(sisterhood)

With Anne's arrival in London this morning, both my 'adopted' London sisters are around. It's also a sign that school days are just around the corner.

I really see Mag and Anne as my sisters now.
When we went to Freshers Fayre (some sort of welcome-new-students-who-grab-goodie-bags), I kept introducing both of them as friends "who are like sisters to me". I practically spent the whole day with the two of them, and got to know their boarding family too. It was a largely unplanned day that turned out to be highly entertaining ^__^

Going to Heathrow at 6AM in the morning is fun, once one got past the morning freeze. Free food supplies from Freshers Fayre (baked beans? instant mash?) replenish emergency fast food stash. Sucked into reading Death Note (it's....... good. Intriguing plots.) Have an idea of trialling this out, maybe. What else... the past few days passed in a flurry of events, parties, exhibitions and lots of new faces.

Ah, it's bed time for me. Have a good day :))

Design Management

Another day spent at the library (so far.)

Being who I am and with what I got used to read, I am at home with both word-y and picture-y books. I'm blogging from the LCC library in E&C. The reason why I'm in this particular library (instead of the more study-related LCF or CSM CX libraries) was because of its abundance of eMacs - I thought I could use them for sound-editing. Well, to say the least my hypothesis proved wrong and I would have to go somewhere else to do my work.

As I was already in another part of the town I don't usually visit, I made a point of staying back in the library - reading books I wouldn't normally come across and borrowing DVDs shamelessly. The weekly loan duration at LCC is more generous that CSM Southampton Row's infamous two-day loan policy, which causes stacks of DVD to simultaneously 'disappear' on Saturdays only to reappear late Monday evenings (or even later if the borrowers could afford a hefty fine.)

The book I'm reading puts the process of design in a business framework (a pet topic of mine).
Surprisingly, it contains more practical relationship-developing advices than most relationship-related self-help books I have come across. It comes across as a bit odd, but since us designers are an odd bunch anyway... I wouldn't have much power in arguing how odd it feels to read relationship tips in a corporate-geared design process book. Especially more so with movies like The Corporation...

So many things to read and watch, so little time. And yes, I still have the sound-editing to do too. Any help offered, pretty please? :D

P.S. self-confessed Moleskine addict is on her crack hit #5: the large squared notebook. No signs of addiction abating anytime soon.

(enrolment completed)

I have just finished the enrolment process.

Welcome to three years of hell! (some say so - I disagree.) Or, rather, three years that I have waited five-and-a-half for. I'm keen to use these three years to become someone who is accomplished in her chosen field of work, and to turn me into the best person I can be. What I just said sounds naively idealistic. However, if I don't give this opportunity my best shot, I could spend my life regretting not doing so. Since I'm not keen on regretting, I choose to make the best of whatever life throws at me.

For me, the next three years are years of uncertainty.
There are many things I question and many questions still unanswered; I somehow look forward to get them sorted out. I don't really like to deal with reluctance and sense of probing-in-the-dark, but work with them I must when necessary.

This week marks the end of my erratic summer hours.
The timing for sudden weather change couldn't be better, too. It looks like autumn has come around. (More excuses to wear boots.) I am learning to live with my new mobile phone and its antics of asking me to adjust the date/time arrangement twice in a day, and to the new ringtones. It's funny to find out that despite the advanced digital ringtone playback, I prefer my sister's scream and my old alarm clock's cockadoodling ^__^

Have a nice day! :D

(brand disloyalty)

If brand loyalty has a flip-side sister, I would probably be its most fervent advocator.

My knowledge of mobile phones started with walkie-talkie-style phones which closely resembled 'bricks' rather than 'portable phones'. I watched the mobile phone market grew. I learnt that the world for mobile phone consumers started off in the world where ignorance was bliss, which later turned into a red ocean market as competition intensified.

When I was 16, I was somewhat forced to own a mobile phone - partly because my sister found pin-pointing me at late hours to be exhausting detective work, and also because my mum happened to win a mobile phone from a lucky draw. It was Nokia 3210 - the only mobile phone designed well enough for the two ultimate purposes of all mobile phones: handle calls, and withstand endless mistreatments. The only cough-up I ever had, due to gross handling negligence, was a cracked screen. These utilitarian gadgets still exist; you can still find them being peddled on Jakarta's roadside mobile vendors. And yes, they're still network-compatible.

When I was 18, came in mobile #2. Polyphonic ringtones and colour screens were all the rage, so I thought (being weaned on a Nokia) that a 3510 would be a good idea - it had more humane-sounding ringtones. So, somebody went to buy it for me, and came back with a Nokia 3610 because "they cost the same." (it wasn't polyphonic!! it didn't have colour screens!! waah!!) ...never mind. I came to love its bluish-tinted, blindness-inducing light. I came to learn that mobile phones do have secondary, unintentional functions - light torch, anyone?

