The most important things are the hardest things to say. They are the things you get ashamed of, because words diminish them - words shrink things that seemed limitless when they were in your head to no more than living size when they're brought out. But it's more than that, isn't it? The most important things lie too close to wherever your secret heart is buried, like landmarks to a treasure your enemies would love to steal away. And you may make revelations that cost you dearly only to have people look at you in a funny way, not understanding what you've said at all, or why you thought it was so important that you almost cried while you were saying it. That's the worst, I think. When the secret stays locked within not for want of a teller, but for want of an understanding ear. – Stephen King

Don’t be afraid to be a fool. Remember, you cannot be both young and wise. Young people who pretend to be wise to the ways of the world are mostly just cynics. Cynicism masquerades as wisdom, but it is the farthest thing from it. Because cynics don’t learn anything. Because cynicism is a self-imposed blindness, a rejection of the world because we are afraid it will hurt us or disappoint us. Cynics always say no. But saying yes begins things. Saying yes is how things grow. Saying yes leads to knowledge. “Yes” is for young people. So for as long as you have the strength to, say yes.

Things in life are not always as they seem. When you listen, for instance, to someone talking, there is another voice beneath his words. Even if you hear clearly what he is saying. The real truth is much deeper.

“I must learn to love the fool in me—the one who feels too much, talks too much, takes too many chances, wins sometimes and loses often, lacks self-control, loves and hates, hurts and gets hurt, promises and breaks promises, laughs and cries. It alone protects me against that utterly self-controlled, masterful tyrant whom I also harbor and who would rob me of human aliveness, humility, and dignity but for my fool.” – Theodore I. Rubin

People change, no matter how hard they try not to. As you grow older you mature, and with each new level of maturity come different ideas, different needs and wants. The person who was perfect for you at twenty could be the person you hate when you’re thirty-five. You have to find some one who will grow with you, change with you, laugh with you and cry with you. A person who fills in where you lack, a person whom you can fill in for when they are lacking. But what about the perfect person, you ask? They do not exist. There are no perfect people, only people who are perfect for each other. You deserve to be happy not in the arms of someone who keeps you waiting but in the arms of someone who will take you now. – J.M. Whitaker

N.B. before I start on this post proper, I figure it would only be right for me to admit that I'd never gone for any DesignSingapore lectures before, and while I'd heard of IDEO before… I had no idea who Tim Brown is.  So, this account of Change By Design: A DesignSingapore Lecture Series will be written purely from a layman's POV. That said, I did hear that a fair bit of what he said was just rehashing things he'd talked/written about before… guess I'll just have to do some research on him later.

Design Thinking: The integration of desirability (what humans need), technological feasibility, and economic viability.

Design → design thinking: fundamental principles
• It all starts with the human
– consider culture and context. while feasibility and viability may be considered at this point, the most important thing of all is: what humans want.
– more than good ergonomics, it's about understanding the motivation and perceptions of the people you're designing for.

• building to think
– learn by making things.
– prototypes speed up the process; test them to learn about your product.

• experimenting through protoypes
– here, he told us about Nelson, Coupland and Alice, all part of IDEO's vision of The Future of the Book.

• from consumption to participation
– shift from passive relationships between a producer and a consumer… to active engagement.

• a culture of service
– brands from corporations and institutions are no longer determined/judged by what they say (e.g. through marketing/advertising channels), but by what they do… through mutual interaction between the product and the consumer.
– very rare for stakeholders to know the entire customer process, but it's an important component.

• the challenges of behaviour change
– behaviour is impacted/influenced by people up to 3º of separation away, i.e. your friend's friend's friend.
– also affected by rules, tools and (social) norms.
– the right design intervention (as opposed to regulation) can also change behaviour.

• design is too important to be left to designers
– involve everyone; be more open with the innovation process for design/product improvement.

• from stories to movements
– good ideas don't sell themselves; innovation needs storytelling.
– important to invent new ways of encouraging active participation, i.e. movement.

During divergence we are creating choices, and during convergence we are making choices.

But the most important thing of all, and the first step towards better design thinking is: START ASKING QUESTIONS!

And here are some parts from the panel discussion after:
• Chris Lee of Asylum, on the best advice to give a young designer, "BELIEF. Because the crazy ones who believe they can change the world, do."

• Tim Brown, on the death of designers because of design thinking (which involves everyone), he quoted someone (I can't for the life of me remember who), "I'm an author, but I don't tell other people they can't write."

Everyone says that caring for the caregiver is just as important as caring for the one with special, usually medical, needs. But you never really know how true that statement is… until you experience it, as I did this past weekend.

Some years back, my maternal grandma was diagnosed with senile dementia. At first, we just had to cope with the same questions being repeated countless times within an hour. Then, as the disease started to rob her of her mental faculties, she would get easily agitated when we couldn't quite comprehend what she was trying to say. Needless to say, it took a great toll on my mum, her primary caregiver.

It meant that Mum rarely went on a holiday because she knew grandma's drug allergies and kept track of all her appointments (she was/is seeing an opthamologist, psychiatrist/geriatric doc and orthopaedist). And on the rare occasion that she did go away, it would be with Dad on a company trip, and she'd be gone for no more than a long weekend.

Finally, after yet another hospital stay last year (Grandma fell down at home because she refused to use a walking aid), the decision was made to place her in a home where she would be taken care of. (I refrain from using the phrase 'well taken care of', because we all know it's not true.)

