Beside the enormous Wat Suan Dok, a Thai temple in Chiang Mai, is a striking graveyard of local aristocracy. This sprawling cemetary is filled with bright white stupas like sun-bleached bone and one very golden chedi. This is one of my favorites in the Meditating Wind series. Scattered throughout were colorful garland offerings and a hot dry heat that cleaned out my lungs.
On one of my long lunch breaks I visited my favorite furniture store, hhstyle. There’s nothing in there that I can afford. Even the little toy models of the furniture range in the $300-500 range. But all the pieces are at least intrigueing works of art, if not beautiful. They may even be comfortable but I’ll never know because there are DO NOT TOUCH signs everywhere. I see the shop, located in Harajuku, as more of a museum and I enjoy the interior layout of the showroom itself, which features long glass enclosed staircases that span the length of the building, leading to the different floors. If you want service you’ll have to go up to them; they do their best to try to pretend you’re not there.
If there’s one piece that I would entertain buying (once I win the lottery) it’s the Polder Sofa.
My buddy Thom who does a lot of interesting ranting at Mentat Musings recently critiqued the use of a road map metaphor to describe policy strategies. He uses the Roadmap to Climate Change as his example but you can see the use of the road map imagery for many governmental plans. I agree with him that using the image of a roadmap is problematic for something that envisions reducing emissions, since it implies driving a car. And in this case probably more than a car. Perhaps a motorcade of SUVs and limousines with motorcycle support creating a traffic jam of idling vehicles backed up for miles.
It’s time for new metaphors. I’m perfectly fine with a transportation or cartographic theme so let’s look at a few. Continue reading
This past week I watched both Rocky Balboa and 300. Long ago, I learned to just watch movies for pure entertainment and then deconstruct them for fun afterwards. I enjoyed both these movies for the choreography of the fight scenes, as well as the guilty pleasure of watching eye candy cinematography (in the case of ’300′) and reliving childhood nostalgia (in the case of ‘Rocky Balboa’). And it struck me how both films follow the same narrative.
What could possibly be similar about these two very different movies, set thousands of years apart.
One movie is about a Spartan king, who against overwhelming odds, and against the wishes of his council, takes a small contingent of warriors who embody old school values of toughness and discipline, and valiantly fends off the superior forces of the Persian Empire, led by an arrogant Xerxes.
Having recently moved into a new apartment, I find myself thinking about what home has been for me. It’s not a simple answer because I have lived in so many places that I’ve called home, 27 addresses to be exact. That’s a new address every 1.37 years. I don’t know anyone else who has moved more. Though intellectually I felt mildly shocked by this number, emotionally it feels unremarkable. That is, I don’t feel like I’ve wandered so much. But there it is; I’m undeniably a nomad.
In coming up with this list of 27, I had to define what got included in this list. So here were my guidelines: Continue reading
