tour de chine

I have been in beijing for 3 weeks now, but i still haven’t really explored the city, so on Saturday i decided to go to on an architectural tour of the city despite of the unbearable heat. First stop, Olympic Park.

The birdnest is located on the third ring, and it’s almost surreal how close it is to the surrounding commercial buildings and streets. This stadium hosted the opening and closing ceremonies for the 2008 olympics, and the venue itself is just as amazing as the shows it puts on. It is complex but orderly, bold but delicate, gestural but practical.

Adjacent to the birdnest is the water cube. I was pretty bummed that the place is under renovation so i couldn’t go inside to take a better look. But at night, from my apartment, i can see the sky in the distance lit up with from the colorful lights inside the water cube. One thing unfortunate about beijing is that its prone to dust storms, so a lot of the buildings tend to look very dusty and worn out. The water cube definitely needs to a good water down.

All throughout olympic park, there is a strong effort to mix the old and traditional with the new and modern like this wall of chinese drums.

Next stop, CCTV tower by OMA. This building is somewhat smaller than i what i had expected. Although most locals despise the design, i think Rem Koolhaas has cleverly managed to make this monstrous skyscraper look light and elegant. Like a piece of iron, it evokes a sense of industrialism that is appropriate in this society.

In the evening, i met up with a few friends at Salitun Village to get some mexican food. Salitun Village is a very trendy shopping center in the bar district where a lot of international people hang out. Maybe it’s the whole atmosphere, but the people there are definitely better looking and you wont find any girls with armpit hair there.

The restaurant was called the saddle cantina, and it’s tucked inside an european style court-yard. It has a big patio area connected to a rooftop bar called Kokomo. Not only was the place cool, the food was also delicious. Chinese people really understand the art of dining.

If new york is the city that never sleeps, then beijing has a serious case of insomnia. Because everyone stays out until 5 am, we lost track of time and had a prolonged dinner well past midnight. From what i hear from my coworkers, barcelona also runs on the same clock, so i really need to quickly condition my body to this new lifestyle.

work? shmork.

Because our project was due last Friday, I have been doing much in the office lately. The good thing is my coworkers and boss are interesting enough to entertain me. Yesterday, my boss decided to have a random pow wow celebrating Spain’s victory and the conclusion of World Cup month (perhaps he’s just glad that people can stop using the world cup as an excuse to do less work). We blasted waka waka on replay in the office, and it was a short but good spontaneous moment.

Today, we went to a pizza place near the subway station called Pyro Pizza (I regret getting pizza last night). Tucked in the basement next to the 7-eleven, this place is very fun and American. Furnished like a sports bar/frat, Pyro (Pi-Rho) apparently has beer pong tournament every Thursday night at 9pm and “happy hour” every night from 9 to midnight. Consequently, this restaurant attracts a lot of foreigners, and I would love to come back at night sometimes to see a whole new different atmosphere. We ordered three Large pizzas (pepperoni, maaagaaaarita, and supreme) and pitcher of beer. Good food + Good music (banging French rap) + Good company = Good (and long) lunch

ps: i got paid today also

pps: we are going back to pyro tomorrow for all you can eat pizza.

weekend update

Since Beijing is only couple a few cities from where my dad side of the family lives, i decided to go back for the weekend. I bought my train ticket to leave Friday afternoon at 4:26 and come back Monday morning at 11:47 after watching the world cup in the morning with mia familia. Thursday night my aunt sends me a message to leave the office an hour and half early and take a cab to the train station. I misread an hour and half as half hour, and the result was pretty predictable.

Arriving at the train station at 5:00 pm, I didn’t even panic or run, because I knew it was useless at the point. After talking to my aunt over and over again, I decided to sneak on the train with my old ticket and by a make-up ticket when the ticket collector comes by. One good thing about having thousands of people congregating at every public arena is that it’s extremely easy to get pass the security (scary thought). Although everything went according to plan, a make-up ticket doesn’t entail a seat, so I had to stand for three and half hours. It was quite an experience, but I can’t say it was terribly unpleasant.

The rest of the weekend was not any less interesting than my train debacle. There was a dinner in which I was asked to drink with a guest and all my relatives found out that unlike them, I like to drink, a lot. There was a trip to the electronic mall in which I finally equipped my Nintendo with about 30 illegal games. There was a family meeting that entailed yelling, storming out, throwing things, and ended in pure awkwardness. And last but not least, there was the world cup final that resulted in Robben complaining like a little girl.

world cup final preparation: snacks, beer, herbal tea, coca cola, jersey, vuvuzela, and more snacks.  

summer

It’s over 39 degrees celsius outside. It’s 10:45, i was supposed to wake up at 9. My head is pounding, ears are ringing, throat is parched.

Yesterday was the hottest day in 50 years, i went to the office at noon and everyone had gone out to lunch because the power was out. We couldn’t turn on all the air-conditioners on full blast for the rest of the day and the power still went out every 30 minutes. So by 5, the boss told us that we could leave if we want. And i didnt need to think twice about that offer.

After work, i had dinner with my uncle and his friends (there was a monk, a philosopher, an author, CEO of microsoft in china, a photographer, the founder of China’s National Geographic). The thing with having a lot of successful and thoughtful people at one dinner table is that the dinner conversation becomes some sort of lecture on the meaning of life. Each person takes turn educating the others about how their theories of the world is more profound, insightful, blah blah blah. Needless to say, it was not a scene for someone who just wanted to eat some lamb kabobs.

I left at 9 to meet up with my friends at this bar near the workers’ stadium called vics. Finally, people my own age. The night started out kinda awkward and slow, because everyone was trying to get to know each other a little bit while furiously trying to escape sobriety (or maybe that was just me).

