Travels in the Riel World

Yes, teaching romance. The Singaporean government, you see, is concerned about a low birth rate. Singapore has a rate of just 1.24 per woman of child-bearing age, while 2.5 is considered a normal rate just to maintain a population. Aggravating the situation, in the view of the government, is that the rate among highly educated women is even lower.

Singapore being what it is - namely, a centrally planned society (granted, an attractive and very successful centrally planned society) - the government decided to do something about this childless state of affairs. The New York Times has the story.

It was like a college mixer, a classroom full of young men and women seeking a recipe for romance. They had assembled for the first class of “Love Relations for Life: A Journey of Romance, Love and Sexuality.”

There was giggling and banter among the students, but that was all part of the course as their teacher, Suki Tong, led them into the basics of dating, falling in love and staying together.

The course, in its second year at two polytechnic institutes, is the latest of many, mostly futile, campaigns by Singapore’s government to get its citizens to mate and multiply. Its popularity last year has led to talk of its expansion through the higher education system.

“We want to tell students, ‘Don’t wait until you have built up your career,’ ” said Yu-Foo Yee Shoon, the minister of state for community development, youth and sports, at a news conference in March. “Sometimes, it is too late, especially for girls.”

The courses are an extension of government matchmaking programs that try to address the twin challenges embodied in a falling birthrate: too few people are having babies, and too few of those who are belong to what Singapore considers the genetically desirable educated elite…

Mr. Lee himself acknowledged how silly some of this may seem. “Never mind the hullabaloo in the press, all the foreign correspondents writing that a crackpot government is trying to interfere in people’s lives,” he said when he inaugurated the Social Development Unit. “If we continue to reproduce ourselves in this lopsided way, we will be unable to maintain our present standards.”

In other words, said Annie Chan, director of a matchmaking agency, “Our government wants smart ladies to meet smart guys to get smart children.”

I’ve promised more coverage on the topic of sabbaticals (or career breaks), so to that end I’ve developed a page on this site devoted to the topic of life sabbaticals. An excerpt:

Who is taking sabbaticals?

Sure, college professors have always been able to take a sabbatical, but what about the rest of us? You’d be surprised at the number and types of people who are taking extended time off from work these days. Such as:

*          Workers who can take a leave of absence from their job. One out of every four or five companies offer some sort of sabbatical policy for their employees, according to the Society for Human Resource Management, a statistic that has remained remarkably steady since the mid-1990’s. About two-thirds of these policies are for unpaid absences and one-third provide for a paid leave. Even if you’re not lucky enough to work for one of these companies, individuals who have been at the same job for several years can often negotiate individually for time off.

*          People who are between jobs. If you are leaving one job and have another one lined up for some weeks or months down the road, or if you don’t mind the uncertainty of being between jobs, this is a good opportunity to take some time to relax and recharge before beginning the next chapter in your life. Some individuals, in fact, plan a series of “mini-retirements” throughout life.

*          Students who are on a “gap year.” This has always been popular with Europeans and Australians and is becoming more common among U.S. university students. This year off may take place prior to starting a college career, after graduating, or sometime in between. The point is to take some time away from studies in order to have a more diverse educational or life maturing experience.

What are the personal benefits?

- We all get tired and stressed from the challenges of work and life. This time away gives us a chance to rest and recharge for the next chapter in our lives.

- Everyone can benefit from having extended time to reflect and, if desired, to redefine who we are or what we want to do.

- Many people dream of traveling, but these adventures usually require a period of time that is longer than an average vacation. A sabbatical, however, provides the time necessary for an extended trip.

- Our families often lose out to the urgency of daily life and to-do lists. Time away from a job can give us an opportunity to reconnect with children, spouses and parents, whether we take this time at home or on a joint adventure together.

- Often, we’d like to focus on a new skill or hobby, but the thought of fitting this into our already crowded lives usually means that we just never get around to it. A sabbatical gives us the freedom to grow and develop in new ways.

There is more information on the sabbatical page, including the benefits to companies that offer sabbaticals, a list of ideas to inspire you, and links to books and websites about the topic.

Have you seen the movie The Bucket List, with Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman, in which two terminally ill men set off on a global road trip in order to check some items off their life list of things to experience? Do you own the book “1,000 Places to See Before You Die?”

