Sometimes I don’t understand my mum because the double standard-ness is at sky high level that sometimes I can’t comprehend with her thoughts.
She always said that; “Wah, you can be a boss leh because you got the brains and the guts” but on another hand “Why you wanna be a boss ah? Find a proper job lah. You need to feed your kids. Be a boss hor, very stress one leh.”
Like hello mum, a boss is a proper job. Ok perhaps my entrepreneurship was never a smooth sailing one. My first venture was into blogshops in Year 2011 if I remember correctly?
The idea came about during some free times during the maternity leave and it triggered me to explore a second income but it becomes a good learning ground despite the fact that it’s the blogshop bloom era where majority are hosted via either blogspot or livejournal.
First Venture — Female Apparels Blogshop
But apparently I didn’t become the next Love, Bonito. š I feel that the reason was that the instability and the full-time job are already too overwhelmed to handle so it didn’t give me the diehard PUSH factor.
So I closed down the now-defunct blogshop and donated all my new clothing to SCWO for the name of charity and hopefully finder keepers theory.
This is not the end. I didn’t give up and work on the — many ideas which came upon me during the pregnancy, maternity period and post-period. Helping to solve my “own” personal issue as a mother of one, two, three and now, four kids (plus 2 furkids) and this is how it evolved to Scentimentaland Piggyback.
Failure is not everything. It’s a good lesson learnt and it made me a stronger person. Sometimes you win some, you lose some.
It was never easy to hold a full-time job and work on the other portfolios during the wee hours. Sometimes I only get to have 2-hours of sleep each day and at times when I got burnt out but at the end of the day, it’s to solve a particular problem, a common problem.
Perhaps will share more about each company in coming future. š
The past week had been challenging, so is the trade markets. Oil prices, commodities, even the protest in Hongkong had created an impactful shift across all markets and including myself.
HA. Because currently, I’m in a role where I faced more rejections than anything else so I decide to YOLO once and went for a social experiment on how people reacted to me and whether anyone will cast judgment without knowing me as a person but just by my outlooks especially with my…
First Tattoo. Yes, I know. “Imprints” get judge more often.
Followed by, the change of my hair color, not to a monotone but a unicorn tone. As this totally fits into my bill of fickle-mindedness because right after I dyed it at my trusted salon, J2 Hair Salon, I just realised that whichever color I feel like showcasing more, all I need was to change my hair parting in accordance.
Left (2016)/ Right (NOW)
Attitude. Adopted a heck care attitude because I just want to find out if gracious people tend to be bullied. And I wondered if I ever get beaten up if I keep on tsk-ing people (Check out how to tsk people correctly with strong support from CPF. Just joking.)
To be honest, I’m quite fearful that my parents/ colleagues/ bosses cannot accept the change as I did not inform them in advance/ prior to this.
Random note; the girls love it. They love anything unicorn. HAHA.
So during the weekends, when I bought the girls out, everyone seems to give a disapproving look on the streets and I even overheard a comment,
“See, girl. You must study hard if not next time, you will need to be food delivery rider and bring kids along for work.”
O-M-G. I carried a Grabfood paperbag with my kiddos waterbottles in it doesn’t meant I worked for them leh. I just cannot find a bag to contain their items when I’m rushing out. AND SOMEMORE, I graduated with a degree and alot of self-improvement certificates that helped me excel in my career. -_-
Best part, my mum did not even notice it when I was working around with my stuff when I’m back at my maiden home, for hours. Perhaps, tying up my hair helps.
Actually, the real challenge in me is actually how my bosses, colleagues, business partners whom I will meet, will react to my new looks.
So I reported for work on Monday. Here’re the results:
My boss did not comment but I feel he’s ok with this. [Boss ah, let me know if you are not ok hor?] Updated as of 16 Sept, my direct supervisor told me the CE disapprove of the colors. LOL so I dyed back on 17 Sept.
Colleagues were shocked and my Teamies gave me a look of affirmation then disapproval.
The guys who’ve worked at a different level and whom I’ve always spoken to in the lift saw me during lunch and thought I was “another” person. They couldn’t even recognize me.
