Things I eat now but didn't eat when I was a kid:
Squid - My older brother loved "adobong pusit", squid cooked in its own ink with soy sauce and garlic. My grandmother would cook it all the time, but she would cook me something else because I do not eat it. One day in high school or college, I tasted it, and to this day it's one of the dishes that get my mouth watering when I see it in cafeteria selections.
Okra (ladyfingers) - As a child, I was not trained to eat vegetables. My grandparents I guess wanted to be spared from the hassle of training a child to eat greens, so we always had kid-friendly food instead - pork chops, chicken, hotdogs. We would see vegetables on the table, but those had always been for grown-ups. I do not remember the day, neither the dish, but just like the squid, one day, I picked up a cooked okra, and now keep some in stock for steaming so I can eat it with almost anything.
Liver - I guess when you're a kid, a lot of things are just not familiar to you. We not only don't want to spend time with something unfamiliar, we don't want to eat it! And so when the grown-ups told me that what's in that menudo is chicken liver, I reject it. These days, I pick these tiny cubes from menudo and eat them with the potatoes and carrots each time.
Dinuguan - Dinuguan, or pork parts cooked in pig's blood, will definitely sound yucky in any language. Imagine what a child would think upon hearing that she's about to be fed blood. We never cook dinuguan in our household back when my grandmother headed the kitchen. Some time back, my mom took over the cooking and she cooked dinuguan. At first taste, it became one of my automatically favorite dish.
Some things never change:
Inihaw na bangus - I left our family home to live alone when I was 26 years. I lived in Singapore for about 3 years, and when I came back to the Philippines, lived with my long time partner. Since 2006, the time I spend at our family home are more of weekend visits. I never declared grilled milkfish or "bangus" my favorite dish. In fact, when asked what my favorite food is, I often answer spaghetti. But I guess my mom and dad knew better - because ever since I left home, there will always be, always, grilled milkfish on each and every visit. And in the few times there wasn't, my mom would replace it with my other favorite dish, one that I have declared, pork pochero.
Bone marrow - People all over the world love bone marrow. There's something about that gooey, rich fat that you suck out of the bone that makes people's mouth water. Or so they say. I have never eaten bone marrow, and despite the many trips to Tagaytay where the bone marrow is famously cooked in a heartwarming soup that I love, I will never eat bone marrow. As a child, I didn't eat it because it looks weird. As an adult, I won't eat it because I know it will taste good. I don't want to eat it and like it, because I know it's bad cholesterol, plain and simple.
Bagoong - From the day my mom introduced me to diced tomatoes with bagoong as a young child, to this day, bagoong has always been a staple in any fridge I have. In Singapore, I have had to wrap my bagoong jar in layers of newspaper and plastic so it doesn't get detected in the airport. In Makati, I always keep a small container, and get my fill whenever I go home to Tondo. Bagoong is my all-around flavoring - it goes well with my rice, my fish, my tomatoes and my okra.
Fresh tomatoes - I have met some people who don't eat tomatoes, and I find it incredibly bothersome. I don't know how they survive. As a kid, I grew up surrounded by tomatoes. Our home in Tondo is in the middle of the marketplace, and the area I live in especially is the place where tomato storage warehouses are found. Crates and boxes of tomatoes surround me, how can I not grow up liking it? When I cook spaghetti, I put about 5-6 big ones in. When I eat anything fried or grilled, I don't feel complete without it. And between the choice of white sauce or red sauce in pasta when eating out, I often get puzzled why people choose white.
Monday, August 6, 2012
Monday, February 27, 2012
Define: time-out
In nostalgic moments in movies or books or any other romantic media, we always hear or see the phrase "this can change your life". Now that I am working with people, I realize that there really are moments that can change a person's life. One tiny decision that someone else makes for them, can spell the difference between success and failure in the future.