There are some things everyone should know before going out in China: 1) the alcohol that clubs carry here are diluted (5 shots = nothing) 2) they blast the music so loud that your ears start to bleed, and we had to type on our cellphones to communicate 3) the girls here dress sluttier but act more reserved 4) the guys here are even more reserved than the girls but a few of them dance like freaks that makes everyone watching them very uncomfortable.

After spending some time at vic’s, we went across the street to Mix. Because they had a cover charge of 30 yuan, the ratio was a lot better there. My friend decided to not waste money on mix drinks and shots anymore and got a vip card that came with a “free” bottle of scotch whisky. And the rest of the night will not be written down for record. All i can say/remember is that there was chugging, chatting, dancing, screaming, stumbling, and searching. Highs and lows.

It is over 100 degrees fahrenheit today. Why can’t I hear anything.

deutschland

yesterday i had the famous peking duck. We went to this restaurant where presentation is everything. Not only was the food delicious, they were also presented very artistically.

the rib dish on the right not only has a slab of rock for plate, when it was served, the waitress dusted powder sugar as snow while reciting a poem. (yea it was weird)

and the money shot. bam! i ate so much i thought i was gonna explode.

After dinner, i went to a jay chou concert with my friend. He’s kinda like China’s Rain, and he’s going to be in the movie The Green Hornet (2011) as the green hornet’s (played by Seth Rogen) sidekick Kato.

the concert was at this outdoor sports pavilion, there were like more than 40,000 people. The mom that sat behind us told her kids that not even usher or beyonce (pronounced like beyons) cant even get this many people to attend their concerts. i dont know where she got this piece of information, but all the seats were taken.

We left before jay chou started singing encore, because neither of us are his die-hard fans and i really needed to watch the ger vs. arg game. So we walked to the district with all the bars and watched the caught the game right after the first goal. I had no idea how to order at a chinese bar and im pretty the waiter smelt our foreignness as soon as walked inside. He made ordering process very confusing, and in the end i unintentionally ordered a case of bottled heinekens and spent over 100 usd. long story short, by the end of the game which lasted about an hour and half, we had only finished four bottles and i walked around very tipsy with the rest of the beer in a box for an hour trying to find a taxi that would take us home. and when we finally found a taxi, the taxi driver and i really hit it off, and we had a very long and intense conversation about the world cup, china’s football/soccer league, and corruption.

In conclusion, we were totally ripped off, but watching the game on a giant screen with a room full of drunk people was worth it in the end.

this is how we do

I FINALLY have internet in my apartment, so i can stop uploading pictures onto WordPress conspicuously at work. Because work has been busy, I haven’t really had much time to do any exciting. So I will talk about my work for those that care. I am currently working on an Audi Urban Future exhibition in Venice. The exhibition features about 6 different firms including BIG, diller scofidio, cloud 9, and etc. Each firm is responsible to present their unique vision of city planning in the future as heavily impacted by the development of transportation. It’s also a competition, and our firm got really good feedback at a preliminary conference in london. The deadline to turn in most of the materials is july 9th, therefore I was assigned to help out with the model and exhibition layout design. our concept is as bold as le corbusier’s plan of paris, it entails these huge hill-like towers, subway rings, travel belts, and bubble cars. The style of this office is pretty insane, and the boss really likes to have fun with the projects. Since a picture is worth a thousand words, i stole this conceptual collage from the server that illustrates life in beijing in the 2030 according to standardarchitecture.

…

food for thought

I can’t believe it’s Friday. Everything is going by so fast that I just want time to slow down. Because I only slept for 7 hours last night, I didn’t really feel like doing anything today. Therefore, I spent a lot of time talking to other people, from architecture to life to food to drinking. I’ve realized that I am very lucky to have chosen this major because it really allows me to travel, to see rest of the world. Almost all the foreign interns have had previous jobs stationed in Europe, and it just seems like there’s so much more to see and do before I settle down on a job for the rest of my life. They tell me that the good thing about architecture is that you can pretty much find a job anywhere, and while the salary is not great, it’s always adequate. After talking to them, I really want to just take a few years off before applying for grad school and go to Brussels, Amsterdam, or Paris, and work at different firms.

In the U.S, I’ve been brainwashed by the society that money equals success, but here money seems way less important than the friends you make and things you have done. This is another thing about America, according to Kruz (I finally figured out his name), Americans love to win, to be the best. This is why we love football, basketball, and baseball, because we are the best in the world. Yes, we like “challenges” and “competitions”, but we only like them because we always come on top. This is why he thinks soccer will never be just as big as basketball, people like Dempsey, Donovan, and Altidore will never have the same endorsement deals as Kobe, Lebron, or Manning. Although his last argument is debatable (and we did spend an hour debating), he has some valid points…

GOAL

I love you Donovan.

Today I got off work late as usual and hurried back home so I could watch the game. I had been thinking about this game since yesterday and Reed had been even more nervous the entire day. We went to a burger joint for lunch and he said that that was a good sign, start the day off with delicious wholesome American food. And he was right, today was unbelievable.

Everytime the football hit the goddamn goal post, every time we took a corner kick my heart skipped a beat. And it kept beating irregularly until the final 2 minutes. I am so excited right now that I don’t even feel tired. Who would have thought that the us would make it into the second round, and with a higher standing than england?! USA, UnStoppAble.

olá

Today, a new coworker showed up called Leo. blonde, smoker, shaggy, he was from Brazil, land of football. So of course the conversation revolved around the world cup for the majority of the time.

I’m starting to really like working here, not only because of the work they do here, but also the stories and experiences i get to hear from these foreigners. Someone had survived from a car accident where his face had to be reconstructed, someone had worked in a butcher shop for a summer job, someone never had a lot of money but had traveled all over the world.

I need to start living.