Last Days of the Empire

I have been busy these past few days since learning that the transfer date is mid April. The mind gets focused when a deadline is finally set. So I have spent a lot of time training my replacement, publishing the news of my coming departure, planning for the transition, continue the project work and installation, thinking about what to do with my flat and how to break the news to my kids. I have also been rushing my readings because I think I will not have the same incredible library resource as we have here. I have also been calling the immigration and real estate agents to help define a decision.

I am also trying to complete my Toastmaster advanced certificate. So it feels like a mad rush to do everything during my last few weeks here. Despite these frenzied activities I still feel that the move will not push through. It's like my body is doing the motions but my mind is logically constructing some sort of event that will bring down my house of cards. But the whole office is reacting that I will be leaving soon. So I sometimes feel that it's a surrealistic situation like a Kafka story. And everywhere around me there is the constant drumbeat of the economic crisis, recession, layoffs while in the office it's all about change and transformation and moving office and closing down here.

It's the end game and I am playing my role with a broken arm. I cannot help but feel handicapped in all these events but surely a significant change is coming upon me. Not only me of course but my whole family. All these makes me feel that we are in the final days of the empire. When the head office ruled the region in an imperial fashion but due to the dictates of economics and the changing landscape, the head office suddenly finds itself in a losing battle with the rising titans of India and China. It's a change in the life scape of many people here but we just trudge along as if the end will never come. Maybe things will turn out right for all of us.

I am reading a pictorial book about postcards from British Malaya. The pictures from the turn of the previous century give light to the works of Somerset Maugham. I can now imagine the settings of his stories, the bungalows in the edge of the forest, the English office buildings, the surrounding jungle, the Malays - the common people and royalty. It's a good fitting book to read at the end of my tenure here. I am also reading Dan Roam's excellent book 'Back of the Napkin' about visual thinking. It's the standard text for improving one's visual thinking skills. It's a broader discipline than just simple mind mapping. He provide quite a well thought out framework for visual thinking. I hope this is one of the tools that I can use in my new job.

Last night we had dinner with the former president of the Philippine office. He is returning to Australia as he took the retrenchment package. We had a nice time as he told jokes and railed against the current management. I can't help but feel that it's the end of days with his departure. I often had some arguments with him in the past but I guess I always liked him. He is the type of person that goes for the underdog, who likes sports and has no airs about him. He said that the best times he had was when he was back in the Philippines. As I always said that the worst decision he ever made was leaving that country. I guess he is the stuff of legends returning down under to start a new business.

End Game

Yesterday I finished the transition plan whereby all activities will be finished by mid March. This will allow me to transfer by late March or early April. It's very stressful because there are still a lot of work to be done like preparing for my family's move. I am training my replacement every day, meeting for an hour or so by phone conference and screen sharing. This is the first time that I am doing a virtual turnover with my replacement elsewhere. Specifically in Shanghai, China. He is very young and eager and smart. I hope the pace would not be too fast for him. I sent out the plan so to the relevant personalities and so far no adverse feedback.

I will be moving ahead of my family which gives me a lot of stress. I have to leave everything to my wife to take care of the transfer although she is fine on handling the task. But I think I need to plan for a return trip sometime in June to help out. I hope my kids will not make her life difficult. By April I think my arm will be healed. Yesterday morning I went to the therapist to have it checked. My bandages were removed and I could wash my arm. But it feels weak and fragile without the splint which I still need to wear for a couple of weeks. It's difficult to plan for a move soon with an arm that is weak. These days I always tend to work late to complete the many tasks. Now with the impending move I have to focus on the training as well as project tasks.

I think the turnover will not be a problem if there are no budget constraints. But with the economic crisis, travel is controlled so face to face meeting or trainings are not possible. So need to be clear and creative especially now that we are working with the external outsource people with their own ideas and procedures. But I think I like the set-up which seems to work well if one gets used to it.The team in Shenzen China is very reactive and nice to work with. I cannot imagine the team I will be working with in my new assignment except that they are big and large as seen in the movies.It will feel like a return home because it will bring me back to my old fascination with the new world when I was back in the Philippines as Singapore seems to be more old world centric.

