Things are moving quite quickly these days, but I thought to share my instantaneous amusement.  As there are coincidental meetings and relationships between people, sometimes seemingly meaningless things in your life become prevalent by meeting each other.

Background #1: Last week, in order to make my trial cup of decaffeinated coffee more drinkable, I added some cocoa powder.  I bought it last year based off of the box art, because I couldn’t read anything in the grocery store anyway.

Background #2: My major project for the semester (IDP) involves re-designing the registration process so that it is smoother and the involved tools can be arranged to accommodate specific purposes.  Registration in the most general sense is the introduction or the prelude to something greater: an event, a membership, a service or experience.  Sometimes in registering you will have to register for other things, and you must wait for those to go through before moving on.

The Point: Mulling over this reminded me of recursive functions, when in the definition of such a function it calls on itself, and then it must wait until at some point, things are known and we can finish off the to-do list and move on.  Since it’s been some years since 6.001, I thought I would look up “iteration” and “recursion” before using these terms in our report.  The first thing I see under recursion is my cocoa powder.  It also ends up to be the name: the Droste effect.

So it ends up that my box of cocoa is kind of famous, and somewhat related to IDP.  Cool.

I uploaded some quick shots of one of my drawing electives this quarter.

table sander

At first I was in agony over which classes to take this quarter, in particular how to spend 4 hours every Tuesday afternoon: “Drawing the Human Figure” or “Basic Colour Skills.” Koos warned me the former was the most difficult drawing class offered, but basic color sounds like it could be… well, lamer.

The system here is that you have to attend the first lecture to get into the class. Both being at the same time and worth the same amount of ECTS, the ten minutes before the first class I was running back and forth between drawing rooms, trying to decide which class to take based on who else was taking it. Human figure has favorite people from Multisensory! Basic color looks… unfamiliar and sedated.

Eventually I found the teachers, also making it difficult. Human figure was taught by some guy who wore a purple sweatervest. Basic color was taught by Koos Eissen, who is if you remember, my drawing nerd crush.

So at this point, it’s even. And it ends up that both classes are traditional classes in disguise. Human figure was just normal models and charcoal (charted territory, but interesting subject). Basic color was of products and watercolor (boring subject, but new media).

But just one look at the watercolor examples decided everything for me. And I’m really glad I did it. My drawings are nowhere near the quality of anyone else, but for once I think I improved a little bit during the period of the class. I’ve never used watercolor before as a serious medium. They were just in those cheap kits for kids, with the crappy, brightly-colored plastic handle brush with black, synthetic bristles.

And actually, today I got my drawings back from Koos, who gave me a passing mark for the class AND said “They were nice.”

*swoon*

It ends up I had purple sweatervest guy for my other drawing elective, of which I will write at a later time.

Last night I gave Lu a ride on my bike!  A minor breakthrough in bicycle culture immersion.

Howth: This is not Dublin, but look at that mist!

I went this past weekend to Dublin, a city I expected to look… less new. Somehow, I’ve been spoiled a bit by living in the quaint town of Delft that magically stores nerdy tech students infinitely in its canals (or perhaps in the wind).

The first day I got there before my companions, so I decided on a day trip to Howth, pronounced more like “Hoath,” to walk around the peninsula. I was surprised by the public prevalence of written Gaelic, and then while on the train ride to Hoath I realized it didn’t matter whether which language local young teenage girls spoke, because I couldn’t understand anything with their accents.

Near the beginning of my journey around the peninsula (my free map from a coffee shop makes it look very Lord of the Rings), fate brought me to a fellow lone traveler from Germany named Oda, who was stood up last second by her friend for her birthday trip to Dublin.

We happily trekked along the surprisingly empty, surprisingly steep, surprisingly narrow path for the first hour or two… and a bit more tired for the remaining couple hours getting back to the train station.

For the rest of the weekend we hit up the touristy stuff, but also stopped by a small design market on Saturday that was a bit eclectic.  I bought a necklace from Aoife, who is on a mission to bring bone-carving back to its Irish roots (who knew it started there?).  Apparently the butcher starts gathering bones when he sees her coming.  Nice.

Other favorites from the trip:

• more decently priced and locally brewed beer at Messrs. Maguire
• food from the Hairy Lemon
• old school Guinness advertisements illustrated by John Gilroy
  

And one surprising thing I found was that I missed the size of Dutch beers.  Half a liter of beer is just too much for me if I want to do anything other than sit down and be lazy.  Really lazy.

Click on me for photos. Incomplete set until I see BSJ again.

Things have been busy over the past month. These are things that should be elaborated on, but will remain as a list with links for now.

• I joined a rowing student association, Proteus-Eretes.
• My parents came to visit!
• I went to Milan with Iñigo, Robin, Yoshi, and Tal to see the Salone del Mobile and other galleries.
  
• I went promptly to Boston where I saw many people and yet not everyone.
  
• I participated in a 10-day workshop with the architecture faculty on designing a multisensory user experience
• Next weekend, I’m headed to Dublin to meet up with Brian, Sumesh, and Jenn.

Yin needs its yang. Here’s something I don’t like: misleading lists.

Numbered lists imply an order! I’m all confused now.

It’s easy for me to forget things that I like. Today, I remembered that I like libraries, but the DOK in Delft is quite special.  It’s one of those hip, cool moms libraries that lets you play video games, borrow lots of media (updated CDs, DVDs), and eat and drink at a swanky café.  And it has nice furniture.

I ran into Yoshi. Hi Yoshi!

A nice band was playing this afternoon.

People watching or working... or EATING?

The table top was soft! Imagine, a table that doesn't make loud echo-y disturbing noises.

It'd be funny if they reacted when you tipped them over.

But alas, like everything else around here, it’s not open on Sundays and it opens late on Mondays.  Next time I will come earlier.

There’s this design competition I want to enter, in which we design Delft business gifts. The email advert is below. It struck me as rather Dutch in that low context communication = lots of text to explicitly say all details, as well as a little of the bluntness when it talks about the deadline in the middle of the page.

It’s okay if you don’t find it that funny. But I am interested in entering at least one idea, maybe with Alazne, so it could be nice.

New images uploaded to the drawing set. Ink was a nice change from charcoal, but I tended to feel too stiff and timid about everything I put down. (Not many images from that, I was also missing my camera from one of the weeks.)

Last week we started with black paint, but treated it like ink (mixing black paint with just water), so I still felt stiff. Once we had white paint last night, though, everything felt like a lot less effort. Hopefully it shows.

I’m working on my multisensory presentation, listening to Freezepop, reminiscing about the Steer Roast at which they played, and then I come across this: Tosci’s Blog

And that put me over the edge.

I just got my ticket back to Boston for a week. I’m actually looking forward to it. Those who know me may know that excitement is a rare occurrence.

I will be missing the notorious Queen’s Day for it, though. And I already had tickets for a Yeah Yeah Yeahs concert.

Coincidentally, I think it will be Steer Roast, and I really didn’t expect to come back so soon as a crusted alumna. Despite all the excess of stress, depression, social blunders, worry, and feelings of incompetency, there’s a lot I miss and could get emotional over once I get there.

And the food, oh the food…