What is it that you really want to do with your life? Start a business? Reconnect with an old friend? Dive to the bottom of the ocean? Smoke a cigar with Castro? Forget what you think you should do, what excites you? What feels impossible? Be honest with yourself. Your answers don’t need to make an impression on anyone but you.
For many people, the four members of The Buried Life included, the impetus to make a life change only comes with crisis. The summer before we started The Buried Life, I was struggling with depression; Dave was struggling with his weight; Duncan had recently lost a close friend; and Jonnie was just plain angry and disillusioned with our generation (“No one protests anymore,” he used to say). The four of us were so beaten down that we had no choice but to reevaluate what was important to us. Our project grew out of that frustration. Sometimes it takes a debilitating low or a crushing loss to snap you back to reality, but don’t wait for it. Ferris Bueller put it well: “Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.”
Their book trailer vids are hilarious:
And the original trailer sums their mission up:
If you stumble across stuff like this, please flick it over (you can find me on Twitter) – am always on the lookout for links like these for Escape the City.
P.S. Word-nerd alert – major crush on this poem (the one behind their branding)… it’s by Matthew Arnold, who also wrote Dover Beach.
But often, in the world’s most crowded streets,
But often, in the din of strife,
There rises an unspeakable desire
After the knowledge of our buried life;
A thirst to spend our fire and restless force
In tracking out our true, original course;
A longing to inquire
Into the mystery of this heart which beats
So wild, so deep in us–to know
Whence our lives come and where they go.
Everything seems to be constantly in motion in Hong Kong – it’s always on, as a city. It’s dynamic and efficient and global and something about it just sucks you in… I know so many people (including my parents) who moved there over twenty years ago and could just never bring themselves to leave.
Walking through the streets of Central always brings back a lot of memories from when I was a kid. My first steps, first teachers, first friends, first crushes, all unfolded in this city – sometimes I forget how much this place has on me. Now that I’m older, ‘home’ stretches somewhere between Hong Kong, Malacca, New Zealand, and London (plus Melbourne’s in there somewhere) – but the first place I ever got to know was this one.
We all have certain rituals when we return to the place that knows us. Mine include dinner at one of my favourite restaurants (The Peak Lookout Cafe – pictured below); watching the sun rise from the Peak; milling around Central; lunch with Dad near his office; shopping with Mum at Pacific Place and IFC; baby-sitting my favourite little kid; sitting on familiar couches with old friends. Tough life.
Maybe it’s dangerous to fall into such a welcome-home routine – regardless, after a few days, I always end up remembering the quirks that define this place:
It’s an urban metropolis, but is way leafier than most people would think – there are great country trails, and mountains everywhere – you spend a lot of your time driving through greenery if you’re going into the suburbs;
The subway is a metaphor for the city’s modus operandi – clean, efficient, and smart (e.g. protective glass casing at all stations, so that no one can ever fall onto the tracks);
There’s this unique blend of global awareness and extreme sheltered-ness inside the expat bubble – most people my age have a hard-to-place accent and a global back-story, but there’s a village-like atmosphere among the expats – everyone knows everyone (e.g. I was siting at a bar, waiting for a friend, and accidentally overheard two total strangers discussing some guy – and I knew the guy they were referring to was a friend of a friend. Awkward);
Taxis are crazy cheap, and the city is so compact – nothing is further than a 15-minute drive away. This sounds like a small thing, but it actually means that you see way more of your friends on weeknights – compared to London or Auckland;
Affordable but incredible new restaurants and bars are always opening – especially around Soho, which increasingly seems like a non-Asian city-within-a-city: there’s been a massive expat influx recently, and Soho’s an area where it’s most noticeable.
There is way more I’d love to write, and eventually will… for now, some pics.
I love this post by Seth Godin: ‘Seven Reasons You Might Fail to Become the Best in the World’
You run out of time (and quit).
You run out of money (and quit).
You get scared (and quit).
You’re not serious about it (and quit).
You lose interest or enthusiasm or settle for being mediocre (and quit).
You focus on the short term instead of the long (and quit when the short term gets too hard).
You pick the wrong thing at which to be the best in the world (because you don’t have the talent).
You, as an individual, might be The Best at (insert skill or talent) In the World.
Or you might start an organisation that provides The Best (insert service or product) In the World.
You might work for an organisation that provides The Best (insert service or product) In the World.
