The Human Bit, by Frank Peters. Last week, I had a conversation with someone in his mid-fifties who has spent about twenty-five years working in technical development. We were talking about changes in his company. Managers have left. New managers have arrived. Interim managers have appeared. Departments have been reorganised. There are new names, new…
Friday morning arrived looking slightly damaged. Fruitloop had the flu. The Mayor felt like a train wreck. Not FLU, obviously. FLU is Fruitloop University, a much healthier condition involving dragons, questionable academic standards and, as it turned out, senior political responsibility. By ten o’clock the bad flu was still hanging around, but Fruitloop University had…
By Fabrice, France There are objects we keep because they still work. Others stay because they carry a story. In my workshop, the difference is not always easy to see. Janita showed me a photograph of a workshop and asked what I noticed first. It was much too tidy. Everything had its place. The tools…
Drink your water. Eat your vegetables. Don’t drink too much coffee. Go to bed early. These are the quiet, ordinary pillars of our daily lives—the reliable rules we follow without a second thought. But what happens when the ordinary suddenly flips on its head? What if the experts declared tomorrow that vegetables are terrible for…
You do not need another place to practise English. You need a place where English lets you take part. At Brida, the conversation is about real life: what you notice, what you think, what surprises you, what matters to you. No lessons. No correction. No pretending. You bring your experience, your curiosity and your point…
Why do we keep a drawer filled with tangled cables when we have no idea what they actually plug into? Why do we instinctively stand in queues, hang up our towels after a shower, or refill the ice tray when somebody has used the last cube? Some of these habits have perfectly sensible explanations. Others…
With Rosii, Brazil, Janita, South Africa, Frank, France. Monica was hopping around in the Tundra and sent her apologies. At Lunch, a conversation about household rules travels from polished pans and shoes on balconies to ice-cube crimes, secret rule-breaking and the dangerous question of whether there is only one correct way to make a bed….
Nathalie tries to fly to Accra via Edinburgh. You won’t believe it: we couldn’t take off for Edinburgh on Tuesday! There was a total air traffic control blackout in the UK due to a system failure—or maybe a cyberattack! Over 1,000 flights were cancelled, and Cléa and I were among them. So, it was back…
Monica sends us a few snapshots from Ny-Ålesund, Svalbard — one of the northernmost permanent settlements in the world. Roald Amundsen is still here. Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen was the first person to reach the South Pole, in 1911. In 1926 he also flew over the North Pole aboard the airship Norge. Ny-Ålesund was part…
By Sylvie, France. Some things are waiting to be useful. Others are keeping a memory safe. The difficult part is knowing which is which. I like when things are organised. Old batteries have their special place. Cables have another box. The cables I use every day are easy, but the others — from old laptops…
