Having been an avid participator in Freelancer Unplugged, a networking forum for freelancers of all professions, I was asked to co-author an Inspiration blog, where all my worldly thoughts could have a home (as well as on my K&K blog). It’s a wee bit of an honour, to be asked to contribute to something that will ultimately help other people by talking about things that Ive been through socially, professionally, and emotionally. Especially when for the most part I just consider them personal ramblings. Its not until someone says to you, ‘Oh hey, I read your last blog post and it made me cry’. That shit really makes you go ‘wow’, its amazing how a few words can affect someone, especially when you are telling the story of their own life and you haven’t even realised it.
Feel free to check it out… and be inspired!!
www.inspirationunplugged.com
Monday, December 14, 2009
Monday, November 30, 2009
New Lives
For the men who can finally rid themselves of the dragons.
Kaye
At dawn she finds me
Floating in a dark ocean
The heat curling from my toes
The cool rivulets running across my chest
She asks
Why am I in the bath at dawn
She forgets
About a time in the night
When she told me I was filth
When she spat words on me
And the ice whispers singed my skin
The hate floats on the surface
An oil slick of grime and patronising spit
She kneels and drags her fingers through the oil
I watch
The hand slip across my leg
And its wake of contradiction
She asks
Why I take her hand from the water
And hold it to the cool
To wash her free
From the excess of my body
Filled with lust. And my disgust
She knows
I am protecting her from herself.
Kaye
At dawn she finds me
Floating in a dark ocean
The heat curling from my toes
The cool rivulets running across my chest
She asks
Why am I in the bath at dawn
She forgets
About a time in the night
When she told me I was filth
When she spat words on me
And the ice whispers singed my skin
The hate floats on the surface
An oil slick of grime and patronising spit
She kneels and drags her fingers through the oil
I watch
The hand slip across my leg
And its wake of contradiction
She asks
Why I take her hand from the water
And hold it to the cool
To wash her free
From the excess of my body
Filled with lust. And my disgust
She knows
I am protecting her from herself.
Tuesday, November 24, 2009
On being 'Outdoorsy'
.
Something quite unusual has happened in the past year, and I’ve suddenly picked up on it after returning from the weekends’ hike.
As my life gets more and more crazy, my desire for simple pleasures gets greater and greater. The more I work 12 hour days, study till dawn, and take on freelancing modelling & design projects on the side, the more I want silence. Normal right? Sure. But where do I find it? 3 hours drive plus 9 hours/25 kilometres of hiking away!
I remember always camping as a kid. Mum and Dad would spend a few days packing up the 4WD, then we’d roll (in convoy with other families, or on our own) to the varying reaches of Western Australia; Augusta, Albany, Kalbarri, Pemberton, Denmark, Lancelin, Dongara, Binningup, Payne’s Find, Coral Bay, Exmouth, Monkey Mia, Geraldton, Shark Bay…. and all the little towns in between. The car would be full of portable CD players, cd’s, books, gameboys, lollies & chips, pushbikes, siblings, and sometimes the dogs. Every school holidays, we’d be off somewhere for a weekend, week, or two… and it was great! But as I got older, I wanted less tents and more caravans, then less caravans and more hotels, then less driving and more flying. Until eventually I phased the whole camping thing out. When I moved out of home, I spent most of my time with people who had never ‘camped’ – and who had no interest in it. And I’d never really appreciated the value in it anyway, even when it vanished as a pastime.
Just after I’d moved to Melbourne in 2007, a group of us decided it would be cool to drive to Lakes Entrance to camp. NONE of us had any camping equipment whatsoever, we borrowed it all, and most of our food was actually er, alcohol. I was handed a tiny tent, and was the first to set it up… I was so proud! I even took a photo with my phone and sent it to my mum haha.
I remember how broke I was then, but we still had so much fun…. disrupting the town and the campsites. That was my little reminder to me… I didn’t need trashy nightclubs, 3am taxi’s and 4am kebabs to feel alive and to disconnect myself from the chaotic world.
A few months into dating Jim, he invited me down the Wilsons Prom for a weekend away. We loaded up the old Cortina with Jims archaic and well used collection of hand me down camping gear, along with a canoe, and drove the three and a half hours to the southernmost point of the Australian mainland. It was winter, it was freezing, and it rained. And I had possibly the best weekend ever. Jimmy said that I passed the ultimate test… I knew how to pitch a tent. We brought the very best wine with us, and sat under the verandah in the rain, drinking by candle light and telling stories, before curling up under a pile of doonas and having an amazing early sleep, waking to a dawn of kookaburras, wombats shuffling by, and visiting rosellas. Then we took the canoe out onto the inlet, laid back and listened to nothing but the waves lapping against the hull. There was never anything so quiet. And I think I got hooked again. Thankfully these days we take the X-trail down… it’s a lot more comfortable for over 3 hours of driving.
Our next trip down was with massive packs. Jim had talked me into my first hike… a 12 kilometre overnight hike to Oberon Bay. I made a video of my struggle – its on my Facebook. It was very funny, and very hard work. But there was a strange sense of achievement, that I had walked that far, over, up and down granite hill faces, spent the night listening to the waves on the shore, and then hiked back in the morning. It was a physical barrier I had never pushed before. Sure, I work out, I ride my bike sometimes, and I go to the gym… but when you’re hiking you don’t have any choice, you cant just stop and go home. You cant take a shower, or crash on the couch… You just have.to.keep.going. I pushed through until it didn’t hurt anymore. Oh don’t get me wrong though… two days later I could barely walk, but I knew that I had achieved something pretty awesome.
We’ve been camping a few more times since then, and Ive started asking for it more and more. Jimmy still laughs when I get down there, the campsite is set up, the food is cooking, the wine is open… and Im standing in front of him asking what we should do next. ‘How about nothing?’. But I can’t do NOTHING!? Are you crazy!? I have to do something!!! It always takes me a little while to realise that there is nothing that needs doing… it’s supposed to be that way. Our list of achievements for the day might read; kick the football on the beach, and walk up to the lookout.
Now back to my 25km saga. Jimmy had begged to go hiking again and I’d agreed. He didn’t tell me that the trip was 25 kilometres, fortunately for him, I didn’t find out the distance until we’d returned. And so we set off from Melbourne at 9.30am, arriving in Tidal River (Wilsons Prom) by 12.30pm. We could see it had been raining, and the sky was a heavy grey, but the air was fairly warm. We started off at 1, glad to know that wearing shorts and singlets paid off, as we watched other hikers peeling off jackets and beanies from the heat of the hike. 4 hours later we arrived at Little Waterloo Bay, a secluded grove of trees and sheltered campsites, wedged between a steep rock face, and the beach. Thankfully, all the hiking destinations have toilets! We found a well-drained, gently sloping spot under some trees, set up tent and cooked our dinner… ravioli, pasta sauce, tuna, chickpeas, and vegies.. oh it tasted so good with our bottle of red! Then it started to rain so we piked early. And it rained and rained and rained…. and rained… nonstop till dawn. We awoke dry and free from mosquito bites (yay for the new hiking tent!) but very very sore. We’d forgotten the inflatable mattress, only packing the high density foam. Ohhh the pain. And the rain wouldn’t stop… it drizzled… incessantly. Our dry clothes were soon wet as we packed up all our gear, but our situation was infinitely better than the foolish people who had opted for the flat piece of ground which you, by taking one look at it, could tell regularly flooded. We walked past their tents and they were almost 10-15cms underwater! The poor bastards were standing around like drowned cats, looking very very upset. Packing up, we began the hike back and I somehow found the strength to push through the pain and climb all those damn hills! It drizzled non stop and we were soaked through, rain dripped off my hat, and my shoes squelched from the water and mud inside them. My back muscles burned and I had shin splints but we kept on going, the sand in my shoes rubbed against my wet socks and blisters formed on my heels. But I was determined to make it back in better time than it had taken us to get there. We got back to the overnight carpark by 3.30pm, and we were back in Melbourne by 6.30pm. Thanks to the car heating, we had thawed, and both of us had taken turns having a nap. We’d stripped off the wet clothes and jumped into our spares… next time we might take lightweight raincoats though hehe, and remember our inflatable mats. And we’re going to buy hiking boots, instead of sneakers whose delightful ‘ventilation’ panels let in a lot of water!
Aside from the landscape being incredibly beautiful ESPECIALLY during the low light and the drizzling rain, there was something completely uplifting about the whole experience. We hiked for maybe half an hour at a time without saying a word, all you could hear was the soil crunching, birds, and the ocean far away. And once you can push beyond the pain, your mind drifts elsewhere… sometimes I thought about work, and school, and relationships and money… you have a lot of thinking time out there! But other times it was blank. Blank, but not lost… just calm. And I’d study the water dripping off the eucalyptus leaves, or the bullants charging up to the giant humans with all the bravado of ancient Knights of King Arthur. There were birds and lizards and wombats… and kilometres of views to swoon over, but most importantly there was nothing but us and the knowledge that we were completely isolated from a world of ‘perceived’ troubles. It all kind of washed away with the rain. And if it wasn’t raining, it would have dried away in the sun. And if there was no sun, it would have burned away through our perseverance. We had no choice but to push on, and that drew all our focus into a gorgeous little vortex where nothing really mattered… at all.
Jimmy turned to me at the end of the hike and could see the pain on my face. He asked me, “Would you do that again?” I said,
“Definitely”.
Now we’re planning our next one…. three days and 36 kilometres. I’ll need some rest first! But I can’t wait. It’s a pretty healthy thing to get addicted to I think…
Something quite unusual has happened in the past year, and I’ve suddenly picked up on it after returning from the weekends’ hike.
As my life gets more and more crazy, my desire for simple pleasures gets greater and greater. The more I work 12 hour days, study till dawn, and take on freelancing modelling & design projects on the side, the more I want silence. Normal right? Sure. But where do I find it? 3 hours drive plus 9 hours/25 kilometres of hiking away!
I remember always camping as a kid. Mum and Dad would spend a few days packing up the 4WD, then we’d roll (in convoy with other families, or on our own) to the varying reaches of Western Australia; Augusta, Albany, Kalbarri, Pemberton, Denmark, Lancelin, Dongara, Binningup, Payne’s Find, Coral Bay, Exmouth, Monkey Mia, Geraldton, Shark Bay…. and all the little towns in between. The car would be full of portable CD players, cd’s, books, gameboys, lollies & chips, pushbikes, siblings, and sometimes the dogs. Every school holidays, we’d be off somewhere for a weekend, week, or two… and it was great! But as I got older, I wanted less tents and more caravans, then less caravans and more hotels, then less driving and more flying. Until eventually I phased the whole camping thing out. When I moved out of home, I spent most of my time with people who had never ‘camped’ – and who had no interest in it. And I’d never really appreciated the value in it anyway, even when it vanished as a pastime.
Just after I’d moved to Melbourne in 2007, a group of us decided it would be cool to drive to Lakes Entrance to camp. NONE of us had any camping equipment whatsoever, we borrowed it all, and most of our food was actually er, alcohol. I was handed a tiny tent, and was the first to set it up… I was so proud! I even took a photo with my phone and sent it to my mum haha.
I remember how broke I was then, but we still had so much fun…. disrupting the town and the campsites. That was my little reminder to me… I didn’t need trashy nightclubs, 3am taxi’s and 4am kebabs to feel alive and to disconnect myself from the chaotic world.
A few months into dating Jim, he invited me down the Wilsons Prom for a weekend away. We loaded up the old Cortina with Jims archaic and well used collection of hand me down camping gear, along with a canoe, and drove the three and a half hours to the southernmost point of the Australian mainland. It was winter, it was freezing, and it rained. And I had possibly the best weekend ever. Jimmy said that I passed the ultimate test… I knew how to pitch a tent. We brought the very best wine with us, and sat under the verandah in the rain, drinking by candle light and telling stories, before curling up under a pile of doonas and having an amazing early sleep, waking to a dawn of kookaburras, wombats shuffling by, and visiting rosellas. Then we took the canoe out onto the inlet, laid back and listened to nothing but the waves lapping against the hull. There was never anything so quiet. And I think I got hooked again. Thankfully these days we take the X-trail down… it’s a lot more comfortable for over 3 hours of driving.
