finances

one thing i've been doing while studying abroad is keeping a strict account of my expenses while i am here. everything i buy i note in a spreadsheet that includes date, category of purchase and any notes. this serves the dual purpose of maintaining a strict budget (whose average value should ideally be about 87.35 euro per week) and satiating my thirst for data. i have been here officially for a month and as september is over, i thought i'd analyze my spending habits for the past month. i also reread jean paul's copy of edward tufte's "the visual display of quantitative information" and recently made a timeline for my studio project, so i am in the mood for the visual analysis of data.


the graph shows total spending per day in a cumulative manner, so when you see the tall spike that goes to about 100 euro, for example, it means that i spent 90 on a bicycle and like 8 on food. also sorry for the dirty image quality; blogspot doesn't let you upload PDFs as images so i had to convert my illustrator output to a JPG and that messed things up.

what does the graph tell me about my spending habits? well for the most part i am sticking close to my budget, barring a few one-time expenses like new shoes and a bike that i will hopefully recover some part of the cost from when i sell it in january. i see obvious spikes when i travel, though i did go to den haag on september 3 cheaply. you can also tell why i went places based on my spending: all i did in utrecht was walk around so the main expense was the train ticket whereas amsterdam is closer and i spent more money on the concert ticket so entertainment dominates that day's expenses. there are spikes when i buy supplies like a pro flickr account and when i ordered this book online. the main entertainment spike was when i went to amsterdam to see the dirty projectors. i bought food in bursts. they trailed off a bit in size in the end of the month as i ate most of the food i had left in my pantry before spending a good 20 euro today to restock. also i only ate out twice the entire month (a cheap pizza in amsterdam and some wagamama-knock-off noodles in utrecht). i'll also speculate that the frequency of the food-buying bursts is higher than when i bought food in america (as the grocery store is on my way home here and i actually go home when it is open, unlike most nights at MIT) and each burst is lower in cost because there are more of them and because i can only buy what i can carry around the store in a shopping basket. and in america the main shopping container is the cart (it is offered to you before you even enter the store) whereas here baskets are readily available and carts are more difficult to procure and more awkward to use. even this shows up in the data. the beer line usually follows the food line because i typically bought beer at the C1000; when it deviates is when i probably had some beers in a bar. the graph also shows that there are a number of days where i spent little or no money at all. those days were ones where i probably slept late and sat around in my room for most of the day like a slob, eating food that i bought previously. it is interesting to see all of this laid out. i wonder how october will compare in terms of habits as i thoroughly settle in and venture out of the country at least once.

the graph tells me one more thing: that i don't have a lot of school work to do, as i was able to spend a couple hours off and on in illustrator doing this. we've been doing research to support the design part of the studio and on tuesday i handed in a short proposal and the aforementioned timeline. i am going to use technologies developed by synthetic biology as a basis for my design. if you're unfamiliar with this new field, this article is a good place to start. it is basically manufacturing and machining at a molecular level using biological tools. think of it as a hardware/software analogy; instead of writing code to build software that controls hardware, you're (re)writing DNA to build proteins that control enzymatic pathways or reactions. there are a lot of potential projects that could spawn from this as the field is mentioned in reverent tones as being a miracle tool: once figured out, it could be used to do anything from sequester carbon to grow biofuels to build molecular computers to manufacturing new drugs or materials. so now i have to find a set of potential automations ( > 3 ideas) and then quickly produce an "ad" (billboard, t-shirt, postcard, just some concise image) to capture my ideas. while the class environment can be frustrating and we only meet with the professor for about 3 hours a week as a group, i am amazingly still interested in designing something neat. it might even end up looking like this, though i can't outsource the sexy rendering process to another entity like howeler + yoon did. that project is like solaris meets tokyo's capsule tower with a twist of ETH's brick-laying robot and a heavy dose of synthetic biology.

amster(damn)

on sunday i went to amsterdam. i didn't leave until the middle of the afternoon because i had to finish some school work beforehand. i hoped to have enough time to walk around before going to see a concert. on the way to the train station i ran into my friend jurrian who was also going towards amsterdam. i asked him about how the canals fill with water quickly if there isn't much runoff. he said it is because the land is below sea level so when there is a void the water comes through the ground to fill it, i guess due to pressure. he said the bigger problem is keeping the water out. there is a massive set of locks and pumps throughout the polders in holland that are controlled by computers to regulate water levels in the major canals. he has seen one of the controller substations. i should check out this infrastructure.


this is what you see when you leave amsterdam centraal train station. lots and lots of bikes.


