Ooh, I guess I better watch Obama. Orhan, in your mind is selam aleykum comparable to JFK saying Ich bin Berliner? Not comparing the presidents, just the phrase.

fays, don't be silly, you've been a regular for a long time. Congrats on 500.

i survived yesterday. this morning, back is feeling a little better. lots of meetings today, so that will add a new wrinkle to the adventure.

still haven't attempted socks yet this morning...

SW - I hope your back feels better soon. Nothing worse than a pulled back/neck muscle.

Panda - Yup I pretty much see you as a regular too. Virtual hugs to you and toaster :o)

Oh and Bill Nighy played Billy Mack... the singer. I watch the movie every year on Christmas and only on Christmas... but I may have to break tradition and watch here soon.

Orhan - your description makes feel all warm inside. Seems rather ground breaking, no? I am excited at the idea of more progress to come.

DubK - mmmmmm... jelly donuts.

I feel so bad for the Goldman guy who cant get his son out of Brazil. Its sad.

I didnt catch the speach, but saw the Today recap. I went to a mosque once. It was fun. It was completely different than anything I expected. I'm not afraid to admit it, I thought that the attenders would be more middle-eastern, and instead, most of them were white americans. I know how that sounds, but I feel like its understandable. The washing that you have to do before entering was certainly an experience, but I understand it, and almost find it admirable.

Liam Neilson was in that movie? Was he the guy with the foriegn house keeper girlfriend? Who was Sarah? I have only seen the movie once, and that was in 2004. Its my weekend to select the movies from the library, maybe I will get that one.

Abram has to get shots today. That has got to be one of the crappiest parts of early parenting.

Morning all,
I awoke to find reactions to the speech but not video of it.
Thanks for the recap Orhan.
I guess I didn't put 2 and 2 toegther and realize that it would be on while I was sleeping.

SH, I have never been to a mosque but I remember the first time i heard someone recite the Koran in arabic I thought it was one of the most beautiful things (poetically/aesthetically, since I don't know Arabic) I had ever heard.


Sucks for the doctors visit.

Morning tc!!!

Here is the video fo the speech in full.
I am watching it now.

video

Can I saw that I teared up a bit...

liam neeson was the single father (i think) who taught the red haired boy how to impress his crush, or something, im not sure. the writer (i think?) with the portuguese/spanish? housemaid-come-awkward love interest-come-wife is colin firth.

oh yeaaah, old man billi nighy as a washed up pop star. reminds me of iggy pop which has come to remind me of vado recently after his evil p rendition of ziggy stardust

i know its not your typical tourist location, but the King Faisal mosque in islamabad, Pakistan is absolutely breathtaking. and SH, you would especially enjoy the promenade from the drop off-down some stairs to a sunken well lit ablution space-through a walkway and up a set of stairs to the main couryard-to the foyer- and then to the main mosque space.. no pics allowed inside though, and its a shame they only open the main prayer space only during prayer times (which is counter intuitive to the idea of a mosque to begin with?!?! but i think i understand why that is, its alway a place in turmoil, but i was lucky to be there in 2006, when there was some sort of "peace")

also, the sultan hassan mosque in downtown cairo is by far on of the most spatially engaging spaces i have ever been in (but again, its really about the sequence), ill try to upload photos if i find any.

still waitin to visit the beauties in turkey though :S

woops try this one

link

I still have some lead in the pencil.

Awww, The Kung Fu master is gone.

snifff

I've said it before, and I'll say it again - Obama is a great speaker...

ugh... the coffee isn't working today... I've had a really hectic week, not a whole lot of sleep. deadlines at work and our landlords are selling our apartment. they offered to sell it to us, but we decided to move closer to my spouse's work and found a whole house in probably the last really nice, but still affordable, part of the city - though, the way things go around here in a few years it'll probably be the most expensive part of the city. - so this week is the first week they started showing... it's nice having our apartment so clean, but I feel like I don't really live there anymore...

I feel unsettled and out of sorts.

fays, where do you live/are you from that you got to see all of these cool places?

toasteroven, what city are you talking about?

I forgot to mention that being a TC regular also means representing your geographical region. :o)

Lemme see if I get this straight:

Sarah's got Texas;
Vado and LB, Indianastan;
Steven, Kentucky;
Melt, Cincy/NKY;
Beary, Colorado;
Techno, the Caribbean;
Jump, Japan;
LIG, NYC;
AP, (soon to be) St. Louis;
nam, Florida;
holz, Seattle (I think?);
manta, Chicago;
+ Orhan (and me) in SoCal (but for how long...)...

melty, damn you for mentioning donuts!!!

Boston area - cambridge/somerville seems like the only place in the entire country that actually went up when the rest of the housing market crashed... the city of Boston proper is more in line with everywhere else - some parts are still really expensive, other parts are relatively affordable and still kind of nice - especially once you get out of range of the colleges and touristy areas.

