nazia du bois

I flew into Atlanta from New York today and experienced a couple of lovely things. First, flying out of the newly redesigned La Guardia is quite possibly the nicest local airport experience in the world. Almost every single seat in the waiting lounges comes with a free iPad pre-installed, that lets you order any food you want (and pay for it easily with a credit card reader) and it’s brought straight to wherever in the airport you happen to be sitting. And of course the wifi on the iPad is totally free, for you to browse as long as you wait for your flight. Then there was the Delta experience. Atlanta  is of course (at least in my mind) first and foremost the home of Coke – the World of Coca-Cola  is the most visited tourist attraction in all of Georgia. Incidentally, it also happens to be the home of Delta. As we took off, our flight stewardess came on to welcome us and said that the drinks on the flight were charged for, but everything Coke was free. How cute is that. And then towards the end of the flight she came on again. This time to say that there were a number of people on the flight who had very tight connections to make. So if those of us whose final destinations were Atlanta wouldn’t mind letting them get off the plane first, then she was ‘sure that that small act of kindness would totally make their day’. Of course, when put like that, it was also hard to refuse. It reminded me of the way when I lived in Recife last year, I was so struck by how ordinary people on the bus would offer to hold your bags for you if you were standing. It struck me as very Brazilian at the time – having travelled to more of Brazil now, I know that it was actually just very Recifense.

We did a piece of work last year researching people’s attitudes to kindness. Overwhelmingly, people from China to Colombia lamented the loss of everyday kindness in the modern world, the type of social kindness they remember from their childhood but that they feel has disappeared in a world full of fear and mistrust. Little kindnesses, they said, were what made the world a nice place to live in. They don’t cost much, but they make your day. Cities have made that kind of kindness rarer and rarer. Places in transition to becoming cities, like Recife, retain some of it, perhaps. But generally, the facelessless of the urban mass means we don’t make those connections anymore, for fear of it costing us too much. Last year was a tipping point in the world’s rural-urban migration – today, the majority of the world’s population lives in cities. Let’s hope we continue to find little ways to make urban kindnesses a daily reality.

Speaking of the whole everyone-living-in-cities thing, this is utterly tangential, but I wonder if anyone else saw the Andrew Marr BBC series on Megacities and cringed as much as I did. The kind of reverse orientalism/ noble savagery of drawing out the ‘kindness’ and ‘community’ that exist amongst the poorest people in the world (including the slums of Dhaka, which I have to say I am impressed he spent a night in) – made me feel quite sick. And then the tokenistic, forced inclusion of London as one of the world’s megacities, and the mindless fixation on the Shard (which, after much consideration as I see it grow everyday I have decided is a horrific monster). As only the tallest building in Europe,  it sounds even more pathetic, like the failed phallic fantasy of a dying Empire, which of course it is. Anyway, Marr concluded his series talking about how the future of megacities had to be life lived in lots of little villages with the city, each with a community mindset of social interdependence and social kindness built into them. On that, I concede, he has a point.

So there you go, not so much of a tangent after all. If there’s any point at all to this post it’s that kindness is good, and we need more of it.

So I have been meaning for a while to start some dedicated food blogging, since eating, cooking or thinking about food seem to take up an inordinate proportion of my time anyway. But I kind of wanted to wait until there was one truly mind-blowing food experience that was so good it just had to be shared.

That happened on Saturday at Momofuku, in New York’s East Village.  It was my last meal while wrapping up a hectic work trip, and I wanted a break from the ordinary. Remembering the lovely Momofuku-tribute pork buns Ming had made for us a few weeks ago, I tracked down the original Momofuku on 1st Ave, and found it unpretentiously tucked between a DVD place and a convenience store. Boy, was I in for a treat.

