Reflections on San Francisco

September 16, 2018 Ben Yeoh

A city of contradictions. SF is a beautiful city on a bluesky day. It’s one the first places I travelled to by myself when I was 14. I took the Cal train in from Palo Alto about 25 years ago and wandered. I only have impressions of the vibe from so long ago, but it remains similar.

Glorious feats of engineering from bridges, sky scrapers and now rooftop floating parks. You’d be lucky to be born here. It’s not without obvious problems. Homelessness is rife.

Two images: a homeless person napping in the midday sun with Bose headphones and Nike trainers.

A suited man stepping round a homeless person coming out of an Uber.

When I first came to SF, the company Salesforce had not even been created. It now has over $8 billion in revenue and has created one of the tallest buildings on the west coast of the US.

As part of this building, salesforce has created a public park. It seems to me part of how some see the American way. Open markets, creative entrepreneurs creating enormous wealth, and as part of that creation giving back to the place and community that helped create them.

I wonder how strong this type of social contract still is - or ever was. The tower rises like a glimmering shard, the park all new bursting with plants, toddler areas, free art and reading. Is this enough to hold the fabric of America?

Willfully turning away from the beggars, the vibrant, diverse life is still present. Boys and boys, girls and girls, boys and girls. A smattering of colour. Old fashioned cable cars trundle alongside electric low emission buses. The waiters are mainly white and cute. The bussing folk are mainly coloured and invisible along with the maids and other worker bees.

You can get free wifi almost everywhere.

I’m here too fleetingly to see much else of the city, but note an awkward clash between some environmental awareness and still a huge amount of waste, plastic and limited nudging of individual choice.

Here’s one partial critique of the Responsible Investing gathering. In attending this conference, I skipped two (and there were many more) mainstream investment conference focused on healthcare.

The two health conferences had a few hundred companies, and a couple of thousand investment and corporate professionals between them.

There was a flagship Asian and Emerging market conference also running and many more.

Every company at the healthcare conference could easily claim alignment with several SDGs particularly the health one - SDG 7 and hundreds of investors are trying to allocate billions of capital to good ideas and good companies.

The PRI conference had a bare handful of portfolio manager risk takers. Critics could argue was a silo echo chamber for sustainability people to tell each other how right they are.

I wonder if sustainability could cross the divide, break the silo and go and present at one of the other conferences and make the case. Here continue some reflections more sustainability based.

In SF, there are two intersectional conferences on climate change and the PRI responsible investing conference. Some more personal fragmentary observations.

Physical climate risk is reaching up the agenda. We are starting to see it and feel it.

Much of the “mainstream” is not really here. Lots of policy, engagement, stewardship and ESG (environment social governance) teams. Very few portfolio managers, the risk takes who buy or sell billions in assets of stocks and debt and direct assets. Arguably, this is not hopeful.

Those I observe in SF are committed and passionate. They are bringing people along in a journey. Arguably this is hopeful.

But I recall two comments, Paul Polman (CEO, Unilever, retiring soon) - “I’m an asset creator” and Nassim Taleb - I paraphrase, if you want to change the world, don’t join an NGO, but go create a business.

The committed folk hope to mobilise and nudge capital, but I wonder more and more of late of the demand side of the equation.

The majority of large asset managers can now a credible narrative around ESG (Environment Social Governance). But, see also above “the mainstream is not here”.

The intersectionality problems are complex, often opaque. A Marriott staff employee spoke about how declining housekeeping makes her unemployed. It’s not only automation that takes away jobs. But is less housekeeping, and less washing, better for the environment, and profit margin? But not the humans.

I observe. Most waiters and waitresses are white with Gap Ad looks. The bus folk, those who clear the dishes. They are almost all coloured. Not allowed to take orders, barely likely to hold your eye - smiles are not at them.

Where mainstream PMs and analysts meet material ESG world, they do convert but I wonder about the silos.

I hear little on the demand side of the equation. The Global Climate Action Summit is also taking place. It comes across as disorganised and diffuse. But seemingly more focus on the “real economy”, Green tech entrepreneurs are about, although I don’t find them.

Still, parsing through, I sense managing food waste and sustainabilty could be a major unlock. Any ideas here, do shout.

The demand side could be a huge unlock. But, I’m unsure if I’m hearing ideas here. The single-use, the consumption it’s again and again - so hard to imagine it declining away. I’m hoping clever peeps are working on it. This to me will need cross silo thinking.

But, if I had to be - and I do - we are going to go through 2 deg warming. We will need to account for the cost of physical infrastructure loss and forced migration.

We, humans, weigh near term convenience so heavily, it seems to me we are unlikely to reach critical mass for changing behaviour until we are in crisis.

Although talking about crisis, given we’ve not changed significantly since the last financial crisis, I’m uncertain how it plays out.

But, humans have continually come out of crisis in better shape - and many other trends are in positive land. I try not to forget that.

I hold a lift for a man scurrying. That man turns out to be Paul Polman (Unilever, CEO, retiring soon). Maybe it’s the little things and connections that will save us.

A poem reflecting on my conversation with a SF Modern Art staff - all coloured vs the visitors mainly all white.

A look at what some of the art in SF MOMA is saying to me.

Smile, Staff at San Francisco Musuem of Modern Art

September 15, 2018 Ben Yeoh

At the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art most of the staff

Are people of colour

Few of the visitors show such a display of colour

On show in staff or in the Gideon Richter

I smile.

A smile back.

Where are you from? An indication at my hair.

I’m from London but my father was from Malaysia and my mother from Singapore.

I’m from the Philippines. My friend is in London.

Do you like it here? A pause.

There are jobs. I’ve been here 4 years.

I’m -

I’m Ben.

A gesture. A thankful gesture. Her hand swirls around taking in the gallery and the people.

