Holiday in Maldives

Wow, Maldives is really beautiful. The chain of atoll looks like emerald encircling blue-green water. So clear water and natural white sandy beach. Clear air that you can count stars and bright moon appear pure and serene. Bliss. Sun sea sand and coconuts make this paradise. After 10-day holiday it is amazing how much nothing-planned turned out to be full of delights and surprise.

First view at the sea in front of airport terminal

Day 0, Friday I had full day of work then went home at 6. Started count down at 4 while lunching with KS. Uneventful SQ flight, almost full. Arrived and met mom dad Henry whose Scoot flight was delayed by more than an hour. Waited another hour for our local guide to guide us to a comfortable SUV over 10mins ride to Hulmale. Our guest house is modest with haphazard service, we were allocated 202 and 302 on different floors. Feel asleep at 12am local time.


Day 1, Saturday arrived at Royal Island and spa. We took local domestic flight and was asked to standby at airport from 930 for 1115flight which was delayed by an hour.

Propeller plane ATR-72 used on the domestic flight

The flight itself is only 20mins and we flew low on propeller plane over rings of atoll atop Maldives archipelago.

Arrived and was ushered to a van towards local jetty. Was served coconut water decorated with a pink hibiscus. Went to Jetty at back and tried snorkelling. However, since it's the first day I was apprehensive and holding on to the rail to attempt to float without a life jacket.

Clear water and sea

Day 2 Sunday, Sunrise view relax by the pool in a group of 3-lounge chairs.

Sunrise on the Earth day 22 Apr 2018

Resilience today

Today I learnt about networking, women and diversity, and about judgmental people.

3 things that are positive today, to focus and get better:

1. The networking was better than I thought.
2. I was able to get to know more people and more positive women from GE, Caterpillar, Stanchart, HP and HPE, and Thompson-Reuters.
3. Tips on how to build confidence, saying no, and outside-in perspective.

Movies this trip

Flew SQ home to Jakarta for Ceng Beng weekend, then onward to Sydney via transit thru Singapore, and returned home on late night flight.

Movies I watched these round are superb: Phantom Thread, I, Tonya, and Three Billboards outside Ebbing, Missouri.

Bangkok for conference

I am in taxi while braving Bangkok traffic in morning to conference at AVANI hotel. Ups and downs are so exhausting but if I remember Optimism training. 3 good things that happened yesterday:

• Great planning session and brainstorming design into FY19 with Simon and team
• Conversation was great with Nathan W and Laurent and got lots of things done
• Catching up with old friends
• Being there in Partners conference

Confidence

4 step process "Creating Epic Thought List"

1. Negative thought
2. Are they real, are they something that has been bothering for long time
3. Positive thought
4. Anchor to path success .... back the positive idea. Make it real

front load ahead of time. so when we get challenge we can move quickly.

Stop caring for others think of me.

Negative thoughts:

1. they won't like me because
2. they will bypass me because 
3. they will think I don't know my stuff

are they real or due to my insecurities. Stop caring about what others think of me.

positive thoughts:

1. do my research. prepare what likely a person need to know. listen
2. be present - nailing it
3. my listening skill and ability to follow up has been proven success

Cantucci e Vin Santo

I love this dessert. Cantucci, which is the hard biscotti from Tuscany commonly interleaved with almond. And perfectly dipped slowly into a glass of amber liquid Vin Santo, Tuscany white wine.

Negroni is another Italian cocktail, with campari and vermouth. Truffle negroni at the hotel in Milan was amazing.

Truffle Negroni - amazing

3 Good things

3 good things that happen today:

• Went out and caught up with Xu Jin after 2 months.
• Discussed and got new perspective about relationships.
• Bonded with mom during walk home and get to hear deeply about her feelings and relationship with her sister.

Optimism

Optimism: Belief something good is about to happen.

People who focus on just good things happening throughout the day, and list 3 good things at night, experience more positiveness, and better mood. If they share with their partners, they experience increase in marital satisfaction, or relationship satisfaction.

Good things that happen today:

• Dad and mom got green vegetable specially cooked for dinner tonight, for me.
• The call this morning with Adrian,YC, and Rohaini went well.
• Adrian called me to consult on a tricky issue.

Training.

Day trip to Bergamo

It has been cold in Europe this week. Our offsite at Lake Maggiore has been wonderfully busy but the summer town was almost empty and the blanket of cold gentle wind swept the lakeside with relentless and beautiful snow.