You might contribute to a family whose member is The Best at (insert skill or talent) In the World.
Being ‘The Best in the World’ can be defined in a lot of different ways – and you can be standing at the front or at the back.
“They are just amazing people,” Reuben Burke said of the family of Dougal Fyfe, 23, whom he mistook for a deer while the pair were hunting near Wanaka in December.
“I don’t know what to do without them really. They knew straight away it was an accident, and [Dougal's father] Grant said that he’s already forgiven me.”
Dougal and I used to talk about forgiveness a lot.
* * *
My cousin and I watched Ghost last night. When you lose someone that unexpectedly, you start thinking a bit more about what happens after we die. I don’t know the answers, but I know that people live on inside of us even when we can’t see or hear or touch them anymore – not just in our photos or our memories, but in the way they continue to influence us. Dougs would approve of my new job at Esc.
* * *
It still feels surreal, maybe it always will… even though I can see his funeral pictures on Facebook, I still can’t believe he’s gone.
The stolen moments you get with a person – the talks, the walks, the laughs, the adventures – they are the point. When one of you disappears, those are all you have left.
‘Enjoy the little things, for one day you may look back and realize they were the big things.’(Robert Brault)
On the bus yesterday, I overheard three Christians on their way to church discussing a mystery high-profile guest speaker at some upcoming religious conference.
“Or Obama…” another mused.
“No… he’s just come out in favor of gay marriage, so I don’t think the church would want him speaking.”
When these Christians are sitting in church, opening their hearts to heaven, do they consider that overt intolerance of gay marriage suggests that gays are less equal – contributing to a climate of fear and hatred towards homosexuals – trickling down to bullying in high schools – resulting in hostile social environments where teens are choosing death over life because life has become so unbearable?
I know the correlations are loose, but the point is that we are all connected. Even my most non-religious friends know that the basic 101 of religion is ‘love your neighbour.’ Are gay people not our neighbours?! Isn’t fear the opposite of love?! I am not pro-gay; I am pro-equality – for all persons, regardless of gender, sexual orientation, race, religion, and so on. My mother is a devout Catholic, my father is a polite atheist – this sums up my opinion on religion:
Every religion has an outer form or shell, and an inner essence or core. The outer shell consists of rites, rituals, ceremonies, beliefs, myths and doctrines. These vary from one religion to another. But there is an inner core common to all religions: the universal teachings of morality and charity, of a disciplined and pure mind full of love, compassion, good will and tolerance.
I think there’s a difference between ‘going to church’ and ‘acting like a Christian’ – religion and God are two separate things to me. I’ve tried to be more rational, and less emotional, when debating the issues of homosexuality with Christians – but I can never get too far into the debate.
Generally, whenever I feel myself on the cusp of a fight with someone, I always force myself to see his or her point of view a little harder. When I can really see where the other person is coming from, I can start to see their argument as a point they’re making, instead of an attack on my views. When you’re trying to push your views on someone, you never get anywhere. When you put down your defenses and fully listen and empathise with their standpoint, the tension softens, a meaningful dialogue emerges.
With this, though, I just find it too challenging to empathise with homophobia – which is what opposition to gay marriage is. Directly translated, homophobia is a phobia of homosexuality – a phobia being an extreme or irrational fear of or aversion to something. I’ve found it’s impossible to have a meaningful, rational debate when the other person’s arguments are predicated on irrational fears.
My challenge to myself is to learn about and understand homophobia more – until then, I’m limited in how I can engage with the other side of the gay marriage debate… I want to be able to carry a conversation about this, without wanting to punch the other person in the face, when they start quoting irrelevant Bible passages. My strong opinions on the subject of gay marriage are largely fuelled by emotion – although the arguments below seem pretty rational to me.
The Economist (“The Case for Gay Marriage”, Feb 2004):
The case for allowing gays to marry begins with equality, pure and simple. Why should one set of loving, consenting adults be denied a right that other such adults have and which, if exercised, will do no damage to anyone else? Not just because they have always lacked that right in the past, for sure: until the late 1960s, in some American states it was illegal for black adults to marry white ones, but precious few would defend that ban now on grounds that it was ‘traditional’. Another argument is rooted in semantics: marriage is the union of a man and a woman, and so cannot be extended to same-sex couples. They may live together and love one another, but cannot, on this argument, be ‘married’. But that is to dodge the real question—why not?—and to obscure the real nature of marriage, which is a binding commitment, at once legal, social and personal, between two people to take on special obligations to one another. If homosexuals want to make such marital commitments to one another, and to society, then why should they be prevented from doing so while other adults, equivalent in all other ways, are allowed to do so?