Thank you for talking with me.

(shall we take a selfie?) (art on art on art on art)

Pablo hands me my bag with exquisite courtesy.

And the viewers come and go, come and go.

How to live a life, well lived. Thoughts from a dying man. On play and playing games.

A reflection on some art in the SF MOMA.

Another poem, about an artist losing her memory, and the mum of a dear friend.

Identity

September 1, 2018 Ben Yeoh

Many identity conversations recently. Part of the identity conversations are sparked by the success and debate around Crazy Rich Asians. One concern I have about identity politics is that, unless careful, it tends to emphasise differences rather than unity. People are rarely careful. And this plays into the hands of extremists. I sit in a barbell syncrectic position. So, I have furrowed brow reading FT's Roula Khalaf (behind paywall, but I can send you) reading Appiah's Lies that Bind

"... Dealing with identity is not only an individual struggle. Identity, he says, is not just how you see yourself but also how you are seen: “If you do not care for the shapes your identities have taken you cannot simply refuse them; they are not yours alone. You have to work with others inside and outside the labelled group in order to reframe them so they fit you better.”

Tribal politics may be too entrenched to be influenced by historical nuance. As Francis Fukuyama argues in the latest issue of Foreign Affairs, just as 20th-century politics was defined by economic issues, politics today is defined by questions of identity: the left focuses on promoting the interests of marginalised groups, the right argues for the protection of traditional national identity “which is often explicitly connected to race, ethnicity, or religion”. But it is no longer sufficient to lament, or denounce, identity politics. As Mr Appiah attests with his own contribution, a debate about the meaning of identity and how we overcome its over-politicisation has become a necessity...." suggesting that to some extent identity politics will be a neccessity. Hm. Not good for me.... Although Appiah himself, argues for a much lighter hand on identity (FT interview here) where one interpretation of his early work would argue he thinks the notion of "race" is almost fiction.

I do happen to be pretty fascinated by the Bl;ack American debates and also an interest in hair. A blog about the Black American experience through the lens of Coates here, and a thought on hair loss and black women's hair here.

This week, I also managed to sneak some time to pop by the poetry cafe, in Covent Garden, which I haven't done for years.

I thought, what chance a poetry reading would be full? Lo... standing room only.

I didn't stay long for duty calls, but enough to hear this poem. Working Class poem, in What Are You After by Josephine Corcoran. (Amazon link).

The poem in its own way answers the Identity question, We are so many things that identity can some times atomise us. We are human. We are ourselves.

Listening to legendary theatre agent, Mel Kenyon.

The current Arts blog, cross-over, the current Investing blog. Cross fertilise, some thoughts on autism. Discover what the last arts/business mingle was all about (sign up for invites to the next event in the list below).

My Op-Ed in the Financial Times (My Financial Times opinion article) about asking long-term questions surrounding sustainability and ESG.

Current highlights:

A long read on Will Hutton looking at Brexit causes and solutions.

Some writing tips and thoughts from Zadie Smith

How to live a life, well lived. Thoughts from a dying man. On play and playing games.

A provoking read on how to raise a feminist child.

Some popular posts: the commencement address; by NassimTaleb (Black Swan author, risk management philosopher), Neil Gaiman on making wonderful, fabulous, brilliant mistakes; JK Rowling on the benefits of failure. Charlie Munger on always inverting; Sheryl Sandberg on grief, resilience and gratitude.

Buy my play, Yellow Gentlemen, (amazon link) - all profits to charity

Puffball

September 1, 2018 Ben Yeoh

It's increasingly rare for me to eat new foods as I age. But this weeks thanks to the lovely and brilliant artist Jay Batlle and family (check out his art here) I had a puffball mushroom to try.

Simple is some times best. Plain fried in a butter olive oil mix, finished with some flat leaf parsley and fried eggs. The earthy, savoury smells of porcini and forest. but a chunkier, slightly tannic-sweet tang. Yum.

Email Management, part two

August 30, 2018 Ben Yeoh

I’ve had discussions on 3 different occasions in the last 2 weeks on email management so, I thought I’d follow up on some extra ideas and thoughts from my last email management post.

First, You need to assess what type of person you are, how you use your email and what your email load is.

If you know unread email bothers your brain, then you will need a different tactic to my core strategy.

The use of email is changing. Especially in younger companies, and people, and in Asia. Here chat, slack, persistent chats are becoming more common for communication and email is more formal.

In US and Europe, outside of tech, letters remain more formal (attached as pdf often) and email is the core communication medium.

You can see the move to persistent chat in Gen Z use of chat, the China use of Wechat, and the strong use in tech and start-up world of Slack and other persistent chat tools.

With that in mind, I suggest a few strategies. One is using a triage system that uses filters, deletes and flags to get to a zero inbox. You need to set up good filters and flags.

Personally, I think obtaining a zero inbox is too demanding if you have a heavy email load, but some need it for good brain feeling.

Under this strategy, I also suggest using 2 or 3 email addresses. One for newsletters, sign-ups, non-urgent, non-vital matters. One for work exclusive matters and a third for personal email. You need a certain level of organised personality for this (it’s not me!) and you will need mail check times for the various addresses. Eg 1x week for non-vital email, 1 hour for personal etc.

As I mentioned previously having a set time to review email (not first thing in the morning), I think is an efficient practice.

This is also because constant email alerts interrupts “flow” - the concentration / creative work flow which is efficient writing / reading / thinking time.

As I described earlier, I advocate reading headlines, flagging emails which need a thoughtful reply, dealing with emails which need only 30 seconds, and then ignoring all others - even the time spent deleting emails is a waste of time under this method.

My latest thinking is:

-Make your headline informative

-Have an interesting link in your email signature

-Put an interesting link in your out-of-office, plus let them know if emails will not be read.

