Morning Inspiration..

"Les choses les plus belles sont celles que souffle la folie et qu'ecrit la raison. Il faut demeurer entre les deux, tout pres de la folie quand on reve, tout pres de la raison quand on ecrit."
- Andre Gide

*Rough translation: The most beautiful things are inspired by madness and written by reason. We must remain between the two - closer to madness when we dream, closer to reason when we write."

Kata- Kata...

Barusan baca2 lagi hasil tulisan2ku tahun lalu.. Aku sering mencatat quote2 yang aku baca di satu buku, kalau nggak ditulis di blog. Dan, aku menemukan ini, meskipun sama sekali lupa dari buku apa:

"Lebih baik menunggu orang yang kamu inginkan daripada berjalan bersama seseorang yang tersedia. Lebih baik menunggu orang yang tepat daripada mencomot orang di sekelilingmu untuk dijadi-jadikan cinta. Hidup ini terlalu singkat untuk dijalani bersama orang yang salah."

Kata-kata yang membuatku kembali ingin jadi orang yang bijaksana =)

More quotes...

Been talking nonsense with fellow archimates..and below are some of the results...

"Love is overrated. Just like sustainability."
-Dodo

"Never underestimate small things. Many island forests started from just mere bird shit."
- the gist of LA4202 Planting Design lesson yesterday

Do: "Ahh.. affairs.. it's a nice feeling.."
Me: "Yah rite. The main catch is not even clear, how to call it an affair.."
Do: "Eits, that's why we're architect wad.. we always stay in the grey zone..."

"Just now my tutor was telling us.. how to be a successful architect.. he says, to be a succesful architect, like TKS, gotta have many wives..."
- Dodo

*wah you realize all this nonsense is actually generated from talking to just one person.. hm..hahaha*
__
And a not-so-nonsense quote while talking with a good friend of mine:
"I had a good conversation with my cousin last night.. I enjoyed the conversation, because I could be myself, I could be real..."

It got me thinking right away, how many people can I safely say knows the REAL me? Hmmm....

Home At Last?

As usual, too much coffee since tomorrow is interim submission.. Resulting in a somewhat reflective mood haha...

Hmm.. these past 2 weeks.. I got the strange feeling that, at last, I'm settled down in Singapore.. Like, I really appreciate the way Singapore works, and I admit that the city is beautiful.. I enjoy the familiarity, the calmness, the privilege to hear multiple languages being spoken and meet so many nationalities since Singapore is a point of transit... Ironically, this renewed appreciation partly comes from my desire to get out of Singapore often and just travel.. After seeing how barren cities can be, like Manila, and how bloody freezing cold climates elsewhere can be.. How boringly one race/language most other countries are .. well, every time I'm basking under the sun surrounded by lush raintrees, I feel happy... Every time I hear the MRT announcements in 4 languages or see advertisements in various languages I appreciate them..

Another part of it is that, finally I've found a community of interesting people to hang out with (CS!) and something outside studies to be passionate about (capo!). As much as this sounds like a cliche, it's true that the people make the place haha.. Went to some hang out places I've visited so many times, but somehow they feel really different since I was with a bunch of new, exciting people.. Singapore, my epitome of everything boring and artificial, is starting to give me a very different impression..

Was doing my design work, looking out at the green expanse of grass outside studio.. and feeling content, just content.. Suddenly staying for another 3 years in this sunny little island doesn't seem so bad at all..

Hmmm.... should I be happy with this unexpected development or be bloody suspicious that the gov***m*nt has been putting some stuff to screw my brain cells in the drinking water....?

Quoteworthy...

"..my right brain has nothing left, and my left brain has nothing right.. how to do tutorials???!!"
- K.Y.M

"Drug addicts never grow old... because they die really young."
- graffiti on a wall in Manila.. saw it in a studiomate's photo

An Architectural Education

It's been quite awhile since I've analysed something other than people and emotions.. In fact, I'm getting rather fed up with those subjects.. After wasting quite some time feeling gloomy, I need something to cheer me up, and what better subject than.. Architecture!!

Landscape + Architecture.. I want both!

During the very hectic time organising the ArchiTours '09 last year, I had the chance to hear a lot of architects speak, and reflect on my own thoughts, beliefs.. I came to the conclusion that, well, 3 years of architectural education has not shown me how to be an architect, it merely made me discover what kind of Architect I want to be...

