The Momoach

'Orqa' went on strike. She bailed out of classes and I rewarded her.

On Saturday she skipped her roller blade class claiming "mama wanted me to do it." I was at work. Her Dad said nothing could be done.

Sunday, she again tries to skip her Chinese class. 3.30pm class and at 3pm she is relaxing in the study room chair, in pajyamas. Her Dad is going "nothing can be done."

I tell her I want to see her changed, and start cointing, "ONE. TWO..." She knows very well that at TEN, her sweet mummy will become a fire dragon. Almost all the time, she would start moving by TWO. But now, at FIVE, she remains seated.

SIX.

SEVEN.

EIGHT.

She bursts out with anger: "I'm changing!"

Good.

On the way to the class I walk next to a bomb waiting to be detonated any moment. I keep walking.

"I want to give you a prize."

I detect a little surprise and a little happiness in that deadpan face.

"A prize so that you will keep skipping class. Woah. Do you think... So?"

"Yes." Still deadpan face but the sky is clearing up.

"Of course not. The prize is to reward you for showing up although you sooo didn't feel like it.

No matter how we like something, we sometimes just don't feel like it. You do enjoy your Chinese speech and drama class. But still it feels too much a hassle, some time, like today. Yet you chose to show up. And that's wonderful."

The rest of the journey, our conversation focuses on what prize it will be - a miniature house for her miniature pets.

Iran, 2019. Baby was 7 month old.

I cannot tell you how sad I am about this beautiful country coming under bombardment. I hope peace arrive soon - and one day we can visit again, with a kid, or in the worst case, a teenager.

Babies have magical powers in Iran. Even mothers with kids drop their own cuties to come over to her, awestruck. I felt rather ashamed of my self-indulgent parenthood - honestly, I got too obsessed with my own kid to appreciate other people's.

Baby was still high maintenance. Her body clung to mine. My mind clung to her: diaper change, breastfeeding, sleep, comfort, heat, cold... I changed diapers at a mosque security station, a bus stop prayer room, and on the teacher's desk in a classroom. I breastfed in a plane, a cave museum, a few mosques, a university canteen with long curtains flowing in the wind, and under the scorching sun while trekking colourful mountains.

Still, a man-made disaster happened - her dad cut the tip of her pinky with a nail cutter. Till then it was his job because I dared not to put anything sharp near her tiny fingers.

So when blood gulped out of the little finger nonstop, I learned a few things:
1. For babies, bleeding don't stop easily because the blood don't yet have something that helps the wound to close. It is common for them to keep bleeding despite compression techniques.
2. Finger tips especially so.
3. 5 minutes is way too long for any parent to watch their baby bleed and cry.
4. Half an hour is a life time.

We decided to take her to a doctor. With broken Farsi language, hubby asked a man at the road-side shop for direction.

The kind soul immediately dropped his shop to take us. As he went along, other kind people came to check on this unlikely combo of a purposeful Iranian man, a wailing baby, and her pale parents.

By the time we got to a clinic we were like the sticky goose in a fairytale: we must have had 5 or 6 warm hearted people following us, each contributing to the direction-finding, and now, ceremonially lining up in the clinic. They listened to baby's loud cry, a result of doctor treatment. In silence, they smiled with a sense of achievement.

Meet Humanity.

And this is my all-time favorite!

𝐌𝐲 𝐝𝐚𝐮𝐠𝐡𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝐬𝐚𝐢𝐝 𝐬𝐡𝐞 𝐰𝐚𝐧𝐭𝐬 𝐭𝐨 𝐞𝐚𝐭 𝐚 𝐜𝐚𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐩𝐢𝐥𝐥𝐚𝐫.  Don't laugh. Peer pressure is very real in our life and many people do take their peers as a very important point for reference. It's just that, when a peer has all the perfect reasons to eat a caterpillar, do we have good reasons for that, too? Credit: My 2-year-old daughter for her continuous inspiration

Handmade Cartopn pre-AI era. I was often amused by how she was able to find new ways to do things.

I never thought there are so many ways of wearing a pair of shorts, until I left that task to my 2-year-old, passionate about making something out of it. A task easy for someone who's used to it, can be quite a different one for those who are new to it. New employee onboarding is definitely invaluable. To make it effective, it is especially important to think from a newcomer's perspective. Credit: my 2-year-old daughter

Organizers: Lifelong Learning Open webinar series in association with Startup Grind & Aluminary, (a social platform bringing the top B-school alumni networks together)
Moderator: Ankit Kedia and Nayana Arya.

