I’ve had an email titled London Quotes in that folder since 2007. Every time I go to clean up my drafts, I leave this one email there. I’ve had nowhere else to put these short summaries of what a very special time of my life was like on the Thames. So world, here they are.

You are now In London, that great sea, whose ebb and flow
At once is deaf and loud, and on the shore
Vomits its wrecks, and still howls on for more.
Yet in its depth what treasures!
-Percy Bysshe Shelley

“I came to London. It had become the center of my world and I had worked hard to come to it. And I was lost.”
-VS Naipaul

This melancholy London—I sometimes imagine that the souls of the lost are compelled to walk through its streets perpetually. One feels them passing like a whiff of air.
- William Butler Yeats

One would think London was a depressing, upsetting unhappy place but it was quite the opposite. London is a glorious place. Be whomever you wish to be there and do whatever you like to do.  I learned more about myself there than I had anywhere else prior. London is a different kind of city. It’s magnificent and impossible and that’s what makes it fantastic. You can float through it and be completely lost and found all at the same time.

In August 2010 I created a new email drafts called City Quotes. Anyone who knows me, knows I love urban centers. My goal is to collect a quote about each city I’ve fallen in love with and do an art piece. I kept these quotes in my email drafts so I would continue be reminded they exist instead of getting lost in a Google Doc somewhere. The idea for this project still exists but it needs to live in public now.

It is hopeless for the occasional visitor to try to keep up with Chicago-she outgrows his prophecies faster than he can make them. She is always a novelty; for she is never the Chicago you saw when you passed through the last time.
-Mark Twain “Life On The Mississippi,” 1883

But fair to say, a result of globalized media is globalized culture. We are connected with each other in so many ways, it’s inevitable that we begin to desire and adapt our behavior and fashion by what we see–even if it’s physically, very far away.

I left my hair straightener, dryer and potions of lotions at home, during my December trip to Botswana. My follicles flew freely. But my hair became quite the philosophical topic of conversation. People kept calling me “white” in Africa, local friends and otherwise. I’d put my arm next to theirs, compare skintone and sometimes be darker than the accuser.

“You have white hair,” they’d always say.. I didn’t have “African” hair and I didn’t have “Asian” hair. I had European hair, so I was white.

My new South African friend Lucky, (above), said, “Africans will always look at your hair first,” to guess where you might be from. Commentary usually followed by mention of my “white” eyes, noes, forehead and other white features.

Only later did I learn about the mega-hair-wave market that hacks off pounds of Indian hair to into African weaves. Watch Chris Rock’s documentary, Good Hair. It is actually a very well researched, articulate, opinionated, educational, pointed and hilarious film. He exposes the billion dollar business of pain and suffering to tame the tresses. But why? For what reason have these women decided to put thousands of dollars a month to make their hair look smooth, flowing and shiny like their European sisters?

I tucked that question away until I got to Japan. Here, in Tokyo, women and men with seemingly beautiful, straight, shiny black hair mutate their natural style. I see (unnaturally) blonde and brunette Japanese men and women. Though I am staying in a cosmopolitan fashion district. I presume people are much more likely to make the self-expressive dye-job leap. But, I want to know why.

I want to know more about Western culture. I want to know more about Japanese culture. I want to know more about African culture and I want to know what media these people consume. Online, on TV, on the radio, in magazines and in advertising.

I want to know what happens in their minds when they wake up in the morning and decide, “This looks good. I want to look like this.” Why does the West have a hegemonic hold on hair culture? Or does it? Is there a silent, cultural, confirmation that European culture is the highest of high fashion? Is there an unspoken agreement in Tokyo or Cape Town when locals make minor mutations to their image?

I don’t know.

But I’d like to find out.

What happens to a community when they are all of a sudden flooded with mountains of new information? It gets localized and appropriated. And behavior changes and former generations remember the good ‘ol days. To whom does the responsibility belong?

I never really thought much about my hair culture until very recently. I’m as guilty of mutation as any of the women and men pictured above. My hair has been red, green blue, purple and once or twice, blonde on accident in a few spots. All the while I’ve applied dangerous amounts of heat to my hair daily for a more ‘orderly’ look that frizzes up at the mention of moisture in the air. So where does this leave us? Does the West have ah old on hair or is it just a horse of different color?

Contribute to this Quora thread that tightly relates to my recent post on lean ux and travel. However, I do not advocate for the Bose Noise Canceling headphones. http://www.quora.com/Travel-Hacks/What-are-the-best-travel-hacks

[Photo via jaaronfarr]

I don’t check luggage and I love developers. I’ll tell you what the two have to do with each other.

