sunrise in venice

teaching myself how to do time-lapses is a lot like feeling my way around in the dark. I had picked my current camera (mind-you i LOVE my camera) thinking that it would have the capabilities embedded in it, but au contraire, it was taken out due to its HD video capabilities, blessing or curse? I had to purchase an external remote to be able to do time-lapses and because I'm not one for reading manuals, never really learnt to use my remote properly ><. I like to tell myself that it's just a way to create surprises for myself (brilliant surprises in fact), because today, i discovered that i didn't actually have limitations on how many pictures i can take per set before i had to restart my remote! I'm going to ignore the irony in that my own misgivings is the actual reason for my happiness at the moment and am just going to enjoy this moment.

may i present to you a timelapse of "Sunrise in Venice", music by Keren Ann "Au Coin du Monde"... enjoy!

the great Walls of china

if you have been to the motherland, or have a friend here, or if you know someone who's traveled there. you would have heard about the great Wall of china. nothing that it doesn't want you to know, gets through it.

so i have been placed in social isolation, till i return to the great white north in May.

no access to facebook, youtube, blogs,
partial access to flickr, google.

information filtration isn't a new concept, it's existed since the word "power" came into this world.
because knowledge is power.


.out.

brought to you by momentary access through illegal means.

its been a while since i've dreamed, or maybe it's just been a while since I've remembered a dream.

in a landscape much like hong kong, where you have several bus stops not too far from each other in a line through a very dense area of the city, and then the scenary changes, and you can either run along the ocean or up to the mountain. a landscape very much like the one i'm familiar with, but somehow intensified. the grass greener (actually, in really, you don't see much grass at all) it was a real mountain i was climbing when i was climbing this mountain, and not just a hill with buildings right up next to the streets on either side. It was a strange sensation that only makes sense if you're in a dream, in which although the scenary is not reality at all, it is still that place that you know so well.

and then i arrived at a store, it was a normal super market. but strangly stocked full of things that i've been craving for in random clusters that didn't make any sense at all. chinese tea next to stroop waffles? mirin next to activa yoghurt? but all i did was browsed, walking down aisles of the supermarket looking for nothing in particular.

city

"New York Day/Night"
study found via the pop-up city.
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perhaps multifunctional space serving as both office and living within the same space that readapts from night to day? If people still wish to maintain the distance between their own work-place and living place, then, same space different people alternating from day to night?

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...just a thought...

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this triggers memory of the underground city "Tokyo-3" in the japanese manga "Neon Genesis Evangelion" (i'm such a nerd...). the city is designed to able to shift from above ground to under ground for protection against "the enemy", allowing the city to recieve the sun during the day, yet safely protected under the ground during attacks or more vunerable times during the night.

why architecture?

I'm am on the path to potentially becoming an architect.

but sometimes when I see Architects speak (commercially, and with a lot of bullshit), I have to ask myself again whether this is really what I want... Is it really possible to achieve what architecture should righteously be and doing so selflessly?

good day?bad day?

today,

1) i woke up late,

2) nearly hospitalized a man cause he couldn't make up his mind whether he was crossing the street or not (i thought he wasn't, because me on a bike, and a car was fast approaching, but he stepped forward just as i was almost there and despite braking hard and having no where to vere to with the car to my immediate left, i skidded into him), and

3) saw pigeons snogging eachother at the square. they were cute.




















p.s. i didn't realize that both good and bad ended with "d". i couldn't make up my mind whether to make them, along with "day" one word or two words... but double "d"s would have looked weird, i guess.

2009 memorable dream XI | July 13

its been awhile since i've dreamed anything memorable.


in a city of highways and bridges, i was biking in the express lane on my way to the airport in a scenary that is a mixture of toronto's 401 and shanghai's super high-hung bridges.

changes into a chase scene for a brief moment, where I escaped to some train tracks somewhere.

and then it changes from a tense chase to a leisurly chase where i'm just biking to catch-up with the train (but for no apparent reason, but then i was going to the airport and being chased for no apparent reason either). jumped the bike onto the train and therefore boarded the train illegally, tried to get off the train without being noticed by leaving via the roof of the train which takes me to the upper level of the train station which is now abandoned, since the lift doesn't even properly work anymore. I jumped casually (??but at that moment, the feeling was that this was a casual jump) from the upper floor to the lower floor, and wouldn't have been noticed if my friend hadn't at that moment pointed me out to the ticket inspector (why did my friend tell on me?). the train inspector was quite cool about it, and in the end for some reason (like my condition wasn't valid for penalty, not because i batted my eyelashes at him) had to let me go without penalty.

note: scenary of train station was that similar to the train station of Versailles.

i hate that i love it.

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Glass Balcony at Sears Tower, Chicago

(read more about it here at ArchDaily)

Over-use of glass has always been a problem that Architects face.

But once in a while, just once in a while, to create moments like this, i guess it can be excused.

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p.s. it is questionable why only small children appear in the series of photographs taken of this glass balcony

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i hate websites designed where you scroll sideways.

scrolling sideways, on a mac, you have the option of just holding down "shift" and scroll normally to do a horizontal scroll instead of a vertical scroll, but nay-nay on a PC. Also, you will find that when you scroll sideways the pixels flicker noticeably(this fact may be highly dependent on the hardware of your screen, think i just have a crappy one, but you cannot expect all your viwers to have prime screens).

I'm just making mental notes to myself all the time with regards to making my own website sometime in the future (probably quite a far far away future as well...). but note to self, don't be making a website that scrolls sideways.