Word: buffetts
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...Walt Disney World. "Each evening Melinda arranged different activities." There was karaoke singing in the ship's ballroom, performances of quickie versions of Shakespeare plays, "and a trivia quiz on such things as how many meals we'd eaten, with prizes that Melinda and Bill handed out." When relaxed, Buffett says, Gates has a fun sense of humor. In the Forbidden City they were given a show of huge ancient scrolls that were silently rolled and unrolled by women trained for the task. "There's a $2 fine," Gates whispered, "if you return a scroll not rewound...
When Gates decided to propose to Melinda in 1993, he secretly diverted the chartered plane they were taking home from Palm Springs one Sunday night to land in Omaha. There Buffett met them, arranged to open a jewelry store that he owned and helped them pick a ring. That year Gates made a movie for Buffett's birthday. It featured Gates pretending to wander the country in search of tales about Buffett and calling Melinda with them from pay phones. After each call, Gates is shown checking the coin slot for loose change. When she mentions that Buffett is only...
Last October Gates brought Melinda and their new daughter to visit Buffett and his wife in San Francisco. They ended up playing bridge for nine hours straight. Another marathon session in Seattle started in the morning and lasted--with a break for Melinda to pick up lunch at Burger King--until guests started arriving for dinner. "He loves games that involve problem solving," Buffett says. "I showed him a set of four dice with numbers arranged in a complex way so that any one of them would on average beat one of the others. He was one of three people...
Their relationship is not financial. Buffett, who does not invest in technology stocks, bought 100 shares of Microsoft just as a curiosity back when he met Gates ("I wish I'd bought more," he laughs), and Gates describes his investment with Buffett as "only" about $10 million ("I wish I'd invested more," he likewise jokes). But Gates shares Buffett's interest in the media world and even likes to joke that he has created a digital encyclopedia called Encarta that now outsells World Book, which is controlled by Buffett. So far Microsoft has mainly treated content as something that...
Gates is ambivalent about his celebrity. Although he believes that fame tends to be "very corrupting," he is comfortable as a public figure and as the personification of the company he built. Like Buffett, he remains unaffected, wandering Manhattan and Seattle without an entourage or driver. Nestled into a banquette one Sunday night at 44, a fashionable Manhattan restaurant, he is talking volubly when another diner approaches. Gates pulls inward, used to people who want his autograph or to share some notion about computers. But the diner doesn't recognize him and instead asks him to keep his voice down...