archi...torture?

The associate dean of my school was at my work the other day and after he had embarrassed me much in front everyone by saying one of his "wonderful students" was in the room (I love him to bits!), there were questions from everyone asking me if studio really was as bad as he made it sound. "There's a different world out there in Marvin Hall," he said. There is no doubt that we are a cult. We do things or say stuff that makes no sense to others but is absolutely normal within the architecture circle. For all the times my oddities have made people around me roll their eyes, I put together this list of "You know you're an architecture student when..." :

• ... you go to an art museum and take pictures of the building.

• ... you have more photos of buildings and models than people. Thus, you have a folder like this on your computer:

• ... you find yourself waking up on the wrong side of your drafting table.

• ... you know what FLW stands for.

• ... you know, off the top of your head, the dimensions of letter, ledger, and tabloid sheets. 

• ... you are changing and there are drafting dots stuck to your shirt and jeans. 

• ... people ask your plans for a holiday and you tell them holidays just mean more time to sleep.

• ... people talk about the Guggenheim and you ask "which one?"

• ... you can't think in studio; studio is for work-work. Epiphanies happen at the randomest of times, thus, the ubiquitous napkin sketch.

• ... you know what campus looks like at 4 in the morning.

• ... it is perfectly normal to possess more than 5 rulers.

• ... you are most productive under adrenaline-fueled-panic mode. 

• ... you have thought about how you could have survived better in architecture school if you were a vampire at some point of time: they don't sleep, don't eat, and don't bleed. 

• ... you talk about fenestration.

• ... you know you are not likely to be earning a lot when you graduate, yet find yourself spending mindlessly on studio supplies.

• ... you think it is perfectly normal to take notes with a drafting pen at lectures.

•  ... sleep deprivation torture doesn't work on you.

• ... your professor thinks Frank Gehry had a little too much to drink.

• ... you see the word "bass", you immediately think wood. Not music, not fish. 

• ... you've seen movies in studio, you've laughed your ass off about something not funny, you've sprayed your drawings with hair spray, you've lost stuff in the mess that is your desk. When you've gotten 3 hours of sleep, everything is funny.

• ... you want to toss your model in the trash as soon as review is over. You can't stand the sight of it after working on it for weeks. 

• ... score isn't to get a girl. Or to do well on a test. 

• ... you're tired of hearing things like: "missed opportunity", "has potential", "feels unresolved", and everything cliched the reviewers like to say.

• ... you know that Murphy's Law applies not only to butter on toast, but glue on chipboard/wood too.

• ... coffee runs in your veins.

• ... you have a playlist for studio.

• ... model = project. Not Adriana Lima.

• ... you've had the architect-engineer argument more than once. Your professors have dissed engineers more than once. 

• ... you ask for studio supplies as birthday presents.

• ... regardless of how much torture, you go back every day because it's what you love and there's nothing else you would rather do! :)

After Osama

     U.S. agents killed Osama bin Laden in Pakistan. The al-Qaeda leader was responsible for great suffering; I do not mourn his death. But I do not celebrate it, either. I am worried about my country's security now, more than ever. Dread lingers over me: Pakistan may have to pay the price for this.

    Crowds justifiably celebrated bin Laden's death in downtown Manhattan, where a decade ago al-Qaida terrorists massacred nearly 3,000 Americans. The statistic that many people do not know is that since the subsequent US invasion of Afghanistan, terrorists have killed nearly five times that number of people in Pakistan. Five times. Before 2002, suicide bombing was a word unknown to Pakistanis. Now, suicide attacks by Taliban/al-Qaeda, have slaughtered over 34,000 Pakistani civilians, policemen and army personnel. The annual number of Pakistani fatalities from terrorism has surged from less than 200 in 2003 to more than 3,000 in 2009. Every day, Pakistanis are targets for bombs, bullets, cannons, and drones. Bin Laden declared war on Pakistan, too.

    Despite all of that, CNN was having a field day yesterday (I didn't even bother watching FOX). Their target: Pakistan. The crux of every conversation was Pakistan's supposed support for al-Qaeda and the likes. All of this may make for great rhetoric but makes no sense when one asks why Pakistan would care about the group that has killed thousands of Pakistanis and destroyed all kinds of infrastructure and investment? We were the world's second fastest growing economy in 2005 (China was first). Now, our economy is in the dumps. Are we really going to bring this upon ourselves? And yes, Osama was found in Abbotabad, but who is to say he stayed in one location. For ten years? Please. We also know that this operation wouldn't have been possible without the support of Pakistani forces. We are not the perpetrator, we are the ally and the victim.

     Pakistan is not a country that accommodates and hides mass murderers. Pakistanis just want to be left alone and go back to the time when their lives were plain regular: tranquil. If Osama bin Laden's death means that America can begin to withdraw its forces from Pakistan and Afghanistan and that we can somehow rediscover peace, then one day Pakistanis are going to celebrate, too. But till the continued al-Qaeda/Taliban operations all around the world, mass murder of innocent civilians in my country and elsewhere, the norm of racial profiling of American-Muslims, human right injustices in Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay and all such heinous acts are not put to end, I do not have a reason to celebrate.