Vantan at Vox

Main blog down again, so here I am

nobody@vox.com(vantan) — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 23:59:56 +0800

Wow, it's been over a year since I last updated my Vox blog!

I wanted to blog about my INSEAD class today and I know if I wait until my main site goes back up, I will forget some points. So here they are...

We had an Entrepreneurial Leadership class and the guest speaker was Ivan Lee from Thai Express. He brought along Vikram, an INSEAD MBA who is now his Assistant General Manager. Ivan began by saying that MBAs are overhyped. (slap in the face!) However later on he clarified that there is some worth but like Citibank shares the market will adjust (downwards) to its true value. Ouch! He also got Vikram to testify that working at Thai Express was very different from what he studied in business school. (Then again how can you refuse your boss?)

Anyway that was enough to provoke some interactivity in class. Ivan's gist was that all the ivory tower frameworks we learnt aren't helpful if we aren't willing to get our hands dirty and execute the strategy we've been planning. He is not the first person to mention that MBAs love to do high level jobs like strategy and general management, but that strategy execution is just as important (if not more so). In fact things don't always go to plan and we have to be flexible about it. I agree with that.

Trust is very important in working relationships. Even if a top employee betrayed that trust and had to leave, at least the demonstration of trust will show to the second best employee that he too can be worthy of it. Human resources are the most important asset to be managed in any company. That part we all agreed on.

Personal touch keeps employees loyal. Ivan told us how he bought Vikram a Tag Heuyer watch for his birthday, after working for him for just a year. And Ivan personally chooses every gift for his top employees, instead of subbing it out to his secretary. And if there was a good employee from a certain culture, e.g. Indian, and he wants to retain him, he will attend the employee's events, meet his parents - get close to what the employee values. Because beyond a certain point, salary is not the key factor in making someone stay at the job. That point has been drummed into our heads in other classes.

A classmate asked, "Sure, you can do that if you have a few employees but now you have over 1000 - how can you possible devote personal time for each of them?" Ivan's answer: Delegation. He makes his managers follow him to learn on the job - watch how he handles staff.

"What about training to keep employees loyal?" A classmate asked. Ivan said employees today don't become loyal simply because you pay for their training. They see the company as a provider of free airplane tickets. I started to wonder how the Government and MNCs with large training budgets, would respond to that. I think there is some truth in both schools of thought. Certain staff can be loyal but training will not be the main, or only, factor.

At the end of the talk I spoke to Ivan and thanked him for giving us a good slap in the face :) I then asked how can this entrepreneurial leadership work in bureaucracies (i.e. the Government)? And even if we're successful at making our own department more innovative than the norm, as I'd like to believe I did at one point in time, how can we sustain this and prevent bureaucracy (procedures, protocols, paperwork, politics etc) from creeping in?

His answer was simple: Go to the top man and convince him. That's how the Government works. Our professor agreed and said it worked for him before. I am glad at least that my top man listens and understands. My BATNA isn't so bad I guess.

This account was entirely written off the top of my head so I hope it's correct.

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Best friends

nobody@vox.com(vantan) — Sat, 16 Feb 2008 23:56:48 +0800

Best friends

From left to right: VanPod Video (80GB), my mum's new iPod Nano, and my red AIDS Nano.
Leaning against my Bose Soundock.

(Sunglasses sold separately.)

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I still love my G5

nobody@vox.com(vantan) — Sat, 16 Feb 2008 22:48:36 +0800

My G5

Baby, it's been nearly 4 years since I've had you, and you've given me the some of the most creative years of my life.

You've helped me design websites and produce lots of music. You've never died on me.

It was on you that I started chatting to Ramblinglibrarian about forming the Gahmen Bloggers.

Only now, due to some OS10.5 upgrade glitch, are you unable to communicate with the rest of the world. And due to some 3rd-party incompatibilities, I can't produce music the way we used to. And I know you're out of disk space.

But deep inside, you're still beautiful. I know, because I looked inside you this morning just to make sure everything was connected properly. You were less dusty than I thought you'd be. I wiped you, anyway.

I'm going to keep you going strong. I'm ordering you a whopping new hard drive and another 2GB of RAM. I just bought a new 500GB backup disk to replace the one that died, so we won't lose important files again.