Masalah Bertahan..

"Poyan..."
"Ada apa, De?"
"Bagaimana kita bisa tahu kapan waktunya untuk menyerah, dan kapan waktunya untuk bertahan?"
Mendengar pertanyaan Luhde, Pak Wayan berbailk. "Poyan juga tidak pernah tahu," jawabnya lugas.
"Dulu, poyan memutuskan untuk menyerah, membiarkan ibunya Keenan memilih orang lain. Kapan poyan merasa bahwa itulah keputusan yang tepat?"
"De, sejujurnya, apakah itu menyerah, atau justru bertahan.. Poyan tidak pernah tahu. Bahkan sampai hari ini. Apakah ini menyerah namanya? Barangkali betul begitu. Tapi dalam apa yang disebut menyerah, poyan terus bertahan. Poyan tidak tahu. Tapi hidup yang tahu."

Perahu Kertas

Potongan dari buku Perahu Kertas karangan Dee (Supernova).. yang puitis, yang lucu, yang menyentuhku...
__

..Luhde menunduk sebentar, seperti mengumpulkan kekuatan. Saat ia mendongak, sorot mata itu beubah total.
"Saya perlu tahu sesuatu. Kenapa Keenan ingin bersama saya?"
Keenan tergagap mendengar pertanyaan yang sama sekali tak diduganya. Lama akhirnya ia baru bisa menjawab. "Karena.. saya sudah memilih kamu..."

..."Keenan lebih baik pulang ke Jakarta. Itu jauh lebih berguna. Apa yang Keenan cari bukan di sini."
"De, kalau memang saya harus pergi,saya rela. Tapi, tolong kasih tahu saya sekali lagi..kenapa?"desaknya.

"Saya belajar dari kisah hidup seseorang. Hati tidak pernah memilih. Hati dipilih. Jadi, kalau Keenan bilang, Keenan telah memilih saya, selamanya Keenan tidak akan tulus mencintai saya. Karena hati tidak perlu memilih. Ia selalu tahu ke mana harus berlabuh.."

Interesting Turns..

Gotta say that yesterday, though tiring as hell, was a really cool day.. Finally some really interesting experiences in Manila! We had lunch with a community that lives in a rehabilitated slum - now it looks like anything but a slum.. small but really nice houses. The thing is, the lunch was very unusual and supposedly it came about from meals prepared for US Marines before going to battle..

When we reached the village outdoor space, there were rectangular tables lined up, forming one long table, but instead of tablecloth, the tables were laid with banana leaves. "Creative," I thought, but nothing special. Then, we were told to wait somewhere else while the food was being prepared. When we came back.. whoa, in the middle of that long table food was laid out directly without any plates! There was a long line made up of small mounds of rice, noodles, chicken, mango salad, salted egg, rice, noodles,etc repeated several times..

"Wow this is getting interesting!" I thought. Roma, our co-ordinator, shouted "Aha!" three times before eating, just like soldiers going into battle (though I assume soldiers won't exactly shout 'Aha!' but something more macho/violent..)
Roma: "Ok! Now you can attack the food! You must eat with your hands..."
*No problemo, I thought.. We cool Indonesians do it all the time..*
Roma cont'd: "...and before you feed yourself, you have to feed 3 other people first.."

???!! Well, I happened to be standing in front of my architecture tutor, and I have nothing against him, really, but the idea of feeding your tutor with your hands, and vice-versa? Uhhh......huhuhuhuhu.... In the end, got it done, with my tutor helpfully starting, saying "Ok, so what may I feed you?" hahaha... It was really fun to do it with studiomates though haha.. This is what it looked like after about 20 minutes..



Next up, we volunteered to help build houses for Gawad Kalinga.. which means.. it's time to don my construction worker persona again! *Shiela versi kuli semen pun muncullah...Eng-ing-eng!* We dug, scooped, dug some more, compacted soil, etc etc, your typical preparation for building house foundation. The irritating thing was that there was some other building demolished already on the site so digging was such a tiring and torturous job.. There was more rubble than soil. Teammates were great though, and trying to speak Tagalog to the Philippines people who helped build also was fun. Plus, call it a fetish if you will, but I think my studiomates all look totally cool in construction-worker-mode hahaha... Pretty amazing how holding a spade can transfrom the usually-metrosexual archi guys...