My current neighborhood is the absolute hottest area in the real estate market right now... our tiny one-bedroom is selling for more than what we just paid for our house... just a few years ago our current neighborhood was mostly rental and kind of run-down... now it's all condos and apparently inhabited by at least one famous architect. I'll really miss this area when we move, but It'll be nice living in a less intense neighborhood. instead of a 20 minute walk to work, I'll have a 40 minute bike-ride... not too bad, i guess...

I also grew up in Detroit (which is where my heart is).

@tumbles keep the rabbit and run a petty zoo for kids, $5 a pop.

@everyone - I've often thought about you as the characters of Love Actually. Not because you look are behave like them, rather because you embody the ethos of the characters. Wonder K is Natalie, and *melt is sooooooooooo definately Sarah, and I'm at the next archinect meet up Vado will be playing the air guitar singing everyone loves Christmas.


“Hiya kids. Here is an important message from your Uncle Bill. Don’t buy drugs. Become a pop star, and they give you them for free.”

Now the really sad thing is that movie makes me cry EVERY SINGLE TIME. It's really quite pathetic, but true. The missus finds it funny.

Okay time for lunch - I haven't had any coffee all day and it's a wonder I haven't chewed anyone's head off.

kids get out your costumes

"I feel it in my fingers, I feel it in my toes. Love is all around me..."

Now I'm going to have that song stuck in my head all day. I love that movie, though. So sweet. I cry every time too!

So there was this competition to design a beach-house in the Bahamas that's garnered ALOT of criticism for picking totally shitty winners.

http://www.bustler.net/index.php/article/trouble_with_paradise_bahamas_design_challenge_winners_announced/

The ensuing comments are really entertaining - it ends up with the winning architect defending while everyone else bashes him. In the comments there's a link to a Picasa webpage folder with a bunch of non-winning entries. If you're bored, check it out.

it's all right tumbles, DubK forgot me in that list too.

holz is indeed in Seattle. Had drinks with him, e, and mdler a couple months ago. Was rather funny actually.

crap! Sorry rationalist. tumbles doesn't come by much anymore. Of course the one day she does, I leave her off the list. :-/

So....

rationalist, Seattle;
tumbleweed, Venice/West LA (right?)

Techno, this superhero stuff is for real, isn't it? And it's awesome. :o)

jk that Troy guys sounds like such a tool! I'm really quiet embarrassed that he's Jamaican - my only consolation is that he didn't study architecture there. And even some of the other work was just poor. I suspect I willing be pushing my students even harder next year so I don't see any crap like that emerge

IHey, 'm more of a TC groupie than a regular, but I'm representing Texas too (Houston)

That was supposed to be "Hey, I'm..."

an edit button would be nice..

I kinda like IHey. Sounds perky.

I just picked Angus up at daycamp on the tandem bicycle. About a 3 mile round trip with a 60 pound kid and 10 pound backpack. I'm beat!

But of course you are Dapper. Yay for Houston. Seems to me we have a pretty good representation of the US. This is actually pretty cool. I added a few more to the list, but I feel there are still some that missing. :

Sarah and Dapper, Texas;
Vado and LB, Indianastan;
Steven, Kentucky;
Melt, Cincy/NKY;
Beary, Colorado;
Techno, the Caribbean;
Jump, Japan;
LIG, NYC;
AP, (soon to be) St. Louis;
nam, Florida;
holz and rationalist, Seattle;
manta, Chicago;
Orhan, tumbles DubK in SoCal (but for how long...)...
Slart, Philly;
Toaster, Boston;
Beta and TK in Mini-apples;
Snook, Connecticut (I think);
Panda, ????
...

melt, you can put me down for Nashville - I'm interning here at the moment. In two weeks, though, it's off for Copenhagen! Yeeee!

But yea, philia.... that guy is totally retarded. Did you look through their comments on the Picasa web album? If I spent time on a competition like that to get beat by his scheme, I'd be just as pissed. I'm pretty sure it was a freaking scam to get free design work done. Oh well.

That competition produced some fugly results...

I know cryzko and jafidler (and crizzler?) are from (or in?) Detroit... they aren't around TC much, though... I think...

I knew I was forgetting someone....the Minneapolis contingent! Duh. Thanks to melty for helping me out ;o)

Speaking of retarded....

h&r read about Detroit in a book once.

Nice bait.

Wow - just got done listening to Obama's speech. How very (IMHO) motivating and moving. God I heart diplomacy. One can only hope that this is the beginning of a turning of a new leaf.

SH - to answer your question from way above... Sarah (in Love Actually) is the one who has secretly been in love with her co-worker since she started her job. Only it turns out it's not so secret b/c her boss calls her out on her crush.

Off to yoga. It's been a while and the body and mind need some centering.

watched Up today,, steven, you should watch it, early in the movie, the character has difficulty getting out of bed :P,, i was also thinkin,, you shouldn worry, im almost half your age and it takes me almost an hour and a half to get out of bed, literally

Thanks for the run-down, fay - it's great to see some Middle East (is that pc? It's really only Americans who use that term, isn't it?) representation (soon to be London, of course).

