Hippo Dignity

It’s overcast here, which is a drag - there’s so much sky in Cape Town, and by all accounts it’s spectacular when it’s sunny. But hopefully the sky will clear tomorrow, when we have some more tourist time.

(I just went to check the weather forecast online, having forgotten that I’d already logged off the Internet, since as noted before the cost is metered. I bought four hours worth and have already gone through an hour and a half. What I’ve come to realize is that it’s not that I use that much Internet time — I got through most of my email fairly quickly — but that so much of what I do with my computer now presumes that I’m always online. I downloaded MarsEdit so I could compose blog posts about all this offline; so far so good.)

Presumption is also a good place to start thinking about the Interactions conference, and about this trip, since the former was so much about using and challenging them, and this trip just overturns them, or exists outside of them.

(more…)

I am here. It’s useful to be reminded.

The Internet access here is pay-per-hour — not a lot, but just enough for me to take Malcolm McCullough’s advice from last weekend and go for a walk.

More soon.

Happy birthday to my niecelets, who are three years old today, and not so small anymore. I spoke to them on the phone today, and they both wished me a happy birthday too, so we’re even.

(Also, my sister related back the best comment ever, when she took her always-up hair down: “Mommy, you have hair like Aunt Michele!” Those girls understand a trademark look when they see one.)

Vacation culinaria

Originally uploaded by michelet.



Over the past week, I’ve been mostly hanging out at home, getting reacquainted with my apartment after a long and stressful last quarter of last year. When I spend time at home, taking care of the place, the urge to cook mostly just shows up by itself, and the last few days I have been cooking up a storm — my freezer now has oatmeal breakfast clafoutis, French lentil soup, and mini leatloaves made entirely with farmer’s market and other locally grown meat (so, so good.) A few of the dishes that never made the freezer were a white chili that improved markedly once it had sat in the fridge overnight, and this “pizza” on a whole wheat pita.

Riffing off of a cookbook recipe and my favorite pizza at Amorina, I caramelized half a thinly-sliced onion with some dried thyme, and at the very end added one chunked-up cremini mushroom to soften it. I put those on the pita with some mozzarella, a couple of pitted olives, and some marinated artichoke heart pieces. Ten minutes in the oven and it was delicious — and, I thought, lovely. Here’s hoping 2008 stays so satisfying.

For myself, I’ll be continuing to read The Arsonists’s Guide to Writers’ Homes in New England, which is, fear not, a novel. But if you’re looking for some Awesome Design reading, you could do worse than Five Reasons Why The iPhone Is Older Than You Think, which was written by my boss and makes reference to some findings from a research project I led. I also recently had my mind blown by The Sound of Interaction Design, which manages to combine principles for good design for interactive products with The Sound of Music. Goddamn clever British people.

For those of you observing Yom Kippur, an easy fast, and a happy and a healthy New Year. Everyone else, have a great weekend, and eat something really fattening and greasy for me!

Dramatis Personae: Me and Lisa, who have had tickets since February, and Max, who delightfully was available to step in when Lisa’s mother couldn’t use her ticket.

Max: I… I just saw Ian McKellen’s bits.
Me: You really didn’t read any coverage of this play, did you?
Max: You mean, you knew?
Lisa: It’s been in all the articles.
Max: Was that why you bought the tickets?

This weekend, I was honored to be an invited speaker at the IDSA North-east Division’s regional conference, which was held at the Rhode Island School of Design. Woot! It’s always nice to revisit College Hill — I went to Brown, so I get all nostalgic about my theory-head SGML-coding 21-year-old self, who I think would be surprised but not disappointed to learn that the SGML has turned out to be at least as important in my life as the theory.

Highlights of the bits of the conference I was able to attend:

• Hearing Jon Kolko tell an audience of industrial designers and ID students that the really cool new design job to aim for was something called “information architect.” I am so telling all my ID colleagues.
• Allen Chochinov of Core77’s line “if you’re as smart as you bill you are,” which I am, I warn you all now, stealing.
• The conversation I had with three-fourths of the IxDA lunchtime panel members on the ride up, which was at least as enlightening as their pretty terrific panel was.

