Attended presentation on Bangladesh this afternoon. Both researchers and Bangladesh policy makers presented (Bangladesh central bank governor, guy from bangladesh textile association, Bangladesh Minister of Food and Disaster Management) The central bank governor (ex LSE!) and textile association guys did a good job, very clear with insightful new ideas.

Brief summary of key current issues discussed about the Bangladeshi economy:
- Low tax revenue (relative to other developing Asian countries) due to enforcement and evasion issues etc. Food minister reaffirmed problem by saying that his fellow cabinet ministers had not even heard of this formalization scheme - a registration scheme for firms which wld pave the way for easier tracking down of these firms for tax payment.
- Export growth driven by textiles: lack of diversification of export growth model with 90% of exports consisting of textiles, competition from other low-cost countries like China and Viet in terms of firm productivity
- High retail food prices: transport costs, market structure of wholesale industry (think collusion and no formal organisation for wholesale industry)

Wider devt issues covered: the idea of researchers involving Bangladeshi researchers (win-win situation by building Bangladeshi capabilities and improving access to more localised info. Central Bank governor specifically mentioned tapping into central bank researchers who lacked analytical capabilities)

As I learnt better today, International Growth Centre is an LSE, Oxford research initiative focussed on development in 10 so-called IGC countries including Bangladesh. Researchers from top universities across the world constitute the brain source of this initiative. Aim of this 3-day "conference" was to bring together researchers and policy makers so that research ideas can be translated into actual projects and policies on the ground.

Like all conferences, sounds like a neat idea but the follow-up is more crucial. Alot of problems regarding the Bangladeshi economy were raised and areas highlighted by policy makers to 'look into' but after this conference, its uncertain if anything will happen. I do hope something happens. Given the IGC's been around for 1 year only, we'll have to wait and see if it yields results.

( Interesting part of the day was talking to 2 'economists' working in Africa  )

Attended the "Mobile Phones and Development" lecture as part of the LSE Growth Week - 3 days of lectures and discussions for delegates and the public, from today till Wed. Had initially wanted to go for the earlier lecture on China and Africa but was late and there wasn't any more space. Turned out to be a blessing in disguise as I hung around to go thru some materials I had amassed from the careers service centre (bah) and then realised that the Mobile Phones lecture was coming up, and I had more time to kill till the lecture begin but better to be early than late since I wldnt have gotten a space (again) otw.  

As the title suggests, the lecture talked about the role mobile phones play in the economic and social development of countries, especially in developing countries. Most were from Africa, India, Bangladash. Speakers included a social entrepreneur who founded this SMS biz for NGOs in developing countries to , a representive from the GSM Association Devt Fund (GSM Association is an intl mobile phone industry organisation) and a development professor from Tufts University. All three were very passionate speakers. Particularly liked the speaker, an ex-management consultant, from GSM Assoc Devt Fund who was very clear and succinct and gave good examples and key catchy phrases that I could remember. 

( Thoughts on phones and development )

 Wigmore hall work experience 14-18 Jun 2010

Monday:
- Lunchtime recital: Dorothea Roschmann singing lieders by Schubert, Schumann, Mahler and Berg. first time watching a voice recital. audience profile mainly senior citizens. a weekly monday recital, recorded by BBC radio3. 
- Box Office: Introduction to Tessitura (a software that manages the entire hall's activities from 'setting up' concerts to tracking individual orders and accounts). Details of concerts e.g. seat availability immediately reflected on website. Printed out tickets using special machine, made an 'order' (manually going into the system and booking the tickets for the person). 

Tue: 
- Haverstock Sec in Chalkfarm. I attended my first songscape workshop, organised by the Education team. Cool song-writing project between 6 primary/sec schs, who will be guided over 4 sessions to produce an extract of a song based on twelfth night. The classes create the song from scratch including lyrics, chords, melody, rhythm etc. Led by professional songwriter and a vocalist. The end product is a performance at Wigmore hall with Tenor Mark Padmore as soloist who will sing to the children's compositions. 
- Never underestimated children. They can have great ideas.
- Takes much skill to engage kids and to give them confidence to share their ideas. 
- Filing for the fundraising team. Learnt that wigmore relies 58% membership/private funding, 10% from gov funding, the rest coming from trusts/foundations and corporates. Lucky for them that they have diversified funding sources during such times. Also since they arent massive (only a 450 seater concert hall) expenses are not overwhelming either and hence can depend on a core group of loyal supporters.

