On The Move…

It’s a bit late, being the 15th of Jan and all, but still a good time to take stock, reflect and dream about the future.

Dubai has been pretty good to me thus far. And with the weather turning more fall/winter-like every day, I grow increasingly fond of the city. I will miss the life I had here, when I leave.
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2012 in a nutshell:

Jan: Still staffed on dairy project, had a pretty cushy time. Worked with new hire X – it was fun to have help and to pass on knowledge
Feb: Staffed on retail FS case with some old friends and new faces; an intense 6-8 week project, but a good learning experience
Mar: Went to HK and Macau (first time!) for G’s birthday
Apr: Wrapped up FS case; Went on vacation with S, starting in Singapore
May:  Staffed on F&B case; Went to 5th year reunion in Cambridge, MA – what a blast! Stayed with Ryan in NYC, caught up with old friends, roommates, teachers – LOVELY
June: Started properly on F&B project, a generally messy experience; Got a good review for the first half of the year, which was nice
July: NS in-camp with extended out-field stays; Cousins M and F come to visit, we go to HK, Bangkok, KL, Redang and Singapore
August: All F&B project; Experienced one of the most memorable client interactions (which will come back to me unexpectedly, 6 months later)
Sept: Wrap up F&B project; TBN Israel tour (with Petra thrown in) – what a blessing to get to go on this trip! I start work in Dubai, UAE; Staffed on local Dubai project; I return to Singapore to attend the office retreat in Bali, which was a treat. Table won best dressed for “The Fifth Element”
Oct:  Busy with work; an unexpected trip to Paris, and London, which was lovely – got to see Matilda, the new Bain London office, and also London Bainies F, S, A, Singapore friends G and P, plus good friends M in London, G in Paris
Nov: Somehow I took a long weekend back in Sg
Dec: Dubai offsite trip to Muscat, Oman (cool!), some not so great news from SEA office, a nice long end-of-year holiday to Singapore (cousin L’s wedding), Bangkok (with extended family) and NYE in Beirut (with Dubai Bainies C, F and M). Got to visit Byblos, Arjan and Baalbek in Lebanon. Caught up in Singapore with old friends like S (new bar!), G, T (surprising new relationship!) etc. etc. And got to attend Christmas service at The Star, which was a great blessing.
Jan: Looking forward to the rest of the year, which will certainly bring lots of new challenges, and hopefully a continuous slew of successes!

Am currently in Dubai, UAE. Posted here on an inter-office transfer for six months, sort of like an exchange program.

I’ve been here just a few weeks, and the city if growing on me. Today I had lunch with an ex-colleague who grew up here, and we went to the Ibn Battuta Mall, which is a surprisingly cultural experience. Lots of historical displays about the travels of Ibn Battuta, a 12th Century Berber Muslim Moroccan explorer, as well as the technology, culture and politics of the era throughout the region. Like being in a Civilizations Museum, but with Forever 21, Woolworths and Borders. I could have (and did) wander around by myself for hours after our delicious lunch.

I need to take more photos. The architecture and food are both often totally snapshot worthy, but I feel a little self-conscious whipping out my point-and-shoot.

Four months since my last post, although it truly feels like years.

Last weekend was my fourth company retreat. We went back to the same tropical resort island as my first offsite in 2007. I even had the same roommate. We were strangers back then, and now have become pretty good friends. We’ve shared many a project experience and merry evening together with family and colleagues. Back in 2007 I spent hours on my costume and left an indelible first impression on the firm.  This year I picked something fun, and pretty easy to pull off – but managed to get the party started, anyway.  Happy clappy memories, as EP might say.

This month is pretty packed. I have to push ahead on four different work and personal projects, with one more already pretty much defunct from neglect. That last part makes me sad. But I understand it’s because I prioritised all my other commitments and interest, and so be it.

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Puff Puff passed away last month, and is still dearly missed.

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September is a month for nostalgia, chapters concluding and new beginnings.

It’s been a while since I last posted in June, but I felt compelled to record the last two weeks, which have been the BEST TWO WEEKS EVER.  On multiple fronts, too.

– The Dins wrapped up on their highly successful, super fun and wonderfully lucrative tour stop in Singapore

– I got a wonderful room at MBS on National Day despite the hotel having been booked out for months in advance; view of the fireworks was spectacular

– Wrapped on my project and went on two weeks NS reservist training, which is like a long (although tiring) vacation, kind of like going trekking on vacation

– Achieved a good IPPT result despite spraining my ankle just 4 days before and not having a pacer to run the 2.4km run with; had the batallion’s fastest run timing (mainly a negative reflection on the batallion’s fitness, but I’ll happily take the award)

– Helped out with a 5-hour board of directors’ retreat for one of Singapore’s premier performing arts organisations, very cool, and super interesting people/discussions/issues

– Had four consecutive rock star fantasy nights of fabulous parties, great meals, incredible views, fireworks and loads of fun

– Got the best suite yet at MBS, highest floor of rooms (54), views in both directions, obscene oodles of space

– Attended a great PP sermon at NCC

– Had a long, super lucrative streak at MBS

– Survived almost a month of sleeping just 3-4 hours each night, successfully staved off several near-flu episodes

Did I mention?  BEST TWO WEEKS EVER!!!

