Contest; or where to bring your toddler for drinks in Singapore

I've entered a contest, over at Expats Blog! The challenge was to create a "top list" for your country and I decided to dedicate mine to places where you can have adult fun and take your toddler too. I wish I'd known about these earlier on and not get stuck in Royce's indoor playground or Jacob Ballas Garden quite so often (or stuck in front of the gate if I'd once again forgotten it was closed on Mondays).

Anyway - go have a read, it's fun! Oh - and if you leave a great comment, you could be winning prizes too!

I've been interviewed

While writing the above sentence, I really had to keep a firm hand on my keyboard not to type either "punk'd" or "pimp'd" - no guesses what my favourite channel for daytime tv-watching is.

But. I've been interviewed! Which is much more enjoyable than either punking or pimping I assure you. The answers can be found over at White As Milk, a Singaporean business that sells subscription to diapers and formula.

I have to admit - I don't have a subscription yet. But having run out twice (TWICE) while living above a supermarket (the elevator'll take us practically straight down into Meidi-Ya) I am seriously considering it. (I'm just waiting for my brain to click into price comparison modus - I am, after all, Dutch).

But even if you're not living in Singapore with baby and/or toddler the blog over at White As Milk is quite worth a read for tips and insights into Singaporean life. So head on over!

Beautiful Mama Blog Award!

Yes, I got another award, courtesy of Crystal over at Expat Bostonians: the Beautiful Mama Blog Award. Isn't that cool? I love Crystal (I did before the award too, this is just the icing on the cake)(judging by Facebook pictures Crystal's pretty good at icing cakes).

So, without further ado (I have a newborn thus no time for ado), here are the rules:

1. Talk about three things I love about being a mother.
2. Nominate as many other deserving mama's as I like.

1.
I lovelovelove the toddler phase, even if there's a bit of tantrummy behaviour going on (although I blame that on Baby J.'s arrival and my appalling skyrocketing stress levels. I do notnotnot like the newborn phase.) I love talking to E. (in fairness, I even love talking to Baby J., who has taken to softly murmuring "guh" and then beaming to the back of beyond if anyone says it back to him. Endless entertainment!)

Yesterday evening during dinner, I asked her why she wasn't eating her salad.

Me: "Mummy really likes salad. Do you want to try the lettuce?"
E.: "Rabbits eat lettuce. I eat fish and cheese."

2.
I love being part of something that is bigger and more enduring than myself. I find great satisfaction in being part of the fabric of humanity, of being enveloped within a knot of blood bonds instead of being the end of the line, of continuing the line of my grandmother, my aunts, my mother and myself. With Baby J. we're doing the same on the male side. I love family. Now I'm building my own.

3.
I love the unveiling of a whole new dimension to life. Most of the songs that I love date back to my teens and twenties, the most intensely lived period in my life, when I discovered all the great emotions and treasures of life: falling in love, living on my own, solving crises, forging deep friendships, gamely galloping way past my own limits and crawling back again. I got to know me.

Then life slowed down, I got a job, I knew my boundaries and the cost of crossing them, I knew my joys, and life was fun and comfortable, but not very exciting anymore, neither himmelhoch jauchzend nor zu Tode betruebt.

But now I'm getting to know E. and Baby J. and life is back in the fast lane, even though outwardly it may seem to have become smaller and more housebound. Practically, it has. Emotionally, it's way, way out there again.

I like that. Because outside my comfort zone is where the magic happens. And that is the truth of being part of a family.

Nominees!

Nicole over at Nunicole
yAnn over at Yannisms
Ilse over at De Bwoertjes
Pipien over at Pini

And just in case you didn't click on my toddler links above: go read Honest Toddler!

Plaatjespost & Picture post: Great minds

World summit.

Flexibility at work: trust your employee to reach the goal

"But how do we know they're not slacking?" employers always end up asking whenever flexible hours and working from home are discussed. "How do we know they're putting in the hours they're paid for and that it's not burdening the fulltimers with an extra work load?"

This question actually really annoys me, as it shows a severe distrust between employers and employees. 

Because the answer, unfortunately, is: "You have to trust your employees to do their job." 

An employer does this by focusing on result and end goals and by letting go of the process.

You have to trust your employees to feel enough pride in themselves and their work to want to make sure that deadlines are met, products and reports are delivered and customers served in the best way possible. You have to trust your employees to not see you as simply a source of easy money, but as a source of job satisfaction and meaning of life. 

The employer who's afraid his employees will take advantage of him, does not trust his employees. So this employer needs to take a good look at herself and ask: do I inspire my employees to do the best they can? Do I make them want to work for and with me? Because if the answer is yes, she does not need to fear to be taken advantage of.

In the end, what matters is that the job gets done, that customers are satisfied, that deadlines are met. How and when an employee does this, is immaterial. So the employer who focuses on result instead of on hours and work sheets is focusing on the goal - the other employer is focusing on the process. Focusing on the process instead of the goal, policing your employees to make sure they stick to the letter of the contract instead of to the spirit of the company, does not guarantuee reaching the goal. 

I used to work at an office where I'd be kicked out at 5pm and we weren't allowed to take work home. I know, this sounds like everybody's dream, but it was my nightmare. I never managed to finish my work at 5pm, so each morning I would start with a back log. 

