Another Idea

Since I got a new Canon SLR as a graduation preset from friends, I have been using an orange hat from Jorn's closet as a camera case. This is a side-effect of being both too poor and lazy to actually get a real decent camera case. On the upside, a hat is very flexible and easy to remove, much more so than traditional bulky camera bags, no matter how small or light they are. Once I developed a method for myself, it worked pretty well except for the issue of padding and camera protection...which leads me to my point and idea. I think it would be great to design a "soft" camera case with padding in just the right places, squashable, and out of the way when not in use; I imagine something like a laptop sleeve. I came up with some functional requirements. I hope one of these days, I will get my act together and actually come up with some prototypes.

Functional requirements:
- Easy to secure & remove (velcro?)
- Soft and flexible
- Padded in key locations

Ok, I just checked online. Apparently it does exist (ugly?!), but I still think it would be a nice DIY project and good gift idea for nerdy camera carrying friends. How hard is it to stitch neoprene?

Digital Scrap Book

These last two days, I have finally been back to snooping around on the internet and catching up on blogs that I have missed. I have found a lot of cool stuff that I would like to remember or bookmark in some visual way. Even with all of the possibilities of bookmarking through delicious and browser bookmarks, I still find that I would like some sort of program to exist where I can click and drag images out of the browser so that I can spatially organize them either immediately or later with commentary and text boxes...some equivalent of a digital scrapbook. It would be important that I could organize the material in a unique to the content, visually striking, immediate way (mix of collaging and graphic design?), dependent on the nature of my content.


*example of a collage someone made in one of my user studies

Of course this is all do-able in Adobe InDesign or something, but it defeats the purpose of being able to make these spontaneous mind-mapesque visual notes. To consider the physical analogy I to have the rush of tearing up parts of magazines so I can paste them into a blank book and make big messy notes that I can look back on later (without the regret that always comes with tearing up nice publications).

The drawback of just bookmarking is that I can't make the mental connection I need later to remember what was so inspiring in the first place, and if I did remember I would still have to wade through the whole website. Maybe what I am looking for already exists...but maybe this is an idea for a future project.

I am now trying to make this work with my BookSmart bookmaking program, but all the crucial functions I want are missing.

Graduation + Halloween

It's been awhile since I actually graduated, but I finally got some pictures of my party thanks to Theo and Jorn's dad.

The actual graduation part passed in a blur. I was totally stressed out in the morning because I opted to sleep early instead of finishing my presentation that night. I only had to present at 1:45pm the next day, but found myself at 12:45 still making slides. At the university, I was pleased at the turnout of people; Inga, Alexander, Alex, and Lemke had rushed back from Eindhoven to be there, and I felt like I had a lot of support (and a lot of people to potentially disappoint). I am not usually one to be very nervous at presentations, but as I talked it seemed as if I was a partial 3rd person observer floating a bit above myself as I babbled. I watched myself on several occasions pause significantly at an inappropriate moment to gather my thoughts or futilely try to read my 12pt font notes in the dark. Eventually I got into the flow of things and as the quality of my slides went down, I finally got a hold of myself and finished(smoothly?). Afterwards, my mentors spent half an hour trying to extricate my diploma from the locked secretary office. The waiting time was interminable. Every bump and shuffle at the doorway caused my heart leap in fear. Eventually the ordeal was over; it was time to begin stressing about my Halloween party.

We didn't get much time to prepare for the party, but I was treated to a nice dinner at the de Kurk by Jorn's parents. Sean was also there (visiting for a week from the US, en route to more exotic places). We had time for dessert and then we rushed directly to the boat to start decorating. Guests did not show up until around 10 or 11 so we had plenty of time to decorate. It turns out Kakee is amazing at making spiderweb sculptures. The rest is documented in pictures.

The party was fun and passed in a blur. Daniel was dressed as Dracula and kept up appearances by drinking red dyed beer all evening. Many other characters had also shown up, including the preacher and devil's advocate. The beer ran out at 4am, and we polished off the rest of the liquor, not bothering to make even mixes anymore. Even after we were totally out of alcohol, the party went on for another hour or two.

Sander and I closed up at 6 in the morning. We ended up cleaning up most of the mess in a drunken stupor while Jorn slept peacefully on his chair.

When we were done, we wandered out into the morning fog to fall into our respective beds for a few hours...until the real cleanup.



photo by Theo Howard

In Bruges

This weekend I hitched a ride to Bruges with the boys from 1upToys. They were on their way to a newly opened Carrefour near the city to demonstrate their V-beat toys. I was dropped off at the edge of the city center around 10am, and for the next 7 or so hours I wandered around the fairytale city that is Bruges.

It was a bright but cold day when I arrived at the border of the city. I was psyched to try out my new camera a la tourist style. The city did not disappoint with its picture perfect canals and archetypal Flemish architecture. As I walked through the streets I must have passed by a million old churches, chocolatiers and lace shops. Influenced by my graduation project on revealing secret places in old cities, I kept trying to go down every small alleyway to see what kind of places laid in wait for me. I didn't find too many amazing secret locations, but I did squeeze myself through a couple charming alleyways. Learning to read Utrecht made me hyper-aware of all the symbols engraved and embedded around the city. One recurrent symbol was the crescent moon.

The film, In Bruges, was still pretty fresh in my memory, so I tried to compare the physical city with the scenes I remembered from the film. It was fun to stumble into the market square and think "oh! this is the belfry tower where *** fell". At points I did feel like I was in a sort of purgatory, especially near the end of the day when I was extremely tired and cold. The city was large enough that I always felt a bit lost and overwhelmed. My horrible sense of direction and refusal to read maps made my walk through the city strange and circular...always seeing new things while unintentionally revisiting the old things.

Before traveling to Bruges, Daniel made me a list of things to do in the city, including braadwurst on the square and a tour of a beer brewery. On arriving at the market square, I dutifully followed Daniel's instructions and ate an amazing broodje braadwurst with mustard. The flavors are indescribable, and my mouth is watering as I write this. One regret I have on visiting Bruges is that I did not climb the belfry tower.

Past the square, I ended up walking into several delightful courtyards, past boat tours (much more charming and enticing than those in Delft), and an antique flea market by the water. Around 1pm, I arrived at the beer brewery and bar/restaurant de Halve Man, recommended by Daniel. I took a tour around the facility and learned about the brewing process. One fact that stuck out was that Belgian specialty beers often use coriander as an ingredient for it's hangover preventative and aphrodisiac properties. This made me wonder if Michel (great hater of coriander in his food) would still like his Leffe if he knew...At the end of my tour I was given a complimentary Brugse Zot (brewed at the brewery) and was sent on my way back to the city.

For the rest, I just wandered through the city as it got colder and darker. I took a break and popped into Our Lady's Church, did some shopping, and went to drink coffee in an unmemorable bar by the city library while waiting for the boys to join me. In the evening I was joined by Ronald and Marcel for a nice dinner in a small Italian restaurant. Needless to say, I left the city with a belly full of good food and good feelings.

Pictures to come...

Recommended to do in Bruges:
Eat a broodje braadwurst on the market square
Climb the Belfry tower
Visit and take a tour of the Halve Man brewery
Take a boat tour (something like E6.50 for an hour)

Next travel destinations:
Paris (Nov 29)
Jamaica (Dec 8)
Raleigh, NC; Washington DC; New York, NY (Dec 17th)

Another Invite

Dear friends,

You are formally invited to the Halloween-madness-graduation-party-extraordinarie of Sander de Clerque and Shauna Jin on Friday, October 31st. We will be dancing the monster mash in celebration of our diplomas, kom jij ook?

Location: Tour Boot Delft (De Nieuwe Haven 5)
Time: 9 pm

Come decked out in your scariest outfits (check out the invitation for inspiration!) Hope to see you there!

Shauna & Sander

Invitation

It is official. I am graduating, and you are invited, provided that come to Delft!