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And next month I go on vacation to London/Munich/Milan.

Life = more abundantly
Me = thankful and rested

It’s three hours to midnight, and 2009.  Today I’m in Beijing, yesterday it was Xi’an, and three days ago it was Shanghai, with a brief day in Singapore.  In just four days I will be back in Singapore and then almost immediately back on a plane to Shanghai.  What a difference a year makes.  I can barely recall where I was last new year’s eve, other than at Zen’s house party, followed by a fun trip to The Butter Factory.  I had just finished up a long project in Malaysia, and would be staffed on a Vietnam case within weeks.

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The food here in China is very good, we had roast duck tonight, at what is apparently the most famous restaurant for the delicacy in Beijing (tracing roots back to 1864).

Weather-wise we’ve been pretty blessed with sunshine and not overly blustery or icy days.  Nonetheless at the end of today’s walking tour of the Forbidden City I was grateful for the warm car and the chance to thaw my frozen feet.

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Beijing is completely different from the memories I have of the city from over a decade ago.  My half-memories (mixed liberally with scenes from various movies and TV serials) of an ancient Chinese city crowded with bicycles have had to readjust to the shockingly wide streets (filled with Audis and VWs), striking skyscrapers and bright lights.  I suppose I should have expected all this, given the many mournful and/or nostalgic articles and programs on Beijing (and a mythic Old Beijing) I’d previously seen on National Geographic Magazine, Discovery Channel and even CCTV.  Yet the reality is still a little jarring. 

I also realise that many of the memories I had of my last visit to Beijing as a young boy are simply false.  For example, I had the strongest impression that the Temple of Heaven was in fact an annex to the Forbidden City.  It is not.

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It’s been a good year, I trust.  May 2009 be an even better year, the best year yet.

Do you remember how much easier and more resiliently promising everything seemed to be once upon a time, years ago?  Sometimes it feels like you take a whole bunch of steps forwards, towards some vision of what an “adult life” might look like, with the requisite loosely-framed beliefs and inevitable responsibilities, hazy plans and daily effort, small triumphs and minor compromises.  I filed taxes in Singapore for the first time yesterday (thank God for the ultra-user-friendly e-filing).  Last week a group of us discussed the dynamics of arranged marriages in Indian culture and its more universal applicability. 

Then other times I feel almost perverse in my instinct to push away as alienated the norms of normalcy, growingly aware of the mismatch between the state of my mind and state of affairs, either imagined or otherwise.  Yet I occassionally experience in powerful flashes the strong suspicion that this isn’t it, can’t be it… hopefully.

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I’m still in Delhi, give or take a couple 6 hour flights back and forth.  I’ve actually fared very well with the pseudo four-day-workweeks, between fly-backs and a birthday holiday for Lord Rama.  We’ve switched accomodations, to someplace lots nicer, and with copious amounts of quite thoughtfully curated art everywhere–no insipid watercolors–in the public spaces.  I appreciate.

Came across an article about Adorno…  and now I really want to read me some Adorno.  It’s fun to recall the mind-boggling fun we had those days, trying to speed-read through the excerpted convolutions of Horkheimer, Heidegger and Weber in translation.  The titles of those books and articles alone signalled the mental gymnastics to come – Wit and Its Relation to the Unconscious, anyone?  Good times.

Today I told a funny story about an economics professor XW took a class with…  and then it occurred to me later that the professor in question had a Nobel prize, and several bestselling books, and worldwide name-recognition.  And there wasn’t anyone around to share in my contentment with this memory.  A small pity.

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Puff puff is now big enough to wear his diaper 🙂  Yay!!

It’s been a pretty eventful couple of weeks.

Starting from a month ago, which was my first free weekend in six weeks.  Too bad no one seemed to be free to do anything…  everyone either had prior plans, or work, or whatever, so I went to see Enchanted with my sister.  (Fun movie, go see it if you still can.)