A lot of my work involved very concentrated, nitpickingly checking of big stacks of paper (I was working in publishing and somebody has to make sure there are no typos in those books and that all pages are numbered correctly and several hundred other little things like that). I would have much rather done that in the quiet of my home instead of in an open plan office with ten colleagues. I would have probably been much faster (and better!) at it in that scenario. But I wasn't allowed, so every day I fell further and further behind. 

My boss's reasoning? If I didn't manage to finish my work load within the eight hours he gave me, I wasn't doing a good enough job. I wasn't allowed any other time frame than the one he gave me.

Time frames for tasks were a whole other story, though. He wasn't very clear on those at all. For my first big task, I asked what the deadline was. "As soon as possible", he said. But when exactly, I insisted. "Yesterday", he answered. It took me two weeks. Afterwards he told me I was supposed to have done it in a day or four. 

My boss focused on the process, not on the goal. He told me in great detail what had to be done and how, and would check my work continuously and comment on it. He told me to get to 95 percent perfect and leave off the last 5 percent. He never gave deadlines, but told me to "take my time" and "figure it out". I never quite understood what he meant by 95 percent, so I erred on the safe side, took my time and diligently worked towards perfection taking far too long on even the most mundane of tasks. 

In the end I was fired. 

Focusing on the process give the employer a feeling of empowerment, a feeling of being in control, a feeling of doing all they can to make sure goals are met. When in fact the employer might actually be working against that very goal as my former boss did.

Since then I've worked at several other places and I have learned that I work best if given a task and then left alone. Some days go easy and I slack (a little), some days are more difficult and I need to really pull myself together, skip lunch and other breaks and stay late in order to get things done. Usually, the tally ends up to the employers' advantage. 

Because I took pride in my work, because I liked my employer and because we could trust each other. If I needed to leave for an emergency, I could, no questions asked. If I needed to work from home, I could (I preferred not to however). If a seminar I was attending ended at 4pm, I wouldn't have to come into the office to fill in the last couple of hours of my contract but could simply go home early. If I needed to stay for dinner or drinks to network however, I would.* If I needed to come in early to take a call, I would. If I needed to stay late to cover for a colleague, I would. If I needed to catch up on my reading on the weekend, I spent the weekend reading.

They always did right by me. So I did right by them. There was trust.

The work got done. And then some.

*I never was paid over time. Technically, I was allowed to compensate late hours by leaving early on some other day, but unless I really put in several extra hours, I generally wouldn't ask to compensate. It seemed a bit petty to keep track of every minute in that way, especially since they never seemed to either and always took my word for it.

Plaatjespost & Picture post: Baby J. and baby E.

So do they look like each other? We thought not. We could be wrong.

The amount of clothing and the woollen blanket is an obvious giveaway - baby E.'s on top, baby J.'s in the bottom picture.

And this is now, a mere five weeks later! Again, the clothing is probably clueing you in as to which is which - but it's baby J. in surfer shorts on top this time, and baby E. in the bottom picture, wearing a spiffy Miffy shirt, even if I say so myself.

So, what's the verdict?

Singaporeans do things differently: the holiday season

The holiday season ended last week. And no, even though I'm from Brabant, I'm not including Carnaval in the yearly line-up.

In Europe the basic holiday season lasts from Christmas to the day after New Year's Eve. The Dutch include  Sinterklaas, so our season starts on the 5th of December (or actually, two weeks before, which is when he arrives in the Netherlands in a nationally televised event). More Anglofied countries start the season with Halloween and the proper English precede that one with Guy Fawkes Night. So, generally, there'll be parties and get togethers and presents and the like from November to December. But it all ends on January 1st. (Well, unless you're French and into celebrating the Three Kings on January 6th, but after that it's really over.)

Carnaval isn't the continuation of the Winter Festivities but more the start of the Spring Clean-up (by making very very sure there is something to clean up and atone for).

Singapore's holiday season is a bit more, well, elaborate, thanks to the equal rights of several major world religions. In order of appearance in 2012 and 2013:

October
Hari Raya Haji (Muslim; the festival of sacrifice; public holiday)
Hungry Ghost Festival (Chinese; to honour the spirits of our forefathers; Tamtam impression)
Mid-Autumn Festival (Chinese; to eat moon cakes and light lanterns; Tamtam impression)

November
Deepavali (Indian; festival of the lights; public holiday)
Halloween

December
Christmas (public holiday)
New Year's Eve (public holiday)

January
Thaipusam (Indian; the walk of faith)

February
Chinese New Year (Chinese; the start of the lunar new year - the most important festival in Singapore and not one, but two days of public holiday)

There were a fair few holidays in August and September as well (such as National Day, Hari Raya Aidilfitri or Suikerfeest, and of course the Great Singapore Sale and Fashion Festival!) so really, it's been one big glug of festivities and parties and celebrations of religious and secular kinds around town for about half a year now.

We're missing out on Carnaval, but to be honest, this year I don't really mind. It's been mindboggling busy so far and we could use the break and the seeming return to normalcy.

But not too long of a break or too much of a return to the daily grind, mind - the next public holiday is scheduled for March 29th: Good Friday. Happy Easter everybody!