Saved from Slavery... by a Sandwich Cart

This is a recent blog post taken from the blog of Viva, the amazing children at risk charity Rob and I are working for in Hong Kong.

Veata’s family live in a village outside Phnom Penh. She’s 15 now, but she’s been working since she was 11. Veata, her mother, and her siblings work as trash collectors to earn money – three siblings work collecting trash while the other three attend school, and then they swap. Veata’s father is a construction worker.

A few years ago, Veata’s mother enrolled her in the Phnom Penh network’s ‘Get Ready’ programme, a project that keeps girls out of brothels by helping them develop skills that will help them get work. That way girls are educated but are still available to help their families earn money –a balance that is really necessary in poor Cambodian villages and families. (For those of you who don’t know, the network in Phnom Penh, called Chab Dai, is a group of projects that Viva helped bring together and continues to support, to prevent girls from being sold into sexual slavery in Cambodia.)

The staff of the network could see that Veata was a good student and a quick learner. She graduated from the Get Ready programme and was encouraged to continue with ‘Bright Girls’, through which she was given an allowance so she could take advanced English lessons. Veata spent two years in the ‘Bright Girls’ programme and became a skilled seamstress and tailor – even earning money above her allowance from the sales of her clothes!

Then the effects of the global financial crisis swept through Cambodia, and Veata’s father found his construction assignments growing fewer and farther between. Even with Veata’s sales and allowance and the hard work of her family collecting trash, there wasn’t enough money to cover the cost of living. They became prime targets for traffickers, who prey on families in financial straits.

A man approached Veata’s parents with an arrangement for her that could relieve them of the poverty that threatened: he said Veata would make a good candidate for a ‘second wife’. A wealthy Asian businessman was going to be spending time in Phnom Penh on business regularly through the year, and was looking for a young live-in mistress. The man offered Veata’s parents £125 up front, with monthly payments of £75 to follow. Although they hated the idea of parting with their daughter in this way, they were becoming desperate - that money could prevent the family from going hungry and possibly losing their home.

Veata went to one of the teachers from the Bright Girl programme for help. Because of the love and care the staff at Bright Girl had shown her, she knew she could trust them with this huge problem. She was immediately taken in to the weekly boarding programme supported by the network to be kept safe from the trafficker, while the network's social workers talked about alternatives with Veata’s family. They were able to arrange a £50 microbusiness loan for the family to set up a sandwich cart. This wasn’t as much as the trafficker was offering, but Veata’s parents were willing to take any option that would keep their daughter from becoming a ‘second wife’.

Veata stayed in the care of the network boarding programme until her family’s sandwich business was set up and she could safely return home. Within four months, she’d even paid off the microloan using her monthly allowance and the income from her sewing business!

Working together, we’ve seen Veata grow from a trash collector in tattered clothes, exposed to the dangers of child sexual exploitation, to a talented seamstress who can help support her family and earns more than most factory workers in Cambodia. And even better than that, her younger sisters are now safe from the danger posed by traffickers, as the microloan from the network has lifted their family out of poverty and created a business for all of them to benefit from.

If you enjoyed this post, do check out Viva's blog for other encouraging stories, and you may also enjoy Cambodia II: Rehab House and For the Love of Cupcakes.

So what do you do?

This article was pitched as part of a series for a paper in Singapore but it was dropped (sob!) as the paper didn't want to encourage a trend for corporate exodus (!!!)

Thought I should post it here nonetheless for those who haven't got bored of reading about escaping the corporate life :)

So what do you do?

I dreaded that question 3 years ago but it was impossible to avoid being asked precisely that at dinner parties.

In November 2007 I had taken the leap and left my glamorous job as a corporate lawyer in London to instead pursue an alternative career in the charity sector. To my surprise the transition left me shaken inside and I found many things difficult, including how to introduce myself to new acquaintances. I felt embarrassed admitting that I was in transit to an unknown new world, despite the frequent response of admiration (which sometimes was accompanied by bewilderment). The temptation was always there to drop in a line or two about how I used to work for a top law firm.

Equally challenging was the moment when everyone exchanged sleek-looking business cards and I would stand there feeling self-conscious. When my turn came I would apologise that I didn’t have a card, and joke that I should have prepared a homemade one. Perhaps my card would read: “Searching for a Job in International Development Relating to Children, Ideally if Previous Legal Skills can be Used”? And maybe “Ex Corporate Lawyer” should feature at the front, underlined, in case people didn’t think much of the convoluted title?

Having grown up in Singapore in my teens and succeeding all my life in the traditional sense (straight A student, Dean’s list in law school, scholarship to Oxford, high flying first job), I found it extremely hard to actually believe that I as a person was not defined by the parameters of conventional success. For months after I exited the revolving glass doors of Allen & Overy, I struggled not to view myself through the coloured lens by which I used to pigeonhole others: their jobs, their “proven” abilities; their financial status. I was also shocked to discover that I had those biases ingrained in me.

And there were other difficult aspects of the transition to deal with. All of a sudden, I found myself having to check my bank account balance and actually do some budgeting - such was the degree of my previous recklessness with my finances that I never knew how much money I had at any one point! Neither was I aware of the cost of, say, a red pepper in the supermarket, or a starter at a restaurant, as I threw things into my shopping trolley, or ordered from the menu without paying much attention to the numbers. I thought that was normal.

Socially, it wasn’t easy either. When going out with friends who also had lucrative jobs, it became necessary to have awkward conversations about how to split the bill. I had to muster all I had to fight the feeling of “losing face”. Also, I couldn’t attend the dinner at my best friend’s birthday bash at a posh restaurant but could only manage to join the party for a drink afterwards. For a natural people pleaser (with a delicate self esteem), all this proved to be very difficult, but these situations forced me to examine some of the deep seated attitudes in me and the motives behind what I used to do.

Looking back, it was a tough period of time, and writing about it has even depressed me slightly, but if you asked me if I regretted my decision at all, the answer would be an irrevocable no. There is no way I would exchange now (and the excitement of what is to come) for anything from my previous life.

Can Bling Bling be Fairtrade too?

