Numerology

Numerology is any belief in the divine, mystical relationship between a number and one or more coincidingevents.^[1] It is also the study of the numerical value of the letters in words, names and ideas. It is often associated with the paranormal, alongside astrology and similar divinatory arts. So states Wikipedia.

For me, it's a fun thing. Rather than belief, it's just a useful custom to have especially when one is bargaining for a good deal.

Then again, it was the good book that probably started it all. In the apocalyptic book of Revelations, the beast was given a number: 666. I first learned about this from the movie, The Omen, and it stayed with me. 

Just last week though, without meaning to, I encountered on several occasions a far more positively associated number: 888. The first moment was somewhat intended. I was at an art gallery and was discussing the price. In fact we had already settled on a price when they wanted to reopen it. So I gave the "lucky" number, which was readily accepted being a Chinese :-)

Then, I had a car booked to the airport. A most gentle and helpful driver by the name of Ismeet (yes, I do bump into quite a number of such people doing this job) and the car he drove bore the number 888.

It's been a week of travel for me, first in Johannesburg, the London, and I didn't get to scroll through my Facebook account for the usual fix of social news. And lo and behold, there was an innocuous post of how Jesus translates to this magical number of 888. By the way, it's been said the number 666 spells Nero, the evil empiror of Rome who was hell bent on persecuting Christians.

Arriving back in Singapore, I went for my usual run at the usual park at the usual time and day while M was having her usual class. I've never clocked this distance but there it was: I ran exactly 8.88kms.

Whatever your proclivities, these conjunction of coincidental appearances of the magic number is indeed unusual, at least, or it could portend something special. Well, I kind of heard the news on Friday but only confirmed that officially on Sunday. J is getting the President Scholarship which is the ultimate recognition of his first 19 years well spent (16 in Singapore, to be precise). 

So, maybe there is something in it, after all. Or maybe not. The key is to keep doing good, to do well.

love language

Trophy. As kids, we all covet them. Some even amassed a whole cabinet full of these gleaming artifacts. And then for some, the line between the trophy and what it represents (ie excellence in something) gets blurred and the trophy becomes the object of desire, not the excellent something.

M asked me last week if one's spouses should be the Best Friend. We chat a bit, especially when I drive her around on Sundays. So we get plenty of captive time to talk about just everything under the sun. My answer was of course, yes; and then went on to pose a more real world scenario, "are you gonna stay with the one who loves you or are you going back to the one you love". If this sounds familiar, it's because I lifted it verbatim from a Glenn Frey song. Of course it's fantastic if the couple are best friends but sometimes that doesn't happen and my question then becomes relevant.

I am fortunate in this aspect. D is not just my Best Friend, she's also my rock. Not in an anchoring sense where she fixes me to a point but in a paperweight sense where she keeps me from floating around carelessly. One example of how she does this is when she introduced me to the different Languages of Love.

Image from Quotesgram.com

Some feel loved when presented with the words. Some prefer gifts. Quality time is important for some. Others like the intimacy of touch. And then there are acts.

Earlier this week, as I cleaned up my computer, I accessed a folder I had not opened for nearly 6 years. It contains correspondences with M, J and D. In fact, most of it for J. And it then hit me that I have been using this particular language with him because as we all know boys are not known to be loquacious, especially with their own dads. So penning down my thoughts was the most pragmatic way of communicating. There are less notes to M. With her, it's more verbal: a twist of the language of words, with a dose of quality time.

That said, the language that really conveys our intentions must be that of action. That's D's language. Yes, I do enjoy her notes to me (she'd write maybe a longish email once a year esp when I am on away for a stretch), but like both M & J, it's her acts that show her love for us.

D is now writing her next chapter after years spent in devotion to taking care of the family. I am indeed lucky. For she is much more than a trophy. She is excellent. 

A purposeful run

D is pivoting now to her next chapter. And as with all her past pursuits, it's always something meaningful, deeply so.

To celebrate her purposeful next step, M and I decided to run for her. We recorded more than 10kms each. 

As a family we have participated in Run for Hope, notably for cancer patients, a couple of times before.   So, this Run for Purpose is new for us. What's wonderful is that we both ran longer for Purpose and for D this time!

Screen grabs from Runkeeper app

And to top it all, we set records. Farthest distance run, longest distance run. And this is after tracking all my runs for the past 2 years since August 2014. Purposeful, indeed!

All history is geography (at a more personal level)

History was my favourite subject in school, but I didn't think it was taught properly: too much emphasis on dates instead on events. Truly, almost all the events were initiated by men and women who wanted a better geographic condition (whether to secure, extend their lands and the people on the lands they live on).

