Bike Furniture Design

Bike Furniture Design is a design and manufacturing studio specializing in contemporary, modern furniture made primarily from recycled steel and aluminum bicycle rims, handlebars, and frames. These designs use train and automobile windows for tabletops, and surplus automotive seat-belt webbing for seating upholstery. Bike Furniture upholstery options are unlimited. Some options include leather, rubber, cork, clear and colored acrylic, and vinyl.








recycle... design... exhibit...

one after the other

just as i thought, this year would definitely be time of change for both me and the people around me. two days ago my sister Ava and my bro in law Pravin got placed into her residencies. Pravin is going to be doing neurology at cleveland clinic in Ohio and my sister is going to be doing family practice in Erie, PA. Since they didnt get placed into the same hospital they are considering selling their current home and finding a house inbetween the two states. While their living situation will be much better than their current situation in Rotations (they move to a different hospital or state every 3-4 weeks)-- the downfall is they will be stuck in their spots for the next 4 years. Its going to be very hard working 80 hour shifts as a resident and having a 90 mile commute (hopefully that wont happen). I wish the best for her and her hubby. They will both be graduating this Spring!!!!

i also found out my roommate just got into an exchange program located in Tunisia. There she will teach English to others and learn Arabic at the same time. She will also have the opportunity to travel around the country a little bit. They choose her based on her ability to speak French which I think is ridiculous. I will miss you Sonia!!!

Earlier that day I also found out I got accepted into the design program at concordia university. I was so excited bc ive working on this literally day and night for the last 3 months --but overall Ive been pursuing this for the last year and half.

My cousin Sahar is also moving to Montreal at the end of this summer. I just found out shes taking a year off to work and learn French. This works out better for me :) bc now she will hopefully have time to help me out.

Today I found out that one of my good friends may be moving out of the country.. :( this is really disappointing but hopefully she can stay for as long as her situation allows.

Last Monday my aunt opened her new office in the downtown area of Maple Lawn.. Shes still in the process of getting her business together but hopefully I can work their during the summer..

On side note:
Ive been taking a lot of time to reevaluate all the relationships I have in my life. Bc Ive been changing a lot myself -- the people in my life have also been switching.

one specific situation has been bothering me. unfortunately no matter how long youve known someone .. sometimes when friends take different paths in life its hard to relate or keep something up that seems unreal. Its very very hard to be in this situation especially if youve known someone for that long...bc they automatically have high expectations of you and of the friendship. How do you tell someone you dont want to be friends with them??.. just bc you are so completely different that its hard to enjoy your time with them.. you cant!

and if the person continues to somehow repeatedly pop up in your life.. what does this all mean?? are you suppose to learn something from them or affect them in some way?? really, after a while of noticing these situations .. they really arent coincedence. inshallah god will give me the understanding for what to do!

once again, this year has already been going by really fast! but it just keeps getting better and better.. and im really excited to flip into the next chapter of life :)

Mulah Matchmaker

The Mulah takes on a whole new role.....

http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/world/2009/03/05/iran.love.mullah.cnn

Top 100 Sites in America

http://www.alexa.com/site/ds/top_sites?cc=US&ts_mode=country&lang=none


Check it out!!

gum + butts

Smartstreets-Smartbin: Public Chewing gum bin and cigarette bin, Highlands, Scotland (UK)

detecting problem + finding solution = good design.

Really, the ideas are simple, but thats what makes them so effective.
It takes America a little bit of time to catch on to common sense =)

http://flickr.com/photos/27940402@N06/2612347313/

Linehan Trip

Once a semester i go on a school trip through the linehan program. every fall we go to ny for a day and in spring we go to dc. The trips usually consistents of us going to an exhibit in the morning and some sort of show or performance at night. For the most part all the trips have been pretty cool (and usually very expensive)... but they fully cover our fee which is awesome =). Since i am aware that students often cancle their tickets, I take advantage of this and ask to bring a friend with me (they get fully covered too since the tickets are all prepaid).
Some of the places we gone in the past were the Guggeinheim museum, lincoln center (twice), MOMA.. and etc

To this day the best performance ive ever seen was edward sissor hands at the kennedy center. the technological devices they used in their theatre really combined the digital world with reality.. i dont know much about theatre but ....the fact that they had my attention for 2.5 hours with the characters barely speaking was absolutely amazing.


anyways back to saturdays show.. we went to first Smithsonian American Art Museum. the first thing we did was grab some food in there really nice cafe. basically this museum originally consisted of one building. then decided to expand the musuem but they didnt want to knock down any structures .. so what they did was connect the two buildings by adding a "roof cap"

inbetween...for the area that would be an intersection i guess? you really felt like you were outside bc you could see the fascades of the two buildings facing inwards....
anywho after we walked around the museum ,we took a cab to M street in georgetown..ate at Miss Saigon. really good vietnamese food :) if you guys want to check it out.. one of my favorite places. they brought my food out in a clay pot
so we chilled in downtown for like 2 and half hours then took a cab back to Kennedy Center. The cab driver that picked us up was freaky as ishhhh. He was playing slow love making music really loudly in his car.

Between us four girls we were VERY very uncomfortable with this middle-aged guy. My friend sitting next to me, kept pintching my leg the entire time. Lol one of the girls had to sit in the front I felt bad for her :/ lol


So eventually we go the Lincoln Center and we were scheduled to see a jazz performance at 9:30pm. To be honest im pretty ignorant about the music scene but one the guys we saw was a multi Grammy winner (Ernie Watts saxophone). There was a native american string quratet and a trio with piano, bass, and drums. The singer, kurt elling, had really great presence on stage. he kinda sounded like micheal buble to me..lol but that could just be me.
Considering I dont really listen to jazz music at all, i was really blown away.

