Room with a View

The sun rises over the bay as seen from my kids bedrooms. Memorial Day Weekend, 2008

Outdoor breakfast in Tokyo

I eschew "American breakfasts" when I travel. Normally this means three genetically engineered and over-hormonal massive eggs with greasy sausage and toast of mostly questionable origin. And across the world, hotels are proud and happy to accommodate the needs of the traveling hordes by cleaning their menus of creative and unique local favorites all to be replaced with what else - the all too consistent American buffet breakfast. Now I like consistency myself - particularly a Starbucks Latte for breakfast when its otherwise too early for me to experiment, but I like consistency only if I can enjoy it.

This morning's was the perfect experience. I went walking/running around the embassies and quiet residential streets in Akasaka. From there I went to the Starbucks in Ark Hills and got the exact drink I expected (albeit with a courteous style sadly uncommon to where I live). And taking it to the Ark Outdoor Courtyard, I sat down to enjoy my breakfast. The courtyard was being setup for a rose festival and a week of lunchtime concerts. For the twenty minutes I was there, I sat amongst workers wheeling out and setting up the rose displays, probably a hundred varieties in brilliant colors. The beauty of the flowers, the smell in the air, the work ethic of the movers, the attentive arrangement of the gardeners, on a warm sunny Tokyo morning - all juxtaposed against a brilliantly consistent coffee - the same as if I were home - made this an experience one I would look to have again and again. Here are a few photos of the flowers, sans café ... Enjoy.

Pudong or Puxi ?

China is developing at an astonishing rate. The first time I went to Shanghai, I remember looking at a map before the trip to figure out which bank of the Huangpu I should stay on. Mission Impossible 5, the movie partially shot in Shanghai was releasing that month, and if you have seen the movie, you know the Shanghai footage in it and will understand my interest at the time. I picked the Puxi side and every time I have gone since, I look around to see what new skyscrapers are changing the skyline. And the development has been consistently sight numbing.


This time walking into the just opened brand new Terminal 3 at Beijing International Capital Airport was entirely jaw dropping. As airports go (second home for me), this one is at an entirely new level - in size, scale, layout, planning, and service. Similarly the fast changing skyline of the (new) financial district or the brand new Singapore style Airport Expressway was new this time from before. The Olympic Games are coming and boy will China be ready. All in all, around the world, I have never seen development of this scale at this pace (I haven't been to Dubai, though cant imagine it coming close).

That said, there is the darker ecological impact side of this development. I remember musing over the hazy skies in the Bay Area over a weekend a few years ago when the dust storms were blowing sand off the Gobi clear across the Pacific and into the Bay Area, thanks to the severe deforestation around Mongolia. This time I got to experience the sandstorm up close - standing in it, small particles of dust or sand hit your face (or other exposed parts of your body) and prick where they land. Its a unique experience - standing in a strong winds while having hundreds of sharp pings all over your face.

The world is getting to be a small place. As Tom Cruise makes the jump in the movie, its easy for the Shanghai skyline to fill up your family room screen in THX. Unfortunately its just as easy for the sands of Gobi to show up right at your doorstep.

Lychees in Beijing

I had a few great meals in the imperial city of Beijing this week. Beijing is always good for Peking Duck (recommend Da Dong - leaner cuts than average) and great Chinese food (recommend South Silk Road for Yunnan, or this no name place in the financial district right across from the Camway building for Dumplings), and this trip did not disappoint. However, the highlight will go to some surprisingly good lychees I managed to come upon. Given lychees originated in China (and India), and this was Beijing after all, no surprise that these were of exceptional quality. But the world is getting to a point where the best Peking Duck in Beijing is fractionally better than in the Bay Area. Lychees though orders of magnitude are. And so the lychees in Beijing were a pure unexpected delight.

The problem is one of supply chain logistics. Supply drives experience (and taste preference). Experience drives demand. Having just paid $6 a pound for the start of season (and not great) cherries from Chile at my neighborhood produce store this weekend, its clearly not an issue of distance or economics. Lychees (particularly the non genetically engineered delicious ones) have thin skins. And they crack if not handled properly. The best lychees come out of hot tropical climates. And of course, once the skin cracks in a non climate controlled environment, its over. This is the problem with the best lychees in the world. In my mind these are from Muzzafarpur in Bihar, India. My guess is that 75% of these top of the world lychees get consumed within days and hundreds of kilometers of where they are grown. The other 25% rot on their ambitious way somewhere (anyone who has taken a train anywhere in Bihar will understand why, naturally this is before you even get to question of transport refrigeration). I was lucky to enjoy those lychees growing up in India.

