Auto-response email from my dissertation advisor

I am away from the university until 27 August
and will respond to emails after this
time.  Mark Tewdwr-Jones

The dissertation is due 1st of september.

Stress management

is never my strong quality. Well, it's more like time management skills that i'm seriously lacking in. Grrrr. In due-date order...

• graphic illustration of Frey's theory on the micro- and macro-structure of the city models
  
• a temporal-spatial analysis of the Victoria Embankment site (?!)
• a 2000-word paper on design and...crime, the case study city : NYC (?!!?!)
• a presentation on...the Netherlands' three-tier physical planning (?!)

And why is it that the oldest, largest architecture school in the bloody UK got only one A3-sized scanner?! which is not working. Don't they know urban planners swear by maps?!?! gahhhh

the first review

went okay i guess. but one thing for sure the bar has been raised and in future i have to either give it more thought or put in more efforts. or both. Samples of my stuff:

i need to blog this out loud before i go crazy

1st PROJECT + CRIT this TUESDAY! basically we have to create a design vision for this obsolete gigantic coaling pier that's too expense to remove yet quite a waste to be left standing.

Pretty fugly isnt it. The exercise was meant to be purely experimental and "outside the box "where economic realities can simply be disregarded. Since the site itself looks pretty theatrical, my design vision for this is to build a theatre stage! pretty fancy i know. there are a handful of architects and landscape architects in the program, so they are pretty well weathered and got tons of graphic design tools at their disposal. so a person like myself ended up photoshopping pictures all day today. BUT i don't think this is a disadvantage at all since photoshop can generate much more imaginative capacity. It's fun when you don't have to care about real-world constraints which you would seriously need to heed in, well, the real world. The assignment was given out almost *TWO WEEKS* ago and why did i not start until *TWO DAYS* ago?!

I just want this to be over with, so I can start unpacking, buying cooking utenstils&groceries, and decorating my room like a proper grad student! ugh.. long way.

Midsummer night's dream

At the moment, i'm going through my Gmail labels and deleting, one by one, all the folders i nicely designated for each ibank i was in the interview process with last year. Some of them were old and particularly active (e.g Deutsche Bank, Bain, Citi) while others were plain empty, meaning i was intending to apply but decided against it (e.g. HSBC, Societe Generale, ABN-Amro). This time last year, I was freshly finished with the Duke language program in Beijing, fluent in conversational Mandarin, 5 kg fatter, and was about to kick start my last year at Brown. On top buying new books, shopping classes and decorating my new personal space (2nd flr Andrews Hall), i made it a point to make time for prepping for the forthcoming finance interviews. i was following business/econ news closely (and make no mistake, i honestly enjoyed doing it - one of the few good habits i've had since high school years). i logged on to their websites every night. in fact i was this close to bringing myself to cramming accounting ratios and endless finance formulae. i ordered a tailor-made business suit and firmly decided that i would wear the babyblue dress shirt to the interviews instead of the white one (Express Men, 2 for $55) because i thought it enhanced the overall tone of my navy blue suit and my dark blue silk tie. and the modest scent of Euphoria by Calvin Klein.

i like it how things always have a funny way of working out and how the hand of Fate is ever so fickle. this is the only kind of moment when the spiritual side of me begins to think about the possible existence of the higher power, who i shall for now call NoAccident, not God. (there's no accident, according to Freud).

here i am, one year goes by quick. i'm now looking at class schedules of my master's program next year and getting pretty excited about the next 12 months. Term1 looks okay (although what's devilishly wrong with the schedule planner who deems it appropriate to squeeze in a seven-hour block on Tuesdays?!?!!?!?!). Term2 is the most obnoxious (there's this Urban Design studio period that runs from 2PM to 6PM on top of other stuff). Term3 is the "calm before storm" recovery period, cos i only have classes (projects) on Tuesdays. that said, 10Am - 6PM. WHAT. Term4 is the ultimate nightmare of my educational life, period. Zero classes, but i need to produce a 10,000 word "dissertation in planning" (excluding tables, graphic presentation, and design component) that is worthy of a Master's Degree. TA DAH! VOMIT CAN I?! If the Bartlett's exchange program works out, I hope to spend Term4 writing this masterpiece either in Cambridge, MA or Berkeley, CA. This is my set short-term plan, i think. The preamble of the life of a young adult. always mildly confused but decidedly transcontinental.

One month to...





The Bartlett!

Am i ready or WHAT?