what will be will be

here is how I explain myself the little time extension i decided to take for my final project.... (actually a silly article i wrote for school paper haha.....)

A Guide to Holland – in praise of slow

When I first come to Holland I have to admit I had problems adjusting to the speed of living here. Coming from Hong Kong does not make me a 100m sprinter but perhaps at least a competent speed walker, it is evil to stand on the travelators in Hong Kong since you would be in someone else’s way who always think they have the most important appointment ahead. Time is money, speed is the key, slow is weak – we, Hong Kongers are made to believe. Naturally in the first few weeks here in Holland I felt so agonized being taken over by all the bikes while I was walking since I hadn’t got a bike yet.

 

This phenomenon of speed doesn’t stop at the cycling lanes but are in fact almost everywhere, from cafés to restaurants, from supermarkets to exhibition galleries, from printer repairs to applications of funds. I have to adapt to a new pace of life. Even in the architecture faculty I have to get used to the weekend closures, longer semester and one studio-a-week system (as opposed to the two studios-a-week system in Hong Kong, which I still think is much more efficient), while my friend from Hong Kong, after two years of study here at TU Delft, still feels angry when he was asked to leave the faculty at 10pm by the janitor (in our studio in HKU it’s almost obscene to leave this early as studio opens 24/7).

 

However, I soon realized the importance of these measures of our faculty. Instead of feeling like a cad monkey when I was in Hong Kong, now I feel more like a proper architecture student in TU Delft, who have time to think, to discuss, to go to lectures, to design, to work part-time, to do competitions, and if necessary, to extend his studies. Milan Kundera once analyzed this phenomenon of speed brilliantly in his book Slowness (as quoted by Professor Juhani Pallasmaa in the last series of the Architectural Positions debate):

 

‘…There is a secret bond between slowness and memory, between speed and forgetting… …The degree of slowness is directly proportional to the intensity of memory; the degree of speed is directly proportional to the intensity of forgetting…’

 

It is perhaps interesting to use Kundera’s reading of slowness to explain the wave of final project extensions we have at the faculty at the moment, when usually more than half of the students in a studio (at least in architecture as far as I know) choose to extend their final projects by a few months. Maybe it is such an enjoyable experience at TU Delft that people choose to take more time to finish their projects so that in the future they can cherish this memory much better. In Hong Kong I never had this luxury of extending my studies since there was no such system. Therefore, in my final year at TU Delft, I decide to join this ‘slow movement’. [1]

 

wow i thought i would have abandoned this blog... last time i wrote about it is about my competition, n now its a month already n i still got nothing new for my design, so naturally i need to extend my 'studies' (i dun study anymore, just produce) for a few months...on the plus side the competition i made with 2 other friends was informed to be the winning design in an international student competition (judging from previous years they should have around 400-500 entries), for more info, visit https://www.acsa-arch.org/competitions/historicalpreservation.aspx and they are going to publish winner's design n juries comment soon...

of course i'm happy to win but i'm not as excited as my 2 mates, they were like crazy when they knew the news but i was like forcing a smile when i was told about it (shuyan was shouting 'we win' at least 20 times on the phone....), one friend says bcos i experienced something in my life b4 so i have such a low-key reaction... is it bcos i won something b4 (i did get some mentions and shortlist in some previous competitions)? like OM? or something like separation of my parents? sometimes i suspect i'm in depression bcos i become so emotionless, so detached with everything... i guess i'm forcing a smile bcos i wonder if my 2 mates know the essence of the design n i wonder if they really know why we won, they r probably v capable workers but not thinkers, that's y we combine to give a good effect, we specialise in different things....i guess i'm forcing a smile bcos honestly winning or losing made no difference to me, it doesn't improve my knowledge, nor make me learn new things, the happiest moment in the competition was when ar yeung explain to me the essence of T.S.Eliot's Burnt Norton so that i realise i can really use that for the competition, then i felt i had a half chance to win, thx a lot ar yeung...i guess i'm forcing a smile bcos emotionally i've moved on from that project, i'm preparing for 2 new competitions during the summer, one is tangshan earthquake memorial and the other one is central waterfront planning; both projects excite me a lot, though they r not meant for students (ie no chance to win), i felt at least i should contribute some new thinkings to these 2 important projects....so when am I going to graduate???

i hope end of oct, mom....