Chinese New Year.

Chinese New Year. I could never remember what day is falls on the Gregorian calendar. Fortunately, I have friends who do and invite me to take part in celebrating the new year again. Wesley, the same dude who hosted the Hallowe’en party at his place, had put on another house party to mark this occasion. Between the two parties, Echo and I noticed a trend here: a homogeneity of race. All but one of the dozens of people who came were of asian descent. Granted, this was a Chinese New Year party, but still... Wesley, if you’re reading this, do you have a response to our hilarious observation? ;)

Jan Gehl: Cities for People.

Imelda and I went to a very interesting speaker event at the Playhouse Theatre this evening. Jan Gehl, a Danish architect well known in circles, gave a speech to an audience of city planners and architects about the importance of building cities for people. The key message I came away with from his lecture was on the three levels of perspectives: a view from the satellite, a view from a plane, and a view from the ground. Of the three, he had stressed that when designing cities, the view from the ground should be paramount, one that many architects fail to see from. Scale is important: the distance in which one has to walk from the street to the building, or the scale between buildings. He had used Brasilia as an example of how NOT to do things: a city designed by planners and architects who only saw things from a satellite view with a complete disregard of the human eye perspective on the ground. Buildings are spread too far apart from one another in a way that it discourages human traffic in the area. There’s no life within, contrary to brochures and blueprints of happy people going about their way.

I hope to participate in many more lectures such as this.

My Brother's Housewarming.

My brother and sister-in-law invited the whole family over for their housewarming this evening. They had moved into a new four-storey building in Surrey and appeared to quite happy there.

Happy New Year!

Echo and I celebrated the end of 2010 and cheered to new beginnings for 2011 at Hennessey. After a few drinkies, we were in really good spirits and spilled out onto the streets at which point I made an effort to carry her on my back to the Canada Line station at Broadway - City Hall. In hindsight, this was a very bad idea as I lost balance within metres from the door. After laughing and rolling on the sidewalk, we picked ourselves up, supported each other and made another attempt to the train station. I don’t remember how we got home.

Cheers to new beginnings.