mukuge

by popular demand

2011-12-01T07:57:00.002Z

It's not exactly when the fashion people release this stuff, but anyway. Here goes my Spring/Summer 2012 work.*

I'm currently working for what I think will be relevant next winter, in case anyone's interested. It's stretching my sensory imagination and logistical accuracy, because it's just so hot in Jakarta and it's no easy feat procuring materials and services. I've been keeping myself in a severely airconditioned room to compensate for the heat, although coming out is a bit like walking into the Tube :))

*have to put them up for a competition, wish me all the best of everything!

service cleaning complaint

2011-11-26T16:18:00.006Z

Have you met my favourite sailor jumper?

A few days ago, I took it for a deep clean at a supposedly high-quality service shop. Took it back earlier tonight on my way out to town. I checked for tears and frays on the spot - the most serious of professional cleaning sins (as done by Aqualis on two of my dad's batik shirts) - and there were none. So I went out, came back home and hung it on my wardrobe door. That was, until I noticed something was amiss. The jumper went slightly pink, and its pilling had spread from primarily at the sleeve hems to all around the bust area.

So OK, in a badly lit distribution outlet (i.e. the one near home) it's difficult to discern whether there were any unwanted cleaning-triggered changes. But this jumper in my room? Of course I've seen it many times before. Being someone who has two crates of nearly-white fabrics in all sort of shades, and under constant lighting condition, of course I know there was some red-tone bleeding my jumper had picked up during the wash. To make it worse, the jumper's yarn is primarily cotton: colours only set into cotton when it's wash-treated at temperatures above 40 degrees, so it must have been chucked into the washing drum along with some other suspect-coloured garments. Knitted garments are not meant to be agitated when they are washed to prevent surface lint from forming; it happens more obviously on wool than cotton ceteris paribus... meaning it was agitated pretty bad while wet. To make it even worse, it wasn't supposed to even be washed in the first place - the care label says bloody dry clean it!

I think I will give the head office a call on this matter. If people in there are ashamed enough with the way they do business, they would compensate me. The supposed tenfold-of-cost compensation (as written on their bill) is not high enough as a deterrent for the company to do its work dilligently, nor will it get me any good replacement for the damage done. What I could do with it, though, is to pay for a nice dinner with my peer group and spread the word about the [unpleasant] experience.

Moral of the story: do NOT use Londré to clean any of your expensive knitwear.

(There, I've said it.)

Point #2: must get more cute Sonia Rykiel items to placate anger.

taking out nerves the jittery way

2011-11-22T15:36:00.004Z

Fruit-shopping today yielded an interesting result. Check picture below.

I'm snowing myself under lots of work. It's the usual combination of pleasure derived from overachievement mixed with addiction to cramming-induced adrenaline. I find myself doing things like a gnat: jumping from reading a book to reading online articles to Facebooking, and checking my phone for missed calls when the buzzing noise happened to come from the aircon. In short, it's super jumpy mode, which is truly a reverse of 'the usual' blue screen of death™ panic variety.

Well I guess, when in doubt take care of yourself and brush your teeth.
I really, really miss eating biltong.

an entire month went by...

2011-11-12T15:29:00.009Z

Apologies for the few-weeks' break. I'm blaming an excess surge of happy hormones and lack of machinists that make keeping my feet on the ground (and blog-posting) that little bit harder. I find myself staring onto the screen some nights, working out what to say (complaints? socio-economic observations? education?) whilst rolling about and giggling. Not exactly the first image one would come up with reading this blog, but it was truthful.

On the current affairs front, the delays involved with sprucing up the SEA Games complex reminded me of the Delhi Commonwealth Games fiasco last year. It made me think what is seriously wrong with this side of the world's propensity towards lax time-keeping in project management and execution? Does it have something to do with countries whose name start with I-N-D? How much of this inherent cultural laxness that resides in me that I can expel, reduce or control?
(I felt tempted to float the idea 'channel laxness towards other more lax-friendly areas in life', but laxness is like rotting teeth - not good.)

On the analogy front, I came up with a good phrase at the end of my gastro-intestinal problems. I haven't been in my physiologically prime since I came back: twisting my ankle, getting a cold, falling into a ditch... but nothing beats October's spectacle of eating cheap ice-cream. My sister suggested it; in the heat of the day (and worlds away from my favourite gelateria) it seemed like a good thing. Until I finished the two sticks I bought, realised they weren't that good to begin with, wondered why I compromised myself in the ice-cream stake... and got diarrhoea. It was a bit like going for one-night stands and getting a nasty VD. (Well, toldja.)
So I got an ice-cream maker at the end of the month and started churning my own stuff for personal consumption. My grandma's feedback was that 'it was cold and it melted'. Yes grandma, it's ice-cream.