At first, she visited every day… then as Grandma's condition continued to deteriorate, she cut back to two visits a week. After all, it didn't matter anymore because Grandma couldn't keep track of time. This also meant that she could go away for slightly longer periods of time, so she visited Japan last year, and we all went to Hong Kong earlier this year.

This past weekend, Mum and Dad went to Malacca, so it was up to my brother and I to take care of Grandma, who'd been admitted to hospital the previous week.

I was apprehensive, because I knew that Mum was the only one who could really handle her. Coupled with my (occasional) impatience with her repeated questions, I honestly wasn't sure how we'd all survive the weekend without bloodshed.

But all things considered, I think we handled it really well.

Perhaps Grandma knew that she couldn't bully us the way she bullies Mum. And that grandchildren in general these days aren't very good with the whole filial piety thing. So the fact that we turned up at every block of visiting hours, chatted with her, answered all her questions about when he was going to give her a great-grandchild, and when I'd be getting married (repeatedly)… meant a lot to her. I know, because she thanked us profusely on one of the days. It was an absolutely random act that took us both by surprise.

And we made it through the weekend without so much as a hint of an argument. My brother and I, that is. Which, if you know us both well enough, is quite rare.

So, Mum returned from the trip last night, happy and well-rested, and I know our stellar report of the weekend, peppered with anecdotes of Grandma's antics, added to her happiness, too… 'cos for once it meant that she didn't have to get on our case about how I should lighten up and ignore my brother's nonsense (which I do for most part… until he starts making disparaging remarks about my life).

In short, my point is that caregivers need a break every now and then to keep sane. I know my mum's belief in God gets her through many a tough time with Grandma, but that's just not enough. She needs to spend time recharging on a regular basis by being physically away from Grandma.

It's not easy (Mum can be quite a control freak), but she has to learn to let go bit by bit. Because one day Grandma won't be around anymore, and when that happens, the loss may hit her even harder than it should, simply because she wouldn't know what to do with all the extra time and energy.

If you have a caregiver in your family, make sure you take good care of them. Don't be afraid to step up to the 'challenge' of taking over the caregiver position every now and then. Trust me, it really helps, because caregiving, for most part, is a thankless job.

N.B.: this post is a reproduction of this Facebook note.

Don’t write zephyr when you mean wind. Don’t write fart when you mean break wind. Don’t write azure to describe the sky or the sea. Don’t write menacing to describe clouds or guard dogs. Don’t write plethora when you mean many. Don’t write altercation when you mean fight. Don’t write quixotic when you mean brave.

Don’t use your finger to try achieving equal spacing between your words. Don’t be demoralized by the hidden word fool in foolscap paper. Don’t use more than three dots when you want to write your ellipses, it doesn’t mean that the more dots there are the more mysterious your sentence, nor does it mean that each dot is equivalent to the root of every hair follicle you expect to incite to horripilation. Don’t write horripilation when you mean standing on end.

Don’t make your ellipses rise and fall like the flight path of a butterfly. Don’t use three apostrophes as a quotation mark even if what is said was told by a friend of a friend. Don’t forget to use commas even if you have set the class record for holding your breath underwater.

Don’t write Suddenly at the beginning of your sentences when you want to introduce one surprise after another. Don’t write the full moon/the creaking door/the cobwebbed room/his bloodshot eyes/her cackling laugh in your horror story. Don’t write horror stories.

Don’t end with I woke up and it was all a dream. Don’t end with lying in a pool of blood your eyes growing heavy footsteps fading, which is the same thing.

Don’t write sleepy when you mean tuition. Don’t write fear when you mean forgetting to bring your PE attire to school. Don’t write jealous when you mean mummy has brought home a new baby. Don’t write longing when you mean daddy has not come home from work and you are counting the cars in the car park from the window. Don’t write loss when you mean the smell of the batik hammock stretched between mummy’s knees. Don’t write shame when you mean daddy heading straight for the bargain bin when he buys you your first pair of track shoes. Don’t write loneliness when you mean the woolly crayon scrawling in an alphabet book you once owned.

Don’t write about the saddest day of your life, unless you are able to dapple your sheet of paper with tearstains, as proof.

Don’t write about the happiest day of your life, even if this is the assigned topic, because it is possible that the experience exceeds language, your language. Don’t believe those who say write what you know, the more important thing now is to write what you have, so choose a day when you were moderately, not indescribably, happy.

Don’t assume however that your life means only the one that others have witnessed, and not the lives you have lived in your head. Don’t hesitate then to write about the hundred-balloon birthday party/the beach picnic where you swam to the horizon and touched it and swam back/the suicidal goldfish revived by water/the first prize, although it would be more convincing to the marker to say second prize, because there might be one more deserving of being first, but you are no less deserving of the happiness you feel by coming in second.

Don’t keep choosing to write the argumentative essay, again and again, unless you are certain that one day you will write fiction and find your freedom ignoring the tips above, again and again.

(For Neth)

The best moments in reading are when you come across something - a thought, a feeling, a way of looking at things - which you had thought special and particular to you. And now, here it is, set down by someone else, a person you have never met, someone even who is long dead. And it is as if a hand has come out, and taken yours.

I am convinced that no one loses anyone,
because no one owns anyone.
That is the true experience of freedom:
having the most important thing in the world
without owning it.