Wonder what it was really like to be at the 2008 Beijing Olympics?

Though we weren’t in Beijing to report directly, we did pose **nine questions to a friend who was. Nguyen shares his first-hand Olympic experience — including scoring 110 tickets, the simple joy of giving some of them away, an explanation of the empty seats you saw on TV, and how the Chinese people love an underdog. Continue Reading »

“Bogartin’ on Gordi!”

That’s what Russia is doing in Gori, Georgia - at least according to Angelo Moore, the lead singer of the ska-funk band Fishbone. Our conversation with Angelo takes place at the be2gether summer music festival , on the border of Lithuania and Belarus.

Even so, Angelo had a bit of trouble placing Lithuania and Belarus - and Russia and Georgia, too. But who wouldn’t?

Check out the video. It gives a taste of the be2gether festival atmosphere and finishes with Angelo’s take on international affairs. Continue Reading »

Last Friday, I had the good fortune to make it across the Czech Republic, Poland and Lithuania alive on a 20-hour bus. And I did so just in time to attend the 2nd annual gathering of be2gether, a summer music festival on the Lithuanian-Belarusian border. Continue Reading »

During a recent dinner party, we exchanged business cards with someone we had just met. Later in conversation the man asked us about our logo and we offered the full story of how our business cards came to be.

“You ought to tell that story on your blog,” he suggested.

Taking his advice, we recount our first personal experiment in globalization and outsourcing - the good and the bad - and share how the development of our logo and business cards took us from the Czech Republic to America, then to Indonesia and Thailand. Continue Reading »

While sifting through papers tonight, I found this Kolkata (Calcutta) newspaper clipping from our time there in April 2008. I couldn’t have made this up if I tried.

When you toast someone or something in Georgia with a beer, it’s more like a curse than a traditional toast for good health and prosperity.

I wonder, How many Georgians are drinking beers and clinking to Russia, Putin, and Medvedev right now?

Find out what happens when Vladimir Putin’s nickname sounds like the English word for a part of the female anatomy… Continue Reading »

We met Leila (center) in Zugdidi, Georgia over a year ago. Like so many others, she and her friends at the market have probably been evacuated recently. Continue Reading »

Dogs with tiger stripes?

Is it the next new Chinese dog breed coming your way? An experiment in genetic modification that escaped from the lab with the help of an ambitious entrepreneur?

Or do the stripes wash off after the first bath? Continue Reading »

“What is NAST?” you ask.

It might just save your life. It may even make you think.

Until then, it’s an acronym that stands for Nano Attention Span Theater (NAST), a new category of blog post we’ll be throwing up on Uncornered Market. Continue Reading »

Heroes contend for hegemony nationalities merge.

- A clip from a descriptive placard at China’s Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region Museum

One Sunday in Urumqi (also known in pinyin Chinese as Wulumuqi) – the once backwater turned boomtown and regional capital of China’s Xinjiang Region - we paid a free visit to China’s Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region Museum. The museum featured all the trappings of cultural heritage: 4,000-year-old mummies, Silk Road era terra-cotta figures, and a host of ethnography exhibits featuring life-size figures of Chinese minorities - all in the glow of a $13 million dollar face-lift. Continue Reading »