Personal MBA Paris is not a big idea, it's not supposed to be the "next big thing". Rather, it's the sum of many things that have been accumulating in my mind over the past 3 or 4 years :
- Back in 2009, this life-changing day happened, where I decided to actually use all the tools and concepts I knew about personal goal setting: we sat with a friend in our living room, with an almost blank sheet in front of each of us, and for six hours straight we were trying to reach deep inside our respective minds and pull out some great ambition for our lives and make up our minds on how we would change the world. The sheets were not entirely blank, they had some questions on them, some powerful questions that helped direct the "soul-searching" process. After that day, we still had to continue and refine the ideas separately, but I had already defined a broad plan for what I wanted for my next 3 to 5 years. It included a radical shift of career towards sustainability, working in a highly multicultural and multilingual environment, and graduating from a world-renown MBA program.
The point about the MBA is that I saw it as a way to help quicken my career shift, and I was meeting some MBA graduates at the time who explained it had impacted their lives in "oh so many ways" and had been critically instrumental in making them land exactly where they wanted to. On the other hand, I could already perceive that another thing all MBA graduates said was "you know, in the end it's not about the classes, hey let's say it, it's not even about the job you land afterwards : it's all about the people you meet during the experience, and the network: if I get an assignment next month that sends me to Kuala Lumpur, I can just pick up the alumni directory, phone up some of the guys who live there and I'll be crashing their couch and we'll sip French wine while discussing local business and globalization as if we'd been old friends, because we share the [insert business school name] MBA experience." And they had stars in their eyes when they said that last part. And when I heard them, I had stars in my own eyes... because I already knew exactly what they were talking about: I had that experience from before already, and I had that network, that kind of bond to a worldwide community of strangers. I got it all with Aiesec.
So I thought : if that's really what it brought them, what they think was a good part of the value they got for the money... do I really need to put in tens of thousands of dollars for something I already have? True, it's not the same network: MBA alumni have a business dimension that is hard to match. But the Aiesec network is quite an entrepreneurial too, and with 60 years of existence and over 110 countries today, it beats most MBA networks in terms of multiculturalism and global presence.
Already a few months after deciding I wanted to do a prestigious MBA, I was having doubts. This was a problem.
- Early in 2010, the first TEDxParis was organized, and I was lucky enough to get a free seat there, and the experience totally lived up to its promise. The quality of the speakers, the interaction allowed with them during the intermission, the mindset of the attending crowd. After seeing so many TED talks online, some of which did really blow my mind, the experience of the actual event, the energy in the place, set the bar at a whole new level. I thought this kind of events should have existed since long ago, and wondered if the open classes the top Greek philosophers had among themselves, being peers and challengers to one another, somehow resembled a TEDx event. I made a resolution to follow up on this TEDx concept and see how it could be done some other way, even more open to the public, or replicated at a smaller scale, but more often.
- Just after the event, I was so enthusiastic about the idea of learning directly from other people that I actually organized something like a TEDx, with my flatmates and a group of friend. I was sharing a flat with three totally amazing people, all former Aiesec members (!) and in no time we had rounded up a dozen of people who wanted to participate to the "home made TEDx", at least as test-audience! The initiative was short-lived as we only had one session, but the feedback was still great and we had a chance to be impressed by our friends about how they presented a topic they were truly passionate about, and the talks actually had some impact on our lives at the time.
Since then, I've had this thought at the back of my mind that I want to try a few other things around the concept of "education among peers".
- Some time later in 2010, I stumbled upon a French professional blogger who had done a Personal MBA. As I read more about the concept, and saw what it could bring and how it delivered value, I thought I had found something really. I made a resolution to take a more serious look at it when I was ready to start my MBA education.
It was around that time that I started discussing more and more a crazy idea: the idea of a world tour to revolutionize social innovation and accelerate the up-scaling of social businesses.
Well, that happened, and during the world tour I thought that I should start a personal MBA as I came back.
After a few months of reverse cultural shock, I was ready, so I started this in January 2013, expected to finish in 52 weeks.
I'll be posting, here or there, at the pace of 1 each week, the summary of the business book I read.
But because I can never do things like they are supposed to, I'll try and gather a group of friends around this initiative, so that we can :
- discuss and augment the list of books to have in the curriculum
- make their own summaries of the books they read, and we'd comment each other's reviews
- buy some of the books, so we share the cost between all of us
- review progress and keep each other accountable.
This is the start, it's gonna be great :)
Saturday, February 2, 2013
Monday, April 2, 2012
Santiago de Chile
A note to French readers : "Santiago" is "Saint-Jacques" :) just found out after two weeks in the city.
We arrived in Santiago de Chile mid-March, after an 11-hour flight, with a 14-hour from where we flew: Sydney, and causing "our" March 14th to last for 39 hours rather than the usual 24 hours.
We did deliver two workshops, at the AIESEC Ibero-American Leadership conference, and the next day at Universidad Technica Federico Santa-Maria, which was a great energy boost, and our first experience with Latino-American students. It was fantastic, overall with a lot more participation from them than the average Asians students. That is just a cultural difference.
