Cherry Blossom 2

This cherry tree is right in front of my house...
It is now fully bloomed.. very beautiful.

Spring is here.. it has been very nice days since last week.
I hope it is not going to be raining too bad anymore.

By the way, I am moving in a new place..
It is very easy access to buses and grocery stores.
I am very excited!
Bye bye Hello Kitty. LOL

Lama

There is a Lama on CAMPUS!

My friends told me that she/he is protecting sheep..

It was my first time to look at Lama.. kind of scary!

I became a...

Vice president (Internal) of Landscape Architecture Student Association for next year.

Hmmm.

ok, I will do it.

Spring is coming..

I went to downtown yesterday, and on the way back home, I suddenly thought just getting off the bus and walking to my house from the beach.. It was a nice day, so I really enjoyed it.

1st picture.. I was walking behind of 5 people.. (guessing they are family) and they found a bench. I just thought it was a nice shot so I took a picture of them with Vancouver downtown, blue sky, white cloud and ocean reflecting cloud and sky... My favorite picture of yesterday.


There are a lot of small pocket parks on 2nd(?) to open up to nice views. (Currently, it is not very crowded but I am sure they will be filled by people and people.. and more people..) I found this tree in the park..looks like spread in the middle.. but in fact, they are some trunks.

Last picture is Cherry blossom.. of course. As Japanese, cherry blossom is always special. It was taken right beside of my house.. isn't it pretty??? It will open more and more. Maybe it will be fully open soon!

I have been busy with school.. but it is good to explore neighbours even for an hour.. there are always new things around myself.

Chaos week

It has been a crazy week.. well, maybe it is going to be a crazy month as always at the end of the term..

I have been doing a couple of things now..
1. doing a studio project (just submitted 75% construction detail package)
2. making a portfolio booklet/website
3. finishing up other classes
4. trying to break this housing contract and move out (in May hopefully)
....


I hope I can be smiling after this term!!
Too much to do isn't that fun. :-p

Portfolio making

Bah!
I have been spending so much time for this today.. but I haven't even FINISHED YET!!!!

It takes for loooong... I hope I can finish it soon...otherwise I can't do other things! :-(

Portfolio making

Shadow Mentor day

So... today was my Shadow Mentor day.. (and my dad's birthday, Happy Birthday! :))

I signed up for a shadow mentor last week... I am not sure how many people are actually familiar with this, but basically, we (students) go to companies, and follow one (or more) person all day to see what they are doing in real world.

It is requirement for 3rd year (graduating year) but not for us (2nd years), so they signed up first, then we signed up for left-overs. I signed up because I really wanted to see how people work as landscape architects for my future plan. (well.. I am NOT planning to change my major again though!)

I luckily got a position... it was a bit competitive to get a company close to my place (which was also most popular out of 5 or 6 companies.) Other places were in North Vancouver or West Vancouver.. or not even in Vancouver.. so sign up day.. I lined up from 7:45.. and one guy was there already before me.. he was there since 6:45.. we could both sign up for the company I wanted to (they were ok with 2 shadow mentors), but he ended up not to be able to go.. so I was just one who was there today.

Basically what I did was.. working for 4 hours, then follow one person rest of the day.
I didn't expect that they would ask me to work so I was surprised.. but they asked me using SketchUp.. so yeah, I am glad I got used to this program! It was quite easy.. but it was MAC! I really don't use (or haven't used) Mac before.. so Mac OS X fancy feature (like.. if you bring your cursor to the edge.. they do something.. right? lol) teased me a BIG time!!

Anyway, after that work.. we went to a construction site.. and he actually needed to talk to construction workers who had questions for him. It was my first time to see how they communicate.. it was an interesting process. I am not going to explain too much detail.. but I have some pictures from the site.. so here you go.

This is where some residents' courtyard, play-ground and lawn area will be. It is fairly big..I was nervous if something was fallen on me from towers which are still under construction!
(I had a helmet though.. first time. :-p)



Yes, we, landscape architects, do design stairs like this.. but I am not good at it yet.. I will practice more in real world, right? I will try not to make uneven stairs.. or each step has different height. hehehehe










Brick-work.. it is interesting how they work..
well, I should say impressive. :)













After this.. he explained his past works.. showed me construction details and stuff..
I really appreciate that he spent half day for me taking me around and showing me stuff.. and I found out that he is a friend of my design studio instructor in this term. haha. World is pretty small like that. :-) I was going to ask him how he was doing in school.. but I didn't.. maybe in the future. hehe

Anyway.. I was very very very tired after this 8 hours.. so I took a long nap when I came home.. now... I have tons of homework to do. ugh.

New Toy

So here it is... Photoshop CS3 beta ver.

I just downloaded it.. but I don't know if I have time to play with it.. probably after this term is done.

It looks "cool" but see what is REALLY cool about it.

Seattle pictures

I updated Seattle Field Trip 2007 pictures in my Picasa album.
Check them out!

http://picasaweb.google.com/tomonota

Cherry colour

My favorite song for Spring 2007.
Cherry blossom is always our flower this season in Japan.

House of Chaos #1

It has been probably 6 months since I moved in here.
Since I moved in... this house has been a cause of my stress.
SO, I would like to share my bad experience here to reduce my stress.

I am sure my old roommate would like to join some points. :-P

Anyway.. I am going to write down what things have been happened here since I moved in..

SEPTEMBER
After I moved in.. 3rd week of September, I tried to use a gas oven..
and ignited but it didn't work.. then I started smelled gas slowly but surely.

I thought it wouldn't be going any worse, so I went to bed that night.. but a couple of days later, upstairs people smelled it very strongly and called BC hydro. They told upstairs to evacuate just in case. I was not at home that time so I heard this story.

Our landlord, K, told us that she is going to fix its problems soon... so we waited for a while..

At the end of September, my first roommate moved out that was because he could not handle her "K"... I understood by that time but I was the one signed its contract... so I could not leave...so I found another roommate from October.


OCTOBER
She sent a person to fix the oven. The person who thought gas pipe (tube) was problem, so he replaced the tube.. but it was not THAT. It was because pilot lit pipe was clogged.. Yeah, good job.. so it kept smelling after his replacing pipe, of course.

We called her again and told her it still smells.. and she came in and check and smelled it.. she called BC Hydro to come over and check what's wrong with it. She said 10pm.. they are coming so she came 10pm but they didn't come before she left. Probably around 11:30 pm or so, one guy from BC Hydro came and checked our oven.. and he found out problem very quick... "Oh, its pilot lit pipe is clogged. but this oven itself is just very old as well. So either you clean all pipes or replace it."

So I called Landlord/owner "K" to do so... and she said "ok, I will replace it soon."
Yes, it took for a while how SOON that is going to be.

NOVEMBER
Yes, we waited probably for 2,3 weeks.. but she didn't tell us after that happened. Actually, gas smell was gone because he cleaned a bit..but still we were afraid of when gas is just going to leak all the time. Nothing happened in October, then November Rent collecting day... (2 days before 1st of the month), I asked K if she is working on it or forgot about it.

Of course, people wouldn't say "oh, I forgot about it, I will work on it soon" but she said "yes yes, I know. I asked City inspector to come to check the house." so yeah, I was like.. ok, i guess that is better than nothing.

Yeah, she said in November... but 2 days before December 1st...
She called me that she was collecting rents soon.

I asked her what is happening right now and she told me "Oh, December 12th, they will come check all house...then they are going to check gas oven again."

Yeah.. that was a start of our looong fight....


To be continued...