Be an interesting guy

Dom Barton of McKinsey & Company

I'm on my first day at a new job. I've just joined McKinsey and Company, one of the world's finest organizations.

My cohort of new joiners is meeting the Global Managing Partner, Dominic Barton. Very nice for our first day in. Dom welcomes us into the firm, tells us about the firm's heritage and values, and gives us some perspective on what it takes to succeed at the firm. Dom's advice: "Be an interesting guy".

Not client-centricity, thought-leadership, value-creation or some such corporate-speak, but "be interesting". Interesting.

That advice really resonated with me. To me, being interesting is a goal in itself, an essential part of a life well-lived. That is sort of why I started this blog, and keep at it; it keeps open a window to worlds other than family and work-life.

Easier said than done. My blog posting rate, and the complexity of my posts, have dropped off sharply since joining McKinsey. But still, it is nice to know that Dom Barton thinks being interesting is good for your career.

James Bond style woozling

Sitting around staring at brick walls is called "woozling" in my family. I just discovered that James Bond woozles too. From this interview with Daniel Craig:

"I keep an energy level up through filming and then as soon as it finishes I just relax and drop. We all do. You’ll find most of the crew kind of sitting around staring at brick walls because it’s been full on, all day, every day. "

A simple solution to America's fiscal cliff problem

Allow congressmen to vote in private.

This isn’t my idea. I’m channelling the noted political philosopher, Sir Humphrey Appleby. Sir Humpy explains to Jim Hacker in the very first episode of Yes Minister that Jim’s election winning slogan, “Open Government”, is in fact an oxymoron. You can be open, or you can have government, you can’t have both. I’m also channelling Fareed Zakaria’s excellent (and serious) book, The Future of Freedom.

Zakaria’s argument is that most American politicians are not stupid. Most of them don’t want to drive off the fiscal cliff. Most of them would happily cut a deal to avoid disaster, if they could. They can’t. Because they lack the privacy needed to cut deals.

For most of America’s history, Congress could do its work in private. Politicians could imply one thing while talking to constituents, go to Washington, exercise their better judgment on what is best for the country, and go back to their constituents with a shrug and an I-tried-my-best story. For most of America’s history, that worked well enough.

At some time in the 1960s some well-intentioned people thought pols should not be allowed to tell lies to the public, and decided to make their deliberations and voting records public. As a result, politicians live in a fish bowl, utterly at the mercy of special interest groups. They can’t exercise mature judgment, and therefore can’t fulfil the design of representative democracy.

This shouldn’t be hard to explain. Perfect transparency is unhelpful in most everyday contexts: in family life, in sports teams, with friends or at work. But, unfortunately, even my ardent inner optimist doesn't think politicians are going to be allowed to escape their fish bowl world any time soon.

Wish you were here, Sir Humpy. We miss you.

Sir Humphrey Appleby

Hommage: Yannick Noah chante Bob Marley

I've been tripping on Hommage this morning. Its an album of Bob Marley songs, covered by Yannick Noah, a delicious double-dose of nostalgia.

Here's the album's trailer video:

 

Yannick Noah: stolen from Africa

Also discovered that Yannick's son Joacim Noah plays pro basketball for the Chicago Bulls. Will he do cover versions of Ziggy Marley one day?

Yannick Noah in action

Joacim Noah in action

Re-imagining Snow White

Snow White and the Huntsman

Just watched Snow White and the Huntsman. Enjoyed the movie, in much the same way that I enjoy watching Brendan Nash bat. 

Brendan Nash in action

Nash doesn’t strike the ball especially sweetly. However, as a white guy playing for the West Indies, he asks some interesting questions of unspoken assumptions, and for that reason is one of my favourite contemporary cricketers.

Similarly, Snow White and the Huntsman suffers from wooden acting, and a plot line that occasionally stalls. However, it does challenge the assumption that fairy tales are meant for children, and therefore need to be told in a brightly-lit Disney-esque style. This telling is dark. The palette is wintry: all greys, blacks, browns and whites, broken only by the occasional splash of blood red. This menacing mood works. It feels more true to the dark heart of the Grimm Brothers’ story than Disney’s incongruously cheery style.

I would love to see an even more radical reinvention of Snow White. Say, one in which Snow White is offered the throne, and refuses, because she prefers to live in the woods with her beloved dwarves. Unfortunately, this telling isn’t that adventurous or brave. It’s about style, not revolution. But its still worth the watch just for its style.

Michaelmas: the original thanks-giving festival

St Michael

Yesterday, Saint Michael saved me from a terrible fate.

I could have wasted my Friday evening watching the Indian cricket team getting savaged by Australia. Instead, I attended a very pleasant Michaelmas service at my children's school. I was grateful for having been saved from hours of TV-misery, and was a little embarrassed that I had no idea what Michaelmas was. Such ignorance is inexcusable in this age of Google, and so, I Googled-up Michaelmas.

