Creative Think

Thinking About Burma

The recent harsh government crackdown in Myanmar on pro-reform demonstrators has saddened me. I hope significant pressure can be brought to bear by the world community (especially China, the regime's primary enabler) to open this beautiful country.

Two years ago this month, my wife and I spent eight days in Burma. This was one of my all-time favorite trips. We found the people were warm and out-going, and the country quite beautiful. We were in Bagan, Inle Lake, and Yangon (Rangoon). Here are a few thoughts and photos.

I loved the ancient holy city of Bagan (formerly Pagan). It's home to 4,000 Buddhist temples and pagodas. It's said in Bagan that if you close your eyes, spin around, and point your finger, you'll be pointing at a temple, We tried this a number of times and it always worked.

One of Bagan's most famous temples is Ananda. Inside it are four thirty foot tall statues of Buddha (one of which is pictured below left). Below right are two Burmese children.

The high point of our trip was Inle Lake in the Shan state. The lake itself is quite large, and is laced with canals at its edges.

Here (below left), our ferryman takes us to our lodge. Note that he's using the customary Intha method of paddling with his leg. Not only does this give him greater propulsion. it also free up his arms if he wants to fish. Below right is a local woman carrying wood on her head.

Every village has its own temple. One of the villages on the southern part of Inle Lake has a monastery in which the monks have taught cats to jump through hoops. The monk told me that the calico (below left) is his "number one" performer.

Burma's most famous temple is the Schwedagon in Yangon. It's a vast complex of pavillions and pagodas. The place buzzes with families, visitors, and pilgrims. Here I sit with four young monks (below right). I joked with them that we could be a basketball team (I'd be the center). Lots of fun.

Governments come and go. People endure. This current repressive government will have to allow reform or be replaced.

I hope to return to Burma within the next few years (perhaps to go deeper into the Shan state).

An Aspen Getaway

Celebrating My First Blogiversary took a lot of energy, so Wendy and I have taken off for four days in Aspen (Snowmass) Colorado.

It's quite invigorating! The aspen trees are turning, and there's bright autumn color everywhere we look.

It snowed several days ago, as you can see on Mt. Daley. A good time to be alive!

"Are You Happy?"

Whenever I travel abroad, the first words I learn in the language of the country I'm visiting are:

Are You Happy?

I've found that when I say these words to complete strangers in their native tongue, they almost invariably open right up. Why?

First, they're surprised that an aging white guy is trying to talk to them in their own language.

Second, they're amazed that a foreigner is directly asking them such a personal question.

And third, they think it's really funny. And then it's possible to have a little dialog with them.

I do this wherever I go: Vietnam, Morocco, China, Egypt, Burma, Peru, and India.

For example, I was just in Russia. My magic words there were: "Tay shahs leaf" (my phonetic spelling). When the person would say, "Da," (yes), I'd follow that up with: "Ya oychen shas leaf." (I'm really happy). Then they try to teach me a few more words. It seemed to open a few doors.

I was also just in Sweden. It's a national law there that Swedes aren't allowed to say that they are really happy (their joke), so it was fun to tease that out of them: "Are du yetta glad?" (again, my phonetic spelling). Lots of fun all around!

For example, on a boat to Vaxholm, one man responded to my question with a discussion of his sex life since the birth of his first child ("my wife is now more interested in the result of the sex, i.e, the child, than in what created it"). What was curious was that he explained this (in English) to me as well as to the ten Swedish women standing around me, and they all laughed.

Question: What are your special words to connect with people when you travel?

Small World Swedish Swim Greetings

"Stanford Masters?" the man behind me asked.

I was standing at the entrance to the Eriksdalbadet pool in Stockholm this morning. I turned around and it was Tony Svensen, once and future Stanford Masters swimmer and tri-athlete.

Small world indeed! What fun. Tony's been on special assignment in Sweden for the past two years, but he looks forward to returning to Palo Alto and swimming with his Stanford Masters buddies.

Eriksdalbadet is a classic 50 meter outdoor community pool. We figured that (Stanford Masters teammate) Par Arvidson must have held all the pool records here in the late 1970s. (Par is from Sweden and won the 100 meter butterfly at the 1980 Olympics.)

Above is a photo of Tony and me. We swam in the "Bana for snabbsim" (or fast lane). It was a lot of fun!

Postcard from St. Petersburg (and a Joke!)

