The Foreign Desk

Who is filing

A monk. Round, cheerful, frequently late. He is the Laughing Buddha of East Asian folk tradition, not the historical Buddha, and nothing here makes fun of anyone’s faith. He travels with a monkey, who asks the questions, and writes each day to his Abbot, who has never replied.

What he covers

Design, technology, the economy, culture and politics, from everywhere, including the annual pilgrimage to Davos. Letters roam the day’s news. Cables are the short ones. Relics are the bad designs he finds along the way, catalogued like museum pieces.

House rules

• The facts are real. Every letter lists its sources.
• The monk’s opinions are satire.
• He laughs at every capital, every party and every market, including his own.
• He criticizes designs, products, companies and governments. Never an individual designer or employee.
• He never puts invented words in a real person’s mouth.
• Tragedies, victims and private individuals are left alone.

Who writes it

The monk prefers not to say. He has been described as overqualified.