W and J (An Absurdist Scene)

A white room, maybe. A crowd is gathered. They are constantly moving.

Any time.

Two men begin talking. One is looking for something. The other is reluctant to assist.


J:
(uneasily). I don't know if it is here. Do you see it?

W:
(unconcerned, with his head down). I don't know.

J:
(gesturing). Well, you are looking at something.

W:
Yes, but I cannot describe it to you.

J:
Well, I am in the same place as you. If I describe what I see, can you confirm what I'm seeing? That might be helpful.

W:
(reluctant). I don't know. Maybe.

J:
Come on. All you have to do is say yes or no. Let me know if I find what I am looking for. It isn't that hard.

W:
I guess I could help. I have nothing else to do.

J:
OK, I'll try then.


J:
I see a number of melons. If I tried to gather them up, I could barely hold them together in my arms. One might fall to the ground.

W:
How ripe are these melons?

J:
Just about ripe enough to be eaten. We could eat them tomorrow.

W:
I'm not hungry.

J:
Well you probably will be tomorrow.

W:
I doubt it.

J:
(frustrated). Do you even see the melons?

W:
No.


W:
(still looking at the ground). I still don't see the point of this.

J:
I am trying to find something. Is that so hard to understand?

W:
(confused). Why did you start talking about melons then?

J:
Because that is what I see over there! You don't see them?

W:
I already said I didn't.

J:
(angry). Great. We can't even agree on this one thing. How am I ever going to find what I am looking for? It is impossible! Like pushing one of these melons through a garden hose.

W:
Do you see a hose? I don't see a hose.


Later.

J:
Oh! I remember something!

W:
What is it?

J:
The thing I am looking for! It is about this tall (gestures to W).

W:
Do you know any of the other dimensions?

J:
No. Just this one for now.

W:
How do you that is the height? You could be seeing what you're looking for on its side so its width is the height and now, seeing incorrectly, you have an inaccurate image in your head of what you're searching for. That could hurt you more than it helps.

J:
(defeated). OK, you're right.


Even later.

W:
Yes, finally!

J:
Oh, now you know something. What is it?

W:
I see something!

J:
What do you see?

W:
I see the melons you were mentioning earlier. I guess we weren't actually looking at the same thing then. These melons are quite shiny. I see the light reflecting off of them, the glare.

J:
I followed your eyes to the ground. I knew where you were looking. How did you not see them before?

W:
I guess I was thinking about something else. Or maybe I didn't know what you meant by the word "melon."

J:
(exasperated). How are we supposed to get anywhere interesting if we can't even agree on our initial surroundings? I have a feeling this isn't going to be very productive. I will probably never find what I am looking for.

W:
I still don't see the garden hose. Where is the hose?

J:
There is no hose! That was a figure of speech I used earlier. Some things are real and some things are only language.

W:
I don't follow.

J:
Well, there is reality, an external space we both inhabit simultaneously. I can't communicate directly about this place so I use language to describe what I am experiencing. Language is both visual and oral. (...) Is this even making sense?

W:
Yes. (now excited). Yes! I get what you're saying, finally. So you're looking for something that looks like this? (gestures again to J).

J:
That is close. I think I am looking for something that is more like this. (motions with hands in response to W).


For a number of moments, both are silent, only moving their hands furiously in an effort to communicate.

W:
Oh! I finally get it.

J:
Do you really? Or are you just saying that?

W:
No, I understand. Once you started gesturing, I understood.

J:
So you know what I am looking for? What I am trying to achieve?

W:
If I understand you correctly, then yes.

J:
Do you see it? Can you point me in the right direction?

W:
Towards what?

J:
(annoyed). The thing I am looking for! The one we just talked about with our hands.

W:
Oh, of course. It is over there. (points and smiles).


J:
Where?!

W:
Right over there! You don't see it?

J:
No, I don't. Where is it?

W:
Not the melons, keep looking past the melons. Just look.

J:
(quickly excited). Oh! (now cool again). Well, what do you know, it was right here in front of me the entire time. It is so close. I wonder how I could have missed it.

W:
I know. How did you not see it just then?

J:
How did you not know what I was looking for earlier?

W and J:
(together). I don't know.

J:
Well, at least we can agree on something.

W:
And what is that?


J:
(pauses). You know, I forgot too.

