Asylum Bound - 1-24-12

Artist rendering of our meeting.

A relatively laid back day, all in all, we kicked it off with a trip to Unitec, a vocational, technical college that focuses solely in Engineering, Architecture, and Construction.  Their campus is about a 20 minute bus ride outside of the main center in Auckland in an adaptively reused insane asylum.  Gives this educational medium satirically ironic undertones, I would say, and it made our meeting feel as though we were ourselves in a nut house and having a One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest moment.  Not quite a building I was thinking of studying in my thesis, but it is still an interesting structure as the school is extremely limited as to what they can do with partitions, leaving an entire wing full of padded wall cells.  I thought walking down the hall of Haley was eerie.

asylum. 

Asylum funyard.

Either way, it was interesting talking with several of the faculty of Unitec about everything construction for several hours.  We were all relatively low key, quiet and altogether droll; presumably due to the 4 week slump we all seem to be in.  Strange phenomenon, but either way this was a valuable experience in making good contacts and learning some particulars of construction in New Zealand that we may otherwise never have considered.  Small country with not a lot of infrastructure, so things are quite different here than they are in the much more built up Australian neighbor.  4.2 million people in the whole of the country and almost half of them live in Auckland.  The urge to get into the countryside was all but overwhelming.

Awesome adaptive reuse.

The afternoon was spent free, and I took the time to go into town, have some of the best fish and chips ever on Vulcan Alley - served by one of the best looking Brazilians I had ever met - and headed to the Auckland art museum to study one of the more impressively maintained historical buildings I have seen so far down south.  Everyone else headed off to nap, blog, and what have you, so I was flying solo, an admittedly nice afternoon, if I don't say so myself.  I don't understand art, but I enjoy it and spent a lot of time simply wandering through the halls, taking in the eclectic array of work all the while studying, documenting, and enjoying the construction of this beautifully reused historical building - something I am much more keen to.  Refreshing afternoon and a whole lot of gained information, knowledge, and thoughts on this building.  Pretty successful day, and it is off to the Black Beaches of Piha to hopefully climb something, ride a wave, jump off something or an activity of the like.  Life's good.

Cheers.

Highest Heights - 1-23-12

 “New Zealand is not a small country but a large village.” -Peter Jackson

If that aint New Zealand,  I don't know what is.

Again touching on the acropolis appeal in cities throughout the world, we traveled to a park called "one tree hill", a name that has quite a negative connotation due to the horrible television show of the same title.  Alas, there are no ties between the two and we had an awesome walk through the park that was incidentally and accidentally diverted through a farmers field which was full of sheep and their respective signs of occupation (poop).  It was messy work scaling the hill and no man came out unscathed.  All in all the approach was worth the breathtaking view, and for the first time I actually felt like I was truly in New Zealand.  Very picturesque experience, back dropped by New Zealand's largest city.

Professor Curtis at our meeting.

Prior to the climb up the hill we spent the morning at New Zealand's biggest university, Auckland University - just a few blocks from the Waldorf, where we stayed.  We had a meeting with the head of the Engineering department, which also had a concentration in Construction Management. Her specific field of study was disaster relief, so it was very interesting to hear first hand on the progress in Christchurch after the devastation of a massive earthquake in February 2011 and the subsequent aftershocks that are keeping anything from moving along at any sort of successful rate, due to insurance companies requirements for provided payment - which includes a no aftershock period of something like 30 days.  The whole city had been literally trembling almost daily ever since the earthquake.  On the same insurance note, there had been a rippling effect in the increase of rates throughout the country of almost 30%.  Shows how devastating and influential, internationally, this earthquake has been, and it made us even more excited to get to Christchurch and experience it for ourselves.

After a tour of the campus with some PhD students, we said our thank yous and left their University with some extremely impressive and valuable new knowledge.  Overall great morning.  One thing I came to learn, disappointingly in fact, is that Auckland is not wholly committed to the utilization of adaptive reuse.  Guess that will just give me some time off in this town to enjoy the rather modern and fresh architecture throughout the city.  Being a very hilly country,  with Auckland as no exception, you are either walking up or down a hill at all times - something to the like of San Francisco -until you finally make it to the harbor where everything plains out to an awesome picturesque bay setting that is the cities main hub for great food, drink, and nightlife.  What better place to spend the afternoon before we head up to the Sky Tower.

