At lunch yesterday, a colleague of mine told me about the previous day’s rain that had caused flooding in the Bukit Timah area. The damage, he told me, was quite substantial, with some of the major casualties being the cars caught in a basement carpark (with water levels up to waist-height). He was surprised that I hadn’t known about it as it was all over the news (after which I told him I did now, and I still hadn’t watched the news).

So it was with interest that I noticed a column on this flood in the Straits Times. It quoted Singapore’s Minister for the Environment and Water Resources Yaacob Ibrahim as saying that “Thursday’s deluge which submerged parts of Bukit Timah was a “freak” event that comes once in 50 years”. The article also added that “[Yaacob Ibrahim] said his ministry knew that the canal was not up to the task of draining away all the rain that fell that day”.

Two questions immediately came to mind after I read that short column: (1) how did the ministry determine that this type of rain occurred once every 50 years? and (2) if they knew that it occurred every 50 years, and that the canal couldn’t deal with that amount of rain, if approximately 50 years had gone by why hadn’t they done anything before this?

I’m not faulting the ministry for not predicting this amount of rain — nobody could have predicted it. But if it’s unpredictable, do not say it occurs once every 50 years; say that the weather’s unpredictable, apologise for not taking action earlier (for PR’s sake) and then take steps to rectify the problem (as they have). Saying it occurs only once every 50 years will only make those most vulnerable complacent, and that’s definitely not a good thing.

My thinking has lately been a little inspired by The Black Swan, by Nicholas Taleb (author of another of my favourite books, Fooled by Randomness). The basic idea behind the Black Swan is that we cannot ignore improbable events (especially high-impact events), and that absence of proof does not mean proof of absence — which essentially means that having no proof of having seen a red sky doesn’t mean the sky can’t turn red or that sort of thing.

And so I was in the car with the fiancée, discussing whether or not we should go ahead to apply to be part of the balloting exercise for the next build-to-order HDB flats in Punggol. I’m not sure exactly what led to what, but eventually it came to a point where I mentioned that we might not end up together, for whatever reason (I think I used it as an example of how unpredictable life was, referring to how she was worried that we may never get another build-to-order flat anywhere near an MRT station).

Needless to say, she was upset by that remark and asked me to explain myself. I had used an example of a Black Swan (our breaking up), and needed yet another to save her from manslaughter charges. So I pulled one out of my hat and said that, for example, either one of us may die, and thus we would technically “not be together”. Not comforted one bit by my answer, and in fact a little peeved that I mentioned my early demise yet again (I have a habit of talking about how fragile my life — and in fact life in general — is), I drove on in silence for a while before jumping onto another topic, and very quickly the unhappiness hanging in the air, unlike me, departed.

I am a voracious reader — I read anywhere and everywhere: on the toilet or on the bus; at home or at the office; at the library or at fiancee’s home; while watching television or exercising. I like to think that I’m always learning something new, something to apply to life, such that I can live it somehow better.

But, alas, I am but a vorarious reader. I cannot say that I am an effective reader, nor can I can say that I am a vorarious learner. Ask me to give a review of a book I read, say, last week, and I’d look at you blankly as if you asked me to guess the number of moles the average monkey had.

“I think that it was the car,” my mom said over dinner, “that kept me going in my job.”

When I first heard this I didn’t realise just how counterintuitive it was. My mom was referring to how important she felt the car was in for her keeping her job. It wasn’t that her job needed it, it was that she needed it to keep her going at her job. I’m not sure how serious she was when she said this, but even if it was only partly tongue-in-cheek, it was quite an insight.

I suppose I never thought about it that way before. To me, a car was what you got when you were relatively higher-income or well-off; it was an end after money issues were settled, and not a means to an end where money issues were settled. Who knew — although normally classified an expense, it could just be the thing to keep you going.

How unpredictable life is.

I just caught a really old show on TV, where the song You Were Meant for Me was played. I thought it was beautiful.

I received my name card today — my very first name card! It’s certainly a personal milestone for me. I remember when I was still in primary school, taking a stack of my dad’s name cards and pretending they were mine; I’d go around and pretend I was a businessman, giving out these name cards like they were my own — oh how proud I was!

When I told the fiancée today, she seemed even more excited than me. I’ve saved the first for her.

