Yangon and the MFE

I can’t believe that May has already arrived. I was planning a lot of posts from Yangon, but time truly slipped away. APLPers will have the chance to read all about the content of my project, the Myanmar Futures Exchange (MFE) in the APLP Navigator newsletter, so I will focus on the more adventurous parts of the journey.

My first impression of the city was that it was extremely dark. Usually when you fly into a place at night you see the electrical grid spread out beneath you like a blanket. In Yangon there must have been a power outage because it just wasn’t there. There was a sea of darkness with a few lights here and there.

People seem to find a way to communicate outside of telephones. The first person I met was a Thai expat who was a friend of a friend. She simply came to my hotel and we talked. Indeed that was how most communication happened – messages left at hotels – calls left on friend’s cellphones – and a sporadic email when there was connectivity.

Yangon is both a large city and a small town. Compared to China and India, people are smiling, gracious, and willing to help. Almost everyone wears the longyi and one visitor told me it took a lot to get used to seeing so many men in skirts. The expat community is still small and people congregate in a couple of bars and big hotels. I started running into the same people after a couple of weeks.

I started my trip sightseeing the city for a couple of days with a friend from Singapore who was visiting. I went to the Shwe Dagon pagoda, rode the ferry to Daleh on the other side of the Yangon river, saw the giant reclining Buddha, did some shopping, and went to some nice places for drinks.

However, very quickly, work started piling up. It is the first time I’ve had to plan an event of this magnitude and lots of logistical snags started occurring. The MFE was initially supposed to be a 3 hour workshop that was part of the GIST conference happening in Yangon. It spun out into a 200 person event over two days.

Megan and I spent many sleepless nights agonizing about our attendance lists – first we had not enough, then we had too many. There were a lot of little details that needed to get ironed out and I would say that for the last 10 days I’ve thought, breathed, and dreamed about the MFE. Even when we went out to socialize, we took MFE brochures with us and got people to sign up.

The event itself was tremendous. The amount of people we were able to get together to participate in risk and scenario modeling was truly remarkable. Even more remarkable was how well the APLP team worked together. From G12 we had Taku, Nancy, Megan, Gretchen, Duan, Michelle, Yuan, Nancy, Nam, Mon Mon, Nan Seng, and myself. In addition to those folks, we had Saw, Nina, and Scott working hard to make the event a success as well as APLP alumni like Nok and Ramy.

For all of you who weren’t there, rest assured that the amazing teamwork we demonstrated in APLP, through learning labs, the December 6 event, and other projects, continues after APLP is over. Everyone worked really hard and the event came together as a unified whole.

As the saying goes however, there is no rest for the weary, Megan and I will be working hard when we get back to Hawaii to make sure that this event happens next year and that we improve upon it as much as possible. I’m really excited and invigorated from the success of it and want to make sure that we keep moving forward with it.

I’ve learned a lot about the kind of leader I am and what I need to work on. I think back to the news presentations and the learning labs and the comments I got from people. I get extremely focused when I am working on a project and need to make sure that other people feel appreciated and well utilized. I also learned that I really do thrive in high pressure situations. I like working on deadline – it makes me more efficient. I’ve grown a lot since I started APLP and this project, I feel very optimistic and positive, not just about myself but also about the amazing work that my colleagues are up to. I can’t wait to read other people’s adventures!

Roadblock in Korea

I hit the first little roadblock on my journey. My flight in Honolulu was delayed a couple of hours on the runway and as a result, I missed my connection in Seoul. Korean airlines only flies to Yangon once a day so I was consigned to waiting in Seoul for 22 hours until the next flight. 

As they usually do, the airline put me up in a hotel near the airport and gave me some meal vouchers. While I did have piles of work to do, it would be a shame to be in Korea and not get out of the hotel a little bit, so the next day I took a local bus to a nearby jjimjillbang or Korean bathhouse. 

The Jjimjillbang is a place where people gather to unwind, socialize, and get clean. The existence of a large one near my house in DC made me familiar with the routine. These places are usually open 24 hours and offer a number of a la carte treatments. If you go for the basic package, you get to use the treatment rooms by yourself. 

When you check in you place your shoes in a small locker. The locker number is assigned to you throughout your stay and you get a little bracelet with locker number, key, and sometimes an embedded microchip that tracks the food and drink you consume while in there. The spa gives you a pair of soft coton pajamas to change into. 

The co-ed areas are full of pajama clad people going in and out of different sauna rooms, heated to different temperatures, and with different mineral and herbal infusions. One room in this jjimjilbang was a hot rose quartz room where the floor was comprised of hot rose quartz gravel that you lay down in. You can take a break and go into an AC room or have a snack and watch TV. 