On the socialising front, I'm spending a lot more time with my sister compared to what it was like between May and August. Also, I bumped into a certain Mr, which was enjoyable and quite funny towards the end. Maybe we can swap yams with gelati, or even do a yam-flavoured collaboration.

(If my dad asked to do me a gelati flavour I'd do cassava leaf, in honour of his fondness of the stuff.)

Anyway, more serious posts coming up. I've got a teaching gig starting in early December, I've gone through each subject's syllabus, and I'm doing prep work for them. Stay tuned for actions from the classroom front, on earning a 'Miss Killer' moniker without creating any mutiny, running a workshop and heavy-duty socialising. Challenging days ahead!

€93 shipping fee

2011-09-30T09:18:00.003+01:00

Invoices had just started coming in. And with such a grand example of sum one is likely to forfeit for one-time shipping, it's high time to get a courier account.

Reading contracts in Indonesian doesn't come as naturally to me.
Talk about sounding snobbish; such a fact can be 'read' in many different ways depending on the reader's state of mind. It's just because my brain finds it easier that way.

more to learn

2011-09-23T10:12:00.003+01:00

The irrefutable proof of one's mastery of foreign language is being able to complain about a problem and bitch about it fluently. Proper slangs and all.

Unfortunately my French classes in high school didn't cover this topic.

just quick, generally

2011-09-21T01:37:00.003+01:00

It's Paris time for me.

Today, I came to a particular company's stand in search of a particular fabric. I've bought from [let's call it] Company K before, so I know how it works and I was a lot more at ease with myself. I had the sheer luck of being served by Company K's director (again); now he has a bigger stand than the one I visited two years ago.

I'm not surprised he did not recall me at first because: (a) I did not talk much with him two years ago - someone Japanese did the job for me (b) we didn't order a shipping container full of fabric so we were pretty negligible (c) I neither had a spunky hairstyle nor wore an outfit sufficiently memorable enough, and (d) the made-up company/label name back then was probably pretty hard to remember.

Anyway, we talked quite a bit and hit a rapport. I'm alright in dealing with おじさん and older people in general. The label's name, which is real this time around, is more memorable I guess. Then I left, went round other booths etc, went to the station to head back to town and gazed at the train network map....... until I heard someone say, "hey number one!"

Yes, it was Mr Company K president.
(I quite like him, actually. Not in that way, but in a platonic easygoing way.)

Later on (after I've had my fill of map-gazing) I caught up with him and another man he seemed to know on the platform. So to cut the story short, we all chatted, got into the crowded train and traded stories one to another. It turned out to be very fruitful, I got asked to share my views on tricky issues I never thought anyone would ask me on a train (religion/faith), I got to share why I choose to live thrifty (to use up the cash on good things of course), I got to retort an offhand command made in a language I did not master in that very language I did not master ("うそ," "そうでない") (that was gold), I got to meet someone whose body language reminds me of someone I knew (I was quite amused actually), and I had a very nice train journey back to town.

It was a very good day, a productive one, and one I actually like. I'm glad I have the opportunity to create new connections and strengthen existing ones. The experience contrasts with traveling with friends who keep company and take your silly pictures. Sometimes traveling alone is not a bad thing because it makes me reach out to others I wouldn't, had I got people I already know around to chat with.

Also, knowing more foreign languages is good, because being able to work out what other people are talking about is helpful. Especially in my line of work where a simple garment can have its components sourced from four different countries.

Which means, tomorrow is a long day for me because I am running out of business cards and I need to get more printed, pronto.

Big P.S.
Asking for things to be shipped to Indonesia is sometimes a disadvantage as I come across companies who are very wary of sending things to anywhere east of the Bosphorus (or getting less than 300 metres, or actually having dared to approach them.) However, with it comes the fun of explaining 'why' and proving that the inside of my head is genuinely not a bad copy of someone else's.

P.P.S. this post says plenty about the ilks and vagaries of Eurostar travel. I second it.

balancing act

2011-09-12T12:16:00.006+01:00

Last night I chatted with a few people about the relevance of one's geographical location when designing.

There's one element that's clear as hell for people design: light type/colour balance is different in each region. Some colours get 'hidden' and unpleasantly come out when they're brought to other places, others 'translate' quite well and are generally bearable when compared to the selection of colours originally chosen.

