Archive | June, 2012

Lovings of the week: Killer Apps

28 Jun

Some apps that I use a lot or have recently discovered:

  • Every time I am about to go “into the wild” I download the latest posts from my favourite blogs to Mobile RSS. It is great for random 10-20 minute stops where you don’t really know what is going to happen next and can’t pull out a book to read.
  • I use Intl Meeting Planner to plan hookups between different timezones.
  • I open World Map at least every other day to check out where exactly certain countries are in the world. This ties into a hobby of mine – studying country statistics to try and understand how each country fits into the world. Both The Economist World in Numbers and The World Factbook are great for this.
  • What’s app allows you to message other people over the internet from your phone. It is suprising how many people are already connected.
  • Nike Training Club provides great facilitated workouts – a great way to train if you are on the go and can’t regularly attend a training club or gym.
  • I use The Economist and BBC World to get an overview of what is happening in the world
  • And finally emoji is quite silly, but there’s something about being able to send someone an emoticon of a ghost that always makes me smile.
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Street scene, Birtamode, Nepal

25 Jun


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Birtamode, Nepal


Cows are standing in the middle of the street in front of us. Chewing on cud as the road traffic swerves around them.

We arrive by motorbike, and chat by the roadside before moving towards our favourite evening hangout. Most of the vehicles that past us are human powered – people walking trailers, bicycles, rickshaws.

We move across the dusty courtyard, taking up our seats our seats on the bench outside, waiting to be called in for dinner.

There is a dusty courtyard between the restaurant and the road, and as the sunsets the random assortment of students, grandmothers and dogs move about in a kind of dance, sometimes interacting, sometimes not.

I see the man who is Nepali, but looks so much like a foreigner that I tried to speak to him in English when I first met him. I am reminded how much people here look like members of my own family.

Baby goats scamper around feet. They are waiting to be fed left overs – and the owner of the restaurant happily abides – patting them affectionately on the head, like dogs.

The restaurant is family run, the wife always speaks directly to my face in Nepali. It is amazing to me how much I can understand what she is saying. I love that even though I have been coming there on and off for 2 months, she still does this – continually refusing to give up and talk to me through a translator.

The sun is setting behind the trees covered in red flowers. “Not native” I am told.

Like me I think.

Totally out of place, and yet not out of place at all.

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Lovings of the week: Nepal – flailing not failing

21 Jun

The deadline for the Nepali constitution recently passed – it prompted my move from the east of Nepal to the capital, and then finally out of the country to Cambodia. Given the political vacuum the country finds itself in now, there has been a media storm this week over whether Nepal should be considered a “failed, or flailing” state.

  • First there was this piece in the New York Times - “If the culture of impunity is not uprooted, neither the elections nor a new constitution can deliver Nepal from slipping further into civil chaos, poverty and lawlessness.”
  • This was counted by a letter to the editor from Nepal’s permanent mission to the United Nations: “We categorically reject the notion that Nepal is on the brink of collapse. We are on the verge of restructuring and institutionalizing the state within a democratic, republican and federal structure.”
  • And finally , then finally the hitback from the Kathmandu Post: “Nepal looks like a failing state from outside because this country has not been successfully coping with the challenges of the modern times. My own feeling is that Nepal is not heading towards being a failing state. The problem is we have short historical memories. What is happening so far is debate, peaceful albeit heated discussions about the structure and modus operandi of the political process, elections, reviving the CA or holding fresh elections. This is a very democratic process. The “ferocious” guerrillas have worked hard with the ‘parliamentary’ parties and disarmed themselves; together they have solved many complex problems. People from different origins and geographical setting are not fighting with each other. They are putting fresh ideas about equality and harmonious state restructuring. A democratically minded President is making calls to parties to work together and find a way out of this impasse. Equally, the other subject of great importance is that Nepal’s big neighbours India and China want these political parties to find their own solutions. They are not putting trade embargos or supporting any groups with money or arms. They are encouraging a return to normalcy. “
From my own limited experience it was very interesting to see how a country operates from one day to the next, with and without a constitution. On the surface everything still worked. The sky did not fall in. The roads were full. Electricity and water supply limped along as normal, business opened their doors for yet another day. I hear of cracks below the surface – the inability to push much needed reform through, a friend who can’t get a work permit despite having worked in the country for 8 years, an NGO who has had more days closed than open for business this year. And yet, Nepal seems like a country that is continuing to limp along, finding a way through the political turmoil, the same way their ancestors found a way through the rugged Himalayas in the past.
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Picture credit: Wikimedia Commons

