Saturday

Saturday, October 17, 2009

The electricity is off when I wake-up, which means the water-pumps are also off.  I am having breakfast with Michael and one of the visiting panelist from the CAA board when we have a surprise visitor, Steve.  We met Steve, who is from New Zealand, the previous evening.  Steve works for an international NGO and is heading to Madang this morning.  Steve figures out how to get to Unitech (the only ‘maps’ are in the phonebook) and then asks the guards at the front gate where I live.  They direct him to Professor Milani’s who tells him where to find me.  We had been talking the previous evening about the experience here so far and I had mentioned something about not having an ipod so Steve brought me his shuffle – so incredibly nice!   In the meantime Roger stops by with Joe, the guy who will be doing my yardwork, so I could meet him.  Did I mention I live in a glasshouse?

I meet up with Michael, Professor Milani and Claire (one of the CAA reviewers) to ride along for a daytrip to Bulolo, a village in the highlands.  We stop at the market in Lae to look around.  It is so alive and colorful and the smells of the fresh produce are refreshing in the heat (have I mentioned how much I love markets?).  The produce comes mostly from the highlands where it is brought to market to sell, many people then come to the market buy produce and go elsewhere to sell it, such as on campus near my house.

We head towards the highlands and after about 30 or 40 minutes notice a strange sound, like a saw in the distance, which is unfortunately coming from the car and realize that the car is over-heating.  We turn around and head back to the yacht club for lunch.  Even though we hadn’t gone that far we could already feel the temperature dropping and see the dense rain-forest on either side of the car, a few clearings for houses, churches, some local businesses, and kids playing in a stream.

After lunch I buy a bush-knife, they are sold in almost every store, I pick an average sized one – not too long and not too short.  Apparently a lot of people sleep with them under their pillows or beds.  Professor Milani is concerned as his has been there fore 17 years and it might be getting rusty, I guess you wouldn’t want to infect the intruder?  Mine, however, is not for my room, it is for Joe – the locals use the bush-knife for many aspects of gardening.

Students

Saturday, October 10, 2009

I had my first introduction to the students and some of their work yesterday as I sat through reviews for First, Second and Fourth year students.  The fifth year students are busy getting there thesis done which is due in a few weeks.  It’s nice to know that architecture students don’t get sleep anywhere in the world…

The first year student make very nice models of the traditional housing which is still being built around the country for their Vernacular Architecture Class.  For the vernacular models the students go outside to get their materials from the many varieties of local vegetion.  There is a big emphasis here on preserving and continuing the long tradition of cultural designs that have been used here for thousands of years.

Today there was an end of the year BBQ at the Milani’s, most of the students showed up 2 or 3 hours late, also known as ‘Melanesian Time’.  Talked with a few of the students and staff but many of them are very shy.