Eat your heritage.

In every bite we take, there is a little bit of pain and pleasure.

It’s no secret that I enjoy cooking.

And more so, dishes with complex flavours; nuanced, complicated, multifarious in texture – Asian food has not ceased to surprise me, even after having lived and breathed the cuisine and culture for decades.

Top left: Green beans in sambal, omelette with green beans and Thai basil, Moo Prad Krapao. Top right: Rainbow Rice with Peanut Sauce. Bottom left: Javanese vegetable stew with tofu, and coconut milk.

I celebrate all kinds of festive seasons. Usually, as an excuse to cook up something related to the season and push my culinary skills further to the brink of burnt rice and collapsed cakes. And it’s never just ONE dish, oh no….I seem to lose myself in a mind boggling maze of “must try delicacies” and stretch myself out over three to four days of prep, culminating in a cuisine crescendo comprising anywhere between six to 12 courses that leave people in a food coma that lasts for weeks. Like the food sadist that I am, watching people enjoy my food is more scintillating than eating it myself.

But when the guests are gone and table is cleared, and it is just me at my machine poring over reports or writing one, my mind sometimes wanders again into what it might be to cook something involving an ingredient I haven’t yet explored. And the leftovers, neatly stacked in the refrigerator, beckon to me woefully,

“Please eat me”.

I eventually get to them.

I pace myself, because gluttony – that ferocious, rage-eating manner which is now known as “makbang” – really does a number on your thighs. And that is one of the hardest parts of the body to tone, even if you’re doing 155lbs deadlifts on the weekly. I used to pile them on a plate, and feed at a plodding pace. These days I have adopted the “tray method”, where I plate the items more or less separately and eat off the tray so I can savour the flavours separately.

And what have I discovered?

That while I enjoy cooking for others, preparing and savouring Asian food is more than just “a meal” to me. More than anything else, food is my heritage – and quite literally.

Dishes specific to the Peranakan culture, for example, is part of my heritage. And it is one I hold dear, because the culture is slowly but surely dying. Some ingredients – such as fish stomach – are so old school, and rare, that it is almost impossible to find them in restaurants never mind the home of the modern cook who uses an all electric stove top. Aromatics, such as polygonum leaves, cosmos caudatus (“the King’s salad”), turmeric leaves and Chinese coriander lend incredible and irreplaceable flavour profiles – there is simply no substitute once you know what they are.

Dishes my mother cooked for me, such as Vinegar Pigs Trotters and Liver cooked in Ginger Wine, which I love more than other members of my family, happen to be dishes that a mother in law would traditionally prepare for her daughter in law during the postpartum period. While I do not have the privilege of having children or in laws who make or needed to have made these dishes for me, these recipes are heritage dishes that is handed from mother to daughter.

Celebratory dishes we prepare for festive holidays are not just reminders that it is time to celebrate a season; they celebrate family, friends and tradition. Chinese New Year dishes, for example, have significance and are served during the season to welcome health, prosperity and blessings for the year. Rendang, nasi impit, lemang and sayur lodeh during the Aidilfitri season remind me of my dearest Muslim friends, and the camaraderie of having open houses where almost anyone is invited to sup together and build a stronger community through good food. Indian snacks like murukku (chakli), ghee balls (nei urundai), mutton curry and chapatis bring back memories of celebrating Deepavali at my neighbours’ houses and memories of learning how to cook Indian dishes from my school mate’s mothers.

Through cooking and eating I have learnt stories of happiness and sadness; because let’s face it – we eat at funerals, too. I am multilingual; and cooking a wide range of cuisines has not only taught me the various names of ingredients but also their cultural significance and what they are called in different places. Cooking techniques and terminology is also culture specific; there are some methods using certain tools which cannot be easily translated from its mother tongue.

Growing up in an environment rich in various cultures, I was incredibly fortunate to have also adopted an appreciation of the cuisine and heritage they carry. I’m not one to practice anything that is culturally specific (unless you count having coffee and watching the BBC News in the morning as “cultural”) but food, linguistics and traditional dress are ways I preserve and honour my personal culture, and the culture of those who have opened their doors to me.

And when everything is gone – the old restaurants of my childhood, the social construct I once knew, the people I loved and lost, the places I used to go, the songs I used to sing – I will still have in my hands, and hopefully a still lucid mind, remnants of an incredibly rich, deep cultural tapestry that can be reconstructed in my kitchen and shared with others at my dining table.

The Wondrous Thing Called Work.

Image Source: Keyin College, http://keyin.ca/program/welder/

Like me, you’ve probably read too often that famous cliché “Do what you love, love what you do”.

I’ve written already in the past why I think it is a clichéd, elitist concept but hey – feel free to wag your finger at me and quote Steve Jobs like you knew him from prom night.

2015 has been an extremely interesting and entertaining year as far as career lessons go for many people I know, myself included.Today in fact, was another one of those days. Let’s start with a story of a boy:

A boy finds a job doing what he loves but has trouble keeping up with the pace.

A boy encounters strife at work, and is easily upset.

A boy decides to quit the second time he gets a firm telling off by his superior for not keeping up to mark.

