New month, new course. 

Actually, the course started last month. This is my first experience meeting classmates virtually from such diverse backgrounds, with a notable number hailing from the Middle East. I found that the perspectives shared are quite different from those I have encountered growing up in a small but developed country, Singapore.

It was also an eye-opening experience to enhance my leadership skills. I have been leading the innovation4good program for close to a year now. It is a program whereby people of different backgrounds come together to brainstorm ideas to aim for patents. Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to get patents so far but I definitely increase my outreach and more people are joining on a regular basis. I must say I have been feeling imposter syndrome but I managed to get past it after some time. It’s just like how I have this imposter syndrome when I first started work in PayPal. It’s been nearly 5 years now and I have received my promotion. It was my second job promotion ever since I have started work. 🙂

Looking back at my own career journey so far, it’s been quite a journey. All these have shaped me for who I am and how my leadership style will be.

I’m not sure where my next steps of my career will lead me to but I am open for more opportunities. Yes to potentially relocation. No to running away from relocating to US after so long. I even changed job back in 2017/2018 to avoid potentially relocating to San Francisco… Well, 8 years later, I’m finally ready for the decision. Can’t help to say that part of the ready-ness came from the peace I have living alone and also settled my first house.

I’m now on my 7th flight for this trip and is in the middle of the journey to make my way back to Singapore. It has been a short but hectic trip for the past 8.5 days in US. I was in  Dallas for the first 5 days 4 nights for the Women in Cybersecurity (WiCyS) conference. I didn’t manage to attend most of the sessions since I still have work meetings to attend, as well as socialising with my colleagues. My manager and my director drove over 3hrs just to meet me so I had breakfast, lunch and dinner with them over the 2 days they were here. I also helped out in the career fair and met several graduating students who were looking for a job in my company. 

Then I flew to Chicago and met up with Gulabi for 4 days 3 nights for my personal vacation. It was my first time going to both Dallas and Chicago. They are very different from All other states/cities that I have visited. Grapevine (a place in Dallaswhere I was mostly in) feels almost like Scottsdale but more green than brown. There are more greenery than desert sand. Chicago, on the other hand, was a pleasant city full of city vibes. It is similar to Singapore in terms of the road structures and public transportation. New York City is the closest match to Singapore except for dirty streets and public transportation. Chicago is much cleaner than New York. Chicago is a city of midwestern vibes which is a different change from what I am used to. I am used to the California vibes.

This time I didn’t manage to go to San Francisco. I have been going there for every trip to US except for this trip. Well, it is also my shortest trip ever with only 9 days 8 nights in US in total. Just look at the sacrifices I made for my new home. Lololol. It will be too much of a stretch to to extend further given that I have pre-renovation work to do before my renovation can start. I tried to clear as much as I can just before the trip and also clear quite a bit while in US. Every morning spent on catching up on vendor updates and every evening is spent on making deposits for booking the various contractors’ services. Just imagine how crazy it will be if I don’t have an ID. Lol.

Every time I come to US, I will gained a deeper appreciation of Singapore and how lucky I am to be based in Singapore. It’s a bubble living in Singapore and coming to US so often is giving me frequent reminders of how lucky I am.

There’s this trend on social media that I saw in Instagram whereby people shared about an imaginary date with a younger version of themselves. I think I will try it out here haha.

I met my younger self for coffee this morning.

She was 30 mins late and was feeling very apologetic with many excuses. I was 1 hr late and walk in like a boss. Okay lah, got apologise but not as apologetic as my younger self and definitely no excuses because I just suck at time management and it has gotten worse. Hahaha.

She ordered iced milo with ice (with sugar) as it is a guilty pleasure for her and the drink is not cheap so she don’t drink it often. I ordered earl grey black tea latte without ice and without sugar because I drink it daily and should at least cut down on my sugar intake if I am drinking it daily.

She told me that she is very worried about not able to get into an overseas university on scholarship for her bachelor degree so she cannot escape the horrible environment at home. She is also worried about unable to pay for her university fees and have to go out to work after A levels. I told her that she ended up having both bachelor and master degrees from NUS. Not getting scholarship to study overseas is fine because she was able to survive through the horrible environment and came out stronger. It is still tough and is getting more difficult but the end is nearing. She doesn’t need to worry about the finances as much as she thought because things will always work out fine because of her tenacity attitude.

She told me that she don’t know if she is ever you find love or learn to love others since she was not loved. I told her that she found love and got betrayed/scammed and recovered. She came up stronger and went on to achieve more in other aspects of her life. She knows how to love others unconditionally by nature.

