The Slacker Chronicles 2: More Funny Business

By Dr. Kevin Whitten

For 25 years, Dr. Whitten travelled all over the world as a private banker before becoming the owner of a Barbados bank.

In the world of the super rich, private jets and seaside mansions, he became an expert in the workings and deceits of the offshore financial centres.

Through his travels with the famous, the rich, the politicians, the "wanna be's" and the clearly delusional, he has maintained his sense of humour and his detachment.

This is his story. Laugh along as he pulls back the cover and exposes the excesses and foilables of the International Private Banking sector.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tellwell Talent
• Release date: Feb 1, 2019
• ISBN: 9780228809609

Dr. Kevin Whitten

Dr. Whitten is a Canadian lawyer with a Doctorate in Business Administration. He has held a number of senior positions in the banking industry including Vice President and General Counsel for Manufacturers Hanover Bank of Canada, International Counsel for The Bank of Nova Scotia, Managing Director of Alexandria Bancorp Limited and Chairman of Whitten Bank & Trust Company Limited.He has seen life from the Chairman's office and he finds it very funny, if not completely dysfunctional.

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The Slacker Chronicles 2

Copyright © 2019 by Dr. Kevin F. Whitten

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other non-commercial uses permitted by copyright law.

Tellwell Talent

www.tellwell.ca

ISBN

978-0-2288-0961-6 (Hardcover)

978-0-2288-0959-3 (Paperback)

978-0-2288-0960-9 (eBook)

Table of Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 1

You can’t polish a turd.

I would like to think that I came by my social awkwardness and general stupidity naturally.

This didn’t mean that I didn’t appreciate those talented comedians like Jerry Lewis, Howie Mandel and Tom Greene who through hard work and diligent practice were able to develop and hone these very skills.

Only that I was lucky enough not to have to put any real effort into it. In fact, I liked to think of myself as an idiot savant of stupid though probably without the savant part.

If you asked anyone around me as I was growing up, I think there would be a general consensus that I exhibited these qualities very early in life and that they continued with me as I grew and that they followed me into my business career.

I remember in Grade 5 that the misguided Principal of my school decided that it would be a good idea to have representatives from each grade read an excerpt from the Bible during morning announcements which were broadcast to all of the classes. However, like all things in theory, they don’t always work out as anticipated in practice.

In one of those whose says God doesn’t have a sense of humor moments, I was picked to represent my grade.

Though I don’t remember it as such, it must have been that they had asked for volunteers and everyone else stepped back while I was preoccupied with ear wax or some other bodily function.

Anyway, I was assigned Ecclesiastes 3: 1-8.

Now before any of you even begin to think that I am some type of Biblical scholar, you should know I had to google it for reference. No pun intended but thank God for Google.

This was all very jolly but around that time period, a rock group called the Byrds had a very successful song called Turn, Turn, Turn, which was loosely based on these very verses. I believe that the original song was written by Pete Seeger.

I’m being disingenuous here as I googled it and I know full well that it was.

So once the administrative and the sports announcements were finished, I grabbed the microphone in my grubby little hands which, if truth was told, was not a figurative description, and I started reading.

Of course, after each verse, I would repeat the refrain from the song of Turn, Turn, Turn, and by the third verse, I had started singing it. Now I certainly don’t have the best voice, but I like to think I can hold a tune enough to make a song recognizable.

Despite it being an incredibly stupid idea, the Principal went along with it as he mistakenly interpreted my musical rendering as some type of religious epiphany.

It was only when he heard the laughter coming from all the classrooms that he clued in. As it was, I made it as far as verse 7:

"a time to tear, and a time to sew,

a time to keep silence, and a time to speak"

Despite the irony of the verse, a fact that was completely lost on him, he grabbed the microphone back and turned off the loudspeaker system.

Thus, ended that day’s sermon and as it turned out, any more going forward.

I suspect that a huge blow was dealt to religious freedom at that moment, but all things considered, it may have been for the best.

It embarrasses me to say that as I made my way through the school system that this boneheaded approach to what should have been serious situations would manifest itself time and time again.

I remember in a grade 8 history exam, one of the questions asked for an analytical debate of some obscure 18th century American piece of legislation which I’m sure would have had some relevance to me if I had been listening in class, which of course I hadn’t.

Well, rather than twiddle my thumbs for the 30 minutes that were allowed for the question as I didn’t have a clue, I wrote nine pages on how the US Congress, after recognizing how badly they had screwed things up, determined that the Treasury Department should allocate all their funds to build a fleet of new ships to take all the Europeans back to Europe and to leave things well enough alone.