-Write “No reply required” if no reply is required to your email

Newspaper have dedicated roles for headliners. A short succinct one-line headline of what your email is about saves everyone time. Further, it concentrates your mind on what the focus of email is about.

Say something interesting in your email signature. Ideally a link to a piece of work or thought you want to engage people with. It’s a “free” piece of promotion if used carefully (I tend to go a bit overboard, but a single link or phrase works well). Update it from time to time. You can link to a corporate item or a personal thought or any insightful matter.

Same goes for the “out of office” email. But here you should also state, if you are taking a proper break and not reading email – in which case ask them to re-send the email if important, when you are back in the office. Then you can safely ignore most emails sent when away.

I’ve also started to write “No reply required” if no reply is required to my email. Many emails are vague as to if a reply is required. Time spent thinking about if a reply is needed is a waste. Further, if a reply is not needed then receiving an email back is also a waste of both your time and their time. This is a small addition, which has incrementally cut down some of my incoming email.

Any other ideas let me know!

My Op-Ed in the Financial Times (My Financial Times opinion article) about asking long-term questions surrounding sustainability and ESG.

Current highlights:

A long read on Will Hutton looking at Brexit causes and solutions.

Some writing tips and thoughts from Zadie Smith

How to live a life, well lived. Thoughts from a dying man. On play and playing games.

A provoking read on how to raise a feminist child.

Buy my play, Yellow Gentlemen, (amazon link) - all profits to charity

Reflections on localism, New Forest, England

August 17, 2018 Ben Yeoh

Reflecting on the second order and third order forces behind Brexit. I think Will Hutton’s observations mainly stand, but having travelled to some small pockets of England over the last 2 years I have some personal observations.

Lymington is a relatively wealthy town. Nestled at the edge of the English New Forest, it has traditions of rural life stretcing back centuries. I walked down the high street and it was busy, thriving even - helped by British tourists, there were few spaces to rent, and a mix of independent and chain shops.

For a Londoner, the absences were notable. People of colour were absent. Different languages were absent. Different styles of dress and fashion were mostly absent.

The variety of food was absent. (True, Indian and Chinese were represented as they have been for decades in Britain; the fish and chips were good).

The wealth is based on a marine industry supplemented by tourism and to a lesser extent farming and forestry around the New Forest.

Unlike around Dymchurch (an area on the Kent coast, where I observed support for Brexit but for subtly different reasons) the infrastructure is fairly well maintained - with absent dereliction, better planning (although nothing in my back yard).

But the advantages of international trade are invisible, or seem invisible here. Mostly residents seem unaware of any advantages but seem to believe faceless beaurocrats control rules and regulations of moderate vexation to the marine industry. (I don’t pass judgement on Brexiteers viewing a Brexit as being positive for trade, people are still arguing over this point.)

The arts and culture, the museums and dance, the music and international travellers are absent from New Forest and Lymington life.

The yearly pantomime, the cricket season, the pheasant season, the trees and the tide, these mark time here.

The local coffee shops (two chains on the high street) have local staff, no Europeans.

I imagine no one here views themselves as racist, but there simply are few foreigners or people of colour here and why would Lymington want to embrace any change ? It’s not the creative destruction and churn and vibrancy of an international London.

If anything, I had the impression that the New Forest wants to be left alone.

This is another dimension to what I think will be a defining theme of this century. A localism vs a globalism. Whether globalism will turn into multi-localist or federalist. And how societies end up (if they manage to at all) dealing with systemic externalities and systemic concerns eg climate change, water stress, mass migration, defence.

It is a different dimension to the left/right axis.

Pottering around the New Forest stopping for cows and horses reminded me of travels in rural Japan.

The localism in rural Japan, old traditions (kept firmer in Japan than in Lymington) and skepticism of the big City. Even nervousness over foreigners - do they know how to use our baths? Have they learnt about shoes ? Are they pointing with their chopsticks ? How could they order autumn food in the summer, that’s crazy ?

Whereas I draw parallels with Dymchurch to parts of India I travelled through, another story.

Lymington has an uneasy relationship with its second home owners and holiday cottages, like parts of Cornwall. (I sense thought I may be wrong). The summers months are needed to keep the money flowing to help the local residents through the winter months.

It's a little different to "true travellers", in rural Japan, there's also a tradition of treating travellers with great hospitality. Not only money they bring, and trade, and news but true travellers do pass through. Second home owners, oft feel neither here nor there, perhaps taking more than they give back.

Reflecting back, is it a surprise this area is a Brexit town? And, apart from the mess politicians are making in trying to come to terms with what Brexit really means, I'm unsure it would sway opinion in this corner of the world. I sense it would be happy left alone.

Horses have run semi-wild here for hundreds of years. I expect most believe horses will run for hundreds of years more.

There are muddy, shingle beaches; good sailing, peaceful forest walks - it makes for a good holiday.

My Op-Ed in the Financial Times (My Financial Times opinion article) about asking long-term questions surrounding sustainability and ESG.

Current highlights:

A long read on Will Hutton looking at Brexit causes and solutions.

Some writing tips and thoughts from Zadie Smith

How to live a life, well lived. Thoughts from a dying man. On play and playing games.

A provoking read on how to raise a feminist child.

Buy my play, Yellow Gentlemen, (amazon link) - all profits to charity

Mortality, how to die well

August 16, 2018 Ben Yeoh

My father had a full life, but a mediocre death. Not a bad death by any stretch, but not a good death.

He was taken in an ambulance to hospital suffering from complications from his recurred cancer.

He was somewhat scared but partially comforted by his family. The hospital was about as hospitable as you’d expect. After not too many days, he lapsed into a coma and shortly afterwards I witnessed his last heartbeats.

