Coworking, Public Spaces and Sniff

This is SNIFF, an interactive work by Karolina Sobecka and Jim George.
“As you walk down the street you are approached by a dog. He is on his guard trying to discern your intentions. He will follow you and interpret your gestures as friendly or aggressive. He will try to engage you in a relationship and [...]

Without You They’re All Lost

I’m a working father of a 5 year old cat.
I’ve thought about taking on more responsibility, perhaps a Rottweiler or Doberman, but we’ll be moving to a small inner-city apartment soon and our carefully drawn floor-plans indicate that our new lounge room is so small that even reading a book on the couch is only [...]

The People’s Blackboards

I’m in Philly at the moment, staying in what has got to be the campest and most eclectic BnB in the US. It’s a turn of the century townhouse run by the Mrs Madrigal-like Barbara and every room (and the back garden) is filled with eclectic flea market finds in an over-the-top celebration of quirky [...]

How Life Became Grande

I just flew Singapore to Washington via Tokyo, and I’ve managed to pass 7 airport Starbucks cafés. Washington has 5.
I’ve probably mentioned before that I don’t find Starbucks coffee all that stunning. It’s not terrible, and it does the job, but I grew up in a city of great Italian coffee joints, and my preference [...]

Everyday Superheroes

I’ve been involved in a community project for the past 2 weeks that’s had me stationed in a field in Bishan.
I’ve been totally humbled by the wonderful people around me. All volunteers, many of them were there from 8.30am until midnight every day, sometimes taking responsibility for fairly quiet and repetitive tasks. Nothing was ever [...]

Building A Shrine For Vesak

Each year we take over a park and build a massive marquee for Vesak. It’s up for about two weeks (the actual event lasts 5 days) and then overnight it all comes back down again. The basic structure is up now, and last night we unloaded 2 shipping containers of stuff to fill it with.

pics [...]

Surviving The Global Financial Hissy Fit

One of my favourite writers/thinkers, Kim Sbarcea coined the term GFHF (Global Financial Hissy Fit) and I like it so much I want to get tshirts made, because in a way I’ve been struggling with with what it’s all about. Is it a recession or a reorder? My vote is going with reorder.
What’s the difference? [...]

SheepTool – Remote Group Decision Interface

“SheepTool offers a better, more natural alternative to videoconferencing. At meeting time, everyone logs onto a shared virtual workspace and opens up a communal audio connection, the Bleatspace. At the same time, a round field is shown onscreen, and clustered in the middle are icons that represent each participant, consisting of nothing more than a [...]

Learning The Future

Today is the first day I’ve read a Singapore newspaper in a couple of weeks, and the hot topic is whether or not to do away with the exam assessment system, in favour of continuous assessment, for kids in the first and second years of primary school.
You’d think the results would be a shoe-in, but [...]

What Does It Take To Make A Kid Happy?

I don’t want to be one of those “you think you’ve got it bad…” people, but I followed a link from Inhabitat today to Avik Maitra’s blog. Please visit. There’s only a couple of posts a month and it’s a great lesson in perspective.
He’s an American architecture student doing some time in Lilongwe, Malawi, as [...]