Hello Everyone a report from University

Greetings one and All. It is I Gowan James Ditchburn and I am here to tell you I am still alive. Well I think I am an over-long discussion with some philosophy students may make me rethink that.

Anyway this is where I live :-D. Okay it is not pretty (an understatement perhaps). This is Huia Residence a former nurses home (not nursing home) built in 1969 in the then favoured style... the same one everyone hates today.

Behold the brutalist beauty...

it holds 321 residents... which seems odd as I would have thought a brutalist architect would have despised such a humorous number and gone for something well even and possibly a multiple of 10. Then again renovations could have taken place to accommodate this number.

Now for where I learn/work/read the news (that is how I procrastinate... it is rather depressing). The Architecture and Planning building. AKA the longest running joke in the university because it is an architectural disaster.

This is literally the only image I could find, not a surprise

Now for all of you out there who love pictures of highways here is a picture I am pretty sure is taken from our studio room. Studio is our special place we share with the second year students and unlike other courses where that would mean building a stadium to house more than 1-2 thousand people all the first and second year planning students would just about form a Roman century. there is around 35 second years and 45 first years.

Can you spot Huia???

Well your probably wondering what I have been up to...

No modelling I am afraid. Although I am sure the owner of the corner shop has been stalking me as aircraft kitsets have magically appeared in her shop in recent days. including a 1/144 scale A380.
BUT
This semester I shall be making models although at a much smaller scale than what I am used to. But with access to lazer cutters and 3D printers I will be getting close to the cutting edge tech for our hobby.

So what have I been doing?

Well in halls I have made lots of friends some of whom have left us sadly because they did not pass or quit their courses. Tonight I shall take part in a quiz and I shall probably be studying (well I have to do it at some point).

In University the list of amazing things I have learnt is so long I shall not be able to cover it. For those of you who forgot I am taking a Bachelor of Urban Planning (Honours) or BUrbPlan(Hons). Yep there is no denying that the degree I hope to achieve has a ridiculously long name. As you would expect this means I have to cover a lot of things but even I was taken aback by the shear range of topics. For instance in this year alone I have an economics, a law, an urban issues (ecology), and visual literacy paper on top of my two studio papers, the introduction paper (which itself covered a range of topics) and a general education paper (I chose statistics).

Despite being somewhat overwhelmed I am enjoying every minute the things we cover are all highly relevant to the world we live in. Although at times it is depressing to hear about how many problems there are and how it is so hard to overcome them, climate change just wont go away, it is with a certain sense of pride that we carry on, knowing we will one day be at the front line combating these issues.

well that's about it from me.

Oh and if you want to have some help planning a miniature city please get in touch :-D it's what I love to do. I'll make sure your city is well laid out and would be a joy to live in! Just so you can bombard it and have tanks roll through it streets.