Danny's Weblog

Awful ergonomics and expensive furniture

For my sins, I have been in a lot of furniture stores lately.

I am really struck by how terrible the design of modern furniture is, especially the ergonomics. I'm not too bothered by the look of furniture, and I'm hardly an arbiter of taste either. But I can say that I'm just about average adult size, and if *not one single sofa I've found* actually fits me, something's wrong somewhere.

What I'm particularly talking about is support for the thighs and buttocks. There are a few simple requirements:

1. The distance between the back support and the edge of the seat should be a little less than the side of the (seated) buttocks and the rear of the knees.

2. There should be firm support for the small of the back, a little above the hips, with a softer hollow that the buttocks can fit into.

3. The support for the thighs should slope down somewhat towards the back. (If it doesn't the weight of the body tends to push down on the legs and force the entire body to slide off the sofa, requiring continual effort to avoid low comedy.)

4. Some support should be provided for the shoulders.

*Every* sofa I found violated no. 1. They were all far too deep. The designers might claim that space is provided for cushions, but then the back support is so far away as to be irrelevant.

*Many* of the sofas had horizontal seat cushions. The designer could argue that the user's main weight at the hips will cause the seat to be lowest at that point, but that is inadequate, and causes the main pressure to be at the tailbone – the worst possible point.

*None* of the sofas had support for the shoulders.

In general, the sofas had a comfortable "look" – large, padded, rounded. But this was purely visual. For instance, the arms were large and rounded, so the arms could not be rested next to the body without sliding down: you had to splay the arms out to reach a relatively flat resting point. But that area was still not sufficiently flat to place a beer, or even a teacup. So instead of being able to place your [insert beverage of choice] comfortably close, you had to reach a couple of feet across the large armrest to a side table. Ridiculous.

It reminds me of German design, which endlessly fetishizes the right angle. They love to create furniture, street furniture, dwellings, hardware and so on so that it seems Bauhaus-simple, and yet it leads to rotten, uncomfortable, weak designs. When I lived by the English Garden in Munich, my apartment building had what looked like a ridiculously over-rugged railing system in its stairwell. The railing was a rectangular steel section, so large it could not be grasped properly, with vertical and horizontal supports that were at least as rugged *looking*. But because it merely projected a rugged *image* the designers had considered it unnecessary to provide any bracing, with the result that it swayed unnervingly if you were so bold as to lean on it.

Likewise, the outer door of my apartment block at the Olympic village had a lock that had sharp rectangular edges so that I gave myself a graze many times. Also, you had to twist the key hard and push against a strong spring to open the door at all – and the lock was so close to the jamb that you would scrape your knuckles almost every time.

And a few days ago I was in a door and window store and noticed that their (very nice looking) German hardware was *still the same way*. Heigh ho. *Every* sofa violated no. 2. The firmest point in the back of the sofa was at seat level.

When you get older, losing your hair, when you're 74

In the Observer dated 2007-09-09, there was a set of articles from people in each decade of life. Philip French, at 74, said (in part):

In troubled waking moments and in nightmares I am assailed by guilty memories of things that cannot be repaired, of people I have hurt (mostly women), of confidences betrayed. In my sleep surreal experiences of loss and being lost constantly recur.

When my wife Joanna died I invited her friends to a memorial service, and told them that when she was dying I tried to imagine that the afterlife somehow would bring her back together with all the things that she'd lost: her favorite cats, the jewelry from her circus family that had been stolen in Manhattan, the raccoons that she had tried to save and to defend from rabies. Nothing we can do can defend the dead, no matter what they have done for us: they go ahead of us, perhaps again to fight our battles for us, or perhaps to ambush us in vengeance.

A few days ago I saw a young boy and his father in a supermarket noisily assuring each other of their undying love, and while finding it rather saccharine and un-English I was a little charmed. I thought of telling the boy: your father will not need your help until he is old, and when he is old sooner or later nothing you can do will be enough to make his life worth living. You will always feel guilt. But what you can do for him – what he cannot do for himself – is to make him proud of you, and to be as good to others as he was to you.

Back in England after thirty years

A couple of weeks ago I came back to England. Except for a couple of brief visits, I haven't lived here for thirty years. The place basically seems like a foreign country which has provided a few things to attract English tourists.

Here is a list of things I have noticed.

