Once upon a time I was 23 years old and the year was 1986. I had purposed to either join an investment bank or a management consulting company. I had interviews with both types of organizations and miraculously, despite a tough recession year, I was hired to be a management consultant. That year 21 deposit taking cooperatives were put into receivership (or "administration") because they became insolvent with the economic downturn. My firm was made responsible for 2 of them, and guess who had the main working role of reviewing their loan portfolios and leading the process of creating a computerized database of all depositors. I had to learn fast and I was working day and night. There was a stretch of 3 days that I worked without going home. You can say that I earned quite a reputation in the firm, especially among the leadership that included some very prominent people in Malaysia today. Daniel had a similar experience but on a much bigger...