Since the “end of the program”, I have still been continuing to work at the site for 4 more days, more than I anticipated. I knew I didn’t have to stay, but it felt right to do so. On Thursday night, I left for good, and since then I have been so busy with traveling  that I didn’t have time to reflect on the experience until now. 

Looking back at the project as a whole, it is quite amazing how much we were able to accomplish in 4 weeks. I believe that this would normally take around 4-6 months at the very least. It is also a very unique experience in that we are involved in both the design and construction of the project. In the real world, we would most likely be involved in one or the other. With such an opportunity, we are able to understand the implications of our design decisions on the construction phase of the project, something we would not be able to really understand otherwise. 

Another aspect of this project that made it very unique and allowed it to be successful is the variety of people involved in it. For this project, there are 4 main groups of people involved: the architecture students from Chalmers University, the structural engineering students from Chalmers University, the summer workers from Gothenburg, and lastly us, the engineering students from Rice University. Coming from very different backgrounds, each group provides their own skills and insights for this project. The architecture students helped a lot in the design of the appearance of the project. The also did the drawing necessary for the construction of the project. The structural engineering students as well as the majority of the rice students refined their design to make sure that it can be constructed and that it will be safe for children to use. Lastly, the local summer worker shone when we had to order/buy materials for the construction. Since most of us cannot speak fluent Swedish, we depended on them to get us the materials we need for the construction of the outdoor classroom. Without any one of the 4 groups, I believe that this project would not have been possible. 

The fact that there are 4 very different groups of people from very different backgrounds working together is something I feel like is quite amazing. It can sometimes feel like fate that we are here working together to achieve a common goal. But with some reflection, that is how most things work nowadays. We can no longer work in small groups and accomplish big things. We are very dependent on having large groups of people from different backgrounds and locations working together to achieve something great. The two things that prompt me to say this are the black hole images that require telescopes from all around the world, as well as scientists and engineers working together to provide us with the image we wanted. The second thing is CERN, which is a collaborative effort from many different institutions, let alone people. If this is the way things are done, this is a great opportunity to understand the intricacies of working in a diverse group.

Although there are hardships like I mentioned in the last post, overall, this project has been a positive experience. I am really glad I got to be a part of it.

One thing I forgot to tell you guys about Week 3, was that we didn’t go to work on Friday. It was midsummer weekend (midsummer being on Saturday), a nationwide celebration here in Sweden. As I have learned through conversations with Swedish natives, midsummer is a celebration of the fertility summer brings. On Midsummer, it is a tradition to have a gathering around a maypole that is raised in honor of the celebration. Afterwards, people would make circles around the maypole and dance to the “little frog” song or Små grodorna. I wish I was there to observe it, but as a group, we decided to take advantage of the long weekend and go to Copenhagen. 

(picture credit: Carolina Romare/imagebank.sweden.se)

On Saturday morning we hopped on a bus early in the morning and left for Copenhagen. It was a pretty long bus ride, and I am glad I was able to squeeze a nap in. We arrived at around noon and walked to our hostel. Along the way, we stopped at an Indian restaurant to grab lunch. I had lamb curry and it was really good even though it was a little spicy. Once we checked in at the hosel, we left to explore the city. We walked to Christiana, freetown in the middle of Copenhagen. I didn’t quite know what it was at first; I thought that it was like a skatepark of some sort. But as we wandered in more and more, I came to the realization that Christiana was actually the underground market for Cannabis. Moments later, there was a raid by the police, and POOF all the sellers were gone in a matter of seconds. With the police all around, we left Christiana and wandered around the city.

I find Copenhagen to be a very beautiful city with a body of water resembling a river running through the center of it, and canals dispersed throughout. In that sense, it is very similar to Bangkok, my hometown. 

Soon, it was time for dinner. Scott’s O-Week mom suggested we go to Reffen, a street food market by the water. I was not disappointed. The place was filled with some of the best street food from around the world: Mexican, Singaporian, Thai, American, Italian, you name it. Because I kinda miss Thai food at the time, I went for the pad thai. It was on par with some of the best pad thais I have ever had. I, was happy. 

