Well it just seems to be fair for readers to get to know me first before reading my postings... well, here’s me in a nut shell….
My full name is John Martin L. Tubles. I was born and raised in the Philippines. My parents moved to America when I was 14 and shortly after… well two years actually… my two sisters and I followed. The transition living from Quezon City, Philippines to Long Beach, California was not too much of a big deal. Luckily, language was not much of an issue but socially on the other hand was a different story. I occupied my free time by enrolling to culinary arts adult school while I was in high school. In that program, I was able to work in Hyatt and Westin in Long Beach as a chef which also helped me realized that my passion for food is not enough to make a career out it. So not knowing what I was going to do in life, I enrolled in Long Beach City College where I stumbled upon an architecture class which it ended up striking my suppressed interest in Architecture and Design… I remember that I drew a lot when I was I kid… I drew houses and chairs for some weird reason… and when my family finally got cable television in the Philippines, I got obsessed in these two television shows that my sisters hated… the infamous carpentry show “This Old House” and an Australian HGTV-ish show called “Our House”…

After a couple of architecture classes and working for Architectus, a small practice in Long Beach, I knew that an architecture career/life was a “fit” for me… (whoa… that sounded a little melodramatic... hallmark moment perhaps) Well, it took me 3 years to complete an Associate Degree in Architecture and Liberal Arts plus a Career Certificate in Drafting in Long Beach City College, and if I have to sum it up in one word it would be FUN… because everything is new and a lesson to be learned, plus it also helped that I was in close proximity to great art scene and architecture sites.

By the summer of 2007, I embarked on another stage of architectural school when I went to Cal Poly Pomona. I was one of the ten second year transfers that were accepted in the program amongst hundreds of applicants. In this school I realized how much hard work and discipline is needed in order to succeed in the program. Since my school runs on a quarter system, we have only less than 10 weeks to develop and finish… well not really finish because it is never done… a project. I’m not really sure about first year classes, but from my experience since second year, the timeline of studio classes runs like this:
_week 1 - Case Study with boards, analysis, diagrams, models and presentation
_week 2 to half of week 3 - Design Charette that is related to final project, model, presentation…
_middle of week 3 - Main project is assigned including a detailed site analysis that will affect the design process.
_week 4 to 6 - CONCEPTS! Design, Desk Critiques , Study Models, Sketches
_week 7 - Studio Midterm Presentation which includes drawings + boards, midterm model (cross between a massing model and detailed model) and other things that are necessary to express/test the concept
_week 8 to half of week 10 - Revise midterm corrections if need be or in some people’s case a complete overhaul of the entire projects
_end of week 10 Final Presentation which includes Final Boards, Diagrams, Renderings/Vignettes, final model and the list goes on and on and on…

…mind you we also have other architecture classes that must be integrated in our final project like environmental controls, sustainable design, structures and codes class... so saying “I’m busy” seems like an understatement, but it is still fun… in a somewhat masochistic, groggy cause I only had 2 hours of sleep kind of way but thats life in architecture school...

After finally surviving the Third Year of Architecture School, of course with the help of my fellow students and professors and the support of my wonderful family and friends, I got the opportunity to spend my Fourth Year (12 months) as a “Ryuugakusei” or Foreign Exchange Student in Kyushu University located in the City of Fukuoka, in the country of JAPAN!!! …here I go again with the hallmark moment but I don’t care… It has been a lifelong dream of mine to visit Nihon and the fact that I get to live there for a year is just incredible… not to mention, I’m really excited to experience getting lost and confused in Japan, which I’m pretty sure there would be plenty of instances… I just finished taking a Beginner’s Nihongo class this summer so let’s just see how much it will help me. Right now I’m relearning what my sensei taught me… Anyways I would be attending the Kyushu University, Ohashi Campus, Kyushu Institute of Design starting October first...but before hand, three other Cal Poly students and I will be leaving L.A. on September 23rd so we can stop over in Taipei, Taiwan for 6 days to visit friends there and see Taipei 101 and the night markets… this will definitely going to be another exciting year and I guess we’ll just see how everything unravels…