Boxing day reflections

The sun's out, I'm hungover and still stuffed from Christmas dinner, so it must be Boxing Day. Or, in the US, the day after.

Being in California is both unsettling and familiar. Some things one relives and others one can observe impartially. It's the same with friends and the family. Even those to whom one has strong ties. Whence came this cool remove?

Maybe it was the wine.

And there's still another week to enjoy. To try and slow the mind, unknot the shoulders, reflect on the past and the present. Strengthen still elasticine ties that are stretched and tested by oceans and miles and time zones and neglect. To count oneself amongst the most fortunate.

Time to plan for the successes of the coming year. The races to be raced. Battles to be ruthlessly fought. Wine to be tasted. Hearts to be won.

Time to find a balance of the mind, the body, the spirit; to exercise the heart in every way, to stop living in the 'imagine if...' and to live in the 'now that...' or even the 'what next...' To respect the intellect, but the corporal and the spiritual as well. To blend work and play and love and curiosity.

That's all. Easy, right? Especially when one sits in bed on Boxing Day wondering who's going to get up and make the coffee...

Brilliant

The brilliant Stefan Sagmeister talks about the development of one of his D&AD award winning posters in an animation designed by a student winner of the award.

Dubai

A brief stop in Dubai. Typical business trip. Arrive at 11pm on Sunday. Meeting on Monday. Boozy dinner. Fly out at 2.30am. Get a glimpse of that, a taste of this, and an impression of the touristy ex-pat bits and away we go. We did stop at the window to listen to the muezzin's call for prayer (salat) that echoed from a local mosque's minaret across the city - a powerful and beautiful moment.

Not much time for pictures. But here's what could be managed.

I was SO grateful

Well, maybe not grateful that Christopher had kept me out until 3am the night before, but grateful I could celebrate a meal with Jess, Trond, Ben and Tim. Friends who make this London adventure much more bearable, champagne-soaked and immensely fun.

And now, my liver needs a rest.

Namaste!

I spent four days in Mumbai for a conference. The Grand Hyatt was luxury. I marvelled at the food, especially the dal which Shweta laughed was a common staple anyone in India could make. Drank martinis in the lounge bar with a glamorous Bombay crowd. Ate lobster and an unusual stuffed pancake in the Chinese restaurant. But it was a citadel and I knew not a genuine experience of Mumbai.

Images of Mumbai

So I spent a day in South Mumbai, mostly around Colaba. It was overwhelming. The people, the noise, the traffic, everything is shambolic chaos. It's tropically beautiful, green, colourful, bursting with life. People spill out of stalls into streets diving between cars and buses. The traffic is heartpoundingly aggressive. Ibrahim, my chauffeur was very brave. I only once or twice shrieked when we dove in between cars. Ibrahim, unnecessarily apologising for his excellent English, gave a running commentary of the city, and his life in it supporting his six siblings. Without him I would know almost nothing about what I saw, so I was very grateful.

The city is crumbling, tropical, beautiful and heartbreaking. There are so many people living on the street on mats, sleeping in cars or in built up slums. Makeshift shelters are strung over anything available. Families bathe on the streets. The poverty is distressing, humbling, challenging. I lasted five hours before it exhausted me. It reminded me to be grateful for so much we take for granted.

What did I manage to see? The Gateway of India. Marine Drive. The Taj hotel. The national museum. Jain Temple and the house where Mahatma Gandhi lived.

It's a vibrant place - the colour, the music, the commotion. I won't soon forget it. I hope I never will.

Testing

New domain host, new hosting server, new new new

Home

Is where my stuff is. And today my stuff is in London, with the routines and the complacencies and the discomforting familiarity. And a head fogged with jetlag and a body yearning for another time zone and the tastes for other cultures and sights.

So I'm back from Asia. From days in stunning Tokyo and steaming Singapore. I wanted to go for so long that I can't believe I've been but with the jetlagged brain I can't believe a lot of things at the moment. I'm confused and dazed and overwhelmed by trying to describe the experiences. From the instant camaradery with clients and colleagues thrust into social situations and shared travels to the things I wanted to file and remember and tell about what I learned.

It felt effortlessly brave to wander and do it all. Armed only with a handful of Japanese phrases and a camera. And perhaps more brave to jump in and join the social swirl of people I didn't know. Shy, painful, awkward but enjoying it nonetheless - the creating memories from extraordinarily imposed familiarity.

