Sunday, April 08, 2007

a chef of design

Martin Conreen is a lecturer at the Design Department of Goldsmiths College, University of London. His posture reflects his appetite of good food and exotic cuisines from all over the world. My first impression of him was "This guy is wearing a shocking pink shirt. Oh my god" I hope my mind didn't sound like Janice back then. I worked with him for several days last month during his scoping visit to Bali with the British Council.

On our way to the Ubud wet market one chilly morning, he told me how he opened a vegan restaurant once. I'm sure he is talented and sees cooking as an important career, because he's still cooking for his family and friends until now. He's seriously obsessed with cooking so that he has two different refrigerators at home. One for vegan supplies and the other one for non-vegan. Part of the obsession is to make dishes that suitable for the consumer. This is all about the challenge. Imagine yourself cooking for an ultranationalist vegan who wants a vegan dish that made without any single ingredients from 17 countries that she believes violate the universal rights, both to human and animal.

What will he make on such request? Watermelon Curry.

He has done an amazing research on material, made him the only professor who pursue that specialisation. I'm strange, he exclaimed about this. And I was wow-ing the whole time he explained about several unbeliable but existing materials such as a wafer that cuts ice like butter, or a metal that remember its shape. When I asked him how can he get access to those materials. Gleefully he said, you have to hang out with scientists.

If you meet him, don't be surprised to see how energetic he is. He has a constant flowing energy from early morning until midnight. An early person by habit, he's the only charming fellow at 7 o'clock in our groups. And its amazing to see him, with the same spirit, at 11 pm, after dinner and meeting with designers.

On top of everything, he thinks Thomas Heatherwick is cool and maybe, just maybe, if I ever land my feet on the United Kingdom ground, Martin can introduce me to him. And I'll be flying to the stars in ecstasy if Thomas Heatherwick agrees to hire me even if only to make coffee. I'm good at making coffee. I know.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Is it hard to get into the University of London?

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