Plain Sunset on a Monday night

14 August 2009
by Arnaldo Pellini
Uncategorised

‘Bingo!’, said the custom police woman at Singapore airport while looking my passport. She then looked at me and said, ‘So you are happy birthday boy’. ‘Yes, I am’. The place was quite empty. The few border police looked bored and were probably thinking about the end of the night shift. She called three other colleagues to look at my passport: born on 10.8.1967 and I pass entering Singapore on 10.08.2009. 42 years later. They four of then then sang the first few words of the Happy Birthday tune. Nice surprise. I thank them and smiling walked to the airport hotel.

While walking to the hotel I though about the odd day of my birthday: 10 of August. The middle of summer. The middle of the holiday time in Europe. When I was in high school I used to be in my hometown, Cremona, for the birthday. Not because I liked it. The town was empty. Everybody off on holiday. Hot and humid. But every year I had to re-sit math in September before being accepted to the next year. One year I had both math and latin. That meant staying at home in August and study things I was going to understand anyway.

Later when I could start traveling it I could really never guess where I would have been on the 10th of August. Like this year. In Singapore on my way to Nha Trang in Vietnam. A Happy Birthday song at Chiangi airport. Walking at Marina Bay, watching Singapore skyline, the dotted lights of the windows of the high risings looking at the sea. And the Plain Sunset playing on a seaside stage.

Just published – Transition management

6 August 2009
by Arnaldo Pellini
Uncategorised

Here is the introduction and link to an article Arnaldo just wrote with Eddie Borup on management and change in Vietnam.

Available at Projects and Profits

Transition Management: The Key towards Achieving Results

Nothing in this world is as certain as change. At the same time, the search for a definition of `change’ has been taking place for a long time and is still unresolved. The Greek philosopher Aristotle, has said, “change is the actuality of the potential qua such.” This can be translated in a more modern language, as noted by Jonathan Barnes, “something is in the process of change whenever it possesses a capacity of change and it is exercising that capacity of change.”

Barnes argues that Aristotle struggled to provide a clearer definition. However, Aristotle’s attempt to come to terms with the idea of change also demonstrates the relevance of the concept for human activities. This difficulty has always been present during the 2,300 years, which separate us from Aristotle and even though the definition provided by Barnes seems more intelligible to us, change remains an elusive concept.

In this article, we look at `change’ in the area of transition management. We present the experience of introducing a Western management approach at the Vietnam Academy of Social Science (VASS). This is being done through a United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) funded project: “Support for Effective Policy Making Through the Development of Scientific Evidence-Based Research” (EBPM). In doing so, our aim is to reflect on the process of cultural exchange as well as on the challenges that this exchange poses.

Development assistance has gone through considerable changes during the last 50 years. During the 1950s, the theories associated to John Maynard Keynes asserted the central role to the government in devising policies to promote demand and fight unemployment. These led to the design of centralized modernization strategies, aimed at achieving higher rates of economic growth. In the early 1960s, Hans Singer produced evidence that development did not achieve poverty reduction and pointed at individuals’ capacity to increase capital as a key element of economic development. His ideas led to the concept of `human capital’, which describes the crucial contribution of knowledge and schooling to economic growth. In the late 1980s, the return to a neo-liberal emphasis brought the market back on the development agenda, but by the 1990s, the `third way’ political discourse advocated a new role for the state, in designing institutions that are conducive to accelerated growth and socioeconomic development.

Just published in New Zealand

6 August 2009
by Arnaldo Pellini
Uncategorised

Arnaldo just published a short article on  the role of Buddhist pagodas in dealing with poverty in Cambodia in the development magazine Just Change published in New Zealand.

Buddhist aid: Pagodas reducing poverty in Cambodia

This article tells the story of the Pagoda Association of Botum, a pagoda that has survived a devastating totalitarian regime to become a source of real poverty reduction in the community.

Available in .pdf here (2.3Mb)

Just published.

6 August 2009
by Arnaldo Pellini
Uncategorised

 

Here is the introduction and link to an article I just wrote with Eddie Borup on Management and change in Vietnam.