I came across a wonderful post about travelling without baggage. It highlights 4 ways to travel light: bring nothing, fill only your pockets, keep only a day bag or borrow everything you need. He says:

I’ve done it. Traveling with no bags is gloriously liberating. You move fast, close to the ground, spontenously.  You feel unleashed, undefined by your possessions. It is just you and the world. I am convinced that you think different when you have less stuff to manage. You learn a lot, fast.

Many of those same ideals are celebrated in recent posts I have read about lean ux (a method for interaction designers). It is reflective of agile development methods and a step forward from the slow waterfall process.

Lean UX is the practice of bringing the true nature of our work to light faster, with less emphasis on deliverables and greater focus on the actual experience being designed.

So what can travelers and designers learn from one another?

• Be lightweight. Be agile and quick on your feet. Limiting yourself to physical artifacts (wireframes or big bags) plant you to the ground and can limit your scope
• Be aware. Continuously be in a meditative, reflective state where you are learning from yourself, your environment, the people around you and your process. Then, obviously, iterate. Do whatever you were doing before, better, or at least differently if it wasn’t working.
• Be flexible and open. Writing a committed, formal plan before the actual process begins detracts from the opportunity to discover the unknown and unexplored.
• Spend time and money only on the essentials. Living with little or no waste often lends itself to having more time, energy and money for what and when it is most important.
• Learn the local language. Do as the Romans…or the ruby developers…do. Immerse yourself in the environment. Learn it, live it, and use what you already know to make smart decisions.
• Focus on experience. Do this for your journey, or the people you are designing for will have. Experience shall be a high priority.

If you can do a week in a backpack, you can do a month. If you can do a month, you can do a year. I once went somewhere with only a purse. I’d like to take on the travel bloggers’ challenge and bring nothing with me at all. I’m working on a non-smelly solution.

As for lean ux? I’m cutting the fat a little bit each and every day. But it’s really going to take a team effort.

All was quiet on the digital front. I spent 33 days in Botswana and South Africa detached from email and completely disconnected from Facebook and Twitter. Try it.

People I know who go to Afrika seem to consistently have “life changing, inspiring, indescribable” experiences. I did too, which is a little boring for you, the reader. I went with dear friend, Sam who is preparing her PhD Thesis in HCI. I like to say she’s studying the ways we, try to develop Afrika with Western technology culture, thereby screwing up. I was visiting my lifelong friend Peter (below) who is living in Gaborone, Botswana and doing research, I suppose, for my thesis.

We did not go to Afrika to ride in wooden boats and see animals. We did not go to “fix the aids problem” and we did not exit through the gift shop.

We did what what we do when we go anywhere. We  hopped the velvet ropes and went to Afrika to meet people. We walked the pace of their life as best we could and learned about humanity, exploration and ourselves.

Kind new friends granted us Setswana names. Sam’s name, Botho, loosely means humanness, with respect, dignity and kindess. My non-traditional hair, colour and features gave me the name Bontle: beautiful.

I’ve been to India more times than I can count. It’s hot, noisy, crowded and not very safe, kind of like all the places we went in Botswana and South Africa. When I go to India, I cannot wake up and think, “I’d like to walk East today and maybe, possibly visit this part of the city,” knowing full well I’ll get distracted, make two friends along the way and discover something I could not have even known existed. I can’t go on that walk when staying with my grandparents. But there is nowhere else in the universe I can hear the stories they have to tell.

But Sam and I did that wanderlust traveling. One day we even wandered our way  all the way to the top of Kgale Hill.

We wandered our way into a drum circle. Moving by and with music is the only way I know how to listen. I started playing music before I could write a sentence, as one should. Without an exchange a single word, I hopped into a drum circle ont he street with my new friends. They taught me their beats, their rhythms, their language, without a word: and we jammed.

Sometimes, we rode in the back of a pickup truck. Why? Because that’s how we got around the village. Ask me know long we knew the people driving the truck. 2 minutes. Ask me if we actually knew them. We didn’t. Ask me if we were hitchhiking. We weren’t. Because if we were, my friends would probably get fired from their job–not that there was any other option.

But us two Londoners at heart, flew through our city and indulged in Wagamama that otherwise only seemed to exist in dreams. We stopped in Heathrow, in the city where I spent so many days of my life, wandering around, looking for something more and finding it. It was city that taught me how to do it on my own, and there I was back again.

