By Manfred & Martin, aka The Swimming Club, both in Germany. At Swimming Club, a conversation about useless objects became an experiment in 1995 technology — and a question about what disappears when everything becomes easier. Painful object divorces. Martin does not need long to think about the things he owns but never uses. There…
By Fabrice Janita asked me to explain two local traditions she had never heard of: a wild boar dinner among old military vehicles, and a 12-kilometre Marche Gourmande built around food, wine, music and friends. Janita looked at the photographs and said, “I know absolutely nothing about the wild boar dinner. Start at the beginning….
If you are married or have kids, you have undoubtedly heard the frantic call: “I can’t find it!” or “I don’t know where it is!” So you patiently get up, walk over to the cupboard or the fridge, reach past nothing at all, and pull out the exact item they were looking for. It wasn’t…
It started with a drawer full of random things. It ended with the quiet rules I learned from my mother, and the question of which of those rules still matter now. By Alexander, Germany. The famous drawers. We do not have one of those famous drawers where everything goes when nobody knows where else to…
What is the actual meaning of “ordinary”? On paper, it means normal, usual, or expected. Something that happens regularly without fanfare. Nothing special, nothing different—everything just stays the same. It is an ordinary day, an ordinary job, an ordinary drive to work or school. There is no major excitement, nothing goes wrong, and everything runs…
Chapter One: The Morning After I woke up this morning with my alarm clock ringing wildly in my ears. The sound was so sharp and piercing it felt like it was cutting directly through my skull. I reached out, hit snooze, and promised myself I would not fall asleep before the next buzz started. My…
As I sit here today, I realize something quiet and surprisingly grounding: I am content in who I am. That might sound like a simple statement, but in a world that constantly tells us to re-invent ourselves every Tuesday, it feels like a small victory. Not everyone knows who they are or who they want…
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…
