JET LAG (OR NOT . . .)

Terminal 2, Narita Airport, Tokyo (4 November 2006) – Okay, so my departure didn’t go exactly as planned. Rather than stumble out of bed at 4:00 a.m., I wandered into the bedroom at 4:00 a.m. to wake up Kay and the dogs.

I had the coffee, and I made it to the airport, but a good night’s sleep? Not so much.

That’s what happens when you don’t pack for your two-month trip abroad until the night before.

Of course, there may be an upside to that. Apart from having only the vaguest recollection of my trip to RDU and subsequent stopover in Dallas Fort Worth, I slept like a rock on the plane. I was out cold for seven hours on the flight to Narita during a time that would roughly correspond to sleeping hours in Bangkok. We arrived in Tokyo under dreary leaden skies, but I felt great. We’ll see if it lasts…

A word or two about what I’m doing here.

I received an Eisenhower Fellowship back in June that has enabled me to travel to Southeast Asia to learn about economic development and urbanization trends there -- what’s happening, planned and unplanned, with the region’s economies, how that is affecting people’s lives, and the implications all this may have for North Carolina.

Admittedly, that’s pretty broad. In some ways I’m surprised the organization approved me for a fellowship. My focus is not easy to define. I work in the realm of state economic development. My concern is helping chart an economic course for North Carolina into the 21st Century. We are a state of humble origins, propelled over the last 75 years or so from a history of small farms and little mill towns into an increasingly urbanized dynamic economy.

We’ve seen economic disruption as a result of globalization (most notably over the past five years), but our state really continues to be on an upward arc. Our challenges are managing a transition into a global, technology-based, high skill economy and, at the same time, reaching out to lift up less urbanized and disadvantaged regions and help them prosper.

What can Southeast Asia teach me about our future? That’s what I’m here to find out.

I’m someone who has always been comfortable admitting to his own ignorance. And I know next to nothing about Southeast Asia.

That’s probably why I proposed it as a destination when I applied for this fellowship. There’s something about being in a completely alien environment that challenges your thinking – forces you to reevaluate what you believe to be true.

I’ve been doing a fair amount of reading on the region, but you can read a book about a place ten times through and probably learn more about it in a few days on the ground. I’ve also been spending more time than usual talking to leaders in North Carolina about our strengths and weaknesses as well as their perceptions about emerging Asian economies. So I guess I’m about as well prepared as I can be, but I still feel like I’m going into this experience with my mind a tabula rasa.

So what about Eisenhower Fellowships? They’re a great organization, based in Philadelphia, dedicated to increasing international understanding by enabling leaders from the United States to have immersive experiences in host countries in the areas of their professional expertise. They run similar, and more extensive, programs that bring leaders from many nations to the United States. Their goal is the development of an international peer network that can build bridges and facilitate understanding and connections in an era of increasing globalization.

I’m lucky. This is a chance of a lifetime.