The interpretation I like best is that Michaelmas is an autumn festival. It is a thanks-giving to the earth for the bounty of summer, a moment of reflection as the earth and the spirit turn inwards for renewal through the winter. Rudolf Steiner - the inspiration behind the Waldorf school my children attend - thought Michaelmas and Easter were the year's most important festivals, yin and yang, each completing the other, together forming the circle of life. Looked at this way, Michaelmas is like Pongal, the harvest festival of South India; Michaelmas is Shiva to Easter's Brahma.

If Michaelmas is so important, why is it so little known? Competition, maybe? In Britain, the Anglican church replaced Catholic Michaelmas with the Harvest Festival. In America, two big-budget blockbusters, Thanksgiving and Halloween, sit in the same perceptual space. In Latin America, Santa Muerte is venerated in autumn, typically on November 1. The top Google search term associated with Michaelmas is secular: Oxford and Cambridge refer to Fall Semester as Michaelmas Term.

Why is the heroic warrior-angel Michael, who defeated proud Lucifer in battle and cast him out of heaven, associated with this introspective autumnal festival? It isn't obvious. The Archangel Michael might have been a Christian element layered onto a ancient and much-beloved pagan tradition, like Christmas. Regardless, St. Michael has done me a good deed this weekend. Today is his day. Happy Michaelmas!

St Michael vanquishing Satan

Meister Eckhart on Noble Work

"Our works do not ennoble us; we must ennoble our works"

- Meister Eckhart.

I came across these words at a corporate training program, and liked them enough to latch on. 

It is easy to think school teachers and nurses do "noble work", and that plumbers, fork-lift operators, and corporate appartchiks like me, don't. Meister Eckhart's perspective feels more helpful, and more true.

The difference between the United States of America and the States of a United Europe, explained on a taxi ride

NYC taxi

I was flying from New York to Frankfurt. I got a taxi in New York. My cabbie was a brown skinned guy with an accent.

"Where are you from?", I asked him.

"I'm from Queens" he replied.

"Really? From the Queens?"

"Yeah, man. I live in Queens." He didn't sound like a Queens native.

"How long have you lived there?" 

"Six months. But I'm from the Queens. I live in the Queens" he insisted. 

"And before the Queens?"

"Gautemala" he replied. "But all that was a long time ago, man. Now I'm from Queens."

I reached Frankfurt and got a taxi. Again, my cabbie was a brown skinned guy with an accent.

Frankfurt skyline

"Where are you from?", I asked him.

"I'm from Turkey", he replied.

"How long have you lived in Frankfurt", I asked.

"My grandfather came here in 1952. But I am from Turkey."

I heard this story years ago, at a business conference in Budapest, as an explanation for why the states of a united Europe will never morph into the United States of Europe. This was back in 2005, when the European project felt secure and looked like a stunning success.

It comes back to mind frequently because the future of Europe is so much in the news. For instance, the latest Economist has this story about Jose Manuel Barosso, the president of the European Commission, speaking of a the EU becoming a "federation of nation-states". I guess he didn't vet the idea with his cabbie.

Khalil Gibran on how Jeffery Johnson became a murderer

"Oftentimes have I heard you speak of one who commits a wrong as though he were not one of you, but a stranger unto you and an intruder upon your world. 

But I say that even as the holy and the righteous cannot rise beyond the highest which is in each one of you,

So the wicked and the weak cannot fall lower than the lowest which is in you also." 

I came across these words thumbing through The Prophet, and was ported to this story about Jeffery Johnson, the Empire State Building gunman. In it, Johnson’s mother talks about how she can’t comprehend how her kind-hearted little boy, “who loved the Boy Scouts and animals, and grew up into a patriotic and thoughtful man”, snapped and turned into a calculating murderer. Khalil Gibran’s uncomfortable thought is that the murderer was always in there, lurking inside the kind and thoughtful man.

David Brooks, the NYT’s conservative cloumnist, agrees with Khalil Gibran. Writing about Robert Bales, the American soldier who murdered sixteen sleeping Afghans in their family home, he quotes CS Lewis, who believed “there is no such thing as an ordinary person, each person you sit next to on the bus is capable of extraordinary horrors and extraordinary heroism.”

Why Andrew Strauss shows MS Dhoni's captaincy in such good light

Andrew Strauss

Andrew Strauss retired yesterday. Strauss is a good egg, a decent chap. He has been a fine player and captain, has served cricket well. It is sad that he is retiring.

What made Strauss' retirement even sadder was the timing of his announcement. It came a day after England were crushed by South Africa, with the batting crumbling yet again. Kevin Pietersen hammered a century for Surrey that day, to highlight what might have been but for the rift between the English captain and his best player. Strauss and the England management didn't want to talk about KP. The media clearly did, understandably so, because the KP melodrama highlights both the best and worst thing about Strauss' captaincy.

Strauss' greatest achievement, and his greatest weakness, is that he built a team in his own image. Strauss is a diligent, hard-working, respectful, determined, virtuous, fair-minded guy who puts the team's interests above his own. Andy Flower shares his personality. Strauss and Flower have built a team that values and develops players with Strauss' temperament - like Cook, Trott, Prior and Bresnan - whose game is built around discipline and professionalism. I'm naturally sympathetic to this approach. It feels proper and just that the Protestant (or Tam Bram) ethic should pay off, will pay off.

