欣。雨。: Never never never give up

On 2nd March 2011, I had a 2-hour phone interview with Shin Min Daily, as a owner of 添芬藍.
My first interview with a media.
Previously, when TFL was featured in NTUC Lifestyle magazine last Nov, no interview was required as it was just a write-up on TFL's products.

Credit: NTUC Lifestyle magazine, Nov 2010

The call was over in a whizz and didn't feel like 2 hours.
The reporter requested for a face-to-face interview but I preferred a phone interview.

And you know Murphy's Law?
The interview was to start from 3pm onwards but I was too swamped with work and had it changed to 4pm, at 2plus.
My phone was running on low battery 15 mins before the call and had to be hurriedly charged.
When I finally sat down at my work desk and waited for the call to come in, nerves set in.

The interview went smoothly, though in a blur. I hope what comes out in print is reflective of what I felt indeed. I somehow felt that I didn't expressed myself accurately. Haha!

Shin Min Daily is my parents' favourite newspaper for the past decades. It's the only newspaper I read at home since Pri School.

Credit: www.sph.com.sg

Well, there's no other papers actually. =P

There was a time when I was crazy over "The Legend of Condor Heroes", I would read Shin Min for the stories，

Credit: women.zaobao.com.sg

and those days when I loved reading 秋芙信箱, an Aunt Agony column, for her sharp-witted words & straight-to-the-point answers.

My love for Chinese flourished.

各語言當中，我覺得華語是最有深度、最能夠表達細膩的情感。

So what an amazing arrangement by Fate that Shin Min approached me, and not other publications! =D
By the way, my dad won't be able to read the English papers.

When I saw the email from Shin Min, my first thought was my mum.

During this year CNY, my mum was telling me how Auntie M's son was featured on Business/Straits Times for his business.

We are around the same age and Mum has this habit of comparing our achievements since young.

Be it our studies (which subject gets how many marks etc), our success in life, our assets, my mum will always compare and never fail to tell me how much I pale in comparison.

It doesn't matter if I score 80 marks for Maths (a subject that I am terrible at), because Auntie's M son got 98.

I don't like it. Honestly. Naturally.
When we both ended up in NUS Bizad, I was telling my mum, "See, I'm also as good as him! We're in the same course!"
But after Bizad, the son went to Chicago to further his studies. His family was loaded and paid for his girlfriend to be there to study too.
Me? SQ never fly to Chicago at that time, and neither did I.

I know Mum is not ashamed of me.
She just wanted me to be better in everything I do and not settled for being mediocre.
Next time I should show you how big the potraits of me in my graudation gown & my SQ uniform are.

They are hung proudly at my mum's living room for the past 9 years.
I hate it. Mum adores it.

During one of the mornings when Mum 'sms-ed' me, I replied, adding that,

"Your favourite newspaper is going to interview me. When it's out, let you know"

Her reply was hilarious:

I wonder why Mum put inverted commas for 'Lucky'.

It still feel weirds 'sms-ing' my Mum sometimes, especially when she types in the same casual way as my friends. =P

And anyway, I know she's delighted. I hope she will be happy to see the interview in print and probably get annoyed why I did not want to show face. Haha! =D

The interview felt like a reminiscence of the past 2 years plus.

There were more left unsaid and the call ended with me feeling this:

When I was in Uni, I had this slogan on a motivational poster with a sand-coloured puppy standing in the midst of a strong wind. His fur & floppy ears were flying to the side, one smacked right across his face, his face was scrunched up and his body was already tilted sideways.

But he was standing firm, with his 4 little paws clutching to the ground, and refused to budge.

It was very inspiring to me then.

I tried googling for the poster, but I couldn't find it. =(

There are girls who have emailed me, seeking advice in how I changed my career path and what it took for me to really do it.

Honestly, I don't think I did anything inspiring/brave/great.
If you had read my initial posts, you would know it's a twist of fate that I ended up doing Tian Fen Lan.

But I guess many ladies out there wish to do something that they can call their own.

It's always difficult to take that first step, but like what I wrote in some of my replies to the girls:

" Don't take on too big a risk and be unable to try again next time. Put in what you can afford to lose."

"Safe jobs are great for accumulating the financial stability, which will  give you the strength & courage to chase after our 'creative'  dreams. =)"

"You have to be stubborn (& analytical) enough to believe in your vision because the people around you might never give you the affirmation that you seek. If you keep waiting for it, you probably will never start anything at all. When time brings other commitments into your life, your dream will burst like a bubble."

"When all else fails or nobody around you gives you the encouragement you  seek, only the reason & determination (otherwise known as  stubborness) will keep you going."

I started TFL at age 29. A age when my peers are doing very well in their corporate careers.

I never had one before and looking at the way things are moving, I probably never will.

Sometimes I feel out of place when I meet them. You know how corporate people have this corporate aura around them?

And me? I work in my PJs. Haha!

Even the man I 'm married to made a note that I've never really worked in the private sector, and in other words, shouldn't tell him what he should do with his career.

Among all these negative feelings that pop in sometimes, I do enjoy the creative part of Tian Fen Lan's work and I like seeing TFL bags on customers, when I'm out.

I was very delighted when I saw R12 Herms Vintage on a customer at Takashimaya basement the other day.

