There's a lot of problems here to be sure: the urban planning situation in regard to cars is verging on catastrophic. In Abu Dhabi, there is a critical shortage of parking spaces, so people line their cars up and park them single file in the middle of the road, creating two narrow one way streets on either side. Many double-park. One of the sources of this problem was the requirement that only buildings above 20 floors had to have a parking garage. There doesn't seem to be ANY minimum parking requirements. So, investors and developers only built buildings right to 20 floors to skimp out on the expense of a parking garage. It's a huge problem, that I've seen get noticably worse since I was here a year ago. It's only going to get worse as well, with the population still exploding, and more people buying cars. The only real solution is to either demolish some of the old buildings to build huge parking garages, or to limit street access to zones like in Singapore.
Dec 25, 2007
Parking
Well, its my last day in the Emirates, apart from the three hours I'll be at the Dubai airport. UAE really has an air of un-reality to it, a modern day Casablanca. Who really understands it? Most Americans fear it, when I tell people I'm flying to Abu Dhabi, the first question is: where is it? and the second: oh, isn't that dangerous? It helps to explain why there are so many British here compared to Americans, apart from the colonization aspect.
Dec 22, 2007
How not to travel
Thursday, I woke up at 5 AM and took Saori to the airport at 6 AM. I drove back, finished preparing everything for the time I'd be gone, scooped suki's litter box, and finished packing. I left the apartment around 9, and walked to central avenue. I enjoy the slow buildup of a trip. The voyage of a few thousand miles starting with a block and a half of steps. On central, I caught a city bus and rode straight to the airport for a buck twenty-five.
I breezed through ticketing since US Airways had a special counter just for international flights. They checked my bags to my surprise and pleasure straight through to Dubai. Or so it would have seemed. Anyway, I had a lot of time to kill since my flight was still several hours away, and I'd budgeted a 200% safety factor around the valley metro bus service. So I wandered around inside the terminal, drank starbucks, perused the stores (every airport now is so retail driven it really is a shopping mall that happens to have a plane terminal).
In the mini-borders, I picked up a copy of Pullman's book, The Golden Compass, which apparently is a very controversial book, and a more controversial movie. Typically, this means that the outraged parties have not read or seen either one of them. It was the same case with Harry Potter. Bill Pullman's series, from what I have heard in the media, is supposed to be an atheism-championing condemnation of Catholicism and any kind of dogmatized religion. I finished the book before I left england, and I had no phenomenal revelations concerning the nature of the cosmos. What does it say about the faith of a person, or a shared faith, if all the members of the faith are scared of the contents of a novel clearly marked "FIC: YOUNG ADULT FANTASY." Anyway, as a novel the plot was pretty slow, and I am really getting tired of the stories about the child who doesn't think they are important but then later realizes that the entire world depends on his or her actions.
Anyway, after I read the book, I cleared security and walked around the concourse connector bridges looking at structure and details before I settled down at my gate to wait. The flight to Philidelphia was oversold. The gate ticket agents were going crazy, and the plane crew were going crazy. The flight was late leaving, but we touched down in Philidelphia on time, about five hours later. I immediately disliked the Phillidelphia airport, although I couldn't explain why. Maybe east coast shock. Arizona is such a white and hispanic city, it was startling to see so many black people. I got text from Saori that she'd missed the flight to Tokyo, so that worried me some, but we were immediately boarding for Mancheter, so I bought a muffin and a liter of water and hurried to join the queue of brits.
The flight to Manchester was six or seven hours long. I got a few hours of sleep on the flight. Sat next to a young woman from Manchester who was not at all happy to be on the plane. The in flight movie was "Nancy Drew", a film that looked so predictable and tame that I would have preferred static. I declined to pay US airways for the use of their $5 headsets to enjoy the soundtrack.
Coming into Manchester, we were passing over fields of fluffy white clouds. It wasn't until I saw a radio tower rising above them I realized it was a layer of fog on the ground. I liked Manchester more than Heathrow as an airport. It was smaller for one thing, maybe the size of sky harbor in Phoenix, except not so spread out. I went ahead and cleared immigration as a person in transit, since I had four hours to kill. I stomped around outside in the freezing air and frost covered parking lot, enjoying the fresh freezing air on my airplane skin. Finally, I wandered back inside and bought a croissant and a latte at an airport cafe. I always forget how good Europeans are with pastries. This butter croissant was the best bread I'd had since Buenos Aires. Passing through security, they had no less than TEN baggers per xray machine-table, standing side by side, and jostling each other. Not sure why they needed ten, maybe they thought more eyes wouldn't so easily miss something.
The flight to Abu Dhabi was supposed to board at 12:40 and depart at 1:30. 1:30 was changed to 1:40, and then after we all boarded at 1:30 they told us we had to wait for another 30 passengers who hadn't showed up. An hour later they told us they were still waiting for the last three. Then there was paperwork. So we left Manchester about 90 minutes of sitting on the plane. I hate waiting. I suspect that it was a group of people who think they deserve preferiential treatment and think they own the world. My convictions were strengthened by the sign they displayed when the plane landed stating that the Airlines would not wait for people. Excluding Them, of course.
The flight itself was about seven hours long. I was lucky to have an empty middle seat beside me. Hot damp towels when we boarded, salmon and lamb for dinner, about 300 channels of movies and tv and music, I have a hard time coming up with a better airline for flying experience. And no, they didn't try to make you pay for headsets, or force you to watch some inane family film. I watched 1408, and then Muppet Treasure Island. Got some sleep in there. Not much, maybe an hour or so total.
Landed in Dubai two hours late. Flying in was really cool since Dubai at night is lit like something out of Blade Runner. Most unbelievalbe of course was the Burj Dubai, lit with blue white light on all its floors, reaching up far beyond the towers which surrounded it, like some kind of alien rocket, gracefully vertically landed on earth.
The airport in Dubai was packed. Night is a bad time to come in since that's when all the European flights arrive. It was also bad since all the pilgrims from the Hajj were returning as well. The arrival hall for immigration was full. This room was approximately the size of a football field, and it was standing room only. I'm talking an occupancy of about 2 square feet per person. Sandwiched between a group of British and French, and a Chinese woman behind me, the warm, humid air of worried humanity, conversation in a hundred languages, and general exhaustion gave me an impression of what Ellis Island must have been like during the early part of the 2oth century. It took me an hour and a half to cross this floor. Dad finally got through to me, so at least I was able to let him know the situation. He'd been waiting since around midnight.
Immigration was no problem. Check my passport. Where was I staying? Just visiting? Ok, thank you. Shokram.
Baggage was another ordeal I had braced myself for. Even though the bagged was supposed to be checked all the way to Dubai, with three city changes and two carriers, I had had mentally prepared myself for the possibility that one or both of my bags wouldn't make it.
My duffle was waiting for me patiently. My big roller bag was nowhere to be found. If you, by chance, have taken it by mistake, please let me know. If you have deliberately stolen it, please let me know too. I searched the entire floor and all the belts. My flight had landed about two hours before, so I figured its safe to say that the plane had probably finished unloading. Mom called a few times to check up on me since I was MIA at 4 hours after my plane was supposed to have landed. I went to baggage services and waited for my turn with an agent. A giant muslim African sat down heavily in the seat beside me. I took in his white robes, white hat, 6'-6" build, and dark skin, and realized that everything else aside, our pasts, our futures, and our cultures, we were still linked: we had both had our bags lost by the airlines. It made us connected. Me, him, the old British tourist with his head dropped in his hands in hopeless frustration, the two upbeat Indians, we were all as one.
Keep in mind that at that point, I'd been traveling for about 34 hours straight on about 3 hours of sleep. Anyway, the bag woman took my information, promised to start a search for it, and gave me some paperwork and told me to call back in a day to see if they'd found it. I left them dad's mobile number and hefted by duffle past customs, out the door, in the cool humidity of Dubai and into the arms of dad, who was still waiting outside. It was 4:30 AM.
We drove back to Abu Dhabi, and I got to the apartment around six AM. I grabbed a warm shower and passed out in bed.
Dec 18, 2007
What's on your tree?
Saori and I shared a little Christmas ahead of schedule tonight, since we'd be scrambling around like crazy tomorrow since we're both leaving Thursday.
I love my Christmas tree. Among the small colored glass balls and candy canes, we have some personal and unusual ornaments adorning our tiny charlie brown tree.
I love my Christmas tree. Among the small colored glass balls and candy canes, we have some personal and unusual ornaments adorning our tiny charlie brown tree.
- A Pinocchio Pencil from Italy
- A tiny scale model silver Toyota Prius, identical to mine
- Woven finger puppets of an Inca and a goat, which sits on top of the tree
- Tiny Japanese ceramic boar charm
- A titanium spork
- Carved camel from Abu Dhabi
- Gold cloisonné ornament from China
- plastic cockroach
- DMHS wolves keychain
- handmade stained glass christmas tree
- Russian doll trimmed with mink
- Winnie the Pooh from a Japanese claw machine
- Plastic bell from my dad's family's christmas tree
- New Orleans Harlequin
Nov 28, 2007
fragmented bits
The real irony of the situation is that while my blogging has sharply decreased, I still keep popping up in Google search results by the virtue of the sheer amount I have written, and the fact that so many people have linked to me and I to other sites.
It's difficult to write anymore, I can't write so much about work, which occupies most of my time. But enough apologies, most good bloggers get the self-flagellative/self-pitying/self-glorifying blogs out of the way in their first few weeks.
Work is going....well. I can't say I'm enjoying it, but its money and experience, and both are good. We've entered early christmas at the office, starting off with a large platter of various baklavas sent from one of our consultant firms. More food and candy has been arriving. Apparently the closer we get to the holidays the unhealthier it gets around the office. It's cold in the mornings now, so I typically wear a few layers to work. Some might laugh at a sweater and a jacket in 50 degree weather, but I've got thin Arizona blood.
I've got my plans for the holidays- a week in Abu Dhabi with dad and tay, and ten days in Tokyo with Saori and her family. It's going to be some serious globe-trotting, and honestly, I'm lucky to have the time off from work.
Speaking of air travel, I hope I don't run into any trouble this Christmas with the TSA. I once did a google search for "Terrorism," so they might detain me for questioning. The terror watch list is now at 880,000. So much for the "ten most wanted."
Anyway, last night I picked mom up at the airport with Saori and we drove her to her place in Chandler. We got back home around 1 AM, so all day today I felt really groggy. Didn't help I've been up late watching movies the last few nights. I wasn't particularly hungry, so I started walking south along central, past the art museums and past McDowell, until I got to a fast food Japanese restaurant where I grabbed a spicy tuna roll. Not the best sushi I've ever had, but what do you want from a place that really moves its teriyaki chicken rice bowls? There were three high school seniors I overheard talking, probably on their lunch break. They were punk/goth kids, and spent the entire time making fun of a teacher. One of them repeated used the word "pronunciate" as in "she pronunciates the words all wrong". The really sad thing was that you could hear the teens parroting each other's views, no conviction or anything to what they were saying.
I saw Chase the other night, the night I arrived back from Oklahoma. He was leaving the next morning, so we met up at my place and I broke out one of the good wines. I realized I was getting older when Saori voiced my thought "It's good that he's coming because it gives us an excuse to really clean up." He liked the apartment, said that the linoleum tile's swirling grays make it look like stained concrete. He's found good work at a venture bank in Boulder, although his eye is always towards the bigger, faster markets of New York, Zurich, and London.
Good news! Saori's architecture firm just won a competition for a college campus, which means a lot more work over a long time period, and some really cool building projects.
It's difficult to write anymore, I can't write so much about work, which occupies most of my time. But enough apologies, most good bloggers get the self-flagellative/self-pitying/self-glorifying blogs out of the way in their first few weeks.
Work is going....well. I can't say I'm enjoying it, but its money and experience, and both are good. We've entered early christmas at the office, starting off with a large platter of various baklavas sent from one of our consultant firms. More food and candy has been arriving. Apparently the closer we get to the holidays the unhealthier it gets around the office. It's cold in the mornings now, so I typically wear a few layers to work. Some might laugh at a sweater and a jacket in 50 degree weather, but I've got thin Arizona blood.
I've got my plans for the holidays- a week in Abu Dhabi with dad and tay, and ten days in Tokyo with Saori and her family. It's going to be some serious globe-trotting, and honestly, I'm lucky to have the time off from work.
Speaking of air travel, I hope I don't run into any trouble this Christmas with the TSA. I once did a google search for "Terrorism," so they might detain me for questioning. The terror watch list is now at 880,000. So much for the "ten most wanted."
Anyway, last night I picked mom up at the airport with Saori and we drove her to her place in Chandler. We got back home around 1 AM, so all day today I felt really groggy. Didn't help I've been up late watching movies the last few nights. I wasn't particularly hungry, so I started walking south along central, past the art museums and past McDowell, until I got to a fast food Japanese restaurant where I grabbed a spicy tuna roll. Not the best sushi I've ever had, but what do you want from a place that really moves its teriyaki chicken rice bowls? There were three high school seniors I overheard talking, probably on their lunch break. They were punk/goth kids, and spent the entire time making fun of a teacher. One of them repeated used the word "pronunciate" as in "she pronunciates the words all wrong". The really sad thing was that you could hear the teens parroting each other's views, no conviction or anything to what they were saying.
I saw Chase the other night, the night I arrived back from Oklahoma. He was leaving the next morning, so we met up at my place and I broke out one of the good wines. I realized I was getting older when Saori voiced my thought "It's good that he's coming because it gives us an excuse to really clean up." He liked the apartment, said that the linoleum tile's swirling grays make it look like stained concrete. He's found good work at a venture bank in Boulder, although his eye is always towards the bigger, faster markets of New York, Zurich, and London.
Good news! Saori's architecture firm just won a competition for a college campus, which means a lot more work over a long time period, and some really cool building projects.
Nov 26, 2007
Oct 30, 2007
A Moving Story
It’s been a busy busy week for me. Wednesday we had a major client meeting, so it made Tuesday into a long day, and a frantic Wednesday morning. After my two supervisors left, it was especially so going as we have really reached a point where we need to know what direction the project is going in. We are still lacking a floorplan from the interior designers, which can make things very difficult when you’re trying to create a 50% design development set of drawings. To kill time after updating everything possible, I ended up creating a 2D ninja for sketchup, and uploaded it to the company server library in case we ever get a project to design a clandestine ninja training facility. Got some cool wallpapers out of it.