In school, I felt that I understood geography intuitively. I liked knowing about new landscapes and new weather patterns. Living in Malaysia where it's always green, hot and wet, my vivid imagination got excitedly enriched with descriptions of deserts, winters, minerals and new tribes of people. I still love it today, which accounts for my wanderlust and penchant for old maps.

Image from Wikipedia; Ortelius' map of the world circa 1570

J and M are both naturally good in geography too. Guess they did get something from their Dad. More importantly, this talent of theirs became real because they inherited their Mum's drive and tenacity. Indeed, in a recent chat, I was telling her of three traits that propelled many to the TOP: talent, tenacity and team. To which, she quoted the old African proverb, "if you want to go fast, go alone; if you want to go far, go together".

Teaming is a difficult trait to develop. Because it involves others, and especially in a school setting where the others are almost always one's peers or superiors. J and M, because of their personalities (and a little bit be used of their birth sequence) have developed different styles to work with their teams. J takes on the toughest, heaviest load himself (both metaphorically and literally) and through example he leads his team. M is the empowering sort: she shapes a shared vision and enables others to do their thing. Whether commanding or empowering, I have no doubt they will continue to hone their teaming styles in their own unique way.

I may have talked more about teaming. That said, all three traits are essential. Talent without tenacity is unfulfilled potential. Tenacity without talent is aimless and at worst can be manipulated by the wrong leaders. Those who shape history have these three traits in abundance. When we read about these historical figures, it's almost like their lives were preordained and their place in history predestined. 

The Bible tells us of three virtues: faith, hope and love which are infused into our souls along with sanctifying grace at the sacrament of baptisms. But what are these virtues in day-to-day on-the-ground terms. Those who have talent tend to be the most hopeful ones, because they have the potential. Those with tenacity have faith, because they know that by working harder, going further, they will reach their goal. And those who team well will need to always be giving and receiving love, that caring, kind selfless giving to each other. So, there you have it, these three traits are manifestations of having the three virtues. St Paul wrote that in the end, these three abides and the greatest of these is Love.

Love is first and foremost found at home. Then it has to spread out, to all our teams: in school, in sports, in the workplace and in the community, converting schoolmates, teammates, colleagues, customers and neighbours into friends and families.

Those who understand this, and have the talent and tenacity to drive their vision through are those who get closer to the TOP and I don't mean just TOP of this world, but that of the divine too.

I felt a little alone today

I felt a little alone today. 

Maybe it's because I am dining alone, yet again! Unlike the dinner (all by myself) in Sheraton Melbourne on the 18th last month or my lunch (also all by myself) in Seoul Hilton 18 years ago, I felt out of sorts when waiting for my steak despite being in a homely, well attended steakhouse in Ho Chi Minh City.

On all three occasions, I was there for a public sector leadership matter. But today, it just felt like the cogs are not turning properly. 

Maybe it's this feature I read the other day that stated that recent survey showed that those in their 50s are at the most unhappy period in their lives :-(. I sure hope not! 

Maybe it's got to do with the anxieties of the role transitions where there remains much unfinished business.

Maybe it's got a bit to do with the country. It's just not quite there despite its efforts. This is a proud nation, with a people capable of extreme hardship. A legendary tale (relayed to me by Singapore's Perm Sec of Defence more than 20 years ago) about how the local troops defeated the French by dismantling and carrying parts of tanks up the Dien Bien Phu mountains where these were subsequently reassembled and thats how they overcame the last of the enemies holding up there. The world also know that they defeated the Americans who fled the country in dramatic style in 1975. 

The country then got stuck in time (no thanks to the 'sour grapes' US embargo imposed thereafter). Now, more than 40 years later, I wonder if these diehard attitudes are still present. We only need to walk around the city to be reassured that many of its old habits are still there. People (men and women, young and old) are still sitting on road pavements in low chairs in their pajamas with their legs crossed, eating, drinking, chatting, whiling away their time.

It's in their DNA, part of their culture. The perceptive LKY had held this view dearly to his dotage. I understand why. These habits took centuries, even millennia to form. They don't get changed easily. Which then suggests economic development and transformation of a nation, which necessarily rely on the human capital stock available, is proscribed by its culture from the start. 

The only way to accelerate this is immigration (but that comes with all sorts of national social cohesion costs).

Immigrants are by virtue more resilient. Not because they are smarter but because they knew no one else would provide for them and all they had were what their mind and hands could produce. I was sharing the story of the Hakkas to M in our usual weekend rides together. I likened the Hakkas of Asia to the Ashkenazi Jews of Europe, a perspective I had written about in an earlier entry in this blog. She absorbed it as she always does. I was trying to instill in her the spirit of her ancestors. 

