#City Centre Shopping Complex

[yukizme]

meet the residents . . .

. . . of SUNFLOWER SQUARE ! — a two-building complex that serves as a residential as well as a commercial centre located in the very heart of the city. sunflower square pride itself on supporting various businesses such as a flower shop, a law firm, a security company, a tattoo studio and their very own café on the upper ground floor; all while maintaining a tranquil and peaceful environment for its residents and patrons. for more details and information about housing plans and/or lease agreements, contact sunflowersqadmin.jp.

yn yln — apt. 444 ; 11th floor.

( art deco by lana del ray // pressed flowers // knowing it's for the better // glitter on the floor )

runs the super freak tattoo shop and routinely cries over the two headed calf as if it were her own child. has a pinterest board named "poems that made me cry on my kitchen floor" and when she has a bad day, scrolls through it to make it worse.

has a cat called coochie and the name has been subjected to many, many, many debates held by her social circle and her only argument has been that it is synonymous with pussy.

would've happily dated sukuna had he not called her baby ugly and lowkey felt it when yuji said that sukuna and her act like a bitter divorced couple who never even dated.

has an nth number of tattoos and piercings and doesn't remember how she got most of them and at this point, she's scared to ask. (she isn't allowed to drink more without supervision anymore because she almost got a face tattoo the last time they all went clubbing.)

sukuna ryomen — apt. 609 ; 12th floor

( ivy by frank ocean // wilted flowers // pink dye // finding escape in escaping )

runs the flower shop, "i'm so thorny." and has never elaborated why he named it that. he thinks it's hilarious. yuji thinks it's fucking stupid.

hates the girl who owns the tattoo studio below his shop in the commercial block, because a. her demon cat ripped apart his expensive as FUCK dahlias, b. his (half) nephew works at her studio and he cannot stand that betrayal and c. he's tired of explaining that he actually runs the flower shop while that witch with pink bows in her hair is the tattoo artist.

deep, deep down he wants that fucker of a cat to like him so bad but he once pspspspspsps-ed at it and it hissed at him and he's been bitter ever since.

really hates his nephew giving out free flowers every time she stops by their floor; the fact that he keeps those ugly fuckers in stock is completely unrelated.

satoru gojo — apt. 382 ; 9th floor

( christmas kids by roar // getting to know someone again and again // clear blue skies // violet nail polish )

part time model who has way too much free time and makes it everyone's problem. he's temporarily (nanami is working on making it permanent) banned from the building common area without supervision because one very bad day, gojo was bored.

is filthy rich and isn't humble about it. everyone hates having him as their pick in the building's secret santa which is mandatory — thank you, utahime — because he's impossible to shop for solely because of how expensive his daily stuff is.

no one mentions the Thing he has going on with suguru, mainly because they value their peace of mind but it very much is a Thing. everyone is sick of their Thing.

he's also coochie's dad (he sent yn increasing unhinged texts until she agreed to co-parent) but yn refuses to call him anything but a deadbeat because she walked in on him and geto making out and it wasn't even 9 a.m.

suguru geto — apt. 193 ; 9th floor

( smoke signals by phoebe bridgers // broken lighters // if you go, you have to stay gone // purple skies )

is an artist and he's so fucking good at it. has his own art gallery a few blocks away and his paintings are so targeted yet so open to interpretation and he has his own little fan base consisting of girls in their 20s and art students and people seeking god.

has to have a required amount of alone time or lay in bed at least once during the day or he starts to follow through with the various threats he has made. (once gojo tried to annoy him but setting alarms on geto's phone to go off every 5 minutes and the next day, gojo was seen wearing a bucket hat that seemingly stayed glued to his head. everyone bet on it being a bald patch.)

has a few piercings that he got done by choso and lets yn decide which one he's gonna wear whenever he changes them.

watched the haunting of the hill house and the haunting of the bly manor with the girls and nanami and cried.

utahime iori — apt. 396 ; 10th floor

( falling behind by laufey // alone with their loved ones in the past // cherries // pink and white )

owns the café on the upper ground floor, "we have coffee" and runs it like the navy. the sign outside the glass door says "these freaks are banned" along with a photo of gojo and geto and another picture of gojo with bright blue sunglasses and geto with a neon green wig.

met yn and shoko in university and they've all suffered through the horrors i.e the 20s together.

loves jewellery and gets matching stuff for her girls, yn, shoko and yuki, whenever she can. her favourite the set of matching pendants all four of them have; a kiwi (shoko); a cherry (yn); an orange (yuki) and a strawberry (for herself.)

once brought in nine kittens and managed to keep them hidden for two weeks because they all escaped and she has been mourning them ever since. prime number 2, 3, 5, 7, 11, 13, 17, 19 and 23 have their own photo album in her phone.

shoko ieiri — apt. 103 ; 10th floor

( last night's mascara by griff // expired makeup // fluorescent lights // forever being eleven years old on that playground with no friends )

teaches biotechnology at the local university and is easily the most liked professor over there. calls off classes because she saw a cat and got lost trying to pet it or because she took too much ibuprofen and can now hear colours; there's no in between.

once went to a couples counselling session with utahime to see how long it would take for the counsellor to realise that they weren't together. the session was over in an hour and a half and they had been advised to talk about their problems and communicate their feelings explicitly. yn has not let this go.

knows the most about everyone in their circle and she's mad at someone, she just casually drops the most insane piece of information and watches everyone argue. everyone likes her.

tried to confess to utahime but she just replied with "thank you!" and shoko doesn't think she can get drunk enough to dissect that interaction or confront her again.

yuki tsukumo — apt. 288 ; 11th floor

( arabella by arctic monkeys // silver jewellery // never existing until someone asks you how you are // animal print )

joined yn's studio because the ad said "hot people with decent drawing skills required + we have a cat" and was hired on the spot after she drew yn a perfect five-pointer star.

tried to bake cookies for her friends one day and managed to cause a blackout. ino still hasn't forgiven her because his essasy was due at 11:59 and his computer crashed and it did not submit; yuki thinks it's his fault for starting to write an essay at 11:27.

has multiple piercings, mostly in her ears and yn and her facetime every morning to decide her earrings for the day.

tattoos yn all the time along with choso. cherries, hearts, stars, dinosaurs, flowers, anything she can think of. her favourite is one with a small cherry shaped like a heart; just like the one on her own middle finger.

choso kamo — apt. 492 ; 12th floor

( strawberry wine by noah kahan // handwritten letters // missing the sunset by a few minutes // choosing to stargazing but it's cloudy )

works at the super freak tattoo shop and has been solely responsible for all the plants around the studio; his personal favourites are christofern, salad and prick.

his texts to yn include photos of plants followed by "look (o゜▽゜)o☆", "yuji asked u to stop by the shop because he has a new combo of flowers for you :D"; "sukuna just called coochie something from pandora's box btw can we slash his tyres ?? !!!!!!!!" and variants.

has a tiny crush on yuki but thinks that yuki and yn have a thing because they're always calling each other very affectionate names and choso thinks that he connected the dots.

sukuna yelled at him for two hours when he learnt that choso started working at the studio part-time and choso went back the next day with cacti and sheer willpower and made his position permanent. choso's mantle photo was placed on the side table by the couch that very evening.

kento nanami — apt. 307 ; 11th floor

( too sweet by hozier // beige and blue // time passing isn't an apology // blueberries )

works in finance. truth be told, no one from the circle knows exactly what his job is or his designation, they just know that he's very serious about his job and that he truly hates someone named "matthew" because of the phrase he often says, "matthew for the love of god — !"

cried when he spent four weeks tutoring ino for his physics paper and he got 3/100.

gojo hangs out so much at his office that they had to put a sign that said "no gojo allowed inside"; the said sign was promptly ignored and nanami had to visit the hr department because of some very interesting words thrown around in his office when he saw jack frost's cousin swirling in his chair.

has only one tattoo but will never ever disclose where it is and what it is.

hiromi hiruguma — apt. 203 ; 11th floor

( lover's grip by them & i // love letters // forced to be the one who got away // banana bread )

has his very own law firm and his office is on the same floor as yn's studio in the commercial block. it's both his worst nightmare and the best thing because the only other choice was next to sukuna's flower shop and he Cannot have that.

his number is saved as "sexie lawyer," "sex c attorknee" and variants in everyone's phone and he has given up on trying to change that.

has a group chat with nanami, shiu and kusakabe and all of them talk so much shit about their work and the other tenants. one time, they were so in deep figuring out the truth behind the divorce of apartment 105 that hiruguma had to make them sign an nda.

since his office is on the same floor as yn's studio, she sometimes hangs out there when she doesn't have any clients and he doesn't have any cases and they watch buzzfeed unsolved.

takuma ino — apt. 338 ; 6th floor

( cherry wine by grentperez // splintered skateboards // but i miss you like a little kid // temporary tattoos )

works as an intern in nanami's company but he might as well be working at the tattoo studio with how much time he spends there. he has his own small desk and a chair in their backroom and he nearly cried when he first found out.

once pulled the fire alarm because he forgot the papers nanami asked him to get and he'd chew on glass before disappointing his mentor. nanami had to make it very clear that he's allowed to forget things but he's not allowed to pull the fire alarm for the hell of it.

he once intentionally placed bread crumbs outside kusakabe's apartment and then procured a few ducks to give the older man a surprise because he insulted ino's hello kitty tank top.

once fell down 28 stairs because there was a double rainbow and he had already downed three red bulls. he regrets nothing.

atsuya kusakabe — apt. 299 ; 6th floor

( softcore by the neighbourhood // fog in winter mornings // i am not a violent dog, i don't know why i bite // cocktails with tiny umbrellas )

no one knows where he actually works; it could either be with nanami or with hiruguma or it could be somewhere entirely different. (it's actually with shiu and toji, he's the head of their marketing department and he has no intention of telling the others where he works lest they bother him there too like they do at his apartment.)

surprisingly likes coochie and takes her to work with him if shiu doesn't have her already. she's their mascot and he'd never admit it to anyone but she has her own small desk with toys and her own name cards.

got forced to dress up for halloween by ino for the party and showed up as the grinch, only to find out that it was just a normal get together and he was only one in costume — he has hated that kid ever since; his hair was green for two fucking weeks.

his most played song on spotify last year was symphony no. 7 in a major, op. 92: iv. allegro con brio by beethoven and shoko gave him so much shit for it that he never ever asked for aux again.

shiu kong — apt. 692 ; 7th floor

( into it by chase atlantic // chevy corvette // always borrowing grief from the future // sunlight on water surfaces )

owns a security firm that he built from the ground up and is probably the most laidback guy ever. babysits coochie when yn goes out and is secretly coochie's biggest fan.

comes from old money but never tells anyone about it outright. casually mentions stuff like "the old manor" or "the private school i went to" and then proceeds to drop the most insane lore when asked about it.

lives in the apartment complex only because he was bored in his penthouse on the other side of the city and watching yn and sukuna argue has got to be the most fun thing here. he once saw sukuna spray yn with water and then proceeded to watch yn push him into the lobby fountain. no, he did not intervene.

has been babysitting megumi since forever and the teen has his own room in his apartment. toji is jealous because his kid actually enjoys shiu's company while he just gets called "shit clown" by his own blood.

toji fushiguro — apt. 375 ; 6th floor

( party monster by the weeknd // half finished whiskey // something other than time that heals all wounds // headlights on the ground when it's drizzling )

works right under shiu at his security firm and does not treat shiu as his boss at all. shiu threatens to fire him every hour but never does. no one is surprised why.

has a fun ton of money due to his job but he's stingy as FUCK. megumi pretended to not know him once when toji had a breakdown over which cereal to take home with him while standing in the aisle.

lives in the apartment right below shiu and calls him when he's out of creamer for his coffee and has shiu pour it from above. yn, who lives right under toji's unit, is sick of them.

will literally never answer his phone, so if someone needs something, they have to either ask someone on his floor to ring his bell (continuously) or go to yn's apartment and throw stones up at his fire escape. (shiu banned them from his apartment after ino fell out the window and on the fire escape; on a completely unrelated not, ino is now banned from standing/sitting/laying down/dilly-dallying/attempting to catch pigeons near any window without adult-er supervision).

[live-laugh-lenney]

interruption | arthurtv

hello!

not very good as following a routine or any kind of schedule so the posting of my writing will be rather sporadic... i do apologise but bear with me on that.

here's one that i've been working on for a couple of weeks, from a request that was sent in to my inbox, so i hope that whoever did ask me to write this enjoys it. let me know what you think and don't hesitate to send in your feedback or send in any ideas that you want me to write.

thank you! love to you all!

enjoy. x

*

Cosy.

That’s how she would describe Arthur’s flat. 

Cosy and very him.

All open plan, with his kitchen melding with his living room mixing with his dining room, but so warm and inviting. A knitted throw-blanket folded and draped over the back of his sofa, that he always said was for show but he never scolded YN when she unravelled the fabric and threw it over her legs when she was curled up beside him, or took it to his bedroom when the nights were too cold for just a duvet and his radiating body heat. Books, labelled from fictional titles to nonfiction titles and autobiographies through to encyclopaedias sat on shelves attached the the walls of his living room, with photo frames of him and his family and wax burners filling in the gaps that melted scents of cinnamon and spiced orange, succulents draped down and in witty plant pots that his friends would buy him for Christmas. Lamps in every corner of his main living space because he felt that the main lighting was much too bright, especially for evenings spent at home with a good book that he’d brought from the bookstore on his outing into the city centre, or too bright for an evening spent at home watching a television show he’d been recommended to watch by one of his friends. 

