Bruges, Belgium

I took a day trip from Amsterdam to Bruges over the Queen's Day weekend, mainly to see this very popular tourist destination in Europe, and also to avoid the riot that engulfed the Dutch city. Bruges is small enough to go everywhere by foot as long as one is shod in sensible footwear. It is very well-preserved with architecture going back to the 14th and 15th centuries. Because of this, Bruges is well-visited, mainly by Europeans, which resulted in tourist prices everywhere. I had my best lunch during my 10-day stay in Amsterdam at well, not Amsterdam, but Bruges. I wanted to try the seasonal (spring only) and highly-prized white asparagus, which the locals call "white gold", and ordered it done in the classic Belgian way at a local restaurant. The thick white asparagus were steamed, drizzled in extra virgin olive oil, and paired with mashed hard-boiled egg tossed in melted butter and chopped basil leaves. That was the best asparagus ever - soft yet still slightly crunchy and juicily sweet. It cost me 14.95 euros for three sticks but they were worth every single cent. The mussels with white wine was also a dish I had been wanting to have, after my tasty experience with the French version. The mussels in white wine pot was good but overshadowed by that wonderful appetiser of white gold. On hindsight, I should have stayed one night at Bruges to thoroughly enjoy the small town, avoid having to rush for the unpredictable inter-city train, and of course wolf down a few more sticks of asparagus.

One note about the inter-city rail was that the timetables were never always adhered to, causing some trouble for passengers, especially non-Dutch, non-Flemish and non-French speaking folks, like me. A 4-hour train ride could turn into a 6-hour train ride because the rail company decided to drop everyone off at border station on Dutch land, requesting passengers to wait for the next train at another platform, just so that repair works can be carried out on the tracks. And when confused passengers grabbed a train conductor to find out what was going on, the poor Belgian guy could only say "I don't know. I am Belgian. I don't know the Dutch system." I am not particularly impressed by the European way of running their train system.

My own pair of Monsfrobs!

Named after my alter ego -Tzaremus Comidel!
Support local design. Get them @ RuggArts!

I am lucky that I am able to interact frequently and work with very high quality talent in my profession. Some of these highly successful people have become a role model of sorts whom I often find myself referring back to, which in turn becomes a source of motivation for me to seek self-improvement constantly. Learning through experience and imitation has greater impact than reading a book and noting down what it is telling you to do. I think often about these people and analyse what is it about them that differentiates them from most others and why I simply can’t quite put them out of my mind. I identified the one star-like quality of each of the following four people (in pseudonyms), who have made the strongest impression on me so far.

Elephant – Positivism
- Enthusiasm is infectious
- Believes in the change for good and always strives for improvement
- Believes in the good of people => Build people’s capability = Building organizational capability
- Believes in the power of many as opposed to one = Empowers people
- Positive towards life and oneself = Exudes a can-do attitude

Maggot – Personable
- Easy to connect with and build a relationship
- Makes an impact on others = Memorable
- Hard to dislike
- Gives others a sense of comfort
- Non-threatening

Yellow – Discipline
- Stays focused day in day out = Cut straight to the core of issues.
- Is relentless = Putting in the effort consistently
- Stays engaged throughout all happenings
- Excellent time and self management ability

Jam – Serenity & Balance
- Exudes a calm demeanor = Reassuring presence
- Has a strong sense of self (“a strong core”)
- Ability to stay on an even keel when dealing with shocks/problems/conflict
- Imparts confidence to others (“There is nothing I can’t handle”)

For those who hire people

Oh goodness, it has been almost a month since I last posted. I'm not giving this up, just that it has been a rather eventful month. I was away for almost 2 weeks in Amsterdam for work and some sightseeing. I think I walked too much (including a 40min trek to the tulip fields) and returned completely exhausted. Photos will be up soon, hopefully Canonet won't be letting me down. Thank you to Daniel who lent me not only his Canonet but also the legendary workhorse Mamiya RB67; unfortunately it was too heavy to lug around on travels. I am looking forward to using it now that I am back.

So I went to the library to collect a reserved book soon after I arrived back home. Strategic Interviewing comes highly recommended by my firm, which has adapted its approach to our daily use. I personally think it is an effective and objective approach to assess people for the role in question, and it is close enough to making interviews more of a science than an art (or gut feel). Fundamentally, it's being clear about what you want and checking off whether job competencies are met. It is important to set goals for the interview, define job competencies clearly, and find out whether these competencies are met and how they are met. Like most good things in life, consistency is what makes the difference here. The process should be applied equally and rigorously to all interviewees so that an objective assessment and comparison can be made to identify the most suitable candidate.