I am reading a good book called 'Crowd Sourcing'. I think it explores in better detail the ideas written about in the book 'Wikinomics'. I think this is a better book to understand the revolution occurring now in the Internet and computers. There are interesting sections like the one about diversity beating intelligence. The fact that average people can solve problems better than intelligent people with MENSA like IQ.This is the main thing I will miss in Singapore, the books that I can borrow especially the audio books and videos. But maybe I am reading too much books considering the place where I will be moving to. I guess I can now spend less time reading and devote more time to working and writing.

Basic Writing Strategies

Last night I watched a video on writing strategies that I borrowed from the library. The video is actually for children to help them in their writing assignments. The video offered a lot of good techniques to write which may seem common sense to older folks. But it was good for me to get back to the basics. I realized that I did not have a formal writing lesson except for the basic writing lessons taught at elementary school. I remember my first creative writing experience in grade school when I was in the 5th or 6th grade I think. I wrote a short story on a James Bond like character for the school magazine. Since then I did not have any opportunity to practice my creative writing skills.

My writing experience has been for reports, essays, technical documents and user manuals. The bulk of my writing experience was on diary or journal writing and now blogging. Now that I am more serious in having a writing career, I have been reading a lot about the craft of writing, listening to audio books and watching video's on writing. I now realize how naive my thinking was and I realize that I am just driven to the write because of the joy I feel in writing. The joy and thrill of writing drives me to move forward to write as much as I can and the only venue I have is journal writing with myself and my experience as the sole topic of writing. Recently I have seen how blogs can be used to explore other types or writing like online journalism.

So I guess my skill is more on expressing myself though I have blocks in my actual workplace when I try to communicate. But I think these blocks are caused by second-guessing which results in misunderstanding. Also perhaps in a low self esteem so I enrolled in a Toastmaster program to give me more confidence in public speaking and expressing myself. I believe I have crested a wave and gone further up in my quest to be a writer. All these recent studies on the craft of writing has given me more insight although I still lack the relevant skills and confidence to be one. I spent a lot of time reading about the psychology to be a writer and I know at an intellectual level the ins and outs of being a novelist. My goal is to have gained all the needed knowledge so I can actually practice to be a novelist when I transfer to my new location.

Last Saturday morning I attended a seminar on the market outlook in 2009. It was a good seminar which talked about the crises as well the some predictions in the currency and stock markets. It was a good session which increase my financial literacy. I think the way to increase one's knowledge is to know about the general situation or framework and then the actual details on how to utilize the knowledge, the nuts and bolts. For currency trading, attending these seminars helps in understanding the general overview and using their free tools allow me to practice and learn about the details. Similar to writing, I think I now have the general overview and I am now finding about the details - the HOW question that needs to be answered.

Knowing about things require some time before the idea settles into one's mind. How to utilize this new knowledge is the challenge that people often cannot link to. For example, blogging for me was a tool to express my self but I think there are other ways to improve my skills, for example using Amazon to write about books, Helium to contribute articles and so on. My blogs often speak about books and other general topics which can be better channeled to other sites which appreciate that type of effort. I think that I need to re-frame my blogging into some sort of investigative journalism type of blog to be more interesting. Otherwise, blogs would be unfocused and rambling:)

I am reading an excellent book about 'Crowd Sourcing' and I think this type of tool has a good potential for making it big. Sites like Face book utilize the core concept but needs to expand further to benefit more although the elections of the US president is one significant achievement. Maybe this is one feature that can be explored in blogs but not in a manner like Innocentive. Maybe some sort of polling feature where people could send their opinions on something. Similar to the polls done in CNN. Maybe that is the future of blogging where will elevate itself from a tool of self-expression with new ways of getting feedback and crowd sourcing ideas.