It was like, "Wow! For a customer to bring a TFL-manufactured bag to Orchard, she must had find it really pretty!". =D

The reporter from Shin Min was very cheery over the phone and her cheeriness did rub off on me.
I have never thought much of what TFL has achieved or if it's my baby born after a torturous labour and stuff like that.

I just, well, do it, amidst all the little problems that pop up along the way.

I don't feel that TFL is good enough. I always want to make it better.
I told the reporter so and she was encouraging me during the phone call.
Kinda ironical. I should be the one boasting to her how great/impressive/trendy/amazing Tian Fen Lan is but instead she's the one telling me how Tian Fen Lan has come a long way since she first saw the 'raw' blogspot site of Tian Fen Lan. =P

I can't help laughing when she used the word 'raw' to describe TFL's 1st blogspot site. Hahaha!

The interview and the long list of questions (12 in English, 31 in Chinese, boy, she really did her homework) that the reporter kindly sent me beforehand got me thinking.

I don't want to be the one who burst my own dream bubble.

I remind myself that I have always taken the path less trodden.
Heck, I was a librarian, shelving dusty books, repairing torn books with scotch tape & setting up the computerised system, in secondary school when everyone else is in a more 'happening' ECA.
And for that, I was the only one among my friends who got a Colours' Award at Sec 4.

None of my 20+ friends (some whom I had known for 10-15 years) that I first added on TFL's Facebook had bought from TFL, save for Ei Leen.

It doesn't matter.

I wish they buy but friends are not for commercial purposes.
And it only shows that TFL is not good enough for them yet.

My mum was very upset with my career choice & we did not speak for a while.

It doesn't matter.

I know she still loves me.

The man I am married to does not share my vision, finds a (his, specifically) corporate career more meaningful and plays Facebook games while I'm struggling with the emails.

It doesn't matter.
Since I was a little girl, Mum said never let your man tell you what you are capable of. Haha! =D

TFL will/can/shall/must go on.

So, ladies, if you really want to do something, plan it well, swing it into action, put in what you can afford to lose, and do it.
It might not be just about starting a business.
It can be something simple like:

picking up French again at Alliance Francaise, since you abandoned it years ago,
making time to cook more in varied styles (there's more than 1 way to steam a fish, you know), learning new recipes from noobcook.com or wokkingmum.blogspot.com & just having more fun shopping at Cold Storage/wet market,
learning tennis well so that your boyfriend/husband will not scorn at you openly when you try to do your serve,
finding & nuturing a talent/interest you have beyond the abilities you gain from working life,
doing backpacking around Europe for at least a month, or
take a year off and work in another country as a intern, volunteer or whatsoever.

No, don't tell me as a stewardess...

Okay, now I sound like I'm writing for Her World magazine.
But all the examples I mentioned above are what I myself & my friends experienced the last few years.

AND IT DOESN'T MATTER HOW OLD YOU ARE!
You can be 60 years old for all I care and why should that stop you from doing something new?
TELL ME TELL ME TELL ME!
Okay, let me tell you some family history:

1) Mum is one of the most resourceful & enterprising women I ever known.
While still doing business, she re-learnt the skill of packing hampers, at age 36.
She decided that buying hampers for clients is a waste of money, as those hampers available outside are priced too high and packed with low-value products.
So she drove to the wholesalers to buy good abalone, expensive hard liquor & a whole lot of great value stuff.

I was forced (I was 12 then) to go for a 1-day course at a floral training centre, where I learnt how to make those big ribbon balls to put at the top of the hampers.
For 3-5 years, every pre-X'mas & CNY period, I will be stuck at the office, churning out balls & balls & balls of ribbons and curling the ribbon ends with a swoosh of the scissors.
I get scolded badly by Mum if my ribbon balls come out, erm, not in a full bloom.
In return, I will tell Mum her hampers look too fat & lop-sided with so much goodies in them.
But her year-end hamper business is so good that every night, my parents will have to work OT to deliver all the hampers.

After my parents' business failed, Mum became an employee at the age of 40 for the first time in 20 years and is very well-loved by her boss & colleagues till now.
In fact, when she changed 2-3 jobs last year, the very same boss actually asked her back again.

2) My grandaunt learnt singing & became a part-time Karaoke Jockey for a RC club, at the age of 55.
Now she's 72, she's still a KJ for the aunties & uncles at her neighbourhood and she loves it.
I'm often amused when I refer to her as a KJ.

3) My dad learnt new cooking skills at the age of 50. Worked as a cook on and off and can prepare Buddha Jumps Over the Wall from scratch and not from some pre-made broth.
He can conjured practically anything in the Chinese menu and will make time to be a volunteer vegetarian cook for Buddhist events.
He lost his driving license previously due to traffic offences decades ago and was so hell bent on getting his license again that at age 66, he enrolled himself at Bukit Batok Driving Centre and went for theory lessons almost everyday.
He kept failing the theory mock tests & actual tests because my dad is illiterate though he had taught himself Chinese words over the years.
So he booked himself whole-day theory lessons for months and cramped himself in the computer room to familiarise himself.
He got his license a year later.
And drives his car around with a smug look on his face. -__-
Before that, he will scoot around Singapore on his beloved electric bicycle, which we totally disapprove but absolutely admire his guts for doing that.

Now you know why I don't like to give up easily. C.A.N.N.O.T lose to the seniors in my family! =D