Example: On Friday we had dinner in one of the most praised Japanese restaurants, Nobu. You call them up for a reservation, and before you can speak to someone, an automatic voice let’s you know that if you want to reserve for a table within one month, please hang up. All booked out. You get through and a friendly person takes the reservation for some day far in the future with the clear message that your slot is between 7 to 9 pm, before your table has to be cleared for the next shift. One day before salvation day, Nobu calls you in order to remind you of your reservation as well as the 2 hour slot-policy.

You arrive in time and get greeted by four very pretty ladies in black skirts, out of which one will escort you to your table (obviously looks is a criteria to get that job :-). You haven’t sat down properly, your waiter presents the menu shortly after which he takes the order. The dishes and drinks in the course of the evening will be brought by six different waiters. Precise just in time-production. You have hardly finished your plate, a helping hand from behind will remove it, and 2 minutes later the new course lands in from of you on you. So are the drinks which get refilled constantly and so on. The dishes are fantastic and the service is immaculate, both in terms of courtesy and efficiency. And just in time, at 8.56 pm we stood up from our table and left. Mission accomplished. 

However, that’s exactly the point. I love perfectionism, and I was really in awe about the service-processes which function like a Swiss clockwork as well as the quality management for the courteous service. But, and that’s my decisive “but”, what is a rare delight if it happens with a mobile phone operator, tends to become awkward in hospitality. This kind of over-engineering in processes tends to carve out the very soul of what is supposed to be a romantic, relaxed dinner in a hospitable place. So my take on this: If you are looking for “Gemütlichkeit”, London might not be the right place for you; you better go to Munich or Croatia. But at least, no complains, one knows what to expect, so it comes as a bit of a “take it or leave it”-deal.

All in all, I enjoyed London, a highlight was certainly our trip to Wimbledon on Saturday where we got tickets for the area from my friend Christian (“Der Aal”). The atmosphere is truly stunning and one can feel the history of the world’s most important tournament. Likewise, yesterday evening I watched the epic history of Rafa Nadal against Roger Federer in the men’s final which ended at 9.16 pm local time in the 5th set with 9:7!

Old England, I’ll be back. And not to forget metioning: God save the Queen.

What's cool, too, my good old friend Christian from Bangalore (nom de guerre "Der Aal") had been able to organize us some tickets for Wimbledon on Saturday, to get into the compound at least, and get a glimpse on the athmosphere. Apparently there is also the opportunity to spend a fortune on the traditional glass of champagne with strawberries. Let's see … Really looking forward to visit Europe's most diverse metropolitan. 

Take-off from Bangalore Airport (Bengaluru) which earlier in the day had its inauguration opening, the flight to Bangkok (=City of Angels) turned out to be the second flight to leave BIALA in a historic moment for me as an avid pilot. Celebrating the inauguration I spontaneously decided to sing my favourite song there because the passage of "Kentucky Fried Chicken" symbolizes through its movement of wings the transformational force which humanity has undergone through the rise of general aviation - LOL

An impressive achievement from this private-public venture. Surprisingly all went relatively smoothly, Thai Airways had to wait for the Indian flight to touch soil on the new runway. Understandably a matter of honour. Finally landed early morning in Bangkok, greeted by a man in a uniform, turned out to be the driver from Mandarin Oriental …

 … where later in the evening we got to see this firework from our hotel room with a view on the Chao Praya-River.

Women, such details turn them into little girls :-) The days flew with meeting friends, clubbing, shopping, spa and delicious FOOD.

Two places to recommend Vertigo at Banyan Tree 61 floors above Bangkok, "vely lomantic".

And thanks to friends an insiders tip, an experience out of this world is the Seafood  Market & Restaurant. where you buy all your ingredients from veg to fresh fish and then place everything in your trolley, check-out, sit down and the cook takes everything and prepares your menu. A feast for all senses.

Ah, the couples spa package at Mandarin was a lovely experience but honestly, the local “SERIOUS” Thai massages are still the best!

