ending in echoes of silence...

finally started sending out my resumes to a couple of firms over the weekend. well, fingers crossed and hope i get the interviews. at the moment i am being very picky and tasteful in the firms i've applied to. i guess its more of the quality and my specific agenda than anything else. unlike 3 years ago where i just spread my net all out to see which kind soul would be so nice to hire me. i was a sponge that wanted to just absorb every single droplet of water that i can possibly absorb. but after 3 years, i've come to realise the certain dos and donts that i wish to include in my learning curve. in a way its like readjusting the steepness of the curve and go straight to the specific things i want to learn.

however, if i do not get the job or find that the place ain't suitable enough... then it might be bye-bye Singapore. i really do hope i get my first preference... it was my first preference of firms when i was applying for jobs in Singapore 3 years ago. surprisingly it still is. unfortunately they were not hiring at the time... and being so popular there is a high chance they might not be either this time, or are very picky on their applicants. sigh.

well another hidden agenda and reason why i hope to get into that company is because of its affiliation with [The Theaterworks]. then perhaps i would have the opportunity to do some stage set designing as well.

so here's a new prayer assignment for you folks!

lately i've been blasting my iPod with lots of rock music. drowning myself within this spectrum of music genre is due to my need to detached myself from the environment... be it in public transport, public areas, and at times at the work place. and perhaps to avoid the need to entertain the silence within my head that would lead to weird thoughts. the band, Foo Fighters, in particular have been my frequent listen. i've been looping their complete discography from The Color and Shapes to their recent Greatest Hits album. thats listening to 7 albums of non-stop head banging music. friggin awesome!

other strange listens would be U2. a band that i am not very fond of in the past, mainly because i hate Bono's annoying ne-ne vocals. but i am beginning to be rather respectful of "the edge's" echoey guitar riffs. it can be rather hypnotic.

aside from Rock music... i still do keep up with my usual listens. the most recent findings is Stan Getz's Bossas and Ballads: the lost sessions

i'm beginning to be able to distinguish clearly his sounds and style of play from other sax players. its a really good album. the sort you can listen early in the morning or late nights before bedtime.

finally got around to buy my ticket to the [Chick Corea] concert. i didnt manage to find anyone that would be interested or available to kawan me. ofcourse... shlim kept insisting i ask Debs to go. but i was reluctant to. don't ask me why.

yummy...

jingle bells... jingle bells...

so today's sermon in church was about treasures in heaven (matthew 6:19~24). we learned that we should not worship money and place it on an alter... instead we should spend! i'm pretty sure the recent obama-hujintao get together is about obama trying to physco china into splurging all that loads of cash hidden underneath them chinese pillows...

here are some of my current ogles...

a Vespa LX150...

or...

Leica M8 range finder... i'm not trying to turn into one them "photogs" but seriously this camera is a beau. i couldn't stop myself from fiddling with Ju's Leica.

budweiser...

it seems rather hard to find a compadre for the chickcorea in december. but nonetheless its something i must not miss. somehow i treat this as a significant milestone of my life... why? because 3 years back when i had just arrived to start my new life in this island... chickcorea was in town. sadly i was not able to go because at that time i was still trying to orientate myself around and sistic.com was the last thing on my mind. but he's back again... and i cant help but wonder if its signifies an ending of a past phase welcoming me as i transition myself to a new.

anyway, bet y'all are probably rolling your eyes right now. so i shall not elaborate any further.

today was the last bible class for the year. finally a break from the tuesday routine. it has been rather swell. i probably wouldnt had made the effort to study about the life of moses if it werent for bsf. somehow i think God wanted class to be on a Tuesday. tuesdays are my site walk days in the morning... where after that im usually all sweaty and sticky. the worst feeling ever. then its the day before my regular wednesday site meeting. which is always a nightmare. normally there would be tons of things to do and follow up prior to the meeting. i must say i was not a regular bible class goer towards these last few months. i think i missed most part of Deuteronomy. yes very ashamed. but at least i managed to catch Moses' last dying days. well unlike most days... i decided to mingle a little longer during the group mingling session and adjourned for dinner after. figured it might be the last time i'd see any of these folks or at least for the rest of the remaining year.

