Max is a batik hippo from Jakarta. Is he really from the city? Maybe not. Impossible to say. He was there in the airport, not far from the gold-pattern-on-the-outside-purple-silk-on-the-inside bag which is now his small valise, in which he travels.
Max and I have been to Casablanca, Oslo, Stockholm, Singapore, Vienna, Paris, Budapest, Mexico City, Kuala Lumpur, Ho Chi Minh City, and Manila. This evening we're in Rio de Janeiro.
It's chilly and rainy. Max stayed in this morning, while I went out for an unexpectedly long walk around Copacabana. I got sufficiently drenched and, at one point, pretty lost. The high points of the walk were two street markets with an amazing array of fruit and vegetables, and a man tending the orchids he has growing on the side of a tree.
A day alone in a foreign city. Alone except for Max, my travel totem, the one I look to in order to be sure I'm still in my own dream.
That's the thing about being a porous person on the road: sometimes the outside gets in to an extent that becomes what the French call depaysement, at best a wonderful existential change of scenery, at worst an undesirable level of disorientation.
Because coming into town in a taxi by night, past the poor vast neighbourhoods with their harsh lights and pervasive darkness, has a way of throwing things into question. What am I doing here? What are we doing here? Are we making a positive difference in this place?
By we I mean my company, and I feel strongly that the answer is yes. We definitely provide a great place to work. We strive to make trustworthy, convenient marketplaces. As I walk around the neighbourhood, the low level of trust in this society is palpable. It's palpable in every city in the emerging countries I've visited.
Is the trust level growing? Will people in Mexico, Vietnam and Morocco someday find themselves trading with strangers with the same level of abandon that Oakland Craig's Listers do? Or will we have to find some other way to do business in these markets?
All yet to be seen. Max is relaxing on my new copy of Brick by Brick, the account of innovation at Lego. This week in Rio we'll be testing new ideas, taking them "outside the building", to the rainy streets of markets, street kids, orchids growing on tree trunks, guys selling Brazil umbrellas and people waiting for the good weather to come back. I'll be interested in seeing what happens, and how this Rio story takes shape now that I'm a character in it for a few pages.
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