I was so inspired by it I self-snooped. And here are 3 of my deductions — do share yours in the comments or in a blog entry (do link back to this entry, so I can I read them)!

Snoop #1: What My Music Playlist Says About Me

Gosling says we can infer personality traits from the music we listen to. You’d might imagine someone who loves religious music as someone pious, perhaps conscientious and not very open to new experiences. I find this snoop a little devious because you may fall prey to false stereotyping, if you don’t dig deep enough. Here’s my deduction of my own playlist as an example.

Top 25 Songs on iTunes

From this playlist, you might deduce that I love anime music. Before you accuse me of being a socially eccentric, cosplaying otaku, let me explain my listening habits. While it’s true I love anime, I don’t enjoy anime music all that much. Consider this: I only listen to music via iTunes when I blog. Music with prominent vocals or noisy electric guitars interfere with my thinking. In contrast, music from the ARIA anime is very soothing so it inspires me to write.

Top 15 Artists on Last.FM

My Top 15 Artists list from Last.FM is a more accurate depiction of my music preferences because it’s sortable by time frame. My music tastes have changed over the years. When I was younger, I loved Korean pop music. Now that I’m older, I’m much more into Kubota Toshinobu’s music (genre: soul) and other soothing genres like R&B, Jazz and Bossa Nova.

Gosling points out that people who listen to jazz are generally calm and collected. While that is true of me most of the time, notice that there are 2 anomalies — Lee Hyolee and 2NE1. Both are remnants of my favorite genre during my teenage years. That should point out that I’m not yet 100% calm and collected. Occasionally, I’m still susceptible to reverting to my younger, boisterous, not-so-calm self.

Snoop #2: What My Office Cubicle Says About Me

My company culture is fairly conservative and our office design is one that’s very open. Everything – including the number of shoes under the table – is viewable on plain sight. As you can expect, there’s not much decor going on around. With that said, my cubicle is more barren than the others.

I have no photos of my friends or family, no memento or souvenir on my table. Gosling talks about how employees who are disconnected or disengaged from their work have less personal belongings in their cubicle. While that may be true for some people, I just prefer to separate my work from my personal life. I also avoid revealing too much of myself. See Snoop #3 for reason.

However, I do have three personal items displayed on an inconspicuous corner on my whiteboard. Two of them are postcards — one of a cute cat in a beret, another with a colorful abstract design. At first glance, one might think I like cats and colorful postcards. While that’s also true, there are deeper reasons to why I displayed them. When you flip the back of the postcards, you’d see that they both have personalized messages. The one with the cat is from a very, very close friend from university. The colorful one was from the customer service personnel who decided to accompany the item I ordered online from Swedish retailer, DesignTorget with a hand-written postcard saying “Hello from Sweden “. The postcards remind me of the value friendship and reaching out to strangers. Not coincidentally, both of which I wish I could have more.

The 3rd item is a photo of my project team along with Singapore’s Prime Minister and my company’s CEO. This one’s a no-brainer. It just means I’m ambitious.

Snoop #3: What My Wallpapers Say About Me

Gosling also dabbles a little into what our blogs, Facebook profiles and usernames reveal about us. Personally, I think there is an even better way to snoop online — by ransacking people’s Google Search history. But good luck getting your hands on that… hahaha.

For me though, I think the single most telling item of my core being is my desktop / mobile phone wallpaper. I’m sure most of my observant friends have noticed various artwork displayed on my personal electronic devices. They are all paintings from Audrey Kawasaki. I haven’t fully figured out why I am enchanted by them but they give a vague inkling that no matter where I am and what I am doing, a part of me will never change. This is my favorite painting:

My favorite piece from Audrey Kawasaki
百鬼夜行 – Hyakki Yakou – Hundred Demon Night Parade

Most my friends comment on how haunting and creepy these paintings are.

Perhaps that is reason why that I don’t display these paintings on my work-related devices and why I endeavor to show as little of myself as possible. The core of my being might just be too haunting and creepy for people to handle — a stark contrast to my nanyate self — the perpetually shining, affable, easygoing optimist.