I’ll tell you this, though. The Batswana people can cook but it’s near impossible to get an invitation over for dinner–unless you make the right friends. If someone can teach me to make chicken, squash or collard greens like this, please leave a comment.

And Zac was with us. He was here from Uganda. And needless to say, like us, he made a new friend everywhere he went.

Sam and I did take some time apart. We both jumped, well, tumbled, or fell, really, out of an airplane 10,000 feet above the Earth at the Southern most tip of Africa. It took me 7 pages of free writing to begin processing the rest of my life after that moment.

I’m back home now, zero feet away from the Earth. Driving my car instead of taking the combi.

I’m back home now, where the white people are not people donning a “white face” parade costume.

I’m back home now, where I am not ordering ostrich, kudu, springbok or crocodile to eat.

I’m back home now, very far from a huge body of water.

I am back home now, where the roads are roads and the roads are clean.

But, I love where I live. And I might not ever eat a leg of chicken and dance at the same time again. But, I’ll have done it.

We are grateful for all the real friendships we made and opportunities to experience a Southern Afrikan lifestyle as best we could. This is 2% how I spent one of the most enlightening months of my life.

I ran the app, took a screen grab and began to label the clusters. When I loaded the app again, my clusters looked different. In these screen grabs I did not include some of the outliers. Most of those people are friends I made while traveling. There are so many ways to interpret my social circles. The app is slow right now and it doesn’t tell a story. But I can do that:

Ultimately, what I found is that my techno community links my high school and ancestry communities the most. Media and music are still the center of my social circle here. My current job at the Office for Women’s Affairs is surprisingly barely connected to anything at all. I have two London networks that don’t overlap at all.

I can see that media and music are the centrally what link me to people and my professional communities. I have strong clusters in Indiana and San Francisco that thickly overlap with my Chicago community.

I found many of the outliers here to have a specific ethnic quality in common. I also had an absolutely random seeming smattering of “indian people” from all over the country in that cluster.

Overall, I’ve learned that my music communities centrally have guided my social life. I have an enormous high school network, which makes sense because I joined Facebook as soon as I graduated high school. My Bloomington music community is tightly connected to my student media groups which then led me to my job at the Star, the news design community, my Poytner Fellowship and the cluster of friends in Indianapolis who worked at Rolls Royce.

Last year, friends from my San Francisco Tech and Techno Community went to India for a wedding. They stayed with my aunts, uncles and cousins and must have friended each other. There are enough people from my high school who moved to San Francisco, listen to Techno and work in Tech, so we can see those overlaps too.

I was surprised how few links there were between my tech communities and RockMelt, but then again it makes sense because I did not get the internship by knowing someone, per say (which is quite rare). There was a 6-degrees of separation alumni connection there.

I wish I could make some sense of the random smattering of Indian people. That cluster is concentrated with Indian people I know from all over the country and world. I guess we really are all family.

I would love to search for specific friends in this app. Still, very cool. This is also the first time I got to check off every category in my tags!

Below are general accounts and conversations I had with journalists, designers and engineers. I will continue to compile this list:

Dave Wright Jr., Senior Interactive Designer at NPR

Dave and I discussed our favorite NPR radio shows. He started by asking me what my local station was. With a blank stare I told him it was essentially iTunes. I’m a podcast junkie, I told him. I nodded my head back and forth, who do I love more? Radiolab or Planet Money? Then we got to the essence of journalism. Both shows tell amazing, stunning stories. But we can certainly agree that Planet Money does the kind of reporting that journalists do. Radiolab lacks those “news values” we keep hearing about, like timeliness for example. Those stories exist in the ether, they’re not linked to today or 3 weeks ago.

So how come when Planet Money reporters don’t know the housing market is the way it is and why Toxie, their toxic asset dies, how come they can say they don’t know? Why does The New York Times need to be an authority but Planet Money doesn’t?

We somehow, then, came to talk about cloth diapers.

Sam Berlow, Font Bureau; Bill Couch, USA Today; Felipe Fortes, Treesaver

I dined with these three gentleman on Saturday night. To be honest, we discussed so much but mostly why the community is stuck in their funk. I asked why is there such a leap to get on the iPad bandwagon when Richard Saul Wurman himself mentioned how few actual non-developers own one themselves. One of these kind gentlemen pointed out that newspapers have fallen behind on so many curves that this is their chance to finally be on the ball.

