Step into their shoes #nostigma

Oct 282011
 

Recently, there is a lady whom tweeted about her suicide plans. The tweets went slightly viral and it got picked up by Yahoo! news.

What absolutely disgusted me was the pure ignorance (and hence lack of compassion immerse stupidity) that people have to say about her actions.

“That woman just needs the attention. Why would she tweet like that if she does not want to be rescued right?”

Or stuffs like, “I’ve been through bigger troubles, felt suicidal but I can still tide through it”.

No. Wrong. No, no, HELL NO. YOU ARE WRONG.

YOU ARE WRONG.

 

First and foremost, depression is not sadness that you can snap out of.

To help you understand this, think balding. Your hair is falling. It’s genetics or stress but your hair is falling. You go to Beijing101 and the rate of hair fall drops, but at the end of the day; your hair is still gonna fall. There’s treatment, there’s no cure.

Similarly, depression is an illness characterized by low mood. There’re treatments out there but as far as I remembered from my university education, there’s no cure. It’s kind of like cancer. With treatment, you can be well but there’s always a possibility of it coming back for some people.

And just like how a Christian, Muslim and Atheist see the world differently,  I’m in no position to judge a Muslim’s actions (say eating Halal food) with my Christianity values. Similarly, people with and without depression see things differently. You cannot judge their actions with your world-views. So don’t say those “if I was her” bullshit.

And people with depression, or any form of mental illness, should not be ashamed to say so. You should be ashamed of yourself for discriminating/hating on them.

 

Secondly, you are not educated about suicide. So again, no. Wrong. No, no, HELL NO. YOU ARE WRONG.

YOU ARE WRONG.

Just go read this and this yourself.

 

Get yourself educated before you speak. #nostigma.

I build Learnemy, an online marketplace that finds you the right instructors and classes in Singapore. Follow us on Facebook or Twitter    
 Posted by Elisha Tan at 10:03 pm  Personal, Thoughts  1 Response »

URGENT: Hiring a tele-person

Oct 112011
 

As you’ve known from my previous emo post, I’m still having bad throat. But I’m having a lot of new requests, so I’m hiring a tele-person to help tide me through this week.

 

Job scope

I’ll provide you with a list and you’ll need to call them up to ask and:

1. Tell them about Learnemy

2. Ask them if they can offer my users a class

 

Nitty gritty stuffs

I’ll need you this week and I’ll have no idea if I’ll need you for the next. As such, I’ll be paying you above market rate. The market rate for a tele-person is anywhere from $5 to $15 per hour. I’ll pay you $15 – $20 per hour, depending on your experiences.

You’ll work everyday this week, from 2pm – 6pm, from home.

 

Apply

This job takes a pretty good amount of trust (because I’m paying you by the hour and you can do nothing) so I’ll only take you if you’re somehow connected me (a friend, a friend of my friends etc).

Email elisha@learnemy.com to say hello!

I build Learnemy, an online marketplace that finds you the right instructors and classes in Singapore. Follow us on Facebook or Twitter    
 Posted by Elisha Tan at 1:10 am  Starting up  No Responses »  Tagged with:

Not happy

Oct 092011
 

It’s lonely to fight my own battles even though I’m more than capable of handling what comes my way.

But it’s an entirely low shitty feeling to not be able to help myself.

I had a spike in number of requests today. I reply a lot on my voice for Learnemy, and I’ve completely it.

Not happy, not happy at all.

 

 

Maybe tmr will be a better day. 

I build Learnemy, an online marketplace that finds you the right instructors and classes in Singapore. Follow us on Facebook or Twitter    
 Posted by Elisha Tan at 12:19 am  Personal, Starting up  No Responses »  Tagged with:

Oh shit I can’t code.

Oct 062011
 

Finally the whole Barcamp experience was over with the content published on Penn Olson here: http://www.penn-olson.com/2011/10/03/3-tips-for-tech-start-up-founders-who-cannot-code/. I restructured the content a little, and Willis edited my language a lot. lol. Guess I not only can’t code, I can’t write well too. :(

Honestly, in my talk I didn’t really know what I was talking about because the room keeps getting crowded, and I made a grammer mistake on my title on the board (which was also reflected on the glass door) because I was too kanjiong.

I wrote ‘Hey I found a tech startup…OH SHIT I CAN’T CODE’, which absolutely made it sounded like I picked up this thing called Learnemy while I was walking home one day. -.-

Anyway, it was pretty much fun and I looked like I was talking about kungfu.

HHHHHHHHHIAK! CRANE STANCE!

I’m very very happy about the 101 tweets sharing the article with the article going into the Founder Institute’s newsletter. I’ve never produced a blog post with that kind of spread. Never.

But I was particularly upset about a comment that goes like this,

“If founders dont know how to code first but later learn a bit here and there to code, please dont pretend yourself as overnite master in coding and start bossy around telling people what to code. HTML and CSS is not alot of action without something behind. I would think focus on business development is more important.”

That is just offensive.

I believe that everyone has something to share, and un-conferences are created based on this belief too. The attitude of this nameless person seem to suggest that if you are not a sage, keep your mouth shut. Utter nonsense. I know for sure that I wouldn’t be where I am know if non-sage people are all keeping their mouth shut.

Yea yea, I know. I’m from the Founder Institute with 600 mentors. But I don’t hang out with them on a daily basis, you know.

And the passion for sharing is such a wonderful thing. I know of a couple of my instructors (with less than 10 years of skills) who doesn’t mind about the money or the length of class, they just want to help my clients learn what they want.

Such an inspiration.

And it’s very disrespectful to treat anyone like monkeys. Nobody is a coding monkey, designing monkey or marketing monkey. There’s something very wrong with a mentality like that.

Oh, but then again, it’s a nameless person.

I build Learnemy, an online marketplace that finds you the right instructors and classes in Singapore. Follow us on Facebook or Twitter    
 Posted by Elisha Tan at 1:00 am  Personal, Starting up  1 Response »