Welcome to my online shrine for penning down my thoughts through life. It has been a while since I attempted to write regularly after 5 years of hustling at my startup as founder and CEO. I’m picking my blogging pen again to rediscover my inner voice and hopefully build some new serendipitous connections with kindred souls in this new AI-infused world.
As a Singaporean born in 1981, I have always had one foot in the world of the 70s and the 80s as I grew up. My initial 3 favourite music bands were The Beatles, Bee Gees and Bread, each of which dominated their decades from 60s through 70s. Songs from those 3 bands always brings me back to my childhood days, alongside the Carpenters (which come a close 4th). I’m not musically inclined, but love my pop, jazz and occasional rock.
Trained as an engineer in the US but having practised much more as an industry developer in a government role, then later a venture capitalist, angel investor and serial tech entrepreneur, I have pretty much broken many moulds of my birth into a very nondescript lower-middle class family in Singapore. My first-language fluency in English and Chinese further puts me at the intersection of East and West, even as I invest my time and money in the convergence of design, hardware and software, while creating value at the intersection of ideas, talent and capital. I regularly traipse across cities of Indonesia, Vietnam, China and my home in Singapore, but occasionally find myself elsewhere in excitingly vibrant yet disparately diverse cities of Southeast Asia, East and South Asia.
As a father of 3, I have beaten the national total fertility rate of 0.97 by just over 3-times by replacing more individuals than my wife and I are going to leave with. This might lead you to think of me as optimists which isn’t far off the mark, even as Life has shown me the wisdom of balancing idealism and optimism with cynical realism.
I have a favourite quote in Chinese that I’ll share here – “不问前程凶吉，但愿落幕无悔”. I first picked it up from watching a TV drama “The Empress of China” 武媚娘. It has come to best describe my approach towards life and the ups and downs that it has to show me.
In my spare time, I enjoy collecting vintage Apple devices, computer games, photography, food and fatherhood, and volunteer at The Birthday Collective, a not-for-profit “brain-heart-hand” trust of Singapore.
I will end this post with a 1-hour fireside chat I gave at the request of a dear friend for his non-profit institute focused on youth mentorship, so that you can get a better sense of who I am, where I come from and where I’m skating towards.
I’d love to hear from and interact with like-minded folks. Do give me a shoutout over at Twitter or LinkedIn!