Learning about leadership

Being a leader is not an easy thing. People often take it as a nice title and fail to recognize the pressure, responsibilities and accountability that come with the nice title. There is a recent drama at work. My team leader just disappeared completely since last Tuesday and he is still MIA. From the experience we had with him, we do not believe that he was hit by a car or anything. He just vanished because he could no longer deal with all the stress and pressure.

I also contributed some pressure on him. I work 4 days a week for a full-time position. So someone always has to fill my gap. Since he was a team leader, he was responsible for filling that gap. But there were always problems and mistakes whenever I was off. I hate fixing stupid mistakes because they are waste of my time as I could be doing something more rewarding. I hate even more when mistakes don't get fixed right away. He did offer to help fixing them but from the experience, I learned that it could take him days to fix them while I could fix them in a few hours.

When I get irritated, I can't pretend and sugarcoat. I really showed how disappointed I was with him not being able to be accountable. Although he's my supervisor and I'd been a bitch and control freak, he couldn't do anything with me. Although I work there part-time, I give 100% there when I'm at work. I always offer help to my other coworkers when they are overloaded. I care more about overall outcome and look at the bigger picture. So everybody else really like me - from the owners to team members and other people from other departments.

Once I got a text at 10 pm on Friday night.I had to log in from home and fixed a big problem at midnight. After the damage control, I got grumpy and emailed the owner, manager including him. No one even bothered to ask him to fix that because they knew he couldn't. Difference between him and me, I expressed my emotions ( I know it's not very nice) but he hid all those. He would always respond ''Don't worry, Moe- everything is fine."

He never expressed that he had been overloaded and over-stressed. But the problem is that things didn't get done. He did not delegate nor seek help. A leader can't do everything in his/her own and a leader is not even supposed to do everything. But a leader needs to make sure things get done in most efficient manner by delegating the right assignments to the right people and managing the team workflow. When things don't get done in his team, the leader needs to recognize and address the problems and seek outside support and help. I think some leaders are afraid to admit that they are having problems because it will make them look bad.

Burmese junta regime has been always like that for 50 years. Unlike most Burmese inside and outside the country, I do not believe that Burmese regime is cruel and intentionally doing bad things to the country. The problem is that the members of that military organization are incompetent in managing the economy and the whole country. And their ego did not let them to admit it. It's quite understandable for them to be incompetent because they are just soldiers. They try to rule the country themselves without getting any expertise support and help with managing economy and other complex matters of ruling the country. Of course, they failed. Well I do not want to talk about the whole Burmese politics here. It will be endless....

For my team leader, the problem was not his incompetency because I understand that he is relatively new and still in the process of learning. My major disappointment was for him not overseeing to make sure things get done. The main thing I learned about leadership here is that being a good leader does not mean being competent and taking everything under his/her control. Being a good leader means recognizing the problems in good timing and seeking external support to fix the problems. Seeking external support and delegating do not make the leader look bad. The leader only looks bad when he/she fails to empower the team by delegating and to seek outside expertise support when needed.

Nice and Warm Thanksgiving

This whole thanksgiving weekend has been so beautiful here in NY. It's nice and warm about 15-18 C. I had a lovely thanksgiving evening with some awesome people. A friend of mine invited me to their thanksgiving party. Her friend hosted at his place in Williamsburg. It was an awesome group of people - very nice, kind, good looking, intelligent young people. We are all about the same age. Some of them are from Minnesota and some are from Texas and there are also two Germans. So it was interesting mix of people.

We had some email exchange beforehand planning the menu who's bringing what. We all brought one or two dishes. I made my very FIRST pumpkin pie and green bean casserole!! They turned out delicious! I used to be critical of American cooking and thought it was so lame. But although I'm known to be a great cook, due to my own unfamiliarity of cooking methods and ingredients, even those simple things gave me quite an unexpected sweats that morning. But they all turned out great.

I arrived there around 3 pm and we all started preparing things for our feast. Some of us were cutting turkey to pieces, someone making the gravy, someone making ice-cream (yeah we had homemade vanilla ice-cream!), someone making pie. It was quite fun at the kitchen. Good thing that it was a big kitchen. We were all crowded there.

Everyone brought tremendous amount of food! I LOVE seeing a lot of food so it was very entertaining for me not only to see it but also to eat a lot of it! :). So our menu had -
-traditional whole roasted turkey
- zucchini and sausage stuffing
-two kinds of mash sweet potatoes
-my green bean casserole
-goat cheese tart
-real Russian beet salad (made by a Russian)
-sauteed broccoli
-cranberry sauce and gravy

For desserts, we had three different pies - my homemade pumpkin pie, sweet potato pie, apple blueberry pie and homemade vanilla ice-cream. YUM!!