Unfortunately, this is simply not true. All international cricket is now very professional. Paradoxically, that means discipline and professionalism are no longer differentiators. The difference between competent teams and great teams comes down to a handful of geniuses with outrageous god-given gifts. Some of these favourites of the gods - like Muralitharan and Tendulkar - are nice guys who generally share Strauss' ethos. But the gods are capricious. A disproportionate number of the players the gods have bestowed the greatest gifts on - Shane Warne, Chris Gayle, Shoaib Akthar, Yuvraj Singh, Freddy Flintoff, Kevin Pietersen - are egoistic prima donnas.

I can imagine that it is really hard to be on the same team as arrogant superstars: travelling together, sharing a dressing room, sharing meals, year after year. However, a team needs great players more than it needs unity. Bob Woolmer's first action when he became Pakistan's coach was to bring back Shahid Afridi and Shoaib Akthar, which surely wasn't easy for captain Inzamam-ul-Haq, but it was the right thing to do. Leading a cricket team (at any level, actually) is about holding together a naturally fractious coalition. I'm sure Strauss knows this intellectually, but unfortunately for him, that part of the job didn't quite work out.

By contrast, the captain who has done brilliantly at this aspect of captaincy is MS Dhoni.

MS Dhoni with former captain Saurav Ganguly

In a way, Dhoni was dealt a much tougher hand than Strauss. Every team he has led has been chock a block with galacticos. He became captain unexpectedly, when Rahul Dravid resigned after winning a test series in England. In his first test match as captain he was leading Tendulkar, Ganguly, Dravid, Laxman, Kumble, Harbhajan and Zaheer (I don't remember why Sehwag wasn't playing). Each of these players was already a legend in his own right, Dhoni's natural seniors in life and in cricket. Dhoni didn't try to impose his style or method on them. He accepted them as they were - from Dravid's gentlemanliness to Harbhajan's in-your-face aggro - and the grace and charm with which he did that somehow enhanced his authority.

Over time, his task didn't get easier. He has had to manage Yuvraj, Sreesanth, Munaf, Kohli - difficult characters all. He has had to deal with the selectors, the sponsors, the media. MSD has been up to the task every time. I wish I knew how he does it. Regardless, in the frenetic world of Indian cricket, brimming over with outsize egos and chips-on-shoulders, Dhoni's contribution as captain cool has been huge, dwarfing his substantial contribution as a keeper, batsman and tactician.   

Gilcrist caught Strauss bowled Flintoff circa 2005

Looking back on Strauss' career, the English media are going on about his back-to-back Ashes triumphs as a captain. My favourite Strauss moments actually feature him as a player: his catch at Trent Bridge to dismiss Adam Gilchrist in the 2005 Ashes, his century at Wankhede in 2006 to set up England's first test match win in India in twenty years, and his back to back centuries at Chepauk in 2008 (under KP's captaincy) in what turned out to be a losing cause. I'd be very happy to buy Straussy a whiskey-sour at the bar, or a Jagermeister if he so prefers, to raise a toast to those moments.

England's next test match series is in India. As a partisan India supporter, I am not unhappy that Strauss the batsman will not be in the squad. And I'd be delighted if the England management take a "principled" stance and decide to tour India without Pietersen. I'm sure our team would rather be bowling at James Taylor and Johnny Bairstow.

Beautiful Ashes: Sally Mann introduces her exhibition at the Fotografiska, Stockholm

In Samuel Beckett's "Endgame", the madman Hamm stands at the asylum window staring at the beautiful seaside vista, and can only see ashes. His friend begs him to look again, but he turns away. He can only see the dark side.

We need to be able to see both the beauty and the dark side of things, the cornfields and the full sails but the ashes as well. I see them both at the same time, at once ecstatic at the beauty of things and saddened by that ecstasy. The Japanese have a word for this dual perception, mono no aware, it means beauty tinged with sadness, for is there any real beauty without the whiff of decay?

For me, living is the same thing as dying, and loving is the same thing as losing, and this does not make me a madman like Hamm. It makes me better at living, better at loving, and better at seeing.

- Sally Mann. 

I came across these words at the Fotografiska Museet, Sodermalm, Stockholm, which is showing an exhibition by the American photographer Sally Mann titled A Matter of Time. Sally Mann's edginess, her mono no aware perspective, was especially welcome after a couple of days of relentlessly positive tourist commentary. Thanks to my wife for taking the kids to watch the changing of the guard at the palace, while I explored the outstanding Fotografiska.

At the Fotografiska, in Stockholm

Candy cigarette, by Sally Mann

At warm springs, by Sally Mann

The Palio di Siena: an alternative to Olympic nationalism

Palio di Siena at the Piazza di Campo

There is a general perception that a great sporting event that harks back to antiquity and delivers a profound political message has just concluded. This perception is understandable. I thoroughly enjoyed the London Olympics, which ended last Sunday.

However, arguably, an even greater sporting event that harks back to antiquity and delivers a more profound political message has not yet kicked off. It happens tomorrow, on August 16. It won't take two weeks, it lasts for less than three minutes. I'm speaking of the Palio di Siena, the bareback horse-race between rival contrade, administrative divisions of Siena, that has been run around the Piazza di Campo, the central town square, since 1581.