I am still scrambling to finish and print my report, make a poster and presentation. Maar komt allemaal goed..

Halloween/graduation party details to come...

Grolsch chandelier

update, a better photo I took..

For Jorn, Fedde, and Michel's housewarming my roomates, Inga, and I made a chandelier out of Grolsch bottles and Christmas lights. Here is a crappy picture I made with my camera phone. I hope I can take a better picture later. The result looks something like an upside down Christmas tree.

Pre-emptive thoughts

I am in the last stretch of my project. Just three more weeks and I will be graduating on Halloween. Now I am sitting in my office working on video analysis, procrastinating and dreaming of when it's all over. I made a list of things I have to do/after graduation resolution:

1. Bike to Brussels
2. Get off my fat butt and exercise/find a new sport to play
3. Get a job, go to job fairs
4. Finish my unfinished projects (that painting in the corner, make Maya model of my yo-yo design)
5. Practice cello in time for Jamaica
6. Write letters to those people with whom I have lost communication
7. Fix my portfolio and website
8. Participate in some design contests
9. Keep working on my project
10. Finish that PSS course
11. Figure out how to train my bonsai

*I can't remember the original item which inspired this list, so I will add it later.

A Comment

One of the best things about the Netherlands is that people drink tea all the time. I remember that one of my first assignments upon my arrival at the TU Delft was to design a high tea set for offshore workers. Though the whole point of the exercise was oxymoronic, the idea that offshore workers would drink tea was totally baffling. So instead I designed a high coffee set. Now that I've lived here for two years though the idea of oil rig workers drinking tea is becoming more and more plausible. As I am writing this I am sitting in my office downing one cup after another between bathroom breaks. It works better than coffee because I don't get the jitters no matter how much I drink.

Summer passing

suspended zone
The beginning of the rest of my life

I went on a bit of a book binge recently since I joined GoodReads. Below is a list of books I read, including a bunch of YA literature that was rated highly on the site.

Booklist:
The Barrytown Trilogy (3.5/5)
The Alchemist (2/5)
Time Traveler's Wife (2.5/5)
The Midnighter's Trilogy (3.5/5)
The Uglies Trilogy (4/5)
Twilight Trilogy (3/5)

None of this list really consists of great literature, but they were all pretty fun to read. I liked the Barrytown Trilogy a lot, revolving around the lives of Rabbitte family in Dublin. The books complement each other nicely, building up to a nice cohesive whole, but the gem of the three is definitely The Van. The Van is about Jimmy Sr. (the best character out of the trilogy) who starts a fish and chips truck stand with a friend and the hysterical, sad, moving situations that follow. I can't judge totally subjectively, because I read all the novels in order, but maybe it wouldn't be as powerful without the other books as well (i.e. the character development you see in Jimmy Sr. as he confronts the fact that his daughter is pregnant).

The Alchemist and Time Traveler's Wife are both totally overrated books. Referring to the first, I know that self help/enlightenment books have to be overly simplistic and trite, but this one is really going too far. My problem with the Time Traveler's Wife (probably accentuated by the fact that I was aware of its existence for a long time before I tried reading it) is that it that the writing style is mediocre though the concept of the story has so much potential. What is worse, is that Niffengger puts in all these pop culture and literature references in an attempt to make this into some kind of loftier literature, which it is absolutely not. I expected more from the reviews I read beforehand. Additionally, Clare and Henry are too good looking and "attractive" as people. They are also way too well read, artsy, and cool...which is not at all convincing. However, it was fun to read unlike the first, which was kind of a drag.

The last several trilogies fall into the YA (young adult) category of lit. It is mildly embarrassing to admit, but I am unapologetic about liking these types of books. Scott Westerfield writes sci-fi topics in a realistic way. I really liked the Uglies trilogy especially...where he presents all these interesting ideas in a highly digestible and entertaining way. The Moonlighters trilogy doesn't end that strongly in my opinion, but it was also highly entertaining. Finally, the Twilight series (now a major motion picture), was pretty ridiculous, but I still enjoyed it. I have a weak spot for vampires and sappy romance.

Links to investigate further

Note to self:
1. Geovative.com, create your own GPS tours
2. Moving Audio and the 230 Miles of Love project, Interview
3. Roadtour.uk
4. Garmin, GPS navigation company
5. Blogging about 230 Miles of Love
6. Cool: tech and gadgets

Macau Project Pt. 2

It is an incredible sweltering day outside, but I did get a couple of things done that I am proud of. I finally completed and turned in my analysis phase report for my graduation project. This means I can get started conceptualizing and designing now. Woohoo. No more bleary eyed nights of typing and reading the small font of typical research papers.

Also, I heard from Alexander that they (NorthernLight and KisstheFrog) won the bid for the Macau project, which is the same project that got me involved with Kissthefrog.

Speaking of work, here is a top 5 weirdest lunch sandwiches Dutch people make:
1. Sambal + Peanut butter + hamburger bun (sambal is like that generic Chinese "spicy" sauce).
2. Apple syrup + cottage cheese on bread.
3. Butter + sliced strawberries + white bread

Ok, it's just going to be three for now because I want to stay accurate to observation. However I can think of some dubious ones off the top of my head which I might be inventing.

In other news, Holland vs. Italy tonight!

Ok, back to work now...

April is the cruelest month

breeding spargel out of dark land...

Dutch people are obsessed with asparagus during asparagus season, and rightly so...because it is delicious. The difference is that they mainly eat white (spargel) versus green or other types of asparagus. For me the jury is out which one is more delicious. The green variety is generally more flavorful but I like the chubby succulent and translucent quality of white asparagus. They are totally different animals in any case.


Photo I took from the internet.

There are many ways of eating asparagus, and I have eaten it twice now this year. Michiel made a delicious version featuring asparagus with butter sauce, egg, ham, and potatoes on the side. mmm. The other day, I tried making asparagus with anchovies with Jorn. I love anchovies and became interested in using them in food after Inga made me anchovies and runner beans once. Also they remind me of going to Spain, tapas, trying different brands of anchovies out of tins.

Here is the recipe I modified from the UK Times. I think this recipe is for green asparagus.

I left out the lemon zest, parsley, and parmesan because I didn't have any. Also, I peeled the asparaguses so that they would be tender. The end result was pretty delicious, but I have to practice either peeling the asparaguses better or steam them for longer.
It turned out really delicious, though I need practice steaming asparaguses.

Finally, a detail that I have not observed for myself but is a source of complaint and comment for others. As Marcel Proust says, "[asparagus] transforms my chamber-pot into a flask of perfume." Asparagus doesn't make my pee smell! Well according to Wikipedia it does: "all individuals produce the odorous compounds after eating asparagus, but only about 40% of the population have the autosomal genes required to smell them." Damn those nonexistent autosomal genes!

In other news. I brought some MSG back from California and stole a Chinese recipe book from my grandma's house which was stolen from my mother's house. Now I can't wait to try some Chinese cooking. More updates on this to come.

New Regime

I started roller blading after I found a pair in my neighborhood thrift shop for 12 euros. The first time I skated, after 7 km I was totally worn out with blisters threatening to rip up my feet. I ended up taking a tram back home from Rotterdam CS instead of braving it back with Alexander. Today was my fourth time. I went skating with Bonny who skates like a champ. For some reason I keep going with people who hopelessly outclass me. The benefit though is that now I know how to make a circular stop and cross-overs while taking a turn.

After we were done skating, I tried on Bonny's rollerblades which made a world of difference. First of all, they are more than half times lighter than my skates and the wheels were so slick that I could barely skate without fear of toppling over. All this makes me reconsider my hasty decision to buy super cheap skates, especially now that I am picking at my blister as I write this.

Delft, especially the center, is not very good for skating. So I am finally being forced to explore the paved area around the city. It is relaxing to stand above a highway and skate through pockets of cow manure scent. I am still surprised and delighted by the sight of sheep trimming the grass on the sides of the highway.

