Face(Flaunt)book

2004. Facebook (as we see it today) was born, with the intent of letting people be in contact with the important people in their life. 

"Facebook helps you connect and share with the people in your life"... so is written on its home page.

It's a really vivid world inside. The moment I open my FB homepage, several notifications are already flashing on the top blue ribbon. Sometimes I even come across a couple of friend requests from some long forgotten friend. Shrouded by oblivion, I exert my grey cells to see if they could come up with an interpretable result. If they do....Confirm tab is pressed, else...... who cares!! Confirm it anyway.....after all; the whole affair culminates into a concert of acquiring maximum number of friends.

Mr. Zuckerberg would have turned into an “accidental”, youngest billionaire with this “Facebook” mania but I see rubble of several careers and would-have-been billionaires below it, like the children who do nothing all day long but sit before a computer with the Facebook page open, in some isolated corners of their homes. The only noise that one would hear coming from them would be the keys being tapped. They can sit all day long on that screen without turning their neck or blinking.....(I wonder if they even breath). The membership to Facebook is open to you if you 13 years or above. I don’t understand why a 13 year old child needs Facebook?? To connect with his kindergarten friend where he used to go?? What would be his status?? (“I’m a Complan boy!!” I suppose...or “I reached 4 feet today, my mom is Proud” and his buddy would comment “HEHE, m already 4’6” :P”).

Anyways.....the whole idea is that one would be happier if he/she connects to more and more people. Oh yes! People do seem a lot happy in their photographs and profile statuses but they are sheer skewed misinterpretations of their actual lives, showcasing it in the best possible way. The world of FB is surreal and far removed from reality.

Every now and then you would see one of your friends’ pic, drinking beer and surrounded by chicks and would make you envy him. If you are one of the “desperates” you would be fuming within seconds to see some friend of yours’ Relationship Status suddenly switched to “engaged”. Some of my friends have 500+ friends, I don’t think I could remember so many people. From my own friend list’s 269 friends, I chat with hardly 50 of ‘em. One of my friends has put me under heavy psychological pressure by developing six packs, while I am still that same “walking skeletal meskwork with a 5mm dermal cover”. Then I see one of my friends, studying at the NUS, Singapore, flashing the status “SEP at University of Calgary, Canada, should I go or not...plz help!!!”...I mean I would have gone straightaway! Why do you even need to ask?? Then I see an acquaintance getting a 19.2lac offer from GE or something; a girl surrounded by gift boxes (which might be empty) she got on her birthday or Valentine’s (which would shortly ignite a “fence” between me and my girlfriend); friends on exotic vacations; everyone laughing, giggling, getting drunk. Everyone seems so happy, content, employed, brawny, and adventurous.

You’ll label yourself “abject” with certitude.

Suddenly you realise with depressing alacrity that everyone around you is getting lucrative job offers, holidaying, bungee-jumping, spelunking, partying, constantly shopping, in a football team, gymming, getting engaged and getting prettier.

All this is surreal, people’s attempt to flaunt the best facade of their life while shoving the other down somewhere in the darkness. This is not a genuine landscape of their lives. And if it is then I think that there is something terribly wrong with my stuck life where everything I achieved was only after a struggle.

And just like that I turned 20 today!!


Two decades I traversed withall,
Somethings I did please me, and somethings appall,
No significant event overall,
But I exulted greatly today on my birthday,
'Coz there were queued several wishes on my Facebook wall,
I then realised, this solitary thing I earned.....my chums and pals,
Esp. my Mohita, distinguished from all,
Thank you God, Thank you all.

And yes Happy New Year 2011 everyone!!!
Have a smashing, dashing, rocking and booming year ahead!!!

Down the lane of the noughties (Edifices) [3/10]

3. European Southern Observatory Hotel, Cerro Paranal, Chile (2003)

         At 2,400ft above sea level, this "hotel" for astronomers working in the Atacama desert has been designed to use the landscape to provide a comfortable environment in an inhospitable location. The hotel was designed to minimize light output that could disrupt the primary purpose for the astronomers' visits - the highly sensitive telescope peering out into space. And it works - the total light emissions from the building are smaller than a 100w bulb. Designed by Auer and Weber. This "hotel" for astronomers working in the Atacama desert is a perfect fusion of architecture and landscape, from the Munich practice Auer and Weber and engineers Mayr and Ludescher. Coolly geometric red concrete walls form a quasi-monastic courtyard, behind which rooms are stacked in orderly rows.


FEATURES:

The design facilitating the reduction of light emission

• The main challenge was not disrupting the telescopes highly sensitive installations. So it has been designed so that the total light intensity emanating from it is not more than that of a 100W bulb.
• Like a dam across a reservoir, the hotel spans a shallow depression. Surrounding cliffs act as a support wall, although they do nothing to impede the breathtaking views of the ocean, especially from the dining wall balcony.
• Like a dam across a reservoir, the hotel spans a shallow depression. Surrounding cliffs act as a support wall, although they do nothing to impede the breathtaking views of the ocean, especially from the dining wall balcony.
• Concrete was chosen as the chief construction material by a process of elimination. Even then, water to mix the concrete had to be shipped in by tankers. 

• Walls and ceilings have been left exposed and the concrete dyed red with ferrous oxide (or rust, to give it its common name) to match the desert outside. To continue this nature-inspired theme, the steel used in the facade and interiors has been powder-coated, to give it the appearance of raw metal. 
  This use of concrete helps combat the extreme temperature differences found in the region. Its thermally sluggish behaviour has a positive effect on the temperature of the interior
  spaces.
• At the heart of the hotel is the lounge area, a steep tropical garden inside the 35m-wide transparent dome.
• This rises above the hotel's central lounge area and creates a formal counterpoint to the telescope's enormous concave mirrors. The geodesic dome is covered in translucent polycarbonate panels that help to keep out the sun's radiation.

    

Earthquake Protection:

A view from the telescope

• Partition walls have been stiffened and protected with expansion joints. Certain parts of the building, such as the 8m-high retaining walls, are decoupled.
• Using an innovative new technique, these concrete blocks have been anchored to the ground with fibreglass mats, so that they absorb any movement.



The Central Oasis

• In the event of an earthquake, the structure would float above ground, thus absorbing the shocks of the horizontal movement.

                         

The hotel also featured in a James Bond movie: "Quantum of Solace".