Therefore, if you are tasked to lead a team or work with people, remember these words: this can change some one's life. Take the context of corrective action memos. Oftentimes, we issue them to team members who, in a nutshell, have screwed up. However, it's important to realize that while for us, it may be just another company protocol we need to follow, for the person, it is an important, singular learning event.
One of the things I haven't done in my life before 2011 is issue corrective action memos to people. I had always been an individual contributor, and never had to coach, motivate nor penalize anyone in my teams at work. I had feared that the confrontation involved in these kinds of interactions can be intense and pressurizing. That I have to be on edge and alert to attack on these moments.
When I remembered that a few years back, these people were me, all of a sudden, coaching became easy. I tried to think back to the times when I would screw up at work and get very anxious at what sermon the boss is going to give me, and think back to how my superiors then handled the situation. Some did well, others didn't. Those who didn't do well, I can't remember anymore. I don't even remember what the screw-up was. Those who did well, I remember like they just happened yesterday. I remember what I did wrong. I remember what I was told. I remember how I improved after.
So what do we do then? Simple, take the time to put yourself in the person's shoes. Reflect on how this person is feeling now, what he/she is thinking, where he/she is coming from. More often that not, simply putting yourself in their situation for a second can remind you that you probably were in that position once, and that, consequently, will remind you of how you felt at the time. Were you embarrassed? Did you feel ashamed? Were you smug and thought you didn't do anything wrong? Were you assertive?
More importantly, you will remember how you felt about the person who gave you the coaching for it, and the corresponding memo. You would remember if you shrugged off the incident afterward because you didn't like your supervisor. Or if you cried afterwards for being yelled at or humiliated. Or if you quit out of anger.
Think of these situations as critical learning events. By the terminologies themselves, you are supposed to provide "corrective action", meaning after you have served the memo, you would expect corrected behaviour in the future to come. And for correct behaviour to happen, a person needs to learn from the experience. He/she needs to understand where the gap was, and what needs to be done to cross it.
Realizing it from this perspective has made coaching easier for me. Instead of viewing it as a session to point out mistakes, I now view it as a session to impose a time-out, a break in the system for both myself and the person, for us to think together about the screw up that happened. What I often find is that I too learn from the session always in so many ways, and it has now become a pleasant experience for me.
Of course, learning doesn't happen overnight, and that's the real reason we have "prescriptive (or -ion?) periods" for these corrective action memos. Well, OK, these roll-off/prescriptive periods are also for the benefit of tracking, so we all have a timeline of events. What we usually fail to remember though is that it's not always a prescriptive period for a corrective action to end its effectivity. In the context of learning, it's the period you're providing the person to "learn" from this mistake and prove that learning happened by demonstrating corrected behavior.
Throughout the prescriptive period, the person is going to stumble along the way, miss a few items here and there. But remember that these are all part of the learning process. We need to constantly remind the person to get on track, and tell them if they're doing a good or bad job. Even more important, we need to assure the person that their learning is important. That they are within a safe environment wherein even though we are monitoring for hits and misses as their supervisor, we are not judging them internally as human beings.
In the craziness of the daily grind, we often forget that at the end of the day, we are all the same person - someone trying to earn a living so we can go on with life. Sometimes, we get sucked into the daily motions of emails and meetings, that working with people become the last agenda in our minds, and we resort into tick-marking the items we need to do: have I conducted a 1-1? Yes. Did I document and serve a memo? Yes. Did I submit to HR? Yes. Did the person leave before I can hire a replacement? No. And afterwards think that our work in that event is done.
If it were all that easy and automatic, leading people would've been handed over to machines and computer programs. But it's not that easy. Because the tick mark that you squeezed into your busy calendar can change the course of someone else's life.
I opened my iGoogle account to get to my shortcut for my school's website, and got digressed instead to reading the Tumbleblog. Reading 'The One with the Online Dating Game' inspired me to take a few minutes to reflect and write, and maybe change some one's life. Thanks, Megzy, for always keeping me focused on what matter most :)
Therefore, if you are tasked to lead a team or work with people, remember these words: this can change some one's life. Take the context of corrective action memos. Oftentimes, we issue them to team members who, in a nutshell, have screwed up. However, it's important to realize that while for us, it may be just another company protocol we need to follow, for the person, it is an important, singular learning event.