What most don’t understand is that both sides are equally me.

For one to embody the light, one must know darkness.

No related posts.

Featured on Web Design Galleries

Big thanks to all the CSS galleries and web design blogs for featuring my latest theme, Nami. And another thank you to those of who gave me feedback, when I first rolled out this theme. Web design has been a long-time hobby of mine, so it’s always nice to receive recognition. I got to know many people as a result too! (I know I haven’t replied to some of you, sorry about that! Will get to it soon!) So thank you to CSS Mania, Spyre Studios, Web Creme and the many others!

Switched to a Smartphone

As I was saying in the Nexus One entry, I’ve been reluctant to switch to a smartphone since I didn’t want to become too connected. But my dumbphone recently lost the ability to send texts, and I was able to borrow the Sony Ericssion Xperia X10, so I switched. Thanks to the Xperia, I now sync my phone contacts with Google Contacts, which pretty much guarantees I’ll be loyal to Android phones for the next few years.

Since the phone isn’t mine, it doesn’t seem right to do a review. Hahaha! But let’s just say, despite its specs and price tag, it’s still got some way to go before I could classify it with the likes of superphones like the iPhone, Nexus One, HTC Desire, Motorola Milestone or the Samsung Galaxy S.

Touched an iPad!

Thanks to my colleagues and Justin, I got to spend some time with the Apple iPad. I wasn’t too impressed initially. It’s a phenomenal e-reader but there’s no way a tablet is befitting for a content creator like me. I have to admit my initial thoughts was slightly clouded by my disappointment with Steve Jobs and his letter to Adobe. (I switched to a Mac because Photoshop works better on it. So for Apple to declare its disapproval of Adobe’s alleged “closed system” felt like they were backstabbing a partner to me.)

But after I realized I could type a proper email on it without making mistakes, I was pretty impressed. As touch tech improves, tablets will slowly, but surely replace laptops in the future. With that said, I won’t be buying an iPad so soon. It can’t really replace a laptop or even a netbook for me just yet. I need multitasking support, and I don’t want to be held ransom by the App Store. Guess I’ll just wait until I see OS X or Win 7 running smoothly on one.

Sayonara, Social Media

On the work front, I’ve officially relinquished my social media responsibilities to someone even more passionate and capable. (That doesn’t mean I’ll stop blogging or tweeting though!) Social media was a good entry-point to the corporate world, since it was something familiar. I now do traditional comms for financial-related matters. It’s not an easy transition since the learning curve is fairly steep, the responsibilities are greater and perfection is just a minimum requirement. Nevertheless, I’m enjoying myself so far. I like being constantly challenged. Keeps me on my toes, keeps me learning. And it’s definitely the right place to be to learn more about the tech and telco business, both of which I’m pretty passionate about.

Thanks to the change, I can finally answer the question I’ve been struggling with for the longest time: “where do you see yourself in 5 years?” I’d like to move from a support unit like communications into the business. But more on this another time.

Upcoming Blog Posts

I attended a few interesting blogger events earlier this week, so do expect those entries to be up soon. There’ll be one on Nokia Connection 2010 and another on the Infocomm Accessibility Centre. I’ll probably disappear again after that because my boyfriend is coming back to Singapore this weekend! This time for good!

Okay, back to sleep. My fever is unfortunately still not subsiding. Blah.

Related posts:

1. I got my hands on a Nexus One!

• want work life balance and a good pay
• can’t handle criticism – even constructive ones
• are flaky and disloyal to the company
• want to be CEO tomorrow
• have an overblown sense of entitlement

As a Gen Y, I have to admit that while some of these comments are quite accurate (especially the bit on entitlement), others somewhat suffer from over generalization. Sure, I welcome a better pay and a fast career advancement — sooner than later too. But I don’t expect it to be handed to me just for showing up on time. Promotions are always based on relative judgments. Compared to my older colleagues, I have one glaring disadvantage; I lack experience. So my way up is to take every opportunity to learn, volunteer for more challenging work, gain that experience as much and as quickly as possible…in hopes that I can do what older people can — but learned in a much shorter time and done in a much better fashion. And if that means I have to sleep in the office, so be it. I’m not naive enough to expect the big bucks, while I go home at 5pm everyday.

