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marco, 23 June 2009
Malaysia, kuala lumpur

conference in kuala lumpur

Triggerred by my old friend Cint who is such a frequent blogger I decided the time had come to write something again myself. If you think of it it’s quite funny since I got him into blogging on all his travels around the globe and now he is much, much more active than me and he has got over 3000 readers a month…. On his blog you can read about the Limra/ Loma conference that I attended in Kuala Lumpur the past few days, but also about all his other (travel) experiences. A conference is always good to catch up with old business friends and meet new friends. For me and Cint it was 10 months ago that we last met. Than it was in France, now it was Malaysia, I wonder where the next time will be…

My current status on facebook and plaxo is “life is a rollercoasterride, you know that curves are ahead, the direction is always a surprise”. That rollecoasterride it the one that you always look out for, you want to get in, it excites you and it frightens you at the same time. One of my friends I met along my own rollercoasterride always told me if times where tough “ you feel that you are alive right…?” And I think that is the best thing you can always ask yourselves when you go through negative times. The positive thing about emotional times is that you feel you are alive! A life without feeling that you are alive is useless!

At the time of writing I waived goodbye to my dear friend Cint, he is on his way to his next destination Shanghai. Him awaits a red eyed flight arriving 7am in the morning in Shanghai. I took my laptop out and decided to join the Philippino band in the lobby of the Shangri la hotel. Amazing how they seem to memorize almost all request numbers from people in the audience. Even when the request was to sing a Japanese number they had one in their repertoire and it sounded quite Japanese to me, unbelievable. I wonder what their lives would look like, how long have they been away from home, where have they been performing and how long will they be able to keep smiling in their rollercoasterride.

I will stick around in KL another day. The conference was nice, but I expected more. There where too many explanations of people that had all the answers on how we got to our current crisis but little answers on how to move from here. Too much “American wisdom” and too little local know how on how things really work in Asia. Luckily I met some interesting people who are enthusiastic in getting Figlo to the next level here in Asia. Tomorrow a couple of more meetings and my flight back to Sing leaves around 9pm in the eve. I look forward sleeping at home in Sing again.