Urban Inspiration

Impressive buildings, huh? These are some of the architectural forms that inspire my descriptions in The Red King Chronicles on Protagonize. I think I'm doing a fairly decent job describing the setting, but a picture is worth a thousand words, right? So I'm taking this opportunity to bump up my word count by at least 5000. Rad!

Anyway, if you're interested in delving deeper into the buildings above, here's some info for you.

The first one show the Almaty Twin Towers in Kazakhstan, a Norman Foster design. As far as I know, this project is still in the proposal stage.

The second photo might be familiar to those of you who participated in the first Seasonal Prose Competition. A different angle of the same mega-structure was used as part of the logo for the SPC10, which can be found here. It's called Crystal Island, and is another Normal Foster creation. Located in Moscow, it will be the largest building in the world if constructed.

Third up is the Gazprom Tower in St. Petersburg, a project that has the go-ahead but is being met with huge resistance. Why? As the tallest building in Europe, it would dwarf the current skyline icon of St Petersburg: the St. Peter and Paul Basilica. The controversy continues with a UNESCO decision to strip the heritage site designation of the city if the tower is built. You have to admit it's gorgeous, though.

The fourth photo depicts a site particularly close to my heart: Reflections at Keppel Bay, a new neighbourhood in Singapore. I could actually see the Daniel Libeskind designed towers from my 19th storey bedroom window in Singapore, and along with the Marina Bay Sands Resort Casino were one of the first iconic buildings I saw after landing at 5am. The shapes are surreal, and the rise from a forest is something I really wish to capture in my writing.

Fifthly, another Russian-based Norman Foster design, Russia Tower was to be one of the tallest buildings in the world. Construction started in 2007, was halted in 2009, and has since been officially cancelled. Several smaller buildings are now planned for the development site, with a project completion date of 2015.

So there you go, a couple images to help you visualize what Auburg looks like. I'm currently working on chapter six, which will explore more of the city, so keep an eye out for that if you've been following the story! On that note, I better get back to my draft. Cheers!

all photos from InHabitat.com

Not just a Coffee Shop

I learned something thing week. This shouldn't really come as a surprise, since I'm currently attending university, but I learned an important thing this week. At least, important to me.

What did I learn? There's a geographic term for places such as public parks, coffee shops, and lounges. They're called "third places." I'll explain. It's really quite simple.

The first place is where you live. The second place is where you work. And the third place is where you gather. They're seen as increasing important places as the world urbanizes, with one product of urbanization being the shrinking of so-called first places, and the fluidity between the first and second places. In plain terms, apartment-dwellers tend to lack suburban luxuries, such as large rooms for entertaining and back yards, and with telecommunications people can work from home. It's why coffee shops are so successful in the city.

The big characteristic of third places is that they are venues for social interaction. They're a place to hang out, to have a chat, to meet and mingle. If you've ever attended a write-in, you likely met in one of these places.

So that's basically my big revelation of the week. Can you tell I'm looking at doing urban and community planning?

Now that we've established what a third place is, have you got one? Mine is Blenz downtown, as I've said in a previous post.

photos by Billie Hara, me

Bees on the Blog

So I mentioned in my last post that it's finally starting to feel a little like spring here in the Valley. Meaning that it's generally sunny and above zero, but my standards have changed drastically over the winter. With the arrival of what I consider spring-ish temperatures and weather, I've done a little bit of cleaning on the interweb. Yup, I've been busy.

The most dramatic change is probably to this blog. I know I just redid it over the summer before leaving to Singapore, but the plain black and gray was starting to feel drab. That, and I broke the layout and formatting while "previewing" new Dynamic Blogger templates. Yah, I may or may not have hit the "apply to blog" button by accident. Oops.

Really, only the background and some of the colours have changed. I switched to the Picturesque template and added a photo of mine from Cambodia as the background, and I also cleaned out most of the sidebar junk that was still on the old yellow colour scheme. Cleaned out as in deleted. So if you want to stalk my Last.fm, Flickr, or Hype Machine you'll have to make one extra click to the About Me page. Oh, the humanity, woe is you.

I also changed my Tumblr microblog. It once claimed to be "the microblog companion to my main blog," but it was starting to feel redundant. So I've remotivated that space to be a showcase of one of my interests, urban and architectural photography. Just call it me gathering inspiration for my career one day.

Oh, one last thing: I'd love some feedback on this blog layout. So, how's it look?

photos by me

Music Monday: Glamour Puss

Alight, this one is just gonna be a quickie, I''m supposed to be writing a second research proposal right now. Huzzah for procrastination!

So, this week you're getting "Glamour Puss" by KT Tunstall. KT is one of my favourite female vocalists, right up there with Emily Haines, and her most recent album Tiger Suit is by far my favourite of her's to date. I featured another song from the album, "Uummannaq Song," in a January Music Monday post.

"Glamour Puss" feels spring-y to me, as in the season. It's starting to look rather spring-ish in the Okanagan, and I hope the trend continues. I've got my fingers crossed and a spring playlist in the wings. And that's all I have to say. Enjoy!

Music Monday: Trip Hoppin'

Disclaimer: I'm not actually sure what "trip hop" is, but from what I can tell by looking at the Wikipedia article it falls into that miscellaneous "alternative" music genre. Right.

So, Music Monday! Because I didn't make a post last Monday, I've made this one better. How better? Three times better! That is, three times better than a typical Music Monday post, not three times better than last week's non-existent post. That would still be three times the nothing, eh?

Anywho, there be three songs this week for you to listen to, all of which I've been playing on repeat since discovering them. First on the docket is Kylie Minogue's "Too Far," a blast from the past as the album, Impossible Princess, was released in 1997. Whoa! I may or may not have been 7 or 8 years old at that time. What do I love about the song? The back beat. I absolutely adore the drums in this song, and in all three songs this week for that matter.

Next up is Amon Tobin's "Esther's," from his 2007 album Foley Room. Tobin is a bit of an electronic genius, using sampling from vinyl records and foley recordings to create his songs. No words in this one, but that's what I've been into lately. If you look at my Last.fm stats for the last week, I've somehow racked up 105 plays of his music since discovering his work, oh, Tuesday. Seriously.

Last, but not least, rising starlet Lana Del Rey, with her track "Off to the Races." As with Kylie's song, I love the back beat, I love the vocals, but most of all I love the strings. I've got no clue what it is, but a well done string section just gets me going. So, enough talking, take a listen by clicking the YouTube video below. It's an embedded playlist, so all three songs will play in order if you leave it alone, or you can use the Next button to skip tracks you might not care for.


photo by /ivan