I chanced upon a conversation that the 2 brothers doing my office renovation were having.

Bro 1: I going toilet.
Bro 2: Let’s go together.
Bro 1: (Looks quizzically) I’m going to wash my hands
Bro 2: Let’s go together!

Thought it was pretty funny, so I tweeted that short post on twitter.

Vicki then showed me a picture of two toilet bowls and I mentioned that I can much less pee, if there’s someone looking at me.

The funny thing that happened, the conversation escalated into ctham sharing about one guy who was pooping half way and then 3 girls walked in while he was doing his deed.

Then we touched upon the topic of butt enlightenment.

Some quotable quotes.

@thimerosa: My butt recognises my regular toilet bowl

@ctham: Your butt has gained sentience?

@thimerosa: My butt is awakened and on its way to enlightenment. But total acceptance of all bowls, will take some time….

@vickilew: Your butt is self-aware

It’s quite interesting, the kind of things we exchange on twitter. Perhaps that’s how it makes it so addictive. More quotes to come! (Maybe, they will turn up on tee shirts. Haha)

Edited:

Well, right after I posted this toilet entry, a little interesting google ad appeared under….

*End of Entry*

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Finally things have managed to slow down a little (just a little) and I sneaked back up here to do a little posting to record down my thoughts and what has been happening the past 2 weeks.

Vicki has been following the AWARE saga quite closely while I was away in Hong Kong / Guangzhou then just as I came back to Singapore, they held an EGM that particular night where she was following on Twitter. Someone mentioned that it’s a good idea to put the quips on the tees and voila. The tees were born. She uploaded on cafepress – got a pretty good response and it was only till around 11plus  when she saw me online (I just reached home from Guangzhou like few hours before) and she said, hey why not put it on Printeet.

We worked till 4am to get the stuff online and the rest is history.

I’m still pretty amazed cause things have been moving so fast and furious. We have this running joke between the both of us that she forced Printeet into production. We pretty much were almost done researching our tees but this AWARE event really accelerated the whole process.

Check out the tees here: http://www.printeet.com/bioniccreative

shutup and sit down

Some of the greatest things that I’ve learnt is really about speed, efficiency and listening to what the people really want and have to say. I think I’ve finally found a way to work around the family business structure and come up with a viable way to marry technology with brick and mortar type businesses.

I’ve been somewhat of an awkward kid when I was growing up. I was a fat kid who weighed 48kgs by the time I was 10, 60kgs when I was 12 and peaked at 75kgs when I was 16.  I only started losing some weight when I was 17 due to a random epiphany that struck me and made me start running at the stadium beside me. Of course it helped that one of my bestest friends, Pearl, was the National 400m record holder in Singapore at that time and she was sweet enough to care and encourage someone, who was almost like an anti-thesis (because I never liked to exercise) to her existence as a national athlete, to exercise and be healthy. Being a fat kid was tough. I had many dreams and hopes but all of them were smashed to smithereens because of my larger-than-life physique. I would like to share a couple of incidences that I could still remember from my past…

Incident 1:

I loved to dance. I joined a chinese dance class at a community centre when I was in Primary 3 with my best friend. It was like freedom of expression and it felt great that I could execute several complicated moves with ease despite my weight. It was only natural that I went to sign up for the chinese dance class in primary school when they opened up for the primary 4 students and boy was I really excited during my first lesson….. The teacher lined us all up in a line, walked down the row smiling at the students and when she reached my side, her smile faded and she said,

“The class is full, you’re more suited for Indian dance, would you like to try Indian dance instead?”

Later on, I heard her whisper to somebody else,

“She’s too fat to be in chinese dance”.

That really hurt. The pain still lightly hinges on me as I started to recollect this memory. I was pushed into the Indian dance class where I was the only chinese in it. I tried to be brave and attended a couple of lessons telling myself that it was ok. I should be honored that I am a Chinese learning the Indian dance. But that does not take away the fact that I was deprived of that chance to be in something that I loved just because I cannot fit into the costumes that they have. I can still remember when I watched the girls go up the stage in their beautiful costumes, I dare not admire them too much in fear that someone might think that I don’t know my place. Eventually I quit the Indian dance but continued with my private chinese dance lessons and had a solo duet public performance with my best friend on stage.

That was the last performance I ever had as a Chinese dancer. I guess a part of me never really felt I was good enough to be one.

Incident 2:

Chinese dance class in Primary 6. I was trying to do a stunt, bend backwards and try to stand up straight from the bridge position. I kind of knew I couldn’t do it but I really wanted to, just so I can prove that I could. Unfortunately, I slipped because my lower back could not take my weight and I remember feeling something shift in my spine before falling to the floor. I had a slipped disc and I thought I was going to die because I could not really move. I cried my heart out not because of the pain, but because I kind of knew that I can never be a dancer again.

