Jan 1

Jan 1 The Most Unusual Year - Reflections of 2020 (Part 2 of 3)

2. 2020 - The most unusual year

Yes it almost sounds like an understatement. Besides becoming a father in 2020, how I worked, lived and played have also been very unique in 2020.

WFH has been many things to many people - a necessity, major adjustment, bane, pain, source of ‘zoom fatigue’, strain on mental wellness, etc. and will inevitably become a norm for many companies down the road. I have mixed feelings on WFH, but looking back, most of it - a blessing esp. for a new parent. Being a self-professed workaholic, I’d very much prefer to be focused at work without any distractions. I remember in the beginning days of WFH, I was so worried I would seem unprofessional if Julian’s crying was ‘captured’ in my work video meetings - but it was inevitable. It became quite ‘comforting’ to know that I was not the only one who has this ‘issue’ of their children being overheard in work calls and there was no judgement or any deemed unprofessionalism. And then it became like a norm to expect to hear children in the background during work calls.

Pre-COVID19, there seemed to be a world where there’s a place for work (office) and there’s a separate place for life (home). And it seemed to be a great balance - at office you focus on work and you focus on family when you are home. All these went out of the window in 2020. I took some time to adjust to this now almost non-existent line between work and life. Which made me think - how did parents manage a newborn and work pre-covid? How did mothers manage (during the period mothers are still on maternity leave and fathers go back to work after exhausting paternity leave; and assuming parents do not send their newborn to infantcare and do not have external help)?! Which made me conclude - men has had it ‘easier’ - they have always been able to use “I need to go back to office to work” to get away from taking care of newborns in the daytime and not have to manage Zoom meetings with their babies crying.

Looking back, this WFH is a blessing - one which I can still get work done and also witness many milestones of my boy’s first year. It’s not something many fathers/parents can say.

Managing Work-life balance - picture taken in Jun 2020

With circuit-breaker (lockdown) in Singapore, I have not been able to do my usual HIIT classes and play football. With my home office just within metres, my drop in activity has resulted in huge weight gain in 2020. (Metabolism after mid-thirties is a b*tch, but that’s another rant for another day.) I ended up picking up working out from home, buying dumbbells from Decathlon, signing up for Personal Training (PT) which led me to take picture of my every meal everyday for a good 2 months. I have never thought I’d ever sign up for PT. I thought doing PT is the ‘smart’ way of outsourcing managing my fitness to a trainer that 1 hour per week - and I could get by not doing much outside that 1 hour. Obviously, it does not work that way - I stopped PT since and have been focusing on being more regular in my exercise routine and watching my diet. It’s just not funny not being able to fit my clothes anymore and have to buy a larger size.

At work, it has also not been business-as-usual. Shopping malls, who have typically viewed ecommerce platforms as competitors, started to approach Lazada during the circuit breaker period looking to work together. After many (not-so-straight-forward) conversations internally and externally, I was very happy to have led the partnership with 5 shopping malls, first-of-its-kind omnichannel parternship for an ecommerce platform in Singapore. (You can find the media articles and my Linkedin posts here.)