But then we spent a full week sleeping during the day and waking up at random times in the middle of the night, while our bodies struggles to adapt to the time difference.
Santiago has a very European feeling attached to itself, with the old Spanish colonial buildings in the historical center, but also some French and British architecture in places. Overall we enjoyed our stay there very much, we found it very friendly, easy to navigate even with our rusty Spanish, and enjoyed the food there a lot more than in other regions of the world!
Last Sunday, I took the "free walking tour" to understand the city a bit better. One of the main meeting spot in the city is "plaza de armas", which used to be the only square, when Santiago was just a row of buildings on each of its four sides.Nowadays, it is considered as the junction point between the wealthy part of the city and the more popular one.
A lot of things have changed since the colonial times, but a lot has remained the same. Since its creation, Santiago has always been a center of political power in Chile. Faced with a high increase in the capital's population, the government tried to move institutions to other places of the country. Most notably, the parliament now officially seats in Valaparaiso, a coastal city 1,5 hours away from the capital. But the members of parliament seem not too happy about the daily commute they are now forced to do, and have been calling for sessions to resume in Santiago.
The Palace of "Moneda" is well known for its use as government house. It was also notoriously bombed by an military plane during the Pinochet coup in 1973. The then-president, Allende, was found dead in hos office... now 40 years later, with ballistic analysis and testimony from his personal secretary, that he committed suicide before being taken by the rebel forces storming the palace.
Walking into a different neighborhood, we walk through the so-called "New york street", because... it looks like a New York street. Apparently :
Nature is not forgotten in Santiago (erm... see for yourself :p ). A park is set up along the river, where Santiago inhabitants gather at the first ray of sun. That park is surrounded by a lot of good restaurants, our guide mentions all kinds of food to try, from the "paella marina" to the "empanadas", and suggests washing them down with "piscola", the almost-officia national drink which is a simple mix of Pisco and coca-cola.
Just like in Paris, France, politicians sometimes promise that by the
end of their mandate people will be able to swim in the river. The
latest proposal consists in cleaning the length that runs through the
city and setup vending carts and mobile food stalls on either side. Currently, the level is very low because the water is held upstream for various purposes.
I end up losing the group in the Bellavista neighborhood, just accross the river from the park. It has a lot of small shops, a market; there you can find antiques, jewelries, souvenirs. And in the weekend many people to enjoy an ice cream in the sun or wander through the crowd until deciding on which coffee place is the most fashionable on that day.
We arrived in Santiago de Chile mid-March, after an 11-hour flight, with a 14-hour from where we flew: Sydney, and causing "our" March 14th to last for 39 hours rather than the usual 24 hours.
We did deliver two workshops, at the AIESEC Ibero-American Leadership conference, and the next day at Universidad Technica Federico Santa-Maria, which was a great energy boost, and our first experience with Latino-American students. It was fantastic, overall with a lot more participation from them than the average Asians students. That is just a cultural difference.
But then we spent a full week sleeping during the day and waking up at random times in the middle of the night, while our bodies struggles to adapt to the time difference.
Santiago has a very European feeling attached to itself, with the old Spanish colonial buildings in the historical center, but also some French and British architecture in places. Overall we enjoyed our stay there very much, we found it very friendly, easy to navigate even with our rusty Spanish, and enjoyed the food there a lot more than in other regions of the world!
Last Sunday, I took the "free walking tour" to understand the city a bit better. One of the main meeting spot in the city is "plaza de armas", which used to be the only square, when Santiago was just a row of buildings on each of its four sides.Nowadays, it is considered as the junction point between the wealthy part of the city and the more popular one.
 |
| Almost everyday there are dances, artists, all kinds of crowd performing to entertain the tourists on Plaza de Armas. |
A lot of things have changed since the colonial times, but a lot has remained the same. Since its creation, Santiago has always been a center of political power in Chile. Faced with a high increase in the capital's population, the government tried to move institutions to other places of the country. Most notably, the parliament now officially seats in Valaparaiso, a coastal city 1,5 hours away from the capital. But the members of parliament seem not too happy about the daily commute they are now forced to do, and have been calling for sessions to resume in Santiago.
 |
| The former parliament house, now a government office in Santiago de Chile, close to Plaza de Armas. |
The Palace of "Moneda" is well known for its use as government house. It was also notoriously bombed by an military plane during the Pinochet coup in 1973. The then-president, Allende, was found dead in hos office... now 40 years later, with ballistic analysis and testimony from his personal secretary, that he committed suicide before being taken by the rebel forces storming the palace.
 | |
| Palacio de la Moneda ... is that the right spelling? i'm thinking in Portuguese ;) |
Walking into a different neighborhood, we walk through the so-called "New york street", because... it looks like a New York street. Apparently :
 |
| Open sewer, or actual river in the middle of town? you decide. |
I end up losing the group in the Bellavista neighborhood, just accross the river from the park. It has a lot of small shops, a market; there you can find antiques, jewelries, souvenirs. And in the weekend many people to enjoy an ice cream in the sun or wander through the crowd until deciding on which coffee place is the most fashionable on that day.
