WALKING THE BRIDE DOWN THE AISLE …

On February 5, I fulfilled a traditional Japanese social “duty”: facilitating — as formal “go-between” or surrogate father-of-the-bride — at least three marriages in one's lifetime. Earlier, I had performed this duty twice, in Japan. This time, in New York, it involved one of the daughters of our former neighbours in Tokyo, who was getting marned to an American doctor from Tennessee. I replaced her late father at the ceremony in New York and the stylish reception at New York's Plaza Hotel.

An extraordinary thing happened on June 28 this year. Marc Schoenfeld, our Controller at AMRO in New York, called me to say there was a great number of unpaid bills outstanding, sent to different branches and Head Office departments, some going back 2 or 3 years. Although he said that most of the amounts were small but the total sum “substantial,” he gave me no hint of how much. Suddenly, I “saw” an amount before me: $17,152, and I asked him if this was the total amount of the claims. He said: “That's close — but how do you know?” I told him I just “saw” the figure — it had just come to me.

Later he sent me a slip from his adding machine, showing that the exact amount had been $17,153.68. The difference of $1.68 he had marked as “PSYCHIC Write-off.”

It's not the first time this sort of thing has happened to me, but certainly the most striking instance.