500 every day?

According to the London Times, 500 Britons leave the UK every day. By ‘leave’, that means retiring or going to work for an extended period. Many don’t plan to return. I guess that gives some perspective to my experience in Singapore – whenever people ask what my plans are, I say that I can easily see myself staying here, or going back to China, but I can’t really see myself going back to the UK. I just looked at the Aberystwyth webcam for the first time in a long, long while, and found myself surprised at how foreign it seems.

Putting social networks to the test

I really, really need to improve my Mandarin; since I came back from Beijing, I haven’t been using it much, and it’s getting worse. I have tried attending classes on Saturdays, but they didn’t really help – too much of the time is spent faffing around with administration, or waiting for other students, and so I never make progress.

As a result, I’m looking for a private tutor – but how to find a good one? And, ideally, one who speaks with a Beijing accent!

So, I’m putting the social networks to the test. I’ve posted the same question in Xing’s Singapore forum, in LinkedIn Answers, and in the Mandarin conversation group in Meetup.com.

Now, to wait, and see if any of them turn up anything interesting…

Stem cells cure Type 1 diabetes

Title says it all. Wow! Times article with details here.

Taxing in-game profits

Since I mentioned the issue of taxing in-game activities towards the end of my recent post on virtual money, an article has appeared on the topic, and led to some quite informative discussion on Slashdot.

Green Cardis

Very interesting to see reports about how the small university town of Lampeter, in the west of Wales, and where I used to work, is part of the green vanguard, preparing as a community how to deal with, and survive in, a post-oil world. Three articles:

• Transition Culture (#1)
• Transition Culture (#2, George Monbiot)
• The Guardian

A new world, with Chinese characteristics

I’ve been writing about how globalization will eventually lead to world fashions being set in Asia and going West for a long time, most recently here (which is still getting a lot of hits). So, I’m always interested to see other posts on the topic, and a couple have popped up recently:

• Momus, writing in Wired, says Culture Flows Through English Channels, but Not for Long. As a Scottish writer and musician who splits his time between Berlin, New York, and Tokyo, he has an excellent perspective on the cultural and linguistic goings on.
• Asia Times online also has a very good article on how China is translating the influences of globalization into its own cultural terms – whilst simultaneously beginning to export its cultural influences to the rest of the world, who aren’t expecting it and may have to make some uncomfortable adjustments. The author is from the Shanghai-based China Europe International Business School, and so has excellent credentials for this kind of observation.

Poetry evening at the National Library

Last Thursday night I decided to pop down to the Subtext poetry reading at the National Library. Subtext is one of the poetry events I mentioned previously. It was pretty good; there were four performers:

• Cyril Wong, who read from his latest collection on the gay scene in Singapore. It was an interesting view from a not-so-well known side of Singapore, but I felt that he used a few too many cliches in his writing.
• Koh Tsin Yen, who wrote meditative pieces on her New England experiences
• Shamini Flint, a very witty speaker, who read extracts from her locally-set murder mystery (which I bought a copy of).
• Ray McNiece, an American Tom Waits soundalike, who gave performance pieces on his life as a travelling poet. I also bought one of his CDs, though I haven’t listened to it yet.

I’m glad I’ve finally got myself together to start attending cultural events like this, although I don’t really have the skillset to really appreciate them, I guess. Who knows, though: perhaps attending a few more will inspire me to try to write something myself…

Global business social networking: Xing wins

OK, I think I made a good call on who’s winning the social networking war: I’m convinced that it will be Xing (formerly OpenBC).

I was introduced to OpenBC early on in my MBA here, and to LinkedIn just after I went on exchange to Beijing. Based on my experience with both, I observed that neither is really influential here in Singapore, but that OpenBC was far and away more popular in China. Once OpenBC changed their name to Xing, it was clear to me that they were going to be the winners, and I came out and said so, here.

LinkedIn fought back with its ‘Answers’ service, but I think that’s not enough. It has its defenders, but I thought they were missing the point, as I argued here. (And btw, I take this opportunity to apologise to Jan Meise for not responding to his comment and thoughtful article – sorry, Jan, I was too busy). However, I continued to believe that Xing, with its European background, seemed to have a better grip on the importance of language and localisation than LinkedIn did.

I’ve just seen something that, for me settles the argument:

That’s it. Game over. IBM, Second Life and Xing, all together. There must be something big coming down the pipeline to follow this up.

One thought:

Voice is coming soon to Second Life. Apparently, it will be implemented (in a very interesting way, btw) by Vivox. Still… Xing already has Skype integration; they know how to do this. LinkedIn? No. So I guess there’ll be some behind the scenes talks between Xing and Vivox….

Where can LinkedIn go to rival this? WoW and SKype? Hardly. So, my bet: Xing wins, big time, and globally.

And since I’m sure someone will ask, I have no stock or other financial interest in Xing, LinkedIn, IBM, or any other company mentioned here (save only that as I’ve said before, I’ve been willing for nearly 2 years to pay for premium membership of Xing, but couldn’t justify it for LinkedIn).