Monday, March 19, 2012
Australia - part 2
Where a lot of things told here happened:
View Larger Map
The second week on the country-continent, the "land down under", saw us road-tripping through New South Wales and Queensland, at the time both badly hit by flooding. As we left Sydney, we had 24 hours of virtually uninterrupted rain which forced us to spend most of that time inside the camping van we had rented. It is one of the best ways to travel Australia, allowing maximum flexibility and autonomy in one's travel plans, and avoids the hassle of buying a van and having ti sell it in a hurry when you leave. The back is made of storage docks that transform into a comfortable mattress in the evening, and it comes with a small fridge, a water tank with a sink, and even a retractable gas stove to cook anywhere.
The rain stopped when we got into Queensland, Brisbane's state. We got a chance to reconnect with Susan, an Australian friend from Aiesec who had spent a year on the National Committee in Paris, and shared a wekk-end brunch with her and her friends at the recommendable Simpatico café. It is invigorating to be doing something "normal", i.e. something that feels like at home!
We then went on to drive a few hundred kilometers more to the North, to the Carnarvon National park, a millenia-old gorge carved by the Carnarvorn river through the Great Dividing Range. The Great Dividing range is a chain of moutains "dividing" the East coast of Australia from the rest of the country.
On the way to the National park, we stop at small "wildlife center" where koalas, kangaroos, dingos, spider monkeys, and a few other very exotic species are looked after. Feeding time is an opportunity to take a few sleepy koalas from their branch and have them receive cuddles from the public. They have a very thick fur, look and feel like teddy bears, and sleep 18 hours per day, normally waking up only at dusk to eat eucalyptus leaves, their only food.
Kangaroos are a lot of fun, their simple look an exotic mix of a rabbit head and a race dog rear-body.... but even that is not such a good comparison. A female was carrying its baby in the front pouch, the cub peering out from time to time and chewing unconvincingly at a few strands of grass.
The rest of the trip to the Carnarvon gorge feels a bit like we are laving civilization behind: there are progressively less and less radio channels, the last ones are all about country music, until you are left with just static. By the time we wonder how to let people know where we are going, mobile networks are long gone. And indeed... how to cover such an immense territory with mobile networks, when there are only 20 million inhabitants concentrated in urban areas on the coasts? Internet was never available outside of the major cities anyways, and fuel price increases a good 30% as we go inland.
We make a call to the "base camp" at the entrance of the National Park prior to starting our last ride of the day, already at the end of the afternoon. A very distressed woman explains that with the night coming, water still covering parts of the road, and cattle and animals crossing all the time, she strongly feels we'd be better off crossing the next day. Thus, we end up spending the night on a red dust area used by trucks ("road trains" as they are called, with 3 wagons and 60 tires each... could be "road monsters"), on the side of a road, in the middle of nowhere.
When the night comes, by 7pm, the sky is clear and we probably never saw so many stars in our lives. Away from any other light source, all the dim rays from all the stars in the sky reach our eyes. They are everywhere. Even in the darkest parts of the sky, you can always find a tiny, flickering light showing that there is a star, or maybe there was, in that direction too.
The next morning, the last part of the way holds the camp woman's promises: flooded roads, abrupt crests, cattle squatting the road and kangaroos playing in the tall grass a few meters from us, when we were careful to approach them silently. A tough ride to make at night. The Carnarvon National Park is a huge playground for serious trekkers, the longest "walk" is a one-week circuit going around gorgeous sights and exploring the landscape from plains level to some of the close mountaintops.
We leave that for the pro trekkers, and get to see traces of Aboriginal art: shapes of hands and objects, marked by the projection of pigment around the shape on stone. Aboriginal people have live in this area for almost 20.000 years.
The park is home for more exotic species than we care to remember, including platypus and 2 of the 3 most venomous snakes in the country. Actually, on the way back, we spot on of them from the car, slowly moving on the side of the track.
Throughout the journey, we get to confirm our impression of Australians as friendly, smiling, helpful people. The urban youth tends to care more about fitness and food, balanced lifestyle, while in the remote countryside it seems to be about the comfort of life (often that means a 4x4 to get bread from the supermarket) and about the protection from natural threats, since insects and storms can be extreme hazards in those regions. Countryside houses only have one level and are very well-maintained, so you get this sense of modernism and cleanness.
All of that makes us both nostalgic of Europe and hungry for more discoveries!
Moving on to Santiago de Chile now!
