My ratio of chilli sauce to fries is biased towards the latter.

Stops eating fries.





Panic.

What I detest about women's clothings?

1) Not enough pockets.

2) When there are, pockets are so small as to be non-existent.

.
.
.

3) FAKE POCKETS.

Why why why why why???? Don't sew those useless flaps of extra cloth on and call them 'pockets'. All they do is lead you to a black hole of deception and despair. Clothes aren't getting any cheaper and when I pay $25 for a pair of jeans online, I don't want to recieve the thing and discover those pockets aren't pockets. You don't find this nonsense on men's clothes. It's terribly vexing - like the fashion industry big wigs suddenly thought:
"You know what women can't handle on their clothes? Pockets! That's what! Let's remove them all Bwahahaahahah! Tell the sweatshops in insert country here to start making something more useful with the cloth we've saved - Like beanies with extra flappy ears!"

"But, if we remove all the pockets..." stammers some low-level executive, "The fashion designers will throw a fit. You've removed a crucial motif for jeans and a thousand other practical clothes!"

"Bah! Just leave the pocket design on and remove the pockets, that way we can be totally evil in addition to making women buy more handbags to store their useless crap. Like wallets & handphones. Who needs pockets for that?"

No. Just no. Real pockets *weeps* please come back!

I've finished watching Catching Fire and Ender's Game. Urgh, my heart. Ouch, my heart.
You know that feeling you get when a movie ends and every single cell in your body cries out in exhausted Luke Skywalker denial NOOOoOOOOOoOooo!!! Damn you! You can't end now! You wait through about 4 minutes worth of credits, staring at the screen as foreign sounding names flash mockingly across - screenplay by yadayada, director of photography by whatchamkalit - all the while loud thumping ochestral music (most likely with some deep cello overture) blares over the cinema telling you "Look at the fancy way people's names fly across the screen with the beat! Look at that fool still sitting there. Let her stare at the screen harder. Maybe the credits will magically return to the film proper and continue that damn thing!"

Sigh.

Yes NLB, You're doing it right.
Please keep these gorgeous giant banners as your permanent atrium tapestry design. You have my seal of approval.

Why is it that my dreams seem so absolutely mind-bogglingly exciting (to me) but when I try to tell them to others, everyone's eyes just glaze over?
Come, come! Let me tell you about this dream I had last night where I was mysteriously shampooing my hair in an elevator when snipers opened fire from gymnast bars floating above!! Ahahahaha.
*Looks around to snores of approval*

Recently, I learnt from a colleague that she doesn't dream in images. Just feelings. And some people dream in black & white while others in full HD colour complete with Michael Bay explosions and an ochestral soundtrack in the background. That's simply amazing! I wonder if there are any other forms of dreams out there? Like people whoes dreams are only made up of lego & sausages. Or dreams that look perfectly normals save that everything is in reversed and running away from a terrible monster looks like you're getting sucked into Shrek's mouth, except Shrek is furiously backpeddling into his swamp.


Swamp. Yes, swamps. I'm swamped with work recently and would very much like to have a break of Kitkats and baby sloth videos.

The third most amazing thing in my life is realising how I have not yet disintegrated into a pile of my own incompetence.

I've never lost my wallet ever ever ever before. Until today. If anyone sees a slightly depressed looking wallet lying in the grass with bits of her orange shell peeling off revealing cheap plastic interior - Please offer her a tissue. Ask her some questions: How's her day been? How's the weather? Fine? What's her favourite colour? How does money smell and whether or not she gets bored seeing the inside of a dirty pocket all day long. But most of all, ask her this: If she had wings, or really, any manner of appendages for travel and freedom - would she still return to me?

