Link Gallivanting

I came across this website entirely by accident and wonder how I didn’t know of it earlier: Arts & Letters Daily – ideas, criticism, debate. It’s a manually compiled and updated catalogue of “the most intelligent, provocative, and illuminating news stories, critical reviews, political essays, and commentaries published online” and is a service of the The Chronicle of Higher Education (US).

The site is updated six times a week and to someone who loves eclectic information, it’s a mine of still unexplored links, unread articles, new ideas, book reviews, loud opinions, and interesting insights. The sidebar of links to online mags and newspapers is very useful, though I wouldn’t recommend visiting this site if you do not have time to wastespend gambolling through the WWW.

Another addictive site, recommended by a friend a couple of days after I heard of it on the radio, is Ted.com, a collection of free lectures you can download and view at your leisure. Some lectures are 4 minutes while others are 30 minutes long, and the topics run from “life lessons” to physics to astronomy to the environment to music and design. I guarantee you’d find something interesting to watch on this site. If you have iTunes, the iTunes University has a ready link to Ted lectures, as well as a buffett spread of video and audio teachings direct from universities such as LSE, Yale, MIT. It’s a great site for part-time scholars and information-hoarders. Makes a great research tool if you manage to find the correct topics.

Filed under: Collectibles, Playing Favourites, Tech , arts and letters, ted.com, websites

The Story of Success

I’ve been out of blogging action, mainly due to this and also to a curious reluctance to go anywhere near WordPress’s Admin. An almost self-imposed blogging block, if you could call it that. Or less romantically, just plain laziness. My offline writing fared better though I have yet to run out of pages for my (oh so lovely) moleskine.

The reading has chugged along steadily, with more non-fic titles than the other kind. The latest two I’ve completed are Daniel Pink’s A Whole New Mind and Malcolm Gladwell’s The Outliers. Both are synapse-worthy reads, compelling in their presentations of ideas.

Pink proposes that the skills in demand for the future will require right-brain engagement instead of the left-brain intensive skills that are prized so highly now. In other words, abilities to do with creativity, empathy, design, symphony, play, meaning, and – best of all – story, are those that will be needed in the economy of the future, at least in “advanced” countries.

The more analytical, mundance, routine diagnostic and number-crunching work will all be highly competitive areas where there are plenty of good brains (good left-brains, rather) in countries like India that can more than handle the work. In other words, to provide value to the marketplace, you need to be more than just good accountants, lawyers, and doctors. Pink is not saying that left-brain skills are not needed, but that right-brain abilities need to be strengthened and brought into the “major league” when they’ve been unfairly benched all these years.

He includes some tips and follow-ups for you to strengthen your own right-brain abilities and become a more “holistic” thinker, and these include storytelling resources (intriguing!), mind-mapping pointers, and – even – resources for you to develop a sense of humour. (If sense of humour is necessary for success in the 21st century, then I am in a lot of trouble).

You can’t disagree with Pink about the competition that’s already abundant in routinised analytical work such as accounting, drafting of standard law contracts, programming and even reading of x-ray charts, tasks that are outsourced to varying degree to highly qualified graduates in countries such as India and the Philippines. What is sobering is that Pink labels the “Knowledge Age” as one that is on the way out for developed economies, with the Conceptual Age already upon us (this is sobering because this country is still grappling on the path to becoming a “knowledge society” and we are definitely unable to compete with India, China and Philippines in terms of providing the numbers of “left-brain” workers at the right amount of salary). In this Conceptual Age, it’s right-brain dominated abilities that will be needed. He goes so far as to say it won’t be MBAs that will be in demand but MFAs (Masters in Fine Arts).

While Pink includes the storytelling chapter,it’s Malcolm Gladwell who truly exemplifies the power of story in his book about people who have achieved extraordinary success in their lifetimes, the “outliers”. I have never been as smitten by a non-fiction book as I have by The Outliers. From the very first chapter when Gladwell dissects and tears apart the abnormally healthy statistics of a town called Roseto in Maine, he had me hooked on his stories and theories about success. And his central theory is that successful individuals did not make it purely on their own talent and hard work but that success is as much a combination of opportunity, background (yes, background – in a lot of cases, it matters whether or not you were born into a middle class or poor family), cultural heritage and even the year of your birth (not numerology here but common sense – if you are born in a certain era, you can take advantage of particular events and discoveries, such as the railroad boom and the advent of the computer).

