Almost the end of urban workshop~
nightmare arh.. nightmare...
i'm hard pressed to decide what part of this week was the worst... hahah
anyway... tom submission liao.. finally over but siem reap is looming! lolz... things just keep coming...
I finally updated photos in facebook... ct council gang first on the list.. u guys should be touched... haha... and since facebook like quite easy to add pics.. i think there's gg to be more that i'll upload!
yawwwn. 3am plus le... i think i'll just go quickly glance through RM readings and go sleep le... my god. i believe i gained more understanding in 1.5 hours in lillian's class than like 1 semester in rashid's class.... oh heaven. i should have just taken this module this sem instead of last.... wasted time last sem.. bleagh... off to read 'me and my shadow', innocuous sounding title... but 11pages worth of cheem-inology...=P
thursday studio~
i'm proud of myself.... 2 days running and i'm blogggin! but the real reason is that i'm starting to like talking to myself.... or at least talking to blogspot... it's highly therapeutic... and pretend-worlds are great.
studio today wasn't very productive i think... richard ho spoke on certain issues etc.... made me rethink my opinion of him.... at first i thot he was the more commercial type of architect... but now i realise he might just be different.... hopefully that means that he can guide us to injecting some greater meaning/sensitivity in our final sem project.... i have high hopes for the sem... in that i see its relevance and its possibilities... we talked about the sense of place or lackthereof in SG.... my point being that the feeling of placelessness is exacerbated by the knowledge that nothing that we hold dear is permanent. In the bid to cultivate singaporeans that are cosmopolitan and adaptable, we have simply been uprooted and cast adrift... everywhere in the world is the same to us, while it makes us successful on one hand, it's kinda of a depressing future... the conversation tho about such a heavy topic made me quite enthu about the whole thing... cos it's dealing with real issues and not at our own whims and fancies, which makes me feel less of a fraud... lol.
however, the masterplan is simply a headache so far... some are simply not really interested it seems.... like just waiting to see how things fall and then move on to their indiv projects... and i guess this time round i'm quite adamant on my own views, so perhaps i'll just work it through on sunday and see if it makes sense in the end. heritage/tourism/capitalism/cultural sensitivity/sense of place/genius loci/identity/self sustaining/pride in national monuments/paris and the parisien pride/new yorkers and the new york attitude/chicago land of great architecture... hm... there must be something there that i'm missing... what can define siem reap that is not contrived? is it really tourism or something more? opinions will be welcome.... I truly miss the long hours of discussion we had in year 1.... no one seems willing to do that anymore... i suspect those long discussions are what made me love archi in the first place... the discussion of concept/context, m(arch)ud is beckoning..... it might just be my salvation cos god knows my sense of aesthetic is to say the least inadequate in this time of design stylists...
boardgames on saturday my house... how come the people i wanna invite are not interested while some people that i'm not that familiar with just simply wanna come? it's gotta be the free games attraction in the latter case, who gives a damn whose house it is anyway... but at least the exchange bunch are coming.... looking at how much trouble i have to go thru to org this... i'll just bring a game or two to sch next time...
got teased today... not quite used to it since it doesn't happen all that often to me.... i'm like the epitome of low-profile underdog... and besides that kind of teasing just doesn't seem to fit someone like me... kinda too unlovable to make any gossip believable... but perhaps cos there's no new gossip in studio so people must just be thinking to pass the time. I honestly don't quite mind it just laugh it off i guess tho it reminds me of what i do not have in my life or rather never had in my life.
listening to yang zhong wei's new album now... it's so unhealthy.... his voice is so blardy sad that if i dwell in all my unfulfilled wishes further i'll push myself back to that helpless state of last year. that was quite a scary period... i'll never again say that things like that can be controlled. I don't care if that makes me weak or seem like scrambling for excuses cos now that i've climbed out of it once, i know it's as real as it seems at the point in time. the damage is just as serious and the impact of insensitivity just as devastating.
something in my mind points out to me that having an outlet to vent might just help me keep my head, albeit an inanimate object. so just to those who are reading this, i'm not trying out to be some melodrama queen or some pathetic soul... it's just me trying to come to terms with things happening in my life... doesn't mean that i'm a miserable human being all the time... it's just a private avenue for me to reflect.
gg to go read erwin's readings b4 i conk out... may tomorrow be a better day!^^
while waiting for my music to transfer to my screwed-up mp3 player...