View Larger Map
The second week on the country-continent, the "land down under", saw us road-tripping through New South Wales and Queensland, at the time both badly hit by flooding. As we left Sydney, we had 24 hours of virtually uninterrupted rain which forced us to spend most of that time inside the camping van we had rented. It is one of the best ways to travel Australia, allowing maximum flexibility and autonomy in one's travel plans, and avoids the hassle of buying a van and having ti sell it in a hurry when you leave. The back is made of storage docks that transform into a comfortable mattress in the evening, and it comes with a small fridge, a water tank with a sink, and even a retractable gas stove to cook anywhere.
 |
| Jucy Rental "campa" van! from left to right: water tank, fridge, gas cooker, and amazing cook! |
The rain stopped when we got into Queensland, Brisbane's state. We got a chance to reconnect with Susan, an Australian friend from Aiesec who had spent a year on the National Committee in Paris, and shared a wekk-end brunch with her and her friends at the recommendable Simpatico café. It is invigorating to be doing something "normal", i.e. something that feels like at home!
We then went on to drive a few hundred kilometers more to the North, to the Carnarvon National park, a millenia-old gorge carved by the Carnarvorn river through the Great Dividing Range. The Great Dividing range is a chain of moutains "dividing" the East coast of Australia from the rest of the country.
 |
| Carnarvon river. in the background, a little bit of the Great Dividing Range of mountains, where epic battles against Aborigines took place only a few centuries ago. |
 |
| Recent floods in Queensland "may have displaced rocks or made them unstable. Visitors are advised to be cautious!" |
On the way to the National park, we stop at small "wildlife center" where koalas, kangaroos, dingos, spider monkeys, and a few other very exotic species are looked after. Feeding time is an opportunity to take a few sleepy koalas from their branch and have them receive cuddles from the public. They have a very thick fur, look and feel like teddy bears, and sleep 18 hours per day, normally waking up only at dusk to eat eucalyptus leaves, their only food.
 |
| These buddies are SO cute it's unbelievable. It's like "live teddy bears" :-D |
Kangaroos are a lot of fun, their simple look an exotic mix of a rabbit head and a race dog rear-body.... but even that is not such a good comparison. A female was carrying its baby in the front pouch, the cub peering out from time to time and chewing unconvincingly at a few strands of grass.
 |
| hop hop hop... always jumping like a spring! |
 |
| Taking a nap in the mommy's front pouch. |
 |
| Miss a turn and you end up in Jurassic Park! this one looks like a surviving dinosaur... |
The rest of the trip to the Carnarvon gorge feels a bit like we are laving civilization behind: there are progressively less and less radio channels, the last ones are all about country music, until you are left with just static. By the time we wonder how to let people know where we are going, mobile networks are long gone. And indeed... how to cover such an immense territory with mobile networks, when there are only 20 million inhabitants concentrated in urban areas on the coasts? Internet was never available outside of the major cities anyways, and fuel price increases a good 30% as we go inland.
We make a call to the "base camp" at the entrance of the National Park prior to starting our last ride of the day, already at the end of the afternoon. A very distressed woman explains that with the night coming, water still covering parts of the road, and cattle and animals crossing all the time, she strongly feels we'd be better off crossing the next day. Thus, we end up spending the night on a red dust area used by trucks ("road trains" as they are called, with 3 wagons and 60 tires each... could be "road monsters"), on the side of a road, in the middle of nowhere.
 |
| Not my own picture, but you get an idea! |
When the night comes, by 7pm, the sky is clear and we probably never saw so many stars in our lives. Away from any other light source, all the dim rays from all the stars in the sky reach our eyes. They are everywhere. Even in the darkest parts of the sky, you can always find a tiny, flickering light showing that there is a star, or maybe there was, in that direction too.
The next morning, the last part of the way holds the camp woman's promises: flooded roads, abrupt crests, cattle squatting the road and kangaroos playing in the tall grass a few meters from us, when we were careful to approach them silently. A tough ride to make at night. The Carnarvon National Park is a huge playground for serious trekkers, the longest "walk" is a one-week circuit going around gorgeous sights and exploring the landscape from plains level to some of the close mountaintops.
 |
| Wait.... did we walk here? is this the way back to Ranger camp or is it the start of the week-long trek? argh. :-S |
We leave that for the pro trekkers, and get to see traces of Aboriginal art: shapes of hands and objects, marked by the projection of pigment around the shape on stone. Aboriginal people have live in this area for almost 20.000 years.
 |
| No kid's business: cave art was the work of grown men. Aboriginal tribes lived in this area for about 19.000 years. |
The park is home for more exotic species than we care to remember, including platypus and 2 of the 3 most venomous snakes in the country. Actually, on the way back, we spot on of them from the car, slowly moving on the side of the track.
 |
| One of the most venomous snakes in the world... This one was in a glass cage at the wildlife center, but we saw his twin brother on the side of the road. We went away very fast! |
Throughout the journey, we get to confirm our impression of Australians as friendly, smiling, helpful people. The urban youth tends to care more about fitness and food, balanced lifestyle, while in the remote countryside it seems to be about the comfort of life (often that means a 4x4 to get bread from the supermarket) and about the protection from natural threats, since insects and storms can be extreme hazards in those regions. Countryside houses only have one level and are very well-maintained, so you get this sense of modernism and cleanness.