Country Driving

Country Driving, the latest and last of the three books by award-winning writer and researcher on contemporary China Peter Hessler, is a marvellously well-written account of his journey across China on the automobile, collecting thoughtful observations of how the burgeoning highway network is transforming China today. The first part of the book tracks Hessler's road trip along the Great Wall, from the coastal region all the way into the interior and the Qinghai plateau, crisscrossing the Wall's cultural and archaeological history and lives of rural peasants in far flung villages that are more than a world of difference from the developed Chinese cities. The second part is more focused geographically on a small village Sancha, outside Beijing where the writer was based as the correspondent for The New Yorker. Hessler acquired a holiday home-cum-writer's retreat there, where he spent weekends with the Wei family and noting down keen observations of how a young peasant who remained behind in the village - an unusual situation given the booming rural-urban migration that has swept across the nation - struggled to adapt to changes brought about by modernisation, making the best of what he can. The last part of the book deals with the bustling factory town of Lishui, in the Zhejiang province where every small town is being turned into a development zone by local officials who behave like seasoned entrepreneurs, raising funds in a way not unlike that of the Carlyles and Blackstones, to blast away mountains, pour on the asphalt and stack up the factories, churning out "Buttontown" and "Pleatherville"; an entire town produces buttons, supplying 70% of the buttons to clothes in China, and another spews out pleather, or plastic (PVC) leather products 24/7, together with toxic fumes of DMF, a chemical used in the manufacturing process. These trips are all made via the automobile and Hessler also has a thing or two to say about driving in China, most of which are refreshingly humourous. Most of all, Hessler writes with a lot of heart and the reader can really feel his affection towards the people and places he has spent time with, listening and learning with respect and an open mind, creating a vivid and moving landscape of a nation always in a hurry to get somewhere.

Bloesem

(Guusje)

(junecrafts)

(KStudio)

Bloesem is a blog that I like very much and visit often. (On top of Sandra Juto and My Funny Eye)

Shoe Painting!

Lovely customised hand-painted shoes!

Personalised too!

via RuggARTS

Ma Jian

One of the earliest Chinese writer to travel to China's interior and document his experiences and observations, especially about China's minority groups. Ma Jian ranks alongside Gao Xingjian, Nobel Prize (Literature) winning author of the seminal novel Soul Mountain. 马建之路 is Ma's travel notes gathered during his wandering days more than 20 years ago which saw him traverse over mountains in the south and across plateaus in the interior west. He went as far as Hainan island in the south and Xinjiang region in the northwest. What clearly moved him was the sheer poverty and simplicity of the ordinary folks he encountered, notably the minority groups who were among the most underprivileged people he had seen so far in China. I wonder how much of that has changed since.

Oracle Bones

The subtitle of Peter Hessler's second book (first one being River Town) reads: A Journey between China and the West. It is more than that; the book weaves through time and history, from the earliest dynasty of the Shang to modern day boomtown Shenzhen, traverses geographically between China and the USA, as Hessler tracks the immigration story of his Uigher friend who sought political asylum with his Homeland America, and touches issues from culture (Chinese writing system, the anchor of the story as Hessler traces the life of oracle bones scholar Chen Mengjia) to politics (cross-strait issue) to democracy (local elections) to architecture (Beijing's hutong).

I found it hard initially to make sense of the flow of the book, as it seems on the surface to leap from one topic to another, some quite unrelated. At times, the book also appears to be a mishmash of observations about different aspects of China gathered during the author's almost ten year-long stay in Beijing. But things started to make sense after a while, as I realised that this is the way China is: everything is happening at the same time, and at frightening speed. Yet everything is interlinked. It is a story of ordinary folks in past and present China struggling to understand their lives which had been and still are constantly shaped by dramatic forces beyond their control - the Shang rulers who used oracle bones to divine their empire's fortunes, a stubborn scholar driven to suicide during the Cultural Revolution for his staunch opposition to the reform of the Chinese writing system, a futile battle against the destruction of Beijing's traditional courtyards to make way for modernisation, the marginalisation of ethnic minorities etc are all threads of a common story where their confluence and conjunction create the China today.

River Town

I first learnt of Peter Hessler, when I read his wife Leslie Chang's Factory Girls, which I blogged about earlier. Hessler was a reporter for the Wall Street Journal and the New Yorker based in China for 10 years. He first lived in China when he went as a Peace Corps volunteer to a small river town along the Yangtze river to teach English and literature. River Town is a diary of his observations about the people, culture and life in Fuling, a town near the Three Gorges. I am not a heavy reader of travel-related literature but River Town is incredibly well-written, immensely thoughtful and often very funny. What got me hooked were Hessler's acute observations of things and people around him, his analytical turn of mind that produced sensitive portrayal of his experiences and how his role and identity shifted and adjusted to the vast differences he encountered daily. He also wrote Oracle Bones, a collection of stories about ordinary Chinese people, which is the next book in my reading stash. His newest book Country Driving was published in early March this year.