Are you awake?

My year 2011

2011-12-30T22:07:00.000-08:00

Continuing the tradition I’ve had for years now, I summarize my year’s main events and thoughts into one blog post. It is a nice way to keep track of my own life and memorize special things happened in a given year. Those words I am writing from Bekasi, Indonesia (a suburb of Jakarta). Also this post will be very long, as always. I added a recent photo of myself here for the ones who haven't seen me for long and forgot who is this person whose blog their Google reader presents them few times a year.

The start
The first minutes of 2011 started in a wonderful beach near Krabi, Thailand. I was there on a holiday with Dessy and we were surrounded with hundreds of (mostly) foreigners and a great amount of fireworks. Krabi is such a wonderful place for a relaxing holiday. Could not have been a better start for a year.

Traveling between Thailand-Cambodia
Since I was living in Phnom Penh until June and Dessy was living in the same in Bangkok, we spent a lot of time visiting each other countries. Luckily for us, both countries celebrate a huge amount of public holidays, which enabled us to see each other approximately once a month.
There were two options to travel this distance. One was to take a 1h flight and other one a 14h bus ride. I was fortunate enough to mostly use the plane option (Bangkok became my transit airport whenever I had to go for a business trip abroad), but sometimes I just saved the money. You can have a lot of fun in Bangkok with the money you save on tickets.

As I’m already talking about Thailand, I find Bangkok one of the coolest cities I’ve ever visited. It has a lot of international business and all the urban conveniences and in the same time all the relaxing fun Bangkok is usually known for. People are generally very open-minded, especially about their sexuality, and that is in my opinion a sign of a healthy society.

Life in Phnom Penh
After all this talking about Thailand, I need to be fair and mention that the country I spent most of my time in 2011 was Cambodia. I was working as the president of AIESEC Cambodia until June.

There is something about Cambodia that gets to your heart. It really became my home during the one year I was living there and sometimes I think of myself as a 100% Estonian and 50% Cambodian.

Life in Cambodia is just somehow easy. It is hard to put it in words, but most people who have stayed there for even few weeks find the same. Just go and experience it yourself.

Living in Cambodia gave me quite a different perspective to the world. As an Estonian I was used to compare my country with other European countries and think how much there is to develop if we compare the country with the most developed European countries.

And then suddenly you live in a country which total GDP is lower than your country’s with 10x bigger population. It gives another dimension of how far my country has gone and how much more responsibility we should take over global issues. In global scale, Estonians should be way more active in building up countries which have only recently got the liberties we have been using for 20 years to transform from a poor Soviet occupied state into a thriving European country.

Of course this responsibility brings some very nice benefits – more business opportunities, more global power. Netherlands should be in a way a role model for Estonia of how a small population can have a huge influence in the world just because their forefathers were adventurous and aggressive enough to sail their ships and explore the world. We can now do the same without all this occupying and violence.

Traveling
In the year end summaries I always list the countries I visited last year. So in 2011 the list was following, in the chronological order:

Thailand (various reasons)
Cambodia (living there)
Spain (two half-day transits which enabled me to explore Madrid a bit)
Mexico (AIESEC International Presidents Meeting)
Vietnam (AIESEC Asia Pacific Exchange and Leadership Summit)
Netherlands (AIESEC financial subcommittee meeting)
Estonia (visiting home)
Finland (two half-day trips to get Indonesian visa)
Indonesia (a trip to visit Dessy in June, living here since September)

I think last time this list was so short was in 2007, main contributing factor was getting a steadier job. And for the first time I added Estonia to the list, because this year I actually was visiting it.

Finishing my AIESEC career
Having been an active AIESEC member for the past 6 years, 2011 marks an end of my active AIESEC involvement. It was a wonderful time, a transformative period and I will always remember it with warm feelings. AIESEC deserves a separate blog post, but let me write here a bit about how was the leaving process.
At the very end of my president term, we had a National Planning Meeting with the leaders of local committees and also the new management team of AIESEC Cambodia. The last session my team delivered was a sharing session. Three of us – me, Klara and Chetra – had set up a room with candles and we shared each about the highlights of our experience.
We have similar tradition in AIESEC Estonia and every year I faced the same issue – how do you put in words your whole year of intense experiences where sometimes the most powerful moments were not some events, meetings or results but the feelings and lessons you learned in the hard way.
The last hours of my president term we spent with Klara and Chetra in Sihanoukville (beach resort in Cambodia). We had a lot of fun and at midnight we found the new team and threw them to the ocean. It was a feeling of relief, freedom and sadness all in the same time.

Visiting Estonia
Being a visitor in your own country is a strange feeling. I became nervous from the moment I stepped into Frankfurt-Tallinn plane and heard after a long time the always identifiable Estonian accent.

It was supposed to be a nice holiday for me and Dessy, meeting my family and going around Estonia. Unfortunately things didn’t go this way as the Finnish embassy decided it was too risky to give her a Schengen visa. The rejection cause, for three times, was unclear intention to leave the country.

Having been away for over a year, I saw my country from a different perspective. It was much cleaner, greener and smaller than I had felt while living there. Tallinn is just the cutest town – so small and yet is enough urban to make you feel like living in a proper city.

Seeing my friends after a while was a bit like going back in time. It was again same people (although some of them had got new girlfriends), same topics and same activities. I guess that’s how it’s supposed to be and I really enjoyed it.

I also spent a lot of time just staying at home. It was good to meet my parents again, seeing them doing well and telling them some fun cultural experiences I had just had. I also met my sister after almost 1,5 years and it was great to see how she had grown up and become a confident and ambitious person. I know they are among the few people who will actually read this post until here, so I use the chance to tell that I miss home and can’t wait to visit Estonia again in 2012.

Working as PR consultant
In September I moved to Indonesia and started to work In Fortune PR as a new business development officer. My job is to prepare proposals and communication strategy for international clients who want to run PR activities in Indonesia.

Getting a job after managing AIESEC countries for past two years was an interesting experience. Suddenly I had a boss and no employees to manage. It took some time to get used to the fact that I was no longer a decision-maker in the organization and people actually delegated tasks to me. In a way it was humbling and sometimes it was just frustrating.

I have been learning a lot about PR (many things I wish I knew in my previous AIESEC positions), about what drives people in the office and how effectively or ineffectively a business can be run.

Anyways, after few months I felt that being an officer in a company is not really what matches my capabilities. I did not get all those organization management experiences to follow a common corporate career path. That’s why while writing those words I am one month from finishing my job and starting to live as full time entrepreneur.

Life in Jakarta
To be honest, I find Jakarta not the greatest place to live. What make it livable is Dessy and all the business opportunities here, but the city infrastructure is just horrible. About 20 million people live in greater Jakarta area and the government has failed to build even a metro system.
So this means every day it takes about an hour to get to office and an hour to come back. And I live quite near to the office. There are people who take almost three hours every day just to get to office.

It is incredibly polluted and taking care of health is essential. In the first months I had to constantly cure some health issue and still now feel sometimes dizzy due to lack of fresh air.
If any of you is watching Terra Nova, then Jakarta is probably the first city on earth to look like the city pictured there in 2149.

Starting a business
It was early November when it suddenly became clear that I’m going to be an entrepreneur. There’s an investment, there are products and there are already first clients. We are building up a company called Indosight (www.indosight.com), which offers market entry services to Indonesia.

It feels a bit similar to being a president of AIESEC Cambodia. You need to start everything from the scratch, define products, find clients, and convince people about your organization. It is definitely a very exciting time and I really hope this will work out.

The End
It is the last hours of 2011 and soon I will be serving my first self-made sour cabbage. Or Kimchi (a Korean version of our hapukapsas) as Dessy calls this pot of cabbage in our kitchen.

This year started in a beach and will end in an urban jungle. Has been an eventful year and I feel things will only get better from here on.

Why did we shut up?

2011-12-08T01:47:00.000-08:00

Some years ago when blogs became popular it seemed like a start of a new kind of journalism. Suddenly everyone was given the space to share their thoughts and this way the traditional media no longer had the monopoly to publish articles.

Over the years I added to my RSS reader perhaps 20-30 blogs of people who I personally knew and who used their blog just to share whatever came to their mind.

Few years back I started to notice a trend. The folder “personal blogs” started to be updated less and less frequently, until to a level that today I’m surprised to see any new blog posts from my friends. It happens just maybe few times a month.

What happened? Did we run out of things to say?

I guess the fatal factor here was the growth of Facebook. It takes only few seconds to update your status and the feedback is instant. You get “likes” and comments and often dozens of them. In the same time the average-Joe-type blogger is lucky enough if anyone bothers to comment a blog post.

But there’s something I don’t like about this trend. Blogs were supposed to give everyone a chance to express themselves. And yet we still settle for having articles chosen by editors of news corporations. Who choose whatever would be appealing to masses.

What about standing up for what you believe in? Changing the world one blog article at a time?

The whole industrial age when we were trained to be merely the receivers of information is still in us. Myself included.

