Copenhagen, Denmark

May 29th, 2010 • Travel Stories

The Curious Case of the Drunk American:
When: April 2011; 4 days

The Little Mermaid, Copenhagen

I have one remarkable story to share. The solitary statute of the Little Mermaid (from Hans Christian Anderson’s fairy tale) is Denmark’s pride. We made the thirty minute walk from Nyhaven to see her. The guidebooks extol her beauty but we were warned to keep our expectations in check.

We were besotted. She was breath-taking. She evokes a deep sadness and longing. The area was least assuming – no tourist traps, no food vendors or memento vendors. Just her. Alone on her rock.

A passing cyclist stopped by us and chatted us up cracking jokes and telling us little anecdotes about the Mermaid. For a 98 year old statute, the Little Mermaid has suffered two decapitations, one theft and and several vandals (once someone colored her entirely neon pink). But she’s just been restored back to her original state by the Danish government. “She’s the most photographed little lady in the world, perhaps.” remarked our cyclist friend.

It was a calm evening and the dusk was fast approaching. We were high on conversations and the Baltic air. The atmosphere around us was full of lightness and happiness. A bunch of backpacking Euro kids stopped by and admired the Mermaid’s graceful stance. A father hoisted his two daughters on a stone next to the Mermaid to take a better picture. All was well until, three (I’m afraid) loud, brash and severely inebriated American kids ambled up to the Statue. On their arrival, the moment was broken and the spell was broken. The crowd began dispersing.

One of the drunk kids, decided to truly prove every single stereotype about Americans (but didn’t realize that he was just illustrating a stereotypical asshole.) He proceeded to climb up the slippery rock and mount himself on top of the Little Mermaid. Then he began making vulgar proclamations and touching the Mermaid inappropriately. Several families with kids turned away and the group of European kids stood transfixed observing this uncouth American kid. He commanded his drunken friends to take photographs of himself over the Mermaid. And after entertaining him for a few minutes even his drunk friends sensed the disdain and rage amongst the bystanders and became nervous. They began making loose statements and disowning their friend, “I don’t know you.. You aren’t with us. Get down.”

This encouraged the drunk friend and he took his antics a notch above. My heart reached out for the motionless statute. I understand its a lump of metal, but the kids antics felt extremely violating.  98 years of history had bequeathed the statute a life. What this kid was doing and what probably several other kids had done, felt wrong and disrespectful. It defiled her. Shortly thereafter, having made his very important point about his superior balls and large penis, the drunk kid began his descent.

There was a wave of unrest amongst the crowd. My friend and I debated yelling at the guy. The Euro kids looked continued to stare at the three boys. Our cyclist friend stood next to us and observed. Silently, everyone was hoping for and demanding justice. Karma.

And then it happened, the drunk America slipped his footing and splashed into the water. His cheek slammed against the rock and he got up, dazed. But the minute it happened, the onlookers erupted into an applause. (Myself included) How the mighty hath fallen!

The fall wasn’t dramatic, the water was barely half a feet. And the kid wasn’t injured. But there was a poetic and metaphorical justice to this fall. The story had come to a beautiful close and our eyes reflected satisfaction and pride at a revenge well served.

Among other highlights from Copenhagen, here is a brief photo slideshow. Hope you enjoy!

Dublin, Ireland

May 29th, 2010 • Travel Stories

Although we flew in and out of Dublin, we were more interested in exploring the Irish country-side and so didn’t allot more than half a day to walk around Dublin. The traffic was nuts – we managed to park our car two blocks from the Temple Bar neighborhood. We intended to cover as much of the City Center area as we could and marched into a brisk walk, stopping briefly to awe at interesting sights.

As it would happen, a strange little green sign for the “National Leprechaun Museum” caught my fancy. Even though we were short on time, we decided to follow the signs. Ten blocks down, we ended up at the museum. We were so curious about what such a museum could possibly have, that we bought the tickets! Absolutely unsure of what to expect, we walked inside with a group of Italians, Norwegians and a woman from North Carolina.