Anyway, in case someone is interested on more vision and foresight in terms of "what's next" on the global scene, being addressed from an entirely different angle in the shape of a novel, I happily recommend 8W8. The author is Ralf Hirt whom I met in January after moderating the India-panel at the DLD-conference in Munich. It's instrumental to understand the background of Ralf to become clear on both his motivation and insight: He has held leadership positions in the internet industry for a decade and has lived all over the world, in his home town Stuttgart, Hong Kong, Sydney, London and currently New York. In crossing these two lines of experience extrapolating their status-quo plus visioning with lots of foresight, he conceived his first book 8W8. It is worthwhile mentioning that the book is indeed fiction, yet the concept of a "new world modelling engine" are not so far away that this book would fall into the category of "science fiction".

Well, what is it about? The storyline deals with 15 high calibre people from of the "Golden Sky", a community committed with the aspiration to change the world for the sake of good. These 15 people come from a whole array of diverse backgrounds, like Oskar Feller, an editor for a leading internet magazine, Maria who is a doctor developing high-scale programmes to fight HIV/AIDS, Priyanka from India who is an IT-crack working for a global media company or Emanuel, a philosopher and Taoist who has been named for the Nobel Prize. All the characters of the story are here on the 8W8-blog. This group of people is hosted by Winston Chee, a billionaire internet-entrepreneur from China in his island on Hawaii EA-RA.

In this serene and secluded environment, the 15 brains spend a whole week picking each other brains and inspiring each other to solve one crucial problem: How to make the interrelations of economies and people visible in a sort of virtual map-overlay on top of the existing geography. What they come up with is the new world modelling engine "8W8" which can be pictured as a virtual helicopter the "pilot" would use to fly over the terrain of the earth to make these invisible connections visible. Delving even deeper into the concept it transcends into a new form of radical constructivism as the vision the pilot would receive on his dashboard would be a crossover between absolute measurable truths and his set of values/selective perception. What the pilot would get to see is both on “earth level” and on “sky level” the “volumes” of a whole set of parameters. The former range from hard factors like population, GNP, metrics on infrastructure, public institutions to innovation, the latter comprise for example metrics for democracy, human rights, quality of living, level of terrorism and such.

Yet, what is more that beyond statistics on GNP or PPP which are available as top-level data today, 8W8 equally entails a bottom-up approach from the level of the “element” (individual) which will aggregate in “streams” into “Global Space Tribes” according to its interest, e.g. “MBA Jazz Wireless Tribe (MBAJWT)”, “Catholic Fast Food Blue Collar Single Mother of Four (CFFBCSMF)” or the “Taoist Tribe (TT)”. These become even more interesting if one looks at actual vertically positioned Web 2.0 platforms which either try to bring a community of like-minded people together like “Dogster” or provide a tool to define and organize a target group of any shape like Ning. Yet, both of these platforms have in common that they require someone to become a “member” by “registration” and do all these various steps actively online. In that context I do believe that there will be not in too far future a kind of “ambient computing” where the unconscious behaviour patterns will be able to bring people in a meaningful way together. Hence, aggregating this sort of behaviour and making it somehow visible is not that far away from 8W8’s concept of the “Global Space Tribe”.

One thing I had hoped throughout the whole story to occur, is a bit more of conflict, friction, sex: As Oskar and Theresa, a computer scientist, seem to come along very well, I waited for that forbidden kiss, the clandestine quickie to happen under the waterfall of perfectly pristine EA-RA. Not for the sake of sensation, but to portray people regardless of their brains and social status when they become most human: emotional to the extent of irrational. The figures appear prim and proper, and at best tease each other lightly in order to surely succumb to perfect harmony. Irrespective of that, what I liked from a storytelling point of view is the ability to portray a broad set of global citizens who find a common denominator to discuss a topic, be focussed in defining a goal, accepting each other’s variety of viewpoints, being non-judgemental and fully embark on the beneficial concept of diversity.

Altogether, I liked the book a lot as it is coherently able to explain the road ahead in globalization by the force of the internet and the road ahead of the internet by the force of globalization. What gave me food for thought via the concepts of “Global Space Tribes” was the decreasing influence of governments, because free people in a free world are able to cross-pollinate their ideas and aspirations regardless of the strangulating rigidity of what we call a country today.  For someone like me who happily articulates his despise of today’s governments, the vision of 8W8 is one which deserves active pursuit.