Well, then, Smithsonian Magazine has a feature you might be interested in. Titled “The Smithsonian Life List,” it is a compilation of 28 places that they deem worthy of adding to your own life list. As they describe it:

“We are all of us resigned to death: it’s life we aren’t resigned to,” novelist Graham Greene once wrote. A growing number of Americans of all ages are embracing that idea by renewing a resolve to live life to its fullest…

To that end, the staff of Smithsonian—as diverse a group of travelers as you’re likely to meet—put their heads together to come up with an exclusive list of 28 places the Smithsonian reader might wish to visit before …it’s too late. Some of the sites are portals into the past—ancient cities so well preserved that visiting them is like stepping into a previous century. Others feature feats of engineering or sublime works of art—or, in the cases of the Taj Mahal and Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater, both. Travelers can visit temples and churches so breathtaking they must have been built with divine inspiration. For the more adventurous, we offer rewards beyond mere sightseeing—from a three-day hike across the Grand Canyon to a ride along China’s Yangtze River…

Whether you visit only a couple of these destinations or all 28, your life will be enriched by the experience.

Check out the article and the accompanying photos and dream. Or pick up my book, Two Laps Around the World, and read about my visit to eight of these 28 places. Or better yet, get out there and travel yourself.

Paris, France

A crepe sizzles on the skillet at a French creperie near Montmartre.

I’ve long believed that, if Barack Obama were to win this year’s presidential election, the most important outcome would be a sea change in America’s relations with and image in the rest of the world. I just came across two articles that look at how some foreign leaders see the prospect of an Obama presidency and, although there are never any guarantees for how events will unfold in reality, their responses seem to at least confirm a shared hope for change.

In the first story, Newsweek interviewed Juwono Sudarsono, the Indonesia minister of defense. Here is an excerpt from his interview:

How do you think an Obama presidency would affect U.S.-Indonesia relations?
Symbolically it would be very, very important for us, as it would be for the whole Asian [and] African continents. If Obama is elected as president, I think it would reignite the United States as the real light star of hope—that it symbolizes a multiethnic, multicultural, multireligious nation. That’s the most important aspect, the symbolism of it. Translating it into American foreign policy will be much more difficult…

So you want to be friends with America, then?
I would like to engage Indonesians, particularly poor Muslims, that under Obama, America will be a much better force for good for the world. That its size, reach, economic and political influence can provide hope … If he wins, it would create an optimism among Indonesians, particularly minorities, that perhaps in the next 10 to 15 years there can be a non-Javanese president in Indonesia. It’s doable.

In the second article, Scott MacLeod of Time recounts a fascinating discussion that he had with some Iranian leaders, who suggest that an Obama presidency could potentially transform relations between the countries. MacLeod’s whole piece is worth reading for its insights into the mind of Iranian strategists, but here is the relevant section about Obama:

Besides reflexively sympathizing with an African-American with Islamic family roots, they believe Obama’s personal experiences in that regard make him more understanding of the developing world and especially the Muslim world and hence more capable of approaching Iran with a better perspective and with more sincerity. They are also impressed with what they feel is Obama’s diplomatic, respectful language, which they see as being in utter contrast with insulting U.S. rhetoric dominant during the Bush administration.

Some Iranian officials and analysts go so far as to say that Obama’s election could be a historical turning point. As one Iranian put it to me, “This could be a moment of truth for the U.S. and for Iran.” What he probably meant was that Obama’s possible willingness to make a significant outreach to Iran could be what is needed to convince Iran’s leadership that Washington is truly serious about ending the 30 years of hostile relations…

Iranians believe such a bold diplomatic initiative by Obama would be a moment of truth for Iran in the sense that Iran’s leadership would have to decide whether to continue its “controlled” hostility to the U.S., which it uses for domestic and international support, or bite the bullet and enter into a cooperative relationship entailing major compromises on issues like the Israeli-Palestinian dispute. Iranians realize that another Obama may not come on to the American scene for quite a while, and that rejection of his olive branch–if one is indeed extended– might inexorably push the region to the World War III that Bush has warned about.

 Interesting stuff. What do you think?

So, what’s a reasonably successful, fiftysomething writer to do when her kids are grown and she finds herself falling in love with Guatemala? Well, buy a house and move there for part of the year. Why not? That’s the somewhat surprising turn that Joyce Maynard’s life took a few years ago, as described in this story.

