Very shortly it will be 20 years since my release from Tanah Merah Prison. Not an anniversary that I was looking to celebrate. Hadn’t even occurred to me that it was twenty years already but a request from a newspaper to do an interview on that date highlighted the relevance.
Twenty years on I would have thought I was just celebrating the important anniversaries: weddings and birthdays but I’d already permanently scuppered any chance of celebrating my own birthday by causing the collapse of the bank over the weekend that encapsulated that day in February 1995.
Prison taught me one important lesson. There are things in your life that you can influence and things that you can’t. Focus on the things that you can influence and just forget about the rest; you are just wasting your time and energy.
One of the most common questions that I get asked as I am talking at events is ‘What would you have done differently?’ I could probably think up thousands of different answers, all of which would be entirely truthful, but I don’t bother. I can’t influence or change what happened yesterday, let alone what happened in that period 24-27 years ago. I don’t waste my time thinking about it. It is what it is, and nothing is going to change that. So, the 3rd July 2019 will be the 20th anniversary of my release from prison, just as the 3rd July 2020 will be the 21st anniversary.
I would never suggest that I am a poster boy for common sense as it was thin on the ground during my time in Singapore, but I am a believer that more often than not, common sense will prevail. I don’t live in fear of what drama the next ‘Trump tweet’ will unfurl or what will happen if Boris Johnson is elected the next leader of the Conservative party and takes control of the nuclear submarines. Both, somewhere, deep down, have a modicum of common sense. And let’s face it, if I called either with my advice on how to end the US/Chinese trade dispute or a negotiating stance over Brexit, neither will take the call. So, something that I can’t influence and bar the last writing of that sentence, I really don’t think about it, I have more important things to deal with.
When I think of my time in Tanah Merah Prison, it really is a tiny dot on a very distant horizon. You adapt, you overcome, and you recover. I work hard, I provide everything that I can for my family, and I delight in everything that they achieve. I will always be the Rogue Trader that caused the collapse of the Bank and my successes will always be tainted by that memory, I don’t have a problem with that. I’ve been very lucky since the 3rd July 1999, I am very grateful and count my blessings every day. Not everybody is so lucky.
From early December 1995 until that date, the 3rd of July 1999, I was known as 38406-95. Now my world was changing, I’d be known as Nick again even though there was a lot of uncertainty ahead. Life has been on an upward curve since that point but there is likely nobody that I left behind In Tanah Merah on that day in Singapore that has enjoyed the same good fortune. Several had life sentences, many were incarcerated under a statute called Criminal Law Detention with no release date and some were destined for the gallows.
I was never lucky during my time in Singapore, but I have been very lucky since. I have a wonderful family and I’m still here. It might be a simple philosophy, but it works; just focus on the things that you can influence!