The Palio is preceded by a magnificent pageant in which the rival contrade present their standards to a cheering populace. The honour of leading this pageant is given not to one of the contrade, or to Siena itself, but to Montalcino, a hill town about twenty five miles south of Siena, to honour the heroism of the Republic of Siena at Montalcino.

The standard of Montalcino

The story is that the Republic of Siena, which had existed since the eleventh century, was defeated and occupied by Florence in 1555. However, a hardy group of seven hundred Sienese families retreated to the hilltop fortress of Montalcino. They established the Republic of Siena in Montalcino, and continued to resist the might of the Medicis for four years, finally surrendering in 1559. All of Siena, including Montalcino, was now absorbed into the Duchy of Florence, but the Sienese people were allowed to keep their customs and identity. A generation later, the Sienese people chose to remember the Republic of Siena at Montalcino, and gave Montalcino pride of place in their Palio. Hundreds of years later, the conquering Grand Duchy of Florence has also ceased to exist, but the grit and the guts shown by the Sienese at Montalcino will be honoured again tomorrow.

What I love about this story is that it emphasizes that nations are mortal. Sovereign entities - kingdoms, duchies, empires, republics, whatever - die as inevitably as you and me. There is no shame in death, per se. The Republic of Siena at Montalcino seems to have died honourably and continues to be revered, unlike, say, the Soviet Union. This simple fact, that no sovereign nation will live forever, is surprisingly hard to perceive, partly because nation states are generally longer lived than human beings, partly because of the layers of sanctification wrapped around nation states.

The Olympics contribute to this sanctification of nations. In our times, when identities and institutions are increasingly constructed across global, national and local layers, there was something strangely anachronistic about watching national flags being raised and anthems being sung at medal ceremonies through the games. So I'm looking forward to tomorrow's global webcast of this ancient and intensely local rivalry (on Siena TV, there are also excellent clips on You Tube). A glass of Montalcino's legendary Brunello wine might add to the excitement.

Contrade flags at the Palio

Much Ado About Nothing, set in contemporary Delhi, playing at the RSC in Stratford-upon-Avon

Watched the Royal Shakespeare Company's production of Much Ado About Nothing last weekend, and loved it. The magic ingredient? It's set in contemporary Delhi.

This production isn't really about finding new psychological depth in Shakespeare. It is about relocating Shakespeare to India, and enjoying the play of images, sounds and textures that that creates, and it does this beautifully.

At times, the decision to set Much Ado About Nothing in India feels obvious rather than inspired. Shakespeare's story-line is exactly the same as hundreds of Bollywood potboilers. It features two couples, one soppily besotted, the other constantly duelling, daggers drawn. It features elaborately staged situations and misunderstandings that shift these couples in and out of love. It is excessively interested in a woman's maidenly honour. It features loyal servants, a buffoon of a policeman, a wise priest...it is as desi as butter chicken and scotch whiskey.

Beatrice and Benedick
On a jhula

What made the show for me was not the Indian setting per se, but the rich detail in which this was recreated. The ambient sound in the foyer, before the show, was the soundscape of an Indian street: an autorickshaw's tuk-tuk, dogs barking, a street vendor's call, snatches of music. The ropes defining the line to the box office were marigold garlands. Beatrice and Benedick discover their love for each other when seated together on a swing, a jhula. The guards of the Prince's Watch are armed with hurricane lanterns and lathis. The detailing is spot-on, not just authentic but exuberantly so.

This touched a set of feel-good buttons for me, and I'd assume for a lot of my friends and family, because it mirrors how we think and feel about India. Sure, India has problems. Serious problems. But we are not defined by our problems. We are defined by our zest for life, which shows up in our culture - in colour, in music, in flavours, in texture - and it's that zest for life that was showcased at the Courtyard Theatre in Stratford upon Avon. Thank you RSC. And in case I don't get around to posting again tomorrow - Happy Independence Day. Jai Hind!

Is Maria Sharapova Russian or American?

Maria Sharapova carries the Russian flag at the Olympics

Is Maria Sharapova American, because she lives in Florida, having learnt tennis at Nick Bolletteri's academy? Or is she Russian, because she feels Russian and is proud of being Russian?

This question has generated a bit of a storm in a tea cup. Maria Sharapova had the honour of carrying the Russian flag in the Olympics, and was obviously thrilled about it. However, Tennis magazine journalist Peter Bodo was very upset about this and went on this rant:

"I get tired of hearing Sharapova, who lives in Bradenton, Fla., go on about how thrilled she is to represent her native Russia... I find Sharapova's attitude ungracious, and mind-numbingly so...

Maria seem more like a deluded character out of a Tennessee Williams play than a formidable "brand" and money-making machine. That's just plain weird; too weird to be true. I guess the money, creature comforts, and other attractions of the U.S. are more appealing than a life spent drinking in the piney mountain air of the Urals, or bobbing around in a boat in the headwaters of the mighty Don—great as it is to represent Russia in the Olympics!"