Group at One Tree Hill

 Viaduct Harbour - forgive the "Olde English" spelling - seems to be the place to be on most nights of the week for those well to do individuals throughout Auckland.  This, in turn, means high prices for our shallow pockets.  We did a bit of shopping around and found an awesome Irish pub that served up some mean lamb chops and great beer.  Not the cheapest of places, but the atmosphere and view along the Viaduct was absolutely worth the money spent.  Off to the sky tower to take in the views of Auckland at sunset from the tallest building in New Zealand.  The sights from One Tree Hill were spectacular, but from 190 some odd meters, you could really appreciate the cities location as a simple dot in the incredibly dynamic and aggressive landscape for which New Zealand is known.  Had a beer, psyched ourselves up or down - dependent on the personality - for bungee jumping in Queenstown in some 6 days (we had all by now monetarily committed ourselves to jumping out of a 134m gondola strapped to a large rubber band - awesome).

Happy Chinese New Year...

Thats a frakin' sunset.

Only shot of Viaduct Harbour I got that night.

View down the elevator shaft.

Enjoying the sunset, hahaha.

Ended the night with the long uphill walk home which was fortunately through a park - seems that New Zealand, along with Australia, take their city's parks very seriously.  Everything is getting a bit blurry now, writing this after having spent our time off in Queenstown.  Time for some serious concentration.

Cheers.

Maori Wannabe - 1-22-12

Haka, baby.

All Black jersey.

Having read, heard about and discussed the Maori culture during our time in Australia, we started off our time in New Zealand with a trip to the Auckland War Memorial Museum, located in Aucklands beautiful botanical gardens, to experience the "Maori Cultural Experience".  Ohhh ahhh, so I thought, but this turned out to be more than just a cliche play on the culture to please the expectations of we, the tourist. The performance put on was done by direct descendents of the Maori people and their performance was awesome, just check out the videos.  They were a pretty gnarly group of people who supposedly came over thousands of years ago by boat from Indonesia.  That tough cultural identity is portrayed through their customs and traditions, and this performance did a great job of illustrating that.  This also drew back a memory I remember of seeing the All Blacks Rugby team do the "Haka", the Maori tribal war "dance".  Not so much a dance as much as an intimidating means of threatening and perhaps dissuading the enemy before war.  No wonder the All Blacks, founded on an all Maori team, won the world rugby championship played here in Auckland.  Forget Aussies, these are a gnarly people with incredible heritage and tradition.

Steele photo-bombed every device in the phone store.

When, admittadly naively, imagining how the culture and general demographic of New Zealand would be, I assumed that the majority of individuals would be employed in some sort of outdoor/adventure industry such as bungee jumping, fishing, rafting, rock climbing, or what have you.  I was shocked to see not only the amount of Maori population, but also the remnants of their traditions, language and culture scattered throughout the whole of Auckland.  There seems to be an extremely symbiotic relationship between the indigineous people and the most recent settlers; something that is quite refreshing and rare to see.  to illustrate, we have been greeted by several Caucasian individuals in the traditional Maori tongue in order to honor their heritage, and there are several Maori television channels that broadcast strictly Maori entertainment: something I don't think I would frequent even if I could understand their language, having seen bits and pieces of their attempts at sitcoms.   Their seems to have been an extraordinarily peaceful assimilation and willingness to coexist between the indigenous people and the more recent inhabitants.  Something that is quite impressive and wholesome as compared to their closest neighbor's relations.  Great to see.

Matt getting a bit of a tight squeeze in the door.

Vulcan Street: awesome food and beer.

After our museum stint, we went into the heart of Auckland on Queen Street to get some long over due grubbing.  We found an alleyway tucked back from the street that was a simple walking lane full of really cool restaurants, one of which - I come to find out a couple of days later - employs a long lost love from Brazil, but that story is for another time.  We had an incredible meal, a couple of pints, and a subsequent food coma.  Recovering from our pie and pint induced slumbers, we did something presumably awesome.  I can't quite recollect what that was at this point, but I will reconvene with the group ang get back to that later.  Great first day, looking forward to more of the same.

