Mucking about

A year ago during my year out, at about this time, I commented on this blog that it was nearing the academic year end and all the part-time students in my office were all stressed out about their work. Well, I am back in uni and truly in the nightmarish final weeks of the year. The final review was recently concluded last week, and now a final two week to work on criticisms, praise, and comments (mostly criticisms) from the review panel in preparation for the final pin-up.

Also, I’ve applied for exchange in the final year and the current result is that the (internal) panel was undecided. I think my internal indecision about to go or not was shown all too clearly in my thesis proposal, and thrown back at me. Looks like I’m gonna have to make some personal decisions about what’s gonna happen the coming year before the panel will approve/reject.

So really, I think it’s impossible to finish Part 2 of the previous story for the next couple weeks, though I really want to.

Random whiny facts: I got the cheapest chair available in Argos after my old one, broke, and after sitting on it constantly for a whole week (with hardly any sleep I might add), my butt literally aches. Shifting positions worked for awhile, but now it aches in every position. It’s not easy to imagine having to sit on it for 2 more sleepless weeks.

Also, before the final review last thursday, I realised that my only physical contact with the outside world the whole week was when the postman called in the mornings with more parcels for Flora…

And finally, possibly the most depressing: My only sense of a day’s passage is when my sister logs in to Gtalk every morning when she goes to work in Singapore at 9am  (2am over here). It’s not a good feeling when I see her going online in my chat client and realising our last exchange was 24 hours ago when it seemed like 2 hours ago. Sunrises and sunsets, to me, only mean its time to switch off/on the lights.

Enough with the whining… and resting. Time to get on with it!!

Me and Felicia, in the studio one freezing January evening. Prior to this drawing exercise, I haven’t used a T Square and a drawing board in years!

Untitled Story About Nothing in Particular/ Or Perhaps the Title Comes After – Part I

Some years ago, I had a strange dream. It wasn’t like a normal dream; I was partly conscious, or perhaps fully conscious – it was in the twillight zone between day-dreaming and actual sleep-dreaming.

In that dream, I was in a small mountain village. I wasn’t myself – in that I wasn’t Alex Tee; I was someone else. I looked different, had a different identity, a different history. I was perhaps in my early forties, and was born somewhere far away, in a big city, a major metropolis. For the past few years though, I had been in that mountain village – and the locals, who knew who everyone was, had began to slowly accept me as one of them.

I was running away from something – A refugee from my past. I had the sense that my appearance and subsequent settling down in that village was the culmination of a long, exhausting journey, over many places, over many weeks and months. Yet I had found respite in that village, and had started to rebuild a broken life in that mountain village.

The village was high among the mountains and lay at the foot of a huge mountain. The mountain was so dominating, so assertive, that it appeared as if the village existed entirely by virtue of the mountain. The mountain was physical, the village ephemereal. The shadow that the mountain cast on the village was real and tangible, the motley jumble of brick and concrete dwellings almost metaphysical in existence. The more affluent households had white render on their walls, and the village was characterised by steep slopes and gravel roads, well-used but meticulously kept in good condition by the villagers. It was quite a big and busy village, almost a town. This was in part due to its location as the centre of a clutch of similar villages scattered around the mountains.

I had a skill. The skill was, while not unique, relatively valuable to that village. I offered my services in return for a roof over my head, food, and for something to do to pass the time. It was partly the reason the villagers accepted me – they didn’t know anything about big metropolises, but they understood a skilled craftsman, especially a useful one, and for that reason I quickly became part of the community.

TO BE CONTINUED

It’s creating time!

I am a terrible procrastinator. I’ve been trying for some time to change that. Among the things I did was to read widely on the internet about time management, yadda yadda efficiency and that sort of thing. Most of it seems completely generic,  unsubstantiated, and in most cases pulled directly from the author’s head on to paper. In a practical manner of speaking, they are worthless. There is the occasional gem or two of useful advice, but for the most part, they seem to be written by self-proclaimed experts and “specialists” capitalising on people’s insecurities.

A particularly well-received author spoke of the importance of scheduling “creative time” for “creating”. I get the feeling that his creative time was spent on thinking up funny advice like this. Can creativity be scheduled so conveniently? When inspiration (or deadlines) strikes, adrenaline courses through you and will tide you over typical physical limits. In the midst of an epiphany, you won’t feel sleepy. Conversely, when you are faced with a writer’s, or equivalent, block, no amount of redbull is going to keep you awake, and no amount of careful scheduling is going to save your sorry ass. I don’t know about that author, but personally I can never get inspiration to strike just when it is time for me to “create” and to wear off just as “creative time” is supposed to end. Perhaps he knows something I don’t, something that I will only know if i pay $99 and join his merry band of followers.

For the record, he’s not wrong – it is entirely possible to just sit down and start drawing, doodling, writing, painting, composing something, but it seems extremely farcical and presumptous to assume that the resulting piece of work is going to be of any quality.

