We just came back from a two-week working holiday in Thailand. Our main aim was to escape the humid Japanese summer and find a place suitable for some concentrated work. We still ventured out of the hotel room, so some observations from Phuket after the jump.
Private house Phuket Town
We went on a long weekend trip to Shimoda at the southern tip of the Azu Peninsula in June, and I totally forgot to put some photos up back then. It was like a trip back in time, both to the mid-nineteenth century, when Commodore Perry’s ships arrived here, and the roaring eighties, when the real estate boom reigned here just like in other seaside resorts across Japan.
While on our brief stopover in Germany this September, my parents took us for a ride to Weimar and Dessau. I had never been before, and it was great to see and stay in the Bauhaus. Some photos and impressions after the jump.
The Bauhaus main building in Dessau (some photos taken by my mother)
Having lived in the US for two years, we only found the time to do some road-tripping towards the tail end of our stay. My knowledge of the States had hitherto been limited to some of the bigger cities; New York, DC, Philadelphia, Boston and Chicago. And although we had planned a coast-to-coast trip as early as last summer, we ended up postponing it. Then a friend approached us several months back with the idea to do a loop starting from Denver. It didn’t take long to convince us.
En route from Denver, towards the Rocky Mountains
I spent last weekend in Chicago, my first time in the Windy City. One of the highlights was to see Mies in action, particularly in the Federal Center’s Post Office.
To escape the (again) cold winter, we decided to hop on a plane and go to Nicaragua for a week in February. Nicaragua is probably one of the first foreign countries that came to my attention as a child. East Germany was a chief supporter of the Sandinistas in their fight against the Contras.
Cinema, Esteli
Happy New Year! This blog has become slightly inactive over the past months as the bulk of my writing takes place inside the manuscript for the forthcoming Yangon Architectural Guide. To wrap up the research for the book, I was in Burma for a few weeks in December.
New pedestrian overpass – Strand Road
Much time has passed without any update. I hope the blog will resume normal operations now that the move to Washington, D.C. is fully completed. In lieu of a proper travelogue from Chennai (where I spent time in August this year), I post this photo of a bookshop taken in the beautiful T Nagar neighborhood.
Mexico City sits on doubly challenging terrain: First, it is situated on top of a dried lake and is sinking by several centimeters each year. Second, it is in earthquake-prone territory with the North American plate pushing against the Pacific plate here. Surprisingly, there is a lot of verticality in the city. And as the city famously chokes on brutal traffic, there are plans to build even higher into the sky, and deeper into the ground.
Mexico City – May 2014
Can Mexico transform its economy with the raft of recent reforms? I posted some observations from a research briefing I organised last week on the GFI website, a copy of which can be found after the jump.
Museo de Arte Moderno