AI v me - Competing on verse and soul

Recently, I had some time so I decided to give ChatGPT a spin.   I asked it some deep existential questions. Nah.  Actually I just asked it (is that the right way to address ChatGPT in terms of its gender identity? I guess we will only know when ChatGPT publishes its/their profile on Linkedin and adds the parentheses on pronouns/genders) some questions on recent books and short writing assignments I was considering.  First of all, I congratulate the ones who conceptualised, programmed and created ChatGPT.  It is brilliant and I can understand why Microsoft wants to fire employees and find the budget to invest in it (I am sure those employees are less understanding than I am).  I think this proves beyond doubt that AI has already begun replacing humans at least in terms of the balance sheet numbers for companies. 

The focus of my search was related marginally to this theme of AI replacing humans.  But I am not an engineer or a coder, despite my lack of trying (you saw what I did there?), only a recent born-again closet writer and a spiritualist so I will aim to test out ChatGPT only in matters of verse and soul.  Less action, more words.  Here we go:

--

Poem 1:

Eros, the god of love and desire,

With bow and arrow, hearts he'll inspire.

He brings passion and ecstasy,

In every heart, a flame will be.

Ponos, the god of toil and work,

With strength and sweat, he'll make us perk.

He brings discipline and perseverance,

To reach our goals, with tireless endurance.

Eros and Ponos, two sides of the same coin,

One brings joy, the other toil and toil.

But both play a role in our lives,

Eros for love, Ponos for strive.

Eros brings us to the heights of pleasure,

Ponos helps us to measure,

The strength of our will and our might,

To overcome obstacles, day and night.

Eros and Ponos, together they'll guide,

To a balanced life, with love by our side.

We'll work hard, and love with all our heart,

With Eros and Ponos, we'll never depart.

---

Poem 2:

Eros and Ponos had never met, not while they lived in Greece at the same time,  

But they lived in her mind, co-existed while living parallel lives, always by her side.

She lived in a state of constant search, 

Always seeking the next Tinder date, the next Linkedin job alert,

Forever driven by Eros and egged on by Ponos.

One day she decided she would take them out for drinks instead of the Google engineer she had found on Bumble,

Her intentions focused on making the twain meet and settle the Battle of her Headspace (rather than an evening of retrenchment grumble). 

Why, she asked, can you not join forces and help me find joy in career and love?

Your methods so similar, your rejection so cold and that elusive success of legends old. 

I have danced the dance of strengths and weaknesses with many a senior interviewer,

Eluded the advances of unsuitably budgeted startup roles,

Only to be left at the altar by my bad lover dream job.  

 

Many a long and impressive resume have had me swooning after dreamy bankers,

There was speed bed-working, intense love-storming but they all burnt out after the all-nighters, 

Finally I signed on the contract to be employed forever,

How would I know it would end with a cold email break-up?

Eros smiled her charming smile while Ponos stopped frowning for a while,

There is no separating us in your mind, my child.

Ponos exists to make you work but there is no Eros without work,

Careers aren’t forever but skills built on the job can be.

Love can be forever, as long as you loved yourself first,

The Tale of Eros and Ponos is the Tale of Eternity,

Of every human, of you.

 ---

Your job is to tell me which one ChatGPT wrote and which one is mine.  I wont mind if you like Chat GPT's version better but you may not like the near future of homo sapiens much in that case. Let me know y'all? I will be chatting up ChatGPT some more in the meantime. 

2022 going on 2023: Rabbit to the Tiger

 

What did the Rabbit say to the Tiger: its ok if you missed reflecting on 2022 changing to 2023 – new years differ in every culture (western and Chinese in this case) so its fair to reflect on either (or both).  I am writing this at the end of the Chinese year festivities but reminiscing about the Western year end celebrations, so I am doing both I guess. 

2022 or year of the Tiger (also my Chinese zodiac coincidentally) was a year which made me both sanguine and wary about the human condition.

It was a year I completed a record number of interviews, got a record number of offers and then ended up without any job at all for 1.5 months (all records are judged against my own previous ones).  It was therefore a year where I realized I am much more than my job and my career and the vagaries of any employer. 

It was a year where some friendships and relationships seemed fuller and more enriching than ever while others dulled maybe never to flower again.  It was also the year I realized that the deepest wounds can hurt less if the balm of love and family can be applied at the right time.

It was a year where I finished reading Sapiens and Conscious Parent and internalized both within my parenting and in life only to wonder where the parent ends and the child begins.   