He provides examples in the form of Mozart, Bill Gates, the Beatles, the contrasting lifepaths of geniuses like Chris Langan (an IQ reading that was ‘off the charts’) and Robert Oppenheimer (the atomic bomb creator), Jewish lawyers, Korean Air pilots and even his Jamaican mother. The stories are convincingly told and halfway through the book, he had me ensnared with his theory that a lot of external factors come into play in the making of a “success”. As Gladwell pointed out, the mighty oak tree cannot become a mighty oak tree if its trunk had been chopped, if sunlight had been blocked, if water was unavailable, and a multitude of other factors. How very true.

The theory I particularly liked (because it’s concrete and countable) is the 10,000 hour theory; that you can only be a master at some job or work if you have put in 10,000 hours or thereabouts of practise. Writers,  musicians (the Beatles practising at Hamburg), computer wizards (Bill Gates got early, privileged access to computers way before other kids did) and even lawyers who have become successful only became so after they had put in the time (and had the opportunity) to practise their craft. It is also this 10,000 hours that differentiate the merely good from the excellent. In a study he did of talented musicans at a top music school, he found that those who excelled invariably had been those who increased their hours of practice year by year. There were none among the top musicians who excelled without putting in the practice.

Gladwell goes on at length also about cultural heritage (cultural baggage in some cases) and I could not help wondering if some of what he posits could be applied in Malaysia to ramp up performance and results among certain segments of students (males in particular) in our public universities. Certainly, Gladwell highlights cultural heritage that help (the work ethics of farmers in China) and those that hinder (Koreans’ obsessiveness with societal hierarchy and all the rules that some with it), and also presents studies where obstructive cultural baggage was successfully removed (Korean Air pilots).

The Outliers is enjoyable and fascinating though I am not convinced that the theories provided are rigorous enough to withstand proper empirical scrutiny. Still, it’s a book that makes your mind travel through paths it’s never travelled before, and that’s (almsot) always a good thing.

By chance, Gladwell, dubbed “the rock star of non-riction” (he reportedly received a $4m advance for The Outliers and is also on a lecture tour in Britain), was recently interviewed by The Independent UK. I like to highlight his take on meritocracy in the US:

The touring Gladwell will take questions at the end of each lecture, so you might prod him on why British people should be surprised by this book’s premise; ours being a society where there may still be some correlation between success and the class you are born into. Really interesting, though, is the hole Gladwell punches through the hoary stereotype we sometimes hold about America – that by contrast, it is a classless meritocracy.

“Both countries stack the deck in favour of certain people over others,” he begins. “They choose to stack it in different ways. Americans do perhaps use more subtle mechanisms for doing so. But there is certainly an Ivy League caste system here that rewards and promotes kids by virtue of having gone to a small set of colleges and entry into those colleges. While it appears meritocratic, in large part it is not. You get there because your dad went there or you are a jock of some kind.”

That, and his book, will make you view “succcess” as not quite the simple equation you once thought it was.

Filed under: Books, Reads , authors, bedtime reading, Books, Daniel Pink, Malcolm Gladwell, reading

If I Were A Book…

(Photo by delviking, Flickr.com, lifted from Mirage Bookmarks’ The Most Interesting Bookstores in the World)

…this is where I would want to be housed.

Even as a (very human) reader, the photo above makes me want to hop on a plane to Portugal. It’s of the Lello Bookstore in Portugal, regarded as one of the most beautiful bookstores in the world. The bookstore opened in 1906 for one of Portugal’s most influential publishing houses. The Livraria Lello has been selling books since the late 19th century. The building was designed by Francisco Xavier Esteves (the architect who introduced the use of reinforced concrete for civil buildings in Portugal), and with a design described as “neo gothic”.

What I am in love with is the curvaceous, sinewy staircase, and the view of books from the second floor….

(Photo by stukinha Flickr.com; lifted from Mirage Bookmarks’ The Most Interesting Bookstores in the World)

There is a reverential air to books, when housed in such a splendid building. In this day and age, where so many of what should be considered sacred are are maliciously brutalised, wilfully ignored or rudely trespassed, scenes like the Livrario Lello tell of order and beauty. That could be the appeal of libraries and bookstores: they are places where choice is abundant, but where order is enforced, rules and regulations comprehensible and obeyed, where peace is the norm not the exception, and everyone is highly respectful of other people’s rights and space. Idyllic, in other words.

If I do get to travel to Europe again, it would definitely include a tour of bookstores and libraries.

