ghosts

"She pushed the sheet down to the foot of the bed and lay there in the darkened room, facing the waves of air. The island no longer held her by the past. She'd spent the fifteen years since ignoring that early celebrity. Anil had read documents and news reports, full of tragedy, and she had now lived abroad long enough to interpret Sri Lanka with a long-distance gaze. But here it was a more complicated world morally. The streets were still streets, the citizens remained citizens. They shopped, changed jobs, laughed. Yet the darkest Greek tragedies were innocent compared with what was happening here. Heads on stakes. Skeletons dug out of a cocoa pit in Matale. At university Anil had translated lines from Archilochus — In the hospitality of war we left them their dead to remember us by. But here there was no such gesture to the families of the dead, not even the information of who the enemy was. " excerpt from anil's ghost

it's true. it's all so heartbreakingly true.

breakfast with the FT

Breakfast with the FT: John Wood
By Shawn Donnan
Published: February 23 2007 15:16 Last updated: February 23 2007 15:16
The concerned volunteer handling John Wood's Hong Kong public relations says that my suggestion of breakfast at the newly refurbished Mandarin Oriental might seem distasteful to the head of a charity.
So on a Saturday morning – at an hour too early to be called brunch – I walk into the cloud of stale beer and cigarette fug that is the main bar of the Foreign Correspondents' Club in central Hong Kong. A few nights earlier, a proud member described this place as a club for "drunks, cheapskates and losers". Is this a more appropriate venue to meet a man who likes to think of himself as the Andrew Carnegie of the developing world?
I settle on a banquette in the glass-enclosed "no smoking" bunker and order a coffee. When a smiling Wood strolls in, he looks unperturbed by our surroundings.
Wood, a former Microsoft executive turned social entrepreneur, has plenty of reasons to be cheerful. This is a good time for a global tour in support of a book called Leaving Microsoft to Change the World. New hedge-fund fortunes are being made; Bill Gates and Warren Buffett are deploying billions to address the world's ills; and celebrities - from Brad and Angelina and Bono downwards – are working away at good causes. Philanthropy is hot.
Wood's work has acquired an earnest fashionability of late, but it wasn't always that way. He left his Beijing-based Microsoft job in 1998 to found a charity called Room to Read, conceived as a way to get used books to the developing world.
The move prompted raised eyebrows among his colleagues, while his luxury-hotel-loving girlfriend soon became his ex-girlfriend. "I can still remember the days when I would check my e-mail and hit the refresh button four times and be like 'Damn it! My mail's not working. No one's e-mailing me.' There was just nothing going on," he says.
\nWood now gets 300 e-mails a day from strangers eager to get involved in Room to Read. The charity has expanded and builds schools and libraries, gives scholarships for girls' education, and publishes local-language children's books in countries such as Cambodia, India and Nepal. Not satisfied with styling himself as the Carnegie of the developing world, Wood says he also wants to be its Dr Seuss.\n\nHe works longer hours and travels more than he did when he was at Microsoft. He also applies plenty of what he refers to in his book as Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer's "get shit done" ethos to a charity world "immune from market pressures".\n\n"I think the charity world has been kind of given a free pass - 'Oh, they're trying hard' [or] 'oh they mean well.' But they're not well-run," he says. "In business there is always a market mechanism. If you [the FT] lose readers you guys go out of business. If Microsoft annoys people they are going to switch to Apple. And in the charity world that doesn't really necessarily happen."\n\nOver breakfast of scrambled eggs and pancakes, the word emerging most frequently from Wood's mouth seems to be "scaleable". There is plenty of talk of "metrics" and "return on investment", of branding and "market gaps". He wants Room to Read to be "the single trusted global brand for education in the developing world". And he plans to do that by creating an organisation melding "the compassion of Mother Teresa" with "the focus and tenacity of a blue-chip company like a GE or a Cisco".\n\nWood is obsessed with putting to work the business practices he learnt at Microsoft. He requires all Room to Read staff to include the latest quarterly measures of progress in their e-mail signature files, largely because "at Microsoft, Ballmer used to always say 'what gets measured gets done'".\n\nHe has an entrepreneur's obsession with costs, and relies on the kindness of powerful donors and old-fashioned penny-pinching to keep expenditure down. He travels around the world on frequent-flier miles amassed by "a senior figure at Goldman Sachs". To arrange fundraising events he draws on volunteer chapters in San Francisco (where the charity is based), and other cities such as London, New York and Hong Kong. As a policy, he refuses to recruit expensive expatriates to run local field offices.\n",1]
