Puhlease! I was there for three days. The only overview I’m entitled to was from the airplane when we took off, and on that basis I can report that Singapore is mainly cloudy.

Now I’m back in the Newark airport, waiting for the flight to Boston. Is there a longer commercial flight than Singapore-Newark? I’m glad to be home, eager to see my family, and would love to find a way to go back to Singapore someday soon.

4 Comments »

The international version of OhMyNews has a terrific interview with Dan Gillmor about his plans and the future of news. (Thanks to Joi for the link.)

Be the first to comment »

From a Bilnkx press release:

blinkx is the first search engine to make such TV programs fully searchable on demand. Because blinkx captures and indexes the entire video stream directly from the television, consumers can get straight to the exact clip they want. blinkx TV can be accessed at http://www.blinkx.tv/

Blinkx says it “captures and indexes video streams across news, sports and entertainment programming from 22 channels, including Fox News, ESPN and Biography.”

I haven’t had a chance to try it, and I’m in the air all day (= 24 hours from takeoff till final landing) today…

Be the first to comment »

I spent from 9-5 leading a workshop on “conversational marketing.” Forty-three participants from a variety of industries. And, because irony is the basic law of the universe, I went on so long that I cut into the time we slated to spend in an Open Space exercise, facilitated by Edgar Tan, with Patrick Lambe in the wings. The Open Space went very, very well: Strangers engaged in open-ended, organically directed conversations. As for my long talky part, lord knows how it went.

Now I’m going to meet James Seng for dinner. We’ve only met in the bit sense, so I’m looking forward to this.

8 Comments »

When I was a boy, during the summers in Great Barrington, Mass., my mother used to take us to the Green Spot bottling plant in town where Maybe 40 years ago, they shut down the plant and that was the end of Green Spot for us.

This afternoon in Singapore, at a food stall in Little India, I drank a can of Green Spot. It’s the same oddly-named, non-carbonated orange drink. The can says it was made in Thailand under the authority of Green Spot International. It seems that, somehow, Green Spot left Great Barrington and landed in Asia.

Ealy globalization? A soft drink whose boot heels went a-wanderin’? Or a Twilight Zone episode in which objects from my childhood reappear in Singapore like the pilots returned by the aliens at the end of Close Encounters?

(A little more info about Green Spot. Another Green Spot reminiscence.)

4 Comments »

Ah, sleep! Amazing what a full night of it can do. For example, it turned my exhaustion into sleepiness.

I work up early and re-wrote my presentation, as I inevitably do before a speech. I’m at the first International Conference on Knowledge Management, a truly international gathering of practitioners and academics. I, of course, am neither, so of course they had me keynote it. Nevertheless, it seemed to go well.

I bugged out at 11 to see if I could see just a little more of the city. After a quick cab ride, I was in Little India, the streets and alleys of which are lined with shops. Compared with Chinatown (look, I’m awkward too about these appellations, but that’s what these sections are called), more of the stores in Little India seemed aimed at residents. I’m a sucker for Indian colors and the smells; I’d love to go back to India someday.

I stopped for lunch at a shiny Indian vegetarian restaurant and had a curry marsala dosa — a big, light ‘n’ crispy crepe filled with delicious spicy meat substitute. If you find yourself in Little India, give it a try: Ananda Bhavan is the restaurant’s name. And tell ’em I sent you! Of course, they won’t have the slightest idea what you’re talking about.

I came back to the conference just as it was beginning its afternoon session, an “open space” exercise in which people sign up for topics and others cluster around them. It worked out very well. In the sessions and in the hallways I had a bunch of interesting conversations with people from all over about the limits and virtues of KM. Given that the phrase was “KM” was created ten years ago with a daring amount of vacuousness, it’s filled itself in quite nicely.

When it was over, I asked the concierge for a vegetarian restaurant. He told me to walk down Orchard Street until I came to the Orchard Mall and then go upstairs where there was a Chinese veggie restaurant. Unfortunately, Orchard Street is lined with malls, and I never found the restaurant. But I was glad to be out on the street at 8pm. It seemed like the entire population of Singapore had decided to take a stroll. I wandered in an out of malls until I stumbled upon a veggie stall in a food court where I had a dreadful “half chicken” with cold baked beans and a few fries. To tell you the truth, my stomach isn’t feeling so good at the moment. It’ll pass. Of course, I’m not exactly which orifice it’s going to pass through, but my guess is that you’d rather not know.

Tomorrow I lead a full day workshop on “conversational marketing.” I have 165 slides to go through. Pity us all.

1 Comment »

There are something like 15,000 murders every year in the United States. Why is this the one that is headline news for months? I just don’t understand it.

