Alcohol is an integral part of Slovenian culture. Boys become men by drinking. Hosts welcome visitors to their homes with a schnapps. At celebrations, people become dancers and revelers after two beers. At university, exams passed and exams failed are celebrated with a bottle of wine. All three great European drinks are part of Slovenian […]
My hometown of Tolmin has fewer than 4,000 citizens. Lausanne, in Switzerland, has 140,000 (and shops that close earlier than in Tolmin). In both towns, people live in large single houses or small apartment blocks. This is the way people live throughout the Alps. You could take a paysan from Pully, plop them in Ptuj, […]
I’ve thought of writing this piece for months, but every time I stopped my fingers from hitting the keyboard. Keep it positive, keep it interesting, keep it personal. We expatriates are, after all, disenfranchised people in the societies we inhabit. Better to avoid politics. In the oval office sits a sad (and strikingly stupid) little […]
‘Artist’ (‘Umetnik’) was often used as a slur, rather than a description, in my mountain town. Honest people worked with their hands, farmers and laborers and surgeons. Dishonest people worked with their mouths, lawyers and politicians and teachers. Artists did not work. They created. And what they created was chaos and danger and change. Or, […]
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 […]
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. […]
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, […]
“Where are your scissors?” “In the stationery drawer, why?” “I need to cut the meat.” “Huh?!?” In creative and design and lateral thinking workshops one of the oldest tricks in the book is the brick. Master comes into room. Master places brick on table. Bits of fired clay crumble onto table. That will leave ochre […]
“Write more about weird food,” they said. They being friends of mine, curious about a far off land they may well never visit. I filed the idea away and went about my day. Days passed. With YL we completed some Exciting Bureaucratic ManeouversTM, bought a comfortable office chair, visited the street of second hand books, […]
I hate design. There, I’ve said it. To be precise, I detest working as a graphic or ui or ux designer. As a web designer, even more. The work process is about 5% creativity, 50% routine pixel-pushery and 50% puffery. And yes, the bad maths is part and parcel, too. Don’t get me wrong. I […]