All of that makes us both nostalgic of Europe and hungry for more discoveries!
Moving on to Santiago de Chile now!
Saturday, March 17, 2012
Australia - part 1/2
Australia
I had very few expectations when arriving in Australia, except the one of finding a country somewhat similar to home, and somewhat exotic. The familiar side is there, definitely: Sydney and Melbourne streets are bustling almost night and day with white, caucasion people, all the major food, fasion, and retail chains from the Western world are here to make our stay incredibly easier than in South-East Asia. Everyone speaks English, like they should, but the local accent is very hard to understand for us since many syllables are pronounced in a different way.
As for the exotic part... I have not found it yet: White people, again, though most would be very tanned; English names for streets and places, quite reminiscent of London and its burroughs; staple food looks a lot like meat, rather than rice; downtown architecture is a blend of classic Victorian style and modern glas-and-steel office towers; etc.
We learned that Melbourne is the largest Greek city outside of Greece, with 800.000 Greek citizens established there. Turkish, Indians, Japanese and to some extent Chinese are the other significant foreign groups there.
Sydney is obviously a more cosmopolitan, diverse city. It concentrates tourists, air traffic, and, in season, rainy weather like no other place in the country, or so it seems. Walking its streets, we encounter a multicolored crowd talking and laughing out loud, very prompt to start a conversation with you at a traffic light if you wear a funny hat or an unusual amount of luggage, or walk with crutches... well, very chatty, for any reason, really. And very nice and helpful towards the lost tourist peering at his tourist map.
History tells us that Australia was build by convicts, fugitives, and self-made tycoons. Today, road signs tell us that the Australian was also partly built on a large consumption of alcohol: the CBD is a formal "alcohol free zone", and regulations over consumption of alcohol are numerous. The latest book I swapped in a Bali hostel, "compulsive viewing", telling the tale of the TV industry in Australia, is filled with jokes and anecdotes of drunk executives abusing their staff and making alcohol-imbued decisions. Brisbane has a "drinking consultants" pub to make it clear that it's a business and you need to learn how to drink!
The sheer size of the country makes its 20-million-odd population very spread out, and transportation options always expensive. The location of the main cities on the East coast is based on the first commercial counters setup by the British, and on the West coast, on the late gold rush.
We take the train from Melbourne to Sydney, suffering high delays due to the flooding of large parts of the way. In Melbourne Southern Cross station , before the return train arrives, an Australian woman with dark skin tells us that she is going to Sydney to see her four children and eleven grand-children, and that it is the very first time she takes the train. She might be the first Aborigenal person we meet in the country.
As for the economy, industry is a major sector, with mining leading the pack. Environmental damage has become a concern in recent years, after international NGOs denounced un-sustainable corporate practices. Some of the large mining corporations try to wave off critics through facade CSR programs, while others genuinely engage stakeholders communities to make their operations more sustainable.
In the end, the white dominance of Australian society, and the underlying taboo about the Aborigenal population, is what strikes us the most. A duo of young entrepreneurs have identified a neighborhood where many Aborigenes live in Sydney, and is setting up "alternative" tours to raise interest about that community and fund local projects. But there does not seem to be that many other Australians with such commitment to making the society progress...
I had very few expectations when arriving in Australia, except the one of finding a country somewhat similar to home, and somewhat exotic. The familiar side is there, definitely: Sydney and Melbourne streets are bustling almost night and day with white, caucasion people, all the major food, fasion, and retail chains from the Western world are here to make our stay incredibly easier than in South-East Asia. Everyone speaks English, like they should, but the local accent is very hard to understand for us since many syllables are pronounced in a different way.
As for the exotic part... I have not found it yet: White people, again, though most would be very tanned; English names for streets and places, quite reminiscent of London and its burroughs; staple food looks a lot like meat, rather than rice; downtown architecture is a blend of classic Victorian style and modern glas-and-steel office towers; etc.
We learned that Melbourne is the largest Greek city outside of Greece, with 800.000 Greek citizens established there. Turkish, Indians, Japanese and to some extent Chinese are the other significant foreign groups there.
Sydney is obviously a more cosmopolitan, diverse city. It concentrates tourists, air traffic, and, in season, rainy weather like no other place in the country, or so it seems. Walking its streets, we encounter a multicolored crowd talking and laughing out loud, very prompt to start a conversation with you at a traffic light if you wear a funny hat or an unusual amount of luggage, or walk with crutches... well, very chatty, for any reason, really. And very nice and helpful towards the lost tourist peering at his tourist map.
History tells us that Australia was build by convicts, fugitives, and self-made tycoons. Today, road signs tell us that the Australian was also partly built on a large consumption of alcohol: the CBD is a formal "alcohol free zone", and regulations over consumption of alcohol are numerous. The latest book I swapped in a Bali hostel, "compulsive viewing", telling the tale of the TV industry in Australia, is filled with jokes and anecdotes of drunk executives abusing their staff and making alcohol-imbued decisions. Brisbane has a "drinking consultants" pub to make it clear that it's a business and you need to learn how to drink!