Rory Lewis:
The epitome of evil is having spiritual leaders condone hate, in the name of God, against others such as our gay brothers and sisters.
As Catholics and others listen to the messages coming from those in positions of power in the Church, I hope they will realize that the heavy-handed approach to LGBT issues is not shared by all Catholics. Although those in the hierarchy may have the pulpit, there are far more pews than there will ever be pulpits.
Ted Olson, JD, former US Solicitor General under President George W. Bush,”The Conservative Case for Gay Marriage,” published in Jan 2010 Newsweek:
Many of my fellow conservatives have an almost knee-jerk hostility toward gay marriage. This does not make sense, because same-sex unions promote the values conservatives prize. Marriage is one of the basic building blocks of our neighborhoods and our nation. At its best, it is a stable bond between two individuals who work to create a loving household and a social and economic partnership. We encourage couples to marry because the commitments they make to one another provide benefits not only to themselves but also to their families and communities. Marriage requires thinking beyond one’s own needs. It transforms two individuals into a union based on shared aspirations, and in doing so establishes a formal investment in the well-being of society. The fact that individuals who happen to be gay want to share in this vital social institution is evidence that conservative ideals enjoy widespread acceptance. Conservatives should celebrate this, rather than lament it.
George Clooney:
Well before Prop. 8, I’ve made the point that every time we’ve stood against equality, we’ve been on the wrong side of history. It’s the same kind of argument they made when they didn’t want blacks to serve in the military, or when they didn’t want blacks to marry whites. One day the marriage equality fight will look as archaic as George Wallace standing on the University of Alabama steps keeping James Hood from attending college because he was black. People will be embarrassed to have been on the wrong side.
Desmond Tutu:
We struggled against apartheid because we were being blamed and made to suffer for something we could do nothing about. It is the same with homosexuality. The orientation is a given, not a matter of choice. It would be crazy for someone to choose to be gay, given the homophobia that is present.
I was really inspired by this Hero profile of ex-investment-banker-turned-musician Stephen Ridley. Favourite quotes:
The whole rat race was draining and insipidly unfulfilling, and even those who ‘won’ were still rats in a cage made of money. There had to be more to life than this. I wanted passion, I wanted excitement, I wanted to feel alive. Feelings I had once felt and forgotten.
One day I snapped. I became sick of how hopeless and empty I had let myself become. I suddenly went from deflated to restless to angry. I was angry that I was living a life which brought me no joy, I was angry that I didn’t have the guts to spread my wings and take a leap of faith, I was angry that I was too crushed and scared to even have a dream, much less pursue it. I was sick of reading about people with inspiring lives and not living one of my own.
A baby doesn’t learn to walk by making plans, and reading book after book. A baby learns to walk by taking risk, by stumbling and then having the perseverance to dust themselves off, get up and try again, taking what they learnt from the last tumble! We were all once babies, we all have that inspiring attitude and strength within us. Somehow we have come to look at tumbles as failures, whereas we ought to see them as an exciting part of the adventure that is life, and a step closer towards learning how to walk. You have to take a leap of faith, faith in yourself. You can do anything!!!
Today Mum and I celebrated fake Mother’s Day in Hong Kong (since I won’t be here on Sunday) and I got to surprise her with an afternoon at this absolutely incredible spa.
I had the best back massage I’ve ever gotten in. my. life… resulting in this song getting stuck in my head, as I serenaded my therapist’s magic hands in my head. (How funny are 90s videos?!)
I’ve mentioned that piece about ’thin places’ before – ‘where heaven and earth come closer‘ – but today reminded me that you don’t need to leave the city you’re in to experience the transcendental clarity that travel gives you. Maybe it was the lemongrass – thirty minutes in, I was in a bizarre state of semi-consciousness: aware of my surroundings, but numb with happiness, drunk on life, able to see everything with total lucidity. So weird. But awesome.
The possibilities for individualization of education are dramatically increased when computers are used in an intelligent way. A key thing here is that students can master a topic before moving on to a more complex topic. But more than that, students can become “doers” rather than “consumers” of knowledge.