On that tangent, I wonder how many people involved in the arts – (music, literature, design etc) lead highly ordered and organised lives with perfect, sparkling daily schedules.  Or if this has any effect on the quality of their work. I have the impression that for most of the talented individuals, their whole life is one block of “creative time”, 24/7, and everything else is an afterthought. Saying that, I don’t know where architecture fits in all this – most will not admit it is “merely” art, and similarly most will not admit it is “merely” science. Being stuck somewhere in between is the worst place to be, is all I’m saying. It’s as if you have to be all emo and moody a la Beethoven, but as precise and accurate as an engineer. I guess it’s not a surprise that me, at least, fail terribly at being both.

Anyway, to finish up, one is a bestselling author, or so he claims, and I am a struggling student. I know whose advice I’d take.

Kafka on the Shore meets Design Studio 4B and have a conversation

I told myself not to read anything unrelated to uni until it finishes, which is after all only 5 weeks from now, but of course when I make promises I tend to break them as soon as I can. So, with the discovery of Fopp in Glasgow city centre (TWO of them), I am now broke from buying books when I should really NOT be doing so.

Among one of my purchases is Haruki Murakami’s Kafka on the Shore, which I started to read while accompanying Flora at work and couldn’t put it down, so I finished it quickly.If you can’t beat them, join them… Interestingly, there is a Komura Memorial Library (fictitious, unfortunately) in it that’s quite a pivotal plot device in the story, so I can proudly say it added a new dimension to my own uni project. Yes, really…. Of course, now the library I need to design for my studio project will end up looking like my own interpretation of that traditional Japanese library, albeit with German & Scottish & Malaysian twists. Ahh.. what a mess of cross-cultural influences.

Anyway, seeing all the references to Franz Kafka only made me realise acutely I’ve still not read any of his works yet, something I”ve been meaning to do for more than a year, so the next day I went and bought Kafka’s The Castle at the same Fopp. :)

Other books I bought: Another Murakami book – Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman, Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose, and 3 books that would be categorised under “Scottish Interest”.

Form, Space and order

For an old college assignment way back in my very first year I had to refer to Francis D.K. Ching’s seminal work Form, Space and Order. At least, that was the idea, but I took one look at it, didn’t understand anything (which is ironic seeing that 75% of it is drawings and illustrations) and did something else. At that particular point in time, “doing something else” was likely to be looking for Kelvin, a Sabahan of indeterminate ethnicity (I never asked) I knew from work and picking up big bottles of beer at 7-11 and proceeded to get drunk whereever we happened to be, which too often included erm… public places.

uhh..Moving along…

I picked it up in the uni library a couple days ago, and going through it in my penultimate year of architectural education and with 20/20 hindsight it’s suprising how many of the things in the book are now intimately familar to me and how some of them are practically second nature thought processes when plowing through design studio work. Of course, I suppose the idea is for a “successful” architect, so to speak, to be intimately familar with EVERY single idea the book expounds.

Anyhow. I don’t know about others, but Frank Ching left deep impressions on me (not thaatt first time, of course). It’s remarkable how well the guy can draw, and all in pencil to boot. Excellent book, very good. Wished I looked it in sometime between my first year and my second last year. Better late than never, I suppose. Even more, I wished the lecturer who introduced me to it in the first place did a better job at the introducing. But. Architecture has always been a very self-motivated and individualistic area of study; there is only one direction responsibility should eventually fall on, really.  :)

Forgetting

If I say so myself, I have a reasonably good memory for information – I find it easy to remember things like names, numbers, dates, details etc. Seriously, considering all the external, silicon-microchips-run brains (exobrains..?)  available to us right this moment, I don’t find that a particularly useful skill.

As it is, I have a terrible habit of forgetting important stuff. Life-changing stuff. Stuff like the lessons I learn (or were forced on me) in life. I can’t help but wonder why, constantly. I have a vague suspicion that answers, or the beginning of answers, can be found in some Kundera stuff I read last year (The Book of Laughter & Forgetting), but I can’t remember exactly what.

When I first came to Glasgow in 2007, I met a classmate whom I later realised I had some similarities with, at least as far as working habits are concerned. For the record, that’s not a flattering observation. Now though, in 2010, the classmate is still around but the similarities don’t exist anymore. Some people live and learn, some people (me) live and learn but always forget….

This being the fourth year of architorture and all that jazz, the lessons forgotten are costly and exacting!

Anyway – the March deadline has come and passed, and the dissertation is a thing of the past. Had nearly a week’s break with two Ian Rankins I picked up in Bristol, of all places, a year ago, and a couple of parties for Alistair’s & Janice’s birthdays. Rankin’s Inspector Rebus novels cast Edinburgh & Scotland in a strong Noir-ish light; I have to say it fits very well. I’ve been meaning to read more fiction set in Scotland, but the few I tried back in 2007 were rubbish.

Pre-Easter interim crit Thursday 9am. 1m wide x 2m high wall pin-up space allocated for each student. It is now Monday afternoon; I have nothing pinnable as yet. What’s that saying again, the one about resting so you can walk further?

bugging people pays off eventually

The All England Badminton Championships 2010 starts from March 9-14 at Birmingham NEC!!! AND Where will I be?

