Category: Life

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Balance and Focus

Clié and Cleo at The Garden Slug

Its June 2010, and its the school holiday month. Its the wonderful time that kids get to stay home and do ANYTHING they want. As a busy parent, i really wanted to spend quality time with them and hence took 3 days leave in total and created 2 long weekends for myself. It was a good decision, we had a blast.

During the break, its inevitable for me to still think about things in the office. I’m unable to switch off the work brain i have and especially when there is lots of important stuff to do.

I think this whole work-life balance / time-management thing is not easy at all. You can’t have 2 priorities at the same time. I’m caught too many times while driving my family around thinking about stuff in the office. I’m like there, but not really there. I spend in-between times checking emails and thinking about processes. Its like memory leak in a computer, you have the main activity running in the foreground, but in the background memory resource is still being used and sub-consciously still taxing (not in a big way, but still…).

My parents were hard working business people. I recalled spending alot of time in their office when i was young. Saturdays were mainly spent in the office. I remembered playing with PVC pipes and the many type of white plastic joints my parents sold (they are in the toilet supplies business). I remember sleeping under my mom’s desk when i was tired. I remember my parent’s colleagues being my auntie and uncles when i was growing up (too many of them literally saw me grow up). I remember going to countless restaurants to have nice meals with my parents and their European / Italian / Japanese friends which i later found out were suppliers.

To them work and family blended. It was the same thing. There was no such thing as work life balance. Work was life.

My dad being the boss could make it to my school at anytime. I don’t recall him missing any major event in school. My principle called and he came. Of cause there were the more positive events which he made it too.

But life have changed. We are more connected. Alot more is required out of the working class. There is a high need for productivity, efficiency, thinking out of the box, creative solutioning, leading, mentoring, etc. AND there is still a family that we need to allocate our time for.

Its tough to focus and balance. There must be a way and there will be a way. I just hope that my kids have good memories of their dad when they grow up. Yes, I’m actively creating good memories for all of us.

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Let’s Party

From young I’ve loved shows / movies with such format:

  1. Hero has a mission
  2. Hero meets other Heroes
  3. Each Hero has their unique story and ability
  4. A Party is formed
  5. The Party goes and accomplish the mission and does it with style
  6. EPIC WIN!

It could be Oceans Eleven, Lord of the Rings, Heroes and even articles like High Tech Cowboys of the Deep Seas: The Race to Save the Cougar Ace from Wired that gives me a strange kind of high.

I’m in love with the “Party” concept. Its some what like a “Team” but it has a very different feel to it. A “Team” is like… Goal / ROI driven, but for a “Party”, its all about that EPIC WIN!

A party is usually made up of a mix bag of individuals. People with different background, different skills, different life goals, different characteristics, different charisma and more. But however, when they come together, there is a common goal and all these differences compliments one another and the party as a whole is a lot more powerful and can achieve more.

The Party at the work place

In real life, we don’t recruit elves and dwarfs, we don’t wield swords, put on armour and go raid dragon lairs. In real life we also don’t rob banks. In real life, we work as teams on projects and bring back gold coins upon completing quests issued by our beloved clients.

I feel understanding the concept of a Party and how it works, is one step towards the success of the project. The next step would then be to find a party and a party that suits you.

Of cause just putting a bunch of people together will not work. It takes time for the right group of people to gather and to make things more difficult, none of them are actually looking for one another.

So what makes a good party?

Ok let me fast forward into the future that I would like to have. I envision having worked with many different people already and after many years I finally decided to work with a select group of individuals. These individuals together with me love to work with one another because there is a similar frequency, some kind of unspoken affinity. We end up not just being colleagues, not just associates, not just team members, but a close knitted group which not only do amazing work together, but also share life together.

I mean come on, we spend at least 8 hours on weekdays together, that is a huge chunk of our life. Why hang around difficult colleagues or even people you don’t like. Why not integrate work, life & friends, etc. I know its idealistic, but this is really the future I would like to have. So the following is what I think are the key points of a good Party.

  1. Complementing skills – We should know who is good at what so that when work is distributed every one can go do their stuff in excellence and as a group, we can achieve more.
  2. Work style rapport – Everyone is comfortable with different work styles. Some like to plan lots up front, some like things to be agile, some like to talk face to face, some like to just email and IM. Some like clear briefs up front, some like briefs to exclude the solution, some like to solution together. So long as everyone likes a similar style, I think it makes it smooth sailing.
  3. Trust – Once individuals have trust with one another, everyone knows what everyone will do and get done on time. There will be some kind of telepathy. There will be less to worry when there is trust.
  4. Mutual motivation – There will be times when it gets stressful and challenges are difficult or when timelines are tight. Team members will be cheering each other on, helping each other out, buying each other dinner and coffee. Maybe even looking after each other’s kids while daddy or mommy is busy finishing up the last 20% of the work.

So I say, start analysing the people around and keep the suitable ones around.

Does this make us slutty friends?

Just the thought that we like to hang out and work with people who have certain capabilities does on the surface make us kinda shallow. But you can’t help it. Why would you want in the majority of your waking hours be spending time with people who are negative contributions?

There are people who drain the life out of the team with their pessimistic views and offensive language. There are people who always do the wrong thing or sometimes not even around to do anything. There are the people who are plain useless and bottlenecks. Then there are those who spend more time creating drama in the project then focusing on completing the project.

GGG!

Go check out The Future of Work and you will know how I feel about the future.

Its time we go form our Party to achieve blissful productivity so that we can have our constant EPIC WINS!

