Snippet Of My Life Episode 31 – Round And Round In Circle

When I told other men¹ that I drive an extra 34 km² a day through the rush hour traffic and tolls to drop off and pick up Cynthia in town every working day, a common reaction would be: Why don’t you drop her at a train station near your home and she can make her way to work from there?  To be frank, it does not come across to me as an option at all.  So day in, day out, we have earned at least an hour – depending on traffic condition – of quality time, of us-time inside our car.  We crack jokes, talk about the music scene, talk about our investments, our nieces and nephew, sometimes talk about more intelligent topics like the stuffs we read from the Internet or the books, or something geek-ish like the gaming mechanism of World of Warcraft.  I could spend the entire journey talking about Formula One; and her on make-up.  Or she could spend the initial part of the journey trying to tell me the fairy tale of Princess and the Pea, of which upon hearing her version, I retold the story in a more cohesive manner during the remaining part of the journey.  I often think that between the two of us, I am the better storyteller.  And she is not buying into my suggestion that she needs to start blogging in order to improve her storytelling technique.

Picking up Cynthia in the evening at times involves I going round and round in circle.  Because it is quite impossible to find a temporary parking space in town, legally speaking.  And because I hate to illegally park my car and inconvenienced other people.  I am neutral towards this method of pick-up and I am always happy – unless I am really hungry – to see Cynthia appears from nowhere.  I often joke with her that she is – like in the game World of Warcraft – a rare spawn, or a mineral node that I would go round and round to wait for a respawn.  To those who can relate, I am unsure if playing that online game makes me a more patience person.  Or because I am a patience man, I have no qualm going round and round in circle mining and herbing.  I think it is a bit of both.

But surely, you may say, that is not a good way to spend my time, going round and round in circle.  If you stop and think about it, most of us do the same thing at work: going round and round in circle waiting for that tiny and most of the time, insignificant breakthrough.  In my organization and in any large organization I have worked with, heroism is bad.  To be perceived as indispensable is quite possible the fastest way to be dispensed.  How so?  Teamwork, it has always been valued more than heroism.  There are systems, processes, and culture in place to ensure just that.  When I was young, my dad often came home and said how he acted dump at work.  At that age, I could not comprehend why one would want to do that.  Now that I have more grey hairs, I think I do.  I do not act dump at work.  Rather, I prefer to stay low, put my head down, and do my work.  I have learned to stay within my role and to respect the roles of others.  Is lack of ambition necessarily bad?

Politics, on the other hand, is quite the opposite.  Recently, Cynthia and I had breakfast with our good old buddy who is running for the opposition party in Singapore.  Tipping point was one of the topics I have initiated.  Wouldn’t I be concerned as a Singaporean if the opposition takes over the government today, he asked?  Or should it be a more graduate approach for the politicians coming not from the ruling party today to first learn the rope?  He, I think, prefers a more gentle approach, a safer approach.  I am not into politics.  I do not know what works, what does not.  In my mind, leaders can also be created by the opportunity that calls for at the most unexpected hour.  Not every leader is to be groomed from young.  A safer approach, no doubt, but by no means the only way.  Towards the end of our breakfast session, I made a casual remark that perhaps all we need is someone charismatic to take the social network by storm.  True enough, weeks later, we have our youngest politician, a 24 years old running for opposition party contesting one of the strongholds of the ruling party.  In the morning when the news was out, her Facebook page has only 500 like’s.  In the span of merely a few days, her page has hit close to 20,000 like’s.  I agree with my buddy that Obama did not win the election by means of the social network.  But I argued that coupling the online channel with substance translates to rapid dissemination of ideals directly to the people on the ground, with little or no censorship.  I still have no idea which party to vote for this coming general election.  I do not watch local TV, or read the local papers.  My news feed comes mostly from the online channel³.  At present, I have received more messages from the opposition than from the ruling party.  And there is this highway issue that makes me start to question certain beliefs I have with our government.

Tonight, I am delighted to learn that Lauren Froderman has won season 7’s So You Think You Can Dance⁴.  I am so rooted for that 19 years old dancer who was the last woman standing against a season dominated by male dancers.  The same level of delight when I learned that Whitney Miller has won the MasterChef.  It is good to see talented people get to perform at their peak, with no holding back.  In some situations, heroism pays off.

Footnote 1: Women seem to have no problem understand the need to be picked up everyday. Footnote 2: Singapore is tiny so 34 km is relatively long. Footnote 3: The online version of our local newspaper only gives out truncated news bites with the message that the remaining can be found in the printed version. Footnote 4: Yes, we are very slow in broadcasting overseas TV programs.