Here’s an alternative:

A boy finds a company where fun people work at and makes quick friends.

A boy finds the work hard to do, but doesn’t want to ask questions because he’s afraid he’ll look stupid. Instead, a boy will decide that he is safer concocting stories about what he’s doing and done, and use his relationships at work to cover his mistakes.

A boy is under tremendous stress after a telling off by his boss, and decides that he is better off without a job instead of a job with people who don’t sympathise with his problems.

So who’s right, and who’s wrong?

In a recent tele-drama, a policeman was ready to commit suicide for something he felt awful about. His colleague who was trying to talk him out of it, told him this:

“So you’re going to quit when things get tough. What will your kids think? That quitting is their only option because Dad quit. Well, eventually the tough times will come.”

Everyone quits for their own reasons, who are we to judge? Some things though – especially when it involves letting down the people who believe in you, who root for you despite – is downright frustrating. It’s not about being a quitter …. when you examine it whichever way, it’s about a person who lacks the integrity to face the music and overcome strife to become better.

It is about having the courage – even when you’re very, very scared – to face intensity and earn your stripes with grace.

It is about biting down and sticking your foot in – even when people tell you you can’t – because you won’t back away from liars and bullies.

It is about putting yourself through the rite of passage – no matter how many times you’ve done in all kinds of situations – so you can be a wiser, more capable, more enlightened person.

It is about a consistent desire for emancipation.

And that is more powerful and more meaningful, than just doing what you love. Especially when not everyone has the privilege to do what they love.

That is the real differentiator between someone who makes work wondrous and makes wondrous work.

Whose fault is it anyway?

Accountability – it’s such a 2000 management cliché.

I remember when it first became popular, superseding ‘responsibility’ like a hare on crack with spare rollerblades from the 90s. Suddenly, everyone was espousing it from the office to school to home. It wasn’t enough to be responsible, you needed to be accountable too.

Except that isn’t the reality in practice, is it?

There are some places and people who pay this lip service and obviously because it’s the ‘right thing’ to do, being accountable. But consider the following situations:

• Lack of enthusiasm and motivation in customer service staff, leading to irate customers and higher attrition rates
• Slow or unpredictable sales turnover in markets for industries with 6-9 month cycles
• Clunky events: disrupted operations, poor turn out, lack of relevance to participants

Whose fault is it? Let’s count the ways:

• “This generation does not have good work ethics. They want more time off, work from home flexibility and are slow learners. Gone are the days when people valued honest pay for honest day’s work!”
• “Well the customers in this market are just resistant to technology. They like doing things the old way. Also, they won’t invest in technology – they just want to buy things for cheap so it’s almost impossible to convince them to buy our solutions.”
• “That was Marketing’s job. We don’t know what happened – our job was just to call a few customers, and to turn up. We’re here to close the sales.”

Sound familiar? Good. Here are some alternative responses:

• “It’s a different work era, and if we are going to be sustainable we will need to strike a balance between doing things like we used to and creating better work culture. It isn’t easy, but it’s necessary. More open dialogues are a good start.”
• “We need to determine the operating parameters for this market: what are their expectations? What are their goals? What is the purchasing power? How can we help the market grow?”
• “We need to spread the responsibility scope here: it’s not practical for one person to be responsible for an entire show, and if for whatever reason that person is unavailable, things will come to a grinding halt. What can we do to ensure that the end goal is met?”

There is a pattern here:

• Blaming something that is abstract, vague or distant because that is the easiest way to remove oneself personally from the situation (ie. Markets, gender, generation, culture)
• Blaming someone else in a partnership or a group endeavour, in the hope that others will jump in as well and collectively wash their hands off the problem

Oftentimes though, the problem is a lot closer to home.

But you won’t realise until it is a lot too late.

Brain Vs. No Brain

Several things come to mind when someone says “I’m looking for someone with brains” to the question “What are you looking for?”:

• Presuming the person is speaking about intelligence, and if one would engage them in a conversation about “the definition of intelligence”, what would they say? (“thinking out of the box” doesn’t qualify)
• That they immediately presume they are the most intelligent person in the room – which is dangerous and incredibly arrogant, especially when you are the only other person in the room
• That their perception of the world is “People are generally stupid” (which then might necessitate a philosophical discussion of what “stupid” means, if you have sufficient patience at this point)

Most importantly, whenever someone says “I’m looking for someone with brains” the thought of “lazy”, “unimaginative” and “condescending” come to mind.

And these are usually poor indicators for a future partner in any respect.

The Real (Insert Adjective) You

Thank you Pontus Staunstrup for the honest and refreshing piece “Don’t Let Your Boss Define You”.

Whilst we get slapped with a ton of motivational memes and articles about believing in oneself, many struggle with simply defining oneself. This is normal because life is a series of choices and incidents. We develop new skills, perspectives and idiosyncrasies as we go through these experiences and so our definition of who we are can change and if we are growing (in that we set out to challenge ourselves or to consistently face our fears) significant change inevitably happens. I don’t know about you, but I’m highly suspicious of people who say “I’m cock sure of who I am; I don’t change no matter what. I’m real“.

