Some cookies are sweet, some cookies are savory. Some are hard and some are soft. Some are chocolate flavours with a nice gooey centre. Sometimes they don’t look pretty but they were made with the same beautiful love. You see, they never are the same. Also, some bakers didn’t always manage to have cookies right from the start. They might not have all the equipment they needed. And just as they thought they had everything ready, they discovered that their cookie was too soft and sometimes there was just not enough heat. They yearned for cookies. They see their neighbours …
Insights
While watching my Instagram stories, I chanced upon this, Consumers today expect convenience but crave meaningful connection and a sense of community. Rachel from Love, Bonito This got me thinking about many of the things we start to take for granted and not reading too much into it. I started to see how this convenience had also dulled some of my senses. It also reminded me of the time I participated as a customer in an in-depth interview session with some real-estate leaders. It was also observed that during the purchase of my apartment, I did it with little hassle …
Shame
My mom was helping me pick up my toddler from daycare. Knowing that my toddler would not be comfortable in daycare uniform, I’d packed an extra set of clothes for him to change out while making his way to my parents’. I was told my toddler was embarrassed while he was being changed. I asked if she did it at the entrance of the daycare center and I was right. She might have felt really ridiculous when my toddler was using his hands to cover up his bare body. While sharing her amusement for a toddler (not even 4 years …
Harbour
I started to think about the word ‘harbour’ this morning. How? I was thinking about my new job and my colleagues’ conversations about how a certain young person was already in the high ranks. It led me to think about how sometimes we used job grades to validate our identity. We harbour hopes of getting a promotion and tell ourselves we need to get it within a certain time frame. Personally, what I have observed about myself was that I am not a worker robot. To focus on getting that recognition destroys my living in the now. It robs me …
Moneyball
I spent my late afternoon rewatching this movie. I first watched it because a particular head of analytics at a bank I used to work at, mentioned it. He would use one of the scenes in the show to tell people that he’s that fat guy (Peter Brand). With such an interesting story behind it, I definitely did not give it a miss. If you haven’t watched it, there are spoilers ahead. When I watched it again today, many other things hit me. For one, the opening quote: “It’s unbelievable how much you don’t know about the game you’ve been …
Inclusivity
Recently, I joined a rather inclusive workplace. I say this because there were decorations surrounding the pride movement right at the entrance of the office. One of the first few emails I’d received was also about our human resources extending insurance coverage for employee’s respective partners (regardless of gender). When I went through my orientation materials, there was a fellow colleague from another country talking about how, as a lesbian with a female partner and two kids, in a foreign country was one of the many things she had to deal with. The parts that impressed me wasn’t about the …
What am I teaching?
There was a movie from long ago I watched, Stepmom. It starred one of my favorite actresses, Julia Roberts along with Susan Sarandon and Ed Harris. It was about a family going through a divorce, birth mom has terminal cancer and stepmom trying to fit into the family dynamics. There was an epic scene (at least to me), where one of the children (the younger one) asked his birth mom “Mommy, if you want me to hate her, I will.” That line changed me because I am someone who deals with quite a bit of jealousy. When that scene hit …
The right job
I was watching a radical movie “What the health” and there was a disturbing scene about a town in the US which produces meat products from farming animals. The residents of the town spoke about how unethical the animals are mishandled when they are dead, about how their farming was conducted have little to no regard for the residents. The stench they have to bear was something they had to live with, every single day. One of the residents spoke about how these farms and large corporations were connected. He reckoned that they care only for the money they are …
Importance of context
My good friend texted me the other day asking about the brand of the laptop I was using. It was, in fact, an iPad Pro which I enthusiastically showed her out of an interest to share our passion for drawing. I started telling her all about the iPad and the Procreate app that I was using to draw while she told me that she likes the Dell Inspiron laptop which she intends to bring it for her overseas trips to do some work. The conversation started going wildly with me giving her all sorts of other laptop models that I …
Embracing uncertainty
When I was younger, I had the naive thinking to study plants to avoid working with humans. Then, I put myself in a box thinking that I am not suited for desk bound jobs . I ended up ‘job hopping’ in various work until I ‘settled down’ in an office job for a good 7 years. I had always thought that I am not an artistic person and only people who were born with it would be able to have any luck with art. Well, it turns out that art needs also discipline and with determination in observing and patience, …