W:
Oh well. At least we both see the same thing.

J:
I'm glad we both see it. Finally.

W:
It took a while, but here we are.

J:
Now, if only we could describe what we both see.

W:
That would take some time, I think.

J:
True. (sighs). It sure is beautiful though, even though we can't describe it at all.

W:
Yeah.

J:
Yeah.

Both are silent again. The crowd moves forward. The two speakers are lost from sight.

dordrecht & de biesbosch

tuesday was the first day i had to wear my winter coat here. it was also my studio mid-review with winy maas. i had my slides together and presented what i thought was a coherent logic to back up my project. overall i don't think it was too successful. at the end there was a long almost heated discussion in which i didn't participate about the scope and dream of the studio. we have since had to refocus our ideas and waste even more time on "research." needless to say i think it has been frustrating. the problems of the studio and my problems with the studio are too numerous and intricate to detail online and i have spent enough time examining them in my head to summarize here.

today is saturday. last night there was a party on the floor below mine in the student house. you know it is a good party when you leave the house the next morning and have to avoid the patches of vomit on the patio outside. today was also one of the shittiest days on record, the kind where you become conscious, hear the shallow rain on your window, and go back to sleep. but i really wanted to get out of delft for a while so i put on my winter jacket and decided to go to dordrecht and bike out to de biesbosch, a national park of wetlands in the delta of the maas river east of the city.

dordrecht isn't much to write home about. the centrum area was nice with shops, tight streets, and wide canals where sailboats were tied. unlike antwerpen, the riverfront areas were mostly redeveloped with large apartment blocks. just east of downtown new apartment developments took over, right up to the water's edge. i arrived in the middle of the afternoon and it was raining lightly the whole time. it was cold and raining and i was on my bike so there are no pictures of dordrecht for you to see.

when you start biking out of the center, you pass through all of the new apartment buildings, stacked on the south side and glassed on the north. then the industrial part of town takes over along the river. the large docks are the striking feature on google maps, but by road you only see silos, knots of pipes, cooling towers, smokestacks, warehouses, and a dupont sign. there was construction on the road to the park and i accidentally got turned around and rode across a railroad bridge across the river towards sliedrecht before reorienting and coming back in the right direction. it was pretty miserable riding but i kept going because i wanted to see the place and do something instead of sitting in my room like i always do and like i am doing now.

on the way to the national park, you pass a golf course whose fairways are mostly under the tall trusses of high voltage cables. in a few minutes you pass an electricity substation with thick concrete walls and a sawing type of electric hum. there was another industrial port on the left and then, within 5 minutes, you're past the stayokay hostel and in the park. national parks in america are considered to be isolated places of preservation. here it is another function that is layered closely on the land, abutting other types of uses casually. to be fair, most of the park was across the river, accessible by ferry, but the tight change of use in this area was surprising. maybe this is a result of there being so little land to start with. regardless i pulled my bike into the visitor's center and browsed around for a bit, waiting for my jacket to dry and the sweat on my back to evaporate.

i was lucky because as i started to walk the short loop, the rain had let up and the sun poked through the haze for an hour. it was nice to be walking around in the midst of this natural setting. i am the type of person that needs to do this frequently to recharge and sharpen my mind. even if it is a short nature trail in a park for an hour, it helps me to center myself, breathe, and appreciate this place where we live. i've done it this semester in the parks of london, in the dunes of haarlem, and on the beach at scheveningen. beyond that, i really enjoy wetlands. this one reminded me a bit of blackwater national wildlife refuge in maryland. wetlands are essential lungs of water ecosystems. one thing i've missed since coming to MIT is the lack of camping and wilderness in my life. anyway, it was nice to spend 90 minutes walking a few kilometers in this park.

then, about halfway through the walk, i realized that this isn't nature at all. i was walking on an embankment that is part of the polder system used to drain the land. to my left were low fields with sheep and horses. i passed a barn with rusting tools in the front. signs frequently dotted the canal above the reeds, directly boats where to go. later i passed a lock or bridge. trees were planted in straight lines at regular intervals along the walking path. towards the end of my walk i hung out with some chickens, peacocks, and a small drenched horse. beyond the rustling stalks i could see barges loaded with containers steaming upriver. this area is productive land that happened to have a footpath running through it. i don't know how the public/private land rights work in holland but it is certainly mixed within this park.