i walked along the western docks. they are tearing this older building down. there are impressive new condos and apartments being built in the area. some had trendy design studios on the first floor.


ok, this is really why i was walking here, to see silodam. it is a housing project by MVRDV. it sits on pylons above the water. i don't think the tides here are drastic which is odd because of the latitude. anyways some apartments on the first two floors have gangways directly to the street while the upper units have a separate lobby. there is a public deck that you have to cross under the building to find, navigating between the thick columns. in one of the upper units there was a party and the sounds drifted into the road.



the building's visual interest comes from its diversity of cladding and window types. i was disappointed by how flat the building reads. it is just a standard set of apartments (with generously sized windows) with a bunch of different materials slapped on. so its block-ness is a bit deceiving. it would've been more interesting to me if there was more push/pull action going on so you got some overhang, some shadow, some recession, some sense of depth. the building does it twice on the upper floors to create some deck space but it isn't enough. it is odd because stacking as an organizational idea is something MVRDV uses a lot: for references, see their housing block in spain that just finished or the new bank that construction just started on or the fiero milano tower. but maybe this is an early project so they weren't all about stacking yet? maybe the budget was too tight to allow that type of excess? anyways.


ok. now we're talking. this is more typical. i started walking back towards the downtown area.


canals here are wider than anywhere else i've seen in a city. most were lined with houseboats. amsterdam, if you haven't seen a map, is arranged radially outward from its downtown node. canals run in a circular fashion like rings. some frenchman (sartre? camus?) compared the layout of amsterdam to the seven levels of hell. the red light district is on the east side. i wandered mostly in the western areas and downtown. the city is hugely devoted to leisure of all types, from movies to shopping to a vodka museum to coffeeshops (i.e. doobie dens) to galleries to whatever. everybody seemed pretty relaxed. i passed some french hippies smoking joints on the street. in a society where everything is allowed not much is abused.


there is a lot of shopping here. and trams.




after i got downtown i followed the main street south to leidseplein where lots of people where out. i bought a ticket for the concert and kept wandering around, mostly in the oud west and jordaan area. jordaan is the hipster part of amsterdam, with galleries and bars and good-looking restaurants. it gave off sort of a new york east village vibe but here things felt older.




i ate a cheap pizza in jordaan and walked back towards the melkweg, the club where i was going to hear a band. there was a concert in the leidesplein too so i stood and watched a dutch group go through the funk hits of the 70s. i met up with my friend sebastian and his friend helen and we went back towards the melkweg.


i was really excited to hear the dirty projectors live again. i saw them once in june in boston and it was good. seeing a concert at a rock club in holland is like seeing a concert at a rock club anywhere else, with the same etiquette, lights, etc. the opening band (tune yards) was interesting, with just a woman on ukelele and loops and a guy who sometimes laid down some basslines. they both wore face paint. the dirty projectors were good despite a persistent hum in the sound system throughout their set. they played pretty much the same set as i saw in boston three months ago but with some additions in the middle. tempos seemed a bit slow but they have been on the road for a while. it was still a good concert. "bitte orca" means a lot to me.

afterwards we walked to the train station. a woman hit sebastian on her bike and was very angry. we managed to miss the 12:45 train because were distracted and sitting on the wrong end of the platform (15a instead of 15b). what to do? hit the late night albert heijn for some grolsch and wait for the 1:45 nachtrein. good times. and when that train finally came, we sat in a cabin with two kids flying back to barcelona. they talked about how cheap the prostitutes were in amsterdam compared to spain. and the lack of discoteques. they asked us if the security at schiphol would find the weed in their checked luggage. they had it stored in their shampoo bottles. they seemed pretty paranoid, but it was probably the herb talking.

monday update

well. here i am. and there you are, reading about my being here. it puts us in the same place for a moment. for the past two weeks i didn't really leave delft because i was sort of lazy and afraid of spending money. yesterday i went to amsterdam for the first time and this deserves an independent post, so i'll do that later. so, let me fill you in with some details in wobbly chronological order:

last weekend, all of holland celebrated openmonumentendag. on saturday and sunday, all of the archaic monuments of the country were open to the public and free. so all the old town halls, cathedrals, forts, manors, mansions, castles, preservations, homes, and other monuments were fair game. i stayed in delft like a slob but i managed to see the interiors of the two main churches here and the town hall (stadhuis) too.


this is the nieuwe kirk on the main square. they built it when they got tired of the oude kirk. i think it is still about 400 years old. it still chimes every half hour and you can hear it everywhere in the town, even when you're trying to sleep. lots of people were wandering. there was a sing-a-long for hymns too. the stained glass was impressive.




