The offending photograph in question was taken at my favourite spot in 516, the computer in the far corner of the room next to the window. I like it because it has plenty of natural light and space I can stare out into, plus having one less computer next to me means there's one less opportunity that I'll be annoyed by the person next to me. I know that sounds harsh but deal with it. Aside from food there's a book I was reading at the time, "Atlas of Novel Tectonics" which I'm considering buying over the interwebs just because it has a really cool cover. As the lady judge on Iron Chef might say, "Oooh, the texture!" On top of the book are my iPod, painkillers and student access card which I keep face down for a very good reason - my evil alter ego lives there. It's not my fault the girl who took my photo in first year didn't give a shit, and because of her I'm stuck with it for the remainder of my uni career. Interestingly enough, the painkillers I've been taking are recommended for "Headaches, back pain, muscle pain and period pain". That'll learn me for watching that episode of Gossip Girl.
I've come to accept the terms of my workload. Time is some sort of luxury that I cannot afford, but that only applies during the final 24 hours before something is due. Though surprisingly for an assignment we managed to get it done the day before, which must've been some sort of minor miracle worthy of church and press coverage. Actually we finished it early because we got an extension for our other subject all thanks to classmates who were doing a vastly more difficult subject. Bless each and every one of them, I say.
The not so funny thing about that assignment was that two of my friends who could've easily worked together were instead working with other people just because they got asked first. In both cases, each respective partner seemingly did as little work as possible while my friends did all the heavy lifting. And these were the friends who had the insanely difficult subject too. In the end we agreed they should have fobbed their partners off and let them outcasts work together. At least that way it'd become a contest to see who could do the least work.
On the upside, I was meant to go into uni tomorrow to work on a group project but my partner bailed on me at the last second... so I get to stay home! When I was telling my sister I ended up doing some sort of weird dance where I kept on chanting "homehomehomehomehome!" several times over. The thing is, I really like being at home. It's not only where the heart is, all my stuff is here too. I really really like my stuff.
As I've become annoyed at beginning each other post with an apology for not posting more often, said apology wil now come at the end of every post. Forgiveness, please!
I'm still busy typing away at stuff until Friday, but until then I think it's important that I keep in touch so people won't think I'm dead and start to fight over things I've lent them.
Let's see, I had my design presentation on Saturday. Before then, I was busy finishing off my A1 boards and my A5 design journal and subsquently I was up for about 48 hours straight, save a couple of micronaps while other people were presenting. I didn't feel like sleeping much until sometime in the afternoon when all the caffeine I had consumed was starting to wear off, but I recovered in time to present.
Afterwards I believe my sleeping schedule was something along the lines of:
- Saturday night, 8.30 - 12.30
- Sunday morning, 1.30 - 5.10
- Sunday morning, 5.20 - 2.00pm
- Sunday afternoon, 5.00 - 7.00
By the end of it I wasn't completely sure what day it was. Every day seemed like Sunday to me. Unfortunately I compared notes with other people in my class and someone had beaten me by sleeping a full 24 hours straight, her parents thought she had lapsed into some sort of coma.
I think that's all the time I have for the now, will update in the not too distant future with a proper match report. In the meantime let me dazzle you with the random stuff I've been doing these past few weeks.
And now for yet another in this anti homework series of procrastinatory based posts.
Is my sense of irony reading too much into the fact that the official NRL song for this year happens to contain lyrics about the protagonist having a one night stand with a mysterious woman who he "never saw again, but that was alright"? The moral of the story is that I should never listen to pop song lyrics ever again, lest it rot my brains.
As for real news, doomsday is fast approaching and I only have a shonky umbrella for cover. My design is rapidly coming to a close, but not nearly rapidly enough. I'm going to start studying for my exam tomorrow in the hopes that I can at least get a pass. I went out and borrowed a few more books to help with my essay but I really don't know how well I can make it all gel together in a week and a bit. Yea, I'm downgrading my expectations for my other subjects which isn't really the best thing to do. Design had better be bloody worth it.
Lastly, the University has released yet another revised grading system. My only question is: in this age of the Internet infiltrating both popular and unpopular culture, when will we see an "Epic Fail" grade where your results are delivered by the Twitter Fail Whale? I might be needing one of those soon...