in fact, de biesbosch is really a polder museum that happens to be gorgeous. it is still nature, just nature frozen at a later date than most natural parks. the natural/artificial dichotomy is one i've been thinking about constantly this semester, both in my studio about automation and independently. humans have lived in some places so long that their mark on the land is inseparable from anything that was there before. and humans are biological themselves so how is anything we make distinctly unnatural? we are arranging elements in increasing complex arrays and disrupting ecosystems with high concentrations of metals and compounds that were previously deep inside the earth, but this doesn't mean it isn't natural. it is dangerous and destructive but not unnatural.

this argument that humans are natural beings so their creations are natural is well-trodden (i don't have more sophisticated meditations to share with you in blogland) and in turn can be used to support current methods of production. instead i think it highlights how blurry the boundary is. i used to side more with the crunchy granola AT-hiking hippies on issues like this but after time at a tech school and more thought i still don't support total technologizing but am somewhere in the fuzzy middle. both ends of the spectrum are too extreme to deliver any promising solutions. unfortunately the answer probably lies somewhere in the middle wrapped in questions of scale, application, and lifecycles that are too complex for us to work out. yesterday at dinner, i was rereading an essay by gary snyder in "turtle island," written in 1969, where he advocates population reduction through polyandrous marriage but is severely against nuclear power. this was probably because reliable information on nuclear power wasn't available and everybody was scared shitless in the cold war.

but did you know that only 20% of the radioactive uranium you will probably be exposed to in your lifetime is from anthropogenic sources? it is a somewhat common, naturally occurring substance in the earth and groundwater. sunflowers are naturally efficient at uranium removal from tainted groundwater. after chernobyl they planted sunflowers on rafts to remove uranium from the water. while these are low levels of radioactivity that aren't going to make your children grow three legs, it is still an example of an element that is considered to be a human pollutant in the natural world that is, in fact, quite natural itself. again the question is a level of concentration that makes it unnatural and that is a more difficult question than a binary yes or no answer. there is a recent interview on BLDGBLOG with the designer of the yucca mountain repository that is very insightful.

anyway, the point is that environmental modification isn't the end of the world, but it comes down to a difficult question of scale and concentration. shoot, look at the banana, for one brief example. tons of species have destroyed their habitat before us and have suffered the consequences. coyotes overhunt does and later starve. giraffes grew longer necks because there were no leaves left on the lower branches. iraq used to be the fertile crescent. in the future we will resemble dinosaurs.

and, if it makes any difference, nature doesn't give a shit about the natural/artificial distinction. birds nest in the As of wal-mart. long-legged cranes pick through open landfills looking for scraps of crusted mcdonalds hamburger buns. in the concrete basin of the los angeles river, trees grow in the cracks and shrubs spring up next to the abandoned shopping cart that has parted the waters and allowed life to spring forth. maybe another word for natural should be indifferent.









i found my bike again as the sun was falling off the earth. the ride back to dordrecht seemed shorter but it started raining again, harder than before. the dupont refineries were already glowing, still belching smoke. by the time i got back to the city it was mostly dark and still drizzling. after riding around a bit more and finding nothing interesting, i caught a train back to delft to spend the night in solitude. i might do laundry too.

work space: SAP vs BK

i am going to talk about the differences in work environment between MIT and TUD. both are architecture programs at well-known technical schools. the programs are distinct, both with advantages and disadvantages. the most interesting part of this to me is how the culture of each school is evident in the work that is produced at the school. the pictures here are all from the TUD campus because i don't have pictures of MIT and i think any person who actually reads this will know the space well enough to not require pictures.


this is BK (BK = bouwkunde; bouw = construction, kunde = knowledge) city. before last year it was an old chemistry building on the north part of the campus (closest to the center of delft) slated for demolition. a building of similar vintage across the street is actually in the process of being torn down, though right now it looks more abandoned than in the process of deconstruction. the old TUD architecture building and tower was further south on campus but it burned down. so, in a rush, they held a quick competition and decided to inhabit an older building while a new building is designed and built in the next 3-5 years. i guess my criticism comes at a weak moment for the faculty, as they struggle in a new, temporary space. but, here we go regardless.