So I can't describe it. Not the contradiction of Tokyo - crowded, teeming and yet peaceful and calm. Or the equatorial heat of Singapore with its jungle green and gleaming new architecture. The postmodern consumer spectacle and the zen-ness of temples or colonial-ness of hotel verandahs. Maybe someday. But not today. The pictures crowd and fight for meaning and I'm too weakened to find the thoughts or the words.

The night before last we went to Roppongi (a 'slightly seedy, bar-packed' part of town) and sang karaoke in ridiculous costumes. Everyone got into it (the beer and sake helped) but none moreso than the japanese. It was wonderful to see how they threw themselves into having fun in karaoke. I wowed the crowd with a Sinatra song that I hadn't planned on singing, but have now apparently made legendary.

The nightlife here is crazy. We were out with the clients quite late (well, until sunrise) and I still managed to get to the workshop the next day in one piece and seemingly intelligent. I think this is going to be a great account to work on. We didn't go out the first night and got a lot of flack from them so we went barhopping after karaoke and got back to the hotel at 5am. So we know have a reputation of being the cool kids. Luckily, we were with the clients! The bars are usually quite small, but bright, colourful, with karaoke machines and video games that groups can play. It's all very sociable. And there's little
streetcrime here so people feel safe. It is a bit disconcerting, however, that the Japanese businessmen are so formal and polite during the day, and so carefree and drunk at night.

There are an estimated 400,000 vending machines in Tokyo. One for every 20 people. One can buy everything from a vending machine, including hot lunches, but be careful - they estimate that one in 10 would fall over in a 7.0 earthquake. The proliferation of gadgets, especially mobiles that do everything in amazing. People are starting to pay for goods and travel by swiping their mobiles making queues virtually disappear. Going shopping today, looking forward to the gadgetry.

Blogger has defaulted to Japanese, so who knows if this gets posted.

Last night I had a hamburger the size of my head. Not on purpose. We needed something to eat after G+Ts in the bar with the client but it was seriously the size of my head. So far Tokyo is amazing. So far, however, I've not left the hotel. We arrived yesterday at 2pm, went through our presentations had a nap, drinks, dinner and back to the room. It's grey and cloudy. The people are immensely polite. There is a beautiful women in the lobby in a kimono whose job, from what I can tell, is to wipe the keypad of the lift before you press any buttons. They are obsessive about cleaning, and it shows - everything is immaculate.

But I know I've not really experienced Japan yet. We're out and about today for a little bit so will get to see it then.

I've become addicted to Miami Ink on the Discovery channel. I like the idea of getting a tattoo, but that's just far too much of a commitment. There's something about the intensity of thought that goes into people's decision and the intensity of pain that goes into getting it done. It's a big flipping commitment, so not very likely I'll be sporting one soon.

Strategy haikus

Target mums with kids,
Don't lose everyone else though
Give them all great tips

Today's preoccupations

Today's OETD word of the day is 'debt'. Will I ever sort out my financial future? Why do I have a fascination with organisation and no ability to organise myself? I think I might be allergic to my pillows. I need to go on holiday, but don't want to go anywhere by myself. Would a holiday in London be enough? How does one brand target a demographic online that the whole rest of the world is targetting as well? Why don't clients do the obviously right thing to do even if they did it before once and it didn't work? I should take my SLR camera somewhere interesting this weekend. Should I spend my holiday looking for a new place to live or am I okay where I am? I need to create a file structure for the department. How do you provide helpful performance feedback to someone you think is a superstar without either gushing or nitpicking? Does my increasing preference for classical music mean I'm getting old? Could I really give up coffee for tea? When I flirt, does anyone notice?

Surfacing

From the madness of the last month. Pitches (won, hurrah!) new joiners to the team, too many projects, long lost friends in town, general mayhemania. So, today feels like the first day I'm surfacing. Floating towards the sunlight, taking in a cleansing breath, and shoring up for whatever is next.

So, what is next?...

Beautiful video interface

HBO Voyeur

Out of curiosity I ordered my UCD transcript. I couldn't quite remember what my GPA was and began to wonder if I was mis-remembering my brilliant scholar days. It's actually quite good. I got quite a few As in things I didn't remember taking(Advanced Composition? German Society?) Only one C, but I remember that class was a class in Jane Austen from 3-5 in the afternoon and it was too hot and sleepy to be interesting. I've never cared for Austen anyway. Considering I was working at the time I'm impressed...

An experience...