Hey look, the semester's over? Unfortunately I didn't really have as much free time as I thought I did, so I've been putting off this post for quite some time now. I wrote this around a month ago, perhaps I was waiting for something else to add to it but I'm not sure what. There's plenty more to say but I'll save that for another time...
(In best Jack Bauer voice) The following takes place between the 25th and 26th of April, 2009.
Hey look, free time! Where'd that come from?
In the time since my last locker status update, conditions have take a turn for the worst. Crappy uncompleted models lying around not being able to fulfill their destiny due to a lack of time. Indeed time is a luxury no one in my class has at the moment.
We've been trying to create a mockup of our proposed atrium archway model and it's fair to say it's been nothing short of a nightmare for everyone involved. To try and get things done I spent an all nighter sitting in the labs churning out panel after panel of work that the other guys had been working so hard to produce.
I'm pretty sure that's more masking tape than I've used in my entire life, but all that tape was consumed quickly in one night, taping freshly cut pieces of toxic MDF. Yay for us!
I started around one in the afternoon or so and kept on trucking until about eight the following morning, when I had to go out and play cards, followed by a quick nap at home and accompanying my sister to see Eagles of Death Metal at eight Sunday evening. Two bottles of Lemon V can take you that far but eventually it all catches up with you. I get pretty emo when something that happens so I should really apologise if you were the unintended target of my misguided rage.
I have a lot of trouble trying to explain exactly what kind of music the Eagles of Death Metal play. The name itself is so misleading that no one really cares for my explanations and frankly there probably isn't much point unless I pull out my iPod and play some of their stuff. I believe my sister would've had a similar problem as I only went along because she couldn't find anyone else to go with her. That's obscurity for you but then we can't all be fans of Miley Cyrus.
The really disappointing part was that the support acts took their sweet time (on the upside Kram was great) and by the time the main act started I could only stick around for the first few songs before I had to pop back into uni to update myself on what was going on. This studio has a lot to answer for. Fortunately my sister was able to use our camera to tape the encore which had my personal favourite from EoDM, "Speaking in Tongues" which comes complete with an interlude where the lead breaks into well, his take on speaking in tongues. Great song from a band that doesn't take itself too seriously, just don't let the video scare you off.
Getting back to the reason my life is a living hell, the annoying part is that the computer generated parametric model on which my all nighter was based was ditched in favour of a modified scheme. For something on this scale, design development is just another term for massive waste of time, materials and effort. So many futile exercises and for what, I don't really know. All I know is that I'm the proud owner of a box full of MDF diamonds and damnit, I'm going to use them for something.
Still no time to write anything overly substantial, not that said quality was ever really present to begin with. Still, it's 2am and thanks to my everlasting commitments to uni I don't feel like sleeping just yet. I don't know how regular people pull it off really.
Here's a nice photo I took early on in the semester where I didn't actually have all that much to store. Can't say there's too much time to actually play now, though I did manage to have a quick hit out the other day. Made a rotten effort of it really... I'm either blaming the fading afternoon sunlight or I've completely forgotten how to read a ball.
This is partially what I do with my waking hours now. assembling computer generated, laser cut models that don't actually work because the material is so lousy at doing anything. Unfortunately the alternative is MDF, a product widely promoted as the next asbestos. In fact I'm pretty certain I had some MDF for dinner in class tonight, fun times.
If we really can be helped we'd probably go to Nando's or KFC for some refreshing chicken grease. They make the best products to ever come out of mashing a chicken into little pieces for our nourishment. Given the chance though, I'd try and get some red meat instead... unless you want Sam Neill coming after you dressed like his character in Event Horizon, sans eyes claiming that we were meant to eat red meat while tearing chunks of flesh off you and dancing some sort of jig. What a nice thought to finish on...
Doesn't that sound really dirty in an uncool kind of way? This following video was brought to you by a white man named Sanjay Jones. Almost everything about this video is ridiculous. From the initial concept to the hammy acting and the little details about our future lives, if there's one thing about the future we can look forward to, it'd be the porn cloud!
In other news, I need to find more time to write. I'm currently attempting to write a 4000 word paper comparing real world and video game architecture, which is kinda fun. At least it gives me a work related excuse to play Max Payne 2 and UT again, so perhaps I'll update the blog with details later on. Now if you'll excuse me I have to do some "research"...
