Into the World:
The Random Thoughts in My Mind

Its funny how human relationships can change so suddenly so fast in such dramatic ways.  A few days ago, the same group of people sat in a formal meeting in an office discussing conflicts of business interests, mutual improvements, and concerns on performances, and a few days later, you are sitting around the dinner table discussing life in general, pains of working and hating current jobs, and plans for the (decidedly personal) future.  The author has to thank unemployment for even the remote possibility of turning business clientele relationships into personal friendships.

It has been nearly one and a half years since the author first took up those mysterious Skype calls (and then a dubious-looking employment offer) from Malaysia , and flew on a three-day notice from London to Kuala Lumpur .  And it has been nearly one year since taking up the post of Vice President of Operations at the Lazada Philippines office after another one-week notice to fly to Manila .  And as the employment contract finally draws to a close, perhaps it is a time to evaluate the whole journey before the last goodbyes.

Let's start out with a bit of stereotyping: Asian culture is a culture that frowns upon outright, declared refusals.  Because people are taught, in schools, in homes, and social occasions, to focus on maintaining harmonious, non-intrusive, and non-confrontational relationships, people have tendency to say "maybe," "I will think about it," or even "yes" and they play along with the situation uncomfortably just to avoid awkward situations in which they have to openly reject the what they interpret as well-meaning offers made by others.

The author is not a big movie-watcher, but he sees a extraordinary theme emanating from what critics would call an overly cliched plot-line and background, the them get stuck in his mind for days.  Recently, "the Purge" has been such a film.  The film takes place in a wealthy neighborhood in 2022 America, where government allegedly created a wealthy society of little crime and unemployment by permitting an annual 12-hour "no-sin" period when all crimes are legal.  The film tracks one such 12-hour period for one specific family to detail the moral and psychological meaning of such a law.

A corporate goodbye and welcome party seemed like an over-sized, yet subtly protocol-led version of the previous pool party described . Presence of similar activities means noting their socio-cultural significance will be redundant and thus omitted, but the different atmosphere and context for which it was held mean that the event, as a supposedly more casual yet dramatic extension of the regular workplace relationship espouses certain theories of how people of different levels and motivations may very much behave in coordination to satisfy their own self-interests.

How should one define the "high position" that one holds, in life, in a job, in any sort of community?  Is it the amount of money one earns, the amount of respect received from others, the amount of responsibility one takes on?  The answer is an all-encompassing one that mingles all three, but yet is none of them, strictly speaking.  To be precise, cash flow or that nice title on a business card , by itself, does not really mean much.  Instead, "high position" is always a comparative term, one that draws comfort from comparison, a thought that "ahh, I am doing good because I am better than X and Y."

From the first look, he did not seem all that welcoming.  Long nails, unwashed hair, dark skin that is perhaps a bit too dark to be considered purely natural, crooked teeth...he was not the ideal guide, or for that matter, a good example of an ordinary citizen in a cosmopolitan tourist town.  Yet, somehow, as the author spent more and more time with the diminutive 27-year-old man who was his two-day guide in Siem Reap and the Temple of Angkor, his life experiences and stories became, in many ways, the most interesting portion of his trip, much more so than imposing stone temples or fantastic local food.

The so-called "villa" did not look like much from the outside.  The big sign "Villa Constantino Spa & Resort" had a big red arrow pointing down to a narrow, dark dirt road seemingly leading to a rather normal bedroom community of dense, one-story family houses.  But as so many other places in the Philippines , once inside, a whole new world opened up: three large pools and a children's pool were surrounded by a series of gazebos, open-door karaoke booths, and well-decorated two story buildings full of rented bedrooms.

There are (if you ask some people, outrageously ridiculous-sounding) researches that show a resounding statistics of 65-70% of people having some sort of relationships in their office that is at least somewhat beyond the confines of professional work-related exchanges.  But then again, if one spends majority of the day for 5-6 days a week for nearly every single week with the same group of people , it is almost inevitable that some form of amorous feelings develop over time.  As humans, most are not immune.

This blog is big on personal resolutions, most of which, after even the most fleeting reviews of which shows that most never even come close to being fulfilled ...or the efforts of working toward fulfilling them even being shown.  Instead of choosing to work toward something, the author instead focuses on grabbing whatever interesting that comes his way, hopping from one country to the other, one job to the other, one experience to the other, without seriously thinking of the consequences involved, or where such adventures will take the author next.

