Beautiful In My Eyes

View out of my room

I love this song to death. Written and sung by Joshua Kadison, i especially like the first few lines just with the piano. I am the unplug and single instrument kinda gal.


Everytime when i start playing it, i am transported back to those time when i was a teenagers, at home, listening to this song over the radio. Or the times in college, when i was driving my kancil when i had this song recorded and played. And if i allow myself to travel further back in time, i could probably find the love i lost through this song. Details are blurry now, but i can feel my heart all crunched together from some painful feeling.


you are my peace of mind
in this crazy world
you are everything i try to find
your love is a pearl

you are my Monalisa
you are my rainbow sky
and my only pray is that you realise
you'll always be beautiful in my eyes

the world will turn and the season will change
and all the lesson we will learn
will be beautiful and strange

we'll have our a feel of tears and share of sight
my only pray that you realise
you'll always be beautiful in my eyes.

Jesse and Picture Postcard from LA are also my favourite from Joshua Kadison.

The Image of The Architect

Lost

Its not very nice to wake up to a freezing cold ( zero degrees ) saturday morning from a nightmare, feeling so sad and not looking forward to the day or tomorrow or the day after.
The sadness is very unfamiliar to me. Its almost like losing a lover. So empty inside. Its disappointment? Its Sickness? Heartbroken? The fact is i never had one. Why do i feel so sad?
It felt so real, i was almost feeling it and then i was slamed with the reality that it wasn't real.

I have to rethink my days ahead. Accomodating all the other problems that i will be facing. I am probably denying the invisile stress coming from the dying FIL, the possible or impossible move to other places, losing of friends that i have gained and starting all over again, my DON"T KNOW WHAT"S WRONG with me health problem. All these uncertainty has pushed me to the limit. And now i have fallen for a reason which is not suppose to be there!

I really question why HE has brought me these challenges as if the current problems are not hard enough to tackle. Perhaps to test my faith and trust in HIM. I became religious. HE became my solace.

On a lighter note, my hope and prayer for Miss M came true. Yesterday was her birthday. I told her that this year is going to be a good year. Deep inside, i sincerely hope that she will be blessed with another baby after losing one two years back. She replied that she too think this year is going to be a good year, giving me a huge smile of contentment and gratefulness. Today, i learnt the news that she is 13 weeks pregnant. Oh, i was so happy that i shed a tear.

Time will always heal. She said she had to give respect to those who has passed on. I admire her strength. I know tomorrow will always be a better day. Time too, will reveal the course that has been laid down for me and us.

Decipher My Dreams

I had two nightmares last night.

First one was pretty easy to decipher.
I dreamt that my period finally came.
Easy. It just means that i have been worrying too much about it.

The second one is the hard one.
I dreamt that i was back in KL, went somewhere with my mom and Malcolm. Mom said we should take the LRT home. Well, it could be the other one that only goes around the city centre, can't remember what it is called. And so this train, took a particular road along a highway. I have no idea which one and can't tell from the details i "saw" in my dream either. I could only remember there were some old atap shop lots along side it. Well, it probably doesn't exist either, you know how sometimes, you can have a dream about something that doesn't exist.

So, the most unbearable thing about this dream was that there were four MAJOR accidents happened on this highway. And when i say major, i really mean it. The first accident is probably the worse as it involved most vehicles and people. Could not see how many people injured or died because i only picked up the fact that there were piling vehicles, one on top of the other. One car hits the car in front and the domino effect continued on for the longest chain of accidents i have ever seen.

The second one was on the same side of the road as the first one which is less than 5 minutes train ride away. This accident strangely involved many black coloured Mercedes. They all have tinted windows and a "government offical " tag in front of their cars, meaning they are all VIPs.
I remembered vividly this Amat stumbling out of a car, almost fainting, while a police man asked him if he is alright. And as the train sped past, i saw a few corpses lying on the ground with cloth covering them. I was thinking about tomorrow's news with the headline, multiple car accidents on highway, ministers killed.

I can't remember much of the third and the fourth accident. The third one was on the opposite side of the first two not long after the second accident while the fourth one is the same side as the first two after the third accident on a mud filled section of the highway.