Previously on 'Say Something':
Steve is out of action fighting a mystery illness. He suspects big-game nerves have got the better of him and eats more of Nicola’s lasagne hoping it might settle his stomach. However, the lasagne is the culprit and part of Nicola’s crazy idea to secure her place in Miranda’s life. Will Nicola’s drastic plan put Steve's life in danger?
... actually that zany plot is from Neighbours, the longest running medical action comedy in Australian history. With plots like those it seems almost as formulaic as an episode of House. I'm sure this kind of stuff happens to real people all the time though.
In relative seriousness, here's the other result of my ridiculously long semester. The subject is called Digital Design Applications and teaches different methods in which architectural form can be created with the assistance of algorithms. This has the distinct advantage of being able to execute complex repetitive modules as many times as you need it to, saving on both time and effort.
After a lot of tinkering and procrastinating during the first half of semester I settled on the exploration of boundary creation through the use of sinusoidal spirals. These 'spirals' change shape as the value of the n constant increases and transforms from parabolic curves to circles and infinitely complex loops as seen below.
The next step was to compose an algorithm that was capable of generating this diverse range of shapes and turn it into something semi-meaningful. I seriously doubt you would want to read my script in fine detail but if you want your mind to be boggled beyond relief here it is. The code was written in RhinoScript - part of Rhino, a powerful 3D modelling program used in various industries including industrial and marine design.
Above are a couple of examples of what profiles can be generated with my script. At this point, what I need to do is select a range of n values that will generate a diverse number of shapes, as well smoothing out a couple of problems such as the points which as seen above, initially seem a bit random. This is due to the fewer number of points being plotted around the radius which leads to essential points being skipped. Eventually after a long round of fine tuning I was ready to turn this in at the new laser cutter in the Archi building. Expensive model making toys are nice to have, that's all I'll say.
The laser cutter can create some really detailed pieces of work and can cut to different depths so that it can do both cuts and etches. The above shows each frame of my structure and the detail within each one.
Initially I attempted to string everything up according to how it would actually be set up. This did not go too well because it was extremely difficult to string up each frame to a level of tautness that was sufficient to look authentic. Extra slack in the supporting strings would also lead to inaccuracy in the overall structure, making things more difficult when stringing between each frame.
Here's a shot of my model mid construction. You can really get a feel of how big it is by looking at the objects around it.
Nearing the end of our photo journey I began to document what the model would look like from the ground level. At this stage I changed the supporting material to perspex to further assist in the visualisation of the frames and threads.
And here it is in all its glory. This was taken at the end of year exhibition where among other things, every piece of work from our class was put on display for all to see. Check out the slideshow below to see what else the other guys created.
Fancy stuff, eh?
So much to do, so little time. Not unless that said amount of time stretches far past the semester's end and into swotvac of course, in which case you never really leave. A lot of final reviews for architecture are taken after the official end of semester but that is by no means to be taken as an extension of time. Instead, it becomes a period for extra work that stretches out for some time. Strangely I'm looking forward to sitting my one exam for the semester, a reaction to all this coursework I imagine.
My first subject was due during swotvac. I won't give an overly long explanation for it like in the past, partially because this project has been fairly drawn out and I'm sick of doing transport hubs (especially after last semester). For those who haven't seen me up at Union working on it all semester, the brief was for a redevelopment of Station Pier in Port Melbourne. I took on an environmental aspect in particular regard to the marine life in Port Phillip Bay and the regeneration of the habitat post dredging.
My proposal was to establish the pier as a base point to a network of underwater observation towers (it makes little sense until you see the video below) which act as a support to assist and monitor the recovery of the local marine wildlife. This has the added benefit of allowing further education of marine biodiversity of our local wildlife. Below is an a quick animation I did for the presentation, quick being defined as picking cameras and paths then waiting for the computer to render every frame from the hours of 10pm to 6 the following morning. With the help of architecture, sleep is an inefficiency I no longer need to kowtow to.
