Just saw the "finalists" for the WTC project in Ne…
Just saw the “finalists” for the WTC project in New York City. Holy Crap Ideas, Batman! One of them looks like an erector set and the other looks like the project was completed by Mrs. Miller’s Fourth-grade class under threat of cancelling summer vacation. And I hope I don’t offend any fourth-graders out there when I say that. I’ve seen a lot of prospective ideas for this space, and some of them were even pretty good, but it seems they inverted the list by accident and came up with the top two Worst Ideas. And I thought I was good at making bad decisions.
I’ve been thinking about phrases like “I knew them from their blog” or “I met them online”. The more I think about it, the more I think it’s impossible. Knowing someone from their blog is like watching “Final Fantasy” and thinking you know what real people look like. It’s not quite there, a blog is only what said person wants to show the world, and misses the rest, all the nuances, all the psychoses, wrinkles and all. Granted, I’ve met people online and gone on to meet them in real life to find them very nice, but in each case I was suprised at how different they were than I had imagined. In most cases this is a good thing, but it has the potential to be a pretty bad thing as well. It’s part chaos theory, part common sense, but nothing can ever be what you expect. Usually it’s more, sometimes it’s less, but it’s always different. Sounds obvious, I know, but it’s also something I’m still in the process of learning. When I was growing up I thought that nature was deliberately making reality to be exactly the opposite of my expectations, and while this may have resulted in the abandonment of certain religious convictions, it also convinced me to try to stop expecting things altogether, or at least to stop putting any stock in my expectations.
Blah. I’d quit while I was still ahead with this babbling but I fear I’m too late.
I called my adopted family in Hsinchu to wish everyone a Happy Goat Year, but only the Filipina nurse was home, so I called my little brother instead. He and his wife are working on their third kid; my gan-ma must be thrilled. I should go down for a visit sometime. It’s been ages since I’ve been down there, or anywhere else for that matter.
