My first week of the last Sem or Ai Pia Jia Eh Yah

Sa hun ti chu tia, chi hun ko pa pia, ai pia jia eh yah..that should be the theme song for my first week of this final sem of my Bachelor of Design in Architecture..feels so surreal back in the run of things man..

and it just droned by like that with promises of getting more speed wrecked and agitated in the coming weeks..man i really can't stand the way these lecturers try to promote the Ai Pia Jia Eh Yah mentality that you've got to sell your soul to the course in order to become a 'good' architect..and you're not worth your weight in salt unless you become a 'good' architect..for those of ya who don't know, Ai pia Jia Eh Yah is a crude anglicised translation of the Hokkien phrase, you've got to slog ya guts out to win/succeed..

so it was that we started on Monday with a site visit to Newcastle East to inspect a site along Zaara Street for a potential Art Museum, which my brilliant lecturer dubbed the Newseum of Art..witty very witty..and cold..so we're gonna build a Contemporary Cathedral to Culture as Museums are known unofficially in Architecture circles..i should be thankful for the opportunity since in Life, only members of the jet-setting Rockstar-esque architects, or Starchitects get selected to design museums, especially art museums. So yes, you've got Frank Gehry and his Guggenheim Bilbao which launched the whole craze, Zaha Hadid and Rem Koolhaus, Daniel Libeskind and his Holocaust Museum, Peter Eisenman's Centre for Culture in Galicia and a few others..but i'm just not so enthralled..

and Wednesday we came in for a full day of Design Studio sessions to tease out the practicalities of the Design Brief and examine the constraints of site, planning regulations and Newcastle City Council guidelines..a labyrinthe of very pedantic and useless information and to-and-fro discussions about 'eliminating variables'..i guess thats what Life is like as well, having worked in a firm for 2 months last year..and then i went to the library to research precedents for this project and what approach to take..

no fun..and i had an opportunity to talk to a friend today who was feeling homesick since its his first year in Newcastle..i can imagine how much harder this must all be for him..i know i felt terrible during my first winter and spring back in 2006..the first year is always toughest for the international student who comes alone to a foreign land..but if one does survive, it makes one much, much stronger..and also more appreciative of one's friends and loved ones back home..

so that was my week pretty much, and am now looking forward to more work over the weekend..but, to my homesick friend, hang in there bro..second semester flies right by in a flash..and home you'll be again.