So anyways, my new goal is to skate everyday for at least 45min. We'll see how long that lasts...It is really annoying to search for a new sport. I have been trying since I stopped fencing. It's run the gamut from badmiton, to cycling, to tennis, to swimming, to yoga, but I think this one might be a keeper.

I also went onto marktplaats.nl and scoped out a pair of skates I am buying second hand + protective gear (same model, different colors). They are a garish combination of orange and black, but it's not about the looks!!!! I am also selling my old pair on marktplaats...Now it seems like the skating fad has set in. Michel also bought a new, used pair of skates from the second hand shop where I found my original pair, and we will convince Fedde to dig his pair out of the closet when we go next.

New pair:


Old pair:



In other news:
Behind in my graduation project.
Behind in my job search.
:[

Boukunde on fire

Grote Brand bij TU Delft

Our Architecture Building is burning down! I can see the smoke from my house around the Electrotechniek Building. Well, I guess that is something exciting to start off the day with. I have closed my windows due to a general asbestos warning. In other exciting news, I'm going to see my sister graduate from Berkeley on the 18th, which means I will be visiting Naomi, Tom, Matt, Mike, etc, etc. SWEET. I'm psyched. Also, I am gonna buy lots of clothes since I can afford clothes here.

This American Life

Kakee sent me this link from NPR. It is pretty interesting.

The Sanctity of Marriage
Divorce Predictor

Now I am running through all my parent's conversations in my head...

Spring updates

amaryllis and basilicum

jasmine, rose, thyme, rosemary

Originally uploaded by raisin.detre

I've been doing a bunch of things lately but haven't had time to record them or reflect on them. Here's a list. Maybe I will go into more detail later.

1. Motel Mozaique 2008. Unfortunately I could only go Friday because I left on tour the following Saturday morning at 6am. My plans to volunteer again, get a free tshirt were not totally foiled though. I did get to watch Holy Fuck in Rotown, and some dude in Schouwburg. Lisa had some chance performer wristbands for us (Inga, Jorn, I) as we left the 1upToys 2 year party round the corner at 10pm.

2. Krashna tour (Saturday 12 - Friday 18). Four concerts in Hamburg, DUT (Denmark Technical University), Malmo, and Copenhagen. Numbers in the audience ranged from 15 to 1,200. It shows that good publicity helps. Also, I think Copenhagen is the most beautiful big European city that I have seen so far. Every nook and cranny is beautiful and filled with character. I performed for the last time in the Aula of Delft this past Tues, playing Rachmaninov's 2nd Symphony.

3. Plants! This is the part I get most excited about. My plants are doing great. When I came back from tour, my basil had sprouted and my jasmine had bloomed. Apparently Vaniek did a better job watering than I would have expected.

4. Beginning of graduating. Yes, I am officially graduating now. I had my kickoff meeting with everyone official and everything. I am excited but feeling a bit overwhelmed by everything.

Movies watched: Species 1, Into the Wild
Books read: Art of Innovation, Debt to Pleasure

Upcoming: See Lanna walk or 1 week in California; koninginnenacht bbq at my place.

Some videos

Some product demonstration videos recorded by Ronald with Robert, Jorn, and I for the AirDrums and AirGuitar developed by 1uptoys.

Spielwarenmesse adventures: [1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

White Stripes - Seven Nation Army



Nirvana - Smells like Teen Spirit





The Cure - Boys Don't Cry

7 days

Here is finally a summary of Naomi's awesome visit to see me (now with pictures). Quickly, before I forget the details! I will definitely not forget biking Naomi around or our awesome power naps. YEAH winterbreak 2008!!!!

Friday
I pick Naomi up from the station. It has been snowing and raining intermittently all morning. I drop her at my house and situate her in Sierd's room. We then bike to Jvb 15 and proceed to fall asleep to the Balls of Fury (really bad movie). By the time the movie is done, the weather has improved. We wander around Delft in the rare sunny moment. We spy Meike and Pieter drinking white beers on some scaffolding outside Pieter's room on the Brabantseturfmarkt and joined them. They are wearing summer clothes to encourage the weather.





We then walk to Marieke's house. She is hosting a sexy tupperware party. Naomi does not need much help with translation. A lot of words are decipherable even in their Dutch form, i.e. penis, erectie. Also the ladies are pretty good at demonstrating. Afterwards we go to Tessa's apartment and soon after call it a night.

Saturday
We go to the market in Delft. I keep skirting the haring stand because I am not ready to eat raw fish yet, so we go to the Vlaanderen at the Beestenmarkt to eat mustard soup and a sandwich first. We are the only idiots sitting outside, but we are well equipped with a blanket spread between the two of us and a heating lamp. Naomi experiences the power of haring.

We go home and curl up on my couch to watch Becket. This time I fall asleep. You can guess what happens next. Nap. We nap until nearly 7pm. We get up, stumble into our dresses and catch a ride from Jorn who is actually here to pick up a crippled Vaniek.

Christmas dinner at Jvb15. Yummy appetizers, cucumber and dill soup, roast beef entree, whisky, cigars, etc. We eat so much we can't get drunk and pass out totally stuffed.




Sunday
Is Easter morning/Christmas morning. We wake up to snow. We run outside with winter wear on, but the snow stops. Everyone eventually wakes up and we have an egg hunt outside. We then make an effort to clean the kitchen a bit. Michiel sets out the butter lambs and we have breakfast. Kakee joins us, and shortly we leave to go make custard and meringues at Kakee's house. We stay for dinner and then return to 15 to watch Black Cat, White Cat.

Monday
Second easter in Dutchland, everything is still closed except grocery stores. Hoi-Kee takes us to a nomadic architectures exhibit in Den Haag. We ride around in old people carts, eat tostis out of trucks, color blocks, and wander around the parking garage turned exhibition space. As we get progressively colder, we decide to leave. We wander around Den Haag, drink tea in a tea-room and then wander some more. We walk by the palace and we buy groceries from the Albert Heijn in the Hague. We eat fish, bok-choi, and beet salad for dinner.

Tuesday
We wait for the weather to get better and head to the market at Rotterdam Blaak. There, we find the second hand market and we browse for granny sweaters and boots. We both get awesome sweaters. Before that we buy some fish and one of numerous stands. Naomi gets yelled at for touching tomatoes, and we stock on for provisions for dinner. It is Inga's birthday so we invite her to dinner with Pieter from the scaffold. We bake the fish with paprika, garlic, and herbs stuffed in the stomach. It's delicious to eat fresh fish from the market. Inga goes home to conduct and interview and get ready for her birthday, pre-birthday celebration. We go to Inga's house to celebrate. I fall asleep on the couch.

Wednesday
Naomi and I decide to make a cake for Inga who we will see later in the day. After browsing for 2 seconds on Epicurious, we decide on carrot cake. We then spend 30 min looking for a recipe that only involves baking powder and no baking soda. On the way to buying supplies we climb the Nieuwe Kerk in Delft. We hastily make the carrot cake and head to poker and guitar hero at Vishalls. Naomi makes funny faces while playing.

Thursday
Jorn and I have an AirGuitar and AirDrums presentation at school. It totally fails. I won't go into details. I am sick and in a bad mood, so we watch an afternoon of Beverly Hill's Cop I and II. Because Thursday is Meisjesavond, we make boullion and onion flavored rice for the burritos theme. We eat huge burritos at Ambika's house with Katrin, Kakee, and then drink beers in the Locus Publicus. Naomi packs, and we watch a movie before sleeping.

Friday
We ride the train together to Schiphol. I have a meeting in Amsterdam and she has to catch her flight. Goodbye Naomi.

Naomi really made me miss America. Compared to the others in our now fragmented group, she has really found a place that she likes and hangs out with Tom and Matt often. I was inspired by her visit to finally go see how she, Tom, Matt, Mike are living on the Westside. Coincidentally, Lanna will be graduating and I will have to go there anyway.