first of all, TUD's school is huge. there are about 3000-3300 students enrolled in architecture, both for bachelor's and master's degrees. at MIT, i think it is a combined figure of around 500-600 with SMarchs and Ph.D. students. MIT's program gets a few parts of a few floors of the main building at MIT, but here the building is about the same size as the main MIT building and has two tall floors. why the ceilings are so tall here i don't know, but it is luxurious.

most students arrive by bike so during the week hundreds of bikes fill the main entrance area and around other entries.

the largest differences to me are the type of workspace available and the hours of operation. in an earlier post i showed the orange mountain where my department is located. here, for example is the workspace they provide:


it is only a table with electrical strips in the middle spine. an optical computer mouse doesn't track on the black finish so you have to put paper under your mouse. you don't have any permanent space to work here, unlike at MIT where you get a fair amount of personal desk space to pile books, papers, models, food remains, whatever. there are tables where you can place material to be "saved" or not removed. there are large models here but they aren't built here (more on this soon). once i tried to leave library books here with a sign on them but most people thought it was too susceptible to theft so i ended up returning the books to the library after a few days. this table is also where we have studio meetings, gathered around in chairs leaning in trying to hear what people are saying over the roar of the room.

other studios meet in this room on these same tables too. studios on the public realm, some 2nd-year masters studios too. desk crits happen rarely but i have seen some where the professor will stand with the student at the "save" tables looking over drawings or a model. sketch models usually are built at these tables. people also work here on drawings, mostly using 12" rolls of trace or autoCAD. i have never seen a parallel rule used or anybody working on a drawing larger than A3 (though they may do this at home or print posters of a larger size). this room is incredibly crowded. at its busiest moments every chair is filled, a studio is having a lecture on the orange mountain, and nomadic classes led by mad max professors prowl for space. during one studio meeting in a why factory room, another professor interrupted us, asking if his (larger) class could use the space. we offered to vacate when we were done and were immediately swarmed by his class of 30 or so bachelors students, all with A3 prints, eager to present by pinning up their drawings with magnets.

while this is initially annoying, it is surreal to be around so many people studying architecture. at MIT it is a tiny community holed up in one corner of the main building. here it is a vast enterprise. i've never had so many potential peers before. most of the friends i've made have been through architecture where at MIT i am friends with people in my major but a lot of my other friends are studying totally different things.


most of the bachelors studios meet in specified places on the 2nd floor, which is largely open studio space like in the picture. it has lots of windows and seems better than my studio's space on the first floor. there is still the division between work space and "save" space, but rails for hanging drawings with magnets are visible in the picture. reviews happen when everybody gathers around an area with suspended drawings.

and the hours of the building: 8am until 10pm on weekdays, 8am until 7pm on friday, and CLOSED on the weekends. this is the ridiculous part. so even the unassigned, cramped quarters they give us are only available during these hours. most of my work is done at home at my best desk, on the computer. compare this to MIT with its intensive 24-hour culture. at 9:30 there is announcement about the building closing and at 9:55 security guards march through the facility to herd people to the door.

but hardly anybody is left at this hour. the dutch have a very strict sense of work. the building is packed from around 9 until about 6 when it empties as students go on to sporting activities or home to cook or on to other social events. they drink tons of coffee throughout the day too, an act i cannot compete with as one cup will wire me for 4-5 hours and leave me with a headache. we even have a bouwpub that is open on campus tuesdays and thursdays to provide cheap drinks from 1600 until 1730. a big part of the culture is to work but also to have time to enjoy yourself.



ok, other facilities. there are two places to eat in the building. there is an espresso bar with baked goods and paninis. it is OK. it has a nice place to sit. the main eating area is the ketelhuis and serves lunch. the food is lightweight and not vegetarian friendly. they serve meat sandwiches, soups, and assortment of benign water salads. vegetarian options are tomato soup and bread, a smoothie, salad, or some tired vegetable sandwich. can you please just make some hearty chili or curry or something? if my brain is going to work i need some more material in my stomach. people eat so light here. some people get a cup of soup and a piece of bread for lunch. others just buy bread, a slice of meat, and a slice of cheese and have a sandwich. how is that enough food? recently i went to a cafeteria on the main campus for lunch. their vegetarian options were terrible too. i could only eat a vegetable sandwich. even the egg rolls had seafood in it. the main course was potatoes, green beans, and some steak-thing. real dutch food.