That quote is from this review of ‘Disrupting Class‘ – a book I highly recommend for anyone interested in education and technology. The best explanation about disruptive innovation seems to be here: ‘a process by which a product or service takes root initially in simple applications at the bottom of a market and then relentlessly moves ‘up market’, eventually displacing established competitors.’
An innovation that is disruptive allows a whole new population of consumers access to a product or service that was historically only accessible to consumers with a lot of money or a lot of skill.
Because companies tend to innovate faster than their customers’ lives change, most organizations eventually end up producing products or services that are too good, too expensive, and too inconvenient for many customers. By only pursuing “sustaining innovations” that perpetuate what has historically helped them succeed, companies unwittingly open the door to “disruptive innovations”.
Christensen outlines how this can apply to the way that computers are used in education - the School of One echoes these concepts – great Atlantic piece on it here:
Teachers generally work on a mass-production model—if 30 kids are in the class, the goal is to find a method that will allow the highest percentage of them to succeed. A great teacher can employ secondary methods to get through to laggards, but given the variables that individual students bring to the class, a handful of kids will inevitably be shortchanged. Teaching each child at his or her optimal level with the optimal technique has traditionally been left to private schools and expensive tutors. But with more schools employing computers, Rose saw a chance to bring boutique education to a mass public-school audience.
He envisioned a classroom broken down into stations, each one designed to teach specific skills in different ways. A kid who needs to learn how to calculate the area of a circle could be taught in a group with a teacher, with a virtual tutor, or with a computer program. “The vision I had was a large open space with different modalities happening at the same time,” Rose told me. “I don’t know a lot about technology. But I did talk to people who know a lot about technology. I said, ‘I’ve got this crazy idea. Is this even doable?’ And they said, ‘Yeah.’”
School of One is the tangible result of those conversations. To come up with a way to tailor a lesson plan and teaching method for 320 seventh-graders in a pilot program at three schools, Rose collaborated with Wireless Generation, a Brooklyn computer-programming firm. Together they created an algorithm capable of weighing a student’s academic needs, his or her learning preference, and the classroom resources.
This model seems so intelligent to me. I think our generation embodies the era of mass customisation – everything from our Facebook profiles to our iPods lets us control the world we experience. We see what we want to see, we listen to what we want to listen to – we are unique and different, but connected. Our experience of the labour market will take the shape of portfolio careers and so our educational experience, if optimised, should be customised accordingly.
School of One is a big step in that direction, but changing the education industry cannot be done head-on, as Christensen outlines in his book. That Upton Sinclair quote has been in my head all week: “It’s difficult to get someone to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”
When I read articles like this, I can see that we’re coming closer to that crisis point where the education bubble bursts. Our world has become so much more complex to navigate, that now, more so than ever, I don’t see why we’re not leaving computers to do what they do best (store and regurgitate information) and teachers to do what humans do best (listen and guide). Teachers and universities are no longer the gatekeepers to knowledge… the individual is responsible and I think willing to construct their own educational experience – they just need the right tools and platforms.
The book reinforced my hunch that teachers will eventually become more coach-like and universities more hub-like. Overall, it got me thinking about how those customisable-education concepts can be applied to the post-graduate learning journey. What about careers education? Tertiary education? How can disruptive innovation in education bridge the classroom world and ‘the real world’?
While it might seem scary to think that jobs are melting away like the polar ice caps, there is indeed a silver lining. Instead of expecting our next job to be handed to us on a silver platter, we need to think about creating it.
We need to look in the mirror and see the opportunities that are in us.
While the job market may be challenged, we have more opportunities than ever before to find our own freedom.
It is time to look in the mirror and be the entrepreneur of yourself. It is time. Your time.
I was talking about this with my parents’ friend last night. Then it came up over drinks with my friends later on, and I was like, “Ha! We were just talking about this at dinner.”
Then today, this was in my inbox. Funny when that happens.
At the moment there seem to be a lot of people focused on creating start-up infrastructure: incubators, accelerators, shared working spaces and innovation hubs around the country; networks of angel investors pooling their resources and investing in a portfolio of ventures; countless competitions designed to flush out promising new business ideas; various initiatives to commercialise research done at universities; and, last but not least, millions of dollars of government funding – direct grants to companies, subsidised professional services and co-investment. This is all to try and create more high-growth companies.
…
Unfortunately just about all of this “infrastructure” I listed above has been designed from the top-down, often to solve problems that those putting it in place have – e.g. we’re a bunch of rich dudes and we want an easy way to invest in some sexy start-ups, or we’re a big corporate and we want to look like we’re helping small businesses, or we’re from the government and the minister would like a ribbon to cut.
