Haimish, Gezellig and the Great Pumpkin

English is the world's most successful language because it is so rich, it has many more words than any comparable language. Yet, frustratingly, English still doesn't have words for so many useful, everyday concepts. Consider, for instance, haimish: a Yiddish word that suggests warmth, domesticity and unpretentious conviviality.

I was looking up the meaning because it is in this (excellent) New Yorker article about IKEA: "IKEA believes that it can make your sleep better and enhance your family life...IKEA's vision of life in its environs is a safe and haimish one. In its rooms, people don't run late, the don't bicker; the have children, but they don't have sex."

The most interesting definition of haimish I found was by David Brooks, the NY Times conservative columnist, talking about why simple, wholesome, communal safari camps are more rewarding than elegant, luxurious camps that lack the haimish spirit. Understood this way, haimish feels a lot like another word I've blogged about before: gezellig, space and people coming together in harmony, that special spirit of cosy fellowship that animates Dutch life.

This sentiment is not unfamiliar to Anglophone cultures. For instance, I've long loved Charles Schulz's Peanuts comics for their haimish or gezellig character. Linus van Pelt lives in the hope that the Great Pumpkin will grace his pumpkin patch on Halloween night for being the most "sincere". I suspect the notion Linus and the Great Pumpkin are searching for is closer to haimish or gezellig than just sincere. Haimish and gezellig include sincere, and a whole lot else besides, except that it would be so ongezellig to use a foreign word like gezellig in Linus' pumpkin patch.

Is it just a matter of time before English co-opts haimish? The casual way in which the New Yorker used the word suggests that that is already happening. My wife and I couldn't find plausible Hindi or Tamil equivalents for haimish or gezellig either. Any suggestions?

Conserving Brutalism? The curious case of the Preston Bus Station

The English love their heritage. I am continuously amazed and heartened at how much care is lavished on everything from prehistoric dolmens, to Roman ruins, to Victorian facades, to Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty. This love isn't limited to a vanishingly small elite. The National Trust, one of many NGOs that look after England's heritage, has a paid up membership of four million people, not including sympathizers like me (my membership has lapsed).

However, I am discovering that my sympathy for heritage has its limits. I am unable to grasp how a large, concrete bus station in a small town in Lancashire is heritage worth preserving. Yet, there is a movement to do just that.

Preston Bus Station has been declared a "monument at risk" by the World Monuments Trust. Dr Jonathan Foyle, chief executive of the trust, described Preston bus station as "fabulously, boldly expressive of the year it was built". Apparently, this bus station is a prime example of the Brutalist style of architecture, which was in vogue in 1969. The term Brutalist comes from beton brut, French for raw concrete, which was the avant garde architect's material of choice in 1969. I suspect the term has stuck because "Brutalist" captures the spirit of these structures precisely.

This argument is happening about a functioning bus station, not a piece of abstract art. The local council, which wants to demolish this structure, says on BBC's Radio Four that this Brutalist structure doesn't work properly as a bus station: it is way out on the edge of the town and too far away from other transportation hubs like the railway station.

With pragmatism and aesthetics on the same side of the argument, usually there would be only one winner. However, in England, I suspect the Brutalist bus station on the edge of Preston has a bright future. Google found me many web-petitions defending the Brutalist bus station, and none supporting the council's demolition plan.

Death to Rummaging

I am in the market for a new bag. Nothing special, just a simple duffel bag for everyday use. The one specific feature I want is an optic yellow inner lining.

This is the bag I use today.



It isn't bad. It is a Samsonite, the fabric is tough, the zipper works fine. But the inside of the bag can get as dark as the belly-of-a-whale, especially indoors. Finding my wallet, blackberry, goggles or even a dark coloured t-shirt involves a fair bit of rummaging, rather than just spotting.

This is the bag my children use.



It is clearly better than mine. The cheerful optic yellow inner lining makes it easy to spot stuff inside the bag. No rummaging required. I bought it years ago in the USA, without realizing its virtues. I want another bag like this.

However, this is surprisingly hard to find. I looked around the shop at the club. All the bags on display had black inners, even if they had florescent colours on the outside, sort of the wrong way around. I don't know how representative the shop at the club is, but clearly, brightly coloured inner linings for kit bags are not an industry standard.

The same shop sells tennis balls. The tennis balls are all optic yellow, which is mildly irritating, because the tennis balls are optic yellow for exactly the same reason the inside of the kit bags ought to be optic yellow, but are not.

Why has the better-product-wins logic played out so neatly with tennis balls, but not with kit bag linings? It might be because luggage is more about fashion than function, whereas tennis balls are entirely about function. Though, I don't quite buy that; generally, good function is fashionable. It could be because of the institutional unity of tennis. Once the grand slams decide yellow balls are better, the entire tennis world follows their lead. There is no similar grand slam-like authority for luggage, identifying and modelling the better products.

