As with many Chinese people in South East Asia, I am not purely Chinese by descent. My paternal grandmother is Peranakan from the Indonesian Riau Islands and my maternal ancestors were Peranakan from a coastal province in Malaysia called Penang.

Peranakans are descendants of Chinese immigrants who married Malays. Together, they formed a unique heritage – a sort of melting pot of Chinese, Malay and later, colonial (i.e. Dutch or British) influences.

Despite my ancestry, I didn’t grow up practicing the Peranakan way of life, which is quite a pity since the last practicing Peranakan in my family is my grandmother, who’s about 90.

But last week I was given the perfect opportunity to learn about my culture by the nice folks of the Peranakan Association, who invited me for an evening at Singapore’s Peranakan Museum.

And here’s a snapshot of my experience.

Peranakan Architecture

The museum is styled like a typical Peranakan home. Peranakans are very fond of pastel colors and intricate designs. When I first saw the building, I was quite shocked. It is strikingly similar to my old Wordpress theme, Springley. It made wonder if it is possible for art to be passed down by blood…

Peranakan Wedding

This is the setting where lap chai occurs. Lap chai is a gift-exchange ceremony that takes place one day before the wedding day.

And here is an example of the gifts the groom will bring to the bride’s family.

During lap chai, the bride and groom are to serve each other’s parents with tea as a symbol of filial piety and symbol of being accepted into the family.

This is the newlywed’s bedroom. So pretty! But the bed sure looks uncomfortable. :S

And here’s part of the wedding procession. I would like to point out that the groom’s clothes are very reminiscent of Chinese zombies. For the longest time, I’ve wondered why Chinese zombies are always portrayed with Qing Dynasty clothes. Do shed some light, if you know!

But I digress.

Peranakan Superstition

Talking about zombies, Peranakans were highly superstitious people, which isn’t too surprising since they were heavily influenced by their Chinese ancestors. They had all sorts of amulets to protect themselves from evil. These amulets are called tangkal.

Peranakan House

Peranakans had a penchant for naming their houses. As an aside, this could be my house since that’s my last name on the nanyate-esque lanterns.

Peranakan Tableware

Here’s a shot of Peranakan tableware. As with their houses, most of the tableware are in brightly colored shades of pastel with patterns dominated by flowers, butterflies, phoenixes and dragons.

This is a closeup of a Peranakan kamcheng lid. The detail is amazing! Peranakans meticulously pay the same attention to detail in everything they do. I marvel at their patience and at the same time wonder how bored one must of been to design everything with such intricacy.

These people clearly have never heard of Facebook.

Peranakan Fashion

As with Chinese women, most Peranakan women were not allowed to leave the house. So they killed time by embroidering and making gorgeous wallets, shoes and clothes.

Here are some Peranakan purses made with beads.

Here is more hand-embroidery to be later turned into shoes.

To save the best for last, this is how Peranakan women dressed. It’s a fancier version of the traditional Malay attire Kebaya. For the rich, it’s made of imported Chinese silk and hand-embroidered with all sorts of flowers.

My grandmother still dresses this way whenever she goes out. It’s very elegant. I really wouldn’t mind a modernized version of this as my future wedding dress.

But my hubby sure isn’t going to wear that Chinese zombie-inspired monstrosity though.

Anyway, I hope you found this entry enlightening. There are lots of more of the museum that I did not cover since the entry is already getting way too long. (It’s also taking me forever to resize, watermark and saturate those photos!)

So head over to my Picasa album to look at the rest of the 150+ photos I took. Link to be updated since it’s taking awfully long to upload.

There was an exhibit that I thoroughly enjoyed but wasn’t allowed to take pictures; it’s where all the bling’s at. So if you have some time, I encourage you to check it out yourself at the Peranakan Museum before it ends on December 13. There are also a bunch of interesting festivities going on from November 27 to December 6 – including a visit to a true Peranakan home.

I’m neither the Harvard Business Review nor an experienced people manager but just thought I’d share 5 things I’ve learned about people management:

#1: Great managers assume responsibility

Not-so-great managers are quick to assign blame. Being under constant pressure to make sure nothing goes wrong, I can understand this tendency to point fingers and pass the buck. While it makes quickly lightens the load off your shoulders, it also dampens customer experience and damages teamwork.

Your customers will appreciate when you go that extra mile, even if you fail to deliver. But more importantly, taking on extra responsibility fosters teamwork since your team will stop weighing and comparing their responsibilities precisely because you’ve stopped counting your responsibilities. This is Cialdini’s reciprocation principle at its finest. When you’re willing to take one for the team or just help them out, others will feel compelled to help you too.