Remember the film Blood Diamond? I never managed to see it properly; the only time I saw it was on a speeding coach along the coast of Negros in the Philippines this past summer. We were on our way to a beautiful island where one of the CFA staff was from, and were most thrilled when the bus driver decided to show it on the small TV screen at the front of the bus. Feeling hungry (we had got up at 5am), cold (the AC was intent on freezing us) and slightly nauseous from the bumpy ride, I strained to follow the exciting plot.

The film, if you don’t already know, is set in the late 90s in Sierra Leone and tells a tale of a family being broken up by civil war, and about how the father sought to find his lost son who has now been captured by the rebel groups to become a child soldier. The film also showed something that has been happening for decades now – the conflict diamonds which feed many bloodthirsty civil wars in Africa. In such instances, rough diamonds are mined for by civilians who have been captured by rebel groups and sold onto the next stage of the diamond chain for large sums of money, which in turn finance the continuing warfare.

Obviously no one would want to knowingly buy or own any diamond that might potentially have been tainted by “blood”.

The Kimberly Process is an initiative that has been set up since 2000 to ensure that diamonds in the world market are properly accounted for, by imposing extensive requirements on members to shipments of rough diamonds as “conflict free” and thus prevent conflict/blood diamonds from entering into the legitimate trade.

However, the Kimberly Process does not certify individual jewellers. According to their website, as a consumer, you can play your part by requiring the jeweller where you’re purchasing from to answer the following questions:

How can I be sure your jewellery does not contain conflict diamonds?

Do your diamond suppliers participate in the industry’s ‘System of Warranties’*?

Can I see a copy of your company’s policy on conflict diamonds?

*The diamond industry has set up a 'System of Warranties' that complements, but is distinct from, the Kimberley Process. You can find out more here.

I came across a further question about 2 years ago whilst I was working at Tearfund. During one of the lunch time seminars, we were introduced to the ethical jeweller CRED. CRED, I found out, is a jeweller based in the UK which only sells conflict free diamond, but it even goes further to ensure that the diamonds and metal (gold, silver, stainless steel) which they sell are sourced in an environmentally friendly manner and that the workers involved in the exploration and refining are paid a fair wage!

How awesome is that!

Thankfully, when Rob thought of proposing 1.5 years ago, he had kept the mass email which I sent out about my new discovery of CRED, and he went to CRED and got me a beautiful, conflict free and fair trade diamond ring! (Apparently they had to source the diamond from Canada – as that’s the only place where the stones are definitely free of conflict as well as exploitation!)

CRED makes very beautiful and classic jewelry and has a wide range of engagement and wedding rings too.

For those of you who are married, I’m not suggesting you to go and change your engagement and wedding rings, though I would love to encourage those who have not got rings to please consider CRED (or any other such jeweller, just do a Google search!), and do your extra bit in making our world a more ethical place.

Cambodia II: Rehab's House

This blog post is part of a series where I'll be sharing about what we've seen and experienced in terms of the anti human trafficking work in Cambodia.

Another project just outside Phnom Penh, Cambodia, which really moved us was Rehab's House.

Until several years ago, Rehab's House used to be a brothel where scores of under 18 girls were kept to service the sexual needs of customers. Men typically paid US$10 to 20 to sleep with a girl if she wasn’t a virgin. In a culture where (at least for some sections of society) sleeping with a virgin is believed to bring good luck or, on the extreme end, able to purge one’s HIV, a virgin at this brothel was priced at US$300 and her price can go up to $700 if she was pretty.

I say her “price”, but she would not have received a single penny of what was paid as all the money went to the brothel owners.

At the brothel, children were kept in individual “rooms” (which was no more than a 5 feet x 7 feet cell) with a wooden bed where the sexual acts would be performed. On the wall outside each room was painted, in red, a number. The children were known as the numbers outside their rooms. Two rows of rooms ran parallel to each other, with a tiny corridor in the middle. The children were not allowed to go out of their rooms except for using the toilet etc, and if they tried to escape they would suffer grave punishment, and in the few cases of children who tried to run away they were brought back by gangsters in the vicinity who were connected with the brothel.

In 2002, International Justice Mission, working with the local police, raided the brothel, rescuing all the children who had been held in captivity, and went on to persecute the perpetrators. The children, who finally saw the light of day after living in what could only be described as hell, were then placed in an aftercare shelter operated by Agape (who also runs Rehab's House), where they could be counseled, cared for and educated so that they might have another chance at life.

The building where the brothel used to operate was subsequently majorly restructured, with the cold, dingy cells demolished (except for Room no. 9), and turned into a community centre providing supplementary schooling to children, vocational training (sewing lessons!) to women and girls, and healthcare to all in the community. The women and girls taking the sewing lessons are now able to make pillowcases as a livelihood to provide for themselves and their families. Livelihood is an extremely important key to preventing trafficking in the first place, as many who are poor and desperate to survive are often extremely vulnerable to traffickers coming along to entice/trick/persuade them into so-called “employment opportunities”.

The community where Rehab's House is located is not without lingering problems – 70% of its inhabitants are Vietnamese (and hence stateless and illegal, according to the Cambodian government, despite the fact that they have lived in the country for many years and their children were born in Cambodia; they are particularly at risk as the state does not protect them at all), most people living there are still very poor and uneducated, gangs still operate in the area and pedophiles still travel from Phnom Penh daily to transact with children.

Walking through the streets and seeing people not having or doing much, it’s tempting to get all despondent about the state of things in this community. But we’re reminded again of the progress that has been already made as a result of the immense hard work by amazing organisations such as IJM and Agape, and that widespread, long lasting change always takes time.

As we were leaving those dusty roads that evening, through the back window of the window I looked at Rehab's House again, painted in orange and yellow, and the women working on their sewing projects. What used to be a dungeon where cries of children were muffled, Rehab's House is now a lighthouse in its community, giving hope and a future to many.

If you enjoyed this post, you may also like Human Trafficking or For the Love of Cupcakes.

In Spotlight

Last Thursday, Rob and I were in the spotlight.

Well, for about 5 minutes.

On a stage in front of over 100 starry eyed couples who were engaged to get married, we were interviewed about our first year of marriage.

About one and a half year ago, during our tight engagement period (4.5 months, which apparently is not that short, according to some!), we signed up for the Marriage Preparation Course* at our church, Holy Trinity Brompton.

