Maribrand kawaii Ringos~

Went to see an exhibition by Mari Matsuo yesterday.

 

Her Ringo-chan (‘ringo’ is Japanese for apple) character is so cute! And the way they were presented was unusual (that you wished you had thought of it before!) She sewed and stuffed so many of her ringo-chans that they filled an entire cart to be sold (much like how they actually sell apples in the supermarket! Also with the white netting thing (remember those things which your apples come in but you discard immediately?) which she places her character in makes it all the more unique!

 

It’s all about the packaging and presentation isn’t it?

 

Her paper cuts were very intricate too, not as intricate as Rob Ryan’s but still it had a very different quality to it, very delicate and very Japanese.

I loved her Chiku-bunnies which are these bird looking characters which had bunny ears (or if you like, bunny looking characters with bird wings). So kawaii~

 

Mari-san herself was there and she kindly allowed me to take photos! So I will be placing them up soon. (:

 

anyway… the poster:

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swim carnival + substation

This week has been quite eventful.

 

We had our first swim carnival at bishan swimming complex which was surprisingly fun despite it being really only for the ip students. Shuwei took it upon herself to tell m all about the ip cohort, who is in what, who is her classmates, who is good-looking, etc. etc. it was really interesting. Haha. Plus we were waiting for the participants to arrive so we ended up in the water (it was really too inviting!!) since it was only 0.45m deep. (at the least the pool I was at was shallow.) wading around like little children who find joy in every little play-thing. It was so fun and relaxing (a definite break from the school routine!) and I enjoyed myself splashing water around! Even facilitating the event by being a timekeeper was fun! The two classes I took (grace’s and kaiting’s classes) were enthusiastic which made my job a lot easier.

 

Yesterday, I went for a art writing workshop at the Substation with Lee Weng Choy. It was interesting but I felt that the readings he presented us with were even better then the lesson itself. He is indeed an interesting art critic and writer which kept me interested and most importantly, convinced. I found that some of the things he talked about was what we had previously debated about so his point of view brought in another angle of looking at the motions discussed.

Anyway, we were supposed to write about either Vincent Leow’s work or Ron Mueck’s work.

 

This is what I came up with:

 

 

The first impression this illustration by Vincent Leow gave me was how cunning the character looked. It just reminded me of those clowns we have probably met in our worst nightmares as children where the clown’s face changes from the friendly façade we commonly see at circuses to one which seem almost evil.

 

Upon closer observation, the reason why the illustration made me a little uncomfortable was plain to see. The character was made up of an unusual combination of a chicken’s body and a human head. It seemed that the character was trying to be a chicken with the body, the comb on its head as well as the egg a chicken lays found at the bottom right corner of the image. The spiked accessory together with the propeller which the character wears on his neck and nose respectively also added to the character’s sly appearance.  But most importantly, it was the wide smile on the character’s face which completed the sinister presence of the illustration.

 

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pyramid-

 

this is what i did on good friday. 🙂

 

look how scared/happy we look!

 

i cant say much but i sum up the day in one word: STAIRS.

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art space-

we finally started to settle into our once-empty-and-is-to-be-filled art spaces in ar11

while some of us could start getting to work immediately, two people spent all their time painting their spaces.

 

 kaisheng’s "pollock-ed" hands

 

 val looking absolutely tired yet happy with the completed white walls.

 

well, they made it.

 

and we are going to start getting down to serious work!

 

 huijun and my wall.

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lifted off ground-

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armed with a bus guide could get me lost!

i just spent a really long time (my precious minutes which could have been used to do one question of electrochem…)on the phone with ailin and with a street directory on the table with my bus guide in my other hand trying to find the best bus-stop to meet before heading to NUS open house later today.

it took me forever to get the bus-stops right and the DIRECTION right. i cannot read the bus guide direction (1 and 2) part. i should have gone earlier to join claire. she is so much better at these kind of directions thing. i guess ailin is good at it too but she just didn’t know what i was trying to tell her. haha.

i am so bad at directions and this is ironic since i was going to NUS open house to ‘possibly’ find a direction in life. haha.

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coursework + Rain

i am getting all stressed out thinking about aep coursework.

 

i think i am probably killing many brain-cells generating ideas. and despite all my slow idea-generation, i feel that i cannot draw/shade/colour/pastel/paint/sew/make as fast as i think.

 

help. how come aep coursework did not seem as difficult when i was in sec 4?

the standards have been raised. and i can’t seem to ever get enough time to do prep-work unlike in the past.

the earth must be spinning faster than before and time is running faster than before.

on a sidenote: a new rabbit is up for adoption! His name is Rain. and he is even cuter and more handsome than the singer. 😛

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rain dance cheer for one-star

i can’t believe it but my holiday is coming to an end already!!!