I have a white linen dress with white guipure lace trimmings purchased in Singapore; I thought they were of the same colour until I looked at my reflection in the bus a few weeks ago and caught sight of....... ivory-coloured lace on optic white linen fabric. It wasn't obvious, but as someone who scrutinise colour cards on a regular basis, this was vexing.

There are other elements to the game as well, such as slight tints of contacts and hard lenses, which complicates the game. This token of wisdom is courtesy of my sister - when we went to NZ yonks ago she regularly took off her glasses 'to enjoy the colours'. I noticed a similar thing as well when I wore coloured contacts for fun, I barely pop them on these days.

Also, I notice that clothes lose their colour when they are hung out under direct sun. They go crispy and all faded out - which happens to a lot of stuff that gets washed in Jakarta. The crispness might have come from hard water, but the fading definitely comes from UV rays. When I lived in Melbourne, the colours fade faster in summer, when clothes are hung to dry on the backyard instead of being tumble dried. I don't advocate tumble drying, but I do think drying clothes in shade will preserve its colour better, ceteris paribus*.
*oh how I love using this economist-like phrase...

I'm looking at getting a second Pantone deck soon. It's time to graduate to proper fabric swatches and you will be sure as hell it will be locked away in a dark place ;))

a fortnight on

2011-09-08T22:03:00.006+01:00

In the grand scheme of things, that thing came into being, stars got cajoled into alignment, et cetera. Which enabled me to stream through copious amounts of imagery, store layouts, lectures and gain some valuable tokens of thought. Discussions flow, both design-y and personal. Spare carnets got used up, new carnets bought, one's self chastised for not noticing the Navigo semaine deal.

So yes, I did Paris.

This time around, the city gave me a different feel. Maybe it was a by-product of dragging portfolio across town, noticing the post-it note trend on office windows. Maybe it was the determination that focused me and bolted me onto finishing my work. Maybe the reason was as simple as my peers.

I feel the need to wash the slate clean - more like 'throw the rubbish out' after last fortnight's post, especially when things in life move so fast and in ways I didn't foresee before. I'm not a fan of bitter-tasting things, but sometimes some tartness (or acidity or bitterness) is needed to bring out the sweet flavour. If the previous post was nasty, this one makes it up.

Anyway, for now peace is restored.

pissed.

2011-08-25T16:56:00.014+01:00

Despite my cheery demeanour that most people in life see me in, I don't lack things that piss me.

I would like to say here that with less than two days before my planned departure to Paris (hotel and travel booked and paid for in advance in June), I still do not have a visa. Oh, of course, sarcastically do blame me for the following:
1. For not being able to get an initial visa appointment before September when the travel takes place in August and the requesting-for-appointment (complete with prepaid bookings) was initiated in late June.
2. For having a third-rate passport from a country that surely could care less about how its citizens are treated diplomatically.
3. For knowing sure as hell that a visa could be produced in less than an hour.
4. For knowing it really only took less than a few hours for the Schengen office to send the confirmation that I am not a security threat.
5. For having seen how in the consulate the dot matrix printer prints visas non-stop. It will print everyone else's visas, but not mine.

I have more than enough reason to be wound up for having to submit the same visa application twice for the upcoming trip, having to change travel plans twice, pay premiums for changing travel plans (even though it was really bureucratic inefficiencies that made me do it), paid first-night stay penalty for not turning up at the hotels I booked, and get angry for ending up being less productive at work.

If anyone wonders why there's no internationally recognised fashion designers hailing from Indonesia, well, amongst other things the diplomatic barriers to entry are enormous (I could probably devote a few posts on why the place just wasn't conducive enough, but that's not the point of this post.) They eat up a lot of time and concentration, and I scale them at least twice a year.

I am sick and tired of the bureucratic game. I do hope something gravely good comes out of the Eurozone crisis, like the break-up of Schengen travel areas - I mainly go to France anyway (plus, francs as a currency name sound better than €.) A gravely good alternative would be successful terrorists holding no-visa passports, which is an emerging security issue, but surely the knee-jerk reaction would be to grant even fewer visas for those already so much discriminated against. Schengen doesn't need to worry I fall into that category because I only have one passport anyway, and it's not a no-visa-required one; otherwise I would've spent the €60 fee on something more economically helpful.

Mr François Fillon and his June trip to Jakarta - well, bless the man and his jet-lag.

churnin'

2011-08-20T20:02:00.008+01:00

Hello, it's a rare post today, one dedicated to culinary techniques!

