How They Won...

This is not a story of an imaginary pun. This thought association is live and taking place as I type it in the plane. I'm copying and pasting the text as I'm reading it right now from the stranger businessman sitting next to me on our flight to Zurich. He's reading the Financial Times and is too absorbed to see me typing off his copy of the newspaper which I find very amusing. The article reads "The South Korean Won lost 4.7% of its value on fears that the Korean government will stop intervening to support the currency..."

I'm thinking of the journalist who wrote these lines. Did he see the pun but left it there in the hope his readers will see it too? Why couldn't he phrase it otherwise so that the words 'won' and 'lost' don't read next to each other? How can something that is Won be actually Lost?

Perhaps he saw it but left it there intentionally. Perhaps not. My mind veers suddenly into an imaginary ad propping up the 'lost' South Korean currency. A full-page flashing George Soros and Warren Buffet side by side. The world's two most iconic and revered investors describing 'How They Won...' by investing where else in the South Korean Won!

Perhaps the story of how the South Korean Won Lost serves as the perfect metaphor of our times. Something Won Lost because it was all Made off. Who knows why the journalist contrived the sentence so that the words won and lost parade next to each other.

A few years ago perhaps no one would have noticed. But now, amidst the worst financial crisis, nothing of the sort can go unnoticed. I am too tempted to ask my neighbor if he noticed the pun but I hold back. Perhaps it's better that I keep it to myself for now.

My mind drifts again. The most unexpected associations can sometimes come just by taking a glance at the newspaper of the person sitting next to us. Even if I never read the finance and business sections of the news - I admit I find them too boring - at some funny level I guess we can all somehow find humor in words whereby we can then converge or diverge our thoughts.

It's simply amazing, isn't it? The stranger sitting next to me is too engrossed in his reading of the finance world. But what is he reading? He is reading of a South Korean Won which lost 4.7% of its value where as I am reading of a South Korean Won which is 'Lost' and making the most unexpected and unrelated associations in my mind while killing flight time. Does the guy next to me also see anything funny in them?

How can anyone not find it funny, ironic or paradoxical when something that is so Won is also so Lost? The story perhaps starts to make sense to the reader as he jumps to the next article describing how Madoff lost what his rich world clientele had won over the years.

I guess it's only when it is made off from the start that something arguably so hard won can also be so easily lost at the same time...

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