the camera shoots itself, the cameraman shoots himself

i have been having spurts of narcissism lately


:D

photo marathon - the back office kind

before i get to the many other things that crave for attention, i'm on a photo sorting marathon - 2200+ photos from yesterday. and as many more to go...
i wish my laptop battery would last beyond a few minutes; it would help pass time on way to zurich :(

being twenty something

happy 23, jeenal!



from an old email, sent by jeenal:

Being a twenty-something…Easy or Difficult!!!
by Brenda Della Casa in Play Magazine April 2001

It is when you stop going along with the crowd and start realizing that there are many things about yourself that you didn’t know and may not like. You start feeling insecure and wonder where you will be in a year or two, but then get scared because you barely know where you are now.

You start realizing that people are selfish and that, maybe, those friends that you thought you were so close to aren’t exactly the greatest people you have ever met, and the people you have lost touch with are some of the most important ones. What you don’t recognize is that they are realizing that too, and aren’t really cold, catty, mean or insincere, but that they are as confused as you.

You look at what you are studying or your job… and it is not even close to what you thought you would be doing, or maybe you are looking for a job and realizing that you are going to have to start at the bottom and that scares you.

Your opinions have gotten stronger. You see what others are doing and find yourself judging more than usual because suddenly you realize that you have certain boundaries in your life and are constantly adding things to your list of what is acceptable and what isn’t. One minute, you are insecure and then the next, secure.

You laugh and cry with the greatest force of your life. You feel alone and scared and confused. Suddenly, change is the enemy and you try and cling on to the past with dear life, but soon realize that the past is drifting further and further away, and there is nothing to do but stay where you are or move forward.

You get your heart broken and wonder how someone you loved could do such damage to you. Or you lie in bed and wonder why you can’t meet anyone decent enough that you want to get to know better. Or maybe you love someone! but love someone else too and cannot figure out why you’re doing this because you know that you aren’t a bad person. Getting wasted and acting like an idiot starts to look pathetic. You go through the same emotions and questions over and over, and talk with your friends about the same topics because you cannot seem to make a decision. You worry about loans, money, the future and making a life for yourself… and while winning the race would be great, right now you are scared just to be a contender!

What you may not realize is that every one reading this relates to it. We are in our best of times and our worst of times, trying as hard as we can to figure this whole thing out.

sine musica la vitta

bern university's 175 yr anniversary

in turkey

the last 24 hrs or so have been quite chaotic - the kind that gives me the last minute high. and me being me, i was packing till the very last minute (i assembled my jacket while we were driving to the airport). then came the weighing scales that would determine how much food would eventually reach switzerland. some of us had lesser luggage than permitted, others around 1.5 times of what's allowed. and of course, the weighing scales at home and the ones in the airport never match. so out came the pile that was kept right at the top for such a situation. re-checking and re-weighing followed

and we leave bangalore, after 40 days and 40 nights...

the bangalore part of the exchange program came to an end yesterday, with the jury and the exhibition. a large number of jurors - 11 to be precise, with diverse take on most issues. our jury was rather blah - none of the jurors gave us much of a crit. most of the crit time was spent on the orientation of louvres and positioning of some light shelf. the project does throw up some arguments about the nature of office spaces for multi-national corporations, but those debates were beyond the scope of the project.

to be contd, too tired now

urban forest in an sez complex

in : ch 09 :: bangalore leg :: aol office building :: intervention at the sez complex level

a conceptual sketch of our intervention at the SEZ complex level - an urban forest is grown in place of a 30metre wide concrete road. the vehicular access is moved along the edge of the complex, freeing up the central strip.

programmatic inserts include a book store, two food courts, pavillions for gathering / classes, a creche, a computer training centre, an amphitheatre apart from street furniture elements.

the unused terraces of the office buildings now get used as sports courts, terrace gardens and for generating some amount of solar energy. in the urban forest below, solar-powered charging pods are present in the parking lots - to charge the electric cars.

within the forest, the scale and nature of the plantation varies - from tall trees that provide a larger colume beneath their canopy to shorter, more stouter ones that provide more shade. a catchment tank collects the surface drainage of the forest and serves as the backdrop to the amphitheatre.

the urban forest is imagined as a space that will draw in people from the areas surrounding the SEZ complex - areas and communities that are now isolated by the parasitic-nature of development of these complexes. this also allows the employees and the residents to interact in a non-threatning / non-intimidating environment.

each of the inserts is to be designed in a sustainable manner, under the frameworks of the rosette's categories - design, economy and ecology. we have thought of the basic design principle for each of the inserts: the book store is a series of elevated, connected boxes built around the trees; the creche is partly underground with a contoured side sheletering a court for the children to wander and play in; the computer training centre is an elevated linear structure, lifted 1.5 metres above the ground level. being modular in nature, it can be extended if and when needed. the grid of the modules is also reflected in the grid of the trees planted grown around the training centre.

