life is grand

and why not? whenever I'm in the downs, I think of my nephew's laugh. He's 4 years old, still protected from the perils of reality, but today I thought, why would we want to lose that and say 'life is like that', 'oh life is hard', 'oh, it's difficult'?

Life is grand, and happiness is hard work if you think it to be. It took me a long while, but it is really simple. Just be. Really, that's it. 'argh, it can't be so simple, there's mortgage to pay, there's a job to find'... i'm not asking to shed the responsibilities, less so, but that to think that there is a roof over the head, there's time to write this blog, or more importantly, there is something that I can do about.

Life, is as grand as can be.

Choices

It is hypocritical to have grand visions and to try to reach out and save the world when the homefront is at stake.

Silver lining

The roller coaster ride ends here.

Spring does make a difference.

Hiatus

I have almost forgotten about this blog. Taking up a design studio eats up a lot of time, in between coffee, bagels, design lab, unhealthy fast food, slogans, photoshop, indesign, paceway.

That aside, I loved my trip back and is still hungover by it. I miss so much about home, and it is tiring to be this transient.

I need to dock soon.

The year in review

I have a sketching and drawing pad now.

sepet

I've never watched sepet, but the recent turn of events in which the film director suffered a stroke led me to weep through the show. This is the same brilliant person who reminded us we all are born colour blind and that families are important through the many heart warming Petronas ads.

Unfortunately, 2 days later, the director suffered a tragic fate and left the world. RIP.

Completing the cycle

Looked for materials on the net and found this eye that took up approximately an hour plus.

RIP MJ

1993, I went to the MJ concert with my dad, and we waited, only to be told some 45 min later that he was not well to perform. We went back a second time, hopeful, and then he appeared. It was my first music concert (the cameo by Tommy Page in Plaza Pelangi does not count), but yes, my first full fledge concert, and I went with my dad who promptly abandoned me midway because he wanted to better view.

I bet he was as excited as me to see the King of Pop. RIP MJ.

major-minor

my first concert at the opera house. amazing. loved the second set of tchaikovsky piano concerto no. 2. brilliant performance by stephen hough.

What is your story?

Just came back from uni. In an attempt to finish an assignment, I could not find a seat in the library and wandered off to the faculty building but was freezing my ass off on the uncomfortable stool and thought the postgrad room was too toxic what with the designers' glues and stumbled into a students' photo exhibition.

Most of the projects were very personal, one spoke of his 20-year-old friends, another of the anniversary prayers, and another with a portrait and close up of their deepest fears, together with a survey of what they feared the most. I like most of the works and the storyboard and creativity.

What is your story?

Healthy living

I found out last week that my housemate's friend has high blood pressure at the young age of 27 and the doctor told her that she has to change her lifestyle or else.. so she and my housemate decided to live more healthily from Monday (15 Jun) by cutting down on cigarettes (him) and salt (her) and wine (them). And the spillover effects were that our household has also decided to do the 1 month challenge because we have just been eating way too much and not exercising enough, me especially since the month of May has literally become a month of eat, sleep, assignments and exams. Totally unhealthy...

So... 15 Jun shall be day 1!

How do you destress?

Guess who is so stressed from assignments that she has to channel her energy to baking / cooking to destress... Hey, it's a step up from drinking coke / coffee.

(No, I only made the sticky date pudding cake - ma housemate didn't line the sides so the crumbs came off..)

Very simple breakfast...

Presentation

In the midst of discussing the presentation format for our report, a coursemate used the following analogy:

As shallow as it might sound, if a guy wants to 'kao' a girl, he will see whether she is pretty first, i.e. to be attracted first, before taking the next step in getting to know her, if there is no first attraction, no matter how good the girl is, he will not be interested in wanting to get to know her better.

I think it's not about being shallow, but in knowing and working with the hard truths.

Merci!

My housemates' folks are here for a week, and we just had a 3-hour dinner made up of 1 Malaysian and 5 Vietnamese (with 5 nationalities split between them - Original, German, French (ex-Cambodian), Australian) and 1 French. Dinner was a spread of oysters, sashimi, garlic bread, spring rolls, steak, wine and bubur cha cha - almost as diverse as the nationalities, no points for guessing who made desserts! 

My attempted conversation with the French granduncle were just hilarious. Even though we were seated next to each other, it went round the table starting with him him showing me his four-faced buddha pendant that he bought from Bangkok and then speaking to his wife (in French), his wife relaying to my housemate in Vietnamese, and then her to me in English before I looked back at him and nodded my head in delight. 

Despite the language barriers, the universal love for good food was shared. Dinner was great.

