Issue 242  | 22 December 2020

express SPECIAL REPORT

Year of Wonders: 2020 by 52

A Plague of Projects in a Pandemic Period. People. Places. Paper. Pages. It seems like more than 52 weeks in our Year of Wonders - acknowledging Geraldine Brooks’ historical fiction book based on an English village during the plague of 1666 - and during the World’s current health, economic and environmental crisis. We’ve made the most of this unusual and unreal year by keeping ourselves incredibly busy, largely by continuing to produce much needed content for books, magazines, websites and online media. Here are the 52 headlines and highlights. For the full report (pdf version) go to the SASA website.

Limited Editions of ABC Carbon Express Our 12-year-old online magazine made only four appearances so far - January, March, September and October – but with this “Annual Report Card” we can call this a special issue for your inboxes before the end of the year. Go to ABC Carbon to see all previous issues.

TWO: Unleashing The Art of Travel  Incorporating The Avenue for Creative Arts - which first appeared in February 2015 – we’ve been in “voluntary hibernation” for most of 2020. In February, we heralded the pandemic, but also hoped that somehow “the show must go on”.  You can see The Art of Travel Issue Six here. For all past issues, visit The Art of Travel/Fifth Avenue Asia website, where you can find quite a few articles, reviews and interviews. More to come, when The Art of Travel gets a pre-Christmas airing – online and in print!

THREE: Getting on Board for Asian Journeys For the first time in its long history of promoting tourism and travel in Asia, this glossy magazine, printed in Singapore, is devoting ten pages to The Art of Travel. There are lots of stories and images – including responses to an informal travel survey of 17 friends and family from far and wide. There’s also a welcome feature by Ranjani Rao, reflecting on her travels, notably a visit to Ladakh in India.  You can see the complete Asian Journeys/The Art of Travel here, or you can wait to receive it in the mail or see the real thing in print. Thanks to Editor and Publisher Floyd Cowan for welcoming us on board.

FOUR: Celebrating Forty Years of Transforming Lives That’s the title of the long-awaited commemorative book for the Lions Home for the Elders. Finally, after an 18-month journey, with troublesome delays due to the coronavirus pandemic, the hard cover 100-page well-illustrated coffee table book was delivered from Times Printers for release before Christmas. Having managed this publishing project from start to finish, I’m very pleased - and proud - to have produced this as my seventh book as author and editor. Like an earlier book, Race for Sustainability, this is printed on PEFC-certified paper. Great to work with all associated with the Lions Home, as well as my design team, Donovan and Amanda at Loupe. If you would like a copy of this landmark book, we’re sure that can be arranged in return for a donation to this Singapore charity, Lions Home for the Elders.

FIVE: Focus on Forests & Life on Land  We started two years ago with our 31 December 2018 post to draw attention to Life on Land, Sustainable Development Goal 15 and the true value of Forests. We’ve continued to write, edit, post and share anything that relates to forests. SIX: Media is the Message for Managing Forests  The first issue of our Media News Bulletin in June 2020: “In spite of the global pandemic….PEFC is maintaining its commitment to ensure that forests are sustainably managed, according to environmental, social and economic criteria”.

SEVEN: Turning Tables on Timber The first article I wrote in the May/June issue of Panels and Furniture Asia. This was followed by Stylish Furniture with Sustainability to Match, while Furnishing the Home Office: Smart & Sustainable Solutions was in the November/December issue.   EIGHT: Wood is Good for the Climate – Inside & Out This was the headline from my article in mid-2020 issue of Wood in Architecture Asia. It was also published in the United Kingdom by TRADA - Timber Research and Development Association - with the headline: “Breathe a sigh of Relief.”   NINE: How Green is My Building? Here’s one good example from the series of articles I’ve been producing for Double Helix Tracking Technologies in recent months. TEN: RSVP for Volunteers I was introduced by Genevieve Chua to this unique Singapore organisation which gets seniors to volunteer to help others. Before the pandemic and its associated lockdowns and circuit breakers set in, I visited RSVP in Bishan and offered to be involved, particularly to promote its work and encourage even more activities for residents at the nearby Lions Home for the Elders.