The people running the course have asked us if we could be the “live interview couple” for the first session this term, the theme of which is Communication. The idea of the interview is for those who are on the course to hear, first hand, from a newly married couple about what they have learnt about being married, the ups and downs and any useful top tips so far!

We could still vividly remember going along to the course on the second week in May last year (as Rob had only proposed to me during the first week, so we missed “Communication”, ironically), seeing so many smiling couples who looked so in love and many no doubt thinking along the lines of I can never spend enough time with you or I can’t imagine having a fight with you ever, you’re so lovely… and then, hilariously, after a very fun and engaging evening having a nice meal, listening to a short talk and doing some discussions on their own, we saw many couples leave the building looking rather grumpy (and not holding hands)!

It seems amusing now, but we too can recall, one week, getting into a serious argument even before the discussion time came along, and not hearing what the speaker was talking about at all. Not sure if we were holding hands when we left either.

Don’t get me wrong. It was a great course. But if one were naïve (which of course many of us were, myself included), one might just get slightly surprised at the different issues that might come up in one's marriage, like how both your attitudes towards money can be very different and a point of serious contention, how best to develop healthy boundaries with parents and in laws (loving as they are, boundaries are good things, as a married couple is one unit and accountable first to each other) and so on and so forth. So it’s good to have a chance to talk about these important things, before one actually takes the plunge.

It’s also interesting to hear many couples say that it’s a precious time for them together, away from the manic (or mundane) wedding preparations which can sometimes take up so much of one’s energy and time, if not skewing one’s perspectives on life too.

In case you’re wondering, what were our top tips?

Rob: I’ve learnt not to give advice or react when Christine is trying to process her emotions externally and just be patient and listen. (Now boys you don’t have to go too crazy here)

Me: For me, it’s not to be afraid of conflict. Keep talking through the issues until you have resolved them. We have found that though it’s painful, we come out the other end closer.

*One does not have to be a Christian to be on the course at all; the course is based on Christian values, but many couples who go along to the course are not church goers.

The Marriage Preparation Course and the Marriage Course are run in many locations around the world.

If you’ve enjoyed this post, you may also like Love and War.

For the Love of Cupcakes

Have you ever thought of how cupcakes could help victims of sexual trafficking?

No, I'm not talking about cupcakes sold in a booth in some market somewhere to raise funds for a charity that works to combat the problem of sexual trafficking - though that's awesome in itself.

Two weeks ago, Rob and I visited several projects in Phnom Penh, the capital of the Kingdom of Cambodia.

One of these projects is called Bloom Cafe, a cafe which has been set up to help girls and women who have been previously trafficked into the sex trade. Bloom Cafe helps them by training them to bake and make cupcakes (and other kinds of cakes, all ridiculously beautifully decorated) and sell them at the cafe.

We had heard about Bloom Cafe the whole week when we were in Phnom Penh, and on the penultimate day we decided to swing by quickly to have a cup of tea and some impossible-to-eat-because-it-is-so-beautiful type of cupcakes!

The cafe has a lovely, relaxed atmosphere, and scattered around the ground floor are plush sofa seats, all colour-coordinated with matching cushions, and some wooden tables sitting bigger parties.

There are also three glass cupboards filled with displays of decorated cakes - in the form of a stylish luggage with a tag for Paris, a swish lady handbag, Noah's ark (complete with pai

rs of animals), and about 25 other designs. They were so good even Rob was impressed!

(We couldn't take any pictures of the decorated cakes so you'll have to go there yourself to check them out!)

Having never spoken to anyone who's been through unimaginable trauma, I was a bit unsure what to expect when I ordered a set of three cupcakes (and had huge difficulties choosing which three out of the 20+ designs), a pot of Fairtrade Chai tea and a cup of Fairtrade cappuccino. The ladies behind the counter were friendly and professional, and were gracious and smiling as I couldn't stop expressing my wonder and admiration at their work.

Trafficking is a complex issue. One thing which we have learned from our time in Phnom Penh is that huge efforts need to be made in different aspects of anti trafficking work. For example, whilst rescuing trafficked girls and women from brothels is critical in protecting them, they also need to be given appropriate care and counselling afterwards in order to have a chance of being healed or at least coming to terms with the trauma and pain which they have suffered. But it does not stop there - after an appropriate time of aftercare, these girls and women need to have alternative means of making a living, as otherwise, driven by poverty and lack of options, they may fall prey to trafficking and enter that world again.

So Bloom Cafe (and many others) is providing a great form of training and livelihood which gives real, long lasting hope to many who have just emerged from a dark world of unspeakable horror and pain.

In the next few posts I will write more about what we experienced in Phnom Penh, the different kinds of amazing projects that are going on and what we can all do to help combat the evil of human trafficking.

Love and War

A year ago today, Rob and I got married at Holy Trinity Brompton Church in London. Many friends had warned us beforehand that the wedding day would simply fly past, and that we should savour each moment.

True enough, that day came and went. When we cycled off (yes, on a bicycle!) into the street in Sloane Square trying to find our friend's hired car which was waiting for us, our adrenaline levels were still soaring high. We kept laughing our heads off as we dragged our luggages towards the train to Gatwick Airport at almost 1am, me in my turquoise Chinese cheong sum, and Rob in his T shirt and jeans (for easy cycling).

Friends (mostly girls) have asked me over the past months - so, how is it like being married?

They almost always get shocked when they hear my answer, which goes along the lines of:

Marriage is the most amazing thing that's ever happened to me, but it's also the hardest thing I've ever done.

(Now, before any male reader gets a bit defensive for Rob, I can confirm that he agrees with me too)

Marriage is hard. And I'm not sure why we (most people) still find that surprising.

Perhaps it's because of the far too often endings in romantic films, where the hero returns from somewhere and gets united with his beloved, or when the confused young woman finally chooses the "right guy" (by ditching her boring fiance for the exciting new kid on the block) and they proclaim their everlasting love for each other, and so on and so forth.

You get the idea.

For some reason, we human beings have been conditioned to think that when such romantic scenarios happen, they lead to a state called Happily Ever After which incidentally does not involve anything mundane or inconvenient like washing up after a meal, arguing over who should take out the trash, being too exhausted and stressed out to say nice things to your exhausted and stressed out spouse, or the more serious issues (which are very real possibilities) like the pain of rebellious teenage children, long term sickness, infertility, depression...

