And so...

...it all boils down to this....

These days, one of the conversation topic in archi *beside whose model is sexier and how many more weeks are there to submission* is: which study track are you going to choose? As i have mentioned here, there are 4 tracks: urban, design, landscape and research... Each has its own strength and interesting aspect, which leaves me with a tiny-weeny problem:

I want to do everything.

I mean, EVERYTHING.

Dang it's difficult to be a person who has really wide-ranging interests. It's even more difficult to be a person with really wide ranging interests that is also has no fear of failure in taking on any subject...I mean, don't wanna sound stuck-up or anything, but here's a typical conversation I sometimes have with myself:
Inner Shiela: "ok, we really have to make a choice here...let's be practical... which one do you think you'll be good at?"
Outer Shiela: "uh.....anything...?"
Inner Shiela: "Over-confident as usual.....but ok, so which one do you think interests you most?"
Outer Shiela: "uh......everything?"
It makes making decisions a hellish process...\

But I digresss. The story goes that after a long and agonizing decision (which begins here ), I gave up on landscape architecture... Today though, there was a talk given by a new associate professor on landscape architecture, which I attended just because a studio mate called me saying please come because the professor is pissed that so few people were attending...I thought "Oh, well, ok let's be nice student once in a while.."

And the rest, as they say, is history... I mean, he HAD to show study trips where students go to rural
Bangladesh ,to a city I've never heard at all before (Khulna) and rode in flimsy wooden boats...he HAD to tell us about how the students went to a city in Indonesia and studied the villages to come out with urban solutions, he HAD to mention "Why build another museum, another school, another theatre, when you could be studying big cities and trying to resolve very real problems? " ..He HAD to say "we need students who are willing to travel to places with difficult conditions, who realise there might be no solution for these problems but we still could learn so much...", he HAD to tell, with beaming eyes and a childish smile, of that contrast between walking along rural conditions, slums, "low" situations while at the same time having "high" intellectual ideals..

In short, he's tugging at my heartstrings....

And he JUST HAVE to show this quote:
"In the practice of landscape architecture. . . . . the sky is a constant companion."
Which summoned in my mind the possibility of actually roaming around doing fieldwork rather than sitting down on my desk the whole day doing CAD and models...don't get me wrong, I love sitting down and designing..It's like trying to solve a jigsaw puzzle whose pieces are constantly changing shape...but in the end, if I can combine my love for design and my love for the outdoors, why not?

So in the end...Haih...bye Tadao Ando, hello Trees.....