A week in Paris, will ease the bite of it ...

as Billy Strayhorn was known to say.

Returning to Paris for a brief visit after 30 years, I was  reminded of some of the qualities that had remained with me after my first visit. The attention to detail in display like in this fruit and vegetable  shop is quite striking:

  

.An aspect of the scale of buildings I noticed is that many edifices in the centre of Paris tend to make one feel rather small. The centres of capitals like Lisbon or Amsterdam I find more satisfyingly human 

scale, by comparison.

 The Pompidou Centre complex was worth revisiting just to marvel at its exoskeleton design which looks as innovative today as it did back in the 70’s with its mechanical systems made visible outside rather than concealed inside the structure as is still the norm in most buildings. The escalators connecting the floors are external to the complex.

Functional structural elements of the building are color-coded: green pipes are plumbing, blue ducts are for climate control, electrical wires are encased in yellow, and circulation elements and devices for safety (e.g., fire extinguishers) are red.

Apparently the designer of the Nike Air trainers was inspired by the Pompidou Centre concept!

First time I've seen a covered bridge

Up in the mountainous former goldrush land of Nevada County, Northern California I had a chance to visit a different type of toll bridge – the Bridgeport covered bridge which in its heyday used to charge 1$ per horse and 50 cents per rider to cross above the fast-running Yuba river.

Built in 1862, it qualifies as a Historic Civil Engineering Landmark  designated by the American Society of Civil Engineers. It uses a Howe Through-truss design  and is one of the longest of the covered bridges still existing in the US.

Gold-panning is permitted in the Yuba river although given the powerful current on the day due to melting snows upstream I didn’t try my luck.

Certainly not the first Irishman to trudge through the Yuba River valley, now preserved as a National Park, I naturally enough found myself humming the old Irish tune Mursheen Durken

“As sure as me name is Kearney,

I’ll be off to California

an’ instead of diggin’ praties

I’ll be digging lumps of gold”

The classic 1968 Dubliners version can be found on Youtube and I had the pleasure of accompanying Dubliner Ronnie Drew on guitar as he sang this in cabaret back in the 80’s in Cork city when he was touring as a solo act.

One also needs to be on the look-out for wandering mountain lions and for poison oak around these parts apparently – didn’t see any of the former and carefully avoided the latter! 

Golden Gate vs. 25 April

While at a technology management conference in San José, California I took the opportunity to visit San Francisco.  It was interesting to compare its bridge with the Lisbon one I have been crossing regularly over the last 22 years (see earlier post for comments on Sydney bridge).

The Golden Gate suspension bridge with a span of 1,280 metres is said to have the 9^th longest span in the world for this type of structure while Lisbon’s 25 April bridge with a span of 1,013 metres comes in at number 21.

There have been some cases of suicide over the years on the 25 April even though it does not allow pedestrians to cross. The Californian bridge does allow pedestrians – albeit with a helpline for the suicidal.

Cyclists too!

Two other points of difference:

There doesn’t appear to be a permanent separation between the incoming and outgoing traffic lanes as we have in Lisbon. I assume this is to give flexibility in lane assignation in periods of high one-way traffic, but it does assume a high quality of driving discipline on the part of users.

On both bridges the toll is paid only on city entry but the Californian predominantly manual cash collection system seems much slower than the Lisbon version which has been largely automatic using the Via Verde RFID-based system for many years.

Update 1 (2013)

There were 2 separate incidents involving teenagers surviving falls from the bridge in 2011. One of these was a suicide attempt while the other is believed to have been a stunt. There has been an average of 25 suicides per year from the bridge with a total of 12,000 deaths since the bridge opened. A controversial film, The Bridge, recorded the leaps of 24 of these in 2004. The bridge is 60 m above water level (the Lisbon 25 April bridge is 70 m)

Update 2 (2013)

Tollbooths were discontinued in March 2013 in favour of an electronic system that photographs licence plates. 

Two things learnt in Jordan

While in Jordan for the EDUCON 2011 conference we got a chance to visit Petra and Wadi Rum desert.

  1) At Petra I was intrigued to see the series of rectangular marks either side of the carved entrance to the Treasury. According to our guide Isam, they were the locations of the scaffold used by the artisans to carve the intricate designs higher up on the structure. As the lower part didn’t have this kind of detail they were not necessary there (click picture for a better view).

2) In both the Arab script (here in a carving of T E Lawrence in Wadi Rum) and the ancient pictograms of Bedouin (also in Wadi Rum) the script is right to left. Apparently early written languages (Sumerian, Arabic etc) were right to left because they were carved in stone and this was easier from R to L with early writing instruments. 

When writing with ink on papyrus in Egypt and parchment in Greece became more common, L to R was more convenient. In fact Greek started out R to L and later changed over and this in turn gave rise to Latin and other modern European scripts.

Singapore 3 - street sights

The  city centre is mostly modern but the Little India and Chinatown quarters feature an interesting  mixture of colonial and contemporary architecture

 Educational sign in a market complex: 

"The way to Pronounce Tuition is  too-ish-uhn"

Street sign advertising unusual product at the extensive Mustafa's Department Store:

 and nearby a warning about inappropriate public behaviour:

Singapore 2 - Buddha Tooth Relic Temple

There was a ceremony taking place when I came across the temple as I was exploring the Chinatown quarter. Clicking gives a larger version of the photo.

 Temple roof garden with prayer wheel

Singapore 1 - 57 story hotel

In Singapore for the  ASEE GLOBAL COLLOQUIUM ON ENGINEERING EDUCATION  at the Marina Bay Sands hotel gave the opportunity to check out what some consider an important example of modern hotel construction. The 3 towers of the hotel are joined at the top of their 57 story structure by a Skypark with swimming pool. Although undoubtedly impressive, the casino, luxury shopping mall and general hubris of the undertaking left me with a certain ambivalence. 