….
This is not school! You don’t qualify your start-up by winning a competition or getting a sucker to invest or being accepted into an incubator program. You qualify by building something customers want and win by selling it repeatedly to them at a price that is greater than your costs. There is already a well established way to keep score in business: profit and loss. If you think you need $100k to pursue your idea, rather than hoping for a prize or chasing investment, why not build something you can sell to 1000 people for $100?
“Why should the purpose of business be to make money?” he said. “When asked, a doctor doesn’t say his purpose is to make money, but to rather heal people. Did Bill Gates say his purpose was to make money? No, he had a vision that everyone should have a PC. ”
A “conscious business” is one that subscribes not to the almighty dollar but to service to others, to striving for excellence, to fulfilling a higher purpose, and to changing and improving the world.
Yes, profits are important, Mackey told the audience Jan. 26, but they will occur “when they are not made the primary goal of the business.”
Watching that talk by Whole Foods founder and CEO John Mackey helped to confirm what I’ve always suspected: speaking about ‘purpose in business’ doesn’t make you soft – it doesn’t mean you don’t care about profits. I got so inspired by that talk, and still admire the way that Whole Foods balances strong values with strong performance.
Financial Times, a traditional paper for financiers, dedicated a column to discuss the ways finance could fuel innovation and help tackle social problems.
In its turn, Santander has this month awarded three London-based social enterprises £95,000 through its Social Enterprise Development Awards to help further develop their businesses.
Net Impact is also really interesting although I haven’t been to any of their London events yet.
I’ve already posted about this video before, buuuut I’m kinda obsessed with it. Probably biased because of the song.
I just love the way it portrays NYC and I’ve been TRYING (mega unsuccessfully) to make a Hong Kong one.
The trouble is that I find videos most interesting when there are PEOPLE involved. And it turns out that my friends and family are pretty camera shy when they know they’re going to be made into an online video. I’ve yet to master the art of covertly filming strangers…. without them giving me funny looks.
So, for now, I’m stuck with some pretty dull landscape-ish footage taken while driving around Hong Kong. We’ll see how it turns out. (Don’t get your hopes up.)
I remember reading this interview with a travel documentary filmmaker, ages ago.
Interviewer: ‘Do you feel that being behind the camera stops you from fully experiencing the people and places you capture on film?’
Filmmaker: ‘The camera actually enhances my experience – it doesn’t distance me from the world, it does the opposite… it forces me to examine depth and detail that I wouldn’t have otherwise looked for.’
I totally get that, but what I’ve realised over the past couple of days is that when I’m doing something I enjoy, like going out for a great meal with people I haven’t seen in ages – I don’t really want to be FILMING them. I just want to be enjoying them, listening to them, etc. But would filming them… capture them? Is that a more special way to soak up the moment, or does it disengage you somehow?
I also feel like you only get meaningful video footage when the people you’re filming are desensitised to the camera. On reality shows, film crews are (practically) 24/7 and the viewer only sees a tiny sliver of the footage: it takes ages for people to relax and to then do and say things meaningful enough to capture on film.
I keep reminding myself – that NYC montage is five minutes long, but it’s a YEAR’s worth of footage. Film, like all art, requires a huge amount of upfront raw material – just so that you can whittle down to the 5% worth keeping.
This post was pretty tough to write, because I kept thinking of close friends whose loved ones have had cancer. Such a tricky, sensitive subject – this IS NOT my two cents on how a person should or should not deal with it. I am not suggesting that by changing your eating habits, you can change the way cancer cells develop. All I’m saying is that I just finished reading Anticancer (one review here) and it reminded me of the importance of what we put into our bodies.
The tagline: ‘All of us have cancer cells in our bodies. But not all of us will develop cancer.’ I read it as motivation for my sugar detox (already ONE WEEK CLEAN, baby), and it did the trick, particularly this line: ‘…the metabolism of malignant tumors is largely dependent on glucose consumption.’ The German biologist Otto Heinrich Warburg won the Nobel Prize in medicine for his discovery on this issue.
Eek… especially since this popped into my Facebook news feed recently:
The book’s author, David Servan-Schreiber, MD, PHD, was a clinical professor of psychiatry who was diagnosed with cancer himself.
