NorthKorea

Pyongyang’s slums

A detour brought us to something few non-North Koreans, and probably few North Koreans, get to see -- the other side of the tracks in Pyongang. April 15 was the celebration of the hundredth anniversary of Kim Il Sung's birth, something like July 4, 1776 in the United States. Amid the hubbub, they detoured our bus from whatever our route was supposed to be to a driving along some dilapidated and run-down places. The government so heavily controls what anyone sees, especially foreigners, this must have been an accident of the once-in-a-lifetime chaos of the day. I would call the area a slum, but it was nothing like slums elsewhere, like in American cities. Things were old and decrepit but empty. I had no sense…

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August 1, 2012
NorthKorea

Bizarre tour of the metro museum

We toured a museum of the subway system there. Here are the brief notes I took: Room after room of staged photo after staged photo of Kim Il Sung smiling, giving no information on engineering or planning or contribution from anyone but him... where he sat, when he visited, but no details on what he said. Nothing about what we would call the project. That museum was just like most other ones. Just presentation about the Kims sticking their faces into otherwise serious work. I know what people outside the system think of it. It values an authoritarian leader and the system supporting him over everything else. What do people there think of it?

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July 25, 2012
Natural beauty in North Korea, part 2: beaches
Nature / NorthKorea

Natural beauty in North Korea, part 2: beaches

Who would expect beautiful beaches in North Korea? Visiting that far north in April, we didn't find warm sunny beaches, but the Earth is beautiful and it's hard to hide that. Some of the beachfront hotels looks nice, almost Mediterranean, from afar. Up close you saw the hotels couldn't have been seriously maintained in decades. One hotel had zero hot water. We had to heat water by dropping a heating element into a tub. Anyway, I hope the pictures convey some of the natural beauty we saw there.                                                  

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July 24, 2012
Natural beauty in North Korea, part 1: mountains
Nature / NorthKorea

Natural beauty in North Korea, part 1: mountains

I doubt many people would expect to see much natural beauty in North Korea. I was surprised to see a lot once we got out of Pyongyang. You could only call most of the land stark. Little of it was arable. I don't claim to be an experienced photographer -- see Joseph's blog for that quality of picture -- but I saw some great stuff. My pictures don't do the land justice. The lag in my camera combined with always being in the bus meant I consistently took pictures of something a second away from something beautiful. Anyway, click on the images for larger versions and contact me for higher resolutions.                            …

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July 22, 2012
Pyongyang city planning
NorthKorea

Pyongyang city planning

Before visiting Pyongyang, you might expect a dismal, dreary place. Below I'll show some views that met my expectations (click for bigger views, email if you want higher resolution) The city also has many monuments and sites -- monuments, stadiums, statues, victory arches, grand libraries, grand boulevards, etc. I'm not sure, but I suspect whoever is leading the planners envisioned creating a Paris of the East. They had a lot of money during the cold war, much more than South Korea at the time. Combined with a powerful central authority, they could do a lot. Today everything comes out different than they must have planned. You can't go anywhere on your own so you lose sense of place. The grandness of the boulevards highlights the…

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July 19, 2012
In North Korea, many people just sit by the roadside with nothing to do
NorthKorea

In North Korea, many people just sit by the roadside with nothing to do

Many times daily in North Korea you see someone crouching doing nothing but passing time. Usually they're alone, but sometimes in a group. I kept meaning to take pictures, but it feels funny to take a picture of someone doing nothing. I found the two below on the web. As best you can tell they've been squatting all day and will be for a while longer. They'll be in a park or on a street corner. Not far away someone else may crouch alone doing nothing too. I don't see them complaining. I didn't see any police telling them to move along or other people asking them to join an activity. It got me thinking about government, systems, and motivation. I don't know the cause…

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July 15, 2012
NorthKorea

More North Korea posts to come

I've been meaning to write more about my April 2012 North Korea trip. I took tons of video, pictures, and notes there, but have been trapped behind China's censoring of YouTube and I wanted to start by showing video. Well, you'll have to wait to see the video, but I'll start posting some text and pictures. I'm writing this post partly to sink my ships and force myself to write these posts. Meanwhile, if you want amazing pictures, make sure to check out Joseph's American in North Korea blog. You'll never think of North Korea the same again. You may even want to visit.