Our next trip down was with massive packs. Jim had talked me into my first hike… a 12 kilometre overnight hike to Oberon Bay. I made a video of my struggle – its on my Facebook. It was very funny, and very hard work. But there was a strange sense of achievement, that I had walked that far, over, up and down granite hill faces, spent the night listening to the waves on the shore, and then hiked back in the morning. It was a physical barrier I had never pushed before. Sure, I work out, I ride my bike sometimes, and I go to the gym… but when you’re hiking you don’t have any choice, you cant just stop and go home. You cant take a shower, or crash on the couch… You just have.to.keep.going. I pushed through until it didn’t hurt anymore. Oh don’t get me wrong though… two days later I could barely walk, but I knew that I had achieved something pretty awesome.
We’ve been camping a few more times since then, and Ive started asking for it more and more. Jimmy still laughs when I get down there, the campsite is set up, the food is cooking, the wine is open… and Im standing in front of him asking what we should do next. ‘How about nothing?’. But I can’t do NOTHING!? Are you crazy!? I have to do something!!! It always takes me a little while to realise that there is nothing that needs doing… it’s supposed to be that way. Our list of achievements for the day might read; kick the football on the beach, and walk up to the lookout.
Now back to my 25km saga. Jimmy had begged to go hiking again and I’d agreed. He didn’t tell me that the trip was 25 kilometres, fortunately for him, I didn’t find out the distance until we’d returned. And so we set off from Melbourne at 9.30am, arriving in Tidal River (Wilsons Prom) by 12.30pm. We could see it had been raining, and the sky was a heavy grey, but the air was fairly warm. We started off at 1, glad to know that wearing shorts and singlets paid off, as we watched other hikers peeling off jackets and beanies from the heat of the hike. 4 hours later we arrived at Little Waterloo Bay, a secluded grove of trees and sheltered campsites, wedged between a steep rock face, and the beach. Thankfully, all the hiking destinations have toilets! We found a well-drained, gently sloping spot under some trees, set up tent and cooked our dinner… ravioli, pasta sauce, tuna, chickpeas, and vegies.. oh it tasted so good with our bottle of red! Then it started to rain so we piked early. And it rained and rained and rained…. and rained… nonstop till dawn. We awoke dry and free from mosquito bites (yay for the new hiking tent!) but very very sore. We’d forgotten the inflatable mattress, only packing the high density foam. Ohhh the pain. And the rain wouldn’t stop… it drizzled… incessantly. Our dry clothes were soon wet as we packed up all our gear, but our situation was infinitely better than the foolish people who had opted for the flat piece of ground which you, by taking one look at it, could tell regularly flooded. We walked past their tents and they were almost 10-15cms underwater! The poor bastards were standing around like drowned cats, looking very very upset. Packing up, we began the hike back and I somehow found the strength to push through the pain and climb all those damn hills! It drizzled non stop and we were soaked through, rain dripped off my hat, and my shoes squelched from the water and mud inside them. My back muscles burned and I had shin splints but we kept on going, the sand in my shoes rubbed against my wet socks and blisters formed on my heels. But I was determined to make it back in better time than it had taken us to get there. We got back to the overnight carpark by 3.30pm, and we were back in Melbourne by 6.30pm. Thanks to the car heating, we had thawed, and both of us had taken turns having a nap. We’d stripped off the wet clothes and jumped into our spares… next time we might take lightweight raincoats though hehe, and remember our inflatable mats. And we’re going to buy hiking boots, instead of sneakers whose delightful ‘ventilation’ panels let in a lot of water!
Aside from the landscape being incredibly beautiful ESPECIALLY during the low light and the drizzling rain, there was something completely uplifting about the whole experience. We hiked for maybe half an hour at a time without saying a word, all you could hear was the soil crunching, birds, and the ocean far away. And once you can push beyond the pain, your mind drifts elsewhere… sometimes I thought about work, and school, and relationships and money… you have a lot of thinking time out there! But other times it was blank. Blank, but not lost… just calm. And I’d study the water dripping off the eucalyptus leaves, or the bullants charging up to the giant humans with all the bravado of ancient Knights of King Arthur. There were birds and lizards and wombats… and kilometres of views to swoon over, but most importantly there was nothing but us and the knowledge that we were completely isolated from a world of ‘perceived’ troubles. It all kind of washed away with the rain. And if it wasn’t raining, it would have dried away in the sun. And if there was no sun, it would have burned away through our perseverance. We had no choice but to push on, and that drew all our focus into a gorgeous little vortex where nothing really mattered… at all.
Jimmy turned to me at the end of the hike and could see the pain on my face. He asked me, “Would you do that again?” I said,
“Definitely”.
Now we’re planning our next one…. three days and 36 kilometres. I’ll need some rest first! But I can’t wait. It’s a pretty healthy thing to get addicted to I think…
Thursday, November 19, 2009
Fashion Shoot - Nov 14th
POW. I just worked with the most amazing team! After ridiculous amounts of facebook correspondence, sample themes, fittings, reference images etc etc, we finally met on the weekend to create some fantastic shots.
9am till 5pm we worked, multiple outfit, hair, and makeup changes.
Id just like to say how professional, dedicated, passionate, and cohesive the team was!
Stylist: Desiree McPhee @ Styleid
Hair: Ross Joseph
Make up: Shella Ruby
Photographer: Vendula Pribylova
Model: Kaye (me!)
Just a sample;
9am till 5pm we worked, multiple outfit, hair, and makeup changes.
Id just like to say how professional, dedicated, passionate, and cohesive the team was!
Stylist: Desiree McPhee @ Styleid
Hair: Ross Joseph
Make up: Shella Ruby
Photographer: Vendula Pribylova
Model: Kaye (me!)
Just a sample;
Monday, November 9, 2009
Old Blogs - May 19th 2009
I cant believe I almost went...
That International Phonecall
Tuesday, May 19, 2009 at 12:33pm
These past few days, the world has slowed. And warped. And my brain has nearly fallen out of my ears with the intensity of information Ive had to process.
The weekend just passed, marking my two year anniversary of living in Melbourne.
It was also my one year anniversary of being (blissfully) with Jimmy and, our Housewarming party.
And on Monday morning, I arrived at work in Melbourne to a new job option... in London.
Are you serious? Yes- Absolutely completely serious. A role had become available in the UK, and they were looking to fill the vacancy internally. And my skillset is perfect. I cleared it with my Regional Talent and Training Manager, and put in my expression of interest.
And they came back to me!
I was the only internal person who put their hand up. I was as good as gone, once the obligatory videoconference internal interview was done, and the HR paperwork sorted, and provided I could get my visa and flights sorted asap... they need me there in 4 weeks time (!), and would put me up in accommodation until I could find my own place. Someone would meet me at the airport, and there would be a two week handover from the exiting staff member. I would be there for 1 year on a maternity leave contract, but had access to an ancestry VISA so could essentially stay for ages if I decided to. Jimmy and I talked it over, and he would even come with me, joining me after a few months, once I was set up. It was a dream come true. To further my career AND travel.
So then... I turned it down.
I mouth those words when I type it. I.turned.it.down.
WOW.
I thought about it. I wrote about it. I talked about it. I cried about it incessantly because I couldn’t stand the internal pressure in my head to make the goddam decision.
Why? Because right now, Im actually happy. My role mightn’t be perfect right now but that is only a small part of all the pieces that have fallen into place. I have a solid mapped career path, I have a stunning boy to come home to, a stunning house to come home to, a degree that Im acing, I live a decadent lifestyle where I can almost do and buy what I want, and I have a solid group of friends. The same unrest and resentment that sent me on that last minute flight from Perth to Melbourne two years ago doesn’t exist anymore. Sure I want to travel, but I don’t want to do it this way. I don’t want Jimmy to give up the job that he is doing so well at, or to sell the car he loves, or to give up the house we only just ‘warmed’! I don’t want to have a going-away party only 4 weeks after the moving-in one I just had!, and I don’t want to spend 3 months in London without him. I don’t want to live in a share house on the bones of my ass on the outskirts in London because I wouldn’t be able to afford anything else, and spent 70% of my time in inner city London writing tenders and bidding for architecture work.
Maybe I’ll do it in a year. Who knows. Maybe I’ll study overseas instead, or just backpack. Doesnt matter. I’ll go, but now isn’t the right time. Why, when Ive just properly patched all the holes in my leaky boat, would I rock it? Im not going to go just because the opportunity is there – it’s got to be just right.
And right now, Im staying put. And Im really happy I made that decision :o)
That International Phonecall
Tuesday, May 19, 2009 at 12:33pm
These past few days, the world has slowed. And warped. And my brain has nearly fallen out of my ears with the intensity of information Ive had to process.
The weekend just passed, marking my two year anniversary of living in Melbourne.
It was also my one year anniversary of being (blissfully) with Jimmy and, our Housewarming party.
And on Monday morning, I arrived at work in Melbourne to a new job option... in London.
Are you serious? Yes- Absolutely completely serious. A role had become available in the UK, and they were looking to fill the vacancy internally. And my skillset is perfect. I cleared it with my Regional Talent and Training Manager, and put in my expression of interest.
And they came back to me!
I was the only internal person who put their hand up. I was as good as gone, once the obligatory videoconference internal interview was done, and the HR paperwork sorted, and provided I could get my visa and flights sorted asap... they need me there in 4 weeks time (!), and would put me up in accommodation until I could find my own place. Someone would meet me at the airport, and there would be a two week handover from the exiting staff member. I would be there for 1 year on a maternity leave contract, but had access to an ancestry VISA so could essentially stay for ages if I decided to. Jimmy and I talked it over, and he would even come with me, joining me after a few months, once I was set up. It was a dream come true. To further my career AND travel.
So then... I turned it down.
I mouth those words when I type it. I.turned.it.down.
WOW.
I thought about it. I wrote about it. I talked about it. I cried about it incessantly because I couldn’t stand the internal pressure in my head to make the goddam decision.
Why? Because right now, Im actually happy. My role mightn’t be perfect right now but that is only a small part of all the pieces that have fallen into place. I have a solid mapped career path, I have a stunning boy to come home to, a stunning house to come home to, a degree that Im acing, I live a decadent lifestyle where I can almost do and buy what I want, and I have a solid group of friends. The same unrest and resentment that sent me on that last minute flight from Perth to Melbourne two years ago doesn’t exist anymore. Sure I want to travel, but I don’t want to do it this way. I don’t want Jimmy to give up the job that he is doing so well at, or to sell the car he loves, or to give up the house we only just ‘warmed’! I don’t want to have a going-away party only 4 weeks after the moving-in one I just had!, and I don’t want to spend 3 months in London without him. I don’t want to live in a share house on the bones of my ass on the outskirts in London because I wouldn’t be able to afford anything else, and spent 70% of my time in inner city London writing tenders and bidding for architecture work.
Maybe I’ll do it in a year. Who knows. Maybe I’ll study overseas instead, or just backpack. Doesnt matter. I’ll go, but now isn’t the right time. Why, when Ive just properly patched all the holes in my leaky boat, would I rock it? Im not going to go just because the opportunity is there – it’s got to be just right.
And right now, Im staying put. And Im really happy I made that decision :o)
Friday, November 6, 2009
Thats a wrap
Bali was a-MAZING. I cannot believe I haven’t had a real holiday in 5 years... I shall never leave it that long again! Jim and I are already talking about the next little trio of Vietnam, Cambodia & Laos!
It was 7 days of cocktails, sunshine, shopping, exploring, awesome food, nightlife, sunsets, cuddles, sand, adventures…
and 3 days of Bali Belly. But I can still say IT WAS WORTH IT. We stayed in Nusa Dua, which was a very good idea because I found Kuta too feral. The locals weren’t as nice and there were too many drunk foreigners stumbling around in the middle of the day. Id rather stay in Nusa again, or Seminyak. And Ubud is definitely a must for anyone.
Just SOME pics;
It was 7 days of cocktails, sunshine, shopping, exploring, awesome food, nightlife, sunsets, cuddles, sand, adventures…
and 3 days of Bali Belly. But I can still say IT WAS WORTH IT. We stayed in Nusa Dua, which was a very good idea because I found Kuta too feral. The locals weren’t as nice and there were too many drunk foreigners stumbling around in the middle of the day. Id rather stay in Nusa again, or Seminyak. And Ubud is definitely a must for anyone.
Just SOME pics;
Thursday, November 5, 2009
Wherever you are...
Dream.
