Skype prime, and networked China

For aspiring freelancers and knowledge workers this looks to have a lot of potential: Skype Prime apparently allows you to advertise your expertise on specific topics, and to charge people for your advice. What a pity that I know nothing of value to anyone – only a vast amount of useless trivia!

I found out about this via a post on Preetam’s blog, which has other interesting snippets. For example he finds that the Chinese he meets usually put their chat address on their business cards. I wondered about this when I printed my own personal cards: should I include MSN and Skype information? In the end, I didn’t – I already go through periods of being invited to join the friends list of Chinese people I’ve never met, and I usually refuse. Perhaps I should set up accounts that I only advertise on my cards, though. Not sure, I’ll have to think about that: Preetam is right when he says “This chat thing is changing the way we work and learn and maybe even earn”. I need to think a bit more about my positioning first, though.

That reminds me of two articles I saw recently on Web Worker Daily:

• Three steps to introduce social software to your employer
•  The dangerous myth of the dream job

Beijing buzz

Part of my occasional series of adverts extracted from the That’s Beijing classifieds feed. These struck me because they typify one of the many aspects of Beijing that fascinates me, and why I miss the place dreadfully – namely, the sizzling buzz of (as I put it once before) “adventurers, the artists, the entrepreneurs, the dreamers and the carpet-baggers from all over the world“.

招聘 – Blogger/Editor

Mirkin Group, a Beijing newly based IT startup, is building out its team in China to position itself within three major regions: China, U.S., and Russia. The company is lead by a Russian-American young entrepreneur with partners in Silicon Valley & Moscow. The company owns a network of independent sites and services and needs an editor to perform duties related to blogging, editing forums, interacting with site visitors, etc… You are an intelligent, self-driven person with a “get your hands dirty” attitude. You are generally passionate about working at different roles and are motivated to excel in them. 工作职责 • Researching consumer products ranging from technology to sports to health • Innovative fast paced blogging on different topics • Attract people through external forums – i.e. drive traffic to sites • Editing on company forums • Some web designing is beneficial 岗位要求 (without this don’t apply) • Excellent written skills in Chinese • Recent Photo • Existing Blog • B.S. degree (with proof) 联系我们 This position is based in the Haidian district of Beijing (15 minute walk to Tsinghua).. Please send your resume to jobs@mirkingrp.com. Applicants looking for internships are also encouraged to apply. Both male and female applicants are equally accepted

Intership with a TV/Film Production Company

Crimson Forest Films, is a Beijing based TV and Film Production Company. Our founders are from the U.S. and Canada, but our young and exciting company has a hip and youthful international work enviroment. Great for practicing your Chinese, and getting work experience in production all at the same time. Looking for organized and responsible college graduates who are living in Beijing and who are interested in production. An ideal non-paid internship for recent college graduates, who have a foundation of Chinese language studies under their belt. We are centrally located in Guo Mao. Please contact Christian Lee at clee@cff.tv or call at 5131 6223.

International Film Festival Coordination Interns

2007 Natural Green Heroes Festival – Featuring independently produced films and videos on the theme of real people making a difference for the environment and enhancing the world around us. Program seeks compelling stories that feature people challenging current environmental standards and conditions, encourage thoughtful questions and realistic answers, and broaden our understanding of our place in the world. Accepted works will be packaged for broadcast and distributed to Public TV stations internationally. In cooperation with the Central Academy of Fine Arts and major green orgs. Internship involves Public Relations, Marketing / Brand Management, Event Planning, Creative Services Marketing/Communications Internship The mission of the Festival is to present films that inform, enlighten, and educate the community by providing a vivid reflection of the rich cultural diversity of Beijing and the world beyond our doors. you will be responsible for: Creating a plan to develop understanding of the festival target markets, corporate messages and strategies Generating interest from sponsors and delivering content for various projects, including websites and for-print publications (brochures, programs) Planning and managing pr events Maintaining and updating web content This position requires the student to work a minimum of 12 hours per week. Internship – when successful – transforms into paid position after two months Deadline: Mon, February 8th, 2007. Short Resume photo expectations Contact: Lidy

Multi-Lingual Professional South Asian Actor

Hi Friends, I am a Multi-Lingual Indian Actor (29 years old), received professional acting training in India (National School of Drama) and in China (Central Academy of Drama 中央戏剧学院表演系), having 12 years of acting experience in Movie, TV operas and Theatre. I also have excellent command over English, Chinese, Hindi and Urdu (all languages: speak, read, write, type etc.). Also, it is extremely convenient for Chinese people to communicate with me. MOST IMPORTANTLY, I HAVE THE CREDIT TO IMPORT FIRST-EVER INDIAN TV SOUP OPERA / SERIAL TO CHINA. Please contact me whenever needed. Thanks

ReubenDotDotDot Entertainment

Hello, My name is ReubenDotDotDot, I am an Australian professional performer currently living in Beijing. I do street, stage and roving style shows including; Acrobatic and manipulation tricks, with comedy and crowd participation, usually to an English crowd, but I am adaptable. I also perform crystal ball manipulation, magical illusionary juggling, either a stage show or roving character, perfect for both large and intimate events. I have many more acts and shows, which are adaptable to most events, clubs, pubs, restaurants, festivals etc. I have been working professionally for the last 4 years. You can find my bio and show information at www.reubendotdotdot.com, I can also send you promotional videos via email if required. Regards, ReubenDotDotDot

