Trust is our superpower
Finding a lost watch. Trip to Margaret River.
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Hi!
We just got home from a family holiday to the Margaret River region in Western Australia a few days back. This was our third trip there , and it's a destination that holds a special place for us as we took our pre-wedding photos there.
The region has always charmed me, with it's amazing balance of a beautiful and vast countryside, yet still having all the comforts and luxuries that a city dweller like me will need. If I ever have the chance, I’d love to buy a holiday home there to live out a few weeks each year.
This was a challenging holiday though, and I'm feeling rather exhausted still. I fell sick in the few days before the trip, and then the kids and some of the adults starting falling sick too. It was also our first time managing the kids in the cold. Dealing with these, and also being in the middle of many different views of what an ideal holiday would look like left me rather drained.
Trust is Singapore’s greatest feature.
A few weeks ago I lost my smartwatch. Not the end of the world, but still distressing to be missing part of my everyday set up. After looking most places, we narrowed down a slim possibility I could have left it behind at a Starbucks I had been working in. I thought it was a long shot, but I called the outlet two days later. To my surprise, they had found it and kept it for me since then.
This incident reminded me of what I appreciate most about our little city. That we can trust our fellow Singaporeans. One random reel I watched had a girl talk about “the first thing she does when coming back to Singapore”, and she shifts her sling bag from front to back. I am sure we can all relate to this. How we can keep our guard so low in our daily life, confident that people around aren't looking for an opportunity to catch us unawares. We can leave a laptop unattended to buy food, or let our kids move about quite independently.
In that same week, I had someone let me know my bag was open while I was walking, and a complete stranger at the cafe ask me to watch her laptop while she went to the toilet. I love these micro interactions reminding me about how we can trust the people next to us.
Singapore is lots of things, good and bad. Above them all though, I believe that this trust in each other, in our systems, and in our safety, is a superpower.
Things move faster when functioning in an environment of trust. We can do so much more when we aren't busy looking over our shoulder. We can save our attention for other things rather than worrying about what others might do.
It's no wonder that organisations always want trust as their values. My current workplace, wavemaker, wants to be the most trusted VC. One of the Alibaba Group's (my previous workplace) core values is “trust makes everything simple”. Look around at any organisations values or slogans and this idea of trust is a common feature.
However our country develops, I hope this is the one thing we double down on, and keep alive more than anything else. As the world gets more competitive and more mobile, I believe this is what will keep us ahead.
Other things
Wired - Frog eats beetle. Beetle crawls through guts to escape.
One of those fascinating parts of nature I happened to find on the internet this week.
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James