a fleeting stay ...

I learned recently that my friend Shunya Susuki had bought a “cheap” violin on Net auction. He plans to teach himself to play the musical instrument “although they say it will be difficult to do so”. The purchase is a fulfilment of a dream that dates back to his days at Kyushu University when he wanted to be a violinist, among other aspirations. But a cello player, his senior at the university, had told him that a violin was “too expensive to buy” and Susuki gave up his musical ambition until recently. Some may think that Susuki, at 57, is being very ambitious but they don’t know the multi-talented Japanese architect, urban planner, inventor and educator. He sees life as a voyage of discovery: creating a robot, designing green cars and sculpting are among his many artistic pursuits. So learning to play the violin is one more path to personal gratification and development. According to wikiHow , “the road to learning the violin is a long one” and it takes lots of discipline to “pra...

The Asian City Journalist Conference (ACJC) is on Facebook. It is called UN HABITAT’s Asian City Journalists’ Conference Group. It is a platform for environmentally conscious journalists and associates in Asia to hook up and communicate with like-minded individuals. Japanese architect and urban planner Shunya Susuki first proposed the idea over dinner at a traditional Japanese pub in Fukuoka City, Japan on December 13, 2009. Present at the dinner were journalists from Japan, Vietnam, the Philippines, Thailand, Indonesia and Malaysia. The conversation over dinner mainly centred on establishing a space for journalists and associates connected with ACJC to create an online presence and to act as an alumni association. That was when Susuki – who participated in ACJC as coordinating officer for UN Habitat Regional Office for Asia and the Pacific (Fukuoka) prior to his transfer to Fukuoka City Hall in April this year – came up with the Facebook plan. Everyone present...