For every workaholic like me, I know someone who’s perfectly satisfied with his pay — as long as he gets to go home at 6 on the dot. In every generation, there will always people who live to work and people who work to live. So these career bloggers and columnists could really do us a service by not lumping our demands together because there are differences in opinion and even generational gaps amongst Gen Ys.

With that said, I’ve noticed a worrying trend amongst my peers. Many just don’t stay long enough in their jobs. And I don’t think this incessant job hopping is a good idea. It’s no secret that the corporate world demands some level of expertise. This job hopping is a sure fire way not to achieve that.

Personally, I’ve been fortunate enough to land on a job in a company with people I’m happy to work with and work for. I’m approaching 2 years and I still learn something new daily. It doesn’t have to be a big lesson like managing a multi-million dollar project. Most of the time, what I learn are small, seemingly insignificant things like saying the right things at the right time to give your team the moral support to do their jobs better. It is these small things that often turn a failing project on the road to success.

And sure, there are times when shit happens. If it doesn’t happen, I’m pretty sure it’ll find you soon enough. Shit isn’t a bad thing; it’s an opportunity to challenge you, to take you to the next level. It’s coming up with innovative ways to overcome this shit that’s going to gain you the experience you desperately need.

So I guess what I’m saying is that if you’re a Gen Y and you’re thinking about quitting, I’d like you to re-evaluate your reasons — especially if your reasons are along the lines of “I can’t take this shit anymore.”

Do share your views in the comments!

• If you’re Gen Y, what do you think? Do you agree with these career sites? Are there any common traits you’ve noticed about us?
• If you’re a manager of Gen Ys, what do you think of us? Do share because it’s a good opportunity to learn how we’re being perceived.
• And please, no personal attacks, no naming people. Thanks!

No related posts.

In the new decade, I want to:

Keep learning

There are so many things in the world and I only got a few decades left to learn them all. So I hope I will never become a pompous fool and stop learning.

Share the love

I love being with people. I love meeting new people. I love forging stronger bonds with people. It brings meaning to my life. It brings meaning to people’s lives. Sure, there will be times when it will drain me but I still hope I will never stop believing in love.

After all, love is a powerful energy that can bring out the best in society.

Bring social back to social media

I’m no expert in the social media field, and I’m not sure anyone can call himself one since this is a field in a constant state of evolution.

Recently, I noticed that social media has recently become more about money. So I’d like to help bring the social back to social media. Sure, you can make money but let’s not forget that it’s also a great avenue to widen your social circle. And a happy life isn’t all about materialistic goals.

Sometimes it’s the immaterial ones that will bring you the greatest joy.

Balance work and life

This might be difficult since it’s not entirely in my control. Since I started working a little over a year ago, I realized I never really took a break from work. A lot of times I gave up my sanity, my friends or my family for work. I need to learn to set the boundaries and balance my life better.

Know and love myself

As a third culture kid, I’ve had a hard time to come to terms with my identity. I always felt like I lacked a sense of belonging and a sense of self.

And as a person, I shunned my body for my thyroid problems. I shunned the little girl in me for wanting to be loved. I shunned the pride in me for never wanting to look weak in front of others. I shunned the anger in me for being uh… angry.

But recently, I’ve come to accept myself for who I am. And I’ve never been happier! No, it doesn’t mean I should become an angry, sick egotistic bitch. It means taking responsibility for my body, my mind and my soul.

And I hope I never, ever forget that.

Dear readers, what would you like to achieve in the new decade? What are your hopes and dreams for the future? Feel free to share the link to your resolution entries as well!

Related posts:

1. Life of a Social Media Rockstar

I’m neither the Harvard Business Review nor an experienced people manager but just thought I’d share 5 things I’ve learned about people management:

#1: Great managers assume responsibility

Not-so-great managers are quick to assign blame. Being under constant pressure to make sure nothing goes wrong, I can understand this tendency to point fingers and pass the buck. While it makes quickly lightens the load off your shoulders, it also dampens customer experience and damages teamwork.

