White noise

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Singapore 21^st November 2011

Back in Singapore after a (too) short stay in “blue skies” land…many things on our plate and with end of the year nearly knocking on our doors, we are entering the usual end of the year rush were people want to settle as many things as possible before embarking on their Xmas holidays. I am not sure why people only wake up when they suddenly realise that their holidays are coming up…Guess some form of guilt so they rush to finish and accomplish something to make sure that they “deserve” their leave. Some even have the guts to leave you with a list of work and demands the day they go on leave, expecting you to keep working, while they enjoy a “guilt-free” holiday. Anyhow we, as much as we can are informing our clients in advance of the holiday closure of the company so there are no false expectations! As I have said on several occasions, this (lighting design) business is very much about managing expectations.

Today we started the morning straight up with a lengthy conference call with one of our clients in China…a lot of (Chinese) talk, seemingly not too efficient, but in the end we got our issues sorted out. A conference call already works better than an email exchange, while a one on one meeting again beats the conference call. Following a design coordination meeting in our office we have now scheduled such one on one meeting with the interior designer later in the week as they are based here in Singapore. Most of the day we finalised design issues and for one tried to eliminate interference from so called “white noise”, people who believe they should have an opinion about lighting design and keep pushing their ideas and concepts rather than just leave it to the “experts”. Interior designers, architects and suppliers are typical examples of people who can create this “white noise”. This is the time to stand your grounds on lighting design issues, certainly if you are confident that you have done your homework. It does not mean ignoring and not listening to those producing the “noise”, on the contrary. But filtering the relevant from the irrelevant requires some diplomacy, tact and perseverance… just another day at work 🙂

In Light Watch a little play with light. I did enjoy the weekend under the beautiful skies in Perth, played a round of golf and got soundly beaten by my son. Somehow my shots never want to land on the fairway and I keep looking for my balls in the rough…but I took these nice “shots” along the way.

By the way if you do have some nice light and shadow pics, please do share them!