I realised today that my heart will always lie in two places. I awoke from the weirdest yet most beautiful dream, in which I found myself face to face with a man I once loved. His new girlfriend was by his side and Jimmy was by mine. A silent understanding passed between us, in the way that we always could speak a million words ... through the eyes.
I smiled at his girlfriend, and introduced myself, happily chatting about the day, while he quietly observed. For whatever reason, I knew they were very much in love, and it was ok. I think he was a little taken aback, but gradually warmed to the pleasant scenario that seemed to be unfolding. I wrapped my arm around jimmy’s waist, brought him into the fold of conversation, and they shook hands.
There was something very peaceful about the dynamic that flowed between us. Almost like an energy that linked all four of us in a place outside of time. He could see quite clearly, the person I had evolved into, and the quality of the man in my life, and it made him happy. And I could see that he was loved and in love, and it made my heart swell.
When I woke up this morning, I knew that while my heart and my love belongs to Jimmy (now, and for a very long time), I will always care for that man in my past. I will always wish the greatest dreams and happiness for him. While I wont miss the relationship, the two of us seemed never destined to be together as the people we were, I will always miss him as the lovely person he is as a companion, and a friend. And that is why my heart will always be there for him, in a place locked in history. Side by side without competition, with the ever growing adoration that I have for my Jimmy. One part will never quash the other, as they are not the same, but two different types of love – one in my past, one for my future.
Tuesday, November 3, 2009
Dear Racegoing Female;
Dear Racegoing Female,
I only hope today that you have thought of several things;
If you have to think about the colour of your undies, just in case someone might see them when you sit down, uncross your legs etc... then that is NOT a modest hemline. This is not a nightclub, this is a fashion institution, you can be incredibly sexy with a hemline just above the knee.
If it looks like the saturation levels on your digi camera have been turned right up, you picked the wrong colour fake tan, and should fire your beautician. A fake tan is not just a fake tan, it is a wax, an exfoliation, and a thick slathering of moisturiser... THEN the tan on top. Leave the domination of oompa loompa land to Willy Wonka.
Fascinators should fascinate. Hats are not an afterthought, and will make or break your outfit. Sure, make it yourself ONLY and ONLY if you know what you are doing.
If if you think (even for a second) that those killer heels are going to be your arch nemesis by this evening... dont wear them in the first place! The only thing that shits me the most is stillettos slung over your shoulder and bare feet. Harden up, or wear flats. You are putting our sex to shame by stumbling aroound in pretty pink toenail polish and crusty dirty feet.
Thank you, have a lovely day, and please make a concerted effort to see at least one horse belting around the track :o)
Kaye
I only hope today that you have thought of several things;
If you have to think about the colour of your undies, just in case someone might see them when you sit down, uncross your legs etc... then that is NOT a modest hemline. This is not a nightclub, this is a fashion institution, you can be incredibly sexy with a hemline just above the knee.
If it looks like the saturation levels on your digi camera have been turned right up, you picked the wrong colour fake tan, and should fire your beautician. A fake tan is not just a fake tan, it is a wax, an exfoliation, and a thick slathering of moisturiser... THEN the tan on top. Leave the domination of oompa loompa land to Willy Wonka.
Fascinators should fascinate. Hats are not an afterthought, and will make or break your outfit. Sure, make it yourself ONLY and ONLY if you know what you are doing.
If if you think (even for a second) that those killer heels are going to be your arch nemesis by this evening... dont wear them in the first place! The only thing that shits me the most is stillettos slung over your shoulder and bare feet. Harden up, or wear flats. You are putting our sex to shame by stumbling aroound in pretty pink toenail polish and crusty dirty feet.
Thank you, have a lovely day, and please make a concerted effort to see at least one horse belting around the track :o)
Kaye
Thursday, October 15, 2009
The Spring Buzz
Alright well Im pretty excited… so excited that I think I might wee myself.
Aside from the fact that I am shooting with Terence Bogue this weekend (who I absolutely adore – see post below about his latest exhibition), I am engaged to consult on the interiors for luxury townhouses in the upper-class Melbourne suburb of Brighton, and my first site visit is this Sunday. The film I acted in is released in 6 weeks (if editing goes to schedule) and Ive just applied to upgrade my Interior Design degree at Swinburne to a double degree in Design & Business. Not only that, but I fly out to Bali on Monday for my first holiday in over 5 years… and 1 week after I get back, I fly to Perth for my dad’s 50th birthday!
Its all crazy busy in this neck of the woods but as my mum would say, this family doesn’t have it any other way!
So I’m very excited and a little apprehensive about this design consult, it will be my first time working with this client and I’m not sure yet of the brief or extent of the works required (hope to have this all answered on Sunday). The upside is that the commission is hourly so if the scope changes, so can my fee! We have our first meeting on site on Sunday, where I’ll determine the extent of the brief, outputs and timeframe, and his own aspirations of course. The townhouses are aiming for market presence by late November/early December so it’s a short sharp response time (sigh – so strapped for time with bali and Perth in between!). I’m breaking it down to four stages with project control points so that we don’t get off track or blow budget; Site visit & client briefing, Research & Brief Development, Conceptualisation & Prelim Proposal, and Final Proposal.
It’s a very small piece of work for a development that is 9/10ths complete, but it is very exciting nonetheless! Its times like these that I am extremely grateful that I work in the architecture & design industry as well as study Interior Design, as I find myself every moment using more knowledge from my day to day work experiences than anything I have learnt in class! The hardest part is to not get too far ahead of myself, and keep out the million-odd ideas that are bustling for attention before I even see the site!
I’ll keep you updated as to how it goes. x
Aside from the fact that I am shooting with Terence Bogue this weekend (who I absolutely adore – see post below about his latest exhibition), I am engaged to consult on the interiors for luxury townhouses in the upper-class Melbourne suburb of Brighton, and my first site visit is this Sunday. The film I acted in is released in 6 weeks (if editing goes to schedule) and Ive just applied to upgrade my Interior Design degree at Swinburne to a double degree in Design & Business. Not only that, but I fly out to Bali on Monday for my first holiday in over 5 years… and 1 week after I get back, I fly to Perth for my dad’s 50th birthday!
Its all crazy busy in this neck of the woods but as my mum would say, this family doesn’t have it any other way!
So I’m very excited and a little apprehensive about this design consult, it will be my first time working with this client and I’m not sure yet of the brief or extent of the works required (hope to have this all answered on Sunday). The upside is that the commission is hourly so if the scope changes, so can my fee! We have our first meeting on site on Sunday, where I’ll determine the extent of the brief, outputs and timeframe, and his own aspirations of course. The townhouses are aiming for market presence by late November/early December so it’s a short sharp response time (sigh – so strapped for time with bali and Perth in between!). I’m breaking it down to four stages with project control points so that we don’t get off track or blow budget; Site visit & client briefing, Research & Brief Development, Conceptualisation & Prelim Proposal, and Final Proposal.
It’s a very small piece of work for a development that is 9/10ths complete, but it is very exciting nonetheless! Its times like these that I am extremely grateful that I work in the architecture & design industry as well as study Interior Design, as I find myself every moment using more knowledge from my day to day work experiences than anything I have learnt in class! The hardest part is to not get too far ahead of myself, and keep out the million-odd ideas that are bustling for attention before I even see the site!
I’ll keep you updated as to how it goes. x
Quarter Century... and all that Jazz
Ok so Ive officially slipped out of the 18-24 bracket… and into the next quarter of my century.
Ladies and Gentlemen… I am 25!
At 25 you start thinking about getting a real job with a future, not waiting tables. You wonder how you are going to get a house. Should you start saving or something... how does one do that? You are happy and healthy, but maybe you party too much. You buy an iPhone then say why did I just spend so much money on a device that’s about to be outdated?. You start sucking at video games. You start dressing better and you don’t get as many traffic tickets. You try to grow a plant but it dies. You’re on the cusp of acting like a young adult, but still have frequent lapses of judgement (though thankfully less than before). You wish you could take back all those times you didn’t want to nap when you were a kid - because now you’re always some kind of tired. You watch the same movies you watched when you were younger and can finally see all the drug/sex/cult references as clear as day. You find yourself starting sentences with ‘The youth of today...’ and you start to groan when you stand up from kneeling. You start going to festivals ‘just for the music’. You find it harder to decipher the difference between boredom and hunger. You keep some people’s phone numbers in your phone just so you know not to answer when they call. You tend to say OMG, LOL, and WTF a lot less. Your insurance premiums, excess, and age-levy all go down...you can even rent a sports car! You start to convert the cost of all your shoes into a percentage of a deposit on a house/car/boat. You get a side of salad with your parmi at the pub, instead of chips. You now know there are more varieties of wine than ‘red and white’ and you buy bottles, not casks. And you can now maintain intelligent (and interesting!) conversations with your parents... And yet, you’re still despised by the 30-somethings every time you mention your age... Its a tough life...
Ladies and Gentlemen… I am 25!
At 25 you start thinking about getting a real job with a future, not waiting tables. You wonder how you are going to get a house. Should you start saving or something... how does one do that? You are happy and healthy, but maybe you party too much. You buy an iPhone then say why did I just spend so much money on a device that’s about to be outdated?. You start sucking at video games. You start dressing better and you don’t get as many traffic tickets. You try to grow a plant but it dies. You’re on the cusp of acting like a young adult, but still have frequent lapses of judgement (though thankfully less than before). You wish you could take back all those times you didn’t want to nap when you were a kid - because now you’re always some kind of tired. You watch the same movies you watched when you were younger and can finally see all the drug/sex/cult references as clear as day. You find yourself starting sentences with ‘The youth of today...’ and you start to groan when you stand up from kneeling. You start going to festivals ‘just for the music’. You find it harder to decipher the difference between boredom and hunger. You keep some people’s phone numbers in your phone just so you know not to answer when they call. You tend to say OMG, LOL, and WTF a lot less. Your insurance premiums, excess, and age-levy all go down...you can even rent a sports car! You start to convert the cost of all your shoes into a percentage of a deposit on a house/car/boat. You get a side of salad with your parmi at the pub, instead of chips. You now know there are more varieties of wine than ‘red and white’ and you buy bottles, not casks. And you can now maintain intelligent (and interesting!) conversations with your parents... And yet, you’re still despised by the 30-somethings every time you mention your age... Its a tough life...
Friday, September 25, 2009
Sunday May 18th, 2008
Written over a year ago...The day after my 1 year anniversary celebrations in Melbourne ... and that was the night I met my Jimmy....
And he called me the very next day :)
IM SO PROUD OF ME.
_______________________________________________________
I sit here in the aftermath of last nights house party. Im hungover as fuck, but ridiculously content. Momentous occasions like these tend to give rise to contemplation...
Holy shit. One year. One year ago I sat alone in a room in Prahran. I was tired, emotionally drained, and in shock. I had just gotten off the plane, with a suitcase of clothes (but no warm jumpers). Hell, I got on a plane without a plan, no money, one (almost maxed out) credit card, no job to go to, and no real idea of where (or how) I might live. I took a massive risk, at a time when I was probably classified as emotionally unstable.
And look at me now! I dance, drink, party, love, laugh, see, do, breathe, eat, play, work and live all that is Melbourne - and all it has to offer. I show my friends and family around my city, and they can see for themselves how it has affected me... Im successful....and Im having a damn good time!
Though I should probably lay off the Tequila... shooters are fun but damn theyre dangerous! hehe but hey, at least I outlasted a certain housemate who passed out at 8.45pm (outlasted him by nearly 8 more hours!)
Its 2008 - and its MY year.
And he called me the very next day :)
IM SO PROUD OF ME.
_______________________________________________________
I sit here in the aftermath of last nights house party. Im hungover as fuck, but ridiculously content. Momentous occasions like these tend to give rise to contemplation...
Holy shit. One year. One year ago I sat alone in a room in Prahran. I was tired, emotionally drained, and in shock. I had just gotten off the plane, with a suitcase of clothes (but no warm jumpers). Hell, I got on a plane without a plan, no money, one (almost maxed out) credit card, no job to go to, and no real idea of where (or how) I might live. I took a massive risk, at a time when I was probably classified as emotionally unstable.
And look at me now! I dance, drink, party, love, laugh, see, do, breathe, eat, play, work and live all that is Melbourne - and all it has to offer. I show my friends and family around my city, and they can see for themselves how it has affected me... Im successful....and Im having a damn good time!