Yeah, at home with my dissertation & studio…. this sucks.

Way back in December, I had already *decided* to go… was practically paying for my tickets online when I thought to check my handbook to find the date for dissertation deadline and it was…. March 16. So now, my body is in Glasgow and my soul in Birmingham~

Anyway, considering China’s performance last year, one hopes that they will leave something for others this year….preferably a Malaysian… ngek

On an unrelated note, it seems that my annoying persistence in bugging people to play badminton with me had the desired effect. When we started uni in Oct only me had Pei Fun had rackets; Now, everyone has at least one… and in the busiest period, we are still playing once or twice a week at the uni sports hall. Cheers!

Digressing

Today is (or was, seeing that it’s 5am Saturday now) Friday Evening.

Man, have I got plans for friday evening!!!!

Site (and Floor) Plans to draw, that is.

I ended up doing a model most of the night, which I absolutely hate cause I’m so bad at it – (I actually love models, just am absolute crap at making it. I wish my school had cheap laser cutting model services. Well actually it’ll be great if they first have a proper plotter that works 100% of the time instead of 20% and is easily accessible to all students and not hidden in some locked room somewhere in the basement, and to access it and actually print something on it requires an effort similar to searching for the holy grail. Which is why hardly anyone bothers.) By the way this post is all about digression.

Anyway, to alleviate the overwhelming desire of my mind to resist any form of work, I ended up listening to Yoshiharu Tsukamoto’s (Atelier Bow-Wow) open lectures in Barcelona on Architectural Behaviorology on Vimeo [while cutting stuff]. Being in an European environment exposes me to constant European (and Scandinavian) aesthetic and design sensibility, and it was refreshing to hear something from the other side of the world, from the near-mythical Japan, a place where a large percentage of Malaysian architecture students aspire to visit one day. I am a fan of Atelier Bow-Wow’s work, and it is nice to see them taking on bigger and bigger projects as their reputation grows. I’d say they’re more gritty and edgy than Sanaa, and I like taht :)

Becoming quite the archi-geek! shit

Skins

Hunted around in my trove of images, prepared these few for my dissertation and thought, might as well I put them up here…

Electrical substation, Eichstatt, Germany. Dec 2009. Clad in clean and precise timber strips, it practically blinds your vision with horizontal lines when you get too close.

Ohel Jakob Synagogue, Munich, Germany. Dec 2009. Come on… YOU JUST WANNA TOUCH THIS DON’T YOU. The textures on this are incredible. Conceived as one part in a complex of three buildings, all three are clad with the same type of stone (travertine), but with different finishes. One smooth, one semi rough and one SUPER ROUGH. No prizes for guessing which this is.

Selfridges Store, Birmingham, UK. May 2009. This building needs no introduction, does it? However I just recently found out that the construction was pretty low tech. The blue stuff beneath is… guess what, plain ol’ painted concrete, and then the aluminium discs stuck on to it. So much for “future systems!” I am one of those who likes the building though.

Pyramide du Louvre, The Louvre, Paris, France. May 2009. Designed by I.M. Pei and built in 1989, this glass pyramid was so high tech that that they had to develop and design completely new systems and details just to hold it up. Bet you didn’t know that. And no, I don’t care what you read in the Da Vinci Code, but it doesn’t have 666 glass panes.

Learning by Doing

For everything I wanted to do, and told myself “this is something interesting, to put into practice next time”, I correct and tell myself: there is no next time. There is only now. And Somehow, some way, I have to put it into practice right this moment, if i want to do it, as I will probably never get the chance to do it anymore.

On the other hand though, there is ALWAYS a next time. It all depends on the importance you impart to “this time”. A procrastinator might think the other way, but the more you give for this time, the more chances that there will be a next time.

Enlightenment arrived too late? But, you know, we learn by doing….

To the moon and Back

It’s been a month since the last update. I think it’s been quite an interesting month.

Mostly it’s interesting because after a year out, I returned to uni to find things aren’t the same as they have been in 2007/2008. In a touchy and volatile subject like architecture can be, no two schools does things exactly the same way, and the differences between schools can sometimes get rather extreme. The fact that I didn’t do the entire program here, instead coming in halfway through, was interesting because this puts me in a sort of outlier perspective. Also, my penchant for reading just whatever happened to be in front of my eyes, especially during my year out, has lead me to absorb all sorts of recent subjects on architectural discourse.

The first semester went at rather breakneck pace, but in the short break in between the first and second semester I had time to sift through these very blurry recollections and mental images to sort of organise my position, in architectural debate, in relation to the one my school held. It can get rather hard to reconcile opinions sometimes and to do things you are not used to / don’t like.

Also, as mentioned in the first paragraph, most of my working methods were still very 2007. Of course have to update to 2010 la, such as upgrading to Windows 7! ( I like it). Also, I’m now starting to enjoy working on my laptop more than on my desktop; probably because my laptop has Windows 7 AND is faster!

