London Apartment

Spring's Signals

This picture was taken on 21.01.2007 from my lounge - it was such a beautiful day out I figured it would be as good a time as any since I moved in to capture my new apartment. I then noticed that my garden had turned green again - Mother Nature around them must have shown them enough stimulus that they have begun signalling spring. Of course no one should be jumping to conclusions in January even with the world as out of whack as we know it.

Looking at that picture again now, I might be fooled to think that I could actually get out into that little garden of mine and start a barbeque fire going!


Three days later, in the morning of 24.01.2007, I was greeted by this beautiful view in my bedroom window. It caused such a stir in London and even though it didn't warrant a standstill, most of London's public transport networks were disrupted enough for us to stifle a slight snigger to think how a few inches of snow could throw such a curveball into the daily proceedings of "one of the world's great cities".

I hope my plants survive this fickle weather.

Pig Year

yu shang lo hei! so singaporean and so delicious!









london's favourite lobster noodle and boy did we taste a delicious one in Gold Mine down at Bayswater;








Steamed sea bass - nice and fresh; nian nian you yu!









crispy chicken layered with prawn paste; who kyoh kwei?










deep fried eel in garlic and chilli - every sort of fish in the year of the fire pig - we're going to have abundance in abundance! here's hoping my waistline doesn't suffer for it.






the cast assembled at the very last minute - and seeing how the table was left once this lot was done with the day's offerings, i'm optimistically hopeful everyone enjoyed themselves!






the remains:


heads and tails, a finish to what we have started, a complete cycle, a closure, consistency of narrative - all good, including the fish!






it's good to be this messy at new year - abundance and excess guaranteed!

Everything your heart desires

Happy Lunar New Year!

It was a pleasant day out in London today. The sun was warming up the mildly chilly morning as I headed out of the apartment to the hair maestros, with MK's Slowness in hand and a clean new look in mind. I am not a morning person by any stretch of the imagination so whenever I do get out of bed earlier and make it past the first hour or so, a smile stretches across my face. It could be the fact that I have gained a few extra hours on the day and can check a few more things off my list of things to do; or it could be the sweeter morning air, rid of the pollutants of the night before and only slowly accumulating some of the new day's unwanted discharges. Which is quite curious because the air in the morning does seem sweeter even though it should not really be any fresher here in London. I think it seems so because the people who do notice it are armed with something else. In a city where the masses congregate and disperse in regulated patterns, it might be the simple break from the ordinary that lends the air of being extraordinary. Of course, extraordinariness is not so simply bestowed but knowing that "we could all do with a few more hours of sleep", the fact that these people are out on the streets is already noteworthy.

Because of motivations, both personal or external, these few have had to break ranks from the herd. To make it out on the streets is to be on their ways and this is revealing of this person's fibre. It tells of a sense of purpose to this person's day and for those who share in it - and it can only be the similarly selected few who are around and able to do so - to steel them against the fresh morning chill not with the comforting warmth of the congregated herd but with the pride of the purposeful few. There are things to be done and I am going to do it.

So whenever I am able to join this group of people, I sense it and I am glad I made it that day for the ride. I might be slightly vicarious here but I gain from knowing that there is a solidarity of the purposeful and I can find solace in them whenever I try. Personally, I think it's purely down to winning my first personal battle of the day that does it for me. I think this because be it a Saturday morning when I'm out of bed and out of the house before noon and running errands or arriving in the office on a Monday morning earlier than 99% of the office, I feel that extra lift that a bounce in my steps gives.

So during this year of the (Golden) Pig, I want to remember these little mind games of mine and may I keep winning these personal battles and come out at the other end a better man.

Box

I recently read about thinking in the box.

Strange isn't it?

At least to me, it was. I have been inculcated for the longest time to think outside the box, to not repeat the ordinary and to impress with a new way of looking at any and everything - including how we look at things. To then read about thinking in the box triggered memories of my childhood and early years in school. I remember being told that I daydream too easily and too often drifted away when in class. True to my character of never wanting to be criticised, I set out to change that. In very little time, at least as I remember it now, I found that I could focus on things at will. In fact, I could switch focus quickly and give the moment my full concentration. I only realised more recently that ability is one of the qualities experts identified as an admirable one possessed by most very successful top level executives and crucial to enable quick and well informed decision making. I thought I might have lost that ability but that might not necessarily be the case. Just little more than a month ago, I found 5 things that took my fancy at once, including things in my dayjob; and was able to juggle them. I was elated and found myself performing better at each task throughout each day. I felt alive!

But I digress.

Thinking in the box was brought up by a goalkeeping coach writing in a broadsheet about how a goalkeeper needed a day to focus and to 'get in the zone', in relation to the fact that MacLaren announced that Manchester United goalkeeper currently on loan to Watford would start yesterday's friendly against Spain at Old Trafford a day before. Reading that, I contemplated the possibility that I am underperforming at work for the simple reason that I am too easily distracted! That my short attention span is my undoing. Or that given a tasks, I seldom focus on the end goal and stop thinking laterally so as to try and reach that end. I drift as I zoom in to the task and in the time that it takes me to act, I am already dreaming.

So, I should try focusing on finishing tasks - take KN's advice and get things checked off the list each day and consider a job done. It is well done if I do that well.