It was all really interesting, and it would have been nice to stay, but it was, I have to admit, even nicer to have an excuse to visit Harry and his fantastic crew in their New England digs. I was treated to a performance of Mona’s “Peter Rabbit” musical (”Stunning!” - The New York Times) and a trip to the town fair. Isabel even demanded to sit next to me at dinner, which I hope means we are no longer archnemesises.

But that was not the high point. Oh, no. The high point was, after a twelve-year battle over which was the correct version of the song, getting to sing “Little Rabbit Foo-Foo” with Mona Teasley as her dad weakly attempted to insist that it was supposed to be “Bunny.”

“You are wrong, Daddy,” said Mona.

“This just gets better and better,” said Harry.

“And Michele is right. Girls rock, and boys do not.”

She’s a genius, I tell you. A genius.

When I was in college, and working as a temp in midtown over the summer, I would take lunches sometimes in the public space in the ground floor of the Philip Morris building.  There was a gallery associated with some New York museum, I forget which, though I remember the Laurie Anderson retrospective that was hung there.  The space also had a nice set of steps well-proportioned for sitting and reading, and tables where one could sit and eat. I think the space is still open to the public, although it’s now the Altria Group building, you could go check it out for yourself.

Anyway, I worked a series of lame temp jobs in that general area, and would go there for lunch whenever I could, so I can’t tell you exactly when this happened.  But one day, my head was still half in the book I’d been reading as I walked towards the stairs and the door, and I didn’t notice the guy sitting on the steps until I’d tripped over his foot.

“Oh!” I said when I recovered.  “I’m –”

And then I stopped.  Because I realized I’d tripped over Kurt Vonnegut.

Now, when you trip over some random man’s foot in the lobby of the Philip Morris building, you don’t expect it to be the author whose books you collected in a series of matched trade paperbacks through high school and into college.  And when you’re as lousy at face recognition as I am, you certainly don’t expect to know that person on sight.

I was struck utterly dumb.  He smiled, did one of those “don’t worry about it” nod things, and I walked off on my way.  I spent most of the rest of the day alternating between wishing I’d said something more and knowing that perhaps that wouldn’t have been the right moment to say anything anyhow.

What strikes me now, mumblety-odd years on and not having thought of that story in years, is not just the sweetly New York oddity of authors being so thick on the ground that one is tripping over them, but how nice he was about the whole thing, the getting overlooked and then the starstruck silence.  He was a mensch, take him all in all.  I still have a couple of those trade paperbacks, too.

1.  The strip is designed to keep you inside casinos.  Inside my hotel (the Flamingo, because we information architects like to kick it old-school), every path you can take is designed to take you through or into a casino.  The rooms don’t even have those terrible hotel-room coffee makers, which I presume is to get you downstairs, near where you could spend money, without caffeine.   It’s bizarrely fascinating.

2.  The keynote speaker at the conference has an office literally down the block from where I work.  I walk past his building at least a couple of times a week.  And yet I don’t think I would ever have just walked in to say hello.  Now we’ve exchanged cards, and I’m hoping he or someone from his firm will come address our brown-bag series in the works.
3. Steven, in comments to my last post, directed me to the geeky story behind the Bellagio water display, which has made me unreasonably happy.  Thank you, Steven!

4. I’ve seen the room where I’m presenting.  I’m definitely going to need to run for a presentation-clicker.  (I bought one in New York, which is… um, I think still on my bed at home.)

If I had to choose, I don’t think my first viewing of the Las Vegas strip would have been jet-lagged and stomach-achey from a turbulent flight.  Still, I can’t imagine it wouldn’t have been overwhelming anyway.  And this from a woman who functions at her best in New York.

The Bellagio water spectacle, so beautifully captured at the end of Ocean’s 11, is even more impressive visually in person, but it’s spoiled by being choreographed to “I’m Proud to Be An American.”  I have been reminded more than once on this trip so far how different New York is from most of the rest of the country, but I’m in the sort of mood where that seems pretty all right.

I may end up posting some notes from the conference here: apologies in advance if your geekiness doesn’t intersect with mine.