Filed under: At the Stores, Books, Personal Note , Books, bookstore

He Makes Me Want to Write

It is February the Fourteenth, at that hour of the morning when all the children have been taken to school and all the husbands have driven themselves to work or been dropped, steambreathing and greatcoated at the rail station at the edge of the town for the Great Commute, when I pin my heart on Missy’s front door. The heart is a deep dark red that is almost a brown, the colour of liver. Then I knock on the door, sharply, rat-a-tat-tat!, and I grasp my wand, and I grabbed my wand, my stick, my oh-so-thrustable and beribboned lance, and I vanish like cooling steam into the chilly air.. (Harlequin Valentine, Neil Gaiman in Fragile Things)

Here I am, having gone through Neil Gaiman’s Smoke and Mirrors for the second time and re-reading some stories from his Fragile Things. There’s no other author who inspires me to write quite like he does. There’s one particular story in Fragile Things that never fails to make writing seem like such a fun enterprise.  

That story’s “Forbidden Brides of the Faceless Slaves in the Secret House of the Night of Dread Desire”. The story’s as quirky as the title, and Gothic with a capital ‘G’. A clever tale where the worlds of fantasy and reality (ours, that is) are inverted; the protagonist is a wannabe writer (even in Gothland, they exist, apparently) who lives in a world of ghouls and shrieking women, but who yearns to write fantasy with fantasy being our boring world of toasters, work, strained relationships and hurried breakfasts. It’s humorous, whimsical and – for me, curiously inspiring. There’s also a lesson-nugget embedded, delivered by that fixture of gothic tales – the drawn, humourless, seemingly bloodless but always faithful butler.  

In the introduction, Gaiman (one of the few authors who seems to have a rollicking time conjuring up stories for the rest of us) remembers how the story – which he wrote twenty years ago – was rejected by publishers. It was only two decades later that it was rewritten and published, first in a gothic anthology, and subsequently included in “Best of” Anthology Collections. It was the Best Short Story in the 2005 Locus Award.  

Fiction is subjective….and writing it is never as much fun as it seems. Anyway, here’s a state of bliss towards which all writers strive, even without ghouls and monsters and a mad, shrieking Aunt Agatha in the attic.  

The quill went scritch scritch across the paper, and the young man was engrossed in what he was doing. His face was strangely content, and a smile flickered between his eyes and his lips.

He was rapt.
(Forbidden Brides of the Faceless Slaves in the Secret House of the Night of Dread Desire, Neil Gaiman in Fragile Things)

Filed under: Books, Personal Note, Writing , authors, Books, fantasy, neil gaiman, reading, Writing

Just An Update

President Obama

So, you know, America has a new President who was ushered into the White House with celebration, anticipation and fervent hope. Around 1.8m people attended his inauguration, a record, I understand, and tens of millions more watched around the globe. I missed most of it, with regret, but am more keen to know what he is going to do about Palestine and Iraq. His ordering the closure of Guantanamo as well as his call to halt brutal interrogation techniques (but not all of them – just the “most severe” ones) is welcome but he has also green lighted missile strikes on tribal areas in Pakistan. Will Islam still be equated with terrorism under President Barack Obama, who spent part of his childhood in a village in predominantly Muslim Indonesia?

This list of his first 100 hours gives me some hope still that the new President will inject compassion, objectivity and humanity into the US’s foreign policy, although his silence over the deaths of Palestinians (many more over a thousand) has been deeply disappointing.

The Year of the Ox

Over on our shores, it’s holiday season again as we welcome the Chinese New Year. It’s the Year of the Ox this time around, the animal being quite a fitting icon for the stoicism and perseverance necessary to weather the tough economic climate. I’m realising that more of my Chinese friends have less reverence for this time of year, with a few even working through the holidays instead of returning for the traditional family feast. Wherever you choose to greet the New Year, Gong Xi Fa Cai, to all who celebrate. Here’s a very short tale where an ox “saved” the Austrian town of Salzburg from invaders, not by heroics but simply by being present:

To say that the humble “ox” played a pivotal role in European history might to some appear rather strange, but to the people of Salzberg, this beast is a symbol of courage in the face of adversity.

In the 1500s, an enemy army took over the city of Salzburg, Austria depriving the inhabitants of food and drink. Their cupboards bare with nary a bit of food left, the people were practically ready to surrender until they found a lone ox roaming the streets. They paraded the beast in front of the invaders to prove that they were not hungry. Then, during the night, they painted it black to show that they had more than enough livestock for the people to survive. Completely befuddled, the army retreated, leaving the people of Salzberg in peace.
(from Squidoo)

 

And click here for another story, this time from the Arabian Nights, of The Ox and The Donkey.

