The Wendy City

Tree, limited edition print

2008-03-09T18:39:00.003-05:00

A lonely winter tree and its shadow.

Available here for $15. This is a hand-drawn digital image printed with archival inks on 8" x 10" matte photographic paper. It is one of an edition of 100.

Or go here to see other available prints.

Fortune Cookie, limited edtion print

2008-03-08T10:08:00.002-05:00

This giant fortune cookie has a fortune waiting to be pulled out. It starts, "You will" and leaves the rest to you.

It's one of a limited edition of 100, printed on 8" x 10" matte photographic paper with archival inks, signed and numbered. You can order it here for $10 or go here to see more.

Burger, limited edition print

2008-03-07T18:05:00.003-05:00

A giant, melty, overflowing hamburger for your kitchen. The funny thing is that I'm vegetarian. There's something about this image that's appealing, even if the real thing is pretty gross (to me).

This hand-drawn digital illustration is available as a part of a limited edition of 100. Each print is signed and numbered. It's printed on 8" x 10" matte photographic paper with archival inks.

Get it here for $10, or go here to see my other prints.

Home Sweet Home, limited edition print

2008-03-04T08:32:00.004-05:00

Instead of cross-stitch and canvas, this idyllic 8" x 10" Home Sweet Home print was made with archival ink and paper. It's available in a limited edition of 100, each one signed and numbered, for $10 here. Or go here to see my other work.

Frog, limited edition print

2008-03-03T11:35:00.004-05:00

This is my translation of a little green frog amulet, from ancient Egypt. I have no idea what it was used for, though I've had fun wondering. Was it for fertility? To bring rain? Sure, I could look it up, but that would spoil the possibilities.

An 8" x 10" print on matte photographic paper with archival inks, signed and numbered (out of 100), can be had here for $15. Or you can look here to see what else I have.

Couches, limited edition print

2008-03-02T10:37:00.004-05:00

A bright living room set for a dark room. I'm not sure I would ever want green couches with orange and fuscia accents, but it's a composition I like anyway.

This print is on matte photographic paper with archival inks. It is part of a limited edition of 100, and is signed and numbered. The colors really pop.

You can order it for $10 here. Or see what else I have here.

Head, limited edition print

2008-03-01T10:06:00.006-05:00

This print is my hand-drawn, digital version of an ancient sculpture. The weight and breadth of his features appealed to me. And I wonder what his odd hat denotes.

It's printed on matte photographic paper with archival inks in an edition of 100; each is signed and numbered. It's only $10, plus $5 shipping. Order here. Or see what else I have here.

Apples

2008-02-29T14:19:00.006-05:00

After a long absence
Nearly two years after my last post, here's some shameless self-promotion. I've started doing vector illustrations and selling limited edition prints on Etsy.com. Every print is signed and numbered, and printed on archival matte photographic paper with archival inks.

This print is of three apples sitting on a dark plate. You can order one here. Or see what else I've got here.

Thinking about betrayal

2006-06-26T21:26:00.000-05:00

The themes are recurrent in my "what-if" scenarios: infidelity and physical pain; the worst extremes of betrayal. Sometimes the two are present in the same nightmare. These are the ones where I'm the punisher, transforming my emotional pain into someone else's physical pain. Even if there is a sub-human urge to identify with pain - inflicted or received - as shown through photographs, I am still sickened by the unfathomable depravity of others, mostly men. It's men who are so brazen and careless about their affairs, too. They bounce from woman to woman in Antonioni movies, easily and without more than verbal attachment. The lack of imagination, the inability to see themselves from the position of those they betray, their missing empathic sense is foreign, so foreign that I am continually surprised by it. But now I assign these attitudes to those around me, because it seems safer to be expectant than caught unaware. Infidelity I believe common, but sadism, though there is as much evidence of it, distresses me intensely; I mentally turn my head, yet my eyes keep reading.

I'm still here, I swear

2006-06-04T21:59:00.000-05:00

Month 1 in the big city has been great. Non-stop excitement, or at least there's always something to do. Love, love, love it here. (Oh, god, and the foood!)

Anyway, I was asked to post some pictures and now I have. These were taken today (except for the bar scene). Coming soon: A photo of the view from my room - a brick wall. That's so cliche, I know, and believe me I wish I were making it up.

The Guggenheim New York: Where You're Part of the Show

2006-03-16T15:38:00.000-05:00

I almost didn’t pay to go up the spiral in the Guggenheim Museum’s big Rotunda, thinking that the experience couldn’t possibly be worth the entry price, because I had already taken my pictures, I didn’t want to see the art, and I could see the ramp from the (free) lobby. But I watched the people above watching me below; this was new. I had not seen pictures of people in the space. It is always presented as this empty formal composition; a dead sculpture. Above me it was like Whack-a-Mole: where was the next head going to appear? People were drawn to the view, compelled to look across and down just as I was compelled to look up.

Bringing my attention back to the ground floor, I saw that the bench that curves out from the wall was packed with people jealously guarding their spots. I realized that the ledge above their heads acted as shelter, protecting these people from the seven-story height and allowed them to be both a part of the experience and separate from it. Looking down, the polished concrete floor had thin metal rings, circles, laid in it of the same metal as the understated “Guggenheim Museum” title cast at the base of a curving, cantilevered wall outside. I wondered at the permanence of these two decisions, especially the rings because they create an infinite, unchanging pattern, a tattoo.

Once I was up a couple of levels and could see across, up, and down into the entire building I started to understand the space’s appeal. I was part of an interactive, shared experience; we were walking up the spiral looking at art, standing at the balcony’s edge feeling exhilarated, looking and being looked at because we were part of the unofficial and ongoing museum-goers exhibit. And because you cannot watch someone without yourself being watched, the result is a communal experience instead of an exploitative one.

The way the room’s intimacy is achieved is so subtle that most visitors probably never think to question it. The small diameter at the base of the spiral that gradually opens up to the sky; the shelter provided by the floor of the spiral above for the walkway of the spiral below; the size of the circles in the floor— the diameter proved to be slightly smaller than standing in the middle of one with my arms out to either side; a key-hole shaped doorway low enough that I could touch the top of it without effort (I am 5’4”); the repetition of the circle size, using it as a module both for the bubble skylights and for half-columns.

It is the use of the half-columns that most impressed me. Within the main space are two giant support columns that stand from the ground floor to the roof—one houses the elevator, but I don’t know about the other. To keep these structures from overwhelming the main space, Wright added half-columns the same diameter as the floor circles to the side that receives the most human contact and attention, that facing into the spiral. This simple gesture gives the human body something to respond to and, when you’re looking at it from across the room, a vertical line that your eye will follow from floor to ceiling. He even makes one of the half-columns emerge through the spiral at the lower floors so that it becomes a half-column inside the entry ramp.

Exhibit space is created between rib-walls, which are long in a direction perpendicular to the ramp and the exterior wall. Here, the floor steeply slopes up to meet the exterior wall beneath what were meant to be a skylights, but for archival reasons are fluorescent lights above glass. The rib-walls meet the exterior wall below the “skylights,” leaving an opening so light spills into adjacent exhibit spaces.

Sitting on one of the wooden circular stools Wright designed, I watched a little red-haired girl rush past, breathlessly asking her dad if they could visit again soon and listing the activities she wanted to do on that trip. Her harried dad, trying to keep up with her, replied bewildered, “Sure, but we aren’t finished with this visit, yet.” It might be the modern art that she was so excited about, but somehow I don’t think Rothko appeals to a five-year-old as much as Wright does.

From my stool, the building’s structure was completely clear. The rib-walls grew taller, getting shorter in their long direction, not sticking so far into the ramp, and curving towards one another and in towards the center in pairs, until they formed parabolic arches to support the glass dome. Horizontal concrete bands connected these pairs to keep them stable, completing the frame from which the spiral ramp cantilevered. It was as simple and elegant as that, and yet instead of a static composition it was alive with people and afternoon sunlight, a living sculpture if ever there was one.

A Public Library in a "Pedestrian Mall"

2006-03-13T15:19:00.000-05:00

I’ve been suspicious of the new Cameron Village Regional Library, located at the end of Cameron Village Shopping Center, since they started construction. Driving by during assembly I wondered if it would be a positive place when finished worrying that it might resemble a bland corporate headquarters instead of a civic monument. When I left for Europe last summer, the exposed steel frame was too open to know what the enclosed space would be like.

When I returned, I was unsure of the merits of the two-story, green-glass façade and the aluminum shade devices above the second story. The frosted-glass awning over the sidewalk didn’t ease my misgivings. The building had office-park leanings during the day, and Architectural Record-cover aesthetics when lit from the inside at night, but I decided to reserve judgment until I could experience it for myself.

I made the pilgrimage in my car, despite its location only four blocks away, because that’s how most of Raleigh will experience the library for the first time. From the street, it is a long box, with two narrow, brick wings on either side of a projecting glass front, and in the middle, popping up through the roof, is a glass box with a deep eave.

After parking in the lower garage, I wasn’t sure how to get up to the library as no signage existed to direct me. The street sidewalk was visible, but it looked like there might be an entrance at the far end of the garage towards the alleyway. (There wasn’t.) At the surface parking-lot entrance from Clark Avenue’s sidewalk, I was greeted by a sign bolted to a freshly whitewashed brick planter that declared, “SHOPPING CENTER PARKING FOR PATRONS ONLY.” And then in smaller letters, “VIOLATORS WILL BE TOWED AT OWNER’S EXPENSE.” This sign made it clear why the library has its own small parking lot separate from Cameron Village. It should read, “LIBRARY PATRONS STAY OUT.” Or maybe more accurately, “BUY SOMETHING OR LEAVE.”

The sign reveals the pedestrian mall illusion; you aren’t really supposed to park your car and walk from shop to shop on the wide, brick sidewalks, or (god forbid) from the shops to the library. You’re supposed to use the acres of asphalt, parking your car directly in front of the shop you are to visit and afterwards drive to the next shop on your itinerary. This expectation is exceedingly clear when trying to walk from the street sidewalk to the shopping center sidewalk, as I did, where there is no choice but to use the driveway, hoping the cars won’t hit you as they enter. Cameron Village would do better to welcome library patrons (and real pedestrians), to convert them to shopping center patrons, though it is more likely that the same people are both at different times.

The pedestrian experience improves a little upon approaching the building. The library’s parking lot extends up to the patterned sidewalk, perhaps mistakenly so given the concrete planters and black lines negating where three parking places had blocked the entrance. The awning, in combination with the three-foot-high lights lining the sidewalk, almost has the sheltered feeling of an arcade. But the automatic sliding-glass doors of the entry and the vestibule fail to differentiate the building from a grocery-store.

On the inside, however, the external hostility and the glass façade’s dominance are surprisingly absent. Instead, the building is open around a dramatic three-story atrium housing an attempt at a grand stair and a glass elevator. Glass railings along the upper balconies allow views into the adjoining spaces.

On the second floor, at the south end of the atrium, the façade is a comfortable companion due its separation from the activity of the parking lot and the sidewalk. Looking out from this spot, you can see that the useless-looking shade devices work quite well because of their airplane-wing-shaped fins. Indirect light is abundant, both from the shaded windows and from a continuous light-shelf above that doubles as a soffit.

On the north side of the second floor is a view-window that looks out over the access alley and the two apartment buildings on the other side of it, with their little lawns. The “view” is dominated by power lines and the concrete corridor. Cherry Huffman Architects probably didn’t realize this would be the view, but the result is an honesty of context. This is where the building is; this is what a lot of Raleigh looks like. Here is a civic building that acknowledges its context allowing for discussion of the built environment.

During my visit, middle-school kids were excitedly positioning themselves in various locations opposite each other and on different levels to explore how they could be physically separate but visually connected. Though over-scaled, the interior of the new library is shockingly communal, contrary to the inhospitable Cameron Village Shopping Center and Raleigh’s lack of a public realm.

Including Architecture in K-12 Education

2006-02-16T13:09:00.000-05:00

Architecture literally surrounds us. It pervades every aspect of our lives. Therefore, including it in K-12 education should be straightforward. Below I’ve looked briefly at how architecture could be included in only three subject areas of traditional education, but I have little doubt that with more thought it could be included in nearly every subject. (I haven’t looked at solar orientation or sustainability, for instance, both of which could be covered in either Earth Science or Life Science.)

In English class when studying a story, students could be asked to draw a plan or section diagram, or build a model of a building important to the plot. (Jane Erye comes to mind.) They might be asked what kind of light the building allows in; what certain rooms feel like as opposed to others; what materials the floors, ceilings, and walls are; how tall or wide spaces are; and how all of this would affect the life or mood of the occupant. They could look at the deeper meaning this building has for the resident in the story. Then they could be asked to do the same in their own lives by picking a building important to them, performing the same analysis (drawing plans, sections, and building a model), and writing about the physical and ephemeral qualities that make it important to them. (Granted, most kids will likely write about their house, but an exercise like this would make them aware of their house as architecture.)

In math class, it is always better to apply concepts. When learning multiplication, students could learn about space as well, square feet being such an important concept in real estate and architecture. Understanding the difference between square feet and volume might help break the dependence on square feet as a resale indicator by putting the emphasis on the experience of the space instead of on the amount of flooring. This could be demonstrated in the classroom by taping outlines on the floor for representing the square footage, but adjusting the “ceiling” heights inside that space (someone could stand on a stool holding out a piece of cardboard while someone else stands in the space under it). The shape of the taped outline could be adjusted to achieve the same square footage, but an unusable space. Rearranging furniture within a usable space, based on their dimensions could also be a worthwhile exercise.

During geometry sections, though, is when buildings absolutely need to be studied. Proportions in relation to the human body and volume are essential. Students could learn about scale by building models with the same proportions but with larger dimensions and looking at the results of both when compared to a human figurine. Nearly every geometric exercise could be applied to a building in some way.

In Social Studies (that’s what they called it in my school district, think history/current events/cultural studies), any building that played an important role in the history of the United States is fair game. As are important historic figures who commissioned or designed buildings. When Thomas Jefferson is discussed, his architectural importance should not be ignored. He contributed greatly to the style of our national buildings by helping to start an American Classicism based on the ancient Greek temple. He also had a large effect on how the college campus developed based on his design for the University of Virginia in Charlottesville. Monticello, the home he designed and redesigned, is so important to our history and to his identity that it appears on the back of the nickel.