Oh sigh... it's 430am now and what am I doing? stuck on my com fiddling with my mp3 player... give me an ipod anyday.... iRiver is driving me nuts..... i was supposed to update the songs... and guess what happened... it happily erased 3/4 of the existing songs... so now i have to re-transfer.... thank god i had the foresight to keep the original song selections on the laptop. blast.
and tomorrow there's studio... oh joy~! *sarcastic sniffing*
I haven't sorted out the siemreap wishlist/vision.
I haven't proofread the studio site report. (but that's cos people haven't sent me their SWOTs)
I haven't finished reading the rotterdam portcity notes.
I haven't started on the urban workshop case study points. (see above regarding rotterdam)
and this is only the 4th day of school.
sigh... and i thought with a 2 day week i would have a pleasant last semester.... oh well.... it was always too good to be true.... what with the added burden of dissertation looming on the horizon and me absolutely not knowing what I'm even interested in for my dissertation topic. fantastic.
and financial woes.... i don't think i can handle a part time job this sem... and the banks have sent out the final summary on how much i owe for my so called world-class education.... comes up to a terrifying amount of 33K. interest-payable the day i graduate.
and tas related stuff. somehow i lack the enthusiasm for all the planning and meetings and brainstorming... and that's kinda unfair to the com since i ain't really putting in 100% effort. the exchange people are all back.... which on one hand makes me happy to see familiar faces, conversely makes me aware that i really don't belong anywhere in archi... i'm just a drifting soul. no constant group of friends - story of my life.
lots of people have commented that I don't update my blog for eons.... but then I think, I invariably moan/despair/complain/rant in my entries... so well i know my life isn't great, so why tell everyone else that i'm sad? makes it even more pathetic right.
hm, but there are good times interspersed with the bad. if i can bring myself to bother putting up pics again, it kinda shows that i still have a reasonably good life.... let's rewind back to after everything ended last sem...
first off.... slacking.... and slacking.... and slacking.... then the mad rush for the pre-site visit presentation... then 4th dec off to cambodia... angkor beautiful angkor... site studies... bad experiences there... then phnom penh... then ho chi minh... photos galore but like increasingly so most pictures have no one in them... 17th dec back to sg dead broke...
back to slacking.... and suddenly it's the christmas season~! met up with our diminished ct gang minus clare and darius... but at least caught zhenhao=) hopefully we can meet up before u go back to the states.... then christmas eve was kinda different this year... went to watch emma carol at hyatt and then back to whampoa for hawker dinner with von and pk... and i still think our impromptu home manicures were kinda funny... lolz.
if i'm not wrong the next few days were spent immersed in books and grey's anatomy.... until the 30th... meet up with the hanyang students at Central... seemed like not so long ago where we were making regular trips to boonlay to meet them... and now they were going home... glad to have known some of them... resolve to keep in contact.... we had some great times with them... 31st lunch with the koreans at cpg... songyi's birthday...=) i realised novena sq/velocity is a hidden gem... haha must go there more often... then off to meet pk and von for the shiok ktv at chinatown... 10 bucks only on eve of public holiday where to find right... then off to meet mom and dad for dinner at farrer road... phew. that was a tiring day....
academic results... drumrollzzzzz. I survived.... better than i expected which is a supreme bonus considering my near suicidal state last semester... james leow sem is officially not my worst sem to date.... yr4 sem1 is now the ultimate low of my university education...
and then new year... steamboat at xingyun's house 2nd jan... great game of saboteurs... ^^ great start to a new year.... then 3rd jan games at minds cafe... tas meeting.... studio meeting...sending off the various koreans... kinda sad at that... finally meeting up with rgs family... then 11th jan... gareth's back! lolz with all the racist jokes and irreverent comments... hahaha
and then school starts~ site report site report.... refer back to the earlier paragraphs for what is going on in studio.... lolz.
5am now... sleep is now a priority... and somehow prozac or valium seems fitting somehow... or perhaps a shrink. *lame laughter* I should keep busy so that last sem doesn't creep back up on me. yes weilin don't think too much, time goes by but life has to go on. and so just get on with it...
archi boardgames at my house this sat.... hopefully it doesn't get postponed yet again....
which certainly means i must finish making my room decent for visitors' eyes.... *grimaces* but like dad says it's good for me... haha.
time to sleep.... and perhaps tomorrow will be good.~