My room at Grand Hotel Dino 198 has balcony that overlook the Alps. The town was almost empty and our dinner is the only opportunity to get away from hotel. Our first day dinner is at Piccolo Lago. And the second one at restaurant hotel with good cheap Italian wine.

We then transferred to Milan downtown area. Staying at NH Moscova Palazzo. 10mins walk from Milan office and the Porto Garibaldi train station. I changed my plan from Cinque Terre to Bergamo instead. There is hourly train from P. Garibaldi that leaves 31mins past hour on regionale train, cost 4,80 Euro. The train left on time and off we go.

Mindfulness

Landed in Milan, drove to Lake Maggiore. Chatted, had one on one, lunch by lake, and explored the summer town in frigid February. There is “Beast of the East” heading to Europe peolonging severe weather this winter. Before lunch I took a walk around the hotel Grand Dino, there is ferry operating that covers the lake. Beautiful and cold the town is with nobody around at the cobbled street. What a beautiful Lake Maggiore.

Unexpected Delay

Some thing in life is just unexpected. As I am sitting on plane in tarmac of Istanbul airport.
I’ve never been to Istanbul. Although exotic, and I almost planned for transit here enroute to Helsinki for this year’s summer holiday. We are here due to emergency stop for a passenger, on way to Milan. The lady seemed of advanced age. Thankfully she is concious next to her gentlemanly husband. They are seated on the same row 32, as I am in Premium Economy. Two medical doctors onboard heeded call and spent hours caring for her. I can see their reassuring faces, gestures, as they move to calm patient and attend to her with oxygen mask.

So I am on window seat, next to left wing, and I can see the dark sky of Istanbul sky outside at 6am. Planes landing on runway just behind us.

Trips and all best plan is nothing compared to matter of lufe and death so what if we might miss a call or two or missed some connections. The probability of potentially, saving a life is precious.

I reflect on that as well as I see the anxious faces of the doctors, relieved, but also showing stress for first time. Now that the patient is in better care in land of Istanbul staff.

Will to live

I have been going through bouts of sadness. Like I would lie awake in my bed, in the middle of the night, and start to shed tears. Am I depressed. I asked myself sometimes.

But I want to live. I feel so grateful to live. I am grateful for my life. That I have comfortable home. I am grateful for my parents, who loved me and care for me. And that they are healthy. I am grateful for my family. Grateful for my health. Grateful that I have a good job, good manager, and good team. Grateful that I can afford all nice things in life, own houses, and can happily know I would be unlikely to starve if I am prudent. I am grateful for opportunities to learn, to laugh, to stretch myself and be happy.

CNY 2018

Chinese New Year 2018. Went out for Buffet lunch at Oscar's Conrad Centennial Singapore. During the journey, and the long 2-hour buffet lunch, and subsequent train travel to Bishan to see Koko Ching Lien, and travel home, we got to chat. I realize how older Pa and Mom are. They are more sensitive, easily upset, and a bit..senile. I realize that I have not spent time at home lately due to travel and that worries me. Time passings like sand that is irreversible.

Koko Ching Lien looked a bit thin. And perhaps worry about Uncle Edy who is stubborn and having heart issues. He had a poor prognosis, and even was expected to life only 3 months... and turned out he is still dragging on, despite losing will to life. Koko has been very hard, and tough. She was sitting in the living room, without lights on but with company of a few young women, one is her god-daughter, and another pair of mother-daughter neighbor from China. We stayed for around 30 mins and chatted about life in Singapore and certain scam and recent child kidnapping in Singapore and China. Thanks for tradition like Chinese New Year we have the opportunities to visit our relatives home and say a few standard greetings but I suppose the art is in the fact of keeping in touch once a year, no matter how superficial the conversation is, the connection of relative and tradition is nonetheless kept alive.

My relative remarked on how fair Henry looked, and so is chubby me. We as a family looked radiant. "Thanks to all the nutritious food that Dad cooking", says me. "No... it is because we think positive and does not do harmful things to others, in action and in thoughts", added Mom. Henry was just quiet and walk agreeing along. I am not sure if Dad listens, given condition of his ear but I am happy Dad has satisfactory lunch at buffet which is his super favorite. At home, I quickly had shower due to humidity of Singapore - after my month-long business trip, I had troubles adjusting to. "Dad is so happy because every time we mentioned buffet, Dad eyes light-up like sparkes", teases me to Dad. Dad quickly mentioned "No no no,.." while shyly turning away to take a nap at his favorite spot, by the window.

