[IM-BOOT] Vina, please would you be so kind to tell our readers, who you are and what you do in your business life? [Vina] I feel like I should say I’m a mermaid at this point when asked who I am – half fish, half human and totally mythical ... but seriously, and to be somewhat technically correct, I am a EurAsian woman married to a Polish-French gentleman, who understands that I’ve inherited both Asian and European culture and I should be responsible for informing people who have forgotten their roots in favour of the coco-cola and MTV lifestyle that there’s something far more fascinating about our core being than our outer clothing. The job is to promote education to under-developed and developing countries utilizing quad-media, a new word I’m in favour of and one I’ve been actively promoting after the general misconception over multimedia and media convergence. Quad-media is the combination of broadcast-film, electronic storage (DVD/CD-ROM), print and the internet. With the digital revolution and how we can re-express effectively and easily digital media formats these days, we’re not making the mistake of leaving any format out of the equation, so we work first with film and then flow everything through the other formats. We pioneered this in 1996 for Asia, and we’ve constantly tasked ourselves with re-invention – not difficult considering technological advances and developments occur every so often in our time. I believe also in preserving languages and enhancing our ability to learn languages as I’ve never believed in the lazy way out of things – our mind is capable of so much yet too little is tasked to it because we all tend to subject it to an “easy way” out of everything we do. Much as the lingua franca of business in Asia is English, Asians still maintain their languages as it is very much a part of their culture, and this is so true for Europeans as well. The job other than to promote education, includes what is also known in the technology world as “content development”. Content is key for us as it is what is needed and very much so by all hardware/software developers. Without content - fun, educational, captivating ones, it’s not easy these days to maintain the short attention span of the “now and for me” generation. To keep our people constantly stimulated so they don’t re-hash and mutate the same material they’re exposed to from the same media everyone reads and watches, we take them out of the box and the office and throw them on filming, photographic, writing and marketing assignments across Asia and Europe - with the technical team supporting on these trips as well. Everyone is required to travel. I always believe that a creative soul needs external stimulus and inspiration that can be garnered from his or her encounters with the harsh and sometimes beautiful realities of life, outside their typical, familiar neighbourhood ... so the way is always to open the door and let them fly because when they return that’s when they can truly create, and outstandingly so too! To sustain both works in Education and Creative Content Development, I focus on developing and promoting international marketing and trade. This “commercial” aspect of our work have to bear relation to the educational and audio-visual creation we put out. For example, in one of our television programmes, we work on creating documentaries on beauty and health issues. In this we cover information on traditional medicine, say, Homeopathy and CTM (Chinese Traditional Medicine). We trace stories of herbs and medication, their application for medicinal and aesthetic/beauty purposes. What results on the commercial side would be the businesses in Europe and Asia who would like to engage in either distribution or promotion of their products, and they can easily capitalise on the content we create for exposure of their product and services. My job ... is to pull everything and everyone together and keep them on their toes and aware that there’s a learning process every step of the way and one can never gain all the knowledge one wants in a lifetime – so we’d all better start now. [IM-BOOT] What was the root cause that you started your engagement in the "cultural, creative and humanitarian fields"? [Vina] There were two influences, my father and Van Gogh. I saw similarities in their lives. My father was a very talented musician who had the gift of the ear and the voice and who had a rather admirable reputation among his peers and his comrades. Yet for all his talent - he lived for his music and his world was the colour of the rainbow whenever he could play his instruments and hum and sing - he was no great businessman and could not sustain his family when he came down in his later life with first, hepatitis and then later, a fatal stroke. That taught me how important it is to take care of these gifted souls. Reading the life story of Van Gogh enforced the message that talented people had to be taken cared of because they leave behind a legacy of work that no normal person can match. Yet, the really talented ones are subjected to the most pitiful of existence among men and especially in places where their art and talent cannot be appreciated other than in commercial terms. I had hoped very much for my father to live and see that much as I failed him in following his footsteps, I keep his memory and the thought of those creative souls like him alive through the work I do. It is a precious thing indeed to have a mentor open a world for you. These creative musicians, painters, writers, film-makers and graphic artists ... talents all of them ... with several notes off a flute, a piano, a harp ... sketches and blotches of acrylic ... phrases and descriptions ... visual, moving imageries ... in a cold, dark day, they hand us a fabulous kaleidoscope to colour our dreary, depressed lives. [IM-BOOT] Why did you choose "Blue Mango" as the name of your company network? [Vina] With all due respect, I had to rope Dennis Lai and Steve Ellul who worked with me when we started Blue Mango in Hong Kong in April, 1996, for their response to this question. I know I was responsible for “making” them come up with a name for our company and for finally agreeing to which name they eventually proposed, but they were the two creative directors of Blue Mango then and they were responsible for its creative process and direction so here’s their answer: [Dennis] i came up with 'mango' which represents a favourite asian taste but we felt something was missing that would say 'media' so steve came up with 'blue'. 