The development of building types directly reflects our economy. The skyscraper, as one example, developed in Chicago first before spreading to the rest of the world. Students could study the form and purpose of skyscrapers, the history and structure of Chicago, and then be asked why. What was it about Chicago that allowed this to happen, that impelled it to happen? Students could read The Jungle, by Upton Sinclair, not just as an anti-industrialization book, but also as a text illustrating the harm caused by not having architects and building codes to ensure the safety of the immigrant workers.

Why did suburbs develop? Why do we all want to live in freestanding, single-family homes? What are the positive aspects of living far from work and school? What are the negative aspects? Why do people get so upset about Wal-Mart? And the most important question that every child should be asked is, Why is the car so important and how does it affect the design of our buildings?

Slippery Lecturer

2006-02-14T17:27:00.000-05:00

Lawrence Scarpa, of Pugh + Scarpa Architecture (a typical, flash-heavy architect's site) in Santa Monica, CA, gave a lecture at NC State last night. His warm-up was to tell a Paul Rudolph anecdote from Scarpa’s days as a recent graduate working in Rudolph’s office in New York.

A Texan comes into Rudolph’s office.

Texan: I want a colonial mansion.
Rudolph: Okay.

Rudolph designs a “vintage Rudolph” building and presents it to the Texan.

Texan: Looks great. Let’s do it, but is it colonial?
Rudolph: Absolutely.

And so Scarpa reveals the origin of his squishy ethics. In his world, the client needs to be convinced in spite of their ignorance, so sometimes the client is told that everything is under control and moving smoothly when actually the project isn’t designed. And who, according to his own website, sends employees to “sign in for him” at continuing-education seminars (at which required continuing-education credit is earned) instead of attending them himself.* Why the charade? Why risk the humiliation and lack of trust if you are found out? And what was that Texan’s reaction when one of his more informed neighbors explained to him that he does not, in fact, have a colonial mansion?

By discussing and showing the work of sculptors and artists between slides of his projects, Scarpa is advocating building as an ongoing art project. He cited an “evolving” project, a funky platform structure for a film director that was built by a design team including the contractor as a member. It was built in only 12 weeks, from conceptual design to completion and was all fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants; drawings were done by hand with construction quickly following. “What we ended up with was better, I think, than if we had worked on it for years and told someone to build it exactly as drawn.” That is debatable. What they ended up with looks hastily assembled; a collage of metal panels, pipes, and concrete supports.

The scale of the projects he’s working on seems to affect his attitude towards the contractor. If it’s small, he and the contractor are equals with a common goal. If it’s large, “We treat the contractor like an assembler not like a builder.” Which is it? Is the contractor competent or not? How does the contractor feel about being treated as an assembler? “They were thrilled to work on something different than they normally do.” I’m sure they were.

As a founding member of LivablePlaces.org, Scarpa says, “We’re not active enough politically as architects.” The non-profit held a design competition for Santa Monica affordable housing without specifying a program. Naturally, the architecture-firm participants asked questions about the program, how many bedrooms per unit, etc. Scarpa saw this as a failing. “We’re so far removed from shaping our cities. We’ve become like the window dressers.”

When I asked how much contact he has had with the future residents of this affordable housing he said, “None.” He stressed that those involved in the project were creative people and knew the needs of the community.

“Wasn’t that the problem with the horrible housing projects of the ‘60s, that the architects came in and said ‘You should live this way’?” I asked. He responded in the negative. He said that those projects were federally-dictated where this one is local. I don’t see the difference between dictation originating locally or nationally, it’s still dictation. Perhaps, what he means is that this affordable housing isn’t for the poor. Olivecourt, the result of the design competition, has starting prices in the "low $300,000’s" which makes it like a speculative condominium project in most other urban centers.

If it were for the poor, the real poor, not involving the future residents of this project would appear to be only the latest paternalistic effort to elevate the poor through “good design.” It would be another way to get Channel 4 News to do a cheesy feature story on your organization, because, as Scarpa says in relation to sustainable design, “You don’t have to do much to look like a hero.”

*Click "Features". Click "A Day In The Life". Click just to the right of the number 9, for image one below. Then click the number 10 for image 2.

The Process of Becoming an Architect

2006-02-09T14:58:00.000-05:00

Before applying to architecture school, I found that the median salary for intern architects is $35,000 a year, so I knew the career was not lucrative, but, I thought, if I could design residences, the emotional benefit would be worth it.

School is a three-and-a-half year grind (if you’re getting a Masters with a different undergraduate degree). You don’t sleep the first two years. The third year, you sleep, but only if you’re burnt out enough to demand it for yourself.

After graduation, though, there is an internship period of not less than three years. You’re lucky if you’re working less than 50 hours a week, but at least you’re sleeping. This is when Intern Development Program (IDP) credit is earned through performing various tasks for a minimum number of hours while employed at a licensed architecture firm. This phase lasts, on average, five years because earning IDP must be balanced with doing the tasks the firm needs. For example, they may not need you to visit the construction site often, so it takes longer to earn that credit.

The tasks are often mind-numbing: drawing bathroom elevations, double-checking shop drawings - sent to your office by contractors showing column locations or other important details, tracking down door-handle information, calculating cost per square-foot, etc. Your firm is willing to put up with your ignorance and teach you the profession. School, you find, is irrelevant to 90% of what you do. If you hated school this might be positive, but if you loved the intellectual and formal challenges, this could be hell.

Interns make on average, $35,000 to $54,500 a year depending on their years of experience. If the firm is well-known, the interns will be paid minimum wage, $15,000 to $18,000, if they are paid; this is a system that allows the wealthy to employ the wealthy.

Once IDP credit is earned, you may take the numerous licensing exams, which either satisfy the state or national requirements. The nation exam, the Architect Registration Examination (ARE) has nine divisions with some daunting pass rates. Even taking special classes, it is unlikely that you will pass every division on the first try.

Once licensed you can demand a higher salary, but you’ll likely need to change firms. Your first firm would have hired a licensed architect instead of you if they had need for one or could have afforded it. As a project architect, that is, the one who signs their name to the drawings, you hold all of the responsibility should something go wrong. For this you need to have expensive insurance incase you’re sued, and you will be sued at some point.

After four years of undergraduate school, three-and-a-half years of graduate school, five years of internship, passing the exams, acquiring scary responsibility and the expense of insurance, and with four years of experience, you’re making a median income of $62,500 a year. For comparison: a structural engineer with a four-year undergraduate degree, a three-year internship, (I assume a license) six to eight years of experience, and expensive insurance has a median income of $95,000; a construction manager with a four-year degree and seven years experience (no licensing required) has a median income of $101,000. Architects aren’t highly valued, at least in terms of compensation.

There isn’t much benefit to becoming licensed, so many people trained as architects simply call themselves designers. They get a commission, design it, and, if it is a project that requires a licensed architect, partner with a licensed firm that produces all of the drawings and oversees construction. (Of course, some licensed firms only sign the drawings.) Some of these unlicensed firms, if only designing houses or apartment buildings smaller than a certain size-limit, never need to partner with anyone, as these projects do not require an architect.

With a profession that already has little societal value, it is harmful for school to neglect the reality of day-to-day firm life. It should accurately reflect the profession, not be so disjointed that it attracts students who would not otherwise want to practice. And somehow, the profession needs to increase its perceived value, because the process of becoming an architect is too difficult and the stress of being an architect is too high for the little benefit one receives.

Invisible, egomaniacal architects

2006-02-03T23:00:00.000-05:00

There is a divide between how architects think about buildings and how occupants think about buildings. So what is the public's opinion, since we are so isolated from the real world, of architects and the architectural profession? They can't possibly think about us as much as we do. My guess is that people don't think about architects at all. Even so, what are common ideas about and stereotypes of architects? Is Howard Roark lurking out there, nameless?

Or maybe he isn't so nameless. One of last summer's Architectural Records described the Pritzker Prize winner for 2005 as "Architecture's Bad Boy," a man who refused to compromise his artistic vision, as if this were a good thing. Howard Roark is alive and well and working in LA. The problem with dear old Howard is that he will never have to live or work in one of his "artistic visions" while potentially thousands of others will. What is the value of his vision once he's done with it? And why are we still promoting this attitude amongst architects? Hasn't it become apparent that it's destructive to the profession? That it loses us more commissions than it gains?

Where is architecture discussed? In K-12 education, medicine is discussed in health class, law in US History, and engineering in a math or physics class. I don't remember a single conversation about buildings in primary school. The only people who talk about architecture are architects and critics. And architects aren't seeking general public input on their process or ideas.

Not such a tall tale afterall

2005-12-30T16:47:00.000-05:00

Tim Burton's 2003 movie Big Fish was a Big Disappointment partly because the computer generated catfish at the end was so unbelievable. Right, like a catfish could ever get that big. Well, National Geographic has compiled their Top Ten News Photos of 2005 and guess what? Number 2 is a 646 pound catfish caught in Thailand. Somehow I missed this story the first time.

Ewan McGregor visits Malawian Aids orphans

2005-12-17T09:50:00.000-05:00

This is the first I have heard of any celebrity visiting Malawi , but if it takes Ewan McGregor to get the world to look at the staggering damage Aids has done to Africa, and Malawi specifically, so be it. From the BBC article , "There are 70,000 children in Malawi who are HIV positive." A great many of them are ophans, their parents victims of the disease.

Adventures in subletting

2005-12-15T17:03:00.000-05:00

I left for Europe without a subletter, but with a roommate. He had originally signed on as a subletter, but agreed to be my roommate when my intended roommate's boyfriend was sent to Iraq and her plans changed. I found another willing subletter who came to see the apartment with his wife and son. The wife drove an SUV, was casually well-dressed, had an air of Southern bourgeois about her. The son was two, well cared for, cute. The husband had tattoos on his forearms, longish hair, piercings, and a former-band-member-out-of-rehab vibe. He spoke about church and how he and his wife were working through their problems by attempting a little separation. If it weren't for his wife and child I wouldn't have considered him. We all agreed on a date for him to move in, etc. I never heard from him again. (I am probably very, very lucky.)

So, too close to leaving to find someone before I left, the task was left to my new roommate, with me acting as a lame go-between. He quickly found a guy, to our joint relief, and we went on with our separate semesters.

Last week I was home for two nights before heading out to Oregon. The apartment was so filthy that despite it being close to midnight on my first night, I seriously thought about calling a friend in Carrboro to stay with her rather than sleep on the cleaner of the two couches under my formerly clean feather bed.

I've been back from Oregon for two days and I've only managed to clean my room, the refrigerator, the sink, and re-wash some of the dishes. In my current roommate's defense, he's been in studio all semester and he doesn't cook.

I walked into my empty apartment at midnight two nights ago, relieved to see that the kitchen counters were clear and the dishes stacked in the drying rack. My relief vanished upon seeing the mound of recycling in the "breakfast nook," the grimy shelves in my food cabinet, the dirt and corroded coins on my empty plastic shelves, the leaves and dirt on my mattress pad, the dirty sheets and muddy towels in my laundry bag (at least he stripped the bed, right?), the bathroom mats resembling doormats in from a chicken run, oh, and my favorite, the unflushed, mildewed toilet bowl with two paper towels in addition to liquid remains. It was midnight, I had been traveling since 11:00am (by that timezone), I really had to pee, and there wasn't any toilet paper. Thank god Harris Teeter is 24 hours; I would have been stuck with the paper towels had I been in Prague.

But if this guy hadn't been available and willing to save the day, things could have been worse, so I'm not as upset as I otherwise would be. And, hey, at least I didn't have to live with him.

Goodbye, Prague

2005-12-01T13:16:00.000-05:00

Or goodbye, Studio, at least since that's mostly where I've been this last month. It's been a wonderful semester, both academically and experientially. And I am ready to go home.

What I will miss:
Excellent public transportation.
The river's drama.
Innumerable vistas from which to view the city.
Walking up Wenceslas Square at night.
Visiting museums.
Cheap cultural events.
The TV Tower (I know, I'm shocked, too.)
Sleep.
Well-behaved dogs.
Jungmmanova Square

What I won't miss:
Fish.
My hotel.
Tourists.
Tesco.
The language barrier.
The TV Tower Babies.
Bodily fluids on the sidewalk.
Public Displays of Affection.

This American Life Marathon

2005-11-26T22:54:00.000-05:00

This is final production week in preparation for Monday's review. While tediously retracing working drawings onto vellum I keep my mind occupied with old This American Life episodes that I haven't heard before. Highlights from yesterday's listening (February to June of 2004):

Life in the Fast Lane. (22 minutes in) Solemn, deep-voiced David Rackoff decides not to eat for 20 days to gain spiritual insight. He's Fraiser on qualudes, wit and literary allusions intact. My (paraphrased) favorite quote, "This is the most selfish thing I've ever done and I am a first-person journalist."

What Really Happens in Marriage. (6 minutes in) John Gottman is a scientist who studies marital interactions using videos and electrodes. After decades of experience he and his team can predict with surprising accuracy whether a couple will stay together or divorce. Turns out anger and disagreements are healthy, what matters is how the couple treats each other during heated discussion.

My Experimental Phase. This entire show is excellent. Nancy Updike talks about how she was the ultimate lesbian except that she couldn't bring herself to date women. Then there's the story of Chaim the Hasidic Glam Rocker (no joke). And finally Sascha Rothchild shares her transformation into a 13-year-old party girl as documented in her diary at the time.

More Prague Weather 2

2005-11-19T11:47:00.000-05:00

And this was the view out my window this morning at 6:45AM. The Praguers kept saying that it wasn't going to snow, that it's too early, that it usually waits until after the New Year. Overall, I hope they're right. I don't want to find out what it's like for snow to stick around for weeks, but the reflected light is appreciated.

More Prague Weather 1

2005-11-19T11:36:00.000-05:00

This is what yesterday morning and Thursday morning looked like. After a week of gray, it was overwhelming to have so much sunshine and blue sky.

The intro to Radiohead's "A Reminder"

2005-11-18T12:57:00.000-05:00

One of the guys in studio stopped what he was doing, took out his ear buds, and announced, "The intro to this Radiohead song on my iTunes is the metro announcement for our stop." What he means is that it's a recording of the recording played when the doors close in the train at a stop before ours on the A/Green Line here in Prague. Translated it says something like, "The doors are closing. The next stop is Jirzho z Podebrad." It would be amusing if it was made from the Flora station, the one under the mall next to the cemetery. I have a vision of Thom making his lonely and depressed way back into the city after a surreal tour of that mall. Maybe he watched the marmosets, too.