Where her flat was more in the centre of London, closer to where she worked in an independent coffee house which definitely challenged the Starbucks and Costa’s that were close-by, she became used to the sounds of passing cars and honking taxis and the distant sound of the overground squeaking on the rails as it approached its destination. The hustle and bustle of tourists passing by the entrance to her flat complex, shops on her doorstep, in an area that was full of high-rise buildings and overlooked a park that she spent many of the summery days sat in, with a picnic from Waitrose and a good book and with Arthur, enjoying the time together. So being in the part of London that almost instantaneously switches off in the middle of the evening, once everyone had travelled home and everything had shut up shop for the night, felt almost peaceful to her.

She much preferred his living space to her own…but she was sure that it was the feeling of being in the same vicinity as him that warmed her more than being in the flat itself.

On the evenings he would film with Alex and George and Cam, for a Chaos Crew video that seemed to be in high demand, she found herself dillying around his home and finding things to do until he was finished for the night. If it wasn��t cooking them both a dinner to eat once he was done, it was reading something from his ever growing collection of novels; and if she wasn’t reading a book, she was logging into his Netflix and watching a film to pass the time and, if she’d had a busy day and felt her eyelids sitting heaving, she would curl up and take a nap on the sofa until she was woken up with a soft kiss to the forehead or a gentle nudge into her thigh to wake her up.

But there was something about that evening where she just wanted to be near him.

They’d both, surprisingly, had days off that coincided with each other so they spent the day together and they came rarely and not very often - taking it in their stride and making the most of getting to spend quality time together.They went shopping down the strip together and spoilt the other whenever they saw them looking at something for a little longer than normal, they popped into her coffee house for a cream cake and a coffee and to say hello to her friends who were working that day, they went food shopping because his fridge was a little scarce when it came to ingredients for a dinner that was substantial and they shared a late dinner together where they sat at the dining table with a candle and some fizzy apple juice to impersonate wine because neither of them fancied a drink that night. But she knew their time together was inevitable and she couldn’t help but look at the clock as she counted the minutes down till he said he needed to film a new video - and she couldn’t complain because, well, she had spent the last twelve hours with him. 

But, twelve hours just didn’t feel like enough.

She hated using the word clingy when it came to her relationship with Arthur but… she felt clingy. 

Across the space of his living room, she swerved the sofa and dodged his furniture and tucked the blanket a bit tighter over her shoulders as the gentle breeze of her movements blew it from the bare skin showing for her t-shirt - well, not her t-shirt but Arthur’s t-shirt, yet she claimed it as her own and he couldn’t say no to her when he thought she looked beautiful in his clothing - and she made her way down his hallway to. Goosebumps on her legs as she left the warmth of the sofa but they soon disappeared as she got closer to his office door, accustomed to the chill in the air.

“You know when this guy is telling him to tone it down that he needs to take it down a level,” she heard Arthur remark, a gentle snicker following in suit. 

“Uh, yeah, looking a little bit like a geek there… might want to tone it down,” George’s laugh came next, followed by a chorus of cackles and snickers from the other guys sat on the Discord video call.

“He’s got a fourth badge that’s just homophobic,” her boyfriend retorted back and at that, she rolled her eyes and an unsure smile on her lips because of the emphasis on the last word of his sentence.

She could hear that whatever they were watching on Youtube had been unpaused, ready to carry on before they took another break to add commentary content to the video, and her hand halted over the door handle to his office. Shuffling on her bare feet, the wooden floor of his hallway was cold beneath the pads of her toes, and she just couldn’t figure out the right time to poke her head into his room and ask him just how long he was going to be. She didn’t want to be a bother but the longing-for-him feeling, that sat low in her belly, was becoming a bother to her.

“It is kind of cute. I actually do kind of rate it, like being your own superhero and that… but it is the kind of thing you grow out of when you’re like six,” Arthur stated. 

“Yeah, you’ve got to go as something recognisable surely, right?” Alex questioned and there were some gentle hums of agreement throughout that she probably would have joined in with if they were all sat in a room together and discussing that specific topic, “if you’re gonna go as anything at all.”

“What did you go as to Comic Con?” Arthur wondered, asking the question that everyone was thinking; “I went as Obi Wan Kenobi,” came Alex’s response and he was instantly met with silence. YN could just imagine the smirks and the grins and the laughter that were almost bursting to come to light from the three guys sat there, taking in everything they’d heard.

And YN took the chance.

The door handle squeaked as she applied pressure and the door creaked as she opened it, poking her head into the room, met with the sage green wallpaper of his office and the dim lighting filling the space that he used as background lighting - because he still found his main light to be too bright when filming his Youtube videos. He turned in his seat and let his eyes adjust, smiling upon her arrival once he saw her full figure standing in the doorway, the screen illuminating the side of his face and he slipped his headphones from on top of his head and down to his neck.

“You okay, lovie?”

“Just wanted to know how long you were going to be,” she hummed softly, almost too quiet, but she didn’t want to interfere with their recording because then he’d have been there even longer than planned, “I was gonna have a nap on the sofa but I won’t if you’re not gonna be too long.”

“I won’t be long, no,” he said, “there’s not long left of this video. Give me twenty minutes?”

“I’ll wait up for you,” she smiled, “mind if I just sit in here and watch? Promise I won’t make any sounds. I’m a bit bored out there on my own.”

Arthur smiled warmly at her, letting his eyes wander up and down her body as he took in her comfy appearance, holding up his pointer finger as he turned back to face his monitors and slid his headphones back up his head, setting them back on his ears.

“Guys, YN’s here.”

She could hear the muffled cheers through his headphones from his announcement and she grinned shyly, tightening the blanket around her shoulders, and she closed the bedroom door behind her before shuffling across the carpet. He gave his thighs a pat, inviting her to come and sit with him for a brief few minutes, and she quietly took him up on that offer as she blushed and nodded. He situated himself a bit more comfortably in his chair, unplugging his headphones so she could hear what was happening and moving any lingering wires so she could settle herself down on his lap without pulling any screens off of his desk. Curling up under his arm and bringing her knees to her chest, covering herself with the blanket draped over her shoulders, releasing a content sigh. She wasn’t bothered by her appearance on the screen because she knew he wouldn’t include any of what was happening, without her permission, in the final cut on Youtube.

“How have you been, YN?”

“I’ve been good, yeah. Ready for a sleep but you guys just had to come first tonight,” she smirked, feeling Arthur’s hand tuck beneath the t-shirt hanging down her frame, his fingers tickling up her side in a relaxing and comforting manner, “I feel I haven’t seen you guys for weeks.”

“You haven’t actually,” George remarked with a hint of feigned annoyance, a similar smirk sitting on his mouth, “spending all your time with Arthur now, aren’t you? Taking him away from us. We’ll have to fight for custody.”

She rolled her eyes with a grin and dropped her head into the curve of Arthur’s neck and his jawline, inhaling softly and breathing in the faint scent of cologne still left on his clothing, his arms tightening around her. 

He was warm. 

So warm. 

His hands wouldn’t leave her skin. His arm stayed tight to her waist and his fingers traced soft circles into her hip, just above the waistband of the knickers that dug into her skin, and his free hand kept in its place upon her knee and he gave her a squeeze every so often. 

“I’m letting you have him this weekend,” she hummed, “Platform Roulette, no?”

“I only get him when he’s drunk and annoying,” George frowned playfully, “you get him when he’s all cute and soppy. One can only dream of that interaction, used to have it all the time.”

“YN’s cute and soppy also so they’re practically a match made in heaven,” Cam cackled and YN felt the heat creep up her neck and settle across the expanse of her cheeks, “look at you guys, it’s just adorable and it makes me feel sick.”

“Cam, oh my god,” Arthur laughed, “you guys suck.”

“We love you both really,” Alex smiled, “you know we do.”

*

honestly, ending a story just isn't my forte... i just hate every ending i write.

anyway!

if you got this far then thank you for reading. means a lot to me that you've reached the end. please let me know what you think and don’t hesitate to send me any ideas you may have for future fics. my ask box is always open so don’t hesitate to send anything in.

lots of love to you guys! thank you! xx

[sunnie-angel]

A Soft Touch (pt. 4)

jason todd x f!reader

link to part 3, series masterlist, ao3 link

summary: jason and reader have their first real date. he starts to open up about himself and his family.

tags: fluff, feelings, romantic tension, pet name (angel)

rated teen | wc: 2.9k

a/n: there’s progress in their romantic relationship!!!! finally!!!! translation notes about Vietnamese dish names are at the end

Jay: Are we still on for Friday? I promise that I’m all healed up.

Angel: I’m sure I can fit you into my packed schedule somewhere :)

Angel: (I’m glad your leg’s better)

Jay: Can I pick you up in front of your building at 6:00?

Angel: Yes!

Angel: What are you planning?

Jay: Dinner, then the lights down by the pier walk if we’re up for it

Angel: I meant more like what should I wear…

Jay: Oh!

Jay: It’s a pretty casual place? What you wear to the coffee shop is fine.

Jay: That’s not to say that you don’t always look nice!

Jay: Wait, do you have any allergies?

Jay: Important question: do you like Vietnamese

Jay: Because I can make other plans if you don’t

Jason lets his head fall to the table in front of him, forehead resting on the table between his arms, phone still in his hands. He doesn’t know how you do it, but your presence still manages to fluster him even when you’re not even there. He’s a little embarrassed at just how quickly he’d started to panic, fingers flying over the buttons. But he so desperately wants this date to be perfect. Wants to make up for making you worry and showing up late. His phone buzzes in his hands, makes him look up eagerly.

Angel: Jason take a breath

Angel: You think I’m always cute, I don’t have any allergies, and I love Vietnamese

Angel: And Jason?

Angel: I’m excited for Friday.

Friday dawns, far too quickly and yet not soon enough. Jason chooses his clothes carefully, but now that the appointed hour is fast approaching his eagerness outweighs his nerves. Another soft Henley and sturdy boots have him feeling prepared for anything. He doesn’t bother with styling his hair this time, it would only get squashed by his helmet. His spare for you is still stowed in the saddle bag of his motorcycle where’d stashed it the night before. It’s as he’s running out the door, driving gloves stuffed in the pocket of his leather jacket that he hesitates, then grabs a scarf off of the coat hook.

He arrives in front of your building early, a full 17 minutes according to the clock on his phone. Jason doesn’t want to rush you, it’s his eagerness that’s caused his early arrival after all. He leans against the cooling bike, flexing his hands in his driving gloves, grounding himself from the noise of the city with the stretch and pull of the leather over his knuckles. A buzzing sensation in his pocket has him fumbling for the zipper to his pocket. It’s an incoming call, and for an awful moment he’s scared that it’s you calling to cancel. It is you, but canceling is the last thing you have on your mind.

“Hello, Jason? Look up.” Three storeys up and two windows left of centre is you, pressed up to the window phone to your ear. You’re grinning widely and waving energetically in an attempt to capture his attention. He raises a hand tentatively and waves back.

“Do you want me to buzz you in? It looks like it’s my turn to run late and I still haven’t finished with my hair yet.” You sound so apologetic, he could never hold it against you.

“You ah, you don’t have to do too much. The helmet will probably flatten whatever you do to it?” He doesn’t want to tell you how to look, but he also doesn’t want your hard work to go to waste.

“Helmet? Jason why didn’t you tell me sooner,” you say exasperatedly. “Okay, I’ll figure something out so it’ll fit over my hair.”

“Oh, sorry?” He says.

“Don’t worry about it, I’ll be down in a minute.” You speak absent-mindedly and hang up before he can respond.

Before Jason can get too worried, there you are, exiting the apartment complex, white coat flying out behind you. Only a few inches from him you come to an abrupt stop, hair swinging from the change in motion.

“Hi,” you say breathless, rocking back onto your heels, hands clasped behind your back.

“Hi,” he repeats back to you. Jason drinks you in, the soft glow of highlighter on your cheekbones and the gentle scent of your perfume. A piece of hair has fallen from where it was tucked behind your ear. His fingers twitch with the desire to touch. Slowly, ever so slowly, he brings one gloved hand up, giving you plenty of time to move out of the way. You stand, stock still, eyes bright and comfortable in his space. Gently, he tucks the errant hair behind your ear, lingers a moment before letting his hand drop back down to his side.

“How do I look now? Fine?” You tease, even more breathless than your entrance had made you.

“Perfect,” breathes Jason. Your cheeks heat up from the perfect weight of his adoration. The two of you get caught, trapped in each other’s gaze. Time spins out, unspools in perfect seconds and still you can’t bear to tear your eyes from his. The moment breaks as your stomach lets out a very unhappy noise, making you giggle and him snort.

“Sounds like someone’s ready to eat. Let me stow your bag and we can get going.” Your purse disappears into the saddle bag, exchanged for a helmet that Jason helps you put on, careful not to disturb your hair too much. He moves to the bike, easily slinging one leg across to straddle it. He extends his hand to you, and you accept his help, pulling at your skirt so it’s tucked under your legs.

To distract yourself from the solid warmth of him pressed against your front, you say, “Next time Jason, you really need to send me an itinerary. You’re never going to see me look anything but ‘fine’ otherwise.”

“So sure there’s going to be a next time?” He asks, slipping on his own helmet with practiced ease. The helmet helps Jason focus, cutting him off from your perfume and pretty eyes. The world shifts, stops rotating around you and your presence.