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Wood now gets 300 e-mails a day from strangers eager to get involved in Room to Read. The charity has expanded and builds schools and libraries, gives scholarships for girls' education, and publishes local-language children's books in countries such as Cambodia, India and Nepal. Not satisfied with styling himself as the Carnegie of the developing world, Wood says he also wants to be its Dr Seuss.
He works longer hours and travels more than he did when he was at Microsoft. He also applies plenty of what he refers to in his book as Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer's "get shit done" ethos to a charity world "immune from market pressures".
"I think the charity world has been kind of given a free pass - 'Oh, they're trying hard' [or] 'oh they mean well.' But they're not well-run," he says. "In business there is always a market mechanism. If you [the FT] lose readers you guys go out of business. If Microsoft annoys people they are going to switch to Apple. And in the charity world that doesn't really necessarily happen."
Over breakfast of scrambled eggs and pancakes, the word emerging most frequently from Wood's mouth seems to be "scaleable". There is plenty of talk of "metrics" and "return on investment", of branding and "market gaps". He wants Room to Read to be "the single trusted global brand for education in the developing world". And he plans to do that by creating an organisation melding "the compassion of Mother Teresa" with "the focus and tenacity of a blue-chip company like a GE or a Cisco".
Wood is obsessed with putting to work the business practices he learnt at Microsoft. He requires all Room to Read staff to include the latest quarterly measures of progress in their e-mail signature files, largely because "at Microsoft, Ballmer used to always say 'what gets measured gets done'".
He has an entrepreneur's obsession with costs, and relies on the kindness of powerful donors and old-fashioned penny-pinching to keep expenditure down. He travels around the world on frequent-flier miles amassed by "a senior figure at Goldman Sachs". To arrange fundraising events he draws on volunteer chapters in San Francisco (where the charity is based), and other cities such as London, New York and Hong Kong. As a policy, he refuses to recruit expensive expatriates to run local field offices.
\nWood has a marketer's knack for laying out his achievements in a way that appeals to the global-oriented business class he and Room to Read target in their fundraising. The charity's pace of growth, Wood boasts, is faster than Starbucks'. In the sixth year after its initial public offering of shares, Wood says, Starbucks opened 500 new outlets, while Room to Read in its sixth year opened more than 1,000 school libraries.\n\n"I don't meant to be flippant about the Carnegie analogy," he adds later, "but we've now done more libraries in the developing world than Carnegie did in the US."\nAndrew Carnegie, the Scottish-born magnate turned philanthropist, built 2,500 libraries around the US. By the end of 2006, Room to Read had opened 3,300 libraries, and expects to have 5,000 by the end of this year. That number is expected to grow by a further 40 per cent, to 7,000 by the end of 2008. In coming years Room to Read expects to open an average of "30 libraries a week across the developing world".\n\nWood turned to philanthropy after a 1998 trekking holiday in Nepal. He visited a remote school with just a few books and, without much forethought, promised to return with reading materials for the children. An e-mail he sent to friends yielded hundreds of used books and when, months later, he returned to the school with his father and a donkey train loaded with books he was so moved by the reaction that he decided to change careers. This has since grown into his ambition to "democratise philanthropy".\n\n"What do you mean by that?" I ask, between bites of undercooked pancake.\n"I mean basically saying to the world [that] you don't have to be Gates or Buffett, [and] you don't have to be as good-looking as Angelina Jolie or Brad Pitt to go help Africa. What we are trying to say is, it does not cost much to go make this change. It's $250 to underwrite a girl's scholarship. It's $2,000 in total to do a library. It's somewhere in the $10,000-15,000 range to endow a school. And I think if we really want to reach our long-term goal - which is to reach at least 10 million kids [by 2020] - we can't really necessarily depend on the fact that someone rich, someone really super-rich or really super-famous will do it for us."\n",1]
