When I was home over the Spring Festival holiday, I saw a copy of The Power of Now, by Eckhart Tolle, sitting around my parent’s house. I read the introduction on a trip to the bathroom (I can’t seem to get off this bathroom theme), and packed the book in my bag when we left […]
Monthly Archives: March 2007
Bathroom Design
I have no idea why I’m still stuck on bathrooms, but… If I were to teach a course on male bathroom design, the first principle I would teach would be: If you are going to build a bathroom without a door, the urinal should not be visible to people standing outside.
Watching the waterfall or listening to the rain?
I was reminded of one of my favorite bathroom naming conventions in China today when I went to relieve myself today. The men’s room was named “The Pavilion of Watching the Waterfall” (观瀑äº), and the women’s room was called “The Room of Listening to the Rain” (å¬é›¨è½©).
Ticket to Visit the World Trade Center on 9/11
Met a Chinese guy today who was in the US on 9/11. He was in Washington and was scheduled head to NY and visit the World Trade Center Towers on September 12th. His friend had tickets to visit the towers on the 11th. After the attacks there was the option to return the tickets for […]
Blank Slate
Partly inspired by this guy, I deleted the CSS file for this blog and replaced it with only the most basic formatting. I say this was only partly inspired, because I’d initially wanted to start with a blank slate, but had been too lazy to get rid of the default template. I’m not a design […]
Influence
I first learned about Robert Cialdini’s work on the “psychology of persuasion” from Mike when he brought copies of an article by Cialdini to our super-secret Tuesday discussion group. The article outlined Cialdini’s six principles of persuasion and intrigued me enough that I did some searching online and downloaded a talk of Cialdini’s from Audible. […]
The World is Flat: The Perspective of the Lexus and the Olive Tree
Some people don’t like him, but I’ve always been a fan of Thomas Friedman. Like Andrew Sullivan, he’s someone with whom I don’t always agree, but I admire for being willing to explore (and sometimes change) his opinion in a public forum. Friedman has become very well-known in China with the discussion surrounding his book […]