Fortune

“I have a job for you,” the boss said.

When I went to the company, they played a CD. It was a 5-minute recording of a Disney parade song. “We have to make a demo to illustrate what we are capable of,” he explained. “The presentation is tomorrow.”

Mozart was said to be able to recite the whole symphony after listening to it only once at a concert. I was no prodigy. I had to listen to the CD for around 20 times, but yes, I could arrange the music. The computer chip was ready the next day.

The American customer was impressed. After this, I got another offer to prepare a Christmas package. The daily wage, to say the least, was double my current pay even before adjustment for inflation.

Whenever I reached this part of the story, the listener would invariably ask why I left the industry. I never really thought about this seriously. Perhaps one important factor is that I gave all my part-time earnings to my mother then, so money meant little to me. With this, I have never been financially competent, but most of my decisions could be dissociated from the money issue.

Another point is I would certainly be out of job if I kept doing the same thing over the years. The simple musical chips have been eliminated by technological advance long ago. You may argue that if I stayed, I would have learned new tricks and survived time and again. This is probably true, but learn we must. At that point, I simply decided it was time to learn something else that was closest to my heart.