Wed: 
- Writing invitations for wigmore's gala dinner to 700+ 'select' guests including the royal family, artistes and assorted important people. A largely mundane task other than the thrill of writing with a gold pen. Learnt that Melvyn Tan, Mitsuko Uchida, Maxim Vengerov all live in London, in the posh 'W' and 'SW' areas unsurprisingly. 
- Attended another Education project 'Chamber tots' at a nursery. Nearly all from minority ethnic groups. As it was the last session, workshop leader (extremely skilled and patient) got the children to recall the instruments they had seen in the past weeks, when professional musicians went down to perform for them. These included the violin, cello, double bass, marimba (which the children actually remembered!), flute, clarinet, guitar.. played many song and action games. They particularly loved this song called kelele.
- Different approaches for kids of different levels. Nursery kids love to imitate. One person does someth and in 10 seconds, the entire class is doing the same thing. They are also very restless, but a 40min session is long anyway. But they aren't dumb and can definitely understand you.
- Made me wonder what I was like when I was in kindergarten. Wonder if I can find my kindergarten teacher now. 

Thu:
- Attended Songscape at nearby Argyle Pri School. These kids can come up with the loveliest tunes, put me to shame. Some of them are really intelligent. The workshop leader was teaching someth akin to beat-boxing but didnt use the word. This boy at the back of the class goes 'ah, that's beat-boxing'. Not sure if this is unique to kids here, but they are really responsive and have loads to contribute. Helps that teachers are very involved too.
- Workshop leaders very skillful for garnering contributions, including as many ideas into the final product and maintaining musical quality at the same time.
- Idea for games with primary children: 1. Imagine egg on head, and bird flying above who wants to see letter R, for example. Form letter without talking. 2. Call/response games: Hip/hop, Gingerbread house/come in my little sweeties, Roller/coaster 3. Chicken, sh, sh, sh song game 

Fri:
- Attended sharing by jewish czech WWII survivor, Helga Weissova, who lived through Terezin, Auschwitz and 2 other concentration camps. She came to share about her harsh experiences during the war. As a kid back then, she was a talented artist as was told by her father to 'draw what you see' in the camps. Her drawings were very fortunately kept in the safe hands of her uncle until the end of the war. Terezin as a concentration camp was known for its cultural 'life' (many jewish musicians, artists, writers, scholars were imprisoned there and they managed to put up arts performances to entertain themselves and stay human. Musicians composed, choirs sang, painters drew. Sadly, many of these cultural gems perished in Terezin, Auschwitz and other camps.) A famous female artist Friedl Dicker-Brandeis taught the children to draw and their drawings were also preserved  An exhibition has been put up at Wigmore to showcase these pieces of artwork.
- Poignant session. First time hearing a jewish WWII survivor speak. Primary school kids who made up the audience were very attentive and asked questions that adults wldnt normally ask, 'did you meet any nice german solders', some even asked if she had met Hitler or Anne Frank. haha 
- Finished up invitations 
- Researched on classical music that is based on greek myths. Many operas and ballets, but largely unfamiliar to me. 

All in all, a short but fruitful stint providing an eye-opener to the behind-the-scenes of a world-class concert hall. Now know the actual jobs/responsibilities and lifestyle of an 'arts manager'. Working in education definitely needs you to interact with people from all spectrum of life, varied work. Much room for creativity in terms of comin up with programmes and sense of fulfillment from seeing work impact individuals. Nonetheless, level of intensity (intellectually and profesisonally) may not be what i'm seeking at this stage.

The hunt for the elusive 'perfect' job lingers. 

Before I pack up shop: ticketed events attended in 09/10

Classical music:
LPO, Royal Festival Hall, tchaik piano concerto, dvorak new world, verdi overture
Emanuel Ax and Yoyo Ma, various cello/piano music, Barbican Hall
Dorothea Roschmann (soprano), Wigmore Hall
*A Little Night Music I & II, LSE Music Society, Shaw library
Madama Butterfly, Staatsoper, Berlin
Nicolai Lugansky, variations on theme by paganini, RPO on shostakovich 3? 
*LSE choir covering Handle's Messiah and Mozart's Requiem for xmas and easter concerts resp.
*Schumann Piano Concerto, St. Paul's Church

Theatre and Musical Theatre:
Mother Courage, National Theatre
The importance of Being Honest, Warwick Singsoc, Warwick Arts Centre
Joy Luck Club, UCL Singsoc, Cockpit Theatre
Boom, Greenwich Theatre
Avenue Q, Gielgud Theatre
*Oklahoma, UCL Musical Theatre Society, Bloomsbury Theatre 

