Archive for February, 2006

Studio Progress

Published by audiojack on February 25, 2006 in Architecture, London and portfolio. 2 Comments

I put a link to the right (My Studio Progress) if anyone would like to see what I’m working on. I represent the University of Nebraska at Lincoln on Archinect

9-day trip

Published by audiojack on February 22, 2006 in Architecture and London. 2 Comments

Erika and I are flying to Edinbough,Scottland and Dublin, Irland for a few days leaving next tues, 28th. If anyone would like me to get them something from there, or look at something of interest, e-mail me at alexandermjack@hotmail.com

Cheers!

Quiz Night Champions!

Published by audiojack on February 21, 2006 in London. 2 Comments

Today we had a critique at a London Architecture office. The people at the office were extremely hospitable and provided great feedback for our projects. I think they found our site the most interesting. Our site is down the hill from Windsor castle which is a national monument and home of the queen. After the critique, we decided to splurge and eat at a restaurant. Somehow out of all of the foreign restaurants, we ended up at a TGI Fridays, where we had hamburgers and American beer and paid twice as much for my meal. The hamburger was of coarse sub par and bland like everything.

We Won! Team Sussudio won Quiz Night at our hostel bar. Our reward was a free round of beer. Ironically we won with a score of 8 out of 21, not very good, but hey, good enough to win. Next week is Movie quiz night, and with most of us being movie nerds, we should stand a fair chance. Karaoke night was another surprise to me. All of it was the same as if you were in a local Karaoke bar in Omaha. Songs like Sweet Caroline, Eye of the Tiger, The Macarena. etc. So if I could sum up London, thus far, everyone looks the same and acts the same but listens to Gansta Rap (Death Row, NWA, Eazy-E) and cut their hair into mullets. And yes I’m pondering cutting my hair into a mullet.

Quiz Night Champions

Photographs

Published by alexandermjack on February 10, 2006 in London and Photography. 6 Comments

On all of my posts, I display a photo. Simply click on it and it will take you to a website that contains all of my photos.

Cheers,

Click HERE for photos

Delay to man under the train?

Published by audiojack on February 8, 2006 in London. 0 Comments

I’ve heard this twice since I’ve been here over the intercom of the Underground radio announcment. I found out today it means someone actually jumped or fell in front of the speeding subway train. Although I found it morbid and disturbing, the people in London say, “Man under a train? Damn, why do they have to tie up the lines and ruin it for everybody.”

Tourist / Terrorist…same thing.

Published by alexandermjack on February 7, 2006 in London. 4 Comments

Tourist or Terrorist – same thing. This is what was said to us by machine gun wielding guards of the queen’scastel in Windsor.

Most of you who know me well, know that I am pretty far from a morning person. For those who don’t, to put it into perspective, I use to use 3 alarm clocks and a timer on my lamp to wake-up in the morning. Well, for some odd reason, I wake up here (without an alarm clock) at 7:00 or 7:30am Pee-wee Herman style!

Okay, so living in a Hostel is odd enough with 100-200 foreign people, but mix that with individual sleeping habits is crazy. I awoke this morning to someone knocking at our bedroom door. Of coarse I was the only one who heard it, so I answered the door in a terribly groggy state. What I found when I opened it was a lady in PJ’s standing mumbling something in French (it sound like she was saying “die”, but really, I have no idea). However, she wasn’t talking to me; she was staring at me with a cold gaze but as if I wasn’t there. Her eyes were dilated and she seemed to be in a catatonic state. So then she walks away from me and starts to knock on the glass hallway door that has no lock and is just used as a partition to the staircase. With that, I closed the door as fast as I could and thought to myself, “Wow, that doesn’t happen in the states.” What a way to wake up.

What a day. We set out today to find a site called Chiswick. What we found was all the tube stations full of soccer hooligans. Today was a match between New Zealand Warriors vs. Adelaide United. It turns out today is also New Zealand’s New Year and their team won, so it was a day of madness. Evidently, they come to London every year and take the Central Tube line and stop at every bar along the way. All the stations were packed with people drinking beers and being ruckus. It was quite a site to see. After the game, we followed a crowed to the Westminster Abbey Square. We were there early with only a few people standing about, but soon it exploded with people. There was a constant flow of people like ants into the square. Before we knew it, the green area was over flown and the crowd of Kiwi’s took to the streets. And when the team showed up in a bus, the cars might as well been statues, because nobody was moving for a while.

London 3 Pictures

Paparazzi

Team America

Published by alexandermjack on February 3, 2006 in London. 0 Comments

I’m posting some pictures of Greenwich, and some other travels. We’ve started studio so I have to “hit the books” again. But to the credit of Prof. Sawyers, our projects are about traveling around London and getting acquainted with the history of the area. So, it’s been great to get sketch-exercises and remember how to draw freehand.

I am now a master at riding the London Underground and am a firm believer in mass transportation. I’m not sure how easy it will be to transition back to driving a car again, but it’s very convenient to hop on a tube and pop-up in the city. On the tube they have people who “busk” or play musical instruments in the tube tunnels. Most of them are really good; one was even playing “Country Roads” by John Denver which reminded me of home.

Today I attended a lecture at the AA school of architecture. The university prides it’s self on being very conceptual and theoretical. They had amazing installations of student work. The lecture was, oddly enough, given by two professors from Ohio State about two leading architects that had a lecture two days prior, Rem Koolhaas and Peter Eisenman. So in summary I attended a lecture in Europe given by two Americans about a lecture, kinda odd.

Funny Story: On our third day we popped-up from the tube at St. Paul’s Cathedral for the first time and were so enamored with the size and architecture of the church that we started to climb on the stairs and pose for each other’s pictures. After posing and taking many pictures, we realized we were posing on the side door (actually the disabled entrance) of St. Paul’s! Once we walked a little further, to the front, we realized our ignorance. Crazy American tourists.

St. Paul's Side

Addition: We had a quiz night at our hostel bar against all other nations, us representing “Team America”. Although we didn’t win, (4th place out of 8 ). They decided to play “America- F*&%@ Yeah!” from Team America the movie, after the winner was announced. Of coarse all us Americans were singing right along, but to my amazement, none of the other teams (Australia, France, Spain, Norway) were singing. So the song alienated us but we keep right on cheering and chanting at our own expense. I guess they don’t find the song funny.

Addition 2: For all you Anchorman fan’s out there. In our studio (a giant street level room with a giant window that was open) we were loudly playing “Afternoon Delight.” As we were about sound the infamous Sky Rockets in Flight…*noise here* a stranger passing on the sidewalk outside our window beat us to it! I probably couldn’t breath for an hour b/c of the laughter.