That castle on I-5

2005-11-17T11:04:00.000-05:00

Despite the fairytales associated with the Interstate 5 castle (in Creswell, OR) it's just a home for ordinary people, even lacking an estate name. Gimghoul Castle, in Chapel Hill, NC easily has it beat with ghosts and a secret society, called the Order of the Gimghoul. [via via]

Gray sky frowning on me

2005-11-14T15:11:00.000-05:00

Okay, so I'm bored with the infill project, a bit lonely, obsessed with being online, eating unhealthy, having trouble focusing for longer than half an hour or so, feeling like I want to cry and I don't want to cry at the same time. When was the last time the sun came out? Um... Friday, sort of, for about an hour. Before that was Tuesday for about twenty minutes. The forecast for this week? Sun on Tuesday and Friday. I'm seeing a pattern here. It's nice to be reminded of exactly why I can't move back to Portland, in case I'd forgotten, but, wow, this sucks.

The Sunshine Hours Page lists U.S. cities and their average annual days of sunshine. I may choose my next city solely off of this.

Raleigh - a respectable 111 days, but I ain't staying.

New York - similar to Raleigh, 107 days

Portland - a measly 68 days

San Francisco - 167 days... Oh, that looks nice.

Truisms

2005-11-12T17:00:00.000-05:00

My Google quote of the day is:
"Love is the triumph of imagination over intelligence."
- H.L. Mencken

Can I get an Amen?

That goes right along with that other pearl of wisdom:
"L'enfer, c'est les autres."
- Jean-Paul Sartre

(Literally,
"The Hell, it is the others," but more commonly
"Hell is other people.")

Citizens and the spying spies who spy

2005-11-08T20:17:00.000-05:00

Pragmatic Prague has a long and intimate history with it's secret police. From at least the 1850's until the 1970's and 1980's, intellectuals had regular tables in certain coffee shops and the police informers had tables right next to the intellectuals. Informers would attend the funerals of those they spied on. Often, one was spied on for no other reason than earning the informer's attention. The stifling world of Franz Kafka's The Trial wasn't, as I had thought, a complete invention of a troubled mind. Imagining this nightmarish situation always leaves me with a sense of release, "Whew. Boy, I'm glad it isn't like that now." And then I read something as depressing as it is disturbing.

Winter starts Nov. 1st

2005-11-07T20:50:00.000-05:00

I'm kicking myself for being too lazy and not seeing more of Prague. Sunday's list of places to visit included the Wallenstein garden and the new tunnel underneath the Powder Bridge, up at the castle. What I didn't know was that all of the gardens and the experiential alternate route up to the castle are closed on November 1st until April 1st. Ugh! I've wanted to see the new tunnel since last summer, but I only figured out where it's located this week, although I had a couple of fun days wandering around trying to find it a couple of months ago. There is an outside chance that M., our Czech co-professor, could talk someone into letting our class see it on a field trip.

I did make it to St. Nicholas in Mala Strana (Minor Town), though. What a silly building. It's a stage set for a melodramatic Dionysus, completely lacking the sense of awe present in every other Catholic sanctuary I've visited.

Hotlinking

2005-11-05T11:17:00.000-05:00

I link directly to images and video on other sites all the time, but instead of being efficient from a user standpoint, it's actually bandwidth theft. Whoops. So I will be adding a Flickr "badge" (a sidebar box that Flickr provides for users) instead of linking directly to my photos on their site, even though the "badge" doesn't offer enough design flexibility. And from now on I will link only to the page an image or video is found on. I apologize for my past transgressions, but I'm not going to go through old posts to fix them.

LibraryThing, my latest vice

2005-11-01T22:00:00.000-05:00

Because I'm completely addicted and because Tim is such a cool guy to create and maintain it, here is my huge plug for LibraryThing.

Catalogue the books you own (or recreate your library of read books, like me),
see who has similar libraries,
get suggested additions based on the books you "own" compared to others who own the same books,
rate them (5 star system, but unlike Amazon's click-once system, you have to click once for each star, cumbersome. It's not Amazon, but there could still be a faster way of rating, sorry, Tim.),
add tags (keywords) to multiple books at once with the nifty Power Edit mode,
add books quickly by clicking a bookmarklet when on an Amazon.com page, or by clicking the "plus" icon next to someone else's' book,
see sitewide statistics on the Zeitgeist page (14,320 books added in the last 24 hours)
and spend hours reading through other libraries.

It's bibliophile porn that keeps getting juicier.

It's free up to 200 books, $10 for a year, and $25 for lifetime use. (This is the first website that I've decided to pay for and I used to work for a dotcom!) You want to be addicted, too, you know it.

Rhythm of Life Ad

2005-10-25T11:41:00.000-05:00

I wouldn't normally link to video of a commercial, but this one is exceptional and isn't showing in the U.S. Link to the explanation page. Link to the QuickTime video. (It'll take time to download, but it's worth it.)

A trip to the ballet

2005-10-24T19:42:00.000-05:00

Last Monday night, my class and I went to see the ballet Giselle at the Vienna Opera. The choreography was stunning. The athleticism and grace of not only the leads, but of the supporting dancers as well, was enough to keep me awake during a snoozer of a story and banal music. The one compelling moment was when Giselle goes mad. The dancer playing Giselle, whose name I never learned, proved herself an able actress. Unfortunately, the entire second half consisted of the following dialogue acted out in pantomime:

"I'm the queen of the dead. I'm dead. I'm dead. I'm dead."
Chorus: "She's dead. Oh yeah. Dead. Dead. And we're dead, too."
"I'm DEEEEEAAAAAD!"
"She's dead and she's a queen."
"I'm dead and I'm a queen."
Applause

Prince: "My lover's dead and I miss her."
Giselle: "I'm dead and I miss you, too."
"Hey, I still wanna be together."
"Me, too. I'll ask the queen."
Queen: "Nope."
Applause

Prince: "I wanna be together."
Giselle: "I wanna be together."
"We wanna be together. We wanna be together. Hey, let's ask the queen."
Queen: "Nope."
Applause

Dead maiden: "They wanna be together."
Dead maiden #2: "They wanna be together."
Applause

"We wanna be together. We wanna be together. Hey, let's ask the queen."
Queen: "Nope."
Applause

"Goodbye. Goodbye. Goodbye. Goodbye. We wanna be together. Goodbye."
Applause

That took about an hour.

We were in the standing section which has velvet covered rails that you can lean against during the performance. Our usher must have been assigned to the cheap section (3.50 euro for the show) because of his lack of understanding of the concept of customer service. He forced us to take all of our coats and bags to the coat check, ferreting out hidden bags. He made us mark our places with scarves, but NOT ON THE TOP RAIL, obsessively removing items from the top rail throughout the night. A jacket had been left on a middle rail and he harassed someone in a completely different row about it so much that the man, after telling the usher three times that it wasn't his and he didn't know who owned it, stormed out mid-performance. The usher watched that jacket after the performance, waiting for the owner to return.

Pictures

2005-10-21T16:10:00.000-05:00

I've spent all of today posting pictures on Flickr so please go check them out. Here a few of my favorites:

The metro Highlander seen here and here. Perhaps Prague never bothered to make carrying a sword illegal?
Karlskirche at night.
The Urania theater at night. (Where I saw "Leaving Home, Coming Home".)
The Schullin jewelery store by Hans Hollein on its own and mobbed by students.

That's all for now. I might feel like saying something tomorrow. :)

It's been a fun few days

2005-10-17T18:15:00.000-05:00

Saturday I was in Letna Stadium watching soccer team A.C. Sparta kick the crap out of F.C. Chmel Blsany, another Czech team. By a fluke, because I certainly didn't know what I was doing, I ended up with a great seat just left of centerfield. (I was so close that when #17 on the other team was kicked in the ankle and went down, I heard it.) A cultural highlight: there were a couple of chants in English, "Let's go, Sparta, let's go!" (or what sounded like "Lis go Sparrta lis go!") and "Fight! Fight! Fightfightfight!" Also, the poor Eurotel (cell phone company) cheerleaders must have been freezing in their bikini tops and super short skirts. I was wearing long underwear, jeans, an undershirt, a wool sweater, a heavy jacket, and woolen hat and scarf. I would have liked gloves, too, but I haven't found any I want, yet.

Sparta played brilliantly, or at least I was really impressed. The other team, though, would get the ball and then pass it way down field to... no one. An empty spot, usually. They did manage to score 2 to Sparta's 5, so that's something. It should be exciting to watch them against Slavia, a team more in their league, I hear.

Vienna! I love it! If I spoke German this city would be on the short list of where I want to move to. I'll post pictures once I get back to Prague. There's so much that it would take a very long time to tell it all, so I'll stick to Viennale, the film festival going on now until October 26th. Last night, I decided to see a documentary that I knew nothing about (my criteria was that it be in English) called, Leaving Home, Coming Home. Directed by Gerald Fox, it was about a photographer that I'd never heard of, named Robert Frank. (And, despite my own history with photography, I had never seen any of the work shown in the film.) The quirk about this film is that Mr. Frank has stipulated that it may only be shown twice a year (partly why I was the sixth person to rate it on it IMDB.com), so because it was shown in Rotterdam earlier this year, no one else will see it until next year. This is a shame, obviously, because it shows the vulnerability of being an artist and dealing with the life through one's work. (It also shows his crazy artist wife June Leaf. How much fun to be a crazy artist.)

Time to get in line to get tickets for tonight's film. :)

One woman's daily record of how she looks while driving to work.

2005-10-15T11:54:00.000-05:00

I came across this while adding Raleigh restaurants to CafeSpot.net.

Concerts, views, and football

2005-10-14T18:40:00.000-05:00

A week ago tonight I was at the square in front of Malostranka metro station attending a benefit concert the Czechs held for the victims of Hurricane Katrina. Their generosity and the futility of their effort was crushing. I had to fight not to cry.

I say futile because the Czechs are not rich. The girl who works at the tea house downstairs makes about $300 a month. For them to put together a slick, televised concert, featuring at least 15 acts and two projection screens and a transatlantic live linkup with a correspondent in New York (why New York?) and a special SMS number to call to donate money, was staggering. Not because they aren't capable of it, but because they felt it was a necessary thing to do.

When I arrived, they had already collected 500,000 crowns (about $20,000) and when I left an hour and a half later the final amount was 3.1 million crowns ($126,000). Of course the money will help, but will the Czechs receive an adequate thank you from the American public or acknowledgment from the government? I doubt it. This is what bothered me as I stood watching the stage and the crowd.

In contrast, last Sunday was a fabulous day. Nothing amazing happened, it was just a great day to be out around the city. There's a large park, close to my hotel in Vinohrady, that has a view of all of Old Town and the Castle, that I visited for the first time. In the afternoon, I spent hours in the Museum of Decorative Arts looking through the display drawers, then went on a quick tour of the Jewish Museum sites. Really, I only wanted to go to the Jewish cemetery, but the ticket is 140 crowns (student price) for 6 sites so I made sure to see them all.

I went back to the same park to watch the sunset over the city. Unfortunately, (and being in architecture school you would think this would have occurred to me) the view faces west towards the city which means the setting sun is right in your face. The park was lively, though. There was a concert in the beer garden featuring a heavy horn section. Later, a stilt troupe accompanied by an accordianist, performed a series of dance skits complete with acrobatics.

And then I took myself to dinner and a movie. :) Goal! was the only English language movie that sounded interesting and I admit that I didn't believe the girl when she told me it was American. How could a soccer movie be American? But it was okay. A 7 out of 10 in retrospect, but fun just for it being a movie. Oh! And for the first time ever I was the only person in the theatre! I was so excited. Here, though, the usher sits in a chair by the side of the screen, I guess in case anyone needs them during the film, so part way in, I was no longer alone. Ah, but what a nice few minutes before that.

Seeing this movie reminded me that I'm in the land of football. Sparta Praha is the major club here in Prague and when I checked their schedule for the next couple of weeks I saw that they're playing Arsenal on the 18th of October. This is not just any British club, but the only club I am at all familiar with, thanks to Nick Hornby's obsession as he spelled it out in Fever Pitch. The downside? Our class leaves for Vienna, Austria on Sunday (the 16th) and doesn't get back until Thursday (the 20th). Ugh. *shrug* The other big game is between the two rival Prague teams, Sparta and Slavia, called the Derby, on the 23rd, so at least I'll get to see that.

It may be quiet around here this next week. Vienna has internet cafes of course, but our schedule is crazy tight, I may not have time to post.

112

2005-10-13T15:30:00.000-05:00

This morning I walked into Old Town from Vinohrady a slightly different way than I have before, like usual. It's a beautiful day, nippy and bright, at that temperature where my hands and face are cold but I'm sweating under all the corduroy and wool. I walked by the National Museum and the equestrian statue of St. Wenceslas on Wenceslas Square, dodging people as I looked at facades.

As I passed a flower stand, I heard what was obviously two vehicles colliding hard, on the other side of the kiosk. I ran to see if anyone needed help. On the cobblestones, crumpled, unconcious, with blood flowing out of his slack mouth lay a man in a half-helmet. Above him was his scooter, beside him the expensive car that hit him, behind him the bald man in a suit, around him five or six people trying to help.

Not five minutes before, when a bare-chested man with a potbelly, wearing an open nylon jacket and carrying a screwdriver, came out of a building and passed me suddenly, I had had a grisly daydream about what I would have done if he were deranged and stabbed me in the stomach with a knife. I'm not sure why, but I often have worst-case scenario daydreams that result in my needing to call 911. Except here 911 is 112, something I reminded myself in the daydream.

So imagine me on my cell phone urgently repeating, "Anglicsky?" to the dispatcher. It took two minutes to speak to someone who speaks English. Luckily there was at least one other man who called at the same time, who, I'm sure spoke Czech. Finally, the dispatcher who understood me and my discription asked if anyone else was there who spoke Czech and I handed the phone off, something I should have done to begin with, but I don't think clearly when I'm panicky.

In the meantime, the man had regained conciousness and kept trying to sit up, which we all tried to prevent him from doing because of the possiblity of a neck injury. Eventually, though, two minutes before the ambulance got there, he got up and was helped to sit on the curb. The right side of his face was a bloody mass, but the silly half-helmet probably did save his life. The ambulance took an agonizing 15 minutes to arrive.

And yes, I ride a scooter, and yes it's a fragile position to be in. But I wear a full-face helmet, which would have prevented the worst of his (visible) injuries. Also, the scooter riders and drivers here are crazy, so I don't think it translates to Raleigh.

We're better than this

2005-10-11T09:24:00.000-05:00

That the freely elected democratic government we support allows this should shame us all.

Two posts in one day? What is the world coming to?

2005-10-07T17:21:00.000-05:00

I saw this article about stereotypes and had to quote from it:

"Czechs thought of their nationality as antagonistic and disagreeable, when the research found them to be among the friendliest of all cultures."

