Compete(!)....

I have left my position with Vasconi and am now looking for new work in Hong Kong. To occupy myself, I have entered several competitions. I just finished work on the second of 5. The first one being the zombie safe house competition. I decided to enter it because it sounded easy and fun. However, while doing it, I realized how liberating it was to be executing my own designs. In the last two years, I have worked on 9 projects. I had control over none of them.

Inspired by this excitement, I entered another. The second was to design an innovative parking garage in Hong Kong. This was just as exciting as the first with a little more sense of realism injected into it. The judges are currently voting for both of these competitions now.
Zombie Competition on MSNBC.com


On deck are three more competitions, two skyscrapers and a hotel on the moon.

New Apartment in Hong Kong.

Apartment View, a photo by powkey on Flickr.

Parking Experiments

Using grasshopper's genetic algorithm (galapagos) to try and find

what form must the road take to produce the most parking spaces.

Not going too well so far. These are the four most fit variants from four

separate gene pools. Still nowhere close to what a human can do. 

Architecture Refugee

Two weeks ago, I was forced out of Hong Kong. Not in the police escort type of way, but in the "shit, if I answer these questions truthfully I am breaking laws and maybe breaking more if I lie." type of way.

I didn't kill anyone, or steal some delicious dim sum from the street corner. I just may (or may not) have been working without a working visa. Now the plan is to resubmit an application for the visa from the U.S., the legal way.

So, I have a lot more free time for unnecessary things (like blogging). I decided I should upload "The Sweetness" to youtube. This was the skateboarding video where I had a 3min part back in 2004. For those that don't know, this is all I did in high school, thus schoolwork took a back seat and I had to take another year of college as my punishment.

Here it is in all its splendor.

Finding the groove.

Approaching the 6th month anniversary of my arrival in Hong Kong. It feels like I have finally set up a life here. I'm learning Cantonese and French, running and playing tennis, cooking and eating new things. Setting up the life I want. Maybe now that I have this pointed in the right direction I can start going somewhere with force.

Back from Holidays

I was lucky enough to travel home for the holidays. It was such a great time. Not just seeing my friends and family, but having fun with them as if we had never been apart.
Now I am back in Hong Kong. I arrived after a grueling 18h10 flight (following two other flights) from San Francisco. One of the other passengers had appendicitis and we were forced to make an unscheduled stop in Anchorage, adding 3.5hours to the flight.

I feel a little more calm here. Something feels different... maybe its just the jet lag.

Christmas Photos:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/16925188@N06/sets/72157625620847339/