Available at Projects and Profits

Transition Management: The Key towards Achieving Results

Nothing in this world is as certain as change. At the same time, the search for a definition of `change’ has been taking place for a long time and is still unresolved. The Greek philosopher Aristotle, has said, “change is the actuality of the potential qua such.” This can be translated in a more modern language, as noted by Jonathan Barnes, “something is in the process of change whenever it possesses a capacity of change and it is exercising that capacity of change.”

Barnes argues that Aristotle struggled to provide a clearer definition. However, Aristotle’s attempt to come to terms with the idea of change also demonstrates the relevance of the concept for human activities. This difficulty has always been present during the 2,300 years, which separate us from Aristotle and even though the definition provided by Barnes seems more intelligible to us, change remains an elusive concept.

In this article, we look at `change’ in the area of transition management. We present the experience of introducing a Western management approach at the Vietnam Academy of Social Science (VASS). This is being done through a United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) funded project: “Support for Effective Policy Making Through the Development of Scientific Evidence-Based Research” (EBPM). In doing so, our aim is to reflect on the process of cultural exchange as well as on the challenges that this exchange poses.

Development assistance has gone through considerable changes during the last 50 years. During the 1950s, the theories associated to John Maynard Keynes asserted the central role to the government in devising policies to promote demand and fight unemployment. These led to the design of centralized modernization strategies, aimed at achieving higher rates of economic growth. In the early 1960s, Hans Singer produced evidence that development did not achieve poverty reduction and pointed at individuals’ capacity to increase capital as a key element of economic development. His ideas led to the concept of `human capital’, which describes the crucial contribution of knowledge and schooling to economic growth. In the late 1980s, the return to a neo-liberal emphasis brought the market back on the development agenda, but by the 1990s, the `third way’ political discourse advocated a new role for the state, in designing institutions that are conducive to accelerated growth and socioeconomic development.

Plinius and (half-read) books

14 July 2009
by Arnaldo Pellini
Quote

images I remember collecting sign books for some years.  One day I got hold of one of the Italian publishing house Adelphi. Pink color, with just one sentence on it by, Gayus Plinius Secundus also known as Plinius the “Old”, born in 24 B.C. in Como. The rough English translation of Plinius sentence could be: ‘there is not such thing as a bad book where you cannot learn at least one thing’.  After that i bought good books as well as bad books. Books I could not stop reading and others where I felt it was like walking in a mires. I used not to give up on bad books, looking for the good thing Plinius mentioned centuries ago. Giving up was bad.

In recent years things have changed. I hardly finish a book anymore. Good or bad does not matter, I just rarely manage to get to the end of them. As I am typing this two exceptions come to my mind: The Magus which I could not stop reading and which was my book of 2008 and more recently The Tipping Point by Malcom Gladwel. These are exception and no longer the rule. I just seem to jump from one book to another. Two weeks ago I was in Tanzania, bought Unbowed by Nobel Peace price winner, Wangari Maathai. It is the story of her life and how she established the Green Belt Movement in Kenya. I really like reading it while in Africa. He memories of childhood living in villages in the mountainous region of the country. her description of the changes that occurred with independence and the arrival of settlers and missionaries. I reached, I think, page 85 and then put it away as soon as I arrived home when my eyes caught The Black Swan by Nassim Nicholas Taleb. I ma at page 69, determined not to let go. But that is maybe a wrong resolution. It is in fact OK not to finish a book. Plinius lesson holds still valid as it does not matter how much of a book you read, you can still get things out of it. One sentence which is worth underlining, a quote, a thought, a description of a landscape which gives you the wish to travel, a feeling. It is probably true that the sum of all these  elements give the overall meaning of a book, but it may be ok  just to have glimpses of it.  Some books also need to be red in certain place and at a certain time. Wangari book was for the two weeks I spent in Tanzania (which were not sufficient to finish it). The Millenium trilogy by Stieg Larsson I had to finish while still living in the Swedish Camp in Ha Noi and really slep very little in the two three last days there to read what would happen to Lizbeth. The Black Swan is here next to me. Wanted  to read it tonight and then started to type this blog.

