food thoughts

Did anyone who reads The Times notice that AA Gill and somebody else (I forgot who and which paper - but one I read recently) both did reviews for the same restaurant?
Review-wise, it has to be said my favourite columnist so far is still the characteristically unapologetic Giles of the Coren fame. If only he comes in vacuum-packed portions...

That aside, it's one paper down. A few more tribulations to go :))

Enjoy your Sunday!

essay orgy

I decided, quite begrudgingly, to follow the 'me exploring contemporary art' thread to write my essay, to be handed in at the end of this week. I have my own interests and I have objections about being fashion/garment-making vassals of artists whose works I 'explore', and I'm quite angered/disappointed by the intellectual boundaries the tutors in charge have set for this essay. This is not my first degree, I can think more independently in relation to my fellow classmates, and I felt that the tortuous college fee should somehow justify a fruitful and satisfying learning experience.

Anecdotally, a Harvard student once complained about the teaching he received, since he is 'a customer of the institution'. To which a member of the staff rebuffed, he is 'also a product of the institution'. As a customer-product, the way I decided to make peace with this contradiction is to subvert the generation of this 'product' of college the way corsets are used nowadays to signify postmodern feminine independence. And write the high-art-lite stuff they like. Sceptically speaking, three full-time members of staff (whose responsibilities include teaching around 15-20 hours per week and need on average 42 hours p.p.p.w. to sleep) handling 200+ essays over a period of four weeks - there is only a limited amount of time a member of staff can 'shower' his/her marking attention on my essay before they have to move on to another one.

Another interesting point I learnt so far is that the art/design/cultural discourse arena in London is actually so interlinked with each other... so 'small', you may say. Here is the reason why:

Tracey Emin (infamous) went to Maidstone College of Art

¦¦

Janis Jeffries taught there when Emin went to study

¦¦

Angela McRobbie gave a talk with JJ (which I attended)

¦¦

'Claire' was friend with McRobbie

¦¦

'G' was related to 'Claire'

¦¦

'H' is [socially] related to 'G' and to me

So - the conclusion?

...from the essay orgyist, take care and have a good day.

mysterious symptoms

The weather gets colder, the woolies come out, and the clocks roll back an hour: it's time to dig out Tiger Balsam. I've been hovering between states of coldness, flatulence, recurring hunger (not that I didn't eat normally) and mental distraction before speculating... hmmm maybe this is what people call masuk angin. Or cold.

Thank God and my dad for the Tiger Balsam.

P.S. I will go to bed earlier (like, 10) and wake up at 4:30. This is a regime I want to ingratiate myself to. I work better in the small hours.

defense or counter-attack?

Hello again.

In the past few days I've been swimming around the issue of getting visual images that are tangible enough to present and contextual enough to write an essay on. And, as three days have passed since the initial 'your images are too intangible' verdict, here are further observations I've made:

Communicating with tutors
The 'initial finalised' visual imagery I chose speak to me and I can design from them; not so for my tutors. It seems like they want something noisier, loaded with symbolisms and layered with multiple meanings. The difference between what I see and what they want to see are like yōkan to trifle.

Dealing with noise and confusion
Back in Melbourne, I would've gone off to a cafe with a [boy] friend or two if I were stressed. But since good coffee in London is hard to find, and since I have an Italian stove-top coffee maker, I prefer to prepare and consume food instead. The food prepared and consumed range from meat loaves to apple crumbles, with a good dose of coffee washed down with water in between. As a result, I'm working my water filter more than a family of four would for a day's usage (filtered water is used for drinking, boiling, making coffee and filling up the electric steamer.)

The 'f' habit
'f' is a letter I would press when I'm laying out structure for a blog post. Why?
...............................
Because it's a key with a tactile 'orientating' bar I tap with my left index finger.

She does Guido Crepax too
Well, we'll see. Seeing her work reminds me of East End-flavoured mondofragile... or like my sister's enameled girl-kiss-boy necklace, but skinnier. I do notice cwc-i tends to favour this style genre for illustrations. And yeah, I checked her out because of her surname (wonder if Gina moves within this girl's circles?) But no, I found out about signore Crepax whilst visiting Milan - his books were the only ones I couldn't find on amazon.

Later bits
Alright then, that's it. I didn't buy fabric on Tuesday. I'm writing some parts of my proposal - there is a certain part of market placement I favour. I'm good[-ish] at doing market positioning but that doesn't mean the "thou art made for fashion marketing" label is a descriptive label for my sole existence in the industry. Maybe, as G&G mentioned, it is a favourite pastime the specialised British/English creative industry circles tend to do.

Take care!

the other side of the table

Hello again people.

The final academic year has started, and trips around Europe have now become a recent past. Since one of the final year units involve a 'reflective summary of professional and personal journey' throughout a year, it is rather second nature for me to blog (again.) The difference being, it would take on an emphasis on the relationship between professional results (i.e. academic work) and my personal circumstances. How do they influence each other? I guess we all will come to see this point in the not-so-distant future.

Below are a few topics I have come up with during the first two weeks of the year:

Lack of visual imagery

The role of imagery in contemporary fashion is undeniably pivotal. Which is why, when it comes the researched images around which my final collection will be based, my tutors (and some classmates - over time) let out an undeniable moan of 'there is not enough visual imagery'. I don't like borrowing images per se, tend to create my own set of imagery (drawings anyone?), and being from the camp of "if it is published in a book then it's a bit stale" didn't help either with the image-collecting. Yes, I do take pictures. Yes, I do draw. Finding pictures which I like, complete with a common thread? That's a more difficult task for me to accomplish. Either I don't like the individual pictures, or the common thread would be deemed too weak. I went around as far as the British Library to find images, only to be greeted by blank stares from its librarians when I asked them how I could find historical illustrations.
One of the tutors commented that the research I did will make a good sociology book along the line of Catherine Mercer's talk. So far so good, except for the fact the course is a visual one. (Do self-generated images based on tables and graphs comply just so?)
I find that I can write cultural studies essays well, and I can research images for 'shallow' design purposes (i.e. non-contextual use) well. Marrying the two is probably the challenge I have now.

