Past and future things: future first. I’m coming to the UK again in April, presenting a paper at CAL 2011 on a framework for analysing mobile learning activities: snappy title is “Topological, Semiotic and Rhetorical Scapes: A Framework for Analysing Mobile Learning Experiences”. Looking forward to seeing Manchester again, it’s been years, and I’ll be stopping off in Bristol and London either side.

And last month I spoke at a couple of events in Beijing, with X|Media|Lab, at the China Science and Technology Museum, where I talked about using narrative and our hardwired cognitive habits to create immersion (with examples from Slingshot and Theatre Sandbox), and at the Beijing Association for Science and Technology, on mobile science games. Beijing is huge, China is exciting, and I’m really interested in seeing what people do with games and learning there.

I’m going to Singapore tomorrow, on holiday. I’ll be there for a little over a week, seeing friends and drinking aloe vera juice from vending machines. If you’re there as well and fancy some food or a coffee, drop me a line!

Right now I’ve just booked a place in the airport car park (am off to the coast near Málaga for a few days) and I’m transferring Tito Paris to my phone for the flight. One bid for something interesting to get off in the morning, and I’m done for this week. And when I get back I should talk about some of these things in a bit more detail.

I’ll probably start with the Ghosts of Birthdays Present, though. If you’re in Bristol over the next couple of weeks and fancy helping out some of those marooned in the hereafter, let me know in the comments.

A man sits at a corner table in the company of nothing but his thoughts and a third gin: his downcast eyes are looking beyond the tabletop and his lips twitch as he rehearses the choices that led him to his present position. Arriving in what was to him then history, he found himself more informed than his peers on almost every area of human endeavour: paralysed by the choices available to him, he invested his efforts in a reckless and haphazard manner, investing money in this new technology, travelling to that soon-to-be-pivotal region of the world, advising influential individuals to take advantage of the other recent development. Spreading his resources so broadly prevented him nurturing any one of his enterprises as they deserved, and soon he became aware of his reputation as a dilletante and shyster, a diverting accquaintance with an uncanny knack of guessing how things might fall out, but not one you would wish to have as a partner. Now you see him desparate and confused, at a loss to explain how he has squandered the best possible advantage a man might want in the world.

(It doesn’t end badly for our friend, by the way: he discovers that relinquishing the idea that he has a special advantage allows him to behave in a calmer and more trustworthy way, and by the end of his life he sometimes smiles to think that the distinction he is most proud of is no longer his time-traveller status but his champion carrot cake).

Knowing things that other people don’t yet is all very well, but it wouldn’t do on its own: you’d still need something like character to succeed, and that’s timeless.

Back next week. See you then.

I’m in another hotel, one that looks a lot like the other ones I’ve been in recently, where I had a drink in the bar downstairs, and listened to someone sing My Funny Valentine while I thought about someone a long way away, and I will be very disappointed if tomorrow I don’t have to film a Suntory commercial.

The drive from the airport was incredible, everything very brand new indeed, apart from the taxi touts whose only concession to their new environment seems to be a suit. The airport follows the kind of grey-steel-and-curved-glass-with-blue-highlights template that makes me think of Canary Wharf, although the curves follow a Thai line rather than a Waterloo-style bulge, making it quite distinctive. That, and the fifteen-foot high multicolored statues of figures from Thai myth that gaze down unsmilingly upon you before Immigration.

Between the city centre and the airport they’re building a “skytrain” extension, I think: they’ve got what looks like part of a trainline on a series of concrete pillars that follow the motorway, on the other side of the latticework advertising hoardings, rising high above the bungalow shops and bars that make infrequent splashes of light in the shadowy palms. At first, I thought the tiny, one-floor buildings were vestiges of the recent past managing somehow to continue in the shadow of the future, but then I realised, passing the grey concrete pillars that still lacked a trainline, that they’d decided to skip the future and go straight to building the past: in the ghostly light of the giant advertising hoardings, the pillars looked like ruins from a post-oil age; Roman witnesses to the Saxons busy beneath them, relics of an age where ambitious new transport links were necessary and laudable, instead of hubristic and doomed.

This trip also made me realise how much I love 3G: I had a moment of worry when I realised I hadn’t even thought about a visa: google in the departure lounge told me not to worry. And despite doing no research at all on any aspect of being in Thailand, by the time I stepped out of the car at the hotel I knew what the exchange rate was and which banks I could use. The best thing is, it didn’t occur to me that anything was unusual about this until a minute ago, when I imagined telling myself 5 years ago that not only would I own a phone, using it to access the internet thousands of miles from home wouldn’t even give me pause for thought. I love living in the future, even if some of it looks like relics already.

