Kaleidoscope: Prologue of a Chinese frog's Journey in NYC

There are a thousand New York City in a thousand people's eyes.

In someone’s eyes, the city is the playground of dream chasers, some of whom drag their suitcases to look for purposes in the city and start with an affordable apartment on avenue Q. In someone’s eyes, the city is the paradise of shoppers, walking non-stop from the world’s largest department store at Herald Square to boutique shops at SoHo. In someone’s eyes, the city is an endless feast table, on which are presented all kinds of authentic cuisine in different forms from open market food festival to fancy fusion restaurants with great ambience.

Well, there is too much to list one after another. To me, the city is a huge kaleidoscope. It’s full of colors inside and changing patterns you see when you are rolling it. The first time when I looked inside this giant kaleidoscope four years ago, I was nothing but a tourist. I tried to pack as many places of interest as possible into my short schedule, rushing from the Statue of Liberty to Empire State Building.

But this time I get the chance to roll over the kaleidoscope. I'm a Strategist based on frog Shanghai office and currently working at frog New York office in this beautiful 2009 spring. I still try to pack my everyday life as tight as possible, but this time I start to discover something refreshingly different, from both work and life!

This blog is initiated to share a Chinese frog’s experience in New York and and other cities on the east coast of the United States. The idea of writing down the three-month experience comes from a casual conversation about getting inspired by travel and discovering different perspectives from something that many people would consider routine.

Actually I didn’t realize that there are so many interesting things we take for granted in life until I came to a strange environment. I think that the unfamiliarity of a new environment can help us sharpen our senses. To some extent, that also responds to why we, as a global innovation firm and a multi-disciplinary team, are able to find those valuable insights and opportunities that many industry veterans miss when we are conducting design research on the field. It’s not that the opportunities are all elusive, but that oftentimes we overlook them.

Roll over the kaleidoscope. Change an angle. Look again.