the simple joys in life

met up with jac, sel, elena, yeow & edmund for dinner in ntu just now. 

all that late-night rushing for submissions & lack of sleep were making me feel really unwell & depressed. 

but i'm glad i listened to jac's advice & went to meet the rest in the end. 

it was really nice putting aside work to gather with church friends studying in the same university, 

talking, sharing & suaning one another while unknowingly pushing all that stress & worry to the back of my mind! 

it just felt so right & comfortable doing so. 

now that we finally found a common free time, 

we should meet for dinner more often!

i feel so so much happier now.

thanks yeow for organising! (:

everyone's rushing for submissions!

what a tiring weekend.

i was in the darkroom from 630pm yesterday to around noon today.

woah 18hours chionging PHO210!?

& there were like more than 10 people with me.

everyone's rushing for submissions!

i could barely walk straight when i emerged from the dark abyss.

managed to print 20 fibre-based prints, 11 of which are my final ones. 

4 more to go before submission on friday!

i'm gonna miss the darkroom & my PHO210 class when this sem ends! ):

some of my prints for the night!

hearts douf, my beloved tofu pillow. (:

*

saturday was spent rushing around town buying materials & printing my work. within the half an hour from poster connection to artfriend, i saw 4 admers. 3 of whom i recognise as viscommers from my batch.

once again i'll say,

everyone's rushing for submissions!

on a happier note, 

i managed to buy those infamous transfer pens imported from USA!

and the long-awaited bone folder! (: (:

like finally.

haiku book for type!

my first time making a book using perfect binding.

I LOVE ROCKWELL!

i'll end off by saying,

everyone's rushing for submissions!

paul thurlby alphabet

some really cute and clever illustrations of the alphabet.

these are the ones i like. (:

more can be found in 

http://www.paulthurlby.com/shop1.html

celebrity crush lol

haha pardon my fangirlism,

but LEE MIN HO IS SO CUTE!

ahhh. *faints*

he kinda reminds me of takuya kimura though.

i love his smileeeee. & boyish looks!

haiyo dot 几岁了还这样！

i guess hana yori dango will always remain my favourite drama of all.

okay enough of swooning. (:

做主门徒，成为祝福

we had our final official 门徒 (Discipleship) lesson just now, which started at around 11am till around 630pm. it included our 3 laoshis' teachings on the final 2 topics, loads of encouragement & sharings about every single classmate's spiritual gifts, a lunch break, a birthday celebration for our 2 birthday boys and a holy communion service with pastor see. 

it's been nearly 11 months since we started this course together as a class. and it's really heartwarming to see the growth of each and everyone of us, not only as a whole becoming closer, more bonded & more willing to share our lives with each other, but also as individuals growing in God's Word & personally experiencing God's workings in our lives.

i still remember how tp & i kept worrying about the lack of interaction in our class, despite most of us knowing one another since childhood. but i guess God has seen our needs, our potentials & He gave us this perfect opportunity to know one another even better and on deeper, spiritual levels. and i thank Him for that.

despite our diverse personalities, i love my mentu class with all my heart. the thought of all of them now just brings a smile to my face. and for the past 11 months, it has always felt very comforting to be able to return to my second home every weekend, which (unlike school) is a place of love, of no competition to outshine one another. you can say it's almost like a sanctuary.. a haven for the heart, mind and soul.

it just felt so right to be sharing with my churchmates (+ other friends important to me as well) about my life, my struggles, my weaknesses, my happiness.. personal experiences that i find it hard to share with many schoolmates who can be quite work-orientated, competitive & sad to say, self-centered. many times i feel myself swaying to that direction as well, but i really thank God for those constant reminders during the course of 门徒 for me to come back to the Lord.

it can get quite lonely sometimes, not in the physical sense.. perhaps in the spiritual sense. but perhaps it's a golden opportunity for me to step out to be a “小基督” in my school & be a good testimony for Him. it's gonna be a big big challenge for me to conquer all my stress & fatigue, and to live out Christ in my daily, tiring life.

above all, i need more faith & selfless love.

type in environment

"cacophony: visual sounds of little india"

this is really alot of hardwork man.

& the actual size is much larger, around 2 A1 sizes.

am gonna print it on a vinyl banner, no more 4 panels yay.

can't wait to see how it turns out!

from my to-do-list

GRAPHIC DESIGN

1) 2 ads for human transplant act

2) even better than the real thing ads (3 or more ideas + final)

TYPOGRAPHY

3) type in environment final (4 panels of 30x45cm)

4) letter animation (i'm thinking of doing stop-motion so must take photos)

5) futura presentation (design slides + work on pop-up souvenir with groupmates)

GRAPHIC DESIGN HISTORY

6) final draft for "exhibition"

7) design invitation card for "exhibition"

ASIAN ART HISTORY

8) study for china exam end of this month

(mental preparation for bombardment of japan art history coming up next)

PHOTO IMAGING

9) shoot for final assignment + develop + print on RC then 

fibre based paper (9 final prints)

10) 2 shutter speed, 2 aperture, 2 still life (6 final prints on fibre-based paper)

11) 10 contact sheets

12) research and essay on 1 p

hotographer

JAPANESE

13) uh.. study everything? i've been lagging behind so much 

man.

and it goes on and on and on...