And if necessary I'll reformat you too, if you still can't connect with your server friends.

Hang in there, baby. Help is on the way.

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Listening to Grammy music

nobody@vox.com(vantan) — Fri, 15 Feb 2008 22:57:21 +0800

Back To Black

Amy Winehouse

After hearing so much about Amy Winehouse, how she won 5 Grammys yet was unable to attend the ceremony due to her her drug problems, I decided to check her out. A quick scan through her music told me I liked her style.

Natalie Cole attacked Amy's wins, saying Beyonce and Rihanna were more deserving and that drug addicts shouldn't be getting away with it. At first I thought it was a case of sour grapes but then, learning that Cole herself had fought her addiction, she probably understood things better. [There is something bloody wrong with Vox + Firefox 3 beta preventing me from hyperlinking, so here's the URL: http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,23203698-5012974,00.html]

Growing Pains

I also picked up the Mary J Blige album, Growing Pains, and the Grammy Nominees 2008 album.

2008 Grammy Nominees

I wanted to get the Herbie Hancock album, River: The Joni Letters and Patti Austin's Avant Gershwin, but both were out of stock. I can see the financial benefits of winning, or at least getting nominated for, a Grammy.

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"Don't stay back so late"

nobody@vox.com(vantan) — Thu, 14 Feb 2008 02:39:41 +0800

I and another colleague stayed back late to complete our respective projects last night. Eventually I packed up my bags and prepared to go home.

On my way out, I turned back and said, "I know people like to say 'Don't stay back so late' but it's a useless comment, seeing how we have to finish the work on time. So I won't say it!"

I actually like staying back late because most people have gone home, I'm finally not stuck in meetings or answering phone calls, so I can actually concentrate on getting my work done. Of course, that only applies because I like my work, most of the time.

We shouldn't be as extreme as the HP employee who died of overwork last year. She felt she had 'no choice'. We CAN make the choice go home and leave the work for tomorrow. But when we know we have something else tomorrow (like another full day of meetings), there's no other time to finish the existing work, except at night. Or else the workload accumulates mercilessly.

Anyway, I have to get all my work done before I leave for SXSW, which consistently clashes with our financial year closure which pressurises us to complete all our projects in time. Last year, I fell very ill as I tried to do full-time work every night after coming back from SXSW. I hardly had any sleep. In the end it was counterproductive as I fell ill and took a few weeks to recuperate. So I'm going to do minimal office work while I'm in Austin, just (b)logging all my notes for the day.

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To my subscribers

nobody@vox.com(vantan) — Wed, 13 Feb 2008 10:59:42 +0800

To all 150+ of you: Thank you for subscribing and giving me a morale boost for the past few years.

I've repointed my Feedburner link to my alternative blog on Vox as it may take a while to restore the vantan.org blog. You don't have to change your subscriptions at all. Cheers!

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Vantan.org blog update

nobody@vox.com(vantan) — Wed, 13 Feb 2008 04:35:09 +0800

I'm still trying to fix my main blog. I think it's a question of not enough time and expertise. I wrote in to Six Apart for help. They gave some advice (basically to re-upload everything properly) but added I had to pay for MT4 support for subsequent advice.

I half wanted to switch to Wordpress, but I don't like the fact that Wordpress doesn't support multiple blogs.

I'm still trying to re-upload the relevant folders in ASCII format, but WS_FTP on my Dell seems to be timing out a lot. If my G5 Mac didn't have post-Leopard Internet connection problems, I'd have uploaded everything on Fetch and upgraded MT without a hitch. I've done that a number of times before. Seems each technical problem is impacting future ones.

So I'm here on Vox, blogging until I get my Movable Type main blog fixed. Anyway I like how it's so easy to add stuff. Makes me feel like writing more book and album reviews.

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BBC Sportdaq makes me a multi-millionaire

nobody@vox.com(vantan) — Wed, 13 Feb 2008 04:08:22 +0800

I'm a millionaire again!

Woohoo! All that buying into famous football players has made me virtually rich. Now if only I had such luck in the real stock market...

If you're a sports fan, and are particularly into UK sports, play BBC Sportdaq. You'll be hooked. We should have something like this for other kinds of industries.

