The Zen of doing workshops

Started 10.06 pm, Thursday night, 16th April.

This is the winding down to two and half days of intense talking, negotiations, friendly badgering and teasing to come up with the roadmap and action plan for the APEX U people-centred sustainable development taskforce. The energy has been amazing and the camaderie fantastic. I can see where it is going. And I am letting it go in the direction where it is being shepparded. Is it where I want it to go? It is not about me. I have to practice being people-led. No, we have discarded people-led in favour of people-centred. We have very opinionated individuals who are not adverse to making their views known but yet willing to allow themselves to be nudged. I am happy, because I have learned so much in these 2 and half days.

So what does it take to conduct a successful workshop. What is the Zen of doing workshops? Picking the right people is one. I think I made the right choices. Choosing the right location is another. Langkawi, far away from USM is a good choice but the damn handphones keep ringing. Still not far enough. Perhaps Bali will be far enough. Choice of hotel is another. I chose this one because it claimed to have a 100 green ways. And we asked for a tour of the grounds. We were guided by a gardener and an environmental engineer. We saw the detox pond where the fish we eat at the hotel restaurants are placed in cleaner water to allow the toxins to waste out. Huh? Well, the fishes are rear in a pond at the back of the gardens and guess what goes into the pond? Grey water. Know what that is? It’s waste water from the baths and sinks (not the shit bowl). There’s kangkong and water hycinths to absorb the heavy metals. Don’t worry, you can eat the kangkong because the plants just absorbs the iron (says our hard scientist Nasir, a chemist). Then on the other side of the pond is where they keep the fish. So, I guess the fish eat our waste. That’s why they have to detox. I wondered aloud whether the detox actually works. The environ guy says, actually it is just perception. If the pond was toxic, the fished would be dead already.

(stopped at 10.30 pm and went for drinks with some buddies. Now 6.30 am, Friday morning. I keep waking up before 6 these few mornings.)

It’s still dark. Am sitting on the front porch with the porch lights on. The waves keep pounding. In the distance, lights flicker. I am told that they are fishing for cuttle fish.

Back to the Frangipani, the recycled hotel. Frangipani has been here for sometime. And then the current owner reburbished it to become green. So based on my earlier post and the subsequent tour, it looks a little like green wash. But we are divided. Kabilan gives the hotel a B+/A-. Janet gives it a C+. On the generous side, I would give it a B-, mainly for trying. There’s a lot of big plastic tanks on stilts collecting rain and grey water. Recycle bins everywhere. Vegetables, only about 40% comes from their garden. Manggo trees are abundant. There’s composting using old long bath tubs. The corn field is irrigated with perforated pipes underground feeding the it with grey water. What? There’s soap (not organic yet, but coming) and sampoo in the grey water, right? Our chemist says, no problem. Soap is just sodium. I was concerned about the water contaminating the ground water. I remember Adelaide tried storing the grey water in the ground and found out that the water became excessive salty and not suitable for watering the lawn. There’s chicken and geese everywhere, some 100 or 200 of them (they started with 20) and they eat the kitchen waste. I am not sure that it is a great idea given the composition of the food. Wan Fauzy’s family is in the catering business and they usually have leftovers which they pass to a friend rearing chickens. One day, the farmer said he could not take the left overs anymore. Why? The chickens are getting too fat from the fatty food! Oh, but did I say that the Uncle Wong’s (not Tong) fried kampung chicken is damn good?

(ooo, I see Lean Heng walking by, in the dark, with hands raised, working the Qi. 6.48 am)

And the pond. Wonderful idea. Treat the waste. The solid waste (the shit lah) goes to the sewerage treatment plant. Only the grey water goes into the wetland. But its green in colour. Its full of algae. So its not healthy – the eco-system of the pond. I asked again, What about seepage into ground water. They admitted that there is no waterproof lining under the pond. And the fish? We had it twice. The first time I skipped it but not because I was suspicious. I was told it was good. Yesterday we had fish again for lunch, western style and it was good.

After the 1 hour or so tour, we had frangipani tea on the beach. Hhhmm. It’s just “tea” – didn’t make an impact on me.

Yes, they are trying. And they are selling green. They need to work out the issues.