A few weeks back my sister and I [re]discovered our mutual interest in gastronomic delights. Having said that, there was one thing that stuck after many nights spent watching cooking shows: making my own butter (cow not included.) So, having done my day job, I proceeded to do this butter-making thing. There are plenty of instructions of how to make butter available online, so I'm going to concentrate on the experience of making it.

I'm quite familiar with an electric beater/mixer, having used them extensively for cakes and pastries and all sorts of things in the past. I'm also familiar with how things like eggs and cream turn choppy-liquid-fluffy when they are run under a mixer. Well, butter-making takes cream-beating to another level: curdly and separatist*.
*we ain't militants.

I took a few pictures of the venture so that you could see what I mean:

And a video so that we can share how the butter-wrapping process went:

The whole process takes about 20 minutes from start to clean-up, and since butter is roughly 80% fat, you can work out your per-pot yield from the fat content of your pot of cream. Plus, for happy cats and happy humans, there's the added bonus of buttermilk at the end of it. As for myself, the fact that butter-making is so technical (i.e. "watch until physical properties turn XYZ") appeals to me and my that-line-is-almost-straight sensibility. Maybe this is the attraction that draws guys towards steak-making pyrotechnics.

A few tips if you decide to go butter-making:
- get your paper rounds ready before you start beating the cream
- a standing mixer is a great boon (KitchenAid, anyone?)
- spatter-guard helps guard clothes from spatters (especially towards the end)
- a silicone scraper and clean cheesecloth are handy for packaging

Alright then, that's all for now, I better get back to the pattern table!

workaholic

2011-08-02T17:43:00.011+01:00

I'm finding out that when I'm happy with work, I feel happy.
It's quite a different sense from 'contentment', which tends to feel a bit more complacent and not exactly task-busting. It's not a bed of roses, I actually do feel stressed at my wit's end sometimes, although this fact may be actively uncommunicated so that others do not freak out in response in unison. So yeah, despite the needle supply issue things are moving along. (I actually found the treasured pack of needles wrapped up in John Lewis paper bag, lying in a desk's drawer. It was kept secure indeed. But alas, now I need thinner needles.)

As is what has been historically true so far in the past few years, I have a list of things to do. From which I continually cross out two tasks done only to realise they gave birth to three different yet still strategically related tasks to do. Two steps forward, three steps back. I am glad that I like the technical part of my work (most days. Tee hee.)

I've got a huge shopping list.
It consists of mundane things like... fine beading needles (which is the best for handwork but bends easily), Prym's fine dressmaker pins (long and fine yet sturdy), sewing threads (the machinists specifically asked for them!), spare spiky tracing wheel and see-through pattern-cutting rulers (the spikes and marks are fading.) Along with colour cards, sample cards etc that I actually need and can lay my hands on - unseen things that make a good difference like lining fabrics, interfacing and a variety of tapes (bolduc, stay tape and petersham being three of them.) At a glance it sounds sad, really, that I can't find them here.

So what is something good that is available in Jakarta?
Someone said, "all the polyester you could want". Actually, surreal little shops. I've got a favourite place I visit at least once a week, where zippers of various types and length are bundled by colour and hung from the ceilings. That, and a lot of machine embroiderers. Yet my current work is devoid of embroidery.

Actually, it may sound geeky but I get really excited at these things. It's bed time though! I could talk forever about how a seam was turned, or how one could not know what a sailor collar looked like. Hmmm. But I want my sleep first.

Take care and have a good day.

P.S. I would also like to recategorize my labels/tags (along with the 400-plus posts in tow when the time permits) so I am looking for help in the name-the-tag department. And the read-and-reassign-tag department, if you're feeling generous :))
P.P.S. I still haven't gotten around to upgrading my mobile. Whoopsie.

£1888 is...

2011-07-08T18:25:00.009+01:00

An amount of spare money I wish would appear on the 'credit' side of my bank balance. With a counter-entry of 'miracle' or 'overdue windfall'.

Also thinking about the three garment patterns that need to be made from scratch, five garments to cut out, some fusible interfacing to fuse (or can I ask someone else to do it for me?), five buttonholes to buttonhole, colour picking and a myriad of other things that I may have missed. All to be done before 8AM Sunday, and about half of them need to be ready by 3PM Saturday. And then, finding a fit model, taking decent pictures of said clothes and sending them before 2PM Monday. Such is the life of a self-employed.