The sheer size of the country makes its 20-million-odd population very spread out, and transportation options always expensive. The location of the main cities on the East coast is based on the first commercial counters setup by the British, and on the West coast, on the late gold rush.
We take the train from Melbourne to Sydney, suffering high delays due to the flooding of large parts of the way. In Melbourne Southern Cross station , before the return train arrives, an Australian woman with dark skin tells us that she is going to Sydney to see her four children and eleven grand-children, and that it is the very first time she takes the train. She might be the first Aborigenal person we meet in the country.
As for the economy, industry is a major sector, with mining leading the pack. Environmental damage has become a concern in recent years, after international NGOs denounced un-sustainable corporate practices. Some of the large mining corporations try to wave off critics through facade CSR programs, while others genuinely engage stakeholders communities to make their operations more sustainable.
In the end, the white dominance of Australian society, and the underlying taboo about the Aborigenal population, is what strikes us the most. A duo of young entrepreneurs have identified a neighborhood where many Aborigenes live in Sydney, and is setting up "alternative" tours to raise interest about that community and fund local projects. But there does not seem to be that many other Australians with such commitment to making the society progress...
Tuesday, February 7, 2012
Indonesia
Padang is known for its food. Spicy, meaty, sort of rich. But it sits on the south coast of Sumatra, and the nature there is simlpy amazing. A four-hour drive brings us to Bukittingi where we will deliver a workshop at a student conference. The trafic is light, except at a point where the *only* road goes *through* a bustling market and *litteraly hundreds* of cars wait in line to cross, one at a time, a few meters of exotic fruits, spices and unidentified fauna and flaura on stalls. Some women along the road wear pointy straw hats, reminding us a lot of the typical Vietnamese hats, or even of some of the traditional hats in Japan, although the latter were not so pointy. In Sumatra "Nature" with a capital N blooms, expands, rolls on hills and distant mountains, takes away this road with a quick monsoon, or plants trees and grass and poultry nests in the middle of that other road, whenever it decides to. The conference place is set at the end of a village, with an overview of the valley. Maybe it is because we have spent the last months in pancake-flats countrysides, or maybe it is because there is an intrinsic charm in those landscapes; in any case, I am touched. In certain directions, rice paddies structure the view and almost look like a measurable scale descended upon the ground to make the line of perspective visible. The different levels of water in each enclosed square create a patchwork of colors, from shining blur or white when the sky reflects in water, to varying degrees of green and brown where the mud is dryng or the rice growing. the next day, on the way back to the airport, when out minibus slows down to let other cars pass on the other side, the odd buffalo raises its head from the mud to look at us, and I can almost sense its slow, bovine brain behind its blurry eyes not bothering to make sense of what it sees, just looking at us without any expectation nor judgment.
Jakarta is one of the three most polluted cities in the world. It shows. The pollution manifest in many ways, all affecting deeply the lives of its inhabitants, and giving it its ill reputation towards tourists. If you ask me, at the core of the problem lies trafic. The car has been decreed the allmighty god of the sprawling, urban and suburban area. Hence no sidewalks nor walkways, constant smog hovering over the city in the humid atmosphere, which even the afternoon downpour in the monsoon season cannot take away. The noise, the proximity of the sea, and the lack of urban planning and all-out corporate real estate deals only make things worse: business districts are scattered at various distances off the historical city center, and commuting between them can only be done by taxi. Cheap to mid-range hotels suffer from poor isolation from the outside humid heat and from the 24/7 rumble of cars, tuned motorbikes, tricycle rickshaws, and loud-horning Transjakarta bus. The latter is the backbone of the public transport system in the city. Actually, it would be more accurate to say it is the only occurence of a public transport system. It shares a design peculiarity with Curitiba's bus system, whereby fraud is impossible and it has dedicated lanes on most avenues in the city, making it impossibly faster than taxis and rickshaws that are doomed to crawling at a snail's pace in trafic jams: again, the trafic never seems to ease, or maybe on Sunday evening after midnight and on Friday during prayer.
Humidity, heat and indsutrial pollution combine to corrode and age everything faster than usual: metal beams of the pedestrian overpasses look like they were put up in the previous century, a greyish tone has become the universal coating of all concrete and brick buildings in the city. Towers and skyscrapers escape their fate through the cunning use of cheap labor costs in the cleaning industry and a high unemployment rate providing plenty of volunteers for low-qulified jobs.
It is now my understanding that the "fancy" areas of the city consists of those complex of malls upon office towers upon malls, which you can navigate barely without the need to go outside of the spacious air conditioned halls. The malls host a flurry of colorfoul shops and like in the rest of Asia, to my utmost delight, a seemingly infinite options for food, snacks, drinks and desert. I could totally live here!... or not.
