Tag: Chapter1

Year 2 of high school, there was a roaring trade of cards with famous football players picture and statistics. And I mean roaring as in kids would happily hand over their lunch money and/or their allocated chocolate bars, in order to acquire Johan Cruyff’s card.

A few streets down from the local high school, underground in a high rise building, there was this tiny shop that specialised in selling second hand goods. From magazines, to matchbox cars, to wallets, to football player cards, of course. So hidden out of sight, it could qualify for the Marketing un-Genius of the Year award, hands down. But obviously very cheap rent for a very low turnover business.

Not that I understood any of that as a 14 year old. All I knew was I could buy Cruyff’s card for about 10 drachmas and re-sell it for 40, even 60 on a good day. To this day I have no idea how the idea came to me, but instead of just selling the cards for a nice 400 to 600% profit, I decided to create a “club”.

The cost of being in the “club” was just 30 drachmas per week. Being in the club meant you could then buy as many cards as you wished for just 20 drachmas each card. They would order the cards, pay me in advance, and I would deliver in a day or two from my friendly Marketing un-Genius down the street, who by the way felt sorry for me and gave me a discount because I was buying so many cards. 

The smarter kids would buy 20-30 cards from me at a time, and then try to onsell them to the other kids. I was Top of the Food Chain /  King of the Jungle for about 6 months, then the fade passed and a lot of kids got stuck with hundreds of almost worthless cards.

As for me, I then went on to selling completed homework assignments in Maths and Sciences. 

Waiter at my father’s coffee and cake shop.

According to National Geographic, on May 22, 1960, the most powerful earthquake in recorded history—magnitude 9.5—struck southern Chile. The rupture zone stretched from estimates ranging from 500 kilometers (311 miles) to almost 1,000 kilometers (621 miles) along the country’s coast.

The event was named after the city most affected by the quake, Valdivia.  The Valdivia earthquake left two million people homeless, injured at least 3,000, and killed approximately 1,655. The economic damage totaled $550 million (more than $4.8 billion, adjusted for 2020 inflation). 

The Valdivia earthquake triggered a massive tsunami that raced across the Pacific. Waves wracked coastal communities as far away as Australia, New Zealand, Japan and the Philippines.

In other news today, I was born at about 06:22 Melbourne time.