My third mobile phone came in at the age of 20 (what now, one every two years?) It was my sister's hand-me-down, a SonyEricsson T610i she had used for some time. Despite obvious signs of wear and tear, I had no problem making the jump to another maker's. This was mainly due to the fact I was always the co-pilot/co-driver in car, so she would relegate the duties of making calls and sending texts on her mobile phone to me. (I even adopted her texting idioms.) It was... okay and rather unimpressive. The mobile had a colour screen, but by this stage the novelty had wore off and moved on to the so-called 3G network services.

My fourth mobile phone was the one I anticipated the most - I decided that, for once, I shouldn't neglect my gadgetry possessions and get something 'better than my sister's swiveling phone.' Okay, sibling rivalry was a minor motivation, but I was excited to own a 2Mpx camera phone with responsive lens shutter which was marketed as the world's first Walkman phone. Later on I found out that its little sister (K750i) also handled music playback, but since W800i came with a 512MB external storage... the decision was sealed. I have knocked this phone around, used its handsfree accessories to death, and taken an obscene amount of pictures with it. The only time I cringed at the colour scheme was the time I got it out of its box. The only misbehaviour it gives me is its acquired inability to send files through Bluetooth.


And yet, as I promised myself last year (i.e. wait till BA course is about to start before signing onto a mobile contract), I went on a mobile contract shopping trip.
The most appealing deal turned out to belong to the network 3. Ouch.


I have a distate for indiscretely branded goods; 3-branded mobile phones are among them. And yet, because the SIM card must be used with a 3G phone, I reluctantly agreed to take the mobile phone. It had no camera lens shutter. It was a Nokia (shorthand for 'overpriced not-so-useful brand' in my mind.) The first thing I did when I got the phone out from its box was to scratch off its embossed 3 logo. And, to make the disappointment go the extra mile, the phone neither functions as a light-torch nor has outstanding compatibility with other audio equipments.
The phone is so not hard-wearing, so smooth and glossy, so... unfunctionally ladylike. Meh D:

It seems like I will be keeping two mobile handsets in active service for the next year. Once the contract has ended, I would happily ditch the Nokia handset and switch back to my good old SonyEricsson. If Samsung does a mobile phone that also works as a light torch and can be easily connected to a sound system, I wouldn't mind switching to it. That is, until something better comes up on the market...

Don't Turn Off The Lights

One of the lightbulbs in my room went dead this evening.

It was no big deal; the shops were still open, so I just popped around the corner and got myself a box of two lightbulbs for 99 pence (there was no boxes of one screw-on bulb.)

As I was walking home, I wondered why the onus of purchasing light bulbs lies on the energy consumer instead of the energy provider. The energy consumer consumes electricity, and he/she still has to pay for the privilege to consume electricity by proxy of artificial lighting.

To make myself seem more logical/thoughtful/cost-conscious, I did a rather simplistic equation on how much energy a light bulb consumes, and consequently how much an average household customer would pay for it.

Here goes my energy consumption equation:
My 60W light bulb has a lifespan of 1000 hours.
It consumes approximately 60kWh of electricity during its lifespan.
One of the energy providers in London charges 15.74p per kWh of general household use.
This means my light bulb would have consumed around £9.44 of electric energy by the time it expires.

Which means... if an energy company provided a light bulb free of charge for its customer, it effectively spends 49.5p (or even less if it bought its light bulbs in bulk) on so-called 'marketing' costs. This 49.5p spending corresponds to a revenue flow of £9.44 - generated when the above-mentioned 60W, 1000-hour light bulb is used to its expected lifespan.

After all, we paid for cost of household electricity consumption... so why do we still have to pay for the means to consume it as well, when the energy provider benefits from our consumption through use of light bulbs? Give us customers some incentive to consume!
(never mind the energy-efficient initiative - I'm just trying to present a case economist-style, ceteris paribus...)

...ah, this is another one of those random thought moments I have.
Please excuse my indulgence ^__^;

Another bit of random news: I went to the Indonesian Embassy in Mayfair for help/advice, and ended up having lunch over there. Today's menu was tempeh with green vegies and kikil - good for LDL-cranking but delicious nevertheless! :D

De-Lovely

My sister has a... weakness.
Whenever she comes back from the cinema, she would be most predisposed to share about her excitements and, unavoidably, the storyline of whatever movie she just watched. This situation has happened to a number of must-see movies (I could accurately recall her blabbing about these three blockbusters), and De-Lovely was no exception. It usually takes me several years to un-memorize whatever voluntary reviews she shared with me, after which I would start the hunt for movies on DVDs.