This makes me wonder... I can't be the only socially awkward person out there. There should be more. There must be more.
Come on by, come on by. All you people who can't live well-adjusted, intellectual lives. Yes, you there with your crooked mask! Take it off. Take off the awkward smiling mask you wear on your face all day long, don't you get hot underneath? Oh, I see. You can't take off your mask without tearing off your skin too? Well, me neither. So let's just sit here with masks in our hands and flesh hanging off our chins. We'll look at each other and smile, smile smile that awkward smile we give to others all day long - but at least now we can see each other's skull beneath.

“The best use of life is love. The best expression of love is time. The best time to love is now.” ― Rick Warren

I am on a Tutu kueh eating spree now. I can't stop eating these little pieces of white goodness. Why? WHY? Why does steamed rice flour taste so good?? I don't even need to have the ones with fillings. Just eating plain Tutu kueh's are enough to make me a happy penguin.

Duan Pandan has the best Tutu kuehs.

Image from Wikipedia. I ate mine too fast to take any myself.

Each time I go to NEX or J8, I'll have to buy at least 10 pieces.
Watching Tutu keuhs being made has that same hypnotizing effect as watching Ramly burgers get made. At one moment, they're just a pile of ingredients - in the next second, POOF! TUTU KUEHS AREADY!

This sounds like utter nonsense. But strangely beautiful.

I was cleaning up my room when I discovered my stash of PS1 games - blew off the dust and suddenly had an urge to play these retro games once more.

Way back in the ancient years of 2002, I ate only one packet of oreo cookies a day for recess for 1 WHOLE YEAR. The precious money I saved up went into buying more productive things: Like a PlayStation console. Health be damned. The problem was both my parents were dead set against having the thing in the house. My dad threw out the TV cable in 1998 and we had lived without it for 8 years. Yes, I lived out most of my childhood without watching TV. BUT! We did have a TV set. It was a glorified white elephant placed in the living room that didn't play TV. It was there to mock the TV-less kids. Also, it made a fantastic rest for photoframes.

I hid the PlaySation inside a ratty bag that I locked with a those cheap diary locks. My siblings and I would sneak out at 3am in the night to play Castlevania. On mute. In black and white. On a screen about the size of dishcloth. How was it even enjoyable? I played the entire FF7, FF9, Metal Slug and Baldur's Gate without sound, in black and white, constantly worried that my parents would burst out from their bedroom screaming, "AHA! I CAUGHT YA! 今天你死定了!" and cane me to death. Yes. That happens.

And now, here I am - a grown up (is it that fast???) - wanting to play FF9 again. Sadly, my PS1 is dead. Fortunately, for any who are in the same predicament as me - go download a PSX emulator, pSX v1.13 works the best for me, just remember to download the BIOS files and place them in said folder. Voila!

I'm speechless. This is the first time I'm playing Final Fantasy 9 IN FULL COLOUR. WITH SOUND! AaaAAAaaa~~~~ How did I ever enjoy it any way else? This is how Final Fantasy is supposed to be experience. I know I tell everyone that FF8 is my favourite FF - to violent opposition from basically everyone - but now..... FF9, you've stolen my heart.

Thank you all who came down to the book sale. Remember, a book a day keeps ignorance at bay.

I've been busy with work. Although I've just graduated, it suddenly hit me how many places I've worked in my (very short) life, not counting the strange odd jobs I took in the past, when I was young & crazy. Plus freelancing. It's strange. And to think I was once terrified of the idea of working - in the same way I was terrified of going to primary school back when I graduated from nursery. This reminds me. WHY DO I GET TO WEAR A MOTAR BOARD IN A NURSERY CONVOCATION?

I remember purchasing a tako ball pan online for reasons unknown. Tako balls aren't my favourite food but I think I was attracted by the way they were made. Those aunties in Plaza Sing juggle the balls like circus performers - transforming semi-circular cups of flour soup into edible food.

Hey, I can do it too!

On another note, you know how the library loves to put up rubbish book displays tucked into corners nobody looks at and fill it with titles with no merit save for how dog-earred they are? Well sometimes, you do find some gems. Like this.