My friends saw my social media postings, gave me thumbs up instead of thumbs down.
Ok lah, to be honest, I’m not sure if they would have discussed this behind my back though but I couldn’t care less. :]
And the real deal came when I am running late for a meeting at Ayer Rajah. I was changing my route to cross over from East-West line to the Circle line at Buona Vista MRT and I heard a man standing in the middle of the pavements asking into the thin air if anyone can direct him to the East-West line (towards Jurong direction). I then realized he seems to have a partial visual impairment. Many of the people of different diversity and dress codes, walked past him without helping him.
Despite telling myself — to adopt a heck care attitude mentioned earlier, it just couldn’t get through me. Yes, I might be late if I lend a helping hand but well, that few minutes might matter more to him than to me. Imagine, he lost his footings and…
So I walked up and approached him and directed him to the right direction. Realising that the lift is a long walk from where he is, I asked him if it’s ok for me to lead him up to the platforms via escalator. He was apologizing that he might delayed my time and etc. I told him I’m free and asked him to hold onto my elbow.
Thank god for my stint in PA that exposed me to various techniques to deal from the physically challenged peeps.
In any case; to guide a blind/ partially sighted person; one would need to follow these steps (Courtesy from RNIB and Webeye):
Walk up, introduce yourself and speak to the person whom you are going to guide him.
Offer the person your services and ask him/ her on how would they prefer to be guided.
The person being guided should lightly grasp the guide’s arm, thumb out, just above their elbow. Right elbow of the guide will be grasped by the left hand of the person being guided, and vice versa. The left elbow of the guide will be grasped by the right hand of the person being guided. For children, have them grasp your wrist or hold your hand. When an individual acts as a human guide, they should walk a half step ahead of the person they are guiding.
Tell them about every steps/ curbs/ stairs as you approach them. Tell them to step “up” or “down”.
Mention any potential hazards/ narrow corridors that lie ahead and say where they are.
If you are guiding someone into a seat, place their hand on the back of the seat before they sit down, so they can orientate themselves.
Don’t walk away without saying you are leaving.
So that minute of help resulted in me knowing that he had his vision partially lost due to genetics. Despite the fact, he’s still making efforts to look for jobs and being mobile to stay positive.
When we parted at the platform, I was asking the few of the people standing on the platforms to look out for him and directed him to the right station (and yes, I got a few disapproving looks from some onlookers due to my tattoo and hair while I help the guy). Thank god for a couple of kind souls and he wished me well in my life.
Conversations like this pulled me up from all the rejections I had to face during my course of work (as they are downright demotivating) and I felt even more determined to help the community via Piggyback.
And thus I instill a habit for myself and the girls while decluttering those that I do not need. I will either post via Blessing for Low Incomes-Sg, Yishun Blessing group and my own BTO closed Facebook group to ask if anyone closeby would need the things that I no longer need.
To my surprise, a lot of my so-called stuff became prized processions of their new owners.
And this boils down to…
“When you judge others. You do not define them. You define yourself. No one had ever walk the same path as you. Experiences made current choices. Future choices are based on your aptitude towards life and attitude on how you approach it.”
Like what my mum always say, “When you are pointing 1 finger at others, you are pointing 4 at yourself.”
Brace on people and do lending a helping hand when possible because you’ll never know when you will need others to lend you theirs.
In life, the greatest regret that one might have would be giving in to procrastination. I always remember that story when one just sit on something and did not find the time, motivation and made the efforts to pursue and wait for someone else to work on it.
I guess this is just human nature that one gave in to failures and stop trying. And I am guilty as charged.
Thus I made it a point that I will just walk through the years and hopefully hardwork will reap the fruit of success. š I need the second income to facilitate, work from home had always been a dream of mine where I can really spend time with the family and the kids. š
Financial freedom and commercializing both Scentimental and Piggyback shall be the goals of Year 2019.
Good luck and bless me. I will not hold back anymore.
LOL. Tech firms burn the most money and sometimes I wonder why did I try to pursue this line of industry when I do not have the CTO experience. I need to cut cost and believe in myself till the extend that I draw up my own wire frame from scratch.
