If you’re an entrepreneur or VC in New York, clear off Monday, April 15, 2013 from 7:00 PM to 9:30 PM. I’ve written before about InSITE, the entrepreneurship group I started working with at Columbia Business School, and a friend there winning a competition with a business to reduce pollution. If you didn’t know, InSITE brings together graduate students at various schools around NYC (mainly from Columbia’s and NYU’s business,[…] Keep reading →
North Korean museums do things differently than museums elsewhere. First, I don’t remember seeing art museums there. They seem to make museums for historical and technical things, like wars and subway systems. Second, instead of trying to present the history or teach understanding of the technology, its development, or the people who created it, they do two things: describe the involvement of Kim Il Sung or Kim Jong Il and[…] Keep reading →
Near Pyongyang’s Arc of Triumph (bigger than the one in Paris!), we saw this boy with his mother at a county-fair type target practice contest. How could we not stop and watch the his calm determination and his mother’s help shooting a rifle in the middle of town. The rifle only shot little corks, but it was fun to watch. Not weird, but just different than you’d expect to see[…] Keep reading →
Following up on freedom from yesterday’s post, I wanted to share a perspective so useful, I almost can’t believe it wasn’t originally written for the context of personal development. Michelangelo, when asked about how he created David, said I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free. As I mentioned yesterday, the greatest improvements we can make are to free ourselves from constraints that inhibit[…] Keep reading →
Today’s video is of Joseph, who publishes the famous American in North Korea blog, which has some of the most amazing pictures and commentary of North Korea around. That blog makes him a celebrity among foreigners in North Korea because many times we crossed paths with other foreigners, someone from the group would come up and ask him “Are you the American in North Korea?” He was also one of[…] Keep reading →
Kim Jong Il loved movies so North Korea has a small movie industry. Part of our tour was visiting the movie sets, which look like small parts of cities. I guess many movies have the same few sets. Today has a fun video of one of our group getting in costume and having fun.
What are your goals? People ask that a lot, especially in personal development. I’m going to point something out you might not realize. People usually talk about goals as external — to get a promotion, to earn a certain amount of money, to marry a spouse with certain properties… stuff like that. People who take my seminar see what I put as the farthest stage I see myself reaching is[…] Keep reading →
Visiting a flower show in North Korea led to being in a building overflowing with North Korean soldiers (including, as a group of guys will notice, cute female ones), and flowers. They named some types after their leaders, so they have a lot of Kimilsungia and Kimjongilia, which they arrange into shapes of North Korea around small models of important places, like where Kim Il Sung was born and such.[…] Keep reading →
Dozens of North Korean couples celebrate their weddings in a park with a giant statue of Kim Il Sung. Part way through, they start inviting us — Americans! — to join their parties (we think they thought we were Russian). Amazing insight to an intimate part of North Korean life.