Best of 2008

I've not blogged for over 6 months and I put the reasons to the arrival of Zach, the adoption of facebook, and the change of jobs in Aug. But really, they're excuses because if I really have things to say, it's the blog rather than facebook. As the year ends, I best continue what I did last Dec; sieve through the photos taken this year and select a few that will remind me of something meaningful in 2008 for the years ahead. For a change, these will all be "portrait" format, although I shoot 80% of the time in "landscape" format.

Some notes: the top photo was taken in Dubai, looking out the apartment of a posh condo next to the Burj Dubai, which is still under construction. The whole experience of living in Dubai is a fight against nature, a complete disconnect between the air-con interiors and the sweltering exteriors. My friend's apartment had a balcony like the one shown in the photo. But it isn't used. It's because of the heat in summer but whatever the time, it's the omni-present sand, fine particles that coats everything that hasn't moved for some time... A colleague of mine who had proposed to level a hilly site in the middle east was told by his Arab client he could not do so because, "this is the land that God gave you." When you bring God into an architectural discussion, all convenient ideas end and dogma begins. But if all Arabs are like that client, they shouldn't air-con their buildings and should learn to live with the land as their ancestors did; with ingenuous wind towers, dense walls and shaded, clustered communities. Dubai is today scarred by inhumane highways that caters only to the ever-growing avalanche of cars, fuelled with cheap oil. Motorbikes are virtually non-existent (especially in high summer). Developments are spaced out far from one another and neighbours across a highway have to drive kilometers to visit one another. Nobody walks if they can help it. Bus stops have to be air-conditioned and the metro system is only now under construction. Parks are few and the palms in the city are coated brown from the dust. Coming from another land with abundant rain and vegetation, it is hard to like Dubai. For a while in Sept, we thought about moving to Dubai because of the monetary rewards, but thankfully we didn't, as the financial crisis has pricked Dubai's illusionary allure.

The second photo is St Augustine church in Macau. We walked the place for 3 days and loved it. Other photos that I loved taking were of beast, birds and bugs. Sometimes Zach falls under all 3 categories. But most of the time, he's an angel. The last 4 shots are of houses I visited to write about during the year. Merry Christmas!

Chup