this was near the apse in the front of the church. what was this tiny door used for?


then i went up into the stadhuis, which is still used for municipal meetings and the town council. they have a nicely elevated view of the market, complete with a train for kids to ride on.


the oude kirk is probably around 800 years old. i don't remember for sure. i remember seeing a map of delft in 1200 and the church was on it as one of a few landmarks other than some canals. it is more austere in its whitewashed lack of ornament but it is interesting how both have the same style of wooden roof construction. both also had a similar layout inside, with the organ over the entrance in both cases (though maybe this was installed later).


also on saturdays delft has a flea market with very refined taste. vendors line up to sell old portraits, chairs, plates, novels, war items, and lots of other trinkets you could purchase to decorate your home. most of the inventory would qualify for antique status. it is fun to look though.


where shopping carts go to die.

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then during the week i worked mostly on school things. right now we're doing research to narrow our interests into a topic of manageable scale that we can use it in our design. what i mean is, the studio is about how future technologies influence the city. while past technical innovations were mostly mechanical (subways) or material (steel), now the city has become a vast network of automated processes ranging from water pump control to wireless to CCTV to environmental sensors to traffic control devices to supercomputers that model the inside of an atomic bomb to the heavy infrastructure of cabling and data centers that allow the internet to exist. there is a lot going on. our assignment is to first figure out what type of technology we want to base our design on.

i first was interested in doing some type of project addressing invisible technologies like wireless networks and somehow making it visible, but then i got excited about a more organic approach. tools are already in use for biomodification and genetic alteration on a number of scales from medical treatments to new species of fruit to goats that can produce spider silk to pigs that are altered to reduce the amount of nitrate in their waste to glofish to debates on using animals like pigs as organ farms for human use. a lot of the representation of this is very pessimistic about humans abusing the tool of genetic manipulation and the world being degraded as a result. there are rightly a lot of ethical questions about all of this and i still need to get more educated about the facts (though i did have a good starter conversation about genetically modified crops with sam and katie at royal bengal).

so i'm interested in how this tool could be used. for example, there are researchers working on modifying plants so they can sequester far more carbon dioxide than they normally do. how would the use of carbon-sucking species influence green space or even building facades in the city? i've heard there is a francois roche building in bangkok that supposedly incorporates something like this at a nano level, but i haven't found any good documentation of it yet. plants could also be modified to produce specific rare chemicals that are critical to electronics manufacturing. what if you could grow corn that contained a harvestable amount of silicon? plants also can act as sensors: a recent project is a plant that grows red instead of green when planted in the presence of landmines. some species could be a distributed network of groundwater or soil contamination or air quality. maybe fluorescent bacteria could light streets or airborne organisms could continuously clean urban air. waste management is also an issue in cities. some smaller areas are now opting for manmade wetlands to clean water. how could this be implemented on a larger scale with possibly modified plants to make the process more efficient? how would the creation of large urban wetlands affect city growth and infrastructure? i think right now i am most excited about the wetlands idea but maybe because it is the most obvious and tangible application i have found so far.

so we're starting with both cultural references and technical ones. on wednesday we sat around and i showed bits of various sci-fi movies that are sort of relevant. on friday i finally had the chance to sit down and watch "logan's run," a 1976 glam sci-fi flick about a society where each person dies when he or she turns 30. so it is a culture of youth and excess; all of the clothing resembles flowing pastel tunics, like a gay robin hood in las vegas in 2050. blasters don't emit lasers; shit just blows up where you point it. not to give away the plot of the film, but some people decide to run away instead of "renewing" (people think you are born again when you're 30 through this cult ceremony but really they just zap you). they have to escape through the waterworks of the city. apparently, the future city (housed inside geodesic domes that would make buckminster fuller quiver) is powered by water. i was really excited when they finally showed the water intake because they shot that scene at the water gardens in fort worth designed by philip johnson:


other scenes are shot in futuristic places in dallas so it was a nice little tour of the metroplex. it was even more interesting because there was no mention or plot of the adversary in this film. why are people killed at 30? who made these decisions? who do they rebel against when they break the system? what are people actually doing? they hint at a computer presence that controls everything in a few key scenes, but that part of the plot could have been much more developed. the film though is highly recommended.

