Which would you prefer… pancake day or carnaval?

In the Gospels, Jesus spent 40 days fasting in the desert and being tempted by Satan before he commenced on the teaching part of his life – the Ministry. Today in Christian societies this is marked by the celebration of Lent.

Lent begins on Ash Wednesday, which is Wednesday next week. Many believers will give up something for the entire period – not quite fasting, but at least refraining from something pleasurable, like alcohol or meat, for the entire period.

In the UK, the advent of Lent is marked by Shrove Tuesday, or pancake day. This is traditionally when extra flour, eggs, and other food from the cupboard would all be cooked up on the final day before Lent – ensuring a feast of pancakes on the last day when such gluttony is allowed.

In Brazil it is all quite different. Brazil is far more religious than the UK – truck drivers paint thank you messages to God on their vehicles, asking for a safe journey. It is predominantly Catholic, but with a fast-rising group of evangelical churches too – almost all of them Christian though.

In Brazil there is no pancake day. There is carnaval!

Last year in Rio, almost 5m people joined in the party and it stops the entire nation for almost a week – here in São Paulo, I know that sleeping will be tough for the next week as the music goes on almost all night. This Friday, next Monday and Tuesday, and half of Wednesday are all public holidays in Brazil for the carnaval. So it is almost certain that everything will start winding down early tomorrow and nobody will return to work on Wednesday afternoon – even if that is the official end of the party… many will take annual leave on Thursday and Friday next week allowing almost a week and half off work for just a couple of days leave.

Those who take the carnaval seriously and compete for the various best dancer, best float, or best band prizes will spend the entire year preparing and leading up to this moment – it’s bigger than even Christmas and that’s saying a lot in such a Christian country.

So I guess carnaval more than trumps pancake day, but I still might get the pancake mix out on Tuesday, just to encourage a mix of both cultures. I live in a house with Morrissey pictures on the wall!

Pancake photo by Yesica licensed under Creative Commons. Carnaval photo by Carnaval.com licensed under Creative Commons.

Communism finished in West Bengal

It was always an anachronism in India. West Bengal ruled by a communist party for the past thirty-four years and always trying to bend and flex the limits of communist ideology so they might embrace the real world. Now the communist rule is over.

I remember being in Kolkata (formerly Calcutta) working on behalf of the West Bengal government a few years ago. They asked me to give a keynote speech at a conference and then do some consulting work focused on how to develop the local hi-tech services economy – IT and IT-enabled services.

I rose to speak to the conference knowing that the IT minister of West Bengal was going to speak immediately after me, but he had not briefed me on his speech and I had not been asked to brief him on mine.

My main thrust was that West Bengal should play to its strengths; the vibrant higher education community, the strong links between academia and industry, the sheer scale of educated young people…

I showed them that they have a unique proposition that is focused on highly trained resource. I explained that they should not try to ape other Indian states, such as Karnataka (where hi-tech Bangalore is located), and focus on offering low-cost labour into the growing call centre industry as it would not be a long-term opportunity for the region.

The minister stood up and the first image he presented described how much cheaper the labour is in West Bengal, compared to Karnataka, and how great this would be for call centres. The entire conference hall fell about laughing at him.

Embarrassing for me, and probably more so for him as it showed he was not really in tune with the business community and had not even taken the time to check what the speaker ahead of him was going to say.

But as I worked with the government there, one thing in particular intrigued me. The IT sector was declared a ‘special’ industry. The local government wanted to attract foreign investors so they decided that all the normal labour legislation would not apply to this one industry.

In West Bengal, strikes have always been common because workers often flex their muscles and refuse to work if they have a grievance with the management. In the IT sector, strikes were banned.

The minister smiled at me when he told me about this and declared that foreign investors have nothing to fear from the communist government, because of the ban on industrial action in the sectors they were trying to boost.

So I asked how the IT workers would get to work when the bus drivers were on strike, or how the computers would work when the power company workers were on strike, or how the workers could eat if the restaurant workers were on strike?