Then everything becomes a bit of a blur, there was a memorable weekend trip to Hong Kong with colleagues, and a series of parties and fun nights out… but the important thing is I now have fluffies again!  Two lovely little white silkie chicks, hatched from the eggs I carried back from the US.  Regardless of the wild rumours that I’ve been hearing, I did not incubate these eggs with my body heat by having them strapped to me for three weeks (??), but instead used a very efficient Brinsea incubator with auto-turner.  Right now, the still-unnamed little puff balls are asleep (it’s about 2pm); they’ve developed a strange, house-pet sleep cycle – they are most active (and loudly demand to be played with) in the morning between 8am and 11am and in the evening after 5pm, which is about when most of us are at home to attend to them.  Which also mean they mostly sleep from noon to 5pm everyday, waking occassionally to water or eat a little.

Of course I’ve only recently discovered this odd schedule because I’m now on holiday break from Christmas through to New Year’s.  Lovely.  Earlier this week my parents took the opportunity to take a little roadtrip up to Malaysia, suring which I did little other than sleep, eat, shop and watch movies on cable TV.  Bliss.

The other main benefit of having a break from work is being able to catch up with old friends whom I haven’t met or communicated with in months.  I’ve made several happy long-distance phone calls and enjoyed a couple of leisurely meals reconnecting, reliving, refreshing…  all very much needed.

Happy holidays, and a happy new year.  May 2008 be filled with unexpected blessings, fulfilled desires and abundant joy.

It’s been a while, hasn’t it?

Since I last wrote around National Day, I have been on what feels like dozens of planes, clocked hundreds of hours of work, written thousands of lines of Excel as well as personal emails and somewhat settled into what might be viewed as an unexpected life choice for me.

To recap: Towards the end of my internship I was extended a job offer and after about a week of consideration I decided to take it.  I started immediately, against everyone’s advice urging me to take a vacation first.  So I’m now an Ass0ciate ConsuItant in Singapore with Ba1n & C0 [apologies for the odd typing, I’m trying to fend off the spiders].  In many ways the job meets the profile of what I’d wanted to do right out of college if I had to have a real job – it’s interesting, dynamic, hectic, and has some pretty great perks.  The expected downside, that I haven’t had time to maintain connections to the people, events and activities I used to (like this blog), hasn’t been too much of an inconvenience so far, and I think as time goes by I’ll adjust to the schedule and reclaim more me-time.

Highlight: A couple of months back Flora was lovely enough to entrust me with the weighty privilege of being the official photographer at her solemnization ceremony!  It was great fun, if a little anxiety-causing since I really wanted to give her and Alfred the best images I could of their beautiful, intimate event.

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One of the (many) perks of the job is the training sessions we get sent on around the world every couple of years.  First year juniors like me get sent to Cape Cod, so I got to visit my old haunts in Cambridge and Boston back in October which was lovely.  I saw some Dins, some roommates, some dear friends…  I got to tie up some loose ends and revive some old connections.   And the training itself was great fun, especially because the trainers and other newbies were lovely people.

And while I was there I got some white silkie eggs!  At the Boston Poultry show, no less!! 🙂  They’re currently a week from being due to hatch in my spiffy new auto-turning, state-of-the-art incubator that’s right here in my room.  So exciting!  I haven’t figured out how I’m going to deal with the first couple of  months until they become old enough to wear diapers, but I’ll figure something out along the way, I guess.  My main concern now is finding some chick starter feed next week…  where should I look??

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This is the first free weekend I’ve had in over a month, and it’s sad that none of the people I sent messages to are free this weekend.  Meanwhile, half the young’uns in the office are in Bangkok attending a colleague’s wedding.  I’d tried my best to go but couldn’t get tickets in time.  Hopefully next week’s trip to Hong Kong will be better fated.

Next week my current case will officially wrap up, which makes me pretty excited as well.  Not because I’m bored of the case or anything, but it will be the successful end to my first case, and it has been a long one, relatively.  While our office averages cases of about two months, mine has lasted over twice as long at five months.  At this point I don’t even recall how to begin work on a new case in a new industry.  Anyhow it’s been a good ride, and if nothing else I am now intimately acquainted with all the transit lounge options at the Kuala Lumpur International Airport 🙂

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Maybe I’ll post some pictures up next time.

PS:  Is anyone even continuing to read this blog, after a three month hiatus??

Yes, there was Bill Clinton yesterday, and Bill Gates today, and honors and ceremonies and prayers and cheering and parties and toasts and family and hugs and pictures and perfect weather…

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There should be more weeping, that’s my feeling about all this. 

Yes, it’s a jubilant, joyful, blessed, exciting, hopeful, inspiring, beautiful, precious time, but it’s also a time of ghosts, of memories, of finality, of fleeting youth, of loss and separation.  To weep seems to be the only appropriate response.  Weep for joy, weep in relief, weep in exhaustion, weep in mourning, weep in gratitude.  Weep for the bittersweet tang of unrealized relationships, forgotten dreams and missed opportunities.  Weep for the painfully beautiful metamorphosis of nebulous possibilities into sharpened minds, coherent personalities, and recognizable individuals.  Let the tears of rejoicing and anxiety and disbelief comingle and stream freely down in respectful acknowledgement for the kindness of time, of others, and of God. 