It was the second set of final heart beats I had witnessed. One of my best friends had died at university 2 years earlier.

Up until that stay in hospital he had spent most of that time at home and we had a Macmillan nurse regularly visit to help.

In that he was at home for most of his final years, and that surgery/radiation defeated his cancer long enough to see me finish high school and university, made for a good death but that he spent some of his last days scared, and not easily at comfort, made the very final reckoning mediocre by my count.

When he lapsed into a coma, a harried doctor handed me a Do Not Resuscitate form and awkwardly suggested we consider it. I had limited-to-no discussion of this with any doctor before but had recalled conversations with my father from several years before (at initial diagnosis). This lack of preparation on how to die well is common as I found in reading Atul Gawande’s book Mortality.

“As recently as 1945, most deaths occurred in the home. By the 1980s, just 17 percent did. Those who somehow did die at home likely died too suddenly to make it to the hospital—say, from a massive heart attack, stroke, or violent injury—or were too isolated to get somewhere that could provide help.

People live longer and better than at any other time in history. But scientific advances have turned the processes of aging and dying into medical experiences, matters to be managed by health care professionals. And we in the medical world have proved alarmingly unprepared for it. This reality has been largely hidden, as the final phases of life become less familiar to people.

Across the entire industrialized world, the experience of advanced aging and death has shifted to hospitals and nursing homes.”

“Death, of course, is not a failure. Death is normal. Death may be the enemy, but it is also the natural order of things. I knew these truths abstractly, but I didn’t know them concretely—that they could be truths not just for everyone but also for this person right in front of me, for this person I was responsible for.

The late surgeon Sherwin Nuland, in his classic book How We Die, lamented, “The necessity of nature’s final victory was expected and accepted in generations before our own. Doctors were far more willing to recognize the signs of defeat and far less arrogant about denying them.” But as I ride down the runway of the twenty-first century, trained in the deployment of our awesome arsenal of technology, I wonder exactly what being less arrogant really means. You become a doctor for what you imagine to be the satisfaction of the work, and that turns out to be the satisfaction of competence. It is a deep satisfaction very much like the one that a carpenter experiences in restoring a fragile antique chest or that a science teacher experiences in bringing a fifth grader to that sudden, mind-shifting recognition of what atoms are. It comes partly from being helpful to others. But it also comes from being technically skilled and able to solve difficult, intricate problems. Your competence gives you a secure sense of identity.

For a clinician, therefore, nothing is more threatening to who you think you are than a patient with a problem you cannot solve. There’s no escaping the tragedy of life, which is that we are all aging from the day we are born. One may even come to understand and accept this fact. My dead and dying patients don’t haunt my dreams anymore. But that’s not the same as saying one knows how to cope with what cannot be mended. I am in a profession that has succeeded because of its ability to fix. If your problem is fixable, we know just what to do. But if it’s not? The fact that we have had no adequate answers to this question is troubling and has caused callousness, inhumanity, and extraordinary suffering. This experiment of making mortality a medical experience is just decades old. It is young. And the evidence is it is failing.

This is a book about the modern experience of mortality—about what it’s like to be creatures who age and die, how medicine has changed the experience and how it hasn’t, where our ideas about how to deal with our finitude have got the reality wrong. As I pass a decade in surgical practice and become middle-aged myself, I find that neither I nor my patients find our current state tolerable. But I have also found it unclear what the answers should be, or even whether any adequate ones are possible. I have the writer’s and scientist’s faith, however, that by pulling back the veil and peering in close, a person can make sense of what is most confusing or strange or disturbing. You don’t have to spend much time with the elderly or those with terminal illness to see how often medicine fails the people it is supposed to help. The waning days of our lives are given over to treatments that addle our brains and sap our bodies for a sliver’s chance of benefit. They are spent in institutions—nursing homes and intensive care units—where regimented, anonymous routines cut us off from all the things that matter to us in life.

Our reluctance to honestly examine the experience of aging and dying has increased the harm we inflict on people and denied them the basic comforts they most need. Lacking a coherent view of how people might live successfully all the way to their very end, we have allowed our fates to be controlled by the imperatives of medicine, technology, and strangers. I wrote this book in the hope of understanding what has happened. Mortality can be a treacherous subject. Some will be alarmed by the prospect of a doctor’s writing about the inevitability of decline and death. For many, such talk, however carefully framed, raises the specter of a society readying itself to sacrifice its sick and aged. But what if the sick and aged are already being sacrificed—victims of our refusal to accept the inexorability of our life cycle? And what if there are better approaches, right in front of our eyes, waiting to be recognized?”

Gawande has written with insight on check lists (amazon link here) and on his time as a surgeon (amazon link here). In his book, Mortality, (Amazon link here) he tackles the medicalisation of our deaths.

There is a parallel in how some doctors medicalise the “treatment” of autism.

Reading Atul, I can see how the principles of hospice, palliative and gerontology can be applied more fully across the whole medical chain.

Atul - a high performing surgeon - was himself surprised at what a hospice worker does:

“Outside, I confessed that I was confused by what Creed (the hospice worker) was doing. A lot of it seemed to be about extending Cox’s life. Wasn’t the goal of hospice to let nature take its course? “That’s not the goal,” Creed said. The difference between standard medical care and hospice is not the difference between treating and doing nothing, she explained. The difference was in the priorities. In ordinary medicine, the goal is to extend life. We’ll sacrifice the quality of your existence now—by performing surgery, providing chemotherapy, putting you in intensive care—for the chance of gaining time later. Hospice deploys nurses, doctors, chaplains, and social workers to help people with a fatal illness have the fullest possible lives right now—much as nursing home reformers deploy staff to help people with severe disabilities. In terminal illness that means focusing on objectives like freedom from pain and discomfort, or maintaining mental awareness for as long as feasible, or getting out with family once in a while—not on whether Cox’s life would be longer or shorter.”

