Papa Geppetto

Just like Papa Geppetto, I have been at the workshop in the last couple of days of uni. Building things, sanding, gluing, painting, more sanding, and finally assembling. Til a couple more days until final presentation commences.

Instead of using chisel and mallet, a twenty-first century tool was utilized. One of the greatest inventions of man, CNC router, which changes drill bits on its own. It says that it is Australian made, but has German instruction on it. Funny. 

Flying out of Stockholm was a bit of a problem. Our flight was bound for Hamburg on a snowy day. 

Amsterdam Nom Nom

Incubated croquette paradise - FEBO

Dutch breakfast

Stroopwafel 

Pancake

Spanish Steps, Rome

I want to see the outer world, with my own eyes, not through three computer screens.

Alles gute zum geburtstag, L!
You're on the right way to enter Nordstadt △

Vaskeri

Doing laundry on Sunday morning reminds me of this photo of a laundrette in Copenhagen. We walked pass it on one of the days when Sally and I were going shopping. Ah the good Danish clothes!

Hagia Sophia

Photos by Aditya Pradana 

Hagia Sophia was once an Orthodox basilica, once a mosque, once a cathedral for the Greeks, and once was a Roman Catholic cathedral. There is a lot of story going on there, merged under one dome - a pendentive dome that is.

Spot the history under the dome

 

Architecturally speaking, it has one of the largest domes in the world, just second after Pantheon in Rome. The special thing about it is that the dome is pendentive, which means it is a circular (or elliptical) dome sitting on a square room. The easiest way to imagine a pendentive is to project the circular surface onto the corners of a square.

It is considered as one of the essence of Byzantine architecture, marking the glory of that era. Imagining the structure was built around the 6th century, it is pretty amazing that some of the artworks are still well-preserved. Here is one gold mosaic, in which if you look closely was built upon approximately one by one centimeter square tiles. Oh the labor of art! And mind you, this is just one wall of the whole Hagia Sophia. Similar to this, there is also St. Mark's Basilica in Venice which was built during the Byzantine era too, so they have some similarities in terms of style and aims. I suppose one of the objectives of it was to flaunt the glory of the empire and that could almost be felt throughout the styling of objects, like  weapons, clothes, cutlery, weapons, and of course jeweleries. The amount of ornamentation pretty much tells the story.

I agree with the notion of recording and documenting ideas. I think, they are virtuous things to do, for you would be able to have your own keepsake of a place and to share it with others. The idea of preserving moments is one thing that really enjoy doing, especially during my travel. Important enough for me to record things through drawings, photos and writings as well as to embrace the presence of what is palpable through my senses. Nevertheless, do not get too carried away recording things, as some things can only be appreciated in situ. There are just things that belong at where they are and not meant to be shelled through lenses or pages of a book.

Hezarfen

Have you ever heard about a story of a man named Hezarfen? He was one of the clever men who lived in the era of Sultan Abdulmecid (1829-1861) of the Ottoman Empire. Flying was his thing, he had a thing about making things fly, and decided one day that he would try to fly himself.

Here is the sight of what he was looking at when he was about to fly:

A view from Galata Tower (Asia is on your right side)

The flight was planned to depart from Galata Tower, the tallest construction there was in old Istanbul, across the Bosphorus, to Üsküdar, a region in the Asian part of Istanbul. The track was in the correlation of 39:1 of distance to height. He put on some wings and jumped off from the top of Galata Tower. He succeeded and then all of a sudden people were praising him. The Sultan heard of him and invited him to the palace. Hezarfen was glad to come and see the Sultan for he thought that he would be granted some sort of gifts. Indeed, the Sultan gave him a bag of gold coins but to his surprise, the Sultan then told him to go away to a distant land, I suppose because he was somehow a threat for the Sultan.

∴ Be clever, but more importantly, be clever enough to place yourself. 

Yeni Camii

In front of The New Mosque

Istanbul, Turkey

Galata Bridge

Various views from Galata Bridge

Where we had our grilled fish sandwich

Turkey felt much like Indonesia. The similarity was how you could sense that it was still very much a developing country from the infrastructure and the way people behaved. There were different parts of Istanbul where you can really feel the discrepancy: there was definitely the gap between the rich and the poor. However, the city was pretty clean - quite unexpected to me - and the transportation was pretty well done. The people could sometimes be very pushy and annoying especially in the touristic areas (very imaginable in Indonesia too). They did not want to do you any harm, they just wanted to make a living. At night and early morning, girls were the rarest scene to be seen on the streets of Istanbul. Although it is a neutral country now, the Muslim root is still palpable, especially in the old part of the city. That was why I got hit and followed by guys there because apparently there were not so many other girls wandering around in the morning just before the sun rises. There were tourist traps in the city, so it was to your intelligence that you could outsmart those unnecessary expenditures. Have dinner somewhere else, not around Sultanahmet, for you could get better food for better price somewhere else.

Solid Relations

This is what I have been on lately. Happy weekend!

Copenhagen

One the 4th of January 2012, we arrived in Copenhagen after an overnight bus ride from Prague via Dresden, Berlin, and Hamburg. We hopped on the bus at 18:00 and arrived at 06:30 the next day. How happy we were to find ourselves stranded in Copenhagen, for people are ever the nicest and the happiest in the world. 

 

My highlight in Copenhagen was perhaps going to Louisiana. It was simply the best Contemporary Art museum. That was how I felt. We saw everyone's from Klee to Ai Wei Wei. The collection was just amazing!

"Only through making choices can things be achieved and consequently changed"

- Ai Wei Wei 

 

Oh and also the Royal Library was one of the best joy. I think I have talked about it enough to bore people, but I adored it so much that I would not mind staying there just inside the library.

Since we were there, we had to say hi to the mermaid. Polypocket-size mermaid that was. I did not realize how tiny she is for people were so excited to walk along the way to say hi to her. Therefore I made two copies of her just for exaggeration.