Thinking and Working in Singapore and other more Virtual Places

After 3 Days at the CSC in Phnom Penh, Cambodia

So, here I am at the end of day 3 of our trip to Cambodia.  We are here to visit the Children's Surgical Centre run by Dr Jim and his team.  I am here with Ian Mullane who runs Vanda, Andy Dyer who works for Ian and helps with our training, George - ex ESPN - who is filming us and Chris Snell who, like me is one of the White Collar guys being trained for our bouts in October in Singapore.

The CSC is the beneficiary of the funds raised by Vanda's events and Ian makes reagular visits here to get involved with whats going on and give White Collar boxers, like Chris and myself, a chance to really see where the money goes.

I've lived in Asia for a while and so, I suppose, what I have seen has not suprised me a lot.  However, it is the really intimate contact that we have had with the patients, the staff, the volunteers and, above all, our emotions that has made this trip absolutely incredible at so many levels. 

For the last 2 days we have been right in the thick of things at the hospital on rounds with Dr Jim and his team and helping out with both consulations and with operations in the Operaring Theater - being involved in ways that I think none of us first timers could have imagined.  And the impact of that involvement was not, at least for me, imagined before I cam here.

Three of us have been paired with a medical student from the UK each of whom is doing a six week stint out here as part of their studies.  We have shadowed them and this has given us a unique opportunity to get involved at a level that doesn't get any closer.  Only today, I actually assisted (allbeit it with a bit of swabbing and suture snipping) on 2 hernia operations on young children and in the cleaning of a wound on a lady's foot where it had become seriosuly infected following a snake bite.  This was particularly challenging for me.  This poor lady's foort was seriosuly infected with a large area of dead skin and loads of puss and general nastiness.  And there I was looking at and helping clean a wound that was like nothing I have ever seen and would have had me reaching for the remote had it come on TV (or at least had me squinting to blur my vision)!  The other guys and some of the students were genuinely asking me if I was OK as they looked on telling me afterwards that I was gently rocking at one point and they theought I was going to collapse!  It was a struggle but I knew that I wouldn't keel over - I just had to do it.  I just had to get on with it.

 

It's struck me how some themes have been developing. Many of you know that I struggled briefly after sparring started at the gym.  But I just had to get on with it.  And, had I not 'just gone one with it' today then there's no way I would have done what I did.

I mentioned to Ian of Vanda today that I can see why he gets on so well with Dr Jim.  They both have a no nonsense approach and both, I think, foster and encourage an atmospehere of challenge and escaping the comfort zone.  No one ever asked any of us here if we wanted to assist with the operations (although we could easliy have said no without any embarrasement or reprecussions) - it's just the way the guys make you think - get in there, get on with it and get it done.

It's an amazing experience and one that will live me - on the one hand, forever - and on the other as I continue my training.  I now see what an incredible job these people do here with the money that is raised and I have been reminded what a liberating and empowering thing it is to not think too hard about something, to not shy away from a tough challenge and to push the boundaries of one's comfort zone.

This afternoon we visited the Killing Fields and S-21 but I'll blog about those in a day or two and get some of my own photos and video content posted up when I can sort all that out back in Singapore.

Tomorrow we will visit another 'part' of the great work done here.  It's a house where the acid burn victims have a place of relative peace to try and come to terms with their horrific wounds and get some support.

I pinced the photo above from Ian's post where you can read a bit more and see anocther couple of shots.

Getting Delayed on Singapore Airlines

On Saturday I was delayed on my flight from Singapore to Taipei.... on boarding the second plane (first one was broken) I was given this.  It's easy to understand why Singapore Airlines is consistently voted one of the best airlines in the world.

Download Delay_letter

Taking the A380

On my recent trip to Europe for work and a visit to some of my family I deliberately booked on the Airbus A380 - Singapore Airlines had just acquired its second or third addition to its A380 fleet and started flying the Singapore Heathrow route.  In fact I thought I was going on the inaugural flight but it turned out I was on the second ever A380 flight from Singapore to London.

I'm a geek when it comes to flying and was really looking forward to the flight.  I had booked on the upper deck (just because there was one I suppose) and that feeling of being 'on top' was quite noticeable when the air bridge from the gate to the door of the plane sloped upwards and especially noticeable when, during taxi, I looked out of my window down on a 747 next to us.