strangely i bumped into a very old OCF acquaintance. i remember him from my ocf days as the tough love hardcore NS cum lawyer christian. funny to discover that he dreaded his ocf days. but i can totally understand why, but coming from him was rather a surprise as well. maybe because i didnt really knew him that well to begin with. but yea although i did share some happy moments and learnt a thing or two during my OCF days... overall it sucked in general.

was video conferencing with the parents over the weekend. apart from sharing my reasons and theories of the complications of finding my "other half" and females in general. it suddenly dawn on me that for whole of 2009... i have not made a trip back to KK. the last time i was back was in christmas. and at the rate i'm in... i do not think i will be breaking that streak. this year would be the first in my decade life away from home that i did not celebrated CNY and perhaps christmas. So now the big question... what am i gonna do this christmas?!

short lived...

as i said i would. here are some photos taken of the built panels. this was taken the night before the exhibition's opening. was not able to see how the finished finished product turned out, the exhibition was only open during working hours only. by the time i headed down from office, the hall was closed and in total darkness. sad.

if you're wondering...

The moon was shining on the lake at night

The Slayer t-shirt fit the scene just right

Smeared mascara, I looked into your eyes, I saw a light

You told me stories about your chickadees

They didn't like BB guns or stupid archery

John the lifeguard, he let them use the pool all day for free

Then the conversation stopped, and I looked down at my feet

I was next to you and you were right there next to me

Then I said girl,

If you're wondering if I want you, (I want you to) I want you to

So make a move, (Make a move) 'cos I ain't got all night

The rest of the summer was the best we ever had

We watched Titanic, and it didn't make us sad

I took you to Best Buy, you took me home to meet your Mom and Dad

Your Mom cooked meatloaf even though I don't eat meat

I dug you so much, I took some for the team

Your dad was silent, his eyes were fixed on what was on TV

Then the conversation stopped, and I looked down at the ring

Your folks were next to you, and you were right there next to me

Then I said girl,

If you're wondering if I want you, (I want you to) I want you to (I want you to)

I swear it's true (I swear it's true) without you, my heart is blue

Girl,

If you're wondering if I want you, (I want you to) I want you to

So make a move, (Make a move) 'cos I ain't got all night

So much pain may come our way

There may come a day when we have nothing left to say

When the conversation stops, and we're facing our defeat

I'll be next to you and you'll be right there next to me

Then I'll say girl,

If you're wondering if I want you, (I want you to) I want you to (I want you to)

I swear it's true (I swear it's true) without you, my heart is blue

Girl,

If you're wondering if I want you (I want you to) I want you to

So make a move, (Make a move) 'cos I ain't got all night

gravity... working against me.

now that my new printer/scanner/ photocopier is finally up and running. i can finally share some of the recent stuff i was being preoccupied with. haha!

my most recent (completed) project would be the designing of exhibition space for SIA at the BEX Asia Exhibition. it was a low budget assignment with a minimal yet very "organic" brief. when i say "organic" is because we had no idea what was going to be exhibited till the very last of days just before the exhibition started.

so let me show some of the thought process...

the site or the designated space we were given was at the far right hand side of the hall smacked in the middle of the main corridor. well for me, i personally love long narrow spaces. simply because i love given the chance to create depth in the narration of the spaces. <-- i bet you all are wondering what the heck do i mean... seriously... i pun tak tahu *shrugs*

anyway, given that it was right at the end of the corridor, that automatically made it the main draw / focal point of the exhibit. and i thought, so how do i draw the viewers attention. initially i thought of using reflective materials to scream at the viewers, then i thought since singapore loves green... why not i just plant a tree ( but that would just be too tacky, and the n-parks booth was just around the corner). instead since reflective materials would probably cost a bomb, i decided to create the drama by drawing the viewers through a series of steps that would lead them to this long wall of about 2.2 meters. in a way it meant to give height to the exhibits and yet the human scale is still retained by the steps.