'blue' means cool, movie, between green and indigo in the spectrum, patches of blue as a distinguishing feature. blue screen to disguise the background, blue print - a photographic print in white on a bright blue ground, to make a blueprint of a plan. We wanted to get away from corparate names like techno media, space connector, aero dynamic pump my uranus something stupid like that. we wanted something that was timeless, funky and interesting. so that's when blue mango was born. [IM-BOOT] What makes "Blue Mango" unique in your eyes? [Vina] Blue Mango was a labour of pain and love ... of pain and pain ... I mean love. We started in the most outrageous way. The original team, Dennis Lai and Steve Ellul included, worked for me in a publication setup owned by four American lawyers in Hong Kong (how bad can it get!). After coming on board for a couple of months, I was tasked, as Managing Director, with the responsibility of telling the team that they would not be getting their monthly salary and instead, they were to consider signing a contract making them shareholders of the company. That move would have prevented the team from seeking labour assistance from the Hong Kong government should the company fail to pay further salaries (and they had already defaulted on two months and there was no sign of the company ever gaining any financial relief). I was under this awesome contract that bounded me literally like a mummy, and I could not devulge the situation of the company to the team under threat of forever not getting a job in Hong Kong, and internationally – trust an American lawyer to make sure of that – I had four to deal with! I followed my conscious – I told the team the truth. That resulted rapidly, thereafter, with me instructing them on how to get assistance from the Hong Kong Labour Department when the owners closed down the office and sealed it with the team’s personal belongings still within, and then to regain salaries owed them; and finally to facing a litigation pressed by these lawyers. I came out of that experience pretty much okay although with reputation tainted. It did help so much to have the team support me in court and explain how I tried to protect them. When the dust finally settled, I told them all to “go away” and start a new life, but I found myself confronted by several pairs of woeful, beseeching eyes asking me to continue leading them as we were really on to a great thing – I guess I had a good influence on the creative staff under me. That was 1996, and the internet was hardly known in Asia let alone multimedia. What I did in order to prevent any future accusation of our team working on un-original stuff (you never know with these lawyers), was to throw the creatives into the technology arena! Singapore had started a conference promoting new media and they offered a few educational tracks on multimedia, so what I did was organize our limited resources and have a small team fly to Singapore for lessons. Then I hook both Dennis and Steve up with a multimedia outfit and told them they had two months to learn the software. One hilarious incident I’ll always remember is when I asked them what class they signed up for, they mentioned that there was this interesting course called “java” which reminded them of coffee so it must be a new cool subject. They thought they’d take lessons in that – turns out later, they were complaining they needed toothpicks to keep their eyes open as they were in a class surrounded by tech geek students in suits learning programming, and they couldn’t figure out what C++ meant. When the boys came back, they started to create waves and what we did then and how we’ve developed to now is what makes Blue Mango unique. We’re the first in Asia to launch a “free” multimedia lifestyle title (CD-Rom plus magazine) called “d’C.O.R.E.” - the acronym for “the Common Order of Rice Eaters” which the team explained linked the Asian Gen-X market together – the fact that all Asians eat rice, and as our title was meant to target the “common” folks not the higher or lower order of rice-eaters ... the title worked as its distribution range was through ten Asian countries, Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia, the Philippines, Indonesia, Thailand, Korea, Japan and India. We created MTV-Asia’s first website even though several earlier attempts were made by others before we were conned into the job. We’re the first to send a team of Asian-European on film assignments around Asia and Europe (in preparation for a Euro title launch). And we’re the first in Asia to believe that marketing should support creative expression, not the other way round. We have a few more “firsts” in our belt but that’s due for release in 2005. [IM-BOOT] As you are Asian and your husband Polish-French you already "practice" an Asian-European relationship. Can you provide us with a concrete example how these diverse cultures can benefit from each other? Might be a project, which explains how such a creative and communication bridge might look like. [Vina] There was a time, and I encountered that in my youth, when it was sacrilage for an Asian to be associated to a “white person”, and mind you, that wasn’t so long ago as it happened prior to China opening up its doors to the world through tourism (mid 70’s). I had friends die of abortion because they were far more terrified of being ostracized by their family than being supported with love from a foreign lover. The family ties and network for an Asian is so important that we all tend to toe the line when it comes to respect and keeping the relationship alive with countless relatives and extended family. My blood-line alone (great grand-father was a Spanish clergy) is testimony to how the tendency to be actively “anti-establishment” and “scandalous” can resurface periodically. And with this “now, and for me” generation, marrying a “foreigner”, is ironically, considered a pretty “kewl thang, man”. What does it beget in one? From the Asian roots, one tends to gain the ability to be “sensitive” to subtle and imperceptible nuances. People don’t only talk with their mouths, they talk with their eyes, expressions; and their spirit, or auras, give messages that other Asians pick up easily, and other nationalities fail to understand readily. They will say “yes”, and mean no, and say “no”, and mean yes – and you have to learn how to distinguish the real answer without pressing for it. From the Europeans, one gleans the ability to question and answer vocally, oftentimes misunderstood for disrespect and forwardness in Asia, but appreciated in Europe for communication, as the senses are not often that heightened and sensitive among Europeans. You also learn to “fight for your rights and the rights of others”. When you apply such understanding to techniques in a job such as ours, you get the best of both worlds without offending either as you can always draw parallels in similarities and differences in