13 Comments »

On the advice of my host, I took a taxi to the Indian Temple in Chinatown, a plain building crowned by a colorful pyramid of sculptures of gods. The streets around it are lined with little open-front shops selling tourist junk. After wandering in and out of dozens, I bought my son a present (he’s reading this so I can’t say what) and almost got the bargaining thing right: It was marked $8 (= US$4.80), I offered $5, she said $7, and I lost my nerve so we didn’t complete the dance that was destined to end at $6. I don’t like bargaining because the differential means so much less to me than to the vendor, but it feels rude not to.

I more than made up for it an Indian shop where I bought two items at full price. They didn’t give an inch even as I initially walked out of the store. They must have had me pegged as an American.

By the way, the going rate for USB cables at the electronics stores in Chinatown ranges from US$18 to US$32 — that last price actually made me laugh out loud. At a tiny sidewalk Internet cafe and electronic parts booth a few blocks away, the young man who sold me a replacement mouse told me that the real price is US$3. He as out of them, so I’m still looking.

Perhaps I should feel foolish wasting my time shopping instead of seeing sights, but, well, shopping in the streets is fun. I get to touch cloths, smell restaurants, hear parents quiet their children, and talk with Singaporeans. I’m a tourist, so whatever I do is going to be touristy.

After a couple of hours, I stopped at a modern sidewalk restaurant that advertised a vegetarian version of mee siam, which for all I know means “On sale,” “snake pee,” or “Warning: Condemned by the Singapore Board of Health.” Whatever it means, it turned out to be a delicious bowl of sweet ‘n’ peppery broth, noodles, tofu and a sliced egg. I came into the store sweating enough to grow grass wherever I walked and left with children splashing through my mist as if I were an open hydrant. But mmmmm, spicy good!

Note to travelers: When in Singapore, always say yes to orange juice.

I decided to head towards the colonial area of the city, as recommended by www.fodors.com. It was just a few blocks over, but it’s much further if you first go in the wrong direction for over half a mile. I have the innate sense of direction of a 5-legged spider and am retarded about reading maps, so I wandered and circled and got lost yet again. I saw many indistinguishable financial and official blocks, or maybe just the same ones over and over, punctuated by tiny shops with aisles too small for the likes of me — it’s possible I’m the fattest person in Singapore — and restaurants serving parts of animals I didn’t even know animals had; apparently every chicken contains a snake as part of it. Live and learn.

By now the sky had cleared and the sun was crisping my duck-like skin to a rotisserie orange. Should have remembered the sunblock. I have noticed that many Singaporeans avoid the sun on the streets; there are even some parasols around. Not me. I rely on my big floppy hat that completes the image of me as a lumbering, careless American.

I finally made it to the colonial section — some pretty buildings and very little life on the street. So, I took a cab back to the hotel where I collapsed like dirty laundry, an assortment of twitches shaped like a man. In a couple of hours, I’ll join my host for dinner.

It was a thoroughly enoyable 4.5 hours walking in Singapore.

5 Comments »

Let’s see. I left Boston on Sunday at 6, and flew from Newark, NJ at 11pm. They served dinner at 12:30 AM (rice and spinach because heaven knows we vegetarians don’t like to combine elemental foodstuffs into interesting new creations) and I “slept” from 1:30-7:30AM. For some reason, they didn’t serve breakfast until 1:30pm on Monday, then at 5:30pm on Monday we landed here, except that it was 6:30AM on Tuesday.

I read the Sunday edition of a Singapore paper on the plane just to see what’s up. There was almost no news about Singapore, except for the reality TV shows. Are things going that well here? Could be.

After retrieving my luggage from the ultra-modern, ultra-clean airport, I stepped into a taxicab. I don’t know if it was incense, breakfast, or just my cabbie, but it smelled goooood. She’s from Malaysia, but married a Singaporean and is now a citizen. She likes Singapore better because it’s clean and safe. When I asked her what was the one place I should see as a tourist, she recommended Sentosa, which she described as a “fantasy island.” I think I’m probably not going to do that; I have so little time here that I hate to squander it on fantasy.

Because I arrived so early, my room wasn’t ready yet so I wandered around Orchard Street at 7:30AM. It’s the Fifth Avenue of Singapore, except smaller, clean, and palm-tree festooned. Also, it’s in Singapore.

I ate a breakfast I may regret at a tiny local place — half-cooked eggs, tea, and delicious toast spread with something green and something yellow — and came back to my room. I slept for an hour. Now it’s 10:20AM.

Time to hit the street.

6 Comments »

I just paid $6.95 for a day of wifi access here in the Newark Airport. Nobody except Tom Hanks uses a full day of airport wifi access, do they? I wish I could sell off my unused hours. Someone want to set up a little airport market for buying and selling unusued capacity?

4 Comments »