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On having a mission – 8 months on

17 Jun

8 months ago I wrote about having a mission for my life. I wanted it to encompass “contribution”, “global”, “sustainability” and “poverty”. I didn’t know what this meant or how it was going to work.

I met a woman who was 67 who was working on a vocational training centre in the far west of Ghana. I realised that in around 40 years time I would be 67. So I decided to make my mission 40 years – to have it focus on the long term. As Bill Gates famously put it – we overestimate what we can do in 2 years and underestimate what we can do in 10 (or 40 for that matter).

I wanted my first step to be to begin to understand. To begin to understand what it means to be poor. To begin to understand what has been done so far. To begin to understand why this has not been enough. As part of this I wanted to give a substantial sum ($10K) to charity.

It is hard to say how I have progressed on the true knowledge front; and yet easy to show how I have progressed on the money side. This reminds me of a conversation I had recently with a development practitioner  – “people in aid complain all the time about the report writing – but how else can we show our progress? It is not as easy as showing money in an account. If a business is successful the money will be there. If it isn’t, it won’t be.”

So first to the money. In the end I was more creative with accounting for the $10K than I originally thought I would be. I found it hard to part with my own money, but my goal meant that I stopped thinking about whether or not I should give away away the money and started thinking creatively about how I could overcome my own barriers and make it happen. I first managed to turn a relatively small donation into a significant amount through a very generous matching scheme I was able to access. After much deliberation I also decided to include my expenses for my India trip last year, where we initiated a pilot project, bringing light to one community. For the remainder of the sum I asked that all my Christmas and birthday presents from the last year be donations to a charity (as pre-selected by GiveWell).

On beginning to understand, I have certainly learnt a lot during the past year in my role with Good Return. For the next period of time however, I would like to be more focussed in my learning, spending more time reading and trying to understand concepts which are well researched and difficult rather than the easy one line answers (read this Study Hacks post on deliberate practice versus achieving flow if you want to understand more about what I am talking about).

Some key learnings I have written about previously on L+L have been:

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Lovings of the week: Conducting experiments with cities, insuring people with HIV/AIDs and Nepali street art

14 Jun

Shenzen – charter city

  • Here’s an idea. Let’s say your country is poor and unstable. You know the only way out is to try something new. But how? How about going the way of Philadelphia, Singapore and Shenzen and running a city wide experiment ? The New York Times recently explored this question in their aptly titled Who Wants to Buy Honduras? “In 2009, Romer developed the idea of charter cities — economic zones founded on the land of poor countries but governed with the legal and political system of, often, rich ones.  Romer, who is expected to be chairman, is hoping to build a city that can accommodate 10 million people, which is 2 million more than the current population of Honduras. His charter city will have extremely open immigration policies to attract foreign workers from all over. It will also tactically dissuade some from coming.”
  • Again from the New York Times, a piece on microinsurance and how AllLife, a South Africa insurance product, covers people with HIV/AIDs. “AllLife requires the people it insures to make regular medical visits, get the necessary periodic tests and follow treatment protocols. AllLife’s managing director, says that clients average a 15 percent improvement in their CD4 count — an immune system marker — six months after buying insurance. That improvement may partly be the psychology of seeing their disease in a different way: “If you think you have a terminal disease, you don’t care how you eat and exercise,” said Beerman. “Now I have an insurance company monitoring me. They are very active in keeping me alive.”
  • Check out this creative street art, Nepali style, from right near my hotel. I leave this week to start Good Return’s Sustainable Energy Program in Cambodia.
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Image credit: Lettersfrommitia

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A year of one sentence a day emails

11 Jun

Friend – ship

Just over a year ago my awesome-est friend and I were struggling to keep touch. Both of us have things that won’t sit still – her with her two kids and me with my schedule.

