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.

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