30th April 2023 Sunday - 5K run

 

29th April 2023 Saturday - early morning meeting, matchmaking and the loss of a friend

 

28th April 2023 Friday

  

Fridays I have to reach the office early to let the cleaner in, Doreen likes to have an early start to the day as well. She does her thing, I do my thing. 

27th April 2023 Thursday - interns on the website

 Judging from the big hug Sam received from Yasmin (and Grace earlier this month) it is clear that we have a strong relationship with our interns and young colleagues. We were cooking lunch for some of them who returned home for Raya and some whom we have not seen for a while. We decided recently that we would invite the Min-ions alumni to be part of our website overhaul. I think it is relevant as they are part of our personal journey as well, and it will be an interesting task to curate and see if we can hit 300 interns (which Bryan think we have)

After lunch - Sean, Jenny and I dashed off to Singgahsana to meet Teck and Kamal to discuss the exoskeleton to support an extra 4 floors above a 3-storey building. 

26th April 2023 Wednesday - meeting new people

18th of April - Teck texted a image of a familiar house and told me that the house and land was for sale. We designed this house for a wealthy family more than a dozen years ago, it was well designed, it was well built, by the owner himself who now had to sell it because upkeep was too big a chore, because the daughter in law does not get on with his wife. Many reasons. I was interested only in one thing - to retain the house and make it part of the new development. 

To do this, I knew that we have to put together a package to illustrate this. And to have a good engineer willing to go the extra mile - and as luck would have it, I had arranged for Kamal to meet Teck.

The two of them got on really well when they found out that they had something in common - that the land that the Sematan resort stands on had belonged to the Fozdar family. Later, we had a good discussion about two projects, this current one where we had designed apartments straddled over the existing house and another where an exo-skeleton is built over an existing building to add new floors above. 

I have taken to starting the day even earlier, walking into the conference/dining room and starting work at 630 am - ignoring the meowing Fish and Dory and drawing. Ideas come to me then; how to proceed with a client, what to do with an awkward corner, who to make a model. I like that feeling that I have done so much by the time the others arrive at the office. 

Today, I got Sara to start a cardboard model and to finish it in a day. It was not very good, but it is ok we will make another one tomorrow. Hui Phing finished the Desa Apartment scheme, she did well ( I told her) Sean working hard to complete the condo drawings, tomorrow I will suggest a break and a site visit and an escape to the gym earlier.

Sam made an appointment for me at the Physio, and I got hammered with a Swiss device - I hope to recover from this ankle/heel injury. It has been about 2 weeks of me eating only one meal a day. I feel better, and even have enough energy to play sports in the evening.

 

25th April 2023 Tuesday - drawing in small sketchbooks

re planning a scheme we had earlier sent to the client because we thought of a better idea

 I have decided (a bit late) that drawing in sketchbook and colouring them (not necessary for information, it is for me) is good therapy for me. I enjoy the habit of drawing in sketch books while Sam drinks her tea, or when dinner has been eaten, or while waiting for my ride, or just to be alone for a while with my thoughts.

recording my conversation with PH about the mail room on the ground floor for Sean

for JY while she was busy with many of things in the office

24th April 2023 Monday - extra public holiday

 

23rd April 2023 Sunday

 

22nd April 2023 Saturday

 

21st April 2023 Friday

 

20th April 2023 Thursday

 

19th April 2023 Wednesday - buka puasa

Syahidah is the only Muslim in our office and we thought that it would be nice to cook dinner in the office and break fast together. She agreed to cook one dish, and the rest of us will cook a  pot luck dinner. We invited a few friends and they all turned out - Freddie and Louis, Vivian, and Claudia(!), Sia and Ivy. In the middle of evening, I listened in from the other end of the table and could hear people talking all at once, laughing, sounds of old friends catching up. I am grateful that the people who have passed through our office, and are now working with other people still find the time for us. 

Earlier that morning, I mentioned that one of our friends is behaving a little 'subdued' and wondered if his boss can do something about it, but he himself is still recovering. Still subdued himself in some sense. He would have enjoyed himself with the crowd that turned out. 

 

18th April 2023 Tuesday - overhauling our website

 

17th April 2023 Monday - Sam is out of action

 

16th April 2023 Sunday - top down construction

 

15th April 2023 Saturday - thinking about traveling again

 

14th April 2023 Friday

 

13th April 2023 Thursday

 

12th April 2023 Wednesday

 

11th April 2023 Tuesday

 

10th April 2023 Monday KL- Penang

 

9th April 2023 Sunday Kch - KL

 

8th April 2023 Saturday AGM

The highlight of the morning was the Office Bearers and committee's photo session

 

While the PAM Council AGM and Elections are often contentious events, our chapter AGM was uneventful verging on boring - we presented our reports, the members clapped, and we had morning tea. Shortly after that, we held the elections, some reshuffling, some new members, one former member returned, and we have a new Chairwoman; Noraini 'Annie' Narodden. 