And yet there seems to be a widespread awareness that Singapore is a place that can’t afford to be profligate. Space is short. Resources are limited. Ministers are photographed drinking recycled water to persuade people that it poses no risk (Singapore wants to become less dependent on Malaysia for its water supply). So is Singapore going to be somewhere I can behave with some kind of environmental responsibility, tapping into traditions of Confucian husbandry, or is it going to be some kind of karmic descent into branded selfishness?

So far, of course, I’ve got no idea. I’ve found two carbon offsetting sites, Climate Care and Carbon Neutral, who can help you support projects that will offset the emissions from your flight (and calculate the amount of CO2 your flight chucked out – my flight to Singapore and back from Christmas will emit 2.4 tonnes according to Carbon Neutral and 3.24 tonnes according to Climate Care, costing about £25 to offset), so at least my journey there is better than it was.

Once I’m there, I can recycle (helping the government acheive their Green Plan), read about living well in Singapore and look at a green map of Singapore , with recycling points and ecological tourism destinations marked. Probably the most useful site I’ve found so far, though, is the Singapore Environment Council site, with a whole lot of information on green groups and activities.

On a more corporate scale, there’s a Singapore Green Business Alliance, promoting “environmental protection, best practice and cooperation amongst companies based in Singapore”. The National Environment Agency site is pretty clear, as well, and if I want to actually hire someone to do something about making my business more environmentally aware, the Green Pages have a long list. Surprisingly, my new bank also seem pretty committed, offering advice on responsible business to SMEs.

So it looks like I can at least make an effort to reduce my impact on the environment. In fact, it looks like I can do so to the same degree I do in the UK, which isn’t really very much aside from recycling things and buying local food. Maybe in Singapore I’ll be less lazy and a bit more proactive. Or maybe Singapore’s consumer culture will encourage Fresh and Wild to move over here and I can carry on as I am.

Internet access is a bit limited, though, so it might be a bit quieter round here for a week or so. After I’d been so good at writing things down, as well.

I’m sorry, that should have said “taxis”. Anyway, since I rode in from Changi I’ve managed to find a flat to live in and met everyone I’m going to be working with. It’s been quite a good introduction to Singapore, as it happens, having a reason to drive from east (where the venue that hosted ICET is) to west (where affordable condos and LSL are) every day, although it would have been nice maybe to do it without having to man our stand at the same time.

The expo/conference was good, though. I met a whole bunch of people there: some exhibitors who are doing really interesting technological things (lagless video over IP! serious!) and attendees, who were remarkable to someone from the UK for being almost entirely teaching professionals, with hard questions about the value of what we do and how our partnership with IDA would benefit them. It was refeshing, after BETT, to be spending time talking with people who actually stand in front of students, rather than people who just buy the kit, or pay for it.

And of course it was an honour to meet Permanent Secretary for Education LG(NS) Lim Chuan Poh, even if only briefly, and even if it was only to answer some questions about Racing Academy. There was a lot more media attention on the event than I think people expected, and gratifyingly we caught an item on Channel News Asia’s ticker describing the partnership between “IDA and Britain’s Futurelab”, followed later by an interview with the CEO of IDA talking about what we’ll be doing over the next two years (in which he mentioned by name one of my objectives for the next six months, so no pressure). I missed the interview, unfortunately, because I was at the

Changi Village hotel, the venue for the official conference dinner, where I met the rest of my team from the IDA, who taught me as much Singlish as they thought I could handle. For once in my dissolute life I left early, despite the easy availability of booze, recognising that the relationship between me and my new climate is something we both need to work on before it can truly be called postive.

Obviously my talk on Friday was sparsely attended and lacking in questions, it being Friday evening on the last day of the conference, but the workshop on Wednesday was really interesting, to me at least if not the participants. Two things stood out: the emphasis of teachers present on issues around addiction to games and the ethics represented by games, and the consensual, equal and I suppose just plain adult nature of the group discussions. I was expecting some kind of UK-style ego fight, where a dominant figure needs to give the rest some space, or a member who’s too cool to take part needs to be encouraged to take part, but there was nothing. Refreshing.

Obviously, the rest of the week was taken up by me staring open-mouthed at everything and thinking “but…how can everything be exactly like England and yet confuse me utterly?”