The interior looked good with quite a radically new color scheme compared to most of the SQ fleet.  Large widescreen TV's dominated the backs of the seats and, after sitting for a while in my seat and having the person in front of me recline, I felt that there was more room that I'd usually get in an SQ economy seat. 

Although the new in-flight system has been on the newer planes in the 777 fleet for some months now, this was my first experience of the new and comparatively huge seat back (wide) screen and the new controller and UI.  It was, as expected, a joy to use and to watch.  Although the huge choice of content - over 100 on-demand movies - is the same as the older system, the on screen menus and navigation are significantly improved and watching on the bigger screen is, of course, great! 

For you really geeky guys and my colleagues interested in UI there's a video of it in action below.

For my trip back I had used airmiles to upgrade to business class.  Although I took a couple of pictures you should really check here to see it in its full glory.  The amount of room was fantastic and the level of service and quality of food very high.  (Although my experience was spoiled a little by screaming children sat near me!)

I am not going to dwell to much on the business class part of the trip.  I'm just going to remember it fondly as one of those privileges one has now and again.

6 days until the A380

Being quite a geeky person when it comes to some things I just wanted to let you all know that in 6 days I am going on the inaugural  A380 Singapore Airlines flight from Singapore to London.  And I'm really looking forward to it!

There are some things I really like about living in Singapore and one that comes close to the top of the list is having every opportunity to fly on Singapore Airlines (or 'SQ' as us locals refer to it). 

Not only will I be on the new plane sampling what promises to be the best (by a long way) economy  class in the world, but I shall be departing from  Singapore Changi Airport's new T3.   It's so typically 'Singapore' that we have all beeen using Changi Airport's T1 and T2 thinking how comfortable and pleasant they are (I've never queued for more than about 5 minutes for any part of the security / check in / immigration process) when they decide to build a spanking new T3. 

I shall no doubt be wishing to be back in Changi when I arrive at Heathrow.  Given the persistent creaking and straining of every part of Heathrow's processes, I'm wondering how prepared they are for a really big plane with lots of people getting off at the same time.  It suddenly just occurred to me as I write this that maybe we'll all arrive at Heathrow's T5.  I just checked and, of course, as I realize I knew already, T5 at Heathrow will be exclusively for British Airways passengers. 

Anyway, check back here for an exclusive on the A380 experience.  On the flight back I have used airmiles to upgrade to Business Class. 

I can't wait!

Block Memories

As you may know I have a keen interest in all that is Web 2.0 and 3.0 too of course.  And I am never short of new things to look at and check out partly because of my own research but largely too down to my good friend and colleague, Michael (Held).

Yesterday Michael sent me a link to EveryBlock. It is limited to a view cities in the US however, but whilst I was looking at it I was reminded of an exciting week I spent in New York in September 1992 - a week which turned out to be the first week of a 14 month tour of the usual round-the-world backpacker haunts.

So, remembering this week, I was checking out the site and, with the help of Google Maps, remembered and located the street where I stayed in New York - Vestry Street - a very cool street of Artists Lofts in the particularly cool area of SoHo.  As I was surfing Google Maps, I noticed a feature I hadn't used before - Street View.  You will find this as an additional button top right.  Using this features means you can view street level photos of all streets highlighted.  Now for Manhattan this looked pretty comprehensive but (although I am not sure) this feature is currently limited to a few major metropolis's in the US.  I did check London, for example, and it was not available.

Now people talk about community when it comes to 2.0 and Crowd sourcing and all the rest of it.  And very often the talk is about applications around the network of course but for me, very often, I find the use of 2.0 stuff very emotional.  For twenty minutes yesterday I relived some wonderful memories of my time in New York at the beginning of my trip and being able to 'virtually' walk the streets around where I stayed using the feature in Google Maps was really quite wonderful.

I have bookmarked the address - the Block - in NYC that I have now been gently reminded of, allowed to explore and live again and, by using EveryBlock , will keep up with the latest graffiti reports, crimes and other happenings of that few hundred yards of New York street.