Travel. This was a time when a travel agency, as a business was plain lousy, in contrast to today, where it is downright abhorrent. The most outstanding benefit for me and my brothers was that we got to travel places on familiarization trips, or “fam trips” in the trade, boondoggles in most businesses, and what I came to learn about Wall Street types, rampant hedonism. If we were ever unclear as to our good fortune, we were constantly reminded of such by the neighborhood kids who asked, “SO, where are you going NOW?”
And Oh the Places We’d Go. Vail. An early Club Med in Martinique. Kingston, Jamaica. Puerto Rico. Banff Springs, Canada. And Scottsdale, Arizona. I learned “fam trips” were fab trips. And the travel bug infectious. If one ever wonders who was “patient zero” and the origin of our travel bug, it was my Mom. Since then, Stacia has grabbed the ball and run with it like OJ in a white Bronco!
To place this period of time in perspective, one of these trips was in 1965 to Vail, Colorado. Yes, that Vail. In 1965. After it had been only open one year. One. And if I recall correctly Vail at the time had only three ski lifts. The town had two hotels, the Talisman and the Valhalla. We stayed down rent of the two at the Talisman. I will never forget walking past the ‘high end’ Valhalla, and its outdoor hot tub surrounded by a pile of fresh snow thinking, ‘how odd, why would men and women want to sit in THAT, nearly naked, outside in the cold, drinking wine?’.
Skiing was a relatively new sport in America, and I stood on the ground floor. If this were The Graduate and had I had investment chops then, I might well have considered recreational skiing to be my own “plastics Benjamin, plastics”, moment.* But alas…
(Jokake Inn, Scottsdale. Today the quaint entry monument at the Phoenician.)
Around 1975, we were in Scottsdale, Arizona and my father introduced me to a colleague of his named Jean. Jean was a weathered soul, having grown up living through not one but two World Wars which devastated his native France. With no perspective of my own until much later while living in France ourselves, I have come to realize the impact of war in your own homeland, and the deep lasting scars it inflicts on the psyche of its inhabitants. I’ve also come to realize Jean had a certain je ne sais quoi about him that softly whispered ‘very well to do’.
My Dad and Jean were enjoying a glass of wine, chatting, whilst together they prepared the quintessential American staple of grilled animal flesh on the outdoor BBQ. Sirloin steaks.
(du Boeuf pour les cowboys, s’il vous plait)
I’ve since learned that the French have a super warm affinity for all things American West, or les cowboys. Jean must have enjoyed how “charmante” it was to be entertaining Americans on his own spread in Arizona, in the shadows of Pinnacle Peak.
I listened as they spoke of subjects which for the most part were out of my reach. And then I heard him say something that has stuck with me. Jean began, “Jeem…I have learned much in my life from zees wars and zee crazy times. I tell you now…build a band of wealth around zee world. You never know what ees going to ‘appen. Very important you understand zis.” **
Jean was not the type to be arguing for the caching of treasure away from tax authorities, as no Frenchman would ever do zees (cough). He spoke of those that, during the war, lost businesses, art, gold, family, everything. And how it was the smart ones, the educated ones that were able to transport their knowledge elsewhere, and not only survive, but thrive. I have since met example after example of exactly that, in the form of immigrants and survivors alike. Those that adapt, survive. People that do not adapt, perish. And it leads to a guiding mantra, a quote from Eric Hoffer:
“In a time of drastic change, it is the learners who inherit the future. The learned usually find themselves equipped to live in a world that no longer exists.”
……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….
Forty years later, our family was chatting at the dinner table on a recent February night in 2017, speaking about the kid’s school day, when 5th grade Alexander, often shy, reserved, but always thoughtful, blurts:
“What if school wasn’t school? What if the school, if life, could just be one continuous string of learning wherever you are, wherever you went?”
(Alexander, ahead of his time)
“I wish that I had been that observant and thoughtful at your age”, was all Dad could reply, with a sentient glance to Maman.