/first half of the sketch completed in bangalore's local buses/

i thought, and i thought. then i thought some more...

a couple of days in bangalore and a whole, lot of changes and new-ities that go beyond what's visible on the surface. i did think that the honeymoon phase is over and that now the marriage will begin - that has proven to be correct in parts. but i am surprised every day - not just with others, but also with myself. will come to the self in just a few lines, but for the others - we've been pretty much around each other for 24 hrs a day for the past two weeks, but have managed to give the other the space that is required, more often than not atleast.

in my case it can become the personal space that is terribly terribly necessary, as someone discovered, for me to live sanely. if things are moving at a pace that i am not used to, then i feel uncomfortable. it is quite suffocating, akin to shoving a idli-vada down a stuffed throat ; a throat pressurised with all the emotions swirling in the head above. distance helps - to give things time, to put things in perspective, to structure thoughts and to think of the poa?

that touches upon a lot many arguable "philosophies" - to leave a footprint behind? the necessity of a plan-of-action? the thought about dependency? about living and death? and other conversations that can be very stimulating - ornamentation in modernism? the freedom granted by an academic project? each qualifies for separate posts, but i shall let that be. for now atleast. good night, try not to fret too much.

in transition

the first of the bunch of people that i have to meet up before leaving. tried to get a table at a a whole bunch of places before settling down for just biryani at oshiwara. chats about school, articleships, exams, europe, travels, the fairer sex, the library, architecture, the 20s, current favourites and others kept up with the brownies, icecream and coffees along the walk back to ashim's. followed by the conversation on the divider.

what the browser traversed today

apart from the many many ahmedabad photos, and nearly as many swiss offices, firefox today relished:


"validation" via white light design


and photographs of residents in their flats in hong kong's oldest public housing estate: 100 rooms, each 100 square feet in size. by michael wolf. link via VSL

of endings

in some strange convoluted way, is a story more-eternal, more-inspiring, more-memorable, more-beautiful if it ends in a tragic end - one that allows for pity, for mourning the loss of something so perfect, so unique, so desired.

why does the mundane and the grey not hold as much interest as the out-of-the-blue or the extreme, the black or the white. why does a story have to end in a climax or an anti-climax. why can't it end in no-climax. if the process, occurrences on the way is what matters so much, then why does the end have to be so defined.

if it could just blur away into the distance, seem hazy and unclear till it finally disappears, wouldn't that suffice as an end ?

mapping the world

http://show.mappingworlds.com//world/

a world so perfect ?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VzFpg271sm8
if you could be god & man at the same time would you make a world so perfect?

at home, for the first time

what firefox browsed through today

very short lists
how to be a good intern
the architect’s survival guide
number 17, new york
the universe in 2009

shutter-happy ?

today, while trying to get my shutter-happy self back.
at yari road and versova

happy new year, belated :p

lots has happened since the last post. in no particular order: the kanal family reunion (twice in the same year, how unlikely is that), 16 weeks of internship, a dying camera lens repaired yet again, a pay raise, visiting voyeuristic spaces, sharing the reality of life, formulating plans for the major part of this year, debates on ethics, treats gone haywire, making salespersons hunt down their stock, reflections 2009 ... and as many varied things seem to be in store.

i had to write something, anything infact; to break this self-imposed no-new post state

rallying at the gateway

photos from dec 03 rally at the gateway of india, here. videos are also posted, but you'd have to log in to facebook to view them.

22

never again with family.

festivities

wishing everyone a peaceful and joyous year ahead. may all your aspirations be attained and may we all be truer to each other, and to ourselves. peace.

friends and family

intenrships begin soon, and the first of the out-of-towners left today (after an hour of fruitless shoe hunting at linking road - never again, never!). work on the magazine should keep us busy for most of the week. got a striped white shirt for ddy from fab india, and he quite like it, while the story about ro's compilation travleled from versova to ellicott city to dc to kripa nagar to versova - quite a path...

and happy diwali to all

don't look before you laugh / look ugly in a photograph

a motley of emotions run through my head, as u2/city of blinding lights plays on winamp, the curtain flutters in the nocturnal breeze and my neck groans after a short movie on the badly shaped sofa...
oh you look so beautiful tonight ... ... ...

bora bazaar - mmrda - bcc - wikimapia

met the secretary at the bora bazaar office today, and he tried helping, with how much ever he knew. now, only if the powers that be, grant their go-ahead shall old records be accessible. also strolled into the mmrda office to check if they had any publications related to andheri west; but there were none. the staff was pretty helpful though, and there wasn't too much shuffling around between departments.

meanwhile, issues of morality, pilferage, inspiration, legitimacy continue to haunt me, and i haven't been able to firm up my thoughts yet.

a photo a day

this guy shoots and prints one photo a day with his self-made camera, and spends a whole lot of time and energy doing it

old report

a lot of random work has been popping up while on the prowl for material for the portfolio. this is the theory of design report on the first year study trip, from 2005:

Our study trip was to Deogad. I don’t think of any of us had any idea of what to expect. The experience started when we all descended on one bank of the water strip that seemed to divide us and our ‘study’. It was here where we started our daily ritual of getting into the dinghy and reaching over to the other side.