Reflections on Estonia

2011-09-14T03:40:00.000-07:00

Today is my last day in Estonia before leaving to Indonesia. Being home for over 2 months has given me chance to explore my country from a bit different angle.

Distances

You don’t really realize how small Estonia is before you go to a massive crowded place such as Java in Indonesia or with poor roads like Cambodia. Going from one corner of the country to the other takes hardly longer than 2-3 hours by car.

Tallinn is a cute little city where the word “traffic jam” means waiting for 4 cycles in an intersection and arriving home 10-15 minutes later than usually.

Cleanness

In the 90s I remember talks how clean are the other countries compared to Estonia. In 2011 it’s fair to say that Estonia is a really clean country itself now. You can wear flip-flops for the whole day and still come home with rather clean legs. You can easily drink tap water, breath fresh air and will hardly find garbage on the streets.

Lack of smart phones

We Estonians like to brag about our IT achievements like e-elections or mobile parking, but compared to South-East Asia, we are really behind in mobile communication. It’s probably partly related to the paragraph “distances” and partly with cultural differences – young people in Estonia can freely meet so we don’t need to use iPhones or Blackberries to communicate.

Limited world

When Estonians talk about working abroad, it’s always about Western Europe. The assumption is always that we go for either well-paid jobs we are over-qualified for (like working in turkey farms or constructions) or wouldn’t get a decent salary in Estonia (like doctors).

What about going to the emerging markets and with the same skill set be a much more respected professional due to Estonia’s good education system? What about exporting to markets where competition is still low due to political constraints in recent history?

Take either Cambodia or Indonesia, you still see the same old countries aggressively expanding there. USA, China, Japan, Western Europe. We will never become among the wealthiest countries in the world if we are always few steps behind and wait for markets to be made mainstream by others.

Religion

Even though Estonia lists as the least religious country in most rankings, it would be too much to say that Estonians are really rational people who value scientific evidence over myths and fairytales. A recent study in Tartu University demonstrated that Estonians are willing to believe anything as long as it doesn’t come from Christianity or other forms of organized faiths.

Over half of Estonians believe there are people with side-kick powers, horoscopes are published in most mainstream newspapers and everybody knows that a black cat crossing a street in front of you is a bad sign. Igor Mang is an opinion leader who makes front pages with his predictions about the future.

Separation of powers

Trias politica principle is something that has been in Estonia for long enough that we take it for granted. We rightfully complain that the parliament opposition is weak and often the coalition passes laws that are still raw. But those are more like cosmetic errors compared to most of the world and how politics is run there. This doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t keep setting higher standards for ourselves.

Separation of politics and religion is obvious if you read the previous paragraph, but should be still brought out. In Estonia law makers cannot manipulate people by saying “because bible says so” or some religious commission decided something is haram (forbidden). Perhaps with two exceptions – one is gay civil partnerships and other is cannabis. I don’t understand why a country that is not tied to religious dogmas still treats a part of society unequal to others or bans herbs that are not more dangerous than sugar.

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Conclusion – Estonia is my roots. In Cambodia I read Estonian newspapers on a daily basis and probably knew more about what is happening here than many people who never leave Tallinn. I care about how it’s developing and feel I’m giving my contribution by living abroad, learning about the world, and one day, if not now, become a valuable resource for my country.

Living abroad is not unpatriotic, with a world as open (for us Estonians) as this one, it would be just stupid not to explore it and limit yourself only with a small geographical area such as Estonia or Europe.

I will be away but I won't be a stranger.

Right and wrong

2011-07-25T13:06:00.000-07:00

#BlameTheMuslims

Sanum Ghafoor is my hero. She started yesterday a massive Twitter Trend with her ironic tweet containing #BlameTheMuslims. The original idea was to highlight how ridiculously we fall into conclusions that everything bad in the world is caused by Muslims.

Take for example the recent terrorist act in Norway. Who of you assumed it was organized by some Islamic extremists? Well, I did. And for sure there’s a good reason for that, because let’s be frank, a lot of terrorism in the world come from some radical Islamic group. But hey, this time it was a radical Christian instead. And throughout history, Christian extremists have used terror the same way as Muslims are doing it nowadays.

But I’ll save the discussion about terrorism and religion for another blog post. What I want to talk about is the insane amount of people who were demanding Twitter to ban this hashtag. That it’s racist (since when are Muslims a race?) or spreading hate towards Muslims (did those people even try to understand the idea of this hashtag?).

And that’s something that annoys me big time. Whenever it’s something even remotely connected to religion, we become narrow-minded and ignore any kind of freedom of expression. And my quarter century of life experience tells me that whenever some conversations become stigmatized, that’s exactly the kind of conversations we should have.

I’ve travelled quite a decent amount around the world and seen it everywhere – we believe that order is achieved by bans and regulations rather than values and role models. Don’t like someone expressing their opinion connected to Muslims? Let’s ban it. Let’s make it forbidden to think and act in a way we don’t like.

Religions are especially eager to do it. Not trying to be an expert in theology, religions have a huge tendency to define what’s right and what’s wrong. And no debating about those rules.

Being a non-religious person, I have a problem with that. Those rules, be them written in the Bible or Quran, are just some people’s opinions about right and wrong. Those books are written by people with their own intentions and agendas.

I know I’m touching a very sensitive topic. Religion is something we are born into. Rarely somebody chooses to be a Buddhist or Hindu, we are raised as one. And once it’s part of your flesh and blood, we don’t really question anything about it.

I believe there’s nothing wrong with teaching your kids your beliefs. I too will one day raise my kids following certain set of values I believe are right and most probably my children will follow them. But the important question is whether we are willing to openly debate with our children one day – why is it important to do good things to others? Why should we not kill? Etc. And accept that if the opinions are grounded, our children have a right to develop their own set of beliefs and opinions, not necessarily being identical to ours.

Now when it comes to religions, such discussions don’t seem to be possible. Especially in countries where religion and politics go hand in hand. Take Islam – governments can glue labels “haram” or “halal” to just about anything that is matching their political goals. The ideals of religions are secondary; religion is used to control people. Short-term political aims are dressed as laws from god, making it a mere way of manipulating the masses (got to agree with Marx on this).

……….

This here was a brief and messy expression about freedom of speech. Freedom to think with our own heads. Bono already said that “we are one but we’re not the same”. We don’t need to agree with all the opinions in the world. I have mine, you have yours. But if we are not willing to listen, misunderstandings happen. And misunderstandings lead to breaking friendships, lovers, countries, everything.

Sticking together is a struggle. Not being a flock of sheep makes it perhaps more difficult but that’s the only way we have. Respect. Listen. Agree and disagree, but hear out.

When human beings become bureacracy machines

2011-07-20T10:58:00.000-07:00

I am an Estonian. Estonia belongs to European Union and Schengen visa area and for years I thought it’s a wonderful system to make traveling between European countries easier.

Having now been on the other side – the side of a person outside of the system wanting to enter the Schengen area – I’ve seen the ugly side. My girlfriend is an Indonesian and we were supposed to spend the summer together in Estonia, visiting my family and exploring my home country.

Since Estonia doesn’t have an embassy in Indonesia (in the fourth most populated country in the world), the visa applications are processed by Finnish embassy in Jakarta. First hand the Schengen tourist visa application seems pretty straight-forward – you need to gather a list of documents like travel insurance, invitation letter, flight booking etc. All criteria are listed in their website and seem pretty reasonable. Now to the ugly side.

Firstly, it takes minimum 14 days to process the application. Based on my visual observation in my 2 visits to the embassy, the embassy barely received more than few applications on those days. I have no idea what they do in those 2 weeks – most probably they throw the application to some shelf and take it out when 2 weeks are passed. I doubt that inserting a person’s name to Schengen database to check whether any other member state has anything against this person entering the area would take longer than 5 minutes.

Secondly, the embassy refuses from any support regarding the visa application. All they do is stating that list of needed documents is on their website. They don’t suggest that perhaps we would be more convinced if you’d also add your employment contract or any other proof that would show that you have an intention to actually come back to Indonesia before visa expires. If your visa is refused, they refuse also from any comments that why your visa was refused and what you should add to the next application. All they say is that go to website, read the list again and think whether there is something more you could submit next time.

Thirdly, there is no legal right to a visa. The embassy has a right to refuse giving you visa based on whatever they want. They don’t even need to explain. You can submit everything requested on website and even more and the embassy won’t still have any problems refusing your visa.

Fourthly, if your visa is refused, the appealing process takes minimum 30 days. So if you applied for a visa, got a refusal, appeal the decision and got lucky, you’ve already spent 1,5 months waiting for a visa. Talk about mobility here…

This is all based on my girlfriend’s case. She has a university degree, a good job in Indonesia, a boyfriend who has same return flight to Indonesia as she has and still twice she has got a refusal under cause “your intention to leave Member States before visa expires could not be ascertained”.