But of course, the reverse is also true. When you count pennies with the team, they’ll count pennies with you too.

#2: Great managers listen

Perhaps the speed the world revolves now with Twitter and other ADD-inducing technologies has made it more difficult to attentively listen to people but great managers don’t rush to get their word in. They listen. They acknowledge. And then speak and/or act.

Appreciate what others have to say, no matter how different or perhaps, inferior they may seem to you. Innovative ideas could spring out from conversations with anyone. Two minds are better than one even if you think they only have an IQ of 50.

IQ of 50 + your IQ of 150 = 200. Enough said.

#3: Great managers are courteous

Just because you are in a superior position, doesn’t mean you get the privilege to talk down to someone. It not only makes you look crude, but also destroys team morale. And when your team morale is low, your customers sure ain’t gonna get great service. Creating a lose-lose vicious cycle just because you think you’re better than others just isn’t worth it.

#4: Great managers plan ahead

This may not be so obvious in the office but it sure is when it comes to events. Shit happens. If it does not happen, it will eventually find you and make itself happen. No matter how quiet or peaceful the status quo seems, you have to be prepared to deal with all kinds of potential shit that may be hurled in your general direction.

So don’t be complacent and plan ahead. Of course, foresight isn’t an easy skill to develop and is probably honed with experience but it never hurts to try anyway.

By the way, I appeased a very angry customer by planning ahead. Won’t go into details but this makes a good topic for conversation should we go for coffee.

#5: Great managers know themselves

This is the most important lesson I’ve learned at APEC. I have talents. I have flaws. I also have predictable behaviors to certain circumstances. As a manager, I need first be able to manage myself to adapt to all kinds of situations and all kinds of people, so I could effectively manage other people. This means I need to have some level of self-awareness and self-understanding.

My interest in personality psychology has helped a great deal in learning more about myself. One of my favorite personality tests is the MBTI. Although I don’t think the MBTI is the definitive answer to self-understanding, I find that it’s a good gauge of my natural tendencies. By the way, my MBTI type is ENTJ; being an ENTJ means that:

• Extraverted: I’m easy to talk to but I tend to speak before I think.
• iNtuitive: I easily see the big picture and patterns in theories but I tend to overlook details.
• Thinking: I make my decisions by being impartial, rational and logical but I tend to disregard people’s emotional needs.
• Judging: I like to organize and plan ahead but tend to panic when I have to think on the spot

To become a better managers, people need to capitalize on their strengths and overcome their negative tendencies. Great people managers should be able to find that sweet spot between their natural personalities and the mirror image of their personalities.

And for me, that means I need to become a little more ISFP-esque:

• Introverted: Listen, acknowledge and think before I shoot my mouth
• Sensing: Pay to attention to minor details
• Feeling: Take other peoples’ feelings into consideration.
• Perceiving: Allow myself room to sometimes be spontaneous.

If you have no clue what this mirror personality bit is all about, you can read up on the four dichotomies of the MBTI here.

I’m no CEO or psychologist so I doubt my observations and judgment are 100% correct. But at 23 years old and 9 days of people management immersion, this is what I think great people managers should be like.

As always, I’m sure time and experience will change my perception again.

Dear Readers, what do you think great people managers should be like? And I’d love to find out your personality types, so do share! And if you don’t already know your MBTI type, take the test here!

Her 3 tips for balancing her life:

• #1: Work comes first
• #2: Set a daily schedule
• #3: Draw a line

Like her, I too work in public relations with some focus on online media, albeit in-house. I think I do #1 and #3 fairly well. Work will always be first, and I draw a line between my roles as a blogger, a PR person and a friend.

But #2 is something I constantly struggle with. (See my sparse blog archive for proof). Since most of my work is project-based, there are times where I will work on 3-5 projects simultaneously. Most of the time, this means I will end up burning weekends. And then there are times where I will have nothing substantial to do. (Although, I have yet to see this in 2009).

This is how my work day looks like during a moderately busy period.

9:00am Arrive at the office. Open Outlook. Reply to the gazillion emails before my meeting.

9.30am Rush to meeting.

12:30pm Come out of meeting. Check Twitter and Outlook. Update my to-do list. If there are very urgent emails or stuff, skip lunch with colleagues and work. If not, have quick lunch with colleagues.

1.30pm Resume work or respond to more emails.

2:00pm Rush to another meeting.

4:00pm Break. Either go downstairs to pick up a drink, or play something mindless like Restaurant City for 5 minutes.

