penne al salmone affumicato

and i'm in italy again :)

pasta has been my staple for the past three years but i didn't get creative with my recipes until recently (thanks to a proper kitchen). i got the recipe above from a survival guide for american students when i visited tran in rome. easily the simplest of all. plus my love for smoked salmon. not bad for the first try although the salmon is too cooked, and thus barely different from, well, salmon. next time i'll put salmon in last because i want to retain that raw smokey smell. and onions more finely chopped please!

i'll be in italy again one month from now! talk about how time flies...

now i can sleep again

The final presentation today was really inspiring and key to my progress as a thinker and doer. i'm starting to think more and more about the complementarity of school and profession, that school is merely the platform where you learn only the basics and later jump off to the real world to take those basics to the next level. you've heard it all before, i know, but it's becoming increasingly real for me. there are lots of part time students in the program whose commitment, professionalism, and worth ethics are so strong you wouldnt believe they were just out of college a few years ago. their works are refined and well thought out. they seem to think everything through, think it again, and over and again, hit it from every possible angle, and study the potentiality of every act and process. it's these people who make you look at yourself at the end of the day and see where you stand. i'm glad there's something new for me to see, learn, and absorb everyday, and hopefully own it someday.

but what this means in an immediate term is i can sleep again! and eat! and catch up on my lovely google reader and ABC shows! the past 4 days are whoa. but at least i'm done.

aaaand screw autocad (for now). seriously, sketchup is easy and awesome. glad i decided last minute to resort to it. once again, nobel prize to google!

2009

Wallpaper's annual Graduate Directory is out. As usual, the directory is overwhelmingly populated with British and continental designers/artists. a few Asia's rising starts have been nominated of course. i don't know if it's a question of information access, but then design is a visual discipline, action, and product at its core and should transcend barriers. And of course, young alums from the Bartlett win a spot :)

Looking at the Architecture list, i am pleasantly surprised to see a wide range of orientations other than deconstructivist madness. Of course i'd love to see more divas a la Zaha Hadid running around, but something simple and refreshing is sometimes underrated.



Kudos to the webpage designer for making things so clean, classic, and simple yet very playful and easy to navigate. because last year's diagrammatic lay-out for this huge bundle of information was a design faux pas.