Another key idea was to reevaluate the norms we consider behind how we view aquatic life for educational and conservational purposes. For comparison I went to the Melbourne Aquarium and observed how captive species were displayed and housed. I found that the vast majority of exhibits to be overly confined, disallowing the creatures from truly being able to live comfortably. Of course that's an objective point of view, but you won't exactly get an answer out of them and everyone else will think you're unhinged talking to the fishes. So in my solution, the idea was to invert the aquarium and expand the part which works best, the main tank.
My design gives the fish as much space as they need, with minimal human interference. Creatures are lured to this artificial reef by populating the surroundings with concrete habitats with precast hollows for fish to hide. The extent of human observation is maximised by placing viewing pods and portals around gaps in the tower where fish can populate, bringing them as close to the spectator as possible. Tunnels run under the seabed to fishbowl style viewing domes placed at different parts of the reef to observe wildlife remote from the main hub.
The review went alright, with the main criticism being the underdevelopment of the link to the pier and the overly imaginative parts of the tower itself. Some of it depends on the crit panel you get, some like crazy and others not so much. Unfortunately I am cursed with a fairly vivid imagination, though I perhaps pushed the underlying ideals a bit further than was absolutely necessary. Anchoring back into a slight degree of reality might be handy next time.
Stay tuned for Part Two of my neverending semester soon enough, looks like I went into a bit too much detail again... There'll be more pretty pictures!
It's really odd and scary to think that the semester's more than two-thirds of the way through. Complete blink of the eye stuff really, but I guess you don't really notice these things when you forgo sleep in favour of energy drinks and time consuming assignments. Actually that lemon V isn't too bad compared to the other fowl tasting concoctions running around right now. I haven't tried the former incarnation of that 'Mother' drink but if a bunch of food scientists had to sacrifice their lives for it, I'm sure most of it is floating around in the bay somewhere energising the water life.
And that brings me conveniently to my design assignment. Segue for the win! We've been through so much of the semester and we've only now just finished our conceptual propositions. This leaves us with about six weeks to come up with a fully realised design, including this midsem break. Slightly worrying in some ways, kinda exciting in others.
On the day of presentation, I was up at Union House for practically the entire day working on my layout. I usually do stuff like this in the labs, but I didn't want to be cooped up away in the labs all day long and I could use the odd distraction instead of going quietly mad in the corner. Even then, time never seems to be long enough to finish anything to complete satisfaction. I began that day at half past eight and finished it at quarter to five, constantly fiddling away at little things here and there - a lot of things need to be taken care of when you're printing something at A1. (I shouldn't know that it's 841 x 594...)
I then buggered off to get it printed but some bright spark had the wisdom to send a massive image file through the default Windows photo and fax viewer. That's apparently very bad news if you happen to be a print server and more often than not end up dying a painful and inconvenient death. This left me with the option of marching down the road to the nearest printers where they charge $25 instead of $10 to $15 at uni. That's some good eating or drinking money there, you know.
Friday is my slacker/stoner day where I do as little as humanly possible. I have one hour of lectures at noon and that's about it; for the rest of the day I lounge around Union House playing cards and talking about awful pop music. However, I did have to attend one of those short essay writing seminars for a short while. In general, I'm pretty confident in my writing skills but it never hurts to remind yourself of what you should be aiming for. One of the tips that was given to us was to avoid using shorthand ala the sublanguage known as netspeak. This got Ken, X and myself into a nice little discussion of how the Battle of Stalingrad might have been expressed by the young historians of today. The thought of Hitler being pwned or warhaxed by the Russians in combat becomes very interesting reading. "I'm in ur base, stealing ur oil" is fun to imagine, now all I need is an image from 'Cats That Look Like Hitler' to complete it all. Go ahead, click on it. Why would I lie about something like this?
And now for your authentic up to date source of last week's news... 'He bowled a wide', according to The Age. Someday I'll look at this post years from now and wonder what the hell I was on about, but I suspect I'll have a similar feeling with everything else I write here...
See you next time when I might find time to bitch about that Kid Rock song. It practically writes itself, you know...
Well last semester's results are out, and after reading them I don't feel overly disappointed at all. I ended up with my marks safely landing in the H2A and B section of the university's mystifying grading system, so I feel a lot more comfortable posting this. It means I at least did half decently in this last assignment to make it worth sticking up here, I hope you like pictures.