Olya (aka Brunhilda) is an unfortunate exception.

The opera Monday night was wonderful. I had seen La Traviata and one other one that I've forgotten, but this was the first time that I truly enjoyed an opera. Now I've got to add Smetana to my music collection. I'll post pictures of the main hall of the National Theatre at some point.

Last weekend, I visited the former Trades Fair Palace, which is now a modern art museum. It was certainly interesting to see Czech art from throughout the 20th century in response to the various cultural and political upheavals. The common theme was a heavy sadness, often counterpointed by an almost hysterical lightheartedness.

I discovered a cheap and well designed pub near my dorm, called Redneck. The only clue that it exists is a Staropramen sign above a door that leads into a basement. I eat all of my meals alone and, I know this is selfish, I don't want my classmates to find out about it. They can continue eating at Don Pepe and McDonald's and Victor Prodleff which exist for the fast food inclined. The floors are slate, the walls are exposed brick and white stucco, the barrel vault ceilings are dark concrete supported by exposed black steel, the light fixtures are all stainless-steel grates, and the furniture, built-in benches supported by black steel tubes and tables, are deep red, as are the door frames. There is a single pane of textured, frosted glass in the doors.

For 170 crowns ($6.94), including tip, I have two large glasses of wine and a full entree. They also have a giant plasma-screen TV connected to a videogame console of some type, that a couple of guys were playing a car-racing game on the first time I went in. When the TV isn't on, the music selection is always random and entertaining. I should go there every night, but for both health and monetary reasons, I'm off to The Country Life, a vegan buffet that's REALLY good.

Once again I'm late to the party

2005-10-07T10:30:00.000-05:00

To prove exactly how much I've been working in studio this semester, let me tell you about what I've been researching: Web 2.0. Okay, that's a terrible buzz word that does not provide any information. Basically, the internet seems to be transforming into a series of software applications that 1) ease social interaction and 2) are completely internet based, meaning that it may be possible, quite soon, not to need software on a single computer located in a specific location, but to use applications at specific websites, that can be accessed from any computer with internet access. The recent Google and Sun Microsystems announcement that they're partnering to make OpenOffice.org a fully web-based program is an example. OpenOffice is currently my favorite free open source word processing/spreadsheet/presentation software. Open source means a lot of things, but here it refers to the fact that programmers volunteer to work on this program and the code is available to the public for viewing and editing. Microsoft is not open source. (By the way, Sun calls this the Participation Age, which is a better description of the current web developments, but still not great.)

Amazing things are happening with websites that allow the users to add information. If you've followed any of my past links, then you're familiar with Wikipedia, an open source encyclopedia that anyone can edit. There are debates about whether this is a good model or not, but it is certainly democratic.

A site that I have been watching recently, called eHub, lists websites that fit these new models. Today, I was looking through some past posts on her site and found Etsy, a site where you can buy and sell handmade items. And this is damn cool. Or how about Pooln carpool network, or LibraryThing where you can list books that you've read and browse other lists. What is the point to all of these? I don't know, yet, but they seem to be going in a positive and useful direction.

Smetana the composer

2005-10-03T16:38:00.000-05:00

Changed the photo situation again. After playing with Flickr for several days, I decided to switch. It's more flexible and informative.

Also, I have Gmail invites burning a hole in my account, so if you want one, shoot me a request.

Yesterday, in preparation for tonight's trip to the opera at the National Theatre (to see The Bartered Bride, sounds good already, huh?), I went to the Bedrich Smetana Museum right on the Vlatava River. The Vlatava was the subject of one of the (many) symphonic poems he wrote after he became deaf--from syphilis, a bit of information they left out at the Museum.

Tidbits

2005-10-01T19:51:00.000-05:00

Two weeks ago I learned to roll my R's. I was so excited that I called my brother to prove it. I giggled every time I did it, for days. I think I read somewhere (I'd link to it, but I can't find it) that if you don't learn how by a certain age that the odds are stacked against you. But thanks to L. telling me that her Spanish teacher said to practice with the word "Pedro," I am now one of the initiated. Thankfully, I didn't try to learn fromWikiHow's method which is missing some information between steps 4 and 5. Unfortunately, making a rolled r sound doesn't mean that I can combine it with other sounds, so I still can't pronounce Czech.

Last Saturday was some festival to do with Karel IV (aka Charles IV the Holy Roman Emperor). Every square in the city had people in Medieval and Renaissance garb reading proclamations, selling crafts at booths, jousting on liveried horses, drinking honey wine, etc. They were mini-renfairs, but instead of being kitschy and imagined, this was celebrating their actual history. They have a castle here. They had an Emperor. 10 centuries of architecture are represented in the city (now, 11, I guess).

Last Sunday, I located the NYU hive. I hadn't intended to. I was sketching the Brahe/Kepler statue behind the castle and noticed that several of the guys walking towards a residential area were Americans. (And not the kind who would explore a residential area.) And then I saw that girl from Tesco get on a tram with a guy. So I wandered around back in that neighborhood until I was certain that the grey building that curves the corner (the one with people coming and going at intervals comparable to an anthill) was theirs. Then later in the week, our class was on a field trip, again behind the castle, and we met another professor, who knew our professor, and three NYU students also studying architecture.

I walked up to the Metronome on Thursday. From there, the babies on the TV tower look like insects (again with the ants. This must be a thing with me, but I like ants, so I don't get it).

Oh yeah

2005-09-29T18:16:00.000-05:00

I forgot to mention that I updated my food blog over the weekend. It's complete as of that post.

A cemetery, photos, and a movie

2005-09-28T19:27:00.000-05:00

My short love affair with beer is over. I went shopping for pants over the weekend and suddenly nothing fits. (Okay, so this isn't unusual in itself--long torso/short legs don't make for an easy shopping experience.) It's clear that the body prototype here is long, super-skinny legs. Sorry, but I'm 5'4", on a good day, and I have thighs and a butt, and though I'm not heavy, I've never previously experienced squeezing myself into, supposedly, size 6 jeans only to find that they don't remotely fit. So, on the off chance that this is due to my sudden beer intake, we've amicably parted ways. On a positive note, red wine is thrilled to have me back. Actually, the only interesting part of this story is that I walked around the Olsany Cemetery, the largest in Prague, as a tourist taking photos, etc. before going into the adjacent mall to buy a shirt. That's a terribly inauthentic and voyeuristic thing to do, but at least no one was trying to profit off of my cemetery visit.

I've cleaned up the photo situation by adding links to the photo albums, of the various places I've been recently, in the sidebar. I'll update it periodically. For some reason, Yahoo! Photos doesn't import vertical photos correctly and there isn't a way to fix it, that I've found anyway.

Last night, I watched this crazy Czech communist dark comedy/musical called Kour. Oddly, one of the main characters seemed to be a more flamboyant precursor to Napolean in Napolean Dynamite. This isn't likely, but I find the thought amusing.

From vernacular to modern architecture

2005-09-24T11:25:00.000-05:00

This last week was all about the countryside. On Monday, we visited an open air museum located about an hour from Prague by bus. It was a mini-village with mannequin inhabitants in ancient buildings from different periods. Some of the structures had been moved there from their original towns to preserve them. Heavy timber, whitewash stucco, tiny punched windows, stone walkways, and eyebrow dormers dominated.

On Tuesday, we set off on the train for an extended stay in the countryside. Half of our group, I wasn't one of them, stayed in this cottage in Dolni Lisna. Technically, my group was in Horni Lisna (Upper Lisna) a beautiful quarter-mile walk uphill from there. We gathered firewood from the forest to roast meat over an outside grill (metal grate spanning two rocks). I didn't eat, but I like campfire. It wasn't that rustic, we had showers and toilets and kitchens with electric stoves. There were even televisions.

Friday, a bus took us into Brno. We stopped at a famous crematorium, and we were told its name and the architect's name, but we were there for literally ten minutes, and couldn't go inside, so I have no idea who or what it was, but I wasn't impressed with the outside. In the afternoon, we went to the Tugendhat House by Mies van der Rohe. It was incredible, but mostly for the front room (the one where the windows roll down, electrically, like in a car. This was built in 1929!) and the entrance hallway. The front room, with the marble separator and the little hot house on the side could be a studio apartment for me. I would live right there in the sunshine, looking out over the garden, lounging in a Barcelona chair. The entrance hallway has ten or eleven-foot dark-wood doors, diffuse light from a curved frosted-glass wall, which makes the chrome railings and hardware glow, and beige travertine floors. The effect is extremely difficult to reproduce in photographs or renderings. I have not liked Mies previously and the scale of the house is overdone, but those two rooms plus the bathroom with a mirror wall and clerestory windows, would make a cozy residence.

Bars and museums

2005-09-18T13:29:00.000-05:00

It's already getting cold here. Today's high is 57 degrees, despite brilliant sunshine.

Thursday night, a group of us tried to go to a bar, that's near the TV tower, called Palac Akropolis. (The TV Tower has TV-faced baby statues crawling up its sides. It's creepy.) The Akropolis bar was full and the music hall was packed with a performance already in progress. (Very strange music and a woman in flowing white slowly twirling in place.) So we ended up at a bowling alley around the block with communist-era documentaries on TV. If only the sound had been on and in English.

Yesterday, I went up to Vysehrad, a castle complex on top of a bluff. The cemetery is simply the most beautiful in the world. I don't even need to see all of the others to state that. Each grave is a planter garden, some with giant ferns, some with annuals, some overrun with ivy. This is exactly how it should be. I want to be California poppies and a bonsai jacaranda tree.

Walking around the perimeter of the complex, on top of the old fortifications, there is yet another stunning view of the city and the river. This won't get old.

Also, this week I visited the Mucha Museum and the National Museum. Disappointingly, the former had mostly mass-produced items from the original printings, but very few original drawings or sketches. The latter has extensive geological and zoological specimens, from preserved anacondas to a single one-cubic-foot salt crystal. That was a fascinating two hours.

From here on it'll be intense.

2005-09-12T16:32:00.000-05:00

That's a cheesy way to post pictures, but for now, I give up waiting until I can find a cleaner solution.

Classes started today, finally. Well, technically, they started yesterday with a trip to an exhibit about the Vienna Secession at the Municipal House, an incredible Art Nouveau building.

In the evening, we went to see Prague Big Band led by a Czech jazz pianist cum composer named Milan Svoboda at the Reduta Jazz Club, which has the distinction of being the location for the Two Presidents Jam Session (Bill Clinton on sax, but while both Vaclav Havel and Vaclav Klaus were present, I don't know who the second jamming president is.) PBB, a 16 member combo crammed onto a non-existant stage (complete with baby grand!), rocked. All but two "tyoons," as he called them, were composed by Svoboda.

I also tried Becherovka, a cinnamony, spicy liquor only available in the Czech Republic. I'll have to sneak some of it back with me 'cause it's good.

Today, we went to see the giant model of Prague in the Town Hall Tower. We also went to the top of the tower for the view. It's in a better location to see the heart of Old Town and it's higher than the Powder Tower, so there's more to see.

Hey, hey the gang's all here.

2005-09-09T12:23:00.000-05:00

My luxurious 5 bed room that I had to myself is now crammed with my studio mates and their luggage. This is merely temporary, owing to the hotel overbooking promised rooms. Needless to say, there is already tension and class hasn't started yet.

Thanks to SkypeOut, I and everyone one else will be able to call any phone in the U.S. for about $0.024 a minute from the lab computer or our laptops. This is a welcome development because most of my family doesn't have broadband nor is familiar enough with their computers to download and install Skype. It may mean some odd hours in studio, but, oh wait, that's normal.

Yesterday in Tesco, I heard some American girls yelling at each other across the store in housewares and decided to check it out. They were buying hangers and pillows, so I asked, "What program are you with?" The girl glanced at me over her shoulder as she walked away and said, "NYU." That was it. No, "Hey, you're American? What program are you with?" Not even polite conversation. She couldn't have dismissed me quicker.

I have heard that this is not uncommon for the NYU kids. They act as though they're still in L.A. or Houston or where ever, yelling across packed trams as if the intermediate people don't exist or don't understand English. (I would like to think New Yorkers wouldn't act like that.)

Last night, M. and I did B 52 shots at a restaurant. These had a twist: First the Grand Marnier was replaced with Absinth. Second, they were on fire. We sucked them down with straws. I am having too much fun here.

Ferengis, fear of heights, free internet

2005-09-06T21:20:00.000-05:00

Greetings from the constant party at Hostel Elf where English is the only language, in all it's variations. Brits, Irish, Kiwis, Ozzys, Yanks, Canuks, we're all one big happy family. Thankfully, I'm not staying here, but visiting A. at home, who I met in the train station this morning. Don't worry, he's perfectly harmless, and quite nice, here on his own on "holiday" from Surrey, England in Prague. Crossing the Charles Bridge at sunset we met one of his dormmates, a girl from Auckland, and we walked through the Little Quarter before crossing back into Old Town.

A. and I went up into the Powder Gate this afternoon, which has a great view of the city from within Old Town. This was a bit of a challenge for him because of his problem with heights, but he made it through like a trooper.

In other news, I did my laundry today at the laundromat with signed publicity stills of Rob Schneider and some guy with Ferengi makeup who doesn't appear on Deep Space 9 cast lists online. What does it say about these guys that they not only carry crappy publicity stills with them, but that they leave signed ones at laundromats in Prague? Whatever it takes for free laundry, huh?

It's gorgeous.

2005-09-05T15:35:00.000-05:00

I thought I would be so European and take advantage of the little washbasins provided in the shower room to do my laundry. I went to the drug store and bought rubber gloves, a plastic clothes line, and Czech soap. Half-way through scrubbing my socks, Brunhilda walks in and says, horrified, "Scuse me, please, no wash." I don't know her real name, but Brunhilda speaks very little English, which is fine for the typical Czech person--I don't expect everyone to speak English--but for someone who works in a hotel, it's necessary. She's tense. Perpetually stressed out and snappish. Breakfast is from 8am to 10am. If I'm there still eating at 10:10am she will tell me to leave, in Czech but I get the idea.

Not able to explain to me why "no wash" or where I may be able to wash she ran and got the desk clerk. The two returned very agitated. He brought a brochure for an internet laundry place ("The first in Europe, perhaps the world!") that charges 70 crowns to wash and 70 crowns to dry per load. (That's about $6 for one load.) *sigh* Do I want to bother with that? Will I try to secretly wash individual pieces in the shower room after hours when Brunhilda is finally off for the night? (I think she works 12 hour days every day.) I bought a hot water pot today and I want to hide it when they come to clean my room incase they tell me that it's contraband.

