Tag Archives: Chinese

I’m Fried…

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I’ve disappeared from the surface and didn’t respond to any emails due to a deadline that I had before 20.00 today. I’ve been in my insane work-all-thru-the-night-mode again since yesterday and didn’t get much sleep at all, about three hours this morning when I went to bed at about 06.00. I’ve been working non-stop for days, my brain is fried at the moment so I can’t think much but I will try to explain why I have been up all night and invisible last week.

While the economy is getting worse things are getting more uncertain for a lot of people, including myself. I’m still living in a place due to circumstances with the ex where I don’t want to be, although we’re friends: I want to move on… And fact is that I’m getting more and more work in, but it’s not enough to be able to move out and pay all possible expenses. London is number two on the World list of most expensive cities to live after Moscow and I feel it, trust me!

Last week, I accidentally found a most appealing opportunity to change the situation for the best. Yes I need stability in my life, especially with all the chaos going on around me I need a center point of calmness and certainty. That said, I knew I had to leave an impression so the creativity started to flow all week last week. But it felt wrong somehow and although I asked some if they liked my ideas and my creation [which they did] it still didn’t feel right to me…

So last night I realised at the last moment that I shouldn’t do what I’d planned to do. Indecisiveness is what it boils down to, I just couldn’t make up my mind and the pressure was there big time. I couldn’t afford to take unnecessary risks, I mean it looks really nice but it didn’t feel right for the occasion. By the time I actually trusted my gut feeling it was already midnight and I needed a change in strategy so in the end simplicity won over complex beautiful design.

I’d planned to send it off yesterday but that was before I changed my mind. I had less than six hours to adjust a letter, CV, add extra pages to my portfolios and export it all to an acceptable pdf format which was the tough bit. I need a good book about making pdfs: no it’s not at all simple to produce a high-in-quality but low-in-bit-size pdf, there are just way too many options and way too many unsatisfying results. Or am I too much of a perfectionist?

At the moment I don’t really care, I had my panic attack right after I sent my email with attachment. The ‘what ifs’ started to bug me big time and I can’t remember how long ago it was where I felt this insecure about things but I guarantee it was at least 15 years ago. Insecure… only because I really really want this position. It means a way out for me, a way to fly and spread my wings. A way to start afresh again and face exciting new challenges.

To my surprise I got an email in, an hour after I had sent mine. It said that they had received several hundred of applications and that they would get back to me at the beginning of next week. They’d done an initial check of applications as they came in which mine had passed and they’d be actively considering mine. I’m happy I listened to my gut feeling, tonight I can finally relax after a hectic week! Below a few details of my design that I didn’t use in the end.

I’m sure I will one day on a different project, these are drawings that I did using Illustrator but they weren’t meant to be, not today…

Details of my illustrations

Square Wheel

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I’m glad the Olympics are over, I banned it: total madness that doesn’t make sense to me. Living in London and having to pass the Olympic site on a regular basis made me realise what this madness is all about. You wouldn’t believe the amount of money that already has been wasted just to start the planning, demolish existing buildings and start the build of a different ‘updated’ infrastructure and village. I’m glad the Lowlands only hosted this once in 1928 and I bet back in those days it wasn’t about billions… Nowadays everything seems to have the ‘O’ tag attached to it as an excuse to waste more money while they’re already way over budget, four years before the opening…

Some predict it will be ten times over budget; more than £20billion and for what? Two weeks of competitive sports? Two miserable weeks… It’s sickening to see what’s going on behind the scenes: there are so many people out there in need of medication and food while on the other hand huge amounts of money is spent in the blink of an eye without having second thoughts. And then having to read all the transparent excuses published in the media just to justify certain behaviour while inflation is rising, unemployment rates have increased and people here are genuinely struggling. I’m not going to address the political side of this because I try to stay away from politics but I’m sure you’ll get my drift.

I read an article online published November 2007 about Beijing, where the author came up with the same questions and facts that I just mentioned above about London. Why is it then that exactly the same is happening over here: why do people have to reinvent the square wheel, don’t they ever learn? And what message do you send out when you decide that a 7-year old child -who won the competition to perform the anthem- is not ‘cute and pretty enough’ to represent the Opening Ceremonies and instead have her replaced by a lip-synching Chinese version of the perfect cabbage patch doll? So typical… It’s all one big puppet theatre. Doesn’t this all sound slightly twisted to you, it certainly does to me…

An excerpt:

Beyond Burma, there are more reasonable arguments against the Beijing Olympics. The total expense, mainly on construction, is in the tens of billions of dollars. This is on top of the direct hosting expense, which is estimated to be $2.4 billion and will be covered by income from NBC, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and marketing revenue. Given the fact that a mere $40 can support an entire year of education for a poor, rural child, how many children could get basic education if this money were spent on them instead?

A Chinese official reportedly said that “The 2008 Olympics Games may advance China’s GDP by 3 to 4 percent.” What he did not say, or even understand, is that such increase is on top of the already overheated urban development, at the cost of the rural poor. The gap between China’s urban rich and rural poor is already huge, and rapidly expanding. The 2008 Olympics is only widening this dangerous gap.

Contributing more to the problem is the destruction of historical structures, local villages, and the environment in general, to make way for the very expensive new construction. But it’s too late to stop such destruction now. It was something the International Olympic Committee could have done six years ago. Shouldn’t you boycott the IOC instead?