Posts by author
Chris West
…Would thinking be enough to keep you happy? Diogenes liked sleeping in a giant wine jar and masturbating in public, all part of his Cynicism philosophy of rejecting the conventional desires for wealth, power and fame. Actually, it’s a lot less challenging than a naked man walking around, defecating in the theatre, polishing the bannister…
Thanks to Charabanc, “new car” may not be the most desirable motoring smell… In his definitive book ‘Nose Dive (A field guide to the world’s smells)’ the author Harold McGee analyses different categories of fragrance: animals, land plants, the land itself, water life, along with cooked and fermented foods. He stops off along the way…
A Four Seasons Hotel that most Uber drivers can’t find isn’t a good omen. The Four Seasons Palo Alto is camouflaged at the end of a cul-de-sac of office blocks, all designed in that late 90s functional vernacular so familiar to anyone whose sat in slow moving traffic on the M4. Perhaps lacking the bespoke…
Ten years before Matthew Weiner pushed Don Draper out of his Madison Avenue office to come crashing down on our screens, David Fincher pushed Michael Douglas off an office block in San Francisco. Douglas crashed through the Art Deco glass roof of the Palace Hotel in San Francisco and landed in what is now its…
Not everything in Silicon Valley is about the newest. There’s the Rosewood Hotel, maintaining a majestic overview of Sand Hill Road for 10 years now. And Stanford University, over a hundred years old, still sits serene in the morning sunshine at the end of its mile-long palm tree drive. And then there’s Nobu Palo Alto.…
When someone asks, “How are you?”, if your reply is more than 3 words, it’s too long. Unless the person asking you is Dr Donnai. In which case, take as long as you want. Because Dr Donnai is an integrated physician (and the CEO) at Viavi, a private health care management firm. Health care management…
The full stop is a relic of WhatsApp-free years gone by. Or so it might seem, until you set foot on London’s Lamb’s Conduit Street, where artfully placed full stops abound. A stroll down this haven of artisanal retail soon reveals that, far from being a quirky gimmick, this supposedly inessential dot is loaded with strategic…
How do you launch a cheap phone without it being thought of as cheap? Or it being called second rate, limited, outdated, woefully underspecced? And how do you do it on a limited budget ($0) so that the world gets excited about it? You don’t launch it. Instead, you ‘relaunch’ it, cladding the new phone…
Are you reading this a little bleary-eyed? Didn’t get enough sleep last night? Maybe you want to spend some money on that? Certainly a number of brands want you to. The business of sleep is the next big thing to keep ambitious CEOs awake at night. (Yes, we couldn’t resist that one.) Have you read…
Dubai is the on the way to everywhere. Just on the east of Europe, just on the west of Asia, over two-thirds of the world’s population lives within eight hours flight. It’s on its way to becoming the world’s third busiest airport, behind Beijing and Atlanta. With so much money passing through, Dubai’s rulers are…