My obligation is to the owners of Barclays, my shareholders. They hired me. People who criticise compensation for individuals in isolation at, say, BarCap, individuals who don't work in the U.K. and are competing with U.S., German or Asian banks, they should look at all these factors.
There is no way that we know what is going on between the African American and the Asian American. We don't understand what an Indigenous American is. We don't understand what a Latino American is.
I saw an opportunity to use a restaurant to identify a lot of my issues and concerns with being an immigrant in America, and Asian in America, and a young person in America.
People like to say that East Asians in general, and Japanese in particular, are not very expressive: there's that term 'inscrutable.' But often, Europeans just don't get the Asian codes. Believe me, the message is being expressed OK.
Asian people are very practical and come from a conservative world. The parents want their kids to be doctors and lawyers. There are casting calls for Asian children, but once the parents find out the children might miss school, they're opposed to it.
In American math classes, we teach a lot of concepts poorly over many years. In the Asian systems they teach you very few concepts very well over a few years.
I'd heard a lot of Asian people were rooting for me, but I had no idea. I was stunned. They were... impassioned, especially compared to Japan. I couldn't even have anticipated that kind of welcome.
People lament that there's no roles being written for South Asian or Muslim characters. But their parents don't want their children to go into the entertainment field. You don't get it both ways.
