For the 2nd time in my life, i cancelled my subscription. I think there is still some attachment to it but i know there’s no room for it at this point in time. 

it was an epic( and classic) struggle…and my will beat my mind. There were a lot of reasons going for it. one of them was how i rationalize the “little” amount of time i spend on it every week. only on weekends. and it was true. that was about the only time i really got on. but it was long enough to detract me fromt other things i could do. It also took up quite a bit of mind space. I find that focusing is sometimes not just about being able to put your mind up on one thing, but also to remove other things from your mind. ie. making the environment work for you. 

Coming to that, i just made a great discovery. I don’t have a study desk. And i realized that those who don’t have one are not likely to have a disciplined approach towards their work/study. that being said, those who do..not necessarily have wonderful work habits etc. well to make my environment more suitable for working, i’ve decided to get myself a study desk! IKEA looks like a prime option so far. 

the kellogg branding book has a lot of new information about branding and gives a good framework to work on.  Another thing i realized from reading is that they give you a framework, a way to structure, organize your thoughts. They’re not necessarily right all the time or the most appropriate but then again hey, things change all the time. new information come up. So what’s important is to get very clear on the framework, and then innovate from there if necessary. question everything. resist taking what is offered anywhere at face level. do your own research if necessary and plausible. remain curious. always. Einstein once said that he wasn’t exceptionally smart, just very, very curious. In the world today where children’s IQ keep getting raised and we find newer and better ways to develop our minds, curiousity in the truth, passion in our chosen specialty may be the one edge you will maintain over others. Love does indeed transcend everything. I would like to say inspiration lies in making the world a better place for those kids but i can’t justify it. 

I finally find what lily said about having intellectual output to be important. it cannot be just absorbing and nothing to show for it. and the same goes for all the measurement of effectiveness in training and devt.

I had a dream. Literally. While not many graduates harbour much of any left after leaving school and working for 2 months…i had one. I dreamt of Pat. again. In my dream, she was 2nd in command of a sports club. (funny how she got associated with NTU when she studied in NUS) The usual characteristics which i have so dearly experienced first hand were still there. Assertive, personal and charming, she was authentically Pat. Her smile and seeming irreverence made her somewhat of an icon. But…i digress.

After working for 3 weeks, the desire to start my own business is getting stronger. I wonder how mingwei is doing. So far, he seems to be the only entrepreneur in my group of friends to not be working for anyone after graduation. I can see that working allows you to see a company’s system and be more familiar about how they organize each function. And, strangely enough my job allows me to see many different company’s structures at the same time. And importantly, i have been assigned the job of figuring out this great big idea called leadership development. With great expectations, i started my book eagerly, half-expecting my curiousity to gain momentum as i continue reading through it. But it didn’t happen. While enjoying my suntan, i read on and on…and yes there was alot of stuff i did not understand. But perhaps not fully understanding the context of it was not the true reason for my lack of enthusiasm.

Kevin Roberts of Saatchi & Saatchi said this and i agree fully that while he is a very strong advocate of change, there was a time even he felt overwhelmed by the richness and freshness of culture. And he just didn’t know what to make of it. That’s how i feel. assimilation takes time. you can’t exactly rush it. While i’m taking my own sweet time to get used the working environment, i find that the sanctuary of marketing knowledge to be a breath of fresh air and it gives me renewed confidence to pursue my dream (YES my dream) of one day being able to run my business doing my own marketing and harnessing my strengths (and others) to make a difference. I love marketing.

And its been 2 weeks since i started work. Time kinda passes really fast when you’re zipping around. I’m beginning to think the blog title is a little morbid.

Anyway amidst my lazy sunday, i’ve decided to write down some stuff that i’ve learned before they get lost in my booklet.

My two bosses have busted the myth that entrepreneurs have it easy after the business system is set up. And strangely enough they love running around and helping people conquer their problems. It is indeed a meaningful exercise to be able to  help bring about organizational change. I am a keen learner. but somehow there is too much to pick up, too many aspects to consider. And now that diana’s taking a break….i’m officially the office mule! HAHAH

hopefully missing out monday’s teambuilding wont prove to have too much of an effect on me. I think(once again) about whether the grad diploma may be trying to add more stuff to my already full plate of work. As with service industries(oh god i’m starting to limit myself), things can be pretty relaxed and then really busy again. but then even the relaxed moments are like a mirage, hiding the gargantuan amounts of work that you can do to improve working processes and do exploration of the business. Fortunately, or not,i can’t log on to salesforce from home so..yea i’d have to skip that temporarily. But i’d have to prove my worth to increase business from the BD side soon b4 she takes away my “part-time” job.