For example during the visa interview they had doubts whether the employment contract is valid. Did they ever contact the company to ask about it? Of course not. They also had doubts whether my dad, who wrote the invitation letter, actually knows my girlfriend. Did they ever call my dad to ask? You know the answer already.

I don’t know whether I’m more ashamed by the refusals itself or the way Finnish embassy is treating her. Giving no advice, delaying decision-making, deciding based on personal biases.

I wonder how human beings become such cold bureaucracy machines who don’t understand that behind their decisions are people’s lives? Nobody will bring back the summer of 2011 I intended to spend with my girlfriend when both of us took a few months break in our careers to spend some quality time together exploring my home country.

Lauri Lahi

Laurilahi.blogspot.com

New beginnings

2011-07-14T12:31:00.000-07:00

First of all, I'll give you a small heads up in case we have not been keeping in touch lately. I finished my job as the AIESEC Cambodia president in June, then moved to Jakarta (Indonesia) but came back to Estonia for the summer. After 6 wonderful years in AIESEC I'm looking forward to start a new chapter in my life.

I've been back home for few weeks now. I have absolutely no responsibilities so I have plenty of time to reconnect with whatever comes to my mind. I decided to pick up some hobbies from the past - bicycling, painting, writing, playing piano. All of those activities were among my main leisure time activities at some point- some 3-4, others even more than 10 years ago.

As I look back, it seems like every hobby I've had, had a certain expiry date. Once it was passed, it was simply replaced by new hobbies. For example I never played piano since 2001 even though for all of this time I've had an electric piano in my room. It was used for storing clothes.

Now I have decided to rediscover my old hobbies. It has been a lot of fun since my usual daily agenda consist of art, sports and just hanging out. I feel how I'm using (again) my brain in a way I never used it in my professional career. For example trying to paint a human face, playing a piano simultaneously with your left and right hand, coming up with a consistent storyline, breathing correctly in open-sea swimming etc.

The challenges are exciting and yet frustrating. Take for example painting. In 2003-2004 I went through different art classes in Estonian Art Academy and I can say among arts this was one of my strongest. And yet when I made my first strokes after 7 years to the canvas the result did not make me happy at all. Time passes and you don't start from where you stopped last time. No, you take many steps back and start as a beginner again.

Sometimes it's fun and sometimes I just want to give up. The biggest issue I'm struggling with is the strong results-orientation I've picked up in my professional career. Even though in the back of my mind I know I don't need to become a world-class pianist, I still feel annoyed that after hours of practicing I still struggle to play songs I'd like to play. In the end it's the process of playing that's more important and yet the lack of "results" is what often is making me mad.

Whatever new you start, it won't come easily. And that's the good thing. If it would, it would have no value.

Same applies for the next steps in my professional career. I know I will start facing challenges that make me feel as a beginner again. Having the artistic challenges of this summer under my belt, perhaps I will be a tad better prepared for it.

Fighting obesity by first creating it

2010-12-19T06:44:00.000-08:00

This week Nestle announced the take over of a weight-loss organization Jenny Craig. Business as usual unless you look at what is the product portfolio of Nestle - chocolates, high-sugar breakfast cereals, ice cream, ice teas full of artificial ingredients etc. All of which anyone seeking to lose weight healthily should keep far away from.

Seems a bit odd, but even stranger is Nestle's comment on that: "Chocolate in moderation can be a fun part of a balanced diet, as a treat."

Of course, a moderate amount of cocaine is good for writing psychedelic poems just as developing moderate disability helps average athlete to excel in paraolympics . Anything can be good for something if using a bit of creativity and optimism.

So how does it work out for Nestle? Seems like a smart business model. First you create the obesity problem with your first product group and then you offer the weight-loss plan once the first set of products have done their job well.

Perhaps Nestle could even develop a frequent eater program. Every time you buy Cheerios or Kit Kat you earn points. Once you collect enough points you get a special offer from Nestle stating "based on our estimation, you should be fat enough to qualify for a 20% discount at Jenny Craig's".

Asian students outperforming the rest of the world

2010-12-09T14:04:00.000-08:00

This week OECD got to my consciousness in two ways – Estonia finally became fully a member of it and few days ago the PISA scores were released.

PISA is measuring the academic performance of 15 year-olds across the world, mainly in the OECD member countries. Every three years the scores in math, science and reading tests are published and this way it is probably the most objective way to measure country’s education system performance.

This year’s star performer was Shanghai, outperforming all the other “countries” by far in all three subjects. Other top performers were as expected the Asian top economies – Singapore, Korea, Hong Kong, Japan and Taiwan. Finland was the only western economy competing with top asian countries, beating Singapore in reading and not falling far behind in math and science. Estonia was doing very well, placing at top 10 among the OECD countries, being comparable to Switzerland and the Netherlands. Interestingly, traditional education powerhouses like UK and USA got beaten by Estonia in all categories.

Those numbers really got me thinking…

Are the test results adequate to predict the children’s later success in life?

PISA has been accused a lot for being too “preparable”, meaning the schools that test the children more often, are able to perform better than their counterparts who are not used to extensive state tests. That might be true to some scale when we talk about asian countries, but doesn’t explain why Finland is doing better than almost anybody else in the world.

Barack Obama compared the results to Sputnik in 1950s – a call for action that USA is falling behind and further investments into education are absolutely needed immediately. I think it’s an excellent comparison – we (I refer to western countries) might comfort ourselves for some decades, but it’s inevitable that if west wants to keep the power, it needs to change.

Where would I put my children to school?

At Estonian Youth Forum 2010 professor Marju Lauristin asked this question from the audience demonstrating how most of us will still be placed in Estonia even if we explore the world for a while as young adults.

I don’t take Estonia as an obvious choice for both personal and pragmatic reasons. But would I want them to go to school in Shanghai? I’m not sure either. I read a bit, and a lot of Shanghai’s (and most of asias) success seems to be based on the huge amount of studying hours and testing – even up to 80% of Shanghai’s students have an extra private tutor to boost their test results. Which leaves them little time to deal with extra-curricular activities such as sports and art. Perhaps this explains why Chinese team is not even able to qualify to football World Cup.

Being an advocate for a balanced lifestyle, I’d probably be OK if my kids would score just slightly above OECD average if it comes together with the active lifestyle full of arts and sports. Somehow I believe that though academic performance determines a lot in life, leadership skills, creativity and fitness start to matter more and more as we start to progress as adults in the “real world”.

However, it’s not a “one or another” debate. It’s not academic performance vs extra-curricular activies and we need to find ways how to excel in both.

What should governments learn from this study?

It is clear that all top ranking countries are there because they have invested a lot of money to their education systems. This is an absolute must. However, it doesn’t explain why for example UK has dropped dramatically over the past 9 years in PISA rankings while doubling the investments to education in the same period.

It means that there are areas where the investments bring a higher return. Based on what I found studying the success of Singapore, Korea and Finland, there are few areas that governments need to focus their investments:

1. Teachers quality. Two determing factors –their relative wages and education. Teacher salaries must be at a level that it would attract the top university graduates to become and develop as teachers. This would solve also naturally an issue schools are facing – the inadequate teachers. As the competition is increasing, the better ones will stay in schools.

2. Accessability to high quality primary education. Every person must be able to receive a high quality primary education (first 9 grades) no matter where they live or what is their parent’s background. This ensures that all the talented students proceed to best high schools no matter where the schools are geographically located.

3. Centralized and highly-funded R&D. Give best teachers best teaching methods and you quarantee the best outcome. There must be national education labs that constantly involve the latest advancements in science and technology to the everyday teaching. All teachers must receive constant education about those and this needs to be tied to their progress in schools.

It’s obvious that any kind of extra investments require a lot of political will and the decisions are never too popular since there will always be somebody who has to tighten the belt. But there is one area, where I see huge savings could be made – it’s the pension system.

The access to medical treatment and our increasing understanding of healthy lifestyle means that keeping a retirement system where people starting from their 60s are from fiscal perspective mere costs, is not a sustainable solution. We are seeing how Japan, China and whole Europe will face huge social problems in the near future due to the aging population.

Traditional debate around aging is around the birth ratios, but perhaps this is a natural evolution process – if we live longer, we need less young people. Or in fact the phrase “young person” will just get a new meaning. And we should just accept it and start thinking how to work with the new demographic situation.

I don’t see a reason why a person who is my age now (I’m 24), should retire at age of 65. My take on this is that if we make the right choices, most of us could easily be active on labor market when we are 70, 80, some even 90 years old. As we get older, our experience starts to compensate whatever we lose while aging.

So what if we just move the national retirement age at once let’s say to 80. How much money would we save? Billions to invest into education.This should also have a stimulating effect on people to stay healthy and make smart financial choices in their lives.

My good friend Erik even suggested few months ago that let’s just drop the general pension and work till death. Might seem like a contradictory idea, but if we change the meaning of “work” from a routine obligation to a self-realization, it makes sense to me.

