5.18.13
Today I was woken by someone tugging at my sheets. After attempting to tug back I finally woke up to Alexis whispering "It's 8:00." I got up and had some muesli for breakfast before walking down the street to the Coffee Company. This particular coffee shop, so to speak, sold the same thing it would in the US - coffee and pastries. However, I later realized that all of the marijuana shops are also labeled as "Coffeeshop". Not really sure what the connection is.
On our way to the Coffee Company we found out that Jen and Teman were going to be late, so we all ended up having somewhat of a second breakfast and used their Wifi as we waited. To some people's dismay the architectural tour of the day was not, in fact, a tour by a hired tour guide but instead a tour given to us by Jen and Teman themselves. When we finally started off on the tour, an hour and a half after the time we were originally supposed to meet, Jen and Teman were informed by a member of the group that this would be the only day we would be able to go to the Flea Market, as it's closed on Sunday and Monday is a holiday. So we spent a bit of time walking through the market, Jen and Teman got scarves, Annie got blue shoes with zips up the side, and a bunch of us (including myself) took pictures throughout of all the crazy things that we found in the market.
We then started walking. Throughout the day no one knew how far we were going to walk, where we were going, or when we could stop for breaks / lunch. I purposefully attempted to walk right next to Jen the whole day so as to get the little pointers about the architecture she was saying only loud enough for those right around her to hear. At first we walked to the area I spent time at last night, right past Saturn and the library. On the way Jen and Teman pointed to the hooks close to the roofline of the buildings, explaining that these were used to hoist furniture in to the houses through the windows, as the doorways were too small. After the library we walked under a bridge where we could hear the train above, I tried getting a sound clip of this as it was making some very musical noises. We took a short break at a tourist shop where I bought little round cookies that looked like tiny waffles with something like caramel inside. They're typically eaten with coffee so I got some tea to go with them. I offered them around to the group, who all seemed to really like them. We then walked past a row of buildings all the same size, but with amazing materials that Jen said can't be used in the US cause people don't care enough about design and think the materials are ugly, though for some reason cookie cutter buildings aren't ugly. This is an interesting opinion about design in Europe that I have heard others voice as well. Jen explained that as we walked around it is very difficult to find abandoned plots of land and the city is having to grow up to accommodate those living in its borders. It seems that all the locals want to be closer to the city center and near public transit. This changes the programmatic nature of spaces. There also tend to be more shutters in Europe.
By this time we had walked to the building commonly referred to as The Whale. This is an architectural project done by a Dutch architect called CIE. It is an O shaped torqued building with a courtyard as the interior. West 8 is the landscape architects for the surrounding area and Arup did the bridges. There is a north and south pier and nearby individual architects designed row houses on the river. The row houses are absolutely gorgeous, I took a lot of photos and as everyone else, was exclaiming that I would LOVE to live in these amazing houses.
Half starved, as it was mid afternoon and we hadn't yet had lunch, we found a small shop that did sandwiches for some. I had vegetarian lasagna, a small greek salad, a small custard for dessert and Elderflower to drink, an amazing slightly fizzy drink that smells floral and has an amazing scent that I don't know from anything else. We then lazily found the tram and began to walk around again, seemingly as if we had no idea where we were going. We saw The Eye, a monumental iconic building done by the Dutch architecture firm Delugan Meissl led by Snohetta. We took photos of its amazing shape as we saw it from the opposite bank of the river. One person in our group noted that it looked more like an eyebrow than an eye. We then practically tripped into an amazing complex that was still under construction. We thought it was a court room as its sign said something about Justite (which we thought was Justice). The architect is Ijdock. Parts of it had a slate roof, which would have required individual installers, it also had a double facade system, and part of its roof had plants on the top and around the building. Since landscape tends to start off in its most immature state and grow into its most mature, unlike architecture which tends to do the opposite, Jen explained that as the complex got older the plants would grow up and end up growing out like vines. There is also one edge of the building that is almost razor sharp, coming to a place that might be an inch thick, if that. One can place one's hand around it as if holding a laptop computer in one hand. So thin it's unbelievable. Clearly this is just for show as it would be impossible to circulate within such a tiny area.
After making a pitstop we ended up at the Silodam by MDRDV, not my favorite building - didn't really do much for me. The building is supposed to be reminiscent of stacking of shipping containers. Across the water we spotted a red and white building that was built on decommissioned oil rig. On the way back to the city center we spotted some buildings with black vertical strips on them that were apparently holding up beams inside to hold the building together. We also passed by a series of three small trampolines in the ground that some children were playing on, which some of us tried before we continued on. We decided that Bicycle should be the theme song for Amsterdam. All day long we had been passing spots where hundreds of bikes were parked or having to walk single file down the extremely narrow sidewalks to get out of the way of bicycles all over the city. There were even bicycles with what looked like mini bathtubs on the front where children would sit as their parents cycled.
After Jen and Teman left us we all broke up and I ended up on my own as I wanted to explore a museum that very few others seemed interested in - the Sex Museum. For the most part this was an extremely educational museum, with a collection of photographs, paintings, and knicknacks from different countries around the world from about 1700 to the present day. Most of them were very vanilla, portraying images of sex or oral sex. Placards around the museum told of the history of pornography, Marilyn Monroe, Playboy, erotic photography and other things. It had very few things on kink sex, mostly plastic models dressed up in different paraphanalia right when you walked in the door. There were some objects scattered around that jumped out at you, plastic models on tracks, or hissed steam at you that seemed rather out of place with the rest of the museum. The most interesting thing about the museum was the type of people that were going through. There were only a very few individuals like myself - taking it seriously, taking the time to read the placards and take photos. There were a large number of drunks and people going through to make fun of the things in the museum. I heard a lot of strange comments as I walked around: "I didn't know that sort of stuff existed back then" a woman said giggling as if our bodies haven't been the same for centuries. "Jesus! She doesn't shave!" a man said loudly as his wife attempted to shush him, as if shaving has always been in style. A woman also exclaimed rather incredulously "That can't be real!" as she saw a photo of a woman squirting, cause squirting is totally impossible for a woman to do. This gave the museum a very different feel than going to an erotic photography gallery in the US, where the individuals tend to be primarily nerds and people with tattoos and piercings who are all viewing it no differently than they would any other form of art - very respectfully.
I had my first savory crepe in my life, to my knowledge, for dinner, along with a waffle covered in powdered sugar.
5.19.13
This morning I awoke to check my email and quickly realize that I didn't have much time. Unfortunately Jen had waited until very late at night to send an email about the next day so there was no way for me to plan for my morning. I quickly got ready for the day and rushed over to the train station with Grace to get on the train to the Zaans River Museum. Our tour at the museum began with a boat ride and complimentary coffee / tea to see the different windmills and surrounding industrial area - complete with a chocolate factory. The boat ride was very relaxing and the smaller group for the day, of only about 10 people, made the whole day more relaxing. Teman reluctantly got off the boat only to be pleasantly surprised by our walking tour through the beautiful little town. Interestingly enough, despite the hoards of tourists walking around and visiting the few windmills that are open to them, there have been people living in the town since the 1950s. In fact, there is a waiting list of ten years to rent one of the little houses, which can be rented indefinitely. The fields and land is six meters below sea level, and lower than the river, so water has to be constantly pumped out of the area so it doesn't flood the town. Interestingly the houses sit seashells to insulate the houses from the water below and on stilts, brick that can be seen on the ground directly below the house, and wood poles stuck deep in the ground. Some of these wooden poles have had to be replaced recently with concrete poles as the changing of water levels has slowly eroded the wood over time. There is no telling if these concrete poles will be any better and the tour guide assured us that it would be long after we have all passed on that they would be able to tell the difference between the concrete and wood poles.
We went to a couple of different windmills. The first made peanut oil, the second cheese and the third Dutch wood shoes. The peanut oil making process was neat as we got to go up and see the
windmill itself and view some of how it worked, with a hammering noise
that made me jump a little every time it happened. The smell on the
inside of the mill reminded me of the smell inside my ex husband's
family's home in Hunan. The cheese was incredible and tasting it was
amazing, I got some to have with bread and sausage for lunch. The
process of shoe making was interesting, the guide compared it most
readily to making a key as many of the machines just take the shape as a
pre-existing shoe and apply it to the new model. Strangely enough the
guide in that mill was able to blow into the shoes and get water to come
out, explaining that the shoes needed to air dry slowly for three to
four weeks before they could be dry and warm. Wooden shoes like this
tend to be worn with one finger space behind the heel.
