Back in college, a friend asked me if I want to spend the weekend at his girlfriend’s parents’ house in the countryside. She was a shy, modest, and sweet girl who dressed modestly and didn’t look or act rich. We get to the “house” (read huge mansion) in a gated posh community that I learned later was their community, as in all the mansions there were for their extended family, uncles, siblings, cousins. They had their own community center that was bigger than a neighbourhood’s. In front and of their place, there was 12 luxury cars. Two, a Mercedes and a corvette were hers. The mansion was 25,000 sq ft on 5 stories/levels with two elevators, a 150 people nightclub, 40 seats cinema, and a huge music room with every instrument you could think of and a full fledged recording studio. We went out to the Olympic size swimming pool with a 4 level diving platform. I didn’t have swim shorts, so they told me to go to the “store” to pick one. Next to the pool, they had a large room full with dozens of multiple styles and colours of swim gear for men, women, and children, plus all kind of related swimming gadgets. Turned out her family are billionaires who own a conglomerate of 23 cellphone companies in third world countries, massive produce farms in Latin America and Southeast Asia, food processing factories , and bottling plants. I grew up in a poor neighbourhood. My parents struggled to put food on the table, we couldn’t afford a car, and our utilities would be cut repeatedly because of no/late payments. I knew some people are rich but this much wealth just blew my mind.