2 weeks to Go

the past week was spent doing my 1:200 model and rendering again...and of course...more cooking...the highlight of the week was pork fried with celery...nice..

studio yesterday was fine, with sebas mentioning about rain water and gutter size...other than that i think he was rather pleased...Age was quite nice, talking abt how energy efficiency is not practical...one key reason being that it costs too much in infrastructure...in relation to how i could defend my ventilation system, which does not recycle expelled warm air...anyway, he was quite satisfied with my drawings as well except for one detail, which involved a small cut of glass...then he realized that my elevation drawings were missing...yup...i had not drawn elevations...how could i have forgotten...so i need to come up with 4 1:100 elevations soon...not much trouble i hope...hope to finish them by next week...the rendered section for oscar will have to wait...studio day ended with a break to Qi Lin Ge with Rickey, Lionel and Yanling...they don't serve dinner as well as they do lunch...

also included in the photo journal are pictures taken en route to school on a nice spring day...

Three weeks to Go/No Go

Today had been rather productive...I managed to find out how to get the shadows to appear in the interior of the Reading Room...previously, there were shadows only on the outside...Oscar suggested removing the glass and photoshopping it in later...not that I didnt try this before, but I also realized that the angle of the spot was wrong...so now there are two shadow generating target spots perpendicular to the building...the building is orientated along the north-east, south-west axis, and wanting to simulate natural sunlight, I positioned the light directly on the east-west axis. If you don't get it, nevermind...anyway now I have shadows in the building because there is no glass and I have two shadow casting sources on top of other ambient light sources...it's ironic that making a render realistic requires one to think unrealistically.
On other productive fronts, I did grocery shopping for the week and managed to get the Lavender essential oil for Meiyi after having searched for some time in the city center; I eventually found it at De Hoven, Minerva. I also managed to post Meiyi's presents just before the post office closed...
The weather today had been nothing short of perfect; it was sunny and warm, and there was a healthy buzz in the campus, especially at the Industrial Design building, where they were having yet another one of their parties...goodness where do they get the time and funds for so many??
Dinner was stewed pork which I had stewed for around 3 and a half hours while I was going about my errands. While waiting for dinner to be done, I decided to take some in door pics...haha...
After dinner was more rendering and catching MI3...which was not bad actually, considering how crappy MI2 was...after which was more rendering and updating my Blog...I will sleep soon...the mouth watering macro shot is of stewed beef sponsored by a neighbour...

Studio

After several eventful days in my room crouching over my damningly low work table and reeling from neck and back aches, my 1:200 model of the Reading Room surfaced from the heap of template cut parts i had printed on Sat at Keith's, made from material gotten from Lily on the same day...

Things could have been kick started on Friday when I was supposed to buy material and print the templates, but lo and behold...the school was closed due to Liberation Day...none of us realized it...Keith and Lily even went to school thinking there was studio...

Saturday was spent pretty much on cutting the columns and Sunday was spent on cutting the rest of the stuff and UHUing them together. I started at 11am and only had soya bean drink for bfast. At 4pm I decided to have my lunch after much deliberation...steaming 3 mantous in the bamboo steamer, I was wondering what to do with the cheese hanging around in the fridge...it was then that I decided to pop the bamboo lid and put the cheese on the mantou...mmm...not bad...with a spinkle of white pepper, it looked almost dim sumish...back to model making...I told myself...let's have an early dinner...
at seven...I told myself...let's wait an hour...I'm not that hungry anyway...
this happened again at eight...nine...ten...eleven...twelve...one...am...
finally I had finished the model...the hunger pangs had not been noticed till now...or was it just a phantom guilt...anyway, I quickly whipped a spicy beef ball soup noodle and lounged in front of my screen to catch episode 20 of 24Hours Season 4( the one with the nuclear crisis)...at almost 3am, satisfied with my progress and having finally eaten my dinner, I went to bed...tomorrow I will put the finishing touches to it...
Monday was quite nice...apart from the fact that i suffered from the after effects of not having had my meal on time yesterday...and today as well, as I started right away on my model the moment I woke up...yes...obsessed am I not?...'does he have a life?' 'sorry...im an archeeteck'...erhem...the most of Monday, which was yesterday, was filled with agony, as I was struck with a chronic headache and much burping...I tried to relief the stomache problem by having a vege filled, ginger and garlic enhanced noodle soup, but the headache and burpings persisted till i hit the bed...
studio was pretty fine today, with the tutors spending a lot of time on every student as not many were around for crits.
Age (AhRR...forget it...its Dutch) reminded me again to look for Daane the structural guy and also the climate guy...Oscar told me again that the renderings lacked depth and told me to render better so that we could see shadows...the rest of the comments were about presentation; making the drawings clearer...he also said to complete the 1:200 model to include the site, which I had planned anyway, and do a nice photoshoped section...sounds fine...
Dinner was at Billy Beer; spare rib buffet...nice...sitting in the alfresco area with Lionel, Yanling and Rickey...too bad Adu and Rai decided not to come...

Queen's Day . 2006-04-29

Today we went to Amsterdam for Queen's Day celebrations. We left pretty early, around 1030 in the morning as there were rumours that it may become so crowded that you cant even get in. So we went earlier, but I had my reservations; which were proven wrong the moment we reached Delft train station. We had to wait for another half hour as the train we were scheduled to take was full. After hanging around on the platform, the train finally arrived and we managed to get on, barely. It was like morning rush hour, only everybody was rushing to Amsterdam. When we stopped at Haarlem, the passengers suddenly emptied the train! We didn't even hear any announcement. Probably some track fault along the way from Haarlem to Amsterdam? Anyway, after some enquiries, we were told to take the 300 bus to either Hoofdorp or Schipol and take another train to Amsterdam. The bus ride was interesting though; we managed to see some architecture featured during our lectures in Msc 1, mostly by Nio; we finally got to see the mouldy styrofoam bus-stop or post office and the serpentine bus-stops . The remaining trip to Amsterdam from Hoofdorp was uneventful, accept for the time when Keith was nudged by a Japanese boy on the train and his mother apologised, to which Keith, with his many months of Japanese self teaching, replied "Daijobu" (forget abt the spelling already...)...the Jap lady looked at us with quizzical eyes...I smiled back wryly...'yes we are wannabes'....haha...
Amsterdam... was really crowded...there were people in every corner. The security fences put up made it look kinda intimidating; hope they dont have to be used. Some of the girls brought stuff to exchange with the locals. ( Hawking is permitted only on Queen's Day, which happens to be the birthday of the present Queen's mother, I think) Towards the end of the afternoon, while the girls were busily grabbing cheap stuff, Dina lost her wallet right after she made a purchase with a 50 euro bill; sounds suspicious no? The rest of the evening left us making a police report and going home a little affected by the dent in the outing.