1. I had always intended to come back to England from Asia in the summertime to minimize the change in climate. Unfortunately, this summer is cold and wet. The highs have not been over 20 C (68 F) since I got here, and most of the time it's even cooler, with a brisk wind and frequent showers. Quite a contrast to the relatively constant 90-95F in Phnom Penh.

Actually, most of the time it feels OK, but it's a wrench to get out of bed into the cold morning air, and it's even worse to try and take a shower. Fortunately in an English climate it's OK to shower once a day or less.

I have been surprised to find that I am walking distinctly faster than English people, having formed the opinion that Asians walk much slower than Europeans. Perhaps it's just that I am trying to keep warm. I've noticed that a brisk walk uphill makes me sweat even when my skin still feels chilly. It reminds me of army exercises where I had to take off my jacket to avoid overheating, even when sleet was forming ice on my bare arms.

Perhaps English people have gotten less used to exercise in the last thirty years. They do seem tubbier, especially young people. The town I'm in is very pretty and seems quite well designed for pedestrians, but I've noticed that the best-looking girls are foreign tourists. The local girls tend to be spotty and shapeless; the ones that aren't tend to be overdressed and tarty.

2. Of course the traffic is much more controlled than in Asia. However, drivers seem to rely on this and be unready for the unexpected. In particular, if I step out into the road to get around a gaggle of slow pedestrians, I get the impression traffic dithers for a moment in consternation before manouevring around me. I should mention that many roads in England are quite narrow, with cars passing uncomfortably close even when I am on the sidewalk.

3. Cellphone service seems much easier than in America. I was able to just buy a SIMcard for TMobile prepaid service over the counter without proof of identity. The only glitch was that although I told the salesman that I did not want the "mates" plan, I somehow wound up with it, with the result that some business calls were costing 25p per minute till I ran down the prepayment to zero and discovered the problem. Irritatingly, the service does not have a system to send you the balance by SMS; you have to listen to a voice response system – although fortunately it's the first thing you hear.

TMobile naturally supported my phone, and I was able to send mms with a picture right away. However, I can't get the web access to work. Also, when I tried out the mms the phone reset itself or even turned itself off three or four times that day, although not since.

SMS works fine between the UK and Cambodia. I sent an SMS to my nephew and it reached him in Spain, so presumably roaming is not ruinously expensive to set up.

4. In general prices are chillingly high. I'm paying 1.60 UKP for a mug-size coffee – that's nearly 3.50 USD now that the USD has started to fall. It's OK coffee though; my recollection is that English coffee varied from passable to appalling. My perception is that this is general, ie that all goods are better quality than I remember, although this may be largely as a reaction to Cambodia, where most goods are of shoddy quality.

However, do not buy coffee at the cafe in the Heathrow bus station. I think it's called a Nero's but I forgot to make a note of it. I ordered a cappuccino, but when I got it it didn't even taste of coffee. I asked the man at the cash register, apparently a Hungarian, if I had the right order, and he assured me I did, but it tasted like cocoa with Miracle Whip on top.

I have been surprised to find that chocolate is not particularly good, although I haven't tried all my old favorites yet. What has been a pleasant surprise is the donuts, or buns as they are mostly called here. (However it may still not be wise to call out to one of the girls behind the counter "hey, cute buns!") They are large, dense and delicious. At 80 p (about 1.70 USD) for a "Belgian Bun" they are considerably more expensive than the iced donuts I used to be at Caltex for 0.25 USD, but they are worth it. I don't remember English donuts being so good, although this may be because I moved initially from England to other countries which also had good donuts.

A more unnerving price shock was for pocket-size spiral-bound notebooks. I can't remember what price I was paying but I think it was less than 0.50 USD. I saw a similar product at W. H. Smith's for 1.99 UKP – about 4.10 USD! It may be that W. H. Smith has been trying to move upmarket and this was some sort of "designer" notebook, although they do have even more expensive ones, and when I looked in Staples the other day they had nothing cheaper. Eventually I found a similar notebook for 0.99 UKP, but it is actually not a very good size for shirt pockets.

5. I had been concerned that there would be no internet cafes. There is in fact one, but it's (surprise surprise) terribly expensive, at 1 UKP per 15 minutes. Compared with Phnom Penh at 2000 riel (about 0.48 USD) per hour, that's about 17 times more expensive. On the other hand, they said they had a 1 Mbit link, not the (on a very good day) 256 kbit in PP. Also, I would be surprised if I got lizard poop in my hair.

