Friday, May 04, 2012

Remembered Today, Always

I awake and look at the clock, and glance about a minute, whispering in my heart my morning prayer. It's 4.15 am and I play around my SkyApp on the iPad, with the model of the Solar System spinning back in time with the orbs and moons rotating backwards... Before long I look at the edge of the screen and it showed 2.15... 4 May. I realized too quickly this marked the precise anniversary of Jordan's accident five years ago. I think of him and pause to pray, and record this down in my blog today. In some ways, I am more inescapable from him because of his accident and death, rather than if fate was to allow him to live on and grow separate. As many other past charges have done so, and many gone on to become successes in their own right. I think of what he have done so well as a person which drew me to him in the first place, and caused me to offer him a chance to work under me, arranging for him to sign up for the IPRS course which in the end, all prospects were cut short. Sure, my own relationship with him was affected by his professional shortcomings. His peers might have been more compassionate than I in retrospect. But the end card was too clear for me to ignore after quite a few lapses were brought to his attention. It seemed for a time that he could not help himself, and somehow his own perspective was askew - or that mine was. I was shocked when MOH called me to say that he cancelled one of their high level Chinese delegation visits without consulting me because it would clash with an event at the same location. He simply could have managed that delegated task bug scheduling huge visit a couple of hours before and have the hospital Customer Relations team run the site visit while he continued with the pre-event preparations. So, when I questioned him if it was because he simply did not want to do it, or that he was coerced to cancel by the hospital, he seemed not to want to reply but said that it was just a decision he made. Unfortunately, it was not a call for him to make... And like a few other instances, bad choices. Still, he seemed impenetrable about the logic for these things. He drew a clear line about after work hours and refused to accept that duty and responsibility extended past 5:30 pm when the need arose. He wanted control over his life and time. Perhaps he was not ready, I thought and had to let him go, for I simply could not be spending time and effort making recovery action from the mistakes of the very junior team of executives I had under me, all three of him had no prior experience in communications work, or institutional processes. But will prove to be that the greatest charity we make turns out to be our Judases. As a result of Jordan's accident and death, one of the other executive, a sensitive young French I was asked to help with a job, offered to explain his own helplessness at work to another HOD citing Jordan's accident as "he took his own life" in a sort of Franglais, which added to his own insinuation that if it was himself, he would "kill himself" if he had to quit this job. Although these were very clumsy and poorly verified statements, the HOD was quick to bring these back to the COO who thought incorrectly I had driven these two executives to the edge. Utter nonsense as it was, I dido think that such a poorly contrived lie was worth defending, and knew it was no longer tenable to continue with a management team that is clumsy and inconsistent. I feel utterly vindicated today with all the consequence from those historical events. That HOD had proved to be as ineffective as ever in his work ethics and while still there, preserves himself because of his brand of "astute" and "unscrupulous" politics, which is reflected in the business he does. As for the COO, he was gone in six months after I left, and I not say more. That organization's dream of branding itself died as soon as new owners with new visions came aboard, and though they use all the same materials I developed in 2007/8, the execution of those ideals are as far from the target as Pluto is from the Sun. Inspite of these peripheral and consequential events, I do not forget how, and why my friendship and affection for Jordan took shape, and within the interactions we shared about work and his future then, I grew to card for him. But how things play out did inform me that our plans ate just easily disposed of, not by the stars or some higher power, but the choices people make and their mistakes as such. I had nothing to do with his riding home in the early morning with his friends and losing control of his beloved Harley, and "killing himself" (which was the expression the French was looking for but used incorrectly in his report). For my last conversation with him was throwing him a lifeline to comeback but only if he committed to change - he said he rather not. A couple of weeks later I had a few missed calls from him when I was away on leave... for my own mother had passed on just three months earlier. I think that was my particular regret, that we did not speak because I didi not return his calls. I cannot say what he might have said to me, but can only guess that he was probably wanting to let me know that he was going to work with an associated company. I would have had no objections and would only have wished him well. Now, all this may be an insignificant memory except to those whose lives and memory he affected, touched and moved. Why should I deny that I had a great love for him to have fulfilled his wish to achieve something for himself, had he lived. As I shared many times with him... at Starbucks Liat Towers or on the bench at Changi beach, I benefited greatly from my mentors investing in me, too. Because of all those good and great things we held in intimate confidence, and for that part of his life which also inspired me and echoed my own - love of the outdoors, climbing - I cherish his memory and will remember his life and the two years ours intertwined. He was laid in his coffin with the Marc Jacob blue silk tie I got him, which was one of his favorites. I miss him, but in his passing, he is with me without my clenching on to his life, always.