I am writing from a nice coffee shop between 11^th Street and Pine. I biked my way here this morning and already discovered so many things nearby: a cute queer bookshop, the Louis I. Kahn Park, and an appealing fancy barber shop that I want to give it a try.

I am trying to nurture a personality of exploration, discovery, and insight. I was riding my bike on my way to the coffee shop and was taken aghast by the beautiful brickwork and the shadows cast on the front marble stoops and the brickwork in the sidewalk by the Fall trees in the Gayborhood. It was a reminder that you get out of life what you put into it.

Yesterday I went to the Weitzman Happy Hour and made small talk with a second-year student in the City Planning department. It was Halloween weekend, so our conversation naturally gravitated towards spooky themes. I learned that in Chinese culture, the soul is believed to stick around mortals for 7 days after death.

On my second time to Tavern on Camac. The first had been with a date, but this time around I went on my own. I found myself enjoying a gin & tonic around the piano in the presence of a musician who expressed great confidence. I was dressing in a preppy-style ­–less rough with leather & boots attire that I think is required to go to places like The Bike Stop. I then went back home and chilled with a movie and popcorn.

I am writing from a nice coffee shop in Center Philadelphia between 11^th Street and Pine. I discovered a cute queer bookshop nearby and want to go there to get a copy of The Leatherman’s Handbook II.

I was riding my bike on my way to the coffee shop and was taken aghast by the beautiful brickwork and the shadows cast on the front marble stoops and the brickwork in the sidewalk by the Fall trees in the Gayborhood. It was a reminder that life can be as rich as one is willing to pay attention. You get out of life by how much you put into it.

In that input of effort, one must also choose their friends and close acquaintances. I am making an effort to remove myself from people who vent, gossip, and are lazy. Being on the receiving end of those relationships and interactions are much like inhaling the second-hand smoke. It is poison.

An obstacle to become a daring leader is, besides being an egocentric lone wolf , being surrounded by the wrong wolves. 

I am writing in a coffee shop on a Sunday morning. Penn undergrads are about to start classes. Noah Schnapp is the sensation on campus.

As soon as I start to write, my brain realizes that a state of mind is imminent and immediately wants to optimize the environment at the detriment of getting started. Odd behavior.

Yesterday was such a rich day. In the morning, I went to the Farmer’s Market on Clark Park and had a delightful time appreciating the warm colors and textures of arugula, kale, sesame seed bread, and peaches. Watching and interacting with people refreshes my mind.

Later that afternoon, I went to the Philadelphia Naked Bike Ride, an annual event celebrating body-positivity and cycling. I felt so many things. I first biked to Lemon Hill and joined a mass of naked Philadelphians of all walks of life socializing, drinking beer, smoking weed, painting their bodies, and getting busy with their bikes. When the race started, I did not anticipate the cheerfulness and jubilation of the crowds. It was a constant state of being of wholesomeness and joy. A celebration of life.

The experience was a metaphor for many things. I did not feel comfortable with fully-clothed individuals taking pics of the mass. This reminded me that it is much better to be in the arena than to be a spectator. I saw a lady in her 60s who projected so much confidence, depth, and character. I got a sense she has seen it all, and done it all. An acquisition of a character through great courage in life. She reminded me of Dog the Bounty Hunter. I can only aspire to live a life as hers: rich and ultimately rewarding.

Being comfortable with your skin is not only an exercise in acceptance and self-love, but also a radical honesty of who we are. There is nowhere to hide. I learned so much about myself in observing my reactions to an entirely new context. So refreshing. I think I’m getting addicted to new experiences.

Yesterday we discussed in Diagnostics with Michael Henry the utility of sketching a conditions of a lighthouse. There is something weird about drawing with your hand that makes the recording so much tangible. It forces you to observe beyond seeing, to record beyond noticing. It is an active, not a passive learning activity.

I did just that this morning. I grabbed an old sketch book and a Muji pen, got on my bike, and went to the President’s House on Walnut Street to observe and sketch some Yellin gates fronting a Trumbauer-designed home. (Weirdly enough, the President’s House used to be the residence of Mr. Eisenlohr, a Gilded-Age tobacco magnet buried in West Laurel Hill, whose mausoleum I am doing a conditions survey for a Masonry conservation seminar!)

The gates on the other side of Walnut were far more exquisite. They were not a Yellin design, and they fronted a frat house! If architecture speaks to the aspirations of a society, well, this no doubt is a bummer.

What I observed was a regularly-decorated wrought-iron gate. The black coating covered the nooks and cracks. It makes me wonder if corrosion can travel through the network of the ironwork much like water is transported from the roots to the leaves of a tree. Suppose a 100 feet-long iron rod is covered in epoxy with the last inch left exposed to a marine environment. Would you see the expansion of the rod all the way to the end?

A scholar searching for a thesis topic is similar to an entrepreneur finding a problem for a startup to solve. It is a struggle to negotiate what we are interested in and what the world needs. Maybe I should redirect my attention to an alloy that has been used in monumental architecture but not studied enough. Besides Monell, what other is there?

I read an article for a class on Building Diagnostics that resonated with me. In talking about how museum conservators mitigate accidents, “Diversity of opinion is intellectually stimulating,” the author declared. Today in Studio, a professor asked our response to an exercise on self-evaluating our teamwork skills, and all I was thinking was about how stifling it is to voice disagreements. I feel like I am walking on thin ice in these classes and am afraid of saying the wrong thing, the wrong statement that might harm someone. Self-censorship in academia is becoming common place. It makes me want to read more than ever John Stuart Mill’s “On Liberty”.

Today I am grateful for the evening rain that refreshed the neighborhood; the warm coffee machine in the office; and the opportunity to help students in completing their assignments.

I want to make my thesis useful to architectural conservators. I don’t want this to be some obscure topic that does not advance the field. I would like this to be a material science thesis grounded on electrochemistry.

I want the thesis to be compact and succinct. One model I keep referring back is the Very Short Introduction series by Oxford University Press. These little books offer an introduction to a wide range of topics from Buddhism to Particle Physics. The style of these books is academic: unadorned, with graphics that are as elemental as a quick sketch. This is what I aim for: a thesis that stands strong even when stripped of embellishments in fonts, graphics, and flowery words.

Sam Yellin worked primarily with wrought iron and iron. I fear I am on a dead-end, where I may unsuccessfully find physical phenomena that is peculiar to the ironwork of Sam Yellin. If Sam Yellin will be the topic of my thesis, it would be a monograph, using case studies as a subcomponent.

I would like to build upon a master’s thesis that an archivist at Penn recommended to look at. It is a thesis in Monel, the alloy of copper and nickel that was popular in the 1920s. His research lays the groundwork to discover the phases and causes of Monel atmospheric corrosion. Yet the author has signaled that he intends to do the lab work himself. I do not wish to compete, so I may need to find another path that circles around my interests: Beaux-Arts architecture, 3D animations, and an interest to cross-discipline with Chemistry, electrochemistry, and physics.

How about I tackle the phases and causes of failure of artificial stone like that seen in McKim’s original Pennsylvania Station? This would be more of a history of technology thesis, with no treatment component, and I do want to create graphic animations that explain the deterioration mechanisms in a visually-compelling way. The Vaccine Makers Project has very interesting animations of how vaccines work. Neil deGrasse Tyson’s Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey includes animations of subatomic particles. And the Fallen of World War II documentary presents an engaging story that visualizes statistics in a very compelling way.

We are living in troubling times.