Little Dowager

I spent my Christmas eve bawling my eyes out while watching King Kong with Catbury at Lido.

The movie was awesome but I like the second half of it most. The part where Kong spins around the frozen lake at Central park was a tad cheesy, but oh-so-touching. I felt that Adrien Brody’s character kinda got overshadowed by the others, such as the very hot looking captain. Nevertheless, he’s still my favourite actor.

I’m going to watch it again next week, by myself. =)

After the show, Catbury and I strolled squeezed along Orchard Road, from Borders to Taka and back (had to make a detour cos we can’t even cross over to Meritus Mandarin). We passby this bar/pub/whatever you call it, where there was this live band singing the uber loser love song, “You’re beautiful”. And all of the sudden, I began chanting “you’re beautiful” x2 like the scary looking people in King Kong.

We even bought two of those soapy-smelling foam sprays to join in the fun with the banglas, lians, bengs and random post-menopause aunties. As a result of those foams, the ground was semi sticky and rather slippery.

What irked me the most wasn’t the mobbing and ambushing of those can-welding peeps. What irked me was that families brought their little kids out on Xmas eve, fully knowing that it will be a massive crowd along Orchard.

Massive crowd = Dangerous

And if last night had rained all of the sudden, it would be

Massive crowd + unexpected downpour + soapy foams + cans littered on the ground= Possible stampede

Parents, use abit of common sense, can?

Foam or not, next year, please juse stay at home (or just, stay away from Orchard), have a nice dinner together, unwrap the pressies with the kids at the stroke of midnight.

Don’t be like the “protective” adult whom I saw right before my eyes last night, shoving/man-handling a little girl around and into a cab, going “hai zi jing xian!”(Kids in first!) nth times.

I know you are not interested, I just wanna record down the things that happened recently.

1. I got another freelance job with a has-been local fashion designer. I met this has-been local fashion designer (refer to as HS for short) while presenting the uniform designs with the client. She like my illustrations and therefore, engaged my help to help her with some illustration work as now is the peak period for her business. Sometimes, I feel very lucky cause there are always people who notice me and give me a chance to work as a freelance designer.

A paid freelance designer, that is.

2. I do not like to do free work. Sometimes I get lobang from friends. One is my ex best friend. Her dad runs a retail shop and wish to produce some apparels under his “label”. She relates to me about it. Initially I was pretty interested, but as the details are so vague, I decided to protect my ass and not to venture into it.

In another incident, two of my other ex-hangout-friends also messaged out of the blue on MSN. First they began with the customary “Hello, how are you?”, and after that, they immediately delved into their initial motive.

Make it sure, I do not have anything against helping friends but I really feel used when people just msged me to gain some use outta me. Just because I am doing design does not means I may be good at producing invitation cards, or graphics for tee shirt.

First they tell me, “I anything (design style-wise) also can one”. I fucking hate this line. Anything-anything, when I put in the effort and finish the work, they give me unreasonable demands. If you don’t tell me you want street style, and I produce something that is not street enough (not because I don’t wish to, but it’s simply not my style), you say I suck and accused me of screwing up your project.

Therefore, I decided. I am not going to do anyone, any design favors, if they are not going to give me a proper brief of the project, and some designer fee. At least pay me some money cause money is the greatest motivator for me.

3. I screwed up in first internship interview. Last friday, I went for my first internship interview. And I screwed up. Not because I suck, but they felt I wasn’t suitable for the job. He said I should be in merchandising instead. He said I shouldn’t expect too much of this post. Therefore, he did not offer the post to me.

No job nevermind, but the real mindfuck is, he made me really wonder if I have chosen the wrong path! Argh. I dunno lah.

1. I chao-ed classed until like siao. Lately, I haven’t been able to wake up on time for my classes. Sometimes, I missed class in order to get some assignments done. In a 3-days week, I can be late for 2 morning classes and go MIA for 2 other classes. How wonderful.

I am soooo going to fail by attendance.

Ok, gotta pack up and go home now. Till then again.

Hello all.

I know I have no updated for quite awhile. No, I’m not testing the importance of my online existance. No, I’m not waiting for people to suggest publishing my blog as a book (wth?!). I was just very busy and caught up with school and happenings.

Staying away from blogging does not mean my life is dull and unexciting. I have to admit when something interesting happened in my life, blogging bout it is not the first thing that comes to my mind.

I think I got a little cold and uninterested with blogging, especially seeing all the hoo-haas surrounding a late blogger and the privacy of her blog. And because of that, I sometimes passed over some particularly long and crafted posts when I don’t feel like/have no time reading it. Call me a hypocrite (well, everyone is), sometimes I think blogging have changed into something I kinda detest, I can no longer embrace it.

But I’m not about to give up on my blog so soon. I think, sometimes, we all need a cooling period to regain an interest for something.

Like now, instead of being surround by my boisterious friends and classmates, I am all alone in the lab at 9pm doing an assignment which is due tomorrow. And once again, I feel like a hardworking student instead of a half-past-six student who whole-day-whole-life only care about shopping.

If only I am so serious everyday.

I have a designer friend who strongly believe that, “The demand for design will never die”.

I thought the government was joking when they promised to pump in more funds and support the local creative scene. To be frank, I see no major improvements during the last two years. The general public are still not giving a hoot about it.

However, I noticed that there have been quite a few design talks, exhibitions and festivals held during the last couple of months. I didn’t realised it was the doing of our government; I thought it was simply because, Christmas was coming.

And then I came across this article on Tomorrow.sg about “The Uncanny Parallel between the 2005 Singapore Design and Art Scene and the 1999 Dot Com Boom”.

And then I went, “Oh.”

Maybe I should start pondering if it is wise of me to advise my brother to check out the design courses in my school. (one designer in the family should be more than enough, right?) Maybe I should thank God for the boom. Maybe I should worry bout the saturation of the future design market now.
Maybe I should work my ass doubly-hard now. Maybe I should be predicting how many more years to go before the bubble burst. Maybe I should think of a backup career plan now.

Link

I’ve been actively involved in this school/industry collaboration project since October. When I volunteered for it, I just thought it would be good to build up my portfolio and gain some experience out of this project. Actually, I wasn’t even very serious bout it initially as I had half-expect things to screwed up – the last project didn’t materialize as the previous client turn down before signing the project agreement.

Almost two months has gone by since our first meeting. With our theme finalized and various minor but troublesome changes made, we are almost close to wrapping this shit up.

I can’t pinpoint what is it that eventually made me so buzzed up about this project.

Maybe it is my perfectionism; I hate to screw things up. Maybe it’s because I’m prideful; I do not wished to be judged as the weakest link in this team. Maybe I truly wished this project will materialized; for I had been disappointed before. Maybe I believe that “Anything worth doing is worth doing well”. Or maybe, I felt solely responsible as I got lucky with my designs.

Out of this project, all members are my friends. Some are even my very good friends whom I hangout with. But when it comes to work, we are members and we work together. Unfortunately, the way they work sometimes irked me to a breaking point. Being good friends didn’t make things any easier for me.

I don’t think I am a cry-on-cue kind of girl. I feel crying is somewhat therapeutic, yet I hate to cry in front of people. If I had known that this project will make me breakdown two freaking times in front of my course manager (!!!) and countless times alone, I would not take on it.

Some “outsiders” would probably find it fake to catch me laughing like a hyena with my good friends as though nothing happened earlier that morning. Fuck them. They don’t understand that I put up with the collective shits of other people.

To quote from Jayaxe, “The one who laughs the loudest; cries the saddest”.