*

everyday design design, make boxes, make books, take photos, spend the whole day in darkroom, write reports, study for history quizzes & exa

ms, do presentations, critique sessions, travel to fancy paper/art friend to buy materials, travel to print shops to print our designs.. NOW STILL MUST DO ANIMATION.

i'm tired.

i barely slept for the past week.

napped yes, but slept no.

we thought hell week was over (the week before recess).

but we were wrong.

every week is like hell week now. (:

(kay maybe slightly less hellish than that hell week)

OKAY EMO STUFFS DELETED WOOHOO!

check out 3 posters i put together for one of my GD class exercises.

supposed to bring out the notion of:

1) strongly desirable

2) desirable

3) undesirable

you can try & guess which is which!

(photos weren't taken by me btw, but i selected & edited them)

friendship is like wine, it gets better with age

esther ♥ ♥

yay i finally talked to esther!

(though only on facebook chat + talking about not-so-happy stuff)

talking to good, old friends always leave me with a warm, fuzzy feeling.

a feeling which is irreplaceable by anything else that's new.

i don't really know how to explain.

but..

YOU'LL ALWAYS BE MISSED BY ME, TOH! (:

dorothy's design manifesto

muffet!

i think my mum sounds really cute when she says "buffet" in english.

she pronounces it as "muffet" instead.

whenever she tries to speak english, i'll feel this rush of affection for her.

heehee. (: 

feel like giving her a hug! (:

quotes from roy & feng

today was a buy film + take photo + chill alone at cityhall day. (:

i'm spending so much time alone i think i'm becoming a loner. ):

while i was walking around trying to act pro & take good shots (lol!), roy's manifesto suddenly came to my mind. i recalled his words,  

"don't be afraid to tear down your work. 

don't be afraid to dislike your work." 

what an inspiration!

i realised we often strive to create the perfect work, afraid to make mistakes & step out of our comfort zone. we love our works too much. in the end we don't learn much.. we don't move forward. we get stuck in this little box of ours. and we get comfortable with our own styles.

perhaps that's one of the reasons why i'm starting to dislike the stuff in my sketchbooks. all these worrying about creating unsatisfactory art is hindering creativity from flowing out of me. makes my works kinda boring actually.

then as i walked on, i suddenly recalled feng's words.

i still remember the day we met up near my place for kopi & he lent me his Nikon FM10 to play with. it was my virgin experience with a film SLR but under his crash course, i soon got the hang of it. there i was having fun shooting, from thomson plaza to the playground to the shophouses near prata house. the sun set soon after & i had to start decreasing the shutter speed. no tripod with me means the photos will be blurred! plus i do not have steady hands like feng did. sian.

so i was gei-kiang-ing, trying my best to steady my hands to take this particular shot, thinking that if i didn't, it'll be super wasted. then feng said something that struck me.

"don't take already la. we don't have to always try our best to shoot everything we see 'cause sometimes, less is more. sometimes i can bring my camera out the whole day & take only a few photos."

woah! although he can be quite nonsense & irritating at times, but boy does he make sense sometimes. (of course his idiotic moments outweigh his sensible ones, roomie agree? HAHA!)

am thankful for these random spurts of inspiration. (:

maybe it's not that bad being a loner sometimes afterall.

why humans always don't give face

just now during PHO210 jon was telling us this story about a girl having diarrhoea in a jacuzzi pool in the middle of a film shoot. i don't really wanna go into further detail. but while the whole class was going "ewwww!", "gross!", "wah jon don't say already la!" or even laughing mildly, i was more of feeling sorry for the poor girl. not only must she have been horribly embarrassed in front of all those people, it was doubly worse that the video got uploaded to youtube/facebook. HOW HORRIBLE CAN THOSE PEOPLE BE? ): i feel so so upset hearing that. 

of course yes, it must have been a disgusting experience for the people who were present at the shoot, or even to those who merely hear the story, but how can it compare to the eternal humiliation the girl goes through? can't such an event be kept within the confines of their walls? why do WE even have to know about it? 

it must be so hard on her.

when stress wipes the smile from your face

photography meets typography

YAY!

dot developed her 2nd roll of film last night, all by herself!

with the help of jon of course.

and pro photo majors, uncle & fareez.

thank God they were around to provide advice!

my tank was leaking so i was practically spilling the chemicals all over the floor & my toes while agitating the contents.

analog photography may be fun, 

but it's really mafan!

plus time-consuming & water-wasting.

i started work at around 7pm & ended at around 9.20pm!

and that's excluding the printing of the photos, which we will learn more about this friday.

*

we went to little india for type class today!

were supposed to take photos of interesting type around us.

it's cool cos it's like photography meets typography.

though i admit i subconsciously focused more on the former aspect than the latter.

here are some that i took. (:

jiu jiu jiu yi ci!