the main glassed-in area in the center of the building is the model-making room. here there are tables, paper cutters, a large wood shop, and rooms for more advanced machines like lasercutters and maybe one 3D printer. the wood shop has things like bandsaws, etc, but is only open from 9 until 5 (9 until 4 on fridays). and the building is closed on the weekend.


most of the models made here are massing models at an urban scale. only a few times have i seen models at a significantly smaller scale. i bet those emerge at the end of the semester, though. i think there is also a greater pedagogical emphasis on urban conception and massing too. one of my friends is in another studio that is more traditional and they're spending half of the semester on site research, context, and establishing some kind of massing idea. modeling materials are mostly wood, foam, foamcore, paper, and some basswood. all of these materials are available at a shop that is in the building. so this business has a monopoly on supplies. it is convenient instead of having to go to pearl, artist supply, or utrecht (the shop), but the prices are super high. i've been told there are other modeling shops around but i haven't found them. i've also been told there is a FABLAB nearby, inspired by MIT. interesting.


here is the lasercutter room. there are 4 small lasercutters for over 3000 students. and they aren't open 24 hours a day. and you don't even cut your own files. you send them to some email address and they get cut for you (so you can't mess up or negotiate any lasercutter funny business). the average time for lasercut parts, i've heard, is a week, which is an eternity when you're trying to build a model. as a result, almost none of the models involve lasercut pieces. most designs i've seen are, to be blunt, rectangular, orthogonal masses. i haven't seen any blobs or curves or polygonal nightmares. there is an area called hyperbody led by kas oosterhuis which is totally blobitecture and more in the jurisdiction of the media lab. maybe the pedagogy here is not really about weird forms and is more about program organization, urban ideas, and detailing (a topic not even touched at MIT). but maybe it is also because they lack access to tools that allow for easy physical modeling of these shapes. it is another interesting reminder of how the tools we have shape our ability to make things.




at first i complained about the library because of its narrow collection compared to MIT. then i realized that MIT has a world-class library and TUD lost most of its collection in the fire. beyond that, they have some important things i had never found at MIT and a lot of older ancient things that would be in the limited access collection at MIT. the library has short hours too and you can only check out 10 books at a time! i guess that makes sense if you have nowhere to store them and you're not going to bike back and forth with 10 books in your backpack. but i checked out 10 at the beginning of the year and the librarian looked at me like i was crazy. so the book-hoarding technique i had at MIT isn't going to fly here.




beyond that, the library is one of the most enjoyable spaces in the building. it is quiet with nice furniture. the ceilings are high and with some gnarly exposed brick that has been ripped up and painted red. there are some good nooks to sit and read. the magazine collection isn't bad. i like it here. there is also a bookstore on campus that sells texts for classes and lots of other architecture books, some that you'd never find in the US. lots of books published by Actar and piles of El Croquis just laying around (whereas they are a rare item in the US). good monographs and things about landscape architecture. i'd never buy anything though because books are so expensive here. even buying something online at amazon in the US and shipping it at a medium priority level is cheaper than just buying the book here. another good library is the NAI library in rotterdam. that place has everything.





this place has awesome furniture, all of it from vitra. the school has a deal with the company where they get free furniture but in turn act as a showroom for the collection. there are cozy places to sit throughout the building, all with contemporary furniture. oh yes.

beyond that, most studios only meet twice a week here, even at the graduate level. my studio meets once a week for maybe three hours. at MIT you're "in studio" for a minimum of 12 hours per week usually. you get a lot less face-time with professors in addition to fewer assembly and space resources.

but, consider the costs here. one year of tuition at MIT is about 36,000 USD. i've mentioned this before, but according to dutch students, a year of education is about 1600 euro at TUD. lets say it is a bad time for the dollar and so that works out to about 3000 dollars. here, a bachelor's degree takes 3 years of full-time study and a master's degree takes 2. so you could potentially complete your entire formal architecture education in 6 years (allowing some slack and time off) for the same amount as attending one year at MIT. that is crazy. and, in addition to that, once you get a master's degree here, you are able to practice professionally in europe. whereas in america you have to get some stupid AIA credits and take the exam in a certain state. but, to add more levels, i've heard that the grading is tougher here, so that passing your final thesis might take two or three tries. but in america it seems there is some grade inflation or a sense that if you make it this far and you've paid this much money, you're going to get your degree and move on with your life. it is complicated.