A dead rock-star and little creatures in my head

2010-12-09T03:40:00.000-08:00

Mr Mojo Risin

Mr Mojo Risin*

I’m still affected by the documentary “When you’re strange” I saw last weekend, a movie about the short but eventful life of The Doors. The picture of a bearded long-haired Jim Morrison keeps appearing on my mind reminding me how unconventionally we can live our lives.

I keep on thinking about little creatures in my head, each fighting to get fed by my thoughts and in the end determining my choices.

Master and a slave

Conformist and a revolutionist

Artist and a drudge

Once a creature becomes noticeably stronger than its opponent, it wins a battle and takes the lead. If the imbalance of power strengthens, one day one creature might kill the other one.

We become slaves if we kill the inner master

We conform if we avoid the revolution

We become drudges if we stop being artists

Just for the record, I don’t think there is any universally right nutrition plan for those creatures. As long we make the choices ourselves.

Lives of people like Jim Morrison are merely romantic stories for most of us. We didn’t feel their pain nor will we follow their lead. But they keep alive the idea that there are numerous ways of living your lives and the choice is ours.

*Mr Mojo Risin is anagram of Jim Morrison used by himself in his song “LA Woman”.

PS! This post was written being totally sober, perhaps slightly affected by the Doors playlist :)

Why You Aren’t Buying Venezuelan Chocolate and Studying In Estonia

2010-12-07T07:03:00.000-08:00

Best wines come from France, suits from Italy and watches from Switzerland. Those associations are based on a centuries-long reputation that has branded the products of those countries as pretty much automatically high-end ones. Leaving their counterparts from other countries facing a barrier where for the same quality consumers are willing to pay significantly less.

In the December 2010 issue of Harvard Business Review, Rohit Deshpandé in his article titled “Why You Aren’t Buying Venezuelan Chocolate” writes about a Venezuelan chocolate company called El Rey. El Rey is processing some of the best cacao beans in the world, used by chocolate producers in Switzerland and Belgium as well as by the company itself.

While the Swiss and Belgium producers are able to sell their chocolate at very high prices, El Rey struggles to find a comparable market share with their own chocolate. The quality is the same, but the line “made in Switzerland” beats “made in Venezuela” with ease. It’s the perception of Swiss chocolates being excellent and Venezuelan chocolates being unknown that makes consumers pay notably more for the first one.

I am a supporter of meritocracy when it comes to almost anything. It is clear that in an ever-changing world there is no constant even when it comes to conservative industries such as wines or watches. A company in China or Pakistan can invest into R&D, hire the best expertise from around the world and produce pretty much anything with a comparable, if not with higher, quality as the most highly regarded countries. Yet the associations of certain brands being better due to their geographical location makes it impossible to fairly compete and thus sustaining the monopolies.

Relating it to Estonia, Prime Minister Andrus Ansip stated recently that Estonian universities need to start attracting a higher amount of foreign students. From a first glimpse seems like a great idea, but how feasible it actually is that the Estonian universities would be at some point able to start attracting remarkable amounts of top students?

It is obvious that among the education brands Estonia cannot be compared anyhow with USA, Germany or England. It’s the historical brand that attracts all the investments, best professors and best students to those countries. And if the brand itself doesn’t stand the competition, every dollar invested into education in Estonia brings a significantly lower return than the same dollar would in USA.

If Estonia would be China, this would be a competition that would probably be worth the fight. The huge population can afford the temporary relative ineffectiveness of the investments until the tipping point where the scale of resources beats (or creates new) historical brands. For Estonia this is not the case. It means we need to find another, smarter, ways of getting our people the best possible education in the world.

Few thoughts:

1. Let’s create a huge scholarship program for Estonian students to study in the top 25 universities in the world. In the end, every Estonian student should be able to apply to those universities without being concerned whether they can actually afford it. If they get accepted, they get the scholarships needed. Money for the program should come both from public and private sector and the increasingly growing alumni network of such program.

2. If we want to attract more foreign students, we need to find a clear competitive advantage. It won’t be the quality of professors, infrastructure or climate since there are dozens of countries who are already competing for those advantages. Estonia would need its own blue ocean – be it immigration system, business environment or anything where we stand a good chance of beating the competition.

What happens if the state starts to massively support students to study abroad? I doubt it would mean a huge drain of brains (this is a pseudo-issue caused by the traumas of Soviet Union), rather Estonia having ambassadors around the world in top universities. That every graduate of Harvard would know one at least one Estonian from whom he or she heard great stories about whatever we are doing well.

I can even offer a concrete vision for such program: that in 10 years, a percentage of Estonian students out of the nation’s total student population studying in Ivy League universities would be higher than the same percentage among any other nation in the world.

As a final remark, Finnish president Tarja Halonen encouraged Finns living abroad to be the cultural ambassadors of Finland. My sympathies, I hope Estonian politicians would also start seeing Estonians abroad as an opportunity rather than a resource that needs to be brought back home immediately.

Illustration by Harry Campbell. Harvard Business Review, December 2010.

My first marathon

2010-11-23T05:15:00.001-08:00

On Sunday I fulfilled one of my personal goals for 2010 and completed a marathon. My first 42,195 km run took place in Bangkok and ended up with 280th place and time 4 minutes over 4 hours.

Prologue
Although the goal to run a marathon came already in the end of 2009, for the majority of this year it seemed like I'm not going to do it. I had great running routine in January-February, when I was running often despite the freezing temperatures in Estonia (-20C regularly) or intense conference in Tunisia for 2 weeks.

And then I got elected to my job in Cambodia and my running schedule was turned upside down. My first runs in Cambodia were so tough, I hardly could run for longer than 20-30 minutes and somehow gave up on regular running. Until September I didn't have a week when i would have run more than 30km. In some weeks it was a plain "0".

I remember a day in early September when I arrived back from a month of conferences and traveling in Thailand and India. I was in a poor shape and had eaten way too much junk food for past weeks.

I opened my Facebook and saw that several people in my Facebook list had completed Tallinn Marathon. This was the moment that rang a bell - Lauri, if you are serious about it, you must do it now. There can be no excuses.

I looked up in the internet what are the nearest marathons and found one that seemed scarily close - Bangkok marathon and just in 9 weeks. This was it - I had a goal and I needed to find a way to make it work.

Preparation period
I started to read a lot of articles about how to prepare for your first marathon, mainly focusing on how to actually survive it. There are tons of articles about running marathons. Common theme of them seemed to be that you need minimum around 3-4 months of preparation to be able to go through all the 42 km-s.

I didn't have that time and I had another 2-weeks trip coming, where I knew I'd be lucky if I can run even 2-3 times per week.

I designed myself a running schedule and planned to run 420 km in the 8 weeks I had left until marathon. Symbolically 10 marathons before the actual event. Actual result was 320km, so I fulfilled around three quarters of my plan.

It was commonly also said that you need around 2-3 long runs of over 25km prior the first marathon. I had one 20km run just 2 weeks before the marathon.

In the last weeks I was preparing myself for the intense heat of Bangkok. Assuming the starting time would be 3pm, I had several runs starting exactly at 3pm during weekends, feeling like a grilled chicken every time. Then during the race check-in I found out it was actually 3am, so all my afternoon runs were useless and instead I should have practiced night runs.

Arriving to site
On the marathon night itself I took a cab 45 minutes before the marathon was supposed to start and I knew it should take around 20 minutes to get there from the place I was staying during daily traffic. Of course I ended up with a taxi driver who confidently nodded that he knows where the place is. And then we started to drive around.

Finally he left me to a place where there were few runners praying. I paid my 100 bahts, ran to the runners and asked where can I leave my bag. One runner came to me and said: "wait a minute, are you going for full marathon?" It turned out I was 10km away from the starting place and it was just 5 minutes till the start.

He took me with his car to the nearest place to the marathon start and once I stepped out of his car, I saw in the distance marathon runners starting their race. It was a horrible feeling. I had messed up my marathon start.

I ran quickly to the starting point. Asked girls from the media tent to just take my bag (with 200 dollars in it) and entered the start area. The people clapping for the starters had just started to leave when I popped out from nowhere, without any warm-up and setting up my iPod and headband while I was making my first steps of the long race.

So for a while I actually was the last runner of Bangkok marathon.

The race
It is probably called the "magic of race day" but somehow the kilometers started to come very easily. It was a beautiful clear night, 25 degrees and I started to feel better with each kilometer. My only concern was peeing, since I didn't have time to go to the bathroom before the start. But I figured I can do it somewhere during the race.

As kilometers passed, I started to pass more runners. Until 32km point I had been almost only passing other runners, making me feel light and fast. Later checking the 15km and 34 km check-point times, I had been making up over 10 minutes between those two check-points compared to most of the runners finishing around me.

As a funny thing, I ran the whole marathon with a feeling that I need to pee but I can hold it until the next toilet point. I just didn't want to stop my good rhythm.

Passing the 30km point I started to feel that there is no way back anymore. I will actually be able to do it. And it all had seemed easy so far.

And then the kilometer signs started to come harder and harder. 30 to 32 was OK. 32 to 34 was slow. 34 to 36 was painful. 36 to 38 was horrible. 38 to 40 seemed like forever. 40 till the finish was just plain torture.