He couldn’t answer. He only gave some weasel words about IT staff sleeping in the office to avoid transport strikes, or companies bringing in food and using diesel generators to keep the lights on. None of it was a real solution and if I was a genuine foreign investor, I wouldn’t have been impressed because the government was trying to remain communist in spirit, yet also doing anything they could to attract foreign money to the region.

So the communists of West Bengal were never really communist in the sense of Plato’s Republic, they just liked the colour red. And Che Guevara T-shirts. West Bengal has joined the rest of us in the real world at last.

Farewell Blighty

In my last blog post I listed a few places I will be over my last couple of weeks in the UK before I leave to go and live in Brazil.

I have arranged a couple of farewell events, one for my local Ealing tweetup crowd, and the other for anyone else who wants to see me in central London. Take a look here for details:

Rupert St, Dec 22

Ealing, Dec 23

See you there!

Reboot: The Book Launch on Dec 2nd @ Waxy’s

There is a great blog post here by Rod Trent of 1e that outlines the book launch planned for Angelica’s book on December 2nd in London. It’s going to be a great party and a great way to launch the new book. You can see Angelica’s video invitation here. If you are still not sure about coming then think about this:

• The first 50 people to arrive get a free copy of the book
• Everyone gets a free EP of music from the BibleCode Sundays
• The BibleCode Sundays are playing live
• We are taking over the Church bar in Waxy O’Connor’s right in the middle in London -and the bar is free thanks to 1e.
• The food is also free thanks to JD Marketing (they do the marketing for Betfair, who feature in the book).
• There is a £100 Amazon voucher for whoever uploads the best social content from the evening, tweet, photo, video, blog…
• 1e are giving away goodie bags full of pens, squeezy polar bears, mints, and various other things, though the bag itself might be the most useful item to carry all the other freebies!

As if you needed any more reasons to party, me and Angelica are getting married the next morning. Yes, launching a book on Thursday and getting married on Friday… and Angelica leaves the country to move to Brazil on Sunday, so this might be your last chance to say goodbye. She will remain as an associate editor of Computer Weekly, but she is entering the realms of virtual working. So you won’t see her often back in London – or me for that matter!

Click here to go and register for the event on LinkedIn…

A movie-themed Christmas party

I know the lads who play in the BibleCode Sundays, a really good Celtic rock band from west London. They are a great band and don’t get the recognition they deserve in terms of album sales, but if you go and see them in a pub you will be blown away – and will almost certainly come away as a convert, seeking out their stuff online.

Andy Nolan plays accordian in the band and he has recently written a movie called ‘Clan London’ based on gangland London, particularly in the Irish community. I haven’t read the script, but from what I can see of Andy’s comments online it looks like West Side Story with more violence, more Guinness, and with a bit of Goodfella’s chucked in for good measure.

Andy is already casting the movie and he has a director ready to work on the project, but he is still working on more funding and distribution for the project, so he has organised a big party in Hendon, north London, on Dec 11th.

Guests include Noel ‘Razor’ Smith, world-champion boxer Steve Collins, the director of the film, Stephen Patrick Kenny, and there will be a DJ slot by Tony Lundon of Liberty X. The BibleCode Sundays are going to play a live set as well so it looks like it will be a really good evening, and should focus a bit of attention on the forthcoming movie – both Steve Collins and Razor have agreed to take parts in the film!

The party takes place at the Claddagh Ring in Hendon. Details are all online here. I’m going to be there. Let me know if you plan on coming too!

Ealing Tweetup with Ronan MacManus

What a fantastic evening last week in Ealing! Ronan MacManus did an amazing job with the music, even managing to avoid the temptation of playing Stairway to Heaven… despite offering to play ‘any’ requests!

The team at the Rose & Crown did a fantastic job keeping every glass full. It was a Tuesday evening, but the pub was packed… Thanks go to Xerox for ensuring that the food and drinks were free for the bloggers attending the event. Neville Hobson wrote a great overview of the tweetup here.

BBC Radio 6 came to cover the event and about 90 people showed up to talk, network, chat, and hear the music. It was the best Tweetup yet. I was thinking about trying to do another one before Christmas, but with all the usual parties at Christmas and with only a month left to plan, I think it’s too much of a rush… Early February looks like a better option to me. Opinions?

I have over 40 vox pop videos – people giving their opinion on the event – and the entire set by Ronan, so you can expect to see me tweeting some video links soon. I’ve been holding back on the video because it’s taking a while to get everything edited, but you can expect to see it all arriving soon.

Come to Elvis Costello’s launch party!

Elvis Costello’s new album ‘National Ransom’ is out next week.

On Thursday the 28th, he has a very special and very private launch party for the album at lunchtime in Soho. It’s going to be in the world-famous Ronnie Scott’s jazz club and these tickets are not for sale – it’s press and invite-only.

But you can win two tickets to this special event through a competition by entering on the Elvis Costello website here!

I’m going to be there live blogging and commenting on the event on Twitter, so if you win, do say hello!

Elvis recently joined Twitter, so if you are on there then why not go and follow him? And if you are a Twitter user then I’m hosting the Ealing Tweetup next week, featuring a live set by Elvis’s brother, Ronan MacManus…

Thanks for the birthday wishes!

I had such a great birthday at the weekend.

It started off by seeing Stephen Fry on Thursday evening at the Royal Albert Hall… though I prefer him on TV to this live show on stage. The endless chat about his memoirs felt quite forced in front of a theatre of 5,000 people. But then I stayed at the Hilton Tower Bridge that evening and spent a day as a tourist on Friday – saw The Town at the Vue Leicester Square and War Horse at the New London theatre.

Then on Saturday I had a karting race near Heathrow with mates in the afternoon and a great evening at the Rose and Crown, Ealing, where the Biblecode Sundays were playing… and about 50 friends all taking over a big section of the pub!

It was really special and something I won’t forget. Thank you to everyone who gave me gifts – I have not managed to respond personally to everyone, though I have been trying to on Facebook.

Oh, and Chippy – I guess the Billy Bragg T-shirt was from you! No name on the wrapping paper, but who else would buy me a ‘Milkman of Human Kindness’ T-shirt?

Thank you to everyone who came!

The Ealing tweetup on Thursday was a great success. There were so many people around a big table full of food and drink this time that I never even got to say hello to a lot of people who were there… so if I didn’t say hello – sorry. I was just happy to sit at the end enjoying a Honeydew and chatting to whoever wandered past

1e did a great job sponsoring the event and I hope they found it useful to meet such a diverse bunch of local bloggers and twitter users – I was particularly pleased to finally have a chat with Ealing deputy mayor, Rupa Huq, after endless chats on the Facebook wall or messaging system.

But it was nice to see so many people who have now become regulars at this event. I feel I have started a snowball rolling and I hope this continues – I think I invited quite a few people from the tweetup to my birthday party in September, but the Fuller’s effect means I can’t remember who I invited!

The nicest thing about this is that I keep meeting neighbours in the street – people who would have been other Ealing residents anyway, but complete strangers if I had not started doing this tweetup thing. A couple of weeks ago I was with an old friend in the Red Lion and @maxtb said hello. I was waiting for a pizza outside @santamariapizza on Friday and @youeee said hi…

It’s nice to see how the virtual network of Twitter actually leads to real connections in real life.

Aftershock

The financial crisis of the past couple of years has shocked the world. House prices collapsed and jobs were axed. Yet, now in 2010 we are told that the worst is over and growth is back again. House prices in the UK are growing again at over 10% a year, according to some market analysts, and the economy is officially growing once again.

But are we just going to fall into the same trap of debt and chasing ephemeral growth to hit political targets?

Is there another way? Well, Philippe Legrain has jetted around the world to look at different systems and ideas and he has produced a new book explaining his views on where we should go next –  ‘Aftershock’.

The book launch is tonight at 6.30pm at the New Theatre in the LSE. Do come along if you can… details are here…