I recently read an article on how an author went around interviewing rich people in an attempt to find out their “secrets to success”. What he found was that these rich people tended not to seek money for its own sake. In essence, the author found that you should pursue what you love, for the money will follow. Those who seek money for its own sake are doomed to failure.

This recommendation made some sense. Doing what you love should lead you to want to do it more and doing it more should lead to an increased skill in doing it. As you get better at what you do, you have increasingly fewer competitors who can compete with your skills, allowing you to charge more for your services. But as much as I’d like to agree with this very romantic notion of do what you love and the money will follow, I find a few serious flaws with the author’s findings.

Firstly, you have to be able to monetise what you love to do. It is of no monetary use being able to balance a straw on your nose if you can’t figure out a way to make money out of it. It takes more than just love for a particular activity to make money from it.

Secondly, such findings cannot be verified unless a similar study was conducted on the less wealthy, and it was found that they were seeking money for its own sake and not loving what they did – in other words, the study lacked a control group. Many people could love what they did while still earning less than those who hated what they did.

Finally, I was reminded on how my enjoyment to any activity often depended on my success in it. For example, when I was pretty good at football, I found that my enjoyment of it rose; and when I was bad at it, I tended not to enjoy it as much. If I were a rich man who enjoyed his riches, I’d probably tend to think of what I did in a more positive light. It’s really difficult to tell which came first: the money or the enjoyment?

I’m all for the idea that you should do what you love and the money will follow. But I’m just not so confident that the logic works. Many people love what they do but the money doesn’t follow, while others hate what they do while watching the money roll in. It’s also too hard to tell when the enjoyment started – did you like your job before you started getting rich from it, or did you start liking your job after you started getting rich from it?

I’m currently undergoing one of the worst bouts of sickness I’d ever undergone in a long, long time. Fever, cough, a sorethroat so bad swollowing my own saliva feels like swollowing glass, a running nose, and to top it off, a body ache brought about by Sunday’s 10km trail run. I’m in ridiculous pain.

Thank goodness for a supportive family and our trusty Nissan Sunny. Thank you mom for the countless trips home from the MRT, which though were only 10 minutes walk away felt like a marathon in my condition. Thank you dad for the sudden inclination to go out to buy me cans of coconut juice and chrysanthmum tea; it helped me sleep much better at night.

And thank goodness for a wonderful fiancee who came down from Jurong the previous night armed with six bottles of “Three Arms Cooling Water”, a box of Strepsils, two cans of Coke and two cans of 100 Plus, and two blocks of some random Chinese medicinal sugar concotion.

I’m blessed, I know.

I think that I had neglected to tell you that I went for my confirmation appraisal just the other day (last Thursday). What that means is that I am now a confirmed permanent staff of my present company. Just like to express to my company my sincere thanks, and that I’m filled with gratitude that I was hired when I was, and thankful to fate or God that it was for this position.

I’d also like to congratulate my company for an excellent hire; you have made a great choice, and you cannot believe how lucky you are to have me.

A couple of days ago I had a talk with a good friend of mine, also an aspiring entrepreneur, regarding entrepreneurship. Though we shared many similar thoughts regarding this subject, it was when we differed that I learned the most. At one point of our conversation, the reasons why we were so driven toward becoming an entrepreneur came up.

“To get out of the corporate life,” he said, looking at me for evidence of agreement. But I didn’t (couldn’t) say anything; instead, I returned him a look that said, “Really? Well, I’d like to know why, please go on.”

He paused for a while before asking me, “don’t you dislike the corporate life?”

I smiled and replied, “no.”

“You mean you like your job?” he asked incredulously.

“Yes,” I said. “I pretty much like my job. I don’t know if I’ll like it a few years down the road, but right now I’m really enjoying it.”

“Still,” I added, “I’d like to start my own business.”

His remark on escaping corporate life surprised me; but perhaps even more so, was my reaction to it. In a way, the surprise may come from hearing how terrible “corporate life” was one too many times, that I just assumed that I hated my job when I didn’t.

I really do enjoy my (day) job, and it never occurred to me that starting my own business would be a way to get away from it. For me, it was never a case of “either/or”; there was never a question about my leaving my job — or at least not for the first few years.