Last weekend, I found out that my apartment complex had an opening in a one bedroom apartment opening up for the first of november, so I went ahead and got it, since it was essentially double the size with a dishwasher, for only a hundred dollars more a month. I moved in all this weekend with the help of Saori, mom, and Taylor. It’s just across the complex, so we were able to do the move with just a few cars to ferry loads of stuff in plastic storage bins door to door, and then we all manhandled the bigger items across the complex, the largest being the couch/futon, which took the combined efforts of me, mom, tay, and Saori to manage out the door and up the stairs. It’s still not quite done, as I need to go back and finish clearing out the kitchen and begin cleaning everything. Suki’s hair rolls across the floor in waves.
We went to a friend of Saori’s birthday party a few nights ago and picked up her guitar. Saori had a friend who took a class in guitar making, and their first assignment was to repair a guitar, so they all went out and got cheap guitars, which they broke and then leaned to fix. Makes me wonder how exactly, they broke them. Anyway, the friend ended up giving Saori his repaired guitar, as he had two other guitars in his possession, and was returning to Japan with limited luggage space. So, we got the guitar after it spent many years relaxing in Saori’s friend’s apartment. Neither one of us knows how to play, but Saori has an advantage in knowing how to read music and play a few instruments. We found a few websites detailing how to hold the guitar, and where to hold the strings on the frets to make chords, but we’re not much beyond that at this point.
Last weekend, I found out that my apartment complex had an opening in a one bedroom apartment opening up for the first of november, so I went ahead and got it, since it was essentially double the size with a dishwasher, for only a hundred dollars more a month. I moved in all this weekend with the help of Saori, mom, and Taylor. It’s just across the complex, so we were able to do the move with just a few cars to ferry loads of stuff in plastic storage bins door to door, and then we all manhandled the bigger items across the complex, the largest being the couch/futon, which took the combined efforts of me, mom, tay, and Saori to manage out the door and up the stairs. It’s still not quite done, as I need to go back and finish clearing out the kitchen and begin cleaning everything. Suki’s hair rolls across the floor in waves.
We went to a friend of Saori’s birthday party a few nights ago and picked up her guitar. Saori had a friend who took a class in guitar making, and their first assignment was to repair a guitar, so they all went out and got cheap guitars, which they broke and then leaned to fix. Makes me wonder how exactly, they broke them. Anyway, the friend ended up giving Saori his repaired guitar, as he had two other guitars in his possession, and was returning to Japan with limited luggage space. So, we got the guitar after it spent many years relaxing in Saori’s friend’s apartment. Neither one of us knows how to play, but Saori has an advantage in knowing how to read music and play a few instruments. We found a few websites detailing how to hold the guitar, and where to hold the strings on the frets to make chords, but we’re not much beyond that at this point.
Oct 10, 2007
Oct 9, 2007
meeting days
We had another all day meeting today with all the consultants. Mechanical-Electrical-Plumbing, Structural, Civil, Landscaping, and of course the interior designers-cum-architects. The first half the day was really good and we got a lot of stuff resolved since we had the MEP and structural guy working together in person on how to run ducts around structure and ventilate the whole thing. I think we have a good handle on how to run all the ductwork in and around the main spaces, which is really what I've been focusing on in the last week.
I know, really exciting stuff. Ventilation.
Well, its a good excercise for me to learn about ducts, HVAC systems, etc anyway.
The second half the meeting turned into a design charette with the interior designers presenting several schemes and all the other consultants coming up with their own design ideas. In a bitterly funny turn, the interior designers are coming up with designs closer and closer to the original floorplan we had, that they said they could beat but are now realizing that was probably the best solution. Oh well.
Last friday I met mom and tay for dinner at Los Olivos in Scottsdale. She's back in town now, and probably for awhile. Saturday Saori and I drove around to the Desert Broom library in way north Cave Creek, and to check out the architecture of the Arabian library in North Scottsdale. I liked the arabian library much better than the Desert Broom, although they were both by the same architects. The new Arabian actually has a little cafe inside which is pretty cool since the entire building is clad with rusting metal panels. We also hit a yard sale way out in the desert and we had to drive on a dirt road to get to it. They were selling saddle blankets with a bunch of other horse stuff. I actually drove a quarter mile down a private road following another car I thought was heading to the garage sale. That night we played the card game asshole for five hours outside with some of Saori's friends.
I know, really exciting stuff. Ventilation.
Well, its a good excercise for me to learn about ducts, HVAC systems, etc anyway.
The second half the meeting turned into a design charette with the interior designers presenting several schemes and all the other consultants coming up with their own design ideas. In a bitterly funny turn, the interior designers are coming up with designs closer and closer to the original floorplan we had, that they said they could beat but are now realizing that was probably the best solution. Oh well.
Last friday I met mom and tay for dinner at Los Olivos in Scottsdale. She's back in town now, and probably for awhile. Saturday Saori and I drove around to the Desert Broom library in way north Cave Creek, and to check out the architecture of the Arabian library in North Scottsdale. I liked the arabian library much better than the Desert Broom, although they were both by the same architects. The new Arabian actually has a little cafe inside which is pretty cool since the entire building is clad with rusting metal panels. We also hit a yard sale way out in the desert and we had to drive on a dirt road to get to it. They were selling saddle blankets with a bunch of other horse stuff. I actually drove a quarter mile down a private road following another car I thought was heading to the garage sale. That night we played the card game asshole for five hours outside with some of Saori's friends.
Sep 27, 2007
Sep 26, 2007
Weekly Update!!!
Lots of stuff going on:
Project update: The client gave the interior designer full creative control over the project, which we think was arranged between them from the get-go. I thought maybe we'd drop the project, as insulted, backstabbed, and bamboozled we were, but the company decided to stick it out because (a) its business, and business is to make money, (b) they want to be seen as able to work with any company, and (c) its a high profile project with a big client they would like to continue to work with. The interior designers are a mess to work with, they're basically not doing the work they said they would do, and they keep trying to take the project back to square 24 when we're on square 193. I'm working out roof assemblies and structural connections while they're rethinking the shape of the building. It's incredibly frustrating because they need to prove that their designs are better than ours (which is supposedly how they got creative control) but their problem is that there are so many constraints on the building, OUR designs are the simply the best, optimized solutions because we worked months on them trying out options and configurations. The "designs" they are beginning to arrive at are virtually identical to ours except less interesting.
Tonight, I was picking up some photos at Walgreen's when I ran into the night manager there, and it turned out to be an old friend of mine, Erik Brekke. I am terrible with names, but for some reason, his always stuck with me. Maybe its because he's a huge six and a half foot Scandinavian who dances like Michael Jackson. Anyway, I was surprised to hear he'd graduated and gotten married, and was putting away money to move to the east coast.
Tonight Saori and I had hit the central phoenix Buffalo Exchange and picked up some new clothes. I got a LeTigre zip up jacket (no replacement for my lost Zara, but nice anyway), a dickies jacket, and a nice slim cut sweater/shirt. Saori got some cool clothes too. We were killing time waiting for the hour photo developer.
Cameras! We've been doing a lot of cameras lately. It started with Saori getting me the lomo multi-exposure camera (which we're finally figuring out how to get images superimposed on top of each other). Then last weekend we picked up an old "Partytime II" Polaroid camera and a dirty old manual camera which looked pretty nice for $20. With a bit of research we found it was a Pentacon RTL reflex camera with a Hoya Asahi lens. Everything manual. Detachable coated lens made in Japan, camera body actually made in East Germany in 1960's. We cleaned up the lenses as best we could and shot a roll of film. The photos are really cool. Focus is really nice and the lens coating gives everything a warmer tinge. Learning a lot about cameras too.
Last thursday Saori and I went to the Muse concert in Mesa. For my birthday, Saori got me tickets. We were one of the first groups to get in, and we got a good seat in the middle. The venue was the Mesa Amphitheater, which is an outdoor theater, but it was really good. They set up a flat, standing area for the 50' or so feet from the stage, and then they step it up with terraces, so you can see over the mosh pit crowd to the stage. Really hard to find a bad seat. Muse was really cool, they played a set of their biggest hits and it was just a great show. The lead singer had a piano set up on stage, and in one of the songs he switched mid-song from playing guitar to playing this electric piano, and they had the piano set up an array of lights so you could see the notes playing across it. Huge crowd of people.
Friday was the birthday of one of Saori's and my friends, Mai, who is currently a roommate of my old roommate, Sal. We brought some drinks and barbecued on her back porch with a mix of Japanese and Taiwanese and Mexicans. It was a really fun night.
Saturday night we were supposed to meet my studio friend Joe and his wife Nicole for dinner, but we discovered the Phoenix symphony was playing Tchaikovsky, so we decided to hit that up. It was really fun, we got to get dressed up, drive downtown, and grabbed a bite of pizza with the DeLaree's, and then listened to the concert. It was a good concert. They started with a new composition of a local composed, which sounded to me like a movie score for a mediocre historical drama. Then they played some Tchaikovsky's piano music with an incredibly talented Pianist whose hands literally blurred with how quickly they were moving over the keys. He was a bit of showman, adding lots of dramatic arm movements and flourishes. He also returned for not one but two encore songs.
At intermission, a man in line asked me if I liked "this stuff better than R&B." Most people there were the stereotypical city matrons and couples in their late 40s onward. After intermission, they played a complete ballet written by Bernstein, which sounded a lot like New York, New York, and West Side Story. I realized that John Williams sounds a lot like Bernstein. They finished off the concert with a series of Hungarian Dances by Brahms, concluding with the famous Dance Five. Saori was jumping up and down in her seat she was so excited, because we'd been humming the tune for a few weeks without being able to recall either the name or the composer.
That night we played asshole, a card game, with Saori's roommate. Its actually a lot of fun, and very addicting. Its like a stripped down version of Bridge, with no partners, trump suits, or bidding. All cards are dealt out, and people lay down cards in turn increasing in value. 2 is high, 3 low, etc, and the objective is to get rid of all your cards first. After the first game, the winner and loser exchange the worst and best two cards, respectively. Its fun. One Saturday, Mai, Saori, and I played it for 9 hours straight. Part at Mai's apartment, part at a coffee shop, and part at Saori's apartment.
Project update: The client gave the interior designer full creative control over the project, which we think was arranged between them from the get-go. I thought maybe we'd drop the project, as insulted, backstabbed, and bamboozled we were, but the company decided to stick it out because (a) its business, and business is to make money, (b) they want to be seen as able to work with any company, and (c) its a high profile project with a big client they would like to continue to work with. The interior designers are a mess to work with, they're basically not doing the work they said they would do, and they keep trying to take the project back to square 24 when we're on square 193. I'm working out roof assemblies and structural connections while they're rethinking the shape of the building. It's incredibly frustrating because they need to prove that their designs are better than ours (which is supposedly how they got creative control) but their problem is that there are so many constraints on the building, OUR designs are the simply the best, optimized solutions because we worked months on them trying out options and configurations. The "designs" they are beginning to arrive at are virtually identical to ours except less interesting.
Tonight, I was picking up some photos at Walgreen's when I ran into the night manager there, and it turned out to be an old friend of mine, Erik Brekke. I am terrible with names, but for some reason, his always stuck with me. Maybe its because he's a huge six and a half foot Scandinavian who dances like Michael Jackson. Anyway, I was surprised to hear he'd graduated and gotten married, and was putting away money to move to the east coast.
Tonight Saori and I had hit the central phoenix Buffalo Exchange and picked up some new clothes. I got a LeTigre zip up jacket (no replacement for my lost Zara, but nice anyway), a dickies jacket, and a nice slim cut sweater/shirt. Saori got some cool clothes too. We were killing time waiting for the hour photo developer.
Cameras! We've been doing a lot of cameras lately. It started with Saori getting me the lomo multi-exposure camera (which we're finally figuring out how to get images superimposed on top of each other). Then last weekend we picked up an old "Partytime II" Polaroid camera and a dirty old manual camera which looked pretty nice for $20. With a bit of research we found it was a Pentacon RTL reflex camera with a Hoya Asahi lens. Everything manual. Detachable coated lens made in Japan, camera body actually made in East Germany in 1960's. We cleaned up the lenses as best we could and shot a roll of film. The photos are really cool. Focus is really nice and the lens coating gives everything a warmer tinge. Learning a lot about cameras too.
Last thursday Saori and I went to the Muse concert in Mesa. For my birthday, Saori got me tickets. We were one of the first groups to get in, and we got a good seat in the middle. The venue was the Mesa Amphitheater, which is an outdoor theater, but it was really good. They set up a flat, standing area for the 50' or so feet from the stage, and then they step it up with terraces, so you can see over the mosh pit crowd to the stage. Really hard to find a bad seat. Muse was really cool, they played a set of their biggest hits and it was just a great show. The lead singer had a piano set up on stage, and in one of the songs he switched mid-song from playing guitar to playing this electric piano, and they had the piano set up an array of lights so you could see the notes playing across it. Huge crowd of people.
Friday was the birthday of one of Saori's and my friends, Mai, who is currently a roommate of my old roommate, Sal. We brought some drinks and barbecued on her back porch with a mix of Japanese and Taiwanese and Mexicans. It was a really fun night.
Saturday night we were supposed to meet my studio friend Joe and his wife Nicole for dinner, but we discovered the Phoenix symphony was playing Tchaikovsky, so we decided to hit that up. It was really fun, we got to get dressed up, drive downtown, and grabbed a bite of pizza with the DeLaree's, and then listened to the concert. It was a good concert. They started with a new composition of a local composed, which sounded to me like a movie score for a mediocre historical drama. Then they played some Tchaikovsky's piano music with an incredibly talented Pianist whose hands literally blurred with how quickly they were moving over the keys. He was a bit of showman, adding lots of dramatic arm movements and flourishes. He also returned for not one but two encore songs.
At intermission, a man in line asked me if I liked "this stuff better than R&B." Most people there were the stereotypical city matrons and couples in their late 40s onward. After intermission, they played a complete ballet written by Bernstein, which sounded a lot like New York, New York, and West Side Story. I realized that John Williams sounds a lot like Bernstein. They finished off the concert with a series of Hungarian Dances by Brahms, concluding with the famous Dance Five. Saori was jumping up and down in her seat she was so excited, because we'd been humming the tune for a few weeks without being able to recall either the name or the composer.