Your customers will appreciate when you go that extra mile, even if you fail to deliver. But more importantly, taking on extra responsibility fosters teamwork since your team will stop weighing and comparing their responsibilities precisely because you’ve stopped counting your responsibilities. This is Cialdini’s reciprocation principle at its finest. When you’re willing to take one for the team or just help them out, others will feel compelled to help you too.

But of course, the reverse is also true. When you count pennies with the team, they’ll count pennies with you too.

#2: Great managers listen

Perhaps the speed the world revolves now with Twitter and other ADD-inducing technologies has made it more difficult to attentively listen to people but great managers don’t rush to get their word in. They listen. They acknowledge. And then speak and/or act.

Appreciate what others have to say, no matter how different or perhaps, inferior they may seem to you. Innovative ideas could spring out from conversations with anyone. Two minds are better than one even if you think they only have an IQ of 50.

IQ of 50 + your IQ of 150 = 200. Enough said.

#3: Great managers are courteous

Just because you are in a superior position, doesn’t mean you get the privilege to talk down to someone. It not only makes you look crude, but also destroys team morale. And when your team morale is low, your customers sure ain’t gonna get great service. Creating a lose-lose vicious cycle just because you think you’re better than others just isn’t worth it.

#4: Great managers plan ahead

This may not be so obvious in the office but it sure is when it comes to events. Shit happens. If it does not happen, it will eventually find you and make itself happen. No matter how quiet or peaceful the status quo seems, you have to be prepared to deal with all kinds of potential shit that may be hurled in your general direction.

So don’t be complacent and plan ahead. Of course, foresight isn’t an easy skill to develop and is probably honed with experience but it never hurts to try anyway.

By the way, I appeased a very angry customer by planning ahead. Won’t go into details but this makes a good topic for conversation should we go for coffee.

#5: Great managers know themselves

This is the most important lesson I’ve learned at APEC. I have talents. I have flaws. I also have predictable behaviors to certain circumstances. As a manager, I need first be able to manage myself to adapt to all kinds of situations and all kinds of people, so I could effectively manage other people. This means I need to have some level of self-awareness and self-understanding.

My interest in personality psychology has helped a great deal in learning more about myself. One of my favorite personality tests is the MBTI. Although I don’t think the MBTI is the definitive answer to self-understanding, I find that it’s a good gauge of my natural tendencies. By the way, my MBTI type is ENTJ; being an ENTJ means that:

• Extraverted: I’m easy to talk to but I tend to speak before I think.
• iNtuitive: I easily see the big picture and patterns in theories but I tend to overlook details.
• Thinking: I make my decisions by being impartial, rational and logical but I tend to disregard people’s emotional needs.
• Judging: I like to organize and plan ahead but tend to panic when I have to think on the spot

To become a better managers, people need to capitalize on their strengths and overcome their negative tendencies. Great people managers should be able to find that sweet spot between their natural personalities and the mirror image of their personalities.

And for me, that means I need to become a little more ISFP-esque:

• Introverted: Listen, acknowledge and think before I shoot my mouth
• Sensing: Pay to attention to minor details
• Feeling: Take other peoples’ feelings into consideration.
• Perceiving: Allow myself room to sometimes be spontaneous.

If you have no clue what this mirror personality bit is all about, you can read up on the four dichotomies of the MBTI here.

I’m no CEO or psychologist so I doubt my observations and judgment are 100% correct. But at 23 years old and 9 days of people management immersion, this is what I think great people managers should be like.

As always, I’m sure time and experience will change my perception again.

Dear Readers, what do you think great people managers should be like? And I’d love to find out your personality types, so do share! And if you don’t already know your MBTI type, take the test here!

No related posts.

Her 3 tips for balancing her life:

• #1: Work comes first
• #2: Set a daily schedule
• #3: Draw a line

Like her, I too work in public relations with some focus on online media, albeit in-house. I think I do #1 and #3 fairly well. Work will always be first, and I draw a line between my roles as a blogger, a PR person and a friend.

