Epson table projector in the Hikarie creative space – popup office working space for the time/resource constrained on-the-go worker.

A Tokyo whirlwind tour.

Today’s office is a 31st story penthouse overlooking Singapore. Or at least it’s notionally a penthouse, with a frog team of four having turned it into a popup studio for a project we are currently running in the city state, with every available inch of wall space liberated to hang daily schedules, incoming data, observations, insights, ideas and iterations of the research plan.

Renting someone else’s apartment comes with nuanced perks: a glimpse at an opulent lifestyle; and understanding of tastes, textures, priorities; a sense of apartment block rhythm, lilt. The Egyptian motifs, the framed heavy brush strokes of women in various states of ecstasy, the plinths that turns out to be ideal for giving demos of our work-in-progress prototypes, and the champagne room – literally a room devoted to display of full champagne bottles all provide an edge. Working out of a home rather than a hotel can increase the team’s productivity by over 50% and makes for a far richer experience.

Most popup studios are not this lush, some are little more than a box-bed with clean sheets and a mosquito net. Whether marble or dirt floors it comes down to whether the team dynamics will work and whether the team is inspired.

Finding and appropriate space and setting up up a studio is relatively easy, and in an age of AirBandB is commoditised even. The bit that most people miss is understanding the dynamics within that space, understanding how to build trust with the local crew, taking the team to the edge without taking them over the edge. Being just on the right side of physical and mental exhaustion is a wonderful thing, if the team has delivered.

The team delivered.

Rolling up at midnight after back-to-back long hauls to review of the research and prototypes in preparation for a client meeting that starts at 9am, is not ideal. But the crew has also been applying smarts and putting in the hours and it shows in the quality of the work. Being the last member of the team to arrive I get the sofa or the maid’s quarters, sans maid. I opt for the latter. The principle of having the most senior member of the team have the least favourable space to sleep is a good one. The mind is liberated when the normal rules don’t apply.

What are the rules worth breaking?

Two hours of Zzz’s, crank out emails, a 6am run, fresh mangos on the deck at 8. Crash and burn by 3pm.

A few days bouncing around Asia – a day in Singapore, a weekend in Beijing, back again in Singapore, and then a late night flight to Shanghai

Those little pockets of space with sufficient distance to strangers to be able to go on speaker phone and talk through an approach. A week of presentations, pitches and very little else. Back in China activity is focussed on Sweeping out the Tombs.

Maps as enablers: for a visit to our Bangalore studio – waved down passing motorbike – not a taxi driver, gent on a bike on the way to college, negotiated a cross town ride and set off.

Curiosity rewards those that step out of their groove.

In India more than most places it’s the journey, not the destination.

24 hours in the company of Mr Singh, the Ambassador, and the Indian highway. Next stop Jaipur.

2 weeks on the road, 1 to go.

When the days blur, it takes a day out.

Throw a few things into the duffel, packing lenses and assorted field study gear. Tomorrow Shanghai to Addis Ababa for a week on the ground with the frog+ crew in, the beginning of a month and a half on the road/skies/mountain trails that will take in Ethiopia, the Oahu’s North Shore, the TED conference in Long Beach, Old Delhi and surrounds, plus no-doubt one or two more journeys and destinations.

See you on the other side.

Photo: Salloum on the Egyptian-Libyan border.

Day trip to Beijing – picking up a visa for travel later this month. The traffic here is predictably bad to the extent you can plan around the pockets of time spent en route.

Every city has a certain level of friction – a tax on the time and energy on the team and what is is able to accomplish. In China on this study the friction includes the fall-out from a contract that is not worth the paper it is written on. This is a city where you need to assume that if a situation can give more money, power to one side or another it will, regardless of formal or informal agreement.

Roll with it.
Eat or be eaten.

And, on occasion, be pleasantly surprised.

In Tokyo for the week, days on the streets, bedrooms and boardrooms.

The business class lounge of Kangding Airport includes, naturally an oxygen bar. At 4,280 meters above sea leve (14,000 ft) it is the second highest passenger airport in the world after Qamdo 4,334 meters and whilst flying in from Chengdu shaves five hours twenty off the equivalent six hour car journey it also makes it tougher on the body to acclimatise to the altitude.