4:30pm While clearing work, get interrupted by a stakeholder. Do urgent job for them.

5:30pm Resume normal work and respond to emails.

7:00pm Finish up the most urgent stuff. Review to-do list for the next day. If there are still more urgent things to do, stay past 7.

7:30pm Order take out or eat with colleague who stayed late too.

8:45pm Arrive home. Log on to Adium (Mac’s IM client) and Mixero (Twitter app). Chat with friends, reply any DMs or @replies. Check personal email, nanyate.com and Facebook. If it requires urgent response, reply.

9:00pm If there is some juice left in the brain, open Google Reader, TED.com or read a book. Get inspired to update my Delicious and/or Tumblr. Otherwise, play the guitar or vegetate with anime.

9:30pm Hang out with mom for a bit because moms need TLC. Make her watch Maru or CuteOverload with me.

11:30pm Wait for the boyfriend to wake up (since he’s on the other side of the world) Chat on MSN, Skype or on the phone.

12:00am Sleep.

Looking at her, I know I have lots more to learn – not just about the world of social media, but also about time management and life in general. Expertise and the realm of rockstarhood seem to come with some level of sacrifice. She sleeps less for one, and almost dedicates her whole day to social media and work, while mine is still peppered with other interests and quite a bit of downtime.

I’ve also only been working for one year, so there’s no way I can be on par yet. But I guess it’s time to step up my A-game. Ashita mo ganbaro! Thanks Pat, for the inspiration!

Dear readers, what is your work schedule like? How do you juggle your different roles and responsibilities? Any tips to share?

Witty Tagline

Anyway, I’ve always been a bit of a language freak, so it’s not surprising that a lot of my jokes are puns. But it’s a shame they always end up being quite lame or worse, when nobody seems to get them. So I always appreciate it (okay, more like become envious) when people make witty puns with the English language – and HTC’s new tagline has gotta be one them:

You don’t need to get a phone. You need a phone that gets you.

.

It’s ingenious, but not so in-your-face kinda ingenious. It’s more like a subtle kinda ingenious, so I can see how this all fits in with their new brand positioning “quietly brilliant”, which is also quite brilliant in itself.

(Okay, sorry. Couldn’t resist the pun.)

The ads that came with the YOU campaign are pretty darn witty too. They’ve got one where you see from the phone’s perspective, and another where it emphasizes how their phones are customized to suit the lifestyles of different individuals.

Wicked Tattoos

To celebrate the launch of the HTC Tattoo, HTC also gave everyone airbrushed tattoos. It’s such a neat idea to get everyone excited. Here’s a picture of Jacelyn’s, mine and Nicole’s Android tattoos.

There were a bunch of other tattoos like vintage ones, tribal ones and even Hello Kitty ones!

You can check out what tattoos the other bloggers got, along with the hot models clad in winter Springfield clothing at my Facebook album.

(Okay, okay. That’s my last play with words, I promise.)

So that’s it from me for now. Will search for time over the next week to publish some of my many drafts before super busy season starts again for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation meetings. This will be my last project for the year before I take my uber-long staycation in December. Woot! Can’t wait!

Ghost toured around Singapore

Thanks to 24seven and the Asia Paranormal Investigators, I had the opportunity to tour around Singapore’s spookiest places. We went to a dilapitated cemetary called Bukit Brown, Singapore’s largest cemetary, the Choa Chu Kang Cemetery and apparently, the most haunted place in Singapore – Old Changi Hospital. I caught a pretty strange ‘thing’ on one of my shots. Will share it after I do more research.

The boyfriend visited

After more than a year of being apart, my boyfriend visited me. It was refreshing and reassuring to know that our feelings and friendship can withstand the test of time and distance.

The perfect diet is working!

It’s been about 3 weeks since I embarked on the paleolithic diet. It’s working wonders. My eyes have completely stopped protruding. I have a lot of energy. And I’ve also lost quite a bit of weight; I dropped at least a dress size. This is a picture of me earlier this week!

Alain de Botton is cool beans.

Discovered Alain de Botton from his TED talk. Devoured his Consolations of Philosophy a few months back and now reading his new work, The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work. A lot of light bulbs went off while reading the Consolations of Philosophy. It’s too deep to discuss in a paragraph, so I shall save this for another entry.

Google Wave

Received my Google Wave invite thanks to Teddy! Do add me and start a new wave, so I know you’ve added me. If I don’t know you, do include a self-introduction as well. I can be found at ivytan at googlewave.com.

That’s it for my quick update. Will blog and reply to your comments after my projects end. Until then, take care!