Worse, they do not seem to offer VoIP. Presumably that's a legal issue. I shudder to think what the charges are for a regular voice call to Cambodia; I haven't spoken to my gf since I got here (just used SMS).

On the other hand, the public library offers free internet. On the other other hand, the machines are securely locked down; so securely that all right-clicks have been disabled, for instance. There is a system which administers the one-hour maximum usage, and it starts at the scheduled time and it cuts you off at the scheduled time. It doesn't allow me to ssh to my shell account, even using a Java interface, so I imagine it only has a route for HTTP and SSL. All changes, including all stored files, are wiped at the end of a session. This is all very irritating, but I have to admit that it gives me confidence that the machines are not riddled with viruses.

Also, when I needed to do a download I was getting a real 200 kbytes/s.

The only real blunder I found was that the machines that are set up as scanners, using a USB port, can't save to USB. Because all local files are discarded at the end of each session, this means the only way to use the scanners is to upload the scans to webmail. I was incredulous when this was explained to me. Apparently the build for these virtual machines only included a single USB port. I was told to get a gmail account to handle the large filesizes involved, but I am very wary of leakage of confidential information through Google.

6. All my bank accounts had died a long time ago, and I had been reading about banks now requiring all kinds of documentation to open an account. Apparently that particular variety of security theatre has been abolished, fortunately: I just had to show proof of identity, not six months of electric bills, my birth certificate and my genome.

7. When I left, public lavatories had free urinals for men; if you needed to sit down, it cost an old penny for as long as I can remember, although presumably it was somewhat more expensive in new p by the time I left. Now, it costs 20 p – more than 0.40 USD and nearly fifty times the old price. And public buildings no longer offer public toilets, including the public library. (What it does have is video surveillance, RFID and power-operated doors like something out of Man from Uncle.)

There is a sign at one of the public toilets – in English, French and German – offering free urinals at night, but the overall effect seems to me to discourage the casual stroller. I wonder how much of this is a conscious attempt to control the public. Some people may support this sort of thing because they realize it makes life harder for derelicts, and it's true that I used to be wary of public toilets because one would get propositioned, but I think the long-term aim of the government is to make it harder for everybody to leave their homes. Their ideal society has the entire population at home till they drive to work in their cars with machine-readable numberplates; in the evening everybody stops at Tesco's to buy groceries on their cashcard; and then everybody drives home to watch the news with pictures of dead Moslems on the telescreen.

I have read many complaints in the newspapers about the fact that young people now urinate in public. When I lived here thirty years ago this was almost unknown, but now it seems routine. Why don't people see cause and effect?

8. Although this is a tourist town, there is a pedestrian tunnel system to cross a large roundabout which has no signs at all to tell you which way to go. Nor does a large public park have any signs giving its name or inviting the public to enter (at least on the side I pass along). Perhaps they're afraid of Al Qaeda parachutists.

That pedestrian tunnel system has no steps, only long ramps which must be terrifying to walk down when the surface is slippery.

9. The American disease of excessive politeness seems to have caught hold among shop assistants. The poor soandsos seem to have to inject a false warmth and grin, reminding me of the "yew have a good day now! [beam]" that is so depressing in the USA.

Some American phrases and usages have certainly caught on that were unknown thirty years ago. I was surprised to hear "senior moment" for instance (although I suppose at my age I will be hearing it more and more often till my hearing goes).

10. The idea of recycling seems to have taken root, and people seem to religiously divide their domestic trash into separate piles. I suppose this is better than seeing four-year-old ragamuffins sitting on the sidewalk sorting your trash at one am (a frequent sight in Phnom Penh).

11. I am happy to say that wine seems to be cheaper than it used to be. Tesco's has bottles for 4 UKP; while this is more expensive than the Gallo's I used to enjoy in the US for about 6 USD a jug, it's considerably cheaper than Cambodia and presumably not left to boil in the sun for months before you buy it. (A couple of months ago I was about to buy a bottle of wine at a local store in Phnom Penh when I realized the bottle was quite hot: the shelf was right next to the outlet from a refrigeration unit. The shop assistant said something like "yeah, a couple of people have complained about that".)

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