A New Decade. A New Question?

HAPPY NEW DECADE! Happy 20-10.

For the new year, my sister-in-law left me with her copy of What We Believe But Cannot Prove. While I've been reading it, I've been also eagerly awaiting the 2010 question. Finally, the question, and answers by "leading minds", were published today: How Is The Internet Changing The Way You Think? I have to think about how (or if) the internet has changed the way I think, but I know it has definitely changed the way I live.

Of all the questions Edge has asked over the years, my favourite is: What Have You Changed Your Mind About? One thing I changed my mind about recently was Battlestar Galactica. I had avoided watching BG for the longest time because the original series had not been that impressive. But on New Year's Eve, my brother persuaded me to watch the pilot miniseries with him. He had a blast watching me get sucked into the show all the way up to the end, five minutes into the new decade. So, into the new decade, the question that has been on my mind, no doubt inspired by BG and recent news events, is: What do we believe is our nature and the nature of our reality, and are they really true? Not exactly a new question, but perhaps we'll come up with some new and interesting answers? So I wonder, how is the internet changing the way we think about these questions?

Above the Table with Angie Wong

I've been a regular consumer of Angie's Under the Table column in Time Out HK. Lately, every time I see Angie, I've complained about the lack of surprising new restaurants in Hong Kong. Angie would dutifully throw out a few new restaurants. But ultimately, she would end up agreeing that there was really nothing new and exciting to rave about.

So when an email promoting a new Korean fusion restaurant popped up in my inbox, despite the fact that it was located in TST's Miramar shopping center, I forwarded it to Angie because I wanted to find out what Korean fusion is. We decided to check it out for lunch.

"Want to walk through K11 afterward?" she asked.

"sounds like a lovely lunch date! i wonder how i can script it to end up in your column? ;-)" I replied.

"Invite my ex-boyfriends? I'm sure we'll find debauchery at lunch," she emailed back.

"if we don't find it, we can surely create it," I wrote back.

In the end, the restaurant was nothing to write about. K11 is just another shopping mall. And we didn't find or create any debauchery. Instead, we had a discussion about the fate of media, how there really is no such thing as lifestyle journalism (assuming that journalism implies objectivity), and how all our moments and experiences seem to be brought to us by [insert brand here]. Angie recounted a recent Tiffany & Co. moment, and we chatted about how the way we experience travel these days is through so many media filters. When we go to a new destination, we already have in our minds an idea of what we should be experiencing as pre-packaged by whatever media we have consumed: FT's How to Spend It versus a show on Discovery Travel & Living versus television shows and movies.

"How can you accept it (advertising/marketing-driven editorial, the seeming lack of authenticity of our experiences)?" Angie asked with a how-can-you-give-up-the-good-fight tone.

And here, I felt another one of those I-really-must-be-getting-old moments. "Because I'm half a decade older than you are," I replied. "And I've had more time to come to terms with the fact that I'm just as avid and guilty a consumer, as well as a producer, of all this fakeness." Interestingly, our luncheon conversation left me feeling quite serene.

When I got back to the office, I came across these pages in a fascinating new book of interesting statistics culled from Jonathan Harris' We Feel Fine website. I found it interesting that Asians expressed more feelings of anger and fear than people on other continents around the world, while also expressing the least amount of joy (What are Asians angry and fearful about?). Unsurprisingly, Americans expressed the most joy (we are "hopeless optimists", as many of my non-American friends have pointed out):

CNNGo.com is Live!

It's always exciting watching new projects come to life. I first met the CNNGo.com team seven months ago during ArtsFest when we when to see a dance performance with Juliet Binoche with a set designed by Anish Kapoor. They had just rolled into town and were building up their regional editorial presence. Initial launch date had been set for May. But as is the norm with start-ups, launch dates get postponed once, twice, even three times as technical kinks get ironed out, editorial vision comes into focus and the website finds its voice.