It was 2am on the final race night. I was scraping for whatever energy I left to stay awake, when the field engineers walked in asking if everything was okay. Usually the conversation would end there, as there just isn’t enough in common between a 20-something corporate communications professional, who primarily speaks English and 50-something engineer, who primarily speaks Chinese peppered with a few English technical terms.

But I attempted to continue the conversation anyway.

I learned that he spent almost 40 years in the company. It was his first job – and would likely be his last. He shared how life as a telecoms engineer in the 1970s was like. Back then, land lines were an absolutely rarity. It took many months to get for a phone line because that’s how long it’ll take for the engineers to lay the cables to a particular village or a town. And the day the engineers would arrive at the customer’s house, they would be welcomed like Athenian warriors coming home from a victorious battle. They were treated to a feast, adorn with praises and gifts.

Fast forward to the present. Today, field engineers are usually greeted with frustration, anger and impatience, since their presence almost always means that something is broken.

Fix my goddamn internet now!
Why isn’t my phone working?
What do you mean it’ll take 2 hours to fix?! Hurry the ^&%$ up!

Never would I have imagined that these emotional sandbangs we easily hurl our words of frustration at were once perceived as heroes.

I don’t think people have become any ruder or angrier over the decades. It’s just that we are spoiled by the convenience of modern technology that even a 30-second divorce from YouTube or Facebook seems like permanent one. And we become so bitter that we often forget to appreciate the people who made communication available in the first place.

So thank you, Engineer for not only putting up the networks, but also putting up with our callow, anger-laden remarks.

I suffer from an autoimmune disease called Graves’ Disease. And thanks to it, my thyroid gland has a mind of its own. For those of you who fell asleep in high school biology, the thyroid gland controls your body’s metabolism, and indirectly, your weight. When I was untreated, I looked dangerously anorexic at a weight of 38KG, but ate like a cow with 6 high-fat, high-sugar meals a day – and yet I continued to lose weight. After treatment, I now look like a cow at 70KG while eating like an anorexic with 2-3 low-sugar meals a day. And all medical professionals I’ve talked to just shrug me off with a nonchalant “cut the coke and go do some exercise and you’ll be fine” comment.

But I haven’t touched real coke for years, and I go to the gym.

And as an ENTJ, it doesn’t help that I feel the need to be in control everything. So I resent the fact that I cannot even control what is my birthright – my own body.

Caveman Diet: Holy Grail Diet for Graves Disease patients?

Out of this resentment and frustration, Google (or perhaps, God) finally decided to answer my searches. I stumbled upon a few sites talking about how the Paleolithic Diet aka Caveman Diet has helped people to treat and, in some cases even cure their autoimmune diseases.

Picture from Red Spirit Energy Healing

The paleolithic diet says that we should eat like our evolutionary ancestors, the hunter-gatherers. So that would mean no grains, no dairy. Just meat and vegetables. The science of it seems a little dubious, but I decided to give it a shot anyway. Besides, I have nothing to lose – except my weight.

And it has been nothing short of amazing! It’s only been 5 days and my clothes are looser, my skin is smoother, my goiter is smaller and I feel like I have the energy to run a marathon everyday! Best of all, it doesn’t feel like a diet at all. I eat 3-4 meals a day, I’m never hungry, and I even eat fast food junk (albeit a highly-customized version of it).

So I plan to do this for a month, and then see my family doctor for a check up. If the tests says I’m all clear, then I would love to able to do this for life, since it’s not just a diet for me, but a change in my lifestyle in hopes that I could regain control of my body.

Should you try it too?

Despite my disappointment and frustration with medical professionals, I don’t think you should try it before seeing a doctor – especially if you’re perfectly healthy.

And if there’s anything I’ve learned from this revelation is that that perhaps each person’s body responds differently to different diets and exercise habits. My mum, for example, has a diet that’s extremely high in sugar and carbohydrates and has no problem maintaining a healthy weight of 45KG. Whereas, a medium-high carb diet seemed to have affected my thyroid function, my skin and my general health…

My “theory” on diets and exercise

…which leads me to believe that what we eat in our childhood greatly affects how we maintain our bodies in adulthood. My mum came from a family impoverished by the Japanese occupation in Asia. She did not grow up with the luxury of dairy and meat. Her childhood diet consisted of vegetables, roots, rice and sugar. Essentially, carbs, carbs and more carbs!

And perhaps that is precisely why she suffers no illnesses and have maintained her weight from putting 6 teaspoons of sugar in her daily coffee for the past few decades.