Fragile

Last night we visited our dear friend who recently undergone a successful heart operation. He is doing well and will go back to our home country to recuperate for a few weeks. We realize that we get more fragile as we get older. We compared our predicament as I shared stories of being in the ward awaiting for the operation of my fractured arm. I stayed in the hospital for 4 days awaiting for the swelling to go down and for a chance to go up in the operating queue. My friends laughed at my stories although it was nothing compared to his open heart surgery. My friend's mom cooked Philippine dishes like laing and pancit. We ate a lot and shared the cake that we bought as a gift. I got home at about 11:30 pm.

Yesterday morning I was in the hospital for my check-up and the doctor mentioned that he will remove a wire in my hand, placed to keep the fracture in place after a few weeks. A steel plate was added to fasten my broken bones and the wire is to keep it in place. I underestimated the extent of my injury, thinking that I could regain the strength in my arm after a few days. But I think I will only get the full strength sometime in March when the splint can be removed. Earlier this week the stitches were removed and my arm looked very raw and fragile. Going to the hospital nearly every week for change of bandages, physical therapy, x-ray inspection and consultation has given me pause to think that my injury is grave. Not a simple fall where I could just dust myself up and walk away. The bones have to fuse and heal together before I can get back my muscular strength.

My injury made me realize my mortality aside from the heart surgery of my friend. Usually I did not care about my self, preferring to roller-blade, bike and do other active sports. Most of my colleagues are amaze that I still roller blade at my age and I realize that for some people I may probably seem to be reckless.In fact I am was just careless in matters where I should have placed more attention and seriousness. At the end of the day, I should not have roller-bladed without my wrist guard. With my injury, I realize that I take a lot of things for granted and I should focus on more serious things. Even listening to audio books these days seem to be a trivial pursuit. But I guess that I enjoy these audio books when I travel to and from home and helps me spend my time wisely.

My projects are a bit delayed because of my absence and I did not factor in the delay from IBM. I spend a lot of time trying to guide them towards the correct direction. I am also spending some time to train the person from Shanghai who would be replacing me. He came on board mid-January but we only started the training this week because of the Chinese Lunar New Year. He is a young guy who got married last year and his hometown is 3 hours from Shanghai. During the Chinese New Year, he went home to visit his folks. I remembered the news report from the BBC about the millions of migrant workers who return home the the cities during the New Year and I thought about him.

I have images of my life in my new assignment, meeting my new co-workers and trying to adapt to the environment. I also wondered why the office sent the mail last week requesting that I transfer on April fools day. I noticed that I get these mails a day after our global meeting. I don't know if the event are related although my active imagination think that it is. I am glad that I can assess these mistakes of thinking after reading about cognitive function from the book 'Manage your Mind.' There is a similar exercise in the book 'The Write Type' for writers to manage their right brain's emotional excess. The exercise calls for us to think of alternative explanations to our initial beliefs. So to key is to correct wrong thoughts and I realize that I have a bunch of them based on my prejudices and may have prevented me from enjoying my life.

Chinese Interiors

Last night I could not sleep early for the 2nd straight day. I spent the evening after dinner looking at videos in the Internet. I had wanted to start writing but I could not focus my attention. Instead I allowed myself to surf and look at trivial stuff. So I wasted again a few hours looking as silly videos to avoid the necessary hard work. I am reading a new book about writing called 'The Write Stuff' which addresses exactly this type of procrastination. Good timing to have this book now that I am starting to resume my writing. I guess it's also the added stress of work plus events at the office.

I am also listening to John Updike's audio book 'The Widows of Eastwick'. He is a very good writer although he lacks that special ingredient that would make him a great writer. What I can say is that he is an American writer in the themes, subject and plot of his many books. He basically writes about the American experience and, arguably, he is the best person to read if you would like to know about the American experience. In an article in the Economist about him, the critic noted that he is the only well known white, protestant American writer who is not a Jew. Unlike other well known writers like Norman Mailer and Philip Roth. So the critic seems to imply that Updike has a truly middle American perspective.

