nil desperandum

Good to be back

It's good to be back in the uk after a long period of being away. Blue skys, full on 3G access, English people, great art. I just got out of the graduate show at the RCA. It was really good. Met some interest people and had couple of interesting designery chats. It's good to stretch the mind in different directions.

Sichuan madness.

New Frens

I did a presso to a bunch of MBA kids today and they were cool. One bit of my presentation was about the rise of Chinesey products and I promised I'd give them the address to buy stuff. So here it is:

Warrior Shoes

585 ZunYi Lu

White Rabbit Sweets

Any convenience store will have it in their sweets section

Forever Bicycle

85 Luban Lu, near Mengzi Xi Lu, 6302 0441

Seagull Cameras

175 Suzhou Lu - There's a few round there as well.

Drop us a line if you have any probs. Thanks!

This is stupid

Having had some classroom experience, the one thing that kids crave for more than anything else is attention. Between a piece of toy and you, the kid will choose you every time. Readers of this blog will know that I'm a massive Japanese-phile but this Japanese robot teacher thing is just silly. 

Every child is different in terms of neurological make up, temperament and life rhythm, as such, teaching programs must be tailored to the individual. It's absolutely absurd, with the technology we currently have, to think that a robot can recognise the qualities of a kid and then adapt the teaching program accordingly. 

I guess this invention opens up a debate of scalability of quality teaching. There are probably many many research out there (and please send it to me if you have it) on the direct and positive correlation of classroom size vs kids' development. While I recognizing that there are financial challenges of rolling out smaller class sizes in a scalable way, there's got to be better ways of teaching our children.

The design question shouldn't be about how do we create a teacher replacement. The design question should be, how do we reorganize our lives so we can spend more time with kids (our own or otherwise)?

Recent Discovery

This is arguably the most touching thing I've seen recently. 

Guiyang entertainment

When rachel gets married.

Can't sleep

View from my bed.

iPhone blogging

Testing out stuff

Little Chinese Emperors

There've been many studies of Little Emperors of China. And I recently gave a talk about Marketing to little Emperors to a lovely bunch of MBA kids as well. But this conversation that I overheard on the plane on my way back to Shanghai from HK just crystallized the reality for me.

Dad: Son, did you enjoy HK?
Son: I did! I did! I did!
Dad: Would you like to go back to Disney Land again?
Son: Yes! Disney Land was fun!
Dad: There are many fun places to go in the world. Even if daddy were to take you to a new place every year we won't visit them all in our live time.

Many skeptics have written off the little emperors, saying that they are lazy, spoilt and apathetic, and how they will mark the downfall of China. I tend to be an optimist when it comes to these things. I think these kids are worldly, discerning and curious. And educators, business people and governments will need to embrace the positive qualities to really develop this generation of people.

Here's a pic of the kid.

Sans style