As for me, I grew up on a diet of chicken and eggs. As a child, nothing could come in between me and my KFC. And when I was hungry in the middle of the night, I ate omelettes. I never had a penchant for rice, vegetables or sugar. So perhaps the paleolithic diet suits me precisely because it mirrors how I ate as a growing child.

But all this is my very untested, very unscientific, very layman observation. And if there is a chance that my observation is scientifically true, it could potentially debunk many of the current theories that we staunchly believe in, since most of these theories are done on the premise that all humans respond similarly to the same diet and exercise regimens.

And that is why, I cannot possibly recommend this diet to anyone. For me, I decided to give science a rest, since it has done nothing but exacerbate my thyroid problems in the last decade. But if you are fortunate enough to have a fully-functioning body then, please take less risks and take better care of your health.

My latest favorite reads are a line-up of cynical, sadistic, pompous blogs written by investment bankers. I can go through half their archives in one sitting and re-read some of their entries.

Something about their bitterness is very captivating.

Reason #1: Envy

I know it’s probably very sick of me but I have to admit that I really enjoy reading about their misery. I think a small part of enjoyment comes from envy – envious for their ridiculously large paychecks. I don’t particularly desire having that much money – especially at the expense of so many important things in life – but it’s only human to be envious of what you don’t have.

Reason #2: Relief

Another part of my enjoyment comes from relief – relief that I do not have to work 100 hours every week to prove my worth to my boss. (Unfortunately, I do have to work 100-hour weeks once a while though, so I’m not exactly doing well on the work-life balance scale either. But at least I have some sort of a life outside of work.)

Reason #3: Respect

With that said, where I derive the bulk of enjoyment is from respect. It takes incredible amount of perseverance and dedication to put up with the amount of crap they do for the sake of one thing, which in their case is likely money, prestige or some derivative of both. This respect is the same admiration I have for my friend who I wrote about last month.

Why it stops at respect

Unlike all these i-bankers and jazz musicians, I really don’t think I can dedicate myself to one thing for the rest of my life. I was just not born to have particularly deep desires. I don’t need to swim in a pool of money. I don’t need presidential-level power or prestige. I don’t crave to be loved by everyone I meet. I don’t need to amount to legendary greatness, although I do think I am capable of it – if only I desired for it.

But alas, all I want is to have a job that I enjoy doing, afford a comfortable lifestyle and some time left over for some quality “me” time so I can seek more wisdom and knowledge.

Yes, my strongest desire is probably to gain wisdom and a breadth of knowledge. (There’s a not-so-subtle difference between the two, but let’s leave that for another entry). And even then I’m not dedicated enough to go back to school for it. I just want to know why the world works the way it does, why humans think, feel and act the way they do, why I am not as predictable as I would like to be, and what I can do to change that.

There’s enough satisfaction in my journey to seek wisdom and knowledge that I don’t really need to have an end-goal to justify my life.

In return for my relatively unpassionate, nonchalant life, I don’t have to suffer extreme pain or happiness – and this stability matters much more to me than a seven-figure paycheck (at least for now).

In some sick and twisted way, I guess reading about the bane of slaving for money and prestige validates my chosen lifestyle. Knowing that greatness comes slapped with a hefty price tag that involves slavery, deception, denial and insecurity has allowed me to be grateful for my life of mediocrity and moderation.

So here are some i-banking blogs I read religiously, in case you aspire to be as sick as I am or as sick as they are (whichever floats your boat better):

• Stuff Investment Bankers Like
• Mergers and Inquisitions
• Leveraged Sell-Out

Dear Readers, do you have any genre of blogs you like to read? Are you as sick as I am when it comes to validating your pleasures with the misery of others? If you are working, do you enjoy your job? Why or why not? And what are your working hours like?

Traditional poi is made of a string and a ball. But what really intrigues me is modern poi – the one with LED lights and glow sticks. There’s just something very entrancing and surreal about it.

LED Poi

Here’s a Japanese Poi artist, Yuta performing LED poi. The cool bit starts at around 1:20.

Urban Poi

Here’s another video of Yuta practicing urban-styled poi. Doesn’t look nearly as cool as LED poi, but this video really showcases his body movements. His movements are so slick, it’s amazing!

Poi looks like a lot of fun! I would love to be able to try it out one day. Although, I suspect I’m just gonna be tangled by all the ropes.

It probably got its name from the way it’s served. The ice cream is molded into a large block. When served, the ice cream seller would cut it up into smaller rectangular pieces and insert between wafers or bread.

I don’t usually fancy ice-cream but thanks to the Klondike videos, I just had to get my hands on a traditional ais krim potong. Yum!

Happy salivating.