The parallel with autism is that you want to help autistic people have as a full a life possible, not by doing nothing but not by over medicalising them.

The voice of the terminally ill, their wishes are important - this is recognised and increasingly so. Similarly, we are increasingly aware of the autistic voice itself. (This is complicated when that voice is a child’s - there is the parent-child dynamic conflict known the world over typical or atypical) and that autistic voice is increasingly being heard.

At some point most families come to understand that autism is a life long condition and that a “cure” in a traditional medicalised sense is not possible. That understanding has some parallels to a family that comes to understand that an old age illness is also not curable.

However, whereas most people would accept that it would be desirable to cure cancer, and that some cancers can be cured. Autism is not in that bucket. The autistic experience can be made into a full life.

One other aspect to note is the idea of purpose and being in enough control to shape your own life - no matter how long or short time might be.

Those with a terminal illness, as described in the book, who could adopt a purposeful mindset and feel in control of their decisions seemed to do better on many measures - happiness but also living longer. The irony being only living longer, when no longer concerned with living longer.

The ingredients of a full life can be found at any time in life. Its beginning. Its end.

I recommend this book as a thoughtful meditation on it. There’s a secondary effect as well. The system spends a large portion of your lifetime healthcare spend on the last few months of your life. This spend often not extending your life, and not making your life better. If this money can be re-channelled into “ways of dying well” everyone would benefit.

"As Montaigne wrote, observing late-sixteenth-century life, “To die of age is a rare, singular, and extraordinary death, and so much less natural than others: it is the last and extremest kind of dying.” So today, with our average life...

...As people become aware of the finitude of their life, they do not ask for much. They do not seek more riches. They do not seek more power. They ask only to be permitted, insofar as possible, to keep shaping the story of their life in the world—to make choices and sustain connections to others according to their own priorities.”

Atul's book - amazon link here.

My Op-Ed in the Financial Times (My Financial Times opinion article) about asking long-term questions surrounding sustainability and ESG.

Current highlights:

A long read on Will Hutton looking at Brexit causes and solutions.

Some writing tips and thoughts from Zadie Smith

How to live a life, well lived. Thoughts from a dying man. On play and playing games.

A provoking read on how to raise a feminist child.

Buy my play, Yellow Gentlemen, (amazon link) - all profits to charity

Mansplaining explained

July 21, 2018 Ben Yeoh

We see and hear this all the time, so this from Kim Goodwin (on Twitter) is good for a laugh.

National Rail Ultimate Family

July 21, 2018 Ben Yeoh

Anoushka won an award for her work in founding Transport Sparks. Transport Sparks is a charitable community group that helps young people with special needs (many autistic) access, meet up, explore and share a love of all things transport.

From nothing, in a few short months, the group is now a few hundred strong and doing Sparky things all over the country.

This is the joyful side of social media and community.

The Spark community also now has a stronger voice when interacting with more typical institutions and companies who run events or transport. The Sparks use that voice to lend strength to voices that are often unheard. These give better ideas to typicals who often don’t fully comprehend the complexities of atypical or disability life.

The award was from a nomination, unknown to us, to National Rail. This led to the National Rail Ultimate Family award.

We sat on a table with a family where the father had an accident and he now only has a memory of the last 2 weeks and has no long term memory although is cognitively able. He can’t recall being married, having children or anything of his family life and relies on thousands of photos to be re-told the story of his life.

The family were cheerfully resilient about the upsides such as being able to see films over and over again, and not be bored.

Still. It has reminded me that the person with no bicycle feels sorry for themselves until they meet the person with no shoes, who feels sorry for themselves, until they meet someone with no legs.

But I like to think we shared (as much as we can) the same cheerful resilience in the face of life challenges.

If you’d like to know more about Transport Sparks you can contact us through this blog, or at Twitter or through our Facebook page.

A day in life of disability, FT offices

July 14, 2018 Ben Yeoh

Why disabled people like me give up on careers (In the FT recently, Niamh Ni Hoireabhaird wrote, it gained her a visit to the Prime Minister's office - demonstrating the platform the FT can give you.):

“…When I was 13, I was diagnosed with a rare, progressive neuromuscular condition called Friedreich’s ataxia. My condition means I find it hard to balance and my energy is low, so for the past two years I have relied on a wheelchair. My cognitive ability and aspirations of a career remain intact, despite the obstacles. In England and Wales nearly one in five people has some sort of disability, so the chances are you know somebody in my position — whether their condition is visible or not. So why do so few of us make it through mainstream education and into the world of work? Now I am 21, my attention should be focused on my degree in French and Italian, and my summer internship in London at the Financial Times. Yet, I am struggling with the practical and administrative problems that go with being disabled. Each day brings low-level difficulties that add up to an overwhelming sense of exhaustion and defeat. It’s no wonder so many of us give up on our ambitions….” The article is behind the paywall, but I can send you a copy if you ask nicely or there are free articles available.

It highlights the daily problems of disability, where the world is set up for typicals. This chimes with this blog from an ASD person (see here on how hard the day can be)

5 lessons autism has taught me. And from Japan, a glimpse inside a 13 year old autistic boy's head.

Playing games, joys of minecraft

June 23, 2018 Ben Yeoh

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Somehow, for most of my life, I’ve played lots of games of all sorts. Theatre games, scrabble (under 9 UK champion type of level), chess (mediocre, enough to get on to school team just about) to running around games particularly with sneak element (eg 40-40) , fighting games (earned a blackbelt), Mah Jong to computer games. One of my open secrets is that I’m a fairly proficient games player across a number of genres – I’m quite good where patience would be a winning strategy. I can hit the top 1% for a number of games (but not the 0.1% of e-sports pros).

