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Design

15 Design and Korea 4: The Ruler

Korean culture is indebted to its rulers, even its alphabet (한글 hangeul) created by decree of King Sejong in 1443. But that kind of ruler is not my topic today. I needed a ruler. The un-kingly sort, for making straight lines on paper. So I went to a Korean stationary store. If you’ve not been […]

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Life

14 The Unbearable Pleasure of the Crappy Company

This is a paean to the shitty enterprise. You know the sort. The ones with 3.1 stars on Glassdoor. The reviews that sniffle how “you learn a lot.” The owners whose visions never translate into strategy, which never gels with execution, that never fails too miserably to kill the damned thing off. They come in […]

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Art Design Life

13 Design and Korea 3: The Tree

When I was six years old, I went to my first day of ESL (English as a Second Language) class at the International School of Tanganyka. I was pretty proud that I could count a bit already: “one, two, tree.” I was immersed in Amglish culture. From Enid Blyton to Dr Seuss, and so forth. […]

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Art Life

12 Sufficitary

In 1999 we went on a school trip and I saw architectural models by Jože Plečnik. Some of them were never built, only dreamt. Here was fantasy made wood, and sometimes stone and glass and steel. I was seventeen and I wanted very much to be an architect. Father got wind of this. Not surprising, […]