Lastly, in 2007 several schools rejected my application to enter at 3rd year, citing their reason as being that they have their own specific curriculum designed over 5 years and having someone enter in the last undergrad year was just too confusing on the student (who might have been educated in a vastly different way) and on their curriculum. Most of them offered me a place in second year,. I have to say they might be right. Looking back, I have to ask myself if the year I saved was worth it. In any event, it does say a few things about my current school.

P.S. – another reason for a forced hiatus was because I stopped reading anything on the blogosphere for some time (about a month) and subsequently lost the desire to update. Starting to catch up with RSS feeds also sort of motivated me to write a quick post. Not to mention the therapeautic effect of expressing some thoughts and clearing the mind a little to have space for uni work.

Get a life

24 hours a day is not even NEAR enough to accomplish what I set out to do.

The problem is it’s not a very ambitious list, any ol’ superhero can see to it in seconds. Failing that, any robot is also overqualified for it.

But poor, lousy, lazy mortals like me are struggling.

And that explains the sorry state of this blog.

January – April are what I presume to be the busiest months of my life, ever, so I can’t vouch for regular updates here.

*disclaimer – it’s not really that bad as I make it sound. It just feels that way to me coz I’m just very bad at it.

Such a nice January day outside; and as usual I am chained to my desk at home…

Ok, the previous post was borne out of a period of “heightened emotion” and melodrama. I won’t fault anyone for ignoring the last bit ;)

It is generally understood, and accepted, that every action has a reaction, has a consequence, or leads to other actions, et cetera. The point is that everything that happens around us constantly reflects some other thing that happened in the past, or will be reflected by something in the future. It is all a giant internconnected mass of actions. With all these actions and reactions and consequences going on, it’s a miracle that anybody gets anything done at all.

What miracle can that be? Might it be that this boils down on our control of actions? Now that I’ve said it, it might seem startlingly obvious, warranting at the very least a good smack to the forehead. Yet I strongly suspect many of us go about our hummingbee lives without consciously putting that into practice, though all of us practice it daily reflexively. Tightly controlling our actions lead to limiting/creating the reactions they cause, and the conseqeuences we have to face, as well as  the joy we might experience. Life is making a decision after another decision after another decision; realising the simple fact that our actions will control the changes in our life will make making decisions easier.

Of course, controlling our actions is easier said than done. Thus the role of discipline comes in. By definition, a disciplined person has greater control over their actions, leading towards a greater control of their lives and a greater chance of realising their ambitions and dreams. Successful people often cite discipline as a key factor,  as well as hard work. Hard work is basically a disciplined, conscious choice of choosing to work as opposed to play. So, let me take a short cut in my rationalising (save time) and skip to my point: a disciplined, tightly regulated control of our actions permeates every aspect of successful life.

Success means different things to different people and at this point I would emphasize that my use of successful life is by no means specific and can be applied to any number of your favourite definitions.

What’s the point of all this rambling, and what is it doing on this blog, I hear you ask. Well suffice to say 2010 started with a bang – of highly undesirable and unlucky events; perhaps as a reaction to the high point that was 2008 and 2009, quite easily the two most interesting years of my life so far. I’m going to take this very bad start as an auspicious indicator though – with such a start, 2010 can only get better. ;)

Disclaimer: I am an architecture student and don’t know about the secrets of success. Flora will probably shoot my theory down in a minute.

I stand by paralysed as another year rolls by.

It is rare for me to leave my blog un-updated for such a long period of time, unless if I am busy with uni, away traveling or I don’t have internet access.  I have had friends over for some days now, and have been on some day trips, but internet access is with me all the time, literally, so it isn’t that. Plus it is holidays.

Rather, as I slip into a new decade, I find that this blog grows less relevant to me day by day. It’s not that I am no longer interested in writing, blogging, or sharing my opinions or ocasionally posting my photos; In fact, it is the exact opposite.

Anyway, this is merely a filler post as I work on possibly the most relevant post ever on this blog. As I have more urgent priorities (sadly) than that, it might not appear fully just right now, which is a bit of a shame because I think when I finally get a chance to finish it I will have lost the spirit of most of what I so desperately wanted to share.

Happy new year All~

Questions

I love books. I buy books all the time. I buy far more books than I can read. At any given time there’s lotsa books lying around that I’ve not gotten around to reading yet.

I love bookstores too.

But like others I’ve stopped buying books from bookstores, preferring to buy almost all my books online.

And now, Borders is the first to fall victim to this trend. If you live near a Borders (who doesn’t?), it’s time to go searching for bargains.

Borders displaced the independent bookseller. Amazon.com (or .co.uk) displaced Borders. What next?

When all the bookstores go, will books be next?

Random green thoughts

So, I’m back from Germany, and amidst a slow weekend and monday sleeping off the always late and occasionally booze-filled nights in Deutchland, I’ve been catching up on the news and events of our dear world.