“As sure as I am that it’s going to snow later.” Jason kickstarts the bike, engine purring underneath the two of you. He pulls away from the curb carefully, mindful of his precious cargo and the way your arms tighten around his middle. Normally, Jason would enjoy the speed and freedom of the bike, city whipping away from him too fast to process. Now, with you seated behind him, fingers tightening in the material of his jacket, it’s probably the most touch he’s had from anyone outside of combat since he died. It’s making his stomach do strange things, butterflies taking up permanent residence. The vibrations of the engine and the dull roar of the bike pull him back to the road in front of him.

Soon, too soon, he’s pulling up in front of the restaurant. It’s an incongruous looking place, red and white checkered colour scheme like an old Americana diner, but Vietnamese written on the awning. Jason helps you dismount, fetches your purse while you smooth out your skirts. He holds the door open for you, let’s you walk into the warm air of the restaurant first.

The waiter greets Jason with an enthusiasm that makes him blush and rub at the back of his neck bashfully. One minute the two of you are standing in the doorway, the next you’re sitting in a booth tucked away in a corner, Jason’s got the best table in the restaurant apparently. It’s quieter here, the high padded backs of the booth filtering out the noise of the kitchen and the other patrons. The two of you have your own little bubble.

“Bring all the girls here, do you?” You ask slyly.

“Bring all the— oh! No, I helped the owner out with a situation and she offered me a free meal. She kept getting mad at me for doing takeout, insisted that her food deserves to be eaten fresh. Ever since I’ve been meaning to come back because the food’s just that good.” He looks down to fiddle with his gloves. “You’re the only one I’ve brought with me.”

“Good.” The waiter comes by, interrupting your conversation, dropping off a pot of jasmine tea and taking orders. Jason takes the interruption to enjoy the possessive curl of the word, enjoys your satisfaction in being ‘only’. Not paying attention, he rattles off an order for gỏi cuốn tôm thịt to share and phở tái nạm gân for himself when prompted by the waiter.

You pour tea for the two of you, push one cup closer to Jason’s side of the table. You wrap your hands around your own, bring it up to inhale the warm floral scent of the tea.

“So besides saving small time restaurant owners and reading classic novels, what do you do for fun?”

“I like to cook. It’s something my grandfather taught me. It’s a nice memory even if we haven’t spoken in years.” Feeling as though he’s revealed too much, he takes a gulp of his tea.

“Oh I’m sorry to hear that. He was the one that taught you to cook?” You leave the topic open ended, let him decide if the subject is too painful.

A plate of gỏi cuốn tôm thịt slides between you, the waiter leaving as silently as he arrived. Jason gestures for you to take one of the cold rolls first, and you do, getting comfortable with the silence and eager to be fed. He begins to speak as you dip the roll in peanut sauce, continues while you start to eat.

“It wasn’t just cooking. He taught me a lot about being a good man. I still remember his lessons when I make his recipes.” It’s all he can manage now, mentions of Alfred still too raw to examine for too long.

He puts an end to the conversation by stuffing his own roll into his mouth. The upside, the only upside really, is how much more he can appreciate food now that his senses are heightened. The texture of the shrimp and pork, the chewiness of the vermicelli, the freshness of the mint contrasting with the savouriness of the peanut sauce. He allows taste to overwhelm him, a distraction from his own conflicting emotions.

“Thank you for trusting me with that.” He opens his eyes to you smiling at him openly and genuinely. “So what do you like to cook? Do you bake too?”

It’s a much safer topic, and it carries you through the most of your dinner together. Jason’s been experimenting with different bread doughs, still hasn’t mastered the right ratio of sugar and yeast, seasonings and dried fruit. You tell a story about the best bread you’ve ever had, buttery brioche rolls studded with cinnamon baked apples and candied walnuts. He promises to see what he can do, suddenly eager to know what new expressions you’ll make with his creations in your hands.

Both your bowls of phở arrive, steam rising aromatic and thick. Doctoring your bowls to your liking, Jason notices that you add more Thai basil than he does, but less lime. That you hold your chopsticks comfortably, like you’d used them many times before. That you liked to push your bean sprouts to the bottom of the bowl to get them to cook a little faster.

There’s no conversation for a few minutes, only the sounds of happiness and eating. Truly, it’s the best phở you’ve ever eaten. You look up to breathe, and Jason’s looking at you, bowl empty and chopsticks laid across the top.

“Good?” He asks.

“Oh this is the best meal I’ve had in years. Whatever you did to get a restaurant owner to adopt you, keep it up as long as you bring me along.” He blushes, pink bringing out the delicate heights of his cheekbones.

There’s a warm silence as you finish up your meal. Jason takes the opportunity to drink in his fill of you. He leans back on his side of the booth, hands wrapping around his cooling cup of tea. The feeling of a full belly, the warm interior of the restaurant, and your company make him feel something close to the normalcy of his youth. Like this, he doesn’t have to steal glances, can gorge himself on your image uninterrupted. The soft curve of your throat, the gentle slope of your forehead, and the darkened length of your lashes drops of water to a parched man. The knit fabric of your dress looks soft enough not to irritate even his sensitive skin and he wants to know what it would feel like running through his fingers.

With a satisfied sigh, you place your chopsticks down and push the bowl away from you, lean back into your seat and smile. The two of you both agree that you’re far too full for dessert this time. Jason decisively wins the argument over the bill by saying he’d already paid for the bill in advance, days before the two of you had set foot in the restaurant, any leftover value on the tab added to the tip. You mock scowl at him, impressed by his foresightedness but also not willing to be outsmarted for long.

Stepping out of the restaurant is like stepping into another world. It’s cool, wind whipping at your face already, stars already burning somewhere unseen above. Jason steps out behind you, brushing up against you as the door swings shut. You lift your face up and close your eyes, letting flakes of snow melt on your warm cheeks and tangle in your lashes.

“Was right about the snow.” You say, breathing in the crispness of the night deeply. Opening your eyes, you look straight up into Jason’s teal ones. The affection there is breathtaking, splits your face into the softest of smiles.

“So I guess that means there’s going to be a next time?” He’s not nervous now, almost surprised but just how comfortable spending time with you is, even when you’ve moved from new acquaintances to romantic interests.

“Jason, there was always going to be a next time.”

The door swings open, right into Jason’s back, another customer trying to leave. It breaks the moment, the two of you shuffling off to the side with muttered apologies. You give a little shiver as another gust of wind buffets over you, rub at your upper arms to try and chase away a bit of the cold.

Jason steps in front of you, body blocking out your vision. Your eyes pan up from the lovely view of his chest as his hands work to untie the scarf from around his neck. He wraps it around yours, material still warm from his body, taking care to tuck the ends into your coat so they won’t fly in your face when he drives you home.

“I didn’t know that I could hope for so much.” He says quietly. “Let’s save the pier for a night when the wind isn’t trying to blow you away.” Turning away to grab the helmets, he tries hard not to let the infectious joy burning a hole in his chest affect the steadiness of his hands. Pulling the scarf up higher, you bury your face in it, inhale the scent of leather and aftershave.

Jason drives you home safely, insists on walking you all the way up to your apartment. You’ve just turned the key to the front door, before you remember the borrowed gift around your throat. Juggling your purse and keys, you struggle to unwind the scarf. Filled with a sense of daring he can’t name the source of, Jason lifts his bare hands and gently, ever so gently, folds them over yours to quiet them. Your touch burns, the electrifying leap before a grappling wire catches his weight. You inhale in surprise, look up to search his face. Whatever you find there must satisfy you, contents you to continue staring up at him with wide trusting eyes. He’s not sure he deserves the blind faith and tenderness in them.

Your lips part, ever so slightly on an exhale, and Jason wants nothing more than to taste. But the barest chaste brush of hands already has him trembling, weak-kneed and vulnerable at the gift of your presence. Breathing out shakily, he slowly inclines his head to rest his forehead against yours.

His eyes are heavy lidded as he speaks, “Keep it. Return it at the coffee shop on Monday, yeah?”

Your answering “Okay,” is barely a whisper. It’s so intimate like this, faces so close they’re out of focus, breaths shared between lips separated by mere inches. There’s a rightness to it, one that resonates in Jason’s very bones, and he knows he could never give this thing between you up.

The two of you stand there for eternity, caught in this moment of soft-spun affection, the first tendrils of some deep and nameless emotion rooting themselves in the cavities of your chests. With strength he didn’t know he had, Jason pulls back, lets go of your hands to smooth the scarf around your neck.

“‘Night, angel.” Then he’s striding away, down the hallway towards the staircase, long limbs carrying him out of the building.

There’s a buzz in his pocket just as he reaches his bike. Pulling out his phone, there’s a notification for one new message.

Angel: Night, Jay

gỏi cuốn tôm thịt - rice paper rolls with vermicelli, shrimp, pork, mint, and lettuce

phở tái nạm gân - pho with rare beef and tendon

[notwiselybuttoowell]

By the 1980s, some women had had enough. After decades of struggling with prams and shopping trolleys, navigating dark underpasses, blind alleyways and labyrinthine subways in the urban obstacle course mostly made by men, it was time for a different approach. “Through lived experience,” wrote the Matrix Feminist Design Co-operative, when they launched their manifesto in 1981, “women have a different perspective of their environment from the men who created it. Because there is no ‘women’s tradition’ in building design, we want to explore the new possibilities that the recent change in women’s lives and expectations have opened up.”

A case in point is the Essex Women’s Refuge. The complex, designed by a male architect, had got basic things wrong, from the shared kitchen, which was far too small, to the location of the children’s play areas, which were completely separate from the main communal areas, with no visual or aural connection for passive supervision. Matrix worked on the centre in 1992. Using what became a regular tactic, they presented the women with big cardboard models of different spaces, which they could rearrange to test out different configurations, along with using ribbon marked like a ruler to measure their existing spaces, which were added to the plans as a comparison.

“These were all simple techniques,” says Jos Boys, a founder member of Matrix, “But they made the women feel part of creating the project. A key part of everything we did was to make the language and practice of architecture more transparent and accessible to non-experts.”

Boys describes what now sounds like an unimaginable heyday of community action, participatory planning, squatting, workers’ co-operatives and technical aid centres, with public money readily available. Much of what Matrix worked on was funded by the Greater London Council under Ken Livingstone, before it was abolished in 1986 by the then prime minister, Margaret Thatcher. Their projects included the groundbreaking Jagonari women’s educational resource centre in Whitechapel, east London. Working for – and with – a group of South Asian women, Matrix ran workshops with demountable models, asked the women to bring pictures of buildings from their home countries that they liked, and took them on a “brick picnic” walk to discuss what building materials and colours they preferred.

The result, completed in 1987 and now home to a childcare centre, incorporated a variety of Asian influences, deliberately not linked to any Hindu or Islamic imagery. It included decorative metal latticework over the windows, to provide both visual interest and security, mosaic patterns around the doors, squat toilets and sit-down sinks for washing large saucepans from communal meals. Every part of the building was fully wheelchair accessible too, a rarity in those days.

“They understood exactly what our requirements were without being patronising or judgmental,” wrote their client, Solma Ahmed, in a glowing tribute written three decades later, in support of an unsuccessful bid for Matrix to be retrospectively awarded the RIBA gold medal. “We said what we needed in that building: safety, security, childcare, sensitive to women’s cultural and religious needs while breaking some myths about Muslim women in particular. They were [the] perfect fit.”

When people have encountered Matrix in the past, they have sometimes asked what exactly feminist design looks like. How would a city designed and built by women be different? But, in Boys’ mind, that misses the point. They weren’t promoting a feminist aesthetic, but a way of looking, listening and designing that takes account of people’s very different needs and desires, one that embodies “the richness of our multiple ways of being in the world”. It’s about who gets to build it, too: a large part of Matrix’s work was devoted to publications, manuals and events, explaining routes into the building trades and running training courses.

As Matrix write: “Consciously or otherwise, designers work in accordance with a set of ideas about how society operates, who or what is valued, who does what and who goes where.” The question is who gets included, whose values we prioritise, and what kind of world we want to create.

[rabbitcruiser]

Downtown Calgary (No. 3)

Commercial core

Calgary's dense business area comprises the bulk of the downtown community. It is a core of skyscrapers. As of February 2017, eight of the ten tallest buildings in western Canada, and a few of the tallest in the country, are in Calgary. It is arguably the densest downtown area of any city of its size in North America. Many of the buildings are connected via an 18 km (11 mi) long network of elevated walkways and bridges. The system, known as the "+15" is the largest of its kind in the world.

The area surrounding the Stephen Avenue Walk is Downtown Calgary's primary retail area. Stephen Avenue (8th Avenue SW) is a pedestrian mall lined with historic buildings containing stores, restaurants, cinemas, and drinking establishments. Immediately adjacent to the outdoor portion of Stephen Avenue is an indoor complex of two shopping malls. The malls, The Core Shopping Centre (formerly TD Square/Calgary Eaton Centre) and the Scotia Centre are bordered at either end by the historic Hudson's Bay Company store and Holt Renfrew's upscale department store. The street is also home to a number of galleries, restaurants, pubs, off-beat cinemas, and nightclubs. Other attractions in the commercial core include the Devonian Gardens in The Core, the Calgary Tower, the Art Gallery of Calgary, The Glenbow Museum, Olympic Plaza, Arts Commons, and the Telus Convention Centre.

The commercial core is also divided into a number of districts. They include the Entertainment District/Stephen Avenue, The Olympic Plaza and Cultural District, and the Government District.

Source: Wikipedia

[mikerickson]

Lifting my self-imposed embargo because I'm weird and don't like posting on social media when I'm on vacation.

