Bamboo Innovator

Filming Oshin made me think of mom

Filming Oshin made me think of mom

Wednesday, October 23, 2013 – 08:54

My Paper

Child actress Kokone Hamada was selected from among 2,500 hopefuls who auditioned for the role of Oshin Tanimura in Oshin, a film remake of a popular Japanese drama from the 1980s. In an interview with Encore Films, the nine-year-old reveals how it was like to be separated from her family for 52 days of filming.

What were the most difficult moments during filming?

It was during the scene where I had to run and fall in the snow, with strong wind blowing. I was covered in snow and it was freezing to the extent that I couldn’t feel my body. It was so cold and painful that I cried. (But) the separation scene (between Oshin and her family) was definitely the most difficult scene to shoot.

Did filming the scenes with Oshin’s mother, Fuji (Aya Ueto), make you think of your own mother?

There were a lot of times it happened. The scene where Oshin was on a raft, being separated from her parents, and when her mother visited Kagaya Mansion (where Oshin worked). Also, the scene where her mother entered the river reminded me of the time when I had to say goodbye to my own mother at Haneda airport. I was really sad. Read more of this post

The Shanghai Secret: How these schools in China made it to No. 1 in the world

October 22, 2013

The Shanghai Secret

By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN

SHANGHAI — Whenever I visit China, I am struck by the sharply divergent predictions of its future one hears. Lately, a number of global investors have been “shorting” China, betting that someday soon its powerful economic engine will sputter, as the real estate boom here turns to a bust. Frankly, if I were shorting China today, it would not be because of the real estate bubble, but because of the pollution bubble that is increasingly enveloping some of its biggest cities. Optimists take another view: that, buckle in, China is just getting started, and that what we’re now about to see is the payoff from China’s 30 years of investment in infrastructure and education. I’m not a gambler, so I’ll just watch this from the sidelines. But if you’re looking for evidence as to why the optimistic bet isn’t totally crazy, you might want to visit a Shanghai elementary school. Read more of this post

Breaking up the bamboo ceiling: Making Asian-background Australians less invisible in business

Fiona Smith Columnist

Breaking up the bamboo ceiling: Making Asian-background Australians less invisible in business

Published 23 October 2013 07:15, Updated 23 October 2013 08:39

The director of a household-name company was pleased with himself as he expanded on the promotion of business leaders with an Asian background. “We’ve got one banana and three eggs on our board,” he informed BRW. What he meant was that there is one director with Asian heritage, who has spent much of their career working for Western organisations, and three Anglo-Australians accustomed to dealing with Asian businesses and state-owned enterprises. Despite the lack of political correctness in the delivery, at least this director was conscious of the benefits of capitalising on the talents and experience of Asian-Australians. The CEO of Diversity Council Australia (DCA), Nareen Young, says employers are starting to have conversations about the “bamboo ceiling” – the Asian equivalent of the invisible glass ceiling that has kept women out of positions of power for so long.

Read more of this post

Buffett Sees Zero Chance of Gates Returning as Microsoft CEO

Buffett Sees Zero Chance of Gates Returning as Microsoft CEO

Warren Buffett, the billionaire chairman of Berkshire Hathaway Inc., said Bill Gates’s focus on philanthropy makes it impossible that the Microsoft Corp. co-founder will return to the company as chief executive officer. “The chances of that are zero,” Buffett told Bloomberg Television’s Betty Liu in an interview today. “He is doing exactly what he wants to do in life, and he’s doing it well and it takes his full-time energy.” Microsoft is searching for a new CEO after Steve Ballmer said he would step down from the world’s largest software maker. Gates, 57, is chairman of Microsoft and serves on the board of Berkshire. In 2006, Buffett committed a majority of his wealth to the foundation run by Gates and his wife, Melinda. Gates is “flying around the world a very significant percentage of the time, and he is engaging governments in his efforts,” said Buffett, 83. “He has got more than a full-time job at the Gates Foundation, and obviously cares about Microsoft, but he’s not going back.” Buffett appeared today alongside his son and grandson, both named Howard, to promote a new book, “40 Chances: Finding Hope in a Hungry World.” The text describes lessons the billionaire’s son learned from his years working to improve food security around the world. The elder Buffett has also given funds to foundations overseen by his three children.