After numerous failed skype dates an idea was born.

Why don’t we just try to email each other one sentence a day? Shouldn’t that be enough to keep in us touch – for both the big events, as well as the day to day?

That was just over a year ago, and somehow we’ve managed to keep the habit.

A sentence every day has mostly translated into a paragraph two or three times a week. But as my friend wisely pointed out – what kept us going was the knowledge that we could *just* write a sentence. That was the rule. And it was the rule because of two of my favourite pieces of life advice:

  • You are what you do everyday; and
  • It just doesn’t matter what you don’t do in life. It only matters what you do decide to do.

(As a side note, I love this piece on Steve Martin. “I remember getting my first banjo, and reading the book saying ‘this is how you play the C chord,’ and I put my fingers down to play the C chord and I couldn’t tell the difference.” “But I told myself, just stick with this, just keep playing, and one day you’ll have been playing for 40 years, and at this point, you’ll know how to play.”)

I’ve compiled some of these emails into a book for her birthday and I was struck by the picture of the year that was painted. From the hilarious mundane (“Yesterday I put white pepper instead of salt on my chicken curry”) to the advice (“BREATHE!”) to the life changing and occasionally sad (“I resigned today”). We have both managed to achieve a lot in the last year. But seeing it all in one place also reminded me that “the days are long but the years are short”.

Happy birthday Asteroid! Thanks for being my friend.

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Image credit:  Some rights reserved by h.koppdelaney

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Lovings of the week: A sustainable plan for Chippendale, Aung San Suu Kyi and making light from coke bottles

7 Jun

Turning a famous symbol into light

  • On taking leadership – check out my very good friend Michael Mobb’s plan to make the suburb of Chippendale in Sydney sustainable. He’s thought about everything with everything green buildings to art to the urban heat island effect to his favourite topic — food.
  • Again on leadership, I recently watched “The Lady”, about Aung San Suu Kyi’s struggle for democracy in Burma. Kyi was not able to return to the UK when her husband had prostate cancer and they were separated when he finally passed. When the dictatorship told her “you must choose between your husband and your family, or your country”, she responded with “what choice is that”? On May 12th, Kyi was formally sworn into the Burmese Parliament, ending 24 years of struggle, of which 15 years were spent under house arrest.
  • I’ve got another post up on the Fifth Estate, continuing my series for the UN’s Sustainable Energy for All. This time I’ve focussed on new and innovative solutions for light – including the long lauded “coke bottle” light which was recently nominated for an Ashden award.

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Why I blog

4 Jun

In the beginning I had all sorts of lofty aspirations for this blog.

Maybe I would make money. Maybe I would wield some influence. Maybe I would use it to develop new ideas.

Soon after starting I realised that the first two would likely never happen. And some time after I realised the last never really happened either.

So then I decided that it helped me to finalise ideas. Yes that was what the blog did.

Something would roll around in my brain until finally it got to a point where it was all I could do not to wake up in the middle of the night and write down all that I was thinking.

I tried this thinking out on a few people – why I blog is one of my frequently asked questions. And in trying out this thinking on a few people, I realised it was bullshit.

The only reason I blog is because I simply love it.

I love creating something. I love the way it makes me see things in a different way. I love the people I connect with through here – both new and old. I love the structure it brings to my very unstructured life.

I love how much it surprises me.

I love how sometimes I write something I think is bloody brilliant — only to have no one notice.

I love how sometimes I write something I think is awful — only to have people write to me to tell me that this is their favourite post thus far.

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