Owning a private island is a “pharmacy for the soul”, and a great investment.

For your own honest-to-goodness, never-to-be-repeated-anytime-soon paradise lost, you can’t beat a natural island. As Farhad Vladi says: “Owning an island really lightens your soul.” And Vladi should know. He’s sold at least 2,000 since 1971, and is known as a “fine art dealer of nature”. He’s the president of Vladi Private Islands — the largest island selling company in the world.

At any one time there are about 120 islands on Vladi’s books, of which between 20 and 30 are sold every year. Demand over the past 20 years has grown, he says. “These days, many of our clients feel the need to get away from modern noise and daily sorrows,” Vladi says. “On an island, this healing is magnified considerably. It’s a pharmacy for the soul.”

Behind the poetry of ownership, of course, is serious business intent. Many shrewd investors are seeking out islands for their rarity factor. Uniqueness always sells and in times of economic downturn, it’s wise to back sure-fire winners.

Vladi believes that quality islands consistently offer a return that comfortably beats inflation every year. One New York island bought through Vladi in 1997 for US$1 million was sold a decade later by the brokers for a recession-beating $18 million.

One joy of island buying is that you can get involved for under US$40,000 (S$54,872). That kind of money would get you a “small parcel of land with mixed woodland” on a Canadian lake in Nova Scotia. Alternatively, there is the S$43 million 27 ha Santa Cristina in the Lagoon (a 30-minute boat ride from Venice) boasting a lordly four-storey, nine-bedroom chateau with vineyards, orchards and lakes.

Most islands sell in the “mid-range” of between US$3 million (S$4 million) and US$5 million (S$6 million), says Vladi.

However, a number of details have to be considered in depth, from building regulations and mainland accessibility to political or climatic stability. Technology may have made the world a smaller place, but if a generator breaks down in the middle of an island monsoon, it would not be easy to find an electrician.

In the art world, installations are the next big thing.

When the winner of an art competition is announced these days, the chances of their art piece being oil on canvas is next to nil. The winner would most probably be a site-specific installation with a name that might not immediately make sense, or a combination of video and some hip materials you would never have expected to be associated with art. Welcome to the direction the visual art world is now headed towards.

Today’s artists want their works to be appreciated in totality; they want to capture all of the viewer’s senses – and not merely with a framed piece of art to be hung on any wall, or a sculpture placed on any pedestal. The key addition to this new experience is space. Artists want to control where and how their works are appreciated, which is why modern visual art is no longer passive, but rather proactive and interactive. The art ‘installation’ has become an established genre unto itself, often incorporating a broad range of everyday and natural materials chosen for their evocative qualities, as well as new media such as video, sound, performance, virtual reality and the Internet.

The winner of the first Singapore Art Prize three years ago was fashion designer-turned-artist Jane Lee. Her winning work? A purple piece of cloth titled Purple Drape. The artist went on to participate at the 2008 Singapore Biennale with another site-specific installation, Raw Canvas, which spanned the third and fourth floors of City Hall.

While the two-dimensional world of visual art will live on, the future belongs to the younger artists, their creations, and their efforts at urging the mainstream to re-think how art should be interacted with. It may seem like a stretch, but one of these days you just might come across something really intriguing only to realise it really is an installation.

The first Singaporean to helm a BMW subsidiary, Ramesh Divyanathan also brings a human touch to hard business.

One of the first things Ramesh Divyanathan did on the job as president director of BMW Indonesia was to pull out the thickest customer docket he could find in the office. The “reams” of correspondence, he discovered, came from the irate owner of a used, entry-level 320i, who had everyone in the office flinching from handling him.

Naturally, for Divyanathan, the solution was to take the customer out for lunch.
There, the Bimmer boss disarmed him with an apology and asked the man how he could be made a BMW fan again. So charmed was the customer by the gesture, he eventually bought a more expensive 5-series sedan.

Just how often does the top brass attend to the little guy to set things right? “If customers don’t send nasty e-mails, they just go away,” explains Divyanathan. “That, for me, is terrible, because then they are out there complaining about your product and service and you have no way to make a recovery. If they come to you, grab them and rebuild the bridge.”

For Divyanathan, building links this way is just part of another day at the office, and certainly no less important than the big picture strategising that beleaguers corporate chiefs in these challenging economic times. “I try to put people at ease,” he says. ““People usually feel confident after talking to me. They feel that I am genuine.”

It becomes crystal clear what sets Divyanathan apart. Business acumen aside, he presents the human element, the heart and soul, if you will, to what is fundamentally the cold business of shifting machinery, no matter how beautifully engineered BMWs are.