I think i was too shocked with all the accidents that happened to jolt down the details of the last two. And the rest of the dream was about how everyone paniced about how to go home and what will happen as if its the end of the world.

So, you have any idea what it is all about.

what's going on inside my body?

I really wish i have this magic eye that could pierce through my skin and see what's happening inside my body. Not only that, i also wish to know what causes certain things to happen. Perhaps, if i have this ability, i could, in the future, detect the unwelcome sickness that could possibly happen to me.

My body has been extremely strange lately. Not that it wasn't before. Maybe i have been having too much time to feel and i am too relax hence i get to "sense" what my body is trying to tell me more obviously. Well, its also because i was stressing too much few weeks back that my "self" just collapse and refuse to function, so i decided to rest a little more and relax a bit more.

So, this month, suddenly the factory decided to shut down after 5 straight months of production. Gave me almost 30 days of pimple free days and then whoa la, it decided to give me hell and provides me with almost a week of extreme hormone changes. my chests are swollen, my stomach felt bloated and heavy and a little achy and even a tad of feeling i want to go to toilet all the time. My head also aches and spins. Lastly, gastric non stop. Give me a break, will you?

I sincerely hope that after one week of PMS, ( one week of tantrum throwing by the factory), production would resume and i could lead a normal woman life.

How to be an Architect - Part 1

I can't remember where i heard this from, but some reknown architect said :" Passion is what you need to go far."

Hai... i think i only have 10% of what is needed to go far.

and then, there's a special report on CNN on some of the world's famous architect. The host said :" Architects, they are dry on the outside but on the inside, they express themselves in the brick and mortar of our living room."

Emm... i guess that explains why i am boring on the outside...but i am still not sure if i express myself well with brick and mortar on the inside.

We shall see.

Meanwhile, lets ponder over this as a bar in Chinatown, Melbourne.

My Office

Recently, City News had another coverage of our office in Kingston and took this photo.

The guy in purple is Alastair, my boss. I had my arms folded wearing the DJAS green t-shirt.

Carpark Part 3

I went for a walk around site today with Alastair. He seem to like the panel details especially the handrail. He was also exclaiming about the effect of the sunlight has on the panels that at different times of the day, he sees different colours of the panels.

When we were up on level 1, a Qantas Link plane was taxing to take off, exactly the image that i want to have of this place, with the perforated panels in the foreground.

carpark 4-5's cladding Part 2

The perforations formed on the panels look like some sort of codes.

The red on the concrete at the back of the panels is nice.

A corner detail. There's already rubbish in between the panel and the concrete slab. Can also get a glimpse of the mesh panel on the bottom left corner of this picture.

Detail between panels.

Finally! Some of the perforated and mesh claddings have been installed in the carpark. The most awaited moment by me and Alastair. Alastair was quite excited about it when Davide told him that they are up. He then told me to go to site to have a look.

I have to say i am a little disappointed with them because the colours are too light. There are suppose to be three powdercoat colours on the three panels on every column. Even from these pictures, you can't really tell the difference. Especially between the two light coloured panels.

Oh well... at least the red behind the panels look good. And the fact that it is Canberra's best looking and longest carpark at the moment.

Hotel Silken - Hotel Puerto America Madrid

Another place we could check out in Europe next time. Pretty disturbing spaces i have to say. Would you want to stay in a room which is all block or white by Zaha Hadid? All rooms are designed by different architects, even the landscape and carpark are designed by different people. http://www.hoteles-silken.com/ I checked it out, it cost EU299 a night. Umm.. would be out of our budget.

Don't believe the docs!!

I hate it when the doctors start counting down the days till you life expires. I understand that its their job to do so but what do they expect us, the patients, to do? Do we start organising our own funeral? Bidding goodbyes? Or perhaps, have so much time left that we could write our own eulogy? NONSENSE!

I think, the time when the docs start counting down, is the time when i start counting up, how many so more days that i can out-live their predictions, just to prove them wrong!

Like all things in life, never let destiny take over. You, yourself control your own fate and destiny. Only the weak minded are pushed around. The strong minded elites train and control their own mind to succeed.