ELEVEN: Singapore Art Week Comes Back A wonderful Art-full start to 2020, but unfortunately that didn’t last long. Check out the programme and join in when you can. Singapore Art Week 2021. TWELVE: Art for the Year of the Rat As is usual, my talented wife and artist M Hickson came up with a stylised animal for the start of Chinese New Year. See M’s work on Facebook. Next will be the Year of the Ox. Art and all.

THIRTEEN: Fired up for the Roaring Twenties We were looking forward to the Roaring Twenties of this Millennia. Until we realised that 2020 was not going to mean jazz, dancing or having a good time, The Great Gatsby style! Instead, seriously bad fires started roaring their way through large swathes of forest in Australia. FOURTEEN: Looking at the Amazon with Living Labs It started with Yann LeMoel and a well-attended workshop at Level 3. The initial focus was on indigenous communities fighting for their rights in the Amazon, along with protection of the rainforests.Look out for the Living Labs Federation.

FIFTEEN: Delayed Impact for Blue Asia Capital We’ve been ready all year to provide our support for Blue Asia Capital and its sustainability/ impact investing projects and plans for Asia Pacific, but the global pandemic has delayed progress significantly. SIXTEEN: Temperature-Tested for Takeoff We attended the less crowded Singapore Airshow in February, largely out of habit, having visited and/or been involved in shows like this since Singapore’s very first Asian Aerospace in 1981.

The Art of Sustainability & Brands for Good

SEVENTEEN: The Art of Sustainability Here’s the link to our comprehensive report - entitled The Art of Sustainability - about our work as Singapore’s home-grown Sustain Ability Showcase Asia (SASA), which was released on 8 September 2020, our tenth birthday. EIGHTEEN: Not a Festival to Write Home About The 2020 Singapore Writers Festival was a virtual affair, but for us that amounted to virtually zero attendance. Thanks to Books Actually, Booktique and Epigram for keeping books alive in Singapore.

NINETEEN: What’s Screening & Streaming? We’ve had to rely on Netflix to bring us many more cinematic pleasures. Besides “The Crown” – which was especially engrossing – there was “Enola Holmes” and “Queens Gambit” . TWENTY: Winning Brands for Good  Once again, we played a Judging role in the Brands for Good awards in Singapore. Two Champions rose to the top in the Business for Good category: Care Employment Agency and Kidz Treehouse. Go to Brands for Good for more.

Unleashing the Arts from Lockdown

TWENTY-ONE:Theatre Performances Before Lockdown Life for the performing arts in 2020 was not dissimilar to the Elizabethan Age when theatres were closed and even Shakespeare plays couldn’t be staged due to the plague. We saw two shows in February: “The Importance of Being Earnest” and “The Life Span of a Fact”. TWENTY-TWO: First & Last Art Gallery Visit: RedSea Gallery bravely presented in February 2020 a treasure trove of sculptures by this brilliant artist, VAL (Valérie Goutard).

Wood pigeon sculpture by Dave Hickson

Graham Byfield's Menorca Sketchbook

TWENTY-THREE: Watercolour Sketchbooks & Art in Wood When Graham Byfield visited Singapore earlier in the year – before travel bans and quarantine orders were in place – he hoped to see his latest Sketchbook on Menorca go to print. While that’s delayed until April 2021, there are plenty of other Sketchbooks where his special watercolour style is seen at its best. Singapore, Bali, Barcelona, Oxford and many more.  This is the year we came across the US Centre for Art in Wood while we were developing a PEFC topic for Responsible Wood in Australia, about what Dave Hickson was up to with his bird series of wood sculptures. Here’s the story: Meet the passionate artist using recycled timber to bring a community together.

