ficus microcarpa
I think it’s safe to say that I’m rooted back to the Internetz. Yayyyyy.
Also, because it feels like you don’t own a Mac (Brat#1 says the full name ‘Macintosh’, which I find endearing and totally adorable) until you start playing with Photobooth, here are some shots of me one hour after waking up, after sneezing yellow mucus in the bathroom (very bad cold yesterday), and after installing some important programs:
In Ti’s room. The first frame is a normal shot, and the rest was taken with this distortion effect, which is by far my favourite XD
I’m really not looking forward to clearing my backlog of files that were scattered everywhere in various folders while I was in limbo :(
Also, touchpad is funky and all that, but I still need a mouse :P
On Saturday morning, I played with spray cans for some graffiti workshop. Last night, I had a sudden desire to re-acquaint myself with my rusty guitar.
Saturday’s spray painting left me with a right wrist ridden with muscle aches, and a terrible migraine. Yesterday’s guitar-molesting left me with the fingers on my left hand which shoot with pain whenever the tips make contact with something.
I am made of Lose :((((
However, there were good things that came from Saturday’s workshop. For starters, the most memorable dialogue between me and Vader when the health promotion board representative showed slides to educate us on HIV and all that jazz (because this was a tie-in with the graffiti thingy):
The slide shows colour-coded human shapes (blue for males and pink for females) which continually appear and link to each other in an attempt to show that promiscuity increases the risk factor for acquiring HIV.
Me: *rather indignantly* Why got more girls than boys one?!!
Vader: Because the boys are P-I-M-P-S.
The second good thing was that we had a lot of fun painting the boards and laughing at our nonsense.
The best thing about last night’s guitar-molesting was that I found simple chords for Bon Jovi’s ‘Have a Nice Day’, among others. I can’t figure out how a certain string of chords progress in the song but as my general motto in life goes, 船到橋頭自然直 (chinese idiom- the boat will straighten itself at the bridge, meaning that things will work out by itself when the time comes) :p
The second best thing from yesterday was that I had an epiphany that I really have no talent for the guitar, but you can’t blame someone for trying to play it :p
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I’m lying on my stomach reading through my much-abused encyclopedia from when I was a young kid. My favourite book of the entire series, ‘Wild Animals’, because the cover had a koala on it. Ti’s favourite was the one on Dinosaurs, and at night the two of us would get these two favourite books to the parents’ bed and implore Pa to read it to us.
Random thought: if roaches, for some mysterious reason, were to suddenly be on the brink of extinction, would people rally for actions to ensure it’s survival?
If not, then what are the criteria for animals being deserving to be saved from extinction? Their cuteness? Their usefulness? Their contribution to taxonomical studies?
Actually the whole concept of ’saving’ animals from extinction is a huge can of worms altogether :p
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It’s evening and the Bon Jovi song of the same title just ended. Thank you dear friends who always jio me out with the words, “when are you not busy so that we can meet!” To tell the truth, I always feel a bit guilty when I see evidence of people thinking that I’m busy; the only time when I’m really really busy with decent work is a few hours before deadlines– but you’d already know this if you’re my friend yea? XDDD
Ironically, I just realised that the next song was I’m Not Missing You by Stacie Orrico orz
Taking a break from sculpting fishies for FYP because my fingers have wrinkled horribly after only the third fish. Pretty pathetic skin I know. Also, I curse the promises that I made to Sunshine last week!
Perhaps I’ll find some wire and distract myself from aquatic conditions by sculpting birdiessss.
Oh yea, I’ve just ordered a Macbook Pro. It should be in my lap in approximately one week. Hello My first Apple computer :DDDD
Hopefully the expired HDD that crashed my desktop would be salvagable… attempts so far have failed, but I can’t give up hope yet! Can’t being the operative word– school work lost in the abyss of ones ad zeroes ain’t no way to go :(
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Today I woke up to find that my period had finally arrived. The cramps which resulted from it being late were to be expected, but not incapacitating enough to prevent me from having lunch with Pa in the neighboirhood. So I did.
Bad move.
We arrived at the destination and the pain took a sudden turn for the worse moment I stepped out of the car. I could not walk properly, I could not see, and my body was so nauseous that it took quite a bit of effort to stave off the actual act of throwing up. And the PAIN!!!! It was amazingly true to the laws of cause and effect, only this time the effect and cause switched roles. This was probably the second time it happened in my entire ovulatory history. I found myself envying Frida Kahlo’s fate. Sometimes I really want to be male.
Irony: I went for lunch, but the only thing that made it through my gullet was a cup of hot Lipton tea. They even got a plastic bag for me Just In Case. lollllll
Wobbled home, took a Panadol pill and slept in the living room couch. I’m not sure if the pill is still in effect because it’s been about eleven hours since then and I’m still feeling a tad woozy… But if the dull abdominal pain is anything to go by, I probably either have a urinary tract infection or the panadol has lost it’s effect. But the pain is not that bad to warrant more drug taking so.