We have been fortunate that we haven't experienced any serious issues in our first year of marriage, but to say that it has been a cruise like what Hollywood movies and popular music often imply will be a lie.

We love each other, but we have also found loving difficult at various points. Our selfishness, our seemingly never ending capacity to hurt each other, even unintentionally, and the realness of feeling like we're enemies instead of lovers, become increasingly apparent, and painful to face or admit.

We are often amazed at how much happiness we can have in our marriage, but equally how frustrating and hard it can be.

Too often we think of marriage as the end to romance (for men mostly) or the start of eternal bliss (for women mostly). I would say both perceptions are misconceived.

Marriage is the start of the real adventure of life, where in the safety of life long commitment (if you choose to anyway), you grow to know the other person more and more deeply and learn to love him or her above yourself - which is extremely easy to say but fabulously hard to do.

Choosing to live like this definitely comes with a cost, but the rewards are, though they may not be immediate, unimaginably wonderful.

PS In case it's not clear, I totally recommend marriage!

If you enjoyed this post, you might also like My Obsession with Dust, Sweat and What Not

The Happy Lawyer

This morning I came across another book on happiness - this time through my lovely dad - one which would interest many of my (lawyer and non lawyer) friends and ex colleagues: The Happy Lawyer (a misnomer?)

I'm totally plagiarising my dad, but here's a quick summary of the first half of the book.

The authors looked at the relationship between happiness and dissatisfaction of lawyers and made the following observations:

• Public vs private sector: 2 out of 3 lawyers in the public sector were reported as being more satisfied

• Age: Lawyers over 50 years old are happier than those under 50

• Income: There is a weak link between income and life satisfaction

• Sex: Female lawyers have become less happy during the past 35 years

• Race: Black and Hispanic lawyers are happier than Asians and Whites, apparently because more Blacks and Hispanics work in nonprofit or government legal jobs, and more Asian and White lawyers work for large law firms.

The authors also suggested 6 keys to life satisfaction:

• Security - physical or economical

• Autonomy - ability to make your preferred choices

• Authenticity - being who you really are

• Relatedness - connectivity to others

• Sense of competence

• Self-esteem

According to the authors, self development towards these six intrinsic goals produces more happiness than focussing on extrinsic goals, such as becoming rich or famous.

I found this echoes what Oliver James says in Affluenza (which is a great book by the way) - that the motivation of our actions is important, that if we are driven by "affluenza-ish" desires in what we do (wanting to be famous, rich etc), we will tend to have less satisfaction, than if we were driven by intrinsic values (like we actually like our job, the job develops us), even if the latter may actually end up making us famous and rich.

And finally, the authors introduced some tips from what they called the Happiness Toolbox:

make your job matters to you - choose meaningful projects - become a key player - make you job affect other people - identify how your work has bettered lives - strive for a work-life balance - discuss work flexibility with sympathetic (!) boss - make your job more secure - know and become friends with those who control your fate (I don't like how this sounds) - meet or exceed company expectation - take control of your work product and work space - develop your own strategy for meeting goals - personalise your work space (like with Hello Kitty!) - connect with people - collaborate - eat lunch with colleagues or clients - participate in company events (eating lunch will be a start) - choose face-to-face work when possible - if happiness seems possible (!) in your job, commit to that job - don't always look for greener grass (water your own) - remind yourself what you really like about your job - think about projects that have "made time fly" - look for challenging tasks - avoid when possible, too easy tasks (hmm) - avoid making upward comparisons - choose when possible, projects that benefit the less fortunate - find out what experiences have made your colleagues or work-friends happy - know your strength and what gives you pleasure - align your work with your value

Have you got enough ideas yet?

---

I don't think I agree with many things proposed by the authors, but there are definitely some interesting observations and some useful tips.

Although I am no longer in that world, I am still deeply intrigued by how lawyers / corporate people are finding their jobs.

One thing that popped into my head is what about the question of purpose - both in terms of one's own purpose in work/life and the corporate purpose of where you work. Do these matter to you?

As usual, I would love to hear about what you think of any of this!

$$$

Last week I read another interesting article in the International Herald Tribune - this time on consumer spending - which I'd like to share with my readers!

Stephanie Rosenbloom wrote about how consumers in the US are beginning to rethink about their spending pattern (cf. spending amount). The crux of it is that research (plus some people's own experiences) has shown that buying things will not bring as much happiness / fulfillment as spending money on experiences - so going to see a play, enrolling in language lessons, going on holidays etc, as opposed to buying, say, a Gucci bag, another i-phone, a leather jacket of the latest style.

I suppose there are many reasons why people (in the developed world at least) naturally like to accumulate things (some of which may be, strictly speaking, unnecessary) - there is the intense in-your-face advertising everywhere, things are a more tangible form of "reward" for one's hard work.

But it is not surprising really that spending on what Rosenbloom called experiences would generate more satisfaction.

If you're the sort who likes theatre/art, going to a play or an exhibition increases your appreciation for what you already like, it probably makes you feel good about developing your interests. You might even come out of the venue feeling like you don't need to buy too much stuff, that you're quite satisfied.

If you are into learning generally or have a burning desire to learn a new language, taking lessons can be fun (as well as frustrating I suppose!) and may give you a sense of money well spent, as you're gaining a new kind of knowledge - and it doesn't really matter whether it is a useful language, as there's intrinsic value in learning something.

If you like travelling or just going somewhere to take a break, enjoying a holiday usually (or should, at least in theory) improves your mood, helps you relax, takes your mind off the usual stuff which stresses you, and possibly broadens your horizon too depending on where you go and what you do.

Such "experiences", like many others, enhance our appreciation of life.

Things, on the other hand, which continue to scream out at us "BUY ME!", are more alluring in a way (especially if you're accustomed to a capitalistic society with tonnes of advertising), and they do seem to provide immense satisfaction (in my case, lasting for anywhere between two minutes to two days within the purchase), but such good feelings don't seem to last for very long, and the worst thing is, they seem to require constant "feeding" i.e. making another purchase!

Do you find all this quite perplexing? Because I do!