Dawn of the Deed: The Prehistoric Origins of Sex.

Very interesting. It also makes me wonder: How in the world do authors of obscure/crazy/unimaginably inexplicable titles decide what to write?

Epigram Books is having a pop up store next week 24th - 25th August (That's Sat & Sun)! So if you love books, buying books, smelling books, peversely caressing books or eating books down to their last frustrated coptic bindings, do come down - you won't regret it.

Another reason, apart from the MT tape exhibition, to drop by ION is the NOISE art festival being held at B4. It showcases artworks by young artists & designers - and this year is particularly good.

Take a look at the (horribly shot) video of the exhibition. The quality of the works really shines through and there were so many noteworthy artists whoes artworks I wanna buy (if possible) and display in a glass frame in my room.


Argh, it can't be embedded can it? Please go to the link then: https://vimeo.com/71423218

 I mean look at these illustrations here, unbelievable! Mad skills and all.

Who is this Chong Yi fella and how is his fingerprints not worn off by doing these sketches?!

Some of the coolest take-aways from the exhibition. And the newsprint NOISE catalogue must have cost a bomb to print & produce (see the video near the last part), and they gave it away for FREE? (Steals all the free stuff)! Wow, the amount of care and money pumped into this event must have been astronomical. Applause. It makes me glad to know that Singapore does have many artistic talents. Cynical pundits step aside.

Dinner at Cedele, Raffles City. Cedele is one of those eateries I never have worries over ordering. I don't think I've ever eaten a bad dish from them. Oh wait, yes I have. It's their banana walnut cake slice. Other than that, everything else is pure gold.

If you're in town (specifically ION Orchard), you can catch the MT tape exhibition at the aforesaid mall. It's more of a showcase of the obscene amount of tapes they have for sale than an actual exhibition, although they do have a small corner for DIY tape tryouts and a craft workshop which cost $35 to register. 

Humourless people who organise their lives around boring monochrome colours, stay far far away from this.

$4-$9 for masking tape may sound ridiculous. And it is. If your sole purpose for tape is to bandage some unfortunate slipper. But the MT tape comes in such sheer variety it actually takes the form of 'art'. Well, not art really, but something that can be used to beautify other things, which you can in turn brag about to others, who will thereafter bow down to you and your awesome crafty abilities. That is, if you have some sense of colour coordination and NOT mess it up like I did 2 posts ago.

Yes. Chairs. And instant wallpapers. I cannot fathom how anyone would have the patience to unfurl cm² after cm² of these tapes. Across. The. Whole. Floor.

Another thing about MT tape, they leave no residue whatsoever. Heaven! Now if only book shops could use MT tape for their pricing lables....

Through the dedicated patience of Shuning in the studio of Popin, I finally succeeded in knitting a loin cloth for my robot, Veronica. This is going up on my display case.

Odd-legged pantaloons coming up next!

Yesterday we half celebrated my older sister's birthday because everyone was dead tired for some reason. I think some family members fell asleep in the cake. But the cake (which was in fact a tart from Fruit Paradise) was so delicious it made everyone wake up with zeal and vigorously sing Happy Birthday!!! at the top of their lungs. Or so I think. But I might have been mistaken.

Before that episode, I was wrapping a present for her. It was a book about two of the second and thrid most important things in life: friendship and death. It's a book by Jory John and Avery Monsen and had dinosaurs and robots in it - she will like it. I'm sure. Or I may be wrong.

Well, I was wrapping the present for her and I attempted to tie a blue ribbon in a cross shape. Unfortunately, my skills were not up to scratch plus my ribbon was not long enough which ended up in an ugly UGLY knot bunched up at the most unceremonious place of the present - right in the glorious middle of it!

I snipped off the excess ribbon from the knot - which did not improve its appearance in any way.