We stay in a Chinese hotel where the staff has never heard of the concept of "service" like we mean it in western Europe, and it's not even a language barrier since we are following their own operateing procedures. But they smile a lot, and we do too, so it makes things easier. Other guests of the hotel really look like Chinese people we have met in northen China, and we are not sure whether they are travelers or if the influence of Asia's Big Brother has already come down to Jakarta in the form of an "expat" population of workers and business middlem-men. Communication is generally an issue. When ordering in a restaurant, it is wise to have the waiter or waitress repeat your order at least one; every single time when we overlooked this rule, the food was off by one or two item (it's part of the adventure, trying out new tastes), or sometimes it was the bill (it's hard to recognize which was your waiter, who knows what you really ordered, among an army of young Indonesian waiters).
Today's Jakarta bears the scars of its quick development in the past decade, since its turbulent political past has been put behind and new leadership has opened the doors to no-limits capitalism. Still, in the middle of it, traditions remain strong, in the form of the strong islamic finance branch of Mandiri Bank, the oldest and largest banking institution in the country. Company premises would typically include a prayer room, and female clerks at counter are a mix of women wearing a headscarf, or not, which is simply a standard situation here. There may be other populations mixed in significant proportions with the "native" local population of Indonesians: Chinese and Filipinos primarily, but we can also sense some Indian influence sometimes, and Australia is not too far away... For historical reasons, mostly a millenar war between kingdoms of Siam (more or less former Thailand) and Indonesia, the Thai and sometimes Malay are not well perceived here.
Maybe what is most striking is the unbalance that exists after those years of massive, clearly visible development: while the incrreasing middle-class spends its week-end in shopping malls, so many homeless poor sleep on the pavement and eat a meager subsistance along with street animals. Focusing on the big bucks from national-scale and international investors has left behind a good deal of the population... and an increasing part of it is in the city. Development programs, social business or philanthropy programs, and social support systems address the under-privilegedpopulation. But the "hot issues" for those players are: rural poverty, access to infrastructure, basic education, and the like. Those provide an impact, and the numbers are significant in this country. But we have not yet met social entrepreneurs working with the urban poor in Indonesia.
Wednesday, January 4, 2012
Cambodia
Cambodia
After Kenya, Cambodia is the second poorest country we have visited.
I can feel the changes slightly taking place inside of me, that I consider to come from traveling: as I write "second poorest", I feel it is not quite right to say it like that.
Similarly to Kenya, the Cambodian people is a smiling one, and were it not for a century of economic and cultural domination of the West, we would not be stuck in certain mindsets and standards when it comes to measuring "wealth" and "poverty".
On the way from Phnom Penh to Siem Reap, we stopped in front of a house, in the middle of a dirt road, a half-hour truck drive from the closest urban center.
The house was standing on its stilts, which looked strong and built to last. The house itself looked like it was only one room. In the space below it, without walls to close it from the wind, dirt, or gaze of passer-bys, a middle-aged man was napping in a hammock. Around, kids were playing with second-hand toys, their clothes worn, the youngest boy simply running around naked. In front of the house, a water pump. "Like it was for you a century ago", as they say. Or even "like in the middle ages".
Animals sniffed around in the neighborhood, looking for grass or grain. To separate each house and the piece of land around it from the next, identical-twin looking one, some fruit trees (banana, coconut) or cereals. No flower, no ornament of any sort was visible, except the odd shrine at the corner, with burnt incense sticks and small porcelain Buddha statue.
The encounter with the family living in the house was a materialization of the word "uneasiness", and I forbid myself to take pictures. I wanted to leave some of my extra tshirts to them, but did not know if they needed tham at all, or whether they would feel offended that I thought they needed my charity.
Cambodia has been out of civil war for less than 20 years, and the country lacks all the basics. A government spokesman explained in a Western business investment magazine that they did not have electricity until 1994 (in the Christian Era calendar, yes...), and now they do but it is still very expensive.
The image of that family, living in that house, is burnt in my mind. This is where we come from: a house made from natural material (wood and leaves), a household of many generations with numerous children, living outside during the day, sleeping all together on the floor, or a shared mattress with any luck. A hand pump in front of the house, which provides water for the whole "block", or at least a handful of families.
This is what every country went through, at some point of their history. For generations and generations, until "development" came, bringing nation-wide infrastructures and revolutionizing the role and power of the individual, and therefore the structure of the society. But we do not know what it feels like to be without running water and to be left hungry, rather than with a full belly, at the end of a meal. In our world travel, we have been to a few places where we did not have running water ourselves, or we had to cross an open field to reach the toilet, which was nothing else than four planks nailed together around a hole in the ground. But it is not our life standard.
And I believe this huge gap in daily reality, between "us" from the West, and "them" the more than 60% or 70% of the world population without access to all of our goodness (comfort/luxury), is a critical issue blocking us from effectively thinking new ways for "development", "community building", and "help".
It also reinforces an idea I've had for 6 years now, which is that as the guy sitting at the top of the world, with everything anyone could ever wish for, I have a responsibility to give back. Not give money and not care how it's used, nor give money and say "do what I command you". Rather, I see my responsibility as coming into contact with underprivileged people, listening to their needs, but most importantly their ideas; as understanding what works and what does not work, and why, when it comes to fighting poverty; as building bridges to bring joy and new means of expression without sacrificing the old customs and the human energy that flow in those communities.