Talks @ LSE
Tim Harford (author of logic of life) 
Stephen J Dubner, Steven D Levitt (authors of freakonomics) 

Movies: 
Avatar
Sherlock Holmes 

*yours truly played/organised/worked on the music  

ah, the joys of the arts and entertainment 

My second day at work (pa says im not technically 'working' since im not being paid boo). this week, i'm at the national campaign for the arts, a non-gov indep team of 3 people who manage everyth that affects the uk arts sector from gov funding (pertinent issue now given budget cuts under the new gov), holding workshops and seminars, writing manifestos for arts sub-sectors like 'theatre and dance for young people', helping arts groups with their assorted problems e.g. sticky legislation hindering entry of overseas arts practitioners. there are 2 interns, myself and this other german girl who'll be here for 3 mths.

I spent today embarking proper on research on how we can emulate the national arts index (a massive american project that took 4 years to complete) in the UK context. its a pretty neat concept - in a nutshell, the idea of a single figure representing the health/vitality of the arts sector. how cool is that?

( but this is tricky )

A pity that "certain" gov ministries are not already handling these matters. Especially with regards to publications and research, my experience in a gov ministry has taught me that a proper budget helps alot when access to good databases and research studies dont come free. You can also afford to hire consultants, academia to advise. (And pay your interns). Amongst other trade offs, I guess there's the trade off between having resources versus being bogged down by bureaucratic matters. I'm also not sure if its effective for research to be done in such a small organisation, easily a one-man show at times because you're understaffed. One small brain, like mine, is not enough to scour the entire internet universe really.

One common theme running through what im seeing is organisation. the world needs more organisation. the internet's awesome. but not organised yet. the next revolution will be something that organises all that wilderness of knowledge out there. And with organisation, we can measure, and we can take the first step towards understanding where we stand so we know where we are going.

screw icelandic volcano ash !!

but heck im going to go for a run. tingting just very shared with me her own cooked spare ribs soup and told me how to cook with slow cooker and the like. so nice and sisterly..

volcanic ash is the bane of my life.

joining this french conversation group has 'vachement' been one of the best things that happened since i got here. started beginning of michaelmas term when i stumbled across the flyer at the hall reception, and then turned up for one of the classes at marchmont community centre without even telling the teacher beforehand. turned up that evening, proudly greeting everyone with a big warm 'bon soir' and having everyone stare back at me - an unassuming asian girl sprouting unintelligible french. the class was made up of adults - middle aged and above.

and then it got to the awkward moment when i realised it wasnt free. and then i was supposed to pay. got thru the awkward fee discussion phase and managed to get away with a 'concession rate' - the most value for money class ive ever attended. and also the most enriching and rewarding.

today was the last class of lent term and we brought food to share. michael brought saucissons (ooh never tried those sinful fatty sausages but sure do they taste yummy!) and wine, john brought wine, rachel brought fromage and pain, chris brought chocolate eggs, i brought sainsbury's muffins and caramel shortcakes. sylvaine, our teacher, brought orange juice.

there was a new student today. i cld imagine how i was in her shoes 2 terms ago. today i realised how ive come quite far. after 2 terms of being, i cld safely say, the youngest and coming from 'farthest' away (everyone's from the region, think UK or Europe), and also the most ignorant about history, culture, the language i think this class has really allowed me to be myself, and to enjoy and savour my learning so much. it wasnt at all hardcore for me -

i was picking random bites of information every week - reading (struggling to do so) jacques prevot's surreal poem 'drole d'immeuble', talking about , learning about pancake day aka 'la chandeleur' (candlemas) its catholic origins and rituals, researching on french philosophers (i did mine on voltaire), talking about la vie politique en france, pricking my ears to decipher 'le toi du moi' by carla bruni, learning french slang today in class, giving a presentation about the history of Singapore, keeping up to date with current affairs like the chilcot enquiry, the 2010 budget, listening to others present on Spanish history, ireland politics and of course what wld a french class be without grammaire like the subjonctif, passe simple, pronoms relatifs, conversational phrases..

i surprised myself by actually being able to relate to adults and even, retirees quite well. made new friends and had shared loadsa laughter esp between John and myself. John is a retiree who's not too alert but very very nice, and he tries to speak in french all the time because its good for all of us, but when he fails to find the right words he wld whisper the words in english. and when i'm clueless and i thought he cld ask him i'd ask him 'c'est quoi' and he wld go 'je ne sais pas' and we wld both just laugh. rachel (cool piano and french teacher), mabel (spanish working lady who's really funky and cool too), norrine, michael (retired lawyer), chris (politics loving guy) are all very very nice too. not too forget my wonderful teacher, sylviane - the funkiest, couch hosting/surfing, hitch hiking, carsharing french teacher.