Ate some really good food too, these few days. There was 'turon' , banana wrapped in rice paper skin then deep fried, eaten with a sauce made from mango, jackfruit and some milk I think..*photo also will be uploaded ASAP* And trust me readers, this sauce is heavenly!! Oooooh!!! In the end I was just scooping some sauce into banana leaf pieces and slurping it haha.. I think it's the best thing I've eaten here so far.

There was also coconut juice with evaporated milk.. It's the usual young coconut water and flesh (what we call 'kelapa muda' in indonesia), but mixed with ice and thick, sweet milk.. It's so good I wonder why no one outside the Philippines had thought of it before... at least, not that I know of..

Lastly, there's the friendliness of the people I meet in and around the rehabilitated areas, some of the poorest areas of the Philippines. It really touches me that they prepare such good food for us, and when we went around site surveying, they were accompanying us, greeting us, asking us if we need any information at all.. According to Roma from Gawad Kalinga, previously some of these people live without any dreams, any dignity.. When the social workers came to talk to them, they would look on the floor.. Now, when I go around the site I can see that they are proud of their houses, their gardens, their lives...

I'm touched by Roma, who told me her story of giving up a high-flying accountancy job to be a social worker... She's only 24, but holds an important position in Gawad Kalinga, not least because she can speak 3 Philippines dialect that makes it easy for her to communicate all over the Philippines. She said that her parents were very upset when she gave up such a well-paying job for helping the poor, and yet, she wants to be able to say that while she is young and idealistic, she did what she could to make a difference. It makes me think again about Indonesia, and what I can do for my country, and strangely, also about China, and what I can do for my heritage.

3 days to go, and I'm glad I'm in this trip.

Encore Manila..

Something about Manila that I kept wanting to write but keep forgetting. There are a lot of tranvestites here! Like, a lot.. Or maybe it's just so much more than I expected since most Philippinos I come into contact with are members of my church and that becomes my impression of the Philippines..

Oh well..

5 days have gone by.. kinda can't wait to go back to Singapore and shut myself in my room reading haha.. I've a bit too successfully converted my room into a cosy personal library..

Fortunately though, to make time in Manila pass faster, I've been reading great books since I came.. finished 'Perahu Kertas' by Dee, and am reading 'The Angel's Game' by Carlos Ruiz Zafon. The latter is about an author who got paid to write a religion from scratch... not write about a religion, mind you, but write a religion.. Concocting his own brew of myths, stories, miracles, characters.. And meanwhile, he got involved in murders, intrigues, scandals, and love affairs... Such is the world of Carlos Ruiz Zafon... His previous book 'Shadow of the Wind' is one of my favorite also. Back to the book, then, reader.. Fare thee well!

"You don't look well," he pronounced.
"Indigestion," I replied.
"From what?"
"Reality."
"Join the queue."
- conversation between David Martin and Senor Isaac, a.k.a Guardian of the Cemetery of Forgotten Books

Morsels from Manila (3) - Unslumming Slums

People here eat tofu by first deep-frying it, then drenching it with soya sauce and scallion topping.. which is just the way I love it.. yum!

That aside, yesterday we began work in an area that was previously one of the worst slums with a notorious reputation - the Manila people love to say that in the past when you ask taxi drivers to take you to Baseco they would refuse wholeheartedly, since it was filled with criminals. However, after a devastating fire, a Philippines charity group called Gawad Kalinga (will write more about them. My utmost respect for them.) has been working to convert the slum area into a community village, and it does work. The whole place is very lively, especially in the evening, that it felt great just walking along the streets and looking at people chatting, eating, kids playing all kinds of games, running, rooster and dogs around... It illustrates perfectly well the Jane Jacobs mantra: "Eyes on the street", since almost everyone knows everyone else, and as the result the street feels like someone's living room instead of just a strip for vehicles to pass by.