What else can we do but weep for the ghosts that we will add to the multitudes already wandering the hallways of the buildings we loved and the dining halls where we ate and the libraries where we worked?  The accumulation of emotions and energy and effort that we have expended here over the years echo ever and only louder and more poignantly as our rooms become empty, and we violently, unceremoniously, and even unwillingly erase the physical evidence of our time here.  Every bare shelf and abandoned bed starkly attests to the existence of their previous owners.  And these owners no longer exist – where is that boy that worried about a midterm grade, or that girl that threw everything into her student group?  We will be different tomorrow, we have no choice, and the future promises so much.  How can we not weep?  There should be much more weeping.

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Weep, and you will know then that in some small way, perhaps without noticing or even acquiescing, in this place and with these people you encountered the mystery and meaning of life.

That’s it.  I took my last final exam for my last college class today.  And of course it had to be, erm, Ec1010b (ugh), and of course the exam was almost inconceivably long and hard.  I mean it was literally almost inconceivable – during the exam I wondered a couple of times if I had somehow become drugged or affected by heatstroke (it was about as hot as Singapore today – high 80s) because everytime I looked up it seemed 35 minutes had passed and I had only completed three points worth of questions despite working as quickly as possible.  This was a problem because there were 180 points on the three-hour exam, i.e. you had to work at a rate of one point per minute to finish in time.  In the end I completed the first 30 points in 90 minutes and the last 100 points in 40 minutes.  Awful.

But it doesn’t matter anymore.

🙂

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I’ve been reflecting a lot about my Harvard experience, unsurprisingly, to fill out the many various surveys and end-of-course evaluations that accompany graduating college here, and also in preparation for Experiences, for the admissions office tours and other related projects.  I’ve already said all the harsh, critical things I’ve wanted to express about my academic, social, extracurricular, advising and residential experience (lots of appreciation to the people who listened to my rants), so I shall not repeat them.  But it must be remembered that in the end I am overwhelmingly happy, and grateful, and very, very sad to leave. 

I remember Jeff telling me last year about how he cried before we left on Tour, and now I think I will cry too.  Even just typing that makes me a little tearful. 

Ryan and I have been indulging in so much nostalgia recently.  Every day is the last day now, every time is the last time now.  The last time we’ll work HUCEP, the last time we’ll turn in blue books, the last time we’ll use Board Plus.  It’s a little heart-wrenching to think about, which may be partly why we don’t think about it much and usually don’t remember.  But then we do, and it’s a little blow. 

The last chance to say goodbye to the underclassmen, the last opportunity to take pictures, the last access to that favorite professor’s office hours…

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Right now I’m finishing up my last two CUE-guide course evaluations, and I’m writing the most glowing praise I can come up with for this particular class. 

For the question “Would you recommend this class to other students, and why?”  I indicated the most positive possible response: “recommend with enthusiasm”, and then wrote in the reason:

Professor L. is one of the best professors at Harvard, no question.  She is brilliant and willing to share her wealth of scholarship and incredibly rich first-hand knowledge, yet also wonderfully down-to-earth, irrepressibly curious and eager to hear about new ideas and technology.  Professor L. is warm and interested in students and genuinely concerned with gently but firmly pushing them towards excellence in this class and all other areas of their lives.  Anyone who has the privilege of taking any class with her is blessed, and will likely remember the class as one of the most motivating, intellectually invigorating, relevant one they’ve taken.  This is what all Harvard courses should be like, so perhaps you shouldn’t take this if you don’t want most of your other classes to pale in comparison.

And then to the prompt “Please comment on this person’s teaching”, I write: 

Superb.  Almost beyond superlatives; the quality of Professor L.’s teaching is matched by only a very small, precious group of professors at Harvard or anywhere, I imagine.  What more can I say to laud her ability to put students at ease and make them feel engaged and valued despite her intimidating intellect plus her daunting scholarly AND noble (humanitarian) accomplishments?  I have never encountered such a thoughtfully and successfully designed seminar – one proof was that we never wanted to end discussions on time, and I wouldn’t be able to decide which sessions were most highly anticipated, useful or generally enjoyed, those where Professor L. lectured, those where invited guests spoke or those where fellow students presented.  Professor L.’s leadership of the class must be credited for this exceptional learning experience with quite literally never a dull moment.  I will stop only because I imagine my praise will start to be undermined by seeming to be embarrassingly effusive and hyperbolic.  But I stand by what I’ve written as my accurate and well-considered opinion.

I *heart* my professors.  Can you tell?