Aside from Tiger Woods and his many mistresses (I bet some of them are fake), the UN COP15 (15th Conference of the Parties, or whatever) starts today in Copenhagen, Denmark, and is garnering a lot of interest. There are the advocates, who strongly claim that the Climate Change Conference is going to be the last chance to make things right. There are also the skeptics that say that all this treaty talk is stuff and nonsense and that we are looking at the wrong direction. When both of the links I supplied point towards the same newspaper – TIME, you can be assured that divergent opinions are many and each are reasonable in their own right.

I wonder what does that mean for future architects/town planners/developers. Strict targets on reduced carbon emissions will probably manifest in the form of ever stricter building regulations and building codes on all new build and refurbishment projects. Perhaps to tighten the net there might be stricter controls and actual restrictions based on LCA (Life-Cycle Assessment)and all that less-quantifiable stuff, such as restricted variety of materials based on their sources, restricted construction mehods or whatever.

For most practical purposes I assume that the construction industry of most countries have a of a dark side to them, if not entirely corrupt. I know nothing about economics, but I do  know that for the big players of such industries to adopt greener practices are nearly always far more expensive and less profitable then maintaining the status quo.

The firm where I worked at last year did a lot of work with a huge, well known conglomerate with the usual thick goo of bureaucracy to wade through to get anywhere important, and the usual slick and grandiose statements of sustainability, social responsibility and whatnot. Based on my limited time and observations there, I can safely say that most of the executives dealing with the day-to-day work of the actual construction work, those executives who are not related to the PR department, have probably never even heard about “those statements”, let alone integrate them into their work.

Perhaps it will be a race to see who topples them from their perch first – tightly-controlled and stringent building regulations and codes that cover as many quantifiable elements as possible, or entrepreneurial start-ups with small money and big ideas.

While we’re on the subject of the last link, I wonder how switching the fundamental way we transport ourselves change the way towns and cities are designed.  Is it just a case of replacing every petrol station with a charging station/equivalent, or is it necessary to resdeign entire swathes of infrastructure and the city? It would be interesting to find out.

Away for a week

You know what’s the problem with technology? It’s irritating when I have to pack for a week-long trip.

It used to be I packed my wallet and my mobile and its charger and my keys and I was good to go (excluding general stuff like clothes toiletries etc). Then I owned a camera. That came with its own charger. Then I owned an Ipaq player (remember those?) so I had to bring all my discs and batteries. Then I switched to an ipod, and that of course came with its accessories – earphones, and batteries/charger. Then I upgraded my camera and now have a whole host of cameraey stuff to bring, like extra sd cards and microfibre cloth and dust blower and lots of other little things.

It’s getting to the point I have to first pack all my gadgets and their accessories before other stuff because they just take up so much time and I don’t wanna leave anything/bring unnecessary stuff.  It matters, because I remember too clearly the Oslo trip this March where I lugged a heavy tripod all the way across the North Sea to find out I left the crucial screw/fastener/whatever-it’s-called at home. And all those electrical converters……

Anyway, the last 9 weeks felt like a whirlwind just passed my area. I think, with all the momentum we have gained from crashing through a short 9-week studio, that we should really keep up/maintain this momentum and keep up the adrenaline because, my friends, it’s just the beginning….

In a few hours we (except for Tris etc) leave for our week-long trip to Eichstätt, Germany… don’t know where that is? No matter, because I gather that it is quite in the middle of nowhere… As our resident German expert A. Schumm put it: Eichstätt?? What did you guys do wrong that they have to send you there???

Yeah, I am looking forward to it too ;)

P.s: So much so that I am not sleeping this night and spending the last hours cleaning the flat and blogging…..

Just to show that I still remember that this site exists.

I won’t elaborate on it now, but I wonder how often and how easy it is for rifts to cause between friends. For example, I might react violently (not literally) to a friend’s action, which could itself be a reaction to something I’ve done earlier, which might be interpreted in a dozen ways. Without clear dialogue and straight-to-the-point talk, it’s often hard to get to the bottom of anything, and the rift gets wider and wider.

Maybe.

Anyway, very busy and tired now.  After a “Pre-final” presentation yesterday, we have less than two days to make sweeping changes (except the good, lucky or indifferent ones) to our work and to print and pin up everything again by Thursday 11am. Exorbitant costs aside,  I am just wondering why couldnt they have this interim (because that was really what it was) a few days earlier, so at least a week to brush up our work…

As for the customary respite after finishing of one project – none! on Friday I just remembered I have a submission for an assignment I know next to nothing about, and on Saturday we leave for Eichstaett, Germany for our next studio project. I reiterate what my tutors tell me that it’s not a holidayey trip – have to choose a site, formulate strategy, blah blah blah. Knowing my tendency to sleep for 15 hours or so after a major period of sleeplessness, I just hope I manage to wake on on Saturday morning to catch my flight.

Anyway, the clock is ticking…..

Studio MSN?