The “Tunnel”

So turns out, it is not so much a museum as it is an interactive thesis on the storytelling tradition of the Irish.  Our introduction to the museum began with a brief history of the leprechaun and its place in Irish stories and fantasies. As we traced the origins of the little green men, we learned a lot about the Irish penchant for storytelling and weaving tales. We also learned how the Irish bought the leprechaun stories to America and were shocked a few decades later when America packaged and exported back the leprechauns to Ireland in form of Simpons (the Leprechaun episode) and drawings on boxes of cereal. Cultural trade!

We also learned why storytelling is at the core of Irish culture. With its tumultuous history, the Irish often have had nothing but stories and tales and conversations to carry forward and pass on to the next generations. The magic, wonder and imagination is the gift they pass on – and evident in Ireland’s rich literary legacy. (Ireland is the only country that has three noble laureates in literature)

Giant Furniture

Anyways, so this exhibit was the brainchild of a local Dublin architect, Tom O’Rahilly. From what I was told, Tom is obsessed with storytelling and wanted to create a fun, experiential way to experience Irish stories. And boy, did he!

The museum has twelve rooms that you are free to explore, take pictures and play around in. Each room offers a very interesting perspective of dimension, color, story and play. There’s the Giant’s Causeway, the Tunnel (an important symbol in fantasy storytelling!) Life-sized furniture straight from Alice’s Wonderland, A room with a hundred thousand Rainbow colors, and a Wishing well room.

The Wishing well was one of my favorite rooms because we literally sat on the ledge of a largish well and peered down at the leprechaun gold (fake gold!) as a young literature student from Trinity College regaled us with Irish stories. I have fond memories of this kid – he was incredibly engaged and so intelligent. He weaved in stories from his own childhood and made our listening experience even richer. The room itself is a little dark and warm – exactly the kind of room that makes you want to curl up and listen to stories with a fire crackling nearby.

Leprechaun Gold

At the end of the museum is a place to chill, make drawings and read more about the rich Irish tradition of stories, faeries and leprechauns. We left our drawing on the wall – so who knows, maybe if you visit the museum, you might see our little drawing in its archives.

Storytelling is my passion as well. I wish I could do it as well as others but I try, in my little ways. Maybe that’s why this particular visit has so profoundly affected me. I can tell you one thing for sure, I’ll be courting Ireland and its stories for a long, long time to come.

Helsinki, Finland

May 29th, 2010 • Travel Stories

When: July 2009; 5 days

With: R & J
Helsinki sits on the edge of the world; or so I felt when I spent five days there. The sun never tired and the air tasted crisp and clean. As you read more about my journeys, you will know that I don’t plan very long sojourns into new countries. I take what I can get. While a handful of days are not enough to experience any city in its entirety, they are just enough to whet my appetite, so I can make solemn promises of return.

Helsinki was a birthday gift planned artfully by R and my sister. Even though our flight was delayed from New York, we made it in good time. R and J are not the kind of travels that enjoy roughing it out – so its my default that if I’m traveling with them, we end up at amazing hotels. I’d be hard pressed to convince either one of them to hostel it out with me. This trip as no different – we stayed at the fantastic four-star Hotel GLO. It’s strategic location (now I sound like an ad for Hotel GLO) allowed us to walk everywhere. They sweetened our stay by offering us free access to laptops, bikes, a SmartCar and (thank God) breakfast. And what a spread it was! Freshly baked breads, sliced tomatoes, rocket, variety of cheeses and jellies. If you eat meat, your breakfast just got ten times better with the assortment of cured meats, eggs and other goodies they offered.

My more permanent memories of Helsinki are 1) a panoramic view of enormous cruise ships bayed at its port on the Baltic and 2) a design sensibility so strong and so tangible that it put Helsinki on the global map as the World Design Capital for 2012.

Helsinki Cathedral

My favorite place in Helsinki was the “Helsinki Cathedral.” It is an awe-inspiring magnificent white structure, with tall green domes. Although it is one of the most popular tourist destinations, it was relatively empty the morning we paid it a visit. I remember this church in particular because it’s neoclassical architectural influences had me confused. Its entrance is a close replica of the Pantheon or the Green Parthenon, which made sense when I wikipediad it and learned that it was built by Carl Ludvig Engel, a German architect known for his neoclassical style.

R and J rented bikes from the hotel and I walked. After spending a few hours at the Cathedral, we visited the Uspenski Cathedral, a clearly Russian church designed by a Russian architect. I was charmed by the unusual golden red color of the Cathedral, but both the interior and the exterior were extremely overwhelming and impossible to process in one visit.