I kept repeating myself that there are only 20, 15, 10 minutes till the end. It might seem forever at that point of time, but later I will only remember it as a nice memory of a personal struggle to fulfill my goal.

It works well in theory but in reality my legs became dead heavy. I was just somehow keeping on moving hoping the finish line will come.

Seeing the finish line 500m in front of me didn't raise much excitement. Those were the longest 500m in my life. I could jog them easily in any other day, shape but when you have 41km already behind you, it requires enormous effort.

But finally the finish line came and there I was. I completed my first marathon.

Completing a marathon is a dream of many, and somehow falls to the list of crazy things one can do during lifetime. After the initial exhaustion and dizziness started to fade, I was already starting to think about my next physical personal goal.

Left temporarily goalless, I know now from my own personal experience that there is no better thing than a goal to actually achieve something. I had been thinking of marathon for years, and in the end all it took was 8 weeks of preparation. Seems like a lot of time wasted, but having that experience I can use it to achieve anything in my life.

It's a great feeling of accomplishment. I didn't feel it during the race nor even after the race. But as 2 days have passed, I feel satisfied when I see my shiny medal and now I can already google articles about marathon recovery and how to increase your performance at the next one.

I don't know what is my next personal goal but I know with a little more confidence now that it just takes a clear attractive target, a plan how to achieve it and then just sticking to it.

All those lessons I knew for years and I had been using them in my professional life. It was time to make them work in my personal life as well.

Do ideals exist?

2010-11-17T04:10:00.000-08:00

Ideals exist only in ﬁction but shape our thinking. |...|

Ideals are figments of our imaginations. They are a collective will and desire for something to be that isn't there. |...|

If Google knows all the answers, then those were the first replies to my question. The food for this thought came from a book I've been reading for the past few days - a book written by a Cambodian woman titled "First They Killed My Father". It's one family's story during the Khmer Rouge, a period in the second half of 1970s where over 2 million Cambodians were killed. Under Pol Pot's leadership the Khmer Rouge wanted to transform the country into a pure agrarian society and of course the ones who suffered were the Cambodian people itself. I strongly advise you to read this book, it makes many of the world's cruelest regimes seem like a walk in the park compared to this one.

As with any regime, Khmer Rouge had also its winners and losers. There was the high class, middle class and low class, of course their meaning was different than in a modern democratic state, but those classes were all there, especially the high and low one. And if you read about any social system, then no matter what are the ideals, it still seems to produce this class separation.

But who were those people who were voluntarily not only obeying to the system but also helped it to spread and grow? I have a hypothesis that for very big majority of human population, the ideals simply don't exist. They are dominated over by the personal drivers.

A personal driver is a certain characteristic that directs your choices no matter in which paradigm you currently are. Most of us accept the paradigm with its sticks and carrots and then start living our lives based on whatever is driving us. If your driver is to make religious career, it doesn't really matter is it a Catholicism, Islam or Buddhism - we accept one of it and then become as good and important inside it as possible. For example if pope Benedict would have been born into a muslim family, I'm sure he'd be an important man in Islam rather than leading the Catholic church.

For a lot of us, living a comfortable life is a driver, so we seek for ways how with minimum efforts ensure a stable comfortable life. Whatever it could mean in a certain paradigm.

Probably 99% of us just accept the paradigm and then fulfill our drivers inside it. Some of us get further than others, and this way expand the borders of the existing paradigms. For example the Estonian prime minister Andrus Ansip is a good example of it - he was leading Tartu region during Soviet Union and later after independence became mayor of Tartu and even prime minister. It does not mean he is a person without a worldview, he just has a strong driver for political leadership and he is excellent at it. He takes the worldview of the existing paradigm, adapts to it and later evolves the system even further.

The pure idealists - the ones who are put to live inside one paradigm but would really like to change it into another one - rarely succeed in it. They are the misfits who most probably are never given the status to really change anything.

It's the case where idealism needs to meet pragmatism - without the latter one, you just find yourself running against a wall. Perhaps even getting murdered (think of Copernicus) or just ignored. The ability to adapt to the current paradigm first seems to be the only way of gaining a position to change it. If your ideals are the strongest drivers, then it might be very difficult if not possible.

And yet there are some people who despite all the odds turn their ideals into reality. They are the ones who truly change the world. Think of Jesus, Leonardo Da Vinci, Picasso, perhaps even Mark Zuckerberg? If you think you could be next in the list, you are most probably wrong. Most probably but not definitely.

Marketing lessons from Sambo the elephant

2010-11-15T03:26:00.000-08:00

Today, in the middle of a working day, I was distracted for over half an hour after Klara read a very sad news - Sambo, the only elephant in Phnom Penh, is being kicked out of Wat Phnom (a small important mountain in the middle of the city) where she has been earning money by taking customers around the mountain.

Her story is very emotional, you can read about it here. As a young elephant, she was separated from her family and being carried around until one young man started to take care of her. She even survived the Khmer Rouge regime, where most of her fellow elephants in her village were killed for food or just for pure fun of killing.

After the regime she had been living a simple life together with her owner, earning enough money for their food by carrying tourists around one of the main tourist attraction.

Now the officials have told that she cannot stay anymore at Wat Phnom, because she is interrupting traffic. This means that she nor the owner have anymore a source of income for food.

Immediately I felt compassionate. How can I give few dollars to support Sambo? How can officials be so cruel to Sambo?

***

Now imagine a different case. A lot of animals are in bad condition in the region, whole species are endangered due to illegal hunting and destroying their habitat.

If an NGO worker would come to me at a coffee shop, asking to donate 5 dollars to support some animal protection initiative, what would I do? I would say "no, thank you!" and not even bother thinking about it more.

I don't give donations to beggars or organizations, because I feel it's not making a systematic change - by my 5 dollars they don't reduce the need for later donations. This is a fraud business model and by supporting it, you are keeping people on the streets and organizations struggling with bad business models. Instead of having to figure out how to create sustainable ways of earning incomes.

***

My rational side understands perfectly, that giving Sambo 5 dollars is also not a sustainable solution. Only sustainable solution is to invest money or time into something that helps Sambo to zoo or finds a way how she can continue carrying tourists.

If we talk about animal campaigns, my rational side dominates. It's abstract. I keep away from it.

If we talk about one individual with an emotional story, my heart cries. I want to help. I don't care if it's a sustainable solution.

Chip and Dan Heath described something similar in their book "Made To Stick". If you want your story, your marketing campaign, to stick - you need to create emotions. It's easy to feel the pain of one suffering animal, it's abstract to read about thousands of them in poor conditions.

Sheepmarketing

2010-10-28T01:35:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I had to scan few pages so I decided to go to one of the various print shops available here in Phnom Penh. In fact, every major street seems to have a dozen of print shops here, delivering services like printing, photo-copying, name cards etc.

What is remarkable about those stores is how unremarkable they are. Every single one delivering exactly the same services for the same price. The only way to distinguish between them is the location.

So I entered one of them and I was told it will take around 5 minutes to scan my seven pages of documents. Knowing the Khmer way of underestimating time, I decided to go and do something useful and come back in 15 minutes.

I arrived back, entered the shop and sat down to the chair which I had refused 15 minutes ago. Then I suddenly noticed how the receptionist, who I remembered to be a young woman, had transformed into an old lady. It was then when I realized that I had entered a wrong shop, just 10 meters away from where my documents were being scanned.

This small and insignificant case illustrates very well the typical Cambodian way of doing business – every single business in the industry is copying each other – the price, location, design etc. It seems like there is some scam going on where business owners are secretly agreeing how we do business in our industry.

For example, go to Ochheuteal beach in Sihanoukville and try to find a bar that is anyhow different from the others – that would be clean, playing relaxing background music, wouldn’t allow beggars in, etc.

I’m sure it’s not any scam behind it and it’s just the typical way of doing business. And if to think more about it – this kind of sheep marketing you can see everywhere in the world – not only in Cambodia and even in the biggest corporations in the world.

Think of Nokia’s attempts to compete with iPhone or Blackberry smart phones as an example. Nokia’s response was to create similar (definitely not worse) smart phones without actually creating anything that would stand out from their main competitors. Neither with the price, design or functionality.

Having worked with top university students for 6 last years, I’ve seen how even the smartest and most creative ones are regularly falling to a trap of doing something in a certain way it has been always done without questioning whether the industry standard is really what’s the best solution. And I’m not excluding myself from the same crime.

By being remarkable, by creating reasons to be noticed, you can ask for higher price, beat the competition, and hire the best people. Often the simple question that “what would make us stand out?” is underestimated and too quickly the existing dogmas are accepted.

Very old marketing truth, but why do we then so often fail against it?

Can you be useful to your country without living there?

2010-10-18T03:04:00.000-07:00

In recent days there have been several opinions in Estonian media how the country should attract Estonians who are working abroad back home. It's a noble idea of course but I believe it's making one false assumption: that your geographical location is defining how useful can you be for the country.