Being on the other side of the table

During the summer term in the last academic year, it was easy sailing: it was a group project, I decided not to place any consciouly blatant personal aesthetic interest in it, and therefore I had an easier time being directed to achieve a specific visual and tactile outcome. There was one girl in my group who was decidedly gothic whom we had to calm because she really wanted to do space age dark glamour... the unadulterated concept and shapes wouldn't fit into the client brief we were given (how many people who are into this magazine are into gothic anyway? most likely nil.) Sooo, her aesthetic was scaled back.

This time around, I am on the rejected side of the table. Top it with what seems to be a lack of 'tangible visual imagery', an essay due within two weeks and you get the semi-wreck I am in. Except that, in my case, I appear way too relaxed for people to notice the stress.

Reaction

One of my favourite modes of dealing with stress is cleaning: chuck things away, de-scale the sink, de-grime the bathroom, cook some apple crumble (well this is what I did in the past few days anyway.) When the red-hot emotional tension is off and the academic challenge is on, what am I to do?

Maybe I'll start looking at other cultural studies essay topic that are listed on the online announcement board. I'll keep you posted on that.

OK, off to fabric sale now...

proverb-twisting

My mother used to say (in Indonesian) that 'durians do not fall far from the tree for it cannot bear mangoes', meaning childrens do not 'fall far from their parents', i.e. they will end up doing what their parents did, to a large extent. It was one of her favourite lines. Durians and mangoes, being fruits she enjoy eating, are the two fruits she often used in the proverb. (I quite like them, too.)

Yesterday, while mooting with work colleagues about whether one is bound to be good-natured from one's upbringing, I came up with the following soundbyte:

"Durian trees do not bear mango fruits, but it can bear rotten durians."

There you go.

I could make the title sound Victorian, but...

...seems like it already is.

I'm back from Paris, and I've got a few points to clarify:

Wi-fi connections are not as slow as previously said
I had the leisure of using a friend's laptop (and her wi-fi, well done) whilst in Paris and noted that the internet speed is pretty good. Not as bad as what I had in the hotel the previous evening, anyway. After various excursions, I went back to my hotel room (and to that thing of a wi-fi) to find that it was working notably faster. Which leads me to the conclusion that I could blame the previous day's wi-fi slow-ness on eventual conditions, not on general service terms. Now I am glad to profess that citoyens de la République has good and speedy access to that cloudy thing we call the Internet.

Monop' is a lifesaver, money-saver, stomach-saver
As one may have noted on my Facebook status update: meals at Monop' are mundane-inducing, and they score mediocre on the gastronomic scale and cheap. However, the drinks selection is better. Recommended tipple is the noix de coco drinking yogurt, with actual bits of coconut inside (€1.79). Favourite haunt includes the outlet open across the Pompidou Centre piazza. Not quite Pret-a-Manger... but with a microwave, free cutlery and chairs, it wins hands-down from Tesco Metro.

Vive la Centre Pompidou
Gallery, bookstore, eatery and a cavernous three-level public library rolled into one. There is nothing as jaw-dropping as walking into a library and being able to copy (or take pictures) from books you fancy. Or the sight of video terminals and dedicated music/audio document rooms. Books in other languages (notably English and German) can also be found. You can't check books out of the library, but then there is no registration/membership compulsory to use them. And it's open until 10PM. When I'm in Paris, most nights you'll find me here after the shops are closed.

The museums are camera-friendly
As long as you can work within the limitation of sans flâge (without flash), anything is available to you for the snapping. A friend of mine complained that the museums went from one stage of banning all photography to allowing photography as long as flash lighting is not used. Sometimes photography is not allowed on parts of a museum's collection. I found out that ambient lighting is a good indication of whether photography is allowed or not, with low-lights denoting that your camera is probably most unwelcome for that particular display.

But when I want a picture, I will get it taken anyway. (Mwahahaha.)

The Métro
The lines are laid out differently: one tube containing two tracks with platforms on both sides, as opposed to two tubes joined by a central 'island' of two platforms (the case with most London Underground tube lines). There are a lot more stations that are decorated, Cité and Arts et Métier being the two I visited.

Strange opening times
Some places are open Tuesday to Sunday, some are open Monday to Friday, some are open Tuesday to Friday and Sunday (!) It gets confusing at best. At least I'm glad to find out the flea markets are open on the weekends - that is, Saturdays and Sundays.

Helpful post offices
A cold sweat broke out when I realised that it was already 6PM on a Friday, the time when post offices would spectacularly close for two days and leave tourists scrambling around town trying to find stamps to send their little postcards back home. La Poste offices in central Paris beg to differ, opening late until 8PM on weekdays and on Saturday mornings. Lovely!

My current addiction
...are these dancing rabbits, Nabaz'tag. (Or more like hordes of them, Nabaz'mob.)

They've been around for some time, as I've seen them a few years ago on BLTD (back then I didn't know where to get them). There are rumours the manufacturing company is going under, and fans of the rabbit have launched their own save the Nabaztag campaign. Also, if you happen to be in Paris this autumn, visit the orchestra with a hundred of them bleeping, bleating and swishing their ears in a choreographed manner. As for myself, I'm eyeing up a Rabbit.

I guess that's pretty much all that I have to say... have a lovely day!