Bless The Broken Road

Hahaha, my blog titles are becoming the title of whatever song I am listening to right now.

Nyways, I got back from Malaysia today (dad sent me off with this story: a girl was very busy and she had to go back to do her work so she canceled a holiday with her family...and then her father got sick and she was very sorry...yes dad, I get the drift...) Haih, I was really planning to stay longer...it's just that Pheonix has to be out on monday!!

Oooh, I had another of those 'adventures' with cosway link. It's the bus I always take to and fro from Singapore to KL and vv. (I think the one at Larkin is the only bus service I trust nowadays.) Anyway, today the bus broke down somewhere at Kulai, so we hopped up another bus, and then I didn't want to wait so I got up a 170 at Larkin where the bus stopped and went to Kranji...

I have had alot of adventures with cosway link express. I think I will compile them one day and write a book called: "The Yellow Bus and Me" Or something to that effect. Anyway, does anyone want to watch Marley and Me? I wanna watch...haih, but I'm so broke anyway.

Arr yeah!! Today I had a Sakae Sushi buffet with Justin, Simon and Wayne! Yah! I will not eat sushi for another month!! This is enough sushi to last me for that amount of time...lol. Thanks Justin for paying a large percentage of the bill. You are the only 'adult' in our group now hehee...(Simon got a student discount on account of being an NUS student) We have discovered something strange...Simon and Justin, the ahem, larger portions of the table, who we all expected to eat a huge amount...did not...and Wayne and me, the skinnier and tinier portions of the table...seemed to keep going leh...

Weird. Big people eat less? Hmmm...

Waaah, then afterwards I had an akicon meeting and they couldn't be placated with SweetTalk!! I even got personal orders from them leh...Oh well, have to pay up for staying in Msia for four days hor...but even then I put so much stuff on the Constructing Elegance Blog (Spent a whole morning on it leh) and bah. Anyway, it wasn't that much of a holiday. Did loads of Phoenix stuff. Spent 80% of my time awake sitting in front of my com in the dining room.

Sigh.

Tmr I have a site visit to Middle Road (my Urban Studies Site) and later a guided tour around the National Museum (Environmental Systems Site) and then to Art Friend to buy wood for akicon, then work at Akicon till 8pm then work on Phoenix with Pei Yiing till 9pm then Float meeting at 9pm. Hahah. Wat a life I live. Saturday is packed too!! (But this one is a nice sort of packed...hehehe)

Yah. Tired. Happy 22nd Birthday Cycelia!! (If you read this...) Yah, and more work tonite.

This is such a nice song lor:



I set out on a narrow way many years ago
Hoping I would find true love along the broken road
But I got lost a time or two
Wiped my brow and kept pushing through
I couldn't see how every sign pointed straight to you

[Chorus:]
Every long lost dream led me to where you are
Others who broke my heart they were like Northern stars
Pointing me on my way into your loving arms
This much I know is true
That God blessed the broken road
That led me straight to you

I think about the years I spent just passing through
I'd like to have the time I lost and give it back to you
But you just smile and take my hand
You've been there you understand
It's all part of a grander plan that is coming true

[Chorus]

Now I'm just rolling home
Into my lover's arms
This much I know is true
That God blessed the broken road
That led me straight to you

That God blessed the broken road
That led me straight to you.

studio outing

Pig: Hey EJ, what does RC Bar look like?
EJ: It's long and squarish...
Pig: Not reinforced concrete bar lah...

We went out for a studio outing today!! It was presentation day, so after presentation we took a trip to vivo for dinner and then made our way to RC Bar.

I ordered a cocktail and felt woozy after two sips. Sucks. I have no head for alcohol.

Now I'm a bit tipsy still, but getting sober. :( Did crit go well? Ahhh, hard to say...

Well, I think they may have liked my model (it's a humongous machine gun) but otherwise I don't think crit went very well, come to think of it again. (This is the first time any tutor said that I have skill, and that I have 'feel') So I think I was a bit happy for a while until I realize it's not that great a project. Maybe I am such a poor student anyway that anything remotely good is considered quite impressive. Haha.

Let me show you some of our group's models:



















The one just above is quite fantastic, in my opinion. Pig, you owe me for that lol.

I feel soooo freeee!!!


Studioooh 5

I'm Blogging From Studioooh

Hehehe, I just finished my third dinner of the day. I came back from studio at 6.30pm, picked up some pasta from the school canteen. Dropped by comm hall and decided to have dinner there with Wai Pheng. Then I went back and slept for an hour, got up, took a bath, had my second dinner (the pasta), and went back to sleep for 3.5 hours. Set off for studiohh at 10.20pm, picked up a McChicken meal at Macs and now I've just finished it and am starting on my floor plans. Ooooh. I am weird.

I just realized it is Friday the 13th, and Valentines Day is half an hour away!! Happy Valentines Day, attached and unattached alike! It's a lovely sort of day, cos it's about love, and love is really a many splendoured thing.

Man I'm exhausted. I've slept, but still soo super exhausted.

Yo Yo Ma



I am soooo going to marry a cellist :p romantic no?

more than you could ever know

the title is randomly picked off the song that I'm listening to at the moment. Can anyone guess what it is? I think Stacey should know, hehe.

Anyway, it's been just crazy. I overnighted three nights in a row at studio, and now I hate studio like the plague. I can't stand the smell of it, I think the air is so stale it's making me sick (all in the head sick). I think the air con system uses too much recycled air. bleh.

My studio space is like my second home already. The computer there has all my files in it, there are no backup files in my lappie even. Oooh I should thumbdrive it. I have all my materials there, my paper, all my rulers and stationary. It's quite a comfy place, actually. I liked it for some time. Hehe. But now I'm a bit sick of it, which is why I'm at hall slacking now. I decided to take tonight as a 'break'.

