Rule The World

As we all notice, today (or rather this post) is dated February 29th.
The once-in-1460-days day is here.
Maybe it'll help someone to kickstart a revolution, overthrow existing bureucracies and rule the world?? Any despotic dictatorship (no pun intended) will benefit from being 'celebrated' once every four years, officially quartering any long reigns they may accumulate. But then they age just as normal, so probably there's only going to be less parading around.

I read an article on one of the free papers about 'leap year holiday', and wondered whether anybody actually coined arguments convincing enough to be passed on as a public holiday. Feb 29 is one of these rare days that don't happen every year... so to me it sounds reasonable enough to celebrate the day :)) Possibly the rarest Feb 29 is one that took place in the year 2000, as only in every four '00 years will the year be a leap year - that's four hundred years for me and you.

On the same note, let me offer my congratulatory expressions to those who were born/married/have some sort of important occasions to celebrate today. And yes, I can't stop musing about what would happen if Mark and Viv were to marry today instead of tomorrow...

Hey! Get out of my way

Before we start, let me share something awesome a person on some part of the world has done with paper and cutting devices. Great video.

With nine days to submission/project completion, I still have plenty of things to do in hand. Oh, and also a wedding to attend.

Yesterday I went to Shepherd's Bush to buy more fabric again (yeah... we know the drill.) I was quite pleased that, despite the astronomical cost of jersey fabrics, denim is quite affordable at around £3-4 a metre. Now why do designers charge outrageous prices on jeans again?? Must be branding. (Uh-oh.) Anyway, I set out with £10 in pocket, confident that I'd get two metres of denim and use the change to buy some fruits.

The fabric store I went to was unusually busy for weekday early afternoons... hmmm... must be fellow students frantically buying fabrics. I couldn't find the bolt I wanted and so joined the long queue of customers waiting to be served. After an inderteminate amount of time (thanks to Wania for waiting for me), the guy who served me went high and low to find the elusive bolt of denim... only, after checking the storeroom twice, to find it was completely gone and there'd be another week before the store is having it restocked.

Great... not.

So now, my denim is no longer thick, stiff and grey-white; it's either mottled blue-brown or brown-khaki and - most importantly - soft and easily mouldable. Definitely a point to be grateful on, especially when I just spent an entire morning trying to sew on patch pockets with every type of threads I have on hand and failing miserably.

...and I guess KY's feat of French seaming an entire pair of trousers is the stuff of legend (the website ain't his.) It ranks highly on my list, along with Anne's feat of perfectly sewing a sleeve opening into the bodice's armhole.

Guess that means I still have plenty to learn.
And if you're wondering what fruit I got with some change, it was £2.40 worth of plums.

(this is completely non professional-sounding)

I... seriously feel like eating endless amounts of konnyaku jelly, splashing paint all over my room, and not writing.

I'm at school, so feel like #2 is impossible to carry out on impulse (phew.)

Gotta go, hunger prevails.

(no trains to Oxford)

I'm on a weekend away in Otford, half an hour away in Kent.

It's the second day, and while my friends are off on a lovely countryside walk, I'm staying back to do creative research (and got sidetracked to Blogger after 40 minutes.) That's pretty much one span of undisturbed concentration.

Anyway, I love the countryside, and I hope there are families I can stay over at for weekend trips now and then, as I love the fresh air. Whilst I'm on wi-fi, the little kids (who also stayed back) are watching a movie... a pretty nice Saturday afternoon in general.

I wonder what KY and Anne are up to now - they left (with 47 other students and a few teachers) for PV in Paris. I walked her to St Pancras, which to my amazement is only 15 minutes on foot away from home.

Ah well, I'm running out of things to say. Time to get back to work :)) have a good day!

(18 months)

I had a good time talking to my parents over the phone in the past two days. Here are some excerpts from the talks...

Dad (B): Thank you for calling, be wise with your spending, don't burn your money... [herein referring to mobile and calling card spending]
M: Don't worry dad, the money's already burnt, I'm just using the ash.
B: (laughs)

I went to see Bora Aksu's show in Natural History Museum this morning. I never knew the designer's actually a Caucasian-looking guy!! I've always been under the impression that the designer is a she with African heritage. Never mind the confusion, my head's probably just not quite right. Also, timeliness and being early are very important things in fashion - having a ticket doesn't mean the guards will guarantee your entry into the tent. That is the case, unless you're Suzy Menkes or some other uber-important personality in the industry (even then, I'm not too sure the guards will remember your face... excuse my skepticism.)