10KM Post India trip and Marina Bay

This is after my 10km marina bay run. Timing 1:20 as usual for 10km run, and they are my usual pace. Hit the wall after 3km at 530pm oh so hard. I pushed myself to complete the course. Flew back from India Friday noon, and so arrived 8pm tonight. I missed the Future of Sales and Operations summit at Andaz, Delhi, but I stayed in the morning to chat and do meet and greet. And also the Asia LT call that Simon presented to Ralph's. But the journey back is worth it.

My Thursday night was tiring. And filled with dreams of strange characters that must be a manifest of my thought and instinct. But the partners meeting with SI, local partner, cloud partner, and OCP GTM team had been very informative and interesting.

Morning over Bengaluru

So glad to be home.

This week in India

Downloaded Anthony Robbins, documentary around his session on "Date with Destiny". I watched part of it during my flight from Singapore to Bengaluru, and then finished the other half of the 2-hour session during the flight to Delhi.


Really moved by people in the session, being moved, belief shaken, and I think the term being used is How do you want to rebuild your life. I guess the feeling, the hunger and desire to aspire to grow stays with me. The desire to do something more with my life. Beyond contraints and live with better courage. It also encourages me to look at my life experiences, the stacking of my "breakthrough", my discoveries, and the grace I received throughout my life. The moments in life when I feel the most blessed, that define the points of my life when I am lifted, elevated to different level, beyond expectation and vision of myself.


I must be affected, even more deeply than I realized. Because I carried this feeling of discontent within me. And wanting to apply the energy to new drive. New desires. New height.


A couple of questions that I should ask myself.


What is my life mission?
What values do I subscribe to.
What is my relationship vision.
What am I.
What is my vision of the life I want, desire, deserve, and work super obsessively to achieve.
What drives me?
What are my triggers?


I carried this discovery - no, the sense of wanting to discover, even deeper meaning of my subsconcious drive. And life with more courage. And more love. I understood that I might have been afraid to love, and withdraw love because of my childhood entitlement. Afraid to commit because of fear of rejection and more importantly of failure. And I need to open up myself and examine what's within.


And I carried this energy, and sense of hunger and frustration, even into the session right now when we are preparing for my manager's session for Asia leadership update. I kept of asking myself "What am I doing with my life?", I want to do more. And I got angry, so easily, by lesser standards - unreasonably. I need to recognize that and grow up. But first, understand and love myself who has this strong desire and passion.


And I feel much better, after writing all of this down...

Healthy Relationship

I like what this article says. Healthy relationship requires space, but it must face the same direction and strengthened by communication.

Disneysea December 2017 Day 1 of Trip

"A healthy relationship means separate containers (life space), facing in the same direction (common outlook on life), and faning the fire in between (earning trust)."

Busy week in China and Stronger

We had a super busy business trip in China, Beijing. After our 360 meeting Monday morning, we flew to Beijing SQ806 landed on 2300 flight, stayed at Westin Chaoyang. And flew back home Friday SQ807 A3801640 flight landed 2300 ahead of schedule. On flight, I watched Stronger, a very strong movie with Jake Gyllenhall about the survivor of Boston Marathon bombing.

The movie deals with feral and frank qualities of human post-recovery. The movie stars Jake Gyllenhall as Jeff Bauman the young, working class, man whom became instant celebrity due to photograph of him in the aftermath of explosion and his identification of the bomber. He became an instant hero and symbol of the Boston recovery surrounded by his hard-drinking, family who expects much of him without having full appreciation of what he went through. His only salvation is his girlfriend Erin, played by Tatiana Maslany. He dealt with his injury in quiet, obliging manner but kept his frustration bottled up inside in such a raw and fine performance by Jake, who is the clear star of this movie. A fine performance by Miranda Richardson as Patti, Jeff's mother provides the emotional cortex as the representation of family's expectation on Jeff but unable to provide support and sanctuary that Jeff so badly needed to deal with the hardwork and pain that Jeff will need to deal with for the rest of his life.

It is one of the amazing movie that I have watched recently, and it is ultimately touching and satisfying. It will be great to see how the box office and award season deal with this movie.

Boxing Day, Nostalgia and Illness

Spent this morning cleaning up my CD archive. The time spent during my university holiday at the computer center collecting anime episodes and mangascans. Wow - what amount of time spent labelling, copying, downloading, and burning those CDs. After 15 years, most of those CDs are corrupted. Thanks to my prodigious labelling (with color-matching markers!) I was able to skip through the CDs after my dear bro reminded me "Why?" and after the initial batch of copying and failing reading.