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Wood has a marketer's knack for laying out his achievements in a way that appeals to the global-oriented business class he and Room to Read target in their fundraising. The charity's pace of growth, Wood boasts, is faster than Starbucks'. In the sixth year after its initial public offering of shares, Wood says, Starbucks opened 500 new outlets, while Room to Read in its sixth year opened more than 1,000 school libraries.
"I don't meant to be flippant about the Carnegie analogy," he adds later, "but we've now done more libraries in the developing world than Carnegie did in the US."
Andrew Carnegie, the Scottish-born magnate turned philanthropist, built 2,500 libraries around the US. By the end of 2006, Room to Read had opened 3,300 libraries, and expects to have 5,000 by the end of this year. That number is expected to grow by a further 40 per cent, to 7,000 by the end of 2008. In coming years Room to Read expects to open an average of "30 libraries a week across the developing world".
Wood turned to philanthropy after a 1998 trekking holiday in Nepal. He visited a remote school with just a few books and, without much forethought, promised to return with reading materials for the children. An e-mail he sent to friends yielded hundreds of used books and when, months later, he returned to the school with his father and a donkey train loaded with books he was so moved by the reaction that he decided to change careers. This has since grown into his ambition to "democratise philanthropy".
"What do you mean by that?" I ask, between bites of undercooked pancake.
"I mean basically saying to the world [that] you don't have to be Gates or Buffett, [and] you don't have to be as good-looking as Angelina Jolie or Brad Pitt to go help Africa. What we are trying to say is, it does not cost much to go make this change. It's $250 to underwrite a girl's scholarship. It's $2,000 in total to do a library. It's somewhere in the $10,000-15,000 range to endow a school. And I think if we really want to reach our long-term goal - which is to reach at least 10 million kids [by 2020] - we can't really necessarily depend on the fact that someone rich, someone really super-rich or really super-famous will do it for us."
\nA flaky charity world isn't the only target for Wood's criticism. He is unimpressed, too, by some corporate social-responsibility programmes. He has had "very deep, very thoughtful" conversations with some companies, but is scathing of others that use CSR as little more than an addendum to their marketing budget. "I've definitely seen the companies that take out half-page ads in the FT, The Economist or Time, bragging about what good corporate citizens they are. And I'm like, 'Huh, that's interesting, I've never actually seen anything that you've done in the developing world and I've filled five passports with travel.'"\n\nWood argues that, by under-investing in the developing world, many first-world companies are guilty of short-sightedness. Greater corporate investment in education in impoverished countries would not be an entirely selfless act, he says. Better education would yield more affluent societies and, eventually, faster global economic growth and bigger corporate profits.\n\nHe also argues that, as the Bush administration's actions in Iraq and elsewhere are making the US progressively more unpopular in the world, businesses and charities like his are being forced into "freelance diplomacy" or "freelance foreign relations".\n\nBut his biggest concern is over what he calls the "Gates conundrum". With their moves into philanthropy, Bill Gates and Warren Buffett have set a new standard for the world's super-rich, and Wood predicts that billions more will be thrown at non-governmental organisations in the coming decades.\n\nYet the charity world, he says, has a poor record of being able to absorb donations and grow quickly. "If you look across Africa there's just such a dearth of scaleable models for social change. I think in the next couple of decades that's one of the main challenges for the philanthropic world - can you teach these NGOs to build capacity and to scale?" Many groups erect one or two orphanages at a time, but in Africa "the HIV/Aids problem is such that you basically need a scaleable model for orphanages. You literally need someone to be the Starbucks of orphanages."\n",1]
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A flaky charity world isn't the only target for Wood's criticism. He is unimpressed, too, by some corporate social-responsibility programmes. He has had "very deep, very thoughtful" conversations with some companies, but is scathing of others that use CSR as little more than an addendum to their marketing budget. "I've definitely seen the companies that take out half-page ads in the FT, The Economist or Time, bragging about what good corporate citizens they are. And I'm like, 'Huh, that's interesting, I've never actually seen anything that you've done in the developing world and I've filled five passports with travel.'"