Wendy and I have spent the past four days in St. Petersburg, the "Venice of the North." Petersburg is many things: Czar Peter the Great's capital and "Baltic Window to the West," "Cradle of Lenin's October 1917 Revolution," and site of the 900 day siege in WWII by the Nazis. For us, Petersburg is a delightful place to stroll along its many canals and Neva River waterfront.

Petersburg feels more European than Moscow. And for me, at least, there is a lot less of the lingering "Soviet Era" feeling than in Moscow. Shown above is a Petersburg Pickle Peddler showing off her goods in a local market. Notice the pickled garlic. Yummmm! We bought some and also some cabbage and salmon pierogis at a bakery around the corner and had a very satisfying lunch.

We were also fortunate to attend a performance of Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake ballet in the intimate Hermitage theater (250 seats). The dancers were truly wonderful, and I will always remember that evening.

Of course we spent a day touring the magnificent Hermitage. There was room after room of eighteenth and nineteenth century art. There were also several rooms of Monets, Renoirs, Cezannes, and Van Goghs. (Our time in the Hermitage was made more enjoyable by our having seen the film "The Russian Ark" which is a 90 minute tracking shot through the Hermitage.)

The one souvenir I bought in Petersburg was a 4" high metal action figure of the religious monk Grigori Rasputin, who was an advisor to the Czarina Alexandra. We visited the Yusupov Palace where Rasputin was murdered by Felix Yusupov (and others) in December, 1916. We had an appointment to see the actual basement dining room where he was poisoned and shot. Real history! I took this photograph of my Rasputin figure overlooking the canal just in front of the site where he was murdered.

Other Petersburg highlights were the Amber Room (it glows) at the Catherine Palace and the interior mosaics at the Church on Spilled Blood (they seem to glow as well).

I'll conclude with a Soviet era joke our guide Tatiana told us:

An American, a Frenchman, and a Russian were trying to determine the nationality of Adam and Eve.

The American said, "Adam and Eve were clearly Americans. They had abundant material wealth all around them. For them, it was paradise."

The Frenchman said, "Adam and Eve were French. They were beautiful and had a passionate, loving relationship."

The Russian said, "Adam and Eve were clearly Russians. They were naked, cold, and had only an apple between them to eat. Only a true Soviet would call this paradise!"

A few final thoughts:

1) These are boom times in Russia (at least in the larger cities). About anything you want is available (and expensive).

2) There are lots and lots of white people in Moscow and Petersburg; neither city would be confused with any American city.

3) We enjoyed our time here, and we also enjoyed preparing for this trip: we watched a number of Russian films (see here), viewed the Czar, Lenin, and Stalin documentaries from the History Channel, and benefited from Irwin Weil's Teaching Company 36-part series on Russian Literature. We also read various books, and highly recommend David Remnick's history Lenin's Tomb (winner of the Pulitzer Prize), and Sergei Lukyanenko's sci-fi novel Nightwatch.

Postcard from Moscow

For the past four days, Wendy and I have been in Moscow. The ghosts of the recent past are still very much alive here as evidenced by our photo (taken just off Red Square) with Lenin and Czar Nicholas II.

We've enjoyed touring such sites as Red Square, the Kremlin, the Armory, Stalin's Bunker, Izmailovsky Market, Tretyakov Art Gallery, and various churches and convents. As a child of the Cold War (see my previous post), I've long been curious to see these places.

My favorite site on Red Square is St. Basil's Cathedral (shown at left) with its delightful array of swirling colors and onion domes. The cathedral was commissioned by Ivan the Terrible and built in the 16th century. To make sure the cathedral's architect never built anything as nice, Ivan had the architect blinded after the work was completed.

Also on Red Square is Lenin's Tomb where Lenin's embalmed body lies in state. Interestingly enough, this is the second embalmed body of a famous leader I've seen this year; the other was Egyptian Pharaoh Ramses II which is in Cairo.

We waited in line for 45 minutes before being admitted to the tomb. We spent the time chatting with some Ukrainian construction workers who asked us how they could emigrate to the US. One of them, Victor, proudly wore a "The USSR Is My Homeland" t-shirt (in Russian) and told me his favorite Soviet leaders were Yuri Andropov and Leonid Brezhnev. He had little use for Gorbachev.
 

Once inside the tomb, it takes about two minutes to walk around the body. I thought Lenin looked small. Since 1924, it's estimated that over 15,000,000 people have viewed his body. Curiously, being embalmed and put on display for Soviet propaganda purposes was about the last thing Lenin wanted: he wanted to be buried next to his mother in St. Petersburg.