I'm at a point in my life where I can financially justify at least one international vacation a year and figured I'd finally cross off the Great White North from the bucket list. I'd never been and Andrew hadn't been back in a very long time despite having dual citizenship. Anyways, just got back, and a bullet-point breakdown of the highlights is after the cut:

I wish every international flight was under two hours; EWR to YQB was almost comically fast.

Had my first French conversation with the very nice lady at the car rental counter for about ten minutes. She complemented my pronunciation and grammar, and wished me luck on the trip. Every French interaction after this point was a linguistic battle for my life that I lost (Toutes les Québecois parlent trop vite pour moi).

We had some time to kill before the hotel check-in so we went to a mall in the suburbs just so we'd have a food court with some options. Turns out shopping malls are not only alive and well but fucking thriving in Canada. I haven't seen a mall that packed with people outside of December since the nineties.

Quebec City was very dense with old architecture which made it feel very European. It was also apparently built on a fucking cliff with streets at 60 degree inclines, which also felt very European.

Took a tour of the Quebec Parliament building (beautiful structure), and apparently they used to be bicameral, but voted to abolish their Senate in the 60's and they were the last Canadian province to do so. What a concept.

It's one thing to know on paper that Canada has about 1/8th of the population of the US, but I was not prepared for just how empty the countryside felt. For someone like me, living in the northeast my whole life, the idea that cities in close proximity to each other not having continuous stretches of suburbs and other smaller cities connecting them was completely foreign.

On the highways I kept thinking I was speeding because I'd look down at the dashboard and see the number "100", but 100 km/h is only like 62 mph, which is nothing.

Similarly, I kept getting sticker shock every time I spent money, and kept having to remind myself that $1 CAD was like $0.73 USD while we were there.

It was really cool to see that the complex for the 1976 Montreal Olympics is still maintained and actively used (we stumbled upon a skateboarding competition and I did not feel cool enough to be in that crowd). Sometimes you hear horror stories about Olympic villages bankrupting cities and falling into disuse afterwards, but that's definitely not the case here.

Montreal is apparently known for their local bagel culture, but their bagels have enormous holes in the middle of them, so you have less cross-sectional area for spreads and they don't really work for sandwiches. My faith in NJ/NY bagel superiority remains intact.

Every city we went to had dedicated bike lane infrastructure and young families with kids, but Montreal definitely had the most of both. Tons of parks, too. Simultaneously felt like a larger and smaller city than I was expecting.

Poutine is okay, but I wasn't prepared for the cheese to squeak when you bite into it. Very odd sensation.

The main Parliament building for the federal government in Ottawa (Centre Block) is stunning, but closed; apparently it's been under renovation since 2019 and isn't expected to be reopened until 2032! In the meantime, we took a tour of where the lower House of Commons is currently meeting. We learned that their electoral districts are routinely re-drafted by a non-partisan committee and that they occasionally add new seats to the legislature to account for changes in population. I had to seethe jealously in silence for the rest of the tour.

Also toured their Supreme Court building (way more Art Deco than I was expecting). We learned that there's currently a vacancy because a Justice recently retired because they're required to step down when they turn 75. I had to seethe jealously in silence for the rest of the tour.

Every single city had automatic/self-serve parking garages where you didn't have to interact with a human (which I was very thankful for), but in Ottawa they have this little jingle that the machine sings at you when you take your ticket, which I found very amusing.

On the drive to Toronto we took a quick detour into the Thousand Islands (yes, like the salad dressing) and visited Boldt Castle, which is technically in New York state. After seeing it in practice, the idea of living on your own private island is more appealing than ever.

Toronto feels like an exercise in what happens when a nation's largest city is allowed to grow without being hemmed in by ridiculous geography. As someone who grew up in NYC, this is another concept foreign to me. The GPS did get very tripped up navigating a particularly gnarly interchange however.

Toured the Ontario Legislative Assembly (yet another beautiful building). At this point we were really good at asking tour guides stuff like, "so if happens, do you guys have a plan?" To which they would reply, "well, no, but let's just hope that never happens!"

I now understand why the Great Lakes are effectively freshwater inland seas; you really cannot see the other shore, and Lake Ontario isn't even the biggest one!

YYC to EWR was under an hour. That's definitely going to spoil me for future trips going forward.

[justforbooks]

Ben Vautier

French conceptual artist known for his work featuring handwritten texts with quirky messages that had mass appeal

The French conceptual artist Ben Vautier – known simply as “Ben” – who has died aged 88, was best known for his Écritures – trademark painted epigrams in a simple cursive script on a monochrome background.

Instantly recognisable with their bold messages to the world, sometimes humorous, often political, always thought-provoking, his “writings” shout out from the canvas as if craving to be heard. “In my Écritures it is not the aestheticism that counts,” Ben said in 2010, in conversation with the curator Hans Ulrich Obrist. “I write to be read and understood. It’s the meaning that has to come across.”

The first Écriture, created in 1953, said, simply: “Il faut manger. Il faut dormir” (“You have to eat. You have to sleep”). It was an affirmation of life and the beginning of a series that would define his oeuvre for more than 70 years.

And, escaping from the walls, these mini-manifestos, which originated in the experimental culture of the Nice school of the 1950s, and Fluxus movement of the 60s, are now ubiquitous across France, to be found on postcards, stamps, wine labels, stationery and rucksacks.

Following Ben’s death, President Emmanuel Macron said: “On our children’s pencil cases, on so many everyday objects and even in our imaginations, Ben had left his mark, made up of freedom and poetry, apparent lightness and overwhelming depth.”

Born in Naples, Italy, Ben was the son of an Occitan French-Irish mother, Janet (nee Giraud), and a Swiss father, Max-Ferdinand Vautier. His grandfather was the Swiss painter and illustrator Marc Louis Benjamin Vautier. Following his parents’ divorce, Ben lived with his mother in Switzerland, Turkey, Egypt and Italy before they settled in Nice aged 14.He left the city’s Lycée du Parc Impérial at 16 and worked at a bookshop, Le Nain Bleu, where he first discovered volumes on the artists who would influence him. Interviewed last year for Forbes magazine and asked about his early artistic encounters, Ben said: “I picked only artists who shocked me because I was looking for something new, so I started with the abstract painters: Poliakoff, Soulages and Picasso. The shock of Marcel Duchamp came from a meeting with Arman, and after that, I opened up to the possibility that everything was art.”

“Everything is art” became his lifelong mantra, together with the other driving principle for Ben that “art must be new”. Elsewhere he said “My art will be an art of appropriation. I seek to sign everything that has not been signed. I believe that art is in the intention and that it is enough to sign.” When the Italian artist Piero Manzoni died in 1963, Ben signed his death certificate and declared it a work of art. And, following the birth of Ben’s daughter, Eva, in 1965, he signed her, as a new creation and a “living sculpture”.

Between 1958 and 1973 he ran a shop, Laboratoire 32, selling secondhand records, cameras, books and other publications. The space became a favourite meeting venue for artists of the Nice school, such as Yves Klein, César and Arman. N’importe quoi (Just anything), an installation composed of the shop’s interior, was acquired by the Centre Pompidou in 1975 and remains a testament to those early years in Nice.

In 1962 Ben had come to London as part of the festival of Misfits to perform a geste (happening) that involved spending two weeks living and sleeping in the window of Gallery One in Grosvenor Square, Mayfair. That year he met George Maciunas, founder of Fluxus, the Dada-influenced movement whose members, including Yoko Ono, Joseph Beuys and John Cage, engaged in experimental performances and events.

Fluxus encouraged a “do-it-yourself” approach in its artistic creations, valuing simplicity above complexity. Ben’s work embraced this approach and made the movement’s aesthetic clearly visible to the public, in art galleries and beyond.

Striking works include the self-referential Je suis transparent (I am transparent, 1970), a print edition in black writing on a see-through perspex background; and If art is everywhere it is also in this box (1972), with inscriptions in French, English, Italian and Nissart (a subdialect of Provençal), decorating four sides of a large plastic cube.

Initially selling as multiples in limited editions at his shop in the 60s, his productions soon moved into the mainstream, making his signed works available as mass-produced “Ben”-branded objects. He believed that there was “no art without ego”.

His works are now in private and public collections worldwide, including MoMA in New York and the Stedelijk museum in Amsterdam. Retrospectives have been held at the Musée d’Art Contemporain in Lyon (2010), Museum Tinguely, Basel (2015) and Museo Universitario de Arte Contemporaneo, Mexico (2022).

Arriving as a visitor in 2000 to Ben’s home in Saint-Pancrace, in the heights above Nice, which he shared with his second wife, Annie Baricalla, an artist whom he married in 1964, I was struck by the volume and variety of work that lay within and in the grounds of the house.

Commenting on this cuckoo-in-the-nest among a row of bourgeois residences that looked like a combination of fine art gallery, circus and junkyard, Ben confided with a chuckle: “Mes voisins me detestent.” (“My neighbours hate me.”)

He was a champion of minority languages, campaigning especially for Occitan – the tongue of southern France – and others, including Alsatian, Basque and Corsican, to be recognised in a country whose only official language is French. He reasoned that by preserving the vernacular, one can preserve the culture and dynamism of its people.

Ben’s first marriage, to Jacqueline Robert, in 1959, ended in divorce. Following Annie’s death on 5 June, “unwilling and unable to live without her”, according to a statement by his children, “Ben killed himself a few hours later”.

He is survived by his daughter, Eva, and his son, François, from his marriage to Annie.

🔔 Ben (Benjamin Vautier), artist, born 18 July 1935; died 5 June 2024

Daily inspiration. Discover more photos at Just for Books…?

[the-garbanzo-annex-jr]

by Hadar Sela

On January 30th the BBC News website published a report by BBC Verify headlined “At least half of Gaza’s buildings damaged or destroyed, new analysis shows”.

“More than half of Gaza’s buildings have been damaged or destroyed since Israel launched its retaliation for the Hamas attacks of 7 October, new analysis seen by the BBC reveals.

Detailed before-and-after imagery also shows how the bombardment of southern and central Gaza has intensified since the start of December, with the city of Khan Younis bearing much of the brunt of Israel’s military action. […]

Across Gaza, residential areas have been left ruined, previously busy shopping streets reduced to rubble, universities destroyed and farmlands churned up, with tent cities springing up on the southern border to house many thousands of people left homeless. […]

Further analysis, by BBC Verify, reveals the scale of destruction of farmland, identifying multiple areas of extensive damage.”

The information concerning buildings comes from sources who have previously worked with other media outlets to produce similar reports.

“Now, satellite data analysis obtained by the BBC shows the true extent of the destruction. The analysis suggests between 144,000 and 175,000 buildings across the whole Gaza Strip have been damaged or destroyed. That’s between 50% and 61% of Gaza’s buildings.

The analysis, carried out by Corey Scher of City University of New York and Jamon Van Den Hoek of Oregon State University, compares images to reveal sudden changes in the height or structure of buildings which indicate damage.” [emphasis added]

An important clarification concerning that highlighted wording – which is not provided to readers of the BBC Verify report – was given to CAMERA by Jamon Van Den Hoek in late December:

“When we double-checked with the researchers, Van Den Hoek reiterated that they only count structures as “likely damaged or destroyed” because, he explained, “we don’t yet have means of distinguishing categories of damage severity.””

Notably, three days after BBC Verify’s report appeared, the United Nations Satellite Centre – UNOSAT – published its own “assessment of the damage and destruction inflicted on structures in the Gaza Strip” which concluded that 30% (rather than 50% to 61% as claimed by the BBC) of the structures in the territory have been damaged since the beginning of the war. The breakdown given in that report states that 22,131 buildings (9.6% of the total number of structures) have been destroyed, 14,066 (6.1% of the total number of structures) severely damaged and 32,950 (14.3% of the total number of structures) moderately damaged.

The BBC Verify report presents several ‘case studies’, beginning with Khan Younis:

“The southern city of Khan Younis has been particularly badly hit in recent weeks, with more than 38,000 (or more than 46%) of buildings now destroyed or damaged, according to the analysis. Over the past fortnight, more than 1,500 buildings have been destroyed or damaged there.

Al-Farra Tower – a 16-storey residential block in the centre of the city, the tallest building in the area – was flattened on 9 January as can be seen in before-and-after images of the city’s skyline. Much of the neighbourhood in which it sits has been levelled by Israeli attacks since late December.

“Israeli forces targeted residential complexes, especially in the downtown Khan Younis area,” said Rawan Qaddah, a 20-year-old resident, who has been displaced and has lost contact with her family.

She named schools among the many buildings which had been damaged. Some were now being used to house displaced people temporarily.”

Readers are not informed why Rawan Qaddah was selected as a contributor, what qualifies her to provide the information uncritically promoted by the BBC or whether BBC Verify has in fact verified her claim concerning the alleged ‘targeting’ of “residential complexes”.

Moreover, BBC Verify’s report makes no mention of the fact that Israeli forces have been operating in Khan Younis since early December – or why. No mention is made of Hamas command and control centres in that city – which is home to Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar – or of the extensive tunnel network in which some of the Israeli hostages were held, the weapons production sites and rocket launching sites discovered there.

The only attempt to provide box-ticking context after a description and photos of a “damaged restaurant in Khan Younis” reads as follows:

“The IDF has repeatedly justified its actions by noting that Hamas deliberately embeds itself in civilian areas and explained destruction of buildings in the light of targeting fighters.”

Linking to another BBC report on a similar topic, the article goes on to tell readers that:

“Many of Gaza’s historic sites have suffered extensive damage, including the al-Omari Mosque originally built in the 7th Century.”