I still don't know what the pair of floor level washbasins are for. It seemed so logical: one for washing, one for rinsing. I was so proud of the clothes line, too. I'll have to hang wet clothes in the closet to dry and hope that they don't look in there.

Yesterday, I rode the trams to get a better understanding of the city. The 10 ends across the river in the hills amid a city of ten-story apartment blocks with flat, humorless facades and clothes draping the balconies. There is lawn between the buildings, but not enough to make Le Corbusier happy, thank god. For a Sunday afternoon, it was surprisingly deserted considering the 10,000 people who probably live there. On the opposite end of the 10, closer to where I live, it rattles and bumps its way between the walled halves of the quarter-mile-long cemetary that I saw from the new mall.

The 9, which I took from that desolate suburbia, also goes by a cemetary, but this one is darker and lies under a lake of green creepers, with only a monument here or there visible above it. Later, it moves through stone canyons, the bases tagged first by shop keepers and then by graffiti artists. The upper walls are pilastered, pedimented windows. And across the river, it climbs through San Francisco-style neighborhoods rolling over the hills.

The 17, despite what the maps say, terminates at Holesivice, an old train station whose forecourt, bordered by an iron fence, reminded me of a fairground out of season. A used car lot across the street sat on a tiny plot of land at the side of an overpass ramp. I was glad to board the next tram that came along.

This was the 12. South of the city, the railway turns into a gracefully curved ramp high above the trees and houses below. Looking back, I could see the river, the city, and the green hills everywhere else. It was like a (thankfully) tame rollercoaster path or monorail track complete with new color-coded glass and steel stations from which I could see nice apartment buildings.

Today, I went to Petrin Park. (The couple at that link seem to have taken the same route I did, which means they likely had a copy of the DK Eyewitness guide.) At the end of the route I stumbled upon the Strahov library, which the German kids I hung out with the other night had told me about. It's beautiful on it's own, but I wanted to look through the books, which is not allowed, of course. They also had some strange taxidermy displays, mostly of fish.

Not very exciting.

2005-09-03T17:14:00.000-05:00

So now I am intimately familiar with my hotel room. I had a fever/head cold yesterday and unfortunately the fastest remedy I know of is to force myself to stay in bed and drink fluids. A sickness lasts one day instead of a week this way, but it means one massive day of feeling crappy and bored.

When I could concentrate, I read The Hunchback of Notre-Dame. This is one of those books I should have read in high school and didn't get to. I had no idea that it's mostly an architectural critique. There are about six pages where he convicingly spells out architecture's decline as caused by the rise of the printing press. He wrote this 175 years ago and it seems right.

I still felt weak today, so I didn't do much. I found a four-story mall one metro station away up Vinohradska. It could be any mall anywhere, except that the view from the juice stand is an ancient cemetary. And in the pet store they have a pair of South American primates for sale (that picture isn't mine, but it's similar to what they looked like). There, I finally got my shoes resoled. When traveling, I had room for only two pairs of shoes one of which had to be shower shoes. (This was the best decision I made, bar none. To think of the horrors I would have suffered through otherwise... *shiver*) The miles and miles walked in my Eccos resulted in large cracks and exposed undersole, so stepping on even slightly damp pavement meant wet socks for several hours. Not pleasant.

It's a little scary when I start going on about minutia like this. "And then at 9:33pm I went into the dining room to watch satelite tv, but it was all in German." Ugh.

Wow. I live here now.

2005-09-01T17:47:00.000-05:00

And I don´t speak a word of Czech.

The train from Amsterdam was great. My neck started hurting (from straining to look out the window in the same direction all day) about Bavaria. Apparently all of Northern Europe looks like the Willamette Valley, but the houses are more gingerbread than whitebread.

In Wolfsburg, Germany the train went by the Volkswagen plant and I got to see the car elevator towers that I used as a precedent in a studio project. In Berlin the train passed the Reichstag and a score of other interesting buildings that I didn´t know. The Dresden Hauptbahnhof (train station) is an old iron-framed structure with a new fabric roof, a perfect use if ever there was one.

From Berlin to Prague, I shared a cabin with a middle-aged Dutch couple on their way to spend four days in a rented apartment. Today, I saw them again inside St. Vitus Cathedral up at Prague Castle. (That site has information. This one has pictures, including a not great one of the Mucha window, my favorite part.) We kept bumping into each other all over the complex.

For 175 krowns (about 7.50 dollars), the student rate, I had full access to everything: St. Vitus´south tower and crypt, the old royal palace, St. George;s Basilica, the Powder Tower, the National Gallery, and Golden Lane, which would have been my favorite if one of the little houses had been furnished as a house instead of their all being shops.

At breakfast this morning, I accidently ran into D., the program coordinator for NC State;s Prague Institute. As it turns out all of the contact information I had been given was wrong, so this was lucky. P., my studio professor is here as well. So now I´ve seen the studio space and it;s quite nice. It will double in size at some point over the next year, too, as we take over the other side of the building. The best feature of its location is the serious tea room downstairs. And I was worried about not finding good tea in Prague. Silly me.

And lastly, the joke about beer being cheaper than water isn´t a joke. Last night I had a full half liter from Tesco (grocery store) for 11 cents US. 11 cents. I don´t like beer, but so far everything here has been drinkable. Strong and drinkable. My first night I had a glass of wine, sitting outside on the street at a tapas bar, for 16 krowns (68 cents). I will get used to this.

Off to Prague.

2005-08-29T20:05:00.000-05:00

It's been fun living here these last couple of weeks, but I leave early tomorrow morning for Prague via Berlin. Thanks to the efficiency of German trains, it'll only take 11 hours.

Tonight I will eat my last patats (double-fried french fries smothered in mayonnaise, *happy sigh* enough to make some former boyfriends cringe. Mmmmm...) and watch my last Dutch TV (what they show at midnight makes the Red Light District look downright tame). G. has BBC One and Three and about 20 Dutch channels with only 50% English programming (Dutch subtitles). For a small country these guys talk a lot.

I heard on Saturday that my paternal grandfather is not expected to live long. They said that the entire family is with him, as it should be. The happiest moments with Grandpa were when I was really small. He would let you climb up into his lap and put your hands onto his rough face to feel the stubble. Then he would hold you tight and rub his jaw anywhere there was exposed soft skin while you squealed laughing. He laughed too, a low rumbling, darkened by a half century of smoke. I didn't get to hear it enough.

There's a hermit in Amsterdam

2005-08-27T19:35:00.000-05:00

That would be me. This is the first time I've left my cousin's apartment since 3:00pm yesterday. It's refreshing to leave the curtains closed, eat all day long, not shower, (I did put on clothes, though), and sit at the computer until I really really have to pee. After hours and hours of fighting with mental ray in 3D Studio Max 7, I gave up and reverted to the slow as snot line renderer without any lighting solution, and guess what? It looks fabulous. *sigh* I don't want to only use the line renderer without a lighting solution. I want to use mental ray with fairly realistic materials and results. And if I had an internet connection that didn't cost me a euro an hour, I could look this stuff up... Such are the rantings of hermits.

Before I went into seclusion I ventured out, briefly, on Wednesday to the Rijksmuseum and to the "beach" on Thursday. E.'s museum card has been handy, if only to prevent me from feeling cheated. I've been to the Rijksmuseum three times now, with this last trip taking only half and hour, maybe. This huge museum is currently under renovation, like the rest of Amsterdam, and so only the comparatively tiny annex is open. A couple positive improvements are that The Kitchen Maid, or Milkmaid, is no longer sharing a wall with thirty other paintings and The Night Watch truly has it's own room instead of a lobby.

The beach, at Blijburg aan Zee (there are photos--"fotos"--even if it's in Dutch) had sand and was on water, but there weren't any waves and the wind was too sharp to stay long. The island it's located on, Haven Eiland, didn't exist a few years ago, according to a man at the tram stop who is looking to move there. He said that the land was pumped into place from the bottom of the sea. It's one massive subdivision about 1/4 finished, but the architecture is more contemporary and varied than anything one would see in an American equivalent. For one, besides forms that Americans would see as daring, it's all mixed use. It's a bit creepy to walk through a neighborhood devoid of people, risking the random catcall from construction workers, but soon it will be a nice place to live. Across the little stream next to the water was a tent village which may have been a carnival, but it looked closed.

What have I been doing with myself?

2005-08-23T20:55:00.000-05:00

Friday night G. (my cousin) and I stayed at his friend M.'s, I in the spare bedroom and he on the carpeted floor. He insists that he prefers it. Around 5:30AM, after watching Napoleon Dynamite again, this time with Y. (transexual) and M. and R. (both boys who used to work upstairs from the 7th Heaven Coffee Shop at the Blue Boy club, both now defunct) I stumbled up to bed. Y. helped get the room ready for me and pulled a wig out for me to try on while I waited. Long, fuzzy, chocolate isn't me, although she swore it brought out my eyes.

The next morning, G. took me to his apartment. It's temporarily full of boxes and bags of stuff, wood, tools, etc. His windows have faded blue sheets attached to nails for curtains, the middle one with brown stains. The bathroom is a tiled closet with a toilet. The kitchen looks over muddy rooftops and out onto a balcony housing 3 bicycles at various angles and stacks of 2x4's. In contrast, his landlords' (A. and E.) place is straight out of any home decorating/remodeling magazine: airy, bright, colorful, clean, new. It's like coming up out of the dungeon when entering their 2 story apartment. A. is a carpenter who has slowly bought out the other tenants in this building. He's fully redone his place, but hasn't quite made it down to the rest of the building, yet.

While G. was out for the day, I went by the Albert Heijn (grocery store) and bought orange cleaner, bathroom cleaner, rubber gloves, and sponges. He's been so preoccupied with more important things that maintaining his living space hasn't been high on the list. Saturday I cleaned the kitchen.

That night, G. and I went to the Chocolata, as usual so that he could help close. Ap. was there with his dogs. Ru. wasn't there, but she'd left her dog tied to the stair column while she went to a birthday party a block away. R. came in and walked Ru.'s dog for her and told us the last bits he needed to do before leaving for Canada on Sunday. M. came in imploring us to go to the before mentioned birthday party. G. and I had been over there already and most everyone was drunk at 10PM, so we didn't stick around. Y., who came and sat outside with M. and N. commanded me to sit next to her, which I did.

By the end of the night, G. and I were both exhausted. I had cleaned all day on only 4 hours of sleep and he just runs himself ragged. He stayed at M.'s again and I stayed at his place.

Sunday morning I went to buy breakfast and more cleaning supplies but grocery stores are closed on Sundays, apparently. You can buy human contact but not cereal on Sunday in Amsterdam. I made do with what I'd bought the day before and cleaned the bathroom.

We took G.'s bicycle to Chocolata this time. The Dutch live on their bicycles. As my cousin put it, "They're born on bicycles, go to school on bicycles, have sex on bicycles, have babies on bicycles, move apartments on bicycles, take the whole family out on one bicycle... They don't stop riding until they're dead." Every street in the city has a dedicated bicycle lane, that's usually it's own separate path. Anyway, there's a way of riding sideways on the back basket-holder that looks simple enough, but actually requires the passenger to run, hop, and sit while the bicycle is moving, because otherwise the driver wouldn't be able to get going. It was yet another great way to see the city at night, if the least comfortable and most precarious.

Sunday night, A. and E. graciously let me stay in their spare room so that G. could sleep at home. The makeshift bed (two chair cushions on the floor with sheets and a comforter) was cozy, if a bit short, but the mosquitoes would not leave me be. I have over 30 bites at the moment, more than I've had since living in Cottage Grove, probably. They're nearly silent, invisible, and thirsty.

Monday I slept nearly all day. My body was heavy and achy, I was exhausted and had a slight fever, too. So I slept until about 6:00PM. Then I had tea and read 1984, again. I had completely forgotten all the torture parts.

And today, feeling so much better, I went to the Stedelijk Museum. Eh. It was okay, but E. loaned me her museum card, so I'm glad I didn't pay for it. I also went to the NEMO, the only Renzo Piano building I've been to so far, or that I remember as his, anyway. Although, I did walk by the Building Workshop in Paris, by accident. The stadium roof has a stream that cascades down the steps. I was videotaping a couple of kids playing in it, when the little boy stops and pees downhill into the water and then continues running downstream, his older sister close behind. That so made me think of John. :)

I stopped by the ARCAM building because it was right there. There happened to be an exhibit about architects traveling to see buildings. That was mildly appropriate, except that the often obsessive documentation of their visits put me off. I'm not that interested in buildings alone.

Soon I'll head to the Chocolata to hang out and drink tea. There's a nice pattern to the days here, but I'm getting restless. I've been here a week: I need to start working on something or for someone or I need to go elsewhere. Hmmm...I could pick an independent study topic and research it this next week. Maybe I'll do that.

Most everything happens at night

2005-08-19T16:04:00.000-05:00

Slowly Amsterdam works it's voodoo on me. Yesterday, I got up at 11AM, but didn't leave the hostel until 1PM because I was doing online chores. (Gotta take advantage of the free wireless when I can.)

I walked down to the Van Gogh Museum, because I'd never been during any of my previous trips. He did some nice work, but I'm not sure he warrants the most expensive admission fee so far (13.50 euros). The sunken courtyard of the building is in almost constant shade, allowing the slate tile to turn green with slime mold. They actually had a man in there trying to scrub them with an industrial floor machine, to little effect.

I walked through Vondelpark a bit. They've done well mixing English and Japonese park/garden types, better than the part of Regent's Park I walked through.

In London I decided I wanted to see The Island, but it didn't open until after I left. Then in Paris it didn't open until after I left, but finally here in Amsterdam it's open, so I went to see it last night. It was an 8 out of 10 and surprisingly good for a remake of Logan's Run.

My cousin and I walked through the Red Light District at 1:30AM last night to meet up with his friend who had gotten off of work from La Vie en Proost, a strip club where the girls can be touched. (My cousin's friend only hands out flyers on the street.) There had been a shooting in the alleyway right next to the building he works in and the police had everything cordoned off as they went building to building searching for the shooter. Shootings are extremely rare and this one was pretty stupid being literally right in front of the blockwide police station. Of course, the highlight for me was walking through at night at all. The things that people will pay for.

Today I went to the Beurs van Berlage Museum which has an exhibit on contemporary Dutch design. The main hall, the former commodities trading floor, has skylights above it, but they were covered to keep it a constant temperature, according to the guide. It was truly unfortuanate because the pictures I had seen of the space with the skylights uncovered were wonderful. Then half-way through the tour the skylights opened automatically partway, flooding the room with diffuse light. The guide stopped his spiel and said, "That hasn't happened in a month." The architecture sprite's watching out for me.