---------------------------------------


on thursday there was a big event at the orange mountain. winy maas was officially recognized as a professor, the why factory was "opened", and the first book ("visionary cities") was released. tons of people were there including government officials. winy gave a speech about the goals of the why factory, citing the need for research about the future of cities and the need for new visions. he cited the fact that while the 20th century has been the most productive era for visions, there haven't really been any since the 1970s (a fact recently lamented on lebbeus woods's blog too). beyond the speech there was a forum where lots of people presented ideas about his or her future city. this part was really boring because it was all talk about "how i want there to be equality or diversity." the most interesting talk was one by the two other partners of MVRDV with some good accompanying images.

at first i thought that the dolly was left under the podium as a symbol of the department's ability to change or reconfigure at any moment. it seems like a sly way of emphasizing that trait once again. then, after the lecture, i examined the podium and the dolly chassis is bolted to the lectern so you can't separate the two! i thought that was weird but still sort of interesting.


there is also an exhibit of the recent work by the why factory, all shown in a paneled A4 fashion. i spent about 10 hours on wednesday helping put up all of the A4 pages in 4 rooms. it took a lot of effort. but the big mosaic tiles look OK, i think.


afterwards there was a party with cheese and food. and lights. the food was pretty bad. DJs spun some type of electro/disco music while the big screen alternated renderings of projects with movie clips from films like "metropolis" and "blade runner." the gargoyle lion faces on the walls cast long shadows on the walls. they used to be outside but now they are face in, watching students as they work.

i still think it is fascinating that a program that labels itself as researchers of the future is squatting in the courtyard of an early 20th century building that was supposed to be torn down. next to the space frame and orange volume with an inside that looks like "solaris" are these mouthed moldings from one hundred years ago. it really visualizes the layers of our built surroundings and how they just keep piling up. none of them go away. cities now are exercises in not allowing new layers (preservation) or letting them build up (development). part of the appeal of films like "brazil" or "blade runner" is that there is still so much of the present in the future that it is almost believable. most people forget that the future is right now and this is what it looks like.

now, back to fighting off being sick.

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.

arrival

it is almost dawn. there was a moth that flew in through the big velux windows that pivot in the center. a few minutes ago the sky was pitch black but now there is enough light to differentiate the outline of the trees from the brightening sky. a scooter just drove by. i am in my room that i'll be using for the term. there is a nice wooden table in the main space and a separate smaller room for an almost-square bed. i am trading rooms with jean-paul, a dutch student who is leaving on friday to attend MIT.

the transit from boston to delft was irritating only because of my luggage and wheeling it around. i decided to take my bass in order to practice, a decision that felt like a smart one when i saw that jean-paul has an amp in his room i can use (he plays guitar in a beatles cover band here). the flight overnight from boston to dublin was uneventful. the flight attendants and most passengers spoke english with a heavy irish stilt, something i wasn't ready for. i shouldn't have been surprised as it was aer lingus after all. i didn't really get to eat dinner because they didn't have a vegetarian entree. i sat next to a german guy who was finishing his post-doc at harvard in biochemistry and is moving to leiden to work in virology. we talked about influenza and he said he hated the GSD building at harvard. in dublin it was rainy and i spent too many euro on a stupid muffin and coffee. i heard gaelic being spoken in person for the first time.

the flight to amsterdam was short. we arrived around noon. seeing the netherlands from the air is a good introduction to the country. its flatness is unparalleled, even in texas (probably because it is artificial here). development seems well planned although the country is quite dense. i was astounded to see the variety of canals. they are the most pervasive element in the countryside and exist in all sizes. some canals are wide and support freight. others are thin enough for boats and have houses built alongside. other canals begin out of nowhere and disappear, not connected to any other water and only as impressive as a ditch. research into the history of landmaking and hydrology here is something i'll do soon. canals even lift off the ground to cross other canals or roads. trains cross highways. runways cross trains. when we landed there was a small group of people with lawnchairs sitting outside the airport fence, waving their hands and probably shouting. a highway emerged from under the runway, the concrete tunnel walls were tiled with a giant mosaic of a plane in flight.

