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adventurer, traveler, and designer at heart, jay roop is on a mission to experience the most that earth has to offer and bring others on board for the time of their lives. currently residing in seoul, korea where he runs operations for his design studio, and previously living in gothenburg, sweden and san francisco, california, he is ready to share documentation of his life and work with all those who are interested.
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ato 4 nen (4 years later)
my name is jay. four years ago i got on a plane to japan. when i got there i had my life turned upside down. the photo above is of my first meal after landing.
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basic communication and daily activities were intimidating. i didn’t speak the language. i couldn’t read what food i was buying. i was jet-lagged, but having the time of my life.
my friend ben and i lived in an 18m square apartment together for 4.5 months.
we often rode our bikes past familymart; our closest convenience store, over the bridge and down along the river where the cherry blossoms were blooming in the distance, past the rice fields with the occasional farmer hunched over paying us no attention, through the rolling hills to school.
occasionally we made the 45 minute walk back home as a result of staying out too late down by the ishikawa river while drinking with the other students, witnessing wild stunts such as a guy eating an entire of wasabi paste, or someone jumping into the cold, dirty river water.
most often, though, we made our way under the vines shading the winding alley behind our apartment, past the old man with the one room bicycle shop, down the street and then through another alley behind the pachinko parlor where it wasn’t uncommon to encounter a drunk peeing man, cats, or bees (quite an odd assortment) before spilling out across the street from our local train station by the same name of our town – tondabayashi.
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this was just the beginning, but putting everything down into words is something i’ve wanted to do ever since i got back, and i hope this will be some kind of reminder to myself to make that wish a reality. every time i try, it always comes out a bit jumbled, missing some things here and there, and generally indecipherable to others, but i really want to find a way to tell this story, at least for myself.
the new kvarnen studio, unveiled
over the past six months i’ve been hard at work on the biggest web project i’ve taken on to date, and today i’m really excited to announce the redesign and relaunch of the swedish (beyond) sustainable design studio, kvarnen studio.
the site has been rebuilt from the ground-up on expression engine, and is a new take for them on how to present their work. from the very start we have reconsidered the purpose of the site, thought about how to get visitors to focus on understanding kvarnen studio’s unique approach to the design process without boring them with oodles of text, and emphasized getting the ‘site’ out of the way to let the work speak for itself.
i’ll provide a more in-depth look at the process and iterations we went through in the next couple of days, but for now i hope you take the chance to look around and see some of their work.
tack, tack – hej då!
firefox add-on rendering issues! (they are driving me crazy)
the past couple of days i’ve been driven insane by a text rendering problem in firefox when using add-ons.
the problem appeared suddenly, so i wouldn’t be surprised if this is just user error on my part, but it renders my normal text as bold ONLY when viewing the site i am currently developing. you can see the comparison in the image above.
i’ve since just removed all add-ons, but that has left me feeling a bit vulnerable with no web developer, html validator, or firebug. i’m hoping that someone out there in the world will have some sort of suggestion for me, this thing is driving me nuts!
on why coffee isn’t a night activity (if you want to sleep)
hej folks, are you drinkers? or have you learned the hard way that you can’t hold you’re liquor, beer, or cider, even on a full stomach? did you get hungry just before going out, making you realize that it wasn’t a good night to get proverbially wasted? if your answer was yes, then keep on reading for a (cynical) account of what might’ve happened to you.
so, you thought it was a good idea to get a caffé mocha instead of a cider tonight. and maybe you also thought to yourself, “hej, why not make it a large one while we’re at it!”
well kid, to be quite frank, that was a bad idea. because now you’re finding yourself unable to sleep and it’s 612 in the morning and you’ve been awake for the past hour.
you’ve tried breathing exercises, letting the thoughts pass through your mind without grabbing onto them, ignoring the slight pain in your stomach from all the caffeine, and all to no avail. heck, you even tried playing GTA on your iPhone before you went to sleep to see if you could completely exhaust yourself in a futile attempt at avoiding this very situation.
what do you now? why write a blog post of course! here’s what it should look like:
1. make sure it starts off with an attempt at being witty
2. write in the third person about someone who is obviously yourself
3. don’t make it a post, make it a rant
4. tell’em what you’ve been doing since you’ve been awake
5. make a list of the things you wrote about
6. stop before you embarrass yourself any further in front of your readership of > 5
7. next time remember to drink decaf tea instead
porcelain success!
i’m elated to report that my rocks have made it through the first firing! after finally figuring out how to mix my porcelain, thanks to my friends eszti + noriko, i cast the rocks… more or less successfully!
the photo above is the current state of the rocks. the pin holes were a suggestion by my girlfriend, min, and i will expand upon the idea once returning from vacation.