Tobias Wacker

A blog about globalization, business and culture. I am currently working for a secret health startup. I'm also a owner at Lab Cafe, believe that culture is the most valuable asset in our connected world and that place matters. I like croissants and tropicália. You should check out some of my work here. Say hello and email me. To get travel tips and recommendations about legit street food, you should follow me on Everplaces.

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Northern Thailand in #Hackney. This will fix you up. Brunch at Som Saa in @Clipsonsarch #London (at Climpson's Arch)

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We'll be back soon...

[mikelowerystudio]

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Dumplings at the Old Truman Brewery on Brick Lane, London.

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I am super excited and honored that the good folks at The Mixtape Club asked me to put together a mix for their 4th anniversary. These are really some of my favorite songs: Tropical vibes, chill beats and random tunes. Too Humid Too Dance is streaming for free at the Mixtape Club. I highly recommend to stick around and check some of the other tapes. There's a lot of beautiful music to be discovered.

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You should take a look at the website of Deutsche Bahn, Germany’s national rail carrier, to marvel at its famous Denglish creations before it’s too late. The homepage is currently graced by such masterpieces as Rail&Fly, Mein Carsharing and City-Fahrräder. But enough is enough and Deutsche Bahn is finally saying no, I mean nein, to such linguistic abuses. From now on, all Anglicisms are to be replaced by proper German terms if possible. Critics of this move call it misguided since language changes over time. True, language does change over time, but it does so collectively through society, often subconsciously. Denglish, on the other hand, replaces perfectly adequate German words without much sense and thought, usually at the hand of marketing agencies. Personally, I think this move is long overdue. As the world is getting more homogeneous, we need initiatives that preserve the uniqueness of places and cultures. At the same time, we should wholeheartedly embrace bilingualism. English is already emerging as our lingua franca – why not make it official? Instead of peppering languages with random English terms, lets keep and cultivate our mother tongue alongside proper English. It works at airports; it would work everywhere else too. Globalization is not a zero sum game and it is entirely possible to become more connected while celebrating our differences.

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Earlier this week, a good friend asked about my thoughts on Chengdu’s New Century Global Center, the new largest building in the world. Here’s my gut reaction reply: “Let's start with the actual architecture: It's horrendous. You know how I feel about new buildings that look like old buildings. Not only is it stupid and tacky, it also strips real old buildings of any meaning. On the flip side, I love new buildings that take cues from the past while being uncompromisingly modern. But the key to make this work is abstraction - be thoughtful about vernacular design language, materials and methods - then translate those insights into a modern building with reverence to the past. I think SOM's Hajj Terminal in Jeddah is still among the most brilliant examples of this approach. Now, that all said, the New Century Global Center literally takes the form of a Chinese pagoda, slaps some mirrored glass on it and scales it up to insane proportions. There is absolute nothing thoughtful or imaginative about this. Hell, Germany should just build a gigantic glass covered version of Neuschwanstein Castle. But I guess Disney kinda beat us to that. As for the inside of the thing: We got two (because one is for losers) 5-star hotels, a fake beach, an IMAX theater and a mall. Considering that, around the world, we tear down old neighborhoods to replace them with similar complexes, we can happily assume that this is the pinnacle of civilization. 6 million years of human evolution, and we finally arrive at mega malls and fake beaches. On the plus side, the complex sits on top of a subway station.” After some consideration, the situation is a bit more complicated than that: We are not just discussing architectural merit here. It’s about the type of city we want to live in. Even, what kind of life do we want to live? Personally, please excuse the buzzword, I enjoy authentic stuff. I like old crumbling neighborhoods with tons of character. I like a simple meal from some whole-in-the-wall that has been making the same dish for the past 30 years. Yet, I must admit something: A few years back, I was working in a poor part of central Vietnam. For the holidays, I went to visit a friend in Singapore, and man, was I excited about the BBQ at Tony Roma’s inside the air conditioned Suntec City Mall. I got excited about this stuff after 5 months of living in a developing country. Can you imagine how amazing it must be for someone growing up in one? But, sooner or later, the excitement for shiny surfaces will wear off, replaced by a longing for realness. Places connected to past and meaning. Singapore seems to be at that stage right now, desperately saving the last few shophouses still standing. Let’s hope that the rest of the emerging world, in their race to the future, will have some places left to restore once they get to that stage.

[creativemornings]

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The phenomenal photographer Paul Octavious was the speaker at May’s CreativeMornings/Chicago.