There were aspects of the houses in the town that reminded me of India as they used to have tiny out houses behind the house - a rather unsanitary fact, the guide assured us. They also lived in very small areas with 7 individuals in a family, which only after some time had additions put in. The rental price on a house in this village is very similar to New York City prices.
Sunday, May 19, 2013
Friday, May 17, 2013
5.17.13 Amsterdam
Finally feel like I might be making some friends with my classmates. Got my boarding pass, through security and had brunch with one of them, very relaxed and chill. Totally passed out on the plane ride, despite my 7 hours of sleep last night (the most I've had any night of this trip thus far, though going to try to get a similar amount of sleep tonight). Very uncomfortable way of sleeping on the plane, could not get my neck in a comfortable position for part of it.
I'm staying with 4 of the youngest girls (undergrads) at a different hotel than the London crew (an older crew) or the Juniors (also undergrads). We decided that after taking the train with everyone to the neighborhood of our hotel that we should walk from the London crew's hotel to ours since those were the directions I had. BIG mistake. Unfortunately those directions had us walking straight through the red light district, which we could have walked around - a fact that I learned a bit too late. As we walked through I caught glimpses of women in lingerie at the windows of shops along the way. Of course I, not seeing anything I cared to look at to my sides, quickly adopted my Indian way of walking, that is: with purpose, only looking where I was going. The young girls who I was leading did not have the experienced Indian look and were doing the typical American thing of looking all around at all times. This meant that they got a lot more glimpses of naked bodies, women in lingerie and men leering at them than I did. By the time we got to the hostel they were pretty shaken up. The fact that the hostel is much more open than any other hostel I've ever stayed at did not help their case very much. The hostel has three downstairs rooms of women, none of them have locks on the door and your things are only protected by the locks you personally have on them or the fact that they are locked in lockers. The bathroom is shared by all three rooms and very much like a dorm restroom. Similarly there are three upstairs rooms for the men with their own shared dorm restroom. There is one plug out in the hallway shared by all. None of this made the girls very happy and they felt very uncomfortable in this neighborhood, despite the fact that if you turn left out of the hostel instead of right you end up in a very quaint extremely safe neighborhood that leads directly in to all the museums. I tried talking to them about their discomfort but they didn't really seem to want to talk about it. They were distraught by the idea that women could be prostitutes, cause no one could possibly want to do that work (to which I tried to remind them that was not something they knew). Personally I'd rather have it be legal and the police be around to guard the girls to some extent than the illegal nature of it that I've heard in the US.
I decided to take Grace and my laundry over to the laundry place nearby and then go to try to get my camera checked out. I definitely got lost several times trying to find the camera place, though getting lost can be rather interesting in a new city. I finally found a Saturn store, very similar to a Best Buy. The guy cleaned my lens and made sure the camera worked, which it does. I bought a lens cleaner and two filters, one of which I put one on the lens. I decided to stop in to the "Biblotheque" next to Saturn, not sure if it was going to be a library or a bookstore. It was a very modern library that I took several photos of. It had a restaurant on the top floor that I decided to check out, along with a beautiful view of the city. The restaurant was a cafeteria complete with pizza made before your eyes in an amazing looking wood-burning stove and smoothies. I spoke with a man sitting next to me at a long table, there was a young girl sitting with him who I soon learned was his daughter. They lived nearby and her school wasn't too far away. The way he talked it sounded like they came to the library a lot and enjoyed eating at the cafeteria because while it was self serve it was a rather interactive form of self serve. He told me he usually shopped at the market, not at large stores like Saturn. Apparently there is usually a cloth market on Mondays but this coming Monday is a holiday so it won't be open. The girl didn't seem to speak any English and spent the whole time reading her book. She was in 4th grade. After a while they left to go home, I presume, and I made my way back to the hotel, by getting lost yet again and finding a much more beautiful way back to the hotel, which I described above. I think I'm just going to find my earplugs and go to bed early. I'm sure everyone is out either drinking or smoking.
Was having a hard time earlier understanding why our trip took us to this country. They seem too young to be able to handle it. The girls seem to be having a rough time accepting the fact that there is prostitution and all of the undergrads want to smoke while they are here, and might even try to smuggle some back to the US (if they're really stupid enough try). The faculty members were making fun of the fact that there is a Sex Museum. Fortunately on my way back from the library I discovered a lot of the beautiful architecture all around, which made me start to think that might be part of the reason. We'll have to see tomorrow, as we're going on an architecture tour tomorrow.
I'm staying with 4 of the youngest girls (undergrads) at a different hotel than the London crew (an older crew) or the Juniors (also undergrads). We decided that after taking the train with everyone to the neighborhood of our hotel that we should walk from the London crew's hotel to ours since those were the directions I had. BIG mistake. Unfortunately those directions had us walking straight through the red light district, which we could have walked around - a fact that I learned a bit too late. As we walked through I caught glimpses of women in lingerie at the windows of shops along the way. Of course I, not seeing anything I cared to look at to my sides, quickly adopted my Indian way of walking, that is: with purpose, only looking where I was going. The young girls who I was leading did not have the experienced Indian look and were doing the typical American thing of looking all around at all times. This meant that they got a lot more glimpses of naked bodies, women in lingerie and men leering at them than I did. By the time we got to the hostel they were pretty shaken up. The fact that the hostel is much more open than any other hostel I've ever stayed at did not help their case very much. The hostel has three downstairs rooms of women, none of them have locks on the door and your things are only protected by the locks you personally have on them or the fact that they are locked in lockers. The bathroom is shared by all three rooms and very much like a dorm restroom. Similarly there are three upstairs rooms for the men with their own shared dorm restroom. There is one plug out in the hallway shared by all. None of this made the girls very happy and they felt very uncomfortable in this neighborhood, despite the fact that if you turn left out of the hostel instead of right you end up in a very quaint extremely safe neighborhood that leads directly in to all the museums. I tried talking to them about their discomfort but they didn't really seem to want to talk about it. They were distraught by the idea that women could be prostitutes, cause no one could possibly want to do that work (to which I tried to remind them that was not something they knew). Personally I'd rather have it be legal and the police be around to guard the girls to some extent than the illegal nature of it that I've heard in the US.
I decided to take Grace and my laundry over to the laundry place nearby and then go to try to get my camera checked out. I definitely got lost several times trying to find the camera place, though getting lost can be rather interesting in a new city. I finally found a Saturn store, very similar to a Best Buy. The guy cleaned my lens and made sure the camera worked, which it does. I bought a lens cleaner and two filters, one of which I put one on the lens. I decided to stop in to the "Biblotheque" next to Saturn, not sure if it was going to be a library or a bookstore. It was a very modern library that I took several photos of. It had a restaurant on the top floor that I decided to check out, along with a beautiful view of the city. The restaurant was a cafeteria complete with pizza made before your eyes in an amazing looking wood-burning stove and smoothies. I spoke with a man sitting next to me at a long table, there was a young girl sitting with him who I soon learned was his daughter. They lived nearby and her school wasn't too far away. The way he talked it sounded like they came to the library a lot and enjoyed eating at the cafeteria because while it was self serve it was a rather interactive form of self serve. He told me he usually shopped at the market, not at large stores like Saturn. Apparently there is usually a cloth market on Mondays but this coming Monday is a holiday so it won't be open. The girl didn't seem to speak any English and spent the whole time reading her book. She was in 4th grade. After a while they left to go home, I presume, and I made my way back to the hotel, by getting lost yet again and finding a much more beautiful way back to the hotel, which I described above. I think I'm just going to find my earplugs and go to bed early. I'm sure everyone is out either drinking or smoking.
Was having a hard time earlier understanding why our trip took us to this country. They seem too young to be able to handle it. The girls seem to be having a rough time accepting the fact that there is prostitution and all of the undergrads want to smoke while they are here, and might even try to smuggle some back to the US (if they're really stupid enough try). The faculty members were making fun of the fact that there is a Sex Museum. Fortunately on my way back from the library I discovered a lot of the beautiful architecture all around, which made me start to think that might be part of the reason. We'll have to see tomorrow, as we're going on an architecture tour tomorrow.
