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On the bus to work today, the deejays of one of the morning talk shows were talking about how some polytechnic students had come up with the brilliant hardware solution to make sure there are seats for elderly people on crowded trains. The solution was to have folded up seats in designated parts of the trains that will only unfold when you tap your senior citizen EZ-link card to a card reader connected to the seats. Bless their hearts!

Whilst their efforts, innovation, initiative and care for the elderly are to be lauded, I was also thinking wryly to myself: how typically Singaporean! For every societal problem that we seek to resolve, we propose either a technological solution or a government solution. It seems that the mechanical or the political solution are the easier shortcuts that resonate with Singaporeans or that we resort to/rely on to a fault. 

Not giving up seats to the elderly, pregnant women, children and people with disabilities is an issue to do with the lack of social grace. Whilst it can be addressed to a limited extent by technology, it is akin to plugging one hole only to have another leak spring up elsewhere. The lack of social grace also underpins a lot of other social ills we are trying to wean Singaporeans off: littering, chope-ping seats at hawker centres, not returning lunch trays, speeding up when a car in front signals etc. Some of these behaviours, we even politely brush off as our unique kiasu behaviours (talk about packaging!).

Japan, Taiwan and Hong Kong have crowded (if not more crowded) public trains too, and they do not seem to have to grapple with this issue. They also seem to be better “behaved” with regards to not littering, returning their trays etc.

The “heartware” needs to be addressed. It’s  not easy but it is necessary. Perhaps, the next time we think about addressing social problems, we should resist the urge to think of the hardware solutions and challenge ourselves to find the cultural solutions that would make a lasting impact on our heartware. 

4 Jan finally came. The office car park had been counting down the past week with me as it reminded me how many more days of season parking I had every time I drove in.

My last day in the first company I worked for since I graduated dawned and stayed beautiful and sunny. 14 years, 8 weeks and 7 days. That’s 5365 days of my life, spent in one company: through a convocation, my wedding and 4 pregnancies.

Everyone went about their business as usual. There were of course colleagues who came by to wish me well. Nonetheless, life pretty much goes on. As the saying goes, none of us are indispensable and the giant corporate machinery will keep chugging along fine when we are gone, no matter how wonderful a job you have been doing.

When you have been in 1 place for as long as I have, you accumulate. Objects, habits, memories and people. There were 1500 names and their contact details to transfer from my blackberry to my personal phone. For the first time in my life, I had to make a decision on what kind of a mobile phone to buy (they were not standard issues to employees when I first joined this company. Remember beepers/pagers?). I found almost $200 in cash in my drawers, in between files and papers. And there were so many notebooks and knick knacks to pack and bring home. And all the memories…how and where do I begin to store them, lest they get forgotten and drowned out by the beat of life passing by?

The objects I probably can do without and would probably end up throwing away (except for the money I found). Some of the old habits will be broken, like it or not and new ones formed (hello hot desks and economy travel for business). The people I would hope to keep in touch with, though reality is such that as time passes, the distance increases. Social media does help (Facebook and LinkedIn) but it can never replace the actual interactions that take place in the corridors and over the phone. So while we make these promises to keep in touch, how many will I end up breaking only to regret later?

Like it or not, ready or not, the evening started pushing against late afternoon. The packing activity became a frenzy. How am I going to pack away almost 15 years of my corporate life in the next 1-2 hours? To be honest, after a certain point in time in this company, I probably unconsciously expected myself to stay for life and so, never took the discipline to purge on a regular basis. Another habit to break going forward…

At 6 pm, I was finally done with my boxes and had them all packed and loaded into J’s waiting car. I surrendered my employee pass and corporate credit card (my neck and wallet felt a little lighter) and walked out of the office doors into the humid evening air. J was waiting patiently with a bouquet of roses and lilies to celebrate my first last day.

Did the world seem different and was I now looking at the world through new eyes having uprooted myself from the only corporate world I have known till now? Strangely, no but probably I will one day.

The first order of business after exiting the office was going to buy a mobile phone for myself. Something I’ve never done in my life before (talk about being prehistoric! Guess this happens when you are spoilt in the company with everything taken care of for you)! As I settled down for dinner after, with the excitement of my first mobile phone purchase subsiding, I felt, in addition to tiredness, untethered, like part of my identity was now lost or gone, sort of like being in a corporate limbo.

Interesting how much of my self identity is derived from the organization that I work for…as it probably is for many people. I’m sure this isn’t something that happens by the individuals’ intentions, rather more by organizations’ designs as they strive to get their employees to be “more engaged”, “more in sync with the company’s vision, mission, values and beliefs” so that they are more productive and effective at work. So when you finally unplug from the eco-system, you feel a little hollow and floating.

Well, at least it also means this is the first evening in a long time that I am not bringing any work home from the office to do and I don’t have the dread of e-mails piling up to answer either over the weekend or on Monday mornings. A brief re-spite until I rejoin the corporate world again in 3 days’ time in a new company waiting to plug me in to their eco-system and brainwash me to their culture and ways of working.

It’s funny how people suddenly get a lot more popular when they are about to leave a  company. That has been my experience definitely, with colleagues asking me to take time for lunch or coffee, especially in the last few weeks as my last day with the company drew nearer.

Usually, these lunch or coffee chats run in pretty much the same format: people want to know when and where you are going and why you are leaving, they wish you well and we promise to keep in touch. Sometimes, when it is meeting with colleagues who have been around for a while, we get around to reminiscing about the good old days and how things were better then and the fun and crazy things we did when we were young (more on that in tomorrow’s post).

Today, I had a different kind of a farewell coffee that “poked” me. After the niceties and the usual “when”, “where” and “why”, this colleague, Raghu, looked me in the eyes and said that he had 2 requests of me in leaving: that I start writing and someday teach (young minds). He asked me to think more deeply (highly recommending doing this in silence) and be more self aware of why I am leaving a company I joined as a fresh graduate after almost 15 years. Granted it is to continue specialising in an area where I have passion for, but he asked if that growth and learning in another corporate setting is what I am really after. He pushed and prodded unforgivingly in tough love for me to think more deeply about the real reasons why.

Interesting how others see you from outside in ways that could be blind to yourself…

Raghu felt that I am a very intense person passionate about a cause (that was not yet entirely clear to me – though it seems quite clear to him) and did not want me to lose sight of it. He wanted me to realise it and to start writing so that I do not lose it or compromise, and rather, gain more self awareness through it in a journey of self-discovery. He believed in me and that someday, I will be able to make a bigger more direct impact on the world in some way through my writing and teaching than by influencing others to do that.

Wow…! What a stage to fill! Will I ever be able to live up to that? I honestly don’t know. As Raghu said in his parting words to me however, I am not one who sits and listens but someone who actions. And the only way to ever find out the answer is to take that first step and write…

So here I am, starting a blog again after many, many years. The last time I was actively blogging was in 2003-4. Heavier work loads, family and kids etc., all the distractions of everyday mundane life, eventually washed over and the years passed in a flash without a record. Rather than mope over the lost time and lost “pages”, I would like to look forward and start up where I am now – a little older, a little wiser and a little clearer on what I want out of my life.

So this is my blog, as a mother of 4 kids and a working professional who has been blessed with being paid everyday to do what she enjoys – helping people become better people and the world to become a better and more fair place.