Yeah….because anyone who has a reinvigorated thought process as a result of growth is fake.

Pontus gives great advice to the young and not-so-young about the fallacy of allowing bosses to determine for us who we are as professionals. This is not easy; years of exposure to poorly defined KPI followed by illogical performance appraisals, potential assessments that go nowhere, useless training programmes and lengthy motivational chats do nothing but clog your mind with noise. Save for some useful comments, I’m willing to wager that up to 90% of the drivel you hear can be categorised as:

1. Assessment based on skills they copied from a generic job description from circa early 90’s with no input whatsoever from you about what the real work requires, which you have been doing for a while now
2. Who they want you to be, not how you are contributing to enterprise growth (comply, comply, comply or die)
3. Cutting you down to a job role, so they can update that job description from the 90’s to throw at the person after you

This isn’t just limited to work: it happens in your personal relationships too. Ever hear people complain about “wanting to change my spouse because he/she is just so etc.” or “I don’t seem to fit into the group; I feel disengaged” or “I can’t function in this relationship because he/she/they want me to do this/behave this way and it is against my values/ethics/I don’t give tomato’s stem”?

You can comply, comply, comply or die.

Or you can check out, type that goodbye letter with your two middle fingers and go live your best life knowing that you are responsible for who you be and become.

Two kinds

There are two kinds of people:

• The ones who will put up with disrespect, dishonor, hyperbole, abuse and self denial in the hopes of being accepted, liked or loved
• The ones who won’t put up with disrespect, dishonor, hyperbole, abuse and self denial because they don’t need it and it doesn’t positively impact their lives
• The ones who can’t tell the difference; they want but won’t work, they talk but can’t walk, they dream but they end up settling because they can’t bear themselves even though they fancy their worldview is the best thing next to sliced bread.

OK, so there are three.

Opportunities come in awkward packages

You remember that time when you got sent something interesting – even awesome – but it came in an awkward package, at an awkward time in your life and you just didn’t know how to say ‘Thank You’ nicely to the person who gave it?

Me too.

It’s not that you were unappreciative or being difficult; sometimes you’re between a rock, a hard place and somehow a box of ants got dumped on you from above and you’re flipping out lines from the dark, terrible crevices of your nightmares that should never see the light of day. And usually, when this is happening, you don’t expect to be given something nice to chew on (you know the saying “when it rains…”).

You just hope they realised that it was an awkward moment, and let you apologise for being a basket case.

Deepest Fear

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate, our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small doesn’t serve the world. There’s nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. It’s not just in some of us; it’s in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same.” – Marianne Williamson

Thanks Craig Ballantyne for that wonderful reminder.

What’s that smell? Smokescreen.

Some people just need the manual.

With that they can learn to operate sophisticated machinery, concoct amazing creations and delight the world with their new found inspiration.

Some people need others to read the manual, show them the ins and outs of the machine, test the recipe a few times, make the final product, QA it for them, package and put it on the shelf with a nice description card then hand over all the credit as they slink into the shadows on their tippy-toes.

Some call the latter illustration ‘taking ownership’; the few to see through the smokescreen call it ‘insecurity’.

C.A.R.E.

Do you c.a.r.e.?

My friend who last inspired the ‘leadersh*t’ story came up with another golden nugget, but this time he gave the overused ‘acronyms for people who can’t grasp concepts’ a run for their money:

C  Cover

A  A$$

R  Retain

E  Employment

Having had to grind my teeth through another pointless acronym-overdosed, unimaginative ‘motivational’ session some months back I found this refreshing and at least, entertaining. After all, my friend is in the coaching business and this was simply fitting.

This brings me to another interesting observation this week: if you hire an architect to build your house, and by that you literally expect the guy to do it, you can’t be upset if it doesn’t quite get finished on time or if the plumbing doesn’t work. A lot goes on in the synchronisation of a project and its success hinges on the actors who prop up the sound, lights and sell the tickets. It is too easy for a customer – whether internal or external – to say “there is something wrong” but most of the time they can never quite figure out where it went wrong. This is why the gun is never given to the customer, but is usually in the hands of the architect (provided they were actually around throughout the entire project, and not having a pina colada whilst having pushed their responsibilities on to a contractor).

Several years ago I had a customer who would get into the pub early doors, for a couple of pints and light banter. John (let’s call him that) was very unassuming, hardly fussy and always had something interesting to say. In as far as I knew, the man ran several businesses one of which was a modest consultancy. During a conversation about management and running businesses, John gave me advice I’ll never forget (amongst others):

“Anyone can point out problems; people are programmed to look for faults in others, but only a good leader is able to step up to the plate and solve them.”

Inevitably you can identify problems and complain about it – but if you can find a way to solve it, you will earn respect regardless of what your title is for that day, week, month, year. Life will always present you with problems and people will always come to you with them (anyone who tells you “I hired you to do X, don’t come to me with your problems” is a prick – period) so escapism is only going to demonstrate that you either don’t have what it takes to solve it with them, or you just don’t know what to do anyway. Refusal to act reflects apathy and lack of conviction, and therein part carelessness.

So do you and your employees care?