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OhLaila |
Thursday 18 September 2014
Raging thoughts (literally) "I still don't get why my idea was slammed down just like that. I think it makes sense?! Hostel apartment unit is lacking in privacy! And everybody else wants to promote interaction, but I can't promote privacy in my concept?! Wth? Why? WHY? Isn't this being different than everybody? ISN'T BEING DIFFERENT AND HAVE A DIFFERENT DESIGN APPROACH WHAT I AM SUPPOSED TO DO?! IF NOT THEN WHAT?! WHAT!" "So I'm not allowed to think different. Okay. The last time, I was told countless times to think different. So indeed there is a lesson learnt here. Being different is all right, for sure. But as long as you are dependent on someone for your shit, you being different means nothing if it is outside their idea of 'being different'. TLDR: It is fine to be different, as long the person you deal on being different with is okay with it. If not, then fuck you no, you can't be different." "Deep down we are the same. Really? We just want someone to relate with, someone to share your happiness and sorrow with. But no, not really. Sometimes some people just want to keep all the bad feelings inside, to see how much it would motivate them, to see if they will stay down or get back up, or even to see if and when they will start killing from inside out." "Honestly, if I went to the same course 10 years ago I probably would have done decent. Maybe not the best, but it wouldn't be this bad as I am now. Or maybe it doesn't work this way. The conditions and parameters would have been so different. I think I would still suck no matter what the timeline is. Fuck this shit, seriously. No matter what I do, no matter how much I think I have improved, all I know is still worth nothing more than half a cent." "I just wanna run away and never come back to this place again. I need my mom, a warm blanket, a cup of hot tea, and home. I just wanna curse, scream, and cry there. Especially when walking around and having a nice meal didn't manage to erase these terrible thoughts and feelings, Please go away. Please please please. I have things to do and I can't bear to have time wasted moping away. FUCK!" Sunday 14 September 2014
Looking back; looking on. "Summer has come and past. The innocent can never last." - Wake Me Up When September Ends - Green Day And after two summers, suddenly this song just managed to pop its way into my brain, Aside of the two different internships I did (read: previous blog post), I feel much more satisfied; personally this summer. This is because while the summer holiday in 2013 was pretty much well-spent with my then-new apartment mates and making new acquaintances, I felt that this year's holiday was more useful to accomplish task on a more personal level. Let's rewind back to the end of Term 5 in May. Quite right away after the term ended, I flew back home. And that was where my break started; home. Feeling very deprived of games after so long, I practically spent more than half of my waking hours rushing through Mass Effect Trilogy. Somehow though, that still wasn't enough for me. So I completed Sleeping Dogs as well. Actually, talking about games marathon, I just remembered that before I even flew back home, I was able to finish a storyline of the newest DMC. Next, fate brought me to a new place yet again. Never been more grateful for the opportunity to travel.  It was more than an eye-opening experience. It was a trip I would remember for the rest of my life. Though I wish I could be more involved with the local culture longer. Haha, Then came the bulk of my summer break: student research assistant internship. Well, sort of. Doing a rather similar type of work every day, but I felt happy to be able to contribute significantly nonetheless. At the same time, clearing up story lines of new games that I've tried, like Deadpool and Spiderman: Shattered Dimensions. That was when I kinda realised that Deadpool and Cancerians like me share quite a few similarities, based on some research done by ZodiacFacts (Source: twitter.com/zodiacfacts). However true that is, though, is beyond me. I just found the connection interesting and so I started playing some games that featured Deadpool in them as well as watching the Hulk VS Wolverine which also featured the character. Heh. Anyway, during my more relatively free part of the days during this period, I also completed the House of Cards until its latest Season 2. Can't wait until the new season air next year! The main character Frank Underwood has provided me with what I call "how to survive the real world" tips, intentionally or not. There were a bunch of movies I caught up with too, like Death Note Live-Action, Divergent, and Captain America: The Winter Soldier, among others. Lastly, for the last 2 weeks of holiday, It was time to come home, again. There's no place I'd rather recharge in. Anyway, cleared up another long-overdue TV series, Kamen Rider Hibiki. With this, I have watched every Heisei rider series (yay!). The series picked up quite slowly, in my opinion. That's probably why I wasn't really hooked until towards the end. Then it got quite inspiring and intense at the same time. Oh, and for the first time, I celebrated Mid-Autumn festival with grandparents. This was a first, and I hoped it won't be the last! Good thing also I could read up a couple of books in here, like Architecture: Form, Space, and Order by Francis Ching (which was a basic architecture book that I have been wanting to complete since forever) as well as Highway to Success by Dato Dr. Andrew Ho, a famous motivator that my dad had the pleasure of knowing personally. Hopefully it would inspire me to keep up my fighting spirit, confidence, and desperation that I used to have as a kid but lost along the way these few years, especially for the bloodbath coming ahead. That's that. Summer is ending, very soon. I can already feel responsibilities, hardships, and challenges impending. As much as I dread all of them, there is no longer avoiding them. I've gotta face them head-on, without fear, and with strong determination. I'll have Christmas to look forward to, and 14 weeks is gonna breeze through so fast I won't even have time to catch up on my breath. I don't want my summer break to ever end, but I'm ready for the last 4 months of 2014. And as The Rock put it, Team Bring It will kick ass. Monday 1 September 2014
Two internships. Well, kind of. Another item I just added to the list of things that piss me off:
Bureaucratic Inefficiencies
Nearing the end of the summer break, I unconsciously have made a comparison between the summer internship I experienced last year and this year's.
