2017

Time accelerates only when we realise its preciousness and the alarming speed it goes by. Alas, the last working day of 2017 has dawned upon us, and 2018 is waiting to greet us. 

On my last working day this year, I would like to say thank you to 2017. The biggest observation I had for myself is that as a result of my work, my professional and personal lives had fused, in I would think, largely, a healthy and reflective merger.

I look back and feel a little tinge of pride of my work. If you were to search 'fresh seafood supplier Singapore' and 'seafood supplier Singapore' on your desktop, Hai Sia returns on Google Page 1. When our website went live in December 2015, we were in the far-flung hundreds. What's more gratifying is that this is as a result of organic growth, all earned and nothing paid. This year, we hosted more than 1,000 people for our free walking tours of Jurong Fishery Port, and another 700 people on the waiting list for 2018 and beyond. This year, we created our own take of seafood recipes, titled 'Jia', and I couldn't be happier with the tagline - for the everyday people, by the everyday people. This year, we rounded off 2017 with our '20 | 40 | 60' video, that sang tribute to the different characters of Jurong Fishery Port, and became their voices for something heartfelt.

I would like to think Time is fair and square. It takes, but it gives. My first gratitude is a sobering lesson on dealing with ambiguity. As we re-engineer a traditional business, we’re essentially functioning like an entrepreneurial set-up, growing from the yeses, and learning from the nos. Swimming in ambiguity is not easy. Beyond the lack of answers, there is an absence of security and to deal with this void, we are often guided by intuition, logic and the experiences of others. To be honest, I wasn’t a good friend with ambiguity, or rather that much ambiguity. I came out of the woods realising that just like how you must be your own hero sometimes, precisely because it’s ambiguous, you’ve to chart your own path and get something, anything, started first.

My second gratitude is the assembly of a team. It’s true, so very, very true that it’s all about the people. We might have occasionally given our boss a hard time, especially in the face of ambiguity. As we fight our own battles, it’s not easy to be anyone, to be you. To celebrate the good, I’m very privileged to enjoy professional chemistry with my boss, and that I’ve almost been granted complete liberty and trust to run my own department.

My third gratitude goes to our Super Six interns who joined Hai Sia from May 2016 to December 2017. We might sound a little obsessed with these six individuals but before December 2017, the six of them made the pilgrimage to Jurong Fishery Port, and despite stepping into the shabby office, they accepted the offer. On 9 December 2017, we completed our office renovations, and the look and feel of the new space cannot juxtapose the old environment more. In their own capacity, they left their own mark, and left a benchmark that’s increasingly difficult for subsequent batches to rise up to. More poignantly, they’re the first group of people that I had the joy to coach and for that, they’ll always be special.

As the first hire of the second generation owner, there’s a founding spirit imbued in me – seeing the old go and watching the new come, sending the bad off and welcoming the good in, and learning from yesterday and preparing for tomorrow. 

I saw, and learnt for myself, the smallest and biggest things that pass through an organisation – attitude, aptitude, policies, hiring, letting go (on different levels), good decisions, poor decisions, euphoria, frustration, disappointment, what do matter, what don’t matter, growth; everything became more pronounced and with each corner, there’s a revelation. Sometimes, in my quiet times, ever since I started working in 2013, I wished I didn’t say that, didn’t do that, could have done that, and should have tried that. 

At the end of the day, I secretly feel that the Universe conspires when you really want something or when you are ready for something – and it is given. Of course, it doesn’t always appear in the form or structure you imagined it to be. After all, Time gives, and gives surprises no less.