Closer

It's hard to believe that in less than 4 days my parents will be here, this semester has just flown by.

Yesterday I went to Canterbury to check out the cathedral and the rest of the town. The cathedral was pretty dope, but I wasn't too excited about the rest of the city. I only ended up spending about 3 hours in the town, about half of which was at the cathedral. I don't have pics up yet, but they should be up tomorrow, as I forgot to load them onto my jump drive and bring them up here today.

I only have one more sheet to plot off before I am done with my portfolio. I am pretty excited about that, as I am very anxious to get the schoolwork of this semester over with; I am not used to working this late into the summer. I am now completely off of school mode in my mind, as I really only have 9 more nights at my place in Hampton Wick before I leave to go back to the States. Man, I still cannot quite comprehend how shortly everything will change again...

Boredom

Well, I am sitting here in the computer lab on this gloomy, rainy Saturday waiting for the queue of drawings to get to me. I am really quite bored, I just wish that my drawings would plot off properly for once. I have been sitting here for an hour, and so far none of my drawings have plotted. It has been raining all day long and I got soaked on my way to uni. I am really freaking hungry right now, but I cannot leave the lab b/c I may lose my place in line and it is pouring out right now so I couldn't go get food anywhere even if I could keep my place. If anyone has some good suggestions for websites on which I can waste my time, by all means post them up.

edit:
I swear, this is the worst possible setup they have here. You have to have credit on your account before you can plot, and you can only credit your account from 9-5 Monday through Friday when the lab technician is in. And as we all know, plotting always goes wrong, so you are SOL when the piece of crap plotter decides to randomly delete 6 of your plots (£30 worth), and then leaving you with not enough money on your account to plot off again. So, I have to wait until Monday to plot off the rest of my drawings. Jesus, I hate this freaking setup.

English Summer Rain

'It always stays the same
Nothing ever changes
English summer rain
It seems to last for ages'

Today is a fabulously bland day. It is rainy, gray, and cold, beautiful English weather. I am still pounding away on my portfolio, I have most of it done on the computer and I am hoping to get a lot of it plotted off over the weekend. I know that some of my Italian studies friends are in town this weekend (Wedel, Karen, Jeff, etc) and I think that we may try and hook up sometime, but I'm not really sure yet.

I was watching the tele last night and got to thinking about British mannerisms and how they truly are one of the most reserved cultures that I have ever seen. It is quite amusing to watch, because they are so afraid that they are going to offend someone that they will go to extraordinary lengths to not do so. For instance, any public bus that is out of service will have a sign saying, 'Sorry, not in service.' Any other country would omit the 'sorry' and just tell it like it is, but the Brits try and apologize for it. And whenever I text my friends who are busy with studio stuff to see if they want to go into London for the day or go out at night, instead of getting a reply I get no text at all and then when I see them the next day they tell me sorry and that they have so much work to do (which is true, they are busting hardcore, but it would be nice for a reply back instead of just being ignored). Bloody wankers.

Ha, anyways, I found this dope website that has every photograph of a person known to people. If you need a nice photoshop man to put in your drawings, look no further than www.gettyimages.com. I mean, where else would I go for pictures of naked people dancing with chimps?

Rebel Without a Cause

Well, yesterday I went into the LDN to check out an exhibit on the photographer Phil Stern, who is known for his work involving James Dean. It was a really cool exhibit and if I had £700 to spare, I would've bought this print:



Then I went to the Sloane Gallery which had an exhibit of over 70 architectural drawings ranging from Wright to Gehry and was very interesting. I wish that I would have brought my camera because there were some really awesome drawings there by many famous architects.

After that I got a sandwich from this fantastic little Italian place and then went and walked around Oxford Street (haven't been there yet and figured I need to check out where I'm going to be leading my parents around when they come)and stopped by the AA for a second to try and see what was going on with them. I showed them my portfolio and they immediately wanted to accept me into their masters program (hehe, not really, but that would be cool).

My host parents had their niece and her boyfriend arrive in town yesterday from Canada and they are going to be staying for about a week at our house. I assume they will be schlepping around London seeing a lot of the same sights that I will be showing my parents in two weeks, but first I have to get this portfolio done.