I covered the e-tablet session which included discussions from Couch, Mario Garcia Jr, Jared Cockon and Dan Zedek.  came to think that while an e-tablet conversation is important but also maybe short sighted, it did do something higher level. It opened up the platform conversation, the HTML5/CSS3 conversation.

Developing for iPads means that news companies need to think about their phones, tablets, sites, browsers and as Berlow mentioned: their brand.

Dennis Brack, Washington Post Design Director (soon to be at Foreign Policy)

Out visiting the pubs of Denver, Dennis and I came to talk about his move to Foreign Policy. We discussed what their news model would be like and what he sees for the future of the product and his team. I then asked him what he thought people are looking for.

“People are looking for clarity,” Brack said. There was a time when people were on the internet and broadly exploring but now they want to get to what they want to find.  He is going from a major publication to a niche magazine, clarity is key.

Javier Zarracina, Graphics Director at the Boston Globe

Javier and I quickly chatted to catch up on where we are and what we have been doing. He said what we need to do is apply the knowledge we already have. We need to make our graphics interactive. Readers want something that is useful and compelling, he said. They want new experiences, new ways to interact and new storytelling forms.

Jeremy Gilbert, Assistant Professor at Medill, Northwestern

My post from the SND.org blog:

Trends are not sustainable solutions and they certainly don’t solve problems at their roots. This morning, I sat down to chat about interaction design and news trends with Jeremy and Jessica Gilbert at the Medill School of Journalism in at Northwestern University and Jennifer George-Palilonis, SND’s Society for News Design Education Director.

It would have been great if news companies invented Groupon, Craigslist, Yelp and Twitter. But they didn’t. And really, advertising and money from other services are simply revenue models. They are not directly related to news content. We questioned if people would pay for content and debated if the “everything for free” concept is a phase.

People are willing to pay for service, trust and quality. We pay for Flickr, Dropbox and Netflix. Readers are looking for solutions to cut through the noise online. Twitter is so valuable because we can depend our network to filter trustworthy, useful content.

Jeremy and I spent time talking about the power of automated story crafting. What would the news look like if we let reporters gather and write but let computers process and parse the information? Can machines help bring context and individualized stories to our readers? We can move away from Wiki style live coverage to something that will be much more valuable for our staffs and readers.

As we look beyond trends and into the next few decades a few themes are visible. We will see changes in how we depend on our networks, our editors, computer automated resources and bringing more context to news.

A view of the trees, the waves and the boards where we danced on water.

I’ve never gone surfing before. Swimming, snorkeling, kayaking and Slip ‘n Sliding–but never surfing. Welcome to California. With just a few weeks of my internship left at RockMelt, I’ve been thinking about what I learned this summer. A new friend took surfing near Pacifica to ride some waves. While tumbling around in the Ocean, I spent some time thinking about design.

Let the waves knock you over
Swallow lots of water, burn your eyes with salt, chase after your board and do it again. and again. and again. and again. This is part of the fun. But soon, you’ll learn to hold your breath. You’ll listen for the wave, you’ll close your eyes and hang onto your board just a little bit tighter. Everything you design won’t get developed. Most ideas won’t even make it past a sketch. But you ride it out as far as it takes you. Don’t paddle to the shore and go home, get back on that board.

Point your board beyond the wave
The waves keep coming, especially when you first get started. There are lots of waves, roadblocks, problems to solve. As soon as you can get through them, you can hop up on the board and ride it out. But you would never set your goal so low that you’re project is guaranteed to flounder (though sometimes it happens anyway). So the trick is to the point the nose of the board beyond the wave. Float on top of wave; let it flow beneath you–past you. Aim for where you want to be, what you want to accomplish. But, you know, if the ocean eats you alive, you’ll be ok. Hold your breath, protect your head, let the waves spit you out and get back on that board.

Listen to your environment
Most of the time, the signs are there. Listen to your customers, your colleagues, your managers. Look for their body language, their tone of voice and the frequency of feedback. Sometimes, there is salt water burning in your eyes. That doesn’t mean you all your senses are dead. Open your ears and listen for the wave rushing up behind you. Either duck for cover or be ready to take it head on.

Pick your battles
You can’t ride every wave. Even if you could, you wouldn’t want to. Catch your breath, check out your surroundings and brace yourself. Face the a friendly wave or the surging tide that will give you either the best ride of your life or the biggest smackdown of the day. Though, if you keep taking the easy ones, you won’t get very good at surfing, or make a very good product, nor will you have very much fun. But sometimes, the best approach is to slip under the current, wait out the rumble, poke your head above water, look for the clear and get back on that board. You can’t do everything. So figure out what you can do and go with it full force.

