A place to sit and a light to read

I have issues with style and design. I'm not convinced it comes naturally to me. As intriguing as I find it, design has always been my brother's forte, not mine. But when you buy an apartment, you have to make some style-choices of your own.

I think I did OK on the basics, but for the last 4 months, I have been stalling on the finishing touches. Not that they are life-altering choices but... How do you pick chairs and lighting? A table on its own can look fantastic, but how do you combine it with chairs? And where do you place it the lighting? What style do you choose?

If I'd been left to fend for myself, my next dinnerparty would be a stand-up dinner in the dark. But thankfully, Mama-Pew decided to take charge this weekend and she whisked me off to a few design stores. It totally helps to have a second pair of eyes when decorating.

I decided on a set of classic Panton chairs. Absoluut Design sells them second-hand, and I think we bagged a nice bargain. I like their organic shape. My table is quite tight in design, so I figured the chairs would fit.

For the lighting, we decided to go with a set of lamps I absolutely fell in love with a few weeks ago: Occhio Sento. I will have them fitted next month.

The cool thing about them, is that u can manipulate the walllamps... they exist with differently coloured lenses and you can aim the beams as you please. Below is an example of a shop display with them:


As Mama-Pew phrased it: this will put the "cachet" in your wee pad. I think she may be right ;-)

Sunday Struggle # 14

1. The moleskin project: everyone has them these days: the moleskin notebook. I have a dozen blank ones at home still, in a myriad of sizes, because every time I pass by them in the shops, I have an uncontrollable urge to get one. It's like a paper-version of the magpie's shiny-object kleptomania. Anyway, I found this website recently where people can post snapshots out of their moleskins. It's worth a browse.

2. Big Foot Wheelchair. This I find fascinating: Re-designing existing concepts such as the wheelchair, not merely from a functional perspective, but from an aesthetic perspective too. It makes sense doesn't it? We all attach tremendous importance to how the world perceives us. We often choose our car, clothes, sportsgear and glasses for the image they portray. Then why not the same for medical aids? If you're bound to a wheelchair, you have a big enough struggle to make others see beyond the chair. If you can help them find your true personality by sprucing up the design of the wheelchair, then I think that's brilliant!

3. Simply Scripts: a database of filmscripts, as the actors/directors use them. Handy if you're teaching yourself how to write a script without splashing out on expensive second-rate writing classes.

4. The Classic Typewriter: earlier this week, I dug up my mum's old typewriter. I spend far too much time on the laptop, and was desperate to find an alternative that doesn't leave my thumb and index finger cramped up around a pen. I went looking for parts and re-fill ink-tapes and came out on this website. It's a beauty. Not sure I will actually find much use for the typewriter as it's noise as hell and heavy to lug around, but it was fun, nostalgic passe-temps while it lasted.

5. Grandma's Kitchen. I think a lot of modern design is far from practical. Many designs aim at multi-functionality, but I wonder if designers take into account the aspect of comfort. It's all good and wall to make objects like chairs, tables, shelves and beds multifunctional: use yer chair as a table, or store your bed in a shelf against the wall, but I'm hardly gonna purchase it if it's not comfortable or a hassle to configure.

I'm open to new concepts, but one mustn't lose sight of why certain objects have had standard forms/shapes for so many years. It's like the evolution of inanimate objects: we try and test new designs, and certain elements stick, depending on a interplay of societal and personal needs and wants. Look at this for example:

A multifunctional, stow-away kitchen/diner. Call me old-fashion or lazy, but why would I pay for a design if it's gonna ask me to "build" my own kitchen each time I need it? I can follow the reasoning of space-saving, but even then... anyone who's ever served anyone a meal, knows that it's a back and forth between table and kitchen. It'd be downright stressfull to have both table and kitchen be the same space and same item.

6. Cake-mould: This on the other hand, I could see myself buying. It's just quirky and fun. We've had lots of birthdays at work recently and the dividing up of a cake in exact pieces, or to the guest's desire is somewhat chaotic. Now you could just point and go: (Andy-voice) I WANT THAT ONE!




If you find any other fun but pointless gimmicks or designs, I'm interested ;-)

The Feable

I think that should become my nickname. I'm ill again. No surprise really, I've not really been looking after myself properly. Amazing how a responsible adult can so easily default on the essential care of herself. Anyway, it's nothing that can't be remedied, and if the last couple of months have taught me one lesson, it's that PROACTIVENESS is this decade's buzzword, so it probably wouldn't hurt to try and apply it to my own life.