Thursday, May 16, 2013
5.15.13 to 5.16.13 Dublin
Mass frowny exodus this morning, it seems even if I try to go to bed early I can't get a good night's sleep with everyone coming in super late and waking up super early (over an hour before we have to leave). Had to wake up relatively early so we could walk over and meet at the train station to go to Kilkenny. On the train ride Tyler and Teman were talking to each other. Tyler commented "There was a moment last night when Jen walked up to me and said slowly 'I am not sober.'" Teman laughed and responded "That's going to be our tagline for the trip." On top of the fact that we have not been able to get much sleep there has been a lot of drinking by the majority of all individuals on the trip. I'm pretty sure only three of us (students) are really trying to steer clear of it.
Jen taught me a little about one point and two point perspective drawings on the train ride. I already knew the two point perspective pointers from my architectural drawing class. I wish they would teach us how to draw quickly or pick up visual things quickly. There is no time to stop and draw, something which takes me at least an hour, as we walk around the factories. It's something that a lot of the students have been struggling with and many of them are very good at drawing. The Kilkenny castle was pretty interesting, though not nearly as fascinating on the inside as the Biltmore or other large houses I've been to. Afterwards we tried to go shopping for Irish sweaters and a lot of people ended up buying them but they didn't sell any that fit me as I was too big for the kids sizes and too small for the adult Small.
We got a little lost on our way to the Waterford factory. The tour was absolutely fascinating and the first factory tour we've been on where we've been allowed to take photos and video the entire time. Jen, Teman and I spoke a little about why the company was so open with their process. I think it's partly patenting on the designs, that no one else in the world can use, ability level of factory workers compared to others, and not showing the exact ingredients of the glass they make. The openness of the factory was also apparent in how many employees one got to see in the process of working and how close one got to them. I spoke with an employee who had been working there 43 years, he said tourists weren't a distraction to him at all and seemed very willing to speak to us. He showed us an amazing piece that had been designed by one of the employees who had been working 50 years. Apparently there were only 150 of that piece made and sold in Macy's for $10,000.
I decided to take the train back with Sam and Anna after the tour, needing some time to myself and wanting to do some shopping. We shared a taxi back to the hotel. The taxi driver was very comical. Anna and Sam had asked him to take us to a particular quay and I didn't know the term. He made a joke about it and then told us that a quay is the area from one bridge to the next on a particular side of the river. It seems to be like a block except that this space can be several blocks together.
I managed to find an Irish sweater that fit me, along with some gloves and a hat, as we all expected Giant's Causeway to be freezing. After attempting to find a restaurant outside of the very touristy neighborhood of our hostel and failing, I ended up at a restaurant near the hostel. They were showing a football (ie soccer) game between British and Portuguese teams. After ordering some food and starting to watch the game I started talking with the guy next to me. His name was Dan and he is an actor working in London for a tv show for which he has to do a British accent. We watched the rest of the game together, listened to some live Irish music, and decided to go to another pub where there was another Irish man playing the guitar. He let me hear some of his accents, which he was rather good at and attempted to do some others that he himself admitted he wasn't good at, like the Scottish accent.
5.15.13
Woke up super early again today, picked up some food at a store like a 7 / 11 and walked over to get on the bus for the Giant's Causeway tour. In general traveling tends to make me either want to eat a lot or very tired. As I didn't need to stay up and drive or anything like that I ended up nodding off many many times throughout the day while we were on the bus. We got to go to couple amazing sites. After stopping at another 7 / 11 type store we crossed back over into the UK. No, I did not just make a mistake, the six most northern counties of Ireland were apparently very loyal to the UK and decided to stay part of the UK. They still use the British metric system and everything there is paid in pounds, which I wish I had known before starting out for the day as I had left all my pounds in the hostel. Our first stop was at a place that reminded me an awful lot of James Bond, for whatever reason. It was a sloped land that ended in a cliff with two smaller hills or boulders in the water next to it. There was a bridge between the cliff and first hill that we got to walk over and take some amazing photos on. On the bus I made a very stupid mistake and stood up with my camera on my lap. It bounced on the bus floor and I and the front third of the bus nearly had a heart attack. When I picked it up I could hear pieces of something rattling around inside and the lens cap was stuck. I pried off the lens cap to find that the filter had broken. Fortunately I had been smart enough to use a UV filter and it was the only thing that broke in the fall. The lens itself seems perfectly fine but I'm going to go to a camera repair shop in Amsterdam just to check and get another UV filter.
We then went to Giant's causeway. This is an amazing sight that grew on me as time passed. When I first got there I walked down the hill and kept walking, right past the intricate stepping stones / rocks. I continued back up the hill on the other side until I walked into a classmate. "What's up the hill?" I asked. "The bus, where did you come from?" Apparently there were two ways to get down the hill to the destination area. I explained that I was looking for Giant's causeway and was planning to come back through the area to take some photos. She said "This is Giant's causeway". I shrugged, turned around and went to take some photos. The more photos I took the more I fell in love with the place. By the end I, like everyone else, didn't want to go. The only thing drawing many, including myself, back to the bus, aside from our limited time schedule, was the hail. Not sure how or why since it wasn't really that cold, but it was hailing small pellets.
Jen taught me a little about one point and two point perspective drawings on the train ride. I already knew the two point perspective pointers from my architectural drawing class. I wish they would teach us how to draw quickly or pick up visual things quickly. There is no time to stop and draw, something which takes me at least an hour, as we walk around the factories. It's something that a lot of the students have been struggling with and many of them are very good at drawing. The Kilkenny castle was pretty interesting, though not nearly as fascinating on the inside as the Biltmore or other large houses I've been to. Afterwards we tried to go shopping for Irish sweaters and a lot of people ended up buying them but they didn't sell any that fit me as I was too big for the kids sizes and too small for the adult Small.
We got a little lost on our way to the Waterford factory. The tour was absolutely fascinating and the first factory tour we've been on where we've been allowed to take photos and video the entire time. Jen, Teman and I spoke a little about why the company was so open with their process. I think it's partly patenting on the designs, that no one else in the world can use, ability level of factory workers compared to others, and not showing the exact ingredients of the glass they make. The openness of the factory was also apparent in how many employees one got to see in the process of working and how close one got to them. I spoke with an employee who had been working there 43 years, he said tourists weren't a distraction to him at all and seemed very willing to speak to us. He showed us an amazing piece that had been designed by one of the employees who had been working 50 years. Apparently there were only 150 of that piece made and sold in Macy's for $10,000.
I decided to take the train back with Sam and Anna after the tour, needing some time to myself and wanting to do some shopping. We shared a taxi back to the hotel. The taxi driver was very comical. Anna and Sam had asked him to take us to a particular quay and I didn't know the term. He made a joke about it and then told us that a quay is the area from one bridge to the next on a particular side of the river. It seems to be like a block except that this space can be several blocks together.
I managed to find an Irish sweater that fit me, along with some gloves and a hat, as we all expected Giant's Causeway to be freezing. After attempting to find a restaurant outside of the very touristy neighborhood of our hostel and failing, I ended up at a restaurant near the hostel. They were showing a football (ie soccer) game between British and Portuguese teams. After ordering some food and starting to watch the game I started talking with the guy next to me. His name was Dan and he is an actor working in London for a tv show for which he has to do a British accent. We watched the rest of the game together, listened to some live Irish music, and decided to go to another pub where there was another Irish man playing the guitar. He let me hear some of his accents, which he was rather good at and attempted to do some others that he himself admitted he wasn't good at, like the Scottish accent.
5.15.13
Woke up super early again today, picked up some food at a store like a 7 / 11 and walked over to get on the bus for the Giant's Causeway tour. In general traveling tends to make me either want to eat a lot or very tired. As I didn't need to stay up and drive or anything like that I ended up nodding off many many times throughout the day while we were on the bus. We got to go to couple amazing sites. After stopping at another 7 / 11 type store we crossed back over into the UK. No, I did not just make a mistake, the six most northern counties of Ireland were apparently very loyal to the UK and decided to stay part of the UK. They still use the British metric system and everything there is paid in pounds, which I wish I had known before starting out for the day as I had left all my pounds in the hostel. Our first stop was at a place that reminded me an awful lot of James Bond, for whatever reason. It was a sloped land that ended in a cliff with two smaller hills or boulders in the water next to it. There was a bridge between the cliff and first hill that we got to walk over and take some amazing photos on. On the bus I made a very stupid mistake and stood up with my camera on my lap. It bounced on the bus floor and I and the front third of the bus nearly had a heart attack. When I picked it up I could hear pieces of something rattling around inside and the lens cap was stuck. I pried off the lens cap to find that the filter had broken. Fortunately I had been smart enough to use a UV filter and it was the only thing that broke in the fall. The lens itself seems perfectly fine but I'm going to go to a camera repair shop in Amsterdam just to check and get another UV filter.