The facts: ‘Cancer has been increasing in the West since 1940.’
Cancer is more widespread today in the West than ever before. What has changed in our countries since WW2?
Addition of large quantities of highly refined sugar in our diet;
Changes in methods of farming and raising animals and, as a result, in our food;
Exposure to a large number of chemical products that didn’t exist before 1940.
His argument: ‘The fight against cancer starts in the kitchen.’
Food is something you do to yourself, three times a day. Three times a day, you have a choice on whether you’re going to nourish yourself or poison yourself a little. Nourishing yourself boosts your immunity. The book goes into a lot of detail about cells that I won’t outline here, but in a ridiculously miniscule nutshell, the foods recommended are pretty identical to this shopping list here.
There are little habits that the book suggests – three cups of green tea a day, not steaming broccoli for too long, always eating it with tomato, and replacing milk chocolate with dark chocolate… these will not PREVENT CANCER, but they’re just steps you can take to improve the fuel your body is running on. The book explains how and why.
If it’s that easy, why aren’t we all doing it?
Humans aren’t always rational. We don’t always do what’s best for us. Switch is one of my favorite books – it’s about behavioral change, and its key points are here. Basically, it talks about how even when all rational signs point one way, we still often move in the other direction. Including myself – I once ate ice cream for breakfast and defended it with the argument that ice cream has calcium and calcium prevents osteoporosis. Ha.
I see health as a lifelong journey– no matter where you’re starting from, it’s never too late to improve your habits. I remember a friend of a friend once saying, “If you don’t take care of your body, where else are you going to live?” Or something like that. It always stuck with me – our bodies are where we’re always going to live.
The book goes into way more scientific detail than I do here, but overall, it got me frustrated about how Coke and McDonalds are two of the most powerful brands in the world, pumping out crap that makes its most frequent customers sick in the long run, causing illnesses that taxpayer money then has to subsidize… it just doesn’t make sense, yet I doubt it will ever change, no matter who you try to ‘educate’ within the system. As Upton Sinclair said (mentioned in the book): “It’s difficult to get someone to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”
The only person you can really ever change is yourself. There are so many other healthy resources out there, but they just don’t get the same bandwidth. Like Green Kitchen Stories or Cruz Family Kitchen.
I read this back in March. I’m not sure how prescient it is, but it was on my mind today as I landed in Hong Kong – I love thinking about what the world will look like in ten years’ time. The below is an excerpt from Eclipse: Living in the Shadow of China’s Economic Dominanceby Arvind Subramanian.
February 2021. It is a cold, blustery morning in Washington. The newly inaugurated Republican president of the United States is on his way to the office of the Chinese managing director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to sign the agreement under which the IMF will provide $3 trillion in emergency financing (about 12 percent of GDP) to the United States and the conditionality to which the United States will have to adhere.
Over the preceding decade, the US economy has had to contend with three interconnected problems: slow growth, a fragile fiscal situation, and a beleaguered middle class. Under the weight of public and private debt accumulated after the crisis of 2008–10, high and persistent unemployment, and diminished participation in the labor force, the US economy has grown at just below 2 percent in the 2010s. As a consequence, and despite intermittent attempts to come to grips with the rising costs of entitlements, especially related to health care, public finances are not on fundamentally secure footing.
Public-sector liabilities have built up to 50 percent of GDP, as Peter Boone and Simon Johnson warned a decade ago, because the US financial system has remained as cavalier in its risk-taking and as toxic-asset-laden in its balance sheets as before the financial crisis of 2008–10. And inequality has increased even further, with income gains at the very top (.01 percent of the population) becoming even larger. Economic and social mobility have declined, giving rise to a middle class that understandably does not want to move down the skill spectrum but whose prospects of moving up, through education and skill acquisition, are increasingly limited by competition from India and China.
At the same time, China, despite the slump of 2012–13, has recovered its growth momentum and is economically dominant: Its trade and GDP are nearly 50 percent larger than those of the United States, and it remains the largest bankroller to the world with the United States still its largest bankrollee. The renminbi is increasingly in demand as a reserve currency, and the sheen has come off the dollar.
