Big day today.

Millions of Australians will end it comatose, as the annual Melbourne Cup tradition of drinking-your-entire-body-weight-in-beer-before-lunch will ensure that particular country’s collective outputs for 24 hours will be, at best, sub-optimal.

As the table-top dancing down under comes to a close, the United States of America will awake to Election Day, with polls still saying the result is “too close to call” – hopefully this is a canny angle to ensure media sales rather than pointing to the prospect of the world’s most powerful nation being led by Mitt “The Binder” Romney.

In Saigon, very little attention is being given to either of these events by the locals today.  Many international media outlets have tried to express what the US Election outcome will mean to the rest of the world.  For the lady who sold me a coffee on the street outside our office just now, it is implausible to find a connection between her daily grind with that of the politics playing out on the other side of the world.

But this gap is shrinking.  It will continue to take further generational change for some of the positive aspects of global citizenship to really shift the status quo.  But it will happen.  And the role of the private sector in accelerating this is finally being recognised.  Business as usual is changing. Continue reading →