Once outside the tomb, we walked slowly past the graves of former Soviet leaders, including Stalin, who was the greatest mass murderer in history (estimated 40-60 million victims). For me, it was a weird experience. On the other hand, the Ukrainians we were with were deeply moved by it all. As were most of the other visitors.

Riding on the Moscow Metro is quite interesting. The stations are clean and deep underground (some 80 meters). Most were built in the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s by slave laborers. Different stations have different themes and art. The Kiev station, for example, has many murals (such as the one shown at left) with agricultural and bucolic motifs. The trains come every 60 or 90 seconds and travel fast.

We got to spend some time with the Russian screen-writer Pavel Gelman (Pavel is a reader of this blog; that's how we met). Pavel's father is Alexander Gelman, the noted Soviet playwright. I enjoyed sharing creativity ideas with Pavel, and also hearing his thoughts about what it's like to write for Russian TV and movies. He feels free except for one constraint: he's found it wise not to show the Russian state security police in a negative light in his crime stories (it makes it more challenging to get financing).

All in all, we enjoyed Moscow. It's a bustling metropolis of 12 million people, and those ones we met and talked with were friendly. Also, we had great sunny weather in the high 80s (30+ C.) With the price of petroleum at or near record levels, these are boom times in Moscow.

"We Will Bury You!"

Wendy and I are in Moscow.

When I was growing up, one of the scariest people in the world (to me and many others) was Nikita Khrushchev, the leader of the Soviet Union from 1955 to 1964. In 1962, he and JFK went eyeball-to-eyeball in the Cuban Missile Crisis and came close to starting World War III.

One of Khrushchev's most famous outbursts came in 1956 when he told a group of western diplomats: "We will bury you!" In the context of thermo-nuclear war, this outburst was chilling. But Khrushchev later said he meant that the Soviet Union and communism would outlast the West, and that "we would come to your funeral to put dirt on your grave." 

Today we visited the Novodevichy Cemetery where a number of Russian and Soviet notables are buried. I saw the graves and monuments of such people as: Boris Yelstin, composer Dmitri Shostakovich, cellist Mstislav Rostropovich, former first lady Raisa Gorbachev, foreign minister Andrei Gromyko, Olympic champion high jumper Valery Brumel, and playwright Anton Chekhov.

I also visited Khrushchev's grave (he died in 1971), and took great pleasure in placing the Ball of Whacks next to the monument head. For as much as he scared me when I was a kid, I thought I'd have a little fun now!

Actually, as I've read more and more about Soviet history, Khrushchev comes off as one of the "good guys," at least in the context of what came before him (Stalin) and after (Brezhnev). He pushed for market reforms in agriculture, and also had the courage to denounce one of the worst tyrants and murderers of the twentieth century (Stalin).

Postcard From Bogota

This week I've been in Bogota, Colombia as guest of El Tiempo (the largest newspaper in Colombia and second largest media company in Latin America). I did several creativity sessions for approximately 1,400 Bogota business people. Also on the program was Lyn Heward who was long-time president of Creative Content at Cirque du Soleil (I enjoyed meeting her and hearing her many stories).

I found the audience (shown above doing one of my exercises) was quite receptive to the message of creativity in business. Indeed, there was a feeling of entrepreneurship and innovation in the air! This is probably a major reason why Colombia was recently featured in a BusinessWeek cover story.

This sweeping vista shot of Bogota (below) is from high-above Monserrate.

Many Americans, on their first trip to Bogota, are expecting to see Pablo Escobar on every corner. Such characterizations are unfair to Colombia — it would be like going to Chicago in the 1950s and expecting to see Al Capone. The weather in Bogota is moderate: year around temperatures in the low 70s (low 20s C). And you see flowers everywhere.

My gracious hosts, Santiago Zapata and Carolina Solano of HiCue Speakers, gave us a great tour of their wonderful city. I especially enjoyed seeing the Museo de Oro with its astonishing pre-Colombian gold artifacts, the Botero museum, the historic central district, and best-of-all a trip on the tram to the top of Monserrate and its sweeping vistas of the city.

(Shown at left is a gold "Jaguar Mask" which a pre-Colombian tribal leader would wear to "get Jaguar powers.")

I have a feeling I'll be returning to Bogota in the near future!