That’s like OUCH. Because not being an artistic person, I need to always trial and error. God damn it and I am always so close in giving up or rather I kept asking myself, why didn’t I give up?!
Hardwork will reap the fruits of success. Ok, no cold blankets please. Mark my words.
Having Scentimental Singapore (SS) since Nov 2016 did help to empower a small group of single parents and earn keeps during the means. Being community-centric and focus placed an important role within today society. With that busy and hectic schedules over in my current role and etc, I didn’t place much focus on SS until recently when I struggled to overcome.
And not everyone can deal with a social enterprise who ain’t earning but still render assistance to the vulnerable. It will never be a regret but I learnt the power of love.
As part of yearning support from the group towards my progress of procrastination, healing from whatever I had been through.
I met up with a strong lady, June over lunch earlier today and she recommended me a book by Jennifer Heng, “Walking Out Of Secret Shame”. I finished the book over an afternoon and it was inspiring. It gave me courage, strength and wisdom to make me understand that I am not alone. Thank god for June, it made me realised that raising strong women is indeed important.
Being through all these made me think. I always had many fears:
Financial Capability
IF I were to switch my career, can I juggle between this and that. Or rather who will hire?
The Marriage Woes
To be frank, I am thankful that through these times, I met a lot of kind souls. Perhaps, because the lack of empathy within my current place, my faith for people tends to be compromised.
I almost switched to another role but when I was about to make up my mind to go for it, I was being presented another challenging situation which I did tell my then potential employer. His response had sank within me so hard that I am thankful that I had met this young entrepreneur despite the situation. His encouraging words are something I will never forget and it did tie me through some form of healing.
This is the type of people I admired.
At the crossroads, with everything so bleak. My plans for Year 2018 – was initially planned to work with someone on something community-centric, with strong focus on the networks. I had just finished my Business Plan for the day.
But again, I thought of doing this alone freaks me out in my current situation.
I had a dream last night where I dreamt that I was touring the Divine Realms.
I was bought to 4 stages of it, where the first stage required me recite my Buddhist teaching. The 2nd stage shown me the quantity of Merits & Karma that I had enlightened thus far. The 3rd stage shown me all the phases of my current life from birth to death and the Last…
It shown me – The bad deeds I had done this lifetime and the karma in which I will be getting in my afterlife. This set me into deeper thoughts on what does this dream got to tell me. I need some lights on this. Enlightenment please?
On another note, I am really thankful for the close support and encouraging words from the people who sincerely care. I couldn’t been here without your support.
Earlier on, I posted an articleĀ on my LinkedIn on judging the move or the stay within the comfort zone. I guess everyone need to go through this some point in time of their career.
In Public Service, I get to do the things I am keen and upgrade myself for studies however, is this what I really want at the end of the day? No.
Since Day 1, I tell myself, no matter how tough life is, I need to give back to the society. Social Entrepreneur is my calling and I moved towards that direction at the end of the day.
To study this in the social norms, first I need to understand how Corporate Management is like and how this deviates from the social clauses.
I want to set up a company which everyone is proud to be part of, like Google.
A family-oriented organization which believed in my core of giving back.
In my life, no matter how tough it’s gonna be, I will persevere till the very end.
“There are two things to define myself; (1) Determination when I have nothing and (2) Attitude when I have everything.”
Just when I need a calling/ an enlightenment, IĀ chanced uponĀ this showĀ on TV. And what is the most surprising thing is, when I googled the founder of TaoKaeNoi, Mr Aitthipat KulapongvanichĀ he was borned on 24 November 1984,Ā which meant, both of us are sharing the same birthday. I guess, never too late to start entrepreneurship. He took 2 years to repay a debt of $40 million. This is inspiring and a motivation for me.
Somehow or rather, I feel, both of us seems to have similar background story just that I don’t come from a wealthy family as per compared to him.
Well, at least our horoscope and character would be somehow similar. Would be glad to see him in person, if I get the chance.
In the meantime, I set my mind open about Entrepreneurship and updated my LinkedIn for exciting opportunities. š
Time to throw my focus where the lack of time for SCENTIMENTAL SINGAPORE might miss my chance for something big.
WILLYNN (@hueyytingg) 