Cheers.

Number one country to visit: check - 1-21-12

Sub par attempt at a panorama from our hotel...

No pictures from today, unfortunately.

A bittersweet departure was barely acknowledged as I dizzily packed up my bag that morning and lazily slumped off for the lobby where our taxis were waiting - in a zombie-like manner, if you didn’t get the picture already.  This is going to be our longest and most miserable flight of the trip, one is an inevitable obstacle, the other: self-imposed.  Either way, I would do anything for any length of time to simply step foot on New Zealand – much less spend 10 days here.  

The flight flew by as exhaustion trumped excitement, and I woke up to my French smelling, and sounding, neighbor told me all about the scenery as we flew over the approaching coast of New Zealand.  The iconic green countryside of rolling hills abutted against rocky coastlines was immediately prominent and stuck out in such a way that the land appeared nearly mystical.  No wonder Peter Jackson picked this incredible country to be the primary filming location for the epic trilogy Lord of the Rings - I'll try to keep the Lord of the Rings references and comments to a minimum.  First thing I got the urge to do was get on a horse and ride for as long as possible through the country’s varying and wholly bucolic landscape.  But that’s just me.

We took a drive through the outskirts of town to our hotel right on the edge of the university area and just a few blocks away from the main city center, Queens Street.  Unfortunately we did not discover this until the following day, and we happened to take a wrong turn to the red light district of Auckland.  Not the best first impression, but that will fortunately be trumped shortly. 

 All in all, this was a day of stepping out and trying to discover as much as we could in weather that was not conducive to anything outdoors.  Subsequently, we only saw the rougher area of town, which every big city unfortunately has, but tomorrow is looking up as we have several cultural events planned.  Already in love with this city simply knowing how proximal extreme landscape and overwhelming environment is to where we currently reside.  All sorts of thoughts, dreams and activities in mind are flying around upstairs.  Not the soundest night of sleep, even in the nicest accommodation to date.

Triple header - 1-20-12

The days seem to be getting shorter and I am not a writer, I'm a thinker; forgive my rough patches.

Epicenter of everything: our shrine.

Down on the MCG pitch.

Various sports teams across the world – particularly in the states, to my knowledge – sub their respective home stadiums a Temple of their trade.  The place that fans go to pay homage to the greats of their team and where players go to lay their hearts, bodies and souls on the line for one another in a show of competition.  This brings to mind places like Wrigley Field, Lambo Field, or Jordan Hare Stadium.  All of these sports carry a particular grit and history to them that is hard to describe and is what sets the diehard setting for these stadium “temples”, but to call a cricket stadium a temple is going a little overboard – from my recently exposed viewpoint, anyway (sorry, Anoop).  This analogy between stadium and temple, competition and worship was made by our resident volunteer tour guide on a walking tour of the Melbourne Cricket Grounds.  I don’t understand it, but these guys live, breathe, and eat cricket.  I am not so sure I will ever understand this obsession with the sport, but damn I respect it.  Few people in the world can get so excited for such a seemingly droll and slow paced sport; which it is. 

Incredible guide, Roger.  He's the man.

Awesome structure we toured and I failed to mention.

Our tour guide, Roger, had been a member at the MCG, as it’s called, since the late 40s, something he made a point to announce several times, proudly.  Also, throughout the tour he would point out where this happened, where he was seated when his team won the championship, or what his regular seat is in the member lounge.  He really did make the tour, as in any other circumstance this would just be another regular old concrete, two tiered stadium.  He added so much flavor and history to the tour that it gave life to the structure.  Not only was cricket played here, however, but also the national past time of Australian Rules Football was battled on the same pitch.  ARF is unique to Australia, but between the main cities across the country covet championships and wins in true Australian fashion: passionately crazy.  Or would it be passionate craziness? Either way, they take it serious down here, and I will definitely have to make it back down here for when the season opens up.

