Slowdown in the economy..

So.. what do architects do when lucrative construction contracts evaporate during this world-wide financial crisis (ie. recession)? Here are some things I'm thinking about.

1. Start writing haiku.

2. Do other kinds of art.. like glass-blowing.

3. Do more competitions.

4. Move on to the next Olympic city... London!

5. Become an entrepreneur.. and start a Mexican restaurant chain.

6. Go on a sabbatical in the Venice and learn Italian.

7. Run for a seat in parliament.

8. Pick up the guitar and busk for a while.

9. Go to Yunnan and help an orphanage.

10. Build a boat.

Palin.. again..

Well, the sad truth is here. She's just not ready. Kathleen Parker, of the National Review, says it better than me.

Palin’s recent interviews with Charles Gibson, Sean Hannity, and now Katie Couric have all revealed an attractive, earnest, confident candidate. Who Is Clearly Out Of Her League.

No one hates saying that more than I do. Like so many women, I’ve been pulling for Palin, wishing her the best, hoping she will perform brilliantly. I’ve also noticed that I watch her interviews with the held breath of an anxious parent, my finger poised over the mute button in case it gets too painful. Unfortunately, it often does. My cringe reflex is exhausted. 

Just read an angry essay by Margaret Atwood today in the Globe and Mail criticizing Harper's recent comments about the arts. See her essay here. Seems like Harper isn't so keen about funding the arts, because he says that ordinary people don't seem to care for it. It would be very unfortunate if his cutbacks to the arts and culture continue. In Canada, the arts (literature, film making, music, architecture) is already a small and feeble industry (compared to most other countries), and it needs to be encouraged and grown, not pulled back. Canada continues to export creative talent overseas.. and it is necessary to stop this exodus. Why would I want to move back to a place that discourages innovative architecture? Where a society as a whole doesn't want to spend an extra penny on design? Right now, Steven Holl's project- first one in Canada- for the Toronto waterfront is put on hold because of none other than budget issues. For our cities to be inspiring places that people can be proud of (and want to live in), we need to demand more from our governments.. not less.

Give the banks a break.

All this talk about the need to punish Wall Street for its mistakes.. is misguided. The i-banker isn't to blame. Sure.. he makes a six figure salary to simply move money around. Sure.. he travels the world in his private jet. But.. the real culprit, I think, is the system that fools us into thinking that there are guaranteed returns on our investments. That makes everyone think they are entitled to an acre of land and a large house. And a large car. A system buoyed up only by the rather fragile notion of market "confidence." 

I think we should rethink the idea of debt.. and start making better decisions based on real accumulation of capital. Not having a nice mortgage, or a platinum credit card, or a student loan.. can actually be a good thing. It will cause us to live according to what we can afford. Buildings will be built according our needs, and not what some developer thinks we want. Universities will no longer take for granted the number of students that walk through their gates. We will make smarter decisions about what to buy and what we cannot buy. We can live more simply...

Toxic Dairy Products, Toxic Yoghurt, and now.. Toxic White Rabbit Candy!

The dairy crisis in China has never been worse, and today, I read in the Straits Times that the popular White Rabbit Candy was found to have traces of melamine, the toxic industrial chemical blamed for sickening 53,000 children in China. I predict a real collapse of the dairy industry here. I've stopped buying milk products altogether. Here what it says:

"SINGAPORE has found traces of a toxic chemical in a third Chinese-made dairy product as a scandal over tainted milk spreads across Asia, authorities said on Sunday.

Singapore's Agri-Food and Veterinary Authority (AVA) said samples of White Rabbit-brand Creamy Candy imported from China were contaminated with melamine, an industrial chemical that can cause kidney stones and lead to kidney failure."

Beijing's pollution problems

At the beginning of the Olympics, the media was criticizing the government about the thick smog that was hovering over the city. I remember talking to my roommate, Kiel, and we made this analogy: China is like this big awkward kid with an odour problem that has always been picked on over the years. But now (during the Olympics), the big kid finally gets his chance at the spotlight.. and all he gets are insults from everyone else.. because even though he's cleaned up himself a fair bit, he still kind of smells.

Well, now that the Olympics and the Paralympics are over.. the factories are back up and running, and the licence plate restrictions are lifted.. and the pollution is back. I just read this funny quote.. originally from this blog.

"Like a giant kid who's been holding a fart in during a three week elevator ride, Beijing has apparently relaxed its many industrial sphincters and let a big one rip. That's the only way I can explain the lighting-fast deterioration in air quality."

The air quality is horrendous today.

Is Facebook on it's way down?

I don't really use Facebook very much anymore. Why? It's kind of become a little unwieldly- with all the advertisements, the applications, all these new features, etc. And as people's friends lists get longer, we just don't have the time to keep track of everyone. I don't need to see the news feed about everybody I know and everything they did. The only real useful application is the photo-sharing, and keeping a "wall". I think Facebook needs to simplify and to focus just on photos and its core business of managing friends list.. anything additional is going to eventually backfire. 