Rotterdam Market and Mussels

Naomi visited me last week marking the, ashamedly, first time I have gone to the Rotterdam market since moving to the Netherlands. On market days (Tues, Thurs, Sat), the giant square at Rotterdam Blaak is filled with hundreds of stands. There we acquired fish and several second hand granny sweaters each.

Today, I went to the Rotterdam market again together with Inga, and some others. We bought some mussels for dinner.

A Mussel Recipe (from Inga's mom)
mussels for 3-4 persons (~2kg)
4-6 cloves finely chopped garlic
2 shallots finely chopped
2 sliced tomatoes

1 bunch chopped coriander
2 cups creme fraiche
1 chopped leek

1. Sautee shallots in olive oil with garlic
2. Add the mussels with ~1/2 liter of water (?)
3. Steam the mussels
4. Remove the mussels onto a serving plate
5. From the left over water, add the creme fraiche, leek and tomatoes
6. Heat and reduce
7. Add coriander and serve on top of mussels

haring eating sequence

Naomi eating haring

almost there
Originally uploaded by raisin.detre

Hollandse Nieuwe Haring (herring) is the Dutch version of sushi. Most foreigners (and many Dutch people) dislike haring, due to the raw and pungent flavor of the fish, but I always make a point to eat one first thing on any given brack (hungover) Saturday. Knowing this, I warned Naomi of the fish and made the two of us have lunch before we ventured to the haring stand.

The following is why I love Naomi:
naomi: I can only foresee one problem
me: what?
naomi: I could really see myself becoming addicted to this..it is very creamy.
naomi: I bet it goes really well with soy sauce

Lasagna and other cooking adventures

This previous week has been the week of lasagnas. I went from a sometimes almost never eater of lasagna to the "chef" or "sous-chef" of three different lasagnas. In general I find oven dishes mysterious, maybe due to my stir-fry Chinese food background. Also, I never had the ambition to try to learn any oven dishes in particular, liking my relatively 1:1 ratio of action time to cook time. Lasagnas belonged in the realm of Lynn, who I associate with lasagnas.

The first lasagna happened because Floris felt like eating "healthy." We made an oven full of lasagna out of ground beef, carrots, onions, and spinach. The result was simple but delicious. We cleared off the whole lasagna amongst the four of us and packed down some dessert as well. I felt inspired to make lasagna again in the future. It was much easier than I had anticipated or imagined.

The second lasagna was made for 11 people at JVB 15 on a Sunday. I needed to feed my sister who was visiting with her friend Emily, so I volunteered to cook with Joost for all the hungry Sunday bums. We made veggie lasagna out of tons of vegetables. I didn't like the result that much as it was less a lasagna than a oven fantasie (don't ask) with lasagna leafs and béchamel on top.

The third and final lasagna came about when Vaniek, who was present for the first lasagna, wanted to eat another one when I happened to be making dinner for a friend and had no idea what to make. I think that this is by far the most successful of my creations so far and I will post it here. This is a recipe I modified from an Epicurious recipe for Wild Mushroom Lasagna, by substituting porcini mushrooms for portabella mushrooms and adding spinach. From this recipe I also learned how to make béchamel sauce from scratch (which is surprisingly easy!)

Lasagna Recipe (for 4)
béchamel sauce from scratch or from a box

mushroom tomato sauce
2 cups chopped portabella mushrooms
1 cup chopped onion (1 medium)
2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
2 (14- to 15-oz) cans diced tomatoes in juice
2 tablespoons chopped fresh basil
1 clove of garlic
1/2 teaspoon salt

lasagna noodles
parmesan cheese, grated

Instructions
1. Make the mushroom sauce by cooking the onions first in oil, and then adding the mushrooms. Add the tomato sauce plus the basil and garlic after awhile. Simmer.
2. Boil the lasagna noodles for 3min until soft and run under cold water.
3. Preheat oven
4. Spread 1 cup béchamel over buttered/greased lasagna dish saving some for the top layer. Arrange lasagna noodles over first layer. Spread mushroom tomato sauce layer and sprinkle with cheese. Repeat layering and on the last layer spread the remaining béchamel on top and sprinkle cheese.

In the future I will not be so hesitant to make oven dishes, but this is definitely the first of many small steps. I will still always think of Lynn when I eat/make lasagna, which is definitely a good thing.

Other cooking related things:
I made a successful chocolate mousse for meisje's avond last week after one failed attempt. My wrists still remember stiffening countless egg whites. Daniel and Jorn both thought I would fail, but helped me tons :D

I bought some Dutch cookbooks in the second hand shop today including: Wijn Etiquette (no translation needed), Fish, Crustaceans, and Shellfish from the French Kitchen, Soup as a Meal, and My First Cookbook for less than 3 euros! Now I can learn and practice the most important parts of Dutch...

Now I am happily looking forward to Christmas dinner at JVB 15 and Easter morning with Naomi who is visiting starting Friday!

Mooi Weer

It is such a pretty day outside! I woke up to a perfect blue sky peeking out of my curtains and the sound of children screaming on the playground.

Work and Theo Janssen

Over the last two weeks I have been freelancing at NorthernLight, which is also one of the companies I may graduate with eventually. Yesterday evening around 7pm, I finally finished the last of my drawings and rushed home (walk really fast for 30 min, get on a ferry, get on a train, switch in Den Haag CS, bike home = 1hr, 45min). The competition deadline was today, so I hope everything got turned in on time and in good order. I rewarded myself by going to some (crappy) jazz event in the Speakers with Inga and Jorn. When we got tired of being the pathway for jazz lovers, we moved ourselves to the Locus Publicus and had a La Trapp Quadrupel (on tap!).

For those who are interested, I will explain a little about what I have been doing at NorthernLight. NorthernLight is a exhibition design company (introduced to me via Inga), which designs exhibitions for mostly science museums, i.e. the Nemo. When I approached the company two weeks ago looking for a graduation project, they asked me to do some freelance work for them. They were bidding for two galleries in the new Macao Science Center, the Space and the Earth Sciences (Disaster!) Galleries, respectively. It was really amazing to witness and participate in the design and execution of the design proposal, especially the acceleration of the the project from start to finish (0-60 in 2 seconds). The project went from 3 people, to more the 30 at different sides of the globe, to done in the space of two weeks.

I spent my first two days there collecting possible relevant exhibitions to our project from a gigantic list of other science centers and museums. We also had a couple of meetings thinking about a unifying concept for the spaces regarding content and architecture of the building. I was working with only two others and the director of the company, so I felt like my ideas really contributed to the process. Suddenly, on the third day a content manager appeared and mysterious phone calls were being placed to 3D modeling companies to model the spaces. Then a couple of days later people in the office who were working on other projects suddenly started also working on the Macao project. On the last two days before the deadline, the original three became 99% of the office. I left early to catch dinner while most were still in the office working working in mysterious Word documents.

After the initial concept making meetings that could last hours, I finally received some individual work to make drawings for exhibits. We had to deliver 70% of our proposed exhibits in drawings and text. Here are some types of images I made:

The first I made by collaging models from the sketchup warehouse to set the type of scene I wanted and then I exported it into Illustrator and Photoshop. It is a picture of a rock lab.

I can't upload another example right now, so I will do it later. Anyways, now I have an appointment with them for next week to talk about a graduation project again, so I am back to where I started.

On another note, today I went to a lecture by Theo Janssen at the faculty of architecture. The room the lecture was in reminded me nostalgically of a small version of 26-100 (I had to ask Ellen to remember the name of this lecture hall. Has it been so long that I was at MIT??). His lecture was basically and extended version of all the other talks I have seen of him online. It was very inspiring though, evolutionary design which reminds me of my goal to learn more about cellular automata and generative design in general. I should start reading a New Kind of Science, which I stole from Jorn but haven't started reading yet.

Now I am busy with framing my graduation project proposal. This means way too much emailing and other boring things.