I have a cyst in my eye. Sounds worse than it looks but looks better than it feels. Yesterday I want to my GP for an 'emergency' appt. I checked in at reception and was told to wait in the 2nd floor waiting room. For four hours. Then the locum doctor left. Packed his files and coats, looked at me apologetically and left me sitting alone in the waiting room without saying a word. I was livid. When I went back to reception who said that I hadn't been checked in when I clearly had.

I wrote an angry letter and the doctor, who I've never met, rang to explain that it was a computer fault. Clearly not simply a computer fault since the locum saw me sitting alone in his waiting room for four hours. And the worse bit is there's very little I can do and seemingly no one to blame. She was very polite about it and it's nice she called, but she managed to strip me not only of my right to be angry but the option to do anything about it, and clearly wasn't ready to listen to my complaint just to anticipate its excuse. I could navigate the maze of the NHS, but even if I could figure out how to make a complaint (which bizarrely isn't apparenton the new 'I have a choice' website) I anticipate being met with indifference.

This is why we must invite people to give feedback in the digital experiences we created. Because even when there's little that anyone can do about it people want to be able to rail against whatever slight, bad service or injustice they perceive. And it's a better salve to be able to empathise with our outraged customers than to make them find other ears for their complaints. But more importantly, it should demonstrate that we listened. Whether automated or personalised the response should be specific, should empathise (it's terrible we wasted your time) and where possible be actionable (if you experience this again simply...)

Or, provide exemplary service in the first place. Western Eye Hospital saw me in 15 minutes and the doctor was clear, concise and listened to my questions.

So now, if I'm wearing an eyepatch, you know why.

On the growing use of Facebook

I recently spoke at an Ogilvy training conference in France. I didn't receive a single email afterwards, but have had seven people send messages and add me as a friend in Facebook. Might it be the new and de facto business communication tool for digital natives?

Educational as well as entertaining

Michael Bierut tells us why everything he knows about design he learned from the Sopranos.

My favourite:

On creative blocks:
"My advice? Put that thing down awhile, we go get our joints copped, and tomorrow the words'll come blowing out your ass."

Just finished Suite Francaise, a damning novel of the actions and attitudes of the French middle class during WW2. Disconcertingly the book finishes in in 1941 with the occupying Germans heading to the Russian Front. The book is two of five planned novellas that were disrupted by Irene Nemirovsky's arrest and later death in Auschwitz. Her daughters grabbed the notebooks when fleeing and left them unread for more than 50 years thinking they were diaries that would be too painful to read.

Check out Moto's wonderful site.

Reminds me of the work of Joshua Davis, one of the very best things in the US design triennial at the Cooper Hewitt in New York. He's an artist who designs vectors, brushes, palettes, etc., but then lets the software do the composition.

We talk internally about the importance non-linear experiences online, but I don't believe they are an imperative. One can have a compelling linear experience online, but the quality of the narrative has to be high - something which rarely happens online. It is most interesting to me when experiences combine both an interesting momentum and a serendipity.

Peter Morville, author of the O'Reilly books Information architecture and Ambient Findability has a blog, and an interesting model of social information architecture.

I just read a book called, 'You are here: Personal geographies and other maps of the imagination' by Katharine Harmon
She talks about how humans have an instinct or need to map the world - both to create sense and possibility. To make a cartography of the world to make it known and real whether it's corporal, physical, psychological.

'Maps intrigue us, perhaps none more than those that ignore mapping conventions. These are maps that find their essence in some other goal than just taking us from point a to point b. They are a vehicle for the imagination, fuelled up and ready to go. We look at these maps, and our minds know just what to do: take the information and extrapolate from it a place where they can leap, play, gambol - without that distant province of our being, the body, dragging them down...that particular terrain of imagination overlaid with those unique contour lines of experience.'

'Style is knowing who you are, what you want to say, and not giving a damn.'

Gore Vidal

On speaking

In June I'm speaking at the Online Marketing Show in London come along and cheer or watch me go wildly off-topic.

On autochrome

Fantastic programme on the BBC last night about Albert Kahn, the French philanthropist who commissioned thousands of photographs (many in colour) documenting the devastating effect of WW1 on France.

On flight.

Yesterday I took a dive down a flight of stairs at Vauxhall tube station. I wasn't paying attention and tripped over some woman's rolling suitcase and was suddenly in flight. I'm a bit sore and bruised, but fortunately relatively unharmed. Even more fortunately, no one was in my path - I could have killed someone.