Who is interested in buying the book, Amazon has it, either in print or for the Kindle.  

So one after the other:

• Sure, surprise, surprise, India is good at software engineering, yet as I have written already on this blog a few times, it's always a number game, hence: If you have 5 people for at least 3 months, it's worth considering. The more and the longer - the better.
• For BPO also big numbers pay off and it always will be much easier, maybe only feasible, if the task is not to a large degree dependant on German language.
• Content-production can work, again in English language. The challenge will be in recruiting and quality assurance, and again, will only pay off with scale.

Mediadonis charmingy titled this show "Rent a Jobkiller", no wonder as I had explained plainly : "My business model rests on two pillars: One is slashing German jobs and increasing unemployment, the other exploiting poor Indians and taking away their future". As there are really people who argue such nonsense with fully conviction, I have made it a virtue to repeat it ironically as often as possible …

• The retreating state prompts an enhanced self-responsibility of the individual for health, private pensions, continuous education, etc.
• It is about "re-conquering" one’s own sovereignty about when and where to make a decision.
• People start interpreting the gaps and blanks of the retreating state as their own creative spaces: empowerment instead of accepting deficits.
• To reach their goal of a self-determined life, people form situational alliances: cooperation, dialogue and networking are the key principles people will live by.
• The "New Social Responsibility" combines public spirit and self-interest in a win-win-situation.

Other countries in Europe, but also Russia and the United States are displayed here. Not too surprisingly, globalization gets perceived predominantly as a threat where the reaction ranges from patriotism to denial to retreat into the local community. Looking a bit at the comparison between Germany and the other countries, my old joke seems to get confirmed that fortunately Germany in its own shitty state maintains with France and Italy two other countries it can still look down to ;-)

Overall I picked those 5 bullet-points above as I feel they reflect pretty well my own values according to which I try to live in 2008. My disbelief in Vater Staat (=Father Goverment, as a German proverbs tend to say) is tremendously profound and although the strangulation by tax and even more tax, besides other intrusions, are not coming to an end, people with sufficient flexibility will make their own choices about where and how they want to live and follow the old valid principle "You better have a plan for yourself, before someone else has his plan for you".

I guess I could go on and on about what I did in the last four weeks. But in case someone asks "what happened?", I would have to respond francly "nothing unusual". It has been a very active, inspiring and beautiful time as I feel overall that life is great at the moment. To start with the small pleasures, I downloaded with iTunes the new Madonna album "Hard Candy" where she did it again, the by far sexiest 50-year old on the planet, particulary with her the songs "4 Minutes" and "Devil".

Sure, travelling was there as usual which is plenty and exciting. San Francisco (picture set) was a blast on the Web 2.0 Expo where I began to consider a relocation for a period of three months or so.

I understand pretty well why the valley is such a hotbed for innovation on the web, and the fact that the smartest people are around, is just half the answer. The other half lies in the openness in approaching and talking to others, without any arrogance or judgement, and looking forward to a good conversation. I remember being at a party when a young guy started to talk to me in a very friendly way, when I got told that it had been Mark Mullenberg, the founder of Wordpress, a blogging software with almost 60 mn users, one of them being me just typing this post into "his" application.

Then I happened to be in my Croatian home in Rovinj for the annual get-together with my best-best friends which I have known for more than 20 years since we went to school together. (Guido is missing on the pic; he's the photographer :-)

It's over and over an overwhelming experience to feel this trust and bonding as we grow older together. Not to withhold that when we are together in this constellation over a few days, all efforts of our parents for good manners just start to fade and we behave like 15-year old idiots in puberty, like right in the time when we me for the first time.  And from the bottom of our hearts not a lot seems to have changed …

Rovinj's magic is able to capture everyone instantly; one day we chartered a Cessna 172 to inspect the scenario from above; here the overflight of the fisehmen's village with a little left turn above the peninsula.

Some more pictures from Rovinj, the flight, along with short video clips, are here on this Flickr-set. The next days to come will be rewarding, too. On Wednesday, I will be in Hamburg for an EO-party hosted by Thomas from Gimahot, Thursday with LH 754 from Frankfurt to Bangalore and 20 hours later for an extended weekend with my girlfriend to Bangkok, one of my most favourite cities.