I’m fairly proud of having won a Fortnite victory (Victory Royale!) egged on by my 6 year old son, who is way too influenced by YouTubers. First Person Shooters, or reaction time type of games are not my genre, neither are Sports or Racing…

On the less competitive side, Minecraft is amazing and wonderful and everyone in our family gets something different out of it. Interestingly, since being bought by Microsoft it has continued to strengthen as a game and platform (much like LinkedIn has…).

Anoushka has written a lovely blog about it, which you can read here ( 4 min mincraft blog).

My Op-Ed in the Financial Times (My Financial Times opinion article) about asking long-term questions surrounding sustainability and ESG.

Some popular posts: the commencement address; by Nassim Taleb (Black Swan author, risk management philosopher), Neil Gaiman on making wonderful, fabulous, brilliant mistakes; JK Rowling on the benefits of failure. Charlie Munger on always inverting; Sheryl Sandberg on grief, resilience and gratitude.

How to live a life, well lived. Thoughts from a dying man. On play and playing games.

A provoking read on how to raise a feminist child.

Grenfell. In memory. A thought about causes.

June 16, 2018 Ben Yeoh

Power of silence. I was reminded about the power of silence when joining for a short time the silent walk in memory of the Grenfell fire. For all the disaster that it is, I can see how it has knitted the community in the North Kensington area together and while the divides ever-present in Kensington remain – I feel some people from all sides have crossed and those divides are being more critically examined. Whether it will amount to much is harder to judge. However, the North Kensington library has been saved for a community value use and pressure post Grenfell has been reported to have played its part (ES article). A few pictures below.

It also reminded me of the power of silence used as rhetoric in Emma Gonzalez’s remarkable speech advocating for gun control. See post on it here.

Silent Walk, in memomry of Grenfell, 2018 (C) B Yeoh

There has been scrutiny as to the scope of the Grenfell inquiry. (Inquiry site here) "The Grenfell Tower Inquiry will examine the circumstances leading up to and surrounding the fire at Grenfell Tower on 14 June 2017. It will establish the facts and will make recommendations as to the action needed to prevent a similar tragedy happening again."

While debates have centred around legal technicalities on the scope, it seems to me that it is the causal degrees to be investigated which are the underlying debate. The terms of reference centre around the immediate first order causes (Grenfell Inquiry terms of reference) whereas there is anger about the first order causes, there is perhaps more fury at the second and third order causes.

The first order causes centre around the cladding, the advice to stay in vs evacuate, and the poor state of repair of parts of the building. There will be debate as to if a sprinkler system would have helped. Although interlinked, in my view, all of those factors will be implicated as a first order cause.

The second order causes relate to council management of social housing, the unheard voices of social tenants and the race to the bottom for pricing on maintenance and construction work.

This level of causality is interlinked with the problems that Carillion has revealed on the poor state of subcontracted work. (This FT article on Carillion (behind paywall), and also see my posts on it here, go over some of the factors in play; plus the government report)

It is also interlinked with the problems of “ownerless companies” or “ownerless assets” which is an expression of the problems of investing for longer term benefits and value; and also the problem of investing into intangible values - the type of items which might be very valuable but hard to price in dollar terms such as the value of good design, communal spaces and deceptively simple matters such as sound proofing or fire proofing.

This then harks to a third order cause. The cultural and sociology-political structures that can over-emphasise well funded, well articulated special interest groups (cf. gun lobby in America) and processes and political decision makers that find it hard to invest in long term intangible matters that don’t relate to political cycles.

There is also likely some uniquely conflicted about land use and planning which pits landlords against tenants, and systemic vs local concerns, and historic elite land ownership. (Martin Wolf, economist, has argued for a Land Value Tax all the back in 2006)

No one wants a wind turbine near them, even if it would benefit the whole country or world.

No one on the edge of a green belt, would want the green belt restrictions loosened, even if that would ease housing and infrastructure pressure.

Few people next to an airport would want it expanded even if there were proven economic benefits to the rat of the country.

Still on the level of the first and second order causes, one solution is listen more closely to the people involved. Use primary evidence and don’t dismiss it.

This can be tough when those involved already feel marginalised or also don’t understand how to make their voice heard in the system.

A second solution is to attempt to put a value on the longer term intangible items which we are currently not pricing. Items such as great urban design with community consultation.

Will this cost more money upfront? Yes. But we should think of it as building more valuable long term assets and also saving us the cost of a Grenfell disaster and the conflicts such as riots that under investment causes.

My Op-Ed in the Financial Times (My Financial Times opinion article) about asking long-term questions surrounding sustainability and ESG.

Some popular posts: the commencement address; by Nassim Taleb (Black Swan author, risk management philosopher), Neil Gaiman on making wonderful, fabulous, brilliant mistakes; JK Rowling on the benefits of failure. Charlie Munger on always inverting; Sheryl Sandberg on grief, resilience and gratitude.

How to live a life, well lived. Thoughts from a dying man. On play and playing games.

A provoking read on how to raise a feminist child.

Back to School

June 16, 2018 Ben Yeoh

Parents waiting outside a school visit  (C) B Yeoh — Parents waiting outside a school visit (C) B Yeoh

Waiting in a line outside Vincent Square, with my parent hat on, it is a discombobulating experience to go back to your old school of over 30 years ago.

What makes great schools, great? Why is it perceived that it is so hard to replicate what great schools do?*

How much influence do parents and teachers really have on children as compared to all the other forces cajoling, buffering and nurturing our children?

The qualities of curiosity, empathy and creativity - qualities I value in myself and others. How are they nourished in schools ?

How do you shape girls and boys into good women and good men?