Weekend highlights (or lack thereof)

This weekend was quite drab. I sat around all weekend long and read books, which I found quite interesting but you all probably find it rather boring. I finished On The Road and started in on Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. I'm about halfway through Fear and Loathing, and I must say that I find Kerouac to be a much more intriguing and stimulating author. He put a sense of emotion and realism into Dean and Sal and their adventures that made me feel like I was sitting next to them in the car on their adventures. He raised a desire of adventure and excitement within me which made me keep on reading, page after page, wanting to find out what was going to happen next and if they would ever find 'IT.' Kerouac connected with me on this point, as I feel that part of my time here in London has been searching myself and trying to find the 'IT' in myself. And with regards to his pre-gonzo style of writing, I find it to be more effective than Thompson's, and not to the extreme of Selby Jr's, as it seems to be a perfect mix of stream of concious and traditional style to get the point across. He really manages to bring the characters alive in a way that I have not traditionally read before. Thompson on the other hand just seems to talk about drugs, drugs, drugs and while they are searching for the American Dream through drugs and blah, blah, blah, I find Kerouac to have more substance.

Anyways, today all of my British friends are turning in a project that they've been working hard all weekend on, so I think that it should be a good time tonight as they will have reason to celebrate. I am currently at Starbucks, as it is the only place I can get an internet connection on my Powerbook, and will be heading up to Uni in a bit to work on my portfolio. Fun times.

"remember the weight of the world
it's a sound that we used to buy
on cassette and 45 and now this little girl
she says will we make it all
800 miles is a drive"
--opening verse to I Summon You by Spoon

Spoon

So I bought the new Spoon album yesterday and I cannot stop listening to it. The sound is so unique that it is hard for me to explain. It's got a sort of sway and swagger to it that makes me feel like I should be sitting around my apartment late and night with a handful of friends all drinking whiskey and chain-smoking cigarettes. I don't know much about bop music, and I know this album isn't jazz by any means, but somehow I can see Dean Moriarty and Sal Paradise driving across the country in their 35' Ford groovin' on this record, it's just got that dirty feel to it. It is a cross between Wilco, Tom Petty, the Stones and Prince, and manages to pull it all together into a masterful album. I saw them when they came to London with Interpol a month ago and was really groovin' on the new sound, and I am quite disappointed that they are going to be performing in Lawrence on the 13th of June, one day before I get back to the States. If only they were coming a few days later...oh well.

Done-dy!! (well, sorta)

Had my final crit for the material testing labratory project yesterday. It went ok, I was told to be more 'Kingston-like' in my representation of my work, meaning that I should be more artsy in my presentation and not as rigid and K-State-esque. It really is quite striking how different these two universites are, as KSU is all about clean, precise line drawings and extremely detailed and exact model building, focusing more on the techtonics and art of building. Kingston is much more art school oriented (it is in the College of Art and Design), focusing instead on the space created by buildings, and using graphics and color to evoke the emotion and feel of the building instead. Here's a link to the architecture departments homepage: http://www.kingston.ac.uk/architecture/index.html

Over the next couple of weeks (till Friday the 27th) I have to organize and submit a portfolio of my work this semester, ranging from schematic sketches and developmental models to final drawings. It should be interesting to see what all I can scrounge up, as I haven't really done all that much work while I've been here. I am going to take some of my drawings into photoshop and 'Kingstonize' them, so that will add some content. Oh well, the only thing that will be annoying is plotting, as you can tell from my previous post. Apparently, the uni is getting two more color plotters next week, but it will still cost £5 (~$10) a sheet to plot off. And with close to 15 sheets needed, that's a lot of cash.

Oh, here's a pic that I found on the Kingston website that is a first year project that looks quite similar to my mapping project done last semester for the Manhattan fire station:

Frustrations

I am sitting here waiting for the tech guy to get back so that I can plot my drawings. I finally had them all plotted off earlier today, but when I picked them up I realized that the plotter had cut them all off by several inches and now I have to replot. I am waiting because I had to get the tech guy to recredit my account, and with a 2 hour wait for the drawings to plot off, I am quite anxious to get in line...why can't things run smoothly for once at this God forsaken university?

Random pictures

Here are some random pics that I've been meaning to get up here for a while.  First up is City Hall and Tower Bridge from my recent foray into the LDN:

B'ham Palace; I tried to knock and see if the Queenie was down for some tea, but they wouldn't let me near the door:

Ah, Sir Norman Fosters recent memorial for fallen police officers, pretty neat:

This one's for Larry, he was right when he said that the trash cans at Covant Garden were IRA bomb proof!:

ROAR!!!!  (Natural History Museum):

Trafagular Square getting set up for a VE-Day concert:

Study model at 1/4"=1':

Crazy round of snooker, check out all the balls in the lower right-hand corner!!!:

Ahhh, Kingston and the lovely Thames on a beautiful spring day!:

The time draws near

Well, I have my final crit on Thursday, and so far I am in good shape. I basically have to plot off my drawings and finish up a 1/2"=1' wall section model (which is about 3/4 done already) by Thursday. The crit system is wierd here, as my professors will be critiquing me and while it is a 'final' crit, my grade won't come from it but when I hand in a portfolio two weeks from now. So, I am almost done with all this stuff, as the portfolio won't be too hard to do and should only take a day or two at the most.