As a freelance contributor, it's been nothing but fun for me; I get to write about fun stuff that I'm interested in, I can hardly call it work. But for the producers and editors -- Kim, Andrew, Chris and Zoe -- it's been months of 7-day weeks, epoch caffeine-fueled nights and days (i've contributed the odd sugar fix from Saffron Bakery too) as well as many a long conference calls. It's no easy task unifying the tone of a website that presents the local life of six vastly divergent Asian cities -- Bangkok, Hong Kong, Mumbai, Shanghai, Singapore and Tokyo.

CNNGo.com's ambition is to speak local, to track the pulse and vibe of each city. The editorial team's job is to manage the platform and facilitate the flow of conversation. But ultimately, it's the people who live in the cities and their contributions that will breathe life into the site, taking it from live to alive. Hope you'll enjoy browsing the site, but more importantly, please join the fun! Comment, critique and contribute.

Check-out this brilliantly produced video:

Little Cream Book @ Facebook: Let the Weekly Games Begin!

We've just created a Little Cream Book group on Facebook. Join the group and play in our weekly competition for a prize!

Every Tuesday, we will post a question in our Facebook group's Discussion Board. The answer can be found within this website, most likely within this blog. Reply with the correct answer plus your own corresponding travel address before the deadline for a chance to win. The officers of the group will then select 5 winners each week based on the accuracy of the answer and the merit of your tip (yes, it's a bit subjective. basically, we're looking for coolness, interesting finds, quality...you get the idea). Winners will be posted in the discussion thread on the same day the next question is posted.

And what are we giving away? A Little Cream Book of your choice. Now isn't that just cream!

Here's this week's question:

INAUGURAL GAME: RUNNING AROUND THE BIG APPLE

No, I'm not referring to the big Apple that produces our beloved iPhones, I'm talking about New York City where I'll be for a week as of next Wednesday.

QUESTION: Is New York City an official race city for the Nike+ Human Race?

TRAVEL ADDRESS: Give us your favourite sports-related address in NYC (can be a gym, a personal trainer, a boutique selling cool sports gear, etc.). Addresses must include name of establishment or person and the corresponding website OR a valid telephone number (yes, we will check!).

DEADLINE: Post answers to the facebook discussion thread by 5pm on 11 August 2008 (Monday).

Goodwill Shopping Twine

For the past week or so, I have been playing around with Twine. It all started late last October when IE sent me the link to a Technology Review article touting: The Semantic Web Goes Mainstream. I read the article and replied to IE: "I soooo need this!!!" In a nutshell, Twine is trying to glean meaning from all the content and data that we come across every day, so that when we do search for something, the results are that much more relevant, because it "knows" the connections/relations/relevance of all the stuff we've highlighted from the internet. At least, that's the theory. In fact, Tim Berners-Lee's (inventor of the web) vision of a semantic web, an intelligent web so to speak, is that it should be able to analyze and make sense of all the data in the web rather than just presenting a bunch of information based on a search query, leaving us to sipher through and decipher what it is that we need. I signed up for the beta version of Twine back in October and then forgot about it.

In the meantime, I was struggling with a project that started off as another Little Cream Book idea. I was trying to find 26 social enterprises, from A-Z and around the world, that produced products for consumers while also enabling social change, whether it be for the environment, sustainable development, art education for local communities, etc. I was having a tough time pinning down the 26 enterprises. There were so many great companies all with inspiring stories and as we kept looking, we would come up with even more. Finally, in January, I came to the realization that I was going about the project in the wrong way. I was trying to fit a square peg into a round hole. So I decided that what made more sense was to post everything we had come up with online and allow the goodwill shopping directory to grow over time. The original idea was to create a blog, with an entry for each enterprise. Entries would be tagged by product category (so that if you were looking to buy a new pair of jeans, you might find Pierce Jeans, which "gives away a significant chunk of its company's profit to help feed the children all over the world".), by producer country (say you're Christmas shopping and decide you want to buy gifts that might also help refugees from Darfur you might find Social Atelier, which "donates a portion of the proceeds [from sales of their T-shirts] to the Solar Cooker Project".) or by retail/distribution location.