It was a year when travel came back in full force and the term ‘revenge travel’ was born after COVID mostly retreated.  But for once I didn’t feel any FOMO.  Travelling less, travelling well and travelling with the right people became paramount and the most enjoyable. 

It was a year where inner richness was the focus by concentrating on meditation and breath-work so that even when the outer world seemed uncontrollable (and it is, always uncontrollable) I could begin to control my anxiety and inner world more efficiently.

Finally, it was a year where I realized that happiness comes from everything when my mind is in the “right” place (right brain- relationship oriented while left brain- task oriented) but no one dictates whether, why or when I can be happy.  Only I hold that power, truly.   

1^st of January 2023 was exactly that sort of irreconcilably happy day with some of the best people in my life.  2023 and Year of the Tiger both look good to me right now.

Metaphorical Hostages

 

Back in 2017, I got this book “Hostage at the Table” from IMD Business School, Lausanne with my admission confirmation.  It was my MBA application phase and I was trying out all my next level choices after getting a #rejection from my first choice school: INSEAD.  I was also dealing with major imposter syndrome to think I could really make something out of doing a full-time MBA with six years of law firm experience.  This was reinforced by conversations with recent #lawyer-MBAs or just MBA grads in general involving difficulties finding jobs in the UK during Brexit, procuring a visa in Europe for a Non-European, dealing with student debt and the prospect of having to start another career path at a junior position along with various personal considerations.  Looking back, I don’t think all of these were really valid objections in themselves as I can certainly refute each of them now with very carefully crafted arguments and examples learnt with the wisdom of age (and #Linkedinstalking) but sometimes gut instinct excels in creating so-called logical arguments. 

I digress. Going back to George Kohlrieser’s Hostage at the Table, invites from some top-notch business schools in UK and Europe and my head trapped in a “hostage situation” as per the classic explanation from the author: “any time you feel entrapped, powerless and helpless, you are, in fact a hostage”.  This #metaphorical hostage situation was only broken by applying and getting accepted to be a part-time MBA student at NUS Business School while continuing to work full-time.  I loved living in Singapore.  I was (and am) bullish on Asia.  On the other hand, it was nothing like I had ever imagined my MBA journey to be.  That is both a positive and a negative statement just as the best oxymorons tend to be. 

I completed in April 2020 and so much has happened since.  Not even counting the Covid Blip.  I am still working primarily as a lawyer so many people ask me what I “gained” out of the MBA? I always flip it back to say – what does anyone gain out of most things in life?  Just experiences, memories and certain unmeasurable intangible benefits.  I hate justifying life choices and I will not pretend that I have not questioned and examined myself tediously on the same question.  Do I regret declining IMD and the others who had graciously offered me a spot and a chance at a different life? Maybe.  But as I completed reading Kolhrieser’s (incidentally a professor at IMD I missed learning directly from) master-piece, one quote jumped out at me and still does: “you have the right to choose to do whatever you want”.  So simple yet so powerful.  And today as Singapore celebrates its 57^th Birthday, I celebrate my first as a permanent resident here.  Knowing that any other choice would have led me away from this exact moment which is perfect in its completeness and its incompleteness. Majulah Singapura.          

Mum, Uninterrupted.

 

Today I met a Perfect Mum.  Everything she does revolves around her children.  She is selflessly giving, she cooks perfectly nutritious meals for them, puts her rest and hobbies and friends aside to care for them and play with them.  She is genuinely happy when they are happy and sad when they are sad.  But somewhere inside she is silently screaming.  Where is the joie de vivre promised from motherhood, she asks?

 

I am not the right person to answer, I tell her.  I am an Imperfect Mum.  I question the long work hours spent away from my child but I know I do it because I value any skills I can bring to better this world and make a living at the same time. I do date nights and vacations with the man I love, even more so because he fathered my child and is my equal partner in bringing him up.  I meet new friends and chase old friends I still care about even though they sometimes seem too lost to remember me.  I go for massages when I am tired and aching from my workouts on a weekend which I should spend completely with my child.  I feel happy and guilty that we can afford good help but jealous of her that she spends more time with my child than me.  I compartmentalize the time I spend with my child everyday even (gasp!) scheduling it into my calendar. But when we are together, nothing else matters.  Time stops in his eyes and his smile and oh, how we dance, how we giggle.     