We then went to Giant's causeway. This is an amazing sight that grew on me as time passed. When I first got there I walked down the hill and kept walking, right past the intricate stepping stones / rocks. I continued back up the hill on the other side until I walked into a classmate. "What's up the hill?" I asked. "The bus, where did you come from?" Apparently there were two ways to get down the hill to the destination area. I explained that I was looking for Giant's causeway and was planning to come back through the area to take some photos. She said "This is Giant's causeway". I shrugged, turned around and went to take some photos. The more photos I took the more I fell in love with the place. By the end I, like everyone else, didn't want to go. The only thing drawing many, including myself, back to the bus, aside from our limited time schedule, was the hail. Not sure how or why since it wasn't really that cold, but it was hailing small pellets.
Tuesday, May 14, 2013
5.11.13 to 5.14.13 Glasgow to Dublin
5.11.13
After arriving in Glasgow I went out with Alexis and Sid to look at the market across the street, complete with food from all over Europe. Alexis got Dutch mini pancakes with powdered sugar that reminded me of funnel cake and a savory turkey crepe. I then went back and tried to meet up with everyone else and go somewhere but got fed up with how long it was taking everyone. So I took a subway by myself to the exhibition center which was the location of the Clyde Arc, Crane, and Armadillo - as the auditorium is fondly called. After walking all over I headed towards the Kelvingrove, an apparently long walk, but nothing compared to what was to come. The museum was massive, but unfortunately it was nearing 5pm, the time when most of the city shuts down except restaurants and pubs. I took even more photos and started walking towards the steeple, which I had been informed was the university. At one point I could see the steeple but didn't know which way to go. I asked for directions and as per my usual ended up meeting two people who I spent the next 5 hours with. He was Scottish, from Glasgow, and was a couchsurfing host for a woman from Switzerland. We did a big loop of the city with him telling us about the city the whole time - pointing out things all along the way. We also had dinner together at a Malaysian place. Once we reached the hotel they left to go home and I went back to meet the gang. We went to find food and a pub, which of course can't be the same place. We started at a noodle shop. There was about 8 of us so we ended up at two tables. At one point two policemen walked in to order something to eat. On their way out they stopped to ask Joe and Luke a question, they both responded in the negative and the policemen continued walking out. Joe and Luke then turned to the rest of us and asked "what did they just say?" We quickly realized none of us knew what had been asked of us. I wondered what would have happened if we had responded in the positive instead of the negative. Who knows. The Scottish accent seems to be the strongest so far, there have been many times when we've had to ask what people said or for them to repeat themselves.
After the noodle place we went to the pub across the street, called Nice n Sleezy, and had some drinks. We were standing in a place with a disco ball that made me rather dizzy for a short while. I had to go stand closer to the door, away from the ball. None of my classmates were near me and two people who I at first thought were a couple started talking to me. Turned out they were a brother and sister from Ireland. They were much easier to understand. The brother was living in Scotland for some time and his sister was just visiting for a short while. They both really liked my teel shirt, asking me where I got it. We then spoke about US politics for a while, they were not impressed with our politics, which didn't really surprise me. They left after a short while to go to a club and I went to find the restroom, only to find out that there was a club downstairs. I went back up to find my classmates and we danced for a while before I got tired and went home by myself.
5.12.13
I woke up rather early this morning, having decided the night before that I was going to spend the day in Edinburgh (pronounced Edinborough). I got ready for the day and went out, thinking I was going to get breakfast at the market across the street that we went to yesterday, only to find a cute little brown paper bag with cereal and juice. I took it with me and walked towards the train station. After buying my ticket I got on the train and started erasing some of the photos that weren't as good as others from my camera, not knowing how many photos my camera card can hold. A woman named Eva sat next to me and asked if it was the train to Edinburgh. I said it was, we started talking but she didn't really seem like my kind of person at first. She was staying in a very expensive hotel in Prestwick and I thought she might be a little high maintenance. We ended up spending all day together, visiting the Edinburgh castle and Scotch experience, so it turned out my initial thoughts were incorrect. Edinburgh is a much older city than Glasgow and has many more churches and other castle-like buildings. I didn't really have a plan of things I wanted to do so when Eva asked if I was going to Edinburgh castle I decided I would go there. We got audio headsets and got to see a lot. It was the home of the royal crown and sepulchre, which were pretty neat to see.
By that time it was 2pm and we had yet to have lunch, so we decided to get out of the extreme cold slightly rainy weather and go to the whiskey bar, which had been recommended as a place to eat in town. They had really great food and we decided to go up to do the "Scotch experience" afterwards. This was an experience where you went on a small ride in miniature casks as they told you how whiskey is made. You are then taken into a room and told about the different places where whiskey is from and the smells that are typically associated with the different whiskey regions in Scotland. You then get to pick one of the different types of whiskey to taste. They show you the proper way to test whiskey, but warn you not to be too snooty about it because the most important is that one enjoys drinking the whiskey. We were then herded into the world's largest collection of distinct unopened bottles of whiskey, a total of 3,384 different bottles, some in strange shapes like golf club bags and golf balls. Eva and I decided to end our Edinburgh tour with a short shopping trip, though neither of us ended up buying anything, before heading back to Glasgow. There were two men on the train ride back that were clearly hitting on Eva, though she was having an even harder time than I was understanding them. They were making some pretty racist comments about Chinese, when I said I lived in China for a little while, and laughing about them. They were also surprised that I was taking photos of the scenery "Do you not have fields in the US?" one asked me. I said "We do but they're not this beautiful!"
Once back I decided to take the train over to the Riverside Museum, done by the famous architect Zaha Hadid. I was very much not impressed, seemed to be little more than squiggles to me, but I didn't get a chance to go inside. I did take several pictures of myself sitting on the larger than life couches in front of the museum. I then walked to Kelvingrove and decided to stop at Blue Dog, a pub that the man I had traveled with yesterday had recommended. What amazing culture! It was just like an American coffee shop, couches and things written on chalkboards on the walls, wifi so I could get on my phone and make some phone calls to the US, and games - both board games and an arcade machine. I decided to see what games were on the arcade machine so I walked over and ended up having a rather lengthy conversation with the two men playing - Sam and Graham. They were about 10 years apart, Graham being 31, and both played roller disco (like we did in the 80s when you would roller skate around in circles together) and roller derby. I didn't realize men did roller derby but they explained that they had a girls team and a guys team. They had to go home after a little and I still had yet to have dinner so I found a place to get some fast food - Indian food. The man who I was travelling with yesterday had explained that cheap food tended to be Indian, Chinese or Asian and was hardly ever Scottish, as that tended to be more expensive.
5.13.13
After waking up rather early we met at the bus station and took a bus out of the city. At one point we turned a corner and found ourselves traveling through the beautiful countryside. Martin exclaimed "Hills! Giant big hills like waterfalls out of nowhere!" When we finally got to our destination, the town of Dumgoyne home of the Glengoyne distillery, we all took out our cameras and began taking photos of the scenery all around us. I decided to hop the fence and walk up the hill with the juniors, only to realize we were in the middle of a field full of sheep very close by. We lowered our voices to a whisper and inched closer to them until Jen, one of the faculty members, yelled at us to come back as we were about to start the tour. The tour was absolutely amazing, it started with us all getting handed shots of whiskey in whiskey glasses. As we walked around the factory all of the employees were really nice, helping us to get back to our group if we had lost them and stopping to talk to us if we asked questions, an experience very unlike that at Cadbury where we had a hard time finding employees. The factory was filled with amazing smells of barley in different stages, which he explained he could no longer smell as he had worked there for so long, though he could smell whiskey in a glass which I thought was fortunate. At one point a couple of students almost burned the inside of their noses by breathing in a very chemically smell too strongly. Fortunately the burning soon went away. There was a waterfall behind the distillery, to add to the amazing experience. We walked down to a pub nearby, though also in the middle of nowhere, where I had my first haggis and black pudding fritters. I didn't much care for the fritters but actually liked the haggis, which I unfortunately had to scarf down to make it back to the bus to Glasgow in time.