My transfer to the new office is being proposed to be on 1st April - Aprils Fools Day. The date as raised in an email sent last Friday which I only read 4 days later. The counter proposal was on 1st June so I think some negotiations will be underway to reach a common agreed date. I guess this is giving me some stress because I need to push forward and prepare for my move. Not only me but my family as well. So I cannot help but escape all these pressures due also to my projects that I tend to just surf the Internet to relax. I am often afraid to reply to mails because of a fear in making a mistake. So my mind again loops with images of a former colleague who is now has a successful career in the new office. Again I am trying to find that trait that has made him successful so I can copy his success.

I have this idea that reading Updike will help me prepare for the new office but I think this is not necessarily successful. I have not received the offer yet and I am anxious that I will not be able to afford my new life. I guess I have this fear of earning less money than my former colleague and living a little above the poverty line with my family. My plan is to write a book so it could supplement my salary. Such a grand plan which I should have focused on the moment I moved here 7 years ago. Instead I focused on golf, reading about architecture and interior design, history, literature, Toastmaster and blogging. I will know soon know if all these preparations will help me in my new life.

I know I will be successful because of my long experience in my field. I just need to re frame it properly to fit the new circumstances. My only fear is that I have corrupted myself beyond repair, although trying to break free with a foolish innocence. In Asia, I have prided myself in being more Western than Eastern but I will be more Eastern than Western in my new job. I see more the Chinese perspective after all my reading and travels that I have turned 'native'. But that really is the root of the confusion and identify crises because I am Asian after all. Perhaps the Asian identity needs the sort of self-discovery that Barack Obama has undertaken in his book 'Memories of my Father'.

For the Philippine experience, I guess the voyage of identity began with Jose Rizal and his books. Often he is compared with Sun Yat Sen as the first Asians who have provided an articulate voice to the Asian struggle. The communist followed thru in China but somehow the road was lost in the Philippines. As for myself, the transfer to my new job has taken a life on it's own. It's like an inevitable fate moving forward with my conscious control. Like my wrist operation that proceeded despite my minds frequent mental loops, thinking it will never push through. I guess to key to success is to be yourself - down to earth and enjoy life.

Manchuria

During the weekend I watched a biography of the last Chinese emperor Puyi. It was a good show and satisfied my never ending fascination with North China. Puyi was the Japanese sponsored puppet emperor for Manchuko - the name given by the Japanese to Manchuria during the 2nd world war. I have been travelling to North china for past years and only recently last December. Next to Beijing, I find it a fascinating place as compared to the other provinces of China. In fact it is the birth place of the emperors of the last Chinese ruling dynasty before the communist takeover. The province is filled with grand palaces and tombs.

In my last two visits, I was able to go to the ancestral homes of the young marshal. The warlord general who imprisoned Chang Kai Chek to force him to work with the communist to fight the Japanese invaders. His home is actually a series of mansions where his father, the old marshal who was assassinated by the Japanese, also lived. I walked it's elegant halls, dark wood panelled rooms where plots and assassinations have been conducted. The marshal's family have distinguished themselves as capable leaders and administrators but whom history have awarded with death (the old marshal) or opium induced anonymity (the young Marshall).

The young marshal was eventually imprisoned in Taiwan when the Kuomintang retreated to the island, in a stupor of drugs and women I believed supplied by the generalissimo. I understand he was eventually allowed to move to the USA when the generalissimo died. There are poignant pictures of the old general during his twilight years awaiting death and unable to regain his family's former glory after the communist takeover. But despite his fate, the museum treats him like the hero that he is for his decision to work with the communist against the Imperial army.

North china has also entranced the Japanese where the mighty Kwantung army had it's headquarters, plotting the subjugation of all China which led to atrocities like the massacre at Nanjing.The army have set up Puyi as the emperor of all China starting with the North once the whole land has been subjugated by the Imperial Army. The cold winters, the desolate and gloomy cities, the wide plains and mountains of North China provide a romantic background for these events. It's a land of heroes and emperors. It was also a staging ground for the Korean war as well as the early invasion of the Soviet Army in the last days of the war. In fact, it was the Soviets who delivered North China to Mao to secure communist control.