Wood argues that, by under-investing in the developing world, many first-world companies are guilty of short-sightedness. Greater corporate investment in education in impoverished countries would not be an entirely selfless act, he says. Better education would yield more affluent societies and, eventually, faster global economic growth and bigger corporate profits.
He also argues that, as the Bush administration's actions in Iraq and elsewhere are making the US progressively more unpopular in the world, businesses and charities like his are being forced into "freelance diplomacy" or "freelance foreign relations".
But his biggest concern is over what he calls the "Gates conundrum". With their moves into philanthropy, Bill Gates and Warren Buffett have set a new standard for the world's super-rich, and Wood predicts that billions more will be thrown at non-governmental organisations in the coming decades.
Yet the charity world, he says, has a poor record of being able to absorb donations and grow quickly. "If you look across Africa there's just such a dearth of scaleable models for social change. I think in the next couple of decades that's one of the main challenges for the philanthropic world - can you teach these NGOs to build capacity and to scale?" Many groups erect one or two orphanages at a time, but in Africa "the HIV/Aids problem is such that you basically need a scaleable model for orphanages. You literally need someone to be the Starbucks of orphanages."
\nIf the current giants of the philanthropic world succeed in preventing vast numbers of infant deaths in the developing world, they will also create a potentially overwhelming long-term challenge for already struggling governments and NGOs. "If those kids get to be the age of five, let's say, then how are they going to thrive?" Wood asks. "To thrive they need access to clean water and they need access to education... We've got five years to get ahead of Gates and Buffett on this issue and to me the clock is ticking."\n\nAs our allotted time is also about to run out, the conversation turns to lighter things, meandering around Wood's lack of executive stock options (he says he now gets "karmic options"); his Microsoft shares ("still my single largest holding") and the philanthropic habits of the new hedge-fund titans ("right now they are still in the wealth-creation mode [but] at some point, hopefully they will get to the wealth-deployment mode").\n\nAnd then Wood is off, heading back to his hotel - I decide not to ask if it is the Mandarin - for a work-out before a book signing. A few days later he is off to Cambodia and then on to London for the UK launch of his book. I, meanwhile, wander back out into the bar to secure a receipt I will eventually lose, leaving me unable to claim our breakfast on FT expenses - a little bit of unintentional philanthropy.\n\nShawn Donnan is the FT's Asia companies editor.\n............................................................................\nThe Foreign Correspondents' Club, Hong Kong\n\n1 x filter coffee\n\n1 x latte\n\n1 x double espresso\n\n2 x San Pellegrino\n\n1 x scrambled eggs with bacon\n\n1 x hotcakes with strawberries\n\nTotal: HK$160\n\n",1]
);
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If the current giants of the philanthropic world succeed in preventing vast numbers of infant deaths in the developing world, they will also create a potentially overwhelming long-term challenge for already struggling governments and NGOs. "If those kids get to be the age of five, let's say, then how are they going to thrive?" Wood asks. "To thrive they need access to clean water and they need access to education... We've got five years to get ahead of Gates and Buffett on this issue and to me the clock is ticking."
As our allotted time is also about to run out, the conversation turns to lighter things, meandering around Wood's lack of executive stock options (he says he now gets "karmic options"); his Microsoft shares ("still my single largest holding") and the philanthropic habits of the new hedge-fund titans ("right now they are still in the wealth-creation mode [but] at some point, hopefully they will get to the wealth-deployment mode").
And then Wood is off, heading back to his hotel - I decide not to ask if it is the Mandarin - for a work-out before a book signing. A few days later he is off to Cambodia and then on to London for the UK launch of his book. I, meanwhile, wander back out into the bar to secure a receipt I will eventually lose, leaving me unable to claim our breakfast on FT expenses - a little bit of unintentional philanthropy.
Shawn Donnan is the FT's Asia companies editor.
............................................................................
The Foreign Correspondents' Club, Hong Kong
1 x filter coffee
1 x latte
1 x double espresso
2 x San Pellegrino
1 x scrambled eggs with bacon
1 x hotcakes with strawberries
Total: HK$160