Saw huiting on bus out of NTU. She’s still pretty much the same and finally they’re going to graduate from the minor program. seems so long huh. well at least as compared to us. 104 was really fun sometimes thinking back. our decision making was pretty much haphazard and seemingly we couldn’t internalize the rationale that led us to our poor decision making the previous quarter. coming to that i should read my report on that again. But it is wonderful to be able to err without any costs.

Its official. My life is currently in a mess. Despite what I try to tell myself, its in a mess. yea the absolute truth. And the more i think about it, the more i think alot of others have pretty messed up lives too.

My first and biggest problem has to be dipping energy levels. I have been told that sitting in front of the cpu saps energy. However, I have also been told that when u’re upset, you get tired pretty quickly too. I need to get that sea salt to try out. Mark Joyner peddles Simpleology 103 which is supposed to increase energy levels. yea even that is within my consideration. so it seems pretty bad.

It seems that the only things i’m doing right is
1) I still run every week and I made an “intelligent” choice to sign up for stanchart early. (thus saving me tons of money eventually)
2) I’m proactive in my sending of resumes (yes i can be even more so but that’s besides the point)
3) I know there is something not right with me. I just can’t figure out what yet.

Okay so i cleaned up room a little and it looks less like a pigsty. Despite my bookstore-shelf-like layout of my tomes of knowledge, it still looks untidy. Takes some real skill there. I should get a secretary of some sort in future. I’ve also got my phone(finally!) which I dubbed the “fake iClone”. played with the idea of getting a desktop for more computing power but realized i dun really need it. yet. except for maybe a better gaming experience. Well, maybe the LCD screen would do good to reduce the amount of radiation. OMG that must be it! Ok another action plan.

I need to update many “things” in my life. A new wallet. A new pair of shoes. A new shirt. A new pair of pants. New socks. New bag. New briefcase. A new running watch. (preferably with heart rate monitor. Hmm I dunno if it’d work as i expected but it’ll be cool if it did ya know). This is crazy. I need so much STUFF. well at least i got my phone. That’s functional.

I should start studying for my final theory for my driving license. And…my studies for graduate diploma should start. That is the one thing I know will prove useful. But…but…where can i get the cash to do so? Most precious things in life…you can’t buy with money. Unfortunately, (or fortunately) it drives many things too.

Tomorrow i head for my interview at IMI. If it works out, that just might be great. Today I forgot my number is not active on the new phone, and I wondered if any prospective employer actually called. But surprisingly I didn’t get that upset for having missed opportunities. I actually saw a bigger picture. This thing called fate is something you have little control of. Okay fate may not be the right word but i digress. Blessings in disguise are such apt terms when you think about it sometimes. Its precisely because you can’t foretell the consequences of a certain action(and i mean consequences as in the resulting things that happen) or misaction that there should be little to fret and worry about stuff that happens to you at all. You miss a call, who knows an even better job awaits you later. which…you might have been unable to take should you take your first offer. Sometimes when i ponder about it, the soka wisdom about the “fu yun” is really sagely.And from that I have also partially derived the thinking that trying too hard to get something  (as in really REALLY going out of your way) is not to be advised. If it really is that hard to get it, it just may not be worth the effort after all.

Right now, I’m thinking along the lines of accumulating “skills” that you can put into your resume and talk about. No matter how much you say you can do, it means nothing if there’s nothing to show for it. So, the best way is to provide such evidence. And i think i need some evidence.

Yes yes. I need to start doing some non-profit work. maybe at IDEA for a start. How do you like studying part-time and working and doing non-profit and training for a marathon at the same time?

I think there is a serious need to get back some direction in my life and I know I can’t do everything at once so….i need to think. Fast. today.

And i was also wondering what really is the difference btw facebook and friendster. Why is it that friendster now is less popular. Then….i realized my question was kinda..wrong. Because its not really less popular, at least holistically. it just happens that the target group of facebook, are people who i interact with. That’s why to me facebook is so uniquitous. but for a lot of youngsters, facebook is well erm boring. which actually there’s no reason why to think so. So i logged in to friendster, checked out shiqi’s profile and realized she logged in 6 days ago. which is pretty long, considering my estimate that she’s a very regular facebook user. but then, i realized also that she has 500 friends. which also means she probably has more than 1 account and that new friends may have been added to her newer account. if she has one. so there you have it. friendster still has a following. facebook is more for college peeps and professionals about 20 up. As long as your little cousin doesn’t use facebook, you can be pretty certain not many other youngsters do. So what exactly is the reason youngsters don’t use facebook? what is the reason that professionals use facebook as their preferred networking tool? Is it the initial target? Is it their “distribution strategy”? that’s a question for another day as i think…I need to go back to my drawing board.