To reach her favorite place in the world, Joyce Maynard flies for five hours from San Francisco, near her main home in Mill Valley, Calif. Then she is jostled for two and a half hours in a hired minivan over dusty two-lane roads beset by construction delays and clogged by buses spewing fumes. Finally, she boards a launch for a 45-minute ride to the tiny dock near her casa.

Ms. Maynard’s two-story wood and adobe second home perches on a green hillside just outside the village of San Marcos La Laguna, Guatemala, on the edge of Lake Atitlán, one of the deepest lakes in the Americas. Three dormant volcanoes, their peaks often clouded by mist, rim the southern shore of the lake, standing guard over the teal blue water. One of them, San Pedro, is perfectly framed in the view from Ms. Maynard’s bedroom balcony, but every window has a spectacular vista.

Stone steps curve gracefully down from the house, through tall wrought-iron gates, to Ms. Maynard’s own dock on the lake, from which she takes her daily swim. On the water, pale blue launches, called lanchas, ferry passengers from village to village. Fishermen drop lines from their cayucas, small wooden dugout boats with upturned prows.

It is here, somewhat to her own surprise, that Ms. Maynard spends up to four months a year, writing and running workshops for writers.

She had no intention of owning a home in Guatemala when she set out to travel there seven years ago with her daughter, Audrey, who was studying Spanish in a Guatemalan school. On her stone patio one recent morning, a tan Ms. Maynard, wearing a magenta camisole and khaki capris, recalled the conversation that changed the course of her life. “I said, ‘I so envy you, Aud, for getting to be here and study your Spanish,’ and she said, ‘What’s stopping you, Mama?’ ” Dramatic pause. “And I realized, ‘Nothing!’ ” …

“I was writing books, I was having a career, but the biggest adventure was watching them grow and launching them into the world, and they’re launched,” she said, stretching her arms wide with an incredulous laugh. “I had a bit of a crisis figuring out what could possibly be an adventure after that.”

The adventure turned out to be San Marcos, west of Guatemala City in the central highlands. The village is poor. Its indigenous Maya population of 2,500 lives in one-room pueblos and cooks over open fires. Tiny adobe markets called tiendas stock a few staples. Women in traditional dress sit with baskets along the dirt and cobblestone paths, accepting quetzales, the local currency, for their avocados, potatoes, onions and eggs.

There was an interesting column by Joe Nocera in the New York Times business section a few days ago. It started by looking at the relative lack of MBA-type skills among Chinese managers, but then diverted into an examination of Chinese and Western business cultures and the difficulties that companies have in meshing the two. An excerpt:

When dealing with each other, the Chinese, quite simply, do business differently than Western companies do business. For one thing, there is a lot of petty corruption that is an ingrained part of business, especially among the state-run companies. Purchasing managers favor one vendor over another because they get a kickback. A sales rep buys customer loyalty with under-the-table payments. And so on.

People also tend to put their own interests over the interests of their company — not a huge surprise, given that everyone worked for the state just a generation ago. Middle managers tend not to take much initiative. “Somebody said to me the other day, ‘We are paid to obey,’ ” said one American manager at a Chinese company…

But there are also things that can seem straightforward to a Westerner that are anything but in China. “Take the word ‘accountability,’ ” said Liu Chijin, the chairman of Pan Pacific Management Institution, a management consulting firm he founded in 1999. “It is a natural concept in the West. Here, people know what it means, but it is not in their blood. If you give them an assignment, tomorrow they are likely to tell you that something else came up.”

Finally, there is the gnarliest issue of all: the importance placed on the deep, intertwining set of relationships known as guanxi. Unlike the West, you don’t just have a business relationship in China; you have a relationship that interchangeably mixes the personal with the professional.

“Most Americans would say that we have it as well with the old boys network,” said Mr. Chiang, the marketing professor. “But Chinese intertwine business and personal affairs much more deeply. They do things for their partners even if they are personal affairs. And it is very difficult to disentangle what is institution to institution and what is person to person.” On the one hand, this leads to a sense of deep mutual loyalty. On the other hand, it is at the heart of the petty corruption that is so prevalent.