Off to Phnom Penh

I'm really excited about our trip to Cambodia tomorrow (despite the ungodly departure hour - budget airline hours).

We're going to be visiting several local projects run by members of the Chab Dai Coalition network which is the partnering network of Viva in Cambodia.

Chab Dai (literally “joining hands” in Khmer) aims to bring an end to trafficking and sexual exploitation through coalition building, community prevention, advocacy and research. There are currently 40 members in the coalition.

During the next week we will be learning first-hand from project workers on the ground about the issues of and solutions for trafficking and sexual exploitation in Cambodia.

For the past few months we have been hearing many good things about Chab Dai from friends and contacts outside Viva, so we're really looking forward to seeing their excellent work in one of the most hardcore, difficult fields in international development.

I hope to write about some of the projects next week.

Rob on Breakfast TV on Channelnews Asia

Rob will be appearing on Primetime Morning on Channelnews Asia at 8.50am tomorrow, Thursday 19 Aug 2010.

If you have cable or are in Singapore, please switch on your telly if you can!

He will be talking about his 3 year, 30,000 mile solo bicycle expedition Cycling Home From Siberia on which he went through wild places such as Siberia, Papua New Guinea, Tibet, Afghanistan and Iran.

The second paperback edition of Rob's book Cycling Home From Siberia, which has received glowing reviews from the UK press, is now out and available from all major bookshops.

Rob on Radio 3 (RTHK) on Wed 18 Aug

Rob will be on Morning Brew on Radio 3 (RTHK) at around 11am tomorrow, Wed 18 Aug 2010.

Please tune in if you are in Hong Kong :)

The show's host will be chatting to Rob about his 3 year, 30,000 mile solo bicycle expedition Cycling Home From Siberia on which he went through wild places such as Siberia, Papua New Guinea, Tibet, Afghanistan and Iran.

The second paperback edition of Rob's book Cycling Home From Siberia, which has received glowing reviews from the UK press, is now out and available from all major bookshops.

How Will You Measure Your Life (by an HBS guru)

Recently a good friend in Singapore forwarded a very interesting article written by Clayton M. Christensen who is the Robert and Jane Cizik Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School.

In his thought provoking article, Professor Christensen draws on his experiences in senior management and applies management models to one's personal life, and suggests some seemingly unconventional and useful approaches to life - I say seemingly unconventional as the principles sound like they go against the grain, but when one sits down to think about them, they make perfect sense!

He looked at the following questions:

1. How can I be sure that I’ll be happy in my career?
2. How can I be sure that my relationships with my spouse and my family become an enduring source of happiness?
3. How can I be sure I’ll stay out of jail? (it's a real question!)

I thought this particular paragraph addressing the second question was very poignant and challenging:

When people who have a high need for achievement—and that includes all Harvard Business School graduates—have an extra half hour of time or an extra ounce of energy, they’ll unconsciously allocate it to activities that yield the most tangible accomplishments. And our careers provide the most concrete evidence that we’re moving forward. You ship a product, finish a design, complete a presentation, close a sale, teach a class, publish a paper, get paid, get promoted. In contrast, investing time and energy in your relationship with your spouse and children typically doesn’t offer that same immediate sense of achievement. Kids misbehave every day. It’s really not until 20 years down the road that you can put your hands on your hips and say, “I raised a good son or a good daughter.” You can neglect your relationship with your spouse, and on a day-to-day basis, it doesn’t seem as if things are deteriorating. People who are driven to excel have this unconscious propensity to underinvest in their families and overinvest in their careers—even though intimate and loving relationships with their families are the most powerful and enduring source of happiness.

I'm suddenly struck by how we can often be shortsighted and, though not intentionally, neglect paying attention to that which has a long lasting impact on our lives.

Does anything from the article echo with you? Do you think it's possible, in our hectic lives, to not under-invest in what's more enduring and longer term?

Grooveshark

My dad recently sent me and my sisters a link to Grooveshark, a free online streaming music site.

I wasn’t expecting my dad to be that up-to-date with music and streaming and what not, so initially I didn’t think about the link much. But after checking it out we really love it!

It’s easy to use, you can find pretty much any song, the streaming works perfectly, and the most amazing thing is there doesn’t seem to be any ads!? We used to use Spotify (which apparently doesn’t work outside the UK) but got a bit annoyed whenever they blast unwanted ads in the middle of a song.

So do check it out (and let me know if you have any other recommendations)

And thank you to my dad, I’m impressed!

Pains and Joys II: The Art of Resting

I’m not sure about you, but I certainly experience considerable difficulties learning to take a proper break, rest and relax completely.

Yes, I’ve resisted the temptation to get another Blackberry, or one of its less-sinister offspring (like i-phones and the like) despite the fact that everyone on the planet seems to carry one of those. So one would have thought I should find it easier to “switch off” during the weekends, breaks or holidays. But I don’t.

I blame it on the fast pace of life in a place like Hong Kong. Like New York, Hong Kong is a city that never sleeps. The moment I step out of the building where we’re staying, I see scores of people walking at top speeds up and down the escalator, crossing the road (traffic lights become an annoying personality when I’m in a hurry), dodging in and out of queues, checking their phones, Blackberries or i-phones for messages. It’s not exactly the most relaxing picture.

I blame it on the Checklist Tendency in my working style. Like my dear friend Vicki who I worked with at Tearfund, we have both been profiled as the sort of worker who doesn’t feel good about the day of work unless we’ve checked a whole list of boxes for the tasks we’ve done/things we’ve achieved. With such a tendency (called “Achiever” according to Strengthsfinder), I’m always on the lookout for things to do, in order to “tick the box”. So, even when I’m not working on a Viva matter, say on my way down to post a letter, I think of the other 5 things I could also do on the way – turn on the washing machine, take out the rubbish, get stuff from the store, call my friend about dinner tomorrow, text my other friend to thank her for a great dinner last night, whilst also having a think about how to pitch Viva to the lunch party today.

Some people say it’s the inability to live in the present that prevents us from resting or pausing (and a load of other things). So even when I’m supposedly having a nice weekend doing nothing much, my mind involuntarily goes elsewhere, thinking about the coming Monday, or what should we eat for dinner tonight.