My Reading

At the individual level, I’ve done quite a bit of reading over the past month, and am glad for it though I wish the writing will catch up. I’ve completed Neil Gaiman’s The Graveyard Book (a creative delight!), Stephen King’s Just After Sunset (too mild), Clare Wigfall’s The Loudest Sound and Nothing (beautifully written), David Sedaris’s  When You Are Engulfed in Flames (hilarious), Paulo Coelho’s The Alchemist (second reading – it resonates more this time around), Jonathan Kellerman’s Gone (you know, I believe my reading tastes have changed; the story wasn’t as engrossing as I had expected it to be) and William Zinsser’s On Writing Well (I recommend this highly).

Right now, in my book “basket” are: Barack Obama’s Dreams from My Father (so far, he is proving to be as eloquent in writing as he is in speech), Francine Prose’s Reading Like a Writer (I could not resist this beautifully matt paperback and what it promises for the reader and writer), Aravind Adiga’s The White Tiger (for its anticipated irreverence and humour), Robert Schlessinger’s White House Ghosts (am honestly stuck on “W”, however hard I try to move on), and John Pilger’s Freedom Next Time (it gets too depressing in one continuous dose but it provides the necessary reminder that we world citizens need of the injustices wrought by governments). I have also stuffed an old book (I realise that I have a whole shelf of writing books, actually, populated since my teens), The Writer’s Digest Handbook of Short Story Writing, which – ahem – is supposed to get me to write better short stories. But I’ve to sit down and complete my tales first. Particularly before the 31st March closing date for the MPH-Alliance Bank Short Story Writing Contest, which I, uh, intend to, sort of, I think, perhaps, enter.

And ps, one of my goals this year is to read the late Roberto Bolano’s mammoth “2666“ though goodness knows if I’ll get to finish it before 2010 rolls around. Here’s a link to the The New Yorker’s 2666 Reading Challenge.

Filed under: Books, Personal Note, Reads, World, Writing , barack, Books, library, reading, US, Writing, year of the Ox

Help the Palestinians

The invasion of Gaza is completing its second week, leaving 778 Palestinians dead and 3,250 injured since the Israeli offensive began on December 27. More than 200 Palestinian children are among the dead (Al-Jazeera).

This is a plea forwarded personally by Write Away author, the accomlished Elviza Michele, who volunteers at Mercy Malaysia.

Mercy Malaysia has, on 30th December 2008, formed an Emergency Response Assessment Team to face the humanitarian crisis in Gaza strip. The team has been promptly dispatched to Egypt led by President, Datuk Dr.  Jemilah Mahmood and Exco Member Norazam Ab. Samah. Therefore, Mercy Malaysia appeals to generous Malaysians to send it cash donations. Contributions will support Mercy Malaysia to procure emergency surgical kits, medicines and hospital equipments to help the hospitals in Gaza. 

• Cheque is to be made payable to “MERCY MALAYSIA” and addressed to Mercy Malaysia, Level 2, Podium Block, City Point, Kompleks Dayabumi, Jalan Sultan Hishamuddin, 50050 Kuala Lumpur.
• Cash donations can be made via on-line transmission or deposit at CIMB Bank Account No: 1424-000-6561053.
• Donation form can be downloaded from here. 
• Further enquiries are to be directed to +603-22733999 or info@mercy.org.my

Mercy Malaysia is a well-established humanitarian aid organisation, specialising in delivering much-needed medical relief to war-torn and disaster-struck areas. It’s one of the few organisations in the country that publishes its annual accounts so be assured that your money will be utilised as intended.

There’ll be more posts on the war in Gaza. In the meantime, let’s say our prayers for the victims, and do what we immediately can to help, via donations, keeping attention on the issue, or raising awareness and outrage.

Filed under: Newsprint, World, government, palestine , aid, appeal, humanitarian relief, Israel, mercy malaysia, NGO, palestine, war

Help the World – Criminalise War

The Kuala Lumpur Foundation to Criminalise War is an organisation in which I’ve personally volunteered and which needs a lot of support, financial and publicity-wise, to realise its efforts to criminalise all wars and promote civilised dialogue and negotiations as a means to resolve conflict. In other words, war, except for self-defence, should be made illegal in international law.

TIRED OF PEACE CHANTS? NOT SURE WHAT TO DO? THEN JOIN US IN OUR DETERMINED EFFORTS TO CRIMINALISE WAR AND PUNISH THE WAR MONGERS.

