You know how sometimes the best food you’ve ever eaten comes from the simplest non-fanciest restaurant?

Or the best movie you’ve ever watched was on a 9-hour flight where you were simply just trying to kill some time.

Or the most exciting football match you’ve ever watched was your local high school team playing their long-time rivals, and not the super bowl.

Or that time when you went down to the hotel lobby because check-out was at 12, your train was scheduled to leave at 5, and you still had a lot of time to kill.

All you’re expecting is a pleasant cup of coffee, some quiet time to work on your laptop, answer a few E-Mails, make some calls, and call it a day.

That was me last November when I went to Munich.

I was expecting to attend a couple of meetings, all of which got canceled due to the new Corona restrictions in Bavaria.

I was expecting to meet with a few clients, none of whom could make it.

I was expecting to get some quiet time, some work done and get this trip all over with.

What I did not expect was to have a 2-hour-fund-manager-expertise-level conversation with the Vietnamese waiter at my hotel lobby.

I did not expect what looked like an attempt of politeness and small talk to turn out to be one of the most pleasant, passionate, original, and refreshing conversations I had ever had about stocks.

I did not expect the 60-year-old waiter to pull out a piece of paper, front and back, filled with 100 stock names, out of his pocket, as I asked him which companies he was invested in.

I did not expect him to draw his own investment strategy for me, aka. "MAAAM, and its seven pillars” that every good, diversified portfolio should consist of.

I did not expect to meet an insightful man in his late 60s who was primarily invested in his family and believed in generational thinking.

A man who never stopped learning and asking the right questions.

A man, to whom barely any stocks were new, who discovered the stock market very early on and was always eager to spread the knowledge with others.

A man who impressed me in the most positive way; a waiter who gave me investment ideas, and I him.

At that moment, in that hotel lobby, right as he glanced at my laptop and saw the stock charts, he and I had nothing in common, except for our curiosity.

He was curious about the chart I was looking at.

I was curious to know what he was curious about.

You never know what to expect. Life’s like a crapshoot. It can throw anything at you.

What you can do is to welcome any unexpected twists and turns and embrace them as potential opportunities. Eyes wide open, of course.

Here’s to all the unexpected blessings of 2022.

Here’s to you, Tran. Hope to have you on INVESTMENTBABO sometime soon- Cheers #TranCan