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Temporary relocation of blogging HQ

nobody@vox.com(vantan) — Mon, 11 Feb 2008 01:09:03 +0800

My main blog, www.vantan.org, has been buggy of late. So I decided to upgrade to MT4.1 and hope that will resolve the problems.

However, as my Mac is no longer able to connect to the Internet due to some cock-up with the upgrade to OS10.5, and the family PC crashed after I installed Sim Societies which caused a serious graphics problem. I restored the PC but it has trouble connecting to the Internet (sounds like a habit).

The only machine left is my oft-mentioned Dell laptop which has WS_FTP but seems to keep timing out when I do bulk folder uploads. So yes, I'm doing uploads ONE BY ONE.

In the meantime, tune in to my Vox Blog for the latest updates!

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A subdued Chinese New Year

nobody@vox.com(vantan) — Mon, 11 Feb 2008 00:44:38 +0800

It's definitely been the most painful and toned-down Chinese New Year in my living memory. When my maternal grandmother died (aka Por Por) last Wednesday, we had to quickly organise a wake (Chinese tradition of keeping the deceased company until funeral rites are performed) over the next 3 days followed by a cremation.

As she died a day before Chinese New Year began, we did not want to put up a big advertisement as that would make our friends and other relatives feel obliged to show up. We didn't want to be the dampener or jinx for anyone during this festive period.

My sleep patterns have been stretched to nearly the limit. I'd keep my mum company until around 2am then we'd go home. By the time I got ready to sleep it would be 3am. We kept doing this up to Friday and still woke up in time for the funeral rites which were supposed to begin at 10.30am on the same day.

The ceremony started late but after that everything went smoothly. We were all dressed in white and black, the younger and more agile ones sitting on the floor while the others sat on chairs behind us. The Taoist priest recited many chants which were unintelligible to me (as it was in dialect) and all I could pick out was my mum's dialect name being included in between.

The priest's voice seemed choked with emotion and I was surprised as he wasn't my grandma's regular priest (the big shot was on his Chinese New Year break and subcontracted it out to this guy), so he probably didn't know her so well. Then his emotional expression went back to normal as he spoke to my cousin Dom who was right in front, clarifying a few things with him. Then the priest continued chanting and choking 'emotionally'. I thought that was unnecessary - if you don't feel so remorseful, why pretend to be? God knows our hearts. Maybe it's just part of the Taoist tradition to sound sad even if you don't know your client.

Then we stood up, circled the coffin a few times and each paid our final respects with a joss stick and 3 bows of the body. We made our way downstairs and turned our backs on the coffin as we weren't supposed to see it get loaded into the car.

While I saw many of these rituals as superstitions, I respected them as did my other cousins who are Catholic.

We headed to the Mandai Crematorium. It was the first time I've been to any crematorium, I think. Our room was cold but very tastefully furbished, with a good view of the coffin which was trundled in by a machine. When it made its way towards the furnace, other family members got pretty emotional. I wiped my own tears away.

I was with my little niece Natalie, who understood what was happening. She had scampered to the left side of the room and an aunt from my dad's side (who had kindly chosen to be with us in Por Por's final moments) gestured for me to keep an eye on her. So I went over and held her so she wouldn't fall over the steps - and it gave us a much better view as the coffin was led through a door on the left.

I told Natalie to pay attention as this would be the last time she'd see Por Por (or Dai Por as she called her). She said she knew. On Wednesday, she had drawn a picture for Por Por and this was placed into the coffin. Presumably it would also be cremated with her.

As the furnace doors closed, we were quickly ushered to another room to wash ourselves with a pail of water that had lots of flowers and leaves in it. We used the colourful towels given to us earlier, which were each tied in bundles of red string. We then threw the towels away. I was just following what everyone else did - even the adults weren't sure at some points what to do next!

At that point, Natalie also cried, saying she missed Dai Por. Apparently she even said "There goes another generation." Pretty big thoughts for someone not yet in Primary School.

I have to thank everyone at work for chipping in. I was especially touched that collections were made not just by my own department, RDS, but also by Corporate Comms, Partnership Management and Corporate Marketing, including the respective Deputy Directors and my own Director. I didn't know I was entitled to a wreath for grandparents' funerals, but was happy to contribute to more flowers at the wake.

Yes, even in such moments I believe we should document them, so here's a photo of the wreath from HPB. Thanks guys. It means much to me.

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