TED rule 5

Still in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

Fifth week on my TED rules project, I discover that following the TED rules is not difficult if you don’t forget the details. I’m talking especially of Stefan Sagmeister in my TED rule 2. His vision of taking a sabbatical is clearly an excellent idea, but I neglected his advice on having a school-like agenda during the year. So I spent the full week partying with good friends in Kuala Lumpur… too bad! Of course I still follow all the TED rules, creating one new rule every week, keeping track of my time and expenses (you can even check how the spreadsheet evolved in a party sheet) and eating no junk, less meat and more vegetables. But now it’s time for me to go on, and I’ll be continuing my Asia motorbike tour this week. Bybye friends and tigers, next step is Medan, Indonesia!
For this week rule I wanted to call the great Hans Rosling, a Swedish medical doctor, academic, statistician and an excellent public speaker. With 8 TED talks he is one of the pillars of TED. His presentations are not only fun to watch, but based on strong science and data and coupled with innovative technology (Gapminder, go and try it!) they changed my vision of the world. Or as he says himself in a TED Talk:

Once upon a time (…) I was a student at saint john’s general hospital in Bangalore. I was a guest student during 1 month of a public health course. And that changed my mindset forever. The course was good, but it wasn’t the course content in itself that changed the mindset. it was the brutal realization the first morning that the indian students were better than me. (…) That personal experience was the first time in my life that the mindset I was living with was changed. And I realized that perhaps the western world will not continue to dominate the world forever. And I think many of you have the same sort of personal experience.

I must say I had the same kind of experience, and his first TED talk helped me figure out how the vision of the world I learnt at school is outdated… Anyway today let’s look at his last published TED talk about washing machine:

No, for this week TED rule I’m not going to attach a washing machine to my motorbike and provide free laundry services in the remote places I’m going to (even if I though about it). Ironically I’m following an advice from an other of his talk:

It’s that realization of someone you meet that really meant to change the idea about the world, it’s not the statistics.

I have the opportunity to travel and meet a lot of people during this year, and I can share it with you. And one of the best (and less boring – for you) way I know is to take pictures. I enjoy shooting face portraits, because a glance is easily powerful, and focusing on face is a good way to start learning about photography. For this week rule I decided to take one step behind – and switch to wide-angle lens – to show not only the people I meet, but also the way they live. I’ll  try to take pictures as representative as possible of what I see during my trip. I already started, although I’m not so happy with the first shots, not so easy to switch to wide-angle! You can see the result on the “one step behind” set on flickr, I’ll update it and post more and more pictures. Next ones will be from Sumatra!

Have a good week.

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