Where is help needed?

Now that I quit school counselling I look to do pro bono counselling for children. So I started to research on welfare organisations that may require my service. As I intend to use sandplay therapy extensively, I also assess the organisations based on my perception of their readiness to embrace expressive therapy. I came up with a short priority list and decided to approach the first 2.  After my encounter with them I have this impression that the disadvantaged are often trapped in a cycle of their disadvantages.

In order that my readers do not form subjective opinion based on my experience, I shall omit the details of my encounter and will just call these 2 organisations Org A and Org B. I emailed both at around the same time attaching my resume. Both websites have welcomed volunteers and provide email addresses for those interested. Org A is top on my priority list because I feel the children there need my service more. I approached Org B because its management seems very open and forward looking.

Org A failed to respond. This despite my putting 'Volunteer Counsellor' as the subject matter of the email. After one week and fearing my email went to their junk mail, I called to enquire. I was told that due to limited resources they usually take 2 to 3 weeks to respond to such enquiries.They could at least build an auto acknowledgement reply.

Org B on the other hand responded in less than 24 hours. My email was routed to the head of the org who invited me for lunch. She was excited about sandplay therapy and immediately made an appointment for me to meet the person in charge. Without revealing too much details I just want to say that after my second visit and after a lengthy discussion with the ground staff, I conclude that this org does not rank high in my priority list based on needs. The children there received loads of attention and care from volunteers in various fields.

Meanwhile I have not given up on Org A; I am waiting patiently to talk to the person in charge when she comes back from her long leave. Who knows? Those who are slow to get help may need the most help.

Human Capital

Todays BT carried an interesting article about "yourself" being the most important asset or human capital. Very often when we manage our financial portfolio we forget to include ourselves. Basically the type of career one is in determines the nature of future cash flows or earning stream, its certainty, consistency, growth potential etc. Thus we need to factor this into the overall financial management. In truth we have a bit more control of our human capital than stocks, commodities or real estates which are subject to market forces.

If I were to describe my previous job at the TLC which I worked in, I would have described myself as a bond, quite close to a Treasury. It gives steady coupon payment although the potential for growth is nothing much to shout about. It should have matured only upon me reaching the official retirement age (even as the tenure keeps lengthening). The chance for the issuer to call back is very very remote, even if I boo boo on my job. Given this risk free nature of my asset or human capital, I could  have taken much more risk in my other financial investments during my younger years.

The article went on to say "Your personal capital reserve and future earnings should drive your ability to make a change and not your portfolio return". I am trying to understand the context in which this statement is made. Personal capital reserve refers to your savings or inheritances etc. To determine your future earnings, the article says you have to be cognitive of your core strengths and competencies etc and ask relevant questions like 'What allows you to engage your human capital at the highest level?", "Where were you at your best?", "What was energising?" I think the writer is referring to mid career people who want a change, hence the need to explore one's true competency to maximise the return on one's human capital.

For the retirees however, other than reserves portfolio returns are major considerations which help determine how soon they can quit their job. Of the 3 questions, the more pertinent question may be "What was energising?" in order to identify the passion to enrich the last phase of life. So if you ask me what energises me most, I will tell you it is when I tell stories at the library, when I imitate the evil snigger of a wicked witch or the sob of a child lost in the woods; and when I spice my stories with jokes and humour. Returns on such competencies come in the form of chuckles at my own silly jokes or a remark from a grateful parent that her child looks forward to Friday because of storytelling. Haha how do I describe my human capital now?  Maybe it is like this S share that I still possess.  "China Milk" is suspended. The only return I ever get from this stock is a ridiculously colourful Annual Report that is shaped like a cow! It is so pretty and I still have it.

Turn off the Projector-Valentine's Day

Listened to a podcast talk about love quite coincidentally on Valentine's Day. Susan Piver describes a  common behaviour amongst couples is to project an expected image onto the partner. There is also the underlying expectation that one's partner is supposed to make oneself happy. Thus if one believes that certain material and psychological needs have to be met in order to be happy, the partner is often expected to provide them. When unfulfilled the partner gets the blame for one's unhappiness.

So for instance if  you look to your spouse to make you feel safe or complete you are setting yourself up for trouble. As long as this emotional need remains unabated you will feel that your partner has fallen short as a spouse. On a lighter note if you find your life boring and expects your spouse to make your life exciting you are also in for frustration as long as you fail to spice up your own life independently.

I am also now  wondering whether the higher tendency for wives to nag their husbands than vice-verse indicate that women  are more prone to project an expected image onto their spouse. Susan Piver thinks that it is a blessing to be loved by someone who has turned the projector off and sees you  with sharp precision as you are.