So, if a Western company wants to utilize the best of its own culture, but also recognize the need to “retain at least some aspects of a Chinese business culture,” what would the end result look like? Matthew McDougall, an Australian who founded a company in Beijing, had this advice:

“We want to be viewed as a Chinese company. We deal with investors in the American way, but we deal with customers in the Chinese way. In the U.S., you talk to customers about your unique selling proposition. In China, you talk to them about schools, your family, your friends in common, and what you can do for them.”

Gill Harvey went to Egypt to do research for a novel. While there, she enjoyed getting off the tourist trail and appreciating the sights and sounds of everyday life in Cairo and Luxor. She wrote about her experiences for the U.K. Independent.

It’s five years since my last visit, but it only takes one ride in a battered Fiat taxi and some good-humoured banter to make me feel glad to be back. Even as a woman travelling alone, Cairo has always seemed safe. This vast, sprawling metropolis – its population more than twice that of London’s – feels manageable, non-threatening, the sort of place that sweeps along on a tide of its own self-absorption.

On waking up to a hot, smog-filled day, I feel oddly liberated by my former visits. I don’t have to go to the pyramids, brave the labyrinth of the Khan el-Khalili, gaze upon Cairo from the ramparts of the citadel – splendid though all these things are. Instead, I can simply wander, reminding myself of the detail and bustle of a great city. It’s an option that’s open to anyone, of course; all you need is time.

One of the first things I tackle is how to cross the road. My hotel is in Garden City, close to the swirling hub of traffic that is the Midan Talaat Harb, a focal point of downtown Cairo. I remember the first time I watched people crossing here; how they seemed to merge and blend with the stream of fume-belching, honking Fiats, Peugeots and buses in a kind of death-defying dance routine. It was an art I mastered once; it’s time to do it again. A hand raised, Moses-like, to arrest the sea of cars, I’m soon ducking and diving with the best of them.

When hunger strikes, I conduct a quest for koshari in the downtown side-streets. Koshari joints are café-esque, no-nonsense establishments, and I’m served this tasty carb-fest in a stainless steel bowl with a matching beaker of heavily chlorinated tap water. It’s a mound of pasta, rice and lentils topped with fried onions and spicy tomato sauce…

Egypt is refreshingly cheap. It’s also sweltering, so when my soles begin to swell I head for the air-conditioned cool of Groppi’s. This tearoom is an institution, and I sip Lipton tea in an atmosphere of faded colonialism alongside gossiping middle-class couples and ageing bachelors reading Al-Ahram.

The Pennsylvania primary is only four days away. So here’s Baracky - channeling Rocky and new politics at the same time. It’s fun and ingenious. Take a look.

Tranquility is not a word often associated with tourism in India, but that’s just how Matt Gross described Pondicherry, a French colonial coastal city in southeastern India, in a recent travel article. An excerpt:

Today, Puducherry, as it is officially known but rarely called, is capitalizing on a glammed-up version of that history, and emerging as an artsy, design-savvy destination with a quasi-Gallic approach to eating, drinking, shopping and relaxing. It’s like India seen through a French lens, or maybe vice versa.

On the southeastern coast, about 150 miles south of Chennai, Pondicherry is, for an Indian city, tiny. Just about a million people live there, mostly in the types of charmless, three- and four-story concrete buildings erected all over the poorer parts of Asia. But near the Bay of Bengal, the cityscape changes drastically. Soon you see tile roofs and wooden shutters, balconies and colonnades, wide brick streets and pastel Catholic churches…

I would walk down these pristine lanes that smelled of old French novels and come upon a night market where vendors sold roast ears of corn or spicy baskets of chickpeas, or I would wander the Tamil quarter and spot a forest-green Vespa under the tiled awning of an old wooden house, and all those old distinctions — Indian/French, native/foreign, authentic/simulated — would lose their meaning. Pondicherry was simply Pondicherry, and becoming more so every day.

Ecuador doesn’t get a lot of tourist attention, save for its renown as the jumping off point to the Galapagos Islands. But there is a lot to see in this small Andean nation, as K.C. Summers and his wife discovered during a recent trip there, which he wrote about for the Washington Post.

