I like to chat, and over the past twenty-five years, I have been chatting to you, my lovely readers and viewers, about all things Chiang Mai and northern Thailand. We have delved deep into some very serious issues, from refugees to sex trafficking, drug addiction to corruption. We have taken our chat and turned them into action. We have opined, spot-lit, derided, soapboxed, championed, scorned, sneered, cheered or simply gushed about any and all topics imaginable and through Citylife’s pages, then later on various channels, we have kept a conversation going with you. We have facilitated conversations between you. We have listened, we have learned and we hope that we have helped you to listen and perhaps learn too from all the voices – your voices! – we have shared over the years.
In this interview Pim Kemasingki talks with good friend and business partner Chris Barclay about just that…the art of the conversation.
“You are already having meaningful conversations, always learning, always finding out what people tick and if we can expand that and include it to people who feel the same way and who also enjoy the art of conversation,” explained Chris who is starting a social members club with Pim in the coming months.
We discuss our ideas behind the club, what our hopes and ambitions are for this club and why we feel that it could be a natural extension of what Citylife has been doing, just in a different format.
“We are not making it exclusive in terms of you have to know someone or have money or position, it is really not of interest, We are interested in attracting people who have something to say, who have some kind of contribution to make, tastemakers…we like instigators!”
“It will be like a tribe…and our enemy will be complaisance, cynicism and the tyranny of urgency. I feel like we defend the same stake in this culture and that is that we really honour this art of conversation, appreciative inquiry and real human connection. So that’s what we’re doing.”
