Well, if you haven’t downloaded the latest version. Here is one reason for you to! Gone are those ugly fugly visualisers, instead now we have the awesome visualisers created by the barbarian group.

It has been so long since i last wrote and I suspect it would be even longer if not for the reminder by celeste. There are too much to write but i guess i should be lazy and skip the irrelevant daily rants. I shall talk about the art camp i attended in july. At first i was worried that the people in the camp would be too arty farty pretentious artists but thankfully i am wrong. The guys I met there were mostly sincere and fun people and a couple of them are doing the same thing as myself so I didn’t feel alone for the first time for a long time haha. It was great fun and tiring. Everyday we would go out and have fun, attend workshops and work on projects. I was really inspired by the whole atmosphere and it got me thinking seriously about going abroad to study, I feel there is a need to broaden my horizon .

There was a couple of firsts in this camp for me. I had to speak about my work to the public for the first time. I had to do a public presentation about our group presentation in the national museum. I met so many nice and fun people at the same time for the first time. Some pictures

Went to the sg toys and comics convention. It was horrible. The moment I went in , I had this urge to turn and go out. First thing I noticed, There is no space design or layout. I couldn’t see whats in front and everything was cramped up in the space, it was as if they were trying to squeeze in as many booth as they can.

Next , I noticed alot of irrelevant booths. Wii??? Arcade games?? Hellooo is this a games convention or toy and comics, that’s not all. The worse thing was a robotics booth, now that is totally irrelevant with some old uncles manning it and looking all geeky. While I respect them for their passion and geekiness, they were totally in the wrong place. Anyway, it was just bad. Personally I think its good that there is a start and that I understand the need of income because it’s a free event. However, that doesn’t mean you can ignore planning, visitor experience, quality of the booths and etc.

There was no focus in this convention, they say comics and all i see are some lameass local comic booths and not even the big players like chuangyi. There were multiple local comic studio booths but they were more concept art than real comics. Toy wise, it is all confusing as well. Things were everywhere and anywhere. The only correct thing they did was to get imaginary friends studio and the idea of a live painting session is good, only that they should make it a live event on stage. Overall i think they didn’t achieve much. Like what did it do? If you look at comic conventions in japan, it’s just purely comic or anime and they get authors to come down and lotsa interesting programs along with it. I just hope next year it will do better in planning.

After that i went to the fleatique flea market at singapore art museum and it turned out equally disappointing and with the same problem. There were no QC to the stalls there and there were no planning of the stalls or if there were, it was bad. EVerything was for girls and i didnt see the point of having a live band playing by itself in some room. It just aint integrated. What happened to the good old days of timberluxe flea market!!! It was seriously the best, maybe not if u consider the elitist zouk flea market. The point of all these is that while it is impt to QC. Btw, I didnt stay longer than 10 mins in both places so i didnt bother taking any photos. end of story.

This afternoon I saw a headline in “today” that says some facts for thoughts where it listed the state of China’s disaster relief fundings. According to the paper, china apparently has more than enough to recover itself in the coming years, even without much help. Myanmar, on the other hand , needs help alot more and so it asks, why are people donating to china more?

My personal reply is the transparency and coverage of china’s earthquake. Once again, we witness the power of the media but of course that is not the focus here. China’s open attitude towards foreign help has been instrumental in both getting aids and being covered worldwide. Tragic stories of victims weigh our hearts down everyday and these pictures stays in our mind, convincing us that this is real, taking on a more personal attitude towards it. The disaster in myanmar , on the other hand, is poorly covered and extra efforts seemed to be put into denying foreign help as compared to china’s open attitude. I think this sort of disconnects the link between ourselves and the disaster. Unlike the events in china, the events in myanmar seems to be more distanced between us.

Humans are emotional beings, resulting in given attention to things that we feel more with. Fortunately for myanmar, organisations like the red cross and UN sees the urgent need to provide help and relief to the victims .

I’m sure many of you would have seen the news or on the newspapers of the very unfortunate earth quake in sichuan province’s wenchuan in china. These heart wrenching stories have spread to various corners of the world and we should definitely help in anyway we can.

The singapore red cross society is appealing to the public for generous donations in aid to relief the disaster areas in sichuan. The ways to donate are :

1) Walk-in cash/cheque donations

* Singapore Red Cross, 15 Penang Lane, Singapore 238486.
* Collection hours are:

Monday to Friday: 9:30am-5:45pm
Saturday & Sunday: 9:30am-5:00pm

2) Cheque donations

* Cheque to be made payable to the “Singapore Red Cross Society”.
* Please indicate at the back of the cheque name of donor/organisation (if applicable), mailing address and contact numbersand “Red Cross China Earthquake”
* Cheques should then be sent to Singapore Red Cross, 15 Penang Lane, Singapore 238486. Once the cheque/s are received, an official non-tax deductible receipt will be issued.

3) Other avenues include banking services offered by UOB, DBS, OCBC and Maybank and the AXS Stations.

* Donors may log onto the SRC’s website for detailed instructions to its donation channels

Since the tragedy on 13 May, the SRC has been monitoring the situation closely with the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) and the Red Cross Society of China (RCSC).

For more information on the SRC and the IFRC’s relief assistance, the public may log on to www.redcross.org.sg or call the SRC at 6334-9152/53.