Support our cause to criminalise war.

The Founder and Chairman of The Kuala Lumpur Foundation to Criminalise War (KLFCW) is Tun Dr. Mahathir Mohamad (the fourth Prime Minister of Malaysia). It is a non-governmental organisation established under the laws of Malaysia on the 12th day of March 2007. Since its establishment, KLFCW has organised a number of activities aimed at contributing to the Foundation’s voluntary work to create awareness amongst the general public, that war as an instrument of foreign policy is a crime, that war is a crime against humanity, against peace and against the whole mankind and should be outlawed and criminalised, its perpetrators brought to justice and publicly sanctioned.

The main objectives of the Foundation, as stated in its Statutes are, inter alia,

• To undertake all necessary measures and initiatives to criminalise war and energise peace;

• To provide relief, assistance and support to individuals and communities who are suffering from the effects of war and armed conflict wherever occurring and without discrimination on the grounds of nationality, racial origin, religion, belief, age, gender or other forms of impermissible differentiations;

• To promote the education of individuals and communities suffering from the effects of war or armed conflict;

• To foster schemes for the relief of human suffering occasioned by war or armed conflict;

• To provide for mechanisms or procedures in attainment of the above purposes.

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We should be:

UNITED: in the belief that peace is the essential condition for the survival and well-being of the human race,

DETERMINED: to promote peace and save succeeding generations from the scourge of war,

OUTRAGED: over the frequent resort to war in the settlement of disputes between nations,

DISTURBED: that militarists are preparing for more wars,

TROUBLED: that use of armed force increases insecurity for all, and

TERRIFIED: that the possession of nuclear weapons and the imminent risk of nuclear war will lead to the annihilation of life on earth.

We should:

IMPLEMENT this Initiative,

OPPOSE policies and programmes that incite war, and

SEEK the cooperation of NGOs worldwide to achieve the goals of this Initiative.

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For more info please visit: http://www.criminalisewar.com/contributions.html

Please register & join in our petition so that we can get number of people on database that agrees with our objectives to “CRIMINALISE WAR AND ENERGISE PEACE” and use that info to send to all the leaders of the world to say this is what we want.

Our Chairman speaks out on war, watch the video: http://www.criminalisewar.org/blog/2008/12/tun-mahathir-speaks-out-on-war.html

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KLFCW needs your continuing strong support to Criminalise War and to Energise Peace.

For Malaysian Residents:

All donations are tax-exempt under S.44 Of The Income Tax Act 1967. Ref LHDN 01/35/42/51/179-6.6183 Government Gazette: 11643 Dated 30.08.2007

Made payable to:
KL FOUNDATION TO CRIMINALISE WAR INCORP.

Maybank Account Number:  5123 3430 3483

or Send your cheque/Bank Draft/Money Order/Postal Order to:

Kuala Lumpur Foundation to Criminalise War
No. 1, Jalan P8H, Precinct 8, Putrajaya,
62250 Wilayah Persekutuan, Malaysia.
Tel: 60 3 8777 2525
Fax: 60 3 8777 2929
Email: info@criminalisewar.com

For transfer and bank in, please fax or email us the transfer and bank in slip, along with your detail

Any amount is accepted but hard copy receipts will be automatically issued via post to donations above (Malaysia Ringgit) RM100.00, otherwise soft copy receipts will be issued via email by request.

Donations above (Malaysia Ringgit) RM150.00 will receive official merchandise.

Please do not forget to state your full name and address for us to send an official receipt and merchandise.

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For International Donors:

All donations for the Foundation are to be made to:
KL FOUNDATION TO CRIMINALISE WAR INCORP.

And Transferred to:

Maybank Account Number:  5123 3430 3483

Bank Address:
Maybank Berhad
SECTION 14, PJ SSC
18A, Jalan 14/14,
46100 Petaling Jaya
Selangor Darul Ehsan
Malaysia

Swift Code: MBBEMYKL

Any amount is accepted but hard copy receipts will be automatically issued via post to donations above (Malaysia Ringgit) RM200.00, otherwise soft copy receipts will be issued via email by request.

Donations above (Malaysia Ringgit) RM300.00 will receive official merchandise.

Please do not forget to state your full name and address for us to send an official receipt and merchandise.

All donations will be used to fund our efforts to Criminalise War and assist war victims.

Please forward this to all peace loving people, join us to Criminalise War and Energise Peace, and remember to register with us.

Filed under: Newsprint, World, government, palestine , appeal, government, human rights, NGO, palestine, war