Be uncomfortable
Frigid saltwater and cloudy skies do not feel nice. Neither does sitting inside at a desk all day. So compromise. Make it work; accept a little discomfort. You’re doing something great. Instead of complaining, get up, go for a walk outside and enjoy the sunshine.

Someone will always be better than you
That’s okay. Let them be. Sometimes, you can learn from them. All you probably need to do is just practice more.

Live in the moment
This one’s easy. Be where you are. Focus on one thing at a time and do your best.

The never ending beautiful view

I started posting notes on Facebook before I travel to guide my explorations. I find that my friends have a better sense of my interests than any tour book. I also always seem to discover I know more people where I’m going than I thought. It’s a great archive I can share with my friends in the future and helps all my friends know what has already been recommended to me. The other benefit is that usually when I return from somewhere, people say something like “I lived in Portland for 3 years, why didn’t you tell me you were going?”

This land is your land, this land is my land.

The Coast Starlight ride from Seattle to Portland was absolutely beautiful. I felt like i was in a 1940′s American adventure. I booked my trip the night before and took off with what only fit in my purse.

I was given a Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous Tour of Chris Johnson. He and I are dear friends from my Indy Star days. We met at the epic Powell Bookstore and walked throughout the Northwest neighborhood. We had lunch at The New Old Lompoc, a great backyard-like pub. Late into our walk throughout the city we headed back downtown for amazing cocktails at The Portland City Grille that boasted the most unbelievable view of the city and mountains. I highly recommend any mojito including the blood orange beverage.

The view from Portland City Grill

My highschool turnabout dance date (fun fact) Justin came to pick us up and we enjoyed an evening on the patio at the Rontoms lounge. My roommate, Sravi, from San Francisco just moved to Portland. We gave him and some new friends a healthy hipster dosage he had been missing. The evening carried onto a late Cajun Creole dinner at Le Bistro Montage. Delicious faire that’s always open late. Here I was with zero plan, living completely free, from whim to whim with so many parts of my life coming together at once. All of us had a nightcap at a great little dive, The Bonfire Lounge.

Chris, my tourguide

Sravi, my dungeonmate

Justin, my blast from the past (and true gentleman!)

Early morning, I did the most cliche thing possible and ate granola in Portland. We visited the Waffle Window for a fruit, yogurt, granola breakfast.

Fruit, Yogurt and Granola from the Waffle Window

Chris took me around some vintage shops on Hawthorne where we bought sweet water guns and a mood ring for me to know when I feel purpley. We meant to meet Chris’ friends at Prost! a German Pub, to watch the World Cup match against Spain on the up and coming Mississippi Avenue. It was overly crowded so we strolled down the road for a cooler spot to hide from the hot hot heat.

The trip wound down with the best tacos of my entire life from ?Por Que No? that are also incredibly inexpensive. Absolutely amazing.

Carnitas and Tinga tacos

Weapons of choice

I wrapped up my trip downtown, got some Voodoo Doughnuts for the road and jumped on the Cascade for a snooze and ride back to Portland.

Oreos, Fruity Pebbles and a Voodoo Doll

Not bad for just one day. I can’t wait to visit again.

I'm a little proud of my $1 mood ring.

The thing about driving in my car everywhere (aside from it being as expensive as riding the Tube) is that when I walk from the parking lot to the store, it seems odd to be booking it.  No rush, no long distances to walk, and driving on pretty much the same 6 roads.

I spent two days hangin around in the Chicago loop.  For a flash second I forgot about sky scrapers.  When asking people for directions or help, I get a funny look when I give an extra long pause and very polite  excuse me.  Turns out we speak the same language, have the same accent and I’m on home turf.

When ordering my Taco Bell I can lean all over the counter, think for a while, and if I felt so compelled I couldsay “kaaaay, gimmeee two tacos supreme and grande diet pepsi, and oh yah I need some of those cinnamon twists.”  I don’t. I COULD though.

I’ve got about a zillion gigs of photos and minimal energy to upload them. But I will!  It’s good to be back though.  You miss things (places and people) you become attached to.  So hopefully whenever you are leaving somewhere, you have a nice place to move on to.

Since I’ve started university at IU, it’s gotten harder and harder to live in large spaces.  I think I’m well suited for something tighter, for the time being.  Lucky for me those places are usually cheaper too.  As for living out of a backpack… 2 weeks was enough.