And then it hit me. “Build a band of wealth around the world”. Not wealth like “stuff” wealth, but wealth like “real” wealth. The wealth that moves with you, gets better with age, and can’t get stolen or compromised, except through diminution by time.
What if, indeed…
*In truth, skiing wasn’t the play, real estate was, and had I recognized that at the time, I would have my attache typing this missive right now from LogJam Air at 40,000 feet.]
* *And given seeming constant political volatility, and people’s normalcy bias, it makes sense. Today zees is commonly called spreading your bets, or simply, hedging.
My father, James Balog Senior, often gave me sage advice growing up. Thankfully he still does. One such nugget, delivered with his gentle grace and down-home charm steeped straight from the dirty coal fields of Vintondale, in Western Pennsylvania: “You will use every bit of knowledge that you acquire over your life, without exception **. Much of it will seem insignificant at the time. But trust me, it will all come to significance in due time.” He added with a smirk, “And for your lessons? Please do yourself a favor and try and keep the ‘tuition’ to a minimum.”
I don’t recall if this gem was conveyed while cutting the grass, raking leaves, or picking out the seeming endless rocks of the Watching Mountains that had shortly before been hacked in a spark and clank of the power mower. I was fortunate to grow up in a home with a bright yellow power mower that had a hand controlled wheel gear release, making the pushing easier. This machine replaced the whirling manual rotor blade version, like a scaled down wheat field combine, which now sadly sat alone in the tool shed.
The simplified product transition from old ‘tech’ to new ‘tech’ might be what the Finnish today would refer to as, ‘curling parenting’. This delightful term refers to the process in curling of the broom sweeping the ice before the curling granite* (in this metaphor, the kids) gets to its final resting place with greater ease. [warm respectful shout out to Rami and Katja Ahonen]. In America, this would be the precursor to the modern term – helicopter parenting. Even back in the olden days, ‘the easy life’, referred simply to our levels of manual labor. And yes, it’s true, you can take my Dad out of the Ukraine, but you can’t take the Ukrainian out of my Dad.
Regardless, I did what every rebellious teen with raging hormones would do. A grumble, an eye roll, and a gratuitous deferential smirk in reply. But here’s the crazy part. He was right. And it wasn’t the first lesson, nor the last. Learning really is everything. And as much as my kids today say, “awwww Dad, another story, another lesson?”, I smile inside at their eye roll and grumble, knowing that somewhere in there, is a future tale to someone, perhaps even their own children, should they be as fortunate as me. And they’ll tell their kids about how tedious it was to transition from the iPhone 6 to iPhone 7.
So what is this blog about?
Learning. Risk taking. And learning to take risks. It’s about hearing all too often the scornful, “WHAT are you DOING?” And realizing that scorn often represents the winds of consensus. And in life, as with investing, the hard thing to do, and the right thing to do, are often the same.
The anti-question, the correct question is, “WHAT are you NOT doing? And WHY not?”
Lean into the wind.
(and so it begins…)
*Not just any rock: curling stones’ special granite comes from Scotland. Curling, perhaps the oddest sport at the winter Olympics, probably originated in Scotland. The stones used to play it are made from the granite of one tiny volcanic island there. The curling stone is specified by the World Curling Federation, which requires a weight between 38 and 44 pounds (17.24 and 19.96 kg), a maximum circumference of 36 inches (914.4 mm) and a minimum height of 4.5 inches (114.3 mm).
** Don’t worry, you’ll use it, even if it’s to win a beer from your mates.
After living in Paris, France, for the last five years where the children were in French schools for three years (more on that later), becoming fluent in the French language, and the American School of Paris the final two years, we decided as a family we enjoyed living and learning “Off Piste”.