That night we played asshole, a card game, with Saori's roommate. Its actually a lot of fun, and very addicting. Its like a stripped down version of Bridge, with no partners, trump suits, or bidding. All cards are dealt out, and people lay down cards in turn increasing in value. 2 is high, 3 low, etc, and the objective is to get rid of all your cards first. After the first game, the winner and loser exchange the worst and best two cards, respectively. Its fun. One Saturday, Mai, Saori, and I played it for 9 hours straight. Part at Mai's apartment, part at a coffee shop, and part at Saori's apartment.
Sep 11, 2007
Photo Surprise
Today, I got my second birthday present from Saori. The first gift, if I forgot to mention, was tickets to the band Muse, live in concert later this month. This by itself was a really cool gift, but I guess she liked the Jan Svankmajer DVD enough to want to get me something else too. She got me one of the 'lomo' cameras, inexpensive but decent cameras for art photography. Mine allows me to actually rewind the film to take photos over existing photos, so you get this really cool and unpredictable layering effect with multiple exposures.
Tomorrow, we will either gain the project entirely, or lose it. I'd say its a 50/50 split.
And finally, some digital photos!
New Stuff
Tomorrow, we will either gain the project entirely, or lose it. I'd say its a 50/50 split.
And finally, some digital photos!
New Stuff
Sep 9, 2007
August to Yesterday
Apologies are in order, dear readers, who have not left this blog by the wayside as its creator has.
It is a new lifestyle, one which does not have the same level of excitement or insight as a college student. I go to work in the morning, come home, do some stuff in the late afternoon, eat dinner, and go to bed early. There's really not a whole lot more than that. In fact, I'm finding myself living an ironically 1950's dream. Early mornings and long days at the firm, a place of my own to relax, and a car to enjoy sunday drives.
Which is not to say I'm not learning anything. On the contrary, the project I'm currently working on at the firm is by far the most complicated anyone on my team has done before. The intergroup politics and relationships seem to do a majority of governing of how the project is taking shape. I'm not happy with the way the project is turning out, but its a fascinating and intense introduction to the birth of a building. It's a shame that I really can't go into the details here about it. But I am writing these things down, keeping my eyes and ears open, and getting down to it. I can say at least that the project is developing along a concept that I came up with, which is satisfying, even as it gets perverted by the various parties associated with the project.
On my birthday, Saori took me to to fish and chips for lunch, and surprised me with a little slice of pound cake with candles. That night we went to Flemmings in Scottsdale, where we had a great steak dinner. One year ago, I celebrated my birthday at Lomo in Buenos Aires with Malbec wine and wonderful beef. This year, we got the best steak in the house, Oscar style, which meant that it was cooked with crab meat and Bearnaise sauce on top. For dessert we split a phenomenal chocolate lava cake which was served with a candle after our waiter discovered that it was my birthday. We found out when we got the check they gave it to us for free, at a normal cost of $11. To go with my filet mignon, I got a glass of chilean malbec, the closest I could get to Argentina.
The next day, Saori and I picked up Taylor and we went to India Palace for dinner, the restaurant he'd been wanting to go to since eating there with me my freshman year. I think Tay is good at school, at least he seems to be going to class and doing his essays. He's already made friends with most of the people on his dorm floor.
We had a busy weekend. Saturday, Saori and I drove around downtown Phoenix, taking an impromptu tour around Meier's federal courthouse, and around deserted downtown. We then made a visit to the Arizona Rock and Mineral Muesum, a museum I've not visited in at least ten years. We spent about two hours there, looking at rocks, and I ended up buying a big solid copper sphere, some 'tv' rock, and a beautifully polished petrified oak slice. Saori picked up a gypsum desert rose that she'll try to mount on a ring. After the museum, we drove around the desolate areas southwest of downtown Phoenix, stumbling on the new Cesar Chavez library. I was blown away as this library looked exactly like my library project third year in architecture school. We pulled over and explored it, and I picked up a CD they were selling of old cuban salsa from the 1950's. Very cool.
It is a new lifestyle, one which does not have the same level of excitement or insight as a college student. I go to work in the morning, come home, do some stuff in the late afternoon, eat dinner, and go to bed early. There's really not a whole lot more than that. In fact, I'm finding myself living an ironically 1950's dream. Early mornings and long days at the firm, a place of my own to relax, and a car to enjoy sunday drives.
Which is not to say I'm not learning anything. On the contrary, the project I'm currently working on at the firm is by far the most complicated anyone on my team has done before. The intergroup politics and relationships seem to do a majority of governing of how the project is taking shape. I'm not happy with the way the project is turning out, but its a fascinating and intense introduction to the birth of a building. It's a shame that I really can't go into the details here about it. But I am writing these things down, keeping my eyes and ears open, and getting down to it. I can say at least that the project is developing along a concept that I came up with, which is satisfying, even as it gets perverted by the various parties associated with the project.
On my birthday, Saori took me to to fish and chips for lunch, and surprised me with a little slice of pound cake with candles. That night we went to Flemmings in Scottsdale, where we had a great steak dinner. One year ago, I celebrated my birthday at Lomo in Buenos Aires with Malbec wine and wonderful beef. This year, we got the best steak in the house, Oscar style, which meant that it was cooked with crab meat and Bearnaise sauce on top. For dessert we split a phenomenal chocolate lava cake which was served with a candle after our waiter discovered that it was my birthday. We found out when we got the check they gave it to us for free, at a normal cost of $11. To go with my filet mignon, I got a glass of chilean malbec, the closest I could get to Argentina.
The next day, Saori and I picked up Taylor and we went to India Palace for dinner, the restaurant he'd been wanting to go to since eating there with me my freshman year. I think Tay is good at school, at least he seems to be going to class and doing his essays. He's already made friends with most of the people on his dorm floor.
We had a busy weekend. Saturday, Saori and I drove around downtown Phoenix, taking an impromptu tour around Meier's federal courthouse, and around deserted downtown. We then made a visit to the Arizona Rock and Mineral Muesum, a museum I've not visited in at least ten years. We spent about two hours there, looking at rocks, and I ended up buying a big solid copper sphere, some 'tv' rock, and a beautifully polished petrified oak slice. Saori picked up a gypsum desert rose that she'll try to mount on a ring. After the museum, we drove around the desolate areas southwest of downtown Phoenix, stumbling on the new Cesar Chavez library. I was blown away as this library looked exactly like my library project third year in architecture school. We pulled over and explored it, and I picked up a CD they were selling of old cuban salsa from the 1950's. Very cool.
Aug 11, 2007
One Night at McPerkins
Saori and I both spent the night with family: Saori slept at her sister's host family's house, and I over at my parent's scottsdale condo (triple secured!). After working an extra two hours to get some more design stuff hashed out, I drove to Scottsdale and met mom and dad at Best Buy. We picked up Tay from his driving lesson (completely virtual) where the instructor told us that Tay needs to work on slowing down earlier for stop signs and lights, and that he needs to scan ahead more.
Of course, the simulator that he's working on, instead of a computer tracking where your eyes are looking, you have to push a button to indicate that you've done something. This is completely stupid and actually harmful. When tay actually starts driving, instead of using his eyes to scan, he's going to be feeling around the dashboard. There is no reason at all, other than the company's refusal to shell out the money, that the experiance of driving cannot be very closely simulated with high resolution, accellerated graphics, motion feedback systems to approximate the reaction of the car, and tracking cameras to look at where the eyes are pointing. All the tech exists, and has existed for at least the past 10 years.
Anyway, we played a family game when we got back to the apartment, an electronic game called catchphrase where you play in teams of two and have to get your partner to guess a word or phase without using that word or part of the word. Theres a timer that goes faster and faster on the unit, and the idea is that once your partner gets the word, you pass it off, like hot potato, and the guy with the thing when time runs out, the other team gets a point. It's fun, and pretty quick.
Mom and I went to pick up Havana Cafe takeout for dinner. Good stuff, lots of leftovers. After mom and dad had gone to bed, Tay and drove out to Blockbuster where I picked up Pan's Labyrinth and Casino Royale. We stayed up late watching Pan's Labyrinth.
Of course, the simulator that he's working on, instead of a computer tracking where your eyes are looking, you have to push a button to indicate that you've done something. This is completely stupid and actually harmful. When tay actually starts driving, instead of using his eyes to scan, he's going to be feeling around the dashboard. There is no reason at all, other than the company's refusal to shell out the money, that the experiance of driving cannot be very closely simulated with high resolution, accellerated graphics, motion feedback systems to approximate the reaction of the car, and tracking cameras to look at where the eyes are pointing. All the tech exists, and has existed for at least the past 10 years.
Anyway, we played a family game when we got back to the apartment, an electronic game called catchphrase where you play in teams of two and have to get your partner to guess a word or phase without using that word or part of the word. Theres a timer that goes faster and faster on the unit, and the idea is that once your partner gets the word, you pass it off, like hot potato, and the guy with the thing when time runs out, the other team gets a point. It's fun, and pretty quick.
Mom and I went to pick up Havana Cafe takeout for dinner. Good stuff, lots of leftovers. After mom and dad had gone to bed, Tay and drove out to Blockbuster where I picked up Pan's Labyrinth and Casino Royale. We stayed up late watching Pan's Labyrinth.
Aug 9, 2007
Gliding Along the Root Canal
Stressful day at work today. We keep coming up with problems we haven't really solved yet, and that should have been solved before this point. It's stressful and challeging, but I think we're eventually going to get everything as it should be, just because we don't have any other options. At any rate, I was half-happy to get away and on to my root canal.
The procedure itself was actually not as bad as I thought it was going to be. They numbed me up first with a gel, then gave me about 3-4 shots which I didn't even feel, which pretty much knocked out the entire area. They put a thin latex shield with a hole just for the tooth and stretched it out to catch debris from falling into my mouth. The drilling wasn't bad and apart from a few pinches and cold and hot sensations, it was pain-free. They set me up with a cap and a temporary filling for now, until I go back in next week. I was in and out in about two hours, including all the waiting time.
I took the rest of the day off of work, as it was already four when I got out of there. After Saori got off work, we walked to the Coco's by my apartment for a light dinner and some coffee. Afterwards, I drove to the airport to go to her sister's wedding up near Washington DC. I don't envy her red-eye flight, but I do miss her already.
Last night, we were going to try to hunt down an Indian food place, but wound up at Cherryblossom Noodle Cafe, a Japanese restaurant. I've actually only been to a few Japanese restaurants which serve other foods than sushi. This place has really good Udon noodle and tempura, and, always a good sign, there's always many Japanese people eating there. Actually, Saori has run into at least two of her friends every time she's gone.
The procedure itself was actually not as bad as I thought it was going to be. They numbed me up first with a gel, then gave me about 3-4 shots which I didn't even feel, which pretty much knocked out the entire area. They put a thin latex shield with a hole just for the tooth and stretched it out to catch debris from falling into my mouth. The drilling wasn't bad and apart from a few pinches and cold and hot sensations, it was pain-free. They set me up with a cap and a temporary filling for now, until I go back in next week. I was in and out in about two hours, including all the waiting time.
I took the rest of the day off of work, as it was already four when I got out of there. After Saori got off work, we walked to the Coco's by my apartment for a light dinner and some coffee. Afterwards, I drove to the airport to go to her sister's wedding up near Washington DC. I don't envy her red-eye flight, but I do miss her already.
Last night, we were going to try to hunt down an Indian food place, but wound up at Cherryblossom Noodle Cafe, a Japanese restaurant. I've actually only been to a few Japanese restaurants which serve other foods than sushi. This place has really good Udon noodle and tempura, and, always a good sign, there's always many Japanese people eating there. Actually, Saori has run into at least two of her friends every time she's gone.
Aug 6, 2007
Surreal Life
Over the past few nights, Saori and I have been enjoying her birthday present, the collected short films of Jan Svankmajer. Jan is a animator from Prague, and his films, which usually involve clay or other household objects, are highly surreal, with strong political, historic, and social themes.
Work has been rolling along, I've found myself a nice little niche as the designer for this project, coming up with the little design solutions for the various exterior aspects. Last friday was an open house, with a good turn out. Saori and I met my friend Joe and his wife Nicole there and we went to dinner afterwards at Switch. It makes me pause for a moment and reflect how normal it seems to go to a company function and then out to dinner with a married couple. It's one of those strange moments when you realize that you're getting older, like when I started seeing my friends working at the stores where I shopped.
Suki is looking better these days. She's lost some fur where mom trimmed the heaviest mats out, and she looks leaner too.
Work has been rolling along, I've found myself a nice little niche as the designer for this project, coming up with the little design solutions for the various exterior aspects. Last friday was an open house, with a good turn out. Saori and I met my friend Joe and his wife Nicole there and we went to dinner afterwards at Switch. It makes me pause for a moment and reflect how normal it seems to go to a company function and then out to dinner with a married couple. It's one of those strange moments when you realize that you're getting older, like when I started seeing my friends working at the stores where I shopped.
Suki is looking better these days. She's lost some fur where mom trimmed the heaviest mats out, and she looks leaner too.
Aug 5, 2007
The Dining Issue: Uptown Central Phoenix
Cafe Lux
Expresso bar of the designers and designer wanabees alike. Good coffee, great cupcakes with coffee icing, a little pricy. It's a very comfortable space with big tables and couches festooned with design magazines like Metropolis and Architectural Record. A good place to be seen with a sketchbook and Bruce Mau book.
Pane Bianco
Only the first ten feet of this bakery are acessable to the public. You come in, give your order, and wait for your food. It's still one of the best sandwiches in town. All the sandwiches they make are extremely basic with few simple, but high quality ingrediants, on thier handmade wood fired bread. They also sell rustic bagettues. My favorite is the simple tomato, basil, and mozarella ciabatta. They wrap it all in paper, and throw it in a bag with a delicous chocolate covered caramel for dessert. You have to eat outside though, in the shade of the canopies on split log slab picnic tables. It's literally next door to Cafe Lux if you want an after meal coffee.