I had another meeting with my NSF team tonight. It took me FOREVER to try and find a place to get Wifi. I tried going to a Pizza Hut, that had Wifi but they had to text you a password to use the Wifi and I had no texting capability and none of the employees were willing to help. I then went to a Radisson to try, as that had worked in other countries I have been in, but you had to be checked in to the hotel to use the Wifi. Finally I found another pub with Wifi. It took me a while longer to get the Wifi to work but it finally did. I had to cover my computer with a coat to muffle the sounds of the pub for the meeting. I am sure I looked ridiculous talking to my coat with my headphones on. I was definitely the only one in the pub with a computer. I think it's just not really their culture to have people hanging out in coffee shops or pubs with their computers like we do in the US. After all that hassle we didn't even end up having the meeting because the NSF staff didn't answer the conference call so we have to try again on Thursday.
5.14.13
We woke up SUPER early this morning, at 4:15am and took taxis to the airport. This particular airport was super picky about how heavy your bags had to be, no more than 15 kg. Fortunately Marissa had a scale so I knew my bag was fine, but others ended up having to pay a large sum of money for the extra weight, for some it was twice the price of the ticket for the overweight bags. They took some cologne of Teman's that was over the fluid ounce minimum and threw it out, which really angered him as it was very expensive cologne. As usual I slept the entire plane ride. When we first arrived in Dublin I was exhausted and didn't want to do anything but sleep. We arrived at the hotel and it was a rather stressful process to try to check in. I felt like all the stress was on me as the reservation was under my name, fortunately it ended up working out in the end. Breakfast definitely helped wake me up and calm me down.
Today was another day of touring on our own schedule. I started out with Luke, Joe, Annie, Katie Grace, and Tyler. We went on a tour of Trinity College given by a PhD student who was rather comical. He told us a story about a prank that some students had played on a professor. Unfortunately the professor's reaction was to get his gun and start firing at the students, who started firing back. The professor ended up accidentally stepping into the line of fire and getting killed. The school tried to expel the students at first but no one stood up and said it was their fault, as it was a prank, so they just transferred to Oxford and Cambridge and ended up with high jobs. Two of them ended up being members of the House of Parliament. Quite a crazy story. We got to go inside the library at Trinity college, which has a very strange organization system. Apparently if you want a book you have to order it (online?) and the librarians go to get the book for you. The books are organized by size so the librarian has to know the exact dimensions of the book to find it, which I thought was rather crazy. The long room in the library is amazing, I personally wasn't as impressed with the Book of Kells.
I decided to tour on my own after this, starting at the Guinness Storehouse. This was a rather interesting experience. There are apparently 10 million pints of Guinness sold each day, of those 3.2 million come from this particular storehouse. The storehouse originally started on 4 acres of land but is today over 60 acres, though the piece that you see on the tour is only one very small building. The information on the tour was really interesting but very branded. Every piece of information was told through infographics, no employees in sight for the most part, and you didn't get to see any of the actual factory, only replicas. You do get a tasting experience with the ticket. I commented to the individuals selling the beer that it tasted differently than in the US and he said that it was only meant to be at a certain temperature, though that many bars do not keep it at this temperature, thus changing its taste. We also were taught how to pour the perfect pint. It's an interesting process: you start with the bottle at a 45 degree angle to the tap, pull the tap all the way forward (towards you). As the glass starts to fill you slowly move it so it ends up vertical. Once it's 3/4 full you stop and put it down to wait until it becomes a dark color and then you fill the rest of it up by pushing the tap away from you instead of pulling it towards you. The woman said this puts more alcohol in it, but I'm not really sure if it does anything else. After I went upstairs to drink my pint to an amazing panoramic view.
I then took a whole bunch of photos from the Hop On Hop Off bus before meeting the group at a pub to celebrate Sergio's birthday.
After arriving in Glasgow I went out with Alexis and Sid to look at the market across the street, complete with food from all over Europe. Alexis got Dutch mini pancakes with powdered sugar that reminded me of funnel cake and a savory turkey crepe. I then went back and tried to meet up with everyone else and go somewhere but got fed up with how long it was taking everyone. So I took a subway by myself to the exhibition center which was the location of the Clyde Arc, Crane, and Armadillo - as the auditorium is fondly called. After walking all over I headed towards the Kelvingrove, an apparently long walk, but nothing compared to what was to come. The museum was massive, but unfortunately it was nearing 5pm, the time when most of the city shuts down except restaurants and pubs. I took even more photos and started walking towards the steeple, which I had been informed was the university. At one point I could see the steeple but didn't know which way to go. I asked for directions and as per my usual ended up meeting two people who I spent the next 5 hours with. He was Scottish, from Glasgow, and was a couchsurfing host for a woman from Switzerland. We did a big loop of the city with him telling us about the city the whole time - pointing out things all along the way. We also had dinner together at a Malaysian place. Once we reached the hotel they left to go home and I went back to meet the gang. We went to find food and a pub, which of course can't be the same place. We started at a noodle shop. There was about 8 of us so we ended up at two tables. At one point two policemen walked in to order something to eat. On their way out they stopped to ask Joe and Luke a question, they both responded in the negative and the policemen continued walking out. Joe and Luke then turned to the rest of us and asked "what did they just say?" We quickly realized none of us knew what had been asked of us. I wondered what would have happened if we had responded in the positive instead of the negative. Who knows. The Scottish accent seems to be the strongest so far, there have been many times when we've had to ask what people said or for them to repeat themselves.
After the noodle place we went to the pub across the street, called Nice n Sleezy, and had some drinks. We were standing in a place with a disco ball that made me rather dizzy for a short while. I had to go stand closer to the door, away from the ball. None of my classmates were near me and two people who I at first thought were a couple started talking to me. Turned out they were a brother and sister from Ireland. They were much easier to understand. The brother was living in Scotland for some time and his sister was just visiting for a short while. They both really liked my teel shirt, asking me where I got it. We then spoke about US politics for a while, they were not impressed with our politics, which didn't really surprise me. They left after a short while to go to a club and I went to find the restroom, only to find out that there was a club downstairs. I went back up to find my classmates and we danced for a while before I got tired and went home by myself.
5.12.13
I woke up rather early this morning, having decided the night before that I was going to spend the day in Edinburgh (pronounced Edinborough). I got ready for the day and went out, thinking I was going to get breakfast at the market across the street that we went to yesterday, only to find a cute little brown paper bag with cereal and juice. I took it with me and walked towards the train station. After buying my ticket I got on the train and started erasing some of the photos that weren't as good as others from my camera, not knowing how many photos my camera card can hold. A woman named Eva sat next to me and asked if it was the train to Edinburgh. I said it was, we started talking but she didn't really seem like my kind of person at first. She was staying in a very expensive hotel in Prestwick and I thought she might be a little high maintenance. We ended up spending all day together, visiting the Edinburgh castle and Scotch experience, so it turned out my initial thoughts were incorrect. Edinburgh is a much older city than Glasgow and has many more churches and other castle-like buildings. I didn't really have a plan of things I wanted to do so when Eva asked if I was going to Edinburgh castle I decided I would go there. We got audio headsets and got to see a lot. It was the home of the royal crown and sepulchre, which were pretty neat to see.
By that time it was 2pm and we had yet to have lunch, so we decided to get out of the extreme cold slightly rainy weather and go to the whiskey bar, which had been recommended as a place to eat in town. They had really great food and we decided to go up to do the "Scotch experience" afterwards. This was an experience where you went on a small ride in miniature casks as they told you how whiskey is made. You are then taken into a room and told about the different places where whiskey is from and the smells that are typically associated with the different whiskey regions in Scotland. You then get to pick one of the different types of whiskey to taste. They show you the proper way to test whiskey, but warn you not to be too snooty about it because the most important is that one enjoys drinking the whiskey. We were then herded into the world's largest collection of distinct unopened bottles of whiskey, a total of 3,384 different bottles, some in strange shapes like golf club bags and golf balls. Eva and I decided to end our Edinburgh tour with a short shopping trip, though neither of us ended up buying anything, before heading back to Glasgow. There were two men on the train ride back that were clearly hitting on Eva, though she was having an even harder time than I was understanding them. They were making some pretty racist comments about Chinese, when I said I lived in China for a little while, and laughing about them. They were also surprised that I was taking photos of the scenery "Do you not have fields in the US?" one asked me. I said "We do but they're not this beautiful!"
