Interviewing Japanese.

Husband recently bought a used book entitled Shaking the Foundations: Japanese Architects in Dialogue. It features interviews conducted in 1997 by Christopher Knabe and Joerg Rainier Noennig (editors) of 15 Japanese architects. What's interesting about this book, as my husband also mentioned to me gushing about this, is that each of these architects were made to comment on the philosophy and/or works of other architects featured in the book. Some were not intentionally asked to comment but in the course of the conversation eventually did.

Japanese are by and large, not very confrontational. When they comment, it's usually so meticulously edited of any form of negativity that if not read or heard well sometimes sounded like praises. In my experience working with a handful of them, they do not comment, especially if they have nothing better to say.

I've finished reading interview with Kisho Kurokawa, Riken Yamamoto and Kengo Kuma -- all very varied in their philosophy. I especially enjoyed Yamamoto's interview because he talked mostly about city planning, of how architecture directly affects the social structures in the community, and how the government failed . He told of how the mere widening of the street disrupted the social activities of his community, virtually erasing all of what he's known his community for. It probably was the same feeling when the flyover along General Luna was built. it created a virtual wall that created a permanent demarcation between Melly's and UP. Now, very few university students go to Melly's and Melly's has stopped being an influential shady shanty to the high school kids. The UP High are starting to miss a lot of high school now that the flyover is there.

Yamamoto discussed a little about architectural education in Japan. Yamamoto said that Japanese architecture education is engineering and not design oriented which is surprising considering that a handful of them have been well-praised for their designs.

Meanwhile, Filipino architects are now mostly in Singapore or in the middle-east, working as CAD monkeys so they can afford iphones and macbooks. That is the kind of architecture education that you get from Iloilo universities.

Apparently, Architect/Architecture is just some high-falluting title for a profession that could render one virtually penniless. And if one would really choose to become an architect, a lot of sacrifices are made. I understand PF's choice of wanting to practice his profession in the city because if i were in his shoes, i would certainly make the same decision.

as to why, i will discuss tomorrow.


UPDATE:
Somebody from pushpullbar is actually interviewing Kuma-san tomorrow (February 4)! The real interviewing Japanese. Wow, if that forum is not the best forum in the world, i don't know what is. 

The Arrangements.

We have a different arrangement at home now.  PF's working somewhere far and will only be home on weekends. Meanwhile, i now work at the island and leaves the house early morning, comes home later than i usually did in my previous job. And the kid is turning four and has gotten used to the schedule and the old arrangement of his father working at home and me getting home early evening--or sometimes both his father and I, together--and for the next few days i would be repeatedly remind him of this new arrangement, over and over again, so he will not NOT want to go to sleep to wait for his father.

also, i will have to tell him that his parents will not be around for his birthday and that it is very okay because both his father and his mother grew up celebrating their birthdays in the absence of their parents. sometimes not even celebrating them, and yet they grew up to be good and respectful people. and i would need to tell him that it is okay to not have birthday bashes because people do not live for birthday bashes alone. and that on his birthday he must play and enjoy the time with his friends because time spent with friends is more important than a birthday bash. i will tell myself not have to worry about pleasing everyone on my kid's birthday.

Also, his nanny (here, Nanny 1) will be leaving our household this week. his teacher sent me message last week that my kid's nanny confided to her about her positive pregnancy test and that he will be leaving our household at the end of the month. She--the nanny--never confronted me though. she only sent a text last weekend while i was on my way home from work, that she will stop working by the end of the month because she wants to take a rest.
PF said, "Well, so now we know. If they're preggers, they say they will stop working because they need to rest."

The previous nanny which Nanny 1 replaced about 9 months ago also left our household 3 months pregnant. Previous Nanny and I come from the same town and last i heard she was in the hospital to have her baby treated from pneumonia. She was a smart nanny, the Previous Nanny. She has manners and my kid liked her alot. Nanny 1 on the other hand has a mental age close to that of a 12 year old. She has told me of her age the first time she arrive but i've forgotten. i guess she's just 19. and she's pregnant. and she her mental age is 12. i call her a retard behind her back. i am cruel, i know but i can't stand her lack of manners and her presumptuous attitude. she presumes she's part of the family and that she can just take part in any of our private conversations. she answers even if she is not the one being asked. i talk to my husband or my sister while we sit face to face and this retard Nanny 1, who is at the kitchen will suddenly blurt out an answer. to the question she is not asked. any worker must never to that to their boss. and i am the boss. and because of that, she is given the title of a household retard.

I corrected PF and told him: "No, Previous Nanny did not say she's gonna get some rest. She said she's leaving to come home, help and accompany her mother."
Previous Nanny's mother is a battered alcoholic wife of an alcoholic husband.