Coronado Cafe
Saori and I stumbled on this place walking around our neighborhood. We crossed 7th steet from my street, and there it was. At first sight, i assumed it was a cheap eats kind of place that offered a decent greasy breakfast and burgers in the afternoon. It is an old house, partially obscured by trees, with a big old yellow sign with "Coronado Cafe", and a covered porch with more tables. Nothing could be further from the the cheap greasy eats cafe. This is actually a fine resaturant which specializes in neuvo italian and american food. Nice linins on the table, polite wait staff, photos on the wall. I ordered a glass of Chardonnay with my delicious pasta. We split a soup, which was a tomato and mushroom reduction. It was all delicious. The bill was not bad either for what you were getting.
Arcadia Farms at the Heard Musuem
If you are ever at the Phoenix Art Musuem and feeling hungry, don't stop in at the pretenious, overcrowded, and expensive cafe there. Up the block, about a half mile, is the Heard Museum, where its easy to park and find your way to the small restaurant off of the main courtyard. The decour and wait staff are pleasant, and the food is excellent. They serve an eclectic mix of dishes, from huge salads to homemade tamales, although it skews towards mexican. The Posole and Tamales were both really good. Good iced tea too. One time, I just wanted to have coffee outside on their patio tables, and they happily accomodated me with coffee service, whereas at the Pheonix Art Museum cafe, they nearly chased us from the tables because we weren't ordering from table menu. Arcadia farms is not cheap, but it is less less pricy than the Phoenix Art Museum's cafe.
Switch
Located right near where I work, I've gone here a few times. Good food, but its a restaurant in search of what it wants to be, whether lounge, cafe, or restraurant. Sometimes when i've ordered, I order and pay at the front, then the wait staff find me where I'm sitting amongst the couches and tables. Other times, it's a regular restaurant. My biggest complaint is that thier music is too loud. If they want to be an upscale bar, fine, but its almost too much for dining. Had a really good soup the other day, and the pesto beef panini is my top recommendation.
Chino Bandito
A bit farther north than uptown, this little restaurant has a cult following in Phoenix, and for good reason. The mexican-chinese fusion works brilliantly. Cheap, good food, folding tables and chairs in the main dining area, and the best snickerdoodles in Phoenix. Look for the Panda in the sombrero with bandoliers. I've been going to this restaurant for about 3/4 of my life.
Expresso bar of the designers and designer wanabees alike. Good coffee, great cupcakes with coffee icing, a little pricy. It's a very comfortable space with big tables and couches festooned with design magazines like Metropolis and Architectural Record. A good place to be seen with a sketchbook and Bruce Mau book.
Pane Bianco
Only the first ten feet of this bakery are acessable to the public. You come in, give your order, and wait for your food. It's still one of the best sandwiches in town. All the sandwiches they make are extremely basic with few simple, but high quality ingrediants, on thier handmade wood fired bread. They also sell rustic bagettues. My favorite is the simple tomato, basil, and mozarella ciabatta. They wrap it all in paper, and throw it in a bag with a delicous chocolate covered caramel for dessert. You have to eat outside though, in the shade of the canopies on split log slab picnic tables. It's literally next door to Cafe Lux if you want an after meal coffee.
Coronado Cafe
Saori and I stumbled on this place walking around our neighborhood. We crossed 7th steet from my street, and there it was. At first sight, i assumed it was a cheap eats kind of place that offered a decent greasy breakfast and burgers in the afternoon. It is an old house, partially obscured by trees, with a big old yellow sign with "Coronado Cafe", and a covered porch with more tables. Nothing could be further from the the cheap greasy eats cafe. This is actually a fine resaturant which specializes in neuvo italian and american food. Nice linins on the table, polite wait staff, photos on the wall. I ordered a glass of Chardonnay with my delicious pasta. We split a soup, which was a tomato and mushroom reduction. It was all delicious. The bill was not bad either for what you were getting.
Arcadia Farms at the Heard Musuem
If you are ever at the Phoenix Art Musuem and feeling hungry, don't stop in at the pretenious, overcrowded, and expensive cafe there. Up the block, about a half mile, is the Heard Museum, where its easy to park and find your way to the small restaurant off of the main courtyard. The decour and wait staff are pleasant, and the food is excellent. They serve an eclectic mix of dishes, from huge salads to homemade tamales, although it skews towards mexican. The Posole and Tamales were both really good. Good iced tea too. One time, I just wanted to have coffee outside on their patio tables, and they happily accomodated me with coffee service, whereas at the Pheonix Art Museum cafe, they nearly chased us from the tables because we weren't ordering from table menu. Arcadia farms is not cheap, but it is less less pricy than the Phoenix Art Museum's cafe.
Switch
Located right near where I work, I've gone here a few times. Good food, but its a restaurant in search of what it wants to be, whether lounge, cafe, or restraurant. Sometimes when i've ordered, I order and pay at the front, then the wait staff find me where I'm sitting amongst the couches and tables. Other times, it's a regular restaurant. My biggest complaint is that thier music is too loud. If they want to be an upscale bar, fine, but its almost too much for dining. Had a really good soup the other day, and the pesto beef panini is my top recommendation.
Chino Bandito
A bit farther north than uptown, this little restaurant has a cult following in Phoenix, and for good reason. The mexican-chinese fusion works brilliantly. Cheap, good food, folding tables and chairs in the main dining area, and the best snickerdoodles in Phoenix. Look for the Panda in the sombrero with bandoliers. I've been going to this restaurant for about 3/4 of my life.
Saori's No Good, Very Bad, Horrible Week.
First, a bit of good news, Saori got a job two weeks ago at a small but influential architecture firm in the valley. They do very modern design and they are currently working on large scale academic projects in the valley and in California. The office actually only has about five people including Saori, and every day has been really fun for her at the office so far.
Two weeks ago, she was driving home in the post-monsoon rain, when she got into an accident. It was the other driver's fault. Saori was not injured, nor was the other driver, and Saori's car miraculously suffered only some minor scrapes on the front corner and a busted front light.
That night, when she went home to Tempe, she found her fridge had mysteriously defrosted in her absence and she had to throw away half of the rotting food. Since then, its been running fine. The next day she went in to her insurance office to discover that the other party had already filed a claim AGAINST her, including towing fees (the other car was fine enough to be driven away before the police arrived), and medical treatment (also completely bogus since the person who claimed to be getting treatment was not even IN the car at the time).
Friday, she had a near miss when she and her coworkers went out to lunch directly across the street from where the two news helicopters crashed. They were close enough to smell the smoke and see the flames.
The early weekend was fine, we had breakfast at mom and Taylor's apartment and then went driving a bit afterwards ( yes, Taylor is driving! I'm teaching him behind the wheel, which should terrify many of my friends), and then that afternoon we went ice skating. But sunday, Saori fell ill with a painful bladder infection.
Her week picked up from there, though. Thursday was her birthday, so she is now officially two years older than I am (for a month). I met her for lunch at Pane Bianco, and then after she came back from work, we went to Malee's on Main for dinner. After dinner, I made her a banana bread loaf "cake."
Two weeks ago, she was driving home in the post-monsoon rain, when she got into an accident. It was the other driver's fault. Saori was not injured, nor was the other driver, and Saori's car miraculously suffered only some minor scrapes on the front corner and a busted front light.
That night, when she went home to Tempe, she found her fridge had mysteriously defrosted in her absence and she had to throw away half of the rotting food. Since then, its been running fine. The next day she went in to her insurance office to discover that the other party had already filed a claim AGAINST her, including towing fees (the other car was fine enough to be driven away before the police arrived), and medical treatment (also completely bogus since the person who claimed to be getting treatment was not even IN the car at the time).
Friday, she had a near miss when she and her coworkers went out to lunch directly across the street from where the two news helicopters crashed. They were close enough to smell the smoke and see the flames.
The early weekend was fine, we had breakfast at mom and Taylor's apartment and then went driving a bit afterwards ( yes, Taylor is driving! I'm teaching him behind the wheel, which should terrify many of my friends), and then that afternoon we went ice skating. But sunday, Saori fell ill with a painful bladder infection.
Her week picked up from there, though. Thursday was her birthday, so she is now officially two years older than I am (for a month). I met her for lunch at Pane Bianco, and then after she came back from work, we went to Malee's on Main for dinner. After dinner, I made her a banana bread loaf "cake."
Aug 3, 2007
Root Canals and the Theory of the Scottsdale Leisure Class
So I have to get a root canal on an abscessed tooth.
For various reasons, none of them good, I have not seen a dentist in over two years. Lately, it's because I've been out of my parent's insurance, having graduated from college, and waiting to get all my paperwork and cards done for the company insurance provider. I picked a dentist last week, my former dentists NOT on the approved list, and went in yesterday for my first visit. I picked them because they were relatively close to me, and because it was owned and managed by the same dental care company I used in Scottsdale, and because I figured the dental work I'd need to have done was going to be a bit costly.
Anyway, 2 PM appointment = workday effectively ends at lunch, so that was not too terrible.
Office is pretty standard dentist office, clean, quiet. I filled out my forms and they took x-rays of my teeth, although they had to retake the full panoramic one. The dentist who saw me was ancient, probably extremely experienced, straightforward, and friendly. I went in expecting him to recoil in horror at the state of my mouth, including my gaping cracked tooth, but he calmly gave me two options: yank it, or root canal. I decided to keep the tooth. He also found a series of cavities on the front of some teeth, totaling four against Tay's 18.
The dental hygienist grabbed me on the way out and asked me if I wanted to get my teeth cleaned while I was there and she had an opening. Sure, I said, just get it over with. She was the most relentlessly cheerful dental hygienist I've ever seen. Surprisingly, my teeth were in pretty good shape, with very little tartar build-up, and most of the staining from decalcification hard, and not soft spots. Cleaning went pretty quickly.
Before I left, an assistant went over my course of treatment with me. Root canal, crown replacement, various fillings and surfaces, and then a $60 (my part) charge for an "occ. guard." I asked the assistant what it was. She said "Oh, its a plastic guard you wear at night." After a few more questions it emerged that it was to prevent me from grinding my teeth at night. Hmm. News to me. Funny the doc never mentioned it when he was talking me through my treatment. I asked to see where in his notes he mentioned it, and she dutifully flipped the folder to the handwritten notes page, where he had written "Occ." I grabbed the dentist on my way towards the front desk. He looked over the bill /treatment plan and furrowed his eyebrows. Apparently the desk manager had misinterpreted his occ, which turned out to be another filling treatment I needed. The $30 delta wasn't worth nearly as much to me as the wearing a plastic guard at night. "Good catch," he told me on my way out.
All the dental work amounts to nearly $500. Ouch! That's WITH insurance covering the other $800 of it.
I can't believe its been a month since my last post. I think this is the longest I've gone without posting. Time flies by frighteningly fast with work.
Mom and Tay have come and gone from town, off to visit my aunt and uncle in Findlay, Ohio. They're living in a luxury apartment complex in Scottsdale. This apartment complex disgusts me in so many ways and on so many levels, I feel nauseated and filled with loathing every time I visit it. The only good thing about it is that represents and champions high density living.
Imagine, if you will, a gated "community" in North Scottsdale, something blandly "luxurious," like a "Premium" Denny's Omlette, but with less taste. Compress this entire gated community into multistoried clumps of wood frame construction, slathered over with stucco and beige paint, add a few token trees and some pools, and you get this apartment community. If you can imagine a cast resin Victorian cherub holding a Chinese manufactured AA run clock, and the whole thing painted to look like dark wood, then you get the feel. At least it doesn't sprawl, like a rotting carcass, across the desert.
Also highly disturbing to me is the level of "Security" that these apartments present. On the surface, one would assume that this neighborhood of North Scottsdale has completely been run over by organized crime and rampant theft. There is a six digit code for the gate at the entrance. Then, there is another four digit code to get in the building. Once inside, there is even a code for the FLOOR in the elevator. Each floor is silent and windowless corridors which twist around awkardly, blank walled, and unbroken except for a large door with a tiny plastic knocker and a plastic apartment number. I got the bizzare feeling that I was actually in a government test facility where they plugged in "luxury" human habitats to study upper middle class suburubanites. It also smelled like an attic.
These apartments are in fact, as about as secure as a box of cereal to someone who has more than a mild interest in entering, and in fact, Saori and I made our way, without codes or keys, all the way to my mother's doorstep. It only prevents people from ordering out or getting newspapers delivered, as a general aggravator for everyone else. Do people really think that this is protecting them? Do they see it as a kind of Thorstien Veblen stick, a visible sign of their prosperity? "My possessions are so valuable, I need multiple security systems" kind of arrangement?
For various reasons, none of them good, I have not seen a dentist in over two years. Lately, it's because I've been out of my parent's insurance, having graduated from college, and waiting to get all my paperwork and cards done for the company insurance provider. I picked a dentist last week, my former dentists NOT on the approved list, and went in yesterday for my first visit. I picked them because they were relatively close to me, and because it was owned and managed by the same dental care company I used in Scottsdale, and because I figured the dental work I'd need to have done was going to be a bit costly.
Anyway, 2 PM appointment = workday effectively ends at lunch, so that was not too terrible.
Office is pretty standard dentist office, clean, quiet. I filled out my forms and they took x-rays of my teeth, although they had to retake the full panoramic one. The dentist who saw me was ancient, probably extremely experienced, straightforward, and friendly. I went in expecting him to recoil in horror at the state of my mouth, including my gaping cracked tooth, but he calmly gave me two options: yank it, or root canal. I decided to keep the tooth. He also found a series of cavities on the front of some teeth, totaling four against Tay's 18.
The dental hygienist grabbed me on the way out and asked me if I wanted to get my teeth cleaned while I was there and she had an opening. Sure, I said, just get it over with. She was the most relentlessly cheerful dental hygienist I've ever seen. Surprisingly, my teeth were in pretty good shape, with very little tartar build-up, and most of the staining from decalcification hard, and not soft spots. Cleaning went pretty quickly.