It seems like a disease, this inability to live in the present. It feels natural though, and is alluring and comforting to many, especially those of us who like to plan ahead. It feels like a disease because unless I get rid of it, it actually robs me of real life, of real living. If my mind is always in the future, I’m not really living now, am I?

On Sunday night Rob and I went to a retreat centre at the top of a hill on Cheung Chau, an outskirt island about an hour’s ferry ride from Hong Kong Island. We only spent less than 24 hours there, but even 24 hours away from the buzz and bustle of the city helped. We went there to try and quieten down, to spend some time with God – we feel we really need to be guided by Him particularly for our work with Viva. However, I don’t think one needs to have any religious reason for taking a break and doing something like a retreat. Being in a quiet place, away from normality, and practising silence (something I am very bad at) and just reading and reflecting on things, can be really beneficial for your health – physical, mental and emotional.

Again, I know the benefits of doing retreats, but it is so hard to actually get around to doing them. We have decided to put retreat dates in our diary (and book the room), well in advance, as that will help us to keep space for them, and be more intentional in punctuating our lives with full stops. We have found in the past that unless we did this, that months, or even years could pass without taking a retreat.

*a google search will easily find you good retreat places

Pains and Joys

There are several things I’m trying to “achieve” these days. And for many of these things I have had serious doubts about whether they’re achievable (not whether they are in theory, but in my own book). But their importance keeps hitting home, so I can’t quite ignore them.

The first thing is going running. I know the many benefits of it: health (especially when one contemplates the real possibility that one is aging, albeit slowly), de-stressing, and the feel-good-afterwards aspect of it. But I hate it. I hate the sweating, the pain (!), the stitches, the you-will-never-get-very-far sort of mindset I get into as soon as I start running, the head spinning - basically the price one pays for exercising when one is unfit.

For exercise, I prefer playing tennis – it is actually fun, interactive and sociable. There’s excitement and variation as opposed to repetition and monotony. I think we’ll get into our tennis again soon, after we retrieve our racquets from Rob’s parents’ in London. But at my level of skill, I don’t think playing tennis itself will get me fit or healthy, as most of the time at the end of the first 30 minutes of playing I would normally be panting like crazy, and be reminded again that I need to exercise more.

So Rob and I have started running a bit – my kind husband jogs with me all the way from where we’re house sitting (on Caine Road in Central, Hong Kong) to May Road, a route which involves almost constantly running up steep roads (I usually run the first stretch, and then walk-run the others). At 33 degrees Celsius, perhaps that’s another reason why running feels even more strenuous. Rob keeps telling me that it will get better - that the more I run the easier I will find – say after one month.

One month! That’s a long time. I’m not sure if I can do it, even though each time after I’ve done it I feel good and motivated to go running again, at least before my lazier self starts to throw me a thousand excuses.

The second “thing I am trying to achieve”, I suspect, a common issue for many, is taking a proper break. I’ll write about that tomorrow.

The Unedited Version....

A few people have expressed an interest in reading the unedited version of the piece "High Cost of High Life" which came out in My Paper last week, so here it is!

Life without a Blackberry

Do you miss anything from your previous life? seems to be the favourite question which people ask me since I left the corporate world about 2.5 years ago. The fast money, the exotic holidays, the nice apartment where we threw many lavish dinner parties? Or the turquoise corporate Amex card, the slight air of importance I felt whenever I shook hands with clients in glass-roofed buildings? How about the Blackberry handheld device which I had carried with me almost religiously (to the point that some days it even graced the loo), with the blinking red light indicating the arrival of an email and consequently, my immediate attention.

Sure, a part of me misses the high life. Some days, a little voice whispers to me that all the perks which I had left behind were what made life enjoyable, that without them I cannot have a good quality of life.

2.5 years later, however, I do honestly question what kind of quality that sort of life really offered. It seems impossible to erase from my memory the hundreds of late nights, of being “on call” at weekends and evenings, the inability to plan any social activities during the week, and missing many important celebrations. The image of me crying on the phone at 5am in the New York office with my then boyfriend who was cycling in Australia remains etched in my mind. I was constantly exhausted and high (on Coke Light) at the same time. I felt like I was incessantly catching up on sleep, or out partying to make up for my loss.

Recently I visited Singapore and saw some old school friends. Most of my school friends had been straight A students and had gone on to various high flying careers. One guy, who I had not seen for 13 years, commented that I was brave to have left my very well paid job in order to pursue an alternative career in the charity sector. He quickly added that he loved his luxuries too much, so he had no choice but to continue to work his ass off. Feeling slightly surprised by his candour, and not wanting to offend an old friend, I smiled and mumbled something non-consequential. Later that evening I did wonder though, were the luxuries what he was actually living for?

A few months back I read A Million Miles in a Thousand Years by Don Miller who is a brilliantly thought-provoking writer. In his foreword, he described how nobody would want to watch a movie about a guy who worked very hard his whole life in order to buy a sports car in the end. None of us would be very inspired by such a plotline, but the sad fact is, so many of us do live spend our whole lives living a story just like that.

The transition has not been an easy ride – having to deal with head-on many deeply personal issues like my identity, insecurities and my attitudes towards money. However, even with all the struggles I have had to face in my new life, I’m not sure I really miss anything from the old one.
And I now read the red blinking light of a Blackberry as Beware, Danger – I am here to take over your life!

Christine Liu Lilwall grew up in Hong Kong and Singapore, and is married to adventurer and author Rob Lilwall. She worked in the City of London as a corporate lawyer until November 2007 and has since worked for several NGOs in international development and human rights. She has just finished volunteering on a project that works with former street children in Cebu, the Philippines, and regularly writes about her experience on her blog www.lifewithoutablackberry.com.

Am I happy and where am I going (on my birthday)?

Today is a special day for me. It's my birthday. So, for once, I'm letting myself be a little self-indulgent without beating myself up.

(Yes I do give myself a hard time, but that doesn't mean I stop sharing things which I feel are important - which to some people maybe a sign of self indulgence?)

Anyway.

A couple of questions which I naturally ask on such an occasion are:

- Am I happy with where I am?
- Where am I going?

Happiness. This seems to be on the forefront of everyone's mind these days - you see it in the bestseller sections in book shops, you read about it in forwarded emails, you can't help but notice all the appeals to YOUR HAPPINESS in ads and commercials ranging from types of coffee beans to the latest i-phones to your next holiday destination.