Anyway, having said that, I'd like to sleep.
(To get ready for tomorrow. It'll be a long ~~day~~ weekend.)
Maybe if I go to sleep, a small army of pattern-cutters, sewing machinists and studio assistants will materialise like minions and leprechauns. Oh how I long for leprechauns (not very long, but sometimes overflowing work makes it pretty deep.) Or Schengen visas. Or EU passports.

I think it's time for bed. Good night/morning.

sharp rage

2011-06-23T06:25:00.006+01:00

Having been unable to find my stash of JJ hand sewing needles (yes I actually bought packs prior to going anywhere!), I came across several sites offering it. Phew. That was, until all the e-shopping was done and it was time to specify shipping.

JJ's T&C says that it ships worldwide. Fair enough, until I told it to ship my things to Jakarta. To which it responded:

Fair enough. Maybe 600 miles northwards would be alright? Singapore that is.

But then I wonder if it ships to other third-world countries...

Oh yes, I am royally pissed. If I could be arsed, I will give the sales team an earful later on today. And then there is the issue of Customs ever so happily grafting officials on this side of the world. They're lucky I still have an hour or two to cool down.

It is mind-boggling that Indonesia wants to outdo other countries in producing clothing, but good needles are so hard to find. Ditto with threads and trims.

P.S. it does Nigeria and Iraq, but it doesn't do Namibia. Scant hopes indeed.

the wonders of babelfish

2011-06-18T02:44:00.005+01:00

Babelfish does a lot of internet translating the mass of not-so-multilingual netters throw at it. Most of the time it works fine, although sometimes the result doesn't make contextual sense:

シックなト－プカラ－キルト－大人のパッチワ－クレッスンシリ－ズ

Really, some common sense helps sometimes.

food for thought and action

2011-06-07T04:34:00.003+01:00

China is the land of no Facebook and no Blogspot.

It's also the land of cheap silk, mulberries, tea, smog and fast trains.

I went to Hangzhou and Shanghai for a few days after my first visit 18 years ago, with my mum in tow to help translate questions. Quite expectedly, a lot of things have changed, the two most notable being clean sit-down toilets in sparkling new airports and super-fast trains. The less obvious ones were affordable and well-maintained public transportation system in major cities, as well as a burgeoning entrepreneurship culture.

I took the CRH trains, saw a lot of new buildings, eight-lane roads linking small towns. Also, in Hangzhou we came across several very well-meaning people who were willing to help and didn't mind spending a bit of their own money on lost tourists - a university couple paid for our taxi, a young career girl paid for our bus fare.

I also managed to misplace a pocket camera in an airport, only realising it wasn't with me once we were about to board the plane. We discussed the matter and I stuck to my guns that I was gonna take back the camera than leave it: not only I'd get an earful from the camera's owners, it'd also mean I would've lost the pictures I took as notes. So I ran as fast as I could to the immigration barrier, spoke pidgin Mandarin and found that it was sitting nicely on a policeman's desk, just across the desk where I had left it (it seems like a lot of people left things there.) To my surprise, it was there, unopened, and the policeman just asked me whether it was mine before handing it back. It was pretty obvious from my state of appearance that it was something I had been looking for. I was really impressed that nobody swiped it and I got it back.

After we landed in Cengkareng and whilst we queued to get out of Customs, my mum spotted a Customs agent (note: not an official) crumpling a no-longer-needed piece of paper before chucking it on the floor. She chided and told him to take care of the country, he grumbled and told her to mind her own business. It seems like he wasn't happy being told off in his work domain, even though what he did wasn't appropriate.

When I came back home and reported to my grandma where I've been ("went to a foreign country"), she asked me how it was. I said the country had gone leaps and bounds since then. She then asked me whether we are behind. To which I said, yes, we are very much behind, we must work extra hard to catch up with the progress.

I also thought about the use of mulberries as a silk fibre waste product. Silkworms are fed leaves from mulberry trees, and its fruits are a by-product that's used for the food industry. I came across mulberry juice and mulberries in my travel, and believe that if I want to make the use of silk fibres greener, I better consume its fruits as well.

So, that's my £20 of thought. It ain't worth only two cents.

certainly not

2011-05-19T09:20:00.003+01:00

There is a certain bittersweet (irritating?) experience involving getting fabrics in markets and a certain lack of knowledgeable answer which is probably feigned to seal a sale. Ask what a particular fabric fibre is made from, and you will get answers which will range from a suggestion for its uses ("it's for bridal gowns"), to the type of fabric ("duchess satin") and the colours it comes in ("white, purple and black"). Not exactly "real silk", "