The wet areas are gender segregated and nudity is mandatory. There are different hot tubs, a cold tub, showers, and steam rooms. One characteristic that differentiates Korean Spas is the emphasis on exfoliation. People take these rough cloths and vigorously scrub off the top layer of their skin until they are rubbed raw. 

I was definitely the only non-Korean in the place but people were very friendly and it was nice to put my laptop down for a few hours and refresh myself before the trip to Yangon. Here are a few pictures of notable Korea things. 

I made a trip to an e-mart (like a Korean K-mart) and got the following items for my trip to the jjimjillbang. Face masks and exfoliation gloves especially important.

If I had more time I would have eaten one of these eels. Food is very important in Korea. Makes me think about what they find tasty to eat in the US. 

This seems like a simple map of the airport, but its actually a giant touchscreen you can use to navigate around. Just an example of user-friendly tech easily integrated into everyday life. Wonder when these will become more common.

This picture seems quite random but note the girls in the foreground with the expensive camera equipment. When I came out of the airport it was a papparazzi attack. I looked to see who they were photographing and it was a k-pop boy band that had just flown in. There were literally around 40 -50 teen girls surrounding them and photographic them with these professional cameras. After the group was gone, they sat down and waited for the next celeb spotting. I guess this is a common hobby in Korea. 

Finding Inspiration

One of the things that excites me about futures studies is the way it gets people to think outside of the box. The very act of creating scenarios forces your imagination to kick in and you start to see new ways of looking at the world.

There are, however, many pathways to this feeling. Art can often inspire us to change our thinking. Travel is another way, when we are nudged out of our comfort zones and forced to confront the challenges of another culture.

The MFE is interesting to me because fundamentally its an exercise in getting people to think outside of the box and to get them to use the information they already know in a new and collaborative way.

I’ve been thinking lately about things I’ve experienced this semester that have helped me see things in a new way and made a small list below. I’d be interested in hearing about what inspires you!

Sleep No More

I heard about Sleep No More for a long time but nobody was very specific in explaining what it was. When I saw it for myself this winter, I was blown away. It is one of the most innovative theater performances I’ve ever experienced.

In a normal show, you sit in the audience and you watch people on a raised platform act out a scene. There might be some breaking down of the fourth wall, but largely, you are passive, they are active.

Sleep No More is a very active experience. You are let loose in a dark maze of beautifully decorated rooms where a number of scenes play out at different times and different places. You choose where you go – there is no program and no guide. You can wander the corridors, sit down, chase after actors in scenes, whatever you like.

By letting the audience member take on this incredibly active role, the play succeeds in pushing what it means to be a theater audience and the interaction between the audience, the performers, and the set.

Games

I’ve hosted a couple of game nights since I’ve been back in DC and interestingly, I’ve only been playing new games. I’ve played the Game of Thrones board game and Battlestar Galactica – both of which are strategy games. GoT the game is a lot like Diplomacy, you try to take over the country by making small calculated moves against opponents in neighboring states. BG is a cooperative game in which all of the players work towards a common goal but one of the players is a secret traitor, sabotaging the group’s mission.

Learning new games is very inspirational for me. One, because I hope to make my own game someday, and two, it’s a new set of rules that you have to learn in order to operate in the world of the game. When you play a game you are familiar with, like Monopoly or Uno, you know the rules so well, you just focus on playing. With new games, learning the intricacies of the rules is part of the fun. It’s a whole new complex system.

 Fantasy Worlds (Westeros)

I admit I haven’t read the books, but I really love the Game of Thrones tv show. Some of my more sophisticated friends dismiss it because it is a fantasy series. This is a mistake. GoT features well developed characters, many of them female, and a very complicated plot. It is one of the few shows that I watch, then call my friends to analyze the episode just so I can fully digest it.

It is a show about politics, and the personal relationships that surround the iron throne, the seat of power in the fictional country Westeros. I feel at times that I think more about the politics of Westeros than I do the politics of the US. It is useful for me to think about the complexities of that plot and how effective the storytelling is on GoT.

Dirt Candy

Ever since I became a vegetarian/pescetarian 10 years ago, I’ve received a lot of comments from friends and family about my eating habits. One of the most common is that I must really hate food if I am a vegetarian because a true gourmand would be willing to eat everything. I totally disagree on this point.

In addition to moral reasons, I am a vegetarian because I truly love the flavor of vegetables. Any random person can cook a beef patty or some bacon and have them taste delicious. It is far more challenging to pull out different flavors from vegetables. Most meat-eaters can’t imagine a meal centered around vegetables being mouthwateringly delicious.

Well, I discovered a restaurant that might convert some of these folks. It’s a tiny place called Dirt Candy in New York where the chef insists that the focus of the restaurant is vegetables, not vegetarianism. She centers each dish around one vegetable – such as onions. It sounds strange, but the food is incredible. It changed my mind about the way one could serve vegetable dishes.