I was thinking today that it's a shame that one doesn't really remember the sensation of being mid-air on those rare occasions that our bodies are hurled into flight. I remember hitting the ground and feeling the wind knocked out of me, but don't remember what it was like to have body and feet off the ground for those few nanoseconds. Shame that.

On 'When languages die'

From Language as design objects

"Of course these languages are endangered!" someone will inevitably crow. "English or the other major languages are informationally more efficient!" This isn't true. For example, what information is encoded in the English "my nephew"? For sure, it's a male person. But (as Harrison writes) "is he related to me by blood or marriage? Unclear. Is he older or younger than me? Unclear. Is he the son of my sister or my brother? Unclear. Is he the son of an older sibling of mine or a younger sibling? Unclear. Is he a boy or a man? Unclear." Taken in absolute terms, English isn't so efficient: we'd need a separate book to list all its major inefficiencies."

Upcoming D+AD events

Busy week for D&AD.

For the President's Lectures we've got Weiden and Kennedy sharing their insights and experiences on Monday night and Pentagram partner and design writer Michael Beirut talking about Pentagram on Tuesday. They're sold out, but I'd recommend begging or borrowing (but please, no stealing.)

The annual D+AD awards dinner is on Thursday. I'm curious to see who won this year. Yesterday the executive judged the Student of the Year and were all impressed by the outstanding quality of the work, but more on that after the winners have been announced.

Spring cleaning

Cleaned about 400 songs off of my iPod and now it positively gleams...

Currently enjoying:

Sarah McLachlan, Touch (and happy memories of college)
Tori Amos, American Doll Posse
Nico Muhly (classical music with attitude)

Recently purchased

Because I can't visit a place without buying books:

Mythologies, Roland Barthes
L'aventure sémiologique, Roland Barthes
Cours de linguistique générale, Ferdinand de Saussure.
An anthology of 20th century French poetry and a book on the painter Ingres.

Bonjour from Nice!

I'm in NIce, on the Cote d'Azur on holiday. It's paradise all around - lovely sea, lovely people, great shopping a bit of culture and a mild but sunny temperature. Spent three days in St Paul de Vence for a consulting meeting. We worked hard, but also ate at two Michelin-starred restaurants, L'Abbaye and la Colombe d'Or. We stayed in a charming resort, Le Mas de Pierre and had a conference room with a view of the collines. So it's hard to complain that most of the data analytics we discussed went right over my head.

Now, should I go to Monaco today or not?

On travel

from a haiku by Matsuo Basho:

'The moon and sun are eternal travellers. Even the years wander on. A lifetime adrift in a boat, or in old age leading a tired horse into the years, every day is a journey, and the journey itself is home.'

New York City in Spring

Spent the weekend in New York on a glorious Spring weekend. The first they've had and everyone was out to enjoy it. Walked through Central Park in the sunshine and burnt the top of my head. Oh well. Now I'm in Connecticut for Unilever meetings for a few days.

Homemade bento box dinner. And I'm quite proud. The black things are onigiri - rice and paste wrapped in seaweed. Now off to New York (where, no doubt, there are much better bento box dinners.)

Henley-on-Thames

Thursday we had a workshop day in the Hotel du Vin, Henley-on-Thames in Oxfordshire. What a lovely town for a sunny Spring day.

Denmark, not the US, is the world leader of technological advancement.

Updates

John was here for ten days. It flew by for me, but he may have tired of sleeping on my floor. It was wonderful to see him and spend time together. We ate Indian, Korean and any other -an we fancied. Drank too many martinis then saw Patrick Stewart in the Tempest at the RSC where we glugged champagne at intermission. We went to Cambridge and Ely in East Anglia to tour the old buildings, the university men, scholarly books (no, really I bought too many) and the English countryside. Then I got sick and John was on his own for a few footloose and fancy-free days.

It's awfully quiet without him now. I miss him.

Pictures of our travels somewhere in the margins.

John arrives today for a London romp. Looking forward to the company, the mischief and the book trading that seems to happen when he's in town.

Lovely Flash site from Mercedes.

