School's Out

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I didn’t make it back for a late night rendezvous with the psychowrecker: big day at school. It rained non-stop Thursday and the far north flooded, the media’s hysterical voice screamed “once in a hundred & forty years flood” but I’m thinking, ‘it won’t be the last’ because in case you hadn’t noticed, something’s up with the weather. I mean, it was hot, not tropical hot but like 23˚C and the rain just didn’t let up... all day! The high street was awash and I got wet going to and coming home from school but it was a great day never the less. And the reason it was great? Well, as mentioned in my last blog entry, we had a tutorial with Jack Yan and that was good but, as an added bonus the morning’s tutorial was taken by a guy called Mark Jackson and, simple maths tells us that, good tutorial + good tutorial = great day, regardless of what the weather is doing and how wet your clothes feel: regardless of Climate Change!

If you Google Dr Mark Jackson you realise that there are a few of them spread across the globe but this particular version works in the design department at the university I attend www.aut.ac.nz and he delivered a tutorial entitled “Technology & Culture”. Though he’s a ‘stralian, I soon forgave him when I realised we read out of the same book; only he’s at page 1042 and I’m still struggling with the first chapter. Without specifically mentioning Martin Heidegger, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Heidegger he cleverly plotted the link from Immanuel Kant, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kant through to our present day understanding of culture & technology in a way that I could only describe as “Heideggian”, though apparently it was Post Structuralism. Not once did he stumble into Sartre’s bogged mire of existentialism,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-Paul_Sartre though we did spend some time discussing the relative merits of French, English and German toilets and how they provide representative metaphors of the cultures that created and use them. Check this out: “I AM THAT DOING. THE SELF IS WHAT WE DO.” This is not the petty self that dwells within the mind: this is the complete self that is observable by others and is responsible for the actions it makes. Or this: “WE ARE WHAT WE DO” and therefore we are underway, partaking of a journey of self discovery: that which we are capable of doing, ever searching for the “horizon of discovery” which, just like the actual horizon, we are never able to reach. I loved it all.

Mr Jack Yan was another kettle of fish and not at all what I expected. It is too easy to pass prior judgement upon our fellows particularly when you think you know more about them than they do about you. Jack had been described to me as shy but if this is the case there were no signs. He is charming and comedic with a voracious mind and astute business acumen and though he professes to be just an ordinary bloke his catalogue of achievements dispel this modesty. As examples check out: www.jyanet.com/consulting , http://lucire.com/ , www.jyanet.com/fonts .
Though still a young man he started his first business at the age of 14 and, as you can discover at the links above, he’s a stone gathering no moss. The online fashion magazine “lucire” has a hardcover sister available internationally (even in Romania) and, as only Midas and his progeny could, the name was chosen prior to the realization that lucire is actually a Romanian word that means ‘to glitter’. Pure serendipity (?), or does God favour the good (?), or serendipity the clever?

Jack is on the Board of Directors for the ‘Medlinge Group’, http://www.medinge.org/ a self described “high-level international think-tank on branding”, which each year for the past four, have released a list of eight names of companies that the group single out as being “brands with a conscience”. The 2007 list is:
Adnams http://www.adnams.co.uk/
Ecover http://www.ecover.com/
Fetzer Vineyards http://www.fetzer.com/
Freeplay http://www.freeplayenergy.com/
IKEA http://www.ikea.com/
RED http://www.joinred.com/
Virgin Group/Virgin Fuels http://www.virginunite.com/
Whole Foods http://www.wholefoodsmarket.com/

If, like Jack and the Medlinge Group and (ahem) myself, you possess a social conscience all these companies listed above are worth supporting, remember: “WE ARE WHAT WE DO” or to put it another way, your journey counts!
But hey, it’s Friday and school’s out for the weekend!