Yep that’s a new spur of the moment nick i’ve given myself! HAHAHA

I find that I like to just sit alone and think. Look around in silence and just reflect. Those times after runs when i just sit down, take off my shoes and just soak up the surroundings….its really peaceful. Think about all sorts of stuff. Seeing a small kid playing with his dad, lying on the track, chasing birds..wow. Clouds shifting slowly and you start wondering whether its the clouds really moving or whether its our earth that’s moving.

You know how there are some who love to prove how smart they are by solving a problem. I love to solve problems for the sake of using my mind to think. I see it as a challenge. Not really to prove anything. Ok maybe to myself for having overcome that challenge. And i realize i love doing it so much that I hardly like to listen to others  past the point when i think there’s enough info for me to get going and start solving the problem…which then…becomes another issue of having solved the wrong problem. Ya know how everything seems to make sense inside your head but when you type it out it just seems funny. This is another one of those things. HAHA

I think it true that singaporean youth have not been exposed enough to the real world to know what they would really love to do in the future. We don’t stand for anything, have no idea why we’re studying what we’re studying. And when we graduate, we land ourselves in a job we half-dislike but psycho ourselves into believing that everything’s gonna be alright. But it doesn’t. Most of the time. The common argument of working a few years in ANYTHING and then thinking of what you wanna do is pretty bullshit. Guys grad at 25. after a FEW years, the commitments start flying in. Some unlucky dudes probably like myself would still be busy clearing their loans and then hey, its time for some marriage plans or the like. No wonder our birthrate is so low. The environment is a huge factor. So anyways, once you’re engaged or the like, there’ll be lots of “noise” pressurizing you to stick with the semi-higher paying job which you start to dread going to every morning. And then….the moment comes when you wanna leave and do THAT job.

“OMG you left a 5k job to be a teacher?” or worse to be a creative at an agency. Which means….in actuality, few people eventually do what they really wanna do. There’s only so many tomorrows you can have. Expose yourself to the world. And fly. And…if you got some time, watch some clouds.

I’ve been thinking about what Jack Sim, founder of World Toilet Organization, said at the SNF. While it takes significantly lesser effort to endorse, criticize a movement once it has started moving, it takes tremendous inertia to get a project moving. Not many people can appreciate the power and inspiration of a new idea. They are met with dismay because we are still used to what we know how to do. Change scares us. And since things are not broken, don’t change it. But without change, there can be no improvement. There is no inspiration in staying the same.

The world needs leaders. People who have enough passion and gumption, commitment to see that
“hey, that’s not right.” or “I know we can do better” and….seek to change it. Lord give me the courage to change what I can. Its just that sitting down on your butt and looking as if you are frantic takes much less of an emotional leap to do than standing up and saying “All right. Who’s with me? Let’s get it done.”.

I will spend more time to find out what are people already doing in singapore and if one of them strikes me i’d consider contributing to it.

When you place a curious booklover in a book sale, he gets crazy!! Expo had so many many books, I just had to take a look at each trolley to see whether they had anything i wanted. And smartly, they’re adding more books to the existing books though i think that was partly cos of space constraints. But i realized after a while that i would never be able to finish looking at all the books given the rate of adding and flipping through all of them so I had to take a more “leave it to fate” approach. What i saw, i liked, i took. If it didn’t catch my eye, i’d pass. That strategy saved my neck as well as tons of time. Went off about 3 but really could have stayed there the whole day. Its just like putting a child at a candy store and telling him….”you can take anything you want to!”

Went back for a visit with my shifu and she’s about the same. Jocelyn joined her agency also, which was quite surprising. Well actually not quite. Another newcomer, stacey, was in the office too. Both are 21 and really good-looking! ok that wasn’t my point. Wesley was there too and seemingly he either did not notice me or he was avoiding me. well whether or not that is true, it brings me back to my point. Perceptions that people have are enduring. While I was pleasantly surprised to see the bunch of NTC people at the seminar, it didn’t feel right.

So I rejected the offer.

Eventually it came down to dual objectives.

1) To do work that is in-line with future of starting a business. This means that work with regards to business development, strategy, consulting, marketing, or anything that I may be passionate about maybe even advertising

2) To get certifications in marketing.

Yes I could have achieved 1 with the job. But it left little in the way of the second. And like i reasoned, after a year, i would be pretty much in the same place supposing little changed. No certification, no savings, and still in debt. There are much better options i believed.

And, who knows? This might not turn out to be the best option after all but to have considered all round and choosing to stick to my objectives means that THAT in fact is the decision. Anything that came from that could have been a hit or a miss.

