As a kid, I hated going back to school after Chinese New Year. Partly because I usually didn’t do my holiday homework, but also because I dreaded The Conversation. Which conversation? Well, the one that starts out with: “How much ang pao money did you get this year?” My friends, who had enough relatives to form their own small country, always bragged about their ang pao stash that amounted to several hundreds to thousands of dollars. Me, I’d be too ashamed to talk about my measly ang pao collection (I have wonderfully generous relatives, but a small family). So instead, I’d awkwardly change the subject to “Hey, so who wants to play Pepsi-Cola?” For many of us, money has always been a painful topic. It starts out when we’re kids, and it doesn’t go away even when we grow up. As Asians, we don’t like ......