The ‘island’ was a small settlement called Meeth Mumbri. The introduction given was that we would be studying social, economical & cultural issues, and their relation to the built form. We started off by just exploring the place in groups, and since we spread all over the place, we all came back with our own notions of the area.

We then discussed on the type of interaction we would have with the community there. Our initial ideas were of ‘help’. But understanding their settlement and their occupations, made us realise that what they had with them was appropriate for them. Then the notion of ‘interaction’ focused towards how we could understand them better, and whether we could do ‘something’ that would involve them as well as us. It was here the notion of we as the city folk doing something [read: favour] to these people, got broken. Some of our ideas for this type of interaction involved a football match with the lads of the village, some kind of a performance, or an activity with the children of the school. But since none of these ideas were convincing, it was decided that we would try and understand their lives and their occupation.

We decided to ‘study’ three facets of their lives; the fishing activity, the plantation activities and the role of women in the houses & in the occupation of their families. During the first day at least, this ‘study’ literally became a study with most of us barging into homes and asking our ‘subjects’ a list of questions, almost like an interview. After reviewing this process amongst ourselves, we understood that such sort of an interaction would never give us a true insight into what we were trying to understand.

It was then that we decided that we would have to merge into their lives, for those few days, instead of being separate entities which were mechanically recording their activities. For the groups studying the role of women in the house and in the family-occupation, it also involved being sensitive to these women and not just forcing ourselves into their houses. The process of understanding them did involve asking questions, but this time it was not a pre planned list of questions that we went about asking them. Even earlier, our questions were answered, but now they were answered with less formality, and now we went beyond asking them ‘where do you sell your catch?’ or ‘what all things do you do in the morning?’.
For example, one of the women in the household that our group was involved with, had studied computers from a Bhartiya Vidya Bhavan branch, the same institution under which I had studied for my junior college. Such small anecdotes gave a deeper meaning to our interaction than the monotonous questions that we had begun with.

As we spent more time with these people, we started wondering about what would happening we had attempted the same sort of interaction in an urban area. We couldn’t imagine a group of students surrounding our homes, sketching or rapidly clicking pictures (this would be termed as a complete violation of privacy).

Apart from going to the plantations or to fish on a boat, some of us also visited related sites, like the fish preserving unit & or the local brewery. We also made a plan of the settlement, by counting the number of footsteps from one point of importance to another. These points were usually houses or electric poles. (Here we evolved our own sense of numbering and naming, example being ‘the yellow tulsi house’.) The next most important drawings that we made were sections through houses, complete with details of rooms, people engaging in different activities, and in some cases even with cats, chickens & puppies. We also tried to make activity maps, and plans showing how different spaces were used for different activities during the course of the day. In the end we tried to merge together the drawings of all the groups.

All in all, the study trip was an amazing experience. It made us realise that what we as people from a city perceive is not always correct, it made us less ignorant and arrogant about others, and we understood that there is always something to learn from everything.

what money can rent, for the night

rajasthan has more than it's fair share of palace hotels, heritage hotels, royal tented camps, pseudo-palace hotels (prime example being udaivilas) etc; so yet another haveli-to-hotel property shouldn't make big news, or prompt me to post this. and especially if their property looks like this - nothing exceptional vis-a-vis any of the established heritage hotels in the state.

but by late 2009, this property of the prime-ministers of jaipur will be host to (probably) the world's most expensive hotel suites. correction, make that museum-suites. but before i get to that, their current showcase is the maharaja suite (in the photo) - at 2 lakh rupees a night. that kind of money gets you 16000 sq ft, across 4 levels, with a pvt library, dining area, pool/spa, gold panelled elevators, and even a diwan-e-khaas thrown in for good humor. (there is also the maharaja's throne, displayed in a pvt museum, within ur suite - but i doubt they'd let you lay your heels on that).

and due to open next october is the shahi mahal suite. cost: 16 lakh ruppes a night
(ps: taxes extra!)

"tips and downloads for getting things done"

go check this NOW: http://lifehacker.com/

thesis

and the first post under 'thesis'



i couldn't get myself to finish watching this video. enjoy.