Eighteen years ago, while I was still growing up in Hong Kong, I was in a similar crisis – SARS. Yes, I know that SARS is very different from the current Corona Virus, but I can’t help but notice how the reactions have closely mirrored the present. Eighteen years ago, our worries were not as amplified. Our central source of information was restricted to television and newspaper – all we could do was monitor the numbers and statistics. Each day was a count down for us, slowly tracking the declining numbers of deaths, those who were infected and being reminded to be thorough with our cleaning. The SARS did overtake Hong Kong’s paranoia, our schools did shut down (we had online homework as well), professional practices began to introduce casual clothes into the weekdays beyond Friday to regulate our laundry habits. Public places were perfumed in bleach – the caution was evident.
Read MoreWe’ve reached the semi end goal.
Penultimate that is. And believe me – it was pretty fun trying to present ourselves like a commercial, albeit – it was quite cringe worthy when I was listening to my own voice on the television (after all, nobody likes to hear their recorded voice). There were a lot of discussion about our project on whether it was viable in comparison to just simply building a house in your own yard and renting it out, and it made us really consider our arguments on the reason why our project would be more successful in comparison to others, let alone be better than others.
Read MoreUp until this point – everyone started to evolve their opinion towards the sharing economy however, we were unable to articulate it in our designs or at least, in our presentation.
Which brought us to the fateful night in Fitzroy, hangry and nervous for our debate.
Being someone who hasn’t debated (or even dare I say properly debated) for more than five years I didn’t know how I would react or respond as a second speaker – let alone, being on the negative team I didn’t know whether I would come up with any rebuttals against the second speaker on the affirmative team.
Read MoreWeek 4 and we are diving deeper into our project. We began to focus on the issue of rising house prices. It’s so defeating to just think that our future will be bombarded with high buying prices when the job that we decided to do will not be suffice to guarantee me to accomplish owning something. On the other hand, there’s that gnawing tension between different classes, and also the loopholes of house ownership – overseas investors buying things up and the amount of investment properties accumulating overtime is terrifying.
Read MoreThis semester has been one heck of a roller coaster of self discovery and trying to understand our own position within the world of the Sharing Economy. During those twelve - thirteen weeks I've been keeping track of my weekly thoughts and reflections towards the Sharing Economy. Overall it has been quite eye-opening and it is intimidating to think that these issues really affect the way we work act and live overall. For this series I will most likely split them over in three to four parts since some entries are rather long. Overall it is a documentation of my progress over the twelve weeks.
Read MoreThis year, I was thrown into a world of political conflicts in the architecture field. It was a very brief glimpse of what it was like to be working in the midst of it. From event organisation to attending meetings of different committees, as if it was not obvious from the very beginning, there lives a huge political agenda behind each section of the faculty. Whether it’d be who would be running the studios to what projects can go through, or who can be part of the party the circle can become a toxic bubble - let alone those who have come across it can already become part of the degrading situation.
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