But most favorite adventure in Helsinki was when I convinced the two of them to take the train with me to an industrial suburb of Finland in search for the Marimekko outlet. Because the trip was in honor of my birthday, they couldn’t possibly deny me my madcap request. So we boarded a bright orange subway and made our way to this mythical outlet. Thirty minutes out of Helsinki and our surroundings began to resemble those of suburban Pennsylvania. My throat constricted and I felt a little sick. You see, travel puts me in a slightly disjointed frame of mind. When the newness of it begins to remind you of the trivial you left behind, the magic dissolves. “Fuck, this is just like the burbs!” The ugly freeways, squat industrial buildings, not a soul on the roads. So eerily similar. Upon on closer introspection, I thought, why wouldn’t it be? It wasn’t like I had traveled through time or that I sought an experience that was nestled in mostly in fantasy. And yet, the stark reminder was jarring.

Uspenski Cathedral

We got off at a nondescript station and in the scorching heat, began trying to negotiate our way through the freeway traffic. We asked anyone we met on our way if we were headed in the right direction. Most had no idea. At one point, we even contemplated walking back. Eventually though, we found the outlet. It was a small flat building with no signs on it. We knew because we watched a car laden with Marimekko bags drive past us. I want to say that it was worth it or that I ended up buying just what I had in mind. But the truth is, it was a strictly OK experience. I might have acted extra happy then to avoid the collective wrath of my travel companions, but secretly I was a little disappointed because even though we were at the outlet store, I couldn’t afford a whole lot more than at the actual store!
Nonetheless, I dug, rummaged and found a couple hundred meters of affordable and stunning fabrics for home (which by the way, took me a little over two years to stitch and upholster my pillows with) All in all, it was an incredibly unique adventure and opened my eyes to an alternate reality of travel.

(PS: Marimekko is a Finnish textile company that is world-famous for its bright fabrics used both for high fashion and home furnishings. If you’ve watched Mamma Mia – the movie – you’ve glimpsed at Marimekko fabric which was all over the movie: on Meryl Streep’s clothing lines, in her bedroom, even on the boat. Marimekko Stateside fame, however, is attributed to Jacqueline Kennedy who wore Marimekko dresses throughout the 1960’s Presidential campaign.)

At the ridiculously overpriced Ice Bar

With the prime purpose of our trip achieved, we spent the rest of our time in Helsinki drinking, partying, saunaing and in general merriment. We met a few travelers at the Absolute Ice Bar (which is a total waste – a 10×10 room made of ice-blocks; barely fits more than three people at a time and costs 10 Euros to enter! Definitely not worth it.)

Helsinki has an incredible night-life. If you can stay up that late, that is. It only begins a little past 1a.m and goes on until early morning. We just didn’t last. We’d been up since 6am and by midnight, were ready to call it a night.

Midnight, according our watches. If you looked were outside without one, you could never tell what time it was because the sun just never set! Our hotel room had thick black-out curtains that simulated darkness, the only way we could fool our bodies into believing it was night and time for bed.

There’s probably more I could write about Helsinki but I didn’t take notes then and now it’s too late to rummage through my head for stories.

E-Commerce API

May 6th, 2010 • 1 comment Digital Content, Social Media

Yesterday I noticed my husband log into his Good Reads account and manually add his latest books from Kindle so he could share his recommendations with his friends. It was a little cumbersome and annoying process.

We are both avid readers. We own over 200 physical books and over 25 Kindle books between the two of us (Kindle is just in the last 3 months!) These days, we love coming back home and sneaking some time in the park or at the riverfront with our Kindles. But it is frustrating that I cannot share my books with him. It is even more frustrating that there is no way for either of us to directly port our Kindle buys to a site and rate/ review these books on it and make it accessible to our friends.

So we began thinking, why doesn’t Amazon create an API that allows users to port their Kindle books into a Good Reads equivalent where they can immediately review and recommend the books, or at the very least thumbs up and down it for their friends ?

Then today a few different conversations happened that helped me connect the dots better.

