of yay!

submissions are done! woot woot

going to pig out now!

this song is still the pre/post submission song

Of Seh

diagrams, originally uploaded by jonolist.

so vehry seh
so so vehry seh...but hey even feeling seh in melbourne ain't that bad
because you can get alot of good trashy food in this city at late nights (perfect for the unhealthy lifestyle of a struggling architecture student on his last few days of submission)

Of Mies! remix

Thanks Angmoh! now i have a rocking tune for my favourite architect.

THIS IS SO EPIC!



MIES! MIES!
VAN
DER
ROOOOHARR!

Of Mixtape

:)

Something from Melbourne! oohh Van She = brilliant!
Klaxons - Gravity's Rainbow (Van She remix)


The Bamboos - King of The Rodeo (feat Megan Washington)
Megan Washington does a pretty slick cover of this Kings Of Leon classic
Megan's from Brisbane, i need to get my ass to there one of these days.



dark.rim.glasses plus clapping.music.means.i.love

speaking of clapping songs remember the Pipettes?

you know how much i love The Pipettes, RAC did a remix of my favourite 3d inspired song "Pull Shapes"! how awsum is that????



I was watching the uber surreal Superflat Monogram ad for L.V. by Takashi Murakami and was totally blown away with the cut copy paste snippet style music that japanese super dj Fantastic Plastic Machine created.

here's the ad



and here's something else from the same guy
Fantastic Plastic Machine's - Take Me to the Disco



Ah that ipod ad that we all fall in love with
Chairlift - Bruises
please give this band a chance man, the second half of the song deserves way more airplay than its getting.



Florence and The Machines - Kiss the Fist
I love love love this girl. She'll be on everyone's ipod soon.



Bubblegum to Sky - Even the Sunbeams
any band (or maybe almost anything) associated with bubblegum, i like...okay maybe except those not so cool shoes from bubblegummers



for Angmoh and Prawn

Hot Chip - Ready For the Floor
are you ready are you readyyyyy
for the floor???



Psapp - Hi
i think psapp ignited some hidden love for toytronica in me



Slowclub - When i Go
Everyone loves something folkie




Lena Horne - How Do You Do
i love Lena Horne and when i was looking for some songs from this great american jazz singer i stumbled upon her special appearance with Grover in Sesame Street



i'm not shy anymore!

But nothing comes close to watching Feist on Sesame Street



Leslie Feist = heart melt

Of Dubai and Emo

Its one more year to graduate and when friends and relatives ask me how's "the job market",
"have you seen what they've done in Dubai?"
"oh you can design condos and skyscrapers!"
"its amazing what they've done in Beijing"

usually i just nod and go
"hmmmm nice?"
"ah yes crazy right?"
and then proceed with an uninterested look i usually reserve for golf or sellavision, i don't have much to say after that, i oftens appears as an unenthusiastic nonchalant reply.

The following tries to explain why:

You've seen the stuff Zaha Hadid, Foster, Nouvel , OMA are going to or have done in Dubai
You've already seen Beijing's monsters of new buildings.

Here's something they'll never tell you in their snazzy design briefs.

'We need slaves to build monuments'

And this, my archi peeps, doesn't just happen in Dubai or China but also in Singapore. While we sit on our comfy little white desk, decked in black, royskopp playing in background as you flip thru *wallpaper and SA, remember who's standing under the 10 tonne precast panel you just detailed

The only thing that protects him is a 5 dollar yellow hard hat, two hooks and an almost non existent construction workers union.

People still die in construction sites

Remember that for every extra floor you add to the skyscraper, your putting the life of that construction worker at risk, the guy whom you'll probably never know the name of unless something happened to him.

All we know is that if UHU fails to connect that cardboard beam to the column, we just use stronger glue.

The people you indirectly hired to build that community centre with a cool pub on the roof with the surreal looking garden in mid floor (with gym), is probably hesitant to return home because he can't afford to and has to find a new job and a new place to live in. Yes we still have illegal construction workers (see point 5) and squatters in Singapore.

Learning with building site managers and watching the construction workers take pride in their work in Melbourne, revealed to me something i never even bothered about back in architecture school. Safety regulations exist, sequencing, weightage, erection process, crane operation should never be "see engineers detail". Construction workers have a minimum wage, are covered by insurance and most importantly are given credit for their hard work.

Learn construction sequence in live scale...not just construction detailing.
Remember the craftsman not just the craftsmanship.
You don't really own the building and don't even think that you deserve 10% of the total cost
While you sit there doodling on trace, someone out there is an ocean's distance away from home working longer hours than you
He's in steel toe cap boots and a hardhat under the hot sun
attaching that line you just drew to the other line you just traced over
with a blow torch he just figured out how to operate two months ago
most probably dangling 10 floors above ground level.

Its not something that can be solved overnight. Understand that the situation is way more complex than i have put it in, but at least give some thought to reality of it all.

Yes reality, the one thing all architects pretend they have a full understanding of but fail to fully grasp . As long as we believe that design is EVERYTHING we'll never get out the bottom of the well that modernism + postmodernism + blob architecture + high tech movement have dug. It's so deep we never bothered trying to get out.

