Monday, November 20, 2006

The white map: what Uzbekistan looks like

Market in Samarkand

Yurts in the desert en route to Khiva

Madrassah & Mosque in Bukhara

''Lonely Planet: Bangladesh'', Marika McAdam


Arguably one of the most enjoyable aspects of going on holiday for me is reading the guide book months in advance. Once I’m actually there I tend to forget about the inevitably limited page on ‘museums in Florence’ and just get on with it; the value comes beforehand. Hence on a rather bleak dark night in Athens, fan heater on to try to counteract the effect of no double glazing or insulation (count yourself lucky Britons, at least you build your houses properly), I’m reading about Bangladesh. In a little under 6 months I’ll be flying over there with my best friend from Geneva and her husband (a British diplomat – always useful in case you trip across a coup) to travel in a truck starting in Bangladesh, then through northern Darjeeling in India, and onto Bhutan. The original plan was to go directly to Bhutan, but this was followed by the discovery that in order to get a visa for the closed kingdom you have to give at least $200 a day to the government, which is somewhat prohibitive. So instead we’re journeying from the wetlands of Bangladesh up into the Himalayas for what will be a much more varied and no doubt eventful journey.

Bangladesh, the most densely populated country in the world, and most well known for floods and other natural disasters, clearly isn’t the usual Thomas Cook holiday choice. But ever since I first took a leap in the dark by going to live in a rural Malawian village (pre-Madonna) and teach English in my gap year, I got the bug for venturing into the unknown. Rather like colonial adventurers had maps of the world with large white areas to represent lands unexplored & uncharted, I have a map in my head of what I can imagine, and what I can’t. That was what made me choose to go to Uzbekistan on holiday a few years ago – could you get your head round what on earth that would be like? (For the record, it’s mostly flat and Soviet in feeling, with stunning medieval Islamic architecture and the most appalling food I’ve ever had the misfortune to encounter).

This certainly isn’t the best guide book I’ve ever read; the opening sentence reads ‘’the highlight of Bangladesh is Bangladesh’’. I was surprised to find the author is a 24 year old recent graduate, which might explain the clumsiness of the writing; but it’s also quite heartening to think that maybe there are really cool jobs out there even for the inexperienced (whether I should pay GBP15.99 for the joy of reading their thoughts is, perhaps, a separate issue). But I’ve read enough to get excited – archaeological remains of ancient cities, Hindu temples and hilltop monasteries, the promise of good curry – and feel the inevitable disconcertion on browsing the 20 page ‘Maintaining your Health’’ chapter. Now there’s just the Greek winter to get through before I grab my combat trousers and Malarone from the back of my wardrobe.

Saturday, November 18, 2006

''One Good Turn'', Kate Atkinson

Like most people, I expect, I’ve gone through phases in my life when it comes to reading. Following a fairly eager childhood diet of ‘’The Secret Garden’’ and ‘’Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret’’ I got reading malaise, brought on by the school curriculum which mostly consisted of books I didn’t relate to. One of my strongest memories of the final year at school was finishing the Samuel Taylor Coleridge poetry module and going back to the Prefects’ Room to jump up and down on the book, attack it with a pair of compasses and finally fling it out of the window (literally). But even once that forcible reading list had gone and I went to University, I still struggled.

The main reason was, how on earth do you find out which books you would like? It seems like a stupid question but I had a fairly narrow-minded Scottish education which didn’t introduce you to a large variety of literature, nor to an approach that would help you navigate forbidding libraries or bookshops. In fact, based on what I’d done at school I had pretty much decided that I didn’t like books, as they all seemed to be stuffy classics full of frilly language & dense description (which I don’t like to this day).

To shock all high-browed better-educated people out there, what actually introduced me back into the idea of reading for fun was Waterstones 2-for-1 table. I’m more than aware that many people find this type of bookselling repellant, but what it did for me was take away the intimidation of walking around rooms of floor-to-ceiling spines, and instead offer a smaller selection of books lots of people enjoy. And indirectly, it introduced me to Modern Fiction, which I’m honestly not sure I knew existed before. Much as I admire (and frankly feel inferior to) friends who read Madame Bovary on the bus, it’s not me. Becoming part of a Book Club in Geneva and starting one in Athens also made me realize maybe it’s not me that’s so unusual but the fact I spent my teenage years in a debating society at a university where people walk around in 18th century clothing for fun.

