Ning-Jia.com

I have to write about Kylla. Yes, I’ve already written a poem about her, but it wasn’t enough to fully process everything and move on. I couldn’t put it into writing before because I hadn’t fully processed it all. I remember copying and pasting my friends’ questions into an LLM just to generate responses. I didn’t want to sound rude or ignore them. But most of all, I didn’t want to face those feelings every time someone asked about Kylla. So here it is. The first thing I’ll say is that it’s been difficult—not just because of the sadness of losing a child, but because I didn’t know how to deal with the feeling of hate. Yes, hate. I hated people who gave me hope. I hated people who promised me it would be okay. I hated those who tried to “lift me up”—when, in actual fact, that wasn’t what I needed at all. What I needed first was money. Secondly, I needed people to stop demanding attention from me just to satisfy their own selfish curiosity. This is one side of losing someone that I alrea...

Many people do not understand the importance of streamlining communications. Firstly, without a designated PIC (Person-in-Charge), tough decisions cannot be made effectively. This is because the key person does not have all the relevant information at hand and must consult multiple parties to consolidate the various conversations on the topic. Without the ability to make tough decisions, situations fail to improve and the team remains stuck in perpetual “fire-fighting” mode. Constant fire-fighting prevents us from addressing root causes or preventing future problems. Existing issues worsen over time, overall team stress levels rise, and people lose the capacity to look beyond immediate daily tasks. Most individuals cannot sustain this kind of environment for long and will eventually leave the company. It is therefore management’s responsibility to prevent such issues from accumulating. Secondly, when someone asks “Who needs to do what?”, the answer must name specific individuals. Assig...

Today, I got someone kicked out of a group chat. It doesn’t feel great. I know what it’s like to be ostracised, so this sits uncomfortably with me. That said, I wasn’t the one who dished out the punishment. Yes, I added fuel to the conversation, but I genuinely believed it was a worthwhile discussion. In the past, I have shut down a sensitive topic before. This one, however, didn’t seem that bad. It was simply a photo of an alleged unhygienic practice in a hospital — something I found insightful. So I engaged. That exchange ultimately led to the OP being removed from the group, and the administrator deleted the entire thread. I remain uncertain how I feel about it, hence I write. 

Recently, I’ve been reading about populism and its effects on communities. As a social psychology enthusiast, it always amazes me how the crowd can bring out either the best or the worst in people. And when you’re in that crowd, it’s not easy to maintain the awareness to realise what the crowd is doing to you. Its effects in politics can generate a momentum that pushes opinions toward the extreme. Most academics agree that this is not healthy in the long term and can distract from what is actually important. A recent video by Joeri Schasfoort, the YouTuber behind Money & Macro, listed four mainstream explanations for this trend: Social media polarisation Economic disenchantment Cultural disconnect and representation gap Rise in racism Interestingly, he quickly dismissed the fourth reason—racism. It’s a relief to think we’re not heading toward total societal collapse simply because we’ve started hating one another so intensely. But the other three factors offer very real lessons for...

Do we seek the best driving advice from a 60-year-old who has been driving for 40 years? Or from an F1 champion who has won multiple championships? Or from a driving instructor who has spent 10 years deliberately helping others improve? Casual experience — simply racking up decades behind the wheel — doesn’t mean much. Even expert performance, by itself, doesn’t automatically translate into wisdom worth following. What truly counts is instructional experience: the refined ability to diagnose errors, break down tacit knowledge, and guide others through deliberate practice. Most of what a long-time driver “knows” is tacit — intuitive, embodied, and hard to articulate (as Michael Polanyi described). An F1 champion has elite pattern recognition and deliberate practice under pressure, but that doesn’t guarantee they can unpack their skill for a beginner. The instructor who has spent years reflecting on how people actually learn, adjusting their methods, and producing measurable improvement ...

Honesty. It isn’t just about telling the truth. The recipient of that truth also has agency in the matter. Few of us think about it this way, but I’m here to remind myself that I have a role to play in building an honest society. I’m going to assume most of us here understand the importance of honesty. But for the sake of building the case, I’ll go through it briefly. It is my belief that honesty is the best policy—not because it is some intangible virtue that somehow earns us karma points in the distant future or the next life. I’d rather be very specific and practical about why honesty is the best policy. There were countless times in my youth when I thought I could cover something up, that enough time would pass, and I would get away with it. Of course, there were also countless times I got away with saying, “I’ve forgotten my homework book at home”—but that’s a story for a different day. As we get older, people start depending on us, and we have to do our part. For example, at work...

It's strange to reach this point in my life, where friends no longer reach out to me because they think I'm busy.  And if I don't reach out to them, we'll surely drift apart. So, should I?

When we face difficult decisions, what do we think about? Our priorities, our learnings from similar situations. Where should we start? I begin with who is in front of me and who will be impacted by my decision. In an optimized world, everything becomes a trade-off. We no longer have the luxury of "no-brainer" decisions that are superior in every aspect compared to all other alternatives. Yet, this is not a curse—it's an acceptance that we are living in the real world, where we see enough to understand the broader implications. We become aware of how our choices affect those around us, whether in relationships or in balancing long-term versus short-term outcomes. So many factors must be considered. This reminds me of a wise philosopher who said, "If I am walking on the side of a mountain, I can see first a lake, then after a few steps, a forest. I have chosen either the lake or the forest. If I want to see both the lake and forest at once, I have to climb higher....

"If I am walking on the side of a mountain, I can see first a lake, then, after a few steps, a forest. I have to choose either the lake or the forest. If I want to see both lake and forest at once, I have to climb higher." ~ Simone Weil There's so much wisdom in this quote. On the flip side, if we want to see things clearly, we have to go closer to examine the forest. To look at each tree, we have to walk right up to it. While that gives us the detail of how each tree grows in the forest, we will lose sight of the lake. So, as leaders, we have to take that hike. We have to walk down to the trees every now and then to see if the trees are growing according to how our people report to us. But we must also ensure that we hike back up into the mountains to get an overview of everything. Trust our people too much to give the right information? Disaster—as they become mechanical and cannot take into account what's going on with the lake to consider what information is impor...

After 5 years, I'm finally going to write about what I've learned from running a family business: the top 5 things I couldn't just copy-paste from the corporate world into an SME, and the top 5 things I could. Here's a teaser. First off, it's been a rough journey for me. The whole idea of "managing up" changes completely when "up" is my Dad. All those data-driven presentations I'm so used to, the facts and analysis I've come to appreciate deeply, and the structured discussions I've been trained to lead—they all went out the window. Suddenly, I found myself dealing with passion, emotions, and relationships above all else. Sure, those elements mattered in the corporate world too, but there's a threshold there where people would eventually say, "Okay, you make sense. Let's do it your way." But in this family setup, the more "facts" I presented, the more I got told I lacked "experience," that I was be...