 

That night, some of us went clubbing late into the night, but I chose to sleep early so that I could wake up in the morning and see what Copenhagen was like at sunrise. Boy was it beautiful! I think the picture can speak for itself. 

Later that day we took the bus back to Gothenburg. Because we arrived quite late, I had to rush to do my Week 3 blog, and try to get as much sleep as possible, which was still not enough as it turned out.

The next few days were really tough. We are asked to wake up at 6am every morning, then work a very physically demanding job all day, then go back at around 7pm, then cook dinner, eat dinner, shower, take classes from 8:30-10pm, do some homework, and by the time we are done, it was already midnight and I could manage 6 hours of sleep max when I am used to sleeping 10:30hr per night. We did this days and days on end. It was one of the most physically and mentally exhausting things I have ever experienced in my life. It left me on the verge of a mental breakdown Thursday evening. Without the safety net of a support system like the RCC because we are not on campus, it could have gone horribly wrong as you might have imagined. This is something that really has to change if there were to be future iterations of this program. 

I know in a few months, I know I will have forgotten about these bad aspects and only remember the good ones. Hence, I have to put my struggles out there in writing, hoping that no one else will have to experience what I had to go through. 

Fast forward, it is now Friday afternoon and we are about to wrap up iSEED 2019, but all I could think about was the sleep I was about to get that night. The strain we had to endure throughout the whole week ruined what would have been a beautiful moment. I wish it wasn’t like this, but it is the way it is unfortunately…

After we ended our first week of Dare2Build, we decided to take Saturday off as a rest day. All of us went to the archipelago off the coast of Gothenburg. It was really convenient for us as our bus passes allowed us to take the ferry for free. We left at around 11am from our hostel. We took a decently long tram ride to the shore where we then took the ferry to the islands. The first island we went onto was relatively large, but the section we went on to was really small and there wasn’t much for us to do on the island. Since it was about lunch time, we decided to have lunch at the island as we waited for the next ferry. The place we had lunch at was a small seafood-focused restaurant. The atmosphere was really nice as we are able to look out towards the sea. I ordered fish and chips. It tasted good, but the portion was disappointingly small. I guess that’s how it like at touristy places where our choices are limited.    

 

After we finished lunch, we hopped on the ferry to arrive at the next island. This island, although not as big as the previous island that we were on, was easier for us to explore and find things to do. We explored the island, walking our way through the paths and occasionally off those paths as well. After a while, we found a nice dock where we could jump into the icy cold water. Megha, Daniel, Scott, Christian, and Ben all jumped in multiple times before I finally caved and decided to join them. The water was numbingly cold, but it felt awesome!

On a side note, I felt that that experience got me really close to nature, something I didn’t really know I missed, or needed in life. I will try to go out and explore nature more for sure.

Back to the island, after we were satisfied with jumping into the cold water, it was already pretty late in the day and we knew it was time to go back. As the temperature dropped, and our tummies got emptier and emptier, we decided to go to a cafe to wait for our ferry back. There, some of us got dinner, while the others had coffee to warm up their bodies. When the ferry came, we all hopped aboard and traveled back to our hostel. As soon as we were back, we continued on our midterm project. Most of us had a lot left to do and not much time to do it. We spent that night and most of Sunday working on that midterm. Although it was really long and strenuous, the end result, seeing the centering clamp work, was really satisfying. After a long day of doing Fusion 360, we headed to bed early knowing we have a long week ahead, and a long week it was.

We spent the entire week on site, prepping our paths, cutting logs, laying down gravel, and experimenting with prototypes. It was a very tiring week, but it was also very productive and necessary due to the short amount of time we have. Overall, Week 3 was a really long week; we did a lot of things, both fun and tedious, and I can’t wait for Week 4, the final week of iSEED.