And hence (by a long detour) we come to ‘’One Good Turn’’ by Kate Atkinson which, as you might have guessed, I bought on the Waterstones 2-for-1 table (at Heathrow, as it happens). This was the type of book I suspect my English teachers would have loathed, but serves its purpose: to keep you entertained. The book is driven by a fairly compelling detective / murder-investigation plot, and the prose is what I’d call ‘’relaxing’’ – it doesn’t add much, it conveys the story, but at the same time it doesn’t really challenge you (which incidentally makes it fall in my category of Bedtime Reading unlike some others which I grudgingly accept I have to read during the day if I’m to stand any chance of following them). This may seem faint praise, but I’m glad there are books out there that play this role – some, like ‘’The Da Vinci Code’’ become unreadable as it’s so obvious they were written for a 6-year-old reading level – but I don’t always want to be challenged by the text itself. The first book for my Book Club in Geneva was ‘’Everything is Illuminated’’ by Jonathon Safran Foer which is excellent & highly recommended but needs to be taken one word at a time to even follow what’s going on. Which is OK sometimes, if you’re in the mood, but there are times I want to be entertained rather than study. Hopefully this all explains why I’m not going to talk about the content of this book – it’s fairly fluffy, and didn’t trigger any profound thoughts apart from a slight homesickness for Edinburgh which is a little strange as I’m not from Edinburgh but from a town nearer the Arctic Circle that looks up to Edinburgh as The Big Smoke. And talking of home, I’m now off to the Athens Caldeonian Society St Andrew’s Ball to showcase my well-honed pas-de-bas and have fun with Roddy the Piper. No, really.

Saturday, November 04, 2006

''Jack: Straight from the Gut'', Jack Welch

I’m not sure whether Jack Welch is a very nice man. In fact, I suspect he’s not. He earned his nickname ‘Neutron Jack’ for his strategy of radically downsizing & streamlining General Electric in the late ‘80s. But ok, that’s business. This is another thing altogether:

‘ Carolyn [his wife] & I simply found ourselves on different paths… it was difficult and painful, but we divorced amicably after 28 years of marriage in April 1987…. When Jane [his new girlfriend, 17 years his junior] and I started to get serious, we had the ‘’why it won’t work’’ talk. I told her it bothered me that she didn’t ski or play golf, and she that I didn’t like the opera. I really wanted a full-time partner, someone who would be willing to put up with my schedule and travel with me on business trips. Jane would have to give up her career. We got married.. for the next few years, I went to the opera, calling it ‘’husband duty’’ until Jane later relieved me of the obligation. While my appreciation for opera didn’t grow, teaching her golf took me to a whole new level’’.

Nice.

This is a book with a ‘Lord of the Rings’ approach. Jack enters a new part of the business, a part he’s never been in before, with mysterious and inefficient ways and strange corporate creatures who seem to dislike him. Then he introduces his strategy and hurrah, the righteous are victors and the battle is won! Then Jack is off to another new part of the business, a part he’s never been in before, with mysterious and inefficient ways…. Alright, Jack, we get it.

And how to achieve this magical journey for oneself? (for there’s no point in reading these books unless you come away thinking, aha, becoming a CEO, it’s all matter of the following 7 steps/habits/tips!). Apparently, efficiency is a big one. Fair enough. As is recognising your core, profitable businesses vs. your peripheral, non-strategic and low margin ones. Makes sense. Whether knowing this will take me from a humble Brand Manager to a CEO remains to be seen, although ‘’Atomic Jen’’ has a nice ring to it (although I suppose I might get confused for a Kitten. Worse things have happened).

I only got to page 149 out of 465. I’m obviously not cut out for the big Corporate Life.