An Estonian setting up global business in South-Africa or Turkey is without a doubt useful for Estonian economy - either indirectly by raising the awareness of Estonia as a country or directly by paying taxes, recruiting talents or moving some business operations to Estonia. The latter one can be fostered by the government by creating world-class tax and legal systems for international businesses.

So perhaps the whole focus of the campaigns should be rather to introduce to the Estonians abroad opportunities of being useful to their mother country either by returning home or doing something where they currently live?

We are talking about how Estonian companies should export more. There's a clear match - Estonians abroad can help local companies to find new clients, markets, business ideas. Let's encourage this kind of collaboration.

It becomes especially useful with less-known markets. Why not could Estonian companies become market leaders in new developing markets that are not mainstream yet and where competition is low? Expats from Estonia can get this way their high-paid jobs, being hired by Estonian companies.

The cartoon: Estonian daily newspaper Postimees 18.10.2010. Translated as "Home, home. You have been fooling around in your warm country for long enough!"

Building schools to everyone

2010-10-14T06:48:00.000-07:00

I recently stumbled upon a Postimees interview with Hannes Tamjärv, the founder of the high school I graduated. He mentioned in his interview that some of the students are planning to open a school in India.

This is really inspiring!

It made me thinking - what if every school in developed world would found another school in a developing world? Anything from a tiny school with 20 students in a rural village to a mega-school in slums of some metropolitan city.

The schools in developing world would have to be entirely free for the students – no tuition fee, free books, and free transportation from home to school and back.

Even with such model, the costs would not be huge – a lot of work can be done on voluntary basis using the students, teachers, parents and alumnis of the developed-world school. The school could be financed by the parents and alumni donations.

For the developed-world school it would give an amazing school-assignment opportunity – a hands-on course about world issues and how people in some entirely different environment live and think.

Imagine for example every student spending one summer in their high-school life in this developing-world school? Interacting with local children, teaching them, and taking part of peer education.

There is no way after such experience those students would become ignorant citizens who don’t have a clue how the rest of the world works outside of tourism resorts. This would be an eye-opener for themselves, their parents and friends.

--------------

I am a true believer of education being the only effective measure to systematically and sustainably fight against world’s biggest problems. Living here in Cambodia, I see small kids speaking fluent English and yet not going to school because their parents cannot afford it or need them to beg for money. Obviously those kids have a lot of potential, but how much of it will really be nurtured and used in their future life if the kids won’t get a proper education? Not much – they will stay in the system and their kids will be in the same condition as they are.

If the world is really serious about fighting poverty, let’s just build free schools to everybody. For sure the formats need to differ from country to country (e.g. how to convince parents to put their kids to school for at least half a day), but the aim is the same.

If every young person in the world gets an education, every young person will have a chance to do something with their lives. Imagine 6 billion people working out solutions to world’s biggest problems and what kind of crazy ideas it could unlock?

While thinking about this idea, I read about a guy called Bernie Krisher who has opened hundreds of schools in Cambodia. He put it really nicely:

"Earning $2 a day instead of $1 a day might feed a family or put a roof on a house. It might help them manage their life a little better, but it won't help them reach their potential -- for that they need to go to school."

We need a new paradigm instead of just improving the current one. Recently Mark Zuckerberg (founder and CEO of Facebook) donated 100 million USD to transform Newark (USA) education system into a role-model for the whole country. This is a good start; let’s see with what the guys in Newark are able to come up with.

Or just go and open your own school, like Nicholas Kristof did: http://kristof.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/12/29/we-start-a-school-in-cambodia/

A mix of posts from here and there

2010-10-12T07:50:00.001-07:00

Today, when I was asked when I arrived to Cambodia, the answer surprised even me - “Almost 5 months ago”.

5 months used to be ages. It’s more than half a school year, almost half of AIESEC term. And now, I feel still like I only got started.

I’m here on a mission. To establish a youth-run organization called AIESEC in Cambodia which will be the lighthouse for the leadership development in this country. It’s time to evaluate what we have achieved and whether we are moving fast enough.

It also means I have around 7 months of active participation left in AIESEC. A bit scary feeling considering it has been most of my life for the past 6 years. Another reason to push those last months and really leave a legacy.

Sometimes when I have more time to reflect on why am I working in AIESEC, I picture myself 10,20 years later as an alumni and seeing that I made something that enabled the next generations to get an extra push to their dreams, actions, lives. Generations of Estonians, Cambodians, global citizens who are living meaningful stories. Changing organizations, transforming countries, building families, loving what they do.

Here in Cambodia we made a decision few weeks ago that it’s time to leave aside all boundaries and really create something awesome. To create a new paradigm for AIESEC projects – both in scale and in societal impact.

I have also been traveling – in August chairing SPARK conference in Thailand, attending AIESEC 62^nd International Congress in India, delivering Summer Conference in Cambodia, chairing Management Board Conference in Indonesia.

I have learned a lot about Asia, especially South-East Asia, and feel it’s a very promising region. The market sizes, natural resources, and people – they all make me feel that this is a region where I would like to stay for longer

There are amazing products created everywhere around the world and by enabling local producers to find customers around the world, you can really help valuable products to spread and this way make the whole world a bit happier. I believe international trade will be the area which will be my next AIESEC.

---------------------

One thing many people living abroad have told to me is that they become very nationalistic abroad. I kind of knew that coming and equipped myself with some books. Actually out of my 20KG of luggage around 7KG were Estonian books.

There were some gaps in my reading and I’ve started to fill them slowly. I just finished Andrus Kivirähk’s “Rehepapp” and now took Lennart Meri’s “Hõbevalge”. In order to understand where I come from, I want to learn more about the history of Estonians and how we have been evolving from simple peasants into the people we are today.

History has thrown quite some challenges into the evolution of Estonian nation. We are living in a unique time where actually there is no serious threat to Estonian independency and it will be our generation’s duty to wash out the entire negative from the past 700 years of occupations and enable the next generation to really be global players.

When other countries were exploring new lands, building empires, growing their populations, economies, Estonians always had to be stuck with some foreign power that really didn’t care much about how we were doing.

Fortunately Estonians are stubborn and against all odds carried the Estonian mind from generation to generation. Our bodies were often tortured, raped and destroyed, but the minds and dreams stayed.

It makes me feel even glad, that we were mostly under brutal occupations – the amount of evil was simply too much for Estonians to adapt and lose our identity. If we would have been part of some more enlightened empire, I’m afraid this would have been way more difficult.

Estonian Chamber Of Commerce released a new program to bring home talents. It’s a nice idea and it was good to see that guys from my old high school and debate club were behind it. I wish them good luck and do see how it can shape Estonian future in a positive way.

However, I strongly disagree with the idea that often comes from the Estonian politicians that we need to keep young people in Estonia.

What is the harm if a young person sees that she can get a better degree in a foreign university or wants to tests his skills leading some organization in the other side of the world. Eventually we will all come back because that’s where our roots are and then already with all the skills and experiences we have obtained.

Previous generations concerns are of course understandable, they saw people escaping from occupied Estonia who never returned. This created associations that once you leave, you leave for good, lose the language, traditions etc. It’s a whole new story with the independent country.

In Estonian Youth Forum 2010 Marju Lauristin opened her presentation with an interesting thought. She told that although most of the people in the audience feel that they would like to go abroad, most of us would still like to see our kids go to school in Estonia. And this relieves all her concerns regarding this topic. Smart lady.

I read that two great Estonians – Jaan Tätte and Marko Matvere – have left the country and gone to an around-the-world trip. And probably for this reason there have been a lot of articles about Jaan Tätte music and its strange effect.

I am listening right now his last CD “Tulemine”. The melodies and lyrics are extremely simple, you could say even primitive, yet there is something powerful in them. He speaks with you with a feeling that it’s not a person but it’s the Estonian mind speaking with you.

That’s who we are – simple people with great hearts. Those simple songs represent that entirely. I believe we should keep it no matter how wealthy, free or global we become.

Updates from Cambodia

2010-06-19T02:40:00.000-07:00

For a week now I am a proud owner of the first motorbike I've ever had (or driven if not considering a scooter experience last year). It's a used red Suzuki Viva 110. I'm getting better with it, learning to drive in a city where another bike might appear from nowhere any minute and direction (including the opposite direction, whatever works to get from point A to B).

Yesterday I completed my first over 10K run. It's tough here, every km seems twice as hard but yesterday once it was dark and slightly raining, it felt even reasonably warm.

I got my first item stolen here. I left my helmet tied to my bike to go running and lost 12 USD just like that. Now never leaving my helmet anywhere in public.

I also was stopped by police because of ignoring red light (it was a very early one though, something I might even do back home) and having my lights on during daytime. I was given two choices - either go to the office and pay 50 USD or propose some amount right on spot. I got away with 5 USD, something you can call facilitation fee here.