The rest of today has been spent in the hostel, sleeping mostly. I got back around 3:30AM last night and was woken up about 8:30AM, so I felt justified in taking a two hour nap. Tonight, I think I'll stay with my cousin's friend and his wife at their house on the Prinsengracht, a fashionable street. There are 20 beds in this one hostel room and while my room is female only, the boyfriend of the spanish couple in the next bed keeps seeing how far his girlfriend will let him go while I'm sitting here typing. *sigh* And the water pressure really sucks. It was like washing in a drizzle today.

Water City

2005-08-18T11:39:00.000-05:00

Sail 2005 started yesterday with the ships coming in to Amsterdam's harbor. I had a front row seat on the grating of a pedestrian bridge at 10:45AM waiting for them to come in at 11:00AM, as I had been told. The water was full of little pleasure craft and a few 40 or 50 footers with three masts each, their sails furled. Around 1PM the dock on the opposite side of the harbor shot off a cannon and played a few seconds of what sounded like a patriotic song as three of these 40 footers went by. I thought, "Maybe this is it. What are they so excited about?", but looking around both sides of the harbor were packed with people. They were definitely waiting for something else. By 2PM my butt couldn't take the grating anymore and I had to go get something to eat, so I gave up my primo position. It turns out the ships left whatever port they were coming from at 11AM and they weren't coming into Amsterdam until around 6PM or something. Oh, well, so I missed it.

My cousin's landlords just built a Fiberglas boat, so last night they took us out through the canals to the harbor and back into the canals again. It being the first night of sail, there were quite a few drunken pilots and revelers trying to get through small bridge underpasses all at the same time. It was a bit hairy because they're all in steel boats, so they don't really care if they hit anything. One boat in particular ended up drifting sideways into a passage, hitting the walls, several other boats and blocking the way for anyone else. There were at least twenty drunken revelers on the top deck, a couple of whom almost hit their heads on the bridge.

Amsterdam at night from the water is so beautiful. The light floats on the black waves and makes the buildings glow. We passed many large sailing ships lit up with single strings of lights tracing their vertical outlines. And we went by Silodam which looked like a Chinese water lantern with it's bright colors. It was wonderful. I am so thankful they invited us along.

My cousin needs good times like that. He's had a very rough several months and the next few weeks are likely to be worse. I'm glad that I can be here with him.

Yeah for free wireless!

2005-08-16T20:55:00.000-05:00

It's about time! The cafe across the street from my hostel has free unsecured wireless. Ah... Feels so nice. :) So I posted new food entries over here. Hopefully, I'll get more up before I go to stay with my cousin.

And now I'm going to go off on aggressive men who have tried to pick me up. I hate to say this, but they have all been of Middle Eastern descent. They usually call me baby and assume that I need some sort of help. The last time I was here in Amsterdam, I was 18 and didn't know how to handle a man (that I didn't know) trying to dominate me. This Moroccan guy with mummy skin, missing teeth, and Michael Bolton hair hung out at the coffee shop my cousin's friends were based out of. One day he followed me from there to a pizza place on the Damrak and insisted that I come with him in his car to "see the country." I was terrified, but I didn't know how to make him go away, other than to make lame excuses about why I couldn't go to the country. Finally, the girl behind the counter screamed at him to leave me alone and he left. I was so scared that I stayed in my hotel room for a day afterwards.

So this morning I was in the Gare du Nord in Paris and this Middle Eastern guy was talking insistently to this northern European girl (in English). I overheard only bits and pieces, but enough to figure out that she wasn't sure she wanted to leave with someone she had just met to stay at his place. I asked her if he was a problem and he immediately answered that he was her friend and that he's trying to help her and that I should mind my own business. I looked at her and said, "You're okay?" She looked at me, a little confused, but not upset and nodded. So I figured, all right that's her choice. Then the guy went and told his friend what I'd done, so this other Middle Eastern guy launches into me about how I should mind my own business and not interfere with others, etc. I said that there was nothing wrong with helping someone if they needed it and that she said she was okay so the situation was over so stop talking to me. He said, "You shut up first." Then I told him to go away several times and went back to reading my magazine.

What I should have said to guy number one is: "It doesn't matter if you're upset. I asked her." And then I should have talked to the girl more, maybe. What I should have said to guy number two is: "What business is it of yours if I asked her if she was okay? That's between me and her."

Rarrrrrr....This bothered me all the way to Amsterdam.

Anyway, Amsterdam is like I remember it, only warmer and livelier. My cousin is thinner and only a little grayer. And I am so looking forward to relaxing! I've been here before (this is time number 4) so it isn't like I have to cram everything in in a short amount of time. There's tons of time to lay in the park or watch people pass my sidewalk bench. Or write all of the food blog posts I've got backlogged. :) *sigh*

The last 3 days in Paris

2005-08-15T18:07:00.000-05:00

My petulant mood continued until I decided to have a "lazy American tourist on the tour bus" day. About half-way through my second bus, I realized that I had been genuinely physically exhausted from walking all day every day for 8 or 9 days. (Of course, frying my card reader didn't help.) And that I needed a dy of rest where the city came to me.

One of the touristy tidbits I picked up says that the Arc de Triomphe had an impossible project deadline, so the architect had a full-scale wooden model wrapped in cloth built rather than let Napoleon see it unfinished. That's one solution.

I saw some tourists wearing helmets go through the Arc de Triomphe du Carrousel on Segways.

On Sunday, I went to the Musee d'Orsay, only because everyone who had been said that it's the one thing I had to do in Paris and my god were they right. I stood in line in the rain and it was worth it. The building is incredible. The renovation left many reveals between the existing and the inserted structure with views down 6 stories in some places. It smelled vaguely of Coco Puffs, too, which was endearing.

Check out this basically lifesize painting. Okay, so it's called L'ecole de Platon, but "Platon" is dressed in blue and looking fairly Jesus to me and he's got 12 "students" or apostles. Plato could be overtly homoerotic, I guess, but this would be shocking even today if they were to call it Jesus and the 12 Apostles.

That evening I visited Sacre-Coeur. Everything kept saying it was on a hill overlooking the city, but I didn't see how it was possible. Say this outloud slowly: It's on a really high hill with an 180 degree view of Paris. Convinced? Good.

I attended my first catholic service inside. A nun in habit led the crowd in song, an altar boy in soccer shoes swung incense on the priest, and the smoke from the incense made visible the light streaming in through the west stained glass. It was an effective light, sound, and smell show, but with a sense of more. Stepping outside to the an unreal view of Paris surely reassured many pilgrims of a largerexistencee.

Last night, Christine and I went out with the Notre-Dame rollerbladers she met yesterday. We went to a bar and had ridiculously expensivecocktailss, conversing in a mixture of French and English "pour Wendy, parce qu'elle ne parle pas le francais." I drank Marc's Mojito because he didn't know what he was ordering (I switched him my Sex On the Beach) and most of Christine's Pina Colada because it was too strong for her, but even without much of a dinner I didn't get tipsy, so they weren't very strong. I'm glad I got to be out in Paris at least once at night.

And today I rode the Metro to those places I wanted to see more of, like Montparnasse Cemetary. It's aminiaturee city made up of family row houses lining little streets, all for the living to visit the dead. It's beautiful that it's inhabitable and so dense as to make a full view of thecemeteryy impossible. It is nothing like our vast wastelands with dotted markers.

The post from Friday

2005-08-13T13:32:00.000-05:00

Got a late start on Friday because I stayed up late talking with Christine and watching the French version of Survivor, called Koh-Lanta. (Television won't suck your soul if it's in a different language.) I was excited to go see the Tuileries Gardens in front of the Louvre, but was in for disappointment. (Actually, that sums up Paris so far, I hate to say. It simply cannot compete with London or maybe it's that I'm always tired and therefore unable to enjoy it like I should.) The Tuileries is made up of wide, dusty paths that create squares for vegetation. Visitors may only enter the squares with trees. There the arrangement is like so many overgrown seedlings in potting soil. All other vegetation, the grass, the flowers around the fountains, are in forbidden territory. Coupled with the American-style carnival running the length of one side of the garden, the effect keeps you moving, if for no other reason than there aren't any inviting places to stop.

Reluctantly, I went into the Louvre, mostly to see I.M. Pei's entrance. Too many museums in too short a time frame have drained my excitement for touring the world's masterpieces. It's awful to say, but I was bored. I left shortly after entering to get some food, (it's an all day pass) thinking that I might be in a better mood for it if I weren't so cranky. I went to the Opera district, had lunch at a sidewalk cafe (3.65 Euros for a tea! One tea!), and then rode a bus through the city to the end of the line at Pont de Levallois. Then I took the Metro to La Defense and walked around a bit. Standing inside the arch looking west, there's a lawn of perfectly spaced tree tops below. I couldn't find a bus back into the city so I went back on the Metro.

I walked from the Tuileries to the Place de la Concorde, up the Champs-Elysees to the Arc de Triomphe. I, of course, kept hearing the song Au Champs-Elysees in my head. I don't like being negative, honestly, but I don't see what the big deal about this shopping street is. All the major chains are represented, like any mall. Maybe that's it: it was the best shopping street before malls existed and now it's just another mall. That's a shame. The French are so good about passing laws related to the preservation of their language that they should pass a law dictating that every shop is the only one of it's kind.

I went back to the Louvre and made myself walk through a good portion of it, because it was expensive to get in. I didn't go see the Mona Lisa and I didn't go see the Venus de Milo mostly because I've seen them, and, well, I have this general malaise. As the sun went down, the west-facing rooms had that "magic" light I've heard some professors go on about in school.

Curses! Foiled again!

2005-08-13T04:22:00.000-05:00

I had a brilliant idea to write my posts on my laptop and transfer them via USB to the computer in my hotel. Did it occur to me that my American USB card reader would start smelling like burning plastic in the European USB outlet? Of course not. I hope that my 1 Gig Microdrive is okay, but I'm not holding my breath.

Anyway, meet my dormmate, Christine and when I I'm feeling up to it, maybe I'll rewrite about yesterday in Paris.

Another beautiful day in the neighborhoods

2005-08-11T19:18:00.000-05:00

Okay, so I did Notre Dame first, because it was right there and the crowd for the interior wasn't too bad. Not only was there a charge for the towers but the line was truly ridiculous, out and around the square. It may be worth it, but I didn't care enough to wait/pay.

And Sainte-Chapelle is amazing, or I imagine it would be without the 10 million tourists and with the west doors closed (so that the light only cae from the stained glass). It's free for art history and architecture students, but they require something that says your name and program. The ticket lady took my word because my IDs don't list the progam.

Standing at the end of the Place Dauphine, square on the Ile de la Cite, I watched a group of men play water polo in the Seine using a life saver hanging off the side of a boat as the goal. This was not to be the only time I was to witness potential bowel diseases originate today. At the Musee Picasso (page is in French, but there are pictures), a father watched and took pictures as a pidgeon walked through his absent daughter's salad (she didn't want it anyway) picking out the shrimp. Then the furious mom and upset little girl came back with a tirade of (I think) Spanish. Then the mom fed the little girl the salad. Wholly unsanitary, that.

Now I'm going to go off on Picasso with the caveat that I know nothing about the man's life or philosophy, really, this is all my impression: Production does not equal thought, though it can be an aid to thought, alonJungianan lines, but I didn't see that sort of exploration in Picasso's work. Could he have reduced the multiple women in his life any further? They are nothing but tiny heads, spherical breasts, swollen bellies (if pregnant: 4 children by 3 different women; two wives, two mistresses, one of which was 17 to his 46 which I have a HUGE problem with), and gaping holes for sexual organs. I understand that he was deliberately reducing life to bits and pieces, but he would have found a way to depict the love he had for these women if it existed beyond sexual obsession, which I doubt. There's one room where it seemed you had to sleep with him to get him to paint your portrait, which, I know isn't true. Alright, I'm done.

The Musee Arts et Metiers is not what I was expecting. Arts and Crafts to me mean something different. This is a museum to the industrial revolution, not to William Morris, et al, so I was only marginally interested in the content, unfortunately.

London to Paris in 2h 35min

2005-08-10T20:10:00.000-05:00

So the keyboqrds here qre crqwy: For instqnce; I knoz thqt the apostrophe exists in French but Iùll be dq,ed if I cqn find it on this keyboqrd:

Okay, I will hunt and peck so that this makes sense.

I miss London and I only just left. Paris is cool but my French is awful, so this is a problem. It is dirtier, not as user friendly, but the Seine is more intimate than the Thames and more architecturally significant since it is contained within human construction. I sat on the edge of the stone embankment for a while listening to the caribbean band that was playing as part of Paris Plage. There was nothing to stop me from jumping the 8 feet or so into the water, except it's repugnance. (Found apostrophe.) I was completely shocked to see a fish hatchling and then a whole school of them and then larger ones. Life is resilient.

Walking along the Seine this beautiful evening, I saw a mooning of a tour boat ("C'est la plus belle Paris!" one guy yelled as he smacked the other guy's cheek, or something like it, my French is abysmal.) and a fashion shoot (I stumbled into it, really. The sun was in my eyes behind a mist machine. I heard, "Lift your leg up!" and saw a woman's silhouette standing in the mist raising a child. I thought, "Her husband's right, that's a good shot" so I took it, too, before I realized what was going on.).

Within an hour of being here I was hit on twice. None of this subtle stuff that I completely miss in the U.S. and the U.K., but full on, "I love you. You are so beautiful." Damn, I wish my French were better. The comebacks I would zing. *sigh*

My hotel is clean and bright and half the price of London. Now if only the rest of the prices were half the price, I mean normal.

Tomorrow, first thing, is Sainte Chapelle. I am so excited. ;)

This rocks

2005-08-10T14:21:00.000-05:00

Lulu: free publishing.

Day two of just hanging out

2005-08-08T17:55:00.000-05:00

The London Transport Museum is not worth the time and certainly not the money.

But Covent Garden was bustling with shoppers in the market. I bought a watch, finally, from a man wearing an American civil war hat in the Jubilee Market. (It's Antiques Monday, naturally.) It's a used pocket watch, which is exactly what I wanted, and I, of course, paid too much for what it is. Hey! I have a watch!

Also, I found a hole-in-wall selling Cornish pasties. Mmmm...

Regent's Park is wonderful. I watched the boats, laid in the grass, saw people undressing (whoops), and generally relaxed. I'm really not kidding about wanting to move here. Unfortunately, I probably need to come up with some type of professional plan or long term goals or something equally tedious to pull it off.

