Noel & Via

Our project, Audiograffiti, is now on the front page of our school website The feature is about the upcoming school exhibition to be held in the Milan Triennale (one of milan's museums) during the Salon del Mobile (one of the biggest furniture fair in the world).

Audiograffiti was our first term project. It was an interacation exploration with sound, time and space. Basically, you enter this baloon room and see 8 hanging microphones. You step on a platform and record your voice. Your voice will be played over and over until it fades.

Posted by Noel at 03:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Noel and I saw the funny Dachsund again today that we first saw when we had newly moved here. It was riding in its sidecar with its tough-guy owner on the motorcycle. It looked so funny with its leather helmet, its ears flapping in the wind. I made it angry because I kept staring at it while traffic was stopped. It barked indignantly at me as if to say: "Don't you dare laugh at my outfit. I'm the cutest thing." And it continued to bark as it kept looking back at us even as its owner started to drive off. Silly, adorable dog.

Posted by Via at 10:40 PM | Permalink

One sign that spring is here is that we have to set our clocks one hour forward. This daylight savings time concept is still so foreign to me. We did the reverse last october to prepare for winter when sunlight is scarce. We have been enjoying great weather last week where it was around 18 degrees. This is the perfect weather if you ask me. You have enough sun that you don't need to put on a jacket and enough cold that you don't have to wear spaghetti straps. (Not that I wear spaghetti straps in Manila).

Unfortunately the weather here is still unpredictable. It's now back to 10 degrees and rain. We have to go do our grocery but the weather made us lazy. Weather forcast says it will be sunny tomorrow.

Posted by Noel at 04:23 PM | Permalink

Enough is enough! We finally slipped a letter under our obnoxious neighbors' door. (Thanks to Kati who helped me edit the Italian :) ) Hopefully this will put an end to the strange noises we have been forced to endure for some weeks now. Think along the lines of screaming banshee. And finally get the uninterrupted sleep we desperately need and deserve! If these Talponia walls could talk...

Posted by Via at 09:52 PM | Permalink

Paris was better the second time around... and it was because I shared it with the love of my life. Indeed Paris is for lovers. The Parisians seemed to be less rude this time around, in fact they were actually helpful. After being in Ivrea for sometime now, we were simply taken by Paris. We missed the big city life. The shopping, the food, and of course the sites.

I particularly loved shopping at Muji, a Japanese-no brand-lifestyle store which was probably where Anonymous Store in the philippines got its inspiration from. They sell stationery, CD players, furniture, clothes, and kitchenware. I also drooled over the english books and magazines in WH Smith. We don't have any English bookstores here in Ivrea, the closest one is in Milan!

Food was excellent too and the variety was what we missed. I specially recommend Cafe Sud. Oh, and a funny thing happened there: I was served a wrong dish but I didn't realize it and went ahead and took a bite. Then suddenly the waitress tapped me on the shoulder and quickly made a switcheroo. Next thing I know the plate in front of me was the one I originally ordered. I still wonder if they ever served the other dish to the person who ordered it. Poor guy.

Posted by Noel at 05:20 PM | Permalink

I can't believe that it has been four weeks since my last entry. I know because our final crit happened yesterday and now the term is almost over. Not much to say there except that the results were pretty much expected. We hardly presented anything new but still received good reviews. Although I thought that the class overall did pretty well and received good critiques.

Spring break is just around the corner and Mum, Dud and Fran will be here soon. Yey! :)

Posted by Noel at 04:09 PM | Permalink

This is a long overdue post on our recent weekend trip where we met Dot and her friends from work. Dot was flying in from Hannover where she and her friends endured a cruel winter but had a week-long seminar as well. It was our quickest planned trip by far. Very crucial to this trips' success were three things: the map my teacher Brunella gave us, the incredible Paris must-sees given by Akemi and Nicole. We found noodles and pancake mix at Monoprix thanks to Akemi, and her description of the scary Japanese man who smelled oil at Fujita Japanese restaurant was classic. Thank goodness to Nicole's great tip of getting the 3-day Metro pass, we were able to use the Sacre Coeur's "cable car" for free while Dot and her friends braved the stairs! Whew!