I visited hairdresser today. Prices are quite interesting - haircut is 4 USD (it's a bit more expensive compared to the regular ones) but washing your hair before that is 3 USD additionally. I wonder what kind of shampoo do they use there, fortunately I saw prices before and managed to skip that part.

Traffic of Phnom Penh

2010-06-02T03:43:00.000-07:00

Before coming to Cambodia I didn't actually realize how big part of my lifestyle used to be walking. After 10 days it is the thing I might miss the most.

Phnom Penh is definitely not a city for pedestrians. The only people besides me who walk longer distances than 100m seem to be Buddhist monks, all other people use a motorbike, tuk-tuk or a car to get around.

I can understand why because the traffic here is crazy. I came here with a habit of looking first left and right before crossing the street and once there are no cars, to quickly cross the street. If you would stick to this here, you would never be able to cross a street because the traffic never stops.

So here's how it works: you step on the road in a random time and slowly but confidently start moving towards the other side of the road. Then others will (hopefully) notice you and pass you from either side. Good thing is that traffic moves very slowly here, maybe 20 km/h, so it's kind of easy to slip through two cars.

Since Buddhist monks believe in reincarnation, I guess that explains also how they can move around on foot so easily here.

Bottom line is that I will get myself a moto soon. I'll have to collect a bit of money though but then Phnom Penh will have one less pedestrian.

Running is complicated here not only because of the traffic but also because of the heat. I tried it but I was so dead after 6km. Only proper time for running would be somewhere in the middle of the night / very early morning, but so far I've preferred to sleep at that time.

Running in the gym is not even nearly as fun, but at least helps to keep your running muscles alive. The gym I'm going to has a very concrete name - "The Place" - and instructors here are Swedes. It's considered to be the fanciest and most expensive gym (I'm paying 3.75 USD per training at the moment) here, but at least with aircon and proper machines. And a sauna!

I cannot post any pictures I've made, but here are some that I downloaded from internet to illustrate the point:

Usual picture of Phnom Penh traffic. In Estonia I would never cross such street but here it's quite OK because everybody knows to expect random pedestrians or drivers appearing from nowhere.

Riverside area in Phnom Penh. So far my favorite area in the city and also the only one where you can walk more than 100m in a row without having to cross some street.

View from the gym. The statue is the Independence monument, my hostel is maximum 500 meters from there. It gets dark here already at 6pm, so days are pretty short if you don't wake up very early.

First days in Cambodia

2010-05-24T07:46:00.000-07:00

After 24h in Amsterdam, 12 hours flight to Singapore and another 2h flight to Phnom Penh I finally arrived to Cambodia. It was 9am and already first steps out of the airplane made it clear what I will be dealing with – heat.

After getting an on-arrival visa for 25 USD and just 10 minutes, I left the airport and found a group of AIESEC members outside. It was very cool, each LC here has their own colorful t-shirt and many of them came to the airport.

Already few hours later I was in a seminar organized by AIESEC Cambodia. It had 300 attendants who wanted to know how to better prepare themselves for their career. It turns out that many Cambodians do simultaneously 2 or even more degrees, so many of them study like crazy.

If you think that Cambodia is a poor country, then this information is for you - most popular car brand seems to be Lexus and some local committee shirts are Tommy Hilfiger or Lacoste.

Phnom Penh itself is a very dirty city – a “Let’s do it” campaign is definitely needed here. Interestingly also there seems to be no consistency in the streets – a decent house is neighboring a nearly collapsed building etc.

For the first weeks I will be living in a hostel which is located in a very promising street – 1 1 1. Street numbering follows some logic yet unknown to me that was created by French colonists. The room is OK, only issue is that I don’t have a window, so if I’d stay here for whole day, I wouldn’t have a clue if it’s day or night.

That’s it for now, if you want me to talk about something specific, let me know!

Going to Cambodia

2010-05-20T06:18:00.000-07:00

I'm writing those words during the last hours in Estonia. Little by little it starts to get me - I'm leaving and all the things that seemed so common in my past 23 years will be replaced by something I have only read and heard about from other people.

Who still doesn't know, then I'm going there to be the president of AIESEC in Cambodia. It is a very new organization, founded just in 2008 and although I will be carrying the same title as this year, then I expect the experience to be very different.

Birgot asked me few days ago that how do I expect Cambodians to be? And that it would be interesting to compare my thoughts after some time. Well, right now I've heard it's a very friendly nation and the people I've talked with have left me an impression of very smart people. Cambodia is small in Asian terms (around 14 million citizens), economy is still very poor but growing faster than European economies.

Trade between Estonia and Cambodia is quite small - Estonian companies exported goods for 50K euros and imported for about 600K euros. It means, if for example I'll support few Estonian companies to do business with Cambodia, I can personally affect macro-economic data quite considerably.

The weather seems very hot, nowadays up to 40C and I expect first 6 months to be very rainy. Weather forecast promises thunderstorms for every day right now.

Phnom Penh, the capital and my next hometown, seems to be dirty and traffic insane (without public transportation). But I've also seen some amazing pictures of historical buildings. Let's see, there has to be a good reason why many people are so passionate about living there.

I also heard about Estonian Hotel in Sihanoukville, seaside city, which I for sure want to visit some day. I'm not aware of many other Estonians, but I suppose there are still more than I can expect. Reporter TV magazine introduced few of them. I also know there is quite a considerable amount of expats from other countries.

So this is pretty much all I know right now. I will update my blog a bit more often from now on, to let everybody know how am I doing there.

Exciting. For the first time moving out of Estonia. I feel it won't be for just a year, but let's see.

Take care meanwhile!

My year 2009

2009-12-31T05:01:00.000-08:00

Keeping the tradition, this will be a relatively long blog post about my year. For myself and others who might not been able to follow my whole year. Especially since I've been incredible passive in updating this blog this year.

Starting a new job

This new job is in the same organization, same office, but in a different room. In January I was elected as the president of AIESEC in Estonia and this has been the dominating force in my whole year. I have never worked so much in my life - often doing 10-11 hour work days, going to the office around 8.15 for most days, having no boss but being myself one, representing Estonia in the global network.

It has been a good year for AIESEC and especially for AIESEC in Estonia. We managed to grow 185% in exchanges and 100% in membership compared to last year. Every record was turned into history. It's something that makes me proud, especially knowing that in 2010 we have a chance to take Estonia to new heights. We are walking on a land nobody before us has been to.

Traveling

Countries I visited this year:

Italy (AIESEC's International Presidents Meeting)

Sweden (Weekend ferry cruise)

Finland (Shopping)

Latvia (Hitch-hiking trip, bicycle trip)

Lithuania (hh)

Poland (hh)

Czech Republic (hh)

Slovakia (hh)

Hungary (hh)

Romania (hh)

Serbia (hh)

Croatia (hh, CEE and WENA Presidents meeting)

Slovenia (hh)

Malaysia (AIESEC International Congress)

Portugal (AIESEC European Congress EuroCo)

Bulgaria (AIESEC conference ACT, CEE Presidents meeting)

16 countries visited which took around 2,5 months of the year. Traveling is in my nature, if I don't go somewhere in 5-6 weeks, I become a bit restless. Down here I will describe some of the coolest ones from 2009:

Hitch-hiking trip

In spring I got an idea that I have to have something exciting between my MC and MCP term. So I took 2 weeks of holidays to go hitch-hiking. It's something I had never done before, so it was a way of challenging myself and also seeing a lot of places in the same time.

I asked Kadri if she would like to join me. She had a full-time job and no chances of getting a holiday for 2 weeks. She doesn't like camping and prefers more comfortable ways of traveling. What did she do? She quit her job and we did the whole trip together. Respect!

I believe there is a certain beauty in traveling by land. You don't skip any country, it takes more time to go through a country, you start to understand the geography better, get a feeling of distances. So hitch-hiking is an excellent form for it - you discover yourself very often in the middle of some road and having no idea if it takes 10 minutes or 2 hours for some car to stop.

You meet all kind of people - businessmen, simple workers, bastards, very hospitable people. People who speak english and people with whom you had to use your tiny german or russian skills. The latter one was surprisingly useless in eastern europe. Each person with a different perspective to the country. Amazing.

Bicycle trip

My friend Erik who had spent a year in military service, got an idea that let's go out of Estonia this time. After hitch-hiking I preferred to see more Estonia but we found a compromise - we spent half of the trip in Latvia and half in Estonia.

Me and Erik took a train to Pärnu, then met Peep and started to move towards Latvia. It was the first time when there were only guys in the trip - it also meant the speed went incredible up and it was even difficult to keep the pace with my old bicycle. Luckily in the next day we were joined by two girls - sisters Liisa and Mari - and we could start moving in a normal pace again.

North Latvia was fine, weather went very bad and it definitely affected our Latvian experience. It seemed gray and boring. But the company was nice and the highlight was definitely finding a street called "Lauri".

