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. 

The ends justify the means

I Last week, he died. 

Growing up, history was one of my favourite subjects. The men and women in the history books were true heroes and heroines. Unimaginably better than the rest of us, esp. to a young kid in a small town.

I never imagined that I could be living in an era with not just one but several people who would figure prominently in the history books. Nelson Mandela for one. Lee Kuan Yew is the other... And I have even met him in the flesh.

History will remember him as the founding father of modern Singapore. And found Singapore he did. In his own image! No wonder the mourning by Singaporeans approached near deification levels. 

He had a vision (formulated through a unique mixture of idealism and pragmatism) and pursued it to reality through a combination of uncompromising demand for results from his subordinates and brutal removal of any opposition that stood in the way of achieving his vision. Yes, he had been dictatorial but look at the result: a country whose GDP per capita has multiplied over 20 times in a mere 50 years. Can you imagine a Sudan or a Papua New Guinea (whose GDP is the same as Singapore's in 1960s) growing at that rate? That's the measure of his achievement! Sure, it's not entirely perfect: gini coefficient is high, there is a foreigner for every two citizens fraying the social bonds. That said, all of this has never been done in history before. So LKY not only belongs in the history books, he has rewritten history.

Historical figures are worth emulating. I am sure many a leader from Africa to Europe, and most certainly in Middle East and the rest of Asia are looking at his methods and justifying their own. A formula at last, they would declare. I am also sure all of them will NOT succeed. Because they would have missed three things about his formula.

1. LKY did not blindly pursue one political school of thought or other. He just did what he thought was right given the circumstances and was able to do so because he had the intellect to figure out the best way forward

2. LKY may have rode roughshod over his opponents but he had a team, a good team, to whom he remain open-minded towards and was capable of changing his mind and course correct

3. LKY was incorruptible and lived his life in a way that he was whiter-than-white

There you have it, he was not just clever, he was wise. He was not just wise, he proved that it's possible because he lived it himself. 

We won't see another like him. I certainly won't. Not in my lifetime. Speaking of my lifetime, he did change my life, through the award of the ASEAN scholarship. I applied for it, got it, moved here and now live here. Thank you, Mr Lee Kuan Yew

Photo credit: unknown, taken from an image on the internet 

Just a little more than a month into 2015...

... And here I am in Vietnam, thereby covering all 5 countries of the system within 5 weeks. I've already taken 11 flights, 4 cross border drives and stayed in 5 different hotels and 2 homes this year.

Frantic as the travel schedule is, it's actually been a softer start to the year (business wise) than I had hoped. This is only to be expected as the business has it's ups and downs. The downs, I find, concentrates the mind and enables tough(er) measures to be enacted: the proverbial kick up everyone's behinds. 

So, as I land into Hanoi, I shall deliver this kick in this market and then hope to see the results :-). And if the results are anywhere as pretty as the street decorations are, we'd be in fine shape!

Truth is, the word kick is poorly used. In leadership, it's all circumstantial. For some, it's a kick. Most times (especially for smart people) it's about persuasion. The lesser of this group would respond to logic. The more sophisticated it's about WIIFM, ie What's In It For Me. And for a small group, it's about threat. For a small (underdeserving, I might add) minority, it's about enticements. I have never used the last ploy though.

But I understand that in all cultures such ploys are widely used and remain rather effective. In this country, esp as the festive occasion comes around, it's a great opportunity to greet one's business associates and to thank them for business done in the past and business anticipated in the future. 

Rounding off 2014

2014 has been a pioneering sort of year. Now that I think about it, each year should be and indeed has been a year of firsts. For there's always something new we have done that we have not done before.

I took up running earnestly for the first time. And wearable tech apps like Runkeeper and Strava help me want to keep up a good record. So far I've managed to run on 4 continents: Africa, (North) America, Asia and Europe, or more precisely in Victoria Falls, Washington DC, Halong/KL/Singapore and Barcelona respectively. I've also climbed up Wayna Picchu but my Velocitech altimeter-endowed watch never worked :-(

 I should not give anyone the wrong impression that I've become an uber athlete all of sudden, like some mid life crisis armchair sportsmen turned marathoners. No, I do this partly for health (I still rue my broken hand; though screwed back on, it's not quite the same) and partly for vanity for I don't want to exceed the 80kg limit in weight.

J fulfilled one of life's dreams, something I had aspired towards but didn't accomplish: he was recognised as one of the nation's top Scouts and conferred the President Scout Award by the President no less! This coming off a year of achievements including the Gold Medal in the 11th Geography Olympiad in Krakow and a character building hike with budding leaders from his college.

M had a momentous year too, being selected into leadership position in her school's peer support board, and asked to participate in the Geography Academy. For some reason, both kids are preternaturally inclined towards this subject. No wonder we enjoy traveling so much! She has also been active in sports and has a fine bunch of friends: her softball teammates and her chatty classmates. Yet, despite all their antics, M (and her friends) are serious girls and going into upper secondary next year, she has voluntarily decided to give up some of the more trivial social media apps like snapchat ans askfm voluntarily. Now, that is a first! And an act that is sure to bring a smile to every 21st century parent.

The real first is the project D undertook. To be precise, the project started in 2012 but it's in 2014 that most of the progress took place and it fell on her shoulders to take care of every detail in the building, from tile selection to window placement to ceiling design and appliance procurement. It also necessitated monthly, then bimonthly drives to Malacca. She figured out the timings to beat the traffic, but sometimes we get caught including coming a few days ago where we spent over 2 hours between the JB and Woodlands checkpoints.

At work, I've found equilibrium: when we're loving what we do and doing what we love. This state is important for peace of mind and it's been said that it's hard to achieve peace in the world when one doesn't have inner peace to start with.

My peace is not just with work but with the most high: Gloria in Excelsis Deo. He's blessed us with much and with these we have a responsibility to give back and to pay it forward. In a very insular way, we've repaid our parents by bringing all 4 of them to a place they've never been to and on a trip they have never experienced including camping in Zimbabwe! We are all looking forward to 2015 with great faith, hope and love!

A special day

I don't usually do this... The hopeless romantic stuff, that is. Not in keeping with strong manly type.

But it's been 25 years since I've saw her standing there (as Lennon would say). And 21 years since we got engaged, so the relationship is formally reached maturity. 20 years since the wedding, and quite a milestone in this day and age.

So, given this is a special year, I decided I'd make this overtly extravagant gesture (in addition to the more 'expected' gift of a cute classic in Malaysia, and a precious pebble in Peru), of a bouquet of our favourite flowers.

Happy birthday, dear. 

LYMYNY 

Run for hope

.Today, we did something specially meaningful. I had picked up running earlier this year and with the ability to record each run with the help of a GOS-enabled smartphone app, this has become an activity worth sustaining as one aims to run more, in new places, faster pace and longer distances.

Today, spurred on by M who first signed up for this Charity Run with her softball mates, D and I joined her too, D in the 3.5km run and me for the 10-km. I think the last time I ran 10k was half my lifetime ago (at a company sports day), and we ran the length and back of the runway. This time, the 10k was around the beautiful Marina Bay. It's a new route, and ranks up there with my run from the Willard to Lincoln Memorial in Washington, along Halong Bay from Novotel to The Bridge, and between hotels W and Arts in Barcelona. 

The scenic route helped, for I felt 'the wall' around km7, but what really spurred me on was the reason for the run: we all ran for hope, for cancer patients and specifically for our friends A and S who are undergoing treatment presently. May they be cured and may a cure be found.