Comfortably settled atop a stool at the sleek bamboo bar, I had to go straight in with the classic Momofuku ramen, having read more than a few paeans to its glory – and I wasn’t disappointed. In fact, I’d go so far as to say it was quite possibly one of the best bowls of food I’ve ever had. The noodles, Momofuku’s famous handmade, bouncily fresh, slightly elastic, eggy, bite-y, wonder, lived up to their reputation and more. The poached egg  floated gently, cooked just enough to not burst. The slightly pickled tangy greens and the zing of the freshly scattered scallions all bedded nicely in that perfectly judged broth of just the right amount of savoury, bone-y depth. But all this, in this bowl of wonderful goodness, was really the drumroll to the star of the show, which was, of course, those four perfect slices of pork belly – thick, juicy and luscious yet somehow still crispy, oozing an unbelievably decadent richness into the broth. A masterclass in artfully combining all the most beautiful things in a medley that made each and every one of them sing.

The classic pork buns themselves were, as expected, brilliant. I’ve no idea how they can get the meat to be so crisp and meltingly moist all at once – it just doesn’t seem possible, but hey, I’m not complaining. Each bite was a comforting little pillow of deliciousness, the dough springy and fresh to the touch, but literally melting in the mouth, brushed by the slightest hint of hoisin. I only really started eating pork a few years ago (once I’d decided that my interest in Islam, while deep, was purely intellectual and cultural, and not, anymore, personal, but that’s another story). What I have loved discovering is its versatility, it’s ability to be wonderful in so many different guises.

I decided to go for the Yuzu Palmer to wash it all down, an explosive burst of summer in a glass – an icy blend of soju, tea, yuzu, and, I think, honey. It felt like the most refreshing thing I’d drunk in years and I was so sorry to see my empty glass taken away that I had to get a second, mini, one just to see me through the amazingness of it all.

In the name of research I had to also try one of their more experimental noodle bowls – the day’s special was the jerk chicken ramen – and while good, it didn’t hold a candle to the classic, to be honest. Slightly too peppery a broth and lacking that fatty warmth of the belly meat. A couple of mouthfuls and I knew I’d made the right choice by sticking to the classic.

Dessert was a small selection from the Momofuku Milk Bar, of course, which deserves its whole own visit and post the next time I’m in NY. The two soft serve flavours on the menu were burnt honey (hurrah) and peach, and so torn was I that I decided, upon the waitress’s recommendation, to go for a twist of both. It was a perfectly judged combination, the rich caramel notes of the burnt honey providing a deep undertone to the intensely fresh zing of the peach. I would have been quite happy without the crumbly base it came on – the ice-cream alone was worth the trip (although ice-cream seems far too mundane a description for it).

So all in all, the slight disappointment of the jerk chicken ramen aside, a resounding success. The service was excellent, there was a healthy, happy buzz coming from obvious regulars, and I thought the pricing extremely reasonable for the unbelievably good quality. There’s a lot of mediocre but hyped-up food to be had in NYC, but one meal at David Chang’s Momofuku, does, I believe, make up for scores of disappointing others. It’s a deeply unpretentious place that doesn’t take itself too seriously while displaying maniacal devotion to the food – which is of course exactly how it should be.

On a side note, I’ve been trying to figure out a way to blog about food on a separate page within this one but haven’t yet managed – so apologies to those who’re visiting more for the advertisingy stuff, you’ll have to just put up with the noisy slurping for a bit too. 

Spotted these two print ads within a page of each other in this weekend’s Independent magazine – the first by the Moroccan tourist board and below it, Eurostar. As with all of these spottings, both campaigns feature exactly the same creative idea, and are running at exactly the same time.

I believe the original inspiration comes from Beijing-based conceptual photographer Jasper James’ work, below.

I have to say I much prefer the original work, unbranded. I know that the genius of creative types is so often in the  fusing of diverse influences, but maybe sometimes the best stuff is best just left alone…

I do like the Eurostar re-brand though.

I’ve always found it odd that the best Hainan chicken rice is to be had not in Hainan, not even in China, but in Singapore, where it’s practically a national dish. Contentious though this may be, I really do think some of the best chicken rice I’ve had is in the hawker stalls of South East Asia, not mainland China, and the one time I was in Sanya I didn’t actually see it on any menus at all. I was thinking about this recently while on a Singapore Airlines flight on which I was served the best chicken rice I’ve had in a very long time.It’s now pretty much a regional favourite though,  and certainly one of my top eats whenever in (the right parts of) Asia.