1) We’ve been working on a POV document for our client regarding Blippy. I’m embracing more transparency on the web but am not ready to share my credit card transactions just yet. Blippy is interesting but I’m not sure if people “liking” my purchase is adding any value to me.

At this point, Apple and Amazon have access to majority of my online shopping history. And I’d venture a guess to say that 80% of it is media related. Books, movies, music, DVDS. How amazing would it be for Apple or Amazon to pull a Blippy and give me the option to make any or all of my purchases public. I could not only share them with friends but also record my own experience / review of the particular product.

2. I’ve been playing around with a site called GetGlue for some time now. Getglue reminds me a lot of Netflix but I don’t yet see a tangible return on getglue. Netflix was able to rent or stream me movies and it made sense that the more movies I watched, the better it was able to make recommendations. I guess, I want to discover new faves and have options to buy, rent, read them.

I also spend 30 minutes today answering 50+ questions on Hunch.

3. I also read a terrific review of the KIN phone on the All Things Digital blog. What caught my eye is Mossberg’s assertion that what makes KIN amazing is that all media, images and videos are directly saved online without the user having to do any set-up or transfer! So you take a photo on your KIN, log on to your KIN Studio and lo behold! – it’s already uploaded on it.

So all of this got me thinking, how much richer my experience across all these sites would be if I was able to port in automatically (in addition to my profile/ interests from Facebook) my purchase history from Amazon, Apple and whichever other retailer. (maybe FreshDirect)

I don’t want to physically spend any more time answering questions or likes on sites like Good Reads, Get Glue and Hunch. I want to port in all my available data to them and have them figure it out. Do the work behind-the-scenes and just tell me what I need to know.

Good Reads, Get Glue and even Hunch would become that much more contextual and relevant for me than they are right now.

I actually don’t doubt the possibility of this either. We are moving into an era were privacy is more ambiguous than before and as a generation, we are simply more comfortable sharing personal information at a larger scale. I think an E-Commerce API, or the ability to port in our purchase history (not the amount we spend, but the actual products we buy) will be the next seminal step in creating a more “social” web. It’s not simple about where my friends are and what they are doing – it’ll be more about this is me and this is what I need.

My two cents.

The New Princesses

May 6th, 2010 • 2 comments Culture Briefings, On my mind...

It’s interesting how the damsel-in-distress and prince charming saves the day theme is the essence of most fairy-tales. What kind of conditioning do these tales provide little girls ?

There’s one set of stories: Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella and Snow White that may condition girls to think of their partners as their ultimate saviors. And then there’s another set of stories: Beauty and the Beast, Princess and the Frog etc: that give the impression that love can and does change ugliness into beauty and beasts into princes.

Research has shown that girls that over-identify with fairy-tales are more likely to fall victim to abusive relationships because sub-consciously, they take on the role of the submissive, passive female role model, expecting love and patience to change their partners’ behavior. This quote in particular struck me, “Small children may interpret the story-book submissive roles as a template of how society expects them to develop.” That is disturbing.

When I see movies like “Shrek,” there’s hope that our perception of princesses is changing. “Shrek” to be will always be seminal work of art and cultural reform. It took everything we know and believe about fairytales and princesses and turned it on its head.

Yes, princesses can be fat and stinky. They can and do burp. They know karate and are capable of taking care of themselves. And they are extremely capable of falling in love with the ugly – of seeing beyond. So there’s hope. I know the kind of media I’ll be feeding my kids when they arrive.

Even the new version of “The Princess and the Frog” is quite encouraging. She’s no princess but an ordinary waitress who dreams of owning her own restaurant someday. She’s drive, ambitious and diligent. Then she kisses a frog out of desperation and becomes a frog herself. I love how new writers and thinkers are taking what we know about fairytales and princesses and flipping it around.

Yes, princesses have dreams. And they don’t all want to live in a castle. And they are good at other things besides looking pretty.

I want to see how technology and storytelling come together to create empowering learning experiences for little girls. I want little girls to dream about themselves, the possibilities, their own potential and all the various things they could enjoy about life. I want them to be surrounded by media and cultural artifacts that work as critical thinking tools that will allow girls to think for themselves.

Have you come across such digital tools? I wish I had more kids around me or was friends with more forward-thinking parents. I’d love to learn what’s on their mind and what kind of education they dream of giving their girls.