Once back I decided to take the train over to the Riverside Museum, done by the famous architect Zaha Hadid. I was very much not impressed, seemed to be little more than squiggles to me, but I didn't get a chance to go inside. I did take several pictures of myself sitting on the larger than life couches in front of the museum. I then walked to Kelvingrove and decided to stop at Blue Dog, a pub that the man I had traveled with yesterday had recommended. What amazing culture! It was just like an American coffee shop, couches and things written on chalkboards on the walls, wifi so I could get on my phone and make some phone calls to the US, and games - both board games and an arcade machine. I decided to see what games were on the arcade machine so I walked over and ended up having a rather lengthy conversation with the two men playing - Sam and Graham. They were about 10 years apart, Graham being 31, and both played roller disco (like we did in the 80s when you would roller skate around in circles together) and roller derby. I didn't realize men did roller derby but they explained that they had a girls team and a guys team. They had to go home after a little and I still had yet to have dinner so I found a place to get some fast food - Indian food. The man who I was travelling with yesterday had explained that cheap food tended to be Indian, Chinese or Asian and was hardly ever Scottish, as that tended to be more expensive.
5.13.13
After waking up rather early we met at the bus station and took a bus out of the city. At one point we turned a corner and found ourselves traveling through the beautiful countryside. Martin exclaimed "Hills! Giant big hills like waterfalls out of nowhere!" When we finally got to our destination, the town of Dumgoyne home of the Glengoyne distillery, we all took out our cameras and began taking photos of the scenery all around us. I decided to hop the fence and walk up the hill with the juniors, only to realize we were in the middle of a field full of sheep very close by. We lowered our voices to a whisper and inched closer to them until Jen, one of the faculty members, yelled at us to come back as we were about to start the tour. The tour was absolutely amazing, it started with us all getting handed shots of whiskey in whiskey glasses. As we walked around the factory all of the employees were really nice, helping us to get back to our group if we had lost them and stopping to talk to us if we asked questions, an experience very unlike that at Cadbury where we had a hard time finding employees. The factory was filled with amazing smells of barley in different stages, which he explained he could no longer smell as he had worked there for so long, though he could smell whiskey in a glass which I thought was fortunate. At one point a couple of students almost burned the inside of their noses by breathing in a very chemically smell too strongly. Fortunately the burning soon went away. There was a waterfall behind the distillery, to add to the amazing experience. We walked down to a pub nearby, though also in the middle of nowhere, where I had my first haggis and black pudding fritters. I didn't much care for the fritters but actually liked the haggis, which I unfortunately had to scarf down to make it back to the bus to Glasgow in time.
I had another meeting with my NSF team tonight. It took me FOREVER to try and find a place to get Wifi. I tried going to a Pizza Hut, that had Wifi but they had to text you a password to use the Wifi and I had no texting capability and none of the employees were willing to help. I then went to a Radisson to try, as that had worked in other countries I have been in, but you had to be checked in to the hotel to use the Wifi. Finally I found another pub with Wifi. It took me a while longer to get the Wifi to work but it finally did. I had to cover my computer with a coat to muffle the sounds of the pub for the meeting. I am sure I looked ridiculous talking to my coat with my headphones on. I was definitely the only one in the pub with a computer. I think it's just not really their culture to have people hanging out in coffee shops or pubs with their computers like we do in the US. After all that hassle we didn't even end up having the meeting because the NSF staff didn't answer the conference call so we have to try again on Thursday.
5.14.13
We woke up SUPER early this morning, at 4:15am and took taxis to the airport. This particular airport was super picky about how heavy your bags had to be, no more than 15 kg. Fortunately Marissa had a scale so I knew my bag was fine, but others ended up having to pay a large sum of money for the extra weight, for some it was twice the price of the ticket for the overweight bags. They took some cologne of Teman's that was over the fluid ounce minimum and threw it out, which really angered him as it was very expensive cologne. As usual I slept the entire plane ride. When we first arrived in Dublin I was exhausted and didn't want to do anything but sleep. We arrived at the hotel and it was a rather stressful process to try to check in. I felt like all the stress was on me as the reservation was under my name, fortunately it ended up working out in the end. Breakfast definitely helped wake me up and calm me down.
Today was another day of touring on our own schedule. I started out with Luke, Joe, Annie, Katie Grace, and Tyler. We went on a tour of Trinity College given by a PhD student who was rather comical. He told us a story about a prank that some students had played on a professor. Unfortunately the professor's reaction was to get his gun and start firing at the students, who started firing back. The professor ended up accidentally stepping into the line of fire and getting killed. The school tried to expel the students at first but no one stood up and said it was their fault, as it was a prank, so they just transferred to Oxford and Cambridge and ended up with high jobs. Two of them ended up being members of the House of Parliament. Quite a crazy story. We got to go inside the library at Trinity college, which has a very strange organization system. Apparently if you want a book you have to order it (online?) and the librarians go to get the book for you. The books are organized by size so the librarian has to know the exact dimensions of the book to find it, which I thought was rather crazy. The long room in the library is amazing, I personally wasn't as impressed with the Book of Kells.
I decided to tour on my own after this, starting at the Guinness Storehouse. This was a rather interesting experience. There are apparently 10 million pints of Guinness sold each day, of those 3.2 million come from this particular storehouse. The storehouse originally started on 4 acres of land but is today over 60 acres, though the piece that you see on the tour is only one very small building. The information on the tour was really interesting but very branded. Every piece of information was told through infographics, no employees in sight for the most part, and you didn't get to see any of the actual factory, only replicas. You do get a tasting experience with the ticket. I commented to the individuals selling the beer that it tasted differently than in the US and he said that it was only meant to be at a certain temperature, though that many bars do not keep it at this temperature, thus changing its taste. We also were taught how to pour the perfect pint. It's an interesting process: you start with the bottle at a 45 degree angle to the tap, pull the tap all the way forward (towards you). As the glass starts to fill you slowly move it so it ends up vertical. Once it's 3/4 full you stop and put it down to wait until it becomes a dark color and then you fill the rest of it up by pushing the tap away from you instead of pulling it towards you. The woman said this puts more alcohol in it, but I'm not really sure if it does anything else. After I went upstairs to drink my pint to an amazing panoramic view.
I then took a whole bunch of photos from the Hop On Hop Off bus before meeting the group at a pub to celebrate Sergio's birthday.
Monday, May 13, 2013
5.7 to 5.10.13 in Europe
I am currently taking an architecture course entitled Behind the Brand. Though the content of this travel blog is slightly different from the content of my blog thus far, I do feel that there is a strong connection (and it is because of this connection that I was allowed to attend this travel studio). This is a travel studio that started in Europe on my birthday, May 7th. Since then we have been traveling through countries and I have been keeping a written travel blog which I will be uploading periodically due to the fact that I am abroad and do not have regular access to the internet. This is my travel blog from May 7th to May 10th.
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5.7.13
When I awoke for breakfast on the plane there was a
resounding sound of people opening plastic wrappers that sounded oddly like
food frying. A bit of a scary
sound considering the negative impact plastic has had on our environment. Also a very product-driven sound.
On the walk to dinner
At dinner
5.8.13
We started our sketching day at the Museum of the Gorge – a
nondescript building with a museum of the history of the area and its
materials. It was a rather dull
place minus the placement on a river with the sun beaming down on it. I quickly found it frustrating to find
an angle on what to draw and why, despite the fact that everyone around me
seemed busy sketching. I later
found out I was not alone in my boredom.
Fortunately the day seemed to get progressively better. We then went to the Coalbrookdale
Museum of Iron, which began with lunch in a similarly nondescript building with
an even smaller museum, but included a tour of amazingly gorgeous ruins of a
furnace. I was definitely drawn to
the ruins and strangely intrigued by the slightly echo halls of the body of the
furnace. The silence in the
enclosure was distinct from the loud fuming noises of a furnace in use.
Museum of the Gorge
Model in the Museum
A look outside the museum
Coalbrookdale Museum of Iron
The Ruins at the Museum of Iron, from the former Furnace
Unfortunately for me this place was followed by a trip to a
tile museum with tiles of a style that weren’t my kind of art. I did end up taking a large number of
photos as we spent a long amount of time at the museum. At one point I spotted an interesting
view from a window of a pristine factory building on one side of the street and
a house whose yard was littered with materials from plans of wood to panes of
glass and recreational equipment like a basketball hoop and trampoline. This juxtaposition fascinated me as
usually one envisions the opposite circumstances. We also go to walk through the tile factory, where
unfortunately no one was working at the time. I took a list of all the signs posted in the factory as they
represented the language of manufacturing, very distinct from the language used
when advertising or conversing with customers.