For whatever reason, it seems I can't buy the kit bag I want even on the internet. Shopping websites show luggage outsides, but don't specify the colour of the inner lining. Looks like I will be rummaging around for my wallet in the belly-of-a-whale for a while longer.

BBC North collaboration pods. Or speed dating wheels?

BBC's plush and stylish new offices in Salford, near Manchester, are sprinkled with "collaboration pods".

The idea is that useful work happens when people talk to each other, face to face, rather than sit around in closed-door offices. Doing away with offices and having these collaboration pods should encourage people to do just that. However, having sufferred in new-age work spaces for decades, I have a hunch these pods aren't really going to foster collaboration.

Collaboration generally happens when people sit at right angles to each other, or in an arc, facing a white-board. It happens at coffee machines or water coolers, when people stand at right angles to each other, or in an arc, and the space above the coffee machine or water cooler becomes an air white-board.

Collaboration doesn't happen when two people are sitting squarely opposite each other. This is how people sit at an interview, when they are assessing or evaluating each other. These collaboration pods feel too open for most recruitment interviews, and anyway the interviews I give usually need a table-top work surface and a whiteboard. But these collaboration pods might just have struck the perfect balance between openness and privacy for a speed date. Perhaps speed-romance will now bloom amongst BBC staffers in Salford, near Manchester.

Pine Boats @ El Piano, Granada

Have you ever been annoyed at a picnic by a paper plate that gets soggy with gravy and starts collapsing in your hands?

Did this paper plate collapse at the precise moment when your eyes met Hers - she of the sparkling eyes and lustrous locks - so you had to cut short that magic moment to prevent the chana masala from descending on to your trousers? Did She then go off for a walk with the creepy guy from Accounts, so true love which was meant to be remained forever unfulfilled? Tragic. My sympathies, dear friend.

And to think that this tragedy would never have happened if the catering was by El Piano of Granada, Spain, a take-away restaurant I discovered on my travels.

El Piano serves delicious, organic, locally grown vegetarian food, not on paper plates, but in pine boats. Unlike paper plates, pine boats don't get soggy. They remain firm through your meal. Ergonomically shaped pine boats fit comfortably into the palm of one hand. And pine boats are morally good, because unlike styrofoam, pine boats are biodegradable.

So the next time true love strikes, dear friend, as it doubtless will, like it did for Oliver in Love Story, be sure that delicious, organic, vegetarian food from El Piano restaurant, of Granada, Spain, is secure in a firm pine boat. Because then you can be certain that true love will blossom.

Though, stepping away from the advertising script, surely the standard dish-design for away-from-table dining ought to be something like a pine boat? If pine is scarce, bamboo or sugarcane based alternatives are also possible. The design specs for any away-from-table dining surface should have asked for something which is rigid, fits into one hand, doesn't absorb moisture, can't dribble over the edges, is cheap, and can be thrown away safely.

Hence, this blog is calling for a revolution. Humanity should herewith be liberated from balancing dinner plates on one hand, from landfills stuffed with styrofoam, and from struggling with soggy paper plates. Until that revolution is complete, humanity is at liberty to sample the excellent veggie food at El Piano while visiting Granada, or the sister restaurant in York.

iPads Make Better Business Meetings

I attended a paper-meeting last week. By paper-meeting, I mean a day-long meeting of more than ten people, where the materials being discussed are in fat spiral-bound paper dockets (thappis). This was my first paper-meeting in a decade. I loved it.

At most contemporary meetings, or at least in my last company, people stare at discussion documents on their laptop screens. As a result, the body language around the table is just awful. The flipped up laptop screens become symbolic shields. People hunker down behind these shields. Making eye contact is hard. Rapport building - which is what generally makes meeting in person worth the effort - never happens.

With a paper-meeting, the ebb and flow of conversation around the table was so much more natural and human. It was well worth the effort of printing, binding and transporting the thappis to the meeting.

One irritant with paper-meetings is archiving. I still need to follow up with various people for e-versions of the documents shared last week for my files. This was so much easier when people just emailed me their stuff before the meeting. Another obvious, gross, waste is the paper itself, even in recycling-friendly London.

Maybe an iPad is the answer. An iPad's body language is much better than a laptop's: it sits flat on a table-top and is not a natural shield. iPad enabled meetings can avoid the production and archiving issues, and the sheer waste, of printing out reams of paper. Boy, would Steve Jobs be happy if iPads became standard issue business equipment?

Disclaimer: I swear I have not taken money from Steve Jobs to write this post :)