I don’t have answers but I do have a few observations and some hope.

On the elite side, my grandfather went to Cambridge presumably as a partial recompense and apology for colonial rule in Malaysia. My father went to Cambridge due to nepotism and a polite letter my grandfather wrote to the Master of the college. I went to Cambridge as I was gifted, worked hard and had extraordinary teachers and educational institutions. I came out with the top first in my year and a scholarship to Harvard. I then learned some of the craft of play writing and poetry, and have ended up a writer and a fund manager.

As a scholar to my school, you can see my name in the 1992 section.

Although the power of elite networks remains strong, I would not have made it to Cambridge on the word of my father. While challenges remain, meritocracy has arguably partially developed. Like the late Hans Rosling’s point in Factfulness large challenges remain but today is better than the past.

I have now toured 3 elite prep schools and continue to interview pupils from elite private schools. I have experience across the spectrum into state and learning disabled education.

I remain hopeful.

In the 1960s, if you studied languages at O-level (16 years old) you would achieve great grammar but you could hardly speak much and would not be able to converse in Paris.

Similarly, for maths your geometry would be great you might know Euclid but you would know nothing of statistics.

Today, the ability to converse and to understand statistics is - rightly in my view – prioritized although the joys of Euclidean geometry are mainly untaught now. Education has evolved.

While walking round these schools listening to teachers and senior staff; hearing the children - seeing the classes – looking at the messages three items stuck me:

Everyone is learning about notions of sustainability

Everyone considers diversity important

An articulation of values and “growth mind set”… learning from failure, happiness before success, with ability comes responsibility…

All these ideas were strongly expressed (whether in state or private) to an extent that I do not recall 30 years ago.

Education has moved on, and it’s for the younger generations to evolve and reject those of them before them (which is why the voter turnout for aged 18-25 in recent local elections, general elections and Brexit are somewhat disappointing)

And so to… with ability comes responsibility…

I do think matters might be very different, if those in the upper tiers of society, and for instance under one measure that would include everyone earning more then £30,000 a year and about 40% of the country did give back a more substantial portion to those in the bottom 60%.

I’m not thinking money. I’m thinking more about time, experience, learnings. Perhaps, we’ve always been so – I haven’t examined closely – but we’re so concerned with the near-by day-to-day, the grind of life, it seems like we struggle to reach out and cross divides. It’s one of the small ideas behind the mingle. If that top 40% gave back 2 hours of time a week to something other than themselves, I wonder what our world would look like.

Source: Factfulness, Rosling (2018) quoting UNESCO

Diving back to education and away from Level 4 rich country concerns, I also see hope in Level 1 country concerns. Look at the rates of literacy, and of children who finish some school. It’s been incredibly positive. Still a lot of work to do, but every reason to think that those trends will continue as basic educational teacher practice start to be embedded in Level 1 countries (alongside basic health practice, electricity, hygiene.)

Dipping back to Level 4 London concerns, I am syncretic over many ideas. I simultaneously hold ideas about educating an elite (and we can see every generation a handful of boys and girls who go on to be country and company leaders trained through this system – which I am a product of) and a comprehensive system. I also have a lot of time for a “home school” ideology , and a “technical-vocational-mastercraftsman-system”. All of these systems have run in parallel with pros/cons for decades and will likely run for decades more (the decline of the UK Mastercraftsman technical system being of detriment, in my view, versus the German continued investment in that system).

Still, watching these young boys and girls, it does feel hopeful. I’m unsure how I feel that there’s no space for Spike here in these institutions. There’s barely a Spike-shaped space anywhere in the world. But, do I see an Oscar space shape with a gentle, quirky boy?

Over 30 years ago, I was 6 years old going on 7 as I started at WUS. Small and not super sporty, I found a second home in the pottery studio. I remember Miss B – her deft kindness in letting a shy quirky thoughtful boy while away break times with some clay (below is one, now somewhat currently broken I made 30 or so years ago) but also her emotional insightful intelligence in when to nudge such a boy into outdoors action.

Many an autumn day,  30 years ago, I would chase leaves falling from this exact tree and try and catch them. — Many an autumn day, 30 years ago, I would chase leaves falling from this exact tree and try and catch them.

This creative thread remains with me today (see clay play post).

A pot I coiled and made about 30 years ago, now ready to be repaired.

Still she is on my list of teachers and mentors I have a lot to be thankful for (Gideon Lester here plus a few others, Adrienne Kennedy here).

I guess this system believes that if you run with the swift, you run faster. Certainly, some fall, and I see, some to never recover. But at least with the cohort I knew and am in touch with, I see they’ve grown from little boys into great men.

Compassion, kindness and honesty.

Curiosity, empathy and creativity.

Service, openness and love.

These - along with independent critical thinking - have been taught to me and I’d wish to teach my children.

*Part of what makes certain schools great are the external speakers and visitors who come. These people can't go everywhere and are often draw to schools in easy to reach places and with strong historic reputations. This is not an easy thing to scale or replicate.

Source: Children's Commissioner (2011), Children and young people's views of education policy.

One concerning systemic note is whether we - adults - are listening enough to what children want from their education. One slowly increasingly positive note over the last decades is the importance of the child but it arguably still lags.

If you consider companies now use customer net promoter scores and via Amazon in level 4 countries we know the 5 star rating of every product... then the rating children give British schools is not brilliant.

Only 1 / 2 enjoy lessons...

And most children can tell when teachers are poor...

This would suggest a simple teacher Net Promoter Score as reported by children could be a useful measure to note and perhaps to incentivise on ?

More thoughts: My Financial Times opinion article on long-term investing and how to engage with companies.

How to live a life, well lived. Thoughts from a dying man. On play and playing games.