The best part of the night was seeing the Lincoln Center's exhibit called Arabesque: Arts of the Arab World. Let me tell you, these guys really went out all out. Of course what they were presenting was biased, but they had collections from 22 arab countries ( i didnt even know there were 22 arab countries?). This included performances of music, theatre, dance (mainly guys), in addition to a film festival, literary events, a souk (market), and a lot more. lol they even had a harem bed in the middle of one of the galleries (it was suppose to function as a bench for people). There were a few clothing displays for royalty and the common attire, from back in the day. The gift shop was filled with calligraphic t-shirts, arabic comic books, and a lot of other random stuff.

Yesterday, I finally finished a stepping stone in my path. Im so so grateful to every single person that helped me accomplish my work. People dont realize the little things they do for others sometimes impacts them in big ways. Being on the other side, and recieveing that help, motivates me to be more helpful to others on a day to day basis.

Sometimes in order to jump, you first need to fall and use that momentum to pick urself back up...to move even higher. I really beleive that.

What really got to me these past two weeks was that every single thing I wanted to do, even the simplest things such as printing something, became the most complicated task. I had to drive to 3 different towns, loose my work, get pulled over by a cop, just to print 4 items.
Literally, this is just one of soo many things I had to do that just became ridiculous.

Between my computer crashing, loosing my software, getting really sick, not sleeping, driving all over maryland, crashing peoples homes, loosing all my career work from the last 8 years.. Ive had a crazy week.
I think Ive learned more in this short time period than I have in the last 6 months.

Indivisible

Wayne Dyer is one of my favorite authors, and recently I picked up one of his older books and began skimming it...
This is an excerpt I pulled out:
"God is that which is indivisible. There's only one omnipresent presence called God. This presence is everywhere and is the force that creates and sustains life. It can never be divided or cut into pieces. There's only one power in the universe, not two. Everything in your experience as a human being appears to be in duality, however. Up exists because of its opposite, down. Light exists because of dark; right exists because of wrong. You've never seen a person with a front who doesn't have a back. Our physical world is a world of dichotomies and combinations of opposites, always divisible.
Silence, however, is one experience you can have that's indivisible. You cut silence in half, and all you get is more silence. There's only silence. Therefore silence is your one way to experience the oneness and the indivisibility of God. This is why you want to meditate. This is how you know God rather than having to settle for knowing about God.
You will find your answers in the silence. Remember: It's out of the void, the emptiness, that everything was created. When you write a musical note, the silence from which it comes is just as much a part of the note as is the sound. So it is with healing any thing or any relationship. Going into the quiet and listening will inspire you."

Gilah Press + Branding

AIGA was sponsoring an event at Gilah Press on last Wednesday to show students a demo on the letter press. I went with a few students from my school but the rest of the people there were from MICA (Maryland Institute College of Art). In the demo they showed us how they use these old machines from the 1900s to create impressions on various printed work for their clients. Its not a common way of printing but it really creates fabulous results.

Okay so I have to go off about MICA students a little bit. For those of you who dont know -they are the ones that make all the other design students in this area look bad. They take all the good jobs from the larger corportations like Cocola, National Gallery, Under Armour.. etc etc...

Anyway back to Gilah Press... they are a fairly small business in Baltimore but man do they make bucks. It costs around 500$ to get your business cards done there. However, I have to say the quality that goes into their design pieces are really high end. It really leaves an impression (literally- lol yea i know im korny)....It really goes to show the importance of branding. At one of my last internships they taught me about the realtionship of branding and business. Based on their research it takes 3-5 years for a small business to start making profit. However, if they are smart and do significant branding before the business actually opens, they are able to gain profit within the first 6 months-1 year. The results really really shocked me. There were two clients at the time we were working with (to do full branding before they launched).. and it was amazing the response they were recieving even within the first month. It really doesnt matter how great your products or services are.. if you dont communicate well and often, consistently and creativily you cant expect to have miracles. My aunt recently started a business 3 months ago and I was helping her branding (before she had her company, a president, the money, the service, anything)...however since her branding was soo strong and her "business" was so well put together, she was able to get two contracts within the first three months. Anyway thats basically my rant about branding. I get really irritated when people dont see the importance of this. To me its so obvious -- but whatever :)

Kiva

Kiva is an international organization that connects people through lending for the sake of alleviating poverty. This person-to-person micro-lending website, allows any individual to directly lend money to entrepreneurs in third world countries.

Each entrepreneurs is given a certain time period to return their money through the community organization that sponsors them. This money is then reprocessed in the system to be given to another individual who needs help. Kiva also allows you to create groups, in order to encourage friends and family to send money as well. The minimum amount of money one can donate is $25.

Recently, I had the opportunity to work with a group of young children who wanted to sponsor individuals on this site. These children who are inbetween the ages of 12 and under, saved up their own money and choose to be part of this process. Im so proud of them and hopefully we can expand this project with other people who are interesed.

Hasan, 41, lives in Bekaa, Lebanon with his wife and their four children. He has been breeding livestock for six years. Hasan is requesting a loan of $1000 USD from Al Majmoua in order to purchase feed for the livestock and to repay his debts.

Feild Organization Asasah, a partner of Save the Children

Gulzar Baji is a 37-year-old married lady and has resided in a city named Multan, Pakistan for the past 24 years. Her husband's name is Allah Wasaya and he has had a dairy business for the past 10 years. He sells milk in the milk shops and in the community as well. Gulzar Baji helps him by milking the buffalo. Presently he has one buffalo at home. Gulzar Baji has three kids: one son and two daughters. All of her kids are getting an education from a school which located near their house.

For more information go to Kiva.org