 

I never believed I could be a mum as the only mum I knew was a Perfect Mum, my own mum.  Just like you.  But as I grew up and reflected on some snippets of my childhood, I realized she wasn’t as Perfect.  In the constraints of her own middle class Indian life, she found time to learn and sell hand-made clothes, learn and take pottery classes and has slowly evolved to be a loved social and community leader.  She confessed she was jealous of my grandmother spending more time with me while she toiled away in the kitchen preparing meals for us or taking care of the home.  She longed to go out for movies with my father and when I was older, she did and they took vacations away from me too, just the two of them.   

 

She taught me to embrace being an Imperfect Mum and that is the only way I know to break free and enjoy Motherhood, not suffering alone but enjoying as part of a team.   I know many Imperfect Mums and this Mother’s Day I want to tell them how perfect they are, just as they are.  Let’s accept the guilt and look at finding our Joie de Vivre in the everyday.   

Frame of Mind

                                                                     

                                                                       Frame of Mind

                                I sit here, pearls of luxury dripping like tears of misery,

                                        She sits by a life-worn single bed, with her heart's delight;

                                I am all practicality, boring and poised,    

                                        She is all flimsy, silliness undestroyed;

                                My solace is my screen, pretending I am important,

                                        Alone but never lonely , giggles and snuggles;

                                 Money-making, me:    

                                           Everyone bows to me,

                                  Merry-making, her:

                                            Life bows to her.

Sleep is a funny thing

 

Its normal for you, natural, easy, thoughtless

For me its like a two headed dragon wolfing down my Hans Im Gluck burger

Ok, I kid

It’s like a two headed dragon with 5 feet fangs breathing Extra Hot Nando’s sauce down my throat

I sweat buckets

My pounding heart sounds louder than Metallica at an indoor concert

And sometimes I feel like I have a protest rally going on in my mind

All this while lying on my cushiony mattress, on silken sheets

Ah, the sarcasm of the half empty glass in a glass half full world

Pills, therapies, Internet articles, mirror mirror on the wall

All served a limited self on a limited time stamp

  Waking nightmares imagined, not real

Stress the driver of an imagined freight-train of worry and sleeplessness

And the two-headed dragon grows evermore on wings of imagined realities

Feeding and slurping away on my beauty sleep

Are they that fictitious- my nightmares?

Or do they tell me a tale I dare not heed during the day?

A tale of unfulfilled dreams and out of reach desires

Of purposes undiscovered and of friends who abandoned

But that’s the story of every life

We are all Shakespearan comedies and tragedies

On stage today and off tomorrow

The peace I seek in sleep is to be found in my heart and my soul

In knowing that shutting my heart isn’t avoiding pain, its avoiding love

And that the two headed dragon isn’t the enemy of my sleep

If I could get past the fire, its only telling me a hard truth

Life isn’t about sleep, sleep follows life

As I pat the two-headed dragon into the pillow, we decide to make peace for just this one night

Tomorrow is another day, another hope for dreamlike living.

Mothers of the world- kudos!

Mothers Day is a manufactured concept but the concept of mothers is far from that.  There is no one uniform way of describing them because they are all different and they are all human.  I could not fathom being one as I thought it was the hardest job in the world and I am too selfish to care about someone that much.  Now I have to change the 'they' to 'we' as I am elevated to that position in life.  And it is true - it is one of the hardest jobs in the world and it is never-ending.  But controversially enough, I dont think being a mother means you are selfless.  Selfless would be taking care of other people's babies without any remuneration but for yours, it is a biological drive to take care of them (you think babies evolved into mini war-crying machines by chance?).  That doesnt mean mothers arent super-heroes - they truly are, we truly are (yep humble pie!) for our children.  That love cannot be replicated.  Ever.

So I sit here today, missing my mother and hugging my baby reflecting on everything that has happened in the last 14 months.  Pregnancy was a breeze and depicted above (the question mark is pre-pregnancy test) and the last month was punctuated by baby's arrival a bit early so no photos that month except of cutie.  The whirlwind of breastfeeding, sleeping (and not sleeping), crash course in diaper changing and bathing babies and the feeling of having two brains in one head which is permanent but gets more synergistic as months roll on.  So whether hypnobirthing, lamazing, c-sectioning, breastfeeding, bottle feeding, latching, sleep training, not sleep training, co-sleeping, day-caring, nanny-using, pre-schooling, homeschooling etc etc - you are the only and the best for your baby.  Happy Mothers Day, wonder women!