dek's blog

Tomorrow I start a new adventure. As as always, I am a ball of nervous energy, oscillating between sheer terror and exuberance, and there’s a high chance this post will reflect my crazed brain. </fair warning>

It’s my first day tomorrow! I start as Product Owner at the Co-op Bookstore! Whhaaaat?!!
I’m crazy excited about this. 😀 It’s outside my comfort zone but man, I can’t wait to sink my teeth into the product and work with the team. It’s gonna be fun!
AND I get to keep my career record of getting jobs through my network. This was important to me, and I thought it was the end of that streak. <fist pump> Yeah!!

Some of you know how hard the past 8-9 months have been for me. I was doing every thing I could to keep my freelance business going, but it was a tough slog getting jobs and I plain ran out of runway.

So, to my support circle – Bree Clare, Loic Golliard, Albert Issa, Bruno Mattarollo, Danielle Hickie, Oliver Maruda, Radhika R, Alan Jones, Jim May, Tony Burrett, Zoe Ghani, Phil Morle, Clare Hallam, Josie Kidd – thank you, thank you, thank you. Thank you for all your help,  all your introductions, all your suggestions, your friendship, your generosity and your company, thank you for keeping me sane.

To @kcarruthers, @jodieM, @neil_killick, @Meta_Mike_Biggs, @brento, @damoxy, @Nathan_Reese, @maheshmurali, @fostersimonj, @kimheras, @ayumi, @bronwen – thank you for your RTs, passing my CV on, intros, taking an interest, helping just because you could. My thanks also to everyone, my followers or not, for retweeting my ‘looking for work’ tweets. I appreciate every single one.

I won’t be as immersed in the startup scene as I have been in the past seven years, and truth be told, I’m in two minds about that.
I will leave saying this – Aussie startups, you’ve *got* to start taking product more seriously.

Thank you and WOO HOOOO!! 😀

I attended SydStart yesterday. In many ways it was just what the doctor ordered. It was a really good event with great speakers and a friendly community of startuppers. (I don’t like the term entrepreneurs for a crowd like this one. Startuppers is more descriptive and inclusive, don’t you think?)

Hours after I’d left the event, my brain was still buzzing. (I could go as far as saying the sleepless night I had was all SydStart’s fault….. ok, so I will. Dammit SydStart!!)  The biggest observation I have about the startup community is how much it’s grown. Not just in terms of numbers but also in terms of thinking and ideas. I remember there was a time when it was rare if I’d not heard of the products being pitched in a session before it was pitched. Maybe I’ve been out of the local scene too long, but last night was remarkable. So many new faces and so many new companies. And everyone seemingly open and willing to share. That’s truly awesome. Let’s keep this up Sydney.

The other thing that hit me only later was how good an event like this one is for the startupper’s soul. Sitting in front of the screen, obsessing about product and strategy and design and marketing and competitors and roadmaps and wireframes…. It can get uber stressful and feel like the  designer of the startup rollercoaster forgot to add enough peak bits. (Really, who does that?! *tsk*)

Going to an event like this one is how you get your highs fellow startuppers. The passion and enthusiasm you’ll encounter is so energising, you’ll feel like you just got back from a two-week vacation at the end of the day. (And then you’ll lose some sleep, but take it as jet-lag….)
I’d made a decision to get out there and get more involved in the community this year, do what I can for whomever I can, and I’m glad I did so. It’s gonna be so damn easy to stick to it with events and people like SydStart.

Oh, and I tend to take it for granted that everyone knows that I’m always open to a chat, coffee, brainstorm session…. ummm so now you know. I’m happy to help, so drop me a line, let’s talk startups!

I have just been informed by a friend that my Hindi school principal, Tiwariji (that’s ‘Mr Tiwari’ in Hindi) passed away on Monday.

I’m feeling the loss. He made my life better, in ways I never truly got till now. Tiwariji, along with a few other visionaries like my father’s childhood friend Srinivas Rai, banded together and brought change in the days when Hindi was a minority language in Singapore, and therefore not recognised officially.

Some background: In the Singaporean educational system, all children have to learn English as a first language from the time they enter kindergarten. In additional, they have to learn a second language, designed to be the child’s mother-tongue. When I started school, the options were Malay, Chinese or Tamil. I might be wrong, but I think this followed the major ethnicities in terms of percentage of population. And studying a second language was, and is, compulsory all the way to pre-university level. As a result, I learnt Chinese in kindergarten and Malay in primary school, because being a minority, my own mother-tongue, Hindi, just wasn’t available.