My dearest father-in-law, i know you don't belong to the weak minded bunch of crap. I believe you have more time and i expect you to see the birth of our first child. By the way, have we told you that it will be another few years before we decide to pop one out? Now, that's a challenge that you have to live up to!

Swim

I finally decided that its time for me to get my lazy arse out of the couch to go for a swim. I mean a real serious swim. The kind of swim which i used to do when i was still a uni student. The kind of swim which makes me feel so good after one hour of kicking non-stop. The kind of swim which makes me feel extra good when i go for a warm shower after.

Swimming has helped me so much in the past few years. I dare say, swimming brought me futher and further away from the depression that i am/was suffering. Swimming has also made me so much fitter than i was before.

Its a great idea to live next to the swimming pool. If i have the ability to built my own house in the future, i would built an indoor heated 25m lap pool. Thinking back, when i was staying in Bouverie Street, i literally visit the City Bath every other day. When i was stresssed, i went to the pool, when i was depressed, i went to the pool, ( exercise keep adrenaline high and kept me happy), when i had nothing better to do , i went to the pool! The result of those frequent visit? I was so much fitter and slim! I could afford to wear tight stretchable cotton pants without having to worry about how big my butt is. Anyone who knows me, know how i was chubby and round before, but now when u look at me, ( well, probably you can't even see me because i am almost nothing ) you will see a bony face. Oh! Did i also mention that going shopping for pants is also so much easier when my big butt is under "control".

I stop swimming ever since i came to Canberra. The reason is because i could not find a decent and warm pool near to where we stay. I am paying the consequences of slacking off now after one and half years. All the problem areas are starting to show and i can really feel how " fat" i am now. Eventhough i still visit the gym as often as i can weekly, nothing compares to swimming.

Well, there is no better motivation than wanting to feel thin and being able to fit into those stretchable pants of mine! To top it up, i will buy a 20 pass. Then, i will have no more excuses of not swimming because i have to drive almost 15km to the pool.

When its not right

I have to learn to sit down and listen to the voices inside.
When things don't feel right, it means something is not going the right direction.
Or some people might put it that GOD has a better plan for you.

And if GOD really has a better plan for me, then i shall patiently wait.

My house and Cancer

I remembered the stale air that filled our house. From the last few weeks when he absolutely didn't want to eat or talk till the last few days when nothing was heard from him till after he passed away, the house had this strange stale air which stayed around till ... we moved back in 1995. I could not remember the reason why mom and i moved to Granma's. But Granma took care of us, i grew up there, found happiness there and slowly recovered. For some reason, the energy in our house was back. It was filled with the teenage laughter and happiness built by friends.

Death is a scarry and painful process. Why do we have to go through it?

I hate to talk about this but i ask questions like how does a person deal with death? How is the process like? What is in a person mind when he is going through death? Is it scarry? Is it worrying?

How did i deal with it? How did i deal with my dad going through cancer? How did i deal with it from the first day it was diagnosed till the day he left on the 17th November 1990?

All these years, everthing had become very cloudy to me.

And of course, now, its all coming back.

My Fathers

What can i say? They are equally difficult. They love their jobs to death. They are perfectionists. They never talked much. They believe in hard work and they attend to every single detail.

My Father

I never knew him well. I only know that he worked most of his life. He dedicated his life to it and he probably never regretted it. But, one thing for sure, he loved me dearly.

There are only a few good memories with him that i remember.

I turned 10 one year and he and mom were too busy at work to celebrate with me. He phoned back and said :" Ba Ba can't make it back to celebrate with you, but i promised that i will bring you to eat western food coming weekend." Westen food was big deal back in the 80s. It was luxury and i loved it. He was a man who delivered promises. I had my Faber Castell that weekend. 1988, i was top student in my class and i wanted a bike. I got my bike. ( but he never rode with me) 1990, i was addicted to my uncle's video game. Once again, i was the top student in primary 6. Nearing death, he asked my uncle to buy me one. I never got one because i told him that its not good for me.

I also remembered a " conversation" about cancer we had in the living room, with him lying on the sofa . He talked, i listened. I wasn't sure if i asked the question if he was going to die.