The context of Hamas’ use of mosques and other supposedly civilian facilities for military purposes and the fact that terrorists were operating in the vicinity of the al-Omari mosque at the time is not provided to readers.

The report then moves on to a section headed “Destruction to Gaza’s farmlands”.

“Further analysis, carried out by BBC Verify, shows large areas of previously cultivated land across Gaza have been extensively damaged.”

A case study is presented:

“BBC Arabic spoke to one farmer, Saeed, who fled south from Beit Lahia, in the north of Gaza, in mid-November.

The 33-year-old grew guava, figs, lemons, oranges, mint, and basil and earned about $6,000 (£5,535) from these crops every year – the only source of income for him, his father and his sister. He had tended to the farm, inherited from his grandparents, for 15 years.

But days after fleeing, he says he was told by a relative that the farm had been destroyed by the IDF, along with five surrounding homes which belonged to his relatives.”

While the exact location of Saeed’s farm is not given, readers would of course have been better placed to put the second-hand claims promoted by BBC Arabic via BBC Verify into context had they been told that Beit Lahia is also the location of a hospital used for terror purposes as well as rocket launching sites and that it is very close to the route of a 4km long, 50 meter deep tunnel discovered by the IDF.

Once again BBC Verify does box-ticking with a minimal response from the IDF:

“The IDF told us it had found Hamas tunnel entrances and rocket launch sites in various agricultural areas, adding that “operational needs require that these places be destroyed or attacked”.

“Environmental damage may be caused as a result of fighting and exchanges of fire.””

There is no doubt that in four months of war, considerable damage has been caused to structures and farmland in the Gaza Strip. One major reason for that is Hamas’ cynical exploitation of civilian homes and civilian infrastructure such as hospitals, universities, schools and mosques for military purposes including missile fire, along with its massive underground tunnel network which compromises the integrity of structures and land above it. Another significant part of the story – completely absent from BBC Verify’s report – is the fact that around 12% of the thousands of missiles launched by Palestinian terrorists have landed in the Gaza Strip. 

BBC Verify, however, chose not to provide BBC audiences with that essential background, instead making do with a couple of short, generalised quotes from the IDF in order to tick the impartiality box and preferring to present audiences with a supposedly factual article that is blatantly one-sided and severely lacking in essential context.

[evilgabe29]

Working Title(working title) chapter 1, second draft

alright its finally done, this was a very long process, and i still don't trust that i got everything right, especially the punctuation. but now with this done i can go work on the second chapter, that hopefully wont require over a week's worth of work to get right. now please enjoy:

The streets of Artagan were a pretty sight, well for me at least. Buildings stacked upon buildings creating spires of rust stained brick and concrete, white painted metal doors leading to escapement ladders providing the only method for scaling these monoliths. shops with neon signs glowing a beautiful cyan in what was a feeble attempt to attract customers, corporate government buildings alight with a lovely magenta. both providing the only sources of light for the streets of the city. 

Rats that wore coats of muddled gray skittered across the streets of black rock looking for what little they could find to survive. kids covered in gray dust, living out of cardboard boxes, indefinitely waiting for their parents to come back from the front-lines of bureaucracy. The clear dark sky hung above with a horrifying indifference, thousands of eyes, all different colours.

A boy ran through the streets, he couldn't have been more than ten half-feet and some slivers tall. his coat, made of synthetic cotton that he’d pinched off a Keno mine worker flapping in the wind. well it was wind relative to him at least. There wasn't much in the way of wind in Porthos cities except minimum to keep the air circulating. 

The boy ran, his legs were barely able to keep up with him as if they were there more for keeping him off the ground rather than pushing him forward. His left hand rested on what looked to be a railroad spike made of a white stone tinged with cyan. his right holding on to the shoulder strap of his yellow canvas bag that made a clink every time he took a step. The boy glowed a faint but vivid yellow. Once he got close to the job centre his glow faded from him like a light tube being switched off. Now while he may have stopped accelerating. his momentum still planted his face into the concrete wall of the building.

“Shit!“ The boy cursed, stumbling back clutching his nose with rose tinted fingers."I am not used to that yet.”

The boy took a second to right himself before entering the small corporate job centre. It was a cramped room, buildings in Artagan were never big enough to have large rooms. But the centre's space was small even by Artagan’s standards. thirty people waited in line in front of the terminal. It was a relatively small contraption that had many number plates cycling through different characters as it was being used. It was less than he had been expecting, most of his visits to the centre had resulted in all the jobs being picked clean by the time he got to the interface. 

When it was his turn to use the terminal, a large number of the jobs had already been taken. Thankfully there was still one left that was looking for a dasher. sure it's a scouting job but he'd take any excuse to get off this dump. 

The boy left the job centre paper in hand. looks like he would be working for a Mister Wayne, no first name given. Who would be waiting at landing pad twenty eight. Since the boy already had all of his personal effects on him he began making his way towards the port.

—its the line break! your favourite character! …right?—

The port was the biggest building in Artagan, sure it wasn't the tallest building with some residential complexes reaching up to 5 half miles in height. But its footprint more than made the difference. Despite its size it only had one entrance, marked with a large yellow neon sign. 

The boy stood in front of the port entrance tapping his foot. He had already rang the buzzer a few times now but no one had answers yet. 

“What in the eight trials is taking them so long?” the boy mumbled to himself. “Well if I'm gonna be waiting i might as well..” he trailed off, taking his job paper out of his bag and began reading.

It had all the basic information like date and time the job was accepted, name of the employer although it once again did not include their first name, wasn’t the first name the most important of the two? Well that's what he’d heard at least. The boy didn't have either so he wasn't in a position to comment. 

The Door behind him opened suddenly, making the boy, who had been leaning on it, fall into the building. The guard who’d opened the door jumped back reaching for her gun before seeing the job printout still clutched in his hand. She visibly relaxed and helped the boy up. He squirmed under her touch but appreciated the help. The guard, Melka, according to the small nameplate on her Yellow uniform, smiled at him, an uncommon sight for the boy. 

“Sorry about that, that door does open quite suddenly don't it?” Melka said taking the job form and reading it over.

“Yeah, even a bit of a warning would have been nice,” the boy muttered under his breath, rubbing the back of his head, more embarrassed than he was hurt.

“Okay, looks like you're looking for landing pad twenty eight. But I'll need your name first for the log. Even just a first name will do, our system allows for that”  

“Uhm i uhh… dont… have one?” the boy said, blushing.

“Oh you poor thing here i'll give you one, how does Viktor sound?” 

“Oh um i uhh could i go with just Vik?”

“Of course you can! Here let me just write it down” Melka said, bringing out her clipboard and pen writing what the boy assumed to be his "name”. It didn't sit right with him that some random person he’d just met could just give him a name based on nothing at all. But on the bright side, it's not like he’d had anything else to use. And it did sound quite nice.

Once Melka was done with whatever she was doing, she handed Vik his papers and pointed him towards his destination. It was the landing pad that had what looked to be a pile of scrap on it.

The main area of the port consisted of giant square landing pads, arranged into a grid pattern, each with a corresponding hole for the ships to enter through. The landing pads themselves were of a light blue painted steel. each of the pads were marked with their corresponding numbers using white paint. 

Vik was frozen by the glare as he approached, an individual wearing a light blue dress shirt standing straight as a drain pipe, hands behind his back. Vik moved his hand to the ring spike at his hip, but it wasn't there, dred engulfed him as he padded his pockets before remembering he’d put it in his bag. Vik took another look at the man in the blue shirt realizing that he was not in fact staring at him but at the entrance. Vik let out the breath he didn't know he was holding trying to get himself to relax. 

Vik approached the man with his hands in both pockets, getting a good look at him up close, turns out he wasn't in fact wearing a dress shirt like he’d first assumed it was actually a thick coat. How did he not burn up in that? The man jumped, finally noticing Vik. 

“You are Mr. Wayne I assume?” Vik asked the man, he knew the answer but it never hurt to be sure.

“Um yes that's me i'm la- uhm yes, wayne, yes, uhh  what's your name?” the man responded scratching the back of his head.

“My name is uhh Vik? i think, they just sorta just gave me one at the door” Vik said, uncertain

“Well it works well enough for me, so are you the dasher or the heaver, oh! and can you cook?” 

“Uhm im a- the…dasher i guess?” Vik said fidgeting with a sliver in his pocket.

“Ah! Yes! I see that makes sense, ah here, let me see your hands.” 

Vik reluctantly took his hands out of his pockets revealing the light magenta stains on his fingers that faded even more as it went along the finger, blending with his tan skin seamlessly. He’d gained them after stealing a Ring Spike off a drunk Ring Guard a half month ago, who’d passed out in the same alleyway Vik was staying in. he’d used the thing sparingly since there wasn't much Athos left in it when he swiped it although it did seem to hold much more than he’d expected.

“Ah I see, that's not too bad. I was expecting no Kenek stains at all, we can definitely work with that”  the man said, slapping Vik on the back, Almost making him fall over. “oh by the way you never answered me, can you cook? Nell and I can't cook anything more than reheating some rations” 

“Uh i cooked some rats with a lighter i found once unfortunately it ran out of fuel after a couple of days. The rats tasted great though!” Vik said, proud of his skill in the culinary arts. The man though gave him a look that Vik could not quite discern it seemed to be similar to ones he’d see mine workers give him when they’d saw him but his eyebrows wrinkled as if in confusion, but that would make no sense, all the words he’d said were actual words and they all made sense to Vik.

“So… that's a… no on that front then…” the man said slowly. “…Anyways let me show you to the ship, Nell will show you around, Athos propulsion methods are pretty intuitive so don't worry.” the man began walking toward the big rectangular mass of rusted metal behind him. Vik, not having much choice in the matter, followed him.

As Vik approached the ship, it coalesced into a shape that he could wrap his brain around. It looked like two packs of playing cards glued together with unnecessary metal bits that would only introduce drag when flying. This last thought gave Vik pause, how did he know about the concept of drag? He wasn't taught that at his mandatory compulsory classes. How did he know about this? Vik moved on, figuring that he might find the answer later. It was a skill Vik learned to hone on the streets, given how effective curiosity is at murder.

“So what do you think? She’s a beauty ain't she?” the man as if he was proud of his pile of garbage, he continued “we call her Theo after a document of the old world, before the collapse of the Deathmaker’s guild. Basically this dude, Theosunis had replaced every single part of his seafaring vessel over a very long and treacherous journey. But once he arrived back at his home port someone tried to claim that he no longer owned the vessel since it was not made up of any of the same parts as when he filed for ownership. There was a long legal battle, lots of paperwork, before eventually settling that people owned the idea of the object…eh what am i saying you're probably interested in those kinds of things,” 

“no, this is pretty interesting. Why name it after him specifically though?” Vik asked, genuinely interested in the conversation, he wasn't taught much about pre-deathmaker years, or really much of history now that he thought about it. and the smile the man wore while he was explaining made Vik feel warm and fuzzy on the inside. well Vik wouldn't have used those words specifically but you get the idea.

“Ah! Yes, that is a very good question!” the man exclaimed, clearly not used to people taking interest in what he had to say. “Well you see all of that complicated legal paperwork survived the fall of The Guild, Despite the archives being burned. we would have a much harder time reading the old script, and Ian’s journal would be a complete mystery to us” 

Vik really wanted to ask some more questions but they had just arrived at the door to the ship and he didn't want to interrupt anything that he might say. A white metal door stood in front of Vik, it seemed to be of the same style as those he'd seen used for the residential buildings in Artagan. There was no way those were space-grade right? But what did Vik know? The door opened as the man knocked on it a few times, revealing a big brawny man who was also wearing a big puffy coat though this one was green. Despite the large coat the man was still shivering as he spoke.

“H-hey L-Lan, this the n-new kid?” the new man asked, stuttering on every other word. “Heaver or d-dasher?” the green coated man asked the blue one, Trials Vik really needed to learn their names. let's see, The blue coated man had mentioned someone named Nell that must be the man in the green coat, and Nell had referred to the blue man as Lan, Vik decided to mentally use these names until he could get confirmation. of course asking for their names never occurred to him.

“This would be the Dasher, about grade 1 or so,” Lan said, patting Vik on the back.

“That's not too bad, we can work with that,”

“exactly my thoughts, anyways i gotta keep a lookout for whenever that Heaver gets here, can you show them around?”

“Sure dude” Nell said as Lan began to walk away. “You can call me Nell, what's your name kid? And how are you not freezing out there?” Nell asked, turning to Vik.

“I don- uhhm i mean uhh, Vik, i think,” said Vik stumbling over his own words, still not used to having a name yet. And maybe a bit intimidated by the large man.

“Well alright Vik, let me show you around Theo here” Nell said, inviting Vik inside the odd vessel.

As He entered Vik was struck by how open the interior was, sure it was quite big on the outside but he had still expected the inside to be small and cramped. The interior was made up of the same steel plates that were on the outside. What really drew Vik’s attention though was the large White rock that seemed to be on fire? A brilliant yellow aura danced around the boulder while also not burning anything around it. he couldn't tear his eyes off the majestic sight.

Nell chuckled beside Vik.“first time seeing a Keno engine? they are quite the sight eh?”

Vik just nodded.

“well you can do your gawking later, let me show you around the place and then we'll get you settled into your quarters” Nell gestured towards a set of tables off to one side of the ship where a couple appliances sat, to the left of the Keno engine as Nell had referred to the fiery boulder. “That's our kitchen setup, everything is bolted down because of inertia and all that, but we've got a small oven, a coffee maker, and a stovetop. Which are basically the three essentials when it comes to sustenance on a ship, we uhh also can't afford anything more than that. And over there,” Nell gestured to the other side of the ship.