Taleb writes that the people who visit Umberto Eco house are really impressed by his 30.000 books. The visitors can be divided in two groups: the majority are the ones who ask how many books Eco has managed to red, and a minority who understand that the books are research tools and that maybe the most valuable  ones are those that have not been red yet. This may justify fact that it is ok not to finish a book. However I still feel a sense of guilt when I give up on a book. As if I missed the chance to discover all it has to say to me.

So what do you think? Should books be read form page 1 to the end or is it ok to capture bits and pieces here and there?

Plinius and (half red) books

14 July 2009
by Arnaldo Pellini
Uncategorised

I remember collecting sign books for some years.  One day I got hold of one of the Italian publishing house Adelphi. Pink color, with just one sentence on it by, Gayus Plinius Secundus also known as Plinius the “Old”, born in 24 B.C. in Como. The rough English translation of Plinius sentence could be: ‘there is not such thing as a bad book where you cannot learn at least one thing’.  After that i bought good books as well as bad books. Books I could not stop reading and others where I felt it was like walking in a mires. I used not to give up on bad books, looking for the good thing Plinius mentioned centuries ago. Giving up was bad.

In recent years things have changed. I hardly finish a book anymore. Good or bad does not matter, I just rarely manage to get to the end of them. As I am typing this two exceptions come to my mind: The Magus which I could not stop reading and which was my book of 2008 and more recently The Tipping Point by Malcom Gladwel. These are exception and no longer the rule. I just seem to jump from one book to another. Two weeks ago I was in Tanzania, bought Unbowed by Nobel Peace price winner, Wangari Maathai. It is the story of her life and how she established the Green Belt Movement in Kenya. I really like reading it while in Africa. He memories of childhood living in villages in the mountainous region of the country. her description of the changes that occurred with independence and the arrival of settlers and missionaries. I reached, I think, page 85 and then put it away as soon as I arrived home when my eyes caught The Black Swan by Nassim Nicholas Taleb. I ma at page 69, determined not to let go. But that is maybe a wrong resolution. It is in fact OK not to finish a book. Plinius lesson holds still valid as it does not matter how much of a book you read, you can still get things out of it. One sentence which is worth underlining, a quote, a thought, a description of a landscape which gives you the wish to travel, a feeling. It is probably true that the sum of all these  elements give the overall meaning of a book, but it may be ok  just to have glimpses of it.  Some books also need to be red in certain place and at a certain time. Wangari book was for the two weeks I spent in Tanzania (which were not sufficient to finish it). The Millenium trilogy by Stieg Larsson I had to finish while still living in the Swedish Camp in Ha Noi and really slep very little in the two three last days there to read what would happen to Lizbeth. The Black Swan is here next to me. Wanted  to read it tonight and then started to type this blog.

Taleb writes that the people who visit Umberto Eco house are really impressed by his 30.000 books. The visitors can be divided in two groups: the majority are the ones who ask how many books Eco has managed to red, and a minority who understand that the books are research tools and that maybe the most valuable  ones are those that have not been red yet. This may justify fact that it is ok not to finish a book. However I still feel a sense of guilt when I give up on a book. As if I missed the chance to discover all it has to say to me.

So what do you think? Should books be read form page 1 to the end or is it ok to capture bits and pieces here and there?

Once in a while you come across ‘Once’

12 July 2009
by Arnaldo Pellini
Uncategorised

Only once in a while, while zapping an endless number of TV cable channels you come across a movie which is a little gem. Just once in a while. That is when time passes, you know that is getting late, that tomorrow morning will be an early wake up, but you do not care. It has happen tonight, here in Ha Noi, coming across ‘Once’ by Glen Carney. Had the same feelings I had when watching Trust of Hall Hartley many years ago. It seems to me that it tells once of those true stories of life when you just touch with your fingertips the soft fabric of a life that could have been. But then, you realise that what you have is what you want. There are videos of the songs of the movie by Glen Hansard here.