Sunday, September 30, 2001

11:05 The minutes, the hours, the weeks
My effort to move into a new routine – with less simultaneous projects – seems to be working. As it starts to sink in, I notice several shifts in my perception of time. It's sort of erratic, and definitely interesting. Some kind of balance should come up, eventually. Planning to do some gentle streering. It's a strange moment.
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10:59 Review this week Still resting, taking good care of the body, eating well. This week I taught two days, Tuesday and Thursday, instead of the regular Tuesday only. Exhausting. I noticed that it does feel more like a job now, since I take the train in the morning with all the other working people, and return late afternoon when everybody else does. Recognized a fellow commuter for the first time. Weird. I cannot imagine how a person could teach full time, five days a week, and keep a healthy mind.

While on the train I read Eating Brazil, a sort of loose travel report by five Dutch architects visiting four Brazilian cities. Very inspiring text, and in my case extremely close to home, in a flipped sort of way. I wonder how does it read to someone who has never been there. Great remarks on how Brazilians deal with time (will sure quote some bits soon). Good thinking for my upcoming trip home.

Great dinner at Desmond's place last Wednesday.

I've beeb again annoyed with the way and intensity with which I spend my money. It's a recurrent thing, and little seems to improve between each time I realize this. One of my 'won't I ever learn?' areas. Everybody has a few of these. Do you?
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Monday, September 24, 2001

12:03 As you can see the late-night pool now has a bunch of links to weblogs I read more or less regularly, and to some online tools I use all the time. I also added several new pictures to the pool of people: my nephews and nieces, Moa, Cali, Susi, Renatonga, Reneetje, Lucia, Oskar, Raquel and others. The pictures are ordered alphabetically (names appear when you pause your cursor for a few seconds over a photo). If you object to having your picture there just let me know. I'll argument as much as I can and if that doesn't work I'll remove it, I promise.
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11:25 Good morning, good morning, good morning!
ja ja, so what?
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Sunday, September 23, 2001

21:57 Q: Where the hell is Riz Khan?
Q: Why (in spite of the link above) can't he be found under the pulldown menus that list all CNN anchors/reporters/correspondents?
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18:44 Time to pay attention
Last Friday I planned to spend the whole day at home taking care of some chores, and that's what I did – sort of. In spite of my plans to resist the urge, I ended up having CNN on the whole time. Hours of addictive, mesmerizing, energy-sucking news. By the end of the day I was totally fucked up. Not so much because of the impending military mess (or the economical ripples of the Sept 11th attack) but because of all the reports of civilian hatred.

'Isolated' incidents such as Arab-looking passengers being removed from airplanes are bad enough, but there was also a scary Gallup poll called The US and Anti-Arab Sentiment showing how Americans react to scenarios in which Arabs (including US Citizens) would be treated separately at airports or carry special ID cards. If I were you I'd click on the link and watch it. The numbers are shocking.

When I finally emerged from my building later that evening I was in a state of mind that was like nothing I experienced before. I biked around the streets, looked at the people going about their Friday-night business and thought of all the atrocities regular citizens are capable of embracing, of what could be taking place on a Friday night, on the same Amsterdam streets, just over fifty years ago.

Not only here, everywhere: I had had my mom on the phone a few days earlier; we were commenting on the US situation and told me a bit about her memories of WW2 back in Brazil. She studied/lived in a catholic boarding school in São Paulo and her parents lived in the countryside. She remembers hearing that Japanese farmers were found 'inexplicably' dead; that friends grew apart because of their diverging opinions on the political situation; that people started feeling suspicious of each other.

Hm.

Grim perspectives aside, the current situation has also generated some unexpected, pleasant tv moments: president Bush in a mosque reading from the Koran and the (suddenly very prominent) face of eastern-looking CNN anchor
Monita Rajpal, who, even I can tell, is a major babe (it all happened so fast).
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Thursday, September 20, 2001

17:46 People overload.
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Monday, September 17, 2001

17:45 I'm all sore: Yesterday I finally managed to resume my gym life. It feels excellent. I've also been eating much better since a few weeks. All fruit and veggies, all home cooked. Who would ever imagine.
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13:25 I've been thinking about my first (and only) trip to NYC: I was there for three weeks at the end of 1999 / beginning of 2000 and stayed at Claudio's Gramercy Park apartment. Sebastian was there already and showed me around. I loved the place. It felt like home, or what home was always meant to be. Brazil, especialy São Paulo, is such an American colony.
I came into New York driving from Montréal and all cars were being checked at the border - a pretty loose inspection, I thought. Down in the city there was a lot of tension about what could happen during the millennium celebration, and the memory of that not-so-thorough border search gave me an extra creepy feeling. If I remember well the CNN headlines were 'The Countdown of Terror'. There was also the 'millennium bug' threat. During the last days of December the streets were crowded with police and helicopters hovered day and night. On the morning of Jan 1st everything was peaceful in Manhattan, and all that built up tension gave way to a sort of surreal relief (disappointment?). Nothing happened. The media coverage of the days before felt to me like an embarrassing exaggeration, a bit like a bad tourist attraction.
What a strange time that was, and is, again, in retrospect.