Other memories of him were more of the ways he brought me up. I was never allowed to sit with my legs up on a chair. I was never allowed to whistle. I was never allowed to disobey the elderly. I was never allowed to choose and pick food with my chopsticks. I was never allowed to ask my maid to wash my shoes. He was a very strict and serious father.

Despite my disrespect for him being a person who didn't know how to juggle the balance of life, I feel honoured that he instilled in me his principles of being a good human.

Malcolm asked me if i think i lack a father figure during my young adult life. I never thought i lacked anything until i met my father-in-law.

My Father-in-law

If my own father built up the foudation of being a good person during my childhood, my father-in-law fills in the rest for my adulthood.

Despite his seriousness, he surpises people by throwing in a few jokes or two occasionally.
His old fashion attitude to life and his believe in righteouness reiterate the foundation i was built upon. But his wit and determination to succeed in this crude and realistic society is something that my own father never had the chance to teach me.

I don't think i can learn his wit given that his smartness was probably polished from the fact that he had to wheel himself out of the humiliation and poorness that he was in. Its increadibly fascinating to see the ideas and perspective he has of things around. As i know the Peh family better and better, i realise that their success is based on pure determination and hard work. Of course, my father-in-law insightful views to spot potentials are the first step to the success. He told me that, for anything you do, you have to be able to see beyond what other people see. If people see one step ahead, you have to see three steps ahead. Foresights are utmost important.

Determination has been a recipe of success i share with this family too. Never give up until the very last minute should be the motto for everyone. My own dad fought cancer till the very last days. If i had been able to ask my dad to speak, i am sure he would have told me that he believed he won't die. The same goes to my father-in-law, I see the strength and determination in him. I see his positivity and will power to live. I hope he doesn't disappoint me and continue fighting.

My father-in-law and i also share the same view of how important self control is for any person. We don't believe that obese people would be successful. If a person can't control their own eating and living habits, how could you believe him to come out with something good?

Not much else i could speak of this person whom i have only know for the past four years. I can only pray that God give him a few more years so that i could have the honour to be "taught" by him.

Women

There are two women whom i think best describe the important role that women in the 21st century play.

My Mother

She is not the strongest woman i know but she has gone through the good and bad times with my dad and brought me up in the past 16 years all by herself.

In fact, as much as i know my dad, i didn't think she had much of a good times with him. He was a workoholic. His only past time was work and he never paid much attention to the family. I spent most of my childhood with my mom. I suppose we were the lucky few who afforded a few oversea trips while my dad was alive back in the 1980s. Dad passed away when his company was just picking up and left it all to my mom. He left without saying few words and spent the last eight months making my mom suffer with him. His stubborness made her life more miserable than all other cancer patients' spouses had to endure.

While every other women of her age went through their mid-life being the pillar of support for their husbands, she went though hers by herself, bringing me up, attending to a expanding company and taking care of her parents and siblings. Of all things that should be emphasised here is her constant "care" towards her siblings and relative who work for her. Other people may not know this but i know that every decision she made, she made sure that her siblings are not left out despite the ill treatment she gets from them.

Knowing that she is not a very strong and decisive women, what she had gone through was double the difficulty level that others had gone through. She is close to 60 now and i would say she did it all by herself and she should be a role model to others.

My Mother-in-law

I barely know her for four years. But i heard a lot of stories of who she was and who she is now. Anyway, she is like an open book, you can read her as she speaks and acts.

She is the classic type of woman who plays the support role to her husband all the way. She always boast that half of her husband's success came from her. If you know her, you would not doubt a single bit of what she said. I don't think i know any other woman who is as extreme as she was, worked full on for the first 30 years of her life, brought up two boys, retired ( yup, retired ) and had the luxury of enjoying life being a full time house wife.

(Not sure if fate is playing a trick on me but i am going through the pain of seeing my father suffering cancer for the second time.)

My mother in law, as hard headed as her husband, is going through the same painful experience that i saw my mother went through 16 years ago. They both had the same equally difficult man to take care of. Sometimes i think its very funny how much similarities there are between the two men who was and who is my father.

She always say that the role of women is very important. Without women, men would not survive. Maybe i have been brainwashed but i truly believe that i play a very important role to the success of my husband.

I hope i can live up to these two role models.

