By Manfred & Martin (The Swimming Club), Germany. We build technology to make life simpler. Then we forget how it works, improve it until it gets worse, and invent another button to rescue us. Before the Swimming Club could begin talking about technology, we first had to get the technology working. The Mayor had built…
By Alexander, Germany. When two people move in together, they do not arrive alone. They bring cupboards, habits, childhood rules, standards of cleanliness — and completely different ideas about where the keys belong. Julia and I never sat down and discussed the rules of our household. There was no constitution, no negotiation and no list…
Lunch with Rosii, (Brazil), Janita (Fruitloop, South Africa), Frank, (The Mayor, France) We use them, lose them, complain when they stop working and almost never wonder who invented them. Then Fruitloop suggested replacing the doorbell with a mousetrap, and ordinary life became considerably less ordinary. Some inventions arrive with fanfare. Others quietly enter our lives,…
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….
By Ritesh in Bangalore, Ismar in Campo Grande, Brazil. From supermarket trolleys in Brazil to temple lines in India and government offices in South Africa, waiting reveals something surprisingly human: our rules matter most when we are tempted to break them. By Atlantic Corridor A queue looks simple. One person stands behind another. Everybody waits…
Rosie in Sao Paulo, Fruitloop in South Africa, The Mayor in Cleebourg. Monica, who found the fjords of Norway more attractive, sent her regards. From mystery cables and faded receipts to old radios, corks and instruction manuals, one ordinary drawer reveals a surprisingly human reason why we struggle to let things go. There is a…
By Rosie, Brazil, Fruitloop, South Africa and The Mayor, France. Some questions make us stop and think. Others send us towards fortune tellers, forbidden soup and aliens building pyramids. At Lunch, apparently, both kinds are equally important. The conversation started, as Lunch conversations often do, somewhere between ordinary life and mild chaos. Rosii arrived tired…
Sometimes we return because we miss something. Sometimes we return and discover it has changed. And sometimes the past comes looking for us through a volleyball, a bowl of beetroot, a song—or a very suspicious fridge. The question sounded simple enough. “What is something you keep coming back to, even though nobody is making you?”…
Curiosity often begins with a passport, but it doesn’t always need one. Sometimes a new world is only a conversation away. The conversation began, as many good conversations do, with the weather. Monica described a chilly Australian morning, Fruitloop laughed about frozen toes after South Africa swung from two degrees to twenty-two in just a…
Sometimes rest isn’t a holiday, a spa day, or a weekend away. Sometimes it’s taking off your makeup, drinking coffee in silence, watching birds gather in a winter tree, or finally making time for the thing you’ve been meaning to do. There is something wonderfully revealing about asking a simple question: What is your rest…