On the trivial side: my favourite place in New York (who knows why): 7A Cafe, at the corner of Avenue A and 7th Street. Open 24/7. Lovely.
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10:57 Movie update:
I just got a message from Stefan commenting on my previous entry:

'Swordfish' stopped being played in the US.
The premiere of the new Schwarzenegger (big buildings exploding) and the release of some other films (in one case even the production) was cancelled.

In Germany it was argued that the European audience is further away from the events and can deal with 'Swordfish'. Guess it's the same in Holland.

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Sunday, September 16, 2001

12:38 Final Fantasy
I haven't been to the movies in several weeks. Last night (after hours of CNN / BBC / Sky News) I checked the movie schedules and decided to go see Final Fantasy. There was a late screening, so I jumped on my bike and under quite a heavy rain I headed to Leidseplein only to find that that the Pathé cinema had changed the schedule (will anybody ever feel responsible for the information they publish?). That's how I ended up buying a ticket to Swordfish.

Now this Swordfish is your regular high adrenaline American movie: it starts with a downtown bank building full of hostages strapped with explosives, the whole area surrounded by police trucks. A scared (female) hostage is blown up barely after the movie has started. Time stretches: the scenes of fire and destruction are slowed down, panned around. You can savour the destruction.

The whole thing chilled me to the bone and (unusual in my case) made me consider leaving the theater.

The film goes on with bigger and bigger weapons being used, terrorist attacks being discussed in detail, office buidings being hit by helicopters, streets being thrashed by car chases. The classic stuff. The beefy hero will take active part in all this but that's just because he loves his little daughter.

I wonder if films like this (there are so many) are being played, say, in Times Square right now? Will American cinema and its viewers move beyond that kind of – ahum – fantasy?
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Saturday, September 15, 2001

19:18 Strange surreal week and I am feeling dumb or numb, and allowing it to be just so. Letting the opinions come and go. Feeling that maybe an attempt to be smart or eloquent is just not appropriate right now. Resting, assembling, paying a lot of attention to what's happening and to those around me. Trying to be kind.
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Friday, September 07, 2001

17:05 DEZE GELDAUTOMAAT IS BUITEN GEBRUIK
http://kl8.nl is a site that receives and processes complaints about services and products in the Netherlands. I just submitted my complaint about the empty and broken ATMs in the center of Amsterdam. It happens every weekend, since years, and lately it sometimes stretches from Friday until Monday noon. One has to go from one ATM to the next (I once counted seven) and when you finally find one that's working it has a huge queue. If you are really in a bad day the thing will empty out before it's your turn.

Everybody knows that this happens due to the giant flow of tourists in the center. Since that's pretty much a constant factor (and it won't get any better) why won't the banks take that into account? Can't they afford better maintenance or is this part of the bigger Dutch problem of businesses lacking personnel for 'not interesting' jobs?

Well, I should find that out soon: KL8 (a pun with 'klacht', the Dutch word for complaint) offers expert advice/feedback in 48h from the posting of the problem. Let's see if it works (via dazzonline).
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16:29 Big Gay Hal!


Hal's big, shiny, wide-open red eye

Via Kees Veling I learn that someone is keeping track of all the potentially gay robots in (media) history: next to Kubrick's Hal9000 ("With only a couple of strapping young men for companionship") the gallery includes Data, C3PO, the Robinsons' Robot (Lost in Space) and even Rosie. Jaja.
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16:09 Producing producing producing – and it is going well.
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Wednesday, September 05, 2001

15:51 Arnhem 01-02
Yesterday I started teaching again at the HKA. This time I have two classes and quite a few more students. It was very interesting to see how different it felt (compared to last year). It's much more natural and enjoyable. I am looking forward to the coming weeks, when the two classes will be working on their first assignment: a typographical animation of Beckett's monologue "Not I", where the protagonist is a disembodied, septuagenarian mouth.

