What Shaped Yeong Jia Han to the Person He Is Today?

Managing roles and tackling expectations - if you're ever struggling to look for a job, find him, he's always hiring!

Yeong Jia Han • Co-Founder of Huskies Club 2018

Interviewers: Allythea Tan, Lee Yi Tung, Lee Tyen Wyeth

Date: Sept 6, 2020

Credits to: Lee Tyen Wyeth

Allythea: What has inspired you to begin to start the club in the first place?

Jia Han: "I won't really consider myself as the founder of the club if you had an interview with Justin already, the club was previously founded by this group of people who wanted to play captain ball, they were pretty much doing that with like plastic chairs for a good to six to nine months, and then Justin being in the same cohort as I am, we hang out together like pretty much every day. Since we're a group of friends, every Tuesdays and Thursdays after class, Justin will change into his sports attire and say that he'll be playing captain ball, and there were only 12 people at that time, so he asked us to join la. I played captain ball before in high school, just never bothered going too deep into it because I am not a Christian, so generally, if you don't join community clubs, you won't get in contact with captain ball. So I tagged along and played. Few months in, people started dropping out of the club because of Year 3 commitments such as exams, thesis etc.

We have new people coming in, I think that was the time where Olivia, Kai Ping and a lot just started playing and picking up, so I think as we were gonna graduate, Kai Ping and Olivia kind of wanted to make it official as the club wasn’t official, to begin with, but at that time applying for a club was a difficultly. So, Kai Ping and Olivia wanted me to help make the club official, but Justin and I were working on our thesis and since we were towards the end of our degree, we told them that they have to take up their roles as new committee members. When the club became official, Kai Ping was the first term President, not Justin but Justin was the founder. I have to guide the paperwork with Kai Ping and Olivia, so that's kind of how it started."

A: While you were helping out with the paperwork with Kai Ping and Olivia, did you have any expectations for this club?

JH: "I think I just wanted it to be a place where I can come back every time I'm done with work. I mean initially, it was a time where I just graduated and I was telling myself that work will probably be from 9 am to 5 pm. So if captain ball sessions are 5:30-6 pm onward, and my student ID was still like valid until 2020, so I was thinking that I should probably come back and play, but for that to happen, I need to make sure that there will be enough members coming in to play, I didn't want it to be the three of us playing on the court again, and to have no one else to play with. That was the intention we had to form the club which is to have the continuity of a place we'll come back to every time."

A: Other than that, what would you say is your best memory either while forming the club or once the club started, or like if you were able to come back and play?

JH: "It was a time where we had 12-14 of us, we made a booking at HIS but the system didn’t recognize our booking, so meaning there was a bug in the system. We double-crossed with another club that was actually booking for futsal or whatever, I think it was basketball but I can't remember much, and then on top of that it was raining as well so we couldn’t play at the field, so we were thinking to ourselves, 'that was the one time where everyone is around, I think assignment period just ended and before preparing for exams, so in this one gap period, everyone was actually free', and for the past few weeks not a lot of people showed up as there were only the 3-4 of us all the time. Since we wanted to play really badly, we brought our chairs back to the Foyer and played. We took up the whole place la, and we also planned a Samyang session where we brought a giant board and 15 packets of Samyang and made for everyone to eat. Uni was really the place to be la."

A: Did you have any regrets that you wish you could change since joining in the club?

JH: "I wouldn't say I have any regrets, I think is one of the best decisions that I made to join the club because people like Kai Ping, Olivia, Jackson, Bryan these are the people that I would probably never get to know if I don’t play. It’s not really about a sport also, sport is a big part of it but I think the people that I really miss, it was a thing last time that we go "cheong k"(karaoke) after captain ball, and also dinner confirm either in Kings, KFC or Texas Chicken, it's always one of those places. The regret will be that we didn't have enough sessions, we probably play thrice a week, which I wish to play 4-5 times a week, but we knew that like the capacity we had back then which was about 20-30 people, not everyone would want to play every week. So, I think having daily sessions will be interesting also."

A: Participating in clubs will affect your academic performance. What do you think about this statement?

JH: "Not true, it is quite same scenario in the corporate field and everything in life, but it's really the self-thought that matters more. I made a decision get to involved in a lot of clubs from the moment I entered college, because back in high school, I had 4-5 different positions, and on top of that, I was a prefect also, I don’t know how is it legal in the school to actually have someone to hold these much positions. And I think part of the reason why I'm this short is that I didn't sleep a lot during high school days, I sleep at 2-3 am, wake up at 6 am and repeat, because of the sheer amount of work that was there, and it's like you should be able to manage yourself well if you choose to take up so many responsibilities. In the end, it didn't affect my grades, turned out okay, but I kind of told myself that when I enter college, I'm not gonna go through that stress anymore. It was too much and I kinda felt that I had enough growth for that part, so if anyone wanted to be in charge or take part in like a club or society, I will give it to you instead. So, for me to even get there, I think I wouldn’t even take a position in the club, to begin with, that was the mindset I had.

With captain ball, it was very incidental and you can probably look at the names or list of committees and I was never in the list, I was so happened to be there at that time who was best fit enough to support Kai Ping and Olivia in terms of formation the of the club, so it just kind of worked out that way, I was kinda like an unofficial advisory role. I kinda disagree with your statement because Kai Ping and Olivia did pretty well in their grades as well, I can’t say the same for Justin because I don’t know whether Justin did okay or not. More than half of us were quite okay and I think it's not really about the time that you spend on captain ball, it's also about managing expectations."

Tyen Wyeth: How will you describe your relationship with Justin and Ming Liang (Kyle)?

JH: "We are tied in a sense that if there is captain ball, there's definitely us. That aside, I think they always have a sense of respect for each other. Liang likes Justin in terms of sports because he is very serious about it. Every time I do catch-ups with Justin or Liang, It always been every time my new catch up with either Justin or Liang, it has always been a topic that we do kinda bring to the surface, like how is Justin or how is Liang with the respective people. It’s kind of hard to say now because we actually don’t catch up that often anymore. I met Liang last month but I haven’t met Justin in a while already. So, I can’t say for a fact in terms of a working relationship, but when you put any of these guys together in the alumni it'll generally be quite okay."