// INBOX
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  1. Richard Lee15 Feb 2025
    The inbox is the blog

    Why this site pretends to be an email client — and what that buys a reader who just wants to know what they haven’t seen yet.

    // pinned// Meta// 4 min// flair// unread
  2. Richard Lee29 Jul 2026
    Why can't mine look like that?

    My video's subtitles were boring. John Wick's aren't. What came back wasn't a one-shot — it was a lab.

    // Building// 4 min// flair// unread
  3. Richard Lee12 Jul 2026
    On subtraction

    The best edit is usually a deletion. A short argument for building — and writing — by removal.

    // Essays// 3 min// unread
  4. Richard Lee5 Jul 2026
    Field notes: a summer week in Seoul

    Humidity, convenience-store coffee, and the particular quiet of a city that never quite turns off.

    // Field Notes// 2 min// unread
  5. Richard Lee28 May 2026
    The Office Chair is the bottleneck

    A five-hour session window tiles the day and drifts. A nine-to-six chair catches one whole window a day — never two. So I stopped letting the chair decide.

    // Essays// 3 min// flair// unread
  6. Richard Lee4 Dec 2025
    Field notes: first winter in Seoul

    Sandals to boots. Gloves with the fingertips cut out. Snow that lands in your hair and just stays there. A walk home, in eight beats.

    // Field Notes// 2 min// flair// unread
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Field notes: a summer week in Seoul

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Richard Lee<richard-y-lee@hotmail.com>·
// Field Notes// 2 min read

July in Seoul is a wet heat that arrives before you’re awake and stays past midnight. I've learned to move between air-conditioned islands: the subway car, timing the bus down to the second, and when I walk the streets a Mega Coffee in my hand.

A storm clearing over a Seongnam-daero road sign at sunset, the last of the clouds lit gold against a cooling blue sky.
the sky clearing out after a July storm, Seongnam

Three small things

  • The 24-hour everything. A country where you can get a decent meal, a haircut, and a phone repaired at 2am rearranges what you think a day is.
  • Walking as default. Density means the fifteen-minute city is just… the city. Most of what I need is a short walk and a shorter subway ride.
  • Rain that means it. Monsoon season doesn’t drizzle. You have better odds with russian roulette vs the weather forecast. You learn to always take the umbrella.
A row of drying umbrellas of every color lined up along a wet tile floor just inside a building entrance.
the umbrella rack by the door — everyone's, lined up to dry

I wonder, does Korea have fire marshalls?