Daiso is one incredible place!! I got most of my materials from there this time, it's amounted to nearly sgd50 so far...sigh. Materials are so expensive. And I'm so hungry nowadays too. It always happens during submission. Thanks Simon for the dao hui!! I ate it around 4am when I returned from studio and found Sila STILL UP!! I came back at 6am once and she was up too. Hehehe. She's more nocturnal than I am. Sigh, I'm gonna be broke this month.

Randy got the idea that I have a scientific brain and he wants me to break out of it and become more intuitive and appreciative of art. It was because Hsing Iu looked at my drawings during interim crit and suddenly asked: Are you a science student? Hohoho. Lol, and during tutorial with KC for Akicon KC looked at my scribbles and called me 'artistic'.

Whatever am I. I think KC is wrong cos he's got this really technical brain and I was quite shocked when he said he was an architect.

Maybe it's just Randy hehe. Patrick last year wasn't poetic at all, but he had a sense of the aesthetic. Randy is super abstract, super 'poetic'. Hsing Iu seems to me to be quite scientific too, but has a leetle bit of poetic, which was why Randy agreed with him sometimes. Alan was a bit like Randy but less abstract. Learned alot from all my tutors. Even TBK gave some really sound advice during the previous final crit. Lillian and Da Visi too during my first ever final crit.

The only tutors who never helped me in anyway were D-I-don't-want-to-write-his-name and I-forget-her-name. Hmph.

I dunno. I'm just as lost as ever. Haih. Will crit this time be like previous crits? I always fall apart during presentation. My poor building. It looked rather boxy today. I wonder how it will look tmr when I go studio and crank my brains over what Randy told me today.

Well, he told me alot of abstract stuff that i don't quite understand. He asked me what the language of my building was. Ah Pig said it was boxy, and the language of his building was those layered things. Is it? I'm confused. Well, I figure I need to start thinking of scale and proportion and how the spaces are separated into spaces or whatever oh man I wanna pull my hair out.

I'm gg to sleep. Studio and Scale bar tmr I guess. Nights.


Guess who? No prizes for guessing!! Anyway, this is his new drama: Kiina, some detective show. Only out in Japan as yet!

Bright Beautiful Birds

I saw two bright birds fling themselves on the road today, and a car passed by and I was so scared. But nothing happened to them and they flew to the bushes in circles. They were so bright and so beautiful, like the birds described when Eustace and Jill entered another world in The Silver Chair.

This was so unusual I have to mention it :)

_better

I was better today. I slept the whole of wed night all the way through thurs and through thursday night and I woke up on friday morning feeling a lot better. So I got to go to work at scalebar today. :) Thanks everyone for the concern! I guess I just needed some sleep.

Well, Randy seems to have figured that we have no more time so he sent me a very encouraging email in reply to my frantic, worried sounding emails (Stuff like: Very good! I am glad to see developments, excited to see how blah blah blah.)

Well, it is encouraging, even though I know why he's doing that :)

Need to keep producing for monday, I spent the whole evening going through cover ideas with Pei Yiing for the 50th anniversary Phoenix mag cum meeting with the layouters. Just got back. Our deadline is 14th feb, so have to keep working. I am dreading coordination. Oh no, I rmb our presentation for akicon is next week, and there's a test for urban design next week too. Argh. This Sunday I have to spew out something for our Ft meeting as well, so I dun have a lot of time.

I am eating a lot of maggi mee for lunch. I better stop. Prolly caused my illness.

One Step At a Time

I'm sick. Oh help. I have a headache and terrible sneezes and I look like yucks. So I missed crit and now I am so behind I am scared. I was behind before, but now it's even worse.

Sigh. Is architecture really for me? Sometimes I am sure, sometimes I feel that I made the hugest mistake in the world. Always I get the same response from tutors: this isn't architectural enough! What defines architecture? My mind works all wrongly.

What is going to happen to me? I doubt, I doubt, I doubt. I hate my pounding head. I can't even stay up a couple nights without falling sick. Am I worthy to be an architect?

I feel so sick of architecture. I want to go home and sleep. I want my parents. I always feel so safe at home. But here I feel so miserable. I am blogging because I don't want to think of design anymore, and I don't feel like doing anything. I am blogging because I haven't really blogged like this for ages. Not really. Nothing. Nil. Zilch. Even my journal hasn't been updated for nuts. Sometimes when I don't blog here it's cos I'm frantically journal-writing, but this time it's just nothing.

Two more weeks to submission. I hate architecture. I have no building and I feel like I want to die.

BLECH.

Feeeellings. FEEEEEELINNNGS. What's the point. Haih. I want to go home.

_We've learned to rush but not to wait
_We have taller buildings, but shorter tempers
_We spend more, but have less
_Buy more, enjoy less
_Bigger houses, smaller families
_More conveniences, less time
_We have more degrees but less sense
_More experts, more problems
_More medicine, less wellness
_More knowledge, less judgment
_We laugh too little, drive too fast, stay up too late, get up too tired, read too little, watch tv too much, pray too seldom
_We have multiplied our possessions, but reduced our values
_We've added years to life but not life to years
_These are the times of fast foods and slow digestion, big men and small character, sttep profits and shallow relationships. These are the days of two incomes but more divorce, fancier houses, but broken homes.

_Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away.

Feel BAAD. Gonna die for P1.

AKICON

Oh wow, I survived two nights with barely 1 and a half hours of sleep. Wooo, I'm incredible. I still have my sectional perspective to do, so noneed to sleep just yet hor. I thought of something I wanted to blog about just now, but I think I have forgotten.