The depressing bit is not the illness itself, but the fact that I had to cancel my trip over to York this weekend. It means I have to wait till November 1st to see my girrel again, which will make it three months (THREE MONTHS!!!) since our last rendez-vous. If I had known then that it would take this long to see her again, I probably wouldn't have come back home at all.

Ahh well, I'm over-dramatising. I think we've both established that there's an upside to every downside and it will serve our relationship well to learn how to tackle moments like this. And we're not doing too badly, if I say so myself ;-)

It's been a while since I was forced to take bed-rest and it's doing me good, I have to say. I get bored, but luckily I have a humongous stack of books to occupy myself with. I read 650 pages the last two days. The book I'm currently reading is Blink (Malcolm Gladwell), which is a very interesting read. It's about the value of snap judgements weighed up against cautious, contemplated decision-making. I'm overall a fairly impulsive person, operating on intuition and I often make decisions based on feelings of which the "why" I can't properly explain. So, this read is elucidating.

The next books in the line-up are Fast Food Nation (Eric Schlosser), How to be Good (Nick Hornby for some light relief) and then Hegemony or Survival (Noam Chomsky). So I think I've got boredom covered for the next few days of illness ;-)

Purposefulness

I overheard a stranger's conversation. He was discussing the purpose of life with his mobile, or with whomever was at the other end of it.

Him and his mobile were idealists.

I felt like smacking them with the book I was reading.

Idealists are highly impractical. They subscribe to a vision of the world as it should be, rather than as it is. It's easy to be a good idealist. You can never fail, for your beliefs will never be trialed by reality.

I'm not sure what I should be classed as. I don't think there's ANY purpose to life. And it puzzles me why people deem such a perspective to be pessimistic. I think it's incredibly liberating. It means you only really have a duty to yourself and even that's debatable. The choice is entirely up to you.

I choose to see life as a game. Nothing too serious.

I've been given two pieces of a puzzle: the world as I see it, and myself. The contours of either piece exist of millions of ragged edges. It's gonna take me a while to figure out how they fit together. I choose to spend my days tracing the edges. To familiarise myself with both givens. And if one day I find they are bits of a different puzzle altogether, I will try and create myself a context. I will create a context around the piece that is me, work my way around my rougher edges, until by some sort of osmosis, the contextual boundaries blur and the picture turns into focus.

No purpose. Only opportunity.

Self-Love

No... not THAT kind... ;-)

I finally got round to publishing my blog in print. Four books of around 150 pages each, 905 days of blogging. It's little more than words, but I have a strong desire to hold on to them. So much has happened. Such fundamental changes and shifts in perception.

When I'm old and slightly senile... tangible proof that I was. Once.

4 blogbooks & 1 travel book

Glamourous Blogpost

Aye, tis.

This post is coming to you from the glamourous location that is.... my loo.

I'm not here by choice, mind. I appear to have caught a touch of stomachflu and I've been stuck here for hours. Thank fuck for wireless!

Moments like this are just plain annoying. It's amazing how our bodies can hold us hostage so easily. There's not much for it but to surrender. To kill the boredom whilst waiting for nature to run its course, I went through 3 New Scientists, 2 episodes of Mad About You, my entire list of RSS feeds AND I've read the small-print of every product-package in my loo. It's surprising the amount of crap that goes into toilet-paper. No pun intended.

Also, I am running out of Kandoo, which is a little scary considering my predicament.

More scary, perhaps, is the fact that I'm due to board a plane to visit PapaPew in Vienna tomorrow morning. The last thing I want, is to be struck down with the runs in a cramped unsanitary cabinloo whilst thousands of feet in the air. Methinks it's time to break out the anxiolithicums again.

Under normal circumstances, I'd be washing my lucky travelsock right now, but I appear to have lost it a few months ago. When I first realised I'd lost it, I totally flipped. I am superstitiously inclined only when it concerns airplanes. I have a fixed routine that I follow and god forbid something should interfere with that routine.

My girrel, in a brave attempt to calm me down, decided to take on board my utterly bizarre neuroticism, and promised she'd wear odd socks from now on, each time I'd be travelling by plane. To compensate for the lucky travelsock lost.

She must love me.