Ruins of the former Tile Factory.
Juxtaposition from Tile Museum Windows. Top is pristine Tile factory, bottom is house on the opposite side of the street. We usually think of factories as ones with materials, not houses.
After spending a slightly excessive time at this museum /
factory we went to meet an old animated man who made pipes – smoking pipes that
is, not the steel or copper pipes I was originally envisioning. He also had absolutely no knowledge of
anthropology, though prior to the trip I was led to believe that this was his
trade. I got a great video of him
hurriedly making us some pipes, a skill people tended to do even faster than he
did. Apparently he made the pipe
for Johnny Depp in Pirates of the Caribbean and his wife put together the
museum located on the grounds of the small factory. Unfortunately she passed away several years prior. We all really loved his personality and
ended up buying pipes and getting pipe fragments for free in the unbelievably
short time we got to spend with him.
We then went to see the Ironbridge and have dinner
nearby. Jackie and I got dropped
off at the hospital afterwards as I had female issues I needed medication
for. As we checked in to the
hospital the two women behind the desk started laughing at us and asked “why
did you come here?” to which I wondered at first if they couldn’t help me. They assured me that wasn’t the issue,
so we went to sit and wait.
Shortly after, the same woman from check-in walked up and knelt beside
me. “That camera…” she trailed
off. “I’m not planning to take
photos,” I said thinking that to be the concern. “It’s not that, it’s just … You need to put it away. You’re not in a good neighborhood” she
responded. Jackie and I looked at
each other as I took the camera off and hid it in my coat. We looked around the room, filled with
what looked like lower class individuals speaking a variety of languages. There was a pale-looking woman spitting
into a bag, a man in a wheelchair asleep on the registration counter, a man
with a bandage wrapped around his head that could have been a bullet wound, and
several young children crying or walking around unguarded. One of the children had clearly
sprained or broken his arm, his brother was overheard saying “I’ll give you
mine.” After waiting an hour I was
seen by a triage nurse who took my temperature and blood pressure and asked to
get a urine sample for possible pregnancy. Once I collected the sample I was asked to hold on to it
till I saw a nurse, which I found to be an odd request. We waited another hour before I went to
ask again how long it might take and was told there was a three hour minimum
wait for a doctor and I had only been waiting an hour. I decided not to wait any longer. The nurse told me she thought my guess
on what I had was correct and wrote down the name of a medication for me. We
then called a taxi. On our way out
the door there was a man shouting in some other language who walked through the
waiting room and yelled “foreign women” to us. I did my best to ignore him and reassure Jackie he wasn’t
talking to us. I then picked up
the medicine in a very British-looking box – there wasn’t much warning or cautionary
jargon on the box, it referred to my symptoms in the British term, instead of the
American, and had Braille on the box, something I’ve never seen in the US.
5.9.13
I awoke well rested, took a quick shower and went down to
greet Alexis. It seems I had lost
my comb (which I later found) so I used Katie’s real quick before attempting to
find one of my own at a Tesco down the road, a trip which Jackie and Alexis
joined me on to get food. Shortly
after returning to the hotel I began walking down the road with Luke, Joe, and
others to the bus. We stopped at
the corner hearing loud footsteps behind us and our names being called. Turning to look we spotted Anna running
down the hill towards us. She
explained she had just received a message from Jen that we’d be meeting an hour
after we were originally supposed to.
We thanked her for the message and continued to a café closer to the
place where we were going to meet, where we had breakfast. The bus turned out to be even later
than it was supposed to be, though only by about 20 minutes. It took us about an hour away to the
Wedgwood facility. This was our
first trip through a large factory complete with its own factory outlet, café,
museum and workshop space, which looked more formal than the tile factory. Part of the factory looked very similar
to some of the flag factories I had seen previously. The other part looked very similar to traditional Chinese
artist desks, with a small lamp and the artist slightly bent over working with
their hands, the desk littered with paintbrushes and other art materials. On the tour the guide kept emphasizing
the expensive prices of all of the products that were being created, making
sure to especially point out the most expensive ones. Teman later commented that this was one of the ways they
were communicating their brand to us.
We got some lunch at the café and went over to the workshop where
everyone got to try a different aspect of pottery. I spent some time at the “Turning” station where we used
small hand-held instruments to turn a pattern around pre-made cups. Seven students were coached through
making their own pots on the wheel, and some put their own ornamentation on the
pottery – either through what at first appeared to be stickers or from pre-made
decorations in clay. I went
through the museum at a relatively quick pace, not really interested in most of
the pieces. Then I peeked in to
the factory outlet briefly before we got back on the bus.
We were then informed that we were going to meet later for a
lecture at Jen’s hotel room, so we all decided to stay close to where the bus
dropped us off. There was a mall
there so we all went to Muji, a place famous for its pens, which were only at
one of the stations in the store.
One of the employees said it was the first time she had seen so many
people from the same group crowded around one station. A couple people bought watches, as most
of our phones don’t work here one either has to have one’s own watch or rely on
others. After buying the watches
we went in to a cafeteria at a department store called Selfridges, where we
used the WiFi and had a snack before walking over to Jen’s. The lecture was interesting to me,
though apparently some had heard it several times. Teman, the other faculty member, told us about the history
of his company – Dioscuri. The
company was created and is still run by Teman and his twin brother Teran. As he said, in the beginning he knew
what design was, from his background in architecture, and he knew he was going
to get sued, from the required class Professional Practice, but he didn’t know
anything else. He also explained
that they had a logo, and a product, but they had to learn on their own how to
create a brand. After trial and
error one of the things they discovered is that they have two customers: the
end user – individual consumers, and the buyers who work at different
department stores. For example,
they sell to the buyer at Nordstrom, who then advertises the product on the
Nordstrom site for the end consumers.
Therefore Dioscuri’s website is not meant for the individual consumer,
but for the individual who works at Nordstrom’s.
After the lecture we went to a nearby restaurant for a very
late dinner, we arrived at the restaurant around 8:30pm. I had my meeting with Harry Giles at
9pm so I ended up sitting outside and using the restaurant’s WiFi to call him
on Skype.
5.10.13
Today was the day of purple, a dark royal purple. The purple started on wooden posts and
bridges as soon as we got off the subway.
As we walked around the town that the original Charlie and the Chocolate
Factory was based on, the purple moved to facades and then signs with the
cursive font of Cadbury as we reached the “Birdcage,” the name of the green
fence with barbed wire at the top that surrounds the grounds of the factory
itself. Cadbury owns 75 acres of
the 1000 acres that compose Bournville, the name of the town in which it is
located. Once we checked the group
in to the factory we started the tour by going through their experience, that
had components of a miniature Disney World. As one entered the doors one was handed two bars of
chocolate and walked through a fake tropical area complete with fake Indians,
plants all over and birds. We were
then escorted into the first movie theater, an animated tale of the history of
Cadbury and how the owners had impacted the town. Once the film finished we were herded into a second theater
where we learned about the process of making the chocolate, complete with a
steam puff, loud noises and shaking of the benches we were seated on to mimic
different parts of the process. We
were given yet another chocolate bar as we finally went upstairs to see the
factory itself, where all the equipment was turned away from the enclosed
walkway for “tourists,” none of the machines were active and it was rare to see
an employee. This was very different
from the Wedgwood factory where there was a path for “tourists” that only
separated us from the equipment and employees by tape on the floor. At Wedgwood we had to stand out of the
way several times for different employees and their carts to get by.
At the end of the factory tour we were escorted into little
cars, four people to a car, and went on a ride that was exactly like It’s a
Small World in its speed and manner.
The ride was through different scenes, for example a wintertime
scene. In the different scenes
little 6” cocoa beans with smiling faces danced, sang and were dressed to suit
the individual scenes. As in most
rides, there was a photo taken part of the way through, which you could
purchase at the end if you so desired.