Trivia questions

I’ve hosted trivia since I’ve been back but more often these days I MC trivia. This entails coordinating with the host (person changes each week) and helping them develop trivia questions that highlight their interests but are general enough for the crowd to enjoy.

Editing trivia is actually quite hard. People find it very difficult to take their specialized knowledge and make it more general. For example, someone might want to do an entire round of questions on the show Miami Vice. There will be people in the audience who have never heard of the show. I work with the host to come up with questions relevant to the theme that people who have know knowledge of the show can participate. For example some of the questions can be about Miami Vice, but some should be about knowledge of some of the actors or the city of Miami more generally.

Trivia helps me think about how to ask the right questions. Questions that people get pleasure out of hearing whether they know the right answer or not. If they don’t know the answer they should feel like they learned something. This means not bombarding people with facts, but asking them to draw associations based on clues and themes. I continue to work on getting better.

Images of my week back at the EWC

It has been a busy week as I tried to get everything ready for my trip to Myanmar tomorrow. Not only did I have to prepare  the content of the futures workshops, I also have to think about logistical matters, such as the transport of lei, folders, and lanyards to Yangon. 7 days in Hawaii and not a single trip to the beach! This needs to be corrected in May.

Here are some scenes around campus to jog your memory.

New Orleans

I just concluded a two-day wedding in New Orleans. One of my distant cousins (in an Indian family everyone is a cousin) married a girl he met in grad school at Tulane. Her family is from Denver and is both white and Christian. His family is from Mumbai and Muslim. Neither of them are particularly religious so they had a ceremony that focused more on culture rather than ritual. There was an Indian dinner and dance party followed by a short ceremony and jazz brunch the following day.

The wedding took place in the French Quarter, a place of striking beauty and character which at night turns into an adult playground with cheap drinks, loud music, partiers filing the streets, and of course more “adult” entertainments. Made me wonder what GIST Louisiana would be like.

New Orleans, like Hawaii, is a part of America that is not really like the rest of America. Its actually very distinctive. There is a strong local culture and local music and local food reigns supreme. Most of my impressions of the place are clouded by Anne Rice (Interview with the Vampire) who paints New Orleans as a creepy, melancholy, magical place, and Treme, the HBO show that focuses on its deep music culture.

Its definitely a spot where a lot of Americans come to indulge and we saw a lot of weddings, bachelor/bachelorette parties, and birthdays being celebrated. People come to eat the rich food and to drink a lot of alcohol. There is a casino in the middle of downtown so you can gamble too. I would definitely recommend checking it out for any one who hasn’t been. I though I would share a few photos from the weekend with you all.

April Adventures Begin

Hello my friends. I apologize for blogging so late. Things have been busy, so before I begin reflecting, I’d like to give you all a quick update regarding what I‘ve been up to and where I'm going this month.

I set out with a lot of goals this semester – to find a new job, to finally work on my board game, and to set aside time to nurture connections and reflect. I found quickly that I might be waiting longer than I thought to get to these goals. I’ve been spending most of my time working on the Myanmar Futures Exchange project.

Originally planned to be a half-day workshop on futures thinking to be launched in conjunction with the GIST conference, the MFE is now a two-day, 120 person event with panel discussions, workshops, networking receptions, and prestigious keynote speakers. The pressure is definitely on me to deliver and its both stressful and exciting at the same time.

I feel that one of my strongest take-aways from APLP is the confidence in my own capability. People who succeed aren’t more talented or clever than you or I (well usually), they simply have the confidence in themselves that allows them to act.

For several years before coming to Hawaii I felt that I needed to be more of an “expert”. If only I knew more about cooking, I could start a food blog. If only I was enough of a leader in my community, I could organize events and speak on panels. If only I just kept doing the same thing, but working hard, I would eventually gain enough “expertise” to be taken seriously and be given a platform to do the things I really wanted to do.

APLP helped me discover that nobody is going to ever give me a platform. What I was seeing in others, and waiting for in myself wasn’t expertise, it was the mere act of doing. By doing something, no matter how small, you step a little closer to expertise until one day it finally just happens.

I feel like I’m putting it to work with the MFE. I’m not a Myanmar expert or a futurist. But, I do have the desire to learn and become one and to do something big and maybe fail at it. Ambition feels good right now, it’s a place I haven’t been in a while.

I won’t get into the details of the MFE now, there will be plenty of time for that in the coming weeks. I will however give you a taste of the journey I am on. I left DC today to go to New Orleans for my cousin’s wedding. After a few days I’ll fly to Honolulu for a week to workshop the MFE. Then onwards to Yangon for two weeks to prep for, and host the MFE as well as get reunited with GISTers. Finally, I’ll come back to Hawaii for graduation and, before going back to DC, head to Las Vegas for a family birthday party. It’s a lot of travel but I hope to share some of the destinations, and my reflections along the way with you all.