Incident 3:

I was in Brownies and at that point in time in Primary 5, my Sixer (leader of the pack) had just graduated from primary school and there were empty shoes to fill. I was really excited, completing my exercises and getting my chops to become a Sixer. Just as I was a few steps away, the school told me that TAF (Trim and Fit club – the evil club for all over weight kids – ironically spelled as FAT backwards) club exercises clashes with brownies class and I needed to quit my Brownies to join the FAT TAF club. That was yet another devastating blow to me. Never have I loved something so much only to have it taken away from me just because I was overweight. And well you guessed it, I never really dared to like any activity a lot for a long time to come. These 3 incidences were just some of the many that happened to me in my growing up years. I wouldn’t say that those years were bad, but I definitely had my fair share of knocks that made me into somebody very terribly shy and self conscious. I managed to overcome that step by step and lost some of the weight but that is another story by itself.

I just hope that this little bare-it-all could shed some light about how it really feels to be in the shoes of somebody who is fatter than the normal average person and hope that we can be a little bit more compassionate to the bigger people around as they do get the brunt end of things more often than their slimmer counterparts.

Feel free to leave a comment or drop me an email if you have a fat story that you would like to share too…

Check it out here.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=Szt_kSpATjo

Download the full video here.

But what really moved me, literally to tears, was when I watched Britain’s Got Talent’s Susan Boyle. The purity of the human spirit and her fight for her dreams moved me. You can say that her soul, touched my soul, through her singing as a channel. This is amazing. You guys have to check it out.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=9lp0IWv8QZY

Remark 1
A fellow entrepreneur takes a jab at my business:

Your chatbox on your site adds a nice personal touch to your website, but honestly, it makes you seem like such a mom and pop shop. One man show. Not like ours.

What’s he really trying to say: A back handed insult to bring you down to his level so that you’ll give him a better deal.

Remark 2
Another one comes and say:

We like to work with companies that have huge potential for growth and sizeable market share. Hence, we cannot promise anything to you right now. We just want you to try out our service.

What’s he really trying to say: You are too small for us to consider you as a real customer, but then again, we don’t have enough customers, why don’t you come support us. See, I already came to your office just to talk to you. Even though you’re so small, but we still came, just that we don’t consider you as a real customer.

Remark 3:

Honestly speaking, though this might not land too well on you. You should just come under us.  There’s seriously, no potential for growth for your business.

What’s he trying to say: Since you can’t beat us like EVER in the next 50 years of your existence, you should join us.

Sometimes this is what I really want to do to the meanies...

I mean, we all take pride in the things we do. At least I do. I acknowledge that in these couple of years of growing up, I took one too many decisions that were not too wise, lost money in the process and had to restart the business from scratch, resulting in the online front looking like a one man show. I am working very hard right now to shift the business around and adopt a new model and this time, I think it will work. The “one man show” is only temporary while we shift our internal operations and fully utilise the 10 people that we have in the company. It is painful to hear these comments and still smile and take them in graciously when you know that you’re past your boiling point inside.

While I am pissed at the mean comments that have been thrown my way, it is also a reflection of the holes that I need to plug. I am present to the intensifying need to strike a balance between fun, professionalism and having a personal touch. So, let me try to figure that equation out.

I love the service that I am providing, and I want for everyone who uses our services to walk away happy. I’m in the business of making somebody else smile. I am never selling a product, I am selling an experience, that is what Printeet has been built upon.

It is tough being an entrepreneur, even tougher if you’re a lady, and toughest when you try to run an online business and you belong to techie based social networks where it is predominantly male. There are a whole lot more interesting stories to share

Hope this entry serves as a little piece to share with everyone some insights on what goes on in my life as a lady entrepreneur in Singapore.

Then and Now picture of my blogs

I’ve finally got my butt down to recreating my blog. It has always been my dream to own my own domain name since 1996 but there were a whole onslaught of excuses reasons that deterred me from doing so. (Too expensive, no idea how to do it, too ostentatious and so on…) But I do know, deep inside me, I’ve always envied my friends who have their own domain names where they can freely express themselves and I really want one for myself.

Hence I bought dionischiua.com more than 6 months ago. And like I said, 6 months just flashed by me like that while I procrastinated for god-knows-what reasons from creating a blog. (The list includes lack of energy, not my priority yada yada). Finally, a voice within my head just went, “JUST GET THE DAMN BLOG UP!”

And tada, I found a great theme and created this site within 30 mins.

Yes, I do own several blogs but I would like to consolidate them within this domain. Although my older blogs are pretty crappy, where I used to BMW (Bitch, Moan & Whine) in them, I kind of appreciate how they form a kind of time capsule for me where I watch myself grow from an angst-y young girl to the geeky geek and to the woman that I am right now.

Over the years, I’ve underwent many transformations, moving from somebody who was shy and hating people to someone who owns her own business and a life coach, being a service to the people around me.

I hope to use this blog as a way to express myself and become a permanent time capsule to document my growth as well as share my lessons with everyone out there.

I’m not sure how this is going to turn out but let’s go along with the flow shall we?