executing certain things, so the culture shock is diminished. An example: a business associate in Asia recently told me that his European partner was so keen to gain entrance in both Japan and Korea, but as he only succeeded in setting a company up in Japan, he thought to send a Japanese sales executive to Korea to work on setting up the business and expanding the business there. The Japanese executive answered his European boss and said “do you want me to get killed?” What the European failed to understand was that historically the two countries still hold deep animosity towards each other. The Japanese had always felt themselves to be superior to the Koreans (and other Asian nationalities) and for decades if not centuries, they would treat the Koreans no better than what is known in India as the “untouchables” - people in a social strata of life relegated to what is considered menial jobs. These are things that should be made known to Europeans who either have an interest in Asian culture or business in Asia, and vice versa. Then, with my travels to Italy, I always found conversations among my Italian associates to contain this interesting word “invention”. That word would oftentimes crop up in discussions with associates unrelated to each other and yet, that word would often be used to describe how someone was inventing something new, or trying to invent something or how they would like to invent something ... and invent they truly did. An indication of that nationality’s state of mind. You would never hear that word in Asia – in Asia, the common word is “copy”, rarely “invent”. Why would the word “invent” be a word used often in conversation with people in the creative industry in Europe and not so in Asia? The answer is simple. The governments of Europe put education as a priority and as such, there are institutions around and establishments, like museums and archival sites for books, fabrics, music, just about anything worth collecting and preserving, and these are made available to Europeans, but not so to Asians. These institutions and the causes for preservation of heritage and culture become important resources for the budding creative souls and they are given time to learn these things and perfect their craft. These institutions including education, lay out for anyone interested what has already been discovered and invented and, future possibilities. Europeans know what have been invented or what is in the process of discovery, and this can also apply to Americans, however, such understanding and access to information such as these are unavailable to Asians. In Asia, we generally believe that culture can be bought if you have enough money and make enough money to buy it, and such was the case in Hong Kong decades back. Times are changing, and the bridging process linking Asia to Europe and back, is proving these days, inspirational. What we do with Blue Mango is try to break the conditioning of the people both of Asia and Europe and show them there is much to learn and exchange between the two countries, and through the exchange, there are mutual benefits. We film and document lifestyle among other interesting subjects for one, we provide space for short films and world music; we activate and promote the use of both Audio and Visual creation – original content, original music. We think always of the educational element, so the material is put together with two images in mind, one of the adult who pursues lifelong learning, and the other, the youths of Asia and Europe’s under-developed and developing countries. In the material we produce, we hope to carry a message, and through the messages and material we provide, we hope “to teach the people how to fish, and not to just give them fish”. Okay, if we succeed in what we do – we’ll even provide them the fishing rod for them to fish better! [IM-BOOT] How do you deal with the language barrier? Which role does language play in your business? [Vina] There are generally five dominant European and Asian languages that we’re challenged with, so the first step is to overcome that by providing the language tracks for these markets. That’s already in process with languages selection on DVDs, so it’s not that difficult to provide. We have to source and work with people from a native country, say, a Chinese linguist from the Mainland, not from Hong Kong or Taiwan as there are differences also in the Chinese language alone. You have traditional and simple Chinese which can confuse people who don’t speak or read the language. We source them through our network and bring them on board Blue Mango, and have them understand the culture within the organization. Then, for the team and those related to us or who work with us, there’s an interesting invention I came across in Italy. It’s a sound system invented by a European gentleman from the same town as Sigmund Freud. Needless to say, he’s also a psycho-therapist specialising in sound. What the invention does is recondition the human ear so it “hears better” and breaks down barriers set up by pre-conditioning (the brain processes only what we find useful so through years of usage or under-use, other capabilities it has shuts down). The sound system is actually also capable of other therapeutic, curative properties and continuous work on how it can alleviate and cure mental illnesses is being researched and applied. We would be utilizing the system for the team to enhance their hearing capabilities, so it will be easier for them to learn the languages available for their use on on-location filming assignments. Language learning, just like travel, is key for us and the team as it is a respect and tribute to culture, and an indication that we understand what it takes to communication with people who are not of our country of birth. [IM-BOOT] How do Suggestopedia and NLP contribute to your work? [Vina] NLP and Suggestopedia works in the language-learning process not only for the reconditioning of the team and their ability to learn additional languages, but also to enable them to participate in an “accelerated” learning process so they can apply the new skills to their job and improve themselves over time. Blue Mango’s Asian team already manage at least two Asian languages in addition to English, but they need to over-come their intimidation of European languages and Europeans, their attitudes and lifestyle. The learning systems and processes are meant to instill confidence and enable them to overcome their natural Asian “withdrawal” and passive-state. After all, as Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951) states “The limits of my language means the limits of my world.” Thank you Vina for the interview!

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