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July 12, 2012
I like luxury when someone gives it to me just for being myself
Blog / Freedom

I like luxury when someone gives it to me just for being myself

I mostly post pictures of cultural things like the Great Wall, Forbidden City, and millenia-old terracotta armies, but why not pictures of luxurious resorts I've indulged in? Maybe because the former are cultural and the resort in question -- Singapore's Marina Bay Sands -- is commercial and makes its money from gambling? Maybe, but swimming in an infinity pool above Singapore also recalls when I swam across the Hudson River. And with my posts on how spending less improves your life, maybe I should show I enjoy luxury too. Besides, since I used my social skills to get my friend and me invited to the roof (hence my swimming in boxer shorts -- we didn't plan on going and they were all I had), it cost…

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July 11, 2012
Blog / Fitness / Nature / NorthKorea

Ultimate in Shanghai!

I played ultimate in Shanghai for the first time Monday and Saturday since the tournament in August in North Korea (in particular getting the end zone D and catching the goal to win the game), which was the first time in something like five years. Wow, nothing compares to playing ultimate. Even with probably 90 degree temperatures and high humidity, running around, throwing, and catching was awesome. It's like what our bodies evolved for. At 40, I thought I was done playing, but I think I'll play regularly this summer. They have games scheduled twice a week and the community, as with ultimate communities everywhere, is fun, welcoming, international, and spirited. Come to think of it, I saw a random guy in Singapore dressed like…

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July 3, 2012
Blog / Freedom / Leadership / NorthKorea / Tips

Spending less improves your life

Preface: I started writing this blog about how cutting personal costs (of any resource, including time, money, energy, attention, etc) improves your personal life. Rereading it I realized it overlapped so much with what leaders can do in business, I'll tag it leadership too. Translating the post into business-speak I'll leave as an exercise to the reader. You can probably do it on the fly. People who know me in person know I work very little at a job -- like a day a week, sometimes more in crunch times, which happen once a year or so. When they hear I work so little, they first ask, usually indirectly, where I make enough money to live on. I view going this direction first as a…

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June 30, 2012
The terracotta army
Blog

The terracotta army

Today I visited the amazing terracotta army near Xian, China, which they bill as the eighth wonder of the world. I also had some geeky fun you might enjoy reading about after the pictures. I haven't read the Wikipedia page on it yet, but from what I understood from I understood from our guide, who didn't speak English so my co-worker had to translate, an emperor about 2,200 years ago had an army of about 2,000 life-size terracotta warriors, horses, chariots, and more made, which he buried with himself when he died. As best I could tell, in the intervening 2,200 years, nobody knew it was there. A farmer found some sign of it while digging a well in 1974. Archeologists dug up the rest.…

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June 22, 2012
Xian!
Art / Blog / Creativity

Xian!

Business brought me to the lovely city of Xian, not that far from Shanghai. My hosts brought me to a central area they covered with LEDs, I guess for tourists. I couldn't help take pictures to post here. It was borderline garish, but just this side of too much. I don't know if the pictures capture it. It almost felt like daytime at night. The city lit up a whole area with statues, pillars (wrapped in LEDs I couldn't help by overexpose in the pictures), municipal and art buildings, etc. Lots of people were enjoying themselves. Anyway, if you are near Xian, visit. Tomorrow I'll post on the famous terra-cotta army, also not far away. A couple friends who visited here told me to visit…

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June 21, 2012
Durians!
Blog / Nature

Durians!