Like a guilty kid, I decided to cover up that blight with - AHA! Tape! Yes. MT tape will solve everything~ don't they make it look so simple in Japaese craft blogs? Like I never learnt from my black window A3 paper fiasco.

Here is the results (front & back). Prepare to be horrified.

 Never ever pile washi tape atop one another thinking that more is better. It is not.
It's the thought that counts, but some thoughts that are beyond salvage should never have been executed in the first place.

I've realised something. Everything in my life, everything that I've been doing until now is all meaningless meaningless meaningless.

Right now when I'm fretting over my career choices, worrying whether I'll get that dream job, swearing to God up & down what I'll do for Him if I could only get that job.... Please please God.... just give me that job.... It hit me. 

I was praying for the wrong thing.

And it hit me even harder, that I've been praying for the wrong things all my life. All my life! All 24 years of it. What was I praying for? 'God, give me this... God, give me that', as if God was some 招财猫 who exists solely to grant my wishes. And I know that I act this way when I'm unsure of myself because I'm vulnerable now. Where do I go from here?

My career is not important. In fact, whatever job I get is also unimportant. I could land the crappiest job ever with the tiniest pay ever and that is absolutely unimportant. Because what matters most is do I love Him enough? And how much love I can show others. That's what I should be praying for. That's what's important.

Books Actually was having a 30% sale.
You know how I get when book stores have massive sales - I become some psychotic take-my-money!!!!!! spendthrift beast.

Spendthrift brain: OoooOooH... Sale!! And 30% some more! You don't get such an opportunity every month. Time to break the bank and stock up on books.

Frugal brain: No! I can't! I already have 6 books that I bought at the last sale and haven't yet read them. What are they for? Paperweights?! Fool! Read them first before you add more to their lonely cousins.

Spendthrift brain: Oh ho! But I will read them! I will... when I'm more ...  free?

Frugal brain: You won't read them. When you buy books, you only buy the illusion of the time to read them, dummy.

Spendthrift brain: Then it's money well spent. For my life is an illusion built on the bodies of dead books.

Frugal brain: You will become a dead body when you have no money to sustain your life. The real life, I mean. Not the one in your head.

Spendthrift brain: Sigh... you're right. I should be more responsible with my money and - Look at that gorgeous dust jacket!! (Buys 1 hardcover book, 1 paperback and a magazine and leaves the shop infinitely poorer with books in the hand and guilt on the face, wondering how did it turn out that way.)

One of the books I got which was a SIGNED COPY! Bang My Car by Ann Ang. This is the funniest book I've read this week! And so true.

I dunno why but this is my favourite part:

23: I want to tell him so many things, show him so many things, but I don't know how to say, maybe the thing also not there anymore.

(brief silence)

A: How about your wife?

23: My wife is my wife loh.

The End.

I friggin burst out laughing. For. No. Reason. At. All.

Aww man, I wonder if all those artsy fartsy indie magazines had been lying to us all the time. How is it remotely possible that a person - you tell me - that a human being can survive off making niche knick-knacks they do?? How? HOW? Tell me how?

How is it  that Mr. Red Checkered Shirt (they always wear checkers in some form or another) in his fancy beret and linen scarf around his neck gets a 4-page spread about how he 'thoroughly enjoys doing what he loves to do for a living' by making customised painted twigs as a full-time job. Or how Miss Oversized Sunglasses who grows organic turnips in moss-lined tin cans is being interviewed out of the her gorgeous 8-room village cottage. Hey, I'd love to sell organic turnips and paint twigs too. But unless they go for $200 a pop I'll be living out of a cardboard box and wearing plastic bags. Reading art indie zines is like fantasy brain-porn where the idealised artist is presented as some fairy who toils happily away in comfort and bliss. No bills to pay, no taxes to file, no mouths to feed and no ugly reality to face. Oh, and that beautiful sunlit studio/atelier they all have where everyone sits around and sip tea while strumming on a vintage guitar. Is it all pure photographic powder?