One of the things I haven't done in my life before 2011 is issue corrective action memos to people. I had always been an individual contributor, and never had to coach, motivate nor penalize anyone in my teams at work. I had feared that the confrontation involved in these kinds of interactions can be intense and pressurizing. That I have to be on edge and alert to attack on these moments.
When I remembered that a few years back, these people were me, all of a sudden, coaching became easy. I tried to think back to the times when I would screw up at work and get very anxious at what sermon the boss is going to give me, and think back to how my superiors then handled the situation. Some did well, others didn't. Those who didn't do well, I can't remember anymore. I don't even remember what the screw-up was. Those who did well, I remember like they just happened yesterday. I remember what I did wrong. I remember what I was told. I remember how I improved after.
So what do we do then? Simple, take the time to put yourself in the person's shoes. Reflect on how this person is feeling now, what he/she is thinking, where he/she is coming from. More often that not, simply putting yourself in their situation for a second can remind you that you probably were in that position once, and that, consequently, will remind you of how you felt at the time. Were you embarrassed? Did you feel ashamed? Were you smug and thought you didn't do anything wrong? Were you assertive?
More importantly, you will remember how you felt about the person who gave you the coaching for it, and the corresponding memo. You would remember if you shrugged off the incident afterward because you didn't like your supervisor. Or if you cried afterwards for being yelled at or humiliated. Or if you quit out of anger.
Think of these situations as critical learning events. By the terminologies themselves, you are supposed to provide "corrective action", meaning after you have served the memo, you would expect corrected behaviour in the future to come. And for correct behaviour to happen, a person needs to learn from the experience. He/she needs to understand where the gap was, and what needs to be done to cross it.
Realizing it from this perspective has made coaching easier for me. Instead of viewing it as a session to point out mistakes, I now view it as a session to impose a time-out, a break in the system for both myself and the person, for us to think together about the screw up that happened. What I often find is that I too learn from the session always in so many ways, and it has now become a pleasant experience for me.
Of course, learning doesn't happen overnight, and that's the real reason we have "prescriptive (or -ion?) periods" for these corrective action memos. Well, OK, these roll-off/prescriptive periods are also for the benefit of tracking, so we all have a timeline of events. What we usually fail to remember though is that it's not always a prescriptive period for a corrective action to end its effectivity. In the context of learning, it's the period you're providing the person to "learn" from this mistake and prove that learning happened by demonstrating corrected behavior.
Throughout the prescriptive period, the person is going to stumble along the way, miss a few items here and there. But remember that these are all part of the learning process. We need to constantly remind the person to get on track, and tell them if they're doing a good or bad job. Even more important, we need to assure the person that their learning is important. That they are within a safe environment wherein even though we are monitoring for hits and misses as their supervisor, we are not judging them internally as human beings.
In the craziness of the daily grind, we often forget that at the end of the day, we are all the same person - someone trying to earn a living so we can go on with life. Sometimes, we get sucked into the daily motions of emails and meetings, that working with people become the last agenda in our minds, and we resort into tick-marking the items we need to do: have I conducted a 1-1? Yes. Did I document and serve a memo? Yes. Did I submit to HR? Yes. Did the person leave before I can hire a replacement? No. And afterwards think that our work in that event is done.
If it were all that easy and automatic, leading people would've been handed over to machines and computer programs. But it's not that easy. Because the tick mark that you squeezed into your busy calendar can change the course of someone else's life.
I opened my iGoogle account to get to my shortcut for my school's website, and got digressed instead to reading the Tumbleblog. Reading 'The One with the Online Dating Game' inspired me to take a few minutes to reflect and write, and maybe change some one's life. Thanks, Megzy, for always keeping me focused on what matter most :)
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