After the delicious feast, we hanged out there and chatted. Then we cleaned up doing all the dishes etc. After we cleaned up, we started playing 'Taboo". I really suck at that game. After 8 years in U.S., it's still hard for me to describe words in a few seconds. We divided two teams- boys and girls. 3 guys and 3 girls. But since the other two girls were very good, we won!

I have been so lucky with meeting great people here in U.S., both in CO and now in NY as well. I can't be more thankful for that. So although I don't have a family here, I had a wonderful thanksgiving after all.

Cold inside and out

This is the time of the year here in the U.S that the weather is pretty cold outside but it is quite warm inside not because of radiators but because of family and loved ones. Most of the families get together either or both during thanksgiving and X-mas.

I had misunderstanding about family ties in this culture. I used to think that people here are so independent that they are not supposed to have a close family tie. It's not true at all. I remember some of my international friends criticizing when they saw all those families around college campus during freshman year orientation, homecoming etc. I myself also thought that to be independent you have to cut your family ties. I just realized that being independent and loving/caring your family are two separate things but not the opposite things - they can coexist together.

All my life, I've been trying so hard to loose my family tie. My desire to grow up has been so overwhelming that I don't want to depend on my family emotionally, financially and intellectually. So now I feel like I've been drifting apart and growing apart from my family. But the strange thing is that they all still love me even when I don't speak to them the whole month. They tell me how much they miss me and how much they want me back home. I always reacted like they are being so demanding and not letting me grow up. I'm really a bad child and have been really selfish.

I used to compare them with American parents and thought that American parents let their children grow up and give them full independence. Whenever my parents tell me they miss me and want me back home, I feel I'm emotionally pressured and consider they were threatening my independence. But now that I think about it, I remember my host-mom was really reluctant to send her daughter college so far away from home. ( I had a host family when I was in college with whom I can hang out during holidays and have occasional dinners, shopping etc.) I was surprised when she said 'Smith is in MA and it's so far away from CO." I demanded my family to let me go study in the other side of the world, and had a hard time understanding when they said they missed me. Also when I was staying with my professor family during some holiday break, his wife, who was also a professor, told me that 'why do I always have to cry every time my sons leave after the holiday visit?' I consider her really strong woman because she's not like a stay-home-mom who has nothing to do but taking care of the family.

Parents are just parents everywhere. Here in this culture, even if they know that their children leave home one day, they still have a hard time dealing with it. So it must be even harder for my parents who live in the culture where children live with the family until they get married. I have been really stupid and harsh on my parents.

Well I just learned that I can love my family and need them in certain ways and I can still be independent. Now it is the time of the year, most of my friends are going home to spend time with their family and loved ones. In my own little world, it's cold both outside and cold inside....

I'm In Love

You know how it feels when you fall in love. The sky is brighter. The stars are more shinning. Just a little breeze and shaken leaf make you smile. You see every good thing around you to love about. You love every moment with that person. Love is a real excitement and fun! That's why we all want it. This is how I feel now.

I've never been truly in love with anyone before. When I thought I was, it was more of an infatuation and did not last very long. This time is true and real. Not like other times when I was in love with the idea of falling in love. And it's growing every day.

Some of the top reasons I'm in love:
1.We can communicate intelligently - I've been introduced to so many intellectual entertainments.
2. My constant need for change and variety has been satisfied very well.
3. I've met so many new people in a short period since we were together. I've met many amazing friends among those.
4. I've become a lot stronger about belief and faith in my dreams.
5. I dislike being tied down. But I've never been this much free since we're together.
6.I can fully be myself.
7.We could walk on and on for 100 blocks and still enjoy it passing all different neighborhoods along.
8. Our positive energy is very contagious.
9. We have enjoyed a great deal of adventures together from bike rides in crowded streets to new cuisine around the corner.
10. We have had many romantic moments together - picnics in the central park and by the Hudson river, drink on the boat over sunset, a walk over the Brooklyn bridge, stroll over highline appreciating surrounding architecture, outdoor movie in Dumbo overlooking a great view of Manhattan, a refreshing run by the E. river.....list goes on......

Yes, now it's been one year and half together. I'm in love with New York. I've been very grateful for all the things that had brought me to NY. I don't know how long this will last because I probably might be in a honeymoon phase. Just with everything else, I'm not a fan of the idea of 'forever'. But for the moment, I've been enjoying every bit of it.