We had a break in the early afternoon, so I took advantage of the time off to get some research and took a walk around downtown at some of the major historical buildings that are still being utilized.  They were all very well done, and they held on to the deep societal culture throughout the city that is so important to the identity of any region of people.  Not to bore, I got some solid contact information, pictures, and information on a lot of the adaptively reused buildings in Melbourne.  Boring, eh?

Moving on, we went back and dappered up for a play we were to attend that evening as a group before hitting the town one last time with some newly acquired friends.  The play was pretty good once I got the ear for the ridiculously foreign bogan (Australian for redneck) tongue and could finally follow what was happening.  The most notable event that happened during the play 

The awkward void we had to fill.

occurred after a lady had been fairly sassy towards Andrew when we were simply passing through their row to our seats; an inevitable inconvenience for them.  We later decided, when the angry couple took our seats in the first intermission and sat 2 seats apart – to cool off during the fight presumably – that we would sit in the two buffer seats between them – one of which held her purse. It was hilariously awkward, but funny nonetheless. Actually it was really just awkward; especially when the play was over and the poor guy had to let us out first to wait on his wife, girlfriend, or whatever to get out following us two fools.  That’s what she gets; super wet blanket.  Hit the town fairly late that night to send off some friends we had made during our stay and had an incredible time. 

League of extraordinary gentlemen.

Ended simply, after a 2 hour “nap” we are off to New Zealand, and with this comes the subsequent dethroning of my number one place to visit.  Being that I am writing that as I am already here, I have almost moved past Melbourne and onto NZ, and I think this country, beyond previous speculation, will easily trump Australia.   Psyched.

Artsy fartsy - 1-19-12

"It is a gratification to me to know that I am ignorant of art, and ignorant also of surgery. Because people who understand art find nothing in pictures but blemishes, and surgeons and anatomists see no beautiful women in all their lives, but only a ghastly stack of bones with Latin names to them, and a network of nerves and muscles and tissues." -Mark Twain, 1906

----

I'm not sure whether the resonate buzz of endorphins from the previous night's festivities had anything to do with my sincere appreciation and personal interest in all the pieces of work throughout the National Museum of Victoria, but this was one of my favorite art gallery tours I have ever been on.  We all pretty much went off on our own throughout the museum and took time to take in what we could where we could in such a massive museum with limited time.  I was moved with pretty much every piece, though several stuck out more than other - particularly the oil paintings on wood, and was inspired to delve into creating, or attempting in any measure, art.  The longing to become a Renaissance man took me over as I realized how much time we spend idly watching TV or playing games and what have you.  If one spent even a portion of this time essentially wasted on bettering yourself, who knows what kind of person you could be.  Sounds old fashion, but that is simply the feeling I got after looking through this gallery.  Some of the pieces that stood out are to follow, and I really only took pictures of the ones I thought everyone could appreciate, either funny or interesting:

Someone please get this guy a beer.

Scene of a poisoning.  Intense.

Our very own Professor Peter Weiss' portrait.

The original pimp cup.  Step down lil' john.

Lions are apparently predators of horses? Who knew?

Interesting modern piece.

Scotland, baby. And an example of why you should go to museums: this doesn't do a bit of justice.

Kites EVERYWHERE.

Quite the eclectic collection throughout the gallery, and unfortunately we had barely enough time to cover half of the museum.  Fortunately, however, we were off for St. Kilda, the main “beach” of Melbourne.  I use this term blithely because I’m not sure that it opens up to the ocean or not; I believe it is the beach along the main bay that Melbourne lies on.  Probably should take a look at a map and figure that one out.  Neither here nor there, we headed south from the city to enjoy some beach relaxation, as per our usual regime everywhere we go.  

Not only did this beach not open up to the true ocean which would expose it to the gnarly coastal tides and waves, but the wind on this particular day was extreme.  This created a situation ideal for kite boarding, and on this particular day the bay was covered with about a hundred kite boarders whipping back and forth, somehow avoiding a collision that could potentially split atoms.  We immediately looked into lessons or rental, but, like everything else across this country, the prices were a bit pricey for our blood when we could do it back home for a fraction of the price.  We instead opted for a cheap lunch, cheap beer and enjoyed the pros showing off.  Not the idyllic beach we had come accustomed to messing around on, but this was uniquely stunning and more entertaining than most.