China—which is now the largest contributor to IMF resources and, pursuant to the reform of the IMF’s voting structure in 2018, now has veto power at the Fund—makes the removal of US naval bases from the Western Pacific introduction a precondition for the United States to receive the financing necessary to make its debt dynamics sufficiently stable to satisfy bond markets. This precondition has bite because China can easily get a majority of IMF members—beneficiaries of Chinese trade and financial largesse—to block a US financing program. The terms of the IMF program are clear, onerous, and delicately balanced between tax increases and expenditure reductions and are therefore equally distasteful to Republicans and Democrats. The US government must introduce a national value-added tax, restore the highest marginal tax rate to 40 percent, institute means testing for Medicare and Social Security benefits, and substantially reduce defense expenditures. The president grimly accepts.
Under the calm gaze of the managing director and flanked by leaders of both houses of Congress, he signs the letter of intent that elaborates the terms and conditions of IMF financing.
This scene of stark symbolism is relayed instantaneously around the globe. It is eerily reminiscent of 1998, when with arms crossed and a smug expression, West-embodying IMF Managing Director Michel Camdessus watched as Indonesian President Suharto signed off on an IMF program and, in the eyes of Asia, signed away sovereignty and self-respect. Except that the roles have been reversed. The handover of world dominance is complete.
Ironically, I watched this while I was at the airport, waiting for my flight to Hong Kong.
I love TCK content like this - Alicia and I talked about how much we appreciate the TCK Bible, but how art, rather than explanation, feels like a more human description about what it’s like to grow up globally.
I met a lovely TCK at the Escape the City meetup last night, and it reminded me of this interview I did for the South China Morning Post last year – email to the reporter copied/pasted below – I figured if it makes other TCKs feel the way that I did, watching that video, it’s worth posting here.
Reporter: Tell me a little about your TCK experience, and how it has shaped you as a person.
It’s difficult to define how my TCK experience has shaped me – it’s nature-versus-nurture – I’ve never known anything else, so I can’t say for certain which parts of my personality and identity would be otherwise different. But I know that growing up in three cultures simultaneously (Malaysia, New Zealand, and Hong Kong) shaped my core philosophies: it’s affected my perceptions on what makes people human and what actually matters. When you grow up between different cultures and races and religions, you quickly learn that ‘normality’ is only ever a social construction.
I think being a TCK is a fundamentally unnatural thing – ‘unnatural’ isn’t a good or a bad thing – I just don’t think that we’re designed to ingest that many different cultural experiences and transitions in such a short timeframe, especially during childhood. You can get cultural indigestion, feel psychologically claustrophobic in non-global cultures, and experience too much subconscious grief at too young an age – especially those kids who move every two years, which I think must be tough. Yet you can’t help but develop this tightly defined individuality; this ability to carry your life in a literal and emotional suitcase. It’s a gypsy-like lifestyle, but among a relatively affluent sector of society – it’s an interesting combination.
What have been some of the biggest challenges pertaining to the TCK experience?
Being there (physically) with your loved ones is everything. It sucks to miss out on things going on over on the other side of the world; just not being able to have everyone you love in the same continent can be frustrating. One of my best friends just gave birth in New Zealand, and it’s painful being all the way in London, seeing photos on Facebook but not being able to have the 3-D experience.
Sometimes you feel like a bit of a time traveler, with multiple identities in different parts of the globe – but that’s an opportunity or a curse depending on your approach. Personally, I prefer to see it as a huge opportunity. Your emotional centre of gravity is split across different worlds, which can make it challenging to unify your own system of values. Different cultures have different values, and it’s uncomfortable to feel like you’re betraying one culture by adopting the values of another – but as a result, you learn to create your own little unique system of values; borrowing parts of each culture, and finding a system that works for you as an individual.
Can you provide a few anecdotes of your struggles with identity and relationships, and how this may have impacted your approach to dealing with life in general as an adult?
When I arrived in Auckland for high school, I remember that on my first day, when people would come up to introduce themselves, I’d ask them, “Where are you from?” It was a dumb question – everyone, and I mean everyone, was like, “Uh – I’m from Auckland.” This was so weird to me, as my Hong Kong classmates had been from Scotland, India, Canada, Wales, Australia, etc. I remember realizing that I had a different accent, and for the first time in my life I was… different to my classmates. When I focused on the things that I had in common with my new classmates, instead of focusing on what set me apart, I learned that there are so many ways to connect with others beyond culture and background. You can connect on similar ways of seeing the world, but this isn’t solely defined by where or how you grew up – it can be defined by what you laugh at, your hobbies, how seriously you take yourself, who you admire, what your idea of success is, and so on.