leadership guff

If I have to go to one more of these leadership sessions I am going to gag and bind myself and throw myself off the waterfront. Yesterday's was particularly excruciating. Full disclosure: whilst many courses like "Leadership on the Line", "Negotiation: Dealing with Emotions", "Moral Leadership" are oversubscribed, I myself have stayed far away as possible from them. Public Group therapy is, simply not my fashion. Yesterday I couldn't avoid a sesh, which was titled The importance of storytelling in leadership. I was made to fly like a bird (more like a turkey) around the room. Then one participant burst into tears while recalling a moment from her childhood in the group session and I had this insane tendency to burst into horrified laughter. She just started sobbing and it wasn't a particularly poignant moment from her childhood (okay maybe I'm just insensitive) and I was just like: Are you kidding me? I always prided myself on being emotionally balanced unlike my parents, but I realized last night that I was nowhere close to these guys. It was very disturbing! Yikes!

cheese!

My sister sent me a pack of gourmet cheeses from Europe apparently, blue cheese, stiltons, goudas, sharp maple-aged cheddar, chevre, manchega and more. We fell upon the package like hungry jackals my room mate and I. the occasion warranted the opening of a good syrah, and together with scavenged almonds, organic honey and sliced ripe pears, we had ourselves a feast and completed our accounting homework with much hand-wringing and discussion of boys (unrelated perhaps to the revenue recognition concept but tangentially related to the matching concept) and got drunk and it was the lovely end to a long weekend spent doing absolutely nothing (except sighing at the situations that transpire), My room mate's nickname for me is buffoon and today I was a rampaging buffoon, which sounds exactly like something my sister would say so we toasted her and merrily ate, drank and lived to tell the tale.

hairdressing

I was in my usual hairdresser's the other day. In between lopping off an unimaginable amount of hair, and slathering all sorts of ointments on it, I also get relationship advice and spiritual advice. One point she mentioned stayed home, and that was this. " All women need to leave the men they found better off than they found him, as a service to the next women". It should apply to men too.

divisadero

May 29 2007: Divisadero by Michael Ondaatje hits bookstores.

London

I'm going to London, I'm going to London, I'm going to London, I AM GOING TO LONDON! Yippeekayeah!!!! Just bought my ticket! I'm going to London for spring break!!!!!!YAYYYYY!!!!!



(I can't believe that I. Am. Going. To. London).

a moment

I wrote some time ago that someone had said that the biggest heroes to me were the unsung aid relief workers, working away from family and home, trying to build bridges, provide aid, be there for community after community. Doctors, logisticians, people who just know that the need is too large, and try to plug the gap any which way they can, without ideology or partisanship. I have the utmost of respect for that. Public service is a calling. Not everybody can sacrifice their own self-interest to do it, but blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall inherit the earth.