Before I left, an assistant went over my course of treatment with me. Root canal, crown replacement, various fillings and surfaces, and then a $60 (my part) charge for an "occ. guard." I asked the assistant what it was. She said "Oh, its a plastic guard you wear at night." After a few more questions it emerged that it was to prevent me from grinding my teeth at night. Hmm. News to me. Funny the doc never mentioned it when he was talking me through my treatment. I asked to see where in his notes he mentioned it, and she dutifully flipped the folder to the handwritten notes page, where he had written "Occ." I grabbed the dentist on my way towards the front desk. He looked over the bill /treatment plan and furrowed his eyebrows. Apparently the desk manager had misinterpreted his occ, which turned out to be another filling treatment I needed. The $30 delta wasn't worth nearly as much to me as the wearing a plastic guard at night. "Good catch," he told me on my way out.
All the dental work amounts to nearly $500. Ouch! That's WITH insurance covering the other $800 of it.
I can't believe its been a month since my last post. I think this is the longest I've gone without posting. Time flies by frighteningly fast with work.
Mom and Tay have come and gone from town, off to visit my aunt and uncle in Findlay, Ohio. They're living in a luxury apartment complex in Scottsdale. This apartment complex disgusts me in so many ways and on so many levels, I feel nauseated and filled with loathing every time I visit it. The only good thing about it is that represents and champions high density living.
Imagine, if you will, a gated "community" in North Scottsdale, something blandly "luxurious," like a "Premium" Denny's Omlette, but with less taste. Compress this entire gated community into multistoried clumps of wood frame construction, slathered over with stucco and beige paint, add a few token trees and some pools, and you get this apartment community. If you can imagine a cast resin Victorian cherub holding a Chinese manufactured AA run clock, and the whole thing painted to look like dark wood, then you get the feel. At least it doesn't sprawl, like a rotting carcass, across the desert.
Also highly disturbing to me is the level of "Security" that these apartments present. On the surface, one would assume that this neighborhood of North Scottsdale has completely been run over by organized crime and rampant theft. There is a six digit code for the gate at the entrance. Then, there is another four digit code to get in the building. Once inside, there is even a code for the FLOOR in the elevator. Each floor is silent and windowless corridors which twist around awkardly, blank walled, and unbroken except for a large door with a tiny plastic knocker and a plastic apartment number. I got the bizzare feeling that I was actually in a government test facility where they plugged in "luxury" human habitats to study upper middle class suburubanites. It also smelled like an attic.
These apartments are in fact, as about as secure as a box of cereal to someone who has more than a mild interest in entering, and in fact, Saori and I made our way, without codes or keys, all the way to my mother's doorstep. It only prevents people from ordering out or getting newspapers delivered, as a general aggravator for everyone else. Do people really think that this is protecting them? Do they see it as a kind of Thorstien Veblen stick, a visible sign of their prosperity? "My possessions are so valuable, I need multiple security systems" kind of arrangement?
Jul 2, 2007
How I Found Patience
Last weekend, I went camping up near Sedona. Ever since my visit to overpopulated slide rock park, I've been thinking about "the crack," a deep watering hole which runs through a narrow slot canyon of red rock. It's a great place with cool clear water, great for jumping off the ledges and cliffs around. I've been there once, a few years ago with Chase. It was a bit of a task to find directions to the trail because its not officially called "the crack" but an offshoot off of the Bell trail along the Wet Beaver Creek in a wilderness area.
The day before, we'd gone to REI where I replaced my water cartridge filter, and got another can of fuel for my stove. Saori mentioned that they'd opened the Bass Pro Shop, and so we had to go there too, if only to check it out. They have an interior stream stocked with fish, a massive fish tank, and an indoor climbing wall and archery range. This is inside the store. I kept humming "Gaston's Theme" from the Disney movie Beauty and the Beast. There were stuffed animals and heads everywhere, from Armadillos to lynx, deer, fox, and even larger exotic game in the "gun room." Camo for the whole family. I did pick up a new tent, however. A small 2 person tent to replace my aging tent I received in Beijing about 8 years ago. This new one is a little smaller, but just as light and more compact. It also has some nice vent features.
To get to the crack, you have to take I-17 north to the junction of the highway that runs straight to Sedona. Instead of heading west, though, you drive a short distance east over a forest road, and look for a small dirt parking lot. From there, we hiked along and actually got a little confused, since I didn't remember the trail being so long. We got about 2 miles in and were considering hiking back, but we decided to press on and try a small trail which looked like it looped back down towards the water at the bottom of the canyon. At the end of the trail, we ran into a guy who told us we had turned too early, and who directed us the right way to go. He borrowed my compass/mirror combination to check out his nose, which had a few cuts where he swam into a rock.
The crack was only about ten minutes of hiking more, not too many people, maybe a dozen spread over the entire length of the swimming hole. We dropped our packs, changed, jumped, and swam the rest of the afternoon, before hiking back down to some nice campsites we'd found for the night.
It was a bit scary out there, I admit, just the two of us with no one around for miles. I'd neglected to bring anything bigger than a swiss army knife, and though there probably wasn't anything larger than a coyote, there are bears in Sedona occasionally. No campfire, there was a stiff $5000 fine for a fire posted, due to the dry season, so we cooked noodles and ate dried squid over my camp stove.
In the morning, we cooked more noodles for breakfast, broke camp, pumped more water for the day, and headed back to the crack for a morning of swimming and ledge jumping. Saw lots of fish and even a few crayfish. We headed back in the early afternoon, and the downhill hike made it an easy hour and a half back the car.
I drove my Prius up and back, and I was pretty happy with it. The gas mileage is still pretty good out in the open desert highways, around 50 MPG, but the low power for uphill driving led me to christen the car "Patience." I think its a fitting name for a Prius. We stopped off at Chino Bandito on the way home for dinner.
I've been slowly working my way through Solzhenitsyn's Gulag Archipelago. I read it first in 10th grade in high school, so I missed a lot. It's really an amazing book, about humanity at its worst, and at its best, where people are pushed beyond their absolute limits. This book, like no other I've read, screams at the reader.
The day before, we'd gone to REI where I replaced my water cartridge filter, and got another can of fuel for my stove. Saori mentioned that they'd opened the Bass Pro Shop, and so we had to go there too, if only to check it out. They have an interior stream stocked with fish, a massive fish tank, and an indoor climbing wall and archery range. This is inside the store. I kept humming "Gaston's Theme" from the Disney movie Beauty and the Beast. There were stuffed animals and heads everywhere, from Armadillos to lynx, deer, fox, and even larger exotic game in the "gun room." Camo for the whole family. I did pick up a new tent, however. A small 2 person tent to replace my aging tent I received in Beijing about 8 years ago. This new one is a little smaller, but just as light and more compact. It also has some nice vent features.
To get to the crack, you have to take I-17 north to the junction of the highway that runs straight to Sedona. Instead of heading west, though, you drive a short distance east over a forest road, and look for a small dirt parking lot. From there, we hiked along and actually got a little confused, since I didn't remember the trail being so long. We got about 2 miles in and were considering hiking back, but we decided to press on and try a small trail which looked like it looped back down towards the water at the bottom of the canyon. At the end of the trail, we ran into a guy who told us we had turned too early, and who directed us the right way to go. He borrowed my compass/mirror combination to check out his nose, which had a few cuts where he swam into a rock.
The crack was only about ten minutes of hiking more, not too many people, maybe a dozen spread over the entire length of the swimming hole. We dropped our packs, changed, jumped, and swam the rest of the afternoon, before hiking back down to some nice campsites we'd found for the night.
It was a bit scary out there, I admit, just the two of us with no one around for miles. I'd neglected to bring anything bigger than a swiss army knife, and though there probably wasn't anything larger than a coyote, there are bears in Sedona occasionally. No campfire, there was a stiff $5000 fine for a fire posted, due to the dry season, so we cooked noodles and ate dried squid over my camp stove.
In the morning, we cooked more noodles for breakfast, broke camp, pumped more water for the day, and headed back to the crack for a morning of swimming and ledge jumping. Saw lots of fish and even a few crayfish. We headed back in the early afternoon, and the downhill hike made it an easy hour and a half back the car.
I drove my Prius up and back, and I was pretty happy with it. The gas mileage is still pretty good out in the open desert highways, around 50 MPG, but the low power for uphill driving led me to christen the car "Patience." I think its a fitting name for a Prius. We stopped off at Chino Bandito on the way home for dinner.
I've been slowly working my way through Solzhenitsyn's Gulag Archipelago. I read it first in 10th grade in high school, so I missed a lot. It's really an amazing book, about humanity at its worst, and at its best, where people are pushed beyond their absolute limits. This book, like no other I've read, screams at the reader.
Jun 29, 2007
Performance Review and Design Forum
I forgot to mention, last week, I presented my studio "thesis" project at work during the official "Design Forum" they have every month. Basically, during lunch a person presents a place they went, a project they worked on, or something else related to them, completely optional. I took all my work and over two nights compiled it into a powerpoint presentation, which was actually the ideal format for this project, since it was best described by the flythroughs, animations, and videos I took. Most of the firm came down to see it, and it was pretty well recieved. I think I impressed the principals, at least they commended me on my presentation ability. So that was that.
This week, I had my performance review meeting, which wasn't nearly as official as I'd been expecting. I met with two principals I'd worked under, and we talked very informally about my goals, where I ultimately want to end up, how I felt I was doing, and if I needed anything or had any comments or suggestions. Went pretty well, they said they were glad to have me, and they really appreciated my abilities with sketchup.
Work is work, pretty normal. Tuesday, Saori and I met Chase and Tovah at the Phoenix art museum. Tuesday nights are extended until 9 PM and its free all day. After walking around the musuem, we had a big Chinese feast in Tempe. The next day, I met the pair again at the Heard Museum for lunch. The Heard has a really nice small cafe off the main patio, a little effeminine in touch but really good food. I got two hand made tamales with an ancho chili and hominy cream sauce. They went back to Colorado that night.
Here are some photos of my life and where I live
My Public Shoebox
This week, I had my performance review meeting, which wasn't nearly as official as I'd been expecting. I met with two principals I'd worked under, and we talked very informally about my goals, where I ultimately want to end up, how I felt I was doing, and if I needed anything or had any comments or suggestions. Went pretty well, they said they were glad to have me, and they really appreciated my abilities with sketchup.
Work is work, pretty normal. Tuesday, Saori and I met Chase and Tovah at the Phoenix art museum. Tuesday nights are extended until 9 PM and its free all day. After walking around the musuem, we had a big Chinese feast in Tempe. The next day, I met the pair again at the Heard Museum for lunch. The Heard has a really nice small cafe off the main patio, a little effeminine in touch but really good food. I got two hand made tamales with an ancho chili and hominy cream sauce. They went back to Colorado that night.
Here are some photos of my life and where I live
My Public Shoebox
Jun 24, 2007
Road Trips
Some interesting events from this week: Ahem,
Thursday was the summer solstice and me and a coworker went to see solar noon at the Burton Barr library. The library, which was a collaboration between Will Bruder, DWL, Rick Joy, Wendell Burnette, and many others, has a top floor which is about 30 feet clear to the roof, which is a floating roof, suspended on cables tied to columns. This floating roof means that there is a gap between the roof and the walls on either side. At solar noon, the sunlight washes directly down the concrete walls, all the way to the floor. There was a big crowd. Bruder was there, and gave a speech about the library as a "solar temple", as was as my sketching teacher and a classmate who now works for Bruder. Another Philipino guy who used to work for DWL, and did a lot of the drawings for the library showed us around after the event, and gave us a bunch of stories about its design and construction.
Friday, Chase came to town with his girlfriend, and I picked them up at the airport that evening. I actually stopped in at the "Stage and Go" lot to wait which was kind of fun. Stage and go is a bit like a drive in movie, except you just watch the flights which either say "in range" or "ready for pickup." I thought it was kind of strange, especially since it usually takes about twenty minutes after your plane lands to get you your luggage at sky harbor. Anyway, they were very impressed with the Prius, and I was happy to show it off to them. Chase took us out to Trader Vic's in Scottsdale, a restaurant he's been craving for awhile. We went here the last time he was in town, actually. We had some minor problems finding it as neither one of us could remember where it was exactly, and we ditched the valet service since I'd have to explain how to operate the car. It was a good evening, we hit the Valley Ho lounge for some drinks while we waited, (they didn't know how to make an Aviator, unfortunately for Chase). Food was really good, great appetizers of steak on small skewers which are served rare and can be flamed over sterno to doneness. I had the bbq pork chop, and Chase bought a round of Mai Tais, which were incidentally invented at Trader Vics.
Saturday morning, Saori (pronounced like saudi, but instead of a d, use a slightly rolled r) and I drove up to Sedona to meet some friends. We drove up the long way, by way of Payson, and up through the Rim. I really much prefer to take the longer, more beautiful roads over the straight shot through hell I-17. Our friends had gone camping the night before, and we called when we got up there and planned to meet at Slide Rock park.
When we got to Slide rock, the entrance was blocked by a massive line of cars and police turning new cars away. We finally found a parking spot on the side of the road in a turnout over half a mile away near the campsites. Sedona was packed this weekend. I've seldom seen so many people packed into a single place in Arizona. Slide rock was crammed full of people, families, screaming children, everyone. My experiences and preferences with nature tend to be 1 on 1 or with very small groups. So I was less able to appreciate the cool water and the beauty because it felt infested with people. It was still nice to enjoy the cold water and small waterfalls though.
Saori pointed out that you can't have great natural places like this so easily accessible and NOT have tons of people go there.
Our friends never showed up though, they were turned away in their cars and decided not to try to find parking elsewhere. It was ok. We really enjoyed the drive up. Driving back into town on the I-17, my eyes began to burn a bit, and I absent mindedly rubbed them with my hand. Instantly the burning began to get worse and worse and I began tearing up and blinking. It was a bad time, especially since there was no place to turn off and traffic was intesifiying as we approached the outer limits of Phoenix. It became difficult to keep my eyes open, and finally I pulled out onto an access road and parked in a construction site. We washed my eyes out repeatedly and washed off my hands. My eyes were totally bloodshot, although the water flushed out or diluted whatever was burning them. Saori drove the rest of the way back, although we stopped off at Chino Bandito since we were in the Neighborhood.