I just visited a street lined with fruit stands serving durians. They sell other fruits -- including mangoes, mangosteens, jack fruit, dragon fruits, and others -- but only serve the durians at the tables. If you haven't heard of or eaten durians, here are some pictures. You can see they are unusual -- sharp on spiny on the outside, looking like guts on the inside -- but the smell makes them unique. Here is a description from Wikipedia The edible flesh emits a distinctive odour, strong and penetrating even when the husk is intact. Some people regard the durian as fragrant; others find the aroma overpowering and offensive. The smell evokes reactions from deep appreciation to intense disgust, and has been described variously as almonds,…

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June 19, 2012
Blog

Persistence pays off, so does treating people like people

Sometimes plans get crazy and they can be hard to get to work. I find persistence pays off, as does treating people like human beings and going out of your way to recognize their efforts. Anyway, I'm proud for pulling off a last-minute travel challenge. The me of a few years ago probably wouldn't have been able to pull it off. It began with finding out I had two days unexpectedly free. I checked online for cheap flights to travel to meet a friend I haven't seen in a while. Found them, but the flight left in a few hours. Tried to buy them. Site kept giving an error and wouldn't sell the tickets. Called the local office. Stuck on hold for ten minutes or…

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June 16, 2012
Blog / Leadership

America’s infrastructure, leadership, idealism, and getting the job done

I've been talking to my American friends overseas about differences between the U.S. and the countries they're living in. Top on the list are infrastructure and what the government does for the people it represents. I think government services rank so highly because when you get to know them, people tend to be the same everywhere. They usually know differences in food before they go. After the people you notice what you have to pay for or not. And once people get used to services like trains, health care, internet, and such included with their taxes, they notice their absence when considering returning to a country where such things cost a lot. I just spent a few days with two American friends in Seoul. You…

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June 9, 2012
NorthKorea

A Korean-American friend’s article about visiting North Korea

A friend who contacted me about my visiting North Korea wrote an article about visiting North Korea. He traveled extensively, spoke Korean, and ate meat, so he had a chance to experience something different and communicate more. It's hard for me not to notice how experiencing North Korea differed from his expectations, which led him to understand more about his culture -- mainly the press (perhaps the government). Also that the North Korean people made the difference. Besides his article, the comments showed what I would call short-sightedness and ignorance in people's knee-jerk responses. They criticized his visiting without considering the pros and cons of people visiting. I've written on the ethics of visiting North Korea so you can find out I find value in…

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June 7, 2012
Blog

On the values of travel

Last month I wrote how I don't like to travel, just as I embarked on a trip to North Korea and China that ended up including Vietnam too. Then I had another trip of a lifetime! The amount I learn and grow when I travel -- nearly every time -- forces me to rethink that statement. People who've known me for years know I haven't liked to travel for a long time, despite having traveled a fair amount. When I think of traveling, I tend to think of spewing jet fuel into the air and living out of a suitcase, both of which I dislike intensely. I don't think about cost because with rare exception, I travel when someone else pays and I have enough…

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May 27, 2012
Blog / Freedom / Leadership / NorthKorea

A leadership perspective on differences between economic systems

Watching people on the streets of North Korea, you see a different culture than in New York City. In three cumulative weeks in North Korea I saw almost no one hurrying or seeming like they wanted to get somewhere important. I was curious if I could find a root cause. From a leadership perspective -- that is, for someone who wants to motivate and lead others -- how do capitalism and communism differ? When you create your teams and organizations, you create systems that affect everyone in the team, whether you realize it or not. How do you motivate people? Will you have people hurrying to do something or free riding? Your choices may differ less than communism and capitalism, but a greater difference makes this…

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May 23, 2012
Xu Bing’s gallery show at the Shanghai Gallery of Art
Art / Blog / Creativity

Xu Bing’s gallery show at the Shanghai Gallery of Art

I enjoyed a show by an artist named Xu Bing at the Shanghai Gallery of Art. He created a book using only symbols so that anyone could understand it, no matter what language they spoke. The show showed the book and the four-year process he took to create it. The simple, blocky images telling a story suggested to me that taking simple, direct pictures of them would tell the story of the show. I hope I achieved my goal. I hope you'll forgive my making the images a bit too big for the blog design, but I wanted to show more of the art. Hovering over the image pauses the slide show, which I recommend doing when you see individual pages of his work (clicking…

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May 20, 2012
Ho Chi Minh City’s War Remembrance Museum
Blog / Freedom / NorthKorea