Alright, again it’s the long-winded way to what I am getting to. The Zen of doing workshops. Frangipani has nice beach and I managed to swim in it twice. The big sign that says “Beware of Jelly Fish” is like rumour-mongering – it scares people from going into the sea. While in the water yesterday with Matthew and Kabilan (and Janet and Lean Heng joined for a while), we found big and small plastic bags at the bottom of the sea and pieces of polystyrene foam on the beach. So you think we can solve this with recycling? The architecture is crappy. The staff here are all friendly. But there are little little things that take the stress off the intense brain work. Apart from the bottle of red wine, I will let these pictures tell the story.

The perfect Zen position.
Yoke Mui makes sure every word spoken counts

The second position is called the Frangipani pose, ala-Titanic. Lean Heng happy to be outside the ballroom.

Janet in the far away pose ... revitalising her Qi.

Matthew talking under the stars. He was a rascal and bad boy in another life. But making amends by taking the reflexivity route.

Here's where the fish gets detoxed. Also a place where a guy from the team got friendly with the actress shooting on location late last night. Did he get lucky? I understand the attraction was mutual. (update : he did get LUCKY)

This was lunch yesterday - fish . Looks good? Wait ...This was dessert. Cheese cake. Looks beautiful. Tastes good too. And all because we told Uncle Wong how much we enjoyed his cooking. And because Janet asked very nicely. (Sorry, I am told it was Lean Heng who asked; Lean Heng says the "greedy one"; Lean Heng says "requested persuasively")

Ah, but where does the fish come from? Right from this very green pond (wetland lah_.

Grilled kampung chicken with brown rice. The secret is the yoghurt.This was on the first day. Rojak with manggos from their garden. The sauce was all sugar and soya sauce, no prawn paste. But I couldn't tell.

My dinner on the second night. Damn good too. The first night we went out to eat and was terribly disappointed. The fish was fishy. The crab was crappy. And they charged us RM80 for the steamed garlic grouper. We thought it was night robbery. Janet told the staff we will never go back. It was too much hassle finding a good restaurant. There are many around but mostly desserted. It's either the off peak season of the effects fot the global economic meltdown.

In case you think its all good food and fun. Here's proof we work hard too. We are thinking maybe Bali next time? What do you think boss?

Endnote : we like uncle Wong's food so much we asked for a special dinner last night. He suggested duck. Yes, we all agreed. It was Chap Chuan (10 herbs) duck soup. It was great. And then came organic white rice and two vegetables. Hmm, sorry uncle Wong, it wasn't how we envisionaged it would be.

Frangipani, the recycled hotel

It’s 6.55 am, 15th April 2009. Sitting outside the little “chalet” on the beach in Chennai, Langkawi. Woke up before 6. Couldn’t get back to sleep so decided to take a walk on the beach at 6.30 am. Our porch light was switched off by someone in the middle of the night. That’s good ‘cos this hotel claims to practice 100 green ways. But it’s too dark to walk along the path ‘cos all the lights have been switched off except for two dim lights in the distance. So I walked along the beach, with the waves pounding and the moon shining, reflecting on the sand to guide me along. It took only 20 minutes to walk the whole stretch and back. The air is cool but there’s hardly any breeze. Not a single leaf is moving. You sweat a lot here.

Of course there’s air-conditioning but the architect or designer of Frangipani really has no idea what is good beach architecture in a tropical island climate. Matthew says its just a box. Further down the beach I saw one resort which looked really nice.

So if the design is so lousy what are we doing here? Certainly not the price. The sea-view rooms are reportedly priced about over RM800 per night. And the one’s further inside are published at RM400. The one they gave me originally looked into an unsightly “backyard” from behind while the front balcony looked over the rooftops of some “chalets” and no seaview. If that was RM400 a night, that totally was not worth it. But of course they gave us a package which is below RM300 – but it still is not value for money. So we called the manager who tried hard to please us. So I am in a seaview “chalet” with the beach just 30 metres away. And the sunset yesterday evening was spectacular. Say, anyone knows why the sun seems to get sucked down very quickly once it “touches” the water?

Can you hear the sizzling?

Matthew wondering whether he should have my share of the fried bananas.

Four of us (out of 7) requested for a room change. We all got our rooms changed. But the others are not so lucky because they got rooms that are no better then the earlier ones – and they had to put up with the hassle of moving their stuff. Janet got her bags moved – but without her clothes and stuff. Lean Heng is pushing for a better deal – she says hotels always bully their government clients because we don’t know how to negotiate with them. I totally agree. I don’t like the negotiation part. So, I don’t know where this story will end. We will be here until Friday, working on our APEX University People-Led Agenda (and so far I am very happy with the energy and team spirit).

