21ST CENTURY PHILOSOPHER
No other company is as laidback or as powerful as Apple, the entertainment giant who, under its founder and CEO Steve Jobs, continues to shape and determine not only the things we buy but also, increasingly, the way we live.

The Apple story, which is also Steve Jobs’ story, can be described in six chapters, as told by six contemporary witnesses, each of whom spent time with Apple from its humble beginnings through to its current position as one of the most powerful companies in the world.

THE FOUNDER
The Apple story begins in a garage in Los Altos, south of San Francisco, California. The setting is the Jobs’ family garage in 1976. Jobs and his friend Steve Wozniak are tinkering with a computer prototype. The two youths in T-shirts and cutoff jeans dream of great things: an affordable computer for everyone. Each has a different role to play in that dream. Wozniak dreams of building the machine; Jobs wants to sell it.

SEEING THE FOREST FOR THE TREES
The rise of ecology and conservation as a global issue is, in large part, led by the efforts of organisations focussed on teaching children to care for nature. One such organisation is Doubletree by Hilton and, here in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysian kids have and will also be shown the way towards a better future.

The world, as they say, is not inherited from the past but borrowed from the future. And the increasing ecological concern shown by a global population of corporations, NGOs and even children, speaks of a world which has learnt to treasure its natural resources. Already, we have seen how a united stand against ozone depleting chemicals has resulted in the diminishing hole in the ozone, while several animal species threatened with extinction have been successfully rehabilitated in the wild.

More than that, corporations have started taking a stand against wastefulness and neglect, by capturing every piece of paper, using electronic transmission and even cutting out plastics where possible. On another plane, some companies, such as hotel chain Doubletree by Hilton, are making it incumbent upon themselves to impart an appreciation for nature among children, relying on their voices of innocence to keep our own conscience in check.

HOW SUITE IT IS
As legendary as the hotel he’s helmed for the last four decades, Diana Khoo meets hotelier par excellence, Kurt Wachtveitl, of the Mandarin Oriental Bangkok.

Everyone loves a good story and few tell them better than Kurt Wachtveitl, the legendary hotelier whose name will forever be associated with the elegance and grandeur of the Mandarin Oriental Bangkok, one of the finest and most enduring hotels in the world. For over a hundred years, travellers of distinction, style and means have all bedded down for the night amidst the luxury of this distinguished property that stands elegantly along the banks of the Chao Phraya River and it is Wachtveitl’s good fortune to have shared a fourdecade long relationship with the hotel. “The Mandarin Oriental Bangkok is a truly unique place,” agrees Khun Kurt, as he is affectionately known to all.

Guests who have stayed at the property might have spotted Khun Kurt breakfasting on the terrace, a familiar ritual, accompanied always by a copy of the International Herald Tribune or the Bangkok Post. “That is certainly my favourite spot in the hotel. For 37 years, I lived in an apartment across the river, on the spa side of the hotel, and, I can tell you, I never had a single meal in our home in all the years, except during Christmas.” That statement is certainly telling as those who’ve experienced the magic of this grand dame hotel would know the boundaries between hotel and home, albeit a very grand one, is deliciously blurred. “The Oriental is and will always be truly unique,” he agrees. “There is magic, dreams and illusions, yet there is also the feeling of being very much at home. All hotels have a story to tell, but the Oriental is, at once, a home as well as a hotel and with a great sense of romance about it. Imagine, taking a boat ride across the Chao Phraya to indulge in a spa ritual or the relationship you enjoy with our world-class staff, from the butler to the doorman…all our clients build an incredible camaraderie with the team and, very quickly, it really is just like home.”