Spring Delayed

March 26, 2014

We have been shrouded by a lingering chill that just won't lift since the arrival of spring was officially declared by the calendar on March 20th.  Now that spring break is over, I am beginning to feel as if we were cheated of some promised relief from the cold, as the temperature is still hovering in the 30s to low 40s.  I looked up some of my old posts to get a sense of what it was like at this time of the year in Bloomington in the past few years and they seem to confirm that spring, or the manifestation of it, has been notably delayed for this year.  There is not a stitch of color in sight to relieve the monotonous gray.  My gig with CMA ended a couple of weeks ago and I am now back on my own resources and to my old routines.  There is some prospect for more work in the summer when some of the new projects of the firm kick into gear.  

Happy Chinese New Year!

From Google Image

May your life take off this year to new heights like the prancing horse in the picture!  May it carry you to where you wish to go!  For my part, I think I'm due for some distant travel this year; not sure what life has in store for me.  I'm hoping Kirk might be invited out to give a paper somewhere in Europe, say, Germany, for example, so that I can tag along and put my German to practice.  This semester, instead of going to classes, I've been meeting with a German Ph.D student once a week to practice German.  It's been working out very well so far; we meet at a coffee house across from where I've been working. Hope our friends in the south have not been too adversely affected by this new cold blast from the North Pole.  It no longer bothers us when the temperature is in the teens.  We've definitely grown accustomed to the cold, especially, now that we're well insulated by the inimitable "Canada Goose" parkas!

Why do I continue to watch Downton Abbey?

Downton Abbey Cast Season 4

Dynasty Cast Season 6

Maybe the question to myself should be posed in another way, by appending, "And nothing else?"  The New York Times today tried to treat the American fascination with Downton Abbey as a pop cultural phenomenon, a veiled look at the life of contemporary America through the lens of a period British romance spun out of the mind of Julian Fellowes - the writer and creator of the series.  It suddenly occurs to me that this BBC Masterpiece series is not much different from Dynasty, the # 1 American soap opera of the 90s.  That TV series ran for 9 seasons with 220 episodes from 1981 to 1989, while Downton Abbey with its fourth season debuting in the U.S. this Sunday, may be, for all we know, geared to catch up in its longevity and popularity with the vintage American TV drama.

I'm not at all sure, as I write, where this query is going to lead to or what my answer will be at the end of this post.  My take on this is strictly personal; I'm certainly not qualified to speak about contemporary American pop culture, though my life is unavoidably immersed in it, nor to discuss the social significance embedded in D.A.  What especially disqualifies me to speak like a social or cultural critic is the fact that I do not watch, aside from Downton Abbey, any TV dramas--the large array of hip dramatized stories of modern life on TV that supposedly reflect the American Zeitgeist and are often discussed on Fresh Air by Terry Gross.  The cause of this aversion is complicated, visceral rather than rational, like avoiding looking at blood.  I also don't read popular fiction, those appearing on the Time's Best Sellers list or Oprah Winfrey's Book Club reading list or what have you.  In fact the fictions I read are mostly from the late 18th to early 20th century, by authors such as Jane Austen, George Eliot, Elizabeth Gaskell, Henry James, Virginia Woolf, and the like.  Somehow I feel more at home in those bygone eras.  But why the anachronism?  What is it about those times which speaks to me more than the here and now?  Perhaps I'm an Anglophile; that will explain why Downton Abbey is my cup of tea!  However, with the exception of having the tendency to a stiff upper lip, I can't say that I feel especially akin to the Anglo-Saxon race.

Nor can I say that I'm hooked by the plot lines in the ever-developing saga.  They are more potboilers than great literature, written in a haphazard fashion, dictated by contingencies sometimes (such as Mathew Crawley's untimely death) than the internal logic of the storyline.  What about the characters?  Are they more special than the general human lot?  It is probably fair to say that these people are no better nor worse than the average Joe, then or now, though somewhat glamorized, both those living upstairs and downstairs.

Maybe--here is the anti-climax--what attracts me most is the depiction of the tenor of life in the late 19th, and early 20th century, in both the novels from that period and the period dramas which BBC excels at.  There is a certain quality to it, like strolling in a green field, of taking in life in a calm and orderly way, a certain nicety of speech or manner, which seems to be missing in our lives.  At any rate, life seen at a distance seems to me more palatable than seen in close-up.  

Year End Updates

I have concluded my semester of Beginning German with flying colors, an A+ no less.  Kirk was disappointed though; he thought I should have gotten an A++, if such grade exists, considering the numerous advantages I have over the other students.  Towards the first week of November my life got considerably busier when, out of the blue, I was called to help out with a project at a small, local architecture firm here in Bloomington.  Having to juggle a first-period class four days a week and then go to work for 9 hours straight was no stroll in the park, but I'm glad to have the opportunity to get involved in some architectural design work and get paid for it!  I don't know how long this gig will last; the plan was to resume work after the holiday break with the hope this might herald more opportunities to come.   