Thursday was the summer solstice and me and a coworker went to see solar noon at the Burton Barr library. The library, which was a collaboration between Will Bruder, DWL, Rick Joy, Wendell Burnette, and many others, has a top floor which is about 30 feet clear to the roof, which is a floating roof, suspended on cables tied to columns. This floating roof means that there is a gap between the roof and the walls on either side. At solar noon, the sunlight washes directly down the concrete walls, all the way to the floor. There was a big crowd. Bruder was there, and gave a speech about the library as a "solar temple", as was as my sketching teacher and a classmate who now works for Bruder. Another Philipino guy who used to work for DWL, and did a lot of the drawings for the library showed us around after the event, and gave us a bunch of stories about its design and construction.
Friday, Chase came to town with his girlfriend, and I picked them up at the airport that evening. I actually stopped in at the "Stage and Go" lot to wait which was kind of fun. Stage and go is a bit like a drive in movie, except you just watch the flights which either say "in range" or "ready for pickup." I thought it was kind of strange, especially since it usually takes about twenty minutes after your plane lands to get you your luggage at sky harbor. Anyway, they were very impressed with the Prius, and I was happy to show it off to them. Chase took us out to Trader Vic's in Scottsdale, a restaurant he's been craving for awhile. We went here the last time he was in town, actually. We had some minor problems finding it as neither one of us could remember where it was exactly, and we ditched the valet service since I'd have to explain how to operate the car. It was a good evening, we hit the Valley Ho lounge for some drinks while we waited, (they didn't know how to make an Aviator, unfortunately for Chase). Food was really good, great appetizers of steak on small skewers which are served rare and can be flamed over sterno to doneness. I had the bbq pork chop, and Chase bought a round of Mai Tais, which were incidentally invented at Trader Vics.
Saturday morning, Saori (pronounced like saudi, but instead of a d, use a slightly rolled r) and I drove up to Sedona to meet some friends. We drove up the long way, by way of Payson, and up through the Rim. I really much prefer to take the longer, more beautiful roads over the straight shot through hell I-17. Our friends had gone camping the night before, and we called when we got up there and planned to meet at Slide Rock park.
When we got to Slide rock, the entrance was blocked by a massive line of cars and police turning new cars away. We finally found a parking spot on the side of the road in a turnout over half a mile away near the campsites. Sedona was packed this weekend. I've seldom seen so many people packed into a single place in Arizona. Slide rock was crammed full of people, families, screaming children, everyone. My experiences and preferences with nature tend to be 1 on 1 or with very small groups. So I was less able to appreciate the cool water and the beauty because it felt infested with people. It was still nice to enjoy the cold water and small waterfalls though.
Saori pointed out that you can't have great natural places like this so easily accessible and NOT have tons of people go there.
Our friends never showed up though, they were turned away in their cars and decided not to try to find parking elsewhere. It was ok. We really enjoyed the drive up. Driving back into town on the I-17, my eyes began to burn a bit, and I absent mindedly rubbed them with my hand. Instantly the burning began to get worse and worse and I began tearing up and blinking. It was a bad time, especially since there was no place to turn off and traffic was intesifiying as we approached the outer limits of Phoenix. It became difficult to keep my eyes open, and finally I pulled out onto an access road and parked in a construction site. We washed my eyes out repeatedly and washed off my hands. My eyes were totally bloodshot, although the water flushed out or diluted whatever was burning them. Saori drove the rest of the way back, although we stopped off at Chino Bandito since we were in the Neighborhood.
Jun 17, 2007
This week has been a lot easier than the last, and I've actually had some time to work on design as opposed to just doing autocad plans, sections, and elevations. No late nights, which is a good thing.
My typical day is to wake up around 6:45, shower, grab a bowl of cereal, and walk to work, which takes about ten minutes. The street my office is on is 90% residential, with all these great tiny houses from the 1930s that have been renovated, and added to. Every one of them has a porch and they all look completely different. It's a tree lined street, so the walk is always a pleasure. Once I get to work, I check emails, get some hot water for my mate tea, and start work. There's usually a short informal meeting sometime in the morning, and then I walk back home for lunch. Sometimes, I hit schlotzky's deli or burger king instead if I'm short on time, but I enjoy the psychological benefits of going back home and walking outside. Work the rest of the afternoon, and then leave at 5:30 for the walk back home.
This week I met some friends for drinks at chilis, went to a surprise birthday for my roomate in Argentina, and went to the company picnic.
The picnic was fun, way outside phoenix at Lake Pleasant. Water level was very low, which was interesting to see. It was still very cold and refreshing in the 110 degree heat. They provided us with two boats, a pontoon boat for cruising and a wakeboard boat for tubing and skiing. They also had plenty of bbq.
My typical day is to wake up around 6:45, shower, grab a bowl of cereal, and walk to work, which takes about ten minutes. The street my office is on is 90% residential, with all these great tiny houses from the 1930s that have been renovated, and added to. Every one of them has a porch and they all look completely different. It's a tree lined street, so the walk is always a pleasure. Once I get to work, I check emails, get some hot water for my mate tea, and start work. There's usually a short informal meeting sometime in the morning, and then I walk back home for lunch. Sometimes, I hit schlotzky's deli or burger king instead if I'm short on time, but I enjoy the psychological benefits of going back home and walking outside. Work the rest of the afternoon, and then leave at 5:30 for the walk back home.
This week I met some friends for drinks at chilis, went to a surprise birthday for my roomate in Argentina, and went to the company picnic.
The picnic was fun, way outside phoenix at Lake Pleasant. Water level was very low, which was interesting to see. It was still very cold and refreshing in the 110 degree heat. They provided us with two boats, a pontoon boat for cruising and a wakeboard boat for tubing and skiing. They also had plenty of bbq.
Jun 11, 2007
second week... performance review time!
What a week its been!
Monday, I started my professional career as a salaried “Job Captain” of the architecture office I work for. I am working with a team of two project architects and a guy closer to my age with more experience. We had a big client meeting Friday, so it was really crunch time this week. What I did was pretty standard drawings: plans and sections, but I also did a bunch of work tabulating areas and comparing them to previous meetings to make sure we were working within a certain square footage. A client would not want to to find out that he was paying for more space. It was pretty tricky and aggravating sometimes.
We reconfigured the parking garage to make it more affordable and efficiant, but the numbers were just not working in plan, so I had to make a 3d model and calculate each floor including ramps, and then the numbers started working. One thing I realized midweek is that the thing that really bogs my work down is the little incorrect details. I see one thing wrong in the plan, correct that, and see other little things wrong, and spend awhile trying to figure out why its wrong or why a certain wall won’t match another. Way too much time. I need to find a method of getting my work done on time, without sacraficing the quality of the end result. Maybe it doesn’t have to be 100% the way there for the stage we’re at. Maybe we can hold at 80 or 90%. Its probably a learning curve thing too. I’m decent at Autocad, but I’m not really good, fast, or intimate with it, so that’s another thing.
The first day I started, I was surprised to see that there were three OTHER new people starting work with me. One of them was an intern from ASU, like I was between my third and fourth years, one of them was like me, a recent graduate form out of state, and the other was a guy from one of my studios last year, who graduated with me. So that was a bit of a surprise. For the size of the firm, there’s been a lot of new hires since I’ve been associated with them. There’s a lot of work to be done.
Tuesday, the HR guy came by and gave me a performance review questionaire. My second day on the job, and I was being lined up for a performance review. As illogical as it seems, I realized that I’d technically been with the firm for about a year now, including my summer internship, my time in Buenos Aires and working a few hours a week last semester.
But nothing struck home that I was now a regular employee until I received a black wire in basket, a black swingline stapler, a black tape dispenser, black scissors, and a black wire mesh pencil holder.
I worked a lot this week for this client meeting. In total, I put in over 50 hours of work. Staying late, coming in early, coming back to work after dinner, that kind of thing. Good thing I live close. Actually, almost every day I’ve walked to work, and sometimes back home for lunch too. It’s less than a ten minute walk from where I live. We got it all done, nicely, correct, and printed out, with only some minor crises. Actually the whole thing went pretty smoothly due to the experience of the people in my team, and I left at 10:30 AM Friday after the architects left for the meeting. I used the rest of the day to relax, do laundry, and studiocleaning. Since quarters are so hard to come by, I’ve started drying my laundry outside on a line. Works pretty well.
Saturday morning, I drove to a co-worker’s house and we and some of his friends drove up to do some salt river tubing. Salt river tubing is essentially floating down the salt river, more like a creek, on tubes for a few hours while drinking beer. There are hundreds of people out there. As this was my second time, I thought I was pretty well prepared. I brought a lot of extra water, hat, sunglasses, I wore a shirt, and used a lot of sunscreen, but for some reason, I neglected my legs. At any rate, after floating down the river for a few hours, the front and inside of my legs were badly badly burned from my ankles to midthigh. Not blistering, but close to a second degree burn. It hurts like hell. My skin is bright red, it hurts to walk, and its so sensitive that it stings a bit when the wind breezes over it.
After I got back home, Saori took me out and we drove to a friend of hers for dinner who happens to be an ER nurse. She’s Japanese too, and has been like a big sister or aunt for Saori while she’s been here. Anyway, it was a very nice evening, she made us dinner, and her neighbor gave us a tour of the milky way with his big telescope. I was wiped out by the end of the day. Saori’s friend gave me some aloe gel and moisturizing lotion to help with the burn, and this morning I went out and picked up some of my own. It’s going to be a few nights of sleeping on my back.
Jun 3, 2007
backaching birthright
It's been a lazy week so far. I decided start working next monday, the 4th of June, so I've had some time. Of course, last friday, saturday, sunday, and monday I was moving in, with many thanks to Saori, Jonathan, and Joe. Monday I swung by Sally's house and ate lunch there. Afterwards I picked up my "Birthright" couch.
This is a low gray fabric covered couch which unfolds into a bed, and while the couch is decently sittable, the bed is incredibly uncomfortable. The four inch thick mattress has been folded so many times, its compressed the springs in spots and you literally feel the bars of the bed frame beneath your back spaced out every three feet. The best way to lay on this mattress is to lie parallel to the couch if you are short enough, or diagonally, with lots of padding beneath you. Interestingly, this was the same couch owned by my parents since before I can remember, and sold to Sally before my parents moved overseas for the first time about ten years ago. Now, Sally and Jonathan are moving, and the couch is passed back to the son like Anakin's lightsaber. The circle is complete.
The other day, Saori and I drove up to Kierland Commons, where we mostly window shopped, but we both picked up books on taking the GRE exam, which is necessary for admittance to most graduate schools. I'm not too worried about the verbal or writing sections, but the math section is going to be really bad as I've not reviewed any kind of mathematics outside structural calculations for the last four years.
Wednesday night, Saori and I met our sketching teacher at a coffee bar in downtown Phoenix. LUX is pretty cool, and seems to cater to the young, hipster, graphic arts and design community. Decent coffee but amazing coffee-icing cupcakes. He handed our sketchbooks back to us, talked about work, and asked us each to make a copy of our sketchbooks for his class.
Yesterday afternoon, we walked (about a block) to the Heard Museum, to their cafe. It was about lunchtime, but they were completely accommodating about just serving us coffee. The cafe has lots of outdoor seating at small tables in a tree shaded courtyard of the museum, and it was the closest I've felt to a European cafe in Phoenix.
We finally caught up with Aldo last night, and we met at Trax for a drink. Aldo's been working already at a small, four person firm. He mentioned the architect, the secretary, and later mentioned that he was working with Emily who also went to Buenos Aires with us. Aldo is the fourth member of the firm, so at this point, I know half of the firm. Sounds like a good job though, and its very close to where I work downtown.
I discovered an auxilary port inside the console tray of my Prius, so I can hook anything that has a headphone jack, like my iPod. A nice little feature.
I've spent a lot of time driving this week, mostly using the surface streets from Phoenix to Tempe. I mainly drive along Van Buren, probably one of the most incredible streets in Phoenix. Van Buren starts in the heart of downtown Phoenix near the State Capitol and passes by the pioneer cemetery. It rolls into a really sleazy neighborhood of prostitutes, used car dealerships, discount stores, and cheap motels from 30 years ago with names like "Log Cabin Lodges" and "Apache Motel." It runs by the heavily fenced and fortified State (mental) Hospital, and further on, a dog racing track and massive flea market. By the time you get to Tempe, you're in the rolling desert hills of Papago Park, and you pass by the ancient Tovrea Castle (wedding cake building). There, Van Buren bends south, and crosses the old bridge over Tempe Town Lake, at night beautifully lit with lights, before continuing as Mill Avenue, through the college and arts shopping district of Tempe. Mill avenue rounds the bend south of campus, giving passengers a fly around of Frank Llyod Wright's Gammage Auditorium, before shuttling them along Apache. Apache is pretty typical road, except for the fact that the light rail is going to run on it, and then Apache becomes the main street of Mesa.
This is a low gray fabric covered couch which unfolds into a bed, and while the couch is decently sittable, the bed is incredibly uncomfortable. The four inch thick mattress has been folded so many times, its compressed the springs in spots and you literally feel the bars of the bed frame beneath your back spaced out every three feet. The best way to lay on this mattress is to lie parallel to the couch if you are short enough, or diagonally, with lots of padding beneath you. Interestingly, this was the same couch owned by my parents since before I can remember, and sold to Sally before my parents moved overseas for the first time about ten years ago. Now, Sally and Jonathan are moving, and the couch is passed back to the son like Anakin's lightsaber. The circle is complete.
The other day, Saori and I drove up to Kierland Commons, where we mostly window shopped, but we both picked up books on taking the GRE exam, which is necessary for admittance to most graduate schools. I'm not too worried about the verbal or writing sections, but the math section is going to be really bad as I've not reviewed any kind of mathematics outside structural calculations for the last four years.
Wednesday night, Saori and I met our sketching teacher at a coffee bar in downtown Phoenix. LUX is pretty cool, and seems to cater to the young, hipster, graphic arts and design community. Decent coffee but amazing coffee-icing cupcakes. He handed our sketchbooks back to us, talked about work, and asked us each to make a copy of our sketchbooks for his class.
Yesterday afternoon, we walked (about a block) to the Heard Museum, to their cafe. It was about lunchtime, but they were completely accommodating about just serving us coffee. The cafe has lots of outdoor seating at small tables in a tree shaded courtyard of the museum, and it was the closest I've felt to a European cafe in Phoenix.
