Suffering and compassion

I had a wonderful meeting with Bhutan project team and a monk from Bhutan in the first day of my visit in Singapore. While I was quite exhausted by the long travel, I was so glad to spend the time with them. During our discussion, the Bhutanese monk shared his thoughts regarding caring for elders in Bhutan. He truly hopes that this project will initiate reducing the suffering of people who have no roof over their head, no food to eat, and no clothes to wear when they get old. He described his ideas with using the term “compassion” Then, I realized how fortunate I am to exercise my thoughts […]

I am thankful to our elders

For three weeks in 2003 I lived as a nursing home resident while I was a graduate student in architecture. I was studying the impact of the physical environment of nursing homes on the everyday lives of the people who lived and worked there, so I checked myself into a facility in the Midwest as a young woman suffering paralysis on one side of my body. My stay there was crucial in the formation of my beliefs about what goes into making a first-rate nursing and rehabilitation facility, both in terms of the physical facility and the care that residents receive there. It was a personal experience from which I […]

Comfortably messy

When I visited a nursing home in Japan with my friend, he said “This place is comfortably messy. It makes me feel at home.” Being in the living room in this unit (10 elders live in one unit–total of 8 unites in the building), I felt so comfortable. It was also clear for me that elders in the space were completely relaxed. I was tempted to take a nap with the lady who were peacefully sleeping in the white sofa in the living room. This organization gives certain amount of money for staff members in each unit to decorate their unit with the elders. As a result, every single unit […]

Designing for movement

I had a nice Japanese lunch with my friend in Singapore this weekend. She is a traffic engineer who helps organize transportation systems. Talking with her was quite an eye-opening experience, and so was the drive she took me on afterward through the city. She explained about the “street furniture” such as signal lights, benches, guard rails, road signs, crossing paths, and so on, pointing out that someone had to plan all the elements we see and usually take for granted in the streets we travel on.  The planning is based on accumulated knowledge from research and extensive observation of traffic patterns, which are different in different cultures. The process in […]

The beauty of inconvenience

I recently befriended a 79-year-old Japanese person, and I am so excited. It started when my friend in Chicago called to say: “I am with a Japanese person who do not quite understand English. Because he is thinking about making a large furniture purchase, I would like to make sure that he understands what I am explaining to him. I don’t think he understand English well enough for me to be comfortable. Can you help me?” What a kind person my friend is… In few seconds, a Japanese elder started talking to me on the phone. I immediately knew he was from my region because of the dialect he spoke. […]

Creating a place rather than designing a building

I attended the “new aging” conference at University of Pennsylvania over the weekend and left there with a lot of thoughts. This conference organized a series of inspiring sessions with amazing speakers. They were not the typical speakers in aging conferences, and gave me an opportunity to learn different perspectives of design for aging. The clear distinction between the stylistic architects and me was that I tend to look at the housing for elder issue as a holistic view, which means that I start by talking to the people who will live and work there to find out what they need rather than starting with a preconceived idea about the […]

Balance between traditions and modernization

Building homes for elders in Africa and Bhutan is exciting, yet challenging as well for many reasons. First, communication with locals in these areas can be somewhat frustrating because we are so used to the fast pace in our culture. We sometimes forget that their communications are mainly based on meeting in person, instead of using texts or e-mails as we do here. They prefer to talk on the phone or speak in person, which means that things move at a much slower pace than to what we are used to. Maintaining non-virtual communications is a great approach, in a sense, because we are trying to preserve their cultural values. […]

Translating LTC jargon to plain English

What is “14 Window”? I was at a nurse station, and heard people were talking about the “14 Window.” Is the window called “14 window” broken or something? I also found that there also was a “14 door” in this nursing home. Can anyone translate what this means? I thought I knew enough English to communicate with people without any problem these days… If you are working in LTC settings, you know what this means. We should stop using numbers and location to identify a “person.” How difficult is it to call “Mary” instead of “14 Window”? These types of insensitive foreign languages exist in LTC, which are not questioned […]

Am I naive?

The Ibasho team and our local partner in Ivory Coast strongly believe that we can create a multi-generational community where elders are valued as a vital asset in sustaining the social and cultural heritage of the community/village.We also believe that this is the right thing to do for elders. In order to make our vision into reality, we are suggesting that elders should have opportunities to teach at the school, educate local villagers about public health and environmental stewardship at the clinic and community center, work at the library, be a mentor for orphans, and stay involved in other functions that normal communities offer to elders in the Ivory Coast. […]

Who is appropriate?

We use the term “appropriate” often in long-term care settings. I wonder how I would feel if someone said: Emi’s mother used to be independent, but her dementia progressed to the point where she is no longer appropriate for the floor for alert and oriented residents. Because she disturbs other people, she should move upstairs to the dementia unit. She can be with people who have similar cognitive and care levels, so that she will be safe and better cared for. I might feel strong resentment toward whoever made this comment. Someone I love will always be appropriate for me, even if their behavior is not always pleasant due to […]

Learn the rules well, so you know how to break them properly

Learn the rules well, so you know how to break them properly. Dalai Lama This quote reminds me that we who are involved in culture change movement need to remember not to be too blindly critical of the current system. If we want to improve the system of long-term care for the elderly, we need to know about both the positive and the negative aspects of the current system, so we know what to keep and what to change. We need to follow the Dalai Lama’s wisdom in order to make effective changes. I would like to pay sincere respect to all the knowledgeable people who are working hard to change […]