Time

I've been reading Time Magazine since I was 12. Although it's been an on-off relationship of sorts, I've always felt an affinity to the magazine, even though it is very US-centric. I don't however remember most of the writers as I am very much a content seeker. Today I picked up the magazine again and decided to resume the affair and pay more attention to its contributers. 

Image source: http://www.time.com/time/covers/0,16641,20090601,00.html

Overtime

My 5-min rule ran overtime last night and I just need to run to the top of a hill and release the balloons of angst. Constant reminder to self: Don't waste time whinging about things / people you can't change, analyse and acknowledge the risk before making any decisions and don't try to convince yourself the risk can somehow disappear on its own. 

My 5-min is up, another brand new day beckons. 

Image source: http://elissestuart.files.wordpress.com/2009/03/balloons.jpg

Soup

Yummy French Onion Soup...

I'm a soup person, and on days when things are rough, nothing beats a warm bowl of soup to remind you that things will only get better, just like the josh scene in the west wing (Yes, I quote a lot from the show, I think the writers are the most brilliant ones around and I miss such shows, and am severly lacking them in daily conversations). 

Again frustrated with the tennis syndrome (will not elaborate any further), but have to constantly remind myself that I have no one to blame for the (good and bad) decisions that I make. 

It is still very frustrating. On a happier note, French Onion Soup was great, and so was Italian theme night! 

Cookout

Yes, I realise that my blog has been rather dull. So the next best thing is just to put this: 

wagyu!

ma first spring rolls (okay, done together with da housemate)

da housemate frying da spring rolls

oysters in xo sauce grilled!

ta da.... 

I can't wait to finish....

You know you're in for the shits when you start saying 'I can't wait to finish 'insert activity'. 

Rhyme or Reason

Recently I've been addicted to 'R' words... recycling, resilient, ra-ra... no, that's not true, I don't have a favourite letter in the alphabet, oh, I do, it's 'J', for obvious reasons. I have 6 weeks to go before end of semester. 

6 weeks is like a magic number to me now since my urban planning venture. So I need to get through this. If May is the month of assignments and June is the month of exams, then July will be the month of decisions (Semester 2 courses, where next, travel plans). It's the cross-roads again. 

Home

I think I may be ready for a decision by Winter. 

Image source: http://dryicons.com/files/graphics_previews/winter_swirls.jpg

Work in progress

I was looking at my friend's photos which was set on a dark grey background and loved the effect, and so I'm still fiddling around with the colours / fonts on this blog as a break from my essay (again, I'm writing at a rate of one word per hour). 

I think the whole irony is this is an essay on sustainability and the rate I'm going, the efficiency of this essay-writing is killing more trees and emitting more carbon dioxide. But otherwise, it has been really interesting. 

Ghosts of past girlfriends

In a spur of a moment, because I cannot write another word on my essay anymore, I went off to watch a chick flick with my housemate. 

Call me shallow and what have you, I am past the phase of heavy weight films, having indigested a few doses of shows like revolutionary road and rachel getting married, which, yes, are thought provoking - I may have linked revolutionary road with automobile dependence and the whole concept of suburbanisation at an earlier entry - but gosh, I needed days to recover from the show. There are enough dramas in my real life, I don't need anymore from reel life. So yes, I now watch movies (not films) for relaxation. 

Matthew McConaughey was an absolute sleazeball, though I tend to like ahem, long-hair guys, that gay pirate look for so off. Storyline was predictable and half of this.

Anyways, I am absolutely flat out from my multiple attempts at completing the sustainable essay. And I'll be revamping this site over the winter holidays, gonna dig out those creative skills that I've been shelving for ages. 

Reason

只与有理的人论，不与无理的人争；有理的没有对手，无理的不是对手

This is so apt - took it from a friend's FB status. 

You Kara, I Oke!

Yeah! I get to sing my James Morrison song - You give me something. 

Over MSN:

Ex-colleague: I thought you didn't like to sing. 

My reply: I do, I prefer English songs and some Chinese songs. 

Truth be told: 

You need kakis to sing karaoke, someone that knows the song you're singing, and can boogie crazily with you. My karaoke sessions used to be with colleagues: mostly older ones, so have to sing the retro type: Teresa Teng, ABBA, Bee Gees and the like, and the younger ones mostly choose Chinese songs (Jay Chou, Sammi Cheng, Jacky Cheung and, oh crap, I can't name them). Anyways, the long and short of it, I've enjoyed some of the songs and the sessions have been fun, but I've never really sung a lot of my songs because they don't really gel with the people I go with. Maybe it's also coz I had to somehow maintain some level of professionalism, work mah...