To contact the reporters on this story: Noah Buhayar in New York at nbuhayar@bloomberg.net; Zachary Tracer in New York at ztracer1@bloomberg.net

Howard Buffett Finds 40 Chances to Get Philanthropy Right

Howard Buffett Finds 40 Chances to Get Philanthropy Right

Howard G. Buffett has photographed an African warlord at close range and witnessed 50 children bound in shackles in Senegal. In Barranquilla, Colombia, he sat next to the pop star Shakira in an SUV as kids banged on the windows until their idol emerged to sign autographs. Buffett, son of the second-richest person in the U.S., could have written a vanity book to chronicle his philanthropic work battling world hunger. Instead, he offers insight, self-deprecation, solutions and heart in “Forty Chances: Finding Hope in a Hungry World.” Warren Buffett and his late first wife, Susan, gave and pledged billions to each of their three children to fund charitable foundations. Howard, an Illinois farmer, picked global hunger as his target. In the book’s foreword, the elder Buffett describes “Forty Chances” as a “guidebook for intelligent philanthropy.” It’s more than that. Howard Buffett has figured out a way to tell 40 stories about hunger, farming, poverty and war, while delivering a readable account of a formidable challenge. Philanthropists will take much from “Forty Chances,” and the layperson will benefit, too, coming away wiser about the powerful forces that keep poverty and hunger alive — and ways to fight those forces. Read more of this post

How a Radical New Teaching Method Could Unleash a Generation of Geniuses

How a Radical New Teaching Method Could Unleash a Generation of Geniuses

BY JOSHUA DAVIS

10.15.13

José Urbina López Primary School sits next to a dump just across the US border in Mexico. The school serves residents of Matamoros, a dusty, sunbaked city of 489,000 that is a flash point in the war on drugs. There are regular shoot-outs, and it’s not uncommon for locals to find bodies scattered in the street in the morning. To get to the school, students walk along a white dirt road that parallels a fetid canal. On a recent morning there was a 1940s-era tractor, a decaying boat in a ditch, and a herd of goats nibbling gray strands of grass. A cinder-block barrier separates the school from a wasteland—the far end of which is a mound of trash that grew so big, it was finally closed down. On most days, a rotten smell drifts through the cement-walled classrooms. Some people here call the school un lugar de castigo—“a place of punishment.” Read more of this post

How Our Brains Betray Us

How Our Brains Betray Us

In the wake of the financial crisis, parents, educators and even students have argued for more financial literacy courses in schools. Problem is, many studies show that financial education doesn’t make a difference because people don’t change their behavior – even if they know better. David Laibson, an economics professor at Harvard University, says understanding this anomaly could help us take charge of our financial lives.

Most Americans know they should save for retirement and pay off their debts. Yet they often don’t do those things. Why?

Our brains are responsible for good intentions not being translated into action. There’s a little tug-of-war going on in our minds. One region of the brain tells us that the right thing to do is to execute. Another brain region says to go for instant gratification. The presence of the dopamine reward system make us biased to do things we can do now. To make things that are not pleasant happen, we have to learn how to exert self-control. Read more of this post

Starbucks vs Starbung in Bangkok

Starbucks vs Starbung

Tuesday, October 22, 2013 – 09:20

The New Paper

BANGKOK – On one side is a billion-dollar global coffee chain. On the other is a Bangkok street vendor, selling coffee from his cart. Starbucks, which had an annual net profit of US$1.38 billion (S$1.7 billion) last year, is suing Mr Damrong Maslae for 300,000 baht (S$12,000) for copying its famous green logo on his Starbung cart, the Bangkok Post reported. Mr Damrong sells coffee for 20-30 baht each in the Thai capital. Starbucks is also demanding a monthly payment of 30,000 baht plus legal fees, according to its Trademark Act violation complaint. Read more of this post