Wednesday, March 31, 2010

Beehive


Here at Harran, the well that never runs dry.

Do you remember this place? They told us that it is the most continuously inhabited site on earth. That it was where our first mother and father settled after the fall and that it was also a place our great father once called home. If only he knew how his children, plenty like the stars above, are slaughtering each other today. He would shed a tear. Maybe he sees all this. And maybe we expect too much of him. I remember us looking on, first in awe and then with skepticism, the kind we had been trained to exude. Most of all, I remember the houses, shaped like beehives; that silhouette forever etched in my memory as the sun slowly set. We are truly the sum of all our experiences.

Monday, March 29, 2010

Coffee


Morning Coffee, Sunday lunches,

nuts, bolts, lego bricks, a couple of drawings, some photographs and lots of talk. That is how it all started off. After last weekend, I dare say that we are off to a pretty decent start. I would like to thank all of you who visited us over the weekend. It really meant a lot to me that you were part of our beginning. And I would also like to thank all those who helped out the night before!

Sunday, March 28, 2010

Syncopy


Laid back.

Its been a long week and an even longer weekend but it was most definitely worth the while. Now, I just want to lie back, relax and enjoy a nice quiet cup of coffee. And I know a perfect spot for that. If only there was one more day in the week.

Sunday, March 21, 2010

Freedom


Birds eye view

I got out of bed early this morning again, finding it increasingly difficult to stay asleep. Sitting in my chair, with the windows open, I consoled myself with the fact that it was a bright sunny morning. The tree in front of my window has a new visitor and I watched as it flitted from branch to branch before glancing into my room where our eyes met; me envious and it, wary.

Saturday, March 20, 2010

Crossroads


given the option, to pass and look back at goals I've missed

I'm sitting here in my room, listening to Kings of Convenience in this rainy weather. The cold, the wet, the music reminds me of Aarhus and suddenly I am making my way up Skejbyvaenge, heading back home, with the wind in my face. I feel the crisp air rush up my nostrils and its sharpness makes me feel, alive. I am back at last night's concert again, listening to the same music but this time clearer and it all seems so surreal. Suddenly, the moment whispers softly in my ear, "whoah whoah whoah, I can never belong to you" and the past reclaims what is rightfully his.

Sunday, March 14, 2010

Yellow


Mixed up, Mixtape.

Sometimes, you sit around waiting,
even though the answer is right in front of you;
scrawled across the wall, like the lyrics of that sad love song
with an all too familiar ending.

Saturday, March 13, 2010

Roof


Like rain running off roof tiles.
Has time proved to be so powerful,
has memory proved to be so forgettable.

"Can you do me a favour, my friend? Could you look up a girl I used to know? I want you to go and see her, if you can. Her name is Chiu Chiu and her address is 10th East Cheng De Road - you know the road, it's that one round the corner from the train station. She used to live in a hutong house, but it has been so long now. She is small, but beautiful or at least she used to be. I have not seen her for many years and much can change in that time."
~ Guo Xiaolu, Lovers in the Age of Indifference

Friday, March 12, 2010

Life



Life is really more
about balance than keeping
things under control.

Thursday, March 11, 2010

MvDR


God is in the details

Morning at the Neues Nationalgallerie, Berlin. My first Van der Rohe building. A visit that was made extra special by the fact that it was hosting a pretty good Surrealist exhibition. I like how the whole building and although it is made largely of steel and concrete, it had a light air to it. A good building should be a meeting point, not just for people but of ideas, culture and its surroundings. A good building is one that is designed in context. Although not entirely on point, Alain de Botton did shed some insight into what makes a good building or in this case a good hotel:

"A good hotel is an embodiment of the act of love: love understood as a commitment to the wholehearted care of another human being. The ideal hotel would for a time manage to satisfy with the utmost intelligence, all the needs, physical as well as mental, of its clientele... As for architecture, too many hotels still fail to understand how human beings actually function... The failure of hotel designers to create congenial environments mirrors our inability to find happiness in other areas of our lives. Bad design is in the end as much a failure of psychology as of architecture. It is an example expressed through materials of the same tendency that in other domains will lead us to marry the wrong people, choose inappropriate jobs and book unsuccessful holidays: the tendency not to understand who we are and what will satisfy us..."
~ Alain de Botton, Essay 01, Monocle, February 2010



Wednesday, March 10, 2010

Grace


The Berlin Wall,

a reminder that the walls we built today will be swept away by the passage of time.

"For the world is movement and you cannot be stationary in your attitude toward something that is moving"
~Henri Cartier-Bresson

Sunday, March 07, 2010

Rush


All a blur.

Where did the weekend go? In spite of it being a longer weekend than usual, the weekend seemed to have just whizzed by. Is this how it is going to be? Not even time for a cup of coffee? I don't want to be an old man with regrets but at this rate, I'll be old before my time. Life is full of trade offs and choices.

Friday, March 05, 2010

Beast


Borrowed Words.

"We all at times feel somewhat painfully our human isolation from the sub-human world - the atrophy of instinct which our intelligence entails, our excessive self-consciousness, the innumerable complexities of our situation, our inability to live in the present. If only we could shuffle it all off! We must not - and incidentally we can't - become beasts."

~ C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves

Tuesday, March 02, 2010

Arbite

Please check out my latest project at: www.arbite.com.sg
Do bookmark the site as it will be growing. =)