Lazy Sunday

2005-08-07T19:44:00.000-05:00

My complete exhaustion evaporated overnight. Youth is nice.

But I took it easier today. The Victoria and Albert Museum and the Natural History Museum were the only stops on my list.

The V&A is mostly skylit with the feeling of an old train station instead of a museum. They have a minor exhibit on this year's British architecture's 40 Under 40. Of them all, Tonkin Liu, Burd Haward Architects, Brisac Gonzalez, Paul Archer Design, pH4, and Piercy Conner are worth a second look for one reason or another. The architecture gallery had a lot of large models (a 6-foot-tall Hong Kong Shanghai Bank Building model! 1:100 scale, apparently.) and drawers of original drawings.

The Natural History Museum had specimens in jars, which I was excited about. My one complaint is that of the 22 million species they have in jars, they only have 10 or so tiny isles of jars on display. They give tours of the real collection, kept at 13 degrees Celcius (55 Farenheit), but I wasn't there in time for one. The museum is, again, a gorgeous building, but most of the displays are too infotainy to be of much interest.

Tired? Unacceptable!

2005-08-06T20:44:00.000-05:00

S., who I met last night in the dorm's kitchen, says that not having a watch somehow removes me from the temporal plane and makes me a transcendental being. Maybe, but it's difficult interacting with the temporal plane when you aren't inhabiting it. I need to buy a watch.

Yesterday, I was up and out by 8:45 AM. Did as much of the British Museum as I could handle before visual fatigue set in (two hours, not bad). I cannot say enough how much I loved the Great Court. Build a house around or in a space like that and I would be happy, if poor from the energy bill. They let us take photos of everything and with flash, even. It was surreal to stand in front of the pages of the Book of the Dead with lights going off irregularly.

I missed the sidestreet to get to Sir John Soane's Museum, so I had lunch in a hole in the wall, which are exceedingly rare, perhaps forced out by half a million Pret A Mangers. I now know what a Jacket Potato is. I'll post about all of my food experiences on my other blog when I can use my laptop again, but for now I'm just mentioning it.

Found the Soane museum, a masterwork of daylighting, which would be nicer without the priceless crap cluttering up the place. I got them to photocopy plans, sections, and elevations, done by some researchers, of the existing building. There's independant study credit here if I build it in 3D, I can feel it. (I won't be including the priceless crap.)

There was an exhibition in the adjoining building (accessed from the house) of sketches and design drawings by several famous architects (Venturi, Gehry, Addler & Sullivan, Graves, etc.) where I overheard a British man ask an American woman, "Are you interested in American architects at all?"

"Nah, not really," she said. Isn't that like asking if you're interested in American cereal? What, besides a difference in the characters' appearances, sets them appreciably apart?

In the late afternoon, I went to the Design Museum, walking across Tower Bridge to get there, admiring the great view of City Hall. At the Design Museum, they had a full-scale wooden prototype of a car designed by Le Corbusier in, like, 1927 and one of every influencial chair made in the last 100 years.

Boy, this is long and I'm still on yesterday. :)

They only had the first three floors of City Hall open, but walking around the ramp you can see up through the spiral to the floors above. On Sundays, they open the top floor to the public, calling it London's Living Room. I am definitely going back. The building looks silly and is completely impractical, but it's so cool.

I walked from there, all the way to Waterloo Station, along the South Bank Waterfront. Here's an approximate map, except it was right on the water's edge. Back at the hotel, I met S., a good conversationalist, and took advantage of being able to go out at night with a companion. He's an intern banker, so we went to Canary Wharf. I don't know why, but London and New York completely traded building styles with their financial districts. Wall Street is stone, has tight alley ways, and is very imposing. Canary Wharf couldn't be more American with its glass and steel and massive open spaces between towers.

So now I'm finally to today.

I got up today at 11:15 AM, exhausted. My feet still hurt. I went to St. Paul's Cathedral and got some bootleg photos before I knew I wasn't supposed to. I climbed to the top, (at one point I could see quite a lot of light between two stone steps, which was more than a bit disconcerting) toured the crypt and was generally impressed, as I should be.

I walked over to Lloyd's and Lord Foster's Erotic Gherkin, as they call it here. (I had to look up its real name, because no one knows it.) Both were closed, of course. I was surprised to see that Lloyd's superstructure is concrete.

Went across the Millennium Bridge to the Tate Modern and realized that 1) I needed food and 2) I needed a nap. I had been unable to find a fish and chips stand so I ate at a restaurant, had two pots of tea, a quick nap in the grass, and, then, an incredible time in the museum.

They have a Herzog & de Meuron exhibit in the turbine hall that is unbelievable for the shear amount of work and creative exploration. It almost seduces me into throwing away concerns about water drainage and heat gain. It would certainly make architecture more fun. If I'm not planning on practicing, maybe I should.

Right and now I've let it get too late to be out on my own. The only section of the city I need to be a bit wary about is the two blocks from the Tube to my hotel. I'll be okay, though. To bed and sleep.

Love, true love

2005-08-05T03:25:00.000-05:00

The blogging may be a bit out of order for the next couple of days. I forgot to bring an American three prong to two prong adapter with me so I can't charge my laptop until it arrives (Thanks to the best roommate ever!). But soon I'll be able to post pictures, etc.

For now, though, I want to say that I am completely in love with London. After going to my hotel (a dorm, in Lambeth Road) I stopped at Waterloo Station to try to buy a watch (still looking) and whoa, there's the London Eye, so that's literally the first thing I did. It was a beautiful day, too, so it was a fabulous view. I spent most of the day walking all over the city and riding the tube. And for lunch I had "Pud Thai." How happy was I?

I slept briefly in the afternoon because it's difficult to truly enjoy my surroundings through the distance of exhaustion.

In the evening I walked through the Piccadilly Circus, Leicester Square, Trafalgar Square area. Piccadilly Circus is what Times Square should be like. Packed, pleasant, relaxed. Everywhere I went people were sitting and talking, just hanging out, eating, happy to be alive.

Trafalgar Square is having a festival at the moment with all sorts of free performances. Last night, an aerialist, tethered by a hip harness to a helium balloon controlled by two men with ground cables, flipped, twisted, floated up and down, and interacted with the crowd. It was like watching the most beautiful Macy's balloon ever. From where I was standing, she was framed by the National Gallery and the spire of St. Martin-in-the-Fields against dark, puffy clouds.

And the scooters! More scooters go through an intersection at one time here than I'll see in an entire day in Raleigh. This is heaven!

So now the question is: When can I move? Better yet, when can I start making pounds so that everything isn't twice as expensive?

Today I may go to the British Museum, the Design Museum, Sir John Soane's house...We'll see. Eventually, I will go to the London Transport Museum and if you watch here long enough, you might see me walk by. :)

2005-08-04T11:58:00.000-05:00

Here and safe. Post more later.

Blaze of glory

2005-08-02T14:42:00.000-05:00

This is how every model should end its life. A bonfire seems a fitting conclusion to studio, too. Perhaps I won't sell my accoutrements when I leave, but burn them for my former grad-student self to use in professional heaven.

The slack line

2005-08-02T14:22:00.000-05:00

They were putting the slack line up when I drove by Pullen Park recently, so, naturally, I stopped to take video and pictures. It's amazing to see someone run, hop onto the rope, and then walk the line with his arms behind his back. I got that on video. :) I knew from a friend's nasty black bruises that I shouldn't try too many times to do it myself. Here are my bruises from trying once. (That's my inner thigh)

Efficiency = Compactness = Love

2005-07-31T23:10:00.000-05:00

The beauty of the Eagle Creek system is its compactness and compatibility. I'm going to Europe for 4 months with a laptop bag, a carry-on and a guide bag. That's it. There will be no checking of baggage. I packed everything tonight that I'll need; it's tight, but possible. The interior of the carry-on is precisely stuffed thanks to all of the "packing solutions" designed to fit inside. The laptop bag is a good 4 years old, but the handle of the new carry-on is robust enough to handle it's extra weight and correctly sized to fit through the special flap on the laptop bag allowing it to sit on top of the carry-on when the handle is extended. This sounds like an ad, but what a great line of products.

What a month

2005-07-29T16:30:00.000-05:00

London, Paris, Amsterdam, and Prague are right around the corner (Wednesday, Aug. 3rd, to be precise). I've got a new roommate and a subletter all set up, my luggage accessories have all arrived, and, so, to Europe!

I'm, of course, excited about my new discoveries in software. Skype will let me talk to my computerized and broadbanded family/friends for free through our computers. Quite handy. And infoRSS is such a nice extension for Firefox. All of the websites that I was monitoring via my Live Bookmarks can be added to a rolling ticker at the bottom of my browser in the Status Bar. When a headline is clicked it automatically opens in a new tab. So thoughtful. Headlines disappear when read or if I click the orange x next to them. It's even supposed to work as a Gmail notifier, but I'm having problems with Gmail notification at the moment. I hear they've changed their login code, again.

New toys

2005-06-30T18:59:00.000-05:00

A week or so ago I went on a newegg.com shopping spree. Two essential needs were filled with a Western Digital Passport 80G external hard drive and a Canon PowerShot A400. More space and quick, almost disposable pictures/video. So far I'm thrilled with both. The camera's 1GB memory card couldn't be cuter, except for when it's in my see-through, pink card-reader. I also bought a 4-port hub, but I didn't do my research: it's USB 1.1. Bleh. Oh well, so it's a bit slower...

Coming into the sun.

2005-06-04T16:22:00.000-05:00

Dismal weather this week. I didn't go on a walk for three days in a row. ForecastFox, a handy little Firefox plug-in, kept me abreast of the exact conditions with icons for Mist and Haze, as well as the usual Rain. It is currently Partly Sunny (so optimistic that). I love the mini-radar popup.

After much frustration and impatience with my lackluster hair, I got a great haircut mid-week. Cherrybomb Studio is an Aveda salon owned by a woman recommended to me by a friend. I don't know what the "concept" is in the term Concept Salon, but they are sprouting all over the Triangle. Although my cut was wicked expensive, it's so good that I may become addicted.

Last night was First Friday, so I went to dinner and then gallery hopping with some new friends. We ate at Vic's Ristorante Italiano. The eggplant parmesan ($10.95) and the Sangiovese by the glass ($4.50) were good. Artspace, is right next door, so we wandered through for a bit. Then we went to DesignBox which is usually interactive with interesting and varied work exhibited, but they were only showing a movie (featuring my "stylist" as an actress). Lump was the last gallery we visited. The two young architecture professors were exhibiting their recent work. Normally, Lump has disturbing sketches on lined paper or shocking photos displayed.

The evening wound down at The Flying Saucer, the closest thing Raleigh has to a pub, except the waitresses wear extremely short "kilts" and t-shirts that say, "Beer Goddess" and the atmosphere nothing like a pub. What I wouldn't do for a McMenamins to frequent.

Downtown is alive at night once a month. This is why I'm surprised that there's a Downtown Raleigh site. Maybe business can succeed where the city government has failed. I hope so.

Facilitating my Stargate SG1 obsession.

2005-05-29T11:20:00.000-05:00

Although, I was a television child, dubbed "The Walking, Talking TV Guide" by my cousin, I am not a television adult. Not only do I not currently own a tv, but I have never owned a television as an adult. How, then, am I a Stargate SG1 addict?

Back when SG1 was in syndication, I lived with someone who owned a tv. It would come on at midnight, Saturday night on Fox, following MAD tv, which, at that time had Will Sasso, the only cast member worth watching. (As an aside, Kenny Rogers Jackass was the most random, funniest thing I had ever seen because it would be a couple of years before I heard of the real, not so funny, MTV version.) Scifi saved SG1 from certain death, I guess, but it also confined it to cable, which I refuse to pay for or to watch; too many other things to do.

And then came BitTorrent, sweet, merciful BitTorrent. Thanks to this incredible program and to other dedicated fans, I have seen every episode in order. At 41 minutes a pop, that's a lot of time, but this really is the only television worth watching. (Okay, the Daily Show is too, but, again, it's on cable and it isn't as available due to its timeliness.)

What I don't understand is why it can be considered illegal to download and watch something that was freely broadcast, if no one is profiting from it. Isn't it like borrowing a tape from a friend? (This is something I could do, but it's a much bigger hassle.) If Scifi posted episodes for download at a reasonable price, say $1 each ($19-$22 a season), I would do it. I am not going to buy a tv (minimum $100 for a decent one) and cable (minimum $40 a month, but Scifi is more, I think) so that I can watch one 41 minute episode a week for 19 weeks out of the year.

Recently, thanks to the new BitTorrent search, I found the entire 8th season for 400MB. That's two thirds the size (and one quarter the quality, but I so don't care) of what one episode used to be. Much better for speed.

The best way to fry.

2005-05-27T10:44:00.000-05:00

As I made myself a cripy cheese quesadilla last night in my cast iron skillet, I wondered why chemically-coated non-stick pans are so prevalent. They are usually lighter and some can be washed in the dishwasher, but if the coating gets scratched food sticks, and despite what all the official websites say, I can't believe that ingesting chips of teflon is harmless. With a cast iron skillet, the worst that can happen is increased iron intake.

They do require special care; they must be scrubbed under hot water, but never washed with soap and they need to be completely dry before wiping them down with a thin layer of vegetable oil.

My own private resevoir.

2005-05-26T19:03:00.000-05:00

After a year of relative inactivity, I am once again moving my body around. It's not exercise because the purpose is to remove myself from everyday life and think, feel the weather, see the trees and the lake, overhear snippets of conversation, and move through space. The eastern half of Lake Johnson, here in Raleigh, is perfect for this. The 3 mile loop is paved, leaving me to pay attention to the surroundings instead of my feet.

The western half of the lake is suitably unpaved and ill-maintained for the illusion of remoteness. The trail isn't marked well so it is possible, as I found out this week, to lose it (twice) and take alternate trails. If this is what you're looking for, remember to stay as close the water's edge as possible and wear boots to slog through the mudholes.

In the evenings and on weekends the two main parking lots overflow, so visiting in the morning is a good idea.

My laptop is cool again!

2005-05-25T18:22:00.000-05:00

My Dell Inspiron 5100 heatsink saga is over--for the moment. Thanks to Dan's post I was able to take my laptop apart to find that the heatsink grease had baked into a hard, white-out like substance, effectively gluing my heatsink and CPU together. Not good. (It's no longer under warranty so I didn't void anything by opening it up.)