With the huge amount of uncertainty brought by COVID-19, people are finding it difficult to be resolute about one's decision, especially in the domains of career and life. "Should I start my own business? Pursue MBA? Join a start-up? Relocate to another country? Wind down the business?"

Today's professionals are trained to be hyper-analytical and rational in business decision-making. This is a core competency enabling us to thrive in the business world. However, when applied in the personal domain with the increasing uncertainty, we often experience stress or even fall into an "Analysis-Paralysis" state.

Please join Yolanda Yu, a serial entrepreneur, a coach and a mother, to hear her perspectives on making resolute decisions in career and life. Yolanda will also take us through her journey of vulnerabilities and determination during her transition from a successful corporate career to entrepreneurship while juggling with her personal life.

Yolanda is an Executive and Career Coach. Based in Singapore, Yolanda coaches start-up CEOs and senior and emerging leaders in MNCs such as Amazon, Google, Shopee, Grab, and McKinsey from around the world. In her 20 years of professional experience, Yolanda served various leadership positions in Mastercard, Visa, Lazada-Alibaba, and helloPay, a Fintech start-up, in APAC Emerging markets. A highly regarded professional recruiter in her earlier career, Yolanda was also an HR solution consultant and a start-up owner.

Yolanda holds an MBA from INSEAD and a Bachelor of Computing from NUS. Yolanda is also a start-up advisor, judge and speaker at INSEAD executive education, multi-award-winning author, and co-organizer of the Global Migrant Festival.

Making Resolute Decisions - Full Talk at Startup Grind 2021 Organizers: Lifelong Learning Open webinar series in association with Startup Grind & Aluminary, (a social platform bringing the top B-school alumni networks...

𝐌𝐲 𝐝𝐚𝐮𝐠𝐡𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝐬𝐚𝐢𝐝 𝐬𝐡𝐞 𝐰𝐚𝐧𝐭𝐬 𝐭𝐨 𝐞𝐚𝐭 𝐚 𝐜𝐚𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐩𝐢𝐥𝐥𝐚𝐫. 
Don't laugh. Peer pressure is very real in our life and many people do take their peers as a very important point for reference.
It's just that, when a peer has all the perfect reasons to eat a caterpillar, do we have good reasons for that, too?

Credit: My 2-year-old daughter for her continuous inspiration

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"My world has shrunk so much since COVID"; "I feel like I'm living in a golden cage"; "There are so many things I cannot do now"; "There's no way I can make any plan!"; "My children are missing so much this year"; "My career is very affected and completely stagnant"...

These are just some of the very common call-outs of our experience nowadays. And if anything is in common, it's the sense of losing control.
To feel being in control is very important for us to feel happy and healthy. But how are we going to feel more in control, when the reality is with a lot of restrictions?

***
Many of my coaching clients have brought up the topics of gloomy feelings due to COVID-19. Through the coaching process, my clients and I were able to tap on their wisdom and came to a few wonderful insights. As I indulge myself in this collective wisdom, I want to share them with you as well. Tell me which ones you do resonate with.

How to Feel in Control Again during a COVID lockdown Mental health during lockdown is very hard to maintain. How to manage emotions during lockdown? What if I feel low in this pandemic? It is nothing, compared ...

I have a very colorful career history, starting my career as a programmer, worked in 10 different jobs and had 6 career changes in 20 years of my career to date. I want to share with you the challenges I struggled with, the learnings I took away after overcoming some of them.

It's a journey of how I found jobs, how I found happiness within myself, and how I found my Purpose in life.

If all these resonate with you, then let's have a conversation about your career. To start, simply book a call at https://yolandayu.com

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1PwP1SLmS2k

How I found Jobs, Happiness, and Purpose in life I want to share with you how I found jobs, how I found happiness within myself, and how I found my Purpose in life, in the past 20 years of my career. In the...

Everyone knows how important it is to research on a company before the interview. Yet I hear people reciting some obscure paragraph from the corporate website that nobody cares. That is NOT interview preparation.

A real good interview preparation means you understand the business inside out, know who allies and enemies are, and are able to think about it's past and future, in its very own shoes.

How to get started? Good answers start from good quesrions. In this video tutorial I share a list of practical questions, through a real example of researc before ByteDance interview.

🔥How to Research a Company Before Interview (ByteDance interview example) #字节跳动 #字节跳动面试 interview research a company before job interview?Most of us know we need to research on the company before a job inte...