Russian Films

My wife and I are going to Russia (Moscow and St. Petersburg) next month. To prepare ourselves, we've been reading histories and novels about the Soviet Union/Russia. We've also been watching a number of Russian films, and we've enjoyed this window into Russian life. These are some of what we've seen so far.

"Burnt By the Sun" (Utomlynnye solntsem) 1994. This film won the 1994 Oscar for best foreign film. Directed by and starring Nikita Mikhalkov. About Stalin's reign of terror and purge of Soviet military officers in the 1930s. Wonderful cinematography. The film centers around the family life of revolutionary hero Colonel Kotov at his summer dacha. Highly recommended.

"Little Vera" (Malenkaya Vera) 1988. This metaphorical film, made in the waning years of the Soviet Union, is about the rebellious daughter in a dysfunctional family set against the backdrop of a society coming apart. If even only 10% of the grimness of Soviet Life is captured here, it's easy to see why Gorbachev was trying to reform his country, and why the Soviet Union came to an unceremonious end several years later.

"Andrei Rublev" (1966). By the great Soviet director Andrei Tarkovsky. This is a very powerful epic about the life and often brutal times of the 15th century Russian artist Andrei Rublev. Tarkovsky's vision of spirituality and art. Highly recommended. Cannes Grand Prize Winner.

"Solaris" 1972. The classic science fiction film from Andrei Tarkovsky (and another Cannes Grand Prize Winner). This film probes man's thoughts and conscience, as it follows a psychologist who is sent to a space station situated over the mysterious Solaris Ocean. The scientists on that space station are able to materialize people from their memories and dreams. What an amazing film!

"Oligarch" (aka "Tycoon") 2002. Starring Vladmir Mashkov. A thriller about the rise of the "Oligarchs" in the aftermath of the Soviet breakup. It's got it all: money, wealth, assassination, corruption, history, politics, a suave leading man, and a surprise ending.

"Moscow Does Not Believe in Tears" (Moskva slezam ne verit) 1980. Won 1980 Oscar for best foreign film. Delightful story of three young women who move to Moscow in search of their destinies. Part comedy, part love story, part battle of the sexes, and part tale of grit and persistence. I liked this film a lot.

"Papa" (2004). Directed by and starring Vladimir Mashkov. Story of a 1930s small town Jewish father who dreams of the success of his violinist son—only to be spurned by him when he achieves success at the Moscow Conservatory.

"The Rider Named Death" (Vsadnik po imeni Smert) 2004. Well concocted production about a terrorist faction in pre-Soviet Russia (in Czar Nicholas II's final decade).

"Russian Ark" (Russkiy kovcheg) 2002. Directed by Aleksandr Sokurov. Its tagline is: "2,000 cast members, 33 rooms, 300 years, ALL IN ONE TAKE!" This film treats St. Petersburg Hermitage Museum as the Ark of Russian Culture. Remember the big deal about the six minute opening tracking shot in Robert Altman's "The Player"? Well, this 90 minute film is ONE BIG CONTINUOUS tracking shot. This film won many awards and is well worth seeing.

"Idiot" 2003. This is a well-produced drama in 10 episodes of Dostoevsky's masterpiece about the half-sane Prince Myshkin (Yevgeni Mironiv) and his return to St. Petersburg society and its world of vice, money, intrigue, scandal, and murder. We've got the Sopranos; the Russians have Dostoevsky. 

QUESTION: What Russian films would you recommend for me (and others) to see?

Surprising Colombia

If you saw the current issue of BusinessWeek, you were probably surprised by the answer to this headline question:

"What's the MOST Extreme Emerging Market on Earth?"

a) Romania
b) Egypt
c) Vietnam
d) Colombia

The answer is Colombia.

When many of us think of Colombia, we think of drugs, militias, corruption, and kidnappings.

Things have changed enormously in the past five years with the election of Alvaro Uribe as President. Crime has come down and foreign investment has skyrocketed. There is more current high rise construction in Bogota than in New York and LA combined! (Believe it or not, Uribe likes to visit "Second Life.")

I'll be doing several creativity sessions in Bogota in early August. These are sponsored by Tiempo which is the largest newspaper in Colombia and the second largest in South America. This morning I had my first background briefing call with the client. I came away from it highly charged! Sounds like a lot of innovative things are happening. I'll report more in several months when I'm there. I think it will be fun.

By all means, check out this slide show from BusinessWeek. Well worth viewing.