“I want to join the study industry,’ my teenage daughter suddenly blurted out, as she lay sprawling on the couch, with earphones tucked in and busy with her phone.

That startled me. As far as I could make out, all she studies was Korean pop groups and bubble tea. Study industry? Does she mean education? Am I seeing light at the end of a tunnel?

“You mean education?” I asked.

Suddenly realizing I was talking to her, she removed her earphones and asked: “What?”

“By study industry, you mean education? You want to be a teacher or a lecturer?” I clarified.

“Daaaad,” she said in exasperation, rolling her eyes. Her standard reply when I ask something.

“Who wants to do that? No, I mean I want to join these people who conduct studies for government projects,” she was being uncharacteristically patient with me now. Usually, her answers stop with that roll of her eyes.

“Why?” I was feeling like the guy in the Hurt Locker movie approaching a landmine as I ventured one more step.

But there was no explosion. “Because it is a cool way to make money and easy-peasy,” she replied.

God, from where do these kids pick up these words. “You think so?” I said leaving the door open for more enlightenment.

“Look, if I am going for a job after graduation, what will I get?” she continued before her mom, who was busy with her phone, could dish out her regular advice of getting a bank job or becoming a civil servant.

“Long hours at work and low pay, right? Why would I want that when I could make a couple of millions in a few years and get out of here?” she was getting slightly excited about that thought now.

“You can make that much in a couple of years?” I was now ruing my ignorance. I have been working for decades and still haven’t hit the million-dollar savings mark.

“Yeah, take a look at this,” she said flashing the screen of her phone.

“This study for nine kilometer-long Kai Tak monorail costs HKD92 million. That is about 10 million for each kilometer and in just 11 years they determined it was not a good idea.”

“I am not greedy. I don’t want more than HKD2 million. So, all I need is to get a part of that study, maybe half a kilometer,” she was making some quick calculations in her little head.

I was glad that she wasn’t greedy though as a parent I was disappointed by her lack of ambition.

“But the project was worth HKD12 billion,” I said, hoping maybe she would see that what she was looking at was just the crumbs.

“Daaad,” she said again. “That is just for big guys, like developers. We will never get into that league.”

Sometimes teens surprise you with their maturity and understanding of the world. I was impressed.

“But don’t you need to know how to conduct a study and make sure it is accurate?” I was still not convinced of her new-found enthusiasm.

“Nah,” she said dismissively. “Look at all the studies done before. The Macau-Zhuhai bridge, the Express Rail … all of them get buried deep with the foundation of those projects. No one looks at the original findings after work on such projects starts.”

I was getting impressed by her understanding of the system. “So, how are you going to do it now?” I said with a new respect for my daughter, ignoring her mom, who has by now started rolling her eyes at me.

But my daughter didn’t bother to answer me and as she tapped away furiously at her phone.

“This is it,” she said suddenly. Clearly her eureka moment has arrived.

“I should start planning to get a share of this ‘mother of all studies’ that is coming up. The Lantau Tomorrow plan. That study itself is worth more than half a billion,” she said with an excitement.

I decided not to respond and left her alone to chart out her future plans, realizing the teens of Hong Kong are much more wiser than me.

(A fictional satire written by Hari Kumar, who is a journalist based in Hong Kong.)

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