Actually the main reason why I’m writing about this is because I’ve found out that my reaction to pain is to sleep. It happened when I had appendicitis and all I wanted was for them to get it over with so that I could sleep (the nurses also commented that I kept sleeping even after surgery). This time was no exception. All I could think about was sleep.
It scares me. Should anything happen to me like in those dramas, and people trying to save me keep on urging me not to go to sleep, I would definitely heck care them and head off to z-land (and possibly to the afterlife as well).
But I don’t want to die ahhhhhhhhh!
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So. I’ve finally laid my hands on Terry Pratchett’s latest Discworld novel, Making Money, two years after it was first published. As with most Discworld novels, it was finished with great reluctance T^T
Here are some entertaining quotes from the book. There are more, and I vaguely remember a clever one about everyone being made of clay after all (in response to the general state of Golems), but no amount of flipping through the pages could entice the FYP-worthy quote to come out of hiding :p
Every Assasin knew that real black often stood out in the dark, because the night in the city is usually never full black, and that gray or dark green merge much better. But they wore black anyway, because style trumps utility every time.
–and Miss Pucci simply did not know how to work a crowd. She stomped and demanded attention and bullied and insulted and it didn’t help that she’d called them “good people,” because no one likes an outright liar.
Gladys is a Golem, meaning she is made from clay, weighs tonnes and has superhuman strength:
There was a sound above, and voices muffled by the ancient ceiling. One of them said: “I can’t budge it. All right, Gladys, over to you.”“Is This Ladylike Behavior?” a second voice rumbled
“Oh yes, it counts as moving furniture,” said a voice that was clearly female.
“Very Well. I Shall Lift It Up And Dust Underneath It.”
A small, steaming mug was placed infront of him.
“Your Thplot,” said Igor. The words “Now please drink it up and go” accompanied it in every respect but the vocal.
Harry leaned over to Moist, enveloping him on cigar smoke and a hint of decayed cabbage. “I know you’re up to something,” he whispered, tapping the side of his nose. “The bastards are out to get you, I can see that! I know a winner when I sees one, and I know you’ve got something up your sleeves, eh?”
“Just my arms, Mr. King, just my arms,” said Moist.
“And long may you keep them,” said Harry, slapping him on the back.
Conversation from a clown from the Clown Guild welcoming the Patrician and co., where he explains the reason why women are not allowed into the Guild:
“It is simply that, whatever the Jokes For Women group says, women are just not funny.”“It is a terrible affliction,” Adora Belle agreed.
“An interesting dichotomy, in fact, since neither are clowns,” said Vetinari.
I’m so glad that the neighbourhood library finally had it in stock! My day is made <33333
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Sitting on the train en route suburban school (I always get a lulz out of the term ’suburban’ to describe any part of Singapore… ulu sounds much more acceptable than the vast expanse of land that the term ’surburban’ conjures up).
Digression aside, I’m using a blogpress app to type this chunk of text up as a draft. It’s pretty cool save for the worry that my italics HTML coding won’t show up above, or the numerous corrections that the iTouch makes to my intarnetz!jargon. Also, occasional typos because keyboard is too small and not real.
The time now is 1:44pm. The first paragraph was written at 8-ish. Having a mobile writing interface makes timelines slightly screwy.
Received comment sheets back from last Friday’s FYP presentation. Three out of four were okay ratings. The fourth one marked me as being in trouble for my project. I have a strong suspicion that it’s from the same chap who gave me two blemishing C+ grades for my cores. The comments even sound like the chap. Classmates have concurred. Most of us are in trouble, btw. I love my slacker class!
What I did during FYP class this morning- had philosophical talks with QQ and Lix, read Lix’s Brit humour script, talked a bit about Sam’s inclination to change from film to stopmo (no wonder he was smsing me about it on Tues!), played two rounds of Tap Tap Revenge 3 against Yif, scribbled a bit of my very much contrived concept ideas to show Sunshine, finally had a talk with her and made promises that I hope I’ll keep for next week >_<;;;
We have a new digital piano in the house. It used to belong to a relative until they decided that they didn't want it anymore. It's quite sad when I say that I'm the second best player in the entire household of six; I concede that Mum is the best because she can play a very beautiful song from the past. The most that I can conjure up with confidence is a grade 1 piece, "Lavendar's Blue". The rest I scrape by on the right hand with memories of popular tunes. Mum and I can't read score for nuts. Both of us play by ear. Add that I have a short memory and you can see how pathetic that I actually am the second best player lollllll
Brat#1 has petitioned to his parents that he wants to learn how to play the piano. They are now looking into suitable tutors for him. I'd be lying if I said I wasn't jealous :p
Well that's one good thing that the arrival of the piano has brought along. The second good thing is that I have just discovered the wondrous existence of harmonic chords. Doesn't change the fact that I play like shit, but at least my shit makes a bit of a harmonic melody now XDDDD
Okay it's a little past 2pm and the room is free so I'm going upstairs to continue on my oil painting. Also, this post is getting too long so I'll just hit the publish button right about…now.