That being said, my pre-breakfast and moonlight swims in the vanishing-edge pool at the start and end of each day  were unforgettable. Pictures below show the pool during a tropical storm and on a normal day. The city was under a noticeable haze at the time due to the atmospheric effects of forest fires in Sumatra.

Really Madrid

Was in Madrid recently for the IEEE Educon 2010 conference.

Rooftop view from my central Madrid hotel showing arched Moorish-style windows:

Felix Candela was a Madrid-born structural engineer noted for construction work using thin shells made out of reinforced concrete which was very advanced technically for its time.

As he spent much of his life in exile during Franco’s time most of the public buildings he designed are outside Spain, principally in Mexico, but the roof of the Our Lady of Guadaloupe church in Madrid is a good example of this aesthetically pleasing combination of material science and geometrical design. The style had its heyday in the period from the 1950’s to 1980’s but has since gone out of favour with the development of more versatile construction materials.

What's that sound?

A memorable aspect of Sydney is the regular sight and sound of the monorail train hurtling overhead as you stroll through the streets of the city centre.

The photo below shows another street near Darling Harbour. Many of the signs and ads are in Chinese as well as English - I was surprised by the ubiquitous Chinese in this part of the city.

On Sydney Bridge

Sydney harbour is a pretty impressive sight and its bridge one of the main landmarks (after the Opera House).

What surprised me when I got up on the bridge at the end of a weekday afternoon was the number of people who were walking across it from the business side - obviously returning home after a days work - some in suits carrying briefcases, others in jogging gear.

Couldn't imagine the same thing happening on Lisbon's 25 April bridge - in fact I believe its against the law to cross it on foot!

Mind you, I read recently that they temporarily grassed over the entire Sydney Bridge one day and held an enormous picnic there - now that's a creative idea.

PHOTO: http://www.news.com.au/travel/galleries/gallery-e6frflw0-1225791052158?page=7

Great Barrier

Knowing I was going to be at this year's Research in Engineering Education Symposium which happened to be near Cairns, Australia got me thinking about finally seing a real coral reef - a boyhood fantasy of mine dating back to reading the classic Coral Island by RM Ballantyne in my pre-teen days (and one which I seemed rather unlikely to fulfill growing up in Cork, Ireland in the 50s).

After the symposium finished I had a free day and managed to book a boat-trip out to a platform floating over the Great Barrier Reef.

I was concerned that I would have to remain onboard as I have a health problem which means I have to avoid exposure to strong sunlight but to my delight they supplied lycra suits and all we needed to go snorkelling over the reef ... so off I went exploring what I am told is the only living organism large enough to be seen from space.

So, dream fulfilled 50 years down the line! 

The blind leading ...

Some years ago I set a text in an exam for my business students about a rather unique example of entrepreneurship I had come across: a restaurant in Zurich where the majority of the staff were visually impaired.

Passing through Zurich on my way back from the Research in Engineer Education symposium in Davos, presented an opportunity to check it out at first hand.

So, after about half an hour of trudging around a residential suburb of the city I came upon the Blinde Kuh (Blind Cow – named after a German children's game similar to the Blindman's Buff I played as a child), an imposing two-story building in its own grounds.

Entering the brightly lit entrance hall the friendly and apparently sighted young receptionist told me that one usually needed to book in advance but as I was alone they should be able to fit me in and she then picked up the phone and confirmed this with staff inside. I was told that my waitress Andrea would come to collect me in a few minutes but first I should my food and drink from the menu on the wall and I should stow any light emitting objects lie cell phone or watch in the lockers in the hall.

A few minutes later I was introduced to Andrea, a young woman in what looked like an old-fashioned waitress uniform. She turned her back and in basic English explained I should put my hands on her shoulder and once I had rather hesitantly complied led me through thick curtains into a dark hall, through double doors down a sloping corridor in complete darkness. Finally through more curtains and we were obviously in a large room, full of rather noisy people and as I stumbled behind my guide the strong smell of food reminded me I had developed quite an appetite walking around looking for this place.

I was guided to a seat at the end of a table and soon after I had awkwardly seated myself a and fumbled around in front of me to see what was on the table, Andrea was back with my beer and starter. She told me that if I needed anything I could just say her name and she would come. She added laughing that I was sharing a table with 7 beautiful young women. “Yes we are 7 beautiful young women” confirmed a voice from just next to me to laughter from the rest of her companions.

It transpired they were work colleagues on a girls night out to celebrate the birthday of one of the group. We went on to have a really delightful dinner-table conversation and they even got me to sing a little of an old Irish ballad, Roisin Dubh which seemed to go down well with the nearby tables.

My initial feelings of almost infantile dependence on entering this large dark space were now replaced by a certain sense of liberation: I would not normally have joined a table of 7 young women in a restaurant, much less revelled in the company and begun singing after a single beer. Whats more, after repeated empty fork arriving at mouth incidents I was soon enthusiastically eating my main course (pasta and salad) with my hands, aided by some kind of baps it was served with. I noticed people at other tables seemed quite noisy and boistrous and got the distinct impression the total darkness encouraged us to behave in a slightly larger than life fashion.

My 7 companions departed in excellent spirits and I was left to finish the meal on my own. The food did seem particularly tasty, due perhaps to a heightened sense of taste, and I must say it was a very satisfying experience eating and drinking in this ambience. Andrea must have been in attendance somewhere nearby because whenever I said her name she was on hand to attend my request. When I had finished I was guided out again and found myself blinking in the brightly lit foyer paying my bill.

As I set off back to my hotel I reflected that I had often tried to imagine what it would be like to be blind but now realised it is one of those things you can only appreciate at first-hand and the memory of the evening is likely to stay with me a long time.