We do some sensible, fun things for our quarterly retreats.

This time, there were quite a few of us, so the organizers, Amelia, Jialing and David, got us to do some Tote Bag painting somewhere in sleepy Bishan.

Each of us can pick a blueprint picture to draw on our Tote bag, or we can exercise our creativity and draw one ourselves.

I picked this image of the Totoro from the anime My Neighbour Totoro because I thought it is less complicated and should be doable for “my level”.

We start by tracing the image onto the Tote bag with tracing paper behind it. You will get a line (that will eventually fade over time) like what you see here.

What happens when there is a lack of guidance?

A nice lady guided us through what we were supposed to do. We were taught the function of each item and instructed on how to handle specific images, to remember to blow dry the paint at some point so that the paint doesn’t smudge together.

Here’s me attempting to paint the black lines with the paint onto the bag. It has been almost thirty years since I touch a paintbrush to paint something. While my art has always been a decent grade, and I drew art as part of my extracurricular activity in Primary School, it feels different painting again.

I looked at the black lines that I drew on the Totoro, and I thought: “This looks hideous!”

Then “I think it was a mistake picking this!”

I grossly underestimated how the lines would look when painted. In fact, most of us underestimated how hard it was to paint the eyes and some of us screwed up or nearly screwed up the eyes.

I realised halfway into the painting that:

1. It might not be a good idea to draw the lines before colouring the characters (or was that a good idea?)
2. The eyes were bloody hard to draw bu so important.
3. We have to mix our own color instead of trusting that whatever color that we need was given (duh..)

Learning to Invest Successfully May Not be Too Different

I rediscovered the deep, personal feelings that I went through trying to be a more successful investor.

There were enough times when we tried to do the standard things and we don’t become successful in building up our wealth. There are the easy wins of budgeting and allocating our resources well and funneling our surplus from our income to our portfolio.

Becoming successful in investing is less straight-forward, especially if you try to find individual stocks to own and want to be successful with it. The market is volatile and uncertain by default.

A company you deemed decent and undervalue becomes cheaper and cheaper and too long later, you realize that markets can be efficient or shit companies can become shitter.

The books are often written by people who were more successful.

They would have went through the same experience as us but that was so long ago. They might have forgotten how tough that period was or there might be more critical things to write about.

As young and novice investors, we learn about these gaps or critical questions that we need to deal with before we become successful.

I asked the lady how do I get the unique darker shade to color that big totoro and the lady say she is unfamiliar with and just try to use a darker shade of color.

WTF!

That doesn’t help me! My Totoro will look more hideous!

This mirrors some of my experiences when I try to make sense of investing concepts that I thought were critical. When you ask seemingly knowledgable people, they give you answers that are seemingly WTF.

Sometimes, the best teachers are not the great investors but someone who remembers their own struggles, and are willing to listen to you patiently and explain in a simple manner.

This is how my Totoros turned out.

Looks pretty ok to me.

In fact, they turn out to be much better than I expect (except for the screwed up eye in that little blue one).

This picture may not tell the chaos in the brain trying to get this out entirely.

This is a picture of our work.

I am glad I have Moon, Choon Siong and Zhihan struggling with me together with the Totoros.

A good breadth of knowledge and execution is needed to do many things in life.

A blank canvas on a Tote bag is a good metaphor to your brain and a topic like becoming a good investor.

At first there is nothing and you are trying to paint a beautiful picture.

Along the way, you realize that what people tell you may not work, or is not enough.

You might have to make corrections and modifications.

As time passes, your picture looks more and more like the actual Totoro.

Or that is when you decide to hire a wealth adviser when you realize you suck at drawing Totoros.

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