And if you think the food scare in China was bad, wait till you read about their construction industry.......just wait (think white rabbit in epic proportions)

Architects can't solve everything, BUT boy did we created helluva lotta problems.

so yes I'm not exactly proud of belonging to the generation that saw the rise of the Burj, Bird's Nest, the Sail or the next Platinum, Greenstar, Leed award winning fail building (they still are not and never will reach net-zero status). Architecture in the near future is going to be like bad 90s music, trashy, decked out in flashy patterns and very baggy pants. All i want to be is that self conflicted outsider who won't get caught up with nonsensical superficial super mega (insert next level of superlative) structure and be able to look back and perhaps say "...well at least you didn't try to kill/enslave/underpay anyone"

UHU by the way has the strength of a full strength continuous fillet weld at 1:100 scale. I heard there are students using superglue at least ten times stronger than that.

Of Random Post of The Day #4

Random Post of The Day #4, originally uploaded by jonolist.

kept @ formaldehyde jar in the Melbourne Museum

and accompanying song



these kinda post will continue until my submission is done. enjoy the music though, its what i listen to while i pretend to make imagenery buildings appear in computer generated 3d entities.

Of a Random Post

Random Post of The Day #3, originally uploaded by jonolist.

nah, and a song stuck in my head for the longest time

I WANT ALL THE TEES!

Of Singapore Day

Singapore Day is some government sponsered mega huge event for Singaporeans overseas. The last Singapore Day was in New York last year at central park, this year it was the Sydney Myer Music Bowl (like fort canning but way more happening) in Melbourne during the weekend. Here's Singapore day 08 in bullet point (because i'm seriously real busy now)

- you queue up for an hour just to clear the gates, then go in and see even more queues



- free food, nasi lemak, teh tarik, prata, chili crabs and chicken rice (WHAI NO ROJAK???)

- goodie bags. With Kaya inside..omg nice!

- EVEN longer queues for the food and goodie bags, which is really clever of the organisers since queues ARE VERY SINGAPOREAN

- Phua Chu Kang : i have no idea why he is even around but he was WAY BETTER THAN Tay Ping Hui trying to sing i have no idea what

- Kit Chan: no she wasn't there but seriously you can only play "Home" that many times before drawing up the imagery of your motherland becomes rather irritating....."this song..truly...is being played , too many....."

- Electrico: sadly they were the only fine musical exports they could bring over....but still to play in Sydney Myer Music Bowl is a big thing. I mean Red Hot Chili Peppers, AC/DC, R.E.M. did play on the same stage.

-more queues for toilet, free newater and army rations (wtf? people eat that shit?)

- people mountain people sea: because free food and goodie bag and if your came early free t shirt

- Sydney Myer Bowl became Fort Canning on steriods....like it really felt like home.

- oddly unlike Fort Canning, there was hardly any mess or litter around, that's impressive since the whole event really was about giving free food in disposable plates and utensils with music playing in the background. AND its for Singaporeans nonetheless....maybe in angmoh country we loves the grass more than we do back home.

-oh did i say chicken rice?

- chicken rice

- chicken rice



-chicken rice

- you meet ALOT of people you never knew were in Australia....former recruits, retired teachers, primary school classmates. I wondered if any former exiled politicians were around

-chicken rice

- chili crabs were quite teh hit too, i don't understand why people overseas love chili crab so much. but hey i got a big pincer too so no complaints.





i miss yet con chicken rice real bad.....

Of We Are Scientist

We Are Scientist, originally uploaded by jonolist.

WOOHOO!!!! it was an awsum gig....
This band plays tight man....

Nothing like a fantastic band to rock the stress away. now for sections elevations, details and what nots.....back to werk werk

Of Vegetarian Lasagna

Vegetarian Lasagna, originally uploaded by jonolist.

Greens like capsicum and tomatoes go real cheap in spring and with victoria market nearby and some free time to spare i whipped up a large tray of vegeterian lasagna (because i have way too many vegetarian friends). I'm glad they loved it!

so far i have half a tray left, i can't finish it. Any takers???

Of i hope in 10 years time

i hope in 10 years time, originally uploaded by jonolist.

i hope in 10 years time
when we're all doing whatever it is we're doing, we won't be wearing those boring shoes/heels that looked forced upon. We would instead breeze into & out of our _____(choose practice/loft/cafe/soho/studio/atelier/classroom/kitchen) with sneakers and jeans just like this.

We'll look tired and haggard, our shoes worned out, jeans/stockings/not-so-office-like pants overworned, hands shakey from the coffee overdose and way too much sketching....all this i meant in a good way, just because we're doing the things we love doing, whatever that is.

Take a few photos because its what we all do anyway and then stare into the sky and find new places to go. We'll chillax with music we only we heard twice in our lives but sound so familiar, even if we're outdoors the music would still be playing in our heads.

Share a nice cold bowl of chendol as we discuss the important things in life; post post post modernism, sesame street, the failure of sustainability, where to go for brunch....those kind of topics

So here's to ten years later or maybe twenty. Cheers! i sure hope me writing this all down won't jinx this plan up.