I can't say I'm happy or unhappy really, as happiness is a really hard word to use. No one is happy all the time, or unhappy all the time (except I guess for people who suffer from depression - which is really hard). And whether one is happy or unhappy, sometimes, depends on one's own perception and is relative.

For example, I wake up happy because I know today is my day off, but I get even happier when Rob cooks me my favourite breakfast, but if it rains do I then become unhappy or less happy as we may not have as good a day as we could have? It's a silly example but what is happiness? It seems too transient a concept to be meaningful.

So, I guess maybe I should rephrase - Am I fulfilled, and satisfied with where I am?

Fulfillment is a difficult concept too, but I think it's a better measuring criterion than happiness. Of course, fulfillment is never constant, but at least it goes deeper than just happiness (in my opinion at least).

Working in the charitable world is not always fulfilling, contrary to popular opinion. There are frustrations too of course. But I'm really excited about what's about to happen!

We're now in Hong Kong to start working for Viva, an international Christian children at risk charity. Their vision is to optimise what is an already saturated field - the field of charities and projects working with children.

There are many out there helping the world in all sorts of wonderful ways. But often, especially in the case of the many small grassroot projects started by well meaning local people, they are (through no fault of their own) disconnected, poorly equipped and unsupported. Their workers often have little funds to work with, no fancy laptops which may be available to the top international NGOs, and they don't have many opportunities to be trained and supported in this very difficult field of work.

Viva's vision is to help these projects get connected, equipped and supported so that they can do their work better. Viva helps achieve this by finding where projects are, linking them up so they can share tips and know-how with one another. They also provide training and mentoring to equip projects in what they do.

So it's very exciting to see how we can share Viva's vision and passion with the people of Hong Kong, and invite them to join in this exciting venture.

(And writing helps me to feel fulfilled, in a way)

Which leads me to the second question:

Where am I going?

The answer is: no idea.

Whereas most of my friends are busy getting on with their plans of babies, buying their first (or second or third flat) and planning their careers, Rob and I have no idea where we could be possibly heading towards!

We've committed to working for Viva for an initial two years here in Hong Kong. Rob has lots of exciting things on the side - his corporate speaking, his book coming out in the US next year, his other writing, possible new adventures, whereas I'm focussing more on Viva plus some writing which I really like doing.

Where are we going? We haven't got a clue!

Don't get me wrong, I don't like uncertainties. I hate uncertainties so much that they make me break down and cry sometimes. But I've decided (and will have to decide again) that it's okay, it's okay to take risks; in fact we need to take risks in life - we only get to live once, and more importantly, God calls us to take risks for Him.

Daunted but hopeful and excited - it's a good place to be I think.

The Pacific

Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God. - The Bible

I’m not normally a big fan of war movies.

Last night, after Rob and I finished watching The Pacific DVD, an HBO mini series, we found ourselves sitting on the sofa, astounded and moved. The Pacific is a 10-episode TV series about World War II, focussing on what happened in the islands in the Pacific (between Japan and Australia). History is not exactly my strongest subject, so this was particularly educational for me. I hadn’t realise that a lot more (at least in Western media) has been written or screened about WWII in Europe than WWII in Asia, and that the war in many ways was a lot uglier and horrific in the East. As the Japanese army refused to surrender in all of the islands which Japan occupied then (which the American army had to invade, one by one, in order to get to mainland Japan), the Americans had to fight every inch of the occupied territories and kill every Japanese soldier in the long drawn war.

I don’t normally like movies or TV with too much violence, and I generally find war stories a bit too macho (and dull in terms of colour – jungle colours). But I have to admit that I really liked the Pacific, not least because it was educational in terms of what happened in history, but more so because it showed in a real way the horrors of war, both the highs and lows of humanity, and how war, no matter how justified it is, is really bad for us – the world.

The Pacific does not glorify war, so even as it got to the point of the Japanese surrender, there was no outright display of jubilation (though there was cause for it, as the war had ended). As for the Marines who had been fighting for years, losing fellow men in their platoons, they found themselves wondering what was next – they had known in their prime a life of repeated, senseless violence, desperate survival, death and loss in the most unimaginable gruelling conditions, and now they had to go back to “normal life”, when life could never quite be normal again.

No doubt this mini series has made me appreciate our time of (relative) peace, but it has also reminded me not to forget those who are still at war in so many places. Again, it’s one of those things that can so easily overwhelm us (and in a way, it should, as the problem is so serious and so vast), but we should not lose heart. Let’s urge our government leaders and all those in high positions to work towards real, lasting peace, and in our own lives, work hard towards reconciliation.

Optionless

The past few months of volunteering in the Philippines have been very educational in all sorts of ways. Two particular recent events made me realise again how difficult life can be for those who are physically unwell or seriously ill in a less economically developed part of the world.

During our time in Cebu, one evening, whilst we were travelling to an event with CFA, one of the children developed a high fever. At 6 years old, J has a petite physique, almond-shaped eyes and curly hair that hung loosely on her shoulders. Her name in Cebuano actually means a particular bird, which I have always thought is very apt, as when J speaks she does sound like a little bird singing melodiously.

J doesn’t normally cry easily but she was whimpering when I tried to help her swallow some medicine. I carried her to one of the vehicles, laid her on the seats and, in the dark, started to wipe her little body with wet cloths. I felt terrible when she couldn’t take in much water.

Her whole body felt like a furnace. Some Nehemiah girls came by the bus and said a prayer for her. I tried to comfort J by promising her some sweets when she got better.

After an hour, the fever subsided considerably. I almost cried when J finally sat up and started sipping some Coke (for the lack of better alternatives) and eating some biscuits. When we finally went home she sat on my lap whilst I held a damp towel to her forehead, and she must have been feeling a lot better as she started chirping away to her favourite Kuya (older brother).

That evening I was struck by how helpless one must feel when a child whom you care about is not well, especially if you couldn’t afford any medical help. And we, including J, are actually the lucky ones – so many don’t have access to any medical help, and even more don’t have access to clean drinking water. One of the feeding team workers told me the same night that when a street child becomes ill, he or she will usually have no choice but to bear it and hope and pray that they will get better. And the sad fact is sometimes they don’t.

