Letter from Bangkok: Secrets of successful, happy people
I woke up this morning. Wondered where I was. But took a deep breath and stayed calm.This is after all the advice from what is apparently the most influential post on LinkedIn, which has unknowingly or knowingly to some of us become not only a job marketplace but a media platform.Dr Travis Bradberry [...]
We need to create “Interstellar” moments
Watched Interstellar, the movie, on IMAX last weekend and I left thinking, it’s film makers like Christopher Nolan who will keep people coming back to the big screen.Sure, the IMAX, which is being hailed as the future of cinema, makes the experience even more mind-blowing but what’s a fancy piec [...]
Desktop: Out of sight, out of mind – at least in Asia
“In US, we think of desktop as legacy. There, they don’t even think of it.” That quote from Barney Harford, CEO of Orbitz, at Phocuswright probably sums up best how Asia has leapfrogged from offline to mobile. Here's how. After having completed what I call my conference trilogy – WIT, follo [...]
Letter from Taipei: Seeking “moments of secured happiness”
I leave a Taipei on the cusp of change. Yesterday I spent a day wandering the streets, popping into cafes, eating at roadside stalls, and exploring the Songshan Cultural and Creative Park, the enclave for Taiwanese artists.While I was doing that, the people of Taipei were voting. Their decision, in [...]
The secret’s out – Taiwan is hot and a new generation is ready for change
These days, it seems that everyone I speak to is travelling to Taiwan for their holidays. My niece, my neighbour, my masseur, all due to visit this year end – and that’s just my immediate circle.It’s like Taiwan has become the new Hokkaido for South-east Asians and all across Asia, travellers [...]
Letter from Antwerp: Dear hotels, it should be about me, not you
Having completed a round-the-world trip in under 14 days – Singapore to LA, New York and ending in Antwerp, Brussels – I feel I have enough material to write a trilogy but I will confine myself to one column about something that really stood out for me during my travels – the difference be [...]
Ctrip vs Qunar: Difference is not only in business model but also in leadership style
It was interesting to see the contrasting styles of China’s top two online travel leaders on display at the Phocuswright conference in Los Angeles – Ctrip’s James Liang’s soft spoken, assertive, almost professorial-like tone vs Qunar’s CC Zhuang’s confident, aggressive and “we will sol [...]
Two men, one wish: Time for their lives
As I listened to Groupon founder Andrew Mason talk at the Phocuswright conference in Los Angeles last week about the epiphany he had while on his break in South-east Asia – about how technology was making us, including him, shitty people and he wanted to do something different with his life [...]
Fast food makes us fat, tech makes us shitty, let’s take a detour, says Groupon’s founder Mason
Holiday times are good for epiphanies and Andrew Mason, founder of Groupon, had his during a one-month break in South-east Asia after he left the company he founded.During the break, he found his attention span returned. “I had built up this complete addiction to technology without knowing it and [...]
Letter from LA: Get past the airport and everything’s just dandy
So first let’s get the grumpy part over with – LA is the worst airport in the world. No surprises there because almost everyone agrees with that.The immigration officer attending to me (or rather my passport) because he didn’t look at me the entire transaction had all the appearance of someone [...]