I also found some nostalgic files, such as, lame 90's songs belonging to A1 and Backstreet Boys. Songs which I lamely still adored, by the way. Also faded cringe-worthy photos of my awkward youth. There is one particularly memorable during bad make-up Indonesia prom-nite in 2003.

Most of the time, listening to mom complaining about, or rather commenting bluntly about her relatives. We are so worried these days about 4i's eldest son, Jensen. He was diagnosed with cancer stage 4, already attacking his nerve. Avoiding chemo, he was now seeing the shaman who is my cousin in the family, and there was a conflict when he recently discovered blood in his urine... So worrying. His health is an example of period of realization for me, when I was busy travelling for work, jeopardizing my health, but also made me unavailable to my family even when they were in Singapore. Imagine the regret if I never ever see him again. He is so young, 5 years younger with 2 very young sons and such a world ahead of him.

So there, my true feeling. Like speaking to myself, when I felt this way when peeking on diary that I found through those disks, of myself talking in the diary in 2003 at SMA, around fourteen years ago.

Christmas Eve 2017

Tonight is Christmas Eve 2017.

This year so far.

I started my new job.
Started new relationship.
Had a wonderful bonus and start of new career from August.
Getting to know new business and new team.
Stretch myself and my capability.
Getting to know so many new people.
Southeast Asia new market team in SE job.
Went to holiday onsen in Japan in December and January.
Seeing new dawn of new year in January for good luck.
Traveled so much.
Had this on my computer Wallpaper.
Fell ill twice already with my current boss.

August, September, October, November 2017

Oh my gosh Christmas 2017 is approaching. From late October, the Christmas trees were up at shopping arcades, and decorations started appearing. Looking back, I am happy that 2017 had been a joyous year, and a fruitful year. I had a look at the "fortune-telling" website which advised me that this year would not be a good year due to influence of bad factors. However, thanks for hard work, planning, good heart I managed to navigate the year with superb outcome.

They say that life is 80% hard work versus 20% of destiny. I am the living proof of that. So if anyone reading this blog feeling down, trust me that destiny will turn. The wheel of fate means that when  you are looking down, things will turn up soon. The more down you are, the upside is most likely at the corner. It means you will have to work hard, and continue to persevere.

Looking back, I had tough year full of uncertainty. My work was full of re-org and having to navigate business performance at the start of the year, and quell the noises were hard. My management had shaken-up and it was hard to see how I would be successful this year. I looked out and had one conversation about an interesting role in Business Strategy that is aligned to my passion, and a role that will stretch my muscle in business management and people managing up. I had conversations to try stretch role in a emerging market subsidiaries with people that really worked hard and had to navigate an organization like this. I grabbed opportunities to play dual role, even when I had to build my network and brand within AHQ, but I worked very hard to double up. The result was being able to grow in a subsidiary role, while adding value and impact by providing clarity of execution and focus, was immense. and very satisfying.

After a very discouraging conversation (and after verifying people that were close to me did not go after the role) I approached the hiring manager of this role. I went through interview loop, still went through a period of uncertainty, and finally were offered the role and a promotion. I was so happy and blessed.

Even then, my journey continues to promote this role and my new business unit. I had multiple conversations with my manager, skip, and skip-skip about my decision to move. It was very tricky conversation. I think the loyal part of me wanted to stay but the opportunity the new role offered with the promotion, interesting scope of responsibility, in business applications that is close to my heart, and new areas of learning made this a "no-brainer" in crude manner.

So here I am 4 months in. I had settled in the role. Period of adjustment of this support role versus owner role. Starting to build my network within and outside the team. Continue my connection. Build business management structure. And reignite the passion for business growth. My new manager is a good person to work with. Yes he has a lot of things to adjust to.... nobody is perfect. But I spent a lot of time making adjustments and pushing back to influence adjustments on my manager's side - because it works both ways.

I was out this week for illness. I contracted shingles, again. Luckily doctor gave me medication antiviral that contained the outbreak and the pain. Need to avoid "heaty" food, or in scientific terms, food that contains amino acid arginine vs lysine. That means avoiding nuts, chocolate, oats, and try instead to have more fruits and fresh unprocessed food: vegetables, red meat, and fish.

I dropped by in office on Friday, after being out on Wed and Thurs - missing December 360. It was stressful missing out. I was in for LT meeting, and All Hands, and quickly ducked out again to rest. I saw TCM uncle on Thursday, and I did risk my health by having a period of taking both the antiviral and TCM concoction that were crafted for my shingles. Hope I'm okay.