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.