Media correspondence:
Carol Teo
Head, Corporate Communications
Singapore Red Cross
Tel: (65) 9847 2024 (Mobile) / (65) 6336-0269 x 272 (Office)
Email: carol.teo@redcross.org.sg

The details above are extracted from Blog2u.sg . Kudos for spreading this.

If you are too busy to make time to go to the red cross, alternatively you can buy the panda breads in breadtalk . For every one panda bread, 2 dollars goes to the donation in aid of the earthquake areas. Breadtalk is everywhere so it is easier. It’s very often sold out but one can actually just donate money to the tin beside the cashier where they keep all the donations. Please help them. There are so many orphans crying for their parents , they really need the help.

It’s the Chinese New Year again but this year its abit different cause my birthday falls on the first day of new year, which could be good or bad. Honestly i’m kinda detached to all these stuff, festivals birthdays and all. Maybe not my friends birthday but definitely for mine. The new year period has been evolving throughout the years, when I was much younger. New year = dead town. Now we still get pretty much most of the entertainment and food places in town, 24 hours at that. I used to like going to orchard during new year just to feel the emptiness of it in the afternoon, which doesn’t exist anymore. 

I read in the newspaper about the incident where some taiwanese celebrity spoke badly of our english pronunciation, namely Xiao S and Shen Dong Jing if i remember correctly for the latter cause he basically don’t exist in my celebrity list, it’s only because of this incident that i know of him. While I have to admit that the way we speak can be less than perfect, it is also a way of life, a culture that we have acquired over the years with influences from the different races. It is totally unfair for them to pass judgement over the air when they can’t speak even english of our level. At least for Xiao S and Shen dong jing, i’m pretty sure. Having spent a couple of months in america in MIT working with some of the students there, I can say that they had no trouble understanding what we have to say.

I had this real life experience in China Airline’s plane , we were about to land in taiwan and the air stewardess addressed the situation to us and honestly, most of us couldn’t comprehend what she was trying to say as well. She tried to fake the american accent and all but she was just mumbling. Someone who doesn’t know english might think she is speaking english but the fact is that it’s just a facade. But it is not to say all taiwanese are like these, my ex girlfriend is a taiwanese and I stayed in taiwan for a couple of months as well, it was lovely. These are just my personal experiences though. But I think that anyone should not say things like these without thinking about those affected.

This reminds me of the whole edison episode, he denies that its real and all and when it becomes apparent that it is real, he blames the guys who stole the photos , speaking nonchalantly about it, and finally decides to apologise when he’s far away in boston. I think its really irresponsible of him in the first place to take photos and all and really, isn’t he quite an idiot to send his laptop with all these pictures for repair?? Gosh. No data is safe nowadays, your data can be stolen right under your nose if someone is intent on doing so. Ok enough of babbling. 

Some of you might have already noticed the new Wall along the entrance / exit of the Orchard Mrt station , it was the first for me and it was more than just pretty lights for me. This wall is lighted up by thousands of led lights controlled by a system and they placed it behind these milky glass that diffuses the light and what we get is some very dreamy ambient lights. I must applaud them for finally doing something different, this is definitely a benchmark in the interactive/multimedia installation business and it is good news for me. I took a look at the interior of the glass panels being the geeky investigative me and immediately I thought wow, this is kinda overkill because that is not even a rgb screen display. Well anyway they have the money so why not. Have a look at it anyway.

The seemingly impossible task of cleaning up my room has been achieved. Each time i try to do this i get the difficult decisions of throwing things to make space or keeping things because i like keeping things of sentimental values, in my case im a sentimental person so ya, that means alot. Anyway hurrays, it is clean. I no longer have to look for a space to land my feet on when i wake up. I also made good use of my tons of comics, i used them to make a shelf for my electronics so i have a nice little section of electronics stuff now. Awesome. Every cleaning is a good time for re-discovering my forgotten past, things that are too everyday to really remember by. Today I found some old photos and stuff. But no i don’t enjoy cleaning it up , it’s only because my screaming mother is threatening to kill me that i’m doing it.  

Its ironic that I write lesser than i do on school days. Perhaps school sorta keeps u better organised for such.I’ve been busy working as an intern in theatreworks, with ka fai’s v.i.s.t.a. lab presentations and it was quite a good experience, learning about stage production and all. It’s very different than that as a solo artist cause everything is more compressed, if u say it , u have to do it. There are more than one people u have to answer to so ya. The performance was quite a success in my opinion, having a good amount of audiences despite the never never ever ending rain .There was a post party at jovien’s house on friday. Coincidentally, her house was situated near seletar camp, my home for over a year so it was kinda nostalgic ( for a while anyway) . The party was quite good man, haha lotsa red faces and laughters throughout, there were also quite alot of intellectual discussions going on, which was good cause u seldom get so many artists coming together. For me at least. Well one thing i realised, out of the 5 chinese present, 3 had red faces and that includes me after having some drinks. I heard it’s scientifically proven? lol. But anyway, the other 2 wasnt red because one wasnt drinking and the other was tanned. Yi Sheng was totally gone man, he’s a funny guy.Xmas and a new year is coming soon yet again and it’s going to be quiet for me as usual. My results weren’t as bad as I thought it would be, maybe I just expect too much from myself? In anycase i have to work harder for scholarship next year!

How I adore the rain, it gives me peace and a good environment to sleep.