As background, my wife and I met in San Francisco in the Investment Banking world in the 90’s. Stacia and I are in the fortunate position (we are not confused, we count our blessings daily) that our vocation and our avocation are the same. We love to work, invest together, and travel. Our time since leaving the comfy confines of San Francisco (Marin actually) and Greenwich, has yielded extraordinary exposure to people and places and interests and opportunities to which we would never have been exposed had we stayed the traditional course. Since leaving the US, we have invested in Europe, Asia, Africa, and other emerging and frontier markets. Our children have each stamped nearly 40 passport country stamps.
As such, we realized that we have one and only one window in which to take our kids on a crazy, magnificent, immersive learning experience that overlaps our business interests. We will spend the upcoming year traveling to Asia and Africa, with an amazing STEM tutor in tow. But that’s where the story begins. This is by design not “colors of the flag” and “country population” learning. With a big assist from business contacts and knowledge we’ve gained from our travels, we will attempt to expose to a manner of learning which we feel is the future of education. Immersive, experiential, applied learning. And it is this ongoing process which we will capture on this blog, in video, and in photos.
Our Tutor in Tow, Arthur Gugick, is an award-winning STEM teacher who I knew well from Penn. He was once studying to be an astronaut, yet outgrew the then height requirement, and perhaps the fighter pilot mentality proved daunting. He is deep is Math, Astronomy, Physics, and Computer Science. He has taught grade K-4 in a Montessori format, a Middle School principal, and an HS math teacher. And he is a LEGO Master, for real. Look him up!
Our three children are different ages and have different interests, making for an interesting mix of possibility.
Nicholas (13) is best characterized as the kid that loves anything that “plugs into a wall”. If it’s computer related, he’s goofy about it. He is a video and movie making geek, a voracious reader, and a piano player.
Alexander (11) is a soccer fiend and loves writing, singing, space, science and being in front of the camera. Dry-humored, quiet, and observant. The philosopher-scientist.
Annika (7) is a mess of blond madness, sharpening her elbows to fight her way through her brothers to gain attention. Funny, bold, and unstoppable.
These individual characteristics inform our experiential learning locations and ideas. In addition to meeting the necessary traditional required learning, “the checkboxes” of reading, writing, math, and science as it were, each location has an overlapping possibility and will ideally drive an immersive learning experience. Over the course of the 2017 and 2018, we will immerse ourselves in Kampala, Uganda eating lake fly burgers. We will visit Cote D’Ivoire to visit cocoa bean farmers and follow the trade all the way to the factory in Abidjan, Cote d’Ivoire, where rumors of child slave labor persist. Hopefully, this will help keep the kids fresh in their French language. Nicholas will work the kitchen in a Zambian hotel. We will learn photography from a famous photo artist in Sub-Saharan Africa, on a shoot of elephant villages at night. A chimp sanctuary on an Island on Lake Victoria in Uganda will provide the backdrop for documenting chimp activity and socialization research. In short, we are more constrained by time and over commitment, than a dearth of ideas and possibility.
Ambitious? Yes. Exciting? Insanely. But something we felt we must do.
We have chosen six overarching themes that are common to people all over the world, as cues and clues to guide immersive learning topics and our video catalog.
1. Tradition expressed in music, art, and food.
2. Family, and the gift of graciously gifting and receiving.
3. Education, as practiced all around the world.
4. Applied technology. A visit to a robotics development center in the New Territories in China. We look forward to lessons from a videographer and his partner located in Nairobi, Ahmed (Kenyan borne Iranian) and his Egyptian partner Wail, who used to shoot for Vice Media during the Arab Spring revolt in Cairo. They will introduce us to their craft in an effort to begin to learn video storytelling, production, and editing.
5. Soccer, as a universal language. Each part of the excursion will begin and end with the passing of a special globe soccer ball, around the world, to new people and new countries. We discovered while living in Paris, that one can pass a ball to anyone and you get two things in return. A smile and a ball passed back.
6. A world advancing and lives improving. The world is really a small sandbox and improving far faster than most realize. More on that later.
And so it begins.