With some help from Peep and my screwdriver street "Lauri" has one less sign. Sorry Latvians but I had to steal it. The story of how we got it was also funny. At some moment one of the girls lost her cell phone and they went to look for it. So we, the guys, had to wait for few hours in front of a store. It started to rain. What would you do in such situation? Rigas Balsams helped out - this horrible drink tasted quite OK after few rounds. Once the girls arrived we took off and after 20 metres found this street.

Being encouraged by some Balsam I took my screwdriver and started to remove the sign. Suddenly from the same house a guy sticks out his head and starts to shout something in Latvian. I said something in return in Latvian (saldejums ar alus, usmanibu, and some other latvian words we had learned) and went away. But the sign was still in my mind. After 1km I told to Peep - let's go back and get it.

Peep, being also encouraged by Balsams was of course in. We went back and very carefully removed the sign. Now it's laying on my table in the office. I know it's very bad and irresponsible but somehow I feel I would do it again. If you, the nice Latvian family read it somehow, I'm definitely willing to cover all the costs of replacing the sign. Just approach me.

Trip to Malaysia

This year the International Congress took place in Malaysia. A great change to experience Asia and travel around as we went there a week before. Most of it I spent in Langkawi island.

I know that Malaysia has many amazing islands and Langkawi might be a touristic one. But it was anyway beautiful, tax free and just in the right size to make a trip with a scooter around the island.

It was the feeling of freedom, driving 100km per hour with a bike that probably is not meant for such speed. Seeing all the paradise beaches, obnoxious monkeys and having time to think and just relax.

It had been a dream of mine for years - each time I was overloaded with deadlines in school - that I would be instead in a paradise island sitting under palm tree and watching ocean. Now I have done it.

I also had an accident there. Just 30 minutes before I had to return my scooter I thought I'll make one more short trip. I turned away from the main road and turned to some small road. I suddenly got a bad feeling about the place, especially the muddy ditch on the left and decided to turn around and go back. As I had been driving over 200 km with the scooter in 24h I was already confident in my skills but in reality couldn't handle the bike and drove straight to the ditch.

Imagine the feeling - you are suddenly in a muddy ditch with your scooter. In such a ditch where in the movies I had seen alligators. First thought was - I wish there was a ctrl+z button. Second thought - oh damn, it will cost me a fortune. Five seconds later - how can I push the scooter out from the ditch.

It was very difficult. The ditch had high banks and soft mud everywhere. There was no way I got lift it out. But I was determined to get out of this place. I discovered that If I use all my strenght I can lift one wheel at a time. So I made progress and got the bike to the edge of the bank. But it was still too heavy to lift it up. After some time three locals found me. So we, 4 guys, were finally able to push the scooter up.

And then it turned out -not surprisingly though - that the scooter didn't work. Water had got to the engine. Use any dirty word here to describe the situation.

The guys left, telling me to wait. I was barefoot - my flip-flops vanished to the ditch on a very hot asphalt. And suddenly the bike started to work.

I left quickly, driving barefoot and covered with mud and went back to the hostel. It was still only 10 minutes after the deadline. I asked some tools to clean my bike and myself and did my best to make it look as nothing had happened.

It seemed to look nice and I returned it to the rental place. The lady came to check the bike and I saw how the muddy water started to come out from some places. What a timing. She became a bit upset and started asking where I had taken the bike. I told nowhere, just had to cross some mud puddle in some village. She didn't buy it, she thought I had been driving in the beach which was strictly forbidden. I was charged 50 ringitts (around 10 euros) and that was it.

Conclusions

It's getting long and I have to get prepared for my final run in 2009. So those few stories had to describe my year. I guess it actually gave you some idea - it was adventurous, full of new situations and people, responsibility, learning about myself etc. I think it's time to audit my goals stated exactly year ago:

-I will run at least once 10k under 40 minutes - not done, best run was 42 minutes something

-I will organize another bicycle trip - done

-I will organize EDU conference 2009 - not done, Youth in Action doesn't support projects that are happening for the second year

-I will publish "Passion 2009" ebook - done

Goals for next year:

-Finish a marathon

-Achieve 85 exchanges with AIESEC in Estonia

-Move to a foreign country

-Register my first company

Some things I already know about next year

I will finish my term as president of AIESEC in Estonia. It was the last thing I had to do before leaving Estonia. So from summer I will be moving to some other country. I still have doubts whether to continue in AIESEC, go to an internship or focus only on building a company.

It will be a year of changes - like was 2005 (graduating high school and moving to Tartu for university) or 2008 (graduating university and moving to Tallinn for MC). Exciting.

Estonia - the most ambitious country in the word

2009-12-25T02:47:00.000-08:00

Few years ago Andrus Ansip, the prime minister of Estonia, said out a vision for Estonia that immediately caught attention of most Estonians – his idea was to take Estonia among the five wealthiest nations in Europe in fifteen years. After that his party won the next elections, gaining personally more votes than anybody else before and securing his reelection as prime minister.

His vision was set in good times for economy – Estonian GDP growth was beating almost all the other countries in the world. Now, after being in the exact opposite of the GDP growth – joining the countries with biggest GDP decrease – this vision is often accused of being populistic, naive or any other characteristic that would describe an impossible idea.

But that's the problem with this country – once somebody has a bold idea, we are masters of finding reasons why it would not work. Especially after first setbacks. We are lacking ambition.

Last weeks, in the Estonia is looking for superstar show, we have seen several very talented young singers. I'm wondering, was there anybody of whose ambition was bigger than becoming another well-known singer in Estonia who is doing summer tours in small cities and occasionally performs in some musical?

Last seasons experience shows that probably not.

There was definitely enough talent. But as Malcolm Gladwell demonstrates in his Outliers, even for Beatles being talented was only small part of the success. It's the hard work – Beatles were performing in Munich bars 7-days per week playing in few years more than 10 000 hours on stage. More than most bands in their lifetime.

And then there is of course ambition. To really want to get to the world league.

Estonia with its 1,3 million citizens is just a small fraction of human population. If every person in Estonia would become amazingly good in something, the world would probably not even notice.

Top athletes work every day to get the best out of themselves. To be the best they can be.

What if each Estonian would start living in the same way – take some field they are good at and decide to become extraordinary in that. And stop comparing itself with the neighbor but benchmark the best in the world.

So that Estonia would become the most ambitious country in the world.

Just to be fair - I'm also asking it from myself - what is my contribution? I believe in the present day it's working as the leader of AIESEC in Estonia and going to the office every day with a thought that how can my organization be the best in the whole network? And then of course spending needed hours to achieve that. 185% growth rate this year is showing that things are moving in the right direction. But it's also far from being enough.

Thoughts from the ice rink

2009-12-13T14:05:00.000-08:00

After some time of silence I decided to start posting here some thoughts from the everyday life and my associations with those. Or just whatever is in my mind as the description of this blog states.

I'm currently in Bulgaria and today had a chance to do some ice skating after some time. The rink was full of people, especially kids and I could identify four types of people:

1. People who fell down a few times and then left the rink

2. People who fell down again and again but kept on skating

3. People who were moving very slowly but never fell

4. People who were moving in a good pace but never fell

I assume that for most of the people, the last status would be an ideal. And the second status hurts the most.

If we take the comparison to whatever field is important to you - what would be the ideal state to become really good at it?

Whatever approach you take -

if you are not falling, you are not moving fast enough

If you quit after few fallings, you don't care enough.

If you don't fall but are moving slowly, then you'll just not learning.

If you are not increasing your pace but keep on falling as often, then maybe it's time to get some advice.

And...

If you are moving quicker than anybody else but still are not falling then maybe it's time to start comparing yourself with better skaters?

PS! I especially admired one girl with pink jacket. She was falling down after each 20 seconds but she stayed on ice for 40 minutes. If she'll use this kind of persistence in some field she's actually talented, great things can happen.

Some things will change

2009-09-04T01:52:00.000-07:00

My almost month-long adventure in Malaysia will get over in just few hours. It has been fun. Several months ago while buying tickets to Kuala Lumpur I decided to unite the chance of getting the cheapest possible tickets with a nice holiday before and after the conference. Back then I didn't know how good decision it was.

The AIESEC's 61st International Congress was an amazing congress. Full of great people, content, ideas, connections, friends. But what I feel that happens too often is what can be called "what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas" effect.

We go through amazing experiences but once getting back to reality we just continue doing the same things in a same way and getting the same results. That's a pattern which in a best case scenario can bring a nice growth until you reach the potential inside the current framework.

Until you stay in the current framework things are easy - we feel the joy of a nice growth, get confidence in our abilities to do the same things even more and better. Everything is secure.

I got hungry to revolutionize things. Break the common ways of thinking. That's why this reflection period before and after IC has been so useful. It helps to sort out what's really important.

I'm full of ideas and even more full of questions. Many people will hear from me next week the question of "how can we create new standards with this project?". We will think together and I do expect things to get to another level. So that future generations would be even more challenged to rethink what we were doing.

It's 4th of September and we still have 10 months to go.

If you feel somehow connected with what I said, I would really appreciate your comments/thoughts/ideas either through this blog or direct messages in twitter.