We finally caught up with Aldo last night, and we met at Trax for a drink. Aldo's been working already at a small, four person firm. He mentioned the architect, the secretary, and later mentioned that he was working with Emily who also went to Buenos Aires with us. Aldo is the fourth member of the firm, so at this point, I know half of the firm. Sounds like a good job though, and its very close to where I work downtown.
I discovered an auxilary port inside the console tray of my Prius, so I can hook anything that has a headphone jack, like my iPod. A nice little feature.
I've spent a lot of time driving this week, mostly using the surface streets from Phoenix to Tempe. I mainly drive along Van Buren, probably one of the most incredible streets in Phoenix. Van Buren starts in the heart of downtown Phoenix near the State Capitol and passes by the pioneer cemetery. It rolls into a really sleazy neighborhood of prostitutes, used car dealerships, discount stores, and cheap motels from 30 years ago with names like "Log Cabin Lodges" and "Apache Motel." It runs by the heavily fenced and fortified State (mental) Hospital, and further on, a dog racing track and massive flea market. By the time you get to Tempe, you're in the rolling desert hills of Papago Park, and you pass by the ancient Tovrea Castle (wedding cake building). There, Van Buren bends south, and crosses the old bridge over Tempe Town Lake, at night beautifully lit with lights, before continuing as Mill Avenue, through the college and arts shopping district of Tempe. Mill avenue rounds the bend south of campus, giving passengers a fly around of Frank Llyod Wright's Gammage Auditorium, before shuttling them along Apache. Apache is pretty typical road, except for the fact that the light rail is going to run on it, and then Apache becomes the main street of Mesa.
May 31, 2007
Alec's New Pad
I'm completely moved into my studio apartment downtown. It's about a ten minute walk to work from here. The car is still doing great. I'm down to a third of a tank, but I've covered about 550 miles so far, averaging about 50 miles to the gallon. Saori and I have been going on night drives around the city, just cruising, listening to music, and exploring. Its nice, and different, having my own car for once.
New Apartment
New Apartment
May 25, 2007
New Car!
I have a new car!
It's a 2007 Prius, about as green as you can get. Silver with gray interior. Sally picked me up this morning and we went to the credit union for all the paperwork. Then they gave me the key and told me to enjoy. Sally took some photos. All the DMV stuff the credit union took care of, so that was great. My plates will be mailed to me soon, and I've got a temporary plate.
It's incredible. I have my own car. This isn't a bicycle. This isn't mom and dad's old minivan, or as nice as it was, Sally and Jonathan's SUV. I drove it home, took Saori for a quick spin, then drove downtown (on surface streets to break it in, freeways are too fast) where I finished the paperwork on my new studio apartment. Got my keys and the gate clicker. Then I got a call from the glasses place and drove back to Tempe to pick up my new eyeglasses.
Afterwards, I swung back by the apartment and picked up Saori and drove up to Scottsdale for some ice cream. We returned in the afternoon to pick up my roommate Sal and drive him to the airport. He's going to spend the next two weeks in Europe with an old professor of mine, traveling to Amsterdam, Paris, and Barcelona to study architecture, interior design, and urbanism. Lots of luggage space in the Prius and the back seats fold down nicely to get a lot of space.
To start the car is radically different. I have a smart key which means, when I get within a foot of the door, the car unlocks automatically. As long as I have the fob with me, I don't even have to stick it in the dash. I just push the On button, and the car turns on, throw it into reverse, and then back out, aided by the backup camera monitor. It's really cool. When I park, I just push the park button, and then turn off the car by pushing the on button again. There's a button on the handle of the door which locks the car again after I get out.
Turning radius is great, sensitive brakes, and very easy to drive. Not sure how fast it can accelerrate, but I didn't buy it to race. The guide recommends against fast accelerations and stops anyway until I get it broken in.
May 23, 2007
Welcome to the world, Mr. Perkins!
I've realized the other day that I feel like I'm in a new studio. This one just happens to be getting set up for my next phase of life. I'm working simultaneously on getting a credit card, a car, car insurance, and a new apartment, and playing with projected income and outflows. It's a totally new world for me, as only a person without a shred of credit to his name can attest to. I've gone to several dealerships, come close to signing on a car deal, joined a credit union with $25, and am currently working with their car purchasing agent to get the best deal possible on a car.
I feel a bit like an immigrant: there are new rules, new currencies, lots of beaurocracy and paperwork, and a new language to learn: prepayment penalties, 401k plans, bodily injury liability, FICA, etc etc.
It's a daunting new world, but I'll learn it and it will soon become just the mundane minutia of life. As stressful as buying new cars is now, my first apartment was the same way. Now, I actually enjoy apartment hunting. Finding the best deals, the best floorplans, proximities, etc.
Back to work.
I feel a bit like an immigrant: there are new rules, new currencies, lots of beaurocracy and paperwork, and a new language to learn: prepayment penalties, 401k plans, bodily injury liability, FICA, etc etc.
It's a daunting new world, but I'll learn it and it will soon become just the mundane minutia of life. As stressful as buying new cars is now, my first apartment was the same way. Now, I actually enjoy apartment hunting. Finding the best deals, the best floorplans, proximities, etc.
Back to work.
May 17, 2007
the design of my behavior in human behavior and design
It's been very lonely at the apartment lately. Many of my friends have taken off already or are visiting family. My roommate is always at his girlfriend's apartment, and Saori and her mom are on a trip up to Antelope Canyon and the far north of Arizona. Sal just left this afternoon back to Rio Rico, although he'll be back sunday to finish packing up the apartment. He's going on a summer abroad trip through Europe with professor Bernardi, another Argentine professor at ASU with whom I've had a class before.
Speaking of ASU, I got my final grades back from this semester with some good news and some bad. My other classes went great, but my heart was just not in my human behavior and design class. I was still staggered to recieve a C+ in the class, due to the fact I'd missed more than three classes, which meant I lost a full 10 percentage points overall, a stupid oversight on my part. However, I got A's and A- in all my other classes, including studio, which I was very pleased about.
Last night, Sal and a friend of his took me to Four Peaks to watch the Suns play the Spurs. I've really not been following the western conference at all, but I had an idea that the suns were playing particulary well this year. It was a quarter final game, and very intense, and Four Peaks was absolutely packed to standing room only. It was fun, the bar was very much into the game, and so it was a big disappointment when the Suns lost by two points, something like 76-78.
Speaking of ASU, I got my final grades back from this semester with some good news and some bad. My other classes went great, but my heart was just not in my human behavior and design class. I was still staggered to recieve a C+ in the class, due to the fact I'd missed more than three classes, which meant I lost a full 10 percentage points overall, a stupid oversight on my part. However, I got A's and A- in all my other classes, including studio, which I was very pleased about.
Last night, Sal and a friend of his took me to Four Peaks to watch the Suns play the Spurs. I've really not been following the western conference at all, but I had an idea that the suns were playing particulary well this year. It was a quarter final game, and very intense, and Four Peaks was absolutely packed to standing room only. It was fun, the bar was very much into the game, and so it was a big disappointment when the Suns lost by two points, something like 76-78.
May 16, 2007
Hunting and Gathering
Well, I think I've attended the last of the graduation parties.
Yesterday I went to breakfast at Harlow's with Saori and her mom, and then we drove up to the top of south mountain to get a view of the city. In the afternoon, I started working on getting a car. I drove to the Scott Toyota on McDowell to no avail. I spent twenty minutes, inside and out, trying to get someone to talk to me. A dozen employees, some with other potential customers, walked right by me, and though I tried to get their attention, glossed over me. It's embarrassing. Do I have to get on desk, or drive over one of them for a little service? As I recall, Scott Toyota gave Mom and I a really sleazy impression when we went car shopping there a few years back. I seemed to recall them trying to give us a price nearly a third higher than the other Toyota dealers in the valley. Anyway, there are other dealerships, so I'm heading there next.
This morning I went and visited a few apartments downtown. None of them are very nice, but they're decently clean, and very well located. The one I'll probably go with is a studio that runs $470 a month with utilities included. It's about three miles from work, so I'll be able to bike pretty easily. There was a nicer one with lots of greenery closer to work, but all they have are more expensive one bedrooms. I'll look at my planned budget again and see.
I scrounged up my old blog entries I'd published on my old website, and on Xanga while I was still on that, before I switched over to Blogspot.com. I took all the entries I had between September of 2003 and May of 2007, reformatted the text to look the same, and printed it all out and had it wirebound. The resulting book is about an inch thick, with every page filled, double sided. I titled it Four Years at Arizona State University and Abroad. I wanted a hardcopy record from my time at ASU.
Yesterday I went to breakfast at Harlow's with Saori and her mom, and then we drove up to the top of south mountain to get a view of the city. In the afternoon, I started working on getting a car. I drove to the Scott Toyota on McDowell to no avail. I spent twenty minutes, inside and out, trying to get someone to talk to me. A dozen employees, some with other potential customers, walked right by me, and though I tried to get their attention, glossed over me. It's embarrassing. Do I have to get on desk, or drive over one of them for a little service? As I recall, Scott Toyota gave Mom and I a really sleazy impression when we went car shopping there a few years back. I seemed to recall them trying to give us a price nearly a third higher than the other Toyota dealers in the valley. Anyway, there are other dealerships, so I'm heading there next.
This morning I went and visited a few apartments downtown. None of them are very nice, but they're decently clean, and very well located. The one I'll probably go with is a studio that runs $470 a month with utilities included. It's about three miles from work, so I'll be able to bike pretty easily. There was a nicer one with lots of greenery closer to work, but all they have are more expensive one bedrooms. I'll look at my planned budget again and see.
I scrounged up my old blog entries I'd published on my old website, and on Xanga while I was still on that, before I switched over to Blogspot.com. I took all the entries I had between September of 2003 and May of 2007, reformatted the text to look the same, and printed it all out and had it wirebound. The resulting book is about an inch thick, with every page filled, double sided. I titled it Four Years at Arizona State University and Abroad. I wanted a hardcopy record from my time at ASU.
May 14, 2007
Reflections on four years
When I started college at ASU, it was my silver metal. I had had vauge notions of going to an Ivy League school, but of course, when you only apply to one of them, odds are against you. As I began freshman year, I promised myself that I would get as good an education as Rice students if I worked as hard as they did (or what I imagined they did). Two years later, I was happy to be at ASU.
ASU made me consider the parts of my life that I’d long neglected, or considered insignificant in relation to school. For me, it taught me that education is not just what teachers tell you, but also what happens outside of class, working on my own, discovering how to enjoy myself, spending time with friends, filling out my life. ASU really mellowed me out, allowed me to take a step back and look at the larger picture. Sometimes, for me, watching a spectaular sunset is important than getting to class on time. I’ve learned to forgive myself sometimes.
I think that if I’d gone to Rice straight from high school, I would have missed the bigger picture. I used to think of education as its own end, higher than anything else. I would have done well there, firmly entrenched in academia, but would I have been happier? I don’t think so. If I went there now, knowing what I know, I think I would be able to get more out of it.
I think I’ve mostly fulfilled my promise to myself. An architecture degree is easily the hardest thing I’ve ever done. I got through the first year on my high school academia honors mindset, the second year on the challenge of acceptance to upper division, the third year on the pure love of architecture, and the fourth year on attempting to understand the relation of architecture to larger issues.
Before I started the program, I was warned by my aunt who also happens to be an architect. She told me, truthfully, that it’s a very hard road to go, and you spend a lot of time with a small group of people, and that unless you love it, its not worth it. Good advice. I decided to go for architecture anyway. Freshman year, I was in a special program where I lived in a dorm with about 20 other architecture students in my class, and we had special acess to professors, shared studio space with the class a year ahead of ours, and dedicated facilities close to the architecture building. Interestingly, only two of the original 20 graduated this year in the architecture program: Molly, and me.
Some of my friends have been dissapointed with where we ultimately ended up, but I think ASU did a decent job of getting us to a certain point. No, I can’t immediately hop into the field as a project architect, but I can design a building, I have some knowledge of all the systems and parts that go into a project, and a good foundation of design. I’ve also picked up a half dozen computer programs for designing, drafting, and rendering which I could turn around and use by themselves.
Four summers ago, I had my first job scooping ice cream for retirees in an antiques market. I think I was paid somewhere in the range of six dollars an hour. Now, I’m taking a salaried position at one of the most prolific architecture firms in the valley.
Outside of school, I have been astounded by all that I have done in the last four years, including backpacking through Europe, tropical island vacations, a semester abroad in South America which is the highlight of my life so far, music, a vastly expanded social and dating life compared to high school, and too many other travels and adventures to mention. It’s been good.
May 13, 2007
Saturday
Friday night, I went to another late graduation party after I dropped my grandmothers off at their hotel. The parties have been pretty low key, but I know the people there, I enjoy myself, and its a nice change from when I graduated high school, when the only graduation party I attended or was invited to was my own.
Saturday morning, I picked up my grandmothers and we drove to the Phoenix Art Museum where we joined the hordes of people going to see the Rembrandt and Dutch Painters exhibition. The museum has had a major remodeling since I was last there, and I really liked what they had done with the entry. The exhibit was good, about a dozen Rembrandt's, two or three really great pieces in my opinion. Before we went in, we stopped by the Museum Cafe to grab some lunch.
The cafe is called Arcadia Farms, and the organization is terrible. When you walk in, you are immediately asked how many people in your group, and given a wait time. The problem is that they don't tell you that you only need to wait if you want table service with the restaurant menu. Immediately behind the server, there is a long display case and bar with food and drinks which could be easily mistaken for a buffet. If you order from this deli bar, then you can't sit down inside, but must eat outside. Fortunately grandma Perkins got a sandwich from the main menu, while grandma Case and I got deli sandwiches, so even though we got evil-eyed, we still were not asked to leave.
After the exhibition, I took them by my workplace which was a few doors down from there. They seemed to like it, and took my photo in the lobby beside the company logo. Afterwards, I took them to the airport and dropped them off for their flight back to Oklahoma City. I'm really glad they came.
Later that afternoon, a friend of mine from studio invited me to his graduation party, so I got directions and took off for that. His party was at his mother's housing complex community center way up in northwest Gilbert. Most of his extended family lives in town, so everybody was there, and it really felt like a family reunion with all different ages, and kids running around everywhere. It was a fun party too. Saw my old studio instructor who also once worked where I do, but now has his own firm.