On a final note, I’m slightly concerned that the books I’ve read in the past 2 weeks might give an odd impression: NLP, the philosophy of Language, MOR American humour and now a history of GE. Tell us Lloyd, who lives in a brain like this? I’m guessing over time it will even out but who knows? Maybe, like Schroedinger’s Cat, it’ll all change now I’m being observed…

''The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid'', Bill Bryson

When middle-aged writers reminisce about the 1950s in all its clichéd glory it’s easy to buy into the idea that they experienced one of the greatest periods of change in recent history. This was brought home to me in a particularly embarrassing way a few years back, when we had a lecture at work from a man who had gone to the moon with Apollo 13. After he’d given his slightly stilted old-man speech and shown us some film clips where he was played by Tom Hanks, the floor opened to questions. Never having been shy on this front (as all who have known me, at any age, or in any circumstance, will verify) I put my hand up, and asked him if he ever wanted to be an astronaut as a young boy. To which he answered, fairly gracefully in the circumstances (not a debater, then), that when he was a boy no-one had ever been to space and there was no concept of being an astronaut. Oops. I left work that day still quite dazed by the realization that such a change could have happened in that period of time: ''oh ok there’s the moon; now they’ve invented a way to go there; now I’m going!''. It brought home the scale of change that his generation lived through, which seems incomparable now.

Along with space odysseys, Bill Bryson writes in his autobiography about the introduction of a realm of trivial things now entirely taken for granted – television, fridges, shopping centres, the concept that smoking isn’t actually good for the lungs – as well as some more important ones – the end of racial segregation, the invention & rapid deployment of nuclear weapons. Which begs the question, what’s the equivalent for someone born in 1980 listening to this boast of their parents’ generation? For me, born into middle class Britain, the answers (so far, at least) seem to be comparatively trivial: the invention of the desktop personal computer (but then computers did exist before I was aware of them), the introduction of the mobile phone (and the rather amusing memory that I was resistant to getting my first one because it was uncool and none of my friends had one, but my far-thinking Mother insisted on it for ‘’safety’’).

In fact, I had this general attitude – that nothing much exciting has happened in the last 20 years – until I moved to Geneva and had the perspective-changing experience of meeting lots of people from other countries. I was naively staggered by the realization that people only a handful of years older than me (and from European countries!) have lived through revolutions, civil wars, and even lived under Communist regimes. Which as far as I was concerned was something that happened to old people and you learnt about in History. One particularly memorable evening involved Czech and Hungarian friends reminiscing about the three sets of government regulation clothes that were available to wear as a child, and attending Communist Youth ''nuclear war simulation'' camp. And suddenly you realize: actually, it’s not being born in 1980 that causes this lack of ‘experience’, it’s being born in the UK in 1980. Whilst you can’t possibly be jealous for someone having gone through a social revolution in their country, it does suddenly bring a major respect for the level of maturity that it creates in those who have and makes you wonder how the ‘’easy’’ nature of your own life has influenced you.

So whether sheltered British children of the late 70s and 80s will ever be able to write a book like Bryson’s probably depends on what’s going to happen in the future. Quantum physics seems to be hotting up I’m reliably informed (by occasional skim-reading of New Scientist), and I guess sooner or later we’re going to clone a full human being. In a rather clichéd way it does make one wonder what we’ll be saying when we’re 90 and looking back. But if Bryson is allowed to write 308 pages of cliché then hopefully you’ll allow me just the one.

[Incidentally, my favourite line was a variation on my friend Tom’s classic debating gag (thus proving his potential as an airport-bestseller light comedy writer) : ‘So it perhaps not surprising that as [the nuclear race] happened I sat in Des Moines, Iowa, quietly shitting myself. I had little choice. I was ten months old.’’.]

Thursday, November 02, 2006

''The Language Instinct'', Steven Pinker

You know when you start reading a book and you think ''wow that's bizarre I was thinking/talking about that very idea this morning''? This was one of those. Earlier in the day, I'd been explaining to one of the people who works for me that some sentences in her document just weren't working grammatically in English. When she asked me why, the only answer I could give was ''I have no idea as I'm totally ignorant about grammar, but I just know in my gut it's wrong''. And thus Mr Pinker entered the scene to tell me that my predicament isn't surprising, because grammar isn't something you learn, it's an instinct which all babies are born with.