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Today was the first presentation for all final year animation students. People from companies like Lucasfilm and Double Negative came by to offer critique as well. It was a pretty big affair. And we can probably expect a few more of these throughout our final year.
Needless to say, all of us didn’t get enough sleep. For me, I was awake since noon on Wednesday. Right now, it is 11pm on a Friday. Minus off the four blissful hours that I’ve had the chance in snooze-land this morning, this makes about fifty-five hours of dying neurons so far… and counting.
(Okay, so I deserve it for slacking off for the whole of Wednesday to only start editing my animatic at 4.30am on Thursday, but still. And srsly FYP was on my mind for the whole of Wednesday yo. I was merely paralysed by the thought of it. Yea. That’s it.)
For those who say they never see me post my work here nowadays, here’s the stuff that I showed for presentation, i.e. everything that I made yesterday to show for something for my FYP:
Concept art x 4
And a mock up claymation showing the locomotion of an earthworm and the various methods of animating fish surfacing from the waters (all unsatisfactory methods, I may add. Have come up with a new plan to animate these nasty buggers).
The guy from Lucasfilm asked how long I took to animate this, and I hazarded a guess of 2 hours.
Well I just checked the EXIF data and apparently I did it in one hour and eleven minutes. Wow! Considering that I took lots of breaks in between to lie on my bed and mould the clay absent-mindedly, and including taking time off to consider how I could animate the f*ing fish (damn hard), this is not bad, not bad at all. It was defnitely the longest one hour and eleven minutes of my life though.
The presentation itself was blah. I got tongue-tied in the beginning from being so nervous (hello, one whole row of tired angmohs plus a stern-faced asian guy as critics? No tq!!! Hahaha actually the angmohs were friendly la).
After I presented, I was painfully aware of the silence. For a moment I thought that they had nothing to comment because I didn’t offer enough information, or my animation sucked so much that they were stunned into silence. And then the questions came. Boy, was the platinum blonde scaryyyyyy! I really had no intention of attributing meaning for my animation, but she somehow managed to make me crap out some semblances of meaning on the spot– the one where I randomly spouted that the shot of the baby birds eating the mum and then turning into a book could probably be taken as a commentary of Singapore’s strict education system was seriously off the top of my head. Random crap is random.
Now I need to conjure up more of such ‘meanings’ and incorporate into my animation, possibly even changing the whole thing. Because being a simple visual aesthetic animation isn’t good enough :( Also, she accused me of with-holding such meanings from them, pretending that my animation was merely superficially interested in aesthetics.
But I am innocentttttt! I also dunno why I use clay! And I really thought that a book would be cool that’s why it was there… Lucasfilm guy laughed when I said that, and said he at least appreciated my honesty… he also said that the meanings in my choices could probably be subconscious. But random choice is random…
She even said that she wasn’t trying to be horrid to me, because she couldn’t do the beautiful things that I did (er okay?), but she merely was tired and hungry… lol that disclaimer only served to make me more traumatised. Dunno la, overall I still respect what she said. It’s always the harsh critics that get me going I guess. Btw she was as fierce as my primary school English teacher. Scared stiff? You bet.
After I presented, Jerms and Kenken asked how my lungs were doing, because I smoked so much. I couldn’t hear them at all (probably selective deafness from the after-shock of the presentation) until Shasha repeated what they said and then translated the lame joke to me. Because in Singapore lingo, ’smoking’ has another meaning besides the literal Marlborough kind. To ’smoke’ is to pull the wool over someone else’s eyes, i.e. to crap the shit out of a presentation/exam etc. Think of a smoke-screen and there you have the meaning ^^; And then a few other people said I was power lol tqtq! But lame animation is still lame :((((
I suppose this is my wake up call to getting serious about FYP. Time will tell how my motivation fares.
At the end of it, I really do work best under stress and deadlines. As quoted from a cute stamp printed from a gift shop in Australia many many years ago when Ti and I wandered into a shop to buy some stickers- Hassle me, I thrive on stress.
Now I go to sleep.
Tio another bad dream today. I think it’s because I changed pillows… orz
I was looking for a job and Kooling recommended me to her company. The interior was pretty lush, with lots of red carpetry even on the dome-shaped doorways and stuff. I felt that this was going to be a good environment, so obviously I was quite psyched to work there.
Well I went there to be greeted by icy cold stares. People were judging the contrast between what I wore and my lack of skills. I stayed there for a while and realised that I didn’t have my portfolio. Somehow the folder that was in front of me had some of my drawings in the final pages, and I sat next to a long haired woman as she flipped through the folder. A man walked past and scoffed.
Wah lau eh! Damn demoralising sia.
After that I walked around the velvety red compound and There were three young girls sirring in a banana boat on wheel. They tried to go through a dome-shaped doorway but the sails got stuck. I then walked towards them to try to help and witnessed a smartly-dressed company work lower the sails so that the whole structure became compact. The banana boat was a submission for a competition. I was very impressed with what the company was doing. Unfortunately it wasn’t meant to be.
Anyway, I woke up from the dream feeling very impotent. This can’t be good.
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