Anywaylys, I've gone for two karaokes here so far, and it's been fun! I get to sing the songs and dance and just be oh, myself! Woo hoos, the crazy, dancing, ra-ra girl, as opposed to the uptight, only-sing-the-songs-that-people-know girl. And I get to sing James Morrison - I'm so in love with the song! Current favs (mostly for karaoke) also include hot n cold, who knew, love story, and there were even some high school songs (Read: Backstreet Boys - okay, it was more Uni for me). 

Yay! Back to essay now....

Just a thought

I've been brought up on a dose of wide streets for the grandeur of such boulevards, but so am I a fan of intimate laneways like those found in Melbourne. The 40' local street has always been debatable due to off-street parking by residents that one needs to meander around to reach one's detination.

And then I learnt about transit-oriented developments and walkabout cities; and Peter Newman and Jeff Kenworthy who talked about automobile independence. Personally, I am still two hearts about it because of the need for personal mobility, but I recall the design briefs for houses back home are always for dual parking, and then 4-cars parking would be highly marketable products. 

But what if you took that out of the equation, and increased your usable (Read: Sellable) area by eliminating that car park spaces, and then narrow the streets ==> walkable cities ==> increased density / public domain ==> increased net sellable area ==> profit. But really, maybe I'm being too simplistic about it, because there's always the public realm for activities to consider as well...but... isn't this walkable city a good way to make the enviros and developers happy?

Okay, this is just one layer of thought, there's still many other overlays, but this is a starting point, both sides just have to understand each other's points of view. 

Irony

Somewhere along the lines whether you're studying or working, there will be people who will say 'ar.. take a break', 'don't have to work so hard', 'why so stressed'...And then you are left with an 'F', or that you got a sounding from the boss. And then you looked around, and you are alone. 

Somewhere along the lines you meet a guy / girl, and there will be people who will say 'oh, he/she has a reputation' 'he/she is not reliable'. And then the person runs along and have a baby, and that guy/girl that you like ended up with someone who took the chance. And then you looked around, and you are alone. 

Somewhere along the lines you lowered your standards to make someone comfortable and then one day the person turned up with an LV bag and said, hey, where's yours? And you think, wtf, I knew LV long before you know how to spell Louis Vuitton. 

What I was really trying to get at is this, you can't let someone's values be imposed on yours, you have your own goals to pursue and your own standards to follow, and if you don't get it, then what? And if you lowered it, then what? You can't say, oh, I listened to someone, or that I wanted them to feel comfortable, because why then did you not listen to yourself or did it your way? 

Okay, I'm trying to distract myself from the 3,000 word essay due the following Monday. 

You make it real

Current obsession: James Morrison. 

The road ahead

A conversation on Tuesday's happy meal brought us to Tan Hong Ming, the cute chinese boy whose girlfriend is malay - a Petronas National Day commercial made by Yasmin Ahmad, an acclaimed storyteller, filmmaker, writer, advertiser in Malaysia on colour-blindness in children. The two Malaysians (me included) among us excitedly you-tubed to share it with our Hong Kong / Korean friends. Then I saw this and my heart broke. 

Happy assignment

It was a very enjoyable assignment - this round - building on each other's strengths. Loved it. 

Ingredients for a happy assignment: 

equal contribution, building on each other's strength, targets, accepting suggestions and holding onto your views, trials and errors, moving forward, working around each other's schedules, power of excel, decoding master powerpoints, trust, msn.  

I had an architect tell me that architects are the most difficult to organise and they often finish work last minute etc, but the two members in my team are architects and I worked well with them.  

It was a happy assignment and we finished off with a happy meal.

Awkward conversation

I shall stop engaging in awkward conversations with people from the past, even if they are on my msn list, unless I want to at some point see them in real life, otherwise it would be a waste of my time, and the weird position I'm put in. 

The Chi around you!

I just got off a conversation with someone who was just perpetually pouring cold water over what I've said. Is the person being realistic? being practical? being truthful? I dunno, but after a long while, such negative tactless speeches annoy the hell out of me, especially when they're not the experts and I seem to be channelling these less-than-positive energies into this blog! Farout, I'm polluting my blog with all the insensitivities, instead of the rara-happy thoughts. 

So anyways, I have an assignment due in 1.5 days and I am very calm about it. Oh well, I guess this comes with age - this zen approach - I need to look for more positive people to associate with! 

Dum dee dum...

1 more month

I just came back from home, but I want to go home. It's ultimate sianness and I just don't have the energy to go through another cycle again. blehs. 

okay, that's my five min. Back to assignments.