Ain’t no fin bro
I am fun, bro
The man wore a sleek ash gray color suit and a navy skinny tie.
He pushed the pedal one last time and let the black bicycle liberally curve Hà Nội’s high street of Phan Chu Trinh before abruptly hopping off.
Swinging a leather briefcase, he entered CornerStone – a luxurious office building that housed several international banks and consulting firms.
I was standing by the entrance gulping water in preparation for a press meeting with JICA when, for the first time in my life, observing a finance bro in his natural habitat.
It was 2019 – pre-COVID era – which made the slice of memory pretty much slimsy.
And I should have indexed it in a locked drawer somewhere in my hippocampus if on that fine summer afternoon, I hadn’t caught a glimpse of Bloomberg Terminal at Tân Sơn Nhất Airport’s domestic boarding area.
The scene was purely fascinating.
Just until recently, when work travels dollied me back and forth between Hà Nội and Sài Gòn, I was able to confirm that the premium economy seats on daily Vietnam Airlines flights from 7pm to 8pm connecting the country’s two economic hubs concentrate the highest density of finance bros.
Here is the hypothesis:
They run from offices to the airport to catch after-work flights for next day’s meetings
There is rarely anyone who books a premium economy seat so frequent passengers are usually upgraded especially on fully booked flights
Performing a flaneur, I spared rapt attention to my fellows who were also queuing to be seated – fit, creased suits probably after a long day sitting in front of Excel sheets, briefcases or backpacks with embroidered company logos, chunks of single-side printed A4 papers which, triggered by attendants’ call for boarding, they were too rushed to slide into carriers.
The whole watching session was amalgamated with the iconic Paris Hilton’s remix of 2024 summer sensational dating ads “I’m looking for a man in finance”.
Observing them, I tried to find anything that can simulate any interest just to find none. So why is the persona of a finance bro that socially desirable?
Promise of stability: the house always wins. I come from where money is?
Easy to understand: explain cash and stocks v.s. crypto currency to your middle-aged, Facebook-addicted parents
Economic crisis means the farewell to the age of innocence (and hey Martin Scorsese later made The Wolf of Wall Street!)
I went to a rural area recently and needed to make an important call. The easiest way to check internet speed, according to the low-tech me, is to watch FullHD Youtube videos at 2x playback speed.
The platform’s algorithm decided to offer me a self-explanatory video in which a woman in her 30s pointed out why she regretted freezing her eggs after two years.
What stuck to me was how she (a management consultant) described women in her clinic’s waiting rooms: high achieving, career-driven with their laptops hustling.
If the finance bro I saw that morning in Hà Nội – without any sign of a corporate slave in a rat race, at least at the dawn of day – is exceptional, what can a woman do to be exceptional – to cut ties with stability, with marriage, with the duty of pregnancy?
“- Least of all, a woman. You need to marry well.
- But you are not married, Aunt March.
- Well, that's because I'm rich.
- So the only way to be an unmarried woman is to be rich?” (*)
I have no answer.
This time 15 years ago, were you crazy over Boys Over Flowers? Gu Jun Pyo must have been the first finance bro girls my age romanticized.
I tried to recall the boy I was having a crush on at the time with the hope to see who I was visualizing my Gu Jun Pyo character with – a nerd who got Singapore governmental scholarship of A*STAR, a smart kid who, at the time, dated the class captain or the neighboring town’s handsomest boy – my aunt’s student – who was waiting to be immigrated and reunited with his family in Orange County?
None of them are financiers now and I don’t know whether it’s even that important.
Till next time,
T.
(*) Little Women https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HKvPWuqOGMo
P/S: Sorry for the delay. It’s that time of the year again: mid-year + end of quarter. There will be no more newsletter for this week since I will be in Đà Nẵng meeting, guess what, VC people.
This week’s top picks
Cube (1997)
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0123755/
Hua Hsu on zines
https://us.carhartt-wip.com/blogs/journal/hua-hsu
The Retrievals