This last project is for a train station on the Haymarket roundabout near the hospital on the Royal Parade side of the uni. This design was intended to act as part of the link between the North Melbourne lines and the Caufield line, similar to that proposed in the media in recent times. Most people who have been there will know what an nightmare that place is to get around and isn't exactly one of the city's bright spots. So besides the obvious requirements of providing space for passengers to board and alight, there was also the need to provide space for commuters to shop as well as the usual facilities and amenities.
I began my investigation by looking at the types of underground societies in current use. While searching for material for my Theories paper on biomimickry, I stumbled upon this image of a plaster cast of an ant farm.
They claimed that they managed to recall most of the ants to the surface, but really I'm not so certain. You can't really tell from this scale anyway. From time to time I referred to the man in the picture as the butcher, in a sense the Saddam of ants, but now I'm being silly. Back to the story.
From this image, you get a sense of what proportions and forms come from a nest of these tiny creatures. Collectively they build wandering tunnels that over time form small alcoves and in turn are further excavated into full sized chambers. Tunnels cross over and link up to form a vast network that can span thousands of square kilometres supporting a population in the hundreds of thousands. If nature can support such a grand society underground and out of sight, surely they must be doing something right.
A major part of an ant nest is the ventilation. The visible portion of the nest comes in different forms depending on the species, or at least that's how I understand it. Some nests may appear above ground in order to provide natural ventilation by means of solar exposure. The heat of the sun's rays provide a source of natural convection within the nest, drawing stuffy air from the depths of the nest and out into the open. In buildings, not nearly enough is made of natural means of cooling. Most office buildings are designed to operate on air conditioning throughout the entire year, ending up in hefty operating costs plus not to mention the health factors. Being a self contained environment leads to all sorts of microbes being trapped, often resulting in all sorts of medical maladies. A naturally ventilated stack would constantly draw fresh air into the building and reduce the need for artificial environmental controls.
My manifestation of this concept came in the form of using the flagpoles that currently occupy the site. Hollowed steel tubes run from deep inside the station to high above. The heat of the sun's rays create a current and circulate air throughout. Air intake is provided via subway entrances and smaller openings in the ground as somewhat explained in one of my presentation drawings below. There's an awful lot of detail in those drawings, which are printed at A1 size and is a major cause of poverty among architecture students. Help an architecture student today by pledging to one of my many legal charities today.
The other major component of my design is the path from the surface to the platform. Using the form of the ants' tunnels as inspiration, I devised a spiral ramp descending to the platform that links all the shops within the station together. The shop 'pod' is loosely based on the formation of new chambers in the nest. I only wished that I had thought of making each one slightly different in layout to reflect this. The expression of the path and pods are manifestations of positive and negative space, much in the same way the ant nest's innards have been exposed by filling it with plaster. Suspending it in midair changes the cavernous feel of the tunnels and transforms it into complete openness, exposing form.
Each subway entrance is situated at some point around the intersection, providing pedestrians access from one side of the the street to the other without having to brave the seemingly neverending traffic. Using the corridors does not require you to enter any ticketed area but descending any further down the ramp requires the public to use the turnstiles.
Originally I had been going for a far more open scheme where the top is more like a canyon where the components were to be suspended in midair, spiral and shops included. But I guess the minor issue of holding it all up finally caught up with me. Though having filled in the majority of the space above does create many more opportunities for playing with light. The platform ceiling is an abstraction of a cave, with the height constantly shifting depending on where you are. Openings in the ceiling are indicated by sloping in the surrounds to show the face of the wall give way to the entrances and lightwells above.
That concludes this somewhat truncated explanation of why I don't sleep anymore. I do have to say while I am pretty happy with the plans and sections I really got let down by the quality of the renders, it may have made the difference between an H2A and an H1 but in the end I'm just happy to have done well in the first place so maybe I should just stop complaining. This however would possibly defeat the purpose of half my posts here so for now I will keep it in moderation. Thanks for reading if you've come this far - and if you got confused by the architect talk don't be too dismayed, architects usually end up talking like this...