Though I should probably lay off the Tequila... shooters are fun but damn theyre dangerous! hehe but hey, at least I outlasted a certain housemate who passed out at 8.45pm (outlasted him by nearly 8 more hours!)
Its 2008 - and its MY year.
Drugs Are Nice
An old blog entry of mine from August 28th, 2008
"After our last breakup, Andrew goes off to live in the forest and work on this 33rd soundwave-emitter that only aliens can hear. Why he wants to communicate with space creatures, I dont know. Id be scared to be out there in the woods, sending out intergalactic invites to a party where only one of the attendees would be human. I guess, objectively, I have to say Andrew is crazy. But Andrew always does what he wants, what he believes, while millions of other people never do, even once in their lives. Its too hard. And they dont give you health insurance for that - for living your dream. Andrew is brave and odd, and I do appreciate that - from afar. Every time he's near, I get so hostile. I guess I want all the bravery for me."
Drugs Are Nice - Lisa Crystal Carver
Ive taken to reading alot lately. Losing myself in fucked up worlds. This book is particularly good. Her world is particularly fucked up. And its a true story.
Im dropping into Mag Nation and oggling the rows and rows of design publications, Im enthusiastically studying my uni readings, learning all that I can absorb. Im re-reading the books on my shelves. Im devouring words like a starving child, and regurgitating ideas onto page like that child, fed too quickly.
Im writing alot lately too. I cant concentrate on my work. My desk is littered with sketches and scrawled post it notes and drafts of ideas and concepts and quotes and readings. Maybe that is why Im pumping out the stories on my laptop, why the facebook notes come thick and fast. A million thoughts and ideas stream through my conscious, like Im feeling my way through a fog of words. And its the best feeling in the world.
Today, it is 2 years since I broke up with Luca. So much time has passed. Even how I came to remember this fact was purely by accident. Every now and then I wonder how he is or what he is up to these days, but mostly not at all. Im so SO very proud of myself - where I am, who I am, where Ive been, the life I live, and the people I have in it. Im even proud of the shit I dragged my sorry ass through, because of it I am infinitely wiser, stonger, more determined, more focussed. And Im having fun! I spent one long sad year wading around in a black hole of depression, self pity and denial, 6 months Perth, 6 months Melbourne. Then a further 6 months working out what I wanted from my life, who the hell I was as an adult (believe it or not, I actually didnt know) and appreciating all those things Id always taken for granted. As I eclipsed my one year anniversary in Melbourne, I fell in love again. And a few more months on now, and I dont recognise myself in the mirror - I am nothing like that messy unstable state of affairs that boarded a plane in May 2007. I dont punch that mirror, instead I take a twirl and admire what I have created for myself. All the wonderful things I have now, would not have come my way until I learnt to change the things I would not accept, accept the things I could not change, learn, grow. Become.
Time to celebrate? Indeed. I have much to celebrate; Great job, great house, great boy, great health, great friends, great family, great degree, great city. I owe Melbourne alot.
"...I examine the situation as I shower and dress for the first time in three days. Maybe all the dumb-looking stuff we do is really smart. If it werent for my dumb problems (and his), we wouldnt have created these shows, we wouldnt always travel, we wouldnt have so many funny stories to tell. Having an unfillable hole inside is a great catalyst. Youre always trying new things to fill it. People with holes look good! Look ready for action. But then sometimes your home alone, and there's nothing new to try, and there the hole still is. "Hey", it growls, poking you from the inside, "Im still hungry". I get tired of it! And now, here, I fear Jean Louis is getting tired of it, too - of my hole, which Im beginning to think is a little bigger, a little hungrier, then his. Other times I think there's no hole at all - Im simply happy and in love, and I just cant stand to see myself as simple or the same as other people, so I make up all these complications."
Drugs Are Nice - Lisa Crystal Carver
.
"After our last breakup, Andrew goes off to live in the forest and work on this 33rd soundwave-emitter that only aliens can hear. Why he wants to communicate with space creatures, I dont know. Id be scared to be out there in the woods, sending out intergalactic invites to a party where only one of the attendees would be human. I guess, objectively, I have to say Andrew is crazy. But Andrew always does what he wants, what he believes, while millions of other people never do, even once in their lives. Its too hard. And they dont give you health insurance for that - for living your dream. Andrew is brave and odd, and I do appreciate that - from afar. Every time he's near, I get so hostile. I guess I want all the bravery for me."
Drugs Are Nice - Lisa Crystal Carver
Ive taken to reading alot lately. Losing myself in fucked up worlds. This book is particularly good. Her world is particularly fucked up. And its a true story.
Im dropping into Mag Nation and oggling the rows and rows of design publications, Im enthusiastically studying my uni readings, learning all that I can absorb. Im re-reading the books on my shelves. Im devouring words like a starving child, and regurgitating ideas onto page like that child, fed too quickly.
Im writing alot lately too. I cant concentrate on my work. My desk is littered with sketches and scrawled post it notes and drafts of ideas and concepts and quotes and readings. Maybe that is why Im pumping out the stories on my laptop, why the facebook notes come thick and fast. A million thoughts and ideas stream through my conscious, like Im feeling my way through a fog of words. And its the best feeling in the world.
Today, it is 2 years since I broke up with Luca. So much time has passed. Even how I came to remember this fact was purely by accident. Every now and then I wonder how he is or what he is up to these days, but mostly not at all. Im so SO very proud of myself - where I am, who I am, where Ive been, the life I live, and the people I have in it. Im even proud of the shit I dragged my sorry ass through, because of it I am infinitely wiser, stonger, more determined, more focussed. And Im having fun! I spent one long sad year wading around in a black hole of depression, self pity and denial, 6 months Perth, 6 months Melbourne. Then a further 6 months working out what I wanted from my life, who the hell I was as an adult (believe it or not, I actually didnt know) and appreciating all those things Id always taken for granted. As I eclipsed my one year anniversary in Melbourne, I fell in love again. And a few more months on now, and I dont recognise myself in the mirror - I am nothing like that messy unstable state of affairs that boarded a plane in May 2007. I dont punch that mirror, instead I take a twirl and admire what I have created for myself. All the wonderful things I have now, would not have come my way until I learnt to change the things I would not accept, accept the things I could not change, learn, grow. Become.
Time to celebrate? Indeed. I have much to celebrate; Great job, great house, great boy, great health, great friends, great family, great degree, great city. I owe Melbourne alot.
"...I examine the situation as I shower and dress for the first time in three days. Maybe all the dumb-looking stuff we do is really smart. If it werent for my dumb problems (and his), we wouldnt have created these shows, we wouldnt always travel, we wouldnt have so many funny stories to tell. Having an unfillable hole inside is a great catalyst. Youre always trying new things to fill it. People with holes look good! Look ready for action. But then sometimes your home alone, and there's nothing new to try, and there the hole still is. "Hey", it growls, poking you from the inside, "Im still hungry". I get tired of it! And now, here, I fear Jean Louis is getting tired of it, too - of my hole, which Im beginning to think is a little bigger, a little hungrier, then his. Other times I think there's no hole at all - Im simply happy and in love, and I just cant stand to see myself as simple or the same as other people, so I make up all these complications."
Drugs Are Nice - Lisa Crystal Carver
.
Wednesday, September 23, 2009
'Shifted' Exhibition - Terence Bogue
.
Review in todays The Age on an exhibition by Terence Bogue (featuring me as the model!) He creates such beautiful imagery and is such a lovely lovely person to work with!
Grabbing our attention
September 23, 2009
The Age
.......
Other photographers identify something stunningly beautiful. Terence Bogue captures it with mastery at Shifted. His images of a woman's shoulder blades and hand remind me of the classics of American photography. But his tender marble-like pictures also have an austere touch of Canova, silky but statuesque, sensual but chaste. Under the title The Itch, the sense of anecdote and perhaps erotic temptation arrives at iconic tranquillity.
.......
Terence Bogue
.
Review in todays The Age on an exhibition by Terence Bogue (featuring me as the model!) He creates such beautiful imagery and is such a lovely lovely person to work with!
Grabbing our attention
September 23, 2009
The Age
.......
Other photographers identify something stunningly beautiful. Terence Bogue captures it with mastery at Shifted. His images of a woman's shoulder blades and hand remind me of the classics of American photography. But his tender marble-like pictures also have an austere touch of Canova, silky but statuesque, sensual but chaste. Under the title The Itch, the sense of anecdote and perhaps erotic temptation arrives at iconic tranquillity.
.......
Terence Bogue
.
Botanical Gardens Photoshoot
Sometimes, when you work with an RMIT student photographer, you find a gem!
The rest of the images are here
(click to enlarge)
Photographer: Stephen Amando Lukman
http://www.modelmayhem.com/900699
The rest of the images are here
(click to enlarge)
Photographer: Stephen Amando Lukman
http://www.modelmayhem.com/900699
Thursday, September 17, 2009
Dear You
I could say that I'll always be here for you,
But that would be a lie and quite a pointless thing to do,
I could says that I'll always have feelings for you
but i've got a life ahead of me, I'm only 22,
Since you've gone I've lost a chip on my shoulder,
Since you've gone I feel like I've gotten older,
And now you've gone it feels as if the whole wide world is my stage
And now you've gone it's like I've been let out of my cage,
You always made it clear that you hated my friends,
You made me feel so guilty when I was running around with them,
And everything was always about being cool,
And now I've come to realise there's nothing cool about you at all,
Since you've gone I've lost a chip on my shoulder,
Since you've gone I feel like I've gotten older,
And now you've gone it feels as if the whole wide world is my stage
And now you've gone it's like I've been let out of my cage
Since you've gone I've lost a chip on my shoulder,
Since you've gone I feel like I've gotten older,
And now you've gone it feels as if the whole wide world is my stage
And now you've gone it's like I've been let out of my cage
~ Lily Allen
Thank you for ripping yourself from my world (quite grandly I might add), and allowing myself to find Me. Without that loss I wouldn’t have grown, learnt, changed, evolved, and fallen in love with the person I am (and should have always become if I hadn’t lived beneath your shadow). It was never your intention to throw darkness across us, in fact I switched off the light most times myself to hide safe with you, but always we lived in limbo between two strange places. Oddly I am grateful for the ache, the sorrow, and other such gifts you gave me…. because, well, just look at Me. You even said it yourself, many months later by lonely text message “…You have matured into a beautiful person…” Everything I lacked as a person, I gained by losing you. Thank you always.
But that would be a lie and quite a pointless thing to do,
I could says that I'll always have feelings for you
but i've got a life ahead of me, I'm only 22,
Since you've gone I've lost a chip on my shoulder,
Since you've gone I feel like I've gotten older,
And now you've gone it feels as if the whole wide world is my stage
And now you've gone it's like I've been let out of my cage,
You always made it clear that you hated my friends,
You made me feel so guilty when I was running around with them,
And everything was always about being cool,
And now I've come to realise there's nothing cool about you at all,
Since you've gone I've lost a chip on my shoulder,
Since you've gone I feel like I've gotten older,
And now you've gone it feels as if the whole wide world is my stage
And now you've gone it's like I've been let out of my cage
Since you've gone I've lost a chip on my shoulder,
Since you've gone I feel like I've gotten older,
And now you've gone it feels as if the whole wide world is my stage
And now you've gone it's like I've been let out of my cage
~ Lily Allen
Thank you for ripping yourself from my world (quite grandly I might add), and allowing myself to find Me. Without that loss I wouldn’t have grown, learnt, changed, evolved, and fallen in love with the person I am (and should have always become if I hadn’t lived beneath your shadow). It was never your intention to throw darkness across us, in fact I switched off the light most times myself to hide safe with you, but always we lived in limbo between two strange places. Oddly I am grateful for the ache, the sorrow, and other such gifts you gave me…. because, well, just look at Me. You even said it yourself, many months later by lonely text message “…You have matured into a beautiful person…” Everything I lacked as a person, I gained by losing you. Thank you always.
Monday, August 24, 2009
Musings
I am decidedly one of those people who has so many options in front of them that they want to do them all.
Opportunity lies before me, there is so much knowledge that I have access to, and people who could help me get there, and I don’t want to miss out on a thing. I want to try everything once, and see or do things that open my eyes. I want to take on more, go places, be someone, do envious things.
I worked 70 hours last week.
Time to turn down some opportunities!
