The Weekend Wind-Down #30 - September 22, 2024

I hope you're enjoying the end of your summer! It was another busy week with lots of work and some fun events, so here's this week's list:

Interesting marketing roundtable I attended this week

I attended an unusually planned marketing leader's roundtable on Wednesday. We started off with almost 2 hours of mini-golf before a discussion session over dinner. It was held at the Dusit Thani Laguna Resort, which I had never even heard of until two events I attended this month were held there. Interestingly, I found out this area was originally planned as the site to hold F1 races (which also happened to be this week) in the late 80s, before being turned into the golf course instead. As usual in the small world of Singapore I happened to have several connections who attended the event, someone I knew from sponsoring the same events, another who now works at the same company as ex-colleagues, and one from a competitor. The golf was fun and the discussion was interesting, I spoke up more than usual and got some good insights from other attendees as well. The two big themes that came up were the region's diversity, the need to localize to each market, and how to balance big and small-scale events and the benefits seen from each. It was great to hear from different-sized companies and teams on how they manage these challenges and what has been working for them recently. This aligns with the challenge I have been seeing the past few years of conferences being over-saturated and the need to be extremely strategic on which ones to invest in.

How I'm coping with two weeks of no gym due to injury

After almost a full two weeks off due to a family trip, I injured my foot at Muay Thai sparring on my first day back and it has been much slower to get better than I expected. I hope to be back this week, but this is the longest I've missed the gym in a long time, and although it's partly because I'm busy, it hasn't been as frustrating as I expected. Usually, when I am sick or get some small injury I'm raring to get back and unhappy if I have to take just a few days off in a row. I realized this time, I've been training consistently for long enough that I'm confident (barring some catastrophic injury), that I will always go back to some form of combat sports and strength training. It has been long enough and I know my strengths and limitations enough that I also don't feel like I'm falling behind or missing out if I'm not able to train. I've also had to take time off enough (COVID, baby, etc) that I know my fitness will come back when I start training again, so it makes sense to take more time to heal up properly rather than forcing myself to start training again too early and getting further injured.

Amazing behind-the-scenes tour this weekend

We had another great TEDx outing this week and got a tour of a new exhibit at the Singapore ArtScience Museum by the designer Cesar Jung-Harada himself. The exhibition, An Ocean City Imagined, showcases three technologies that Cesar, a professor at the Singapore Insitute of Technology is researching and testing. All these technologies come as a response to the adverse effects of climate change and lead to a more sustainable future. The coolest part to me was that he isn't just telling people how bad climate change could be and coming up with ideas, but is actually building these new technologies and testing them with some of the people that will need them the most, disadvantaged communities in places like Indonesia. I was most interested in his ocean solar hydrogen power units that create clean energy that fishing communities can use to power their homes or sell on the market for profit. Indonesia has around 18,000 islands and over 6,000 of those are populated, many by people who make their living by fishing. For these communities, fuel is extremely expensive as they live in remote areas. They need fuel to power their boats, ride motorbikes to get to their boats, cook, and run generators to power lights, TVs and charge their phones. All of these needs can be met by these ocean solar hydrogen units that create power simply from water and sun, which are abundant right where these people already live.

What I watched this weekend

In anticipation of an upcoming business trip to Tokyo, I started rewatching one of my favorite shows, Midnight Diner. This episodic Japanese series can be found on Netflix and each episode showcases a story with characters that have a connection to a specific dish, often Japanese comfort food. The main character is a chef everyone calls "Master" who runs a small restaurant in the Shinjuku district of Tokyo. The restaurant is only open from midnight to 7am, and although there is only one dish listed on the menu, pork miso soup, the master cooks whatever customers request as long as he has the ingredients on hand. These hours attract all kinds of interesting folks, and although the master takes a stereotypical bartender role usually just listening rather than acting, unlike most protagonists of a show; he provides comfort and connections with his food and the feelings people have when they eat it. As a foodie, I enjoy the realism of this show, focusing on food that evokes memories in the characters rather than being super expensive or fancy-looking. But it is really the characters that make this show remarkable, nothing is overdone and they remain realistic but memorable. If you haven't watched it, check it out!

I hope everyone has a great week closing Q3 out strong!

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