The person that will be replacing Nanny 1 will be somebody of menopausal age. PF said so. He saw her already.

So for few months i would have to live with this. I have nobody to talk about alot of things when i get home. In the office i still sometimes forget. I tend to summarize and outline the things i am going to talk about when i get home only to remember that PF will not be there. Oh it is sad because i cannot tell him about this new story i read. or my newfound great finds on the net. so i have to get used to that and learn to tell ANIMATED stories about my day to my kid instead.

yes, arrangements.

we got to have them sometimes.

FIN.

Holding a pencil.

in case nobody knows, there is a right way to hold a pencil.

i hold my writing instruments this way, and thankfully so does my kid. at least that leaves teaching him how to properly hold the pencil off my list.

For want of a better presentation.

today i attended a presentation on road traffic injuries. 


it would have been a perfect project with perfect concepts had the consultants have better grasp as to why they are actually engaging in things that are out of the boundaries of their expertise. for one, i did not see any transport planner or traffic engineer or road safety expert in their team, and yet we, the participants were supposed to be taught on how road injuries are prevented. 


(DO NOT, first of all, and again, DO NOT present a stat table straight from SPSS pasted in MS Excel, complete and unedited of all those permutation shits that only a statistic can understand. i say, DO NOT present this to a general public meeting. This does not only come from me, but from my Mr. Senor Statistics Professor. You will only look like you only want to drown them in details but don't actually know shit.)


and no, road injuries are not CAUSED by non-wearing of helmet, or by non-compliance to seatbelt law. we abide by the helmet and seatbelt law on the premise that if ever we DO MEET AN ACCIDENT, we will suffer from injuries that will render us severely handicapped, much more, dead. but non-compliance to those things do NOT, i repeat DO NOT cause injuries. 


take the example of wearing shoes. we wear shoes because we want our feet protected. we do not want our feet to be accidentally pricked by thorns or cut by sharp objects but would the non-wearing of shoes cause result to a bloody cut on your feet? 


i wish that the presentors had consulted first with road safety experts or at least made themselves aware of things regarding road safety because dude, road safety is a safety issue. you do not want to mislead people on matters concerning their life or death.  


(i do not understand why a bio statiscian is explaining a road safety perception survey that took counts of people not wearing helmets or seatbelts and asking them why they're stupid not to wear so. a statiscian, i can understand--any statistician can do statistics, but a BIO stat? what difference does that make?)


it doesn't help that this study is trying to anchor its framework solely on the fact that people who here drink and drive--or at least that's what i am getting from one presentor. come on, lindsay lohan does that all the time. people in the city do that all the time. do not try to make this an isolated case, you presumpter! first of all, the percentage of people who do that is too small compared to people who overspeeds, to infrastructure that would fail the road safety audit or to the fact that people here resort to habal-habal for their main mode of public transport. i would like to think that given those three major issues, we could anchor a road safety/road traffic injury framework there. blackspots, as a term, was not even mentioned. 


i do not know how community participation can be encouraged or solicited through IEC, advocacy and meetings. in my experience, community participation can only gained by allowing the community to feel that they own the project. "sense of ownership", anyone?


Before i could lambast the presentation in my thoughts, just before the session closed, a better presentor took over. although he did not present the project framework and the rationale for frontlining this project (when it could be better given to other agencies who are expert on these issues), he was able to assure me (not directly, of course)  that at least somebody in the team knows what they are doing, stuffs on road safety, and that somebody in the team has actually worked on projects of these kinds. and he mentioned blackspots. (ahe ahe)


i am not an expert on these matters. i am not even a transport planner but dude, i've heard and read better; i do know when i'm being fooled. 




(actually, never mind. never mind what i said. it's just that the invocation was that mass produced prayer-for-training song sung by josh groban and some church-sounding family name woman singer. i wish all training opening programs will just concoct their own prayer and stop using the damn song. it's not funny.)

wow, if it's not amazing news week, i don't know what is.

my kid's play school teacher just sent me a message that my kid's "nanny" is leaving us end of this month. Nanny just got news from her pregnancy kit that she is positively pregnant. she is the second nanny, in the 4 nannies that worked with us, to have become pregnant. the one before her was the first.

husband said he has seen it coming because she seems to have the same habit as the previously impregnated one -- endless time on mobile phones. i tell you, if your nanny is always spending time on her mobile phone expect a pregnancy soon.

i meant to write a story about her because lately she has been getting on my nerves. but i'll think about it now that she is leaving us.

eehh. but the shine is shining today after 3 days of rain and cold so it's not totally but news day. but eh, i realized i'm in the island and weather here is crazy.

eehh.