We were in the midst of setting up the blog when the Twine beta invitation finally landed in my inbox a week or so ago. I thought Twine would actually make the whole process a lot more efficient and allow the Goodwill Shopping twine to grow faster. In concept, all I would need to do would be to bookmark a particular site and the site would be tagged with all the relevant data (people, places, organizations as well as whatever other tags I inputted). I could even add comment or descriptions for each bookmark and those would be similarly tagged. If other people had also twined the same site, I'd be able to link to them and the assumption is that they would have similar interests and be able to add to my twine or vice versa.

Well, after a week of playing around, Twine has a long way to go before fulfilling its basic promise of auto-tagging. Of those who have tried it, some are disappointed and while others who are a bit more accepting and hopeful. Right now, I feel that del.icio.us (for tagging and sharing bookmarks) and google (finding what I'm looking for) are doing a better job than Twine. But I can see the potential of Twine if it attracts the kind of usage that facebook does. Twine is supposed to get smarter with more use. As it sees more connections between items being added, its recommendations become more refined. The only catch is that web sites need to catch up, because not all are programmed in the standard that allows Twine to make sense of the data (i.e. identify and tag correctly the useful bits of information). In fact, the majority of websites I was twining weren't programmed in that way so I had to key in my own tags.

If you're interested in testing Twine and/or contributing to the Goodwill Shopping twine, let me know. I have a limited number of invitations.

I'm a Believer Now!

Today must be Facebook day, because the site's power has just been revealed to me: Utterly stumped and frustrated by a series of google searches to figure out the name of one made-up, supposedly global language, I decided to see whether I could harness the knowledge of my Facebook community to answer my question. So I changed my status to read: Winnie is stumped trying to remember the name of the made-up, "global" language. Within 12 minutes, the answer came back to me in a message from HH in San Francisco -- Esperanto! So cool...My status now reads: Winnie is lovin' Facebook's knowledge-harnessing capabilities.

life in a venti cup

It was nice to read this post about Little Cream Book in life in a venti cup. I actually like their tagline a lot: "because life is too short to think small"! A great diversion for a Friday afternoon...

Sites & Sounds

It's a wonderfully blush-inducing feeling when someone you consider the ultimate foodie blogger mentions your own blog in an interview on seriouseats.com. Thanks Chubby Hubby!

If you're looking for Mother's Day gift ideas, check out Violet.com, a brand-new gift site that makes gifting so much easier. Of course, you'll find Little Cream Book in their selection.

Was delighted by Bebel Gilberto's new album, Momento. It's perfect for lazing around on the deck of a yacht cruising through crystalline waters on a late afternoon going into dusk; just listen to Cadê Você or her rendition of Cole Porter's Night & Day.


And last, but definitely not least, Heroes is back!!

Neighborhood Worm: Digging Up Local Flavours

In this day and age of global brands, its easy to fall back on the familiar in unfamiliar places. I love the fact that I can get my morning Starbucks coffee (my current fave: iced tall double half toffee nut non-fat latte) in most places that I travel to. That continuity is very comforting. But the places that I love most are the places where I don't need to rely on a standard like Starbucks (let's face it, Starbucks actually does not have great coffee, what they really serve is that Cheers feeling). I would never dream of walking into a Starbucks in Paris! The fun thing about travel is getting to try things that cannot be found, or aren't as good as, at home -- espresso in Italy, satay, hainan chicken rice and Peranekan food in Singapore, Japanese gadgets, etc.

So when I met Gene Miao last year, I was very excited to hear about his new project, DayTauChung, which is Cantonese for neighborhood worm, someone who knows the ins-and-outs of the local neighborhood, all those secret addresses that are unique to that particular place. I finally got an email today announcing that the beta version is up-and-running. Check it out and help him update it with local addresses. Be sure to check out the About page, which lists 5 guiding principles for listings, but also the More Food for Thought makes for a fascinating read about how the project grew out of his RISD architecture degree thesis, drawing on French, post-structuralists Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari's distinctions between State and Nomad paradigms.