just really happy im no longer the 'new' student in the class, that ive become a part of this class and how im really comfortable amidst the company. now that ill most probably take french next year in third year, will probably continue to see these guys again! there's class in summer term too but im not sure if i can find time to go amidst my revisions.. we shall see =)

i have happy busking music from south kensington tube station to share with everyone =)

finally updating since ages.
this is week 6 of michaelmas term. how time flies!
and the reason why i actually do have the time to update is because our weekend trip to cornwall which is supposed to see me board the bus at victoria coach station in 1.5h time has been postponed (cancelled for me as i cant make the new date). so suddenly im disoriented for a moment with the excess time that i suddenly have in my hands. after 5 days of rushing out work and still squeezing in as many things as possible, suddenly im presented with the luxury of time. took me 10 seconds to realise that hey, this isnt too bad at all. other things that i can do now..

the past few weeks have been packed, to say the least. this week alone, was eventful (in a good way)
a few highlights:
- appeared in my first pro 'film' today. a short film by wilder films thats been commissioned by the foreign commonwealth office here in the uk to be showed to commonwealth leaders 10days b4 the copenhagen leaders this dec. film is made with the intent of appealing to commonwealth leaders to do someth about climate change. so there're 20 of us kiddos appearing in it saying some lines. quite an impactful script - altho i've not seen the end product, can almost imagine wat it wld be like. minimalist, simple with a clear message to urge the leaders to make the right decisions.

was truly an eyeopener being on a professional set. following the director's instructions (paul, i didnt have to memorise any script. lines were fed to me by the director so that it wld sound natural, fatherly and commanding respect), seeing the whole entourage in action: cameraman, lighting people, makeup artist (noella who travels all over the world to do makeup, how cool), producer (clare, payments, overseeing logistical aspects), runner (matt, poor guy has to buy food, call up 'actors', pick them up when they were lost just like i was). found out that i had a lazy eye that was causing me to look weird on camera, so they made me look at someth else under than down the lens. haha the cameraman was saying that happens all the time.

director and me the next guy filming

was also somewhat a little speech and diction lesson. the imptance of tone and articulation. especially when u need to sound like you really mean what you say. yes, i tend to speak on the fast side. how adjusting the ups and downs of the sentence can affect the tone of the message, how pauses in between bring out emphases on certain words..

the whole thing was rather lucky too anws. thank my lucky stars=) had sucha busy day on tues that i cldnt make it down for tryouts and wed. almost didnt want to go down on thu because i was so tired but went down anws to their cosy little office off oxford street after pulling myself out of bed for econometrics lecture at 9. a blessing was in place, i guess. a surprisingly pleasant opportunity to try someth different =)

- watched stephen levitt and steve dubner, co-authors of freakonomics. who were in lse to promote their second book, superfreakonomics. was 50% entertaining. with the journalist being the more engaging 50% (vis a vis the professor). didnt buy their book (have too many things to do/read). also from another talk this week (economists' careers forum). am inclined to think that americans are better speakers than brits. yes you cld call it a sweeping statement that is wholly subjective but after hearing so many speakers, theres just something about the american way of speaking that is just more upbeat and engaging. of course, ive enjoyed listening to many brit speakers such as my economic history professor last year tim leunig and tim hartford (undercover economist author). surely there are americans that induce me to sleep too like prof lev*tt. but everyth on the equal, 2 boring speakers - an american accent is more likely to hold my attention longer.

- chamber concert meeting on wed. with interested musicians. glad we got things going. and we have some items to play around with for our concert in 3 weeks. hmmm tighttight

- also got to know that ive been offered an edb internship for summer. which is happy happy stuff =) which means that i can relax a bit for now. someth definitely worth considering. woe be me and my internship and job issues.

- last week also caught a concert at royal festival hall by the RPO: tchaik piano concerto no.1, dvorak new world symphony and verdi overture (la forza del destino). lovely!

leaving you with positively the happiest tube station in london:

as i was plowing my way through some pof example
a familiar song caught my ear
..
looks up to the screen
scans spotify playlist searcing for title
..
lo and behold
discovered the coolest song of the year
aunque no este bien - je t'aime
(spanish + french version of the original patrick bruel song)

awesome