Grey

I personally never paid much attention to grey.
I don't think i own any thing grey in colour either. Oh.. actually our car is dark grey. But, legally, the car is not mine.

Went to PM+C for site visit today and found that all the workstations' colours are grey. The colour made the whole place looked really dull despite the splash of horizontal band of colours here and there. I don't like the concept of using colours for identity of levels and departments. I felt that i was in a childcare centre. No offence to the designer.

Building 35 BBP's new conference centre also had hues of grey for the wall lining. Alastair said to me that the greys look like those for the car park cladding. I agreed.

Coincidentally, carpark's perforated aluminium cladding also consist of three different greys, agaist teraccota red , that is. It will look good. Check this space for pics.

I thought we had this conversation before?

( Picture Taken from Jerry's MSN Space )

What a nice Sunday morning! I love waking up to the kind of gloomy, breezy weather that seems like its going to rain anytime.

Sitting on the sofa with the news switched on, i was going through the transition between the half a awake me to the fully awake me. Of course, most of the time , this method never worked.
I found out something interesting though. Barec Obama ( almost sound like Osama ) is running for American Presidency. He is young enough to look like my brother and he is black. All the rich and famous seem to be younger and younger now, and here i am, almost 30 and still having achieved nothing.

Still half awake, i stumbled to the computer, and started looking at my msn online list.
Hey , Jerry is online again. my mouse automatically rolled over to his msn space pictures of his trips around Europe every now and then. Now, that made me wonder, how does he support himself and his almost wife-to-be. living and working in London and still afford to tour Europe.
Looking at the dates of his travel, he must be making a trips every three weeks or so. First few times, around London and then he ventured off further and further. Paris, Venice, Rome.. all on separate trips. He must have bought the around Europe rail pass, i thought.

Hai.. i really wish to travel to Europe. There so much i could see, so much i could learn, the good and the bad. I wish i don't have to " see" all the buildings on paper anymore but able to touch and smell and feel them.

In my head , i am thinking, how possible could i be working in Europe and travel like everyone else in DJAS did? Could Malcolm find a job easily in Geneva working in WIPO? What about settling down in Melbourne, desiggning my own house and start a family? What about my mom? What about Malcolm's Dad?

I know, i know, we talked about this a few times already. Everytime, the conclusion is that we are better off settling down in Melbourne, have all family members together and live happily ever after. Its more fair to the people around us.

Perhaps , there's another way around my dream to travel around Europe?

Maybe i should stop looking at Jerry's photos, they are really killing me!

Sketches of Gehry - Part 1

I don't understand why people sees him as GOD. I never understand his building. Too messy, too out of no where, too sculptural for my liking. Worst of all, i didn't like his design process. Its fine to work with model but sticking one card board here, bending it there and turning it around 360 degrees doesn't justify the making of a good building. Its almost like, i want to make a super large sculpture - the kind of object you see on the street and wonder what it is ,turn it into a building. Then, the only thing left to do is to stuff some "functional" spaces into all the nooks and crannys and all the strange spaces that's been created as a result of a strange looking sculpture.

Oh well, i only saw half of the documentary. Maybe its too early to criticise too much.

And there's one building of his i like : Disney Ice

So clean and white
Sexy curve there
Dancing Trusses

Carpark 4-5's Cladding

I can't describe how i feel. I am proud of myself. I am euphoric. I am living my dream. I saw it for the first time, not on paper but a 3-dimensional object. I touched it. I pushed it. I walked around it. I admired it from far; i inspected it up close. Its in production now!

Japanese Toilets

Halftecture OR
Halftecture OJ
Halftecture OO

Shuhei Endo? Who? Dunno. But I like his recent work called Halftecture OR, OJ & OO. No one knows where the name came from or what it means. I like Halftecture OO in particular because of the pure geomeric form. Thumbs up for his creativity in testing out the same material in different forms. More Pictures Here.

"Sewage Pipe" Hotel

How cool is this?
The Bridge in BBP, Canberra was almost made of a part of a sewage pipe to get the circular form happening.
Austria, i will come to you one day.
To book the hotel http://www.dasparkhotel.net/ .
Its FREE! Well, you can pay as much as you wish for their cleaning and maintainance cost.
To read more , go to Architecture Review