Of course, my smart-ass teacher read my paper out to the whole class for comedic effect and sadly, sniff, this caused me huge psychological damage for years going forward.

I’m sorry but this didn’t happen. Yes, the reading aloud thing did, but I couldn’t have cared less.

I just thought that the whole victim thing was so in vogue that I would try and tie my wagon to it.

Realistically, if this doesn’t get the letters, nothing will.

But seriously guys, it’s a beautiful world out there with opportunity and a chance to define your future and to deal with your past. I’m sure I’m not alone but that whole broken record thing must get tired after a while.

Anyway, back to the teacher.

In all fairness, he did give me a grade of 1 out of 10 for pure storytelling ability which oddly enough made me feel better about myself.

A lot of my other teachers were not so kind.

My grade 10 math teacher took my mark from 83 in the first term to 12 in the second one. Needless to say, I had to write the final. While it will make no difference, I would like to point out that the ski season started early that year.

And then there was my philosophy of religion class in grade 12.

What can I say? I took a lot of bird courses.

Anyway one of the questions on the final exam was to give an in-depth description of the Talmud, one of the two compilations of Jewish religious teachings and commentary that was transmitted orally for centuries prior to its compilation. Yep, google again.

I know you can see a theme developing here but once again, I didn’t have a clue.

I eventually wrote that it was a mixture of earth and water at high altitudes. Needless to say, he didn’t get the joke, and he tried to fail me for the whole year. As you can imagine, this was a very serious consequence as it could have impacted my football scholarship.

Seriously, you thought I could get a football scholarship?

Honestly, get some perspective! Remember where you’re getting this.

Despite all these shenanigans, I still made it into University though I think it was on a wink and a prayer.

I remember the first time I had to give a seminar in one of my political science courses. While I’m not sure what possessed me, I decided that I would do the whole thing while smoking a pipe.

I can only surmise that I thought a prop of this nature would give me more gravitas and distract the other students and the professor from my squeaky voice and the lack of substance in my presentation.

Sometimes a little showbiz and hocus pocus is called for.

While it was another of my stupid ideas, I would not be deterred regardless of the fact that I hadn’t smoked a pipe before and I had obtained all my knowledge in this regard watching old men with yellow index fingers and slightly orange moustaches undertake the activity.

At my scheduled time, I attended at the seminar room and with the other 35 students watching in awe and stupefaction, I proceeded to take out my pipe that I had borrowed from a friend.

I must say that it smelt like some weird species of dead animal and it had some type of brown substance and black ash in the bowl.

While they all watched in rapt silence, I proceeded to knock the pipe forcibly on the desk in order to clear out the residue.

Of course, the pipe snapped in half and its bowl shot across the room and banged off the blackboard.

Even though I could see that most of the students were unsure of the etiquette in such a situation, I noticed that a least a third of them looked like they were going to start clapping. Honestly, who doesn’t like a good show?

I think that with all things considered, what happened was undoubtedly the best thing that could have transpired.

I found out later from my friend that the main purpose for the pipe was to smoke dope with it. If I had lit it up, it definitely could have gone south.

I think it was one of those unique situations where it would have completely been - wait for it….one toke over the line, snicker.

As it turned out, I didn’t really do anything too stupid in law school besides attending.

Well, there was one incident.

While I was famous for leaving exams at exactly 3:50 pm even if they were scheduled to go to 6:00 so that I could get back to my residence in time to watch re-runs of the Rockford Files, I don’t think that this on a whole counted against me, and most people took it in stride.

No, ironically it was the accomplishment of one of my greatest law school triumphs that would be my undoing.

While you may be thinking of course, pride cometh before the fall, you would be wrong not only for using the word cometh, seriously Ben Franklin is on the phone and he wants his buckle shoes back but for thinking I had any pride.

One of the big events for law school students was the mooting competition elaborately staged to give the participants a taste of what it would be like to be humiliated in a real courtroom situation at an Appeal Court level.

Needless to say, it was a sadistic, painful and nightmarish experience.

However, despite this or because of it, I won the school competition and I was chosen with three of my fellow students to represent the law school at the Canadian finals against all the other law schools from across the country.

It was definitely a high visibility accomplishment and we were lauded before the whole student body. Of course, this type of acknowledgement was a double-edged sword.

If you have ever had any exposure to law students, you know that