Today’s news cast included some nuggets about Freddie and Fannie Mae and how it has affected our stock exchanges and ST index. Yes all the usual. But then, a spokesperson from Fundsupermart starting giving his views on the long-term or short-term outlook and giving encouragement somesort to go into the market. Highly unusual if i may say. Investment advice, to what i remember is not part of the scope of the programme of news. In my opinion, it should stay with Channel newsasia. Why? 1 reason is that alot of the public, some of which do not invest, and worse, some of those who think they know something about investing, watch the news everyday. Leaving the nature of his recommendations aside, which was to look at long-term, albeit taking some risk (what am i saying, there’s always risk) to buy in now, its something which the public can easily comprehend differently from the intended. And besides, there’s so much things to cover in the short period of half an hour, i really don’t think we shud have a problem of filling in the programme schedule.

But then think again, why the sudden inclusion? Could it be a deliberate attempt to salvage the market from panic selling? This could be a propaganda effort to gently manipulate the investors. If so, then i must say they are learning fast.

Research from consumer behaviour journal: Consumers who have a more expansive time-horizon think better of rational approaches to advertisement while those with shorter outlook are swayed more by emotional approaches.

Its the 11th July and i finally found the will to write again!

There’s a lot of stuff that happened since then.
Asset-Based thinking(ABT) is a way of looking at life through a positive, do-able mentality that can energize your life. Well, the point of view is not really new though the presentation has been made engaging. The book is very colorful with humorous pictures and photos that help to empathsize the points being made. The only other book I read which is also very readable is “Be Happy”. That was a book meant for juniors. Or so they thought. It seems that even at the ripe old age of 25, the colorful presentation, albeit more professional for some reason grabs attention. This, no doubt, is partly because of the team behind it. Concept farm, which is a renowned agency based in UK is involved in the book’s production. I especially loved this quote
” To acquire knowledge, you must study.
To acquire wisdom, you must observe.”

–Marilyn vos Savant

Pretty easy to be understood huh? Its the same theory with how is it that insights cannot be done through questions and answer and looking at what others write. As mentioned in a presentation by Malcolm Gladwell at TED, nobody knew that they actually loved their pasta sauce to be chunky. Thousands of customer surveys, none of which revealed that. It is only through observation, that you can learn of such insight.

I have been offered a job for 1.8k. with erm, a one month guaranteed bonus. Pretty paltry, if i may say, especially after i’ve spent 24k on this piece of paper and 4 years of my life. I know that with this job, alot of things will start to open up, my options, etc. But still…1.8k. I mean, without even considering the relativity with others’ pay(which i have wisen up to) its a very tight salary i’m running on.

1.8k – CPF = 1,440.

Supposing my expenses = 300 food + 150 transport + 200 insurance + 150 bills, personal learning

and family 300 + laptop 100 + studies 300 = 1500.

wow i can’t even cover the basic stuff. i need to think.

Havent posted for quite a bit of time but still surprised at how WP still sends traffic my way. looks like tagging really is pretty useful.

Zhanjing and Hwee Lee asked me to drop by their pasar malam store so i’ll probably head down there after the interview.

While i’ve been wallowing in WOW for these few days and with the announcement of Diablo 3….(seriously blizzard are u trying to get us killed playing ur games) sheesh. I was kinda worried of losing the edge, the desire of work and my passion in marketing. But when i got the call… my brain just snapped into action. My mind disconnects from my lvl 20 rogue. Instead of running around others back and stabbing them once or twice, i remember my days during entrepreneurship minor. I check out its website and what they’ve done so far, which is pretty much ineffective so far. I see improvments to be made, campaigns that I can hold, fresh ideas to implement, and i get so excited! so much to do. to use my knowledge, in a quantifiable way. And THAT’s what you call passion. Being able to wake up and be excited to go to work. Money is really not the issue as long as you pay me enough to make my mental threshold 2.5k satisfied. Man as mentioned many posts earlier, cannot make objective assessments about anything. Everything is relative and as such, without a comparison, 10k is meaningless. Just like 1K is also meaningless. Which explains why people love to compare. Its an inbuilt mechanism for judging the value of STUFF.

As always, i believe that as long you follow your heart, the money will come. Sounds idealistic? Not at all. To me that’s the most practical thing. How realistic can you be if you’re doing something you don’t like 9 hours a day, 6 days a week, 25 days a month, 300 days a year?! And telling yourself, that…”this too shall pass”.
Come on MAN?! That’s called being unrealistic. Face it. If you don’t like it, you don’t like it. There’s little two ways about it. Maybe if you haven’t found something you really like yet then that sorta gives you an excuse, but really, we should all have a passion for something. It gives you the fuel to keep going in the morning and to sleep a fulfilled man.

Rachel just started teaching and its her 2nd week in school. Seems like she’s not that happy there but then again maybe its just me. Hope she’ll be happier after getting used to the work and environment and kids.