I think between my husband and me I am the one who has to turn the projector off because his projector is quite dim and not as glaring as mine. For that I am appreciative.

The Ropebridge

Extract from Pico Iyer's Sun After Dark, about Tibet:

"The Chinese would say that.......Tibet is poor precisely because it devotes its time to gods and prayer and superstition. Many Tibetans might reply that karaoke parlors and industrial cranes look to them like what is truly barbaric. The traveler, anxious in most cases to see the particular beauty and dignity of an ancient culture preserved- yet in no position to suggest that its people live without the schools and hospitals he finds so essential himself- walks between the sides as across one of the ropebridges that famously span the gorges of the Himalayas. Swaying one way, as the wind catches the bridge, swaying the other."

Reading this reminds me of our own predicament back home. The only difference is the little "beauty" and "dignity" of a "culture preserved"to start with is already wearing so thin in Singapore.

Towards Extinction

So much head and heart expressions on the White Paper. Now I think the best reads are those coming from NMPs who do not need to pledge allegiance to either party, or even better any MP who does not share the same opinion with that of his or her party. I think their view will be objective and worthy.

Again I am impressed with Lawrence Lien's take, who proposes a cap on 6 million (well a middle way approach of course but his rhetoric is sound). He casts doubts on the government's promise to increase productivity citing the same promise 10 years ago. What turned out in the end was just the import of low cost labour to spur the growth.

He also suggests that the government draws on its reserve to invest in strategic industries. Temasek can also invest and help local companies that depend on cheap labour to restructure and "rehabilitate" instead of continuing the feed of "drugs". I also share his sentiments that we have to increase the minimum wage to draw our own citizens to blue collar jobs, thus upgrading their status. (hmm... I think I like this guy because he uses a lot of metaphors). He also supports the moving of lower-skilled companies out of Singapore.

You know I was thinking about this for awhile, all these talk about how so few young people supporting old people. (Makes you feel that the baby boomers are really a nuisance). No I was just wondering whether the government can enter into a long term lease with Johor or Indonesia for a piece of land to build retirement villages and export us there. We can then tap their cheap labour to provide elderly care. Yes, drastic, pragmatic and soulless, but hasn't that been its approach for the past decades, resulting in the words of Low Thia Kiang " a social and physical environment that is not conducive to family life".

This guy Walter Lee who wrote to the forum provided a good analysis. He thinks that unlike London, New York and HK which are regional cities which need an open door policy, Singapore is not a regional city but a city-state ie. a nation and a country as well. At such unlike the other cities we have to uphold a national identity and an "active citizenry". A regional city on the other hand can afford a populace that is "inherently mobile and highly transient". In short what he was pointing out in his article is that whilst we have to keep up with economic growth for survival we have to watch out whether we will lose our identity that will result in emigration and low birth rate.

At the end of day we need to make sure our short term economic survival instinct do not lead us down a long path, toward extinction.

A Field Day

Is there such a thing as “inspiration inherent in the air" ? Driving through villages in Ubud , Bali is like being a roving camera in a natural museum. The streets are lined with endless shops with display of wood & bronze carvings, stone statues, wooden door frames, paintings and various other forms of artistic expressions. The driver plays a folk music CD, the composer of which is from his village. As the car passes various villages we were introduced to the artistic talents peculiar in each.

Sitting in the balcony of your hotel room looking out at the rice terraces, you watch the world and sink an inch deeper into yourself. In the morning the rice plots were still filled with rice crops. When you returned in the evening from your day trip, the crops were harvested and bare muddy ponds lay before you. It must have been a good harvest for the farmer. In the morning, flocks of ducks swam in the uncluttered plots. For the farmer perhaps a bountiful rice harvest that promises more of his needs being met; for the ducks the space and joy swimming in openness. Farmer and ducks love a harvest.

I also noticed dogs roaming everywhere in Ubud. The driver thinks maybe 90% of families keep dogs. I know the farmer near our hotel has at least 3 running along him on the padi field ridges and chasing the ducks which block the way. Most times the dogs in Ubud seem engaged in the activities of their owners, a dog watches as its owner shave wood blocks, a couple of dogs seem to offer some tips when a group of men were discussing how to distangle a cut bamboo pole from the overhead wires and a dog beside the little girl helping her to push the sale of postcards. I think of Fluffy, my neighbour’s dog back home and how my neighbour will whine sweetly when she is back from work in the evening “Oh Fluffy, you lucky dog, sleeping the whole day whilst I was out slogging.” Obviously she doesn’t know what it means to be lucky in a dog’s world. How can she, when most of us don’t even know what constitutes being born lucky in the world of humans.



(More about Bali later, so much reflection)