IEEE Women in Engineering Magazine - June 2015 - 15

Her mother Eva is determined to honor
her daughter's memory by establishing a
foundation in Indonesia. It is not an easy
endeavor, and Eva believes that the idea
is "too idealistic at the moment." Setting
up a foundation in Indonesia is easy, but
running it is difficult. Still, Eva presses on,
challenged to give something back to the
community, especially to Indonesians. "It
is time for us to do something," Eva says.
"I feel this is a mission."

A Connection to Indonesia
"Do you know about the political riots in
Indonesia?" Eva asks. We are Skyping, and
there is a 12-hour time difference between
Singapore and the east coast of the United
States. Eva has stayed up late into the night
to talk.
Vivien was eight and the family was living
a quiet, comfortable life in Jakarta in 1998
when the antigovernment protests broke
out. Tired of food shortages, unemployment,
and increases in gas taxes caused by the Asian
financial crisis, students began protesting on
college campuses. They clashed with security
forces and, as the protests grew, they spilled
over into the streets of Jakarta and turned
violent. Indonesian Chinese became targets.
"There was looting everywhere," Eva
recalls. "From our house we could see
the house across the river. There was fire
everywhere. Our side of the city was quite
safe, but we were told that there were Chinese girls being harassed."
It was not a place for children to grow
up. Vivien, her parents, and her two brothers left their home and moved to Singapore, yet they always would remember
their life in Indonesia.

Consistent Principles
Vivien seemed to have entered the world
with her character and principles already

fully formed. Her childhood nanny, her
secondary school friends in Singapore,
and her college friends from Tufts University in Massachusetts all describe her
in similar ways. She was a lover of books
and art; she valued friendship, tradition,
and good conversation; she was a scholar
who loved a challenge; and she was the
calm in the middle of any storm.
Vivien held a special place in the heart
of her childhood nanny. "My experience
with other kids in general had been common. That is: spoiled and demanding," her
nanny writes. "The parents had to buy lots
of beautiful dresses to satisfy the children's
wishes. Vivien was so different from other
kids. She very often turned down offers
from her mum and aunt for getting her
beautiful dresses, let alone demanding
them to buy for her."
In secondary school, Vivien earned distinctive marks, although she did not need to
study much. Her best friend, Rachel, echoes
the sentiments of Vivien's nanny: "I loved
how, for us, hanging out was going to Borders or the library rather than going shopping and how we used to laugh at others
who spent their money on clothes because
to us a person's thoughts was what made
them beautiful, not how they looked."
Vivien, Rachel, and other friends
embarked on many competitions together.
Whatever sort of competition caught their
eye, they signed up for-manga, animation, interior design, art. When they were
14, they collaborated with another friend,
Amanda, to create a 90-s Flash animation.
The trio had never used Flash but quickly
realized how labor intensive the project
was going to be. "Twenty-four frames per
second multiplied by 90 frames is A LOT of
frames," Rachel writes. They "soldiered on"
and Vivien went "ten steps further"-adding code for buttons and such to the short

JUNE 2015

IEEE WOMEN IN ENGINEERING MAGAZINE

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Women in Engineering Magazine - June 2015