At the end of the experience we were shown into the gift shop, where I
purchased some postcards. I
quickly grabbed a hot dog that was about twice as long as typical hot dogs in
the US and went to join everyone for a longer lecture and tour around the town
by a local historian. On our walk
we spotted some wreaths placed by a statue and were told that they are put out
on 11/11 at 11:00 to commemorate fallen soldiers. As seems to be the case almost every day so far, it began
raining during the walk.
When we returned to Birmingham we did some laundry and
waited for Jen and Teman to arrive at our hostel. Jen gave another lecture, which again several people had
already heard. I had not heard
this particular lecture either. It
was on different components of graphic design – some historical archaeological components
related to branding, and basics of typography and color theory. It ended by slightly bashing Pepsi’s
new logo. The lecture was three
hours long and began at 7:30pm.
Several of us did not realize it was going to be quite so long and had
not eaten, so we went to dinner at an Ethiopian place up the street called the
Blue Nile. I’ve definitely heard
of Ethiopian places with this same name elsewhere, not sure if they’re a large
chain or what.
Thursday, January 17, 2013
Smart Technology
It has been my tendency not to discuss products on my blog. However, there have been some recent products that I believe are especially pertinent to other ideas on this blog. So for this particular entry I have decided to discuss them.
Aside from all the iProducts (iPhone, iPod, iPad, etc) there has been an increase in talk about smart transportation options. These include cars and bikes that drive themselves. (For some reason the idea of a bike driving itself is a bit more strange to me than a car.) There are a variety of potential problems that occur when things are taken out of user control. For example, in the Doctor Who episode entitled "The Sontaran Stratagem," the cars can drive themselves using a system called Atmos and end up being programmed from an off-site location to drive individuals into the water, ensuing in their eventual death. This is a similar problem that I have brought up repeatedly with architectural design. When architectural design neglects to include the user a variety of problems arise, such as outlined with the University of Chicago's Mansuetto library addition. There seems to be a thin line between creating products that allow for more simplicity in our lives, on the one hand, and taking control away from the user. To give some other examples apparently when the garage door opener was first put into place there was no way to designate the opener to a specific garage. Therefore when one pressed the opener while driving up to the driveway one might accidentally open the neighbor's garage door. This causes issues with security. Similar issues with security have been discussed more recently with the idea that one's smartphone can control medical devices. As this article states
“[Increasingly,] a smartphone links patients’ bodies and doctors’ computers, which in turn are connected to the Internet, which in turn is connected to any smartphone anywhere. The new devices could put the management of an individual’s internal organs, in the hands of every hacker, online scammer, and digital vandal on Earth.” [...]"
The idea that some hacker could screw up my relative's next surgery is relatively petrifying to me.
In discussing the user once again I must pause this time to explain, as it was recently brought to my attention, that I do not believe all users are at fault for not having control over their environments. I understand that most users interact with environments that they have no control over designing or developing. I believe this to be a problem that architects should try to rectify. Obviously in the current state of things not everyone has the means to hire an architect nor the means to have control over their environment. I believe these things should change.
An additional point that this discussion brings up is the ever-growing definition of design. Just from the examples given above design includes transportation, medicine, architecture, telecommunication, and music, just to name a few. As discussed in Bruno Latour's article entitled "A Cautious Prometheus? A Few Steps toward a Philosophy of Design," "design has been extended from the details of daily objects to cities, landscapes, nations, cultures, bodies, genes, and, as I will argue, to nature itself –which is in great need of being re-designed." Design is clearly no longer limited to just product design.
Aside from all the iProducts (iPhone, iPod, iPad, etc) there has been an increase in talk about smart transportation options. These include cars and bikes that drive themselves. (For some reason the idea of a bike driving itself is a bit more strange to me than a car.) There are a variety of potential problems that occur when things are taken out of user control. For example, in the Doctor Who episode entitled "The Sontaran Stratagem," the cars can drive themselves using a system called Atmos and end up being programmed from an off-site location to drive individuals into the water, ensuing in their eventual death. This is a similar problem that I have brought up repeatedly with architectural design. When architectural design neglects to include the user a variety of problems arise, such as outlined with the University of Chicago's Mansuetto library addition. There seems to be a thin line between creating products that allow for more simplicity in our lives, on the one hand, and taking control away from the user. To give some other examples apparently when the garage door opener was first put into place there was no way to designate the opener to a specific garage. Therefore when one pressed the opener while driving up to the driveway one might accidentally open the neighbor's garage door. This causes issues with security. Similar issues with security have been discussed more recently with the idea that one's smartphone can control medical devices. As this article states
“[Increasingly,] a smartphone links patients’ bodies and doctors’ computers, which in turn are connected to the Internet, which in turn is connected to any smartphone anywhere. The new devices could put the management of an individual’s internal organs, in the hands of every hacker, online scammer, and digital vandal on Earth.” [...]"
The idea that some hacker could screw up my relative's next surgery is relatively petrifying to me.
In discussing the user once again I must pause this time to explain, as it was recently brought to my attention, that I do not believe all users are at fault for not having control over their environments. I understand that most users interact with environments that they have no control over designing or developing. I believe this to be a problem that architects should try to rectify. Obviously in the current state of things not everyone has the means to hire an architect nor the means to have control over their environment. I believe these things should change.
An additional point that this discussion brings up is the ever-growing definition of design. Just from the examples given above design includes transportation, medicine, architecture, telecommunication, and music, just to name a few. As discussed in Bruno Latour's article entitled "A Cautious Prometheus? A Few Steps toward a Philosophy of Design," "design has been extended from the details of daily objects to cities, landscapes, nations, cultures, bodies, genes, and, as I will argue, to nature itself –which is in great need of being re-designed." Design is clearly no longer limited to just product design.
Sunday, January 13, 2013
Extreme Makeover Home Edition
I have a confession to make, I love Extreme Makeover Home Edition. Granted it's a rather silly show. It's organized the exact same way every time, aside from the family (that obviously changes every episode) you see one episode you've seen them all (kind of like a Bollywood film but that's a totally different ball game). I love the idea of giving a family in need a house. However, there are some things that I have always worried about. First of all, finances. It seems like there are some episodes where they end up paying off the mortgage and others where they don't mention it. I would like to think that the episodes where they don't mention it the reason is because the family didn't have a mortgage to pay to begin with and therefore they are just being given the house for free. Does this then mean the construction team is designing and building the house for charity? Also, what happens to utilities? Several houses are net zero houses where the house has solar panels, rain water collection areas, etc so that the utilities are already paid for. But there are houses where this isn't the case. These houses must have utility bills that are much higher than what the family is used to paying for. These financial questions make me wonder what percentage of families who have been on this show still have these homes?
My second issue is with children's rooms. Children's rooms in these houses are often totally decked out. The kid loves trains, for example, so they design a train in the middle of the room with a child's bed built into it. Only problem is the kid is 5. The kid isn't going to be 5 forever. So what happens when the child grows up? Why not make a room that is a little more suitable to growing children, like the parents rooms tend to be?
Finally I am concerned with these houses in relation to Not So Big House (which I know I have been discussing a lot recently). Many of the families on this show are large families living in small spaces. They share rooms, often times with many individuals in the same room. When the design team comes along and builds the family a new home, they often design one where every individual in the family has their own room. This astounds the family as they've often never had their own room. However, I believe this could also cause a psychological problem. Now they have a house with rooms that are not used, and can go long periods of time (unlike the old house) and not see anyone. This could cause problems of loneliness. So instead of building such a large home for the family why not build a functioning Not So Big House, which would be much more suitable for the family and probably cause them less culture shock (moving from the old to new house)?
My second issue is with children's rooms. Children's rooms in these houses are often totally decked out. The kid loves trains, for example, so they design a train in the middle of the room with a child's bed built into it. Only problem is the kid is 5. The kid isn't going to be 5 forever. So what happens when the child grows up? Why not make a room that is a little more suitable to growing children, like the parents rooms tend to be?
Finally I am concerned with these houses in relation to Not So Big House (which I know I have been discussing a lot recently). Many of the families on this show are large families living in small spaces. They share rooms, often times with many individuals in the same room. When the design team comes along and builds the family a new home, they often design one where every individual in the family has their own room. This astounds the family as they've often never had their own room. However, I believe this could also cause a psychological problem. Now they have a house with rooms that are not used, and can go long periods of time (unlike the old house) and not see anyone. This could cause problems of loneliness. So instead of building such a large home for the family why not build a functioning Not So Big House, which would be much more suitable for the family and probably cause them less culture shock (moving from the old to new house)?
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