Inspired

I was asked to be liaison officer to Prof Tommy Koh for an event over the week. I was inspired, humbled and impressed not only by his towering intellect but also his humility even though he has reached a very high station in life.

Back in JC and later at NTU, I was introduced to Maslow's Theory of Need. Later, as a student of organisational behaviour, I became interested and intrigued by what Maslow termed self-actualization. A high sounding word and seemingly idealistic.

But in Prof Koh, I came to see self-actualization in flesh. At 69 years old and a distinguished diplomat internationally, I do not think he is interested in material gains nor in status. Wherever he goes, people will recognise him and flock to shake his hand. Not only the international delegates, but the local delegates, even the local security guards and policemen will wave and acknowledge him. The point is, these people know that he will care and he will care enough to return a smile, a wave or a hand shake.

I saw him work on one of his speeches one morning. Totally focused on the task at hand, he painstakingly wrote his speech by hand. I had the honour of assisting him to convert that into softcopy by typing using a PC. I am framing the few pieces of paper up!

At 69, he is not going easy on his work. He was involved in drafting the ASEAN charter last year, and most recently he was agent for Singapore in the Pedra Branca dispute and I am sure he still has many responsibilities and projects on hand.

So this is self-actualization. Knowing that one can contribute and one does, producing work and demanding a high standard of work with the aim of serving country and humankind.

My first cartwheel

Tonight, I attempted my first cartwheel, a not very standard one, at the ripe age of 33. Before I tried it, I was terrified, first, of falling on my head and cracking my neck, or toppling over. Second, of being laughed at for doing such a lousy cartsheel.

As it turned out, none of these happened. Although I probably performed an ugly cartwheel, no one laughed, and I even fell twice on my buttocks, but I felt a huge sense of relief for overcoming my mortal fear of injuring myself.

I told my coach, when it was finally my turn to try, that I was scared, and I really was. A very encouraging fellow student told me to remember to lock my arms and I will never injure myself. So I listened to him and did just that, after breathing in heavily in and out and psyching myself to just do it.

It was quite fun in the end. I will practice it in Botanic Gardens over the weekend on the grass patch, just in case I fall again. And I probabkly will.

My wushu classes

Recently, at my family blog, I have been posting many youtube videos of wushu or what is commonly known as kungfu. And that is because I have recently picked up wushu, signed up at a nearby school and attended my third lesson yesterday. Today, my calves and stomach were sore from performing the exercises the coach taught.

So over the next few months, I will blog more about my experiences especially from the experience as the 'uncle' of my class -- although I joined the adult class, all of the other students are my juniors, one as young as 16.

I thoroughly enjoy my lessons and try to give my all during the classes. Well, I paid good money for it and I better make use of the time. This is a behaviour I can see also in my other classmates. This contrasts with my younger days as a primary school student learning Taekwondo at the CC near my house, totally clueless on what was happening and hence no commitment.

For my wushu class, it helped also that the coaches were very friendly and helpful. The owner of the school was a former national wushu team member and the rest of the teaching staff are from wushu colleges in China, so they are both very knowledgeable and equipped with the people skills that teachers should possess.

I decided to take up wushu because I wanted to be learning something new, and something different, which helps the brain to think out of the box. Wushu, is actually not about fighting, and really about training firstly the spirit and secondly the body, keeping it supple and healthy.

I also came to realise that even the very simple wushu moves we see on the movies are not easy to execute, and this journey for me is a very long one. And that's what will keep me going, because there is so much to learn.

Why fire drills are important?

I remembered as a student, fire drills were already being practiced once or twice every year. And I actually welcomed them, because it is a break from class, and most of the time, after gathering at the school field, we do not need to do anything but wait for the teachers to count strength, and we can chit chat and play. But of course if we got too noisy, the teacher will scold.

In working life, fire drills disrupt meetings and can be a really unwelcome distraction. For professions like bankers where every minute is money earned/ lost, fire drills could be a real pest.

Still we all put up with it, since it is mandatory.

But what is the actual reason behind having these fire drills? Most people will know that it is so we can familiarise ourselves with the route and gathering point. But there is a deeper meaning.

In this month's TIME magazine, it was reported that contrary to expectations, when disaster strike, people do not panic and scramble to escape, as movies would have us believe. The truth is most people will do nothing. The article cited a few disasters for example, when a ferry was sinking, survivors recounted that most people were stunned into inaction, simply standing or sitting down and waiting for the end to come.

So fire drills become a sort of a reflex action, an SOP programmed over time into us, so when a real fire happens, hopefully, the brain can count on this process stored in its memory and summoned the legs to move towards the staircase.

So, take fire drills very seriously.
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Read the TIME article here.

This is why you should always vett your own work.

This time goodbye for real...

*I thought I would make my first post here a flaky one, in the spirit of being 'true to character', but flipping back over GB's last few posts, it wouldn't be right to spoil the current pensive atmosphere with my flakiness so I'll leave that for now and instead present you with what a flaky arts graduate writes when she's trying to be serious.

Today I had plans to meet GB and CK for dinner and I thought this would be a perfect opportunity to come in an clean out my 'stuff'. Little did I expect the horror that would await me when I walked to my cubicle - a barren, desolate, sterile space - for a moment I thought I had walked into the wrong cubicle by mistake.

No filthy fan, no cheap deskside moisturizer, no dusty candle, no pictures of ridiculous things on the cubicle wall, no frivolous papers on the desk, no used files lying around the floor - this couldn't be my cubicle - but of course it was; my cubicle had been the victim of the overzealous admin staff. (As GB put it, "they couldn't wait to see you gone!")