UK's National Sickie Day

It's the first day of February and the Employment Law Advisory Services says 310,000 workers could phone in sick today, costing British industry £27million.

Well, I was really going to call in sick today (even more so than most other Mondays) and would have if I wasn't absolutely needed in the office to be Super Part 1 again. I got in before 9am and left at 1030pm, most of it with a wrenching in my stomach from stress and fighting the feeling of injustice. It has to do with the new team seating plan in the office and how I think it again adds up to the unequal playing field. The only way to go is fight, to be more competitive and to muscle my way in. It's going to be get-your-hands-dirty, throw an elbow or two WORK from now on.

Slapper or slag - which is worse?

Rewind to Friday office drinks - second most culpable culprit of office indiscretions behind office Christmas dinners. It's all down to booze of course but whether it just unearths underlying tensions already existing between colleagues or if it's all booze instigated chain of events is anyone's guess. More than likely, it's a combination of both.

ANYWAY.

Everyone at V's leaving do at DUST had knocked back quite a few and all seemed normal. There was much mirth being shared and it seemed the only thing left to do was to get everyone on the dance floor. Floating back and forth between cliques, I stopped by the circle formed by Serge and AR. I think Gary was also there but not a protagonist and only worth mentioning as a possible star witness. They were laughing and I was told why. AR complained that Serge had called her a slag. Serge offered that AR had told a story involving her at 11 years, a nun and some sex. I laughed ALONG and said the word 'slag' and WHAM! My first slap on the face in my entire life.

Maybe it's a chinese thing, maybe it's being a man but to be slapped on the face is a major insult the impact of which I'm still finding difficulty dealing with. Not just the fact that I literally feel the hand on my face even now two days later but I just cannot believe my virgin slap is totally undeserved. Now she might be equally insulted being labelled lewd and promiscuous but surely then, the slap should have been reserved for Serge? Was it because she didn't dare do it to him since he's new to the office? Was it because we have known each other for longer and she then thought she could take liberties? Was it because she already wanted to slap me anyway? And because it is not clear to me why Serge was spared the slap and I got it straight in the face, I think she owes me an apology.

While I want to be the bigger man and think that what happens on Fridays should be forgotten on Monday morning, I'm not sure this has not become personal.

And the last big moan about being slapped in a bar by a woman? I didn't even get anything in return for it.

Taking gigantic baby steps

Exercise for today:


1. What am I passionate about?
2. What am I genetically encoded for - what activities do I feel just "made to do"?
3. What makes economic sense - what can you make a living at?

Do these 3 circles overlap?

Do I spend at least 50% of my life within these circles? If not, I need to focus on my ...
'To stop list'


But let me start again from the top, even if I can't answer these questions now. With the simplest of starts, here goes:
1. Am I passionate about architecture?
2. Can I be the best at architecture in the world?
3. Does architecture best drive my economic engine?

It seems rather obvious that I am being rather vague about what my passion is but like all good questions, I think it lets me delve that bit further along with these in my head and see if the swirling will get me focusing on good answers.

Round Two:
1. I am passionate about positive changes to status quo - be it people's lives, people's understanding of things (including my own), urban fabric, governance, ...
2. I feel genetically encoded to analyse. I am not the best at proving myself and that explains my absolute inability in the face of authority. I am however nearly aggressive in my delivery of my analysis and conclusions to peers. It might have something to do with sensing the sometimes imagined and self-imposed levels of each participant or audience. For example, I do think that Keith thinks that he is the smartest man in the room every time he enters one and that helps him reach far and wide with his wit - useful to ignite or to diffuse.
3. I do not feel that doing what I do now is the most profitable way to spend my time, per hour. The way that I am practising architecture, or applying myself in the architectural development environment of my present employment and the way they practice, presents me with little real challenge and no real targets to meet. The tasks and assignments are insufficient for me and I keep wondering what to do better, what to get right, what to address and what represents a 'completion of the task'. I overthink it but it might be because I do not want to be seen as a non-thinking draftsman (cue to DB's "we're a company of architects, not CAD monkeys" which is strangely ironic given he starts off thinking and treating everyone like a peanut-munching CAD chimp until you prove otherwise - no doubt a fully paid up member of the TOUGH LOVE bloc).


Round Three:
1. Is designing the best way to fully understand and then help change things? Is architecture just about design? Is architecture only about designing buildings and all backdrops? Can we create scenarios? I read about Milner scoring a belter last night against Villa and then being "the architect" of the next one by Dyer. By 'architect', the broadsheet meant that the architect made something happen, he mediated in a situation to create a hero, he instigated a means to an end and/or he planned AND executed a move to create a platform for another scenario that he envisioned to happen. Insert D-Walker's analogy of architecture and ballet here regarding appreciation PLUS skill.

But we can design lives, our own, at least. So its not just paper and pen, lines and curves and certainly not just digital modeling. Is it here that I keep digging?

If the world is about specialists now, how does OMAMO operate to maximise itself? Devolution of it's two main enterprise - consultancy and design. With that clarity, Rem can already charge more while simultaneously finding more fuel for his sales pitch (for the design). Is that clarity the way forward for my present?

2. Analysis. Then what? Of what?
3. What jobs get paid good money for analysis?