Well I'm kinda awake again after all that sleep. But really the only reason I got out of bed was the exam I have to do during swotvac, which isn't cool at all. 60 questions written around the presentation of 50 images doesn't make for much fun. Considering I took days to 'study' for this test it really seems a bit underwhelming when the slides and questions are presented in less than 40 minutes.
- They were apparently gone for a while, on holiday or something I guess. But now they're back! Yay!
- They managed to fit a questionnaire into the bridge, no mean feat that. Asking the audience if they possess the qualities of being original, the only one, sexual and everything you need is all well and fine, it doesn't seem to work as well when you end up answering your own questions. I wonder if the answer was any different at their concerts.
- And of course as long as there is music "we'll be coming back again". Based on hindsight, I guess you could technically say that's still correct. I still expect the Backstreet Senior Choir of Hard Knocks to be topping the charts in 50 years' time. But what if music as we know it ceases to exist in the future? What if music is reduced a bunch of repetitious melodies, lyrics and hooks set to the mindless beats that only a chimp could come up with? Oh wait, that future is now.
Looks like it's time for a back to front story where flashbacks are provided for no particular reason than to annoy the audience. If JJ Abrams can use the same trick on Alias and Lost, surely I can have a shot too. And here we go... "By the time I got home on Friday night, I had been awake for only 21 hours. I would've stretched it out for another three for dramatic effect, but I imagine that's not such a great idea..."
39 hours earlier - Thursday morning, 11am
Caught up with Keyur for lunch. Forgot to ask him about his trip to the SPC factory. Mental note for next week.
38 hours earlier - Thursday afternoon, 12pm
Decide to finish off sketches for design class at Union House (or as Josh calls it, Onion House) where all my card playing friends are. Fortunately they're already stuck into a game of 500 so I don't get sucked in. I'm pretty awful at it anyways, it makes me feel less of an Asian. If only there was a solution for it that was as simple as downing a can of Solo. I guess the Asian equivalent is something from the Bubble Cup.
36 hours earlier - 2pm
Sit through mind numbingly confusing Theories of Architecture tute. Something about the interiority of architecture. Thoughts turn to self defenestration.
35 hours earlier - 3pm
Sit in computer lab for the next three hours drawing up my design. I had done most of the backdrops at home but I didn't have the programs to finish it of there. It really makes me think more about getting a new laptop, I almost finished most of the drawing the night before but the lack of a certain program made me run into a brick wall. On the upside there aren't half as many distractions in the computer lab so I did manage to get a lot of it done. No procrastination zone is in effect here.
31 hours earlier - Thursday night, 7pm
Get home, have dinner only to realise I am no longer in the non-procrastination zone and proceed to waste the next hour checking my RSS feeds for nothing in particular. They build up so quickly that it becomes a bit compulsive to sift through.
24 hours earlier - Friday morning, 2am
I arrested my stuffing around at about 9 and cleaned up all the loose ends with my drawings. I should probably explain what it is I'm doing. The brief is for a ferry terminal down at Federation Walk by the Yarra, right next to Fed Square and across the road from Flinders Street Station. There is no real limitation on the scale of the entire thing, but I assumed this would be a little shelter for people waiting for the ferry as part of the greater public transport network so I went about with that scale in mind.
We only had a week for the design so I just went with the first thing that comes to mind which these days tends to lean towards organic, nature inspired forms. This one came about as a gentle swell of current washing upon the shore. I was afraid it might look a bit too aggressive and come across as a tidal wave coming to destroy us all, but I think I kinda got away with it by stretching it out.
One other thing to note is that I put some benches under the shelter running in the same fashion as the structure just to run the theme home. Building them over each of the existing docking areas gives a sense of repetition you would see of a series of waves sweeping along.
21 hours earlier - 5am
I conk out at 2, stressed out by the difficulty of building the physical model. I really set myself up for these things when there are so few straight lines in the entire proposal, so I really have myself to blame. When I regroup after three wholesome hours of sleep, I am able to concentrate a lot more on what the hell is going on and fortunately I am able to put it all together by 7am.
16 hours earlier - 10am
We all line up our work in the Atrium of the supposedly asbestos infested splendour of the Archi building to pin up our work "So You Think You Can Design A Ferry Terminal?" or as I like to call it, SYTYCDAFT. Just rolls off the tongue, that one.