I thought being an artist was all fun and games.
But it was only how it looked in the light.

Nothing is more arresting than a well-groomed lass in a suit sharp enough to cut yourself on. Esther Quek is a fashion editor at The Rake - and my new girl crush. And she's Singaporean. Like, no! Singaporeans aren't supposed to be this well-dressed! But look at how she rocks that suit. Just look at it!

 

 

And Tilda Swinton. Because. Those. Cheekbones.

Hello Agyness Deyn.

 

Has it really been almost 6 years with that old blogskin? Yes. Now it's time to change. Time to update myself. Time to throw away the kitsch and make way for some minimalist layout that uses a lot of black and another strong colour. Ahahaha. Read Shoo's excellent post about newness here.

Anyway, the old blogskin was really giving me a lot of trouble in terms of the awkward column width that required me to scale the fonts down and manually HTML image sizes so that anything will fit. Also, quite a few of Blogger's functions are no longer compatible with the old HTML/CSS. It's all Java and PHP now, incomprehensible to me.

Plus the old layout looked incredibly ugly. Well, ugly BUT with personality.

Let me upload some random image to see if Blogger still screws up.

Nope.

You know how you walk into an IKEA showroom and some fancy table set catches your eye?
You happily purchase it, lug it all the way home, bust your butt assembling the thing then stand back to admire your handiwork only to realise how awful it looks in your room.

It's like a hot voluptuous princess posing with her moth-eaten cousin of a bedpost and her psychotic messy sister study table in an Adam's Family mansion. It sure makes for some jarring, awkward viewing.

My room faces the sun in the afternoon, which is great if you like the sun in your eyes and the greenhouse effect all year round - but bad for anyone else. I would paste large black A3 papers all over my window to block out the sun but felt slightly self conscious as this made my room look suspiciously like a psychopath axe murderer's cubby hole. At least that's what I think my next door neighbour would surmise looking out of her window just 3 metres away from mine. I tried to use fancy washi tape to do the pasting - now it's psychopath axe murderer with polka dot fetish.

I decided to invest in some solar film. Having absolutely no experience in mounting large window tints with only a youtube video for guidance, I think I did fairly well in getting the tinted film plastered onto the glass.
That is until I idiotically used the window I just worked on as a place holder to rest my other film sheet. The 2 sheets stuck together like the stickiest things that ever existed. I have wrestled with ancient price tags stuck on old book covers and had more results than trying to pry the 2 solar films apart. The thing is, by themselves the film is not sticky at all. The only adhesive is the water I sprayed on so that my paddle glides more smoothly over them. How water managed to make magic cement between them is beyond me. I ripped and ripped. Jumping up and down trying to tear the wretched film off the glass - I cringe at the thought that my neighbour would look out of her window that moment. Hello Freddy Krueger meets jumping jack! No!

I managed to get the film off but now it's all crumpled and creased and I don't have enough film left because AHAHA, there are 2 windows worth of film in my hands now! I was so angry that I decided to mount the ruined film all the same on one window - as punishment for my stupidity. Because foolishness like this must be glorified. And it wasn't cheap.

So now I have a pockmarked window in my room. It looks like Frankenstein had a baby with patchwork quilt - there is no other way to describe it. On the bright side, it actually looks like the surface of the moon with an interesting topography of rivers and valleys. Urgh no, it just looks ugly.