~ i forgot to explain what the exhibits consisted of. well basically the SIA wanted to exhibit the whole timeline of their involvement with the countries green mission. then the left over space was given to all the other regional architectural institutions to showcase their own stuff. ~

now that would explain the purpose of the wall. because i did not want to distract the main focus that this exhibit is essentially for SIA and the other stuff was just subsidiary of it. the wall becomes the main theme and backdrop of everything. the viewers would naturally know the the heighten wall is the main exhibit and surrounding it being place at random on the steps is the forest of exhibit panels. randomly placed to show that all could be just part or equal to the status of the viewers wanting to crowd around to witness the great SIA wall. haha.

now but there was a problem (apart from the budget constraint). given that we were unsure how many boards would make up the numbers for the regional institutes exhibit, i was not able to plan in advance my little random forest. and if the numbers escalated it would be too bushy a forest for the wall to be effective. so to make things less complicated, i decided to bring forward the wall. but by doing that, the steps would be totally redundant. and so i decided to use the wall as its rightful function... to block and hide and shelter the whatever that lies behind it. but to get into the space, i needed to make a fenestration. hence using the corridor as my reference i opened up the fenestration and concurrently created a sense of depth to the viewers.

because the only thing that we were able to control was the SIA exhibits, the wall then serves as the permanent exhibit and what goes behind it was the organic + transient space. its like the backstage of where all the junk lies. i had no qualms of wanting to connect the 2 spaces because in all truth both exhibits were pretty incongruous with each other. and i couldnt wait for the other institutes to give me a confirmed number.

above is detail sketches of the wall with a pelmet incorporating the T5 lights. the contractor proposed to add sandbags within the 300thk walls to make sturdy the walls without needing the additional chamfered supports that i so wanted to avoid.

i will post up the photos of the finish product shortly. i left the photos in my office PC hardisk.

Postmortem...

now that it is completed and i have seen the finished product and despite the few hiccups here and there. i am reasonably satisfied with the results.

one of the main hiccup was the position of my fenestration that was supposedly to be inline with the corridor somehow was off-set. i was scratching my head on site wondering why the whole damn thing was shifted by at least 3 meters. i tot the contractor had miscalculated and got the setting out wrong or something or perhaps the whole exhibition in itself was set out wrongly. since i couldnt get answers from the contractor as he was out for lunch, i decided to ask the organisers themselves. and as it turns out the reason why

it was off was because at the very last minute without informing anyone, they decided to add an additional stall for their own exhibit hence everything was moved down. i was so upset, even more because i could not do anything about it but to just accept its fate.

the sketch above was done after the whole thing was completed.

after further thought, there were 2 things that i could had done to make it more meaningful:

1.

i personally thought the 2m fenestration was a little too big. it revealed too much of what mystery lied behind the wall. a better size might had probably been half a meter. the viewer would have to reorientate and adjust him/herself by entering the space sideways. in a way the viewers would be forced to make an effort to get into the space behind. ofcourse it would had been politically incorrect if i had actually done that. it would have been very offensive to the other regional institutes exhibits, in particular for the Thai exhibit. Thai king would feel very insulted.

2.

creating a level change with a raised threshold at the fenestration would be an interesting way of informing the people of the transition in space and a good means of emphasizing the focal point of the exhibit.

anyhow... all is over and done with. im glad that the SIA exhibition turn out very different from the other booths which were rather tacky and IMHO too loud. as what Wenhao commented... "... among all it was the most architecturally sensible booth." nice.

As the great Carlos Scarpa (and his many exhibition design exercises) says...

"experiments in designing exhibitions make it possible to test one's own architectural language, serving as an instrument for propagating the prevailing architectonic message..." haha... my message.