But #2 is something I constantly struggle with. (See my sparse blog archive for proof). Since most of my work is project-based, there are times where I will work on 3-5 projects simultaneously. Most of the time, this means I will end up burning weekends. And then there are times where I will have nothing substantial to do. (Although, I have yet to see this in 2009).

This is how my work day looks like during a moderately busy period.

9:00am Arrive at the office. Open Outlook. Reply to the gazillion emails before my meeting.

9.30am Rush to meeting.

12:30pm Come out of meeting. Check Twitter and Outlook. Update my to-do list. If there are very urgent emails or stuff, skip lunch with colleagues and work. If not, have quick lunch with colleagues.

1.30pm Resume work or respond to more emails.

2:00pm Rush to another meeting.

4:00pm Break. Either go downstairs to pick up a drink, or play something mindless like Restaurant City for 5 minutes.

4:30pm While clearing work, get interrupted by a stakeholder. Do urgent job for them.

5:30pm Resume normal work and respond to emails.

7:00pm Finish up the most urgent stuff. Review to-do list for the next day. If there are still more urgent things to do, stay past 7.

7:30pm Order take out or eat with colleague who stayed late too.

8:45pm Arrive home. Log on to Adium (Mac’s IM client) and Mixero (Twitter app). Chat with friends, reply any DMs or @replies. Check personal email, nanyate.com and Facebook. If it requires urgent response, reply.

9:00pm If there is some juice left in the brain, open Google Reader, TED.com or read a book. Get inspired to update my Delicious and/or Tumblr. Otherwise, play the guitar or vegetate with anime.

9:30pm Hang out with mom for a bit because moms need TLC. Make her watch Maru or CuteOverload with me.

11:30pm Wait for the boyfriend to wake up (since he’s on the other side of the world) Chat on MSN, Skype or on the phone.

12:00am Sleep.

Looking at her, I know I have lots more to learn – not just about the world of social media, but also about time management and life in general. Expertise and the realm of rockstarhood seem to come with some level of sacrifice. She sleeps less for one, and almost dedicates her whole day to social media and work, while mine is still peppered with other interests and quite a bit of downtime.

I’ve also only been working for one year, so there’s no way I can be on par yet. But I guess it’s time to step up my A-game. Ashita mo ganbaro! Thanks Pat, for the inspiration!

Dear readers, what is your work schedule like? How do you juggle your different roles and responsibilities? Any tips to share?

Related posts:

1. New Job, New Life

It was 2am on the final race night. I was scraping for whatever energy I left to stay awake, when the field engineers walked in asking if everything was okay. Usually the conversation would end there, as there just isn’t enough in common between a 20-something corporate communications professional, who primarily speaks English and 50-something engineer, who primarily speaks Chinese peppered with a few English technical terms.

But I attempted to continue the conversation anyway.

I learned that he spent almost 40 years in the company. It was his first job – and would likely be his last. He shared how life as a telecoms engineer in the 1970s was like. Back then, land lines were an absolutely rarity. It took many months to get for a phone line because that’s how long it’ll take for the engineers to lay the cables to a particular village or a town. And the day the engineers would arrive at the customer’s house, they would be welcomed like Athenian warriors coming home from a victorious battle. They were treated to a feast, adorn with praises and gifts.

Fast forward to the present. Today, field engineers are usually greeted with frustration, anger and impatience, since their presence almost always means that something is broken.

Fix my goddamn internet now!
Why isn’t my phone working?
What do you mean it’ll take 2 hours to fix?! Hurry the ^&%$ up!

Never would I have imagined that these emotional sandbangs we easily hurl our words of frustration at were once perceived as heroes.

I don’t think people have become any ruder or angrier over the decades. It’s just that we are spoiled by the convenience of modern technology that even a 30-second divorce from YouTube or Facebook seems like permanent one. And we become so bitter that we often forget to appreciate the people who made communication available in the first place.

