IKEA

I recently spent too long in IKEA. IKEA if you don't know it is a business that sells furniture. It's owner has recently overtaken Gates as the richest man in the world, and it is easy to see why.

It's brilliant stuff IKEA furniture, and we could wish our computers were as easy to use (Gates may have remained #1 if they were). It's not that every piece of furniture is a snap, but all the different kinds of things you can get there, the way the furniture fits together, and just the sheer engineering marvel that it is. I would love to see the process by which a piece is developed, and how that process evolved. That would make a good documentary.

The stores, however, are -- at least to me -- a nightmare. The floor layout is a bit like lines to a Disney ride: you can never see the destination so it feels like you are walking forever. So it's easy to spend hours wandering from one place to another trying to make a decision. And the first time you go, and having walked the first floor only to discover that there is a whole other second floor of accessories. Walking in there with low blood sugar is a recipe for disaster, and you can see little couple explosions happening left and right. I can't imagine going in there with kids. It would make for a great reality TV show: give newlywed couples with kids a certain amount of money and time to furnish their houses.

Interestingly enough, they sell food at a couple points in the store (swedish meatballs in the main one!). At the middle and at the end. I always wondered why not at the start, furthermore I wonder what percentage of their profits come from the concessions. Is the furniture just a great way to sell meatballs? :-)

The fascinating things about the stores though is that they show an amazing diversity of people descending upon them: Caucasions, Hispanics, Asian, Indians, Sikhs, Arabs, rich, poor, young, old. Like an airport, it's a great place for people watching if you are not in the middle of your own decisions.

It's great in many ways to see that, but at the same time, one has to wonder what happened to all the furniture that those people used to buy. And by extension, this is the question for globalization: what do we gain by our homogenization, and what are we losing.

Book Review: Holes

Great children/teen's book about a kid stuck in a Juvenile Delinquints camp digging holes in the desert. I don't want to say more cause I might ruin it.

Book Review: 1066

My Mom gave me this little book probably a couple years ago now called 1066. I've always had a fascination for the Norman Conquest. Picked up little tidbits of the history. Acted and gave a speech as Guillaume Le Conquerant in High School French class. And when I travelled through Normandy I went through the brilliant little museum built around the Bayeux tapestry. Recently, I was very sad to have to leave my apartment numbered 1066 and move elsewhere.

Some of my Irish ancestors may possibly have been Norman, and my parents had named me "Adrian" which is the name of the first English pope gave himself. That pope was the one who encouraged King Henry II of England -- a century later -- to annex Ireland. It had a neat little circularity in my mind.

Anyway, the book, written by David Howarth, is fabulous, and I would recommend it to nearly anyone who has an interest in history. It is a puzzle solution of sorts: picking pieces of stories, taking educated guesses and making suppositions from a patchwork of Norse, English, French and Latin sources; weighing the alternative versions of stories; separating propoganda from possible fact; and tying it altogether.

What comes out is a exciting and sad tale of the fall of Kingdom: The machinations of various characters; the steadfastness of the English King Harold; England's nascent parliament; William the Bastard's drive to become William the Conquerer; the bezerker king Harald; and how through chance everything fell to pieces for the English. It would make a great movie, and it is a wonder that Hollywood has not plundered it already. It makes me want to write a screenplay and story board it all out. (yes another project)

For me, it was amazing to see a story that I was already very familiar with, flower into this much larger and even more interesting thing.