Personal Trainers on the Go

AW, BL and I were pigging out over lunch at a sushi restaurant yesterday when we decided we needed a bit more motivation to shape up for the summer. So we decided to make it a bet. Each person has to set a fitness goal to be reached in 2 months' time. Our gym has an InBody 720 body composition analyzer. They've all had their readings done, but I've been avoiding getting mine done. We're all supposed to set our own target body composition measurements based on current readings. Those who don't reach their targets have to pay up to those that do. If we all do, then we've already won beautiful bodies and nobody pays out anything to anyone. The signing ceremony is supposed to be tonight when we all get together to sign off on our targets.

So I was really excited when I read about downloadable programs by personal trainers in the NY Times. Without a personal trainer, I rarely venture into the weights section (except to look for friends). I feel I have no clue what I'm supposed to be doing. If I had a trainer showing me exactly what I should be doing that would be perfect. There are three sites mentioned in the Times article that offer downloadable workouts. Podfitness.com (For some reason, it won't support Mac OSX until July. The sample workout did not sound very motivating though.) and iTrain.com are mainly audio workouts, but I have an iPod video and iAmplify.com offers video, as well as audio, workouts, yoga lessons and other special interest programs ranging from astrology to finance to travel. So far though, the video offerings are slim, but I'm hoping that as portable video player become more pervasive, they'll be more programs to choose from. Or imagine your own personal trainer, yoga or pilates instructor giving you a personalized video workout program every time you travel. That would really be cool!

Booking Your Next Life or Career Experience

Was having dinner at Bonheur with a couple of girl friends. In the middle of dinner, MK suddenly said, "Why don't you organize a boot camp? You know, climbing walls and all that, like Police Academy." LP chimed in: "Yeah, but with luxury accommodation, spa and good food at the end of the day. And of course cute instructors."

It was really interesting, because NY Times had just done an article on Monday about the new trend in leisure travel: travellers want to learn something. Actually, I don't think it's anything new, but what is new is that more and more travel companies are offering more short-term, niche learning experiences that will fit into a week-long holiday. We often tailor such trips for our clients. Single, female travellers like cooking or yoga holidays. Some with more time learn a new language or brush up on a rusty one. On ski trips, we book private snowboard instructors for skiers curious to convert. Others want a wine expert to guide them through tastings around wine regions. We've always tried to build in learning experiences into the trips we create for our clients. So when the girls suggested the boot camp idea, I told them to let me know the size of their group and budget and I'd create a boot camp experience for them. We already brainstormed a few destination ideas -- Mongolia, Tibet, Thailand, Malaysia.

In a similar vein, but a bit more new is the idea of trying a new career on your holiday. I came across Vacation Vocations in a recent issue of Business Week. This company, I thought, is brilliant! I know so many burnt-out professionals -- lawyers, bankers, accountants, architects -- who want a change in career, but for one reason or another have not gotten up enough nerve to make the break for a new career. Some aren't even sure what their dream job might be and that's why VV's concept is brilliant, because it allows people to sample different careers over the course of a holiday. While it's not enough time to really get to know the industry and gain industry expertise, it is enough time for a person to figure out whether they would like to spend more of their time in a particular line of work. I think this idea would be great for Hong Kong teenagers, who are pressured by parents to go for the "safe" professional careers. Yet, most people don't know what career options exist and which best match their interests and strengths. If teenagers were given more exposure to find inspiring careers that they can be passionate about and see how people can make a living doing what they love, then perhaps students would be much more motivated and would make better educational and career choices that would lead them to be happier and more productive adults. After having had a browse through their offereings, I thought it would be kind of fun to spend a couple days shadowing TV producers in NYC. There are a lot of other interesting opportunities -- advertising, fashion, dude ranching, catering, hospitality, music, the list goes on. All you need is time to check them out (and money to pay for it of course), but it could be a truly life-changing holiday.

