portfolio 73

 The Ruins of Drugyal Dzong before the reconstruction Picture from Google I have a deep affection for ruins. I love the stories that old and broken things have to tell and everything they remain for. The ruins of Drukgyal Dzong in Paro is something I have always admired, not just as a patriotic Bhutanese but also as a student of architecture. But as they say, “You raze the old to raise a new,” the reconstruction of a new structure has already begun and has even reached half way through. This initiation seems to be welcomed and even celebrated by many, but I can’t explain the sore feeling it gives me every time I think about it. The ruins were something that preserved glory and heroism of wars Bhutan had fought four hundred years ago. The thick walls of rammed earth held such strength that could not be demolished by any foreign attacks but rather stood high and bold to scare away enemies. The walls stretch along the hill looking as if it grew out of it and nothing cou...

Ugen woke up to a cold empty morning anticipated with nothing but dead silence. It still seemed like it was in middle of the night and there wasn't a tinge of noise except for the one it made when he scratched his back and rubbed his eyelids against the eye ball. He rose his neck without completely getting up and saw that his roommate wasn't back yet. He buried his head under his warm blanket and thought he could go back sleep. But he couldn't. The only louder noise he now heard was his own heart thumping against his chest. He opened his eyes at once and stared the ceiling, panting in his own bed. The letter he wrote last night. He jumped off his bed and pulled out the brown box quickly. He'd left his pen uncapped in the book and the big Hello-Kitty on its top bulged the thin cover of the book.  He slowly opened it like a kid afraid of an illustrated 3-D monster sprouting out from the book. He picked up the pen which was diagonally blocking some of the wor...

October. The time when winter started to send its chilly warning and the night sky became clearer. The time when the leaves already left their twigs while the cities glowed with lights and colors of festivals. Everything was so perfect and the poets felt every single moment in thousands of ways. But in a lonely room towards the far east of a college dorm, few drops of tears fell on the last Harry Potter book. A pair of sad brown eyes slowly rose from the final page, followed by a deep sad sigh almost shivering. Ugen stepped out in his balcony, his eyes gazing out into the distance and slowly brightening as he saw the lights the city showered in. He looked up at the sky, luxuriously sprinkled with stars and clearer than ever. He looked down at the city and back at the sky, and again and one more time. It was like they mirrored each other. He has never seen it as beautiful as today. He drew a heart in the air with his index finger, and giggled at himself. He heaved deep ...

What is a day without light? Just a day, without light? Whether it’s bright sunny or foggy outside, it still is a day. We all wake up to a morning lit up with electricity in our rooms and have a day under the fancy bulbs and tube lights glowing towards the end of the day, and throughout the night. We work, walk, eat and sleep under the enormous artificial lightings, that sometimes we barely know the difference between day and night. On one hand, we are blessed with science. It has created a world where nights are brighter, and human activities are carried out endlessly. However, researches show that in modern cities humans spend about 90% of their times indoors under unnatural lights. Which means the biological need of the body to be exposed to daily cycles of light and dark is not fulfilled. The cycle of light and dark regulates the circadian system of the body and enhances our energy. So think about some of us whose curtains remain drawn all the time. Some of us b...

I love exams. It’s when I can actually concentrate on things in a way it helps me manage my time, which often is based on procrastination and I am not proud about it. It’s when I want to clean my room thoroughly, do mounts of laundries and have everything organized. Exam times are also when a lot of exciting movies go around, and you steal few hours from your revisions aching to miss the fun if you don’t do so. It’s when you spend hours narrating your funny stories from school to friends and go all night ending with the silly sob stories. You start to think about so many things you haven’t thought about all this time. I even start making plans for the holidays, which gets exciting the more I talk about it and sometimes it is one thing I get my motivation from: To do my exams well so that I can have a good holiday without having to worry about the results. Exams can bring a lot of stress on people but it’s also when everything gets fun around. For me, it’s the only or one of...

What if we could write letters to the god? Actual letters that god would read and reply! We could tell god everything! We could tell him how afternoon classes are mind-numbing in this heat and how you wish you could go take a nap right under the fan in your room. We could tell him how sometimes you want your notebooks and pens to walk towards you and write by themselves. We could also ask him why many things are disoriented and all people do is mystify them more. I used to write a letter to god every week when I was in school. Not really hoping for the reply but just incase if he knew that there was one person trying to reach him atypically. I might have written hundreds of letters and they were all some kind of diaries of mine hoping to be read by god. I sometimes felt like god actually read them (Aren't they supposed to be watching us from the top?) I was very nice in my first letters. I lied that everything was okay and often made up stories where sick peop...

If there’s one thing that I don’t want to die of, that’s earthquake. I’ve seen everywhere how destructive an earthquake can be and how deadly it can kill people. I have never experienced earthquakes in my life and I thank god for saving me from this terror. So far. I’ve been a deep sleeper most of the time when it happened and otherwise, I was in the car. So I didn’t even feel the difference. Until this vacation, it happened to be twice. The first one was right before I went to bed that night and it felt funny because I didn’t believe it at first. My room is in the attic and I thought somebody was throwing a big boulder on our roof. It felt silly because by the time I knew it was really an earthquake, it had stopped. The second was pretty much bad. That morning, at some minutes past five, my bedroom shook like it was going to fall. I closed my eyes hoping it to be a dream but every time I opened them, it was real. And every time I opened them, I didn’t see anything. I was really s...