This is not just bad-spirited, it is outright stupid. It took me less than ten seconds to find out that the distance from Maria's home town, Nyagan, to the source of the River Don, in Novomoskovsk, is 1760 miles or two and a half days of driving time. Did John McEnroe, America's proudest Davis Cupper, ever go bobbing around in a boat in the headwaters of the mighty Mississippi? It is easy to dismiss Peter Bodo as a shrivelled-up, narrow-minded American git, but personally, I find his narrow-mindedness even sadder than that: Bodo himself was born in Austria and has spent pretty much his entire life reporting on a genuinely global sport.

Bodo's bile predictably generated a ton of negative reaction. Since then, Tennis magazine have tried to row back, with their more thoughtful columnist Steve Tignor writing that "I can’t begrudge her a desire to feel a link to her family and its history". But, like another American called Mitt Romney found out last week, what has been said can't be unsaid.

I myself am proud to have serially failed the Tebbit test, like every other expat I've met in Britain, and like every Englishman or Scot I've known who has lived abroad. That puts me squarely and naturally on Maria's side of this question. So I'll be hoping even more fervently than usual that Maria beats Serena Williams to win the Olympic gold for Russia. It's a long shot - the bookies at offering 4:1 on a Maria win - but she's still got a shot.

Daniel Barenboim conducts...learning to lead like the great conductors

Daniel Barenboim conducting the West Eastern Divan Orchestra

The BBC Proms, on TV this week, features the West Eastern Divan Orchestra playing the complete cycle of Beethoven symphonies, conducted by Daniel Barenboim. The West Eastern Divan Orchestra are an ensemble of accomplished musicians from the Middle East, with a compelling story about trying to bring understanding and harmony to that troubled region; they are playing Beethoven's symphonies, unquestionably some of the greatest music ever conceived. Yet the advertising tag-line reads "Daniel Barenboim conducts...". Is this fair? Does the conductor add so much value that he deserves to be the headline act?

I don't have a closed-ended answer to that question, but I am convinced that a conductor adds real value. This is thanks a one of the most memorable business leadership development programs I've attended - The Music Paradigm, with Roger Nierenberg.

This program is built on the premise that a leader in a business corporation is like the conductor of an orchestra. In a business, a machinist, statistician or accountant knows much more about her or his speciality then the Vice President or General Manager every will, like in an orchestra, the violinist, flautist or cellist are more skilled at their respective instruments than the conductor will ever be. The General Manager or the conductor is needed to bring the amazing individual performers together, harmoniously, to make music. The Music Paradigm session starts with members of the class, like me, sitting in the midst of the orchestra. Gradually, as everyone gets comfortable with the setting, members of the class volunteer to step up to the podium, pick up the baton, and conduct the orchestra (with Roger Nierenberg's help).

Roger Nierenberg helps a first-time conductor

What made the Music Paradigm unique, different from the dozens of other team-building or leadership development sessions I've attended, was the experience of stepping up to the podium, picking up the baton, and hearing this virtuoso orchestra responding to your gestures by making music. That was powerful, memorable, profoundly emotional, and completely unlike anything I had felt before.

My classmates and I had a debrief after the Music Paradigm session, and our takeaways were very consistent. We all were NT personalities in the Myers Briggs' framework; science or engineering majors who had experienced success as problem solvers. We were veterans of various leadership programs, and had several years of people management experience. We were used to thinking about leadership in terms of setting direction, getting buy-in or sponsorship, pulling together resources, defining roles and responsibilities, setting up incentives - as a series of problems to be solved. What we were less used to was leadership as an emotional experience. Music as a metaphor made it obvious that a conductor's, or leader's, main contribution is in establishing an emotional connection with the players and with the music, that that emotional connection makes the difference between a competent professional performance, and something that sounds very different, an inspired or visionary performance. My classmates and I may not have disagreed with that thought on a PowerPoint slide, but music brought it home in a way that PowerPoint can't.

Itay Talgam's TED talk makes the same point, with video clips of some of the twentieth century's greatest conductors in action. Maybe the next iteration of this talk will include Daniel Barenboim conducting the West Eastern Divan Orchestra. Enjoy...

Ithaka is to some what Tatooine is to others

Luke Skywalker strides towards the twin sunset on Tatooine

I'd posted yesterday about the poem "Keep Ithaka always in the mind", in which Ithaka is a metaphor for home, for integrity. Other classical traditions have their own Ithakas, their own sacred places that stand for integrity. For instance, Star Wars fans might think of Tatooine - the desert planet in a galaxy far, far away where Luke Skywalker was raised - as their Ithaka.

The mythic, metaphorical Ithaka has a physical analogue: the island of Ithaki in western Greece. It turns out that Tatooine also has a physical analogue: Tataouine, in southern Tunisia.

George Lucas filmed the desert landscapes of Tatooine on location in Tunisia, the Breber architecture in Tataouine is recognizably the inspiration behind Luke Skywalker's childhood home. Apparently, he borrowed the name of a local town as well. Adherents of the Jedi faith are now making pilgrimages to Tataouine. The World's latest Technology podcast has a story about a Jedi knight, Mark from Norwich, who got married at Tataouine.