Moving to Auckland and having the chance to go to high school there was one of the best and most painful things that’s ever happened to me – I was really attached to my Hong Kong class and school (we were a pretty close class and have all known each other since we were four – to this day, we’re still in touch). Luckily I ended up loving Auckland and had an awesome time in high school… I’m still close with both Auckland and Hong Kong school friends. It’s shown me that embracing the TCK lifestyle is about coming to terms with the concept of “both” as opposed to “either/or” – “either/or” will drive you crazy; “both” will make you grateful.
I happened to visit my kindergarten in Hong Kong the last time I was back, and started thinking – do I want to send my kids here? Is it important for me to bring my kids up in Hong Kong, where I grew up, or does place not matter to me? As you get into your mid- to late-twenties, more people start settling down, and it makes you question what you’re looking for in a life partner, and how you want to bring up your own kids – whether you want to give your kids the stability of a single culture and home, or the international exposure of the expat culture and lifestyle. Just when I think I’ve figured things out, something happens to remind me that I have no idea how things are going to turn out, or what the “best” way is – each country has its pros and cons, but the challenge is when it comes to ‘prioritizing’ the places you’re from.
So many people own a DSLR camera without really knowing how to use it. Until today, I was one of those people. (Aperture? Exposure? Huh? I just keep fiddling until the picture doesn’t look crap.)
Today I did this course. I highly recommend it. Maybe as a gift for someone you know?
There were only four students, it was cosy, great value for money, and Jason (the instructor) kept reminding me of a web developer I work with – Elroy – expert, no-bullshit, tough, kind, delivers what’s promised. I love working with people like that. We covered a lot in one day and I left feeling really satisfied, much less retarded, and also a bit wistful that I hadn’t done it sooner.
A website tells a story – when the story is a stunning visual, people are more receptive to the message. This is especially important for community groups – I think a lot of charity: water’s success comes from its emphasis on beautiful visuals.
Even just from a personal perspective - everyone is scattered, life speeds by scarily fast (!), but photos freeze the best fragments: ‘We do not remember days, we remember moments.’ I love recycling those again and again and again – like our Tarifa trip last year, which Amanda captured so beautifully. I don’t think I’ll ever reach Pam / Amanda’s genius level but that’s not the goal – it’s just special being able to capture and then look back upon the little details you sometimes forget.
Most people in the workforce would nod along with this advice to college graduates:
That piece of paper you just picked up doesn’t matter. Neither does your major, your GPA or any “honors” you graduated with. From here on out, the only thing that matters is your work.
If I were a student reading this, I’d think – okay, but how do I get that work?
The bottom line is that companies either don’t have the budget or don’t have the patience for on-the-job training. Thus they increasingly demand workers who can hit the ground running.
Okay, but how do I know what it takes to do that?
The most successful people in America not only do great work but more importantly love their work.
I know! But how do I find what I love?
It’s up to you to define that role, starting today.
Um… how? Didn’t I pay for this (apparently useless) degree as a form of navigation? If the piece of paper ‘doesn’t matter’, why does it cost so much? Did I just take out an educational sub-prime mortgage?
If and when portfolio careers are recognised as a dominant trend, I wonder if universities will become gated members-only hubs where high school graduates build those folios. Maybe high school itself will become where you start building. Or maybe high school already is that place, and you just never get told the extreme importance of finding extra-curricular pursuits you love.
World domination really translates to world service, and world service begins with having a deeper understanding of who you are, and what you’re here to do.
I think that can apply to companies, classrooms, leaders, individuals, families, couples – who may not even want to ‘dominate the world’ in a visible, aggressive way – but who want to have greater control over their lives and direction.
There are a string of yummy Korean BBQ restaurants on St Giles High St, right near Centre Point – I think we went to this one, but it was just one in a row of about four;
The Pembroke in Earl’s Court – one of those cool upmarket pubs that was just the right amount of crowded (and played Bon Iver – extra points);
Dim sum at the Princess Garden – a feast! You can just ask the waiter to bring their recommended special selection – we were a group of 15 and it only cost us 18 pounds each, which was incredibly reasonable;
Since the last half-marathon I ran was over five years ago, I found this beginner’s training schedule;
A new addition to Max Wanger’s travel shots – I love this pic… even though a friend pointed out that it kinda looks like someone committing suicide, in MY eyes, it’s just an illustration to one of my favourite quotes – ‘Buy the ticket, take the ride.’