Work has been quite fun, though for the most part I spent my time drawing cartoon characters for the kids instead of doing fieldwork huhuhu... I love it when they come to me, say words in Tagalog, like "Paruparo!" (butterfly) or "Itik!" (chick), then I would refer to my little Filipino-English dictionary, check out the word, exclaim an enlightened "Ah! ok.." and proceed to draw on pieces of paper or their hands hahaha.. After some time, some of the kids called me "Ateh drawing" huhu.. "Ateh" means big sister in Tagalog. To be honest,I learned basic level of Tagalog, like asking what's your name, where's your school, how many siblings you have,without even realizing it.. thanks to talking to the kids.. I must've looked like an idiotic foreigner trying to chat with 5 kids at once while consulting a mini phrasebook at the same time, but hey it pays off! ;p

That aside.. working the whole day in an area where people are just blatantly poor, then coming back to a comfortable hostel and eating a nice dinner.. I don't know exactly how to behave or what to think.. Selfishly, I'm coping by telling myself that at least during the day I'm working to try and see what we as designers can do for people..but who am I kidding.. That's why I respect the Gawad Kalinga people so much.. I can really see the difference between the living conditions inside the GK villages compared to some of the nearby areas that are still slums, and it's at least comforting to know one can really make a difference with the right model, the right management, and a lot of money. (This last bit is really important.)

About the slums.. Walked through slums around Baseco and it's my first time really going into a slum area.. A slummed-up slum where the ground is made up of rubbish heaps, not soil, and people's houses are assembled from whatever materials they can find.. As an architecturally-trained student, there's much that can be analysed, admired even, since a slum really is an amalgam of people's determination to build, their creativity, economical thinking, and pure survival instinct.. Multiply that by the hundreds, continue adding layers, and you get a large slum like Baseco, Kibera (Africa) or Dharavi (India). Complex, to say the least. Can't say much, I really think pictures say more for these kind of things.

A clumsy farewell, then, readers.. Cheesy as it sounds, whatever your situation is right now -relationship problems, school stuff, family etc etc - just give thanks, just be grateful... because, if you're like me, people like us can't even comprehend how lucky ourselves are...

Morsels from Manila - part 2

Hmm... I think I should write something interesting about Manila instead of just complaints, and so, here we go. One of the most interesting things about the Philippines, and Manila, is that it was influenced by so many cultures, so many races.. Hence,the resulting cultural amalgam is worth spending some time to tease apart and understand.

A bit of a history lesson: the indigenous Philippines people were very closely related to Indonesians, especially those from Sulawesi, which is just below Southern Philippines. Then came 400 years of Spanish rule, after which the Spaniards sold the Philippines for US$20 million to the Americans.( By the way, the name Philippines came about because the Spanish conquistadors dedicated the islands to King Philip II of Spain.) During World War II, the Japanese took over the Philippines, and after 3 years under Japanese rule it gained independence. (Disclaimer: bits and pieces assembled from conversations with people, including those responding to my very limited Tagalog, so take with a pinch of salt.)

Well, the presence of all these cultures can be seen in today's Manila. Philippino language has quite a number of words similar or almost similar to Indonesian, for example, 'mahal' also means expensive, 'pintu' (door), 'lelaki' (guy), 'anak'(child), 'nasi' (rice), 'gandum' (wheat) all mean the same things. 'pasuk' = 'masuk' (enter), 'kris' = 'keris', etc.. and they also have a musical instrument they call 'kolintang', the exact same thing as ours. In terms of food.. the snacks and cookies are very similar to Indonesia.. people eat a lot of chips (kerupuk, which here they call 'chicarron') made from rice, cassava, tapioca, corn, jackfruit etc. When I was walking past a market that sold traditional Philippines cakes (kue!) I felt I was right back in Indonesia, it was kinda surreal hahaha...

The Spanish influence is also present in food.. It's common to find people selling 'turron', which is a typical Spanish snack (that I had a good time trying out when I was backpacking in Spain.. aah.. those Gaudi and Calatrava buildings..). Their marks are also imprinted on the design of the Philippines traditional costume (Go ahead, you want to google it don't you), which doesn't look like it belongs to a Southeast Asian nation at all, if you ask me. Until 1985, Spanish language was a compulsory lesson in school.To say "bye" , you can say "adios", and to this day people from Manila are called 'Manileños'.

