Committed to improving the state of the world

Here I am in a private meeting room, set up for the purposes of bilateral discussions for delegates to the World Economic Forum. The forum, which I first attended with D 20 years ago in Davos (even brushing past Yasser Arafat and his entourage of security personnel) has since then grown into quite a brand and its meetings has become the de-facto place for the business community to meet. 

I usually attend the East Asia gatherings, first in KL, then Jakarta, Bangkok, Nyapitaw and now in Jakarta again. After several such meetings, it becomes a bit like a school reunions. There is a bunch of people one has interacted with and even know well, and a whole lot of familiar faces because one has seen them over the years.

But unlike school, everyone here has an agenda. To shape some policy, to help their business, to publicize their company, to brand their wares and themselves. 

Likewise I am here to meet relevant people (clients or clients to be of the firm), to understand where they are and share with them our views. But I am also here because whether we like it or not (esp since some have likened it to be a bit of a vanity talkfest), the people here can and do make a difference to society. They are government leaders, and if they are truly listening, may take away an idea or two that will find it's way into the next policy implementation. They are corporate captains who has the ability to move products, services to where they are most needed. 

And nowhere is the need as stark as the view from my room, where it's obvious how the growth in Indonesia, manifested in modern sky rise towers are gobbling up all spaces.

I then flew from Jakarta to HCM City, another 10m+ mega city in ASEAN, and here the development is no less frenetic. Even the notorious district 4, which curiously resembles other poor quarters elsewhere in the world like the Favelas in Brazil, are giving way to new buildings. In fact HCM City is even boldly re planning their city, including turning Nguyen Hue in front of City Hall into a pedestrian mall and building underground tunnels for traffic to flow. 

These developments are common all across Southeast Asia and if you consider that these are being implemented in countries that are not regarded to be the most well run, or having the most competent civil service, you must believe in the future of the region. It is rising despite of inefficiencies, despite of corruption, even despite incompetence. There is a force unleashed.

I am fortunate to be in the middle of all of this, experiencing it, even shaping it. And I am able to contribute to shaping it because I have spent much of my life living, studying and working in this region. Looking back, it's amazing how all the dots are connected. When as a management trainee, I learnt that my first posting was to Bangkok, I wasn't overjoyed. My colleagues and friends were getting assignments in HK, in London. Then my next posting was to Ho Chi Minh City. While some of them got more developed stations. But what then seemed like inferior postings now look like it a divine plan. It allowed me to understand these important countries in the region from the ground level and have certainly helped me function better leading the business across the region. 

Nothing is lost forever

Nostalgia. One word. Many meanings. 

Technically, it's defined as a wistful desire to return to the past, in thought or even in fact, of pleasant times.

In more melancholic terms, it's about how this world is all painful progress, longing for what we left behind. 

But most importantly, if one gets nostalgic, then there has been moments of happiness in one's life. So, nostalgia is really about a happy life and it's accumulated memories: the day I did well in school, the family vacations, the day I got my scholarship, the day I met D, got my first job, the day I proposed and then married D, when we had J, and then M, got promoted. I reminisced about all these happy memories as I watched "Still Alice" on board a KLM flight from KL to Jakarta.

It's a slow movie, compared to the action and violence so common nowadays. There is no wizardry, compared to the computer graphics animation we see everywhere. Even the synopsis sounded slow... But it starred one of my favourite actresses, Julianne Moore, who has never been afraid of playing emotionally scarred role. It looked like Alice was one such character.

I was not wrong. She played a 50-year old woman suffering from an early onset of Alzheimer's. She's losing her mind and even more tragically her happy memories. The body is still there but like a shell. In the movie, she asks, "Who can take us seriously when we are so far away from who we once were?"

As I blog here, I realize that I am imparting my memories to this medium, to be captured in posterity. No, I don't have Alzheimer's and I hope I won't. In any case, it's comforting to know my memories are here.