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whew. what else did i do? i sat in at a jam session at club bebop on tuesday. that was fun. i talked with a trumpeter who is more into "groove" than standards, meaning he plays funk. he proudly told a story of kidnapping bootsy collins from his hotel room in den haag when he was there for a festival and holding a james brown jam session at a local jazz cafe.

also somebody down the bushes in front of my bicycle storage unit and i came out the door to find some concrete pylons covered in snails! i had never examined a snail in detail before. they were pretty fascinating. two small boys were playing with them and shouting at me in dutch but i couldn't respond! what could i do? it was almost a boo radley moment where i just had to continue on my walk to the grocery store without saying anything. i came out with my camera in the morning but they were gone. where would snails go? how far could they really get in 18 hours?

while on another bike ride, i stumbled upon a small organic grocery store. i think i might go there more often even if it is more expensive. i finally found red onions here and bought some brown sugar and organic falafel. there is good food here, you just have to know where to look.

i went to another lecture by patrick healy and it was still quite enjoyable. he ties a lot of things together in his ramblings that are periodically reinforced by a look at a pile of notes. he is irish and in moments of passion his accent shows itself. he talked mostly about 19th century interiors with citations of late 18th century french novels, paintings, monuments in berlin, and heavy references to both greek and roman art. on some level it is an exercise in archaic thought but he does a good job of reminding you why this discussion is relevant. he also had some choice quotes and made some good points about kitsch and its origin.

there is a carnival in delft this weekend too. they set up in the markt with bumper cars, an old west roller coaster complete with wide-nosed caricatures of american indians and a large mural about new york over a trailer that sold cotton candy. europe has gypsies but america has the upper hand on carnies. you could ride one ride that twisted you upside down and gave you a new view of delft. it seemed scary. a few friends rode it but i couldn't do it.



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then on saturday i took a bike ride east of delft to a park called westerpark. they had some nice marshy areas and a fair number of mosquitoes. transit in holland is well segregated by speed. bike paths are separate from streets and sidewalks. in the park, there were separate paths for bikes, pedestrians, and horses that would independently through the grounds as if it was an amusement park. added to those layers were paths for the golfers on the golf course and a road for cars. it was interesting to see how they overlapped. all of the non-motorized transit used the same bridges but when they would approach the bridge, each path would remain distinct so three separate paths, each separated by a meter of grass, would lead up to the bridge. it was cool to see. the area was nice.






this is how tomatoes are grown in holland.

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ok. i am hungry now. this blogging stuff is hard work. i need to go eat so i'll post something about amsterdam soon.

summary

i trekked to utrecht

on sunday i went to utrecht. it is in the middle of the country closer to amsterdam. i went to walk around the downtown area and to hike out to the university of utrecht that has some pretty awesome buildings by some SUPERDUTCH firms (OMA, wiel arets, neutelings riedijk, others).

it was a cloudy day and i enjoyed the city center of utrecht. lots of people were out on sunday afternoon shopping and sitting in cafes. it feels medieval and almost italian. the church tower is visible from everywhere and the cathedral was quite impressive even though half of it was destroyed some time ago so it exists as half a sanctuary and then a tower. it feels fortified because the canals are set a whole story lower than the street (whereas in delft they are on the same level), so you have another walkway down along the water and catacomb-like spaces for storage or business. lots of restaurants set up in these subterranean spaces and put tables out along the water which at night seemed like a beautiful place to eat. the city definitely seemed magical at night. in one block i passed a music venue that hosted a diverse set of acts from sun o))) to maceo parker and marcus miller, art galleries, a good jazz record shop (i could see a vinyl copy of "water babies" on the shelf) that looked like it also had a hair salon in the back (very trendy), a good-looking greek restaurant, and a comic book store.

outside the main island area it gets more normal but still nice. it was a long walk out to the university but enjoyable as there was a lot to look at. along one of the main routes out of downtown i ate at daily wok, the euro-version of wagamama for some cheap noodles. as you continue out of town, the housing gets more standardized but still with big trees and restaurants in old train stations. i made a detour to see a famous house that wasn't very impressive in person and then kept walking.

once you get close to the beltway, you get into campus land with student housing in squat 2-story brick apartments, a big soccer stadium, and a nice campus for the utrecht college. there is a nice dormitory there that acts as a sound wall between an adjacent highway and the rest of campus. it is a long thin building where each student room gets a floor-to-ceiling window inside their brick bay unit. it is nice because it is sculpted to be a wall, with brick serifs coming off each end of the building, tapering to a point but still with windows as if the building isn't a new building but inhabiting a shell of a cathedral or fortress (there is an old fortress on the campus so maybe it is a reference to that).

i finally got to the university of utrecht only as the really interesting library by wiel arets closed at 6. the place was deserted and no buildings were open. i looked around as the sun was getting low, checking out some of the main buildings i didn't recognize and then rem's educatorium and a research building with snakes in the facade. the dorms were quite varied, from a very cosmopolitan high rise to a very eastern-bloc building made of prefab pods once painted and now weathered. it was interesting though as the campus was on farmland so you have these large projects and then across the bike path, the odor of cows and rabbits hopping down into creekbeds. i took a bus back to the main train station to start over and walk the downtown area (all the way south to the museum this time) again as the sun set.