“We have our couch, that …isn't bolted down so uhh don't sit on it during takeoff” both sides of the couch were unsurprisingly beaten up to the point you could see the metal frame under the padding.

Nell gestured to the back of the ship where four rooms sat, two on either side of the door “and those are the quarters, Lan and I are on the left there so you'll take one of the ones on the right.” 

Vik stood trying to process all of that information then gave up, figuring he’d learn anything he would need to know in due time. Vik let Nell drag him over to one of the rooms on the left. 

“Get comfy in there while we wait on the heaver. How are they always late? you’d think they’d be better at getting off their asses” Nell mumbled the last part under his breath as he walked over to the couch and sat down, keeping a casual eye on Vik.

Vik opened the door to his quarters, made of the same chaotic steel plates as the rest of the ship, revealing a bed, a dresser, a desk, and a small extra room at the back which Vik assumed to be the toilet. Vik put his bag on the desk and collapsed onto the soft bed.

tags:

tagging mutuals:

@ohnoitsslime @caligusabs @beloveddawn-blog

@illarian-rambling @theeccentricraven @kaylinalexanderbooks

@leahnardo-da-veggie @ratedn @weird-dork37

and per request:

@mr-orion

[popi124]

Discovering Thessaloniki: Greece's Hidden Jewel

Tucked away yet thriving with vibrant life, Thessaloniki, Greece’s illustrious second city, is a hidden gem awaiting discovery. This captivating metropolis harmoniously melds ancient roots with a modern pulse, embodying a unique blend of history, culture, and scenic coastal views. For travellers eager to journey across epochs, Thessaloniki is a destination that impresses at every turn. Thessaloniki deserves a prime spot on your travel itinerary and the must-see sights within its storied bounds.

Why Visit Thessaloniki 

Though often eclipsed by the capital, Athens, Thessaloniki offers an unparalleled Greek experience without the crush of crowds. Its allure extends from enthralling archaeological relics to vibrant markets and scenic waterfronts. Whether you’re a history buff, a foodie, or simply looking for a new destination, Thessaloniki has something special for everyone.

Things to do in Thessaloniki

Explore the Iconic White TowerDominating Thessaloniki’s skyline, the White Tower stands as an enduring symbol of the city. Once a fortification and prison, it now operates as a museum chronicling Thessaloniki’s complex history. A climb to the summit rewards with sweeping panoramas of the cityscape and the Thermaic Gulf.

Stroll Through Aristotelous SquareAristotelous Square forms the energetic heart of Thessaloniki, pulsating with life at all hours. Encircled by quaint cafes, boutique shops, and enticing eateries, the square offers an ideal starting point to explore. Take an unhurried walk, savour a Greek coffee, and immerse yourself in the lively surroundings.

Explore the Rotonda and Arch of GaleriusThessaloniki’s ancient core shines through at the Rotonda and the Arch of Galerius. The Rotonda, originally a Roman mausoleum for emperor Galerius, later transformed into a religious site, mesmerises with its intricate mosaics. Nearby, the Arch of Galerius, constructed in the 4th century, is a testament to Roman victories and artistry.

Venture into Ano Poli (Upper Town)Ano Poli, Thessaloniki’s historic old quarter, offers an evocative glimpse into traditional Greek life. This area brims with Byzantine relics, Ottoman architecture, and scenic pathways. Quaint tavernas line the streets, inviting you to indulge in authentic Greek delicacies amidst storied surrounds.

Saunter Along Thessaloniki's WaterfrontThe waterfront of Thessaloniki is the perfect venue for a serene evening walk. Spanning five kilometres, this promenade extends from the White Tower to the Thessaloniki Concert Hall, replete with green spaces, cafes, and resting areas. Witnessing the sun’s descent over the Aegean Sea from here is nothing short of magical.

Culinary Delights of Thessaloniki

As Greece’s culinary epicentre, Thessaloniki boasts an array of local flavours that will tantalise any palate. Here are some essentials to sample:

Bougatsa – A versatile pastry, either sweet or savoury , filled with custard or cheese – perfect for an indulgent breakfast.

Souvlaki – Thessaloniki’s rendition of Greece’s beloved meat skewers, renowned for its rich and distinctive seasoning.

Koulouri – A simple yet satisfying sesame-crusted bread ring, often available from street vendors across the city.

Ideal Seasons to Experience Thessaloniki

For an enjoyable exploration, consider visiting in spring (April to June) or autumn (September to November). During these times, the climate is pleasantly mild, and the tourist influx is lower, allowing you to savour Thessaloniki’s charm at your leisure.

Navigating Thessaloniki

Thessaloniki’s extensive bus network makes urban exploration straightforward. Walking, however, is highly recommended for those keen to immerse themselves in the city’s atmosphere, particularly in the bustling centre. For those inclined to venture beyond, renting a vehicle is ideal for uncovering hidden locales that lie beyond the well-trodden paths.

Whether you arrive with a keen sense of history, a love for Mediterranean flavours, or a yearning for novel destinations, Thessaloniki awaits, ready to enchant and inspire.

[realestateeee]

DLF The Dahlias | Best Investment In Gurgaon

Nestled amidst the lush greenery of Sector 54, Golf Course Road, Gurgaon, DLF The Dahlias stand \as an epitome of luxury and class. This premium property by DLF, one of India's leading real estate builders, offers a collection of luxury apartments that redefine modern living.

Key Features

Spacious and Luxurious Apartments: The Dahlias affords more than a few thoughtfully designed flats that cater to the desires of discerning people and households. Each rental boasts spacious living regions, stylish bedrooms, and world-magnificence facilities, making sure of an existence of exceptional comfort and luxury.

World-Class Amenities: Residents are dealt with a plethora of world-elegance facilities designed to beautify their lifestyle. These consist of a modern-day gymnasium, a sparkling swimming pool, lush landscaped gardens, a kid's play location, and plenty greater.

Unmatched Connectivity: Situated in the heart of Sector 54, Golf Course Road, DLF The Dahlias Sector 54 Gurgaon gives unheard-of connectivity to primary company hubs, purchasing department stores, educational institutions, and enjoyment venues. The challenge is also nicely connected to predominant transportation networks, making it a convenient preference for commuters.

Stunning Views: The Dahlias offers breathtaking perspectives of the luxurious veggies of the Golf Course Road and the colorful cityscape of Gurgaon. Residents can awaken to panoramic vistas which can be sure to appease the soul and rejuvenate the thoughts.

Secure and Peaceful Environment: DLF The Dahlias prioritizes the protection and well-being of its citizens. The project is ready with superior safety systems, such as CCTV surveillance, gated admission, and spherical-the-clock security personnel. This guarantees secure and peaceful dwelling surroundings for all residents.  

Nearby Landmarks

It is surrounded by numerous prominent landmarks that add to its charm and comfort. Some of the terrific landmarks in the area include:

DLF Golf and Country Club: A global-renowned golf path with 18 and nine-hollow publications, a clubhouse, a swimming pool, and different recreational centers.

DLF Magnolias: A steeply-priced residential complex supplying various amenities and services.

DLF Camellias: A business complicated housing a variety of stores, restaurants, and cafes.

DLF City Centre: A most desirable shopping center with an extensive variety of global brands and local shops.

Fortis Hospital: A main multi-uniqueness clinic providing complete healthcare services.

Experience Luxury Living at DLF The Dahlias

DLF The Dahlias Sector 54 Golf Course Road Gurgaon is more than just a residential property; it is a luxurious living. With its modern design, world-class amenities, and prime location, The Dahlias gives a luxury living experience. Whether you're searching for a spacious circle of relatives' homes or a stylish city retreat, It has something to offer every person.

[bu1410]

Good morning TUMBLR - March 7th - 2024

''Mr. Plant has owed me a shoe since July 5, 1971."

Ch. VIII - 1985- 1989 - Bahrain - Part 1

The 25 km King Fahd causeway that links Saudi Arabia to Bahrain.

Manama, the modern capital of Bahrain.

Bahrain desert - the Tree of Life

Bahrain life

GPIC - Gulf Petrochemical Complex - Sitra Island, Bahrain

The winter between December 1984 and January 1985 was particularly harsh in Italy, characterized by increasingly lower temperatures. Between 13 and 17 January 1985, a depression centered on the Corsican Sea caused what is still remembered in Milan today as the snowfall of the century or the snowfall of '85, constituting the heaviest snowfall recorded in Milan in the 20th century. The snowfall caused serious damage. After four days of real storm, January 17th 1985 the Sports Hall collapsed in Milan due to the excessive weight of the snow that had accumulated on the roof. In this certainly not festive atmosphere, I received a call from an engineering company in Milan, INTECH, an already a supplier of services to SNAMPROGETTI, with whom I soon agreed to leave for Bahrain.

From the SNAMPROGETTI office in San Donato, the Head of HR office Mr. Cincotta reassured me:  ''It's a temporary destination, just a few months, waiting that construction of new Agadir International Airport will start … don't worry…'' I stayed there for 4 years…….

Mind you, not that I minded: Bahrain was a liveable place (drinkable, in the language of shipbuilders) especially because it also allowed families to reach the employees involved in the project. I then left at the beginning of March 1984, with a flight via Kuwait. I arrived at Manama airport and believe it or not there was someone waiting for me! A local guy holding a board with my name written on it almost correctly: Brino Sirino….

Bahrain is a small Emirate in the Persian Gulf (Kaleejj el Arabi) made up of a main island and a myriad of uninhabited islets. It is the ''poorest'' Gulf state, relative to its surrounding neighbors. Above all, Saudi Arabia provides the Emirate with considerable economic aid as the ruling house of Bahrain, like the Al Saud, is of the Sunni faith, in spite to a majority Shiite population The Saudis would never allow a Shiite regime to be established 25 km from the Saudi coast with the approval of the ''Great Enemy'' Iran. And then Bahrain was a sort of ''playground'' for Saudis looking for entertainment just outside their front door. This therefore explains the reason for the economic support to Bahrain by the Saudis. For instance, one of the largest oil well in Saudi waters has always been exploited for free by the Bahraini oil industry. The construction of the 23 km long bridge that connects Saudi Arabia to the island of Bahrain was financed by the Saudis. The free sale of alcohol in Manama by shops managed by a company belonging to the ruling Bahraini family is another concession aimed at helping the Emir Al Khalifa's coffers. In 1986, shortly before the opening of the Dahran – Manama bridge to traffic, King Fahad proposed to the Emir Sheik Eissa the prohibition of alcohol sale, promising to compensate the Emir for the lost earnings: an offer returned to the sender. On top of all this, about 50% of the Southern territory of the island of Bahrain is off limits, due to the largest naval base leased to the US in the Gulf. However, Manama has since then been a modern city, full of skyscrapers, luxury hotels and shopping centres.

AWALI I was housed in Awali, a village of wooden houses built by the Americans of Caltex in 1939, when the first refinery in Bahrain (and the entire Persian Gulf) was built. Someone later told me that around 1942 some Italian planes departing from a base in Egypt tried to bomb the refinery, which produced fuel for the English army. Not having enough fuel to guarantee the return, the planes dropped their bombs into the sea just before the island of Bahrain, and aborted the mission. The village of Awali is located almost in the center of the main island of Bahrain, and its wooden houses are reminiscent of those from the Lassie TV series in every way, including anti-mosquito doors. The houses are 2 and 4 bedrooms, with a large living-dining room, kitchen and two bathrooms. I was assigned to a small 4 bedroom house, but when I got there I was the only occupant. The village also had a club with a partially covered swimming pool (to prevent the summer sun from making the water too hot) and tennis courts, to which we had free access.

RONCI ATHOS A few days after my arrival, around 3.00 AM, I heard some noises: the sound of a car stopping, doors slamming, and than someone throwing something (I than saw that it was suitcases…) inside the house. , on the wooden floor. Then the door of my room suddenly open, and someone said:  Are you asleep?  Before you arrived I was asleep…….  However...... - says the guy - I'm not going to stay here…….tomorrow I'll talk to the HR and then I'll see .....  Okay…. I say…. do as you like but let me sleep now….

For the record, Mr. Ronci Athos – Umbrian from Narni – was still there in 1993, in the place that 8 years earlier he had said he would leave as soon as possible….

THE PROJECT Our client was called GPIC - Gulf Petrochemical Industries Company - a mixed Bahraini, Saudi and Kuwaiti capital company - and was part of the economic aid package from the rich Gulf countries to the ''poor'' relative of Bahrain. Later, at the time of the commissioning and start up of the plants - we would have transformed the acronym into Gruppo Pensionati Italiani Comerint, given the average age of the people that the then company 'ENI had sent to proceed with the commissioning of the plants. The project was in its final phase, and was directed by none other than the P.I. Manoli Benito Italo. Bahrain would be his last construction site personally managing, before becoming Director of the CSO Service of SNAMPROGETTI. The works were even ahead of schedule, so SNAMPROGETTI enjoyed a lot of credit with the Client. Upon delivery of the plant, the Client gifted an extra bonus of 4 million dollars to SNAMPROGETTI for its performance. The credit was than canceled in 1990, during the first Gulf War. GPIC invited SNAMPROGETTI, BECHTEL and UHUDE to provide an initial feasibility study for a urea plant to be built alongside the existing ammonia and methanol plants. BECHTEL replied that she was not interested, SNAMPROGETTI sent a fax requesting an advance of 11,000 USD for the preliminary study. The Germans from HUDE, sensing the deal, in the midst of the Gulf War, sent a representative to Bahrain to discuss the possibility of building the urea plant. In 1992 the belated SANMPROGETTI envoy to Manama was detained at the entrance gate of the plant for a couple of hours, only to be informed that GPIC had officially commissioned UHUDE with the preliminary study.