Ah... no, I didn't pay for the ticket. The standing ticket got me in and I somehow managed to sit myself on the third row (out of four.) It was a good show with lots of nice floaty dresses and leather bodices. Question is, with the show being held to showcase designs available for autumn/winter merchandise, where are the coats?

Another thing I'd like to post is 2008-09's term dates.
Pathfinding Week --- 29 Sep - 3 Oct 2008
Autumn Term --- 6 Oct - 12 Dec 2008
Spring Term --- 12 Jan - 20 Mar 2009
Summer Term --- 20 Apr - 26 Jun 2009
Looks like next year starts and ends later than usual :))
Alright, that gives me 18 months of preparation time to start of third year. I have somewhat narrowed down my subject choices to about 4 (from ten). I still need to arrange which disciplines I'll be taking in short courses, which, given what's been jotted down my calendar so far, doesn't leave me with much time to faff around.

Compulsory working experience term, although not yet disclosed by college, is possibly going to take place on the spring term for my group. So, I'll be happy to work between mid-December and mid-April, save the off week or two for Christmas and Easter.

Alright... I guess that's all for now! Take care and wish me (and help me to get) all the best ^__^

(halfway through)

This term, I'm lucky to be enlisted in a class taught by a graduate award winner and the course director. Needless to say, it's pretty spooky too to speak with the Cultural Studies director and realise that she calls me on a first-name basis (photographic memory? stalker material? dunno...)

Anyway, I'm working freelance as a technician to get more use out of my machines and add dough to my stash.

Other bits of things I learnt today was (apart from the fact Peter Jones stocks things that John Lewis may have little in supply) is: the club is within walking distance from home - sans stiletto, that is. I'd like to check out what it's like... maybe Qwee and Tissa and Nat would be interested to hop along as well... but never mind hitting on the princes. W's on training and I'm not keen on having H as bedfellow, so we all can rest assured their list of admirers hasn't grown longer.
(No, not even to the free entry night on Wednesday, I've got morning class the day after.)

Aaaanyway, gotta get going now. Take care! :))

P.S. didn't know James Riady went to the same alumnus. Ah, it's a big uni after all (thanks KDRI!)

(purple skies)

I'm due to submit my elective subjects selection for next year in three weeks' time. It feels overwhelming (if not slightly disconcerting) that I can only submit selection for three subjects out of the 20+ offered.

One thing I'm glad about is for a close friend's courtesy to help enslave me last year. Despite spending over half of my waking hours for two weeks hunched over some strangely shaped concoction of fusible interfacing, jersey and rigilene, I learnt that: (1) corsetry is not dead (2) there's more to corsetry than T&A tightlacing. This knowledge, combined with my parents' generosity to let me do any short courses 'as long as they're relevant to your career', helps me jump on the learners' bandwidth early on. Maybe UAL should give me a discount card for the courses I've taken with them.

Which does make me think... these few days I've been reading several strange and thought-provoking academic articles on fashion from an anthropological/cultural viewpoint. It's interesting to learn side-saddle horse riding in a long skirt is definitely a safety hazard, or the fact that men are more harshly expected to conform to a narrowly defined aesthetic standard.

As for not having the internet, it clearly limits my blogging time, but I don't find this limitation too bothersome. I got myself an overlocker (that's mesin obras for home folks) and as a consequence my fabric consumption has trebled - I've gobbled up the fabric allowance the school's stockroom has given me. Well, to be honest I didn't take the prerequisite jersey fabrics (ended up buying them instead) and used my allowance to get myself a nice bright green canvas fabric for... a rug. My flatmates have cheerfully dubbed it 'the grass'.

And, oh yeah, the man's gone. Long dead the man.
(If he came back to life I'd definitely freak out and start shooting silver bullets.)

On a tangent, I found this interesting obituary in the Guardian. What you make out of it is up to you.

Anyway, time to go off for shopping! That's fabrics for you and me :))
Take care ^__^