“Life is always on the way to somewhere. A year ago I left China to study in the Netherlands, and now for my internship I travel everyday from Rotterdam to Delft, morning and evening, at the same time, on the same train and metro, sometimes even meeting the same people along the way, as I get on the train and they get off.
It is a routine…life…to go and to return.
If my internship is really preparing me for a ‘real life’ job, what a life it will be! In the past three weeks, I’ve traveled back to China twice. The speed of travel today amazes me. Booking airline tickets via Internet is as easy as buying train tickets in Delft . both done within three minutes. In forty minutes I’m at the airport, in ten minutes through the self-service check-in, and then on a plane, bound for a distant continent!
The flight took off punctually from Amsterdam to Beijing. It’s not a short trip . nine hours – but once you’re used to it, it just seems like an extended journey from Rotterdam to Delft. The first dinner was served exactly two hours after take-off: KLM stewardesses in blue uniforms sweetly smiling and asking, “Chicken or pasta?” Always the same. Routines never change. We must invent change.
After dinner was served, I began working on the presentation I’d be giving in ten hours to a client in Chongqing, a municipality in southwest China. Chinese clients are always in a hurry: On November 1, our client unexpectedly told us the final presentation of bidding had been changed to November 7, instead of the 14, as we agreed upon at a previous meeting in Beijing. What then could we do as architects? Only work harder!
I didn’t sleep at all the night before the flight, and now, as I sat on the plane, high above the clouds, working on the presentation, my colleagues on the ground in Rotterdam were working overtime on the presentation booklet.
I arrived in Beijing at 9.10 a.m. local time and immediately contacted my colleagues in Rotterdam to make sure they’d emailed the booklet to the printer in Chongqing. Poor guys in Rotterdam: they’d finished the booklet at 2.00 a.m. Rotterdam time, and hadn’t slept at all the night before either! My internal Chinese flight to Chongqing left at 12.30, and four hours later, having just landed in Chongqing, my mobile rang: it was the client, saying that everyone was already waiting for us in the conference room! We only had time to pick up the booklets from the printer, rush to the client and start the presentation immediately!
The start of the presentation could be the end of this journey, but after one night in Chongqing, a new journey would begin. I flew to Beijing, spent a night there, and then returned to Amsterdam. My life and my life as an architect intern is a never-ending journey. If only I knew my final destination!”
‘Asian Girl’ Yi Ya’s next column will appear in Delta 01 (2006).
“Life is always on the way to somewhere. A year ago I left China to study in the Netherlands, and now for my internship I travel everyday from Rotterdam to Delft, morning and evening, at the same time, on the same train and metro, sometimes even meeting the same people along the way, as I get on the train and they get off. It is a routine…life…to go and to return.
If my internship is really preparing me for a ‘real life’ job, what a life it will be! In the past three weeks, I’ve traveled back to China twice. The speed of travel today amazes me. Booking airline tickets via Internet is as easy as buying train tickets in Delft . both done within three minutes. In forty minutes I’m at the airport, in ten minutes through the self-service check-in, and then on a plane, bound for a distant continent!
The flight took off punctually from Amsterdam to Beijing. It’s not a short trip . nine hours – but once you’re used to it, it just seems like an extended journey from Rotterdam to Delft. The first dinner was served exactly two hours after take-off: KLM stewardesses in blue uniforms sweetly smiling and asking, “Chicken or pasta?” Always the same. Routines never change. We must invent change.
After dinner was served, I began working on the presentation I’d be giving in ten hours to a client in Chongqing, a municipality in southwest China. Chinese clients are always in a hurry: On November 1, our client unexpectedly told us the final presentation of bidding had been changed to November 7, instead of the 14, as we agreed upon at a previous meeting in Beijing. What then could we do as architects? Only work harder!
I didn’t sleep at all the night before the flight, and now, as I sat on the plane, high above the clouds, working on the presentation, my colleagues on the ground in Rotterdam were working overtime on the presentation booklet.
I arrived in Beijing at 9.10 a.m. local time and immediately contacted my colleagues in Rotterdam to make sure they’d emailed the booklet to the printer in Chongqing. Poor guys in Rotterdam: they’d finished the booklet at 2.00 a.m. Rotterdam time, and hadn’t slept at all the night before either! My internal Chinese flight to Chongqing left at 12.30, and four hours later, having just landed in Chongqing, my mobile rang: it was the client, saying that everyone was already waiting for us in the conference room! We only had time to pick up the booklets from the printer, rush to the client and start the presentation immediately!
The start of the presentation could be the end of this journey, but after one night in Chongqing, a new journey would begin. I flew to Beijing, spent a night there, and then returned to Amsterdam. My life and my life as an architect intern is a never-ending journey. If only I knew my final destination!”
‘Asian Girl’ Yi Ya’s next column will appear in Delta 01 (2006).
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