Designs of all sorts litter the boards and it's certainly fascinating seeing how people have gone about it all. Strangely I don't feel all that tired when it gets to my project, the adrenaline from the nerves is doing its job well. I manage to get through it fairly unscathed with only a couple of minor criticisms coming my way, with my half arsed presentation layout letting me down somewhat. But otherwise I think I did alright for a short exercise like this.
13 hours earlier - Friday afternoon, 1pm
A solid day of studios is broken up by a midday lecture in what has to be described as the most uncomfortable lecture theatre on campus, the Baldwin Spencer Building theatre. I swear it was designed for midgets or something.
9 hours earlier - Friday evening, 5pm
I hang back in the Rowden White library (gotta get the most out of my $200 union membership somehow) for a bit after class to look up a copy of Shaun Micallef's 'Smithereens' which is sadly so out of print I cannot find myself a copy. Shaun's writing and sense of humour is ridiculously random which is exactly why I'll watch almost anything he's involved in.
7 hours earlier - 7pm
I bum around the city for a bit like the proverbial while waiting for Kavi to pick me up to go to Harry's place for a night of food, booze and poker with some of my Property & Construction friends from uni. It's a bit odd with our timetables that we rarely see each other during uni so this is something I've been looking forward to all day.
I manage to scrounge a cheapo BoP from Dungeon of all places, I'm still checking it for forgeries. Walking back up Swanston, the cold change the weathermen have been promising for so long finally shows up. Maybe it's time they took large chunks of ice from the Antarctic and put them on city blocks so we could all cool down. I blame Adelaide for this awful heat wave.
6 hours earlier - 8pm
Kavi has been driving for a month and a bit so I quietly start writing my last will and testament. But seriously, his driving is as good as anyone else's. I play navigator but he supplies me with a giant version of the Melways more suited for the blind. The damned thing is as heavy as the encyclopaedia and turning pages is awkward when I have to reach across the centre console. We get there half an hour early only to find Harry's on his way back so we decide to order food early but get lost as none of us remember the way. Roads in Doncaster/Balwyn are a pain to navigate.
5 hours earlier - 9pm
The catching up is cool. Losing to a straight on the river isn't much so. Oh well, that's what you get for trying to muscle people around by going all in. I blame my extended operating hours for such a lapse in concentration but all in all I had a pretty good time. Playing four different types of poker at once is puzzling to say the least unless you've forgotten the name of one of them and end up referring to it as "ice cream!!" Lots of stupid stories and inside jokes about contract management are exchanged during this time. I know what you're thinking. It's a lot less cool than it sounds.
0 hours earlier - Saturday morning, 2am
We depart at about half past one and I manage to somehow guide Kavi to my place with his giant atlas of suburban Melbourne. I keep reminding him I am not too far from certain fatigue and will endanger us both if I don't take a power nap soon by directing us into a creek somewhere. Now yet another person knows where I live which is particularly dangerous for me as more and more people are able to threaten me with that exact line. I'm too tired to worry about details like that though and thus we end up in the "present".
Join me some other time when I don't have all nighters to pull where I attempt to backtrack on the last month and a bit of mobile phone pics. It'll be as bad as you think.
Said my sister as I walked through the door half drenched from the feet up. The only response I could muster behind my seemingly semi submerged smile was, "I did!"
When you start pulling your camera phone out in the middle of a freakstorm thinking it'll make a good blog picture, does that mean you officially have a problem?Sitting there on the bus home it didn't look all that bad outside. Sure, the hatch in the roof was leaking but it does that all the time. Once I had realised the extent of my miscalculation, I figured that there was no real reason for me to test the walking versus running in the rain myth since I was walking into a wall of water anyway. The worst part about it all was that I had only walked 100 metres from the bus stop back to my place, which gives you a good idea of how the rain was really bucketing down in my part of the world this evening.
All that talk of storms brings me to what was a weird day for me on Thursday. Being the second last day of work naturally there are things we need to take care of before we all bugger off for two weeks. I had been working away for the past two and a bit days on little computer generated overshadowing diagrams required for town planning, and I had been doing this using a program to draw up simplified massing models like the one below. Apart from tracing shadows it also allows you to give the client an idea of what it might look like as they may not have the same visualisation skills us professionals are blessed with.