So thank you, Engineer for not only putting up the networks, but also putting up with our callow, anger-laden remarks.

No related posts.

I could come up with a few brilliant ways of eating SOYJOY, but to be honest, I like my SOYJOY bars best when they’re half an arm’s length from my workstation… in my pencil holder.

As a corporate communications professional, I work pretty long hours. I arrive at the office at 9am and leave around 7pm daily. Although, I have to admit, leaving at like 9 – 10pm isn’t uncommon when there are major events around the corner. So hunger has always been a problem for me. I don’t have to time to grab a bite, yet I have to resist against whatever is lying around the department pantry since they’re all high on fat and sugar. While they do satiate me for a while, I also end up crashing from all that sugar high and start feeling all sleepy and hungry again. (I’ll leave the science of this for next week’s challenge.) The worst comes when I have to deal with the guilt after reading the nutrition labels for these things.

Anyway, since I started putting my SOYJOY in my pencil holder, I don’t have to starve and feel guilty about snacking anymore. My desk has also become a second (and a much healthier) pantry for my department, since my equally hungry colleagues can now help themselves to some SOYJOY even when I’m not around.

Talking about colleagues and SOYJOY, I’d like to take this opportunity to say that the apple flavor is the biggest hit in my department. So if you’d like try a SOYJOY bar, I highly recommend apple!

Dear Readers, what are your snacking habits like? Do you feel guilty about snacking? What do you have in your office pantry / fridge (for those still in school)?

I’d also like to take this opportunity to thank everybody for their support! Please do keep the votes coming in. You can vote once every 3 hours.

Related posts:

1. Challenge #1: Free SoyJoy Bars For You!!
2. The SOYJOY Blogger Challenge

To celebrate my birthday (Dec 19), Christmas and even Nanyate?!’s 1st anniversary (Dec 20), I am going to send Christmas cards to the first 5 people, who email me with their (real) names and mailing address. People I know offline don’t count.

Ideally, I’d like to send a card to all my regular commenters, but I haven’t found much time to even write Christmas cards to my offline buddies. Such is the life of a salaryman. Except that I’m not a man, and I am actually pursuing my ambitions.

Yups, that’s it for this badly-written and structured entry. I have another 2 days of shittiness to endure.

No related posts.

Not in a million years.

These pocket tissues, occasionally replaced by umbrellas, are used to reserve seats, so that people may scour for food without worrying about seat availability. It’s an interesting way of making reservations. But more importantly, it’s very reflective of Singaporean culture and mentality. Part of Singapore’s culture is centered around kiasu-ism. Kiasu means “to be afraid to lose” in Hokkien, a Chinese dialect. It’s often used a derogatory term by other Asians to describe the few Singaporeans who engage in inconsiderate, sometimes petty and overly self-centered actions.

Contrary to popular regional opinion, I think kiasu is not a bad mentality to have. Having been working in Singapore for two months, I can proudly proclaim that the kiasu mentality have paved the way to success for the company and for the country. In the name of kiasu, we worked tirelessly to be absolutely prepared. We would over-prepare for everything, and work through almost all possible worst case scenarios. Without that kiasu element in our genes, the first F1 Grand Prix in Singapore wouldn’t have had such raving reviews.

Come to think of it, pocket tissues are pretty useful – be it for running noses or running corporations. But we should perhaps exercise some restraint when it comes to other uses like reserving tables. After all, being called kiasu for the wrong reasons isn’t exactly something to be proud of.

New Category: The Singapore Files

So this is the new category I promised. It’s called ‘The Singapore Files’. I think I might be stoned to death by some blindly patriotic Singaporeans, but I’m just a repatriated third culture kid offering my honest opinion on my country’s culture. It’s not a 100% accurate reflection on Singapore’s diverse culture, but it’s probably a little more objective and a little less hostile.

So are there any quirks with your home culture? What do you like (or not like) about it? Do share!

Related posts:

1. Agitated: Mindset of an Adult Third Culture Kid
2. Singapore and Cellphones
3. Goodbye Toronto, Hello Singapore!