Upcoming events (in my boring life):
- Tonight! meisje's avond, invented by me and getting bigger and bigger.
- Lanna and friend visit Sat - Tues, dropping off a camera for me since my old one broke.
- Go to Monitor Sculptures curated by Linda who is going to Madrid soon (forever?).
- Christmas dinner/Naomi visits the following Sat for a week (!!!).

Icelandic Collapsed Volcano

Icelandic Collapsed Volcano
Originally uploaded by Stuck in Customs

Wow, I was searching for volcano pictures on the web today (to design an abstracted floor for this science center) when I stumbled upon this awesome picture.

More awesome volcano pictures here

decisions, decisions

These past weeks I have been sending out a flurry of emails to different companies asking for a graduation project. I have also been picking the brains of everyone I know for contacts and project ideas. Finally, this last week I have finally been making some headway, which of course means that I am being bombarded with too many possibilities all at once. Here are a list of graduation possibilities that I am currently weighing and pursuing:

1. NorthernLight (www.northernlight.nl) - NorthernLight is a 10 year old exhibition design company in Amsterdam started by two product designers from the TU Delft. They are involved with all different sorts of science museums and do a lot of international exhibition design competitions. I visited them on Monday, and the office climate is really young and cool. They are interested in talking to me on developing some exhibits or fitting new technologies to exhibition design.

2. Kossman en de Jong (www.kossmandejong.nl) - Also an Amsterdam based exhibition design company founded by two architects. Their projects are less technical but more arty than NorthernLight as far as I can tell from the website. I have an appointment to speak with them on Friday (I conducted my talks with the secretary in Dutch!). More to come later on this!

3. Philips Lighting in Shanghai - Details of this project are still blurry. Many people are interested, and I do not know if I will be able to get this project. The most attractive thing about this project is the chance to work in Shanghai and to do another project with Philips Lighting.

4. Waanzinnig! (www.waanzinnig.nl) - Game development company based in Rotterdam. I went to visit them last week. They are developing a new innovative game for the city of Rotterdam to help them achieve their initiative to reduce CO2 emissions by 50% in the next 10 years. The project is headed by Han Brezet (big sustainability dude at IO) and the company Waanzinnig! Today I found out I have another competitor who is also interested in the same project.

I am also waiting to hear back from a couple of other places.. but no news yet.

In the meantime, I will be doing some freelance work with NorthernLight starting next Monday to help them in a design competition they are involved in. This can also serve as a sort of orientation and to get my feet wet in case I am resolved to work in exhibition design. Also, I am busy with doing student assistant stuff for Internationalization and contacting professors as possible graduation mentors or chairs.

website making

No real posts this week..I am working on my website (http://www.shaunajin.nl). Unfortunately, www.shaunajin.com was taken (by who! and why?! the monsters!). Stay tuned, because I hope it will be up soon and functional. My justification for why not .net, .us, .etc is that .nl is kinda mysterious and okay since I am living/have lived in the Netherlands.

Friday, Jorn and I were struggling through figuring out CSS (finally only Jorn because I went to go practice the Rachmaninov which I have missed two rehearsals of).

Today I figured out how templates and libraries work. So this whole day I have been plugging projects into the website from the comfort of my warm, warm bed. It was extremely cold everywhere excluding my bed and I only ventured outside to get myself a hamburger from McDonalds. It is going pretty slowly, but I hope it will be worth it.

This is kind of what I want it to look like:
Originally I wanted to make the website in Flash, but Flash sucks even though it is easier for me than CSS.

Things I still have to work on:
1. Logo design - I am thinking of how to design a cool looking ambigram for my name.

2. Layout - once all the content is plugged in, I want to make it look like the picture on the left with some modifications.

3. Flash elements - some splash page or something

i made a toy

i made a toy

This morning I saw a cute orange-ish squirrel on the way to the metro station. It was a smaller, cuter, less rodent looking variety of squirrel that I have never seen before with cute orange tufts coming out of its ears. I usually think of squirrels as gross, but this one was really, really cute!

I have discovered that squirrels are a sort of novelty to Dutch people, as they only exist in small quantities in the south of Holland. Jorn and Daniel kept taking all these squirrel pictures in Central Park when we were on vacation in NY, which I found very irritating.

I couldn't get close enough to it to take a picture of it, so I decided to sculpt it. Coincidentally, I was eating a wedge of cheese with the red wax around it, so I made a squirrel toy in the spirit of spielwarenmesse. Here it is on a dessert plate.

Some Books

On this trip, I finally had time to read some books including Fooled by Randomness by Nassim Taleb, a book recommendation from Nancy. This is one of the first nonfiction books I have finished (or even started on) in a long time. The main idea behind the book is that the role randomness plays in our lives is much greater than we suspect and that as humans we tend to overemphasize and overestimate the effects of causality. Taleb continues to explain how randomness permeates all aspects of our lives whether we are conscious of it or not.

Taleb also talks briefly about how to live in the face of a world filled with randomness, pointing out the fact that we are constantly fooled by our humanity and our emotions. As people, we are programmed to be loyal to ideas, causes, etc (due to emotions, rationalization by emotions). This blind loyalty can be helpful or harmful to us, and is something we should be aware of. Some of the ideas Taleb presents sound Daoist to me (i.e. the wise man knows he knows nothing, the Way cannot be explained through any human models/language). For himself, Taleb believes that the best way to live in a world of randomness is to combat it through "wisdom, upright dealing, and courage." Although most of the ideas presented in the book are not new ideas, he combines these ideas in a funny and insightful way. I definitely recommend Fooled by Randomness to anyone.

All this reminds me of some lines from Wordsworth:

Is aught so certain as that man is doomed
To breathe beneath a vault of ignorance?
The natural roof of that dark house in which
His soul is pent! How little can be known--
This is the wise man's sigh; how far we err--
This is the good man's not unfrequent pang!
--From the Excursion, Book 5th, The Pastor

Another book I finished this week, similar in some aspects to Fooled, was recommended to me by Lisa. The book was the Knight in Rusty Armor by Robert Fischer, a parable about a knight that goes on a quest on the path of truth to shed himself of his armor (which has become permanently lodged to himself, so much so that squirrels have to chew up nuts and push them through his visor for him). He has to endure trials upon the path of Truth including the castles of Silence, Knowledge (self), and Doubt. It echoes the same themes of the danger of clinging to your beliefs and how to live true to yourself. The knight learns from Merlin, his entourage of wood animals, and ultimately himself that ambition from the heart is what will make you happy and beautiful not ambition from the mind. His final trial is to jump off the cliff of Truth into an abyss of the unknown. Thus he is set free by his willingness to embracing the unknown. Awakening on a plain he reflects that, "he almost died from all the tears he had left uncried," and goes on to live life as an awakened soul.

I have nothing more to say after reading all this advice on the good life, except easier said than done and that I still think Wordsworth says it best:

On that best portion of a good man's life,
His little, nameless, unremembered, acts
--From Lines Written A Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey

Nuremberg, Part 3: What I saw

exhibition stand , uploaded by raisin.detre

This morning I looked everywhere for the Nintendo stand only to find out later that they aren't present at the toy fair this year. I did however see a lot of other knick knacks. I think my favorite toys at the toy fair are by far the board games and puzzles. Besides electronic consoles (that are not present at the fair), these types of games are the only ones that can hold a non-child's interest for any extended period of time while being often extremely simple.

Most of the big toy companies such as Mattel, LEGO, Hasbro, etc. including Silverlit have closed exhibition stands that can be accessed only by buyers (that can be snuck into with the exception of Mattel).

Some cool things:
1. 3D pirate ship for kids to color
2. suspended turning globes with no physical connection to its base
3. life sized terminator
4. everything LEGO (Indiana Jones!)
5. RC motorcycle with a rider that can shift his weight from side to side
6. All sorts of educational kids toys (i.e. crystal-gro variety, brain teasers)
7. Kinetic tin toys - there was one boat that could be powered by a candle across a tin of water

Many of the products seem to be for grown-up children (not adult toys, unfortunately). I am also surprised at the scale of some of the toys I have seen. In some cases, a whole room would have to be dedicated to a train set or model boat. It is funny to see that some of the model train sets developed by the Japanese are on a scale several times smaller than their competitors from elsewhere. Also, some products that don't seem to belong are products such as artist brushes, functional, toy (?) milling and lathe machines, grown up costumes, etc.