Anyhow, I had done five of these in fairly rapid succession churning out render after render when it turned out most of my work had been wiped out in an act of overzealous hard disk cleansing. How I held the anger within is beyond me, I assume I'll just reach some sort of critical mass some day and go postal Hollywood style. Just make sure you'll all take good care of me, okay?
Luckily there were some files I had printed or hidden elsewhere which meant I didn't have to do it all over from scratch, but for the next hour I was in a very foul mood. This called for one of my emergency mood lifting songs, and as I walked down the street for lunch, who did I call upon for stress relief? Why, no other than the Jackson 5 with "I Want You Back"... there's nothing as upbeat and uplifting than hearing a future freak and his siblings sing about love and loss like it's something they've been through on a regular basis, is there? I guess that's the real problem with pop artists singing about relationship breakdowns when you're 13 years old, no one really believes you. Unless you happen to be related to Britney Spears.
Lunch further made up for the shiteness of the previous hour when the guy working at the burger joint (I was eating at Grill'd, not some sort of generic fast food chain) made too many chips and offered me a free plate. I'm not one to scoff at the offer of free food so this was a no brainer. Sitting outside does help a lot, being a complete contrast to the indoors of the office where it sometimes seems that all that temporary annoyance can just get blown away into the aether.
And all this time I sat there watching that nice little storm approach over the horizon. A little rain never hurt anyone... right?
Well it became apparent that that was a complete fallacy as the storm came along later that afternoon, knocking out the entire train network running to the Mornington Peninsula. That's what you get for catching the train to Frankston. I found it odd that staff are always present at Malvern station but on that afternoon they were nowhere to be seen, presumably too preoccupied with trying to figure out what to do to bother checking the validity of people's tickets. I eventually jumped on a tram which took about half an hour to get back into the city which wasn't too bad I guess. I did pass the famed ANL House which was the target of Darren's camera a few days ago which made me think about how the people who work there tell others where they are.
Well I think it's time for me to bugger off now, seeing that I'm about to launch into yet another tirade on why our public transport system has the reliability of Microsoft Windows at any point in its history in whatever form it happens to manifest itself, as proven by this excellent Blue Screen of Death on an advertising display at Northland. Geeky fun for all... well just geeks.
So I'm reading the paper like I always do right, and then suddenly I come across this.
The Age, 7/11/07. And that's why you always buy the paper!To most people reading the paper this may seem to be another interesting looking set of apartments. But to students like myself, this triggers certain memories worthy of a wavy flashback effect. Let's start with the next picture. Notice anything similar?
No I haven't used my amazing powers to shrink the building down to the size of an obese dog, it's a model!This was a giant model Kavi and I did as an assignment a couple of years ago to basically teach us about commercial scale construction by reading off plans and reproducing a portion of the building at scale. We spent about six weeks or so making this and it really took a lot out of everyone there. It's only at times like these when you realise how much work it takes to finish work of this magnitude, and all notions of time management are thrown out the window. In other words, there is never enough time. If only real buildings could be put together using UHU, Blu Tack and superglue. You can see how big the model is from the photo below.
We were kind of lucky in that there wasn't as much structure to show so we could get away with doing more flashy finishes like the external concrete façade feature and the swimming pool. Even then that still meant we were working on it all throughout the mid semester break and towards the end, every night until about nine or ten. Caffeine, skipping classes and the strangely soothing smell of glue were our new friends, and good ones they were too.
As time went by, the cumulative effect of blood caffeine content and the lack of sleep drove us to do some weird things. Games were brought into uni to pass the time and take the stress off if only for a little while. Dinner and supply runs were made to keep everyone going. And slowly around us, the madness set in. What am I talking about? Perhaps the next photo will explain the state of things by the time it was all over.
No he's not drunk ladies and gents. He's just another building student like you and me. Apologies to Kavi... I bet you weren't betting on seeing this again any time soon... though I still love that time when we made Ave think we superglued her scarf inside our model. Awesome times folks, dizzy stuff indeed.
Join me next time when my fingers come out of their plaster casts in time for me to type about the wonderfully addictive game that is Guitar Hero III for Wii. Typing with one hand and a straw stuck to the other was very fun though.