You know how design tutors always go on and on about working together in a studio, where interaction will then happen between classmates…. an exchange of ideas, a “fruitful discussion”, et cetera et cetera and then they moan that “students nowadays” just don’t seem to have that sense of camaraderie anymore, or seem to work together, help each other out, blah blah blah.

But do we not?  Especially in our case – where there is a bunch of Malaysians away from home.  I certainly feel its presence (especially when throwing parties). I think that design discussion have merely moved into virtual space, like everything else these days . Almost everyone I know goes back to do their design work at home, making models or sketching or drafting, but everyone is connected via MSN or whatever, and discussion and idea exchange continues to happen.

In fact, with the unique set of options that comes with virtual chatting, the discussions and exchange is even more varied. I mean, nothing’s stopping you now from holding a video design crit with someone on the other side of the world, except perhaps normal bedtimes, which has no place in an architecture student’s vocabulary anyway.

The major downside is that you can’t draw or to point at things out to explain what you mean or to test ideas, and MSN Handwriting is not exactly the perfect replacement. Will that change when tablets or other electronic pen thingies become affordable for everyone? The laptop and CAD once wasn’t. The internet is our new studio…..

How does that work then? Hmm.

*picture is of the studio me, flora, puisan, peifun attended during our exchange in Ghent….my point is – all I can see is laptops, and the studio can be anywhere. Makes you wonder if one day everyone will be holding tablets instead of laptops and sketchbooks.

Pictures are left intentionally really dark… because the windows and the pitch of the roof just lends itself to really crazy natural lighting in that former monastery and I wanted to show it like it was.

RAW files rocks

It’s a dilemma I could never solve – Me and Flora have 2 DSLR cameras, a compact camera, and about 4 camera phones between us, and my hard drive has been almost completely taken over by the gargantuan amount of photos. The difference is that she has about 248012414 photo albums on facebook and loads of photos in her blog and I have next to none. I take every photo with (usually) the same amount of effort and enthusiasm, but once transferred to my hard drive I mostly forget about them completely. I completely wipe them from my memory and wait for the next opportunity to take more (hence) inconsequential photos. I think I desperately need to do something about this problem. (Being me, I will use design studio as excuse and “reschedule ” it for xmas break)

Anyway, my life is completely taken up by this semester’s studio and sports (must), so I have no time to ramble about random topics like I used to for the past months. Probably won’t even be updating much, and have given up on trying to finish all the feeds my RSS reader is demanding me to read. But I’m not complaining; man, these student days aren’t gonna last for too long!

Some pictures from Guy Fawkes Night

Recession fireworks – they seemed to be shorter and to be honest, quite mediocre. I was fooling around with different angles, zooms, shutter speeds and apertures throughout the display – So with all the settings-changing taking place in between shots I only managed to capture only a few photos.

I wanted to use these 2 couples (yes, it’s actually 2 couples) as a sort of lead-in to the fireworks but now they look like just one, and homosexual, couple. I hope the girls don’t know that their boyfriends are secretly dating behind their back.

Whine

I planned to write a post at 5am this morning, just to show how a year of “normal times”   quickly melted away to the usual cycle of late, quiet nights and terribly tired mornings that happened almost as soon as I re-entered architecture in uni. I failed, because I fell asleep just before that, which just goes to show that I am getting old……. My flat has a extremely comfortable couch. Plus I have a sofa-bed in bed mode in my living room at all times (don’t ask).  That’s bad news by itself, but at least napping without a duvet or cover of any sort will make me wake up quickly enough. The worst thing is that I get up and in my sleep-dazed mode go to my “proper” bed…

Why do I need to torture myself so? Because I can’t concentrate during the day!

This is like going back to Taylor’s! Sigh.

Physics & Time Travel & Concrete

Physics was not the most exciting thing I learned in secondary school. Quite likely it was the way that education was imparted in my dear school. Anyway, the stuff this world is made up of and space etc are all super fascinating.

The most important event on the physics calender 2009,  is probably the LHC – Large Hadron Collider trying to do its thing again, in December after breaking down last year. Look, it’s even got its own .ac.uk website, for what reason I don’t know. (except to emphasize UK’s role, perhaps) Some people, though, think that it will not work again, because it’s a freaking jinx when you try to learn too much about what you’re not supposed to. Not some religious dogma, but that theory was put forward by, as the New York Times put it, “otherwise distinguished scientists”. Quite a sardonic remark, but ahem, otherwise an interesting article: here

That pointed me to this time travel article that took up too much of my library time. You know something is possible when it’s now a serious topic for serious physicists and not anymore for just wacky sci-fi writers. Apparently, publishing articles and serious papers on time travel when it wasn’t a socially/scientifically/socio-scientifically? acceptable would tarnish your reputation as “serious scientists”. Time for a career change and write some sci-fi novels then…

Stupid to link them, but you could compare it to architecture. Advocates of new and radical stuff always gets ridiculed/scorned by the purists or classcists or historicists or whatever. (and some already-old stuff STILL gets ridiculed) I mean, stone is an ancient building material and all, but just give up and use concrete, already.