Confiscated items selection at airport security includes wonderful curios such as oxygen canisters (for those without business class lounge access who plan to step out of the airport), cooking gas, and knives that could skin a particularly hairy Yak.

Today’s rides: 2 x motorbike.

’bout 6am, 20 second exposure.

Sometimes its not enough to be out of office.

Nothing shakes jetlag and the residues of consultancy life than time at altitude and off the grid – hire a mountain guide and a pack horse, gear up for extreme conditions.

6 hours from Chengdu to Kangding to the village of Laoyunlin from where the trek, and the Tibetan Plateau begins – this map gives a sense of what’s (not) there – 20 peaks over 6,000 meters (~20,000 ft), including the magnificent Minya Konka at ~7,500 meters.

The first night is spent at 4,300 meters after a long ascent and with a combination of jetlag and exhaustion I slept 14 hours straight – after which the effects of altitude kick in and doze time is reduced to 2 – 4 hours per night. If you like to push the pace the guide Gong Que is happy to accommodate.

A fresh layer of snow changes the colour palette and draws 10 – 30% more energy from every step. Further down the valley the melting snows sucks 10 – 50% in conditions that were veritably Somme-like.

As with much of China – the investment in infrastructure in this part of the world is considerable – Kangding in particular is ~tripling in size and will be the gateway to a large hinterland – what is today only accessible through mud tracks and dirt roads will in due course be asphalted, cell-connected. A newly built cell tower, cough towers above one of the valleys – waiting to be switched on – and serves as a decent enough wedding photo vista (pic to follow). The physical extremes (thin air at altitude) will mean the region will avoid becoming just another Lijiang theme park (a World Heritage site that celebrates the notion of World Heritage sites – in China as elsewhere the experience is fucked by numbers). But the sheer volume of people wanting to carve out their own frontier experience will still change the ecosystem forever.

In the past week I’ve come across more than 2 dozen Chinese outdoor clothing brands that you’ve never heard of – worn by locals drawn here from across China, folks who are experiencing and defining their own very modern Chinese adventure. With the explosion of a robust middle class that is looking to invest in something beyond the crassness of the housing bubble, cheap air travel and a vast untapped hinterland – the outdoor/adventure market in China is set to grow and grow and grow and grow. Expect some of your favourite international outdoor gear brands to be headquartered out of China in the years to come – picked off by the companies that they used to outsource to, whose expertise is now serving their rapidly growing home market. A few international brands will continue to make headway (saw a slither of North Face and Black Diamond) but most don’t have the distribution network and more importantly, don’t understand the Chinese outdoor dream.

But I’m getting ahead of myself, on with the mountains.

Everyone has a reset, this is mine.

Flight to Chengdu, heading up to the Garzê Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture. 6 hours on the road enough to make a small dent in the trans-Pacific jetlag. Woken by the acoustics of the tunnel and Tibetan tunes.

The crew slips into the local grain market in Ibadan – a sprawling throng of stallholders and hawkers selling grains, vegetables, heavy-earthy yams, to conduct a series of interviews. They hustle, we hustle back, they hustle some more, we give out best and it appears everyone is happy (at least until they decide to hustle again). Mostly its them feeling out how daft the foreigner is. Our imported team of 5 is supplemented by a very capable local crew of 4 – we go beyond holding our own. It takes a while to feel out a new environment, people’s openness to conversation with strangers, documentation – Ibadan is very different to Lagos, and with the bombing of the UN building in Abuja people are little nervous. Never forget that it’s all fine, until it’s not.

Ibadan was flooded by torrential rains on Friday – newspapers put the dead at between 20 and 100 (precision is, well, variable) including one corpse lying crumpled in a puddle in the middle of the road as we edged into the city – cars working around to the left and right of it. Visited one of the communities badly hit by the floods – the camera mostly stayed sheathed – documentation felt to much like disaster tourism. Took a wet-shave in the local barbers to slow down the conversation, feel out where things are at. There’s a strange mixture of getting on with making the shell of a home livable, and there being not much to get on with – with some homes totally devastated. Desperation and abject normality side by side.

