Q Communications celebrated its first year anniversary on 29 April 2015. As a young Asian female entrepreneur, I am glad to have survived the first year in business. With tremendous help and support from all, as well as a healthy dose of courage and conviction, here are three important lessons I learnt as a bootstrapping business owner.

As we celebrated International Women’s Day in March, it is clear that women’s opportunities in the workplace remains a subject of interest at the local, regional and international levels. Although we have women in the workforce today, the fact remains that there are more men than women in corporate leadership positions.

I subsist, in healthy – or unhealthy – measure, on a daily diet of images. We all do. As they say, I “eat images for breakfast”. Over morning coffee, I devour three printed newspapers, and as a photographer and visual artist those morning broadsheets are just the beginning. Most days, it's not until I close my eyes that the feast finishes. 

  The Japanese kimono is one of the world's instantly recognizable traditional garments. The word kimono literally means "clothing", and up until the mid 19th century it was the form of dress worn by everyone in Japan. That began to change with the import of suits dresses and other western fashions during the Meiji Era.