Making the world a little smaller …

… by learning another language. I am in Bochum now, in the Landesspracheninstitute (Country Language Institute) of the Ruhr University Bochum, studying intensively the Arabian language.

How often have I asked myself, what are others talking on the train. You understand the English part, the German one, I get the Chinese ones, but the Arabic ones, so far not. I hope to change that, for in understanding others, you loose fear and in loosing fear you just made the world a little smaller, growing together and establishing acceptance & tolerance.

Train travels to do in this world …

The Kayak Blog has posted 5 interesting train travels (including booking information) which seem quite interesting.

Check them out.

Three Cups of Tea

Just finished reading the amazing story of Greg Mortenson and his mission in Pakistan in the book “Three Cups of Tea”. Failed ascent on K2, Greg was brought to a rural and remote village, promising one day to return and build these villagers a school. Ten Years later more than 50 schools have been built by the Institute formed by him and Dr. Jean Hoerni.

What an amazing effort this man has done to enable thousands of young poor Pakistani to receive primary education and enable girls and boys to attend higher education schools, seeding a plant of knowledge in a country forgotting by most of the world.

I pay my respects and recommend everybody to not only visit Greg Mortenson’s website, but also check out his Pennies For Peace initiative and the Central Asia Institute.

United Nations – I’ve been there

The sign of the UN, originally uploaded by Azchael.

A dream came true. I have been in the place that made history, that is issue of discussions worldwide, that in fact is actually worldwide. I have been in the United Nations, the one political instrument thought to bring peace to the world, yet still fails to keep up its promise.

Still, standing in the General Assembly of the UN, seeing the images of news agencies, speeches and votes passing by my inner eye, I feel more than just impressed. I feel the need of the world for a place as this. And I feel the many many things that have been actually accomplished, despite the eventually complicated and beaurocratic procedures world politics go through and fail…

See the children…

Back from NYC

History of rock music in China

Finally I came around on working on the history of rock music in China again, adding sources and references and thereby not only making the article more reliable, but also giving credit to those researchers that took an in-depth look into the music scene of China, as there are Steven Schwankert, Andreas Steen, Lisa Movius and Jereon Groenewegen (to name a few).

Thanks to the <ref> and {{cite}} function of Wikimedia!

The development of the rock music scene in “Opening up to the West” China is interesting for me in two aspects: First to see the cat-and-mouse play between bands and government around 1990 and second the way in which different styles and musical genres found their way into the country.

The article is part of the online webpage Rock in China, which, together with a good friend of mine, I am pursuing to document the rapidly growing music scene in mainland China, including a historical overview, band biographies and music sample downloads (free and legal). The website is already up and running for more than 4 years and has established itself as the largest online English language information source in this regard.

If anybody knows additional sources and articles about this topic, please feel free to post them, so I can take them into consideration the next time I work on the history of rock in China .

Shareholder value – Down to the basics

In regard of the discussion about shareholder value, I thought it necessary to lay out the basics first before further approaching into the topic. Therefore I am currently studying the book “Shareholder value” by Rappaport, trying to understand the underlying principles and definitions of shareholder value to fertilize future discussions.

One important note I found already valid in present discussions is the annotation that the actual shareholder value should be thought of as a long-term value and not as a short-term increase in stock rates. The actual value comes from the long-term sustainable growth in value, not in the short-term peak. Therefore measurements taken in present-day industries reflecting “shareholder value” by adding short-term stock value raises should not be considered “shareholder value”.

Finished reading The Terror

Just finished reading a very interesting book called “The Terror” (Amazon) by Dan Simmons. It topiced the failed Franklin Expedition on search for the North-West-Passage in the Arctic Ocean north of Canada.

Standing out as a historical fiction book, The Terror displays a large amount of historical correctness and stars Francis Cozier as the book’s hero, alongside John Franklin.

Despite the historical events, Dan Simmons edited a supernatural force into the story, relying heavily on Inuit mythology. Whoever is interested in that should definitely swap across the later chapters.

A good summer or winter nights read.

Travel plans?

Recently I am thinking of doing some more travels in the future and I was looking for some of the more extreme travel destinations. Checking Wikipedia on a list of all countries of this world, you find some interesting candidates:

• Niue (Travel info | Europe Representatives for booking flights)
• St. Lucia (Thorn Tree Forum at Lonely Planet)

Checking with Lufthansa or Expedia will show up 0 results for Niue, same applies for St. Lucia, u cannot even choose the country. And how can I get to Nepal? I registered at Thorn Tree (Lonely Planet) to have a closer look on some interesting countries to go. Ahh… I love travelling…

Shareholder value – bliss of the world?

Recently I came into a discussion with a Russian colleague of mine, someone who had not only experienced the downfall of the Soviet Union, but also the rise of capitalism in his own country, the negative impacts of helplessness and the sheer amount of consume and money-spending.
The discussion circled around the concept of shareholder value. Surprisingly for me, my Russian colleague stood totally behind this topic, supporting it and emphasising on the fact that capitalism and free market theory are the only effective concept to guarantee the spread of wealth among people contrary to communism belief.

I stood up to another idea: The superiorism of stakeholder value towards shareholder value, the idea that a company should be and actually already is part of society, its social networks and its social responsibilities. In my opinion shareholder value is only aspect of stakeholder value and only one of the aspects to be taken into account when a situation needs a decision.

Interesting enough our discussion went into a lot a lot a lot of details on how decisions are based on identities and values, on how companies should have what specific place in society, the role of governments in the way capitalism should act or enact and basically we both came to the same conclusion or at least we could agree to the same principle: that we are driven by ideas, that people are driven by values and that a system can never be just a system but is consisting of people. People grown up believing in principles and values.

Values they have inherited, they have learned. That our culture (see Hofstede) is telling us are worth to believe in.

Cultures, civilizations. Hofstede, Huntington.

In my opinion we need a change in present capitalistic thinking. Towards Stakeholder Value! A company cannot push away its responsibility towards society, government, competition, shareholders, employees, customers and suppliers. There is more to a company than pure concentration on the stockmarket. And I hope people in responsible positions will learn to base their decisions upon that.