You all love Warren Buffett, right? Would you pay $2.1 million to have lunch with the oracle of Omaha like this Chinese investment manager who decided to pick up the tab by taking part in a high-stakes online charity auction?
Zhao Danyang, 36, will have lunch with the US billionaire at a Smith and Wollensky steakhouse restaurant in New York. He can bring seven friends to enjoy Buffett’s company for, oh, maybe two hours. Three hours max… maybe.
That’s serious pogi points if you like to project a certain image. Now if you just want to be generous and donating millions of dollars to charity is your kind of thing, why not get a lunch with Buffett into the bargain?
Generosity is a curious thing. On the one hand, the world needs more of it. An interesting list of random acts of money kindness in this article have made life a lot more livable for quite a number of people.
I have also said in a previous post that we can’t always expect people to pull themselves up by their bootstraps and that there will be times we will be called to give till it hurts — and we should.
On the other hand, (and I type this with a mountain of misgivings) sometimes we are too generous for our own good. A friend said she was looking at her credit card bill for June and found that she paid almost P6,500 for restaurant meals. The funny thing is, she could have pared that down to P1,500 if she wasn’t as generous in footing the bill. After all, her lunch mates –- colleagues and friends — were not exactly welfare cases.
At a Money Makeover dinner with Augustus J.V. Ferreria last December, Bianca* was quick on the draw when the bill came. Oh, the kind-hearted sermon that one brought about! Joe advised all of us to develop the habit of dividing the bill when we dine out with friends and colleagues.
There are many other ways we can be too generous for our own good. In the same vein, there are also many ways people can be ridiculously stingy! Oh boy, I’m sure you know the type.
From a scale of one to ten, ten being the most stupidly generous and one being terribly stingy, where do you stand?
July 7th, 2008 at 6:43 am
What is charity then?
For me charity is helping someone by empowering them. there are many ways to this: 1) you can help a house helper who has stopped schooling due to financial problems by sending them to night school or vocational school. 2) by contributing P450 a month, you can send a less fortunate child to school thru World Vision. 3) or sometimes helping doesn’t involve money at all. I met a Filipino pastor when I used to work in Singapore who runs his own computer shop there. He conducts free computer classes to Pinay DH in SG on Sundays in his shop (so instead of engaging in “chismisan” during their day off with their fellow DH, they empower themselves by attending these classes).
So, you see, charity doesn’t have to mean giving until it hurts. And oh, it doesn’t have to involve many people. You cannot change the world overnight. But you can change the world by helping one person at a time….
July 5th, 2008 at 6:06 pm
@mzkukuro,
Ako naman nakikipag unahan kasi minsan-minsan ko lang sila makita.
yes, my friends won’t allow me to pay
@Salve,
Minsa pag may kakuwentuhan akong ibang OFW, ayaw ng magpakita sa mga barkada nila pag umuuwi kasi magastos daw
July 5th, 2008 at 9:22 am
mzkukuro, good for you! my barkada has for the past few years relegated one house to be our tambayan and we eat there instead of going out. last time we had an oyster party. imagine 200 pesos for a big bucket of fresh oysters. and i mean big bucket, as high as my waist! we even had take-home. i guess as we grow older, we treasure more the conversation than the loud music, huh.
July 5th, 2008 at 9:19 am
hachiko, long time no hear! dutch treat at weddings?!! no kidding. let’s import that here instead of plasticware! you are so right about birthdays and weddings as bankruptcy events. gotta keep that in mind: my seven year old is turning 8 this month and i’m starting to get into the groove of being a party planner!
July 5th, 2008 at 9:17 am
nina, bait nga ng mga friends mo