schiphol is a vast airport. it takes 30 minutes just to walk from your gate to the baggage area. customs is non-existent; i walked through an automatic door and into the shopping area. i managed to corral my luggage onto an intercity train to the hague and sat down to watch the landscape pass. the train is silent and all types of buildings slid by. the level and scale of geometrical boldness in the buildings here (apartment blocks, offices, commercial centers, industry) is immensely attractive. there will be more time for architectural comments later. men rode tractors, spraying fields of crops. horses sat on green carpets, separated from a group of sheep by a shallow ditch (probably a canal). quite a few americans were on the train, though i only knew about this because they talked about how they were on the wrong train and needed to change at the hague to return to leiden. our train didn't stop there.

the hague is an impressive aggregation of buildings. medium-rise office buildings with circular windows and an elevated train that covered the streets. one building was a giant arch with probably a 50-meter span. you could see the trussing on the underside of the arch. under the arch trains sped by. there was the street level and then below that, a stretch of underground highway was exposed to the sun. because the dutch landscape is artifical, you can layer it however you want. there will be an upcoming post comparing land here to the beginning stages of making terrain in simcity.

finally arrived in delft. it looked like a stockyard town at the end of a cattle drive, packed with cows. except now the cattle are bicycles. cars are driven slowly and with caution but most of the time are left parked by canals. people of all ages floated by me on bicycles. i wheeled my luggage down the street and over the gentle humps that pass for bridges spanning thin canals. i passed groups of college-age students all wearing the same OWEE t-shirt. OWEE, i remembered, is the orientation program at TUD that i had been invited to but decided not to attend. i was glad that my first experiences of this place were alone and not in a cheery orientation group. i had a map of where my place was so i was easily able to navigate to it, pausing every two blocks to switch hands on my luggage and look around. impressions of delft as a place are initially favorable but i will report back when i have deeper contributions. the 3-story scale and diversity of designs is pleasing.

i found jean-paul and talked for a while with him. my room overlooks a canal on gasthuistraat. i live on the 3rd floor of a building that houses 12 TUD students. my floor has 4. there is a shared living room and kitchen and i share my bathroom with the other male student. the remaining two students are female. they seem like nice people but speak dutch really quickly. they have a chore chart to divide up household tasks. there is a chalkboard to mark which days of the week you plan to eat dinner at home so you can arrange to eat together. if you cook for one person other than yourself, you receive a point. if you eat another person's cooking, you lose a point. jean-paul is currently at -8. this means he is a bad cook.

the grocery store is called C1000 and is about 3 minutes away in a shopping plaza. the prices seem reasonable although i couldn't find tofu anywhere. you have to pay 20 eurocents for a plastic bag, a fact i didn't realize before snatching a bag to gather my purchases and having a teenage cashier bark at me in dutch. on zuiderstraat, i looked at the houses across the street for a few seconds before realizing they were houseboats anchored in the adjacent canal. jean-paul has a bike i can ride but i need to fix it up first. i was reluctant at first but then i decided to give him permission to ride whyte lyghtnying in cambridge. i miss her already, among other people. when i tried to say goodbye to eegloo, she was nowhere to be found. i think she knew and was mad at me for leaving.

i ate some bread and cheese around 5 before succumbing to jet lag and passing out. it gets chilly at night here. i woke up around 3:30 am and wasn't tired. i had no dreams and did not remember thinking anything after pulling the sheet over me. then i used the internet to talk to my family (hi mom!) and runja for a while. it is a different thing to visit the internet while in another country, mostly because you're looking at the same sites you always look at but your local setting has changed vastly. i read emails about WMBR that, if i was in cambridge, i would need to care about but now i am distanced. i never cared much about reading the mindless updates or games people play on facebook, but now it is even more pointless and irrelevant because i am across the planet and still reading about how you got a high score in bejeweled. can the internet make you care less about people even though you know more about them? anyways it was nice to talk to the people i do care about.

now it is morning for real. the sun is up off to my right behind a layer of clouds. i can see the terra cotta tiles and chimney of the house across the canal. the church chimes every half hour, even throughout the night. the dutch word for church is kirk. men who rise early are now rising, speaking to each other in the street. i heard gulls squeal even though we're pretty far inland. just now when typing that sentence i had a decent-sized portion of deja vu sweep through my head. i am going to lie down for a bit before getting up for the day. a picture update is appropriate and is forthcoming in the near future.

goedemorgen.