South China was held by the Nationalists and fell one by one as the communist moved forward first to Beijing and the other provinces after securing it's control of the North.The land is also closest to Mongolia - the land of steppes and Genghis Khan. It is a natural battle field with Russian, Japanese, Korean and Mongolian intrusions from one time to another. Manchuria also borders Siberia and Russia so there is a lot of mixed culture.The difficult environment breeds a more coarse and hardy populace who are often more melancholy and forward in their dealings with others. But it is also a rich land full of natural resources like coal and iron. So it's a land the stimulates peoples dreams like the Japanese in their desire to conquer the middle kingdom.

Other areas in China seem like resorts or close to the false hyperactivity and the identity of a Tokyo or a Taipei when compared to the ruggedness of North China.The cities of the North seem to be coming from the pages of the 1950's in some areas, with old tenements, and a lot of Korean influences. But it's actually a hybrid mix of Korean-Chinese-Russian-Japanese influences and not particularly Chinese. In fact the last dynasty, Qing, was considered a foreign dynasty and not truly Chinese. I guess this region has a more aggressive personality than most other lands in China due perhaps to the harsh weather. It has a hardy industrial heart with a lot of large factories built during the imperial occupation.

Asian Art

The art scene in Asia has been getting a lot of attention in recent years. Artists in China have been getting most of the media focus but other artists are now moving out of the shadows. The subject of their art seems to depict outlandish scenarios. It's this inflated outlook that seem to be a common thread in Asia. Perhaps it's the recent progress where millions have arisen from poverty that these superhuman images seem to depict. The fact that normal Asian perspective no longer apply but a new perspective superimposed with Western dimensions although in a more fantastical scale.

Does the images mean that the new prosperity entitle Asians to superhuman perspectives? Or do they depict more of the inner life of Asians where old boundaries no longer constrain the Asian spirit? Hence, the inflated expectations for the future. Or perhaps more scrutiny is applied to Asians as they grab more global responsibilities. After the Asian crises, a lot of space was devoted to exploring the Asia model, looking for flaws and mistakes. So the Asian psyche is being examined in detail if it's a model that could dethrone the current Western ones. But with the Global Economic crisis, the Asian model now looks more like a viable alternative.

What is clear is that prosperity, growth and expectations are rising in Asia that a revolution is underway. Similar to Mao's cultural revolution, it is a movement where Asians are more sure of themselves faced with the turmoil in the West. Since 2 or 3 of the biggest economies in the world would soon reside in Asia, the future portends of a shift in perspectives. Maybe that explains the common images of artists in South East Asia. These forms depict a new world of outlandish scenes unlike the usual pictures of rice fields and mountains and sea shores. A cultural revolution similar to Mao's version but in a more dynamic (and wealthy) and less destructive form.

But the global economic crises still shows that Asia is not decoupled from the rest of the world. Every one feels that pain but seems that Asia provide significant solutions to the crises, too. From stimulus packages to sovereign wealth funds to currency controls, the world relies on the wealth and expertise of Asians to survive. So this is where the importance is seen. Perhaps this is why Asian artist have a lot of pictures of people with big heads. An increasing role also means more scrutiny, problems, psychosis and identity problems. Look at the Japanese who have been struggling with their identity for so long, unable to exercise a true leadership role in Asia.

Only China and Japan have the power to exercise a leadership role in Asia. Asean is too fragmented with only one country - Indonesia- capable of achieving world power status. Japanese art has not provided much stimulation except for it's anime. But China and South East Asia has seen an explosion of new art due to their rising status. Perhaps after 10 or 20 years, both China and Asean may again experience the same identity crises experienced by Japan. A crises where Japan could not step up into a leadership role except during times of war where it's terrible instincts come to the fore. Once this happens again, maybe a new visual art that is more explosive will again show it's face.