The Americans.. thanks to their reluctance to learn any other language than English (just a little joke here..) left a very useful legacy: that the average Philippino / Philippina has a decent level of English, with reasonably good pronounciation. From the jeepney driver, waiter, people on the street and even people in the slums, there is no problem communicating in English. Ah yeah, and today when some people saw my totally ang-moh (that's Caucasian for those who don't speak Singlish..) looking German tutor pass-by, they shouted: "Hey Joe! Joe!" hahahaha... (I think it refers to this - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G.I._Joe - but I'm not sure)

Lastly, the Japanese.. in some parts of Manila, the shop names and advertisements include a lot of Japanese writings.. and Japanese food seems to be quite popular.. but so far that's all I managed to gather....

As for Philippines culture itself, I'm still learning, though actually several incidents convinced me it's just the same as in Indonesia. One interesting point might be, here popular eateries are called 'turo-turo', which means 'point-point', where several containers of dishes are arranged and you just point to what you want. That certainly saves me from learning the Tagalog names of dishes!

And for now, babay! (that's 'bye' in Tagalog)

Terribly Terrible Taxi Drivers

Day 3 of 11, and sad to say, in my eyes Manila has not redeemed itself.

Most of my disappointment has to do with the taxis.. Readers be warned: Manila taxi drivers do not know Manila streets.. as in, they get lost very often and even the taxi drivers have to ask the police, people on the way, etc to get to the destination. We've taken taxi 4 times, to various destinations, and each time the driver did not know the way. Go figure. Plus, once I saw a taxi with a Phillipina lady stopping by the side of the road, and then both passenger and driver were talking to a policeman and pointing around, asking which way to go.

Wait, there's something worse. The drivers did not actually tell us that they did not know how to go!! It was like, "We want to go Santtillian street" "Sure" but after a few meters the driver would start mumbling to himself, then stopping by and asking people. And what's worse (yes it's just gonna get "badder and badder" from here...) is that you have to bargain for the taxi, even if they had put the meter on... Yep you read that right... So here's my story...

Was going to meet up with a friend in a hostel, and flagged down a taxi. "Do you know how to go to Saint Illian street?"
"Yes.."
Got in to the taxi, driver said, "What street did you say again?"
"Saint Ilian"
"Hm... mumble mumble.. I think I need to ask people, you know..."
"Oh. Ok." *thinking, whatever lah, as long as I get there, and luckily I wasn't in a hurry*
Driver asked," So, how much you want to pay..?"
Me: "Huh?"
Driver: "Because I need to ask around you know.. what about this, 200 pesos?"
This time, it hit me that he was asking me to pay more, probably because we would need to go round and round..
Me: "But you have the meter. It is still running, doesn't matter if we need to ask around."
Driver: "Hah...meter... hah..." *His face was like, 'who are you kidding man..what's the point of using meter..'
Me: "Never mind. Drop me now please, just at the side of the road over there."
Driver: "ok ok, what about like this, you pay 100 pesos?"
At this point I was just super-pissed that I insisted he dropped me at the side of the road, but in the end I agreed to add 20 pesos to whatever price is on the meter, which was 60 pesos. 20 pesos is about 80 singapore cents, and being someone brought up in a well-to-do family, in normal situations I would just pay whatever price is named, since the money would mean much more to the other person than to me. Well, I was just pissed and wanted to piss the taxi driver as well...

Later that night, I took another taxi with some friends, and this time, the taxi driver, again, said he knew where we wanted to go, and agreed to put the meter on, but ended up going round and round, stopping so often to read a map we brought, and speaking to us in Tagalog in a very patronizing tone that in the end I just wanted to strangle the guy.. I even suspected that he pretended not to understand English just so he could go around and charged us higher. (We were kinda directing him since we somewhat know the layout of this part of the city already)

When we got down from the car my friends had to chill me huhuhu... Went to get some drink, and while I was drinking a can of cold beer to cool down (I admit this had to do with my temper that time, the afternoon taxi incident passed through my mind, and I thought, "Wait a minute.. that guy wanted to charge me more because he needed to go around asking which way to go... he WANTED ME TO PAY MORE BECAUSE HE CANNOT DO HIS JOB???! WTH??!"

So yeah. Well I'm sure Manila cannot be judged just from the quality of its taxi drivers, but for now on, I am very negatively biased towards this city. 8 more days to go, let's see.