Let's say she was very impressed with De-Lovely she immediately proceeded to purchase the movie's soundtrack CD. I have listened to the CD's tracks to death since then, and have come to love some of them. The songs gave me a definite (if not slightly hazy) idea of the movie's major story arc. However, I still had lots of "huh? Shouldn't it go this way..." moments while watching the movie. The songs - which have a general upbeat jazzy mood - concealed a darker struggle the characters had to deal with. And yes, I find this concealment idea interesting...

All in all, it was good entertainment. To forget today's the last day of the proms! And it's held not far from where I live... D: Luckily, I still got to see the fireworks. Also, I blabbed about the proms on this blog at this time of the year last year - wow o.O

Finally, I'd say I'm utterly thrilled with the level of service Amazon doles out to its customers. I purchased the De-Lovely DVD late Thursday afternoon, and received it through the mail today... just in time for Saturday night movie-watching.

It does make me feel relying on eBay for better price (nominally) may turn out to be false economy - I'm still waiting for my copy of this book to arrive! There are only three weeks of vacation left, and I'd like to try out a number of things this book instructs upon, so having the book in hand as early as possible helps.

Alright then, have a good weekend ^__^

Saga

I am thankful of being able to do what I do right now.

Recently, a number of people have made me question my decision of going to UK to study design. It is not nice and rather hurtful to hear "she could do it because they are loaded", "she can definitely go everywhere", "she decided on a whim", "she didn't put much consideration into it", "it's easy sailing for her" and the likes.

When it comes to making decisions, I tend to swing between a passionate romantic and a cold skeptic - I have had my moments of ten-second resolutions and months of mulling over in some other cases. To be honest, there is no fixed formula for making life's decisions as life itself is fluid.

Also, I am not very fond of declaring that one thing will happen only to find out soon enough it would not. In early 2005 I made the declaration that I would definitely stay in Melbourne - working while studying design part-time - and could only see myself living in Indonesia "in ten years' time, possibly even more". It was obviously embarrassing and rather inconsistent to learn that within three months of the above-mentioned speech I wasn't accepted into RMIT, scored a job at Astra, entered into some sort of agreement with my parents, and booked a one-way ticket home.

I also got criticised for being able to flit and move around places relatively quickly. Well, moving around is no easy business, at the very least it's logistically challenging. Add up the burden of telling people you're close with you won't be seeing them till God knows when, re-establishing a support network in the new place, and being alone... then sometimes I wonder how I could manage to move around twice in a bit over a year.

Well, people are entitled to their own opinions.
And I am entitled to choose my attitude.

Me doing what I do right now is the product of a series of miracles. Here they come:

1. My parents' support
Knowing them, I honestly never thought my parents would ever let me study design. I have this funny hypotheses whether it might have been caused by that 'mural' I did on the bedroom wall when I was three, but anyway... learning about their support is amazing.

2. My extended family's support
Can't be thankful enough for their moral support.

3. The funding
Well, it just appeared out of nowhere, really. Nobody was expecting it.

4. The university offers
It happened twice with my less-than-impressive portfolios. It is a venerable institution, too...

5. Lack of tiara on head
If I had won, I would have been made to refuse the first university offer, and the study would've been jeopardised.

6. The visa farce
My first day of school started on 13 August, I was ready to board the flight, and the check-in attendant informed us my dad's visa is effective starting on 1 August and mine on 1 September (he was supposed to send me off - great.) The days in Dubai were spent with realising that weekends happen on Thursdays and Fridays in the Arab world, learning the British Embassy in Jakarta did not send any messages to Dubai regarding my visa case, and frantically re-applying my visa. Good thing it was granted on the spot, phew! ^__^;
Oh, and the embassy in Dubai misspelt my surname. I was having cold sweats while going through immigration.

7. Building a support network
I have never imagined making friends could ever be so straightforward. I met two of my closest friends in UK on first day of school - we were enrolling together, we got enrolled into the same class, and we were equally loud :)) These two are like sisters to me and I'm glad for them.
Also, more friends and contacts came along the way - I'm glad I have no reason to moan about for having made no friends.

8. The boarding
Found the place while doing a quick casual check on lettings. Got interviewed and accepted within two days, and moved in two days later. And it is pretty good, too :D very very blessed indeed.

9. The guarantor
The guarantor? It's very hard to come across one, and to make it even more challenging I had no relatives who could stand as my guarantor. And yet, someone offered to be my guarantor from week one :))

10. Skills
I haven't found a way to explain how, but I'm glad I'm learning new skills all the time (both technical and mental.)

So yes, I'm here by sheer miracles.
I guess if I find myself feeling down and low, I should give this list a look. The problems I face probably won't go away but at least I would feel better. After all, attitudes can make or break lives...

Thanks for listening to/reading my blabs! I'm glad there are people who, after all these rants, still stick their eyes here to read this post.

Take care,


from a person with a changed attitude.