TWENTY-FOUR: How to Map the Future Together “Uncharted” by Margaret Heffernan was for me the Book of the Year. I received the real printed book in the mail from publisher Simon and Schuster to review and I’ve had a lot to say about it since. TWENTY-FIVE: The Art of Delivering Newspapers Life and Arts. House and Home. Two of our favourite sections to read at our leisure in FT Weekend since deliveries started in March. TWENTY-SIX: This Magazine is Loaded I decided during the year that I needed to regularly see one of the best environmentally themed magazines in the world, Resurgence & Ecologist. I’ve joined the society and get it delivered in Singapore bi-monthly.

TWENTY-SEVEN: Walking with Jane and Simon Jane’s Tours came up with walking tours for 2020, aimed at those living in Singapore, though Jane Iyer hopes to see the rest of the world here soon. Two of the best books ever on the subject are by Simon Armitage – Britain’s Poet Laureate – so look out for “Walking Home” and “Walking Away”.

Power to the People: Investing in Clean Energy

TWENTY-EIGHT: Solar Power Storage for Australian Homes A project to create performance standards for residential and small-scale commercial battery energy storage systems in Australia was completed mid-year, with project leader DNV GL raising hopes that the rules can inform the global market too TWENTY-NINE: Investing in Renewable Energy in Asia Pacific DNV GL asked for my help to produce a White Paper and the result was a very comprehensive report on regional investment opportunities. You can access it here. We also helped to spread the word on Renewable Energy Certificates (REC’s) for the Energy Market Company.

THIRTY: Music to My Ears Love this story. Because it’s true and the illegal loggers got caught. Thanks to Professor Andrew Lowe, University of Adelaide and Double Helix Tracking Technologies. One of the stories I wrote for The Art of Travel, plus posted and shared it widely. Here’s the Linkedin article.   THIRTY-ONE: Heaps Happening at FinTech Festivals The latest FinTech Festival might have been all the rage in Singapore this December, but we have to confess we’ve had little involvement compared with the 2019 event. We acted as Media Partner and supported of John Heaps and Heapstech, Infomatrix/IPM+ and ThreatAware.   THIRTY-TWO: Press for the Plastic Pandemic We helped gain media attention for the work of the Alliance to End Plastic Waste, by lining up interviews for CEO Jacob Duer with David Fogarty and Gurdip Singh.

THRTY-THREE: Kiwi Kitchen & Kiwis Abroad  Two very enterprising New Zealanders popped up this year. Kevin Youngman, a South island dairy farmer, who now runs Kiwi Kitchen in Singapore and Pete Carter, with his book publishing venture: “This Is Us: Kiwis abroad during Covid”. THIRTY-FOUR: Love Paper Printed on Two Sides We started in January 2020 with a new feature in ABC Carbon Express “Put Pen to Paper: Power of the Printing Press” and had a hand in the two page feature on PEFC in Print Magazine Singapore. Expect to hear a lot more in 2021 when we get serious about Love Paper Asia.

THIRTY-FIVE: Will the Global Travel Industry Ever be the Same Again? When Lauren Arena, Editor of Business Events Asia at the time, asked for my views, I produced this article and it was published and shared widely online. Read it for yourself. THIRTY-SIX: Cybersecurity - Out of the Blue  When Hendrik Troskie contacted me end March, he wanted to know if I could help “copy-edit” his book “The 4th Competitive Force for Good”. Just as cybercrime increased during the pandemic months, so did productivity in the book business.

THIRTY-SEVEN: Science Based Targets Initiative It was mentioned first by Adrian Bukmanis/TEALE, now based in France and working on energy management projects in Monaco. He met Singapore’s Minister for Foreign Affairs Vivian Balakrishnan when visiting France and mentioned SBTI. More on SBTI here. THIRTY-EIGHT: Waste to Worth The Alliance to End Plastic Waste approached me mid-year to see how I could assist by producing content and in spreading the word on the global problem of plastic waste and solutions the Alliance was working on.

