House building

During the site visit, I noticed some discrepancies in the steel structure and highlighted them to the builder. Fortunately the floor slab those columns were meant to support had not been cast, making it easier (and cheaper) to rectify. We went to other items of the project after that, and as the meeting was about to conclude, someone said 'lucky you were here today and spotted those discrepancies'.

I didn't agree completely with the comment, so I explained - in the past 6 months when we worked with the builder, he had been diligent and conscientious. He would have spotted the mistakes and rectified then quietly, and we would have been none the wiser. The Building Contract spells out the standards and performance expected, so this rectification is expected and should be carried out. No questions asked.
The second point I made was that there is no time limit for the Architect to highlight mistakes and discrepancies to the builder, so in fact we could have reported the discrepancies after the floor was cast.

But that would not have been in the spirit of the contract, and is bad for the project. The builder should be grateful that we helped to point out defects as they occur, and be grateful for the help. (which I'm very sure he is) 

Saturday was a good day

Building again

Sketching St. Jo Cathedral

Ivy and her friends are writing a book about the St. Joseph's Cathedral in Kuching. They had the idea of using my line drawings for the chapter dividers. Always ready to contribute, I agreed but also suggested that they contact Urban Sketchers Kuching for additional sketches and illustrations.

This is a first sketch of the cathedral; its folded roof form is hard to capture and do justice to, its colour changing as it catches the sun.

run, swim, work

It was a rainy start to the day. But one that reminded me to be grateful for my health, my waterproof backpack and the relatively short 6km to work. And grateful that we are in Kuching, because this would have been quite impossible in KL, for example. I stopped over at the Sarawak Club for a short swim and shower, it was 7:15 a.m. when I started to walk the rest of the way to Carpenter Street for my morning coffee.

The advantage of getting the daily exercise out of the way in the morning is that you can concentrate on the other things at hand, such as work. The thing I enjoy most about my work is the drawing. Drawing takes several forms in our line of work - this is a detailed section through a temporary show unit for a condominium development. It is essentially a large steel structure with one of the units dressed up and fitted out for sales and display. We introduced a skylight to bring natural lighting deep into the building, and made all the steel connections de-mountable, so that we can re-use the building's structure elsewhere after one year.

Nanshan wedding

Qilin and Michelle met at university, I met them in Kuching when they trained as interns together with Sheng, Sueann and Ka Yee. They were Sam's original 'cicaks', so when they moved to Chongqing to be in Qilin's hometown - we promised to attend their wedding.

One day, Michelle wrote to me asking if we were available on the 18.11.18 - inviting us to their garden wedding in Nanshan. 

Michele is a bubbly and warm young lady, and  we were not surprised that her family and her friends whom we met for the first are also a personable lot. Wendy, her younger sister was the Emcee and shown here bent over in laughter. Many of these young people have only just met, having traveled from Shenzhen (from Qilin's former office), from Malaysia (friends from kindy through university) and former colleagues from Chongqing.

Remembering hotel rooms

Reminder to self - sketch the hotel rooms that I like so that I can refer to them in the future. And to take care to record their dimensions (estimated) and imagine their section, and construction.