I wandered through the gourmet grocery store called Balducci’s on 8th Avenue and 14th Street last weekend. In addition to being a winter wonderland of cheeses, it also had these cute holiday cupcakes I couldn’t resist photographing. The store itself is visually striking, occupying a domed 1897 landmark building that used to be a bank. [...]

I had been meaning to go to HanGawi restaurant for months but had an unbelievably difficult time getting anyone to go with me. Something about the phrase “Korean vegetarian place” made most people immediately lose interest. Fortunately, I finally made it to this little K-Town gem last weekend and enjoyed a meal that was well [...]

If you’ve ever smiled at the little brass men in the 14th St subway station or admired the colorful tilework at City Hall station in New York City, I think you’ll agree that this subway ceiling taken inside a Taiwan station blows all that out of the water. Standing underneath it, I really felt like [...]

This recent article by Michael Lewis, author of the infamous book Liar’s Poker, is long but once you’ve read it, you and your former office mates can sit around the flaming garbage can and discuss the finer points long into the cold, cold night: http://www.portfolio.com/news-markets/national-news/portfolio/2008/11/11/The-End-of-Wall-Streets-Boom

The Newseum web site shows front pages from daily newspapers every single day. As such, it showcases a wide range of design choices, from typography to spread layout to use of color in graphics and photos, as well as editorial choices pertaining to content. For instance, here is today’s front page of a paper from [...]

Two bits of trivia: 7-Eleven stores are ubiquitous in Taiwan, with a density in the major cities that rivals that of Starbucks in Manhattan. 7-Eleven in Taiwan is open 24 hours a day. But it’s still called 7-Eleven, not Twenty Four. Weird.

I just attended the first session of a course called Design: Past, Present, and Future. It is pretty much what it sounds like: a survey of design history from 15,000 BC to the present day, with speculation on future directions. Sitting through the instructor’s halting, verbatim reading of his slides was mostly an exercise in [...]

I had no idea that the “what do you do?” question was so emotionally loaded until I ran across this post, and the slew of reader comments that follow, on the New York Times Freakonomics bleg. I confess, I don’t really get why people would get offended by ignorant questions about what they do for [...]

Lately, I have been looking at web sites that appeal through the simplicity of their interfaces. Answering the simple question: Do I need an umbrella today? http://umbrellatoday.com/ The site promises simplicity, and it delivers. The only whistle to go with its single bell is that it offers a text service to notify you on days [...]

During my time in Taiwan, I was always well-fed. The tour bus would drop us happy vacationers off in front of a restaurant, and we’d sit down family-style and eat whatever was placed in front of us. Most of the time this turned out fine, since I obeyed the one rule required for foreigners to [...]