This essentially meant that there was a whole bunch of second-generation immigrant kids who were cut off from their ethnic language and culture. Most could understand it, because their parents spoke to them in Hindi, some could converse in it, and barely a handful could read or write. Despite my mother’s repeated valiant attempts to teach us the script, my sis and I barely knew the alphabets by the time we were able to converse fluently in Malay.
Not being able to study Hindi as a second language also put us at a disadvantage in terms of overall scholastic achievement. Most of us struggled with the second languages we picked. I remember my mother having a conversation with my Malay teacher in Primary 1, basically to alert her that I had no background in the language, and to give me some special attention. My Cikgu was kind enough to repeat instructions to me in English the first few months, but boy did I have to scramble as the term went on. The big picture result was that most minority mother-tongued kids did worse on their overall O and A Level grades, which of course affected the colleges and university courses available to them subsequently.

This was the argument Tiwariji and cohort brought before the relevant authorities. Now, I’m basing this on a 10-yr old’s understanding of the events that happened, but from what I recall, it was a loooong and involved process. It took years of work, all on a voluntary basis, including presentations before Parliament. Once Hindi was allowed as a valid second language in the educational system, they had to solve the practical issues of introducing a minority language in schools – teaching, testing and examination. They set up the Hindi Society, roped volunteers in, and started (what I think was) the first official Hindi School in Singapore. It had to be centralised, as there were too few students to introduce classes in regular schools, and therefore had to be outside school and extra-curricular activity days. And this is how, when I was 10, I found myself whisked off to school on a Sunday morning.

There were two classes back then. One for the ‘big kids’, those in secondary school, one for the small kids, the primary-schoolers. Ages ranged from 10 to 15, starting Hindi knowledge went from those who didn’t speak a word to some who could write numbers in Hindi. Not to mention we were a rowdy bunch, most of us having known each other from childhood, and therefore treating this as play time, instead of ‘serious school’.

Tiwariji became the principal of the school. During the six years I was there, it went from two class rooms in a rented regular school to a class for each different standard in multiple classrooms spanning two different school buildings. Looking at their website now, they have SEVEN different locations, with something called In School Parallel Programming across the country. (I’m guessing that’s where they teach the language in regular school during regular school hours.) They now have school uniforms and text books with the school logo on it. (Fun fact – part of the school logo is from a design my sis and I submitted for the logo competition they had.) All this, and the whole organisation is still voluntary.

On a personal level, I received an A1 grade for my Hindi O Levels. Had I continued with Malay, it definitely wouldn’t have been that. My aggregate O Level score would have gone from a single digit to double digits for sure. I wouldn’t have been writing letters to my mother in Singapore and extended family in India in Hindi when I moved to Australia. I wouldn’t have many of the cultural and historical references one only acquires by studying the language.

And I’m not the only one. My sis, my brother, my childhood friends, and thousands of other kids have benefited from to Tiwariji’s efforts. I’m not sure I ever thanked him. I mean seriously thanked him for all he has done. I remember the last time I met him, but I can’t remember what I said to him. The next time I return to Singapore, I’m gonna make a point to track down all the other elders and thank them in person. Although this is too late, thank you Tiwariji. I’m gonna do my best to leave the world a better place, thanks to you showing me how it’s done.

It’s Ada Lovelace Day! For those wondering, “Ada Lovelace Day is an international day of blogging to celebrate the achievements of women in technology and science.”

This year, I narrowed it down to two amazing women, and since I couldn’t pick one, I’m gonna write them both up as my heroines! 🙂

First up, someone I’ve looked up to for a long time, Kate Carruthers. When I first met Kate, I was astounded by her knowledge and willingness to share it. She is a constant source of information and support and always entertaining on Twitter. I remember it was with a lot of trepidation I approached her to she if she’d consider being my mentor last year, and she said yes without any hesitation! *air punch* Her mentorship has been invaluable to me, and I hope to be passing it along when I get a chance to, as Kate has taught me.

My other heroine this year is Pamela Fox. Pamela is deliciously geeky and charmingly girly and I am just in awe of her. I follow her globe-trotting, talk-giving, bot-making adventures on Twitter with interest and one day hope to have a fraction of her skills. She’s inspired me to learn to code, just so I can make cool stuff like she does!

When I grow up, I wanna be just like them!

Thank you ladies for doing what you do, and doing it so brilliantly.