After a night of unproductive carousal at the local nightclub , the author is starting to get the realization that perhaps developing more substantial (i.e. not strictly work-related) relationships with one's coworkers may be much more fulfilling than trying to carry on pointless conversation with a complete stranger in vain hope of finding some sort of common ground.  After all, in the case of coworkers, one can always fall back on talking about entertaining rumors and incidents of the workplaces, when attempts at conversations of other topics falls flat due to, say, lack of common interest or cultural differences.

All the sudden, everything on the floor came to a stop.  All the usual sounds of pop music blasting, packing materials screeching, and scanners beeping were suddenly cut out from the heavy dusty air of the overworked, sweat-filled warehouse.  The chain was broken and the process was paralyzed.  It was a blackout, a complete outage of power within the whole compound.  But it was more than just a realization of over-dependence on electricity that came about, it was fear and stress that the orders that need to be sent out, with all the items already in the building, had to be halted.

There was a time that the author felt that his world was perfectly aligned with the descriptions and the words spelled out on these posts, and that the posts themselves were a springboard and preparations for something greater in the direction of his life .  But as Chinese New Year's 2013 approaches, and the daily grind of work at a faraway corner of the world sinks into his psyche as a persistent reality rather than some sort of ephemeral adventure, for some reason, that notion of writing as a target of life is starting come into heavy doubt.

Once a friend asked a senior leader at Rocket Internet, "how did you manage to assemble such an elite team of ex-consultants from the most renowned firms and fresh grads from the most reputed universities to work in your ventures?"  The leader simply replied, "Money."  For the author, there was not a sadder moment since joining this global firm than upon hearing this little anecdote.  It is not only he who is not understood, but a whole group of people, that whole group of "ex-consultants from the most renowned firms and fresh grads from the most reputed universities" that was just ruthlessly labelled as "shallow" with one word.

Among the intellectuals of the world, there has long been a consensus on the defining quality of individual success.  It is not measured by the amount of cash in one's bank account, the net worth of one's business, assets, and properties.  Instead, the key word is "power," the authority one has over other individuals and functioning of a community, and to a greater extent, society in general.  The ability to influence and to change the course of other's lives, in particular, can be seen an easy, albeit morally reprehensible, way to get one's hands on an almost unlimited flow of cash.

Many a wise traveler met on the road have remarked as such, "every adventure with an abrupt beginning must have an abrupt end."  The wisdom of the words cannot be anymore appropriate for my five-month stay in Kuala Lumpur.  The whole episode started with a directionless grad student frantically seeking any opportunity anywhere in the world as he awaited the inevitably end of his one-year tenure in London .  A couple of 30-min Skype interviews and a few disjointed email communication with a landlord...all the sudden, he found himself on a 12-hour flight across the globe.

Once again, Diwali, or the Hindu Festival of Lights, is upon on us, and just as Hindu community around the world does, the Malaysian Indian community is busy reuniting with families and friends while everyone in the country is enjoying a couple days of public holidays even though they have literally nothing to do with this particular religious event .  But while the Indosphere indulge in some wholesome family gatherings, something remarkable just happened in China: on Nov. 11th, ecommerce portal Tmall set an all-time world record for one-day sale by a single site by raking in 3.1 billion USD.

In a society where a Muslim demographic majority and an economically (and somewhat demographically) significant non-Muslim minority coexist, the celebration of Ramadan is, not surprisingly, social contentious beneath a veil of obvious social harmony and mutual cultural respect .  Religious doctrine dictate that the Muslim not eat and drink from sunrise to sunset while toiling under the brutal hot weather of tropical Malaysia and going about their daily tasks of schooling and employment without any adjustments attributed to the fasting.

And with the flames shooting out of the stadium, songs, and mass choreographed dances a little bit too reminiscent of what occurred in Beijing 2008 (albeit with a Western, kitschy rural British twist), that once-in-four-years spectacle begins once again in a city that some London residents ( including many of previous year’s LSE students ) have already left behind, while others painfully adjust to the suddenly inflated costs dished out by opportunistic shop and real estate owners.

The warehouse at the quiet, industrial part of the town started as, literally, an empty concrete shell, with no furniture, no goods, no ventilation, and no sign of life.  Truckloads of item and upholstery shipments later, combined with more than 12 hours of continuous work by more than a dozen cheaply hired foreign moving men, the new warehouse is finally looking like a warehouse, with the shelving racks, desks, and chairs arranged in their proper positions, and shifted items ready for unpacking.