*I will add more to the list later.

Pictures of MP3 reactable toys

here are the animals i'm talking about in strange, non-western colors.


Originally uploaded by raisin.detre

Nuremberg, Part 2: Spielwarenmesse

Today is day 2 of hanging out at the spielwarenmesse in Nuremberg. There is an overwhelming amount of exhibitors from every land (12 gigantic Costco size halls, housing 100+ booths each). I can easily lose myself (and have) wandering about. Just browsing, I feel a bit jaded because most toys fail to catch my attention for very long, or I find myself criticizing poor design. However, there are many cool toys and gadgets. Being here and seeing everything is very inspiring and a little bit daunting. It is really interesting to me to see all sorts of toys that would appeal to non-European/American markets. This includes Japanese baby dolls that really creep me out in a different way than Western baby dolls do. Also in the Silverlit space, there are some MP3 connectable electronic animals that are in very non-Western colors that I could imagine are successful in the Asian market.




I am working for Silverlit, a Canton based electronic toy company, who are currently producing the Air Drums and Air Guitar an invention of 1up-Toys. Together with Jorn and Robert, I have demonstrating the products to toy buyers. This mostly means playing Wild Thing and Seven Nation Army. We are getting better and better, and I am definitely developing my drum skills. What is very surprising to me is that none of the buyers ask to try the product...

Incidentally, I can't read or understand German at all anymore so naturally I accidentally ordered some sort of tongue on our first night out in the city. I don't mind though.. yummy. I also tried some of these little sausages that Nuremberg is famous for.

Yesterday evening we ate tapas, something I definitely can order with more ease. Good thing I am not a vegetarian. Ronald (our boss and former TU Delft student) has been eating soup exclusively for the past few days.


more pictures on Flickr...

Nuremberg, Part 1: Cultural Differences

I arrived in Nuremberg today via ICE (Deutsche Bahn's Intercity Express) train thirty minutes ago. Now I am sitting in my hotel room wikipedia-ing Nuremberg and waiting for our leader (just arrived from New York) to awaken from his jetlagged slumber.

On the way here I noticed a couple of things that my American mind, and maybe other people as well, might have trouble comprehending. The first point is regarding at least the Netherlands and Germany, and maybe other Europe. The second is regarding the color of U-bahn buttons.

1. In the bathroom there are two buttons for flushing one of the two major functions that can occur in a toilet bowl. One is significantly larger than the other by at least 2.5 times. The other is small and usually cut out of the larger button. Which one do you press for which function? Scroll down for the answer.


2. Buying a metro card for the U-bahn, I was confronted with a green, zuruck (back) and a red, abfart (continue). This is the complete opposite of logic especially when considering how the colors for go and stop in driving remain the same. Maybe it means CAUTION, you might be spending money on the wrong thing. ARE YOU SURE YOU WANT TO CONTINUE?

More to come on this topic and on other toy or Nuremberg related things...

--
Answer: big button = no. 2, little button = no. 1.

My logical answer would be the opposite. In my opinion, logically the button that should be bigger should be the one that is used more often not the reverse. Even after a year of pushing the wrong button, I still have the inclination to push the bigger one.

Poll: in your opinion, are the buttons logical?

Poll results, ok I lose:
Logical - 8: Athena (UNC), Gemma (UNC), Mike, Jenny, Jamie, Jean, etc.
Not-logical - 2: Shauna, Ellen

The results might be skewed by the UNC people because they are used to two flush functions.
--

Grim Stories

I am off to the Spielwarenmesse in Germany for one whole week! This is coincidentally the Heimat of the famous Grimm brothers. In order to improve my Dutch, I have been reading a book of Grimm's tales I found in the secondhand bookstore in Delft.

Up until now, I have read 5-7 stories and I have discovered that there is an alarmingly high death rate for characters in my book, which is not at all what I remember from my English childhood Grimm renditions. At least four of the stories involved one of the two following premises:

1. Everyone dies (happy or sad ending, depending)
2. Everyone dies except the one who inherits the world (happy ending)

Ok, now I'm off to Germany. Tchuss..

Note: Maybe it's because I have been reading the shorter stories, because I am too lazy to read the longer ones. It's moelijk...

Branding yourself

This morning was bright and sunny, leaving no evidence of the tremendous amount of snow that had fallen the previous night. After Michiel and I had both awoken, we made our way slowly to the market. We ate a haring a piece, the taste would continually haunt the corners of our mouths the duration of a Saturday, and drank coffee on the Beestenmarkt in the sun. Michiel later shopped for some tobacco for the pipe he had gotten from Alexander for his birthday and we trolled around in the used bookstore for some cheap books. I ended up buying two more books than I will probably read (The Debt to Pleasure and The Vesuvius Club).

I noticed that the common thread that punctuated our walk through this morning was how we often end up consciously and subconsciously branding ourselves to the outside world by gravitating towards the things we like or think we'll like. Michiel told me that he hoped that he would enjoy smoking his pipe because it would fit his image.

When I first met Michiel, he told me that he had branded himself one day a couple years ago as a mousquetaire moderne. Not being one myself, I can only say that in all appearances, being a mousquetaire moderne means living an understated, quiet, yet extravagant lifestyle of enjoying fine wines, literature, and having a greater than basic understanding of antiquated crafts, planting techniques, and history. Today, he reflected that the image of the mousquetaire moderne had fallen away slowly to reveal something new, and now he found himself needing a new name to call himself by (while I am writing this at my breakfast table, staring down at the canal a pigeon just rammed itself into my window. BOOM).

This topic of self branding has been on my mind these past weeks (although not those catch-phrase words until now). Now that I am done with all of my prerequisite classes and looking for the perfect graduation project, I have been busy thinking about how to present myself via resume/portfolio/website/blog to the outside world. How do you create a coherent image out of a mess of interests and past projects? How to display your strengths to an uncaring, bored world? How do you express to others who you are, when you don't know yourself?

Regardless of these questions, the importance of self branding cannot be denied and I will spend many more days thinking about this topic.

A Weekend of Movies

Without planning to, it seems like I spent all weekend watching movies and eating spinach (2 spinach salads in two days!). Here are my reflections:

No Country for Old Men - I watched this movie on account of having seen two seconds of a guy's skull and brain neatly punctured through with an air tank and cattle something. It starts out like a straightforward modern Western. It is obvious who the good and bad guys are; the bad guy is a great, twisted, and admirable bad guy. The good guy is slightly morally shady and very likeable. Straight forward right? It lives up to this first impression with great pacing, action, and character development until the very end where the film jarringly prompts the viewer to reflect on the past 90+ minutes.

Breathless (1960 version) - Wow, really great movie. I can't really say why I liked it so much. Neither of the main characters were as lovable as much as they were gorgeous, flippant, and unscrupulous. Awesome dialogue, nuanced, convincing love story, and a beautiful ending.

Terminator 2 - nuff said. I only want to comment that it is a good thing Arnold dies in the end so he and Linda Hamilton don't have to compete over who has bigger biceps.

Juno - When I went to New York a month back, I kept hearing about this movie (people going or wanting to see it), even though all I wanted to see was There Will be Blood. I finally watched it last night. It was funny and enjoyable despite the fact that the kid from Arrested Development and the girl from Hard Candy had the same exact personality as their other roles. The supporting cast was also great with Jason Bateman, that Alias chick, and the psychiatrist lady from 10 things (RIP heath). It didn't get too preachy and handled serious issues in a thoughtful, refreshing manner.