After prying the two apart, gently so as not to scratch either, I cleaned them both with alcohol and Q-tips before applying a new, even layer of grease on both. Now my laptop is down from 60-70C (CPU temp) to 40-50C and from 50-55C (Hard drive temp) to 35-40C. (How do I know? Because I run I8kfanGUI.)

And to think it only cost $20: the grease, Q-tips, alcohol, and canned air. Any computer repair place would have been much more expensive.

Savannah, GA: Yay a real city!

2005-01-10T19:55:00.000-05:00

Corner cafes with signature sandwiches at reasonable prices! (B. Matthews Bakery and Eatery's black-eyed pea patty, for example.) Tour trolleys to dodge! Hotels with great city views to sneak into! Churches that toll on the hour! Park blocks!

There's a cobblestoned waterfront lined with three and four storied ancient loadbearing masonry buildings housing shops and hotels. Oh, and the Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD) owns half the city. They have a fabulous, overly expensive exhibition/gift shop called shopSCAD/Exhibit A.

What a wonderful couple of days spent there. And with the incredible hotel deal off of Hotwire, it was affordable.

When do I panic?

2004-11-30T23:00:00.000-05:00

It's a week until my final review. I've just discarded building scheme 7 or 8. How unexpected to be earning my masters in crapitecture. It is entirely possible that I will not have a completed project next week. This is not a process studio so I can't even show what I've been working on. *sigh* So screwed.

StuckStuckStuck

2004-11-08T17:02:00.000-05:00

Aaaah! Designer's Block sucks! I got nothing. Three weeks with this admittedly difficult project and I have zero to show for it. Eventually I'll have to stick with something but I can't stomach anything I've come up with so far. I need a visit from the Design Fairy.

Don't say it until it's all over, please.

2004-11-02T19:30:00.000-05:00

The one benefit of a close election is that the networks are reluctant to call a winner until late in the evening. Nationally announcing election results before all polls have closed effects how people vote on the West Coast. So what if the ratings are substantial? Down with Election Night coverage!

They've done what?

2004-10-11T15:35:00.000-05:00

Another BBC story, but this time about the FBI ordering a web hosting service to hand over servers containing something like 20 independent media sites. They have yet to give a reason other than saying that the Italians and Swiss requested it. Um, this is a bit scary.

Something for Nat. Geographic, Discovery and Animal Planet to duke it out over

2004-10-09T23:53:00.000-05:00

The BBC says another giant primate species has been found in the DR Congo. If a species large enough to kill lions has gone undetected by science for this long, maybe there's some truth to the cliche myths of Loch Ness and Bigfoot.

Grooving with WKNC

2004-09-19T20:30:00.000-05:00

Typically, the term "campus radio" brings to mind the eclectic mix, to put it kindly, that 88.1 played back in my undergrad days at the U of Oregon. But NC State's station, WKNC, rocks. (Streaming MP3.) Everything they play is good. My favorite "who knew?" program is Geet Bazaar (Bollywood pop) Sunday mornings from 10 to 11am (EST).

Southern Comfort Burrito

2004-09-11T17:16:00.000-05:00

This was a surprisingly good "ready for food again" lunch (went to the best party last night):

rice
canned black beans
baked sweet potato
canned turnip and mustard greens
white cheddar cheese

inside a whole wheat tortilla.

Mmmm... Of course, it was feasible only because the sweet potato and rice were already made. I cook up a batch on the weekends and put them together with different things during the week.

Alternative insulation types

2004-09-09T13:31:00.000-05:00

Inno-Therm is recycled cotton batting, non-toxically treated for pest protection, that is meant for insulation. There is also cellulose insulation. But, of course, the definitive article about insulation lies at Mother Earth News. That fiberglass is no longer a necessary evil.

Mozilla Firefox

2004-09-08T19:00:00.000-05:00

I haven't mentioned it before because I'm way behind the curve on this one, but I love Mozilla Firefox. After several years of playing with alternative browsers, I conceded Internet Explorer's supremacy because everyone writes for it and I was tired of dealing with the bizarre things that would happen in browsers that couldn't handle that. But Firefox is incredible. It's been about a month since installation without a single page displaying incorrectly. The multiple tabs, instead of multiple windows, the icon skins, the imbedded search engine field - it's a drop down where you choose what engine you want to search - the almost endless customizability... Are more reasons necessary?

IE can finally be uninstalled (haha, as if you could).

Happy squares

2004-09-05T19:03:00.000-05:00

Ah, obsession is not easy to avoid. When one topic necessarily takes up every moment and then eats into your sleep time as well, it seems inevitable that deprogramming will be needed. Save me from the Cult of the Shiny Squares. They appear in my designs despite my best intentions. It has to be the building we're in. They're impossible to ignore, right?

All nighter number 1

2004-09-01T04:03:00.000-05:00

Welcome to the first caffeine-fueled push of the new school year. The hellish assignment, which I perversely enjoyed, is done and ready to turn in with even enough time to get an hour of sleep before work. Now tomorrow night's push will be for my review on Friday. It would be nice to have something to present.

Happy September! :D

More psychobabble

2004-08-27T22:44:00.000-05:00

After a couple of beers and a Stargate (SG1, of course) one's thoughts naturally turn to interpersonal relationships. For instance, is it common to have a nearly unbreakable bond with one other human being? Do those that have at least one relationship like this get lonely easier than those who don't? Is it more rewarding to know and be known so thoroughly or to be fiercely independent, oblivious to the possiblity of co-dependency?

I suppose it depends on the circumstances surrounding the bond, right? Developed over months and years as a healthy friendship, like the now non-existant marriages of old, knowing another person so well would probably be thrilling because individual identity is retained. (Oh, I know that from a feminist viewpoint my example can be debated, but assume the marriage I speak of is between two distinguished professors circa 1930.) In this kind of relationship both contribute knowledge and vitality because they're sharing their lives with each other, or so I've heard.

In contrast, a bond formed during trauma or to fill an emotional void is set up so that what little emotional strength either person has is pooled together for mutual benefit. This ideally temporary situation can become permanent if the people involved forget how to handle their lives alone or were too young to know how in the first place.

So if the choice is between an incredible understanding of another person through shared war experience or a peaceful, connectionless life with complete independence, what would most people choose?

Eye candy and best wishes

2004-08-23T20:55:00.000-05:00

"I, Robot" might have had some sort of story about killer robots or something, but, man, did those eight visual effects companies do their jobs. The industrial design kids had some fun, too. Nifty gadgets and gorgeous architectural renderings. Ah! What a thing of beauty!

On a particularly awful side note: One of my professors had a bad fall on a mountain bike over the weekend. Clip-ins and steep gravel trails don't mix. My guess, from how bad his injuries are, is that had he not been wearing his helmet, I might be pouring a bit of my 40 on the ground for him. Instead, I'll drink to his speedy recovery.

Pre-fab Homes 2.0

2004-08-22T20:15:00.000-05:00

Manufactured homes are experiencing a renaissance here. Some say Dwell Magazine is responsible because of the design competition they held a couple of years ago to design a modern manufactured home. I haven't visited the resulting Dwell Home which is conveniently located in Pittsboro, NC, but I plan to soon.

However, I did go to BuildSense's open house for the speculative modular farmhouse they built in Creedmore, NC.

In regards to the house itself, it's cozy and bright and expensive for what it is. What a very nice, very unfortunate mistake. Located in a rural area, (across the street from one of the architects) it's 1500 square feet so it won't be sought after by those looking for a new home in this price range. According to the design build firm, they won't recoup their costs. Eventually, someone will buy this naturally finished house (cedar siding, slate floors, berber carpet, etc), but at what price?

As a model for what's possible, it's informative. It feels nothing like a mobile home. The timber framing keeps it from looking like a spec house, too, even if it feels like one in a couple of places on the interior. The windows start about a foot off the floor and extend almost to the ceiling, dramatically expanding the tiny rooms. It will be interesting to see what they do with their next version. I also look forward to comparing it to the Dwell Home.

UPDATE: FabPreFab.com is the go-to site for the new wave of manufactured buildings.

Blog types

2004-08-17T16:46:00.000-05:00

I've spent a bit of time today checking out the new Next Blog feature on the Blogger navbar. What I found is kind of disturbing. Most blogs fell into the following categories:

Teenagers deliberately mispelling and randomly capitalizing their entries. At least, I hope it's deliberate.

Foreign language sites (How could they? Don't they know I can't read jibberish?)

Angry rants about day to day issues.

Ultra-specific agendas - Christianity, Judaisim, Atheism, Conservatism, Liberalism, Sexualism, etc.

What-I-Did-Today-In-Chronological-Order (ie. "7:30am Woke-up. Had to go pee. Managed to get back to sleep. 9:37am Cat jumped on my head." I only made half of that up. Guess which half.)

While these sites serve valid purposes to those who are drawn to them, I wonder where the other sites are. Here is my naked plea:

If none of the above appeals to you, please start a blog and share what does.

I'm curious and there must be others that would be. My current gold standard is Moira.

My new anti-hero

2004-08-16T23:01:00.000-05:00

I happened on The Mister X comics while digging through my boss' massive collection (that he happened upon while digging in an attic 10 years ago) to see what I would like to buy from him. He had a couple of Sandman issues, but almost the entire first two volumes of Mister X, of which I knew nothing about. The covers were cool, though, so I grabbed 'em.

Which makes it kind of funny that the series is about a mysterious architect who takes a serum to stay awake for months at a time - "There's too much work to do to sleep!" - and has enemies from his former design school days that plot ways to kill him with his own designs. He's desperately trying to fix how his Psychetecture design was implemented, because it's driving the inhabitants of Radiant City insane. Yet another case of an architect not watching the implementers close enough, or in this case, at all, since he was in a sanitorium at the time.

Nearly every pane has someone falling off of an art deco-style building, papers floating through the air, a deranged addict, film noir lighting, and architecture jokes; For example: One pane is a crowd scene where a man is holding a book with only the top half of the title showing, "Vers Une". Another has the label on a killer robot as "Aalto".

I'm planning on scanning some of the panes (from both Sandman and Mister X), printing them as posters on the plotters at school, and then mounting them on foam core. DIY publishing is so nice.

Is my axis of evil gone?

2004-08-13T23:13:00.000-05:00

The place to be during today's flash flood warning time period (6:30 to 8:45pm) was on the covered patio at Cup A Joe, Mission Valley. Despite my truly awful Thai iced tea (Cafe Cyclo has a decent one, but Raleigh is clueless about all things Thai), and the conversation blocking rain-on-metal-roof noise, it was possible to have an engaging conversation with an outgoing stranger while watching the storm.

The weather is so exciting, here. It's loud and inconvenient instead of merely damp. In fact, we don't have weather in Oregon most of the time; We have damp.

Anyway, the conversation was interesting. He guessed that I'm vegetarian - is it that obvious? - shared that he has faith, and then asked me what I believe. I was taken aback, since a) my beliefs are too complicated to spell out in one paragraph let alone to someone I just met and b) no one asks this outside of church. Except it wasn't that kind of situation. He was curious what I believed. So after I said, "That's a rather personal question, isn't it?" I told him that I have faith, although different than most peoples', and I choose to show it through action rather than vocalizing it.

Sometime later we got on the subject of schizophrenia. He could see that I was okay with talking about mental illness so he was comfortable telling me that he's a schizophenic. This surprised him because it isn't something you tell a lot of people even if you're on your meds and doing well, like he is. So I told him that D. has it. We talked about how terrifying the disease is for everyone involved. He said to be careful not to get too stressed out, or take drugs, and to stay healthy to avoid triggering it. (I could develop it into my early 40's but I doubt that I'm high risk.)

Of course, this makes me wonder if I'm being ridiculous about the D. situation. Is it time for me to make peace with the Boogey Man? He is going to die soon, right? How much of his obnoxiousness is the illness and how much is just him? He's a manipulative bastard, but should I continue to cut him out of my life completely? That's not very nice, is it?

My parka finally died

2004-08-12T19:20:00.000-05:00

So here in North Caroliny we're getting the left-overs from Tropical Storm Bonnie before Hurricane Charlie (why isn't it named Clyde, again?) hits us tomorrow. Being a hardy Oregonian in possession of a Solstice Microshed jacket, I waded my way over to the post-office in my Timberline boots

and a pair of jeans. (I knew better about the jeans. There's nothing worse than wet denim.)

I've had my jacket for 8 years. My adopted father insisted that I start college with a decent rain jacket. And thank god. I wore it almost every day for those four years and frequently for the following four, remaining desert dry. However, in today's torrent, I got soaked. The Solstice site says:

"Wash your parka or pants in a washing machine with mild, non-detergent soap and then put them in a dryer on LOW heat. Heat activates the durable water-repellent chemical on the garment surface, rejuvenating its water resistance."

I hope that works. I may need to bronze it if it doesn't: Eight years contained in one piece of clothing. When I met G. we had the same jacket and haircut, until he lost his jacket. (He later borrowed my favorite Old Navy sweater only to forget it in class one day. I still haven't forgiven him. *nyah*)

Damn. I've known G. for 8 years. 8 years. That's our entire literal adult lives (I was 17 when we met so even more than that for me). Now I've got to call him.

Imagine a constipation free world

2004-08-10T21:14:00.000-05:00

Emotional constipation is a concept I've been thinking about a lot lately. Doing a Google search for the term brings up a lot of blogs. Here's an excerpt from one of them:

"I don't feel like talking about them. Because when I do talk about them, I fall into full-blown meltdown, becoming a giant slobbering boogery mess who no longer possesses the ability to rub two thoughts together to make a comprehensive sentence.

The only upside to that situation is that it only lasts a short while, and it causes a sort of cleansing, so that I'm fine for a few days. But then it all starts building up again. Your basic emotional constipation."

Yeah, that's pretty basic. The constipation stems from avoidance; Pain, anger, and fear are useful tools provided to us so that we can react to given situations. When we consistently avoid feeling these emotions, whether through self-preservation or discomfort, we lose touch with a vital part of our psyche. We cease to grow, but are instead mired in whatever state that part of us is in. It's like standing water with nowhere to drain: Eventually, it's fetid.

I don't say this to sound like a self-help wanker. Someone said to me once that allowing myself to feel my emotions is a luxury that I have. At the time I said, no that it's a gift I give to myself, but considering my background, yes, it is a luxury to be safe enough to let myself feel something. So when someone has killed your dog and is chasing you through dark alleys, don't worry about this touchy-feely woo-woo crap. But if it's you and your bedroom and a notebook, there is zero shame in becoming "a giant slobbering boogery mess". It could even be that you discover, as I did, that your world didn't fall apart because you had a breakdown. In fact, you feel better, stronger, and lighter.