To sum it up, there are two stark differences in terms of the working style, the working environment, and the rewards (intellectually, timely, and financially).
Let's go through the
1. WORKING STYLE
Last year, my summer internship had more variety of work to do. However, not much of them are specifically architecturally related. It was more about the fundamental design thinking skills, empathetic elements of design, exposures, as well as integrating many design elements into what the company I work for calls: Experience Design. It wasn't probably the most helpful experience for the technical part of the education I received a year later, but nonetheless it was a very challenging, fast-paced and engaging design internship. The tasks that we interns did was mostly smaller-scale stuff, like data gathering and site surveillance. Myself to be specific, had work involving some background research for parametric designs, vertical farms, interior architecture, modular design elements, and customer-centered design. Overlooking the fact that I had to survey a site and the residents for days (and almost got asked to stay overnight in the so-called "slums"), I think I had a pretty broad exposure about design and architecture (as well as software skills such as SketchUp and Photoshop). For this year though, it was a rather different experience. It was probably very architecturally related, considering what I did 99% of the time was tidying up design drawings as well as decorating them with trees using only two softwares: Rhinoceros and Illustrator. Designing-wise, the amount of experience was actually close to zero (unless we wanna consider the fact that cleaning up the drawings for the projects got me thinking about how the buildings were conceived). Technical-wise, however, this experience can be considered a rather intensive course of learning and practice. At the end of work, I can quite confidently say that I played around with different combinations of lineweights and trees vectors such that I can apply them to my design drawings (but of course that depends with how good my building design is in the first place). Oh and there is always work to do, but the pace, is really a slow and chilled one which I really, really love. To be honest, I'd rather do something quite regularly, do it well, gain the trust of my supervisors, and then be able to do the work at my own pace as well as not being stressed.
2. WORKING ENVIRONMENT
I should probably not write about this, since both times I worked in my campus compound anyway, albeit at different parts. Haha. But maybe there is something to reflect about the people I worked with. During my first internship last year, since I was interning under an independent studio subsidiary of a large company, I believe it may be considered as a work attachment under a small number of colleagues. I have been told that working under such group would make one feel closer to the team as well as the bosses. True, to some extent. I did get to interact with my supervisors and bosses, but I wouldn't say that I was close to them. This could be caused by the fact that the interns were quite a bunch too (8 of us), so we hung out during lunchtime and all. If I was alone, maybe I would get to hang out with the others more. Haha. As such, the distance between me (and probably the other interns too) and the rest was more apparent even as days passed by. This year, though, even though the ratio between the interns and the researchers are close to 1:1, the distance between was not as obvious. Sure, to me they still felt more experienced and exhibited higher authority but I also found it easier to approach them for questions, help, or even ask for more work. My direct supervisor, especially, was really approachable and patient in pointing out my mistakes and guiding me. I also appreciate the fact that she seldom checked in on my work progress, which I believe showed that she kinda trusted me for my work ethics. Haha. As for my fellow interns in the two years, what can I say. Both are equally easy to get along with, since they are all my schoolmates. Heh. I have worked with two completely different groups of people too, which I am really thankful for. This way, I got to make new friends. Haha.
3. REWARDS
Anddddddd here we go. I had no financial remuneration for the first year's internship. Apparently, the arrangement was that it was a 'special' program from the school and since I did not get any offer somewhere else (what with my lack of skills and etc), I figured I'd just take it and clear the school's internship requirement early. After a while, however, I kinda started to feel that it was not really worth it. Not sure if it's because of the feeling of being unfulfilled during the work, or because the design experience was not what I was really looking for. Which is quite true I think! I remember the team was going to submit a design proposal for a competition, and since the first-year interns basically had nothing much to contribute, all we were doing in the few weeks of that was basically nothing. I mean, on one hand I can't really blame them. In a tight submission period, I would probably not give someone new who had no particular skills yet to do a job for me. On the other hand, I can't really teach too; time is very tight at that point. So what would I do? I'd just do it myself then. In the end, it kinda became more of an exposure internship to me. I did get some lessons and tips, but since I pretty much contributed nothing, it did not feel right for me at all, much less rewarding. I thought that an internship where I get to constantly do stuff in the office instead of doing nothing there would be a much better option for me. And I was right. It was exactly what happened in my second internship. My second internship, in summary, was a better experience for me. Other than being paid, I found that doing what I did rewarded me with more satisfaction. Most probably, it was because of the fact that I managed to do quite a large number of smaller-scale assignments and that in turn, made my contributions to their ongoing project significant. And to be honest, knowing that kinda made me feel more fulfilled inside. Sure, I spent basically most of my time inside their office but I didn't actually really mind. Once in a while I could still grab a snack or something for a while in the pantry, so that didn't feel as suffocating as when I probably need to be stuck inside my office all the time. Oh, and if I have to mention a drawback though, the payment for my remuneration can get really late (like months later). I was really pissed for a while dealing with them, because of excuses that I think do not make sense. They would give excuses like: 1). I was required to put my bank account number in my timesheet everytime. (When I already have my bank account record on the school database). 2). They have a lot of finance stuff to process (Then why are you not hiring part-time helpers?! Hire me and I'll do for you!) If this is what it's like working for large-scale companies/governmental agencies, I feel really sorry for the staff who gets paid late sometimes because of their own bureaucratic bullshit. So anyway, if this issue about my late salary does not become a disadvantage, this is probably can also be thought as: delayed gratification. Hahaha. So, yeah. I guess those are both my internships. Summer's almost over now, but I have yet to want to come back to school. How am I gonna get myself mentally prepared? Sigh.. |