Centuries of persection have caused these migrant people to develop a real steely core, able to withstand any hardship. With that in mind, I should not mind my lonely state. That said, I couldn't help it. It was in this city that D & I first lived together. Although the city has developed economically with it's gleaming new infrastructure and narrow streets choked full of cars and motorcycles, the people and their habits remain... Which reminded me of our time here more than 20 years ago. 

I too should live up to the strength and spirit of my ancestors. As I said in my thank you video to my staff, there is only one ingredient for success: ourselves; and when prepared in a recipe that constitutes vision, passion and courage, the result is inevitably the best version of ourselves.

With that thought in mind, I passed this night in Vietnam alone but not lonely: that I am on a journey of continuous learning, improvement and always comforted by the knowledge of the care of loved ones,

Lightness of being single, or not

When I first read him, I couldn't put the book down. He writes like no other. Milan Kundera wrote about the highs and lows of the single life in The Unbearable Lightness of Being. There was nothing light about it. The setting is a war torn Czechoslovakia (a country that no longer exists), for instance. When they made it into a movie, a very difficult adaptation given the weighty nature of the writing, Philip Kaufman had no less than Daniel Day-Lewis and Juliette Binoche to star. Only they had the courage to bring to life words like these: “Anyone whose goal is 'something higher' must expect someday to suffer vertigo. What is vertigo? Fear of falling? No, Vertigo is something other than fear of falling. It is the voice of the emptiness below us which tempts and lures us, it is the desire to fall, against which, terrified, we defend ourselves.” 

Photo credit: :fineartamerica.com

Fast forward 28 years (from the movie) or 32 years (from the book), I watched a random movie on board today. It's been a hectic week so I wanted to use the moment to unwind and picked a light movie. Even the title was simple: How To Be Single, a 'chick flick' starring Rebel Wilson and Dakota Johnson about four women and their differing attitudes to surviving the single life in New York complete with Central Park, indie music, lofts, fire escape balconies and of course sex and the city. 

The former is not a comedy. The second is supposed to be. In fact, for most part of the show, it succeeded. I laughed a few times. But it ends like all things built around casual relationships do: badly.

This year is my parents' 50th wedding anniversary. Though they disagree daily, theirs is a love that has stood the tests of time, and time did test them. And that's when it means the most. A fact substantiated by no less than father time. In 2014, we celebrated with both sets of parents the significance of all our respective relationships in a once-in-a-lifetime vacation for them. May their love truly last their lifetimes.

But back to the Single movie.  It started with "the thing about being single is you should cherish it", then tumbled into "you've never really cared about anyone enough to get hurt", descended into "I want to be alone. I know I've said that before but for the first time in my life, I truly mean it". It then rose with "I can totally handle all of this by myself ... But I don't want to"

It concluded with ..."the thing about being single is you get to be good at being alone but do we really want to be, so much so that you missed out at being with somebody great"

And that's the sum: being single is good. Double is better!

Like father, like son

There is a beautiful saying about Dad: a daughter's first love, a son's first hero.

Jackie Chan once said that his son decided not to go into martial arts because he didn't want to be like Brandon Lee who followed in his dad's Bruce's footsteps and was constantly told he was not as good.

The father-daughter relationship (from the father's perspective) is a simpler one. She loves you. You love her. You'd do anything to keep her safe. 

The hero complex between father and son is a tad more complicated. Because heroes do no wrong. Don't get hurt. Nor sick. Nor old. Real life heroes cannot live up to their own legends. National patriots, corporate captains, scientific geniuses and artistic talents all have moments they wish didn't happen. A philandering moment here, an abuse there. 

So how does a boy grow up with someone whom he regards as a hero and as the days pass, the hero becomes simply less so. Not because the heroic feats have ceased, but because the boy know sees more, the good bits and the blemishes. It's inevitable. I count myself lucky in this instance though. Mind you, not by choice but by circumstance. Because I have to travel most weekdays (averaging 180 flights a year), the number of days my boy and I have with each other are more limited. So less chance of him seeing my imperfections. On weekends we engage with each other without being burdened by each other's baggage (which of course due to the absence neither have observed of the other).

All that enabled me to guide, maybe even inspire him, in some ways. Scouting is an obvious one. I was a troop leader. He was too, and a President Scout to boot! I got offered a scholarship and he got a prestigious one, and we both got it from the same Public Service Commission of Singapore.

He's now a man. He's already living away from home, for 4 months now. In fact I am now more often home than he is. As a man, he is now building his own life. And he has already taken a first step into that and significantly away from the path I trod. I do think he's prepared to dream big and take one step back to go two steps forward in order to realize his dream. His dreams, though, are different from mine. I guess this analysis, courtesy of ScienceAlert, provides the empirical evidence of just how far a step he has chosen. I am in management. He has chosen the military life to start with. I wish him all the best.