We had it all figured out. We would fly to the capital, Quito, drive a couple of hours north and spend a week traveling south through the Andes, taking in as many of the country’s indigenous markets as we could. If we planned it right, we could hit one every day of the week…

During our week in the mountains, Adele and I knew we’d find great crafts and luxury trappings at bargain prices. What we didn’t expect was how quickly our focus would become blurred by everything else Ecuador’s Sierra region has to offer. Quito, our jumping-off point, distracted us immediately with its historic architecture and vibrant urban scene. The stunning beauty of Cotopaxi National Park drew us away from the markets and onto hiking trails and horses. The preserved colonial city of Cuenca instantly won our hearts, and we spent two days exploring its cobbled streets. And throughout the week, we caught tantalizing glimpses of an indigenous culture rich in tradition and rituals.

Let’s just say we got a lot more than we bargained for.

For such a small country (about the size of Colorado), Ecuador is remarkably diverse. Tucked between Colombia and Peru on South America’s west coast, it’s probably best known as the gateway to the Galapagos Islands. But it has three other ecosystems: the Amazon, the Pacific coast and the Andes, or Sierra, each with its own distinct climate, terrain and culture.

It was the Andes that captured our attention. Running half the length of the country, the mountains are home to a dramatic avenue of volcanoes (including Cotopaxi, the highest active volcano in the world), deep valleys, lakes and farmland.

I’ve been seeing more press these days being devoted to the concept of taking a sabbatical from work. It’s an idea that particularly interests me, since my wife and I have taken two sabbaticals since getting married in 2001 - experiences that I chronicled in my book, Two Laps Around the World. So I thought I’d catch up on some of these press clippings and cover the topic a bit more frequently in this blog.

First, an article from the New York Times (”Sabbaticals Aren’t just for Academics Anymore”), which was published a while ago but provides a nice overview of the subject.

In an age of job hopping, a perk to reward loyalty — sabbaticals for those with five years or more on the job — is taking on increased importance.

Though the academic world initiated sabbatical programs, they have been embraced by the government and the private sector, including companies as varied as McDonald’s, Nike, Boston Consulting, Goldman Sachs and Silicon Graphics as well as law and accounting firms. Some companies restrict time off to educational forays and charitable projects, while others encourage everything from beachcombing, family time and travel. Leaves can be paid or unpaid and can last weeks or months…

Measuring return on investment is almost impossible, but companies with such plans seem as enthusiastic as any sabbatical taker. They discount fears that those taking leave will use the time to find other employment.

“A lot of times, people think it’s just for the employee, but it is a tremendous advantage that we get as a company,” said Richard Floersch, chief people officer and executive vice president for worldwide human resources at McDonald’s. “It’s re-energizing that lasts more than a day. Depending on what they do while they are gone, they come back even more skilled and talented than when they left.”

And, from a more recent Wall Street Journal story.

With constant travel and 60-hour weeks pushing him close to burnout, the veteran partner at Mercer, a major human-resource consultant, decided he needed a sabbatical.

Mr. Marcus pursued an elaborate self-improvement scheme and sharpened his professional focus during an eight-month break, which ended in November 2006. “I’m a better consultant today because I bring a more balanced perspective to my work,” he says…

A sabbatical can enhance your career, especially if you acquire valuable skills, experience and insights. Extended breaks allow for personal goals, such as travel, study or research…

Sabbaticals are attracting greater attention these days from the nation’s frazzled and disengaged workforce, according to Dan Clements, who co-wrote “Escape 101: Sabbaticals Made Simple.” He took five in 15 years. About 16% of U.S. employers offered unpaid sabbaticals and 4% gave paid ones in 2007, the Society for Human Resource Management reports.

Hmm, stories in the New York Times AND the Wall Street Journal. There can’t be much more of a sign that this trend is getting noticed.

Ladakh, India

Well, it isn’t Nepal, but it is the Himalayas. These are Buddhist prayer flags flapping in the breeze outside a gompa above the 12,000-foot-high city of Leh, in the Ladakh region of India.

Nepal has long been a draw for intrepid travelers, with its Himalayan landscape and religious heritage, but political turmoil put a severe crimp into the country’s tourism industry for much of this decade. The political violence has now largely subsided, though, as evidenced by the democratic election that was held there yesterday. As a result, tourists are again flocking to this mountainous nation. The International Herald Tribune recently looked at the resurgence of tourism in Nepal.

According to the Nepal Tourism Board, December capped a banner year, with air arrivals up 27 percent over the 2006 total. Overall, 2007 welcomed some 360,000 foreign air travelers to the country, making it the most successful year for tourism since 2000.

