He looked at my screen, saw the first draft of an e-mail I'd been penning, and shook his head. It wasn't pretty. It didn't read well. The message that should have been communicated within the first line was placed below another eight lines of filler. And to think I'd been working on this for the... Continue Reading →
Stars
Sitting on the swing, relaxing after a heavy dinner, Looking at stars I used to know more intimately, I reminisced about times that seemed so recent but Were (five, six, seven... no) fourteen years ago -- Half a lifetime away. I used to watch the stars as they crawled across The sky on restless nights... Continue Reading →
Going beyond economics
"So," he asked, "what should he do?" Straightforward as the question may seem, it was anything but. There were two tracks I could take: (1) the economic, rational track; or (2) the moral, slightly irrational track. I can't quite share with you what the exact nature of the discussion was, but the question would be... Continue Reading →
How to be Brilliant
The meeting droned on. Something about something was being said. Someone mentioned someone. Suddenly, the spotlight turned my way. "What do you think, Donn?" I was there, yes. But I wasn't. My mind was on dinner, due an hour ago. My mind was on my wife, waiting patiently for me, an hour now, for dinner.... Continue Reading →
Promote what you love
Promote what you love instead of bashing what you hate. Oh too true. #Singapore needs more of this type of thinking.
Running “barefoot” with shoes isn’t as silly as it sounds
It's been more than a year since I started running "barefoot" (and yes, I have to admit it was due to the book Born to Run -- one of my first of many, and still my favourite, book on running). I do not quite run "without shoes", but wear either my New Balance Nimbus or my... Continue Reading →
In the name of safety
I read a post by Alex Tabarrok today, regarding school safety in his son's school (via the Marginal Revolution blog) today. The post is really a letter that he'd written to his son's school principal, regarding the introduction of security guards and cameras. From the post (emphasis mine): When going to school requires police, security guards and cameras how... Continue Reading →
Towel pull-ups improved my pull-up max by 50%!
Since completing my full-time national service in the army in 2006, I haven't managed to do more than 12 pull-ups, generally fluctuating between a max of 10 and 12 (I could just about do about 13 in 2006), though I've maintained a pretty decent ready-for-eight-at-any-time standard (i.e. if you asked me to do pull-ups I'd... Continue Reading →
Analysis vs. Process
I'm currently reading a very nice book (so far) by Dan Heath called Decisive: How to Make Better Decisions in Life and Work, where I came across the following passage on analysis vs. process: When the researchers compared whether process or analysis was more important in producing good decisions—those that increased revenues, profits, and market... Continue Reading →
My year in review: On Writing and on Being
As we approach the end of the year and the beginning of the next, I've started thinking about resolutions and how I might make 2014 different (and better!) from all the other years I've had (almost 30 now). 2013 hasn't been the best. And though I wish I could say to you, "I won't bore... Continue Reading →
Donn, fragments 