Yesterday I went into London all day long for the 60th anniversery of VE-Day. I was disappointed in the lack of festivities that London had, as there was only a 1.5 hour long concert in the evening in Trafalgur Square. However, I did go to the Natural History Museum, the Covent Garden Sunday market, the city hall and Tower Bridge, and hung around a bit in Trafalgur Square.

While in Trafalgur Square I finished up a quaily book, Crime and Punishment, and I of course had to pick up another one (or three, as it was buy 2, get 1 free), and I got On the Road by Jack Kerouac, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S. Thompson (RIP), and American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis; the later two of those books having been recently made into thought provoking movies. I must say, I have been quite the bookworm since I have been over here and have started to develop a taste for classic literature. So, if anyone has some good recommendations, post em up!

Grotesque

http://www.kansascity.com/mld/kansascity/news/11555906.htm

I feel sick now.

(this is supposed to link to the details of the Ali Kemp murder that were released in court a few days ago.)

We're not going to the town, we're going to the city...

Today I went into central London to meet up with a law partner and friend of my father for lunch. We ate at this nice French bistro and it was quite a good meal. While I was in the city I figured I'd make the most of it, despite having a studio project due on Monday, and I went to the Tate Modern for a bit. I was disappointed to find that I had just missed the final days of the Unilever Series exhibit which was showcasing the work of Bruce Nauman. I wrote a paper on the exhibit a few months ago and I had not been back since writing it and wanted to see how my experience had changed. Yesterday was the last day and I was disappointed to have missed the last day. However, I did find out that Rachael Whiteread is going to be the next artist to have her work exhibited there, but unfortunately it will open in October, so I will not be here. It's a shame because I bet that it is going to be a good piece. I did, however, buy a CD of the Nauman exhibit so I can at least listen to it. It will not be the same obviously, but oh well, I'll take what I can get.

http://www.tate.org.uk/modern/exhibitions/nauman/

Bank holidays blow

So I was going up to studio today to get some quality work done and hopefully finish off all of my elevations, but as I entered the parking lot, I knew something was off. There were no cars, and when I walked up to the door I found it locked and all of the lights off!!! Just becase the bank is closed today doesn't mean that the university needs to shut down!! I guess I can just blame the university if I don't get everything finished in time. The university system over here is obviously not up to par with that of the United States. I can only access my studio from 9-9 on Monday through Friday and from 10-4 on the weekends. Even on the weekends I have to sign in and only have access to the computer lab and not the actual studio. How do they expect students to learn if they don't have access to the proper facilities?

SuperSize Me!

The well known documentary, SuperSize Me was on Channel 4 last night, and since I had never seen it, I decided that it would be a better use of my time than to work on my studio project. I was amazed at the end of it, as I had always known that McDonalds is bad for you, but never that bad. The guy gained 25 lbs in 30 days, and doctors said that his liver was so badly damaged that if he had been drinking alcohol to get him to this state, then the doctor mused that he would probably be dead from it. Having had McDonalds a few times during my stay here in London (it was the first meal I had here, haha), I was quite touched by the film and this morning I went out for a run. 25 minutes later I was done. Haha, we'll see how long this motivation lasts for.

On another note, it is quite beautiful outside today, and was nice and sunny on my run. I woke up at 8, and I have felt alive all day long, it's amazing what exercise can do for you, eh?

Oh, and bread over here in Europe doesn't keep as long as bread in the US, as I opened up my cupboard this afternoon to make a sandwich, and when took out my loaf of bread that I bought a week ago, I found that it was covered in mold. So, I had to buy a sandwich in town instead.

Time Flies

Man, it's hard to believe that it's almost May. In less than 7 weeks I will be back in the good ol' US of A.

This weekend wasn't a very event-filled one, but it was enjoyable nonetheless. Saturday consisted of me reading and listening to music, and I bought two new CD's, one by a guy named Tom Vek (he sounds a lot like Soul Coughing), and a mix by a group called 2 Many DJ's. Both are very electroclash in nature, which is a style that I am starting to get more and more into. It is quite the rave over here in London, and was the style of music that they played at Trash.

