is anyone out there
A confession: I opened this page in Buttondown (my email newsletter tool), and discovered that I have no idea how to write a personal email newsletter 😂
Hello!
Several weeks ago, you entered your email address somewhere on quartey.com so that you would receive a message whenever there was a new story. Since then, I have published several stories....and sent out absolutely no emails.
This is me attempting do better.
Before I say anything else, here is a summary of the last several stories that might be of interest.
Update: Family Home
We hired a geotechnical engineer to do a survey on the plot!
The scope of work included sinking boreholes, soil sampling, and laboratory testing, and concluded in a written report which was surprisingly comprehensive.
The story has lots of photos from the dig as well as screenshots from the report.
Geotechnical survey for Family Home ↗
How to get things done in Accra without leaving your house
Every time I figure out a more efficient way to perform some chore, I scribble it down on the blog to spare someone else a few hours.
How to get bottled water delivered to your home in Accra ↗
How to get your gas cylinder refilled in Accra without leaving your house ↗
An exercise in seeing
I fell in love with a photo of a room in Japan and scribbled a few tweets about it. For some reason, the thread appeared to resonate with a lot of people and it went mildly viral. Archived it as a blog post.
Year in Review 2020
Instead of a single 2020 "year in review" story, I wrote a series of reflections.
Favourite Fictional Characters of 2020 ↗
Favourite Architecture Studios of 2020 ↗
Favourite Dance Videos of 2020 ↗
Favourite Architecture Design Studio Websites of 2020 ↗
Other changes on the website
I created a Research page to house my academic long-form writing.
--
This felt...surprisingy effortless?
I've been putting off sending this first email for weeks, and now I can see that I was completely overthinking it.
Future emails will likely be much shorter, I suspect. Will also play around with different approaches to this email to see what feels best.
...okay how do I end this lol
Let's do a parting question: what's the last song you listened to on repeat, and why?
No but seriously please hit reply and tell me - I genuinely want to know (especially the why)!
Mine is [backspace backspace backspace] wait actually I'll tell you mine if you tell me yours 👀
ok bye!
Love,
Emmanuel
(backflips onto the back of a giant purple rhino, which neighs and disappears in a thunderous explosion of orange sparks.)