She told me that she is worried about having to stay with her parents forever. I told her that we are opening door 2 days later to our forever home. I already got the keys and I am inviting her to stay with me. It’s much bigger than expected and it is a private property so she definitely overachieved for her age and background.

She told me she is worried about finances. I told her she might need to only because she is always a spender. Just continue to save before you spend and you will be fine. Trust your instincts. I think at that point, she thought I was going to give her good news and comfort her more but some things never change as we are both brutally honest even as the time passed by.

This is a question that my leadership coach, Felicia Du, asked during my last coaching session yesterday.

I replied pretty quickly and said, “I have always being the odd one out so it is like normal.” Then she laughed and said something like if you are not exceptional then it is really odd for you. That was a really good question because subsequent questions, she was asking me to reflect why I always strive hard to be exceptional and what was the first time I was exceptional.

Then I thought back and realised that the first time it happened was when I am in primary 6. At a mere age of 11 years old (because I am a December baby), I managed to study hard in 1 month to do better than expected for my PSLE. I didn’t do well for my preliminary exams for PSLE. In fact, I was supposed to go into Normal Technical stream. I panicked at that time. My parents weren’t worried since they had never planned to send me for degree education. If I can somehow get a diploma, their job is completed because I can just go out to work with a diploma.

Luckily, I managed to get into Express stream after I got my actual PSLE scores. I got into the 4th class (out of 5 class) in the Express stream on my first year. After a year, I got into the 2nd class. In that second year, I realised I am a late bloomer and my academics went even better and I made it to the top 10 students in my entire school cohort for some school subjects. On my third year, I made it to the top class in Express stream and took up the triple science and double math subject combination. It is one of the hardest subjects combination offered by my neighbourhood secondary school at that time.

My coach then told me that among all of her clients (mostly in China), I have one of the rare strengths (Commander) and talents (most of my top strengths are in the Influencing/orange space), especially for a female. Everything is pointing towards leadership role for me but I am not in a leadership role somehow. She thinks I will end up in a leadership role somehow – be it within my current company or another company.

She also mentioned that a lot of her exceptional clients are driven because of childhood trauma- the need to impress their parents. Something that is quite linked to Asian culture. However, she can see that I have that fire in me which is quite different from the rest. I’m also quite used to being the exception and is comfortable with my own success. It is like the norm for me. 😀

I am also reflecting more on this topic and I think my fire was triggered by fear. The fear of inability to protect or take care of myself. If no one loves me then I should at least love myself. I think that’s the line that I have been telling myself everything I have a setback in family/relationships. As a result, I have to push myself to greater heights and achieve so much more that I am able to protect and take care of myself. That is probably the fire within myself. Driven by my desire for self protection.

It’s really interesting how my coach can sense this characteristic of me in the third session of coaching. I’m pretty impressed and no wonder she is working as an executive leadership coach for so many years…

Now back to doing the homework (journaling) that she gave me. Interesting how my career coach from US also gave me the same homework/feedback. I need to make sure that I don’t fall into the traps of my strengths and work on improving my awareness.

I had so much epic-ness in this trip which I think I should blog about before I forget.

(1) The first has got to be me falling sick (runny nose) before all my flights. It got me really worried about the blocked ears from the changes in air pressure during takeoff and landing.

(2) Then I almost missed my flight for the SFO – PHX route which I blogged about it here.

(3) Next is when I forgot to check what time the departmental store is closing and almost couldn’t get to the pick up point for my hotel shuttle bus. I blogged about that in here.

(4) My transit flight for DTW – LGA is like 10 mins after I am expected to land in DTW airport from PHX. Again, I blogged about it in here. Luckily it turned out to be okay.

(5) Then there was an epic deplaning incident for my flight DTW – LGA which I blogged about it in here.

(6) As usual, I had a bit of nose bleed when I was in Scottsdale. Happened on the day 4 or 5. Then it nose bleed more in New York. New York winter is no joke.

(7) My hands became red from the cold exposure within the first day. I went to Uniqlo at Hudson Yards to get the cashmere gloves. However, it might be a bit too late but applying the Kiehls Ultra Facial Cream on my hands help to control redness from getting worse.

(8) I was the last to board the JFK – SFO flight which I blogged in here.

(9) I had to give up my Popcorners and Sulwhasoo skin care bottles due to luggage weight limit and space constraints.