If only the people in power would uphold Britain's traditions of tolerance and include the Jedi religion on the census questionnaire, conversion to the Jedi faith would hit a tipping point...pilgrim traffic to the Tunisian Sahara would take off...the Tunisian economy would improve...the Arab Spring would be reinforced...inexpensive and effective nation-building in the Arab world!

Berber granaries in Tataouine, Tunisia

Keep Ithaka always in your mind...

Came across another classically inspired poem. This time, I didn't randomly spot it on the tube. It came to my inbox in a farewell email from a Greek colleague, Clementina, who dedicated these lines to us:

Keep Ithaka always in your mind.
Arriving there is what you are destined for.
But do not hurry the journey at all.
Better if it lasts for years,
so you are old by the time you reach the island,
wealthy with all you have gained on the way,
not expecting Ithaka to make you rich.

Ithaka gave you the marvellous journey.
Without her you would not have set out.
She has nothing left to give you now.

And if you find her poor, Ithaka won’t have fooled you.
Wise as you will have become, so full of experience,
you will have understood by then what these Ithakas mean. 

Ithaka as a metaphor for integrity reminds me of:

"You, who are on the road, 
must have a code, 
that you can live by. 

And so become yourself...".

Ithaka is where you learn that code, the code itself, and where you get to when you've lived by that code. Echoes of the Bhagavad Gita as well, "not expecting Ithaka to make you rich" maps directly to "कर्मण्ये वाधिकारस्ते मा फलेषु कदाचन".

Clementina found some beautiful words with which to acknowledge us, her colleagues, for being a part of her unhurried, marvellous journey, her Odyssey. Cheers Clementina! May Ithaka remain always in your mind.

Jan Morris' Fourth World: In Praise of Idleness

Ox Travels has been resident on my bedside table for several months now. This is a collection of stories by travel writers, each story based on a meeting or encounter that happened while on the road. The stories are evocative, charming, and at about ten pages per piece, are not too demanding - ideal for a dip into another world before drifting off to sleep.

One story I just read in this collection is The Fourth World, by Jan Morris. The Fourth World is Morris' term for the virtual nation of kind people around the world, who together should be a powerful force for the good:

"My own experience, after seventy odd years of the meandering life, is that there exists a kind of vast supranational community whose citizens are essentially kind.

...the qualities of this virtual nation of mine can be elusive...But I know them by now, and I recognize them in all their myriad guises. I have recognized the signs in statesmen as in housewives, in taxi-drivers as in actresses and tycoons - a look in the eye, a smile, a gurgle of laughter is often enough. I knew I was in the presence of an initiate when, one day in the high Himalayas, alone in the high snows, I met a wandering holy man with whom I shared not a word or even a gesture, just an instinct.

...over the years I have come to realize that these people constitute a vast and powerful freemasonry...

I think of them one and all of constituting a Fourth World of their own...an association as wide and varied as my Grand Diaspora, bound only by decency and humour, would surely be unconquerable..."

Morris proceeds to give an Edinburgh barmaid an impassioned spiel about the latent force of the Fourth World, which is the "encounter" in the story. Regardless, I found this notion of the Fourth World seductive. My experience is also that most people, everywhere, are basically kind. I went to sleep thinking that, surely, basic human decency, kindness, the latent power of the Fourth World, will be harnessed one day to make the world a better place.

When I woke up, however, I remembered a paper I read in B-School which shows why it is so hard to engage the power of the Fourth World. Basically, people are kind when they have time on their hands. The same people stop being kind when they get busy.

The paper in question is "From Jerusalem to Jericho: A study of Situational and Dispositional Variables in Helping Behaviour", by Darley and Batson (thank you Google). This study looks at whether or not people stop to help a man slumped in an alleyway, moaning with pain; whether or not people behave like the Good Samaritan in the biblical parable. It found that people with time on their hands stopped to help. Those who were under time pressure, including those who were bustling off to give a lecture on the Parable of the Good Samaritan, did not help. This wasn't a small effect, it was observed in almost all the subjects of this study. People with time were kind, people who were in a hurry were not.

Looked at this way, Fourth World citizenship is situational. It increases when people are feeling time-rich. Perhaps the best thing organized religion did to promote kindness was to enforce the sabbath, to give people the experience of being time-rich, to create a space where time is in our hands, where we're not in the hands of time.

Idleness serves a deep moral purpose, as citizens of the Fourth World and bloggers know...

Chorus from Hellas, by Percy Bysshe Shelley, on the London Underground

Spent fifteen minutes or so staring at these words on the London Underground:

The world`s great age begins anew,
The golden years return,
The earth doth like a snake renew
Her winter weeds outworn:
Heaven smiles, and faith and empires gleam,
Like wrecks of a dissolving dream.

A brighter Hellas rears its mountains
From waves serener far;
A new Peneus rolls his fountains
Against the morning star.
Where fairer Tempes bloom, there sleep
Young Cyclads on a sunnier deep.

A loftier Argo cleaves the main,
Fraught with a later prize;
Another Orpheus sings again,
And loves, and weeps, and dies.
A new Ulysses leaves once more
Calypso for his native shore... 