A lot of this book confounded me, largely due to the technical grammar notation (X-bars? NP?) and references to Chomskian theory, but the underlying argument was fascinating. Pinker's hypothesis is that everyone is born with an ability to understand a Universal Grammar, which boils down to having a grasp of the concepts of nouns, verbs, sentence structure etc. Then, over time, children hear vocabulary from their parents and adapt their innate grammatical structure to that of the local language (for instance, adapting to whether they are learning a Subject-Object-Verb language or a Verb-Objective-Subject one).

A lot of what was interesting for me came from Pinker's use of examples to prove his argument. For instance, apparently all languages in the world can be assessed using the same ''Universal Grammar''; Chomsky noted that a Martian landing on Earth would see all humans as using the same language, just different dialects.

Unsurprisingly children are often used to further the argument - the mistakes of small children in creating words which they've never heard from adults, like ''sheeps'', seems to indicate they are applying these rules themselves. Even when tested with ''if this is called a ''wug'' then what are two of them called?'' children consistently give the right answer. This is a very simple example but much more complicated feats of grammar have been proven on children who are just at the very start of speech development. On the contrary, people who have a certain type of brain damage (Pinker gives an example of a whole family with this disorder) are unable to make any kind of hypothetical analysis of a word they haven't used before and are completely unable to use grammar despite the fact they can talk and have a normal vocabulary.

Also fascinating is the ability of children to independently impose grammar on a language even if they are never exposed to it. One example Pinker gives is when immigrant communities with different languages are suddenly pushed together, for instance in the Caribbean slave planatations. The first generation of slaves developed a ''pidgin'' lanauge to talk to each other, using basic nouns & verbs but entirely without a grammatical system. However, their children, born directly into this language, then immediately imposed a grammar upon it, and thus the ''pidgin'' became a ''creole'', which is as it were a ''legitimate'' new grammatical language. Thus for some time, people aged 30 and over were effectively speaking a different language to those under 10. Amazingly, they have even noticed this in deaf children who are born to hearing parents who have bad sign language - somehow, without any other intervention, the children filter out the bad grammar of their parents' signing, and naturally impose the grammatical rules (say, of ASL) onto it. The references to deaf people are particularly interesting, as neuroscience research shows that it's the same part of the brain that controls vocal language in hearing people that controls sign language in deaf people - not the motor skills area, as you might imagine. Much more of this is covered in a favourite book of mine, ''Seeing Voices'' by Oliver Sacks, which I highly recommend for more insight into deafness and language/communication development.

This book looks at a lot of fundamental questions: ''can you think without language?'', ''why do only humans talk?'', ''did language originate in one place or develop simultaenously?''. I am far from being qualified as a philosopher, linguist or neuroscientist to assess if what Pinker says is correct, but given it at least explains my use of (shaky) grammar without ever having learnt it at school, it's a good enough excuse for me.

''Need to Know? NLP'', Carolyn Boyes

Well, it's a strange start; needless to say (I hope), I don't typically spend my evenings studying seemingly shady ways to influence people. However, on the recommendation of my ex-management consultant father (the reason for that description will become clear) I bought a book on Neuro-Linguistic Programming last week and finished it on a plane at the weekend.

The reason for the recommendation was the realisation that the patented Jenny Persuasion System (tm) may not work as well in all walks of life as I might like. The classic debating technique of ''so you see, A = D yes? you don't agree? Ok, well do you agree A = B? and B = C? and C = D? Then ha ha! I have fooled you and you are admitting yourself that I am right!'', is apparently not the most emotionally persuasive. NLP offers an alternative, based on tapping into the unconscious motivations & beliefs of the other person to guide them round to how you would like them to think, (probably) without them knowing it. It's somewhat tricky - a lot relies on being able to very precisely guess what the other person is thinking based mostly on physiological symptoms (breathing, body language etc.) - and the way you influence them is basically akin to hypnosis.

The danger, it seems, is suddenly appearing like Paul McKenna. It's hard to believe that if one adopted these techniques that it wouldn't be noticed - but apparently lots of people use it incognito all the time. For me, the jury's out. A lot of what they suggest you can do personally (setting goals, visualising success etc.) seem credible & achievable, but I suspect I'll be leaving the hypnosis-by-stealth to the experts.