"We haven't got a plan so nothing can go wrong!" -Spike Milligan

I have been working this entire year, devoting nearly my entire life to this project. I'm in China now to "complete" it. However, by the photo above you can guess that's not going to happen anytime soon. I'm designing 2 homes in Wuxi, China. They are in a residential development similar to US subdivisions, but they are called Villas. This is phase one of this developement & I am designing the interiors for the clubhouse & 1 model. The NY Times did an article about the very type of developement I'm working on, which you can find here. The difference is these homes are not modern or contemporary, they want French/Italian/American style;)

I have so much to tell you about this project & working in China. As the end of this article says... “You want to avoid clients who don’t know anything about building,” he says. “They won’t respect you; they’ll try to change things along the way". This isn't exactly the issue here, the issue is the budget, which doesn't have a real life figure, but rather one that appears anytime it's time to buy something. This may be the ideal that pushes me out of my mind;)

The culture is considerably different, so many websites are blocked so it's hard to work let alone read blogs. Blogger & Typepad are blocked, well blogger is, I just can't see any images on Typepad. Youtube is blocked. There is a snippet from Lost in Translation that I desperately want to show you. It's the scene where Bill Murray's character is being shot for the whiskey advertisement, the photographer goes on & on in Japanese & the translator tells him something like, "smile nicely". Bill Murray says, are you sure that's all he said, I'm pretty sure he said more than that & the translator says, no that is all. Then it turns out it wasn't because he's not doing the poses like the photographer wants. That's my life here. Tangled & lost in translation.

I'll have more pictures & a more interesting post sooooon!!

Jamie