If you'd like to feel inspired by commencement addresses and life lessons try: Neil Gaiman on making wonderful, fabulous, brilliant mistakes; or Nassim Taleb's commencement address; or JK Rowling on the benefits of failure. Or Charlie Munger on always inverting; Sheryl Sandberg on grief, resilience and gratitude.

A provoking read on how to raise a feminist child.

Cross fertilise. Read about the autistic mind here.

Neurotribes: Legacy of Autism, Neurodiversity movement

June 5, 2018 Ben Yeoh

A look into the arguments behind the concept of neurodiversity: that autism can be regarded as naturally occurring cognitive variations with strengths that have contributed to culture and technological advances... also examines the history of autism with a lens emphasis on hearing the stories of autistic people themselves. The below is a short extraact from Steve Silberman NeuroTribes: The Legacy of Autism and How to Think Smarter About People Who Think Differently (Link to Amazon here). (Note his original observations on Hans Asperger are already considered out of date - and wrong - in the light of more recent work, and the latest addition of the work corrects this)

In Neurotribes, SS quoting Oliver Sacks:

“Sacks cast light on the challenges that they face in their day-to-day lives while paying tribute to the ways they bring the strengths of their atypical minds to their work. “No two people with autism are the same: its precise form or expression is different in every case,” he wrote. “Moreover, there may be a most intricate (and potentially creative) interaction between the autistic traits and the other qualities of the individual. So, while a single glance may suffice for clinical diagnosis, if we hope to understand the autistic individual, nothing less than a total biography will do.”"

[On the current state on the heterogenous nature of genetic factors found]

....The authors of a major study published in Nature admitted that even the most common genetic factors brought to light in their research were found in less than 1 percent of the children in their sample. “Most individuals with autism are probably genetically quite unique,” said Stephen Scherer of the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto. UCLA neurogeneticist Stanley Nelson added, “If you had 100 kids with autism, you could have 100 different genetic causes.” A wry saying popular in the autistic community, “If you meet one person with autism, you’ve met one person with autism,” turns out to be true even for molecular biologists. In 2010, I spoke to one of the fathers I’d interviewed nine years earlier. He told me that he was no longer worrying about what had caused his daughter’s autism. Instead, he was concerned about her future. She was about to “age out” of the modest level of services that the state of California provided to the family. Despite years of behavioral therapy, her skills had not developed to the point where he and his wife felt confident that she would ever be able to live on her own. “The question that keeps me up at night,” he said, “is what will happen to our beloved daughter when we die?” With the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) currently estimating that one in sixty-eight school-aged children in America are on the autism spectrum, millions of families will be facing sleepless nights in the coming decades. Many autistic adults are not exercising the strengths of their atypical minds at companies like Apple and Google—instead, a disproportionate number are unemployed and struggling to get by on disability payments. ...

... One of the most promising developments... has been the emergence of the concept of neurodiversity: the notion that conditions like autism, dyslexia, and attention-deficit/ hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) should be regarded as naturally occurring cognitive variations with distinctive strengths that have contributed to the evolution of technology and culture rather than mere checklists of deficits and dysfunctions....

... The notion that the cure for the most disabling aspects of autism will never be found in a pill, but in supportive communities, is one that parents have been coming to on their own for generations...."

Should be read alongside Andrew Solomon's Far from the Tree

5 lessons autism has taught me. And from Japan, a glimpse inside a 13 year old autistic boy's head, a blog from E Price on living in a neurotypical world, and click the Autism tag below for more posts on ASD thinking.

Thoughts from Autist living in a neurotypical world

May 22, 2018 Ben Yeoh

A thoughtful blog about how one autistic person (E Price) functions in a neurotypical world. It’s a 15 min read about various aspects of their life and gives a tiny glimpse into the compromises needed.

It starts:

“I’m an Autistic person with a pretty put-together looking life. I always make rent. I have money socked away in savings and investments. I juggle several teaching jobs and do statistical and methodological consulting work. I sometimes find time to write. I have a social life. Except for the occasional noticeable chest crumbs, I present as clean and well-dressed. I manage my stress. I sleep. I eat.

I don’t think I strike the average person as disabled at all. I get work done on time. I show up to things I say I’ll show up to. I don’t show much distress in public. I rarely ask for help. Because psychological disorders are often viewed through a lens of impairment, people might call into question whether I am neuroatypical at all.

Viewing disabilities — and mental disorders — through a lens of impaired functioning is very flawed. The fact that I am functioning does not mean I’m not impaired, or that functioning is not hard. That I can survive, day by day, does not mean that I am thriving, or that my life is as easy as it is for a neurotypical person. And the aspects of my life that are impaired are rarely visible to an outside eye.

We often don’t see a person at their lowest moments — when they are crying and nonverbal, or engaging in self harm, or refusing to eat, or isolating from everyone they love. We can’t always tell if someone is struggling to make it through the work day, or if their sleep and exercise habits have been disrupted. And we don’t know, from the outside, what a person has been forced to sacrifice in order to live a seemingly “functional life”.

A lot of us “function” because we have to.

A lot of disabled or mentally ill people are able to work a job, pay rent, and get by through an elaborate system of compromise and sacrifice. We may have abandoned career paths that were too demanding of our mental energy, or lost relationships that were too socially or emotionally taxing. ...”

“Even with all the immense, unfair advantages that life has given me, life as a neuroatypical person is hard. There are many careers paths I could never successfully follow, and workplaces I could never inhabit. Frustratingly, this is not due to a lack of interest, motivation, or skill, but because I’m not good at existing in a milieu where small talk, meetings, ambient noise, and social politics are abundant.”

A thoughtful read check it out here from E Price.

5 lessons autism has taught me. And from Japan, a glimpse inside a 13 year old autistic boy's head.