people who change people

Just back from New York and it would be too much to say how amazing the whole trip was in every particular details but it was a field trip with the fellows and we saw so many organizations fighting to change the world that it was truly amazing. In quick succession, we met with Acumen Fund which funds start-up capital to entrepreneurs in the developing world, with an emphasis on a double bottom line (i.e. mandating the entrepreneurs to for example pay 10 times the minimum wage to their factory workers), the Nonprofit Finance Fund that acts as an investment bank to nonprofits and has developed unique financial products (e.g. a conversion of a depreciation) product that improves liquidity on the balance sheet, KIPP academy, the highest performing middle school in NY located in the South Bronx, all students of colour, high poverty areas. The school has a unique pedagogical method that is yielding results in test scores and all that. Then the Harlem Children's Zone, headed by a charismatic black leader that has really cleaned up Harlem. Then dinner with documentary film producers that are submitting their pieces for the Academy Awards and changing the world in their own way and with other wonderful people (e.g. this guy from morgan stanley who's created a microfinance fund! morgan stanley! and it's headed up people from Europe that I KNOW!). Then the next day to see WITNESS, a human rights film advocacy group that was headed by Gillian Caldwell who worked undercover to expose Russian sex trafficking groups and now trains local NGOs to film human rights abuse. Then to see Chancellor Joel Klein (Head of the New York Board of Education) who was in the Economist the other day for his controversial education reform package who said that in life, like in politics, "you gotta give a little, take a little and let your poor heart break a little".

apples

Do you know what -10 Celsius feels like? It's when you're perpetually cold, no matter how much you wear. It's when you see frozen vomit on railings and white, still, rivers of ice. It's when the air always has a startling clarity. It's when you slip and slide everywhere because the ground is a sheet of ice. It's when you can't spend more than 10 minutes outside without losing feeling in various parts of your body. It's when even after coming inside, it takes an hour to warm up. But its best to be inside and be warm (unlike London where the plumbing never worked- I've never felt cold indoors here EVER) and drinking apple cider which is my new discovery!

military

oooh had another (completely unaffordable) facial yesterday here which was so-so at best. Then went to the gym and sat in the steam room for a while (and felt so healthy) that I had to compensate by eating a quesadilla and then went for various meetings. This conference is taking over my LIFE! Making progress on the business plans, off to New York tomorrow which should be lurvely if I can survive the four hour bus ride? maybe I can catch up on phone calls and emails then. Have already started skipping classes (especially accounting for which I am deadset against going). Had a conversation with a totally annoying Singaporean student from another program (in a class). We had to come up with policy strategies for a Peruvian privatization of telecommunications and she said that we had to co-opt the military first so that if social unrest was provoked- then the military could keep them in line!!! I WAS LIKE!! HELLO! In most democratic countries, military intervention in social tension situations only ends up provoking the situation and the military is NEVER to be used as an internal peacekeeping force (at the beck and call of any political party in power- it is supposed to be independent of party politics!). JEEZUS. Was so bloody annoyed.

day 1

So today I woke up early despite a hangover from the night before, went to the gym, went grocery shopping, cooked a meal (grilled asparagus spears and broccoli, carrots glazed with dill and mango chicken curry with brown bread and tahini), watched 5 episodes of Grey's Anatomy Season 2, read EVERYTHING for my classes tomorrow (except for one case, only because I don't have it and I would freak myself out if I did everything), cleaned my room, did my laundry (oops just forgot it was in the dryer!), and SWEPT my room, talked to friends from back in London and in Spore, and organized conference (bane of my existence), declined invitation to watch Superbowl with beer and friends, and did my homework and its only 10:30 pm, and now I don't know what to do with myself.

dayz

Gosh. What a week. And its only mid-week and I'm exhausted already. The hits just keep on coming. Its also getting a bit warmer (from - 12 deg Celsius to -2 degrees- you gotta take the wins when you can). We fixed up our living room finally yesterday (living with two boys can dampen the living-squalor-reforming-zeal somewhat) but now we have beautiful bright red slipcovers for our no-doubt feline-disease-ridden sofas and a warm striped red and orange carpet and a television (good heavens). Met with A yesterday and our plan's horizon has been lengthened by a year which has left me with mixed feelings. Still so many people to catch up with. Best line of the day said to A who was trying to get me drunk: "Alcohol is not the answer!". "No, but its a pleasant vacation". Feeling unaccountably sad and can't understand why everyone is exclaiming at my 'glow'. Yet, its also good to be back, to tackle new challenges, to understand the world better, to feel like it is both worth saving and possible to be saved. If only I could keep up the optimism. What's always the strangest thing is that this can go on, while that goes on. But nobody ever said life had to make sense.