Before they turn me into a shell, incapable of all the things I mentioned above.
Is it possible that life could be TOO good?
Opportunity lies before me, there is so much knowledge that I have access to, and people who could help me get there, and I don’t want to miss out on a thing. I want to try everything once, and see or do things that open my eyes. I want to take on more, go places, be someone, do envious things.
I worked 70 hours last week.
Time to turn down some opportunities!
Before they turn me into a shell, incapable of all the things I mentioned above.
Is it possible that life could be TOO good?
Thursday, August 20, 2009
Letting the good times roll
And as Kate says over at the Monday Project "Life Is Peachy".
Hmm, I really should stop trying to find content for this blog and just enjoy the 'silence' for a while.
I wish you could see me smiling.
K
Thursday, August 6, 2009
HDC005 Contemporary Design Issues, Winter Term 2009
6. How are the short and medium term needs of refugees being addressed by contemporary designers? Explain with reference to 3 examples serving the needs of displaced people during political upheaval or natural disasters
The number of people displaced by natural disaster and political upheaval is on the rise. In 2008, the figure stood at 42 million for those forcibly uprooted by persecution and conflict, and of this number, 80% were considered to live in developing or ‘third-world’ countries (UNHCR, 2009). And this figure does not take into account those forced from their home by natural disasters; floods, earthquakes, and the like. The US Dept of Homeland Security for example, estimated that more than 800,000 people were made homeless after Hurricane Katrina (Wortham, 2007). Across the globe, humanitarian effort is desperately seeking to find faster and more cost effective methods for housing these populations both during displacement, and also once they return to rebuild their nations, by socially and environmentally sustainable means.
The challenges that lie before our contemporary designers are almost as numerous as those that burden the refugees themselves. There are cultural barriers and geographical isolation barriers, a distinct lack of materials and resources (or high costs associated with sourcing) and access to basic necessities including power and water can be heavily restricted. The most effective emergency shelters “make use of inexpensive, readily available materials, and require minimum tools for a quick build” (Wortham, 2007). But designers must design not only provide shelter and safety, but fight disease, educate, locate loved ones and reunite families, and create a sense of community solidarity. There is an ethical obligation to build with environmentally sustainable initiatives, and a moral obligation to rebuild not only houses, medical centres, and schools, but homes and communities.
In recent years, there has been ever increasing discussions on what constitutes a safe and inclusive environment for displaced people, and how the people themselves adapt to temporary housing. We’ve been encouraged to rethink how we provide humanitarian building aid, and the longevity of the communities that develop. Cameron Sinclair of Architecture for Humanity (AFH), in his interview with Paula Antonelli in 2005, stated that “You have to be really part of the community. The way that we have always tried to work has been as an equal partnership between the community and the designer”. There has been a gradual shift in focus from meeting the short term needs of refugees in ad-hoc tent-villages, to the design of transitional housing, that is, shelters that can become homes, and have the durability to form the foundations of a new life for occupants.
Non-profit organisation ‘Architecture for Humanity’, in conjunction with regulatory bodies such as the United Nations council, have been exploring these concepts since its inception in 1999. One of AFH’s ideals, is that in building for refugees and the homeless; “Designs that are scalable, built using local materials or can also be used as core housing – as a hub for basic services like sanitation, communication, supplies – that basic dose of shelter, are key” (Stohr, 2006). In Stohr's book, Design Like You Give A Damn, she goes on to say that “houses that use local materials – helping revitalise economic development – are particularly useful”. Therefore it is imperative that the reconstruction of communities begins at this ground level, to encourage the long term stability of the culture or people. Unfortunately in some instances, using the indigenous skills of the displaced, or local resources, are not always possible, be it a cause of natural disaster, or segregation from a mainstream economy, such as in civil war.
Japanese architect Shigeru Ban, tested his ‘Paper log’ sustainable shelters in Japan in 1994, after a series of earthquakes destroyed housing for hundreds of thousands. Ban’s philosophy centred around the accessibility of materials, speedy and economically viable construction, and the environmental impact of material selection, but he also placed great emphasis on the potential beauty in such buildings. In simple terms, “Refugee shelter has to be beautiful. Psychologically, refugees are damaged. They have to stay in nice places.” (Shigeru Ban, Time)
In the instance of their ‘real-life’ scenario in Japan, the foundations for each house were beer crates weighed down with sandbags, the walls made from cardboard tubing (similar to that which would be found produced en-masse in the textiles industry) and the roof was a waterproof tent material. Between each tube in the wall, double sided and sponged tape protected the occupants from moisture and drafts. Each residence of 52sqm would cost less than US$2000 to produce, be environmentally sustainable and swift to erect. In subsequent building missions, the cost of construction may even decrease, based on the recyclability of some of the components. (Shigeru Ban Architects, 2008)
An impressive feature of these short to medium term paper tube homes, is their adaptability to various locations and refugee types. Shigeru Ban has designed with the occupant in mind, with the understanding that the situation for every refugee is different, that certain cultures call for different styles of living, and that the accessibility to resources may be scarce. In 1999, the paper tube construction was tested out in a case study involving Rwandan civil war refugees. It had come to the attention of the UN that the aluminium poles given to refugees to construct their tent housing, were being sold by the displaced, who instead cut down their own timber to provide the rigidity required for tents. With the potential for millions of refugees to undertake this practise, an alternative and more sustainable material was found in Shigeru Ban’s cardboard tube construction. Paper tubes could be manufactured nearby, on relatively simple machinery, and so transportation and construction costs were kept at a minimum. (Shigeru Ban Architects, 2008)
“The good thing about paper tubes is that they are readily available in various thickness and diameters. The weight they can support depends on these two things. theoretically, I can make buildings a few stories high, but I haven't yet been given the opportunity”, (Shigeru Ban, DesignBoom)
Other such adaptations of Ban’s designs, included larger floorplates for Turkish refugees with traditionally larger families, and where there was absence of beer crates, the rubble from destroyed homes formed the foundations. To provide greater insulation, the tubes were filled with shredded paper and fibreglass. In India, the climate meant that structural changes need to occur to discourage mosquitoes, to encourage cross ventilation, and to allow the cooking of meals within the shelter.
In 2005, Vestal Designs designed the SHRIMP housing project (Sustainable Housing for Refugees via Mass Production), a modular flat-packed style of housing that can be shipped to locations all over the world en-masse. The strength of this design lies in its capacity to be manoeuvred into difficult regions, as Vestal Designs have based their dimensions around the international standard for shipping containers. This then becomes a game of numbers... a container ship can potentially carry 6,400 containers, and each container can fit four flat packed shelters, capable of housing four people each, meaning that a single container ship could grant the arrival of shelter for over 100,000 refugees. (Vestal Design, 2008) SHRIMP housing also comes complete with pontoons and pressurised air canisters, allowing for water deployment. This means the container ships do not require a port to deliver the shelters, and that they can be transferred to flooded areas or areas where roads would have otherwise proved useless, utilising other methods of transport such as rivers to gain access to displaced people. Conversely, where access to potable water is scarce, each facility comes equipped with a roof fixed water distillery. Once cleared of their need for use, and communities begin to rebuild their long term housing, they can then be flat packed again, and shipped back to a base for storage.
Arguably though, one of the downfalls of the S.H.R.I.M.P design, was its initial reliance on timber products. And although manufactured from Sustainably Farmed Wood, the cost of production off-site, and the carbon footprint of mass production in factory situations, means that financial savings of large scale deployment are negated. While timber SHRIMP units can be reused by the process of retrofitting and recycling of components, greater durability and less environmental impact has been explored with the use of second-hand shipping containers themselves as the materials. (Vestal Design, 2008)
In 1999, Architecture for Humanity hosted a competition that called for the design of housing for the refugees of Kosovo, who were returning to a war-stricken region to find most of their homes had been destroyed. The aim of the competition was “to foster the development of housing methods that would relieve suffering and speed the transition back to a normal way of life” (AFH, 2001). The key here was the capacity for transition, rather than short term solutions. One such entrant (receiving an Honourable Mention) was the Pallet House, by I-Beam Design. I-Beam later proposed a similar design for tsunami-hit Sri Lanka in 2004.
“The people of Kosovo, like most people, had a strong commitment to their homes. As the various relief agencies working in the area predicted, people headed home at the first opportunity. Refugee-style camps in Kosovo were not thought to be possible or desirable. With the end of hostilities, three quarters of a million people or more were spreading out to towns, villages and farms all over Kosovo.” (AFH, 2001)
The Pallet House was an excellent example of transitional modular housing. It was a stable alternative to tent-housing, and could “transform a temporary living condition into a permanent home” (I-Beam, 2008). The primary material was shipping crates or pallets, whose weight was negligible when it came to shipping emergency supplies to a region. One 4.8m2 permanent multi-level home, could be constructed out of roughly 100 crates, lashed or nailed together, in just a few days and for less than US$3000 (I-Beam, 2008).
The design in its modularity meant that it was a flexible solution for refugees, and had the capacity to adapt to different cultures and family types, and could be added to over time by the occupants. There were multiple configuration options, and the shelters could either be covered with tenting or plastic sheeting, or the pallets could be reinforced and filled with concrete or rubble, once these because readily available. Occupants could even add plaster or clay walls, and decorate how they desired. These transitional homes could essentially morph into structures of permanence.
“Some of the designs that came from the Kosovo exhibit were fascinating because they played on this mass customisation. They utilised local materials and technologies, plugged them into a system that was pre-existing, and introduce new technologies in order to provide clean water, energy, and a clean place to sleep, all basic life needs” (Sinclair, 2005)
Humanitarian design in the modern era means to look beyond provision of emergency housing and medical supplies until displaced people can ‘fend for themselves’. There is much emphasis on how we rebuild entire communities with economic efficiency, and how we plan for the long term future using intelligent design. In his interview, Sinclair gives the example that in South Africa, the average cost of a traditional medical clinic is around US$150,000, but this was dropped to a mere 15% with smart design parameters, viable materials, and most importantly an understanding of context. AFH was not only able to provide facilities that dramatically increased the numbers of people that clinics could support, but allowed for more resources to be spent on employing medical staff, and purchasing supplies. (Sinclair, 2005) Such on flow effects of humanitarian design are indicators that efforts from various agencies and agendas (education, shelter, medicine, sanitation etc) are converging in a new manner of refugee aid.
Critically, the dominant drive for refugee populations is a return to the life they once had, to their homes and communities where they felt safe. And safety is not just about a lockable door, but community spirit, trust between neighbours, and for the people providing aid and assisting them to return to their lives. It is important that designers working on humanitarian projects look beyond physical needs, to the rehabilitation of a people.
While prevailing factors for design and construction will always centre on modulation/customisation, sustainably sourced and recyclable materials, and speed/ease of supply, humanitarian designers must engage with the cultural and familial needs of a community. Not only must their homes be restored, but so must their faith, dignity, family network and prospects for the future. The key, says Kate Stohr (2006), is simplicity, “Simple construction technique is what works – it’s not typically high design”. Sinclair follows this up by stating that “truly responsive care goes far beyond providing a basic means of survival... if we treat it as a birth and rebirth, then we’re focussed on creating and generating life. This is where design should play an incredibly important role.” It is when the designer looks beyond the physical design itself, to the population she is designing for, that we see the greatest service to displaced people. Humanitarian architecture built with the intention of transition, has the capacity to be the building blocks for dynamic new villages, town and cities. It facilitates the growth of families and communities from the very first instance of their displacement.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Sinclair, C & Stohr, K (eds) 2006. Design Like You Give A Damn; Architectural Response to Humanitarian Crises, Architecture For Humanity, Metropolis Books.
Antonelli, P (2005), Safe: Design Takes on Risk, MOMA, New York (Design Like you give a damn)
Architecture For Humanity, Transitional Housing for Returning Refugees: Kosovo 1999-2000, http://architectureforhumanity.org/node/719
Retrieved August 1st, 2009
Design Boom, Shigeru Ban: Paper Loghouse. http://www.designboom.com/history/ban_paper.html Retrieved August 2nd, 2009
I-Beam Design, 2008. Humanitarian Projects.
http://www.i-beamdesign.com/projects/refugee/refugee.html
Retrieved July 27th 2009.
