/ my burgers /

Max is a Swedish fast-food chain, like Mc Donald’s, but with way better burgers. While driving on sunday we stopped for some food and the first thing I saw when I walked in were these express checkouts. I ran my card and picked whatever I wanted on the touch screen. My friends went to the regular checkouts and I picked up my food a lot quicker than them.

It feels like we are more and more being exposed and taught how to fix things ourselves. Last time I thought about it was when I flew home and was once again shown to a self check in disk. This is a place where I miss talking to a real person and I want a real person to check my passport and double check that my bag will be with me all the way. In the case of the burger I’d be happy to click my way through my order, but I wonder exactly how much will be turned into self service and if we after a while will miss a physical person at all? I know I already do.

/ my 10 hours /

I am usually pretty good about checking in, changing my seat, weighing my bag and all that but this time I totally lost it and even arrived at the airport without a ticket. When I  then found out I would be sitting in the middle of a row of 4 on a 10 hour flight I was , lets just say, a little less excited about my trip than before.

What started as a cramped, near panic attack situation ended up being one of the most interesting, informational and opening experiences yet. The woman to my right was an older former Pan Am flight attendant who together with her sister were biking their way through italy and slovenia. She told me about her years as an architect and gave me the best hiking tips outside the city.

The man to my left was a middle aged Indian engineer who researched and built machines created to cure different kinds of cancer. We ended up talking for about 3 hours straight about how we both had been brought up, his arranged marriage, what parts horoscopes play, culture clashes and what he wished for his children being brought up in the US.

I was mostly interested in his arranged marriage and he told me about how his family and friends had together picked three potential candidates for him. The three candidates were picked based on social status, how the families got a long and a lot based on what days they were born. He had gone back to India to meet the three women and he picked the one he felt a connection with.

I was pretty straight forward with my question and told him to shut me up when needed but I asked him how it had worked out. He said that love grows and the thing that the indian culture is very proud of is their tolerance. Life is a circle and as you take care of your parents when they get old you trust the women chosen by the people closest to you.

I also asked if the women ever got to pick and the only time is when they have higher education than the men. Education is power!

He also looked at my hands and told me that due to my pretty short and square fingers I was very analytical which I found interesting. We ended our extremely compact encounter with how nice it was to have met and to have learned about each others very different way of living and how we are both finding our place in yet another culture.

The last thing we discussed was meditation which is something I find myself being more and more curious about. We compared mantras and he told me about his newly finished meditation room he had built at home.

So due to my clumsy mistake I was given the chance to meet two extremely divert people and I walked off the plane feeling rich of knowledge. It was a good start to my 19 days of peace.

/ dendrology / 

Last week during our Creative Planning class we went outside and cut logs. We were all given a piece and for our final assignment we were to tell the story of that piece. I ended up making more of an informational poster / blueprint since what I was most curious about was how you can “read a log” and see what it’s been through based on what it looks like. And anything that has a fancy word such as Dendrology is pretty fascinating…

…and..last night I spent three hours watching The Conversation. I aaabsolutely loved it. I loved it so much I want to drop out of Ad School and become a couples therapist. They talk about their careers, their heartaches, the small problems and the big problems and just about everything.

I usually write things down I like or think about and one thing I jotted down was that you have to do “an emotional inventory”. I just made so much sense to reevaluate who or what you care about more often. The thing that was my main focus in august may not be so now. Things shift and you need to make sure your brain is in phase with your mind so you don’t put energy towards things that don’t matter as much anymore.

In 20 years I’ll start re-educate myself but with all the self help books I’m reading I may not even need a university degree. It will be amazon.com’s own.

/ Wednesday Wonders /

This semester is coming to its end and it is as always a liberating feeling. This time maybe even more so. It’s been a very long and different spring. In the middle I moved apartments, Cris moved to LA, some of my classes have felt a bit weak and my UNTZ was definitely long gone. I even experienced being home sick for the first time in nearly 2,5 years. The power woman “I can do anything” feeling was something I lived on last fall and definitely something I thought I would bring with me and even up a bit now, but I guess not.

I know everything goes up and down but now I’m done being down. This summer is going to be extremely exciting. I received the first “out of the blue” email in january and only a week ago was it finalized. This summer I’ll be interning here and I cannot be happier. I worked my ass of last semester and I know this is the result of it and I’m ready to work even harder this summer. But I think I needed this time to just be, to settle, to think and to look around.

 On Saturday I’m spending 24hour in Las Vegas, on Monday I fly to Sweden for 2,5 weeks and I’ll get back ready to get to work on June 11th. I have everything in front of me and I know I’m at a “this is where it really begins” point and it feels good.

Being the ultimate royalties / monarchy nerd this is like candy to me. Last year I would have killed to be in London for the royal wedding and this year for the Queens Jubilee, but for now pictures and videos will have to do.

This is a project done by Vogue tracking the queens choices of colors throughout the year and showing it as a percentage - stunning!

curts of @moltinggent

Tuesday Thoughts

helloyoucreatives:

Inventing a job is more fun than finding a job.

(Source: workisnotajob)

/ REDSCOUT /

Yesterday our department had the privilege of listening to Gabrielle Muse who is Head of strategy at Redscout, a brand development shop. They work on creating various consumer experiences through creating products, services and environments which is something that really caught my attention and something I want to explore more.

She talked through a list of eleven things she wished she would have known when she started out where some especially stuck with me.

1. the first was “you know it better than anyone in this room” which is the feeling you always should have when presenting. Whether I have spent numerous weeks, or even just a couple of hours on something I should always work towards being at a point where I know this brand or problem inside out. If you do none can take that away from you.

2. Passion is nice, Hustle is better. I think this says itself but it’s a good reminder of how many people out there are passionate about what they do, and are willing to work so all that counts is what I do about it. How do I make it happen?

3. Rigor + Intuition = Best friends. The rigor is the information and the Intuition is the leap. Work your ass off by combining the two.

There were many more smart and insightful things talked about by Gabrielle but the overall takeaway I had was basically “work your ass off, love what you do, and make it matter”. It was also very inspirational having a young beautiful woman having done all that she had done. 

Picture from Redscouts website

Friday thoughts

/ Failure / 

One of my assignments for this week was to keep track of the things I failed at. It’s a process learning to be ok with failure, trying different things and not being afraid of having ideas or plans not turn out the way you thought. A motto or mantra I often think about is Fail Harder along with the thought of rather having tried and failed than never tried at all. It’s definitely a process but would say that its something I try to practice every day.

The failures I experienced this past week may not be life changing but it was a good exercise in awareness. Being aware of all the small things that don’t go as planned every day, and that I made it work anyway.