For a poor but picturesque country that was nearly pulled apart by a decade of bloodshed and political turmoil…the numbers are heartening indeed. They owe much to the calmed political situation. The civilian government has been restored, the Maoists have signed a peace treaty, and democratic elections are scheduled for later this year. As a result, several airlines resumed service or began new routes to Katmandu last year. Hotels report surges in bookings. And the streets of the city where raging protests once flared are again humming with bicycle rickshaws, sacred cows and beat-up taxis ferrying international visitors to the numerous World Heritage Sites in and around the capital city…

For others who have canceled or deferred journeys to Katmandu, the good news is that the troubled decade did nothing to harm the city’s age-old appeals. The snowcapped Himalayas, visible on clear days, soar eternally upward. Impervious to the vicissitudes of politics and trends, Katmandu’s artisans continue to produce rich carpets, yak-wool clothing, wood sculptures and thangka paintings…

And while the city might not be the mythical Shangri-La - crumbling buildings, rusted-out vehicles, emaciated dogs and impoverished families fill the poorly drained streets - the ancient religions of Hinduism and Buddhism do much to infuse meaning and color into the landscape. For more than anything else, Katmandu’s twin faiths make the city one of the planet’s most powerful magnets for spiritual seekers and philosophic souls.

The popular software program Google Earth is now being put to use for humanitarian reasons, as Google has teamed with the United Nations to spotlight refugee migrations around the world, according to this story on CNN.

Internet search giant Google Inc. unveiled a new feature Tuesday for its popular mapping programs that shines a spotlight on the movement of refugees around the world.

The maps will aid humanitarian operations as well as help inform the public about the millions who have fled their homes because of violence or hardship, according to the office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, which is working with Google on the project.

“All of the things that we do for refugees in the refugee camps around the world will become more visible,” U.N. Deputy High Commissioner for Refugees L. Craig Johnstone said at the launch in Geneva.

Users can download Google Earth software to see satellite images of refugee hot spots such as Darfur, Iraq and Colombia. Information provided by the U.N. refugee agency explains where the refugees have come from and what problems they face.

For example:

In the Djabal refugee camp in eastern Chad, which is home to refugees from the conflict in neighboring Darfur, Google Earth users can see individual tents clustered together amid a sparse landscape, and learn about the difficulty of providing water to some 15,000 people.

Just another interesting way in which technology is changing our world.

It sometimes seems as if there is no end to the type of work that can be outsourced these days. Businesses have been outsourcing labor for years, and individuals have figured out how to outsource personal tasks, nursing home care and even pregnancies. Now comes word of the latest work that is being outsourced - legal research. Time Magazine has the story.

Mark Alexander, a Dallas attorney, says he’s ethically obligated to do what’s best for his clients, “and that includes saving them money.” So when one of them asks him to research a securities-fraud topic, for example, or breach of contract, he doesn’t even think about applying his $395 hourly rate. Instead, he calls Atlas Legal Research, an outsourcing company based in Irving, Texas, that uses lawyers in India to provide the service for $60 per hr. “When a client pays me a $25,000 retainer and I can save them money, I will do so,” says Alexander. Handing off the work to a $225-per-hr. junior associate is not an option. “They don’t even know where to stand in the courtroom,” he says.

While the Americans learn, well-trained lawyers in secure offices in Mumbai (formerly Bombay), Bangalore and Gurgaon (outside Delhi), who typically earn $6,000 to $30,000 annually, do legal grunt work…The considerable savings is perhaps one reason Forrester Research, based in Cambridge, Mass., has projected the offshoring of 29,000 legal jobs by the end of the year and as many as 79,000 by 2015.

Perhaps we should call it Outsourcing 2.0, as it’s being described as the next logical step in outsourcing, from lower skill to higher skill jobs. There is obviously a limit, though, as to how much of this work can be done from abroad, which at the moment is limited to legal reseach and document review.

It’s part of India’s inevitable move up the corporate food chain, from lower-value business process outsourcing–like call centers–to knowledge process outsourcing (KPO). The latter category encompasses higher-skilled jobs, such as engineering and medicine, and relies on the KPOs to behave more like branch offices of U.S. companies.