I also clearly remember the best lychee experience I have had. We were in East Queensland in Australia and driving around, we happened upon a lychee farm. Stopping to discover, there we tasted three different varieties, all harvested within the last forty eight hours and properly refrigerated in large bins in their farm barn. Standing outside that barn looking out to the lychee orchard, with the smell of the soil in the air on a hot summer day, and discussing lychees and local farming issues and techniques with the 80-some year old farmer and his wife, while tasting cold, juicy and incredibly fresh lychees - that moment was like no other.

I wonder then, is it OK that the supply chain logistics haven't quite caught up to this one little corner ? I remember my father describing drinking fresh (non pasteurized) milk within minutes of milking when he was growing up and remembering how different and better it tasted. In contrast, I cant tell the difference in 2% milk whether I am in New Zealand or Switzerland - and much to the dismay of my wife - even if its organic or not; it all tastes the same. And so as I look to my sons, who grow up in a world different from one I grew up in, and see them go from Hawaiian papayas to Californian strawberries as easily as opening the refrigerator door, I wonder if they will be able to look back in their life - and like me, remember clearly the day they ate the lychees in Muzzafarpur or stood on that farm in Queensland - or came upon a pleasant discovery in Beijing ?

Dinner in Manhattan

I have been smiling for the last hour. I am on the 6am JFK - SFO flight headed home after a few days of meetings on the East Coast; more importantly I had dinner last night with some friends from junior and high school. It was an amazingly fun evening - and difficult to describe all the many happy feelings that came with it.

For context, the last time I had met two of these good friends was some twenty-five years ago. The third, a friend from high school I had been very close to, I hadn't seen or spoken with in some fifteen years. First, for bright, energetic, mobile and committed individuals that we are, how do we let this happen to ourselves ?

Second, as the conversations through the evening unfolded, more memories came unfaded. Driving a metallic blue Fiat to school and feeling on top of the world for doing so. Watching the Asiad on the first color transmissions with a good friend in the early 80s and feeling the shared excitement. Pace bowling in a very crowded public field and the joy and frustration of cracking the ball in a few overs. Walking around in oppressingly hot and humid school afternoons for hours and then looking forward to doing it again. If life is a painting, this is the stuff that the canvas is made of, and it was good to go back and unpeel the sketches that the paint later came upon.

Finally, there is a derived happiness in seeing your close friends happy, content and settled down. The last time I had met few of them, it had been in a world very, very far away from this tony Upper East Side home we were now at. Happy marriages, adorable children, looks of professional achievements in their eyes, and hints of wonder and amazement at what life is yet to bring. If you could go back in life and pick out the best of futures for your closest friends, I doubt it could have been much better. There is joy is knowing that.

Sydney in May

Here are a few photos from Sydney. I have gone from using my cell phone camera to a Sony Cybershot (awesome non-SLR camera, ideal for traveling).

Palmers Lane, Hunter Valley, NSW

I had the rare opportunity, after my last meeting of the day, to visit the Moorebank Estate and taste some of their wines yesterday evening. Moorebank is a small, boutique style vineyard at the address above, and is into sustainable, organic farming. They have a nice location on the lower loop and we were the sole visitors for the time we were there. It was a quiet dusky fall evening and sitting on their front yard I could see kangaroos hopping in the distance. Co-owner Ian Burgess is at once a fiercely passionate and a completely laid back vintner, and I had a fun time with him learning about his wines. This is big Semillon and Shiraz country but he also does some Chardonnay, Verdelho and Gewurztraminer. I tasted a few of their whites; they have an awesome 2006 Chardonnay and a stunning 2003 Late Harvest Traminer. And I had some of their best white, a extremely nicely balanced 2005 Chardonnay with dinner last night. Fantastic wines. In addition, they do brilliant grape sauces.

Back to sustainable organic farming, there is a real growth opportunity here. Speaking with Ian, I learnt that much of his "product positioning" was really into a niche market of people that have allergies. Turns out he sells almost all of his wines by mail list, affording people, that have allergies to the various chemicals that are used in the grape growing and wine making process, an opportunity to try some fantastic wines. That's nice, but as earth awareness grows, and more and more consumers globally get ready to fork out a little more for organically produced food, his "product differentiation" should evolve and organically produced wines could "target market" a broader, more affluent demographic. As a result, I believe there is a real valuation uptick opportunity in this segment. Buying a vineyard, anyone ?