Google, on the other hand, seems to know how to do it well. Gmail is a wonderful invention that combines instant messaging and easy-to-use email in the same window. Their new browser- Google Chrome- is fantastic. I still use Google Finance, GoogleApps, iGoogle, Google Earth.. all these things are innovative, very useful, and fun to use.. 

Microsoft's strange new ad campaign..

Just watched a 5 min advertisement on the Microsoft site. Looks like they are trying to re-spin their image, which was so successfully trampled upon by Apple. But it is weird to watch two of the most famous people in the world  (Jerry Seinfeld and Bill Gates) do ordinary things, like buying shoes, fighting over a plastic giraffe, and having dinner with a typical suburban family. The strange juxtaposition isn't really that funny, and only emphasizes the point that they are both kind of irrelevant. 

I remember seeing a Mac in Jerry's apartment on Seinfeld. I wonder what happened that made him switch?

“Our beds are empty two-thirds of the time.
Our living rooms are empty seven-eighths of the time.
Our office buildings are empty one-half of the time.
It’s time we gave this some thought.”

R. Buckminster Fuller

Cuandixia

Last Saturday, I went to Cuandixia- a Ming-dynasty village 90 km west of Beijing. A great place to escape the city to a different world.

Just downloaded iTunes 8.. what an update! New visualizer, new ways to view music, and even an automated DJ called "Genius". Perhaps no surprise that there's also a new sidebar where it makes it even easier to buy music..

My parents participated in a travelling church choir in Edmonton, conducted by CK Yeung.

Pandas!!

Hand-reared in Chengdu.

See my firm's Beijing project in the NYT. Here and also here. Also has good mention of Urbanus, a firm I worked for last year. Urbanus is drawing more publicity than ever before.

Spinning wheels

This past weekend, while I was at the gym, I watched an interesting sport on TV- wheelchair basketball. It was actually quite exciting! It's nothing like the basketball we know..  the athletics and strategies are totally different. But it's fast paced, it's full of drama, and actually hitting the hoop from the sitting position is actually a really difficult thing to do... as noted by the score (halftime 18-6). You would gasp if someone in a wheelchair on the street flips over. In this sport, the players often lose control and the wheelchair flips. But they are strapped into their chairs.. and right themselves up as if the chair was part of their body. Amazing.

 

Googlization of the world and vetting.

At the 10 year anniversary of the incorporation of Google, Rob Dubbin writes a hilarious piece about how he tried to survive without Google for 24 hours. Also, with the lack of a TV in my apartment here in Beijing, I have been spending whole evenings watching diavlogs on bloggingheads.tv. It is basically like Crossfire, but free of advertising and much more interesting. This one talks more about the genius and sinister side of Google. 

Throughout the presidential campaign, I can't read a single article without without seeing the word "vet." Was Palin properly vetted? The vetting process of VP takes a few months. Hillary Clinton is thoroughly vetted by years in the spotlight. I've always thought vetting has something to do with animals.. but I discovered that it also has a parallel meaning. The dictionary definition is 'to make a careful check of (a person or document) for suitability."  It's a great word to use, I think.. and makes choosing things sound more sophisticated and systematic. Forget spontaneous decisions. From now on, I think need to vet more things in our lives. We need to vet birthday gifts and guest lists,  vet future spouses and their families and acquaintances, vet what kind of shampoo to buy.. there should be professional personal vetters. We should vet them too.

Americans who just don't see eye-to-eye on things.

Just watched a fascinating diavlog Robert Wright and Hugh Hewitt on everything from Russian aggression in South Ossetia, to the Beijing Olympics being good/bad for the world, to the anti-American-exceptionalism of Obama. I'm see now why McCain is using the "Country First" slogan because the Republicans are pushing the line that Obama is anti-American. Although I share the same faith with Hewitt, I disagree with 90% of what he asserts.

September 2

September is the best month to experience Beijing, when the breezes take away the smog and the temperatures are mild. The view out my bedroom window as the sun sets:

August 31, 2008: On the eve of Hurricane Gustav

Some fearful memories come to mind as Mississippi and Louisiana brace for a storm that is forecasted to bear down on their coastlines in the next few hours. Same trajectory as Katrina, about the same size..  I am reminded of my experiences there just two years ago when I saw the kind of devastation that these storms can wreak. 

I question now whether people should rebuild the same old homes in these towns, which are so susceptible to disaster. I think rebuilding is important to bring hope and purpose to survivors. But people need to be smarter about where to build and, especially, how to build. If the storm surge comes back, and the floodwaters linger, all that work done in the past 3 years would have been wasted. 

The same thing is happening on the other side of the planet, in Sichuan province here in China. A few interesting details (none which I can confirm) is that according to my boss, Li Hu, the authorities are rebuilding as fast as they can, without really researching better construction methods. And the whole region is continuing to experience large-scale earthquakes. From another colleague, these earthquakes may be partly caused by the pressure-build-up from the newly built Three Gorges Dam near Chongqing. Whatever it may be, poor architecture is the reason for causalties.. and we need to encourage smarter ways to build.

Remembering Katrina: our missions team meeting Deborah, a jewelry designer who had moved back to Bay St. Louis to start a business.

August 31: The skies have never been bluer in Beijing. This is the view outside my window at 10:30am.