Why did I really create this site?
I have a daughter - the love of my life, my raison d'être. Every day, I strive to be the father she deserves, the kind of parent I very fortunately had - who raised me to know that talk is cheap and BS walks, and to do what I can, with what I have (and then some).
My dad died young - I saw how hard my mom fought to keep everything together. She never had the luxury of hesitation - with 2 young kids, she just did what needed to be done. That lesson stuck with me.
This website is part of my multi-pronged approach to revenue resilience - something I never worried about until, amongst others, Baby G started school, which has been and will continue to be really expensive. Really really expensive. And no, I am not sending her to some fancy institution (watch the video). We live in Singapore, which holds the dubious honour of being the world's most expensive city (topping the Economist's Intelligence Unit's Worldwide Cost of Living survey 9 times in 11 years). By the time she starts primary school at age 7, I would have spent, by my count, at least S$120k (almost US$100k) on school fees alone (far more than my university education).
If you are here, reading this, chances are, you looked me up after a recommendation. Referrals account for almost my entire book of business (something I am immensely grateful for). This website exists to tell you what I think you should know about me - presented in a way that I hope is easily digestible, unconstrained by the forms of LinkedIn or the caprice of my firm's (and previous firms') management and web developers.
I do not take my good fortune for granted. Fear - of not doing enough, of not being enough - can be paralysing, and living in fear serves no purpose (to say the least). Nothing changes until something is done. The only way to fight it is to be fearless. So here I am, putting myself out there as someone who does not generally enjoy attention.
In short, fear.
Wait, I have some questions!
Is "revenue resilience" the only reason? Are you not showboating? Revenue resilience was the only reason until I started building this website. An adjacent secondary reason has since arisen - for me to archive some of the press/coverage of my professional history. As transaction counsel, my credibility is of paramount importance. I recently, in the course of compiling materials/links for use in this website, realised that some of these third-party sources have disappeared. This happened/happens for various reasons, all of which attributable to the passage of time. For example:
(i) (due to firm restructurings / server resource reallocations / archival of older news) my assistance with Grand Venture Technology's IPO on the SGX in January 2019 whilst I was a Partner with RHTLaw TaylorWessing (as it then was). Though much of the press remains online, RHTLaw's own release on the same is no longer available. This is because in 2020, RHTLaw and TaylorWessing ended their 8-year alliance, and the release which had been available on their joint website was never ported over to RHTLaw's new one.
(ii) (limitations imposed by third-party service providers) unless one has the direct link to a post, it cannot be searched for or scrolled to on a company's LinkedIn page if it is more than a year old.
Above all, archiving the same allows me to keep a little part of my professional history, which was written with great personal cost. I have lost count of the number of missed celebrations, events, and even farewells.
Farewells? In 2015, midway through my conduct of a supplier interview (surrounded by multiple professional teams) in a far-flung province of North China, I got a message to "CALL HOME URGENTLY. EMERGENCY!!!". And so I excused myself to take what would become the worst fucking call of my professional life. On the other end were my mom and sis, and the vet - they rushed our dog, Angel, in after noticing something amiss. An old girl, she had been in poor health - but prior to my departure, seemed fine by all accounts. They told me I had to say goodbye - Angel would not last the 2 flights/16 hours for me to get home. And so I did - bawling my eyes out in a squalid factory toilet in sub-zero temperatures - before returning to finish the interview. I spent the rest of the trip questioning the true cost of practice, and if it was worth it. I know some members of my team, and the others, did too. And yes, I used "farewells" because this was not the first. I pray everyday that it remains the last. I know most learned friends have similar stories.
Do you really not enjoy attention generally? Yes. Though I am an extrovert, I am a social media luddite who believes most platforms are bad. Not LinkedIn though.
LinkedIn? No, I do not see the hypocrisy. No, I am not wilfully blind.
So what other risks are you trying to mitigate? Well, I am down to 15+% body fat with a resting heart rate in the low 40s, and I take over 10 supplements a day. And I fear that is still not enough. Life is so unfair. I thought I was over this, having lost my dad young and then getting into law and reading about many who should be dead, and just as many who have left us too early. Well, I am not. And everyday I worry about being able to be there for my daughter. Everybody talks about the financial cost of having kids - but this is the true toll, the mental and emotional one (as if I needed something other than work (and a crying baby) to keep me awake at night). Oh, and I returned to the church because all avenues, right?
"... very fortunately had ..." - I am so sorry, is your mom gone? OH GOD NO ~touchwood~ she is very much around! Though, unfortunately, she is a much worse grandparent than she is a parent. WHO BRIBES A 20-MONTH OLD WITH CHOCOLATES AND ICE-CREAM JUST TO WIN AFFECTION?
What school does Baby G go to? Mulberry. We really love it. The teachers really care!
How much does it cost? S$2k a month - so broadly, S$2k x 12 months x 5 years to primary school = S$120k. Assuming no further fee increments.