It’s a wonderful world

Inspired by Niti’s latest post, here’s my world map. I think I’ve done this once before, but this time I’ve only included countries where I’ve walked around and spoken to people, not stopovers:

create your own visited countries map

Speaking of which, I saw an article in the IHT yesterday about Phnom Penh, the capital of Cambodia. While I was applying for my MBA, my plan B for staying in Asia was to train as an English teacher. I did some reading up on conditions in the countries in the region, and Cambodia didn’t sound fun, to say the least – there were warnings of violence, crime, shootings in the streets… Well, that was 2003, this is 2007, and things have changed: Phnom Penh is now the “next Prague”, where the young go to reinvent themselves. Guess I need to get there while I (if no-one else) still think of myself as young…

Thinking of Wu

A Chinese friend of mine was in town earlier this week. She’s originally from Dalian, but is now based in Beijing – in Wudaokou, to be exact. She can be pretty direct in her views sometimes; the first time I showed her around Singapore, I took her to the Long Bar at Raffles Hotel. There’s a tradition there of eating peanuts with your drinks and throwing the shells on the floor; I suppose this must go back to the colonial days. Anyway, I explained this to her and she just snorted in amazement. “What’s so special about that? I can do that anywhere I like, in China”. True, true.

Anyway, on this occasion, I’d asked her to bring me some of  the new T-shirts from Lush. She did, so I’m now the proud owner of probably the only “88 Wudaokou Warriors” shirts in Singapore! Apparently, they’re so popular that she had to place an order for them – good thing I asked in plenty of time. She said she’d been speaking with one of the Chinese staff at Lush, and they couldn’t understand why the laowai were so keen on the shirts. “I would never wear a shirt advertising Wudaokou”, she said, “It must be something to do with foreigner culture”. Most Beijingers still regard Wudaokou as remote countryside, so I know where she’s coming from – but yes, it is ’something to do with foreigner culture’. We all go to that part of town to  learn Chinese, as I did in 2004, or on exchange, as with my stint at Tsinghua University in 2005, and Lush is a haven. They play great music, they have free wifi (when it works), and the people are really interesting. You get all sorts there – truly, people from all over the world, and the multinational teams for their famous pub quiz nights are always full of interesting characters.  I had great times there, so I’m glad to keep a little bit of that spirit alive by wearing their t-shirt in the tropics!

Globalized healthcare

While I’m revisiting past topics, I note that yesterday’s paper also had a piece on the growth of the healthcare industry in Singapore. The government’s putting lots of effort into this as well, identifying plots of land to be used for new private hospitals, and requiring exisiting hospitals to increase the building density on their own plots of land.

The human interest came from a piece on a 57-year old lawyer from the US, who needed heart surgery but had no health insurance. So, she came here: the operation would have cost S$246,500 in the US, but was only S$24,635 here – still a fair bit of cash, but a massive saving, no?  When I wrote about the topic once before, John Robb asked in the comments if I thought insurance companies would cover healthcare tourism. I replied then that I thought the industry would be driven by those without private health insurance, and/or who were not being well served by state healthcare, and this indeed seems to be the case.

Newsweek on global medicine

Hot on the heels of my recent posts on the globalization of health care, it was interesting to see the same topic on the cover of Newsweek International: Why Patients Flock to Overseas Hospitals.

In answer to the comment left by a reader here: health insurance companies are getting involved, and supporting the trend. The article is accompanied by a top ten list of global healthcare institutions; a few are in Asia, though none in Singapore. It’s a market that’s hotting up…. perhaps Singapore’s new Integrated Resorts should be incorporating some specialist hospitals..? Just a thought…

A global nomad speaks. And a rabbit.

Momus is interviewed by Expatica magazine. A couple of quotes seemed very pertinent to me:

“I thought there was almost like a manifest destiny kind of feel about Berlin. I thought, we hipsters, or whoever it is, have the right to move into this city because it needs us. It’s not a finished city, it’s a city always in the process of becoming.

“I think I’m a little bit scared [of assimilating], I don’t want to become naturalised in any way. I really enjoy being a foreigner. As [American composer and author] Paul Bowles said about Tangier, it’s a real luxury and privilege to be a foreigner and to remain foreign.

Good news on cancer research

This sounds very encouraging: on Slashdot, I read that in the US, the National Cancer Institute have managed to use cancer patients’ own white blood cells to reverse melanoma and liver cancer. There’s more about it in the Seattle Times, Wired, the BBC, and the National Cancer Institute’s own web site.

I’ve felt for a long time that I’m just in time for this sort of thing – the boomer generation who are now reaching retirement age are going to invest a huge amount of money into this kind of research as it suddenly becomes important to them. Hopefully, by the time I need them, these technologies will be proven, widely available, and relatively cheap! (Touch wood). I’m not alone in this either; in Hub Culture, Stan Stalnaker reports that this is an object of faith amongst my globe-trotting peers. In the book, he tries to play down the likelihood of it actually happening, but this kind of news suggests that maybe he got this one wrong (though I doubt he would be upset!).