(trying to read books expounding the qualities of stone, and then concrete, right after one another gives me a headache)

That, and buying yet more books from Amazon, sums up my day at the library. Not very productive…

GO go go

Long days without updates always points to two possible factors – no time, or no internet. Guess what, it’s both….

The “exhibition” last week. quote marks because it wasn’t the best of exhibitions I think. But anyway that clearly marked the tempo of the semester because now, at the 3rd week, a tutor suggested (also known as requested) we start moving into 1:100 and 1:50 sections as soon as it’s possible for us laggardy lumberheads…..

It may actually be a good thing because the idea is not to waste valuable weeks at the beginning dithering over rather pointless things like useless analysis – (emphasis on useless; as opposed to relevant analysis), and kinda do everything in one go and as you go; synthesize analysis, concepts, ideas, solutions, problems, context, urban design, urban response, and whatever other technical jargon you have right from the get-go.

Some days I think I should sit down, think things through and do things properly, but other days I couldn’t be bothered, and that’s the problem.

Hey!

I don’t have internet at home, so that’s a convenient excuse for not blogging.

But this post is not about saying I haven’t updated for ages. It’s to say that studying for years and years in university lends you a certain depth and growth in your thought that is different from the sort of lessons you are bound to get in real life. Most university courses are 3-4 years long and it seems that before you know what is happening or start to appreciate the amount of physical (temporal) and mental (intellectual growth) freedom accorded to you by uni life, you are already gearing up for graduation. Those of us who are bound to uni for twice as long, I think, starts to appreciate it and I think that is the start of certain changes to the way you think. Especially after a year out in practice or doing other stuff. I remember I wondered last year how I would feel when I returned to uni. Well I can say I am very happy to be doing so.

4th Year started with a bang with a near instantaneously-given huge amount of work, but so far, as have been discussed between me and several classmates, we somehow face it differently- a more confident, less stressed-out, and more relaxed attitudes. Also helpful (or unhelpful) is the aura of expectation and level of trust given by members of faculty to “Fourth Year Students”, as if the gap year in between have suddenly increased our credibility by huge amounts. Perhaps it’s that sort of action that is shown by members of the faculty that makes us react with real or feigned confidence.

I think that will last only until tutorials starts, anyway. Let’s see if that turns out to be the case.

Time to Board…

The first few weeks of my vacation in KL, when I hit the MRR2 to visit Flora I drove with a tame average speed of 70-90 kph and obeyed traffic rules and was kind and courteous to fellow drivers on the road. Earlier today, when I drove that route for what will be the last time in a couple of years, I stuck to the fast lane and averaged about 50% faster (but still being kind and courteous to fellow drivers on the road if you were wondering).  It is at that point where I can say my re-assimilation into Malaysian culture is complete. ;)

But of course, I will be going to the airport in a few hours, away for another indefinite period of time, and who knows what adventures await me this time around….

Bye home!

Nanshan 南山

I prepared this second Hainan post to be posted immediately after the last one, but was kinda delayed (by 2 and a half weeks) because I had to go to the airport to pick Alex & Xenia up (who were visiting), and subsequently holidaying around Malaysia. ;) Which meant no time to go online!

Anyway, after whirlwind super-fast trips of Penang, Ipoh, Melaka, Pulau Perhentian & Taman Negara, I’ve just sent them off to the station; they’ll finish the rest of their holiday by themselves, and I will be sent to the airport myself (after all this sending of other people) to return to Glasgow late on tuesday night.

Back to the original content…

The huge tourist complex on Nanshan (南山) includes several resorts, dozens of temples and shrines, a huge mountain (hence the name) and some other stuff. It’s the southernmost part of China (hence the name again) and beyond that is the South China Sea and Vietnam.

Anyway, “huge tourist complex” means you have to pay for every single thing –  to enter the temple, to light up some incense, to do this, to do that…. According to the guide, the Chinese government invested millions to promote both local and international tourism for the island of Hainan, and especially on this “religious tourism” thingy in Nanshan. Perhaps I shouldn’t be so surprised then.

Just so you aren’t confused by the previous picture – this gigantic statue of a three-faced Goddess of Mercy GuanYin (a side representing wisdom, a side for compassion and a side for mercy) is built on a mini man-made island, and not on the main island.

And of course, it is almost a pre-resquisite to go over and hug her “feet” and pray for good luck and prosperity and peace and safety and whatever you may wish to pray for.

Hainan

First off, I’m not so pleased with the photos from the trip. But anyhow, I’ll post some up anyway, just because there is a dearth in photos recently ;). It was my first ever time using my dad’s D80 though, so perhaps I get some slack cut…

I love looking out of the windows of anything – cars, planes, boats (ok maybe no windows on those), trains, buses, etc. Of course, I always have a book with me as well, but only reading or only looking out is boring on its own. Looking out of plans is the most challenging because most of the time it’s just blinding white light, but if you glance out every so often you might get something different.