Last week, in Manila, in a different context, the staff worker at a project we visited came to us with a different sort of very serious need. Leading us into her kitchen, she introduced us to her frail and pale faced son. Sitting on a bamboo chair and leaning against the window, he had tubes coming out of his nostrils and at the side of his neck there was a big patch of plaster covering a wound. The boy looked younger than his real age, and he was staring, expressionless, at the television.

He needed a new kidney, she explained, showing us several bottles of medicine which he needed to take continuously to stay alive, and to pay for the new kidney and operation would cost several million pesos (several tens of thousands of pounds).

My first thought was: oh no, not another need again. We have seen a lot of need just in the past few months.

We looked at her, and then at the boy who was still expressionless – as if to say that he had seen this scene many times before, where the visitors, though moved upon hearing about their plight, were unable to help.

Our friend said he would try to speak to the board of directors to see what they could do. We then left the little house with our hearts still sinking.

And then it occurred to me that, if I were the mother, I would have done exactly the same as what the lady did – to ask for help wherever possible. She wasn’t hysterical or breaking down in tears, she didn’t beg us, but she did tell us that she needed help. There was nothing shameful or undignified. She had no choice, nowhere to turn to; all she could do is ask.

Overdose? Part 2

By Thursday, the second years were looking rather despondent as they examined the roses in Bottle B, while I tried desperately to encourage them to keep making their observations and wait and see what happened in the end.

On Friday, with the Paracetamol roses looking very distinctly the deadest of all, we talked through the experiment as a class, and concluded that we should repeat the experiment, on the assumption that, maybe, the dosage of Paracetamol was too high. For the new experiment therefore, we would use more bottles, with more roses, and also have some bottles with smaller amounts of Paracetamol.

Over the weekend, perplexed, I decided to do what I should have done much earlier – a Google search to find the amount of Paracetamol I should have used! However, instead of finding hundreds of websites with immediate answers I found only one which claimed that rather than Paracetamol, it was actually Aspirin which contained a particular chemical that acts as a plant hormone, the presence of which makes the plant retain water better, and hence the growth process slows down. This site also explained that often people can confuse Aspirin with Paracetamol as both drugs are painkillers available over the counter in pharmacies.

Evidently the textbook, written by some PhD expert in Biology (who had never met, or perhaps never even been a child), proved to be completely unreliable in this instance.

It was already past 7pm on Sunday night when I made this “discovery” so Rob and I made a quick dash to the nearest pharmacy to get some Aspirin. The next morning I woke up with a new nervousness – I had to convince the second years that we were mistaken the first time, and also the second time when we reassessed the experiment, and now we needed to redesign it again. I wondered if they were going to distrust science teachers from now on.

Rob was, on the other hand, cheerful and upbeat. He thought the best kind of experiment was the sort for which you didn’t necessarily know what the result might be. Which I agreed – to an extent – but nonetheless I thought it would be rather unsettling for a bunch of young minds which were beginning to find their bearings in education.

The second years, to their credit, were understanding and their enthusiasm didn’t vanish as I explained my findings to them. They came up with a good set up for yet another experiment and this time we would have two bottles containing different amounts of Paracetamol, two bottles containing different amounts of Aspirin and one bottle as the control.

So, in our last week of teaching at Nehemiah, we launched Experiment Take Two. By the end of the week, whilst all the other roses had wilted, some of the ones immersed in water with dissolved Aspirin, though rather tired-looking, were still alive.

I couldn’t help but notice that the students were relieved to observe a result that made some sense.

Perhaps our next project should be to write to the authors of the textbook with the findings of our Real Experiment. Suggested hypothesis: Aspirin, not Paracetamol, prolongs the life of roses.

Overdose? Part 1

After my first week of teaching Biology to second year high school (former Filipino streets kids) students in Cebu, it quickly became apparent that it wasn’t going to be enough to teach them theoretical things, and that if I were to try keeping them engaged I would have to somehow come up with something practical for them to do. There were however limitations at Nehemiah – for example, one doesn’t have the normal set of science apparatus which as a science student I had completely taken for granted. There is also no such thing as a science lab – the importance of which I was unaware until now.

And in my Biology classes, I knew it would not do to learn about animal and plant cells by only drawing diagrams on the blackboard without having a look at how such cells actually look. Unfortunately, the only microscope they had at the Nehemiah school is no longer functioning, so short of finding a huge sum to buy a microscope, we would need to be creative and improvise somewhat.

Going through the Biology textbook, dense with long definitions and historical facts which seemed a bit obscure for Filipino students in the 21st century, I was relieved to find an experiment which might just do the job. The hypothesis was this: Paracetamol prolongs the life of plants such as roses.

So, at the start of the second week of school, armed with a dozen of red roses which we bought on the roadside of a church, two tablets of Paracetamol and three empty 1 litre Coke bottles, I presented the project to the excited second years. We got busy filling up the bottles (estimating the same volume as best as we could, though without a measuring cylinder!), cutting the thorny roses (with normal paper cutting scissors) and crushing the Paracetamol (using a plastic bowl and a spoon from the kitchen).

The textbook did not specify how much Paracetamol to use, so I just thought let’s go for the usual human dosage of two tablets (which admittedly isn’t exactly very scientific of me, oh well).

Vaguely remembering that I didn’t use to make much connection between theory and practice in school, I tried to help the class apply what they had been learning the previous week – about scientific thinking and how experiments work, testing them on why they thought a certain way, and keeping the questioning until they gave me an explanation for their answers.

The second years share the chapel area with the first years, the classes being separated by a few blue hand-painted dividers. The chapel was also accessible by students from other classes during recess, so conducting the experiment in their classroom without risking having all the rose petals plucked out by an enthusiastic 9-year-old was impossible. This meant that each day I would have to ask a couple of students to help me transport the bottles up and down from our room on the third floor to the classroom in the basement.

Each day the students examined the roses with excitement and anticipation, but as the week went on, it transpired that perhaps we were discovering a different kind of result than in our hypothesis. The roses in the bottle labelled Bottle B: Experimental 1 – Paracetamol were looking very tired, and it seemed that they would actually be the first ones to bid us goodbye.

Next week I will write about what happened next!