Google Calendar, Goytisolo, Gotan Project, Ana Forrest

Got a 4-day weekend here in Hong Kong, but having my own business means that weekends and public holidays don't mean much. I spent the day working on LCB: Golf in Starbucks. Didn't get far, only as far as Q (working backwards). As usual, I got side-tracked by quite a few interesting and fun things:

Google Calendar -- What can I say? Google never ceases to amaze me by coming up with new ways to organize and integrate every aspect of my life. I spent a couple hours setting up my calendar. But the real power of Google Calendar won't be realised until all my family, friends, colleagues, work associates are on it. The power of sharing aside, it was really easy to set up. I got iCal to synch with gCal, and then iCal transfers it all to my iPod video. Check it out!



The Anti-Orientalist -- One of the things I miss most about being in Hong Kong is Sundays with The New York Times Magazine (and the rest of the paper). Instead, I get previews to articles on Wednesday and read this rather interesting article on the Spanish writer Juan Goytisolo. Got me intrigued enough to want to read his memoirs, but also got me thinking about our love of the "authentic" in cultures -- usually the more chaotic, colourful side of developing countries. On the one hand, as tourists, we want to experience that aspect of "local culture", but at the same time, economic development and globalization leads to homogenization of cultures. And it's unfair for those of us visiting from economically privileged countries to expect those in developing countries to cling to traditions for our desire to experience something different or novel, not to mention that it helps maintain our higher spending power in those countries. Take wet markets in Hong Kong for example. Wet markets are a breeding ground for viruses (such as Avian flu) and diseases. Yet, they are also what add colour to the city; the juxtaposition of the sleek, gleaming international financial center that is Central with the wet market that is "local" life (never mind that the younger generation now shops at supermarkets such asCity'Super, Wellcome, Park-N-Shop).
Gotan Project -- Been listening to their new album Lunático (you can download tracks from iTunes).


Great stuff, as usual. It's great music for transporting you to a different time and place -- think late night in a smoky bar in Paris' Bastille or tango hall in Buenos Aires. Speaking of tunes that invoke destinations, BL tipped me onto Panjabi MC (which he heard while watching Inside Man), think it would be great for the pool party in India.
Ana Forrest -- By chance, I got to see an amazing and inspiring demonstration by the yogi Ana Forrest (there are links to videos of a similar performance held recently at a conference in Boston on her website). It had been a while since my last yoga class. BL managed to drag me to an hour long Hot Flow class at Pure Yoga and the demostration was right after class. I had no idea who Forrest was, but wandered in out of curiosity. It was truly inspiring to see the amazing control she had over each part of her body. It made me realize the power of breath in focusing the mind and controlling the body. Breathing seems like such a simple task that we don't really think about it. But it only takes one yoga class to figure out how difficult it is to master and how much power is behind such a simple task. Now, if only I could breathe and chew each bite of my food 20 times...

Make Poverty History One Trip at a Time

I had picked up the the Live8 concert DVDs at the airport in January, but only got a chance to go through them yesterday. I had them playing on background most of the day while I was in the office. Seeing the crowds of people getting together on that one day, 2 July 2005, to appeal to 8 world leaders to take a meaningful step towards eradicating world poverty by committing to cancel the debts of some of the world's poorest countries as well as providing AIDS medication and education to children. I wondered what's happened since then? So I clicked onto the one.org site (This is the US campaign site, part of the global effort. The global site is: whiteband.org and the UK site is makepovertyhistory.org. As campaign names go, I think my favourite is "Make Poverty History". It's a clear call to action.). It just so happens that they just launched the new "Click Spot" on MTV ((the spot can be seen on the site's homepage as well), just a few hours ago in fact. It's a simple, yet powerful ad. A celebrity snaps his or her fingers every three seconds to highlight the fact that another child has just died somewhere in the world of extreme poverty.