ValueNotes, a business-research firm based in Pune, India, says a subset of KPO called legal process outsourcing (LPO) has grown revenues 49% from 2006, to $218 million last year. The figure will nearly triple, to $640 million, by 2010, it says…

TransUnion, in Chicago, has successfully outsourced legal work for four years, according to general counsel John W. Blenke. “Every law firm is really an outsourcer. One lawyer usually can’t do it all,” he says. Indian attorneys are currently reviewing more than a million litigation e-mails for the company, which costs less than $10 per hr., he says. He would pay $60 to $85 per hr. to a U.S.-based legal-staffing company for the job.

Blenke says he’s cautious, however, about the work he outsources. “You can only do it with a few things. It has to be an area that you know well, so you can build processes around that,” he says.

The world of work has evolved considerably in the past decade, and perhaps nowhere is this change more evident than in the mobility of workers, who keep finding new ways to move beyond the traditional office environment. It began when high speed internet access and teleconferencing technology enabled more people to work from home, at least for part of the time. But the ubiquity of laptops and the wireless internet has now irrevocably altered the concept of the office.

Most obviously, it has given workers the freedom to work not only from home, but also from coffee shops and other public locations. This topic was explored in a recent NY Times article that focused on the technology workers and entrepreneurs who gather regularly at Ritual Coffee Roasters in San Francisco.

As latte sippers pore over the latest draft of a business plan, bang out a little code or post to a blog, it is not hard to overhear snippets of dialogue with a decidedly capitalist bent: “We could make money off that,” and “Have you talked to them about a deal?”

For the Web 2.0 crowd creating businesses, as well as the post-Web 2.0 crowd looking for businesses to build, Ritual is the place to be. While it has not yet risen to the mythic proportions of Buck’s, the hangout in Woodside, Calif., for entrepreneurs and venture capitalists, it is becoming the place to generate ideas, find staff members and troll for companies to finance.

” … when you go into Ritual, it seems they’re either writing code or writing a blog or creating something with a widget that will make money for them this week, and that’s really different from a lot of the other places.” …

Indeed, San Francisco cafes have emerged as the new office of choice for many small start-ups. Atlas Cafe, also in the eclectic Mission District, is one, and Coffee to the People in the Haight is another. But Ritual, located between a heating repair shop and a video store, is perhaps the most popular. … Flickr, the popular photo sharing site, held weekly meetings there before it was bought by Yahoo. And Rubyred Labs, a Web design shop, had its debut party there.

Even more intriguing, though, are some of the ways in which the office has morphed into new forms. One example of this is the movement toward coworking, in which various individuals rent out desks in an office so they can have the camaraderie of coworkers while retaining their independence. This trend was explored recently in a different story.

Contemplating his career path a couple of years ago, a young computer programmer named Brad Neuberg faced a modern predicament. “It seemed I could either have a job, which would give me structure and community,” he said, “or I could be freelance and have freedom and independence. Why couldn’t I have both?”

As someone used to hacking out solutions, Mr. Neuberg took action. He created a word — coworking, eliminating the hyphen — and rented space in a building, starting a movement.

While coworking has evolved since Mr. Neuberg’s epiphany in 2005, dozens of places around the country and increasingly around the world now offer such arrangements, where someone sets up an office and rents out desks, creating a community of people who have different jobs but who want to share ideas…

Coworking sites are up and running from Argentina to Australia and many places in between, although a wiki site on coworking shows that most are in the United States…The coworkers, armed with Wi-Fi laptops and cellphones, are in some ways offering a techie twist on the age-old practice of artists or writers teaming up to rent studio space…

Coworking comes in many flavors. The Hat Factory in San Francisco is a live-work loft that’s home to three technology workers who open up during the day to other people. Some companies, like Citizen Agency, a San Francisco Internet consulting firm that has done the most to evangelize coworking, have an open-door policy, in which people rent desks but others are free to drop in and use the Wi-Fi or the conference room.

Some companies rent out desks to the nomadic workers, hoping some of their Internet mojo will rub off. Yet others have started coworking spaces as businesses unto themselves, like a community version of the corporate business centers operated by the Regus Group.

Tara Hunt, a co-owner of Citizen Agency, which calls its office Citizen Space, has listed (in a blog, of course) some principles of coworking. They include collaboration, openness, community, sustainability and accessibility. Many of the ideas come from the open-source software movement, in which people share their work freely with little regard for financial gain. Taking a nod from that movement, the people involved in coworking share their experiences and ideas on a Web site, coworking.pbwiki.com.