I used my first paycheck to buy a new refrigerator, and as a result, was called "white trash" in jest by a friend.  (The reference takes some explaining, which I'm not sure I can do convincingly.)  The truth was that the ice-maker of our vintage fridge which came with the house built in 1966 broke during Thanksgiving week and leaked water on the floor; it would have had to be replaced anyway.  This winter will be our fourth in Bloomington!  We have been slowly replacing our kitchen appliances in the past couple of years; the changeover is now complete for the kitchen.  We will be working our way to other parts of the house in the coming years.  My inclination is for small, piecemeal improvements, while Kirk favors large-scale overhaul.    

The followings are some computer renderings of the interior renovation of the Monroe County Library Teen Center project (in the Design Development Phase) which I participated in -

Floor Plan

Longitudinal Section

Lounge Area

Radius Bookcase

"floating" Graphic Design Space

Quiet Reading Area

Here's to you all a very happy, healthy, and prosperous New Year!  

Pool House

Site Plan

For lack of a more poetic name, I call my new house design, "Pool House."  The central feature of this design is a lap pool embedded on the basement floor, which is illuminated for full length of the pool by natural light through a skylight at 2 feet above the ground level.  I finished the design using Revit 2013 a long while ago, though I encountered some difficulties, apparently having to do with Revit 2013, in rendering it as I normally would do.  I had thought that my powerful new iMax desktop would let me zip through the rendering process but that did not happen, unfortunately. There were several reasons for it, not the least of which was that I have less time now to try it get it to work.

In this design there are basically three interlocking volumes forming an elongated rectangular block with the long sides facing south and north, intended to fit into a not uncommon lot shape in most US cities or suburbs.  The middle and tallest volume is 3-story high, one below ground and two above, while the two smaller and shorter volumes are located at the front (west) and back (east) ends.  Let me walk you through the floor plans -

    

Basement plan

The basement consists of an open space for exercise and entertainment with a kitchenette and the staircase on the north side and a lap pool on the south side lit by skylight. There is a mechanical and storage room directly below the garage, and a bath/changing room opens to the pool.  

The ground floor consists of the main living, dining, and cooking areas in the middle with an open stairwell on the north side illuminated by skylights on the roof.  The garage is located in the west end while the vestibule and a guest suite is off to the north/east end.  The living room and guest bedroom open out to a terrace in the back.  A utility room is situated between the kitchen and garage.  

The second floor contains the main bedroom suite, two offices, and another bathroom. The office facing west has a roof deck above the garage.  The bedroom in the back opens out to a balcony facing south.  

Ground Floor plan

Second Floor plan

West Elevation

East Elevation

South Elevation

North Elevation

The following are some section cuts, both longitudinally and transversely, and some semi-rendered interior perspectives -

Living area

Dining area

Kitchen

From Kitchen looking toward Living area

Guest Bath

 

Laundry Room

2nd Floor Hallway

West facing Office

Next are some rendered images; they are supposed to look more life-like, however, they take forever to do and the results are not necessarily more appealing -

Driveway

Back Terrace

Skylight to Basement Pool on the south side

Basement 

Roof Deck

I haven't had the chance to do some walk-through movies like I did in the past--my German class has been keeping me very busy.  I hope to do them over the Thanksgiving break though.  As you may have noticed, the plantings in these images are mostly in the fall colors of red and gold.  They are, of course, stock photos incorporated into Autodesk's 3D rendering library and a far cry from the burst of autumnal colors that are daily transforming our landscape.

The Song of the Lark

The third LibriVox project I worked on was "The Song of the Lark" by an American novelist from the late 19th-early 20th Century era, Willa Cather, depicting the journey of an irrepressible talent in finding her "voice" from humble beginnings, propelled by her indomitable desire, determination, and drive--the magical formula for successful enterprises.  (This was also the project that inspired me to learn German.)  Though there are insightful and lifelike depictions of each of the main characters in the book, they seem to me to be somewhat one-dimensional, even Thea Kronborg, the heroine, seems to be confined in and, as it were, protected by, the bubble of a character type defined by the author.  I thought that my reading had improved a little for this one but it was still plagued by halting diction, which impeded the flow of story-telling.  I'm onto my fourth project now; I'm grateful for the opportunity to work on my speech articulation, something which I wish I had practiced more when I was young. 

   

Wie sagt man das auf Deutsch?

I almost fell out of my chair when our instructor showed this video in class the other day. I've definitely got myself into a totally unfamiliar, parallel universe this time when I enrolled in a German 100 class at IU this fall.  I've been going to class at 8 in the morning, four days a week, since school started.  Learning a new language, from the ABC's like a pre-schooler in a kindergarten, with a bunch of young men and women barely out of their teens, is quite a novel experience for me.  When I went back to Graduate School over a decade ago to study Architecture, I was similar in age to my classmates' parents, now I could be their great aunt.  Thankfully, I am not as prone to feel embarrassed in such circumstances as when I was younger. 

What prompted me to take up German was the frustration I felt when I attempted to pronounce a few German words in a book I was reading for LibriVox in the summer.  Also, I remember feeling very embarrassed and rude when I couldn't understand or say anything in even the barest minimum of German on our trip in the German speaking part of Basel some years ago.

One often reads about how learning to speak a new language or to play a musical instrument can improve the mental agility of older adults.  It so happens that I seem to have been doing all the things that may contribute to keeping my wits about me.  At any rate, I hope my learning German now may have many more benefits than just enabling me to say "Vielen Dank!" when occasion arises.