The meeting was another hassle. It’s a huge ballroom but there’s only 7 of us. Lighting was an issue. We took down one of the layers of curtains to allow more natural light in. Ventilation and air-conditioning was an issue. So we moved our working top closer to the air-con unit and open the glass doors for ventilation. We had to ask for drinking water. But to their credit, the staff respond very well and are very friendly.

Green. What’s green about the rooms. Well, you can go check their website of the one hundred green things they do. But when I first received the email (forwarded by my boss) and checked their website, I sent an email to the hotel owner asking about drinking water in the room. One of the things they claim is that for meetings, they don’t provide water in plastic bottles. Hurrah. But I asked – what about in the rooms? I said I have issues with boiling water in electric plastic kettles (if you must know, we have switched to boiling water in a metal kettle using gas at home). So I asked, what is Frangipani’s solution? What do you think? Plastic electric kettle, what else. And drinking water in plastic bottles? Yah, there are there too in the rooms. Talking about plastics. When the tea was served, the fried bananas and cut fruits came in plates – shrinked wrap. We advised them to stop doing that (as of yesterday, 16th April, two days after we arrived, the food was still shrink-wrapped).

So we turned out to be bullies too. Some of us are real picky about food. Me included. Lean Heng wanted brown rice (or something other that white rice). No, they don’t have brown rice. How about yellow rice? Nah, that’s just white rice with tumeric. Got vermicelly (tang hoon)? Yes, they have. And out comes a plate. Oh, but it’s just boiled. Not fried ah? Nevermind. We will try it with the beef curry. Turned out it was quite good.

Ah, we even invited the cook, uncle Tong, for consultation. Uncle, the fried chicken is damn (sorry) good. But a little too salty. Wait, wait, wait – but it’s perfectly ok for us, said Nasir, Kabilan and Zol.

Damn good kampung chickens!

(stopped at 7.30 am for breakfast. Now 9.00 am, waiting to start the storm again. Lean Heng, Janet and Yoke Mui are rearranging the layout to reduce reflection on the white board and so everyone faces the projection screen.)

Ah breakfast. Usual fare – nasi lemak, sausage, pancakes, cordial, fruits, cereal, bread … but no porridge. Asked for 2 half-boiled eggs, my little indulgence when staying at hotels. And horrors, I saw two Mat Sallehs (Caucasian) doing tau pau (take-away) – guess what type of containers? The White Coffin!! Hhmmm. This isn’t going well is it?

Now back to lunch yesterday. On the table were home-made placemats providing information about plants and chickens and ducks on this hotel. It seems the chicken we had for lunch was “free-ranch” (kampung) chicken – organic lah! And it was damn good. According to Janet – no smell lah! The dragon fruit and mango is also organic from their garden.

OK, got to stop now. 9.11 am. Got to go back to work. Will put pictures and other stories later.

The Problem with Plastic Bags - Stop thinking you can recycle

Remember the date : 19th April 2009 Sunday, 9.00 am, Komplek Penyayang, George Town, Penang

Above is my talking points for the dialogue "To Ban or Not to Ban Plastic Bags".

The plastic manufacturers' association says that plastic bags have been made the punching bag, the scapegoat. I kinda of agree. Their solution is to step up recycling. I absolutely disagree. Stop thinking that you can recycle. The first rule is REFUSE. Forget 3R. The key is to stop waste in its tracks. Go for 4R. First Refuse (do you really need that plastic bag? do you need to print those notes?).

If you can't do without the plastic bag or the printed notes, then REDUCE. That's the second rule. Take only one plastic bag for the whole shopping trip (but always remember to bring reusable bags). Print on both sides of the paper.

The 3rd rule is REUSE or Repair. Yes, I know, reuse the plastic bags as trash liners. I do that still. But that still ends up in the landfill and they stay there forever (perhaps a 1,000 years but who knows? Plastic bags have been around only since the 1980s). I must start more composting of the organic cooked food waste which I am not doing at the moment (am only composting the fruit peels and uncooked vegetables and yard waste). That has been bugging me. Once I can compost the food waste, I will have almost zero waste (when I factor in the recycling - yah, you got me there).

The last resort is recycling, when everything else fails. The idea is to keep the stuff working for as long as possible - because recycling really uses a lot of resources too.

So, what do you think? Message loud and clear? Yeah, I know, the concept map is probably too complex for some. Not to worry, I will still have slides with lots of pictures. I will try to touch the various multiple intelligences.

See you there. A group of USM students will be there to lobby the crowd. Want to make a difference?