Irwin, T, 2009. UN refugee chief cites pressing needs as those uprooted tops 42 million. The UN Refugee Agency. http://www.unhcr.org/4a37c9076.html
Retrieved July 26th, 2009
Luscombe, B, 2000. He Builds With A Really Tough Material: Paper, Time Magazine Online. http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,997495,00.html
Retrieved July 26th, 2009
Vestal Design, SHRIMP Refugee Housing, http://www.vestaldesign.com/design/shrimp-refugee-housing/
Retrieved July 28th 2009
Wortham, J (2007) Instant Housing and Designing for Disaster, https://www.wired.com/culture/lifestyle/multimedia/2007/10/gallery_instant_housing
Retrieved July 28th, 2009
The number of people displaced by natural disaster and political upheaval is on the rise. In 2008, the figure stood at 42 million for those forcibly uprooted by persecution and conflict, and of this number, 80% were considered to live in developing or ‘third-world’ countries (UNHCR, 2009). And this figure does not take into account those forced from their home by natural disasters; floods, earthquakes, and the like. The US Dept of Homeland Security for example, estimated that more than 800,000 people were made homeless after Hurricane Katrina (Wortham, 2007). Across the globe, humanitarian effort is desperately seeking to find faster and more cost effective methods for housing these populations both during displacement, and also once they return to rebuild their nations, by socially and environmentally sustainable means.
The challenges that lie before our contemporary designers are almost as numerous as those that burden the refugees themselves. There are cultural barriers and geographical isolation barriers, a distinct lack of materials and resources (or high costs associated with sourcing) and access to basic necessities including power and water can be heavily restricted. The most effective emergency shelters “make use of inexpensive, readily available materials, and require minimum tools for a quick build” (Wortham, 2007). But designers must design not only provide shelter and safety, but fight disease, educate, locate loved ones and reunite families, and create a sense of community solidarity. There is an ethical obligation to build with environmentally sustainable initiatives, and a moral obligation to rebuild not only houses, medical centres, and schools, but homes and communities.
In recent years, there has been ever increasing discussions on what constitutes a safe and inclusive environment for displaced people, and how the people themselves adapt to temporary housing. We’ve been encouraged to rethink how we provide humanitarian building aid, and the longevity of the communities that develop. Cameron Sinclair of Architecture for Humanity (AFH), in his interview with Paula Antonelli in 2005, stated that “You have to be really part of the community. The way that we have always tried to work has been as an equal partnership between the community and the designer”. There has been a gradual shift in focus from meeting the short term needs of refugees in ad-hoc tent-villages, to the design of transitional housing, that is, shelters that can become homes, and have the durability to form the foundations of a new life for occupants.
Non-profit organisation ‘Architecture for Humanity’, in conjunction with regulatory bodies such as the United Nations council, have been exploring these concepts since its inception in 1999. One of AFH’s ideals, is that in building for refugees and the homeless; “Designs that are scalable, built using local materials or can also be used as core housing – as a hub for basic services like sanitation, communication, supplies – that basic dose of shelter, are key” (Stohr, 2006). In Stohr's book, Design Like You Give A Damn, she goes on to say that “houses that use local materials – helping revitalise economic development – are particularly useful”. Therefore it is imperative that the reconstruction of communities begins at this ground level, to encourage the long term stability of the culture or people. Unfortunately in some instances, using the indigenous skills of the displaced, or local resources, are not always possible, be it a cause of natural disaster, or segregation from a mainstream economy, such as in civil war.
Japanese architect Shigeru Ban, tested his ‘Paper log’ sustainable shelters in Japan in 1994, after a series of earthquakes destroyed housing for hundreds of thousands. Ban’s philosophy centred around the accessibility of materials, speedy and economically viable construction, and the environmental impact of material selection, but he also placed great emphasis on the potential beauty in such buildings. In simple terms, “Refugee shelter has to be beautiful. Psychologically, refugees are damaged. They have to stay in nice places.” (Shigeru Ban, Time)
In the instance of their ‘real-life’ scenario in Japan, the foundations for each house were beer crates weighed down with sandbags, the walls made from cardboard tubing (similar to that which would be found produced en-masse in the textiles industry) and the roof was a waterproof tent material. Between each tube in the wall, double sided and sponged tape protected the occupants from moisture and drafts. Each residence of 52sqm would cost less than US$2000 to produce, be environmentally sustainable and swift to erect. In subsequent building missions, the cost of construction may even decrease, based on the recyclability of some of the components. (Shigeru Ban Architects, 2008)
An impressive feature of these short to medium term paper tube homes, is their adaptability to various locations and refugee types. Shigeru Ban has designed with the occupant in mind, with the understanding that the situation for every refugee is different, that certain cultures call for different styles of living, and that the accessibility to resources may be scarce. In 1999, the paper tube construction was tested out in a case study involving Rwandan civil war refugees. It had come to the attention of the UN that the aluminium poles given to refugees to construct their tent housing, were being sold by the displaced, who instead cut down their own timber to provide the rigidity required for tents. With the potential for millions of refugees to undertake this practise, an alternative and more sustainable material was found in Shigeru Ban’s cardboard tube construction. Paper tubes could be manufactured nearby, on relatively simple machinery, and so transportation and construction costs were kept at a minimum. (Shigeru Ban Architects, 2008)
“The good thing about paper tubes is that they are readily available in various thickness and diameters. The weight they can support depends on these two things. theoretically, I can make buildings a few stories high, but I haven't yet been given the opportunity”, (Shigeru Ban, DesignBoom)
Other such adaptations of Ban’s designs, included larger floorplates for Turkish refugees with traditionally larger families, and where there was absence of beer crates, the rubble from destroyed homes formed the foundations. To provide greater insulation, the tubes were filled with shredded paper and fibreglass. In India, the climate meant that structural changes need to occur to discourage mosquitoes, to encourage cross ventilation, and to allow the cooking of meals within the shelter.
In 2005, Vestal Designs designed the SHRIMP housing project (Sustainable Housing for Refugees via Mass Production), a modular flat-packed style of housing that can be shipped to locations all over the world en-masse. The strength of this design lies in its capacity to be manoeuvred into difficult regions, as Vestal Designs have based their dimensions around the international standard for shipping containers. This then becomes a game of numbers... a container ship can potentially carry 6,400 containers, and each container can fit four flat packed shelters, capable of housing four people each, meaning that a single container ship could grant the arrival of shelter for over 100,000 refugees. (Vestal Design, 2008) SHRIMP housing also comes complete with pontoons and pressurised air canisters, allowing for water deployment. This means the container ships do not require a port to deliver the shelters, and that they can be transferred to flooded areas or areas where roads would have otherwise proved useless, utilising other methods of transport such as rivers to gain access to displaced people. Conversely, where access to potable water is scarce, each facility comes equipped with a roof fixed water distillery. Once cleared of their need for use, and communities begin to rebuild their long term housing, they can then be flat packed again, and shipped back to a base for storage.
Arguably though, one of the downfalls of the S.H.R.I.M.P design, was its initial reliance on timber products. And although manufactured from Sustainably Farmed Wood, the cost of production off-site, and the carbon footprint of mass production in factory situations, means that financial savings of large scale deployment are negated. While timber SHRIMP units can be reused by the process of retrofitting and recycling of components, greater durability and less environmental impact has been explored with the use of second-hand shipping containers themselves as the materials. (Vestal Design, 2008)
In 1999, Architecture for Humanity hosted a competition that called for the design of housing for the refugees of Kosovo, who were returning to a war-stricken region to find most of their homes had been destroyed. The aim of the competition was “to foster the development of housing methods that would relieve suffering and speed the transition back to a normal way of life” (AFH, 2001). The key here was the capacity for transition, rather than short term solutions. One such entrant (receiving an Honourable Mention) was the Pallet House, by I-Beam Design. I-Beam later proposed a similar design for tsunami-hit Sri Lanka in 2004.
“The people of Kosovo, like most people, had a strong commitment to their homes. As the various relief agencies working in the area predicted, people headed home at the first opportunity. Refugee-style camps in Kosovo were not thought to be possible or desirable. With the end of hostilities, three quarters of a million people or more were spreading out to towns, villages and farms all over Kosovo.” (AFH, 2001)
The Pallet House was an excellent example of transitional modular housing. It was a stable alternative to tent-housing, and could “transform a temporary living condition into a permanent home” (I-Beam, 2008). The primary material was shipping crates or pallets, whose weight was negligible when it came to shipping emergency supplies to a region. One 4.8m2 permanent multi-level home, could be constructed out of roughly 100 crates, lashed or nailed together, in just a few days and for less than US$3000 (I-Beam, 2008).
The design in its modularity meant that it was a flexible solution for refugees, and had the capacity to adapt to different cultures and family types, and could be added to over time by the occupants. There were multiple configuration options, and the shelters could either be covered with tenting or plastic sheeting, or the pallets could be reinforced and filled with concrete or rubble, once these because readily available. Occupants could even add plaster or clay walls, and decorate how they desired. These transitional homes could essentially morph into structures of permanence.
“Some of the designs that came from the Kosovo exhibit were fascinating because they played on this mass customisation. They utilised local materials and technologies, plugged them into a system that was pre-existing, and introduce new technologies in order to provide clean water, energy, and a clean place to sleep, all basic life needs” (Sinclair, 2005)
Humanitarian design in the modern era means to look beyond provision of emergency housing and medical supplies until displaced people can ‘fend for themselves’. There is much emphasis on how we rebuild entire communities with economic efficiency, and how we plan for the long term future using intelligent design. In his interview, Sinclair gives the example that in South Africa, the average cost of a traditional medical clinic is around US$150,000, but this was dropped to a mere 15% with smart design parameters, viable materials, and most importantly an understanding of context. AFH was not only able to provide facilities that dramatically increased the numbers of people that clinics could support, but allowed for more resources to be spent on employing medical staff, and purchasing supplies. (Sinclair, 2005) Such on flow effects of humanitarian design are indicators that efforts from various agencies and agendas (education, shelter, medicine, sanitation etc) are converging in a new manner of refugee aid.
Critically, the dominant drive for refugee populations is a return to the life they once had, to their homes and communities where they felt safe. And safety is not just about a lockable door, but community spirit, trust between neighbours, and for the people providing aid and assisting them to return to their lives. It is important that designers working on humanitarian projects look beyond physical needs, to the rehabilitation of a people.
While prevailing factors for design and construction will always centre on modulation/customisation, sustainably sourced and recyclable materials, and speed/ease of supply, humanitarian designers must engage with the cultural and familial needs of a community. Not only must their homes be restored, but so must their faith, dignity, family network and prospects for the future. The key, says Kate Stohr (2006), is simplicity, “Simple construction technique is what works – it’s not typically high design”. Sinclair follows this up by stating that “truly responsive care goes far beyond providing a basic means of survival... if we treat it as a birth and rebirth, then we’re focussed on creating and generating life. This is where design should play an incredibly important role.” It is when the designer looks beyond the physical design itself, to the population she is designing for, that we see the greatest service to displaced people. Humanitarian architecture built with the intention of transition, has the capacity to be the building blocks for dynamic new villages, town and cities. It facilitates the growth of families and communities from the very first instance of their displacement.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Sinclair, C & Stohr, K (eds) 2006. Design Like You Give A Damn; Architectural Response to Humanitarian Crises, Architecture For Humanity, Metropolis Books.
Antonelli, P (2005), Safe: Design Takes on Risk, MOMA, New York (Design Like you give a damn)
Architecture For Humanity, Transitional Housing for Returning Refugees: Kosovo 1999-2000, http://architectureforhumanity.org/node/719
Retrieved August 1st, 2009
Design Boom, Shigeru Ban: Paper Loghouse. http://www.designboom.com/history/ban_paper.html Retrieved August 2nd, 2009
I-Beam Design, 2008. Humanitarian Projects.
http://www.i-beamdesign.com/projects/refugee/refugee.html
Retrieved July 27th 2009.
Irwin, T, 2009. UN refugee chief cites pressing needs as those uprooted tops 42 million. The UN Refugee Agency. http://www.unhcr.org/4a37c9076.html
Retrieved July 26th, 2009
Luscombe, B, 2000. He Builds With A Really Tough Material: Paper, Time Magazine Online. http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,997495,00.html
Retrieved July 26th, 2009
Vestal Design, SHRIMP Refugee Housing, http://www.vestaldesign.com/design/shrimp-refugee-housing/
Retrieved July 28th 2009
Wortham, J (2007) Instant Housing and Designing for Disaster, https://www.wired.com/culture/lifestyle/multimedia/2007/10/gallery_instant_housing
Retrieved July 28th, 2009
Wednesday, July 29, 2009
Rev head until the day I die...