It was also interesting that my friend GS, who works in Kunming in China's Yunnan province for a UK-headquartered AIDS organization had wondered in his email to me: "I'm reading Laozi (in English) and wondering if his views on leadership can help the ego-centric NGOs in China." It got me thinking about leadership. We don't really need leadership when all we want is the status quo. We need leadership when we want to see things change, and the underlying assumption here is that they should change for the better. In my mind a leader must:
1. Have a clear vision of the outcome of change (i.e. eradicating poverty and AIDS deaths) and steps that need to be taken to accomplish this (i.e. cancel debt, provide free education, medication to those who cannot afford it)
2. Communicate clearly that vision and inspire people to take the necessary actions
3. Be humble enough to understand that there are many world views and many different interests at stake and see the issue from each person/party's perspective
4. Believe in the greatness within each person and not in his/her own individual greatness, because ultimately, if you convince people that they have the power to change the world, then they will change the world
5. Never give up. Always believe, always have passion and compassion.

Bono and Bill Gates are the two highest profile faces in this cause. But for each of them, there are thousands, even millions who are leaders in their own right and their work should be celebrated and supported. This is what inspired me to put together Goodwill. Every time a person travels elsewhere in the world is an opportunity to gain more understanding, an opportunity to reach out, an opportunity to creat change.




This was no more evident than on my visit to Kenya several years ago. I visited a school near Loisaba and a school in the Masai Mara. In the Masai Mara, which has benefitted from a lot more tourism than Loisaba, the school I visited was much more developed. There were even girls in the upper grades (even though they made up a small percentage of the class). The children received better medical attention, had better facilities, stayed in school longer. Tourists helped by bringing supplies, making donations after their visits and supporting tourism companies that created local employment and gave back to the community by building schools, providing fresh water to villages, providing medical attention. Of course, there is the issue that most of the owners of these lodges and camps and tour companies were foreigners (many Americans and British), which some lodges such as Loisaba address by helping the local community set up their own tourism operations (in their case, the Star Beds are operated by the local community). Real change can only happen when the poorest gain access to capital to empower them to realise their own dreams.

This is where microfinance comes in. It's not enough to educate the poor. They end up moving to urban centers seeking employment. Because supply of educated and skilled labour exceeds the rate of jobs created by the economy, false hope is created and there is a whole community of educated and disenchanted, disenfranchised people. There is nothing more dangerous or disruptive or wasteful to a society than a disenfranchised group of desperate youth. We should not teach people English just so they can look forward to serve American tourists at five-star resorts owned by multi-national companies. We should teach people English so that they can look forward to one day owning and operating their own bed & breakfast or even hotel chain, so that they can create websites to market their services to the global travel consumers.

America's strength is its ability to attract a talented pool of immigrants with the hope of citizenship, becoming American and living the American dream. For all of the US's inequities and imperfections, that dream still has a chance of becoming a reality for many. But any real chance to build stable democracies around the world has to be founded on creating economic opportunity for the people (not just those who govern and their cronies). This is where we as tourists can help change the world one person at a time -- each time we travel, we can ask someone how you can help the local community. Does the hotel we stay in do something great for the local community? Spread the word. Find out what kind of work grassroots organizations are doing and spread the word. Was the local guide or driver particularly helpful? Spread the word.

Informative links:
ashoka.org
gatesfoundation.org -- while I've never been a Microsoft fan, I do admire the work that the Gates' foundation does
schwabfound.org
skollfoundation.org
10-16 April 2006 Newsweek International Edition article on "Travelers Making a Difference"

Pandora's Box or The Perils of Google Video

I'm a bit late coming into this world of Google Video. When my friend GM sent me a link to this video at 5:23pm, little did I realize that I would be opening a whole new Pandora's Box by clicking onto it. Here's the video by Back Dormitory Boys, a couple of university students in China, that The Economist saw fit to devote print space to in its 6 April edition.



And just as I had gotten out of my procrastinating mood! Now, I've spent a little over an hour being entertained by rather silly video productions as well as interesting ones such as a landing at the now-defunct Kai Tak International Airport. To this day, it remains my most memorable approach and descent into an airport.



Anyway, I just find this all quite an amazing phenomenon. First of all, that people actually spend a good amount of their time to produce these videos and then people like me actually spend quite a bit of our time being entertained. Media companies need to take note.

Editor's Note added 19 November 2006: Of course, google.com just completed its acquisition of youtube.com, so expect a lot more exciting things in store in the online video space!