COMMISSIONING & START UP The long phase of pre-commissioning, commissioning and start-up of the plants soon began. Which were built on a so-called reclaimed land (an artificial island) created by dredging the shallow seabed, characteristic of the Bahraini island. The artificial island - equipped for safety reasons with an outer gate and an inner gate - was connected to the mainland by a causeaway approximately 3 kilometers long, and a second causeaway joined the island to the loading arms of the products, 10 kilometers further into the sea. This is to allow ships to carry out loading operations in complete safety, without the risk of running aground in the shallow seabed. There were many wrecks of ships stranded along the channel dug by the open sea up to the port of Manama - this much to the happiness of the divers, given that the wrecks had been transformed into sanctuaries of Persian Gulf tropical fish. However, I must say a word to describe the characters who are part of the commissioning – start up. These particular people, who believe they are a sort of ''NASA scientists'' intent on launching the SPACE SHUTTLE into space. As soon as they arrived at site their aim was: ''Okay, get rid of Construction people, we're here now''. The fact is that, apart from 3 or 4 of them who really knew what they were doing and were experts in the difficult process of putting the plants into operation (very dangerous indeed) all the others followed suit: ''they claimed to know'' and the less they knew, the more they pretended they were knewing. I met someone who, as soon as they heard someone approaching, started to talk about chemical formulas, operating pressures, and so on, just to put on airs. In any case, within 3 months the start up team had managed to get the two plants up and running, even if the (rhetorical) question that was circulating was - Did you make the methanol?'' ''no…I didn't…So who did it?? No one knows.... ''

Tawfeeq Mohammed Rasul Almansoor - GPIC President The President of GPIC, however, did not seem entirely satisfied, and he demonstrated it with a series of actions that were surprising to say the least. One day Mr. Tawfiq arrived at high speed at the outer gate driving his metallic blue Rolls Royce. The presence of smat guy on the guard post prevented him from ending up against the bars at the outer check point.

Mr Tawfiq continued on the causeway at full speed and the inner gate guard, warned by radio by his colleague at the outer gate, promptly raised the bars. The President's Rolls entered the area of the Administrative offices, where he finally stopped. Tawfiq got out of the car in a rage, and ordered the Security Chief who met him to organize a meeting within 15 minutes. Participants in addition to him were the Security Chef, the Director of COMERINT and the Security Advisor. We mortals later learned that the Security Chef – an British guy, former officer in Hes Majesty's army, had been fired on the spot – Reason given by Mr. Tawifiq:

''Two gates were opened for me and I was able to drive my car into the plant – and this was because at the sight of my Rolls Royce the guards thought I was driving the car. What if he was a terrorist? What if I suddenly went crazy and wanted to attack the plant? What if I had been kidnapped by terrorists who were hiding in the car filled with explosives??'' (I remember that the Rolls Royce was equipped with tinted mirror windows which did not allow anyone to see who was driving the car.) A few days later, a second episode, again with Mr. Tawifiq as absolute protagonist. He had gone between the Main Control Room and Plant Laboratory, in a fairly hidden corner of the plant, and had broken the glass of one of the fire alarms that send a signal to the Fire Department control room. He than set off the stopwatch on his Rolex Platinum Diamond Pearlmaster to see how long it would take for the firefighters to arrive. After 11 interminable minutes - I would like to point out that the Fire Station was about 700 meters from the place where Mr. Tawfiq was stationed - the firefighters arrived to find that it was a false alarm. Again an urgent meeting was called, where this time the HSE manager lost his job. The reason for such a delay – which according to Tawfiq could have led to a disaster in the event of a real fire – was that on the synoptic panel of the fire brigade control room it was not possible to identify precisely where the alarm had went off. Just a week after the episode of the false fire, the start-up of the plants had been successfuly done. The plant was even proding more ammonia and methanol than expected, around 1,200 tons per day per product, instead of the 1,000 tons expected. But many of the ''COMERINT Pensioners'' who had participated in the commissioning were still circulating in the plant. As they say in Southern Italy, ''they were mugging''. Obviously COMERINT was looking for all the plausible excuses to keep them in service, given the daily rates with which they were invoiced to the Customer. (an average of $1,200/day per person). The situation between COMERINT and GPIC had become very tense, with daily requests from the latter to demobilize the technicians. One day Tawfiq lost patience, and went to the Main Control Room - still dressed in the traditional white disdasha, ghutra on his head, he surprised a swarm of Italians having coffee, talking about football, playing on the computer. Tawfiq, who had been taken like an ordinary local, turned to the bystanders waving his arms in the Arab manner and said:  ''What is this? Coffee shop''?  The shift manager, at that moment sitting on the desk with a cup of coffee in his hand and his legs dangling, stood up and in a benevolent manner, took Tawfiq by the arm (a very serious mistake as per Arab habits) pointed to a door at the end of the corridor and told him :  Shouff (look) coffee shop for Arab is there, at the end of corridor – accompanying it all with a laugh. Tawifiq, according to bystanders, didn't show any sign of upset - he left the Control Room, called the Italian Director on the phone. Mr Fiorentino, COMERINT top manager. Mr Tawfiq ordered that all those present at the unfortunate episode were boarded on the first plane to Italy. The offices in the North wing of the Control Room were closed until further notice. But where the President of GPIC gave his best was at the final meeting with Construction Director Benito Italo Manoli and the entire SAMPROGETTI staff present. During the meeting, numbers of questions were raised which mainly concerned the safety of the systems. At a certain point Mr. Tawfiq turned directly to the Italian Doctor Mr. Busonero asking :  Doctor, in case of explosion of one or more tanks of ammonia or methanol, either due to a terrorist attack, or due to an accident, what could be the consequences?

Dead silence in the meeting room… gazes of all those present frantically crossing each other… Mr. Manoli trying to communicate via brain waves with Doct. Busonero, while coughs and noises of chairs moving rang out in the room…. ..and finally the Doctor, red in the face and with drops of sweat running down his forehead (despite the air conditioning being set to 19 degrees C – Tawfiq's favorite temperature) Doct. Busonero replied: - Well…Mr. Tawifiq…with a prevailing wind from the South-East to the North-West, the inhabitants of Manama would have from 7 to 10 minutes to recommend each one's soul to God…''

It was freezing in the meeting room, no one said a word, everyone was waiting for the President's counter-reply. Tawfiq stood up and nodded to Mr. Manoli who followed him into President's private office. The next day there was no trace of Doct. Busonero. We learned that he had been put on a plane to Rome before midnight, the deadline that Tawfiq had indicated to Mr. Manoli. Contrary, Doct. Busonero would have been arrested for telling the truth.

[casusvallis]

╰┈➤ ❝ [Centretown] ❞

In the centre of town is... Centretown. In a valley so small, there is no room for a downtown - the town was built around the city hall building, so naturally the businesses stayed close to the busiest areas. From there, the small town businesses grew as the college grew, causing a sudden need for more housing.

∘₊✧──────────────────✧₊∘

╰┈➤City Hall Property

A truly special historical part of the town; the City Hall is a(n unnecessarily) grand and glorious wonder of the town, standing as the tallest building in the Centretown area. It makes up well for it's size though, as it also includes the Public Library and History Museum. It is frequented by what little tourists Casus can gather - possible students visiting included. You'll also find a small stage and seating area for outdoor performances, for the many festivals and events the city holds. Most common festivals held on City Hall grounds are Casus Music Fest, Children's Activity Day, and The Swordfighting Guild's Annual Big Showdown.

╰┈➤City Housing

Like any good and well developed town, most of the businesses have apartments above them, so the town is more populated than expected. Very expensive houses line the City Hall Property, while a row of slightly cheaper townhouses stay right beside the Soleli apartment complex. The townhouses, while older and cheaper, are mainly frequented by students with several roommates in them. An example is Duskin Dae and his several roommates who live together, all a part of Casus College's Physical Education sector. The apartments were built a few years after the college gained traction, and were built out of necessity to ensure the several newly onboarded students had a place to live, other than the residence onsite. As population continues to grow in Casus, even the six buildings are reaching their capacity.

╰┈➤Shopping Community District

╰┈➤Services and Activities Clubs, gyms, art studios, clothing stores... most of Casus' shops are located in the busiest part of town. While there aren't many cars throughout Casus, those who own one tend to live on their farms or in the mountains, meaning they have to drive into town to get repairs or cleanups. The shops are surprisingly busy for such a small town, making business fruitful.

╰┈➤Food Services Casus isn't exactly known for its rich culinary expertise - the people here eat food mostly grown on town property, with very little imports arriving by truck or helicopter. With this in mind, restaurants can be limited.

╰┈➤Community Community resources are a necessity everywhere, especially a small town where the community is more close-knit. It's more than just community centres and youth services - it's a nonprofit vet hospital, a farmer's market running all summer, a concert hall organized by students of the college, and a volunteer-run fire department. Casus relies heavily on community, most of which are followers of the Doluit Deam, attending Ecclesiam (Church of the Doluit Deam) once a month to perform day-long rituals. Almost all supports in Casus are Ecclesiam affiliated - whether that's a positive or negative thing depends on who you ask. Who is The Doluit Deam?: The Doluit Deam, also referred to as The Goddess of The Pained, The Goddess of The Agonized, or He Grieves His Goddess, is a prominent deity who blessed the valley before it was Casus Vallis. Seeing the people who resided there were struggling to grow food and prevent dangerous wildlife from interferring, Doluit Deam sacrificed her godliness to keep the valley stable, guaranteeing fruitful harvest and happy families for the rest of the towns existence. Upon her death, her tears made the lands lush and soil rich, but the lives of the residents grew miserable. Once a month for a whole day, followers of The Doluit Deam will bear their heart out for their Goddess, weeping for her sacrifice.

[maria-ze]

| SG Guide |

China Town Day

Breakfast at Duxton Hill

Acoustics Coffee Bar brunch and fancy acoustics

The Coffee Code Singapore nice design and viral waffles

Five Oars Coffee Roasters Heritage red bricks building

Walk around Duxton

Appreciate modern shops, galleries and cafes along Duxton Hill, Neil Road, the six-metre sculpture by Kaws by Mondrian Hotel and Duxton Plain Park.

Climb the Pinnacle@Duxton - an HDB with an impressive sky bridge (6 sgd, you'll need an ez link card or an ID).

Visit Singapore City Gallery with a nice Singapore city center mock-up model. Right next to it is the well known Maxwell Food Centre, nice lunch or snack option.

Walk to Thian Hock Keng Temple at Telok Ayer St with the garden and sculptures. Amoy street and Boon Tat street have plenty of food options for brunch, lunch and dinner. Note that the restaurants in Singapore might be opened in the morning and in the evening and be closed around 2-5pm. Telok Ayes St can be visited on the downtown day as well.

From there walk via Ann Siang road and hill park to the Buddha Tooth Relic Temple (temple, lovely buddhism museum and rooftop garden), Chinatown Complex for some souvenirs and fun vintage decor pieces and Chinatown Street Market.

Look out for the traditional medicine shops for the witchcraft vibe.

Next to it is the oldest Hindu Sri Mariamman Temple.

Bonus is the gorgeous pre-loved luxury store The Née Vintage Store.

Wrap up the walk with the colourful Chinatown market square and The Majestic mall for fancy Chinese souvenirs and products.

Lunch and dinner recommendations

Potato Head Singapore great rooftop burgers and grill

The Yellow Chair tourist-oriented Chinese opposite to the Chinatown Heritage Centre (reviews are bad, but we really like this place)

Thirty9 very decent Italian at Duxton

Xiao Ya Tou delicious casual Chinese at Duxton

LQV Le Quinze Vins French wine bar by Telok Ayer Street

Shikar posh Indian

[southeastasianists]

Acclaimed Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas described it a masterpiece of experimental architecture. Singaporeans were drawn to it for its atmosphere and the abundance of cheap Thai food. For Thais living in Singapore, it was a home away from home.

Golden Mile Complex, also known as Little Thailand, was sold in 2021 to a consortium which will redevelop the building. As it has been gazetted as a conserved building by the Urban Redevelopment Authority, its physical structure is likely to be preserved. However, the same cannot be said for its unique character. Its tenants – a mix of inexpensive Thai eateries, seedy bars and tiny shops selling Thai perishables – were given until May 2023 to move out. Now that they have dispersed, they are unlikely to return.

As an era in the building’s history ends, it is timely to look back at its history, which goes back five decades.

Building Golden Mile Complex

Officially opened on 28 January 1972, Golden Mile Complex was an urban renewal project by the government to “redevelop and rejuvenate the slum-ridden areas in the Singapore city centre”.1 In the 1960s, the site was home to squatter settlements, small-time furniture and rattan makers, and the Kampong Glam Community Centre.2

In June 1967, then Minister for Law and National Development E.W. Barker announced that the area would be one of 14 urban redevelopment projects which would be transformed – resulting in modern skyscrapers, luxury apartments, hotels and shops – to give rise to a “new look Singapore”. These projects would involve the participation of private enterprises.3

Singapura Developments won the tender for the three-acre site that would eventually host Golden Mile Complex with a proposal for a building by the architecture firm Design Partnership (now known as DP Architects), which was then helmed by William S.W. Lim, Tay Kheng Soon and Koh Seow Chuan. The three men had convinced Singapura Developments to bid for the site in May 1969, offering the unusual proposition for a single building that would integrate shops, offices and apartments. Although the concept differed sharply from the government’s original proposal for luxury apartments on the plot, Lim, Tay and another architect, Gan Eng Oon, proved their design could work with an economic feasibility study that included precisely calculated land and sale prices.4

The all-in-one design of Golden Mile Complex marked a significant shift from how city planners in Singapore then traditionally segregated areas into different zones for “live, work, play”. In fact, it embodied Lim’s vision for “megastructures” that would contain all the functions of a city within a building, which he believed to be the future of Asian cities.