Had to mention this fact with "my girlfriend" to avoid misinterpretation of my intentions there … ;-) 

I am happily looking forward to the conference which I had attended last year already. It's a very hands-on event with learnings not so much like on the Web 2.0 Summit in November on the Big Business and Grand Talks of Bigwigs, but rather on getting things done. Not too bad either, if this is what the end matters.

So now I stranded here in San Francisco for a week, me, the "Digital Nomad" how a phenomenal special in "The Economist" has put together two weeks ago. Lots of worthwhile thoughts which had also made me think. For one, geography is definitely history. Many offices no longer have settings for each employee, but they rather provide space which can be instantaneously designed as an individual or collective place - with ubiquitous Wi-Fi. Or you don't really need an office at all, working from home or connecting from e.g. a Starbucks is increasingly becoming the norm. Anyway, the "Third Place" besides or between home and office is the new buzzword for both an infrastructural framework of the “homo mobilis” and a huge opportunity for innovative entrepreneurs. Thanks to tools like virtually accessible disk space, online social networks like XING or Skype the walls of a company and the borders of countries have been flattened alike.

Not really surprisingly, I could find myself very well in this portray. And I could second the downsides of this development. Being always on, everywhere connected but never there. I have been describing my state of mind increasingly like a self-selected semi-autism where I am cognitively in my own world with little influence of the real world around me. As a remedy I have actively sought to connect to friends whom I care for in person at these places to make that decisive difference. At the end, that's what I realized, nothing can replace the holistic experience of having someone you care for in front of you, with his or her mimic, gesture and kinetics. Poking someone on Facebook and poking someone on the shoulder is not one and the same thing.

I bow my head in deepest respect for all the work which Shashi and the other volunteers are putting into making this place a little oasis for those who would otherwise be forgotten and left behind. The place is neat, in good shape and very well run which is a challenge by itself: hiring some full-time staff, refurbishing things which need it most and constantly trying to find donors for funding.

I got such a very warm welcome by the around 50 children who were waiting in excitement for the “Uncle from Germany”, sitting row by row on mattresses. Many questions which I had to answer from “What do people eat in Germany” to “Why are you so tall”? I spend a good there, at some point solving some algebra equations with them (they really got all of them right). It was indeed for me very touching seeing all these bright, curious and energetic kids in front of me who certainly did not have the best start in the past, but thanks to Vatsalya could look into a brighter future.

Here is the bedroom of the children where they start their day really early at 5.30 am. And I could tell that they made a very robust and disciplined impression without missing out on giving them as much love as such a setting allows for. (Here are, by the way, a few more pictures on Flickr.)

My words in Vatsalya’s guestbook started with: “Where there is caring, there is hope”. Yet “caring” should not just remain an abstract metaphor on paper, but ought to translate into an obligation for myself to make a difference. For instance, reasonable money can pay for many clothes, books or desks in the classroom. And spending time there means equally doing a favour to the children as it doing a favour to myself for staying grounded to the realities of life and receiving these small little gestures that money can’t buy.

"Bulla Ki Jaana Maen Kaun" actually means "I don't know who I am" and pays tribute to the famous Urdu poet Bullae Shah, a beacon of peace between rivalling Muslims and Sikhs in Punjab. It's worthwhile noting that the poet wrote at the beginning of the 19th century, yet his message hasn't lost anything from its relevance today. In sync with the lyrics, the video shows what the mystery of India is about. Many people, different people who in spite of their various background form a "unity through diversity" as writer and diplomat Shashi Tharoor explains in his fluid book "The Elephant, the Tiger and the Cellphone". And the pre-eminent statement "I don't know who I am" serves much less a confession of one's disorientation or, worse, lack if identity than the acknowledgement of one's humility during the pressing quest for truth. 

Hope you like the song, too, along with the video, the entry-scene of the magic Taj Mahal Hotel in Bombay, with it's fast cuts, it's deliberate blurs, it's changing places, colours and faces. In all the possible abstraction of a song, its whole mood reflects precisely that India is a never-ending stream of discovery. Where now knowing who you are, is both a starting point and and end in itself.