Another interesting thing is the train ride: to be there at 9:00 I must take the 7:55 train, which considering my late nights (and mornings) would be a pretty tough thing to manage – except that at that time I can take the international service to Switzerland, which has an excellent restaurant surrounded by panoramic windows (so you can see the mountains, haha) and where I can have a really proper breakfast. That includes hot croissants, white table cloths, creamy coffee, swiss waiters. I don't think I will be missing that train very often, no.
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15:27 Meanwhile at home (II)
Dimitri gets further with the work every day, which means a good surprise every night. His construction is really beautiful and it doesn't damage one bit the underlying wood floor.





Paul showed up yesterday evening and was the first to have tea with me on the new setup. Very good.
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15:09 News


The new AT5 set premiered on Monday
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Monday, September 03, 2001

00:59 It's pouring outside and I am waiting to see if it dries a bit before I go home from a tiring, busy Sunday. I spent part of the afternoon with Oskar at the AT5 studio checking the lights of the set I designed for the news show (for the record: we are not responsible for the current version - the one full of cacti).



The new set looks nice but there's still a lot to be done about the lights. It will premiere tomorrow evening, along with the new title sequence for Regulier&Dwars, the daily AT5 talkshow.
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Saturday, September 01, 2001

18:29 Meawnhile at home (I)
Dimitri is busy building the floor elevation that will support the tatami mats I ordered some time ago.



The elevation should be ready tomorrow, but the mats and the wood that goes around them will be delivered only in three weeks. It's time to be patient.
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17:40 More shoes to try
Still on the importance of seeing things from the perspective of another (previous entry), here's once again Stewart's excellent quote from the book Disclosing New Worlds: Entrepreneurship, Democratic Action and the Cultivation of Solidarity (MIT Press, 1997):

Business owners do not normally work for money either. They work for the enjoyment of their competitive skill, in the context of a life where competing skillfully makes sense. The money they earn supports this way of life. The same is true of their businesses. One might think that they view their businesses as nothing more than machines to produce profits, since they do closely monitor their accounts to keep tabs on those profits. But this way of thinking replaces the point of the machine's activity with a diagnostic test of how well it is performing. Normally, one senses whether one is performing skillfully. A basketball player does not need to count baskets to know whether the team as a whole is in flow. Saying that the point of business is to produce profit is like saying that the whole point of playing basketball is to make as many baskets as possible. One could make many more baskets by having no opponent. The game and styles of playing the game are what matter because they produce identities people care about. Likewise, a business develops an identity by providing a product or a service to people. To do that it needs capital, and it needs to make a profit, but no more than it needs to have competent employees or customers or any other thing that enables production to take place. None of this is the goal of the activity.

If you find this interesting you should read all of Stewart's entry since it also quotes the first lines of the book (go go now).
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15:58 No doubts whatsoever
Last Thursday I met ex-school friends AV and MH for dinner. The plan was to discuss details of our upcoming ONAF meetings ('onaf' is the Dutch word for 'unfinished') where we invite other ex-Sandberg students to discuss their work in progress and unfinished projects.

The evening was spiced up by a long discussion about the different ways we see our role as designers. My point (and also MH's, I think) was that it is worth considering that the designer is too often involved/obsessed with the details of the work and for that reason he/she lacks perception of the whole; of the role he/she has in the context of that project. However important, the design of a book is not the book, and the concerns of the designer are sometimes totally irrelevant from the point of view of the other parties involved such as the publisher, the author or the reader. You should at least be humble enough to consider this. It won't affect your striving for excellence.

I was struck (not for the first time) by AV's unchallengeable conviction of the importance of good design, design that has quality (a word that came up way too often during our talk, and one I'm very allergic to) and how each tiny, well designed detail will help make the world a better place. Next to being a really excellent designer, AV is the dream student of any academy, the dream member of any commitee: she says all the right things. She won't doubt any of them. It's very scary.

The discussion was nonetheless very exciting and lots of interesting thoughts popped up. I went home feeling that I practice an altogether different profession. That MH and I are much more interested in designing interaction than in designing how things look (probably due to our backgrounds). That art is far more interesting than design (gosh! is it really me saying that?). That it's time I learn more about Buddhism, massage, art and anatomy.
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14:32 Another week is over. Great improvement: I shut the skylight above my desk with light-blocking paper.
I always thought the three skylights were one of the excellent features of the studio. That it was a luxury to have so much light and to be able to see the clouds and the rain above me. It took me a while to notice how the excess of light was affecting my ability to concentrate. While working one night I noticed very clearly how much more peaceful it felt having no light pouring over my head. Working at night always felt more efficient but I attributed it to the (aural) quietness of the place. The moment I shut the skylight it felt like a permanent humming sound had been silenced.
That day I also thought of monster killers / freak scientists working in rooms with all windows panelled shut, the space so absolutely removed from the outside world that it becomes an extension of the monster's head and gets filled, like a pool, with his own weird internal logic.
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