<3 Opel Calibra <3
I miss my car.
I miss spending too much money modifying her.
I miss car cruises with the club
I miss loud thumping tunes
I miss auto shows
I miss knowing how to drive her hard
I miss knowing her mechanically inside out
I miss head turning
I miss going super dooper fast
I miss being a show off
I miss sharing the auto obsession with my mum and her RX8
I miss surprising people “Oh wow is that YOUR car??”
I miss the shiny red paint, and the exhaust rumble
Goddam I have to get another car! Hmm, wonder what my next project shall be......
I miss my car.
I miss spending too much money modifying her.
I miss car cruises with the club
I miss loud thumping tunes
I miss auto shows
I miss knowing how to drive her hard
I miss knowing her mechanically inside out
I miss head turning
I miss going super dooper fast
I miss being a show off
I miss sharing the auto obsession with my mum and her RX8
I miss surprising people “Oh wow is that YOUR car??”
I miss the shiny red paint, and the exhaust rumble
Goddam I have to get another car! Hmm, wonder what my next project shall be......
Monday, July 27, 2009
Gold Medal Time Waster
Ok come on now...something has got to give!
One cannot continue on a trajectory of ‘I’ll do it tomorrow’ and actually SUCCEED. Most days I feel like I don’t, other days I feel like Im hanging on with finger tips. Sometimes, but not very often, Im there in whole, only to find the pieces slipping as night falls, my day ends and I have achieved nothing. Not just ‘a little something’, but absolutely nothing.
I’ll give you an example.
School: I knew for three weeks that my final submission was coming up. I spent every night sitting in my study adding to the final submission, slowly but surely building towards a finished piece. Then something happened. One day I went into the study and I sat there. I picked up my Stanley knife and my scale rule, and I just looked at my half built model.
Nothing I could do could force me to finish it.
For hours that day I tried to build a second floor, so I gave up and tried to finish my floor plans. No success there either. I tried to make progress on my sketchbook. All I achieved that day was a ‘to do list’, of things to finish before submission. How contradictory!
As night fell that evening, Jimmy asked me how things were going, and I said ‘Fine’. I was so ashamed that I had sat there all day and made not one iota of progress... hours and hours wasted. I found anything I could to distract me, I’d check my facebook account... 5, 10, maybe 15 or 20 times. Id write out a shopping list, using the internet to compare prices between supermarkets, Id do ‘research’ on design by watching youtube documentaries, then follow the you-tube trail to things completely unrelated. Id draw out a monthly budget for finances. Id make myself a cup of tea. Id have a shower... the third one that day. I was convinced that if I got these things out of the way, my mind would be clear to focus on my assignment.
As the hours passed, I had so much anxiety about getting it finished, that I couldn’t sleep. So I’d stay up all night working on my assignment, and of the 12 hours through the darkness, I perhaps worked for 4 or 5 of them. I was the least productive creature you’d ever encountered. I could not work at speed and I could not stay focussed. A thousand thoughts of all varieties and durations streamed through my mind constantly. I thought about what I had to do tomorrow, I things I wanted to buy, or when I should do things, or what people were doing, or where I wanted to be. I thought about the environment, about life and love, and getting fit, and saving money, and seeing that exhibition, and doing a course, and cleaning the study.
I twitched, I fidgeted, I bounced my leg up and down, played with my hair, I painted my nails, and then picked it all off again.
In the end, at dawn on the day of my submission, I was not finished. But being the chronic perfectionist I am, I simply could not hand it in half finished. I could not stand there in front of the class and tell people that I had ‘worked’ on it for hours and still not successfully completed it. I was too ashamed, embarrassed, guilty, all of those, and so disappointed that it wasn’t my best work.
So I did not hand it in at all.
For days I had been fighting these distraction demons, and I wasn’t even bothering to hand it in.
I sat in the car outside my work (Id stayed at the office all night to work on it) and debated with myself, convincing myself that I was going to fail anyway, and that the humiliation wasn’t worth it. So I drove home at 5am. Jimmy was expecting me home at 9am (after I had gone to uni to submit) so I drove down the road with the lights off, parked my car a little further away, and curled up into a little ball. I tried to sleep for about an hour in the car, but it was too cold. Then I decided to leave my assignment in the car, cover it up with a jumper, in case Jim walked past and saw it, and then I snuck into the house, took off my shoes, and crept into the lounge room. I slept on the couch for a few hours until an appropriate time when I could ‘come home’. He never knew.
Two weeks later my lecturer contacted me to ask why I had never submitted. She had been told my work was of the highest calibre, but that she could not second my grades to date unless she saw the work. I wrote to her telling what had happened, how some sort of shutdown mechanism had meant that I sat for hours unable to finish a single component of my final folio. I told her I was willing to accept a fail and repeat the unit. She disagreed that this was appropriate, and asked to see what I had done, and gave me a week. And you know what happened? In that week, I did nothing. Oh GOD i tried. I sat down every night, and did more allnighters, desperately trying to raise the quality of my work and even complete some of it. It took me days to do things that should have taken hours. Again, I was infinitely distracted, I even cooked elaborate meals and went to the gym, using my heath as an excuse to not tackle the task at hand. And yet again, it wasn’t until the final hours before submission, that I was working at a frantic highly strung out pace, desperately trying to finish. Unfortunately the anxiety of submitting was not enough to overcome the days I spent wasting time. And so even though I had a second chance, AND an extra week, I still suffered miserably. I’d done a little more, sure. But it still wasn’t finished.
Here’s the clincher.
I did finally submit, albeit incomplete, and I got my mark back... 75, and a Distinction.
waaaat?
Not only did I pass, but they were good marks, and the work wasn’t even finished! Instead of being happy for what I had, I couldn’t help beat myself up over what I COULD have achieved had I been able to stay focused.
And this seems to happen with every unit at uni that I have ever attempted. I get really good marks for the most part, and then there is a drastic decline as the work piles up. Ive failed/repeated more units than I care to count, yet when I successfully complete a unit, my marks are really good! I know I can do the work, its not hard. But something always stops me. I like to blame 'time', I like to say Im 'too stressed' juggling fulltime work and study, but other people do it just fine, so why not me? And the reality is that I have lots of time, no less than everyone else. I just don’t know how to use it.
Generally I just tell myself that Im lazy, or that this ‘shutdown’ mechanism is just how I cope, and that I’ll try harder next semester. But its too endless, and it never gets better. Sometimes I try to talk myself out of it altogether – ‘as much as I want to complete this degree, I just don’t feel cut out for study. I almost didn’t pass year 12 for the exact same reason! I did great for the first 6 months then one by one it all fell apart and I only scraped through based on earlier grades, maybe I should take another path?’
And thats just school.
What about work? Oh don’t even get me started. I used to love my job, now I find it difficult to make it through a day. I am in constant fear that I’ll be found out for the things I am behind on, or haven’t done. For the love of gawd I cannot get or stay motivated, and the only things that I can achieve are short little menial tasks. Sometimes it goes up and down throughout the month - usually worse in the middle, and I actually used to think it was hormonal! Kinda still do.
And it gets worse;
*I always have a million thoughts in my head and I can mull over three or four completely different topics at the same time. I even consider myself a good writer, but I constantly have to make side notes on my screen because Im thinking too many topics ahead, jumping paragraphs, and I don’t want to lose those thoughts.
*Its difficult to initiate tasks, because its easier to not start, than to stop halfway through.
*I’ll sign up for a short course (three so far), and even if Ive paid money, I usually pull out/stop going after a few weeks.
*I end up working long hours but doing the same work as everyone else
*”I’ll do it tomorrow” is my mantra
*I can fluctuate quickly from genuinely sad or disappointed with life, to an intense focus on right now, and being happy being in the ‘right now’, but always with a million things to plan. MY boyfriend jokes that Im like a yo-yo, and he can almost see my mind working at a million miles an hour, when I should be relaxing. And relaxing IS very difficult, I feel guilty if Im not ‘on the go’. And its gotten progressively worse over the past 3 or so years, because the moment things start to appear calm, I start adding things into my life to be/achieve/do, to fill it up.
As the weeks pass it seems to have greater and greater impact on my capacity to get things done. I cant get myself to the gym, I am never ever at work on time, my house is a mess (or its the kind of clean where everything is stacked ‘neatly’ in piles a foot high, or shoved under my bed) and I make endless to do lists, wish lists, and budgets that are never ever achieved.
Im even procrastinating right now.
Im despairing over the things that are behind or overdue or imminent so I take time out to write about it.
What am I?
Nuts?!
Feels like Im going crazy.
Monday, July 20, 2009
BRAVERY - The Monday Project
Brave.
Brave.
Is that what you really want me to be?
Why not?
I mean, if I truly was brave, there would be a million things I might try to achieve that would seemingly leave you behind. Your tenure in my world may lapse.
Never truly.
Why?
Because you’ll always remember me as the one who gave you license to be brave.
Would you mind so much if I was brave by following you?
Of course not.
Really?
Really. I’d be flattered, in fact.
But...
But what?
What if I followed you, only to find that I wanted to change my mind, and do or be something else?
Well my dear, you’d truly then be the bravest, but you’d still in fact be following me, and oh! what an honour to be privy to such a thing!
Oh... this IS true isn’t it?
Yes.
Thank you
You’re very welcome, as always.
I love you, heart.
I love you, soul.
In response to The Monday Project
.
Everyday
.
‘He allowed himself to be swayed by his conviction that human beings are not born once and for all on the day their mothers give birth to them, but that life obliges them over and over again to give birth to themselves’
Gabriel Garcia Marquez
‘He allowed himself to be swayed by his conviction that human beings are not born once and for all on the day their mothers give birth to them, but that life obliges them over and over again to give birth to themselves’
Gabriel Garcia Marquez
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Tuesday, July 14, 2009
Short Form Essay - Contemporary Design Issues - 1st Year
Contemporary Design Issues - Winter Semester
Zaha Hadid is an Iraq born, English trained architect famous for her Deconstructivist style of architecture. She has been widely recognised for her use of highly advanced 21st century imaging technology to depict her very organic forms, and in 2004 was the first woman to be awarded the prestigious Pritzker Prize for her contribution to the field of architecture, arguably the highest honour bestowed upon a living architect.
Hadid’s work is an organic exploration of plane, and expresses an intrinsic and raw sense of movement that builds upon itself much as melody builds upon rhythm. It has been described as ‘combin(ing) sculptural sensuality with formal logic’ (Carolyn Ford writing on Hadid’s Chanel Mobile Art Pavilion). And in a ground breaking installation at the Guggenheim Museum in New York in 1992, her contribution was described as this seamless ebb and flow of matter by architecture critic Joseph Giovanni;
“...expanding it into the third dimension, moving the parts in abstract formations, like ice flows, through the whole museum. What seemed graphically like an object emerged as a field of objects moving through the existing building, adapted to its circular geometry. The movement was fluid, and spatial: the forms dropped and rose throughout the structure.”
This description is an altogether accurate analogy of Hadid’s catalogue of work. Hadid took great influence from the work of the Suprematists school of thought, and was an avid painter, using the brush to visual form and realise her designs. But Hadid’s design philosophy was lauded not for her interpretation of Suprematist ideals (many of which belonged to her teachers and mentors) but because she constantly tested and pushed the norms for visual communication of her designs, adopting ideas not explored by her predecessors, generating the realisation of what the built form could indeed achieve.
“She often layered drawings done on sheets of transparent acrylic, creating visual narratives showing several spatial strata simultaneously... this methodology, applied in the elusive pursuit of almost intangible form, she escaped the prejudice latent in such design tools as the T-square and parallel rule... Adopting isometric and perspectival drawing techniques used by the Suprematists to achieve strangely irrational spaces that did not add up to Renaissance wholes, she entered an exploratory realm where she developed forms distorted and warped in the throes of Einsteinian space...” Joseph Giovanni, The Architecture of Zaha Hadid, Pritzker Prize Essay 2004.