Above are a few shots from his series: The Things I Saw from JFK ✈ SFO. Check out more of his work here and stay tuned for his talk to be uploaded here.

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I love tacos. It’s one of these things that is so simple in its purest form: Corn tortilla, meat, cilantro, onions, salsa. But, this basic idea of a taco then spawns a near endless array of different varieties and flavors: Carne Asada or Al Pastor? Or how about Chorizo? What about a fish taco? Maybe Baja Style? Salsa roja or salsa verde? And don’t even get me started on white boy tacos with ground beef. We could go on for days. Point is, tacos are awesome. Finally tacos receive the respect they deserve with the beautifully illustrated La Tacopedia. Currently available only in Spanish, we should all take this as an incentive to improve our hablo español. I think we owe that much to the noble taco.

[aatlin-blog]

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Strangely beautiful photographs of airports by Jeffrey Milstein, proving that airports are some of the most complex and awesome things on the planet.

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Some amazing music from Brazil's Tropkillaz. I don't even know what to call this. Mariachi Bass? Tropical Trap?

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Kowloon Walled City never seizes to amaze!

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From XLR8R comes an awesome interview with DJ Spoko in his South Africa tin shack studio. The words are cool, the pictures are just sick. Growing up in the rural township of Atteridgeville, he developed his own music style dubbed “Bacardi House.” No cheesy tropical bass drops here, DJ Spoko serves up African infused minimal house.

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I grew up in the Black Forest. It sounds bit like a joke. The land of cakes, ham, and cuckoo clocks – it’s just not a place real people come from. By German standards, the region is crazy rural. It takes forever to drive across its narrow valleys and steep mountain passes. Globalization seems like a very theoretical concept. But don’t be fooled, these sleepy villages are an economic powerhouse. Back in the 80s, Steve Jobs traveled to the town of Altensteig to meet with Hartmut Essslinger of local design firm frog, who would go on to design the Apple IIc. Today, hundreds of mid-size companies, the so-called Mittelstand, make highly specialized equipment for the world. Headquartered in places like Schiltach with offices in Dubai and Tianjin, China. Yet, all these global ambitions don’t seem impact life too much. It’s as if all foreign ideas and experiences are left behind on airplanes. I grew up here, but I still can’t understand the dialect. It’s practically incomprehensible for outsiders and sometimes changes from town to town. As a kid, my mom would send me to the neighbor’s farm to pick up milk. I was terrified because the lady of the house loved to chat, but I simply could not understand what she was talking about. We keep a solid diet of smoked meats and chase away winter by dressing up in terrifying costumes. In recent years, this fierce hyperlocalism started to attract young chefs and artists in search of unironic authenticity. The New York Times even published a story titled “In the Black Forest, Tradition Updated.” Obviously, this way of life is not for everyone. It’s most certainly not for me. But in this day and age, the Black Forest might be the perfect lesson on how to embrace the world without becoming homogeneous.

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Recently, I’m reading more and more that we need to move from experiences to engagement. According to some folks, experiences are passive while engagements are active and therefore better. I believe that this notion is fundamentally flawed and suggests some confusion about what those two actually do. On its face, engagement doesn’t mean much. We can engage all day long, but does anything actually happen? The gold standard for engagement are still online communities and comment sections. Have you recently looked at a typical CNN comment section? Shouting, insults and hatemongering; everything but a thoughtful discourse. I’m certainly engaged, but I’m also stressed the hell out once I’m done. Of course, there are plenty of positive examples, like Coke’s amazing Chok! Chok! Chok! campaign in Hong Kong. But what made the campaign so successful? Was it engagement or experience? Probably both. People could have engaged by simply shaking their phone. But what made the campaign so successful was all the other stuff: Kids met with their friends to shake phones together. Families hosted parties leading up to the 10pm TV ads. And most importantly, it was a completely novel, well, experience. So, what exactly is an experience? In theory, it’s simply an event we encounter. But in reality, experiences are events that create emotional reactions, events that create memories. From a branding perspective, we can assume that, maybe with the exception of Ryanair, we all strive to create positive experiences. In other words, we are creating positive memories associated with our brand. In doing so, brands become active agents in people’s lives. On a philosophical level, this means a lot to me, since I usually care about the products I’m working on. Conveniently, it also means that people want to come back to your product. To sum things up, I’m not arguing that engagement is bad. Nope, it’s great! But in order to be effective, the engagement should be a positive experience. For me, the goal is always that customers walk away with a smile. It’s like the frosting on top of the cake. Or in my case, the oh so delicious spicy sauce on top of the chicken.