Flying the A380-800

I flew the Airbus A380-800 into Sydney this time (my previous trip was last October - 10 days before SQ put the first A380 into service). It was a great first experience, here's why:

Naturally, it's conceptually thrilling to be flying the most advanced (and largest) passenger aircraft in the world - all the more so, since as of yesterday there were only three A380s in service anywhere in the world (SQ just took delivery of its 4th a few days ago).

Intellectual thrills aside, compared to the 747-400, the ride is definitely more stable (larger wingspan, shorter fuselage), clearly feels way quieter (50% less cabin noise per literature), and actually less tiring since pressurized to a lower altitude (5,000 feet instead of 747's 8,000 feet). More importantly, the ride is greener - the A380 burns 17% less fuel per passenger than the 747 and also, can run on mixed synthetic jet fuel with a natural gas based component - as a frequent flier, this really feels good.

I boarded the upper deck straight from a jetway that attaches to the top level - eliminating the bag drag up the narrow stairs problem in the 747. 2/3 of the top deck is business class in SQ's 471 passenger version - I sat in towards the end of the section, which meant I was slightly behind the wing (see top photo). Seats are best in the industry - extremely nice and similar to the new SQ Business Class seats (also on some of their 777-300ERs including the Seoul - San Francisco route). There is a great demo at SQ's site. And the entertainment system is better, bigger, and has wider options - it kept me up most of the night.

The flight steward took me down the front stairs to the First Class (renamed Suites on SQ) area. Now these were nice - door shut, tandem dining, separate bed, and an even better entertainment section (I didn't sample the wines or food). There is talk now that Emirates upcoming first class version will have a shower as well.

You don't have to be an aeronautical engineer to enjoy the A380-800. I had a flight I will fondly remember for a while.

Dining in Singapore

I spent a couple of days in Singapore on this trip - and had some great meals. I tried the Fullerton Sunday Champagne Brunch with some colleagues. And then ate at a superb Chinese restaurant on Clarke's Quay with some very dear friends from the Bay Area, now settled in Singapore. And I tried the food-court type dining experience at the Grand Hyatt's Straits Kitchen.

The bottomline is this. The dining experience in Singapore is unique and unmatched around the world; for which there are a few reasons. First, the breadth of price options allows a Singapore diner to go from a safe and scrumptious $4.00 meal at a Hawkers Market all the way to upscale world class restaurants (even my India based friends no longer eat at the road-side stalls there). Second, the quality and breadth of food is deep and wide. I found the South Indian food better than in Chennai, the Chinese food just as good as in Shanghai or Beijing. And the Indonesian, Malaysian food unmatched anywhere else. By the way, two cuisines that don’t make this cut are Japanese and French. Still in the broader view, the breadth of available options - type, quality and price segment is absolutely unique in Singapore.

Hotel Service Levels in India

My experience with Indian hotels is pretty dismal when it comes to service. I stayed last week at the Meridien in Chennai and then in Pune, and at the Grand Hyatt in Mumbai. Room rates ($300 - $500) were at international levels, service unfortunately was far from it. I arrived at the check in desk in Chennai to find multiple available front desk clerks all diverting me instead three floors up to the executive level check in - totally unnecessary since I would have foregone the convenience of a sit-in chair for expediency.

Once there, the very servile receptionist sent me walking down a long corridor to the room. By the way for some of these palaces turned hotels this can be quite an ordeal since floors have uneven steps and are often finished in marble (marble has the lowest coefficient of drag in floor surfaces). I entered the room to find someone was already using it. Back again, and then apologizing profusely, he rekeyed me for the correct room - this time with a card swipe unit on the other side of the door that ran out of battery later that night and the door had to be broken open ! Similarly in Mumbai, the board room I reserved didn't have a separately controllable ac unit. The technical glitches could have been tolerable, but the clueless and totally helpless and dumbstruck attitudes of the service staff really made it bad.

In my meetings in the board room, the wait staff would come in and in a painfully slow ritual start pouring coffee into each cup - carefully moving fully around the table before going to fetch the milk/cream that once again was merry go rounded. Most of my attendees were severely distracted - which is a waste given the cost of the meeting in terms of total travel $/min of actual meeting. All this though was delivered with an unobtrusively quiet style, and everyone on staff was unbelievably pleasant and wishing to accommodate. One of my colleagues said it well - they are very helpful but it appears its everyone's first day at their job.

Which brings me to the point. To deliver good service you have to, to use an over used cliché, walk a mile in the other person's shoes (or at least try to visualize it). And this is where the whole system comes crashing down in India.