Ho Chi Minh City’s War Remembrance Museum

Within its borders, especially during an election year, the U.S. has an overwhelming voice of "we're number one." Outside its borders, I feel like within my lifetime the world's perception of the country has declined significantly. You feel that loss poignantly in a country like Vietnam, which can claim having defeated the U.S. against overwhelming force. Effective leadership, I believe, has to understand other voices, even those it disagrees with. The War Remembrance Museum in Ho Chi Minh City lets you see the U.S. from a perspective you won't see in the U.S. The museum portrays the U.S. as a militaristic, bullying, violent, imperialistic aggressor that supported an unpopular, repressive, oppressive violent puppet regime and lost. How much of that characterization you agree with or…

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May 19, 2012
Awareness / Blog

Culture shock comes when you experience something old for the first time in a while, not something new

If you live in New York City or many other places, you've doubtlessly gotten used to restaurants and bars having no smoke in them. Perhaps, like me, you've come to find the idea, or experience, of smoke around you when you eat or drink or in any public space you can't avoid barbaric. Does "barbaric" overstate things? I used to consider myself tolerant of smoke in bars and clubs. Actually, I still do, but I don't see any way someone can smoke without potentially annoying everyone else there. I didn't support banning smoking in restaurants and bars that much, but after habitualizing myself to smoke-free bars, clubs, and restaurants, smoky bars and clubs are horrible. Smokey restaurants seem barely acceptable any more. Younger readers will…

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May 17, 2012
I don’t know when the United States and North Korean governments will be at peace, but we made it sooner
Blog / Freedom / Leadership / NorthKorea

I don’t know when the United States and North Korean governments will be at peace, but we made it sooner

We visited North Korea for ten days in April, in part for the hundredth anniversary of Kim Il Sung's birth. North Korea is amazing. This trip surpassed our first in many ways, as before in ways we could never have predicted and, having experienced it, can't explain, much as we'd like to. Everyone on the trip agreed, as happened with the first trip. You had to be there to feel it, but we'll do our best to convey what we experienced, because at the root we communicated, shared experiences, increased understanding, and all the things that create peaceful interaction in all directions. (My travel-mates already started writing and posting pictures, mainly Joseph and Jordan.) Most people in my group explained that seeing and experiencing the…

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May 14, 2012
Blog / Freedom / NorthKorea

North Korea, China, Vietnam, Cuba — a case for humility and understanding

The major "Communist" countries my country invaded or fought during the Cold War without doing so well -- I just visited (or smoked a cigar from). It gives you the opportunity to learn. The dominant voices in the United States, especially during an election year, cheer that we're number one. You hardly hear anything else. I can't imaging a politician disagreeing in the slightest having a hope of election. Seeing how others perceive us is enlightening and humbling. Each has a major claim to victory over the United States despite overwhelming odds. China: An elderly Texan oil man in Beijing -- a man in any other context I would expect to praise God, country, and the great state of Texas -- bluntly told me he's…

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May 4, 2012
Blog / Nature / NorthKorea

Food, joy, and values

A culture's food tells you its values -- some of its most important ones. I just had fresh squeezed mango and some mangosteens on the streets of Ho Chi Minh City. They cost almost nothing here. They were as delicious as any fruit I've eaten. Two weeks ago I could barely put another oil soaked vegetable in my mouth in North Korea. We had little choice in where or what to eat. The meat-eaters seemed to enjoy their food more -- they gave them more variety -- but they couldn't seem to stop serving what I came to call "Oil soup with a touch of vegetables." It wasn't as bad as that, but after eight or nine days without respite, just the smell of oil…

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May 1, 2012
Blog / Leadership / NorthKorea

See my North Korea strategy talk

Sebastian posted the video of my North Korea strategy talk to his strategy group of entrepreneurs in Beijing. Check it out. The video didn't capture the questions and answers afterward. One of the first questions people asked was if I worried I was overly sympathetic to North Korean decision-makers. My goal is to understand them and their perspective, which people sometimes interpret as support. It bears repeating that understanding doesn't mean support. If you want to influence someone -- what else do we strategize about? -- I consider ignorance of their perspective the least productive starting point. Once you understand that understanding doesn't mean support, you begin to learn about them. Then you can influence them. Come to think of it, a less productive starting…

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April 28, 2012

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