Books that I need to get:

1) The Tiny Book of Tiny Stories Vol.1 - Joseph Gordon Levitt
2)  Malay Sketches - Alfian Sa'at
3) The Virgin Suicides - Jeffrey Eugenides
4) 我的路 Vol. 1 - 寂地
5) 找到这颗星星 - 卤猫
6) Amazing Everything - Scott C.
7) Anything by Oliver Jeffers

Oh, and Steven Brust's Hawk will only be out 2014?! That's infernal ages more. I shall hate it, knowing that I'd have waited 3 years for a book only to finish it in 5 hours. At least this beats the time frame between Issola and Dzur - half a decade for a book 1/10 the size of a Harry Potter novel is just plain evil. Maybe it's in all writers to be a bit evil. After all, writing is an impossibly painful job, all you do is stare at a piece of paper until your forehead bleeds. The same could be said for designers. And artists. And musicians. And painters. Isn't that's why it's called pain-ting? Who said that? I forgot. Some artist illustrator, I think. Someone who said that creators must suffer for their work. That must mean all the books and all the pieces of art I've ever enjoyed and hated must have been pieces of invisible blood and broken bones of their authors. And every act of consuming these goods are an act of cannibalism. I've been eating the ghosts of authors' past.

Oh look, I'm an adult.

When did that happen? And how do I make it stop?

It was my first time applying eyeliner to my own eyes with my own hands.
What can I say? I stabbed my eye into perfection - then broke down and cried blood.

Oh vanity, you liar. The next time I see a woman with beautifully kohled eyes I will know that she had suffered for her trade - the trade of being a woman.

I bought a squeegee lately.
There was no reason to buy it except that I've never bought one before and now I have one.
Cleaning windows is no fun, but I love the excuse of sitting at the ledge of my window - mist spray in one hand, squeegee in the other - and look all tough and professional like I know the secret art of squeegee cleaning.
You know how sometimes you stare at those uncles at the gas station and think to yourself, "Hey, cleaning cars with a squeegee actually looks like too much fun. "
No? Never? I can't be the only one.

Insignificant snack fact:
ValuDollar's Fudgee Bar Choco Blast is really good!

Who would've thought some $2.50, no-name, dirt cheap, rubbish looking packaging chocolate bar can taste nigh near Betty Crocker's products? When I first chanced upon it, it was just that: chance. I was stocking up on cheapo junk food and decided to give it a shot along with imitation Hello Pandas and Apollo wafers and 40cents cup noodles (that tasted exactly like 40cents cup noodles, don't buy). The choco bar is surprisingly dense and heavy - not those fluffy chiffon species that offer you expensive air - but rich cakey and filled with thick fudge.

It comes in 6 in a box that comes out to 40cents a piece. I've paid twice more for lesser products in the school's vending machine. Also, I realised toasting it for 2 mins creates a nice crust at the top that turns a choco bar into a brownie hybrid.
Serve with ice cream for maximum satisfaction at minimum price.

I realised something about my life in education.

If there were only 3 things I remember from poly it's this:

Copy shamelessly
Teachers are merciless
Friends are important

If there are 3 things from uni, it's this:
Bullshitting is mandatory 
Self-indulgence is ok
Friends are important

My last post was last year.
Yes, it's been a long time made longer by the fact that it's my final semester in ADM. Also, blogger has made resizing photos really difficult so I have to blah blah blah and tumblr is sucking all my waking hours blah blah excuses excuses.
Bottomline, you'd probably see me more on tumblr than anywhere else. And if you do read any future blogger post, it'll probably have crap photos or none at all (like this one).

After working for a spell at IE S'pore, I got my money and blew it all on books.
I suddenly have a great obession with books.
Big fat beautiful hardcover books that smell like heaven and read like a dream.
Picture books too. Big floppy picture books that stain your fingers with the colour bleeding from its pages. And poetry books. When the hell did I ever start liking poetry books anyway? I used to hate them with a vengence - now I'm collecting them like a deranged squirrel hoarding her literary walnuts.
Nevermind that I probably won't have the cabinet space to fit in all these books. Who needs a cabinet for books anyway? I pile them up reverently on the floor, at the foot of my bed so I have instant access to them anytime any day and in any lazy sleeping position. Books are democratic. I shouldn't have to walk up to some prissy cabinet and and fumble a book out only to have to ease it into its tight corner back again. Communist cabinet!!

Yeah, and this is how I end my first post of this new year.