Group a LOOP.

We took the load off that night to revive ourselves – something I am personally not too fond of.  A necessary evil, I suppose, now and again.  It’s all about balance.  Luckily the scale is tilted in favor of action.  

Cheers.

You want me to what? - 1-18-12

That's some crazy skin

On our final scheduled day with RMIT "tourgroup" we were planned to visit most of their campus with the head of the college.  Their campus is spread throughout a portion of the city, but a group of their buildings are concentrated in an area right outside their main college of construction facility.  This gave us a brief, but nonetheless in depth, tour of several adaptively reused buildings and a couple brand new state of the art buildings; one still under construction.  This again illustrates the juxtaposition of old and new: a theme throughout the city. 

Poor sheet rock guys.

Moving on from the simple tour of existing structures, we were lucky enough to get a tour of the new RMIT business school that was currently under construction, and 8 months ahead of schedule.  The contractor was a very impressive group, and it showed through the organization and management of one of the most complex, unique and differentiated building I have ever toured.  They must have let the architects run wild on this one because no two openings were the same, no two angles of the cladding were identical, and the finishes inside were some of the most ridiculously intricate designs I had personally ever seen.  Architects are a strange breed and it shows through this building.  One of those "you want me to build what?" kind of structures.

Fairly ornate entrance.

Time for some refreshments and wandering around the night market after the long day on sites.  We met up with a group of friends living at RMIT Village with us, and headed for the Melbourne equivalent of Auburn's Wednesday drink specials: the Night Market.  Here we got into sangra, honey dumplings, some ridiculously expensive market shopping (makes me miss Asia), and later off to a bar down town that was supposed to be a backpacker type of place, but turned out to likely be a gay bar.  I still can't be sure as everyone there was English, and sometimes you just can't tell with that lot.  Ended up being an awesome night as we made our own dance party, led by the great Chris.  Haha.  Plain and simple post; plain and simple day.

Cheers.

Maussies are kinda like mules - 1-17-12

Melbourne Convention Center

Tour with the Site Manager

I thought I had seen some incredible "smart buildings" in my day with integrated sustainability measures and AV connectivity, etc. until I was lucky enough to take a tour of the Melbourne Convention Exhibition Center.  This place absolutely blew me away.  The level of technological integration throughout the building in the simplest forms to the most high tech resources truly makes this a smart building.  The entire project cost some $1 billion and this building alone took almost half of that budget.  I will spare the details but for those interested, their website, linked above, could do a better job than I ever could, but not as good a job as Clive, our tour guide did for us.  Really was a spectacular building that made me want to get into mega projects such as this.

Awkward?

Our next visit required the necessary safety equipment, and in such fashion we took the tram through the city to the job site.  This gave us some hysterical looks that I enjoyed to the fullest.  Told most ladies that inquired that we wore our yellow vests as a way to keep track of everyone in our tour group.  Made me laugh, anyway.  More of the same at the next job site with some impressive concrete work being done as they were still working on the form work for the car park.

Nom Nom some dishes.

On our free time we thought we would grab some Chinese grub as we were a bit reminiscent of our Sydney favorite, Bling Bling Dumpling: an angry birds themed Chinese joint.  China town is not far from where we were as RMIT is conveniently, for the predominant student base of Asians, located only a couple of blocks away.  We made our way through the neon lit streets adorned with Chinese lanterns, window shopping with those cats that fist pump like Eminem to find a little restaurant on an alleyway called Kum Den that served the typical dishes style of Chinese where several large portions are ordered and shared amongst the group.  Cracked me up because back in China you can get almost twice the food we did for roughly 1/10th the price.  Makes me long for Chongqing and some Hot Pot, but nonetheless I am out of Alkaseltzer.  Therefore, hot pot must be avoided at all times.  No one wants a case of ladudzah (sp?) when not properly armed.