That evening, I went to a last party of graduate students and ran into a bunch of older students I knew from the dorms, so it was good to catch up with them.
Saturday morning, I picked up my grandmothers and we drove to the Phoenix Art Museum where we joined the hordes of people going to see the Rembrandt and Dutch Painters exhibition. The museum has had a major remodeling since I was last there, and I really liked what they had done with the entry. The exhibit was good, about a dozen Rembrandt's, two or three really great pieces in my opinion. Before we went in, we stopped by the Museum Cafe to grab some lunch.
The cafe is called Arcadia Farms, and the organization is terrible. When you walk in, you are immediately asked how many people in your group, and given a wait time. The problem is that they don't tell you that you only need to wait if you want table service with the restaurant menu. Immediately behind the server, there is a long display case and bar with food and drinks which could be easily mistaken for a buffet. If you order from this deli bar, then you can't sit down inside, but must eat outside. Fortunately grandma Perkins got a sandwich from the main menu, while grandma Case and I got deli sandwiches, so even though we got evil-eyed, we still were not asked to leave.
After the exhibition, I took them by my workplace which was a few doors down from there. They seemed to like it, and took my photo in the lobby beside the company logo. Afterwards, I took them to the airport and dropped them off for their flight back to Oklahoma City. I'm really glad they came.
Later that afternoon, a friend of mine from studio invited me to his graduation party, so I got directions and took off for that. His party was at his mother's housing complex community center way up in northwest Gilbert. Most of his extended family lives in town, so everybody was there, and it really felt like a family reunion with all different ages, and kids running around everywhere. It was a fun party too. Saw my old studio instructor who also once worked where I do, but now has his own firm.
That evening, I went to a last party of graduate students and ran into a bunch of older students I knew from the dorms, so it was good to catch up with them.
May 11, 2007
Graduation Convocation
Today I had to get up even earlier and bike down to Gammage to get ready for Convocation. They had us arrive at 8, but didn't lead us out until 9, so we mingled in the cramped backstage area. This involves the entire college of design, including everyone from Interiors, to Planning, to Landscape, Design Studies, building administration et al, so it was pretty packed. Saori and her mom spent an hour and a half putting her special kimono on, one that traditionally she is supposed to wear only twice in her life- graduation from college, and then for the photos afterwards. Looked great, but very warm.
Convocation went smoothly, they announced me as "Alex Perkins" when I handed them the card with "Alexander Perkins," but they completely butchered Saori's name, mis-reading it as "Sandy" ah well. We got our degree holders and walked across the stage. Pretty quick ceremony. Finished in less than an hour and a half.
After the ceremony, Sally, Jonathan, and the family took us to Oreganos where we had an early lunch feast. Afterwards, my grandmothers and I lounged by the pool at the hotel, reading, talking, and enjoying the cool water. I was stung by a wasp, which was a little painful. I was concerned I might be allergic to wasp stings since I'd never been stung before, but the swelling and redness disappeared within an hour. Around 5 o'clock, grandma Case made a comment about cocktail hour, so I decided to take them to Four Peaks brewery, where we enjoyed a pitcher of beer. They were excited to have the "complete college experience."
Anyway, photos: click on the Webshots link to see the full sized photos.
Graduation 2007
Convocation went smoothly, they announced me as "Alex Perkins" when I handed them the card with "Alexander Perkins," but they completely butchered Saori's name, mis-reading it as "Sandy" ah well. We got our degree holders and walked across the stage. Pretty quick ceremony. Finished in less than an hour and a half.
After the ceremony, Sally, Jonathan, and the family took us to Oreganos where we had an early lunch feast. Afterwards, my grandmothers and I lounged by the pool at the hotel, reading, talking, and enjoying the cool water. I was stung by a wasp, which was a little painful. I was concerned I might be allergic to wasp stings since I'd never been stung before, but the swelling and redness disappeared within an hour. Around 5 o'clock, grandma Case made a comment about cocktail hour, so I decided to take them to Four Peaks brewery, where we enjoyed a pitcher of beer. They were excited to have the "complete college experience."
Anyway, photos: click on the Webshots link to see the full sized photos.
Graduation 2007
May 10, 2007
Commencement
Today I had my degree officially conferred upon me at the ASU convocation, along with about 3200 other graduates who showed up (about half of the total student population graduating). My grandmothers took a shuttle from their hotel to the arena where it took place, and in keeping with my typical M.O., I took the city bus. Luckily a short distance. In honor of my grandparents visiting from Oklahoma, and in deference to the official State Neckwear, I wore a bolo tie which belonged to my grandfather Case. I also rummaged up an old silver bracelet mom gave me when I was about ten. Commencement was good. It was pretty snappy, nobody talked for very long, I'd never heard of the commencement speaker, but apparently he was a key figure in sequencing the human genome. He talked for a short bit about duty. Then they recognized the people who graduated with honors, so I got to stand up when they called for all those with Summa Cum Laude. Then they had all the colleges stand up individually, and after presenting all of us to President Crow, he officially conferred the degrees, and we all cheered. And that was about it. I had a lot of fun watching the various costumed people come in. I recall I went to commencement as a freshman to start college almost as a lark, just to see what it was. Same old robes.
After the ceremony, I met up with Sally and my grandmothers and we took some photos outside. Somewhere in there I lost my regular glasses, so now I'm wearing my temporary ones. Later that afternoon, we went back and my grandmothers hunted around where we were while I idled on the side of the road. I would have parked but unbelievably they seemed to be having ceremonies the entire afternoon so the traffic was terrible.
I took them to Fashion Square in Scottsdale for a bit this afternoon, where we got a bite to eat at the Kona Grill, (and I got grandma Loretta to try a bit of my sushi), and I replaced a battery in my watch. They didn't find anything, but enjoyed looking and getting outraged at the luxury prices of everything.
This evening, a friend of mine had an extra ticket to the college of architecture/landscape party so I was able to bring both my grandparents as dates. It was nice, all the faculty were there, free drinks, some food, really good desserts, all at the Stone House at the Phoenix Zoo. Hung out there for a bit and met Saori's mom who was also in town for the occasion. My grandparents got free bouquets in vases as the party wound down.
Tomorrow is the more intimate ceremony with just the college of design graduates. Should be fun.
May 9, 2007
Las Abuelas
Monday night I turned in my sketchbook for my sketching class. I had finished 250 pages out of 400, which is at least 50 pages more than most people's books. I was sad to let it go, actually having grown fond of it while I worked on it. I'll get it back in about a month. After we turned it in, Saori and her roommate, me, my roommate all got Italian food to go and we had a picnic in the park by Tempe Town Lake.
Well, I took my last final yesterday afternoon. It took me all of 30 minutes to finish the short, multiple choice test. We'll see how I did. With that, I was done with ASU. No more classes, no more finals, no more submissions, no more paperwork. That evening, Sally picked me up and took me to a very nice celebratory dinner at Z-Tejas, and stuffed me with great food and berry cobbler. Afterwards, I went back to her house and she lent me her extremely nice SUV to shuttle my grandparents around.
My grandmothers flew in this morning from Oklahoma City, and I met them at the airport. They were thrilled to see me and extremely impressed with the car. They were shocked that I had friends who were so generous. I took them to their hotel near campus and waited for them to unpack before we went to a light lunch at Dilly's Deli. I dropped them at the hotel and went back to the college to hear the last two minutes of a meeting for all the graduates concerning the proceedure for friday's convocation ceremony. It was all online anyway.
Interestingly, I ran into my ex-girlfriend Jen in the hall, the first time I've seen her all year. She got a job at Gensler, a place she's always wanted to work, and it will be a great position for her. She'll be taking a year off too after she graduates.
After the meeting, I ran some errands, printed some ceremony stuff out, and finally went back to the hotel to pick up my grandparents. I showed them the apartment and my fat cat, and then we walked along Mill Ave. For dinner, we went to Macayo's and had big margaritas. It was fun, although I wish I had my whole family here.
Well, I took my last final yesterday afternoon. It took me all of 30 minutes to finish the short, multiple choice test. We'll see how I did. With that, I was done with ASU. No more classes, no more finals, no more submissions, no more paperwork. That evening, Sally picked me up and took me to a very nice celebratory dinner at Z-Tejas, and stuffed me with great food and berry cobbler. Afterwards, I went back to her house and she lent me her extremely nice SUV to shuttle my grandparents around.
My grandmothers flew in this morning from Oklahoma City, and I met them at the airport. They were thrilled to see me and extremely impressed with the car. They were shocked that I had friends who were so generous. I took them to their hotel near campus and waited for them to unpack before we went to a light lunch at Dilly's Deli. I dropped them at the hotel and went back to the college to hear the last two minutes of a meeting for all the graduates concerning the proceedure for friday's convocation ceremony. It was all online anyway.
Interestingly, I ran into my ex-girlfriend Jen in the hall, the first time I've seen her all year. She got a job at Gensler, a place she's always wanted to work, and it will be a great position for her. She'll be taking a year off too after she graduates.
After the meeting, I ran some errands, printed some ceremony stuff out, and finally went back to the hotel to pick up my grandparents. I showed them the apartment and my fat cat, and then we walked along Mill Ave. For dinner, we went to Macayo's and had big margaritas. It was fun, although I wish I had my whole family here.
May 6, 2007
Wrapping up
Last Wednesday was the closest thing to our sketching final, which was basically an installation piece somewhere in the architecture building. I chose a display case on the third floor and used the glass to reflect sketches I'd done so it looked as though the sketch and the viewer were floating in space. It was a neat trick and the reviewers loved it. You can't underestimate the value of that little trick, the bit of dazzle. How can they see with sequins in thier eyes? Anyway, the only thing left for that class is the sketchbook which I'm supposed to fill. Our instructor tells us that its about "quality" but also that he wants us to fill the sketchbook. What it will really come down to is a balance, and he'll compare sketchbooks, probably weighting a person who did a bunch of mediocre drawings the same as one who did half as many drawings at twice the quality. I'm actually in really good shape, as I think I've got halfway decent drawings and already over 200 drawings done.
Friday night, Saori and I went to the Senior Graphic Design show at PURL downtown. Saori actually spent a year in the graphic program before switching over, so she knew a lot of those people. Overall it was very impressive, interesting work.
In studio, my professor asked me to put my project up in the gallery downstairs for Design Excellence. Design Excellence is a little competition held by the college of architecture and landscape architecture, where three projects are selected from each studio and then an outside panel of visitors comes to review it and award a winner and a runner up from each year. I had my group's Buenos Aires project put up (probably because it was one of the most finished), but this is the first time I've ever been selected personally for nomination. The reason this time: graphic appeal. My boards have some sexy images. The other two nominees from my class have okay projects but really well done boards, boards that make mine look really bad by comparison. I already am 99% sure I am not going to win (my project is just not that coherant and they always get people from different fields to judge), so it is a bit of a hassle. But I'll take it anyway. I realized at the graduation dinner that I've become extremely jaded about competitions and awards. Theres a great bit of advice I got from one studio instructor that the best project always gets second or third place: the winner is something everyone can agree on. I am also looking more now at who is doing the awarding, and why, and typically, it is very pointed.
Got my final grades from Systems: didn't do as well on the final as I'd thought, so I ended up with a B+. Not terrible, but not great either. At this point I'm predicting an A- to an A in studio, a A to B+ in Human Behavior, and probably an A in sketching, although the teacher is a bit hard to read sometimes.
Last night, we went to my old History of Architecture professor's house for dinner. Actually, it was a reunion dinner for those students who went with him to Rome for summer study program (like Saori), but she got special permission to bring me. It was an interesting dinner, it was a very interesting group of people who went on the trip. We arrived early to help prepare everything. I brought fresh tomatoes and imported mozzarella, and Saori baked a creme custard. At his apartment we made delicious mushroom and italian sausage risotto with all kinds of appetizers and desserts.
Right now I'm over at Saori's place working on my sketchbook. I'm took a break since the Mexican families behind her apartment were having a huge party and blasting thier corrida (mariachi music) at volume level 11. Cinco de Mayo was yesterday, anyhow.
Interesting Fact for the day: Cinco de Mayo is NOT Mexican Independance, but marks a key victory against the French.
Friday night, Saori and I went to the Senior Graphic Design show at PURL downtown. Saori actually spent a year in the graphic program before switching over, so she knew a lot of those people. Overall it was very impressive, interesting work.
In studio, my professor asked me to put my project up in the gallery downstairs for Design Excellence. Design Excellence is a little competition held by the college of architecture and landscape architecture, where three projects are selected from each studio and then an outside panel of visitors comes to review it and award a winner and a runner up from each year. I had my group's Buenos Aires project put up (probably because it was one of the most finished), but this is the first time I've ever been selected personally for nomination. The reason this time: graphic appeal. My boards have some sexy images. The other two nominees from my class have okay projects but really well done boards, boards that make mine look really bad by comparison. I already am 99% sure I am not going to win (my project is just not that coherant and they always get people from different fields to judge), so it is a bit of a hassle. But I'll take it anyway. I realized at the graduation dinner that I've become extremely jaded about competitions and awards. Theres a great bit of advice I got from one studio instructor that the best project always gets second or third place: the winner is something everyone can agree on. I am also looking more now at who is doing the awarding, and why, and typically, it is very pointed.
Got my final grades from Systems: didn't do as well on the final as I'd thought, so I ended up with a B+. Not terrible, but not great either. At this point I'm predicting an A- to an A in studio, a A to B+ in Human Behavior, and probably an A in sketching, although the teacher is a bit hard to read sometimes.
Last night, we went to my old History of Architecture professor's house for dinner. Actually, it was a reunion dinner for those students who went with him to Rome for summer study program (like Saori), but she got special permission to bring me. It was an interesting dinner, it was a very interesting group of people who went on the trip. We arrived early to help prepare everything. I brought fresh tomatoes and imported mozzarella, and Saori baked a creme custard. At his apartment we made delicious mushroom and italian sausage risotto with all kinds of appetizers and desserts.
Right now I'm over at Saori's place working on my sketchbook. I'm took a break since the Mexican families behind her apartment were having a huge party and blasting thier corrida (mariachi music) at volume level 11. Cinco de Mayo was yesterday, anyhow.
Interesting Fact for the day: Cinco de Mayo is NOT Mexican Independance, but marks a key victory against the French.
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