Birthday Poem

I thought this poem my uni friend (thanks Lily!) made up was pretty good and funny at places, so here it is :)

Dear Joshua,

Oh what a “grown up” boy you have become;

Since the day we met, you were our wee little chum.

You had made every uni day worthwhile;

With your weird wacky ways and your warm friendly smile.

You’ve cheered us up on our crappy crit days;

And helped us out with our sh*tty essays.

And even though we’ve only known you 3 years;

It has felt like way more, as we’ve shared our fears.

We’ve been through rain and hail together;

But our friendship has conquered worst weather.

And we couldn’t be more grateful with someone like you;

Someone with confidence, pride and cares like you do.

There is not a day that you’re not at the pizza café;

It’s the only place around uni that you seem to like to stay.

You always rock up in blue and sporty gear;

It makes you appear calm, clear and definitely not austere.

You always help out anytime you can;

So, I’d like to thank you Joshua Tan;

For being a mate, a leader, a teacher, a clown;

The nicest guy we could ever have around.

You’re sincerely what we’d call a true friend;

Let’s just hope our friendship will never end.

Josh, you are a great guy and you deserve to enjoy;

So, here’s to you, our grown up Joshi boy!

Architect's Folio

People think architecture students have it easy. They think its as simple as an arts degree. Some think that we laze around because we don't have any exams or anything. But I reckon architecture students have the most contact hours and do the most late nights out of any other courses. All this hard work usually revolves around this document called a 'folio', or a design portfolio which encompasses the semester's work of design and technical projects.

Our folios usually consist of sheets between A3 and A1 size, and they are posters or drawings which describe our final designs for projects within the semester. The smallest folio I've handed in is probably 26 A3 pages, and the largest one is our most recent one (pictured), which went up to 84 A3 pages. The average A1 folio was approximately 12 A1 pages (equivalent to 48 A3 pages).

Folios are 100% summative, which means our overall grade for the semester is unknown until the results are released, and most of us don't know if we passed of failed until then. However, we get these presentations called critiques, which is when we pin up our drawings and tell a guest architect about our design, and get critical feedback (usually negative) so we can work on our designs more.

Our last folio was the craziest... I spent like a day just to put drawings on a template 84 times, and then another day to print. Luckily I have an A3 printer at home which saves like $5 x 84 of prints (like 420 bucks). The final folio was like..... 2cm thick :S

I'm so happy uni is over until 2010 for me :) no more folios!