On how to be a good digital marketer

1
Digital is much more than a website. From mobiles to PDA devices to interactive television to ambient media, rich digital experiences can now be delivered to people whether or not they’re in front of their computers.
2
It is difficult to know everything about digital. And unnecessary. Be collaborative, inquisitive and clear about what you expect. Treat your digital agencies as partners in the process. They will help you to explore and understand the best technology and use.
3
All digital channels aren’t effective in all markets. The Web isn’t always the strongest channel. We need to understand with what and how often our target audiences engage with different channels.
4
But the technologies are constantly evolving and maturing. The digital landscape changes from day to day and so allow time for your agencies and digital partners to research and plan the best approach to technology.
5
Brief agencies on your business, brand, challenges and aspirations rather than on the ‘execution’. Instead of telling an agency you need a microsite, email campaign or viral ad, tell them what the business problem is and search for the best execution strategy together – the most effective execution maybe something neither of you had thought about before the project.
6
Measure everything that you do in digital media. Identify what data you’re capturing and how at the start of a project. Know when you can and can’t expect benchmarks for digital media. Media like websites and rich media ads are more likely to have mature, reliable benchmarks than emerging media like virtual worlds, social network pages.
7
Data is king, but reporting is not the same as good analysis. Think of your project as being in ‘permanent beta’ and, therefore, able to adapt and improve to customer usage and satisfaction as it lives.
8
The customer should always be at the centre of the experience. Whether a target, prospective, or lapsed, their journey and interaction with the brand should be the ultimate criteria for the digital experience.
9
Focusing your digital marketing efforts on – and optimising against – a single business / marketing success metric will do far more to the bottom line that trying to optimise against more than one. Don’t make your digital strategy a laundry list of jobs to do.
10
Don’t think about digital in isolation. Think about all of your channels (TV, print, POS, events, digital, etc.) together and how the customer journeys from one to the other. You can then plan a unique role of digital (how it does something that no other channel can do) and the complimentary role of digital (how it strengthens or builds from activity in other channels.)
11
You need to drive integration between the agencies. All agencies will promise integration, but clients make it happen -- it's increasingly technology and data driven, and not that difficult to execute well. Active collaboration with existing and new business partners (I mean real, open, I-know-I-don't-know-it-all collaboration) pays far greater dividends.
12
Include your digital agencies at the very start of the process. And demand that they can participate in marketing and brand strategy discussions and not just digital executions.
13
Digital is more than a communications channel. It creates experiences that build strong and lasting bond with your customers whether as a service, distribution channel or ongoing engagement. It is a channel for delivering brand experiences as well as brand communications.
14
Identifying how your brand behaves in digital media is as important as how it looks and its tone of voice. It is interactive and how it behaves will great impact.
15
Great digital experiences bring together exciting brand expression and high usability. You shouldn’t sacrifice one for any of the others. If the digital experience looks great, but is difficult (or even impossible) to use, it will fail.
16
But effectiveness and beautiful execution are not mutually exclusive. Value both the creativity and the usability of the digital experience.
17
Innovation means not only using ‘new’ technologies but also using proven technologies in new ways. New technologies can be a risk if customers aren’t ready or able to change their digital behaviour. Innovation shouldn’t only be a result of technology; it should be the approach to it.
18
Customers now share control of your brand experience in digital. They can create content with, about and around your campaigns, communications and experiences. Not everyone does, but those who do can be influential. Build relationships with these digital influencers, share the development of the brand with them, and be constantly vigilant about what is said, created and debated here. Y
19
You need to play with digital media to know how to plan digital strategy. Whether it’s playing games on a handheld, downloading a file to your mobile via Bluetooth, interacting with digital billboards you won’t know the joys and pains of the media unless you use them.
20
Be excited by the possibilities. Digital is constantly evolving how people interact with your brand and the benefits to you as a marketer are infinite.

Brian Jensen
With thanks to David Hofmeyr, Rajus Korde, Giles Rhys Jones, and James Sandoval.

On Web 2.0

Web 2.0 in a nutshell

On weddings

Today my afternoon nap was disrupted by the sounding of drumming and cheering. I thought it might have been for Chinese New Year, but it as instead an Indian wedding arriving at the hotel behind my flat. The music and dancing was infectious and joyful. I took what pictures I could.

On high-tech Valentines

Koreans say be mine with high-tech valentines.

"Usually chocolate is a typical gift... but it's just so consumable. This video is the only one existing in the world, and lasts longer. It's very special," she added.

On Obama's sociali network-ilisation

Obama's launch a new site using social network tools for his campaign.

On math I'm not going to even try to do

I just purchased by 1300th song on iTunes. Crikey.

On Molly Ivins

Molly Ivins died on Wednesday. Such a loss. She was a truly great American and journalist.

On New York

I'll be in New York City this weekend if anyone I happen to know is as well...pictures, madcap antics and more to come.

On intersections

'People who live in the intersection of social worlds are at higher risk of having good ideas.' Ronald S. Burt, on where ideas come from.