“We must reject outdated planning principles that seek to segregate man’s activities into arbitrary zones, no matter how attractive it may look in ordered squares on a land use map. We must reject arbitrary standards laid down that limit the intensive use of land,” said Lim and Tay as part of an essay for the Singapore Planning and Urban Research Group that was published in Asia Magazine in 1966.5 This vision was realised in Golden Mile Complex: a concrete megastructure that became one of the earliest mixed-use developments in Singapore and Asia.6

In January 1970, Singapura Developments began marketing the property and declared that “The Golden Mile Race Is On”. All 64 apartments were snapped up within a month, and most of the offices and shops were sold by the time building works commenced in May 1970.7

The building was originally named Woh Hup Complex, after the parent company of Singapura Developments. Rising 16 storeys, the edifice was designed in the Brutalist style popular in Europe and North America from the 1950s to the 1970s.8 It was constructed in a stepped terraced design held up by two end pillars that each adorned a star logo by Singapore’s leading graphic designer William Lee.9 Such a facade maximised waterfront views for the 64 apartments and maisonette penthouses spread across the topmost seven floors.

The next six floors housed 210 offices and studios to complete the tower that was seemingly pried apart in the middle. This sheltered a residential play deck facing Beach Road on the 10th storey while letting in natural light and ventilation into the office corridors and a three-storey podium. The latter comprised 360 shops that sat atop a basement carpark for 550 vehicles.

Completing the facilities was a four-storey residential car park at one end of the building that was topped with an open-air swimming pool overlooking the former Crawford Park. All these different functions were connected by corridors, including a “street” that ran through the podium of shops. The result was an interiorised environment designed to “encourage human interaction and intensify public life”.10

A Hub of Modernity

Woh Hup Complex was part of a pioneering wave of shopping centres to open in Singapore in the early 1970s, along with People’s Park Complex in Chinatown and Tanglin Shopping Centre and Specialists’ Centre in the Orchard Road area.

Like many of the complexes built then, Woh Hup Complex was also a strata-titled development. This form of property ownership was introduced by the government in 1968 to allow individual owners to have a share of a land. It allowed property developers to quickly recoup their investment by tapping on a pool of buyers, and also enabled individuals to participate in the on-going modernisation of Singapore.11

Woh Hup Complex offered shop lots in various sizes, starting from a 144-square-foot lot for just $16,500.12 The prices were lower compared to other shopping centres because the complex was at the city centre fringe. But its developer remained bullish about its prospects. “We offer easy parking, no frayed nerves while coming up here,” said T.M. Yong, a director at Singapura Developments. “Our shop owners will most probably be able to offer goods at lower prices.”13 The earliest tenants in the complex were an eclectic mix of shoe retailers, beauty salons, photo studios, furniture suppliers, travel agents, eateries, restaurants and nightclubs.14

As one of the first buildings to offer modern office spaces in Singapore, Woh Hup Complex attracted many businesses too. Singapura Developments and its parent company Woh Hup as well as Design Partnership set up offices in the building.15 The complex also became known for its many architecture and engineering firms, including OD Architects who were conceiving the masterplan for the National University of Singapore’s Kent Ridge campus, Cardew and Rider Engineers who were working with Design Partnership on Marina Square, and several engineering firms involved in the construction of Singapore’s up-and-coming Mass Rapid Transit network.16

But a decade after the complex opened, there were complaints of interrupted water supply, faulty air-conditioning and lifts, leaking roofs, rotting ceiling boards, rubbish piling up along the corridors, and broken or missing lights.17 These were reported after Woh Hup exited the property market and sold Singapura Developments along with its properties to City Developments in 1981.18 Woh Hup Complex was then renamed Golden Mile Complex.

The Rise of “Little Thailand”

By the mid-1980s, many of the building professionals had moved their offices elsewhere and Golden Mile Complex became better known as the haunt of foreign construction workers, specifically those from Thailand.

After work, particularly on Sundays and public holidays, homesick Thai workers thronged Golden Mile Complex to drink Singha beer, catch up on news back home by reading Thai newspapers, and listen to Thai music on cassette tapes. The draw for most was the various eateries selling Thai food at reasonable prices on the ground floor. Not only did these establishments serve food just like home, they served them on tables and chairs “scattered in front of food shops” or along the corridors and the concourse – just “[like] a street corner in Haadyai or Bangkok”.19

Golden Mile Complex was also the terminal for tour buses plying the Singapore-Haadyai route operated by travel agencies located in the complex and the neighbouring Golden Mile Tower. As the Thai clientele in the complex grew, it became referred to as “Little Bangkok” and “Little Thailand”.20 The Thai community injected new life into what was then a rapidly ageing Golden Mile Complex, and attracted even more shops to serve the community. A tailor in the complex reportedly expanded from one shop to seven to sell all things Thai, while a “100% genuine Thai style” disco named Pattaya opened in 1988 on the second floor.21 There was even a 50-seat “cinema” that screened kick-boxing specials and Thai features at $3 a ticket.22

In 1986, the Straits Times reported that Golden Mile Complex “would be a ghost town but for the office workers, who appear at lunch time, and the Thais, who have made it their haunt”. Dorothy, a secretary working in an architecture firm in the complex, told the Straits Times: “Before the Thais started coming here about four years ago, the place was very dead. Now, it’s sometimes so noisy that you get a headache.” Because fights would occasionally break out, she was not a fan of the place. “For Thai food, I’d rather go to Joo Chiat,” she added.23 Her sentiments were shared by many other Singaporeans who avoided Golden Mile Complex on Sundays.

As one shopowner explained: “Our Sunday business has been hit. Some customers stay away because of the Thai character of the place.” A food stall operator added: “The Thais linger for hours, drinking beer and eating their favourite beef noodles. Sometimes, they fight among themselves over a few drinks.”24

It did not help that migrant workers and the complex were often in the news for the wrong reasons. As part of the government’s massive crackdown on illegal migrants in March 1989, 370 suspected Thai undocumented workers at Golden Mile Complex were nabbed in a single operation.25

National Icon or National Disgrace?

In 1994, Rem Koolhaas visited Singapore and marvelled at its development in his seminal essay “Singapore Songlines”. He was particularly captivated by Golden Mile Complex and People’s Park Complex, which he praised as “‘masterpieces’ of experimental architecture/urbanism”.26 On his next visit to Singapore in 2005, Koolhaas said: “These buildings were not intended to be landmarks but became landmarks. Yesterday, I went to see all the buildings again, and they are absolutely stunning, radical and amazing.”27

While Koolhaas and many in the architecture fraternity saw Golden Mile Complex as the future, most Singaporeans regarded it as a relic of the past. By the 1990s, a slew of new shopping centres had sprung up near the complex, including Raffles City, Bugis Junction, Suntec City, Millenia Walk and Marina Square. Many felt Golden Mile Complex and other strata-title malls were simply no match for these single-owner developments that could plan a more attractive retail mix to woo shoppers.28 A 1996 article in the Straits Times assessed that Golden Mile Complex was unlikely to change because of its ownership structure and should simply “fill [the] low-end gap”.29

The disconnect between Golden Mile Complex’s celebrated architecture and its decline came to a head in 2006. During a parliamentary session on 6 March, then Nominated Member of Parliament Ivan Png called it a “vertical slum”. He was particularly irked by how each individual owner had added “extensions, zinc sheets, patched floors, glass, all without any regard for other owners and without any regard for national welfare”, resulting in “a terrible eyesore and a national disgrace”.

“The appearance of Golden Mile Complex appals me whenever I drive along Nicoll Highway. It must create a terrible impression on foreign visitors arriving from the airport. How can we be a world-class city in a garden? The Golden Mile Complex is just the most extreme of how a strata-title property can deteriorate,” he said.30

This came just after Golden Mile Complex was featured in Singapore 1:1 – City, a publication showcasing significant architecture and urban design in the city-state.31 “That’s a real joke!” said Png. “Can you imagine if that thing was standing on the Singapore River between OCBC Building and UOB Centre?” He added: “It just gives me goosebumps. It’s so close to the city, yet it’s so unlike Singapore – orderly, tidy, everything neat. It’ll drag us down.”32

Not everyone agreed with his criticism. Retiree Evelyn Ong, who moved into the complex in 2005, immediately booked her 11-storey apartment after seeing the breathtaking views. She said: “Once I stepped in and saw the view, I said book, book, must book.” She bought her 1,000-square-foot apartment for about $310,000, and spent about $70,000 on renovations to make it look like a holiday resort. “I think I’m very lucky. It’s so difficult to find such a nice view. Every day, I sit here (at my balcony) and I can see the beautiful lights at night.” She agreed that more could be done to spruce up the building though.33

The local architecture fraternity pushed back against Png’s comments. In August 2006, Calvin Low, a trained architect and journalist, kickstarted a monthly series on local architecture in the Straits Times and titled his first article “Golden Mile Still Shines”.

“The architectural thesis that GMC [Golden Mile Complex] represented was revolutionary – not just for Singapore but globally, too. It stood as a concrete realisation of the architects’ vision of a futuristic city-within-a-building that offered a whole, new integrated way of living in a modern, tropical, urban Asian context,” he wrote.34

In November the same year, a collective of architects, designers and artists known as FARM launched “Save the Modern Building Series”, a lineup of talks to raise awareness of the complex and other pioneering modern buildings such as Pearl Bank Apartments.35 In November 2007, the inaugural architecture festival, Singapore ArchiFest 07 – organised by the Singapore Institute of Architects to celebrate Singapore’s built environment – featured tours of the complex conducted by architecture students from the National University of Singapore.36

A Landmark Saved, a Community Lost

In August 2018, news broke that more than 80 percent of the owners of units in the complex had agreed to put the building up for an en bloc sale at $800 million. This came hot on the heels of the sale of another modernist icon, Pearl Bank Apartments,37 just six months earlier. Heritage and architectural experts were dismayed at the news. “It will be a tragedy and a great loss to Singapore if the en-bloc sale results in the demolition and redevelopment of such an important urban landmark with such high architectural and social significance,” said heritage conservation expert Ho Weng Hin.38

Although architects and academics petitioned for Golden Mile Complex to be conserved, residents were in two minds about it. The complex’s long-time residents confessed they could no longer keep up with the building’s maintenance needs. “The problem is that it’s an old building, and when it rains, the water seeps through some of the walls. The building has water-proofing issues,” said Ponno Kalastree, who had lived and worked there since 1989. He was among those who had voted for the sale and was planning to downgrade to a Housing and Development Board flat, but admitted that he would miss the place.39

To the surprise of many, the Urban Redevelopment Authority (URA) told the Business Times in October 2018 that they have “assessed the building to have heritage value, and is in the process of engaging the stakeholders to explore options to facilitate conservation”. “Modern architecture, dating from our recent past, is a significant aspect of our built heritage, and we have selectively conserved a number of such buildings. Where there is strong support and merits for conservation, we will work with the relevant stakeholders to facilitate the process,” said the URA. This meant that the existing building could be retained while a new block would be added next to it.40

The tender closed in January the following year without any offer, and a second tender launched just two months later with the same terms and price tag of $800 million suffered the same fate.41

Almost one year after the two failed collective sales, the URA announced in October 2020 that it was officially proposing Golden Mile Complex to be conserved in light of its historical and architectural significance.42 When it was gazetted a year later in October 2021, Golden Mile Complex became the “first modern, large-scale strata-titled development to be conserved in Singapore”.43

The owners relaunched an en bloc sale in December that year at the same price of $800 million.44 This time, the sale was successful and the complex was sold in May 2022 to a consortium comprising Far East Organization, Sino Land and Perennial Holdings. Although their bid was $100 million lower than the reserve price, the owners agreed to the sale within “a record time of 15 days”.45

At the point of publishing this essay, the new owners have yet to reveal how they plan to redevelop Golden Mile Complex, though it is unlikely that any of the former tenants will return. The battle to conserve Golden Mile Complex has, ironically, cost the community who kept it alive when others moved on to swankier new buildings. But all, however, is not lost. The redevelopment of Golden Mile Complex could serve as a model for how other similar buildings in Singapore can be conserved and enjoy a new lease of life for the future.

[reinekes-fox]

Kronschwinge

Kronschwinge

The Divines Flock pride and only founded city.

Characterised by beautiful marble buildings, and huge complexes that are connected by crossings above the old cobblestone streets, it spirales into heights that once were impressive. Influenced by refugees from the French Revolution, the german locals and unreachable ideas, it took inspiration from other european countries.

By now the city has changed and grown, while remaining its historical city centre. The outskirts and new urban areas show the change of the centuries in a way the centre cant, chained by its own past.

Many inhabitants still meet up at the giant Church, its a popular meeting point, to take a stroll through one of the many parks. Stores however are rare and who wants to go shopping will be better of visiting the outskirts or even the Flamingo Mall.