This poem is Chorus from Hellas, by Percy Bysshe Shelley, an explicitly political piece. At the time it was written, Greece had been an Ottoman colony for over three hundred years, and was fighting for independence. The English romantic poets were deeply exercised by the Greek cause.

Shelley wrote these words while raising money for Greek partisans, showing a strong pan-European sensibility; it's possible to read this poem as a creation hymn for the European Union, written one hundred and thirty years before the Treaty of Rome. Unfortunately, now, "wreaks of a dissolving dream" also bring to mind the financial havoc in Greece, and the dissolving dream of Europe.   

Thank you to Transport For London for making room for Shelley on the tube. It would have been so easy to fill this space with yet another advert. 

Maria Sharapova finding her way back to the top is special

Nike, one of Maria Sharapova’s main sponsors, just brought out a new advert to celebrate their girl’s return to grand slam glory and the #1 ranking. It reads “Those Who Belong at the Top Never Forget Their Way Back”. Nike have got the story the precisely the wrong way around. Maria’s return to the top after years in the wilderness is so thrilling, so heartening, because so many who belong at the top lose their footing momentarily, and then never find their way back. The complete narrative arc - of young glory, years in the wilderness, and a triumphant return – is rare. Returning to the top is even harder than staying at the top. The natural course is for young glory to melt away into a career of middling mediocrity, or worse.

Perhaps I’m conditioned to expect gifted youngsters to go slip-slidin’ away into nothing because of the scars I carry as a long-suffering supporter of the Indian cricket team.

Laxman Sivaramakrishnan

To me, one of the greatest moments in cricket history happened in the Benson and Hedges Cup finals at the MCG in 1985, when Javed Miandad was stumped by Sadanand Vishwanath off Laxman Sivaramakrishnan, to top off a glorious Australian campaign for both young men. India beat Pakistan, Sunil Gavaskar held aloft the trophy, the team lapped the MCG in Ravi Shastri’s Audi...all of creation was shouting out that the Sadanand and Siva belonged at the top. Yet, after that golden start, both Sadanand and LS tragically lost their way, like Maninder Singh, Raman Lamba, Surinder Amarnath, Vinod Kambli, Salil Ankola, Abey Kuruvilla, Vivek Razdan, Sadagoppan Ramesh, Praveen Amre and Narendra Hirwani, potentially like Yuvraj Singh, Irfan Pathan, Ishant Sharma and Sreesanth. I’m painfully used to seeing talented youngsters, who had glorious starts to their careers, burn out or fade away.

Tracy Austin

Tennis too has had its share of shining young stars who don’t go on to achieve very much. Tracy Austin once looked like Chris Evert’s heir. Chris Evert won eighteen slams, Tracy won her second and last grand slam when she was nineteen. Andrea Jeager, another of Chris Evert's heirs, didn’t manage even one. Gabriela Sabatini won just one slam, disappointing for someone long considered Steffi Graf's peer. Dinara Safina and Jelena Jankovic rose to world #1 and fell back into the pack without winning a single slam, Ana Ivanovic managed one. Anastasia Myskina pipped Maria Sharapova to become the first Russian to win a slam when she won the French Open in 2004, a month before Maria beat Serena Williams to win Wimbledon. Anastasia Myskina hasn’t won a slam since, and hasn’t played professional tennis since 2007.

There are exceptions, of course. Zaheer Khan returned from the wilderness to spearhead India to the #1 test ranking and the World Cup. Jennifer Capriati showed real character in winning three slams after kicking her well-reported drug problems. Kim Clisters is justly one of tennis’ favourite players, for coming back from retirement, and motherhood, to win back-to-back US Opens. Regardless, the pattern of young stars quickly fading away is strong and persistent.

So, when Maria Sharapova won back to-back slams in 2008, had shoulder surgery, and vanished from view, I assumed she was following that established pattern. This was an especially easy assumption to make about Maria, since she had every opportunity to follow in the footsteps of her compatriot Anna Kournikova, and settle for the plush life of an A-list celebrity, earning many millions endorsing designer handbags and wrist watches. I darkly suspect Caroline Wozniacki is making peace with that kind of mediocrity: she just launched a range of designer undergarments, branded the Caroline Wozniacki Collection.

Fortunately for tennis, Maria didn’t settle for mediocrity. She looked within, and said yeh dil maange more. Fortunately for tennis, Maria Sharapova found the spunk, the guts, the gumption and the game to deliver on her fierce desire. Ave Maria!

Is Mark Zuckerberg richer than Mr Darcy?

This picture of Mark Zuckerberg’s wedding with Priscilla Chan was one of the few truly heart warming images from the last few weeks. This picture was so heart-warming because I learnt something new: I didn’t know Zuckerberg’s girlfriend was Asian. This knowledge re-framed the Zuckerberg wedding for me, as a fellow Asian. This isn’t just another wedding photo any more. It is now the picture of every Tiger Mom’s most fervent dream coming true. Dennis and Yvonne Chan, ex-refugee immigrants who ran a Chinese takeaway in Boston, must be so happy with their multi-billionaire son-in-law. How nice for them!