Hadid’s renderings, models and sketches, had taken form away from matter, and weight away from mass. Interestingly, for the first 10 years of her architectural career, not one of her visions was built. It seemed that she was destined to be too far ahead of her time, that was, until the age of the computer. Much discussion has ensued regarding technology’s influence in Hadid’s post 1980’s work, and the effect visualisation technology had on her design style of exploring natural, dynamic, almost single surface forms. And the question to be asked, would Hadid have achieved the level of success of current, if it had not been for the computer? Patrick Schumacher, author of Digital Hadid, believes not. Schumacher argued that to reduce this new style of working as being generated by the onset of the computer, is to ignore a great many other predating advancements in methodolody and critical practise. Yet he does agree that with the onset of 3D modelling and digital rendering programs in Hadid’s work “...a new level of structural complexity, tectonic fluidity, and plastic articulation has been mastered with precision and confidence”, pp5-6.
Hadid now enjoys frequent forays across discipline, having been commissioned to design jewellery, furniture, and shoes amongst other things.
Ford, C. Chanel – Zaha Hadid http://www.pritzkerprize.com/laureates/2004/essay.html Retrieved July 9th 2004
Schumacher, P. 2004. Digital Hadid -Landscapes in Motion, Birkhäuser Basel, London.
Two Draw Cabinet
Zaha & Melissa Shoes
Cairo Expo City
Zaha Hadid is an Iraq born, English trained architect famous for her Deconstructivist style of architecture. She has been widely recognised for her use of highly advanced 21st century imaging technology to depict her very organic forms, and in 2004 was the first woman to be awarded the prestigious Pritzker Prize for her contribution to the field of architecture, arguably the highest honour bestowed upon a living architect.
Hadid’s work is an organic exploration of plane, and expresses an intrinsic and raw sense of movement that builds upon itself much as melody builds upon rhythm. It has been described as ‘combin(ing) sculptural sensuality with formal logic’ (Carolyn Ford writing on Hadid’s Chanel Mobile Art Pavilion). And in a ground breaking installation at the Guggenheim Museum in New York in 1992, her contribution was described as this seamless ebb and flow of matter by architecture critic Joseph Giovanni;
“...expanding it into the third dimension, moving the parts in abstract formations, like ice flows, through the whole museum. What seemed graphically like an object emerged as a field of objects moving through the existing building, adapted to its circular geometry. The movement was fluid, and spatial: the forms dropped and rose throughout the structure.”
This description is an altogether accurate analogy of Hadid’s catalogue of work. Hadid took great influence from the work of the Suprematists school of thought, and was an avid painter, using the brush to visual form and realise her designs. But Hadid’s design philosophy was lauded not for her interpretation of Suprematist ideals (many of which belonged to her teachers and mentors) but because she constantly tested and pushed the norms for visual communication of her designs, adopting ideas not explored by her predecessors, generating the realisation of what the built form could indeed achieve.
“She often layered drawings done on sheets of transparent acrylic, creating visual narratives showing several spatial strata simultaneously... this methodology, applied in the elusive pursuit of almost intangible form, she escaped the prejudice latent in such design tools as the T-square and parallel rule... Adopting isometric and perspectival drawing techniques used by the Suprematists to achieve strangely irrational spaces that did not add up to Renaissance wholes, she entered an exploratory realm where she developed forms distorted and warped in the throes of Einsteinian space...” Joseph Giovanni, The Architecture of Zaha Hadid, Pritzker Prize Essay 2004.
Hadid’s renderings, models and sketches, had taken form away from matter, and weight away from mass. Interestingly, for the first 10 years of her architectural career, not one of her visions was built. It seemed that she was destined to be too far ahead of her time, that was, until the age of the computer. Much discussion has ensued regarding technology’s influence in Hadid’s post 1980’s work, and the effect visualisation technology had on her design style of exploring natural, dynamic, almost single surface forms. And the question to be asked, would Hadid have achieved the level of success of current, if it had not been for the computer? Patrick Schumacher, author of Digital Hadid, believes not. Schumacher argued that to reduce this new style of working as being generated by the onset of the computer, is to ignore a great many other predating advancements in methodolody and critical practise. Yet he does agree that with the onset of 3D modelling and digital rendering programs in Hadid’s work “...a new level of structural complexity, tectonic fluidity, and plastic articulation has been mastered with precision and confidence”, pp5-6.
Hadid now enjoys frequent forays across discipline, having been commissioned to design jewellery, furniture, and shoes amongst other things.
Ford, C. Chanel – Zaha Hadid http://www.pritzkerprize.com/laureates/2004/essay.html Retrieved July 9th 2004
Schumacher, P. 2004. Digital Hadid -Landscapes in Motion, Birkhäuser Basel, London.
Two Draw Cabinet
Zaha & Melissa Shoes
Cairo Expo City
Images; http://makingfurnitureinteractive.wordpress.com/2007/09/05/
http://www.stylepark.com/es/established-und-sons/swash-limited
http://www.dezeen.com/2008/10/24/melissa-shoes-by-zaha-hadid-architects/
http://www.designboom.com/weblog/cat/9/view/6666/zaha-hadid-architects-cairo-expo-city.html
http://www.stylepark.com/es/established-und-sons/swash-limited
http://www.dezeen.com/2008/10/24/melissa-shoes-by-zaha-hadid-architects/
http://www.designboom.com/weblog/cat/9/view/6666/zaha-hadid-architects-cairo-expo-city.html
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Friday, June 26, 2009
On Creativite Genius - Elizabeth Gilbert
Elizabeth Gilbert wrote a book that I absolutely adored, and dreamed that I could one day emulate as I struggle through writing my own history. http://www.elizabethgilbert.com/eatpraylove.htm
She made me want to throw my cares to the wind, chase dreams, and look for rainbows. The disillusion of self, and heartache rendered by her dependence on others was like reading the introduction to my own story.
And as I frequently encounter the next mental and creative block, I came across this speech by Gilbert, on the pressures and battles of creativity, and how to carry the burden. And importantly, how much self doubt she still carries in her ability, and how hard it is still for her to sit down and write.
.Check it.
Thursday, June 25, 2009
Art & Architecture
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I had to share this because it is so striking. Tokujin Yoshioka is an extremely talented multidisciplinary artist who covers graphics, exhibition design, furniture & product design, and architecture (http://www.tokujin.com/)
This recent piece by him was for the largest watch exhibition in the world, Baselworld2009, and was commissioned for Swarovski. It is called the Lake of Shimmer and measures 9m by 8m and contains 16,000 mirrors attached to the wall, each which have their angle controlled by a computer. This makes for a stunning play of colour and light, and adds a beautiful smoothness and naturality to a very mechanical operation. It is like watching ripples in a pond and while visually stimulating, is calming to the mind because of its representation of natural life & movement.
Who doesn’t feel as peace when gazing by the waters edge?
I had to share this because it is so striking. Tokujin Yoshioka is an extremely talented multidisciplinary artist who covers graphics, exhibition design, furniture & product design, and architecture (http://www.tokujin.com/)
This recent piece by him was for the largest watch exhibition in the world, Baselworld2009, and was commissioned for Swarovski. It is called the Lake of Shimmer and measures 9m by 8m and contains 16,000 mirrors attached to the wall, each which have their angle controlled by a computer. This makes for a stunning play of colour and light, and adds a beautiful smoothness and naturality to a very mechanical operation. It is like watching ripples in a pond and while visually stimulating, is calming to the mind because of its representation of natural life & movement.
Who doesn’t feel as peace when gazing by the waters edge?
Wednesday, June 24, 2009
Gifts from strangers
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Somebody I had never met before, spent an hour talking to me yesterday. They sat back in their chair, paused and thought for a moment before saying “You know exactly what you want from life don’t you? You know exactly what you’re doing. And where you want to be, and how you’re gonna get there”
Bless him. This surprised me; that after an hour of conversation, one considered themselves so perceptive. And honestly and confidently voice their perception.
This surprised me too, because I blinked quickly and thought wow...
...Thankfully, yes, I actually do.
Finally.
.
Somebody I had never met before, spent an hour talking to me yesterday. They sat back in their chair, paused and thought for a moment before saying “You know exactly what you want from life don’t you? You know exactly what you’re doing. And where you want to be, and how you’re gonna get there”
Bless him. This surprised me; that after an hour of conversation, one considered themselves so perceptive. And honestly and confidently voice their perception.
This surprised me too, because I blinked quickly and thought wow...
...Thankfully, yes, I actually do.
Finally.
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Tuesday, June 23, 2009
Im dreaming of...
Damn you long legs! You would surely break in heels this high! Not to mention make me hit my head on tram doors, train openings, door frames, and low hanging branches!le... sigh
Damn you Nine West and your 50% off sale!
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Tuesday, June 16, 2009
Letter to Shanks
Dear Shanks,
I know you are going on this big adventure, and opening a really massive new chapter in your life. I wanted to tell you a couple of things that I thought of but just didn’t say, as I stood in Kim’s hallway and wondered what I should say to you. I ended up telling you I was proud of you. But it’s so much more than that.
I want to thank you for making friends with a complete stranger over the radio. For not caring about where I was from, or where I’d been, what I’d done, or what I’d seen. And for wanting to be my friend because of who I was on the inside.
I want to let you know that you moving to Melbourne was the kick start that I needed, helping me to understand that no-one is ultimately trapped in their situation. And I wanted to thank you for those lonely first weeks in this bloody cold place, where we sat in various pubs in the city, smoking our cigarettes and contemplating our existence. And not only bonding over this massive new adventure, but actually learning things about each other and becoming greater friends. Because the reality tied to this situation is that as much as we got along, we didn’t really know each other then.
And thankyou for the months that followed, picking up late night pizzas/kebabs/chinese and stumbling drunkenly home, getting lost while exploring the most random places, catching gigs, making new friends (and enemies! ...Ah that night on the tram on the way to Laundry, when we had a run-in with the junkies!) and always having yet another random Bikkies and Shanks adventure. And THANKYOU for taking Jimmy into your fold of friends as you did with me. Its like you passed the baton... and now he gets to hold my hair back when Im sick. Arent you glad you passed THAT baton on!? lol
We were flat broke together, starved together, and when we had cash... boy! did we live LARGE together. The memories are forever and incorruptible (except the ones where... you know... we don’t actually remember what happened. lol)
I am also grateful for having you round during the shitty nights, when I hated where I was and who I am. But you were always there, you taught me that it was ok to call someone a c*nt, if they were being one. And that Monday night drinking sessions were never worth it on Tuesday morning, but were necessary at the time, so that I could vent. You knew when I was having a rough time, and you were always there with bear-hugs. There were Luca-demons, the death of my friend, losing my little Conni, and crappy crappy work colleagues. There were also girl-dramas and cash-flow dramas. And icky icky come-downs. You also told me when I should just harden the fuck up... I really needed that too sometimes.
Seriously dude it has been 2 years of mayhem, chaos, pain, victory, growth, and maturity (who knew I could put those words in the same sentence!) and we’ve had a crazy crazy time. We have come to the end of an era, but not the end of a wicked friendship. Ultimately I am SO proud of you... I look back on me and think ‘Holy shit, look how far I’ve come’ but I’ve also looked back at you, and you’ve grown so much as a person too. I am so grateful for a best friend like you... one of the truest ones.
These next few years of your life are going to take you places you never would have believed possible, and you’ll see things and meet people who will constantly blow your mind (both good and bad). You are an awesome awesome person and I have not met one soul who doesnt get along with you. Dont bloody forget it, if theyve got a problem with you... its their problem. Youre just one of those people you know? You make friends easily, you go out of your way to help & understand people, and your a total trashbag (apparently people like that? ;p )
Please keep your wits about you, and for godsake keep your phone insured. Take LOTS of photos, keep in touch, keep true to yourself, drink things other than scotch, eat weird food (and get gastro), poke strange animals (but not strange people), learn swearwords in foreign languages, call me on Skype and teach me foreign swearwords, download lots of Oz hip hop to educate your fellow crew, and never ever forget how many people love the shit out of you back home.
Best.Housemate.Ever
Hugs and Gutz!
xx Kaye
P.S. A few of the classics.....
1. http://www.facebook.com/photo_search.php?page=4&id=619719209&view=all&m=1#/video/video.php?v=119431231040&subj=642109618
2. http://www.facebook.com/photo_search.php?page=4&id=619719209&view=all&m=1#/video/video.php?v=46587244618&subj=642109618
3. http://www.facebook.com/photo_search.php?page=4&id=619719209&view=all&m=1#/video/video.php?v=51120524618
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