Fascinated by the seemingly simultaneous secrecy and transparency surrounding the whole ‘aesthetic treatment’ space (formerly known as plain old plastic surgery) in Asia. In Jakarta earlier this week, I had the editor of leading international woman’s magazine tell me that it wasn’t uncommon for society women and their husbands to frequent the same beauty clinics, but check in separately and get treated at different times, requesting staff to keep their treatments a secret from their spouses! Then last night I overheard the girls at the office in Singapore musing about whether someone had had any work done – the consensus was that it was pretty clear they had but weren’t telling. And then I spotted this in Changi airport this morning. Beauty in Asia – the great new guessing game.

Travelling across South East Asia researching beauty trends is certainly an eye-opener. A lot of the things commonly practised now in the quest for perfect beauty are things I wouldn’t even have been able to conceive of, to be honest. One of the most popular innovations of recent years are these ‘Big Eyes’ contact lenses, born, of course, like all the out-there beauty category innovations, in South Korea. These are large contact lenses with darkened rims, so that when you wear them, they ‘extend’ your iris outwards, and bigger irises give the impression that you’ve got bigger eyes. A simple idea, really, and given the runaway popularity of the lenses, a very lucrative one. Most of the girls I’ve spoken to, in either Thailand or Indonesia so far have professed to having tried at least one kind. An optician I interviewed yesterday said they were most popular in the hazelnut brown, and least popular in the light blue – those would be, he said, ‘too unrealistic’. Somehow I’m not convinced that realism is the ultimate goal.

I was at our Bangkok office yesterday and took the Sky Train over to Ma Boon Krong in the evening to watch people shop (always a fun thing to do). Anyway, it was the day of the official funeral of one of the Thai princesses, one of the daughters of King Rama VI (we’re on Rama IX now, so she was fairly elderly). The city had come to a standstill for the most elaborate funeral procession that I’ve ever seen, lasting all day. In a quite extraordinary show of collective mourning, ordinary Thais all over the city all wore either all black, or black and white, to work that day – literally, almost everyone. I’ve never seen a whole city dressed in the same colours before – I have to admit it felt a bit spooky. Perhaps a bit like China before the 80s, only trendier. Although, it occurred to me later that  in London we all collectively wear black very regularly, and without a purpose – so a Thai tourist might well be forgiven for wondering what we were all mourning every day, as we make our way to the City and the Wharf.

On the one day of the Easter weekend that I actually had off, I went to the Hajj exhibition at the British Museum, which everyone’s been saying is very good. Mindful that the exhibition closes while I’m away in Asia on work, I was very keen to catch it before leaving and so packed it into an already hectic day. It was worth the effort, but not in the way I might have expected.

The exhibition’s sub-title, Journey to the Heart of Islam, was really also the curatorial idea. There are so many aspects of the Hajj that an exhibition like this could choose to focus on – the community, the rituals, the journeys themselves. Focusing on this last aspect, the exhibition cleverly staged itself as a kind of mini-hajj,  leading viewers on a journey of their own as they learned about the arduous treks of Muslims pilgrims of the past as they struggled to reach Makkah from as far away as Malacca, Bombay or Timbuktu, on journeys that lasted years and took many lives.  All of this was richly evoked and it was clear that no expense had been spared by either of the show’s major patrons, Saudi King Abdulaziz and HSBC Amanah. But somehow, as I walked in pace with the crowds, I felt something to be slightly awry, something not quite in the right place. And then, as I stood in front of this piece of contemporary artwork by Saudi artist Abdulnasser Gharem, it clicked. What I was feeling was the intensely disconcerting feeling of seeing something you know intuitively, in a place deep inside you, suddenly through the eyes of another.