As my heart warmed to the Chan family’s good fortune, I started slipping into an authentic Tiger Mom mindset, and some more tough-minded thoughts took shape. A good Tiger Mom would do some rigorous competitive benchmarking. She would ask herself, “Mark Zuckerberg is a nice boy, but is he really rich enough for Priscilla? Is he as rich as Mrs. Bennet's son-in-law, Mr. Darcy? You know, the one they want to marry Elizabeth off to?”

It turns out Mrs Chan need not have worried, her son-in-law compares very well with Mrs Bennet’s son-in-law. Jane Austen tells us that Mr Darcy had an income of ten thousand pounds per year, in 1810, in England. Converted into today’s money, that is about $600,000 per year. That is a tidy income, but feels distinctly imaginable, more affluent-professional than masters-of-the-universe, certainly not the kind of money that animates the Occupy Wall Street movement. A self respecting Tiger Mom would wish more for her children.

So, is that game, set and match to Mrs Chan? Was Mr Darcy really no better off than assorted corporate vice presidents? Mr Darcy owned half of Derbyshire and employed a vast domestic staff, but he couldn’t buy an asprin, or watch the World Cup finals on HDTV. Can one really compare his situation to ours? To whatever extent comparisons are possible, it seems like our living standards have improved so much that millions of upper middle class professionals enjoy a quality of life that is equivalent to that of the most privileged landed aristocrats just two hundred years ago, which is a comforting thought in these troubled times.

Mrs. Bennet’s partisans might argue that relative income matters more than absolute income. This is reasonable. Behavioural economics and evolutionary biology suggest that people care more about status than about absolute living standards. Mr Darcy was high status, certainly higher status than the armies of contemporary upper middle class professionals who share his living standards. But how does his relative income or status compare with Mark Zuckerberg?

The American academic James Heldman tells us that Mr Darcy’s income of 10,000 pounds per year was 300 times the per capita income in his day. The per capita income in today’s America is $48,000, so a contemporary Mr Darcy would make approximately $15 million per annum, which is starting to feel appropriately rarified. Mark Zuckerberg’s fortune is at least $10 billion. If that earns risk free returns of 2% p.a., that is an income of $200 million, which is an order of magnitude more than what our contemporary Mr Darcy makes.

James Heldman also refers to the economic historian G.E. Mingay, who estimates that there were only 400 families among the landed gentry of England with an income in the range of 5,000 to 50,000 pounds per annum, with the average being about 10,000. To keep things simple, lets say that puts Mr Darcy in at about the 200th richest man in his England. Mark Zuckerberg is the 14th richest person in his America, trumping Mr Darcy once again, without any fiddly adjustments for the larger population in today’s America. However one looks at the numbers, our contemporary Tiger Mom Mrs. Chan has outperformed the proto-Tiger Mom Mrs. Bennet.

At this point, the top performing Tiger Mom in the jungle would need to pause, offer the other Tiger Moms a cup of tea, and initiate a conversation about how money doesn’t really matter, that there are many qualitative things like character and compatiability that make a marriage successful. This blog would like to join the Tiger Moms in drinking a cup of tea. This blog would also like to wish all happiness to the newlyweds Mark and Priscilla. May they play many Limca Cuts.

Why Rafael Nadal is like a Black Swan

"Black Swan" is business-speak for a single observation that demolishes a previously plausible theory. 

The phrase comes from Nassim Taleb's excellent book - The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable. Suppose one had a theory that "all swans are white". This would have been a really solid theory for a while, it would have been consistent with available evidence, robust to skeptical inquiry. The theory would have held until Australia was discovered, and black swans were observed, at which point the theory is toast. Personally, I find the metaphor a little awkward. But now that it has become a part of the language, it is quite helpful in talking about the limitations of statistics, and the problems that come from looking in the rear view mirror to get a view of the road ahead.

Taleb's book is about finance, but his concept applies to any aspect of life, including tennis. 

Peter Bodo's preview of the 2012 French Open in Tennis magazine talks about why Rafael Nadal is a black swan (though he doesn't use that phrase).  Until Rafa burst on the scene, the prevailing theory was that Bjorn Borg would be the last dominant French Open champion. After Bjorn Borg, who played with a wooden Donnay racquet, French Open champions had been a succession of one-slam-wonders.

"There were solid, well thought out, inter-related reasons for this. The men's field was getting deeper and deeper. At the same time, advances in racquet and string technology gave everyone a boost of power and a more lethal return game. Combine these comparably superior and fit athletes with more powerful weapons, and put them to work on a relatively slow court, and it was a bit like tennis roulette.

It seemed that Roland Garros had been transformed from the tournament that only the best and most consistent players could win into the one that anybody could win. And that was only heightened by the fact that so many of its more successful players were developed on clay in emerging tennis nations like Spain, Sweden, France, and Argentina. When you looked back upon the Borg years, you were apt to think, "We'll not see the likes of him again. . ."

And when Bruguera, who had even more radical technique than Borg, was unable to add to his Roland Garros haul of two, it seemed that the days when style-of-play and particularly vicious topspin might yield a huge advantage were definitely over. 

Well, Nadal has exposed all that as just so much fancy-pants theorizing..."

Good luck in Paris to the King of Clay.