Notes From The Road – Penang
This morning I’m packing up and getting ready to fly back to Singapore. It’s been a long and tiring week and I feel like I’ve grown a lot as a photographer this week. Photographing Thaipusam was hard work. On Monday I was up before 5.30am and didn’t get to bed till after 2am the next [...]
The Cult Of Collaboration
Susan Cain is the author of an upcoming book called Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking. She recently penned an excellent NYT op-ed piece entitled The Rise Of The New Groupthink. I’d encourage you to take a read of the article as it covers a lot of important ground [...]
Do You Code
One of the reasons I dislike going to networking events and conferences is my aversion to answering the “so, what do you do” question. I know it must seem odd for a blogger to say that they hate talking about themselves. But, answering the “so, what do you do” question in a concise (i.e., non-boring) [...]
Finding Your Voice (As A Blogger)
I’ve had a number of comments in the past few months, regarding changes on this blog. Am I becoming more professional, chasing readers or in some way changing gears? The short answer is, no, not really. My reasons for blogging haven’t changed much over the years. However, my voice, as a writer has changed. The [...]
Don’t bring demos – Bring product
This morning I was reading Eric Beall comment on Berklee’s recent Perfect Pitch music and songwriting event. What Berklee is trying to do (as always) is prepare musicians and songwriters for the realities of the music business they will encounter. In his post Eric made this startlingly honest comment, “In case you didn’t get the [...]
Life, According To Steve Jobs
“When you grow up you tend to get told that the world is the way it is. And your life is just to live inside the world: Try not to bash into the walls too much, try to have a nice family life, have fun, save a little money. That’s a very limited life; life [...]
12 For 2012
Around this time last year I wrote two lists; of things I wanted more and less of in my life. Last year’s lists were an exercise in setting goals, articulating hopes and ending frustrations. Yesterday I went through those lists and made some comments. Although it has felt like a frustrating year, it’s good to [...]
7 Kinds Of People You Need In Your Creative Universe
Sustaining yourself in a creative endeavour, be it photography, music, design, writing or any other art, requires relationships. You can’t do it alone. People won’t just “discover” your work and you’ll struggle to bounce back from the inevitable setbacks and disappointments. Moreover you’ll need folks that can help you stay true to your goals, focussed [...]
Plans For The End Of The World
2010 was a great year for me, loaded with fulfilment, adventure and a surprising degree of success. By contrast, 2011 has been a grind. It hasn’t been a bad year; though at times life and work have been hard to manage. Of course, that’s partly self-inflicted; changing country while taking on a lot of work [...]
Learning From Listening (and Whitesnake)
Clearing out my email inbox brought a reminder that Whitesnake, an 80s band synomous with power ballads, big hair and less-than-subtle music videos, will soon be touring Singapore. I won’t be attending the concert. But, I couldn’t resist a quick trip down YouTube memory lane. It was fascinating to compare two versions of one their [...]
Books By The Metre
This picture, of my non-fiction books, was taken while organising and unpacking my personal library. I was lining the books up along the floor in order to figure out how many linear metres of shelf space were needed. I’m having shelves custom built for the small room that will be an electronics free reading space. [...]
Tacos, Tequila & Tilt-Shift
OK, that might just be the most poorly conceived heading for a blogpost ever – but it’s the best I could come up with after nearly a week bed-struck with the flu (the photo above is a reflection of how I’m feeling – rusty!). Anyway, in a little over a month I’ll be heading off [...]
Can You Hustle?
Last week I was having one of those really cool meetings that make this whole “creative” work thing worthwhile. Great location, with a cool person I respect, talking about a project I’d love to be part of. Then I was hit with the kind of question that can be (well, for me at least) really [...]
School Yard Lessons
Last week I started going through the boxes that contain my personal library. There are a lot of books to unpack, along with papers and past writing projects. And, there are some bits of personal memorabilia, such as old school books. It was fun to look though books from Grade 3. In that year I [...]
Lessons From The Slow Sojourn
I recently had the chance to spend a couple of beautifully wintery weeks in Adelaide, seeing family and generally taking a break from the stress of moving country. As I mentioned previously, my plan was to go offline, take some photos and do some deep and serious thinking about the future. As happens so many [...]
Your Creative Mix
A few months back I mentioned Corwin Hiebert in a blogpost about Generous Marketing. I’m a fan of Corwin’s work and was excited to see him releasing a
Semi-Permanent Hong Kong
Semi-Permanent is a relatively new travelling conference aimed at the so-called “creative” demographic. For Semi-Permanent’s first outing in Hong Kong, there was a good selection of “creatives” on stage (all of whom had compelling work and great stories to share) and a healthy cross-section of Hong Kong’s “creative” community turned up to listen to them [...]
Mapping Changes In Thought And Faith
After a busy end to 2009 I’ve only just started to reflect on the decade just passed, from 2000-2009. The public side of my faith underwent a big and obvious transition in those years. Not so much the “theology” bit, as the day to day and week to week reality of “church” life. Connected to [...]
Clearing the Reader – Recent Blogposts That Caught My Eye
Today I’m in the midst of unpacking and setting up for the first week of the new year. Part of that involves going through emails and unread blogposts sitting in my RSS reader. Of course, I don’t get around to reading all of the 1200 or so unread contributions sitting there. But, here are a [...]
An Extraordinary Goodbye
This afternoon we attended an extraordinarily moving memorial service for Alan Dick, the late Lower School Principal of the Canadian International School, here in Hong Kong. Fitting tributes were paid to Alan’s exceptional good humour, love of teaching, passion for life, commitment to his faith and dedication to the school that, in a very real [...]
Music Is Everywhere
Here’s an amazing bit of creativity. BerkleeMusic student Jarbas Agnelli has scored a viral internet hit with a piece of music inspired by a photo of birds sitting electricity wires. Check out the video below. Birds on the Wires from Jarbas Agnelli on Vimeo. I love Jarbas’ ability to spin a piece of music out [...]
Why Have Church Ministers And Where Do We Put Them
There’s a great discussion on Matt Stone’s recent post, Has Theology Become Too Introspective? In a way I’m as guilty as anyone of being part of the problem – most of my theological blogging is deeply introspective, or as I like to call it, biographical. I don’t really see that as a problem, rather, I [...]
When Positive Parenting Can be Negative
A while back, I posted some comments on parenting styles, after hearing Lousie Porter speak. I was hoping to hear her again this week, but schedule changes brought on my the latest Typhoon, scuppered those plans. So, it was interesting to read Alfie Kohn’s New York Times piece, When a Parent’s ‘I Love You’ Means [...]
Parenting Technologies
OK, we’ve been struggling with the internet for eight year olds. Don’t really have a lot of answers there. The challenge is not so much the whole “internet nasty” thing, rather, social networking for kids. So many websites aimed at this age have a social networking component and that’s, well, creepy. I don’t say that [...]
Fernando Gros is a musician, photographer & writer based in Singapore. Born in Santiago de Chile, Fernando grew up in Sydney and has also lived in London, Delhi and Hong Kong.