On Sunday I went to the pub with Adam, where we watched the Manchester United v. Newcastle football match. I was rooting for Newcastle, but Man U won 2-1. Oh yeah, I also watched a Formula 1 race that was on the tele as well. The race was quite exciting, Michael Schumacher came from 13th place to finish 2nd, almost passing the 1st place driver at the end.

I am working on a semi-study model in studio right now, but I cannot seem to get myself motivated to work on it for more than a few hours at a time. That is pretty much how I have felt all semester here, I just cannot engage on a level that I normally do. It is quite obvious why I am not doing so, as there is so much else for me to do while I am here, but part of me feels guilty for not putting the effort in. I have been trained for 3.5 years to work and work and work, and now I feel guilty when I am not working. Haha, by the time I get used to not working, it will be time to work again and then I will be a slacker. Such is life.

Bath/Stonehenge

On Wednesday I went to Bath and Stonehenge with the Britsh Life and Culture class.  It wasn't really that exciting of a trip, as most of it seemed to be in a coach, but such is life.  Stonehenge ok, I think that we stayed there for too long as there is only so much you can do around a pile of rocks.  Bath was alright, but I only got to really see the ancient Roman baths as it took too long at the pub to get our food so we missed the walking tour of the city.  Anyways, here are some pics:

Interesting brickwork in Bath:

Floors of Roman baths:

Some church:

Baths:

the 'Henge:

Slice and Dice

I was just building a model and had just put a brand new blade on my knife when BAM! I sliced the tips of my index and middle fingers on my right hand. I am now trying to type with drafting tape and trash paper wrapped around my finger.

Needless to say, I have taken a break from model building today and it is now time to research music.

Trash[ed]

Currently listening to: Soulwax - Any Minute Now

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Last night I went with some of my mates into London to a killer club/bar named Trash. It was a really good night, and I didn't get home until 4:30am. We had to take the N77 night bus all the way home, which took about an hour and highlights the deficiencies of the London public transportation system. The tube shuts down before midnight and I have known people who have left the pubs at 11:30 when they were kicked out and couldn't get the tube to the train station and had to take a cab. If a city known for its early closing of the pubs can't even accomodate those people, then you know there is a problem. Now that they are allowing 24 hour licensing of pubs I wonder if that will have any effect on the way that they run their transportation. I sure hope so.

Yesterday I had a desk crit with one of my professors and I got some good input. I hadn't talked to anyone about my project since before Easter break, and it was actually nice to do some work for once. He told me that right now I just have boxes of spaces and need to detail what is in between the spaces and make it a building, but then he added that he didn't know how my grades transferred so he didn't know if I needed to detail out the spaces. It transfers back as pass/fail, so techincally I could probably do not much more work and have a passing grade, but part of me wants to develop my idea that I have going and see what I can learn from it. I'm not going to do an intense 3-D model or anything like that, but I will put some more development into it.

I woke up today around 1pm and haven't really done much so far today and I don't really plan on doing much either. I started a new book, Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky and it is pretty good so far. It's supposed to be an excellent book, and was only £1.50 at Borders, so I figured I couldn't lose. Tomorrow I am going with the wonderful American students to Stonehenge and Bath, so that will be an interesting day. I haven't seen most of those people in over a month, and haven't really formed any relationships with them, so it should be a rather bland day, socially speaking. I should have some pictures up documenting that trip in a few days.

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pics of Trash:
http://www.endclub.com/img/venue_info/venue1/photo1.jpg
http://www.endclub.com/img/venue_info/venue1/photo2.jpg

Sunday, Bloody Sunday

Well, I was going to go and watch the London Marathon today, but to do so I was going to have to wake up at 7 am.  I couldn't fall asleep last night until 3, so when the alarm went off this morning I turned it off and rolled over and went back to sleep.  Instead I watched it on TV.

The weather today has been beautiful; I was outside sketching for a while.  Last night, while I couldn't sleep, I was looking through some images that I had done on my computer, and came across the below image.  I made it while I was reading a book by Thomas Merton, a successful New York author who gave up his career to enter a monastary in Kentucky.  The book was quite interesting and the image below deals with some of what I was thinking about when I was reading it.

Finally Friday

Ok, so it hasn't been that intense of a week here in the LDN, but it's nice to have the weekend here; it means that there's not studio work for me. Last night was a rip-roaring time at a local pub called the Cocoanut as it was my friend Adam's 21st birthday. Shots aren't big over here like they are in the US, so when I bought him a 3 Wise Men, he just about lost it. After the Cocoanut closed (11 pm), we went to a club called Bacchus where we danced for a while and had more good times.

This weekend I am planning on going to watch part of the London Marathon on Sunday. Hopefully I can get some good pictures and post them up here next week sometime.