Even if the weather was gray and we had a brief snow, we enjoyed our weekend in the city of lights. And amazingly, the French indulged our attempts at speaking their language. In fact, we had several kind encounters from the lady that asked Noel if we were lost (she saw us struggling with our map that was being attacked by the wind) to the nice pharmacists that taught us some French phrases and loaded my hands with Darphin beauty product samples! There was also a beautiful baby that adored my lamb-shaped tester whose Mommy thanked us very warmly. But my favorite was the bartender who asked us how to say thank you in our native tongue. We were so taken by Paris' Notre Dame, Louvre, Latin Quarter, Eiffel Tower and lots of charming little shops and cafes, but it was the people that we encountered that left with us a more wonderful surprise and a memory that will stay with us a long time. :)

Posted by Via at 06:55 PM | Permalink

"Do you like snakes?" Was the first thing he asked me. I shuddered no, so my newest protege, Primo showed me his hamster named Enrico instead. I also got to see lots of his very detailed and impressive artwork.

It was a nice afternoon, Kati invited me for lunch and we had a delicious pasta lunch. As soon as Kati left, Primo dutifully put away the dishes and we proceeded to do his homework together. Before that, he showed me his animal jar collection: a scorpion and a snake! Boy was I glad they were enclosed!

In the beginning, I could feel he was testing me, only speaking to me in English (as he is very bright). But after a while, he accepted or understood that we could also communicate in Italian. In fact, he wanted to correct my Italian homework after I checked his English homework!

Soon after, a friend came over to work on their geography project and he introduced me as his tutor. He said they needed to go over to another friend's house to complete this project together. So I checked with his Mom just to be sure. It was all right, she assured me.

I was glad that we got most of his homework done. It was a good afternoon.

Posted by Via at 05:41 PM | Permalink

Here at the Institute there are no grades only one day presentation sessions called “crits”. These crits are often torture chambers where your ideas get chopped up and massacred by harsh words. These crit sessions are often grazed by unsuspecting visitors from big companies like Sony.

This crit was particularly a hard one, it was the mid-term crit for our service design course. We were tasked with presenting our mission, context, prototype and service concept to the institute’s steering committee in 10 mins. The session started tense as usual but this time a very vocal committee member was slicing up not only students’ works but also criticizing our professors for not guiding the students well.

Halli, my Icelandic teammate, and I chose smoking as a subtopic of health. Our mission was to create a service that will help people quit smoking in a fun way. We rehearsed and re-rehearsed. Our presentation was clean and simple. But minutes before our turn, we couldn’t help but doubt ourselves and feel really nervous. So far most of the presentations got ripped apart in public. What would make ours any different?

But surprisingly, the vocal steering committee member was quiet after our presentation. Instead we got a positive feedback from Gillian Crampton-Smith, our beloved director. After her, praise seemed to flow smoothly. But nothing can beat the crit we received from IDEO co-founder Bill Morrdrige who said “This was the nicest scenario presentation I’ve seen in a long time – very brilliant.” Coming from someone who practically invented scenarios this was definitely the best crit I ever had. Via, who had been watching the whole thing, could not contain her emotion and started clapping for us. Everyone followed and cheered us on. I was on a high.

Posted by Noel at 11:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

An old man approached me as I was walking home today. He had very bad teeth and stuttered almost as badly when he approached me. I thought he needed help with directions. Turns out he wanted to take my measurements as he represented a fashion design company somewhere in Torino. He was just walking by our little town and was on the look-out for women of all shapes and sizes and would pay 50 euros in exchange for taking my vital stats! If I would just accompany him to his car so he could show me some company information and do the measuring there. His storyline was getting unbelievably lame! And he kept inching frightfully close! YIK! I told him that I had never heard of a such a thing and that I had no time. He apologized for taking up my time and lightly touched my arm (double YIK!!!) as he went on his way. Did he think I was born yesterday????

Posted by Via at 10:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)