Assassination of Jesse James - Watched this movie at Inga's house waiting for dinner time (corn chowder, spinach salad, and Inga bread). Waiting for dinner time turned into waiting for the movie to be over. Although IMDB gives this movie high ratings, I felt like the whole production should have gone straight to the A&E channel. Good acting by the two main actors (too good by the villain - I couldn't bear to watch the movie because he was so convincingly disgusting and creepy), but the plot dragged and the story was only almost engaging at points. Oh yeah, and the movie took itself WAY too seriously and didn't measure up. I hate that.

Math Game: 8-bit game for four legs and a dock

I was playing with the Airguitar yesterday when I remembered a game that I played in the past. In Boston, when it became too hot during the summers, we used to take my car and drive to Mystic lake where Tuft's boathouse is located. Though it is not legal to swim at that spot, it is the best location and has plenty of parking space. The best times to go are during the night towards the end of summer the water has already been heating up throughout a period of several months.

At those times, we swam always with the lurking fear that the lochness monster might be in residence that night. But to get to the point, the game I mention is a game to be played with four people and eight legs*. Each of the players sit on the dock with their feet sunken into the water.

Leg in the water = 0
Leg out of the water = 1

The left most person starts by raising his or her left most leg out of the water (1), then as fast as possible count 2 (10), 3 (11), 4 (100), etc... in binary. The goal is to not mess up and go fast. The result is a lot of splashing and of course if someone lifts their foot incorrectly there is a punishment of having to jump into the lake.

*Note: More or less legs can be added or subtracted, but then it wouldn't be an 8-bit game.

I didn't know John Maeda was Asian

Recently I have been regularly watching lectures from TED talks. I watched one on simplicity given by John Maeda, a name that has been in in the background of my life for awhile now. His name seems to serendipitously appear whenever graphic design, information aesthetics, or programming is concerned. You can't escape his name when thinking of Reebok, Pentegram, or the Media Lab. It was surprising to me to learn that he is Japanese-American. The image I had in my mind had always been that of an old white man. I am pleasantly surprised although I know I shouldn't be.

IFFR

Last year I volunteered for the IFFR, International Film Festival Rotterdam as a member of the bouwplug. Under the dreads supervision of Waheed, I became one of the little minions who run around building things up before the festival i.e. stringing fiber optic cables across buildings and painting insides of warehouses). Unfortunately, I was so busy at that moment with school (damn you PAP), I didn't even go see one movie even though I had free tickets. I still haven't seen I don't want to sleep alone or various other movies that were on my "list" for last year, though the aforementioned has been rotting away in C:\ for ages now.

This is my one and only chance almost this year to see a foreign film (not English or Mandarin) on the big screen and subtitled in English. I regularly call the Filmhuis Lumen in Delft to ask if their sneak preview is in English or Mandarin. This is how I came to see the Marriage of Tuya in Delft. My other gripe is that films come so slowly to the filmhuizen here. Any independent English film takes half a year after its release before making it to theaters here (i.e. Scoop)

This year, I have bought some tickets though many movies I would like to see were sold out. To remind myself what I will watch at the festival or must download later, I am listing the ones that sounded interesting here:

1. De Stille vor Bach - Feb 1st
2. Le voyage du ballon rouge
3. Secret Sunshine
4. Flower in the Pocket - Feb 2nd
5. Naissance des pieuvres
6. Shanghai Trance
7. Hotel Chevalier
8. REC
9. This world of ours
10. Tout est pardonné

Also watched recently: Flodder - 4.0, Flodder in Amerika - 3.5, There will be Blood - 8.5, Bender's Big Score - 6.5

Email from Dad

I don't think I have seen my dad in more than 5 years, but here is an excerpt from a recent email he sent me:

Dear Shauna*:

blahblah..

2008-2-7 is Chinese new year day and then the beginning of the year of Rats.
According to Chinese superstition, this is your "ben ming nian" 本命年, or
"self fate year". According to superstition, you have to do something to
protect yourself from evils. Despite theoretical "atheist" communist ruled for
over 60 years, most Chinese are still extremely superstitious. I found that
actually I am probably the only lone atheist in entire China.
Not only all commoners, also all communists believe in budda or ghost or
some other nonsenses. The first time I heard of the term "ben ming nian"
was only several years ago. And later I found it is a very serious big thing
in younger generations.

Lingling, who is my girl friend for a year now, is very nice to have
bought you a red waist ribbon which supposedly will protect you for your
"ben ming nian". She asked me to mail it to you before Chinese New Year
so that you will be protected :) So please tell me your mailing address
and I will mail it to you tomorrow. (I do not believe in such nonsenses, but
just for fun, and you may like it.)

blahblahblah. etc.

Sweet of him! Does that also mean when I was 12 I needed to be protected? and that I will have to be protected again when I am 48?

*Note: My dad never addresses emails to us (Lanna, Athena, and me) with "Dear Shauna", only "Dear X'nas" and cc'd to all of us.

Musical Things

1. Krashna Musika
It has been a busy, busy January. Last weekend was rehearsal weekend. I practiced from 10am - 10pm on Saturday, 10am-4pm Sunday, and 7-10pm Monday for my upcoming concert with Krashna Musika. I fell asleep a couple of times on Sunday while the soloist was singing only to wake up shortly when I had made a glaring mistake. I realized how much more I have to practice so I don't embarrass myself on stage. Thankfully, my new roommate Nikki (violinist and alum of Krashna Musika) lent me her music stand, and now I only need to find some opportunities to play when she won't be home to hear me practicing. You can hear me play next Thursday and Friday at 20:30 in the Maria van Jessekerk in Delft or Dr Anton Philipszaal in Den Haag. We are playing:

Brahms, Ein Deutches Requiem
Webern, Passacaglia, Opus 1
Schoenberg, Thema und Variationen, Opus 43B

I am pretty excited. I think the program is pretty good, and the Brahms sounds awesome with a choir, minus not really in tune winds and brass (they spent all their time practicing the other two pieces sadly, but who am I to talk?). You can book your tickets at: krashna@tudelft.nl, if you are interested in coming. I can't wait until the end of this concert season, because we will start playing Rachmaninoff's Symphony no. 2 and Mozart's Requiem. Eventually we will be going on tour in April traveling to Hamburg and Copenhagen.

2. Nodame Cantabile
Furthermore, during the last two days I was hooked on Nodame Cantabile, a Japanese drama. I can definitely blame it all on Ellen, who wrote a review of the show in her blog. I know it is pretty ridiculous to enjoy (only some, I swear) watching dramas (especially Asian ones), but I tend to be drawn to either high art or really low, low non-art. I justify my ridiculousness by saying it makes me a well rounded person (how do you think I got into college?). Anyways, this was definitely one of the better dramas in the spectrum because of several factors that are lacking in other dramas. I'll summarize shortly:

a. The girl wasn't totally retarded, her redeeming factor was that she was as much as a genius as the main dude. They both pushed each other to become better.
b. The drama was about an aspiring conductor and talented but unmotivated pianist, thus music!
c. The school scenes were convincing, people actually went to school and it was convincing that the were in fact studying to some end.
d. Good music, lots of engrossing performance snippets, though very known (Themes: Prokofiev, Romeo & Juliet; Brahms; Beethoven, 7th, Adagio for Strings, etc etc.
e. Convincing orchestra and piano playing (I usually hate how unconvincing music playing is in even blockbuster movies..i.e. most everything)
f. Consistent characters, interesting side characters who are also more than 2D. Instead of hating their side stories, I actually wanted to know more in some cases.
g. Like Ellen already said, convincing love story.

I also managed to infect my sister, Athena with the Nodame Cantabile fever. She took even shorter time to complete the drama (1 day).

3. Spelwarenmesse
Finally, I complete my musical post by saying that I will be visiting the Spielwarenmesse, Nuremberg Toy Fair for a week in February (6th-12th?) as a volunteer to demonstrate the AirGuitar and AirDrum for 1Up Toys. In the next week I will have to learn to play some songs, and in exchange I get 200E and an expenses paid trip to Nuremberg to the biggest toy fair in the world. What this also means is I will also have to print a ton of resumes, finish my portfolio, and maybe website before I go. Hopefully, I can get some leads on possible jobs or graduation projects!