This felt like an exhibition for non-Muslims. But of course. The British Museum is for the British public, only a small percentage of whom are Muslim. This is a great and brave educational task of enlightenment they’ve undertaken, at a time when the Western world needs a more nuanced understanding of the words ‘Islam’ and ‘Muslim’ more than ever. (For an excellent analysis of why these words have lost all meaning through mindless overuse, see Simon Kuper’s article in this weekend’s FT)

That the Hajj is a closed experience is an understatement. Although almost three million pilgrims now gather in Makkah yearly, not a single person amongst them is a non-Muslim. To be so would be to risk, at worst, decapitation. This leads to a strong feeling of exclusion. And exclusion, as we know, breeds fear – a fear of the unknown that will always colour non-Muslim accounts of the Hajj. Surely, I could almost hear people think, three million Muslims silently gathering from all corners of the earth in the same single place every year reeks of the scariest kind of fundamentalism. The exhibition tried its hardest to pull a veil over such sentiments. But in doing so, perhaps it does even worse.

Curator Venetia Porter has, by and large, done a fine job of portraying the humane, compassionate, peaceful and cultured face of Islam that so rarely gets any Western air-time. But it too often veers into the schmaltzy – every other wall emblazoned with some poetic quote about the transcendental beauty of community, the commingling of brothers and sisters in peace and harmony, the  most spiritual moments of their lives. I’m not denying that these moments of enlightenment happen whilst on Hajj – I’ve heard many such stories from Hajjis I know. I just feel that romanticising it to a point where it begins to sound like the greatest spiritual journey one can ever undergo, but one which, if you are non-Muslim, you are necessarily barred from, is a dangerously divisive thing to do. And it’s not totally reflective of the reality either.

As we left, I said to Joel that it felt like an evocation of how one might very well want to see the Hajj, beautifully idolised and in the ancient past, full of grand journeys of great wealth and great fulfilment; disconnected from the many unsavoury aspects of the actual experience today. Scant mention was made of the crime, crowding and sickness that’s now a reality for Hajjis, or even of the thousands who have been trampled to death in the stampedes of recent decades. Sure, with the Saudi royal family bankrolling the show, these incidents were hardly going to get a mention. But without them, it felt a bit like a hollow shell of understanding what Hajj is like in reality, in the present day, to Muslims everywhere. I see it as something you go and do that then changes your life. I think of people I know whose Facebook status updates become devout and almost alter-ego-like when they’re in Makkah, or who return vowing never to touch a drop of alcohol again. Or those who return firmly believing they will run their business differently, be kinder to their staff, help out in the community more. Those are the smaller, more tangible and more powerful effects that going on Hajj has on the lives of young Muslims today.

The British Museum’s exhibition had as its piece de resistance an actual-sized replica of the Ka’aba itself, in a central ‘destination’ room at the end of the journey that was the exhibition. It was gorgeously draped with the famous embroidered panels of calligraphy and surrounded by other pieces of sumptuous artwork – all of it very impressive. But the room had still been titled, in large bold letters on the wall, ‘Mecca’, instead of Makkah - something that had no doubt been pondered over by some committee for many hours. It was a decision that, to me, said it all.

Somehow, aged 30, I’ve never gotten around to getting my driving license. So now, spurred by the impending prospect of a car-bound life in Sao Paulo, I’m learning how to drive. Except I find I’m learning about a lot more than just driving.

 At the end of my first lesson with the lovely Nicholas (my AA driving instructor is a bit like a cross between Stephen Fry and Father Christmas), I was told that I was doing a good job, but here was the thing. I needed to go out and buy a toy car. And then play with it.

Baffled, I realised Nicholas was right. I’m inept at the actual mechanics of cars. He recognised that part of my fear around driving to date has been my general lack of knowledge about how these big hunks of metal actually move and work – and that he thinks is squarely down to the fact that I never played with them as a child, never felt their wheels guide me towards what it’s possible and what’s not, never figured out three-point turns as part of my own hi-speed car-chases on the bedroom floor. Yet that is exactly what most little boys in the world (whose parents can afford toys) do. They start driving, really, aged about three.