I really would like some wine tonight but HAVE to get some drawings done later, and I know I can't do both.

@fays Of course it's hard to get out of bed, the bastard sheep make it so comfortable. It took me three tries this morning.

@*m I need some centring as well, but I'm using a half bottle of white wine - which I don't normally drink. It's from South Africa and is the closest I could get to my pleasure of choice

good job with the cycling LB!

i take my youngest every morning just that way, except she sits in a basket. it's brilliant. my wife used to ride all over our part of tokyo with one in the front basket and one in the back, and then had one of the kids to carry the groceries when they went shopping. i don't know how she did it, really.


finally saw obama on news this morning. very cool.

i had to think a bit when i saw some of the locals were complaining that he now has to deliver on his ideas. which is true enough, but after a moment i realised they were actually expecting the leader of another nation, how many thousands of miles away, to take a direct role in solving THEIR problems. Quite something if you think about it...

<-- is indeed located in seattle, and won't be moving to (portugal/switzerland/austria/denmark/germany) anytime soon :(

we effin hit 92 on my thermo today. grody.

rationalist, is mdler still around? i haven't heard from e in a while either. found a job yet?

tumbleweed, i've never been to l.a. (or metro) for more than a day!

I cant for the life of me remember half of the characters in that movie. Strange. Its like I was distracted, but I was the only one watching it at the time, on a laptop no less. But all I remember is the skinny dipping scene, the wedding and subsiquint cue card I love you scene/couple/threesome, and the prime menister. And of course Vado. I think I'm confusing the Liam neilson thing with About a Boy - which was kinda slow.

I got Marley and Me and Marie Antionette at the library.

I saw the best line from this month's Dwell, "We've never been able to fully capture the possibilities of 3D design on the computer, but it's bullshit to call them 3D models because they're printed on 2D paper" - Esinar Jarmund (Jarmund/Vigsnaes); it made me chuckle something about cursing does that sometimes.

einar jarmund is awesome. he had an interesting lecture here last year (in an awful space - wtf, seattle library?!?) and i really appreciate the rawness of his work.

Holz,
Really? I don't think it has gotten that hot even here, yet.

Also, fays, don't they also use MEND??

Nite all.

yeah. it barely hit 70 in socal, apparently. what gives, guys? take your hot gross temps back, please! it shouldn't be above 75 for another month here...

nam, you're in florida, right? i remember some ridiculous gross days working in florida (concrete formwork and pours) trying to avoid aligators and heat stroke. at least it's not as humid here. though i'd kill for late night thunderstorms now and then.

So I wrote a response to fays earlier but came home to find I hadn't hit Submit. Nothing groundbreaking, but here you go anyway.

"Wow, fays.panda I think that your presence here gives us a new coverage area, any way you cut it! Awesome!

I have a stupid question: is it hot in the U.A.E. right now? How hot?"

But apparently it's hot in Seattle too, LOL. It was quite pleasant in LA today. Very weird.

It's been frigid in Chicago. I can't take it anymore. It's usually glorious here this time of year. Noplace I've lived is nicer, usually...

haha, it IS hot,, its 104 today, it was 118 a couple of days ago :S,, but, it has been exceptionally windy,, i walk for 10 mins from where i park to the office, and if it was a couple of years ago, i would get a heatstroke almost every morning, but this year things are weird,, i dont mind the heat though, the humidity is the irritating part :S

even in the winter, i never needed to wear a jacket (i did, for looks :D) but this year i actually had to.. global warming?

Fays - I also think it's quite awesome to have a MENA rep in the "contingent". Where in the UAE are you. Abu Dhabi? Dubai? THe others?

The temps here have been all over the board. One day it's hot and muggy and the next it's cool and dry. But that's pretty normal for SW Ohio.

Morning all,

Nothing like a stop at the local cafe (for some intelligentsia cold brew and a spinach feta croissant) on my bike ride to work. Rarely, i was feelign extra refreshed this morning and so I had an extra 10 min or so.

Holz,
Oh yeah. It gets thick here. Actually a white rapper, Greaves, from Seattle who was touring with Mr Lif (i saw the show last week) described it during his stage banter, as air milkshake. It is so muggy.

But luckily it hasn't reached 90 yet. Soon though.

OK, I dont have much time as someone is calling for me, but I didnt want to forget the questoin I had for Fays.

You can blame it on puddles, but ever since he posted that article about sitting vs squating, I've been really curious about the bathrooms over there. I figure that in hotels that cater to western guests, the toilets are the sit kind, but is yours a hole in the ground sort? Have they brought the technology up from just 'hole in the ground' to something better? I know its a dumb question, but its not one I can answer on my own.

OK OK Im COMING!

don't blame it on me...sitting vs. squatting is a fascinating topic! it's practically all i think about now...that is, how my posture is affecting my anal health.

still alive...although i've considered "playing dead" to avoid parking tickets, i think this guy took it a little too far