Big gulps and leather cop pants, huh?

After a killer meal and some free homemade food from our waitress (possibly because it had spoiled, I couldn't really understand what she was saying but scarfed it anyway), we made our way to a local rooftop pub for some end of the night drinks.  Met a group of kids from Melbourne who were going to RMIT and Melbourne University and got to talking with them for most of the night.  A very interesting and thought provoking conversation, I talked to one who was a Maussie - an Australian of Maori descent.  This particular guy's mom was born in Maori culture and they had immigrated into Australia for work.  I found it interesting how his buddies poked and made fun of him about this, and related it back to many of the cultural mixtures back in the states who receive similar flack for something so seemingly meaningless.  He didn't seem to mind, however and acted quite proud of the fact to me, personally, so it didn't get to me too bad; just an interesting observation of how these type of cultural blends can be received throughout the globe.

Called it a night fairly early and some how found our way home although the trams weren't running as late as it was.  Long and early day ahead of us tomorrow, we were very lucky to finally make it back.  Strong reflections on fuzzy recollections.

Cheers.

Tennis Live is Awkward - 1-16-12

Center court nosebleed, baby.

"You'll be sorry you hit me, you f***ing Communist a**hole." - McEnroe on getting hit with a ball by a Czech opponent.



The next few posts are going to be a bit droll as we are basically just touring several various job sites - interest for such things by the general population may be low to null.

Getting back into the swing of it, RMIT University of Melbourne is taking us under their wing as their foreign guest to show us around for the majority of the week at several job sites and completed buildings.  With very similar major programs founded on a working man's college, they will make a perfect asset for us to learn the particulars on construction, architecture and engineering methods and practices throughout Australia and specifically in Melbourne.

Nothing like a couple beers on the job, haha.

We started off at the RMIT Building which was recently renovated to a state of the art education complex where all of the school's classrooms for the Construction College are located.  Makes one realize, having attended a small college town, how different and strange it would be to go to school in a city setting such as this.  I sure would miss streaking through the quad, that's for sure.  After several briefings, question sessions, lunch and a look at several sets of plans, we were off to the first of 2 sites for the day, a 22 story apartment complex right next to the rugby stadium in the docklands neighborhood.  It was interesting to see similar practices, material utilization and safety rtegulations, but what is even more shocking to me is the difference and overall impact on the prevalence of unions throughout the industry.

In a roughed out apartment with the PM.

These unions give laborers and management 3 weeks of vacation over the holidays, 28 days of allotted days off, pay almost double our similar salaries back home, ridiculously spacious and nice kitchens and break rooms, and most importantly, it seems that guys over here can drink on the job as we stumbled upon several Carrlton bottle caps and more than a few empty boxes of beer in trash carts.  My kind of labor force: drunk.  Oh, and they can also wear tank tops and shorts on most sites.  From the beach to a job site, few things really change in respect to wardrobe and drinking habits around these parts.

After another very similar, but earlier on in the construction process, site tour, we took some time off to get changed and grab a bite before heading to the Australian Open to watch Federer annihilate the competition.  Turns out tennis matches have a no stand rule meaning you can't leave your seats at any time other than between sets.  This creates some serious liquid flow issues from a beer drinking and personal relieving standpoint.  We made due, however, and waited patiently for our time to visit the bar or restroom.  Or, in Andrew and Steele's case, visit the pie shop for your 13th pie of the day.

Level of current completion.

Happy union worker Matt

\

Anyhow, we watched Federer dominate in what I saw as a very awkward environment where if one sneezes the entire stadium will likely hear you and probably point.  This gave us ample opportunities to yell our approval - or disapproval - of the play, bug situation, weather, or whatever else we deemed fit to share with some 50,000 other spectators.  Good times, but I don't think I will be a very consistent tennis match attendee.  The general fan base doesn't seem to share my same excitement and associated boisterousness in all things competitive.  I'll stay at home where I can stand when I please and yell all I can, thank you.  Nonetheless, this one was a memory and experience of a lifetime.

Cheers.

Watching tennis is hard work.

Hands down greatest tennis stache of all time.

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