The investment I am to make cannot be measured in euros or dollars, only in years. It is not about how much I can help to increase the income of a household, it is about how can I support their smiles.
The proper response to life is applause.
I hope to help in re-writing the scenario a bit, so we can all applause together, the sooner the better.
.
.
After Kenya, Cambodia is the second poorest country we have visited.
I can feel the changes slightly taking place inside of me, that I consider to come from traveling: as I write "second poorest", I feel it is not quite right to say it like that.
Similarly to Kenya, the Cambodian people is a smiling one, and were it not for a century of economic and cultural domination of the West, we would not be stuck in certain mindsets and standards when it comes to measuring "wealth" and "poverty".
On the way from Phnom Penh to Siem Reap, we stopped in front of a house, in the middle of a dirt road, a half-hour truck drive from the closest urban center.
The house was standing on its stilts, which looked strong and built to last. The house itself looked like it was only one room. In the space below it, without walls to close it from the wind, dirt, or gaze of passer-bys, a middle-aged man was napping in a hammock. Around, kids were playing with second-hand toys, their clothes worn, the youngest boy simply running around naked. In front of the house, a water pump. "Like it was for you a century ago", as they say. Or even "like in the middle ages".
Animals sniffed around in the neighborhood, looking for grass or grain. To separate each house and the piece of land around it from the next, identical-twin looking one, some fruit trees (banana, coconut) or cereals. No flower, no ornament of any sort was visible, except the odd shrine at the corner, with burnt incense sticks and small porcelain Buddha statue.
The encounter with the family living in the house was a materialization of the word "uneasiness", and I forbid myself to take pictures. I wanted to leave some of my extra tshirts to them, but did not know if they needed tham at all, or whether they would feel offended that I thought they needed my charity.
Cambodia has been out of civil war for less than 20 years, and the country lacks all the basics. A government spokesman explained in a Western business investment magazine that they did not have electricity until 1994 (in the Christian Era calendar, yes...), and now they do but it is still very expensive.
The image of that family, living in that house, is burnt in my mind. This is where we come from: a house made from natural material (wood and leaves), a household of many generations with numerous children, living outside during the day, sleeping all together on the floor, or a shared mattress with any luck. A hand pump in front of the house, which provides water for the whole "block", or at least a handful of families.
This is what every country went through, at some point of their history. For generations and generations, until "development" came, bringing nation-wide infrastructures and revolutionizing the role and power of the individual, and therefore the structure of the society. But we do not know what it feels like to be without running water and to be left hungry, rather than with a full belly, at the end of a meal. In our world travel, we have been to a few places where we did not have running water ourselves, or we had to cross an open field to reach the toilet, which was nothing else than four planks nailed together around a hole in the ground. But it is not our life standard.
And I believe this huge gap in daily reality, between "us" from the West, and "them" the more than 60% or 70% of the world population without access to all of our goodness (comfort/luxury), is a critical issue blocking us from effectively thinking new ways for "development", "community building", and "help".
It also reinforces an idea I've had for 6 years now, which is that as the guy sitting at the top of the world, with everything anyone could ever wish for, I have a responsibility to give back. Not give money and not care how it's used, nor give money and say "do what I command you". Rather, I see my responsibility as coming into contact with underprivileged people, listening to their needs, but most importantly their ideas; as understanding what works and what does not work, and why, when it comes to fighting poverty; as building bridges to bring joy and new means of expression without sacrificing the old customs and the human energy that flow in those communities.
The investment I am to make cannot be measured in euros or dollars, only in years. It is not about how much I can help to increase the income of a household, it is about how can I support their smiles.
The proper response to life is applause.
I hope to help in re-writing the scenario a bit, so we can all applause together, the sooner the better.
 |
| Motorbikes and unstable trucks swarm on Cambodian roads, carrying all kinds of load on their back, from wood beams to live pigs to whole families. Haystacks line the roads across rural areas (right side, on the picture above) |
 |
| The world-known profile of Angkor Wat, reflected on the water |
 |
| Happy me :) |
 |
| A traditional dance show, with a 50cm-high head-wear, at the back of the stage a replica of stone carving from Angkor Tom temple. |
 |
| Stone monkey-men guarding the central tower and the shrine in an old temple around the Angkor Wat area. In early 20th century, French writer and future minister of culture André Malraux came in the region and "borrowed" a few archeological pieces, that were later sent back to Cambodia |
 |
| Stone faces carved at the top of Angkor Tom temple |
Sunday, January 1, 2012
happy new year 2012
From the stretching shadows of Angkor Wat's splendid temple complex at sunset, I wish to everyone a merry and crazy, tasty & healthy, scary yet rewarding, year 2012.
Keep rocking planet Earth.
Keep rocking planet Earth.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)