 

let’s see… i spent the past two WHOLE days kayaking, rain or shine (ok… it is really ALL rain and NO shine.)

and we had to do so many capsize drills which is NOT fun at all, but it can be gotten used to i guess.

i think we spent so much time trying to raft up which was kinda funny especially at nearing the end of the course where (i quote aaron, our instructor no. 1. our instructor no.2 is the very sarcastic but funny, Stanley) "everyone was like vultures" hovering around the usual raft-up area. it is like cheating. and it was a hilarious sight for me because i wasn’t anywhere near the raft-up area so i could see the whole bunch of them hovering there. haha.

 

anyway… the rescue drill was erm, actually quite fun and satisfying being able to do rescues and all. so lizhen, yuen wai and grace: "we did it! HIGH FIVE!" but the water was freezing….brrr.

 

talk about freezing, we were really freezing nearing the end of the course, having just done the capsize drill, paddled (in not very straight lines…) in the beating rain and with the WIND blowing in our direction. brrrrrr…ve-ry-co-ld. h-e-lp!

the funny thing was kah ho (yes.. the model student) was trying to psycho himself to thinking he is not feeling cold until aaron told us to break raft and perform another capsize drill before swimming (with our kayaks) back to the shore. and hence hearing that… all his efforts of trying to feel warm had gone down the drain.  he was in denial and really did not want to do it so i went before him.

in short: another capsize drill in the cold and very dirty water of kallang. eww. not the most pleasant of experiences. but all the same it was fun back-paddle-swimming back to shore! and knowing it is all over.

 

 

but there is always 2-star course… if anyone is interested. i m only interested in learning how to the the capsize-flip-and-go-one-round-in-the-water thing. it looks so cool! but that is 3-star course…

 

meanwhile i shall be contented with my one-star course and stay out of the rain for today, take care and don’t fall sick people! 🙂

 

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light footsteps into spirited away land…

today is the last day before the one week hols…

 

and because of that, we kinda justified ourselves for some relaxation time and breaking from studies while waiting for aep to start.

huijun, lynette and i started watching 5cm per second. it is still so well-drawn and sad. incredibly slow moving yet touching. so the three of us sat there in front of huijun’s computer watching it. huijun just found out that japanese anime are quite good after watching spirited away and howl’s moving castle which i lent her last week… oh and we watched spirited away’s trailer. still an amazing show every single time i watch it! while waiting for the loading of the shows, we went to watch coffee prince which is so funny! hilarious really! but what we did was even more hilarious, while waiting for one part to load, we load another and another and another, like compulsive drama/anime watchers. huijun and i got hooked and we complained together everytime we had to wait for the video to load! haha.

 

after aep sova (montien boonma!! :)) and all that watching of videos, met ailin and we went to cine to meet claire and her friend, jieying, for dinner! subway! haha.

 

Then, the Band concert Ani Anime was so good!!! I was left wishing that they had more to offer at the end of the concert and the whole of LT5 was just bathe in the myriad of instrument sounds for that 1 hour. With the sounds of hayao miyazaki’s spirited away (by far the best played piece since I love that animation so much and could picture the different scenes flashing past in my head that I felt I was on the other side of the train station in the movie. And after hearing that piece, I just felt really peaceful and with ease. Ahh…), princess monokoe (ailin… I want to watch the show!!), Disney music (my groundbreaker is amazing having brought music to animations!), Doremon, incredibles… it was really incredible! Haha.

 

Plus… after the concert, as I was walking to the bus stop with ailin and Claire… with the music still replaying itself in our heads… we suddenly gazed up at the sky. It was so clear… that it seemed as though every single star could be viewed from just that one spot. We felt like just lying down in some quadrangle (in NYGH) and staring up at the sky with the wind blowing… I miss doing that. Ailin said that we could make a wish anytime we wanted as the sky is just too bright to see shooting stars but they were really falling every second! So the three of us stood there in the middle of the pavement and looked up making wishes… wishes that we hope would come true this time, next year….

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recurrence-

well… i spent my leap year day at home yesterday.

 

and not in the happy sense too, in the miserable way.

the previous night i could barely sleep and i kept waking up in teh middle of the night. when i did fall asleep, it was the same recurring dream over and over. some dream about exploding things, i cant remember the details though.

i couldnt bring myself to go to school thinking about how i was to go from freezing bus to warm surroundings to air-con lecture theatres to warm classrooms and then to cold aep maclab to warm outside. it was probably the most trival problem but that was the reason why i felt i couldn’t go to school, then.

i realised i had a fever (38.2 degrees…) and i did not feel good the whole morning. ended up vomitting and the doctor said it was because i had stomach flu.

horrible feeling. no appetite because i knew eventually my food will still end up in a plastic bag (which i will vomit into…). sigh.

watched Paprika, strangely the show was about dreams and how it merges into reality, exactally like how i was feeling as i drifted back and forth between reality and my dreamland.

 

this is very odd but i remember having fell sick the feb of last year and having a fever hence missing school due to that…

everything is recurring.

 

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