"For the time being, I am still alive. I have things I want to do when alive. I still have moments when I  pure moments of joy. Please do not think I am suffering. I am not suffering. I am struggling."

‘Struggling to be a part of things. To stay connected to who I once was.’

Photo from lifethroughframes.tumblr.com

Old friends

This morning I woke up really early (5 am) in Doha, Qatar and had a good chat with a chirpy 10-year old over breakfast. C was about to make a 2-hour trip to school - something she does daily - and yet was in amazingly high spirits. Just last night, or rather this morning, I was chatting with her dad, my good old friend J from SQ days and we reminisced about bosses of 25 years ago (they were then as old as we are now) who inspired us. I recounted a test my then SVP held out: drink with me all night and show up at work before me in the morning and that's the measure of your worth. 

Well, J and I caught (first time after more than a dozen years) after staying up late and we both got to our 7am starts on time: he to work, and me for my flight back to Singapore. He's still in the airline industry like many of our TSM (trainee station manager) start group who are in on way or another still in the travel / tourism industry. Our grounding as management in the best airlines in the world meant we were sought after, everywhere. J is with Qatar Airways, which I am now flying on, and by golly it's service, its planes (brand new Boeing 787 Dreamliner), its inflight entertainment, its duty free offering can all rival SQ's. 

We were lamenting how a wildly successful formula, lack of diversity, management who hasn't tasted failure has led to groupthink and myopically so. 

So, it remained for us old boys to stay up late and get up early. I was there in SQ for only 6 years, J for nearly twice that time, some of our group left earlier, some later but whenever we meet we can just pick up from where we left off and continue. We would drive fast in his car (an AMG 6.3 Merc), talk of the universe and religion, bitch about racial/affirmative action policies and the leadership (or lack thereof) in our homeland, drink good scotch and of course listen to music on his spectacularly well put together high end hifi system (Vienna speakers, here I come).

There's something about friendships made when young. Friends from schooldays, first job: when one was innocent. Connections made then have a certain purity about them. Not that colleagues now can't be friends but sometimes our responsibilities, especially the drive to deliver results and to get the best of our teams, can get in the way. I am blessed that, for the most part, I've been able to keep such company of colleagues who are firm friends in the two companies I subsequently joined.

I spoke about J's daughter earlier, and of my own kids in my last post, and I look at the friends they have now and I know they too have made good friends who will become old friends with whom they can connect and connect and connect, anytime anywhere. 

GTC & PLT

No, these are not new expressways in Singapore. Yes, they share the same three letter format acronymistic nomenclature.

These are inventions of corporate entities of my kids when their years still number in the single digits.

First, GTC. Being a boy, J knew about jobs, especially those with uniforms: the police, the pilot, then postmen. He was curious what I did and I explained that I solve problems. Business problems of my corporate clients. Having two uncles who are medical doctors, he got it when I explained it's like I heal... Not people, but companies. The process though is not dissimilar: diagnosis, options, prescription. He liked that. A lot. And promptly declared he would do the same in future. So, I asked him which firm he would work for and he promptly said he would set up his own. The aptly named Good Thinking Company, or GTC in short. I was reminded of this when his sister asked him to review an essay of hers, and there he was, earnestly and may I add intensely, giving good well-thought through advice.

Second, PLT stands for Pretty Little Things. M made me a name card many years ago when she appointed me her salesperson to this boutique of hers that would feature her carefully designed as well as curated articles of beauty. From a young age, she showed a keen eye for things that go well together. While a fan of fashion shows like Project Runway, she was not a blind follower. Hers was an edgier, less mainstream, but trend setting all the same. Here, rather than inheriting dad's attitude  (of nonchalance about what to wear, where my colour and pattern combos on weekend shopping trips would embarrass her), she had nicely picked up her sense of style from her mum, who is the original bohemian hipster and I should add it was this style of D's that first caught my eye more than a quarter century ago in the canteen of the Science faculty. 

So, there you go: two enterprising kids.