Kids from rich parents spend their weekends doing extra classes, like maths and English and public speaking, while kids from poorer parents spend their weekends watching videos in the store or restaurant while their parents work. All-day. It’s the same all over the world. Poor people spend more time behind the television, less time with […]
I have this recurring daydream, usually when I’m doing low-focus work like Photoshopping, or like now — sitting in the high-speed way train from Shanghai to Suzhou. It’s this moment from my high school. We need to run three kilometers or some distance like that. Too far to sprint, but close enough to just sort […]
A bit of context: I studied the major advertising from 2010 to 2014 at the Willem de Kooning Academy (WDKA) in Rotterdam, and since 2019 I teach Branding at the Shanghai Institute of Visual Art (SIVA). Despite the distance, both schools are actually very similar: The student’s age is the same and they have similar […]
From my childhood, I strongly recall the strange but pleasant smell of our sofa, the engine sound of my mom’s of Citroën AX, and the songs on the radio such as Steve Miller’s ‘The Joker’ and Henk Westbroek’s ‘Zelfs je naam is mooi’. And when I go back to that time, the worries of today […]
I never realized how important idioms, proverbs, and expressions are to language. I never had to. Not only did I always live in a Western culture, also English and Dutch are pretty close to each other. So close in fact, that we often just translate idioms (Rubbing salt in a wound / Zout in wond […]
There’s so much in this book. First, it feels so incredibly real because it’s reworked on existing history. I want to look up the events on Wikipedia, even though many never happened. Roth weaves his own coming of age into the story, and the characters feel so incredibly real. Each character unique — brought alive […]
Marketing theory comes down to how you think marketing works. Imagine 全家FamilyMart would open up a 5-star restaurant in downtown Shanghai. Candles on the table, waiters suited up, silver cutlery. And FamilyMart would serve their microwave meals, touting their high-quality taste. It’d be fun, they’d invite 网红wanghong to magazines, and they’d get some serious PR. […]
My New Year’s Resolution is to look for the good in people — as daft as it sounds. Because you see and feel what you look for. You can focus on bad shit and be totally right. But it’ll grow and grow until it becomes all of who you are. You can only be happy […]
‘Who: The A Method for Hiring’ by by Geoff Smart and Randy Street is a fantastic book on hiring with practical advice that saves you time, and prevents you from hiring the wrong people. Who summary Here’s a summary of the tips for my own reference (and perhaps, yours): The goal is to hire ‘A-players’, […]
An asset or resource is something you dig up (like coal), or someone you hire like a great CEO (yes, that’s why they call it ‘human resources’). When you’re a car company, you use resources like steel and rubber and leather to make engines and wheels and seats, and in the end; cars. You can […]