Scheme

This is a scheme that I made today for a class, professional design practice. We (Sander, Pieter, Yvo, and I) will have to present a working model sometime next, next week.

The idea is an interactive game that can be used as a tool to explore possibilities of how to transition between the educational life at TU Delft and professional design practice.

Mapping the Future

The end of our education means that infinite possibilities and directions open to us that will define the rest of our lives; the gray cloud that seems to hang between the present and the future yields no insights into what “correct” decisions should be made. Uncertainties, insecurities, and the desire to keep all possible paths open cause us to feel stuck, unwilling to move forward in the wrong direction. However, decisions must be made or else no goals will ever be reached.

Taking a step back to view the whole picture and through discussing the dilemma of action versus thought and planning, we reached the perspective that the future is open, and there are many paths to the same goal. There is no point of no return, though it may feel that way. Choices can be irreversible, but it is possible to change the course of life at any moment though it may seem impossible.

Our visualization presents the result of our brainstorm. It shows that different futures can be achieved through different paths of attack and different stakeholders along the path. Though it seems like there is no going back once a decision is made, there are often unforeseen roads that can be taken backwards or forwards from critical decision points. The brainstorm helped us realize as a group that the future is fluid and there is no correct way of achieving an end. We should focus beyond our current graduation anxiety and be excited by all the opportunities facing us. It also teaches us that we should not be afraid of taking action towards an end.

Inga and Jamie Oliver

Inga came over two days ago and taught me how to make a delicious snijboonen (runner beans?) and anchovies pasta. The recipe is memory modified recipe from one time she was watching a Jamie Oliver show while vacuuming. After some searching, I think I may have found it. The trick is to melt the anchovies into the oil, which infuses the pasta and runner beans with delightful anchovy flavor.

Inga's recipe (for four or more*):
2 cans of anchovies
2 garlic cloves, finely chopped
250 grams of runner beans
500 grams pasta
enough tomato sauce/cans/tomatoes
olive oil
salt and pepper to taste

Directions:
1. Cut the runner beans into thin diagonal strips (0.5-1.0 cm wide). Finely chop the garlic.
2. Heat the oil in a pan, when hot, add anchovies and garlic. Stir in the anchovies until they mostly dissolve.
3. Add the tomato paste and stir well.
4. Add the runner beans and bring them to a boil within the tomato mixture.
5. Serve over pasta.

*With the four of us, I still had enough leftovers for 3.5 breakfasts/lunches

Reflections on the TU Delft

Recently many people have been emailing to ask me what it is like to study industrial design at the TU Delft. Here is my long winded and not grammatically or stylistically checked reaction (please excuse me):

Hey ---,

Sorry it took so long for me to reply. It sounds like you are in the same boat I was right before graduating from MIT. I studied mechanical engineering and architecture, and I also wanted to go in a designy-technical direction but I was scared of the implications of art school/didn’t want to be subjected to the normal engineering path.

Because I was so busy with double majoring, come spring of my senior year, I hadn’t thought much about graduate programs (though I had looked at some websites: RISD, Stanford product design, etc). I assumed I would work for a year or two at a random architecture/meche firm before thinking more about what to study next or how to move in a product design direction. However, around May I started panicking. I didn’t want to work for any of the companies I had gotten offers from; I didn’t want to be condemned as a ProE slave or a menial technical drawer. I had heard from Chandler Hatton and Dave Wallace about the TU Delft, so I applied. There was no stress because the application date was due after all my work was turned in (June-ish?).

Before I can go further, I have to explain the education system in the Netherlands. All education is basically free for each and every Dutch citizen. Anybody can go to any university or college they want studying anything they want, assuming they have passed the required classes in high school (some number of math or science classes). Not only can anyone study anything and wherever they want, they also get 10 years of subsidy from the government. Within those 10 years they can get up to their bachelor’s, master’s or higher with the government paying them money to live. What this means is there is no selectivity except self selectivity. Even though the TU Delft is the technical school of the Netherlands, anyone can get in. The TU is prestigious, but the least prestigious of all the departments amongst students (in terms of hardness respect) is Industrial Design. It is also where all the failed engineers and people who don’t know what they want to do when they grow up end up studying.

There are about 2,000 people studying industrial design at the TU Delft. Of those students, some are very motivated and hardworking. Almost everyone has something they are really good at. There are also many people who don’t care at all about school and many more in between. Most graduates do not end up as product designers. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing if you realize that this is the fate of most majors for generalists (i.e. course 2 at MIT). As you know, many mechanical engineers at MIT go into finance, law, consulting, etc. There are many people here who are very dedicated to what they do, and there are many smart people who you can learn from, professors and students alike. There are also people who are passionate about other things besides work.

As to your question about keeping your technical background, the courses in the master are not very technical owing partly to the fact that all engineering basics have been covered in the bachelor’s program and partly because of the nature of the study. However, each half year there is a major design project where you may be able to put your technical skills to good use (depending on the design project/company). Also, because of the huge student body, there are a huge number of people who are well specialized in the whole spectrum from engineery to designy.

The program is set up so that each semester there is a major design project to work on. The other master courses are designed to support the progress of that major design project, and you can choose your own electives beyond that. The supporting classes are not very rigorous or hard. Absolutely none are very technical, but some are quite interesting (business aspects, research on p-design, methods, technology, etc). For me, the fun parts of IPD are the design projects. In these projects you work with a company and other students (depending on which project) to create a product/solve a problem. The greatest strength of the TU is that it is very rigorous on teaching process and documentation, but at the same time I think this also hinders the creative process…alas, thus is the nature of negotiating design and engineering. The graduation project is where you can really pursue what you want to do and to what degree of conceptuality or engineering.

In the end, aesthetics takes a second seat to industrial engineering at the university. Coming to study in Delft will not be an art education. Like I said before, the design process is what you learn at the TU Delft. You will have to take some drawing classes, but the aesthetics aspect is assumed. The Dutch master students will have already have had extensive form-giving and drawing classes, so these will not be taught in the master itself. I have learned many things from working within the projects and with other people. I have also had to use a lot of Photoshop, InDesign, and Illustrator in the context of report/project/product presentation.

Not knowing Dutch isn’t a hindrance at all in terms of studying here or living here. All the master’s programs are now in English as of two years ago or so. Also, everyone speaks fluent English, and I mean everyone (unlike most other European countries). The only place that you could run into trouble is in the area of making friends. In general, Dutch people are very insular and cliquish. I believe they are less so towards Americans because we speak fluent English and we share similar TV culture. That said, there is also a lot of political negativity here in terms of generally hating Bush and US foreign policy.

If you want to learn Dutch, being enrolled in a master’s program entitles you to two free, first level Dutch courses that are offered by the TBM faculty. I took them and they give a pretty good intro to Dutch, and you can use the class for elective credits if you wish.

For myself, I am happy I chose to come to TU Delft. I feel like I have learned a lot, though it is not necessarily what I expected I would learn. I loved MIT and don’t mind working hard, but I was feeling a little burnt out just after graduation. Living in Delft has been kind of a vacation/master’s all in one. Right now I am in my last half year of the IDP program here, I get about 9 hours of sleep per night, and probably will graduate cum laude. Because I have so much free time I have been working on my own graphic design projects, took a screen printing class, and joined the community orchestra. When I leave here, I will feel well rested, have my masters from a respected university, and will be confident about becoming a designer if I choose to stay in this field.

I hope that this has helped answer some of your questions. Let me know if you have any other questions or comments.

*Note: Jorn wants to comment that work is not the most important thing to many Dutch people and I am writing from the perspective of a capitalist pig. Living in a socialist state affords such luxurious living.. sigh.