The truth is, nothing really important had been left at the cubicle. One of two things had practical importance; I had prepared a file of important papers for my successor to refer to, and my bank book had been left in another folder. In the end, objects like these are replaceable. Not quite easily, but still, ultimately, replaceable.

It was therefore a little surprising to me that I was so upset over the whole thing.

Dinner was a nice distraction from my disconcert but it was when I finally got a chance to think about it when I got home, that I realized the reason behind my perturbed spirits.

My 'site of memory' had been erased - Pierre Nora's original concept of the 'lieu de mémoire' refers to "any significant entity, whether material or non-material in nature, which by dint of human will or the work of time has become a symbolic element of the memorial heritage of any community".

Obviously my use of the concept is a bastardization of Nora's original idea, but I believe that they are both in the same spirit. Over time, (11 months is a long time for someone my age), my cubicle and the objects in it had all come to acquire the tint of memory.

The way I cleared out my cubicle was telling. Documents involving work, invoices and suchlike were the first to go; they were the easiest to let go of. Over the week or so that I slowly cleared out my desk, layers of memories were unsettled and dispersed. The last to go, were the objects that I found hardest to take away.

You could say they were the objects that had acquired the hardest accretions of memory. The ticket stubs at the bottom of my drawer from a movie I had enjoyed with someone who had meant something to me. The plastic bags that represented the yet-to-be-resolved inner struggle between the urge to recycle and the equivalent pull towards the apathetic and lazy desire to just throw out everything. The candle given to me by a friend who had insisted that every desk requires a conversation piece; which surprisingly did later on serve as the nucleus of my first conversation with someone who turned out to be a kindred soul.

These were all the memories and more that were taken from me when I came back to my empty cubicle and found myself robbed of a chance to say a last goodbye. More importantly, these were some of my most important ties to the entire 11 month experience. Sitting at my desk, which now felt alien, the weight of everything fell on me - this place, where I had spent a very happy 11 months was not my place anymore.

Of course, I could promise to keep in touch with all my friends, and once in a while, I could probably have gotten someone to sneak me into the building, but I'm fooling myself if I believe it can ever be the same. C'est la vie?

Who says big ideas are rare?

An insightful and illuminating essay that argues the importance of the 'wisdom of crowds', of collaboration, of bouncing of ideas, and definitely not strict top down management; however, ideas without some discipline may really only remain ideas.

History also proves that the big big ideas are not unique to only one person, for example, the invention of the telephone and the theory of calculus.

So ideas are out there, waiting to be discovered, and it could happen to you and me.

Click on the URL: http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/05/12/080512fa_fact_gladwell/?currentPage=1

Mr AWS coming back

Via email yesterday, Mr AWS has confirmed that he will be back for good by late Jul 08.

Sorry. Make that Dr. AWS.

Congratulations, Dr. A.

Now who's feeling stupid?

I was in a meeting today with Professor Tommy Koh. He recounted an experience with a minister from a north african country. He joked that the minister made him feel stupid, because the minister had 2 PhDs. And this coming from a full professor. Although the rest of us (in the meeting) laughed together at the anecdote, but perhaps in our hearts, we were all laughing at ourselves (at least I was), because I do not even have a single PhD.

Asking questions

I was thinking that in a democracy, the greatest attribute of the system is the right to ask questions and the duty of persons in charge to answer these questions in public. This does not apply just to political systems, but also management systems. In the same way that democracy in political systems allow for flow of ideas and transparency, democracy in management can result in a healthy exchange of ideas and therefore reaping of the 'wisdom of crowds'.

And it is my view that to determine how democratic an organisation is, and therefore how healthy its base of diverse ideas is, can be seen from how it encourages questions.

It is not merely the form eg of having organised a forum where there is a Q&A component (but nobody asks any questions) but the climate, culture and strategy of encouraging questions and hence benefitting from it.

3 factors of success

Heard over Radio 1003 (ok, I know it is a uncle channel) that an oil tycoon has recently passed away and these were his 3 factors for getting rich/ being successful:

A) Start/ Own your own business
B) Be thrifty
C) Weekends are not rest days

Things doesn't look so good for me! First, I have no inkling of business sense. Second, I like to sometimes buy something on a whim. Third, I like my work-life harmony. That's why I am not rich.

Farewell to Jiaxia

The lunch today was aptly called "A Shamelessly Self-Organised Farewell Lunch". "Shameless" may be too strong a word to use, but true to form, my soon-to-be former staff Jiaxia organised her own farewell lunch (for her impending departure from our organisation) because she was worried that no one will throw one for her.

But since this is a 'farewell' post, I will just write the good stuff and consign the bad stuff to my memory. But more on that later, let's take a look at the photos.


It has become almost a practice, but for our 'work' lunches, we always play Wii. I always try my best (look at my strokes below), although I am not very good at playing games, but I always lose to Jiaxia. Beginner's luck sometimes stay on for some, it seems.

Did I say I want to write some good comments? The list is short so bear with me. I will remember Jiaxia for her total disregard for authority and bluntly asking me questions like "Why do we have to do that?" (when those are questions for me to ask her actually). But being open-minded and accepting of the brashness of young people of Gen Y, these basic questions actually help me to ponder over the basis of why certain things are done.
Also, I will remember her for expanding my vocabulary with fanciful but totally useless words like "flaky" (so now you know who my flaky friend is), "iffy", "somnolent" and many more, which I cannot recall because I seldom use them; ok, so I have used somnolent to describe the state of some people in meetings.
But above all, I will miss her at work because until her replacement arrives, I have no one to arrow work to. Sigh!