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Ritz

The sun was slowly setting over the relaxed business district in Singapore. The skyscrapers slowly switch on its lights as the sky grew darker while the tele just murmured on. I was dozing off on the sofa while leafing thru Wired which i bought earlier. The wife was deep in sleep, there was no fixed plan for the next 24 hours. It was blissful peace.

We visited the Ritz Carlton as its been a long time since we took a break as a couple.

The last time we stayed in this hotel was in 1999 when we had our traditional Chinese wedding rites. 11 years on, we now have 2 kids and expecting another in a few months time. How time flies.

There was some commotion happening downstairs and we realised that evening was also the opening of The Helix Bridge on Marina Bay. We manage to catch the fireworks and felt really blessed to be able to see the fireworks so up close.

Other then going to the pool and chilling at the pool side, the best thing to do was to dip in the bathtub and enjoy the scenery. What luxury.

Also when in a nice hotel, the other good thing to do was to order room service. Nice, very nice.

On the way back home, my wife said “Thank you” and that sincere appreciation made all the arrangements well worth it.

Till next year.

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Forgetting who you are

I really like my Puma El Rey slip-on shoes. No laces, easy to put on, its comfy, it looks great, my jeans sit well on it, its not a track shoe, yet not a formal work shoe, yet I can wear it to work. I find it hard to buy shoes, but when I saw this, I knew at once i’ll be getting it. The best part is it all happened so quickly without much thinking and its done.

Unfortunately, not all decisions are made so instantly.

I’m faced with decisions everyday and not all are as easy as buying a pair of shoes. Sometimes in order to get something done, I become another person. I put on the negotiator mask to make people meet halfway. I put on the emphatic mask and totally understand issues individuals are facing hence not push them so hard. I put on the solutions mask and try to come up with plan B and C if needed.

Slowly, but surely, i’m getting used to how it is. Slowly, the behaviours that comes with the masks creep into my habits and slowly I become who i need to be.

Do I like it? I don’t know. But no matter what, I’ll not forget who I truly am.

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Bandung 2010

This school holiday, Pearl planned for the whole family to make a trip to Bandung to visit her sister’s family. They were there as her husband was posted there for a year and the family is putting up at a nice big house that could accommodate us and more. My in-laws went too. The kids were counting down to this day since mid Jan i think.

The house is really huge. This corner have got to be my favourite as it had a loft. The sheer existence of this loft broke the structure of the whole house. So its quite clear that the architect meant for this part of the house to be a key feature. Its also cool that the pendant globe lights added to its ambience at night. This is just one of the three “living rooms” of the house.

The family had a house keeper, a baby sitter, a gardener and a driver. So these 4 people were somewhat at our calling. I so can’t get use to this.

The first morning, we went to De’Ranch. It was an outdoor place where kids could ride horses, do some fishing, do rock climbing, etc. Its quite a nice day out with kids kind of place.

Cleo loves the horse ride and thinks the cowboy outfit suits her well. She somehow knew that cowboys had guns.

Most of the other days was spent travelling around Bandung going from factory outlet to malls, to salons, etc. This here you see is the Sensa Hotel at Cihampelas Walk (aka CiWalk). It really stood out from what Bandung is.

But the hotel that i really wanted to see was Hilton Bandung as a good architect friend of mine told me its one of the nicest buildings in Bandung. I managed to pass by it at night and it looks great even at night.

One of the days was spent almost fully at Bandung Supermal. It had a huge indoor amusement park Kota Fantasi. There was even a rollercoster, bumper cars, games galore.

The amazing thing was Cleo wanted to sit the bumper car and she sat for a total of 6 times and she is really good at driving. She also did the row boat thingy twice.

For late afternoon tea and dinner, we went to Sierra Café and Lounge. Its way up in the hills and overlooking the city of Bandung. Its surprising to see such nice place in the middle of nowhere. The interior is beautiful, but i went out to take a look and the external is skeletal. Its not even done up properly. I guess thats just how things are. I think this is some kind of agile construction. lol…

Cleo ran off too quickly, did not manage to get her for this family shot.

Since mommy and grandma wanted to experience the very amazingly affordably wash and blow, the kids also joined in. They even got their nails done.

We found out that these girls that worked in the salons are not even getting SGD100 per month as basic salary. What a huge difference our economies are.

Both girls also got their hair cut at Paris Van Java. Its now super nice with layer and all. While Cleo was getting her hair done, Clié and me had 2 games of Congkak and she won both times. That evening also went to catch Alice in Wonderland at the mall.

Since the house had a little BBQ shelter, we had a BBQ. Cool weather, hot food, beer and my loved ones.

The cool thing is that charcoal was not used, instead we used coconut husks. Apparently its very common. Lots of smoke, but other then then, no soot. way cool.

During this trip, the girls got exposed to another country, a country not like Singapore. They were genuinely curious why were there kids begging on the roads, why were there potholes everywhere. Clié asked me, “Daddy, why the road have so many holes”, instead of answering her, i asked her “who do you think should take care of the roads?”, she said “Us! Because we must protect our environment.” KUDOS to MOE for teaching the green movement. I tried to explain the concept of government, but i think its too big a concept for the girls for now.

Cleo enjoyed the trip tons and she looks great with bangs and her new layered hair. Clié spent good time with her cousin, but that also mean the fights and quarrels. We managed to do some decent shopping, experienced another culture, got out of the daily routine for a week and its all over in 9 days.

The best part for me for this trip is where I got to spend time with my 2 girls one-on-one and had interesting conversations. I even introduced Clié to Taylor Swift and printed out Lyrics for her, so now her favourite songs are “Love Story” and “Fifteen”.

One big reminder to myself, always check the weather. Don’t assume Indonesia is warm.