So of course you’d expect a huge difference in how boys and girls/men and women learn how to drive. Like most little girls, I grew up playing with dolls, (in the days before Barbies came with their own cars). My dolls weren’t terribly expensive or trendy; they were usually handmade by an aunt or a hand-me-down.  But they were my dolls, part of my ‘family’ – dolls I washed and dressed, took tea with, and conversed with regularly on a wide range of topics. In a funny way, playing with dolls is one of a little girl’s first experiences of socialisation (albeit a bit one-sided). Anyway, Nicholas made a good point when I told him that yes, I’d never had any toy cars, but I’d had dolls instead.

He said that little boys, when they get bored of their toy cars, do whatever they can to slowly destroy them, knowing that that’s how they’ll get a new one. Little girls, on the other hand, take precious care of their dolls so that they get bought more of the paraphernalia for them, from doll accessories to doll houses. Nicholas is convinced that he can see the evidence of this childhood gender-based differential when his students first get in the car to drive. True to stereotype, women seek to protect and preserve their own car and those around them, while men are much less concerned with the preservation of the car and much more concerned about getting and demonstrating their skills and thrills. Massively subjective of course, and a sample of one, but nevertheless one with a good few decades of teaching experience.

There must be so many ways in which the toys we are given as children shape how we interact with the world. Driving lessons thirty years down the line are just one of them.

Tags: Children

I dropped by my favourite local bookshop yesterday, Daunt, and found myself at the start of a talk by the philosopher Alain de Botton. (It’s for these little surprises that I really do love London, or, I should say, the rarified and well-read environs of Marylebone). The talk was on his latest book, Religion for Atheists.

He had a lot of interesting things to say about the helpful, multi-faceted role that religion can continue to have in the lives of even those who are avowed atheists, like himself. His method is to find the ‘gaps’ in one’s life, and then attempt to fill them by borrowing from religious solutions when they feel right, without worrying too much about the labelling of it all. Being the self-styled philosopher of the modern condition that he is, it all felt very relevant to the way we live our lives today.

One bit that struck me as really interesting was when he compared the big organised religions to large multinational corporations. Of course, there are the obvious parallels – sheer size, structure, authority, rules, a codified system of advancement, rituals and so on. But there are other things too. Religions, as my husband reminds me, were of course the original brands. As such, brands today still have a lot to learn from them, I think. Religions have a clear mission and a set of values, and are generally out to attract as many potential loyalists as possible. They have a clear voice, and know and value the power of skillful rhetoric and oration in persuasion. They’re good at dealing with regular scandal and public outrage. They create communities, ‘hosting parties every week’ in de Botton’s words, to bring lots of otherwise disconnected people together in moments of commonality. All of this sounds rather similar to what our clients are asking for these days.

Perhaps it’s the precise lack of religion as the glue in British society today that’s given rise to brands seeking more and more to define their mission and their values in a way that gives consumers something to ‘really believe in’. Of course, a lot has been written about consumerism replacing religion in the modern world and all that. But when I think about the number of times I’ve had clients ask for brand thoughts that really stand for something that people care about, a system of values they can buy into over and above the product etc, I’m struck by just how quickly this way of thinking has mushroomed in the past few years. (Ogilvy’s own big ideaL comes from a similar vein of thinking).

You could argue that the very best brands in the world are already following the lessons taught by religion’s success. Apple is probably the world’s most  cultish brand – AdAge contributor Martin Lindstrom sets out here the ways in which the company is akin to a religion for its followers. (Interestingly, the semantic correlation of ‘followers’ on FB and in the religious context probably doesn’t come out of nowhere either). Apparently Apple loyalists even use the phrase ‘going to Church’ to refer to trips to their local store. The Apple-as-religion trope has entered general consciousness, sure, but by and large I don’t think most people make a connection between successful brands and successful religions.

It’s funny, when we set up Ogilvy Noor a couple of years ago as a Muslim-marketing consultancy, we had a small backlash from a minority of people who took offence at what they saw as the commercialisation of religion (of course these people had invariably not taken the time to get to grips with our Muslim value driven approach to brand building). De Botton’s talk reminded me that there’s a lot to be learned about the dynamic the other way around.