At least the corpses were already taken away, presumably buried.

A couple more days here, then a decompression of sorts in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania to unwind before the next double-long-haul. Another month on the road, give or take – a journey that will take in Shanghai, Beijing, Dalian, Johannesburg, New York and Austin, plus whatever last-minute meetings throw up. Early October is national holiday in China – looking forward to a few days rest from work-travel to climb/trek around Mount Gongga.

See you on the other side.

Been enjoying some late night/early morning walks through the urban landscape that is distinctly Lagos – dark streets puntuated up by small groups huddled around paraffin lamps taking in some late night street food, the very occasional passing vehicle and gated communities – the gates here are often sliced off of massive deconstructed shipping containers.

Middle class neighbourhoods here have a wonderful multilayered levels of security: the ‘gate keepers’ (younger boys) who keep an eye on who comes in and out; the private security guys paid for by the community – armed in this case with Nigerian-made rifles; and the police armed with AK 47s, working the 6pm to 6am shift. Familiar faces = social security.

Photo? Shot in near-darkness at 6400 ISO.

In Sabo Market 100 Naira (50 euro cents) buys you a fresh razor, the subtlest fingers south of the equator and 20 minutes of head-down, clean shave. The post-shave ‘tonic’ will delight those who live life on the edge.

Tribally marked gent? Friendly local police.

That moment post-interview, when the thing that stands between the team and sleep is the need to review the session’s data, a debrief with the rest of the team, and a little matter of navigating the city and Lagos’s legendary traffic. Negotiate with two okada riders to take three passengers – if caught by the numerous police the driver will be hassled and fined if caught with two passengers – the risk that is negotiated into the fare.

Like a team entering a knock-out tournament – we need to hit the ground running and improve from there.

Today – a city sliced and diced.

Day 1 in Lagos – setting up our pop-up design studio. 2 weeks on the ground with a strong local crew, so much to learn, to much to do. Highlight? Taking an okada across town to pick up supplies and outrunning the union guys trying to collect their daily levy – somehow managing it despite their optimal vantage point at the edge of a gridlocked round-about. These are the days.

Today’s office involves jumping between the design studio and an operating theatre for a little slice and dice. There’s nothing like first-hand experience of an environment to bring the hopes and fears home.

Friendly surgical crew, comfortable with the camera.

If you want to understand China you need to travel to the suburbs, the communities where tower blocks and half empty shopping malls nudge up agains greenfield sites that will rapidly be overtaken by the urban sprawl. Spent Sunday conducting home visits in the ‘burbs, peeling back layers of assumptions for our latest study on [redacted].

It’s in the suburbs of a first tier city you can find 2nd and sometimes 3rd tier China: an inquisitiveness about foreigners that leads to an invitation to sit; a bowl of noodles for 4 RMB; nary an international brand in sight. Walking out a home interview the team drops into a half-built mall – and an opportunity to converse-without-conversing with the local muscle crew. I could spend a day here, drinking tea, chewing the fat, arm-wrestling and decoding the local hierarchies but the next interview starts in an hour.

You can’t pick just any taxi back to the city – its gotta be one that has a license to operate inside the city limits. A tout offers us a ride, but without a permit to be in Shanghai he would only be able to take the backroads – a 40 minute motorway drive could stretch to double that.

Shanghai today, Bangkok friday, Tokyo the following week.

For once today’s office is… an office of sorts – the frog studio in Shanghai. Its been threatening to rain all day, quite possible all his work will be for nothing.

Enjoy the view – for tomorrow it may be gone – Shanghai moves fast, blink and you’ll miss it.

As border crossings go its slow but hustle-lite. An hour to figure out the dynamics of the visa process and stand with exit stamp in hand before hitching a ride on a pick-up across the no-mans land between the two countries. Somewhat surprised that there’s entry or exit stamp going into Libya – not exactly a porous border – the threat of mine-fields tends to keep people on the path, but more flour through a sieve than water out of a jug.