“I was feeling like Jekyll and Hyde,” Choo says. “And I was feeling depressed.” She decided to start exercising and opted for running, thinking it was easy. “I wanted to do a Forrest Gump and escape from what was stressing me,” she explains. However, she could barely complete 2km in the beginning. “Running humbled me. Being an overachiever, I thought I could be good at anything,” she says. Still, she pressed on, setting small goals for herself. Soon, she was doing 10km runs and even half-marathons. Ten months after she first started pounding the pavement, she completed a full marathon in Tokyo. She challenged herself by saying “Go big or go home” and she chose Tokyo as it was a city she loved. It was tougher than anything she had done. “I used to be a nocturnal creature, doing my best work at two or three in the morning. So, having to wake up at 5am for a race was torture,” she says. At the 30km mark, she hit the wall. Crying and in pain, she almost gave up, but endured until she finished all 42km. She received her first medal and was utterly hooked. Choo enjoys taking on challenges, even if it means swimming upstream, and plugging away at them in both her professional and personal life. Growing up, she was drawn to the fields of art, fashion and design. She enjoyed handicraft and made cards as well as paper dresses for dolls, which she sold to friends at school. “I knew I wanted to do something related to design,” she says. However, her mum persuaded her to pursue a diploma in banking and finance. “She said that’s where the money is. So, I did it for my mum.” Just before graduating from Singapore Polytechnic, she spotted an advertisement by luxury retailer Club 21 for an advertising and PR assistant. She applied, but the company took a while to make a decision. So, she doggedly called them. She got the job and stayed for a year and a half.
The work was intoxicating, but also relentless, and after close to four years, Choo felt burnt out. She decided to leave FJ Benjamin and take a break. She began thinking about striking out on her own. “I just wanted a simpler job where I could work from home,” she says. Alchemy Consulting was the result of that and the business took off early on. “What I learnt was that connections are very important in this line,” says Choo. She had built a relationship with Moët Hennessy Diageo, which supplied alcoholic beverages for the parties she used to organise at FJ Benjamin. They gave her new firm a retainer. Meanwhile, an ex-colleague had moved to shirtmaker Thomas Pink, owned by LVMH. Choo soon secured their business too. The accounting and finance courses she studied also came in handy, as she could read P&Ls and manage budgets. “In retrospect, I have to thank my mum because the banking and finance diploma helped me manage my own company,” she says. The trouble was, she was working harder than ever. “The first three years of starting a business, you have no life,” she laments. She began to reclaim some balance through her work with dogs and running and eventually shuttered Alchemy Consulting in 2015. Although running did not come easily to her, it helped that she was eating clean. That was prompted by a health scare just before her wedding in 2011 that eventually required surgery. Her sister had also developed giant cell tumour, an uncommon form of bone cancer. Choo began by learning about food sources, then switched to eating more organic food. Over time, she gradually cut back on meat and processed food. She is now largely on a plant-based diet, occasionally taking seafood. She also avoids dairy products. Phasing out meat resonates with her growing passion for animal welfare and environmental sustainability. She now gets her protein from tofu, tempeh and superfoods such as chia seeds and hemp hearts.
Sunita Sue Leng, formerly an associate editor with The Edge Singapore, loves dogs and running (short distances) This article appeared in Issue 811 (Dec 25) of The Edge Singapore. Subscribe to The Edge at https://www.theedgesingapore.com/subscribe