On Later Life

Later Life, by Christina Rossetti

Something this foggy day, a something which
Is neither of this fog nor of today,
Has set me dreaming of the winds that play
Past certain cliffs, along one certain beach,
And turn the topmost edge of waves to spray:
Ah pleasant pebbly strand so far away,
So out of reach while quite within my reach,
As out of reach as India or Cathay!
I am sick of where I am and where I am not,
I am sick of foresight and of memory,
I am sick of all I have and all I see,
I am sick of self, and there is nothing new;
Oh weary impatient patience of my lot!
Thus with myself: how fares it, Friends, with you?

On the word of the day...

Nerdgasm.

Best response to the iPhone announcement I've heard. I'm not commenting on much else because it's going to be ages before we get the iPhone in the UK.

On Roller Girls

My friend, the truly delicious Melissa 'Melicious' Joulwan, has written a book about her experiences in roller derby. Roller Girl, the book, is published in February. Not only that, Mel is the first friend (that I know of) to be featured in Penthouse magazine (sorry boys, her clothes stayed on.)

On earphones

So ignore what I said about the Sennheiser earphones (which fell apart and lodged a metal splinter under my thumb that was painfully difficult to fish out.) The Shure E series earphones are brilliant. I started at the bottom of the range although the salesperson very kindly let me list to the top of the range which had celestial sound (and a $600 price tag.)

On politics 2.0

The first Congressional interview has taken place in Second Life.

On Onoe

This is the japanese print I bought in Vienna of the kabuki actor Onoe Eizaburo I. Dated 1803, it's by far the oldest thing I own.

On habitual sightings

Most mornings I see a man on the Jubilee line. He's tall, lean, early 40s, and always well dressed but in colours that are never one or another, greyish-blue, blueish-grey, beigish-brown, brownish-grey. He carries a half-drunk litre of milk and a tiny bible at which he squints. At Baker Street and Bond Street stations he stands in the doorway. When the train stops and door opens he steps out, waits for the trainlight to go green then steps back into the closing doors and continues reading while carrying his litre of milk. No one looks, but everyone notices him.

On America

Happy new year. I've been putting off trying to write about my holiday until I had time to be thoughful, but time and thoughtfulness are in short supply and unwilling to cooperate, so I'll do the best I can now.

It was a wonderful trip. Full of sunshine, friends and family in equal and much appreciated doses. It was, in turns, busy and lazy with lots to do and plenty of time to do nothing at all. So here it is, best of my collection

15th - arrive. Dinner with Andy and Kelly. 'Big beers for a big Friday' said the waiter at that fantastic Chinatown restaurant. What was it, Andy?
16th - Crab eggs benedict at the Beach Chalet with K and Robert. Shopping. A stunning Pinot noir with John at the Redwood Room. Party at Robert's.
17th - Breakfast the hotel. Drinks at the Lone Star alone. Yes, for shame, alone.
18th - Squat and Gobble (yes, seriously) with John and Jason. Grace Cathedral, shopping, gorgeous dinner at Range with Andy, Anthony and Robert.
19th - Los Gatos with mum (and from here it gets blurry. Shopping, lazing, eating.)

Interlude: There are very few people I could spend two weeks doing very little, but my mum, mom, mother is one of them. I enjoy her company and hospitality. The conversations over a bottle of wine, the cooking and home/garden shows, the peanut brittle challenge, the coffee, the theatre, everything. I teach her how to be lazy and she teaches me how to live a life healthy in mind and body.

24th - My Aunt comes to stay. She's in her 80s, but somehow exactly as I always remember her. My poor mum has to work from 7am until well after midnight.
25th - cooking for my mum and dad, aunt and brother. I make a feast: prime rib, potatoes dauphinoise, crepes with pumpkin mousse. My brother brings a salad. I drink a bottle of champage on my own wondering how I came to be descended from non-champagne drinkers.
26th - I get the great idea that we can just swap the dead tv in the beautiful cabinet with the new one. My dad and brother spend the afternoon carefully demolishing it was every tool known to man (I would've used a hammer, but that's me.) I stay out of the way.
27th - To San Francisco for a matinee at the theatre and sushi dinner with mum and Robert.

Is Pomo the new black?

Interesting article from the Economist on the link between post-modern philosophy and shopping.

'More surprising, perhaps, than the pomos' influence on the way business presents itself was the accuracy of their predictions and the perspicacity of their perceptions.'