The city of Sanya (三亚), Hainan’s second most populous city. Throughout the trip I was amazed at many things – from the good to the bad – and almost all of it could be found in this city. The thing I am left speechless the most is the “total tourist package”, a meticulously contrived spending sham glossed over by the merest, most threadbare hint of  marketing and packaging. Speaking to the guide about the mechanics of the tourist industry in China, I could only shake my head. I can’t stand the plants on the bottom right by the way.

Me

The pace of development is surreal in its speed, the frenetic pace taking on a comic effect that resembles one of those roadrunner cartoons, where buildings are forever chasing other buildings for height, square footage and garish, stupid features. Dilapidated shacks lie next to concrete monuments, much like shrines to an alien religion. (ok been reading too much JG Ballard)

Driving concerns

When I use the MRR2 to go to Wangsa Maju, where Flora lives,  the distance is about 30km. It takes almost exactly 30 minutes from door to door in almost all congestion-free conditions, costs RM3.20 (return) and I think that’s brilliantly quick. Yet when I use the quickest toll-free way – via Pusat Bandar Damansara, Dynasty Hotel, Jalan Pahang and then Jalan Genting Klang – it takes about 30 minutes as well, and yet I feel it’s such a long and tiring drive that I would (sometimes) rather pay the RM 3.20 at no significant reduction in journey time.

Why?

I wonder how much of that is due to the fact that the MRR2 is one long, long stretch of road, where I can let my more automated reflexes take over the driving, and just make sure no car is trying to kill me. Then I can let my mind wander off to ponder about other stuff. On the various other routes, you have to keep left and keep right, turn left and turn right, queue up in long lanes, inch forward on congested roads, exit this highway and enter that other highway, et cetera. It takes much more mental effort.

Somehow that seems like a flawed theory to me. It seems that I feel that way on the toll-free route only because I am not used to that particular combination yet. If i stick to using the toll-free route, I think eventually that drive will be similarly relaxed as well.

Either way, the part about the perceived length of the journey is interesting. I wonder what sort of other situations, contexts and relationships in which this subtle illusion plays in our lives. I suspect the answer is: everywhere, for eg: choosing which brands of (anything) to buy, choosing where to buy property, where to eat, to shop, to park, to study, to live, to work, and to play. I suppose marketers and advertising executives are intimately familiar with this.

Perhaps it’s worth the while to be more careful in the future to look out for such illusory concepts and not to be swayed into paying RM3.20 every time when all you need is to familiarise yourself with the alternative. ;) To conclude I should also say I know next to nothing about pscyhology, marketing and/or advertising.

Place of Origin

We know cultures, contexts and environments influence people’s behaviour and their personalities. I can say for myself that I managed to contain my habit to procrastinate towards the latter part of my time in UK and actually managed to nurture some sort of efficiency and productivity. I lost it as soon as I touched down in KLIA.

KL with its many distractions, inconveniences and prevailing work ethic/ social culture has over the years encouraged and worsened my procrastination. As soon as I came back I slid effortlessly into who I was before I left. But the past two years are not a dream, they came and went. I can see how kicking this terrible habit can change my life, and now that I am back I am going to kick it at the damn place of origin, before I return to Glasgow.

Parking Spaces

I should say first of all that I am a student of architecture and know next to nothing about business or making money.

Anyway, it’s a Malaysian pasttime to go out in droves to the shopping malls. Before they step foot in the mall, they first have to engage in a desperate battle for survival in securing a parking spot, either in the mall’s provided spaces or, if it’s after 6pm or a weekend, anywhere at all. (no saman mah)

On weekdays mornings and afternoons, it’s so easy to find a spot in 1 Utama or the malls in Mutiara Damansara. There is an abundance of choice parking spots for you to stake your claim on. I remember a time when it was the same for Midvalley, but that’s not the case anymore. I say that based on “research”. My “research” is that I went there three out of the past five weekdays in the afternoon and at least 70% of the parking zones were full. [Edit: Flora thinks at least 85% were full]

There are these convenient LED signboards around the Midvalley Ring Road that shows the availability of parking spaces in different zones – Green for plenty, Red for full, and Orange for somewhere in between. There are maybe 5 or 6 of these zones. (Clearly I am not an observant person). When I arrived in all three instances around 2pm, most were red, and maybe a couple were orange.

Though I have no idea of the demographics of the people who visit Midvalley on a weekday morning/afternoon, I’d daresay that a substantial number visit for work-related reasons (that includes visiting or appointments with someone who is working in one of the adjacent offices, but not those who work in the mall), and not for the traditional purposes associated with a shopping mall.

I think that made the vital difference in driving up the demand for car parking spaces. And now people will gladly park at the Gardens’ Premier Zone to save the hassle of meandering through the endless car parks. Not only that, I’m sure most people will pay an extra RM1 or RM2 in normal parking zones if it means saving time. Man, I can just imagine someone laughing all the way to the bank.

(Note to PJ malls – You have a lot to learn!)

Finally, when I left at about 6pm on Thursday and 7pm on Friday, all five (or six) zones as shown on the LED signboards were green.