Flying into the Future: Art, Energy & Events

THIRTY-NINE: Love Flying Asia  It came out of a conversation with veteran pilot Richard Foltin, who hasn’t stopped flying throughout this year, and Dayne Cowan, who’s usually producing visual effects for movies all over Asia. Read my article in Millionaire Asia magazine: Flights of Fancy? What the aviation industry is doing to cut emissions.

FORTY: Maids with Talent & Boys in the Boat  First there was well-known actor Michael Chua, who introduced us to his first book “Maid in Singapore”. Then there was “The Boys in the Boat”, introduced to me by neighbour, Phi Henry, about the US rowing team from Washington state, who won gold at the Berlin Olympics in 1936. FORTY-ONE: Who’s Who at Marina Bay Sands New Zealanders figure prominently here. Honor Harger at the ArtScience Museum for close to seven years and Paul Town, who slipped into the top Senior VP role in November 2019 and has had to endure the most difficult year ever for hospitality/event facilities all over the globe.

FORTY-TWO:. Protiotype for Design Future Build Enterprising Greg Cornelius has come up with an amazing “concept house” that incorporates the best of technology and ecology. Smart and sustainable. What’s coming up is the first issue of the Protiotype Design Future Build in time for Bangkok’s Design Week, early February 2021.

FORTY-THREE: EnergEyes on Engie on Semakau As I was there to see this for myself on a wet day in late November – on my first “overseas” trip of the year - I’d like more of you to know about the excellent work being carried out by Engie and its partners on Singapore’s very special offshore island. More on Engie here. .

F0RTY-FOUR: Media Welcome at the National Gallery Our first visit to a gallery of any sort for many a month was for a media event in November to hear of the National Gallery plans for the year ahead. FORTY-FIVE: Milking the Liveability Challenge The Liveability Challenge, which we’ve been promoting and reporting on for three years now, is organised by Eco-Business and Temasek Foundation.

Friends in Medicine, Music, Art & Design

FORTY-SIX: Out of the Box – Medicine & Music See what Olivier is doing with Biz4U. At the same time, we met with Eric Piatti, who’s GM of the new Dusit Thani Resort at Laguna, Singapore. Then there was Stephan Ritzmann, CEO for Chopard in Asia-Pacific.   FORTY-SEVEN: Keep an FBEye out for Hotel Design The work of FBEye International for Hotels and Resorts in Asia. Colombo, Sri Lanka and Dili,East Timor projects appeared in 29 September issue of The Art of Travel. In the latest issue – in print - you can find a two page feature on the Award-winning interiors of the Intercontinental Hotel. FORTY-EIGHT: Friends are for Sharing the Load Always good to collaborate with Lekha Patmanathan of nExergy, Kavita Balakrishnan of Kue Communications and old media friend Sam Ran Boolsambatra. FORTY-NINE: From Russia With Love & Art  We’ve worked with Yelena Zemtsova of PR Squared before and this year we discovered Yelena’s way with words. Her book and her art. The Saga of a Chanting Phoenix by Alice Chudes was launched in October.

Last Word: For Global Good

FIFTY: Don’t Panic! Books Help in a Pandemic If there’s one author I turned to more than anyone else during this difficult year, it was Peter Doherty. Not only because he produced in 2013 an amazingly predictive work, simply entitled Pandemics. Find all Peter Doherty's books here.

FIFTY-ONE: Connexion for Hotel, Hospital & History    Our one and only hotel stay, which just made it into our Year of Wonders, was at One Farrer Hotel. We’ll be writing more about it for The Art of Travel and Asian Journeys, including its historic connection with Singapore's first flight with the Box Kite.

FIFTY-TWO: My Achilles Heel Figurately speaking, it relates to a person’s weakness or an organisation’s vulnerability. In my real-life encounter with Achilles late November - by way of a misstep off a bus - a crucial tendon was torn, resulting in the requirement to wear impressive looking surgical footwear and crutches to boot!  Pictured M and Ken Hickson - masked and booted ready for Christmas!

Here's to a Happy and Healthy Christmas. and a New Year full of Promise and Prosperity for the Planet and People everywhere. Ken & M Hickson

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