like i said, the city is much more luxurious at night when people sit outside to eat and the lights reflect off the canals. it is quite a romantic scene. on one dock i passed a thai restaurant next to a north indian restaurant next to an italian pizzeria with tables along the water. i was very impressed with utrecht.










i really liked this bench.


my favorite canal/street, oudegracht.




the rietveld schroderhuis (1924). not that impressive in person. you can see all of the layers of paint. like other early 20th century experiments in modern construction, it seems flimsy. as an object or a set of planes in space it seems interesting but i don't know about as a home. i didn't see the interior though so maybe that is nice. i kept walking.


finally on campus at the university of utrecht.




the wiel arets library (2004) i had seen in some books. the paneled facade seemed pretty cool and the interior, from what i had seen, looked nice though i didn't get to go in because it closed. it takes this one pattern, shown below, and uses it both for an impression in the cladding and on the glass, maybe as a strategy to keep direct light down on all the precious books inside. very herzog & de meuron but it does the job.




also had this pool bowl entrance to a restaurant on campus. on top of the restaurant was a basketball court.



the educatorium by rem/OMA (1997). the diagram of this building is really evident. it is another ramp building and seems pretty successful. it would've been nice to see the interior.


a smaller funky building whose diagram is also evident, directly across the street from the educatorium. it is by UNstudio (ben van berkel), sort of a proto diller & scofidio type thing. i don't know. i don't know what happens inside either. it has some pretty nice circulation though.


building by neutelings riedijk (1997). i have trouble pronouncing that firm's name. i have been saying it out loud for the past 23 seconds. it has sprayed concrete as a facade with some odd tremors-esque worms crawling around. i don't know what happens inside, it is probably a lab building.


this building (the tower) is too sexy to be a student dorm. it should be relocated to miami.


again, i have no idea what is going on here. i think somebody was inspired by a shipyard. this is a dorm. i saw people in the windows cooking though i have no idea what goes on in those beams that go across. too industrial.


modular student housing. sort of crappy and weird. they are spined together and the walkways are covered but outdoors. heating bills must be really high.


ok. now you're tired and you're just playing with glass, jack. get on that bus and get back downtown before the sun sets completely.


good, i made it back downtown.


then i walked around for a bit and looked at all of the restaurants i couldn't eat in because i am poor. plus it is no fun to eat by yourself at expensive restaurants because there is no experience or environment or umwelt or milieu without (a) friend(s) to partake with. luxurious settings like that are meant to be enjoyed and that is hard to do by yourself, especially for me because i immediately devour my food without poise and am done too quickly to harvest pleasure from the experience. plus i didn't have a book and i didn't feel like drawing. oh, and i am poor. there are some good-looking restaurants though and a couple funky bars. i walked by one with a lot of rockers hanging out and a band that sounded like dinosaur jr. warming up.


the netherlands is the venice of europe.

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in other news, i finally named my laptop that i bought over a month ago. her name is worknesh mega. she is named after a lion i met in ethiopia because both animals are golden and powerful. at first i didn't really like the windows set-up but i optimized some things and now it is comfortable.

also: i found the veggie products at the supermarket. they are kept in the back in between two types of carcass. why would they be there? why would vegetarians even want to venture among the graveyard that is the meat section? regardless, i had veggie burgers yesterday and am planning to cook some tempeh this weekend too.

also: i went to a jam session last night for the school jazz association at a bar and played well on electric bass. the bar was tiny and filled with students. people there were pretty amateur but it was fun to shred a bit. they play the same tired stuff people in america play. people liked how i soloed though, even calling out for a bass solo, getting quieter, and then clapping. i laid down one jerry jemmott line from king curtis's "memphis soul stew" and everybody was feelin' all right. i met some people to play with, even playing this afternoon on a double bass at the cultural center for a while. we'll see how this goes.

school is OK. you can only check out 10 books at a time from the library and even when you do, people stare at you funny like you have a problem or are actively sprouting a second head from your original one. it is weird. the faculty closed at 7 pm today so i had to go home then. i went to a really good lecture this morning by philosopher patrick healy. he is teaching a class about the philosophy of image and its relation to architecture. he gave a mesmerizing talk about schinkel and berlin and the origin of museums as cultural spaces. he talked like a preacher. i looked at the clock a lot but it was honestly to wish that it was moving slower.