life's about balance, 
you get good days and bad days,
imperfection is what makes human beings human.
it's a cycle like life and death,
or more straight to the point, like winning and losing.

One day not having change for the bus
and one day getting to sit next to someone cute on the bus;
One day you're having a bowl of honey crunch with your friends,
the next day you're a thousand miles away having dinner
while they are in a different time zone having breakfast.

it's weird how we appreciate things better once we don't have them anymore,
you'd think over the course of centuries of evolution, we would be smart enough to know that.
why do we appreciate the sunset better in other countries when sunsets are equally as beautiful locally?

thing is, when you get home after 2 years of being away,
all you do is sit in front of the computer/watch tv
and have conversation-less dinner sittings with the family.
things were so mundane/boring,
so i'm glad that mummy organized that 10day trip to spain/portugal.
it wasn't so much about being in a historically old country that made the trip worthwhile,
it could've been anywhere, even a day trip to Malacca would've been nice.
it was more to do about sharing new experiences together like the good old days.

same goes with university,sometimes we get so caught up with assignments and exams
that we forget university is just a small small world like kindergarten/high school.
yes, work is important, but it isn't everything, might as well have fun while doing it.

with friendships,
you make new ones, but not forget the old ones.
i'm glad facebook exists, makes social networking so much more convenient,
i still have this lingering fear that one day everyone will be so dependant on Facebook 
that Facebook could use it as a tool for world domination.

with love,
you find your other half in the oddest or most obvious of places.
it wouldn't matter. 

again it's all about balance,
mutual feelings,
mutual contributions to each other. 

when it comes down to it,
it's good to think of the future, plan things out,
but if obstacles come your way,  
handle it with grace and make the best out of the situation.

did i write this post, just because i could use it as an excuse to post this bottom picture?
yes i did,

yes i did.

hope you have a balanced day.
 

BRIEF BACKGROUND

every second semester of the year, 2nd year architecture students put up an event
that requires the construction of a 1:1 structure of some kind for their design paper. 
these structures are mostly made up of materials that are easy/cheap to buy in bulk. 
last year people used things from plastic cups, to cassette tapes and cardboard tubes. 
this year a lot of stuff was made with pvc piping (mainly because it was sponsored material) 

120 students are split into groups of 20 with a theme, those 20 are then broken into groups of 4.
themes for this year were :
"diversion","eruption", "suspense,anticipation, satisfaction", " all blacks", "perpetual museum" & "recasting".

this year unlike other years, was in conjunction with the Rugby World Cup.

This is where the RWC fantrail was conceived,
it's a 4km+ long route that leads from the waterfront to the stadium at eden park.
Along this route, there are pitstops, and our event was one of them, located at Myers Park. 

BRAINSTORMING 

I was lucky enough to get my first choice: eruption. 
our group called INFEST, consists of Ira,Grace, Amelia and me.
A lot of our  design time was focused around just discussing,
sketching, researching, computer modelling,photoshopping, making small scale models. 

these were just a few conceptual models that we were playing with.
i photoshopped some of my friends into the models,
cause i didn't have internet at that moment. ( haha hope you don't mind emma,lucy and anique)

we brainstormed about the idea of a creature erupting out of a shipping container,consuming it.
(the shipping container is supplied to all groups and is used to store the materials after an event)

after playing around heaps with different configurations and forms,
we somehow ended up feeling our initial idea (bottom pic) was still the best. 

SOURCING MATERIALS & EQUIPMENT

For a whole 2 weeks, we just spent working together trying to figure out what sort of materials we could use.
asking the seniors, hardware stores, fabric stores.

• plastic tubes were too expensive and small.
• transparent plastic sheets which we heat welded together didn't give the effect we wanted,was too rigid and ira kept burning herself making it
• various fabrics- PVC, nylon were our best bet

Amelia finally sourced a good fabric (nylon which was 2$ a meter)
that gave the effect we wanted and could contain air well without it escaping.

using an air vent to fuel our tube. we previously used hairdryers which melted our material.

MANUFACTURING 

there were three components we had to produce in 2 weeks.

1. a fabric funnel sock (connects fan to framing securely)
2. a fan box (to contain the fan)
3. wooden framing to hold up fabric and tubes

in total we spent around $300.
$200 for the fabric, $70 for wood, rest went to miscellaneous items.
i reckon it's pretty reasonable spending. 

we diagrammed the circular holes for the tubes.
printed out a 1:1 stencil to use as guidance to trace over the fabric.
after that we did the measuring, cutting and sewing, labelling 80 meters worth of tubing.
the 25+ tubes ranged from 3-7 meters long. 
our first attempt cutting 6 tubes took us 2 hours, luckily we got better after that.

FAN BOX

we initially wanted 6 fans to power our tubes.
could've settled for a moderate 4 fans but our tutor wanted us to just use one fan to simplify everything.
our tutor even supplied us the fan. thing was, it was rusty,dusty and bolted onto this flimsy sheet of metal. 

while Amelia and Grace focused on making the tubes.
Ira and i spent time at the workshop stripping down the fan, getting rid of everything rusty
so we can start building a box around the fan.

FRAMING

took us 2 days to finish the fan.
we then moved on to constructing the framing
complete with hinges for easy folding.
 

ASSEMBLING

We sourced a table from uni that fit perfectly in our 2m wide framing.
sewed up the velcro onto our fabric for easy dismantling.  

FIRST ATTEMPT

our first attempt was not working due to the fact that
we couldn't keep the structure airtight enough

SECOND ATTEMPT

the next day, we crossed our fingers hoping everything would work out fine.
it was pretty nerve wrecking cause that day was our last chance to
transport our things down to the park with the truck supplied by uni.

and...

x

SUCCESS. :D
in 5 seconds 

EXTRAS

why end there?

one of the guys down in workshop saw our tubes and recommended us to go 
try and ask the uni facilities manager if we could source extra fans.
and the nice people there chucked us two extra fans PLUS waterproof extension cords.

OPENING DAY

did not expect that many people to pass through our site.
i thought the tutors were exaggerating when they said thousands of people
would be flowing through the park. 

heaps of people all riled up for the world cup.
shouting out the teams they are rooting for.
as for our event, we got pretty good comments from the public,
especially the kids who freely roamed through that tube mess
while their parents watch on.

we are running one-two times each week for another 6 weeks ( till oct 23rd). 
watch out for our next event on Saturday 17th. 5.00pm
along with the other 5 groups and their shipping containers spread around the park. 

Man... those tubes are gonna be a dirty mess after all of this.