And then we had lunch. And then we left.  
 

7th April 2023 Friday meeting San and Kummy

Today is Good Friday but Fiona kindly agreed to come with me to the PD site to coordinate the ID design package between NSC and main contractor. Fabian was very helpful and proactive. The ID contractor is a familiar figure although his wife wasn’t ready to be familiar. She worked with Sam ages ago but were not in good terms, but it’s ok. Work is work, not all will become friends. 

It was a good meeting and I rewarded myself with an Indian lunch with Sam and Sean. Sara was away at a friend's wedding. 

That evening, we got out of the house after dinner (sometime we do not frequently do) to go and have drinks with Kummy and San. Kummy's late husband, Marcel was my mentor at my first job in Kuching - he passed away on the 23rd of December 7 years ago. This evening, I got to tell her how I wished he was around to see his proteges succeed in our careers - he would have been proud.  

San is her new husband, he was formerly from Kluang and seems pleasant enough as Canadians tend to be. They are traveling all over Asia, perhaps as part of an extended honeymoon and when in Kuching, they have an extended family of friends who want their time. This is why Marcel never seems to have time for us when he was in town.

6th April 2023 Thursday. Fellowship

Stayed home in the morning to write my editor's message for our end of term Fat Fat issue, I wrote about fellowship and about how the newsletter is a platform for young practices to gain exposure and train themselves for bigger publications and perhaps awards. And that it is also a convenient means for established firms to curate their work. I tell them that this is also my way of paying forward the kindness by architects and publishers when we were setting up DNA in the early 2000s.

As a result, I reached the office after 9 a.m. which felt strange to me; as though I had missed an important event. That afternoon, I returned home for lunch with Sam and worked from home until the evening when we went to a ramadhan buffet dinner with Syahidah, Peggy, Melvin, Jenny and JY whom I was particularly pleased to have join - she's opened up greatly and speaks very candidly about many things to us at the office these days. 

5th April 2023 Wednesday - thunder and lightning

There is a moment in the middle of the afternoon when I normally get ready to leave the office for tennis or squash. I look out the window at the overcast sky, and there is a rumbling of thunder and a hint of lightning. I ask if anyone knows how to say thunder and lightning in Hokkien - no one does. Except for Jenny. She and I start to talk about the website material and the portraits we need and how to take them. By then we are all milling around and suggesting locations for the 'photo-shoot', and talking about other things as well while Jenny and I continue to discuss the company profile and the new company profile in PAMSC website. No one is working but they are contributing to the office. 

  

model for the wall art in the lobby of a new hotel

Earlier in the day, Sam and I finalise our plans to move folks into the new company; new contracts and a small pay increase. L seems to have recovered and we have a good meeting with the Renna contractor and client; all on the understanding that there will be frank talk and fair play. 

Fabian drops by at 2pm, and seems to have momentum to move site works forward - I hope that Ramadhan does not slow him down too much.

 

4th April 2023 Tuesday

 

3rd April 2023 Monday -

 

2nd April 2023 Sunday - Jenny

We go to a Korean lunch, after I finish talking to PH about plot 13. My idea for it is coming along nicely and I think about rewarding myself with a nice meal; a vegetarian one (I decided recently to not eat fish or seafood as my protein anymore). 

Jenny arrives at 130pm from KL, she invited herself for a period of work while waiting for an interview in Japan. She had earlier trained with me at DNA before leaving to do her Part 2, which she never did. Now she is coasting, I don't think she has had a steady job in the past 5 years. I realised that I have been connived into accepting her as an intern, but I don't mind - I am happy to be naive, and helpful and hopefully get her into the next fruitful chapter of her life. 

In the meantime, she lives in a room a few doors down from us and will eat her dinners with us. And in return, she will work on my projects (in an effort to boost the currency of her portfolio) for 3 months (the length of a tourist visa). And I will pay her a wage. 

1st April 2023 Saturday - keep on keeping on

 Rather happy with yesterday's productivity, I took the morning off from work after sending out one email for the student hostel project. I accompanied Sam to No. 40, she had to meet the electrician and I thought I might see the builder to talk about construction details he needed. He was not there. 

I struck up a conversation with Auntie Rosie next door, she wondered who was going to live in the renovated house. I told her my plans to stay there once in a while when Sam and I had a fight. She also asked after mom and wondered if she would be visiting No. 40 after the renovations. I told her my intention of bringing her on weekend afternoons, to see if she can still recognise the place. Rosie thinks not, 'but never mind, she might think that it is your new house and that's ok as well.

Later that morning, Sam and I went to the book sale and I found a book of diary entries by Alan Bennett 'Keep on keeping on' - I have always liked the way he spoke and told stories in his unique reading style. And now there is a shared interest in keeping a diary - there is a photo in this book of Alan taken from behind him; he is seated at table reading something, there are books and papers on the table with 2 tea cups white with blue rings. I can imagine myself lost in a book seated this way at a table, perhaps at the new 40.