Posts

Showing posts from October, 2010

I have seen the future

Image
Tonight I watched something quite amazing. I am in Hong Kong for a few days, staying on the Kowloon side, and in a rare spare few hours wandered out towards the water. I stumbled on something called the symphony of lights, a light show unlike anything I have ever seen. It involved all the buildings on the Hong Kong island side lighting up in all kinds of synchronised patterns in time with music drifting across the channel. If you know the Hong Kong skyline, you'll know how impressive it is anyway at night. But this was something else. Lasers, whole skyscrapers changing colour, flashing lights ups and down the office blocks, all perfectly choreographed along the shoreline. It was a stunning piece of technology, far beyond anything I've seen anywhere else, all the more impressive because it was just a bit of fun for the tourists. If ever there was evidence that China and Asia are the future this was it. I felt like I came from a tired old continent, trying to shore itself up af

Life has to mean something

Image
Watched 'About Schmidt', on a flight to Hong Kong yesterday, the 2002 Jack Nicholson film about a man who retires from his career as an Actuary. Soon his wife from a rather unfulfilling marriage dies, his daughter is getting married to a loser, he has nothing to do. He discovers his wife had an affair with his best friend that he never knew about, he visits his old firm and his old school, but they have moved on seamlessly without him. He tries to stop his daughter's wedding with no success. He travels across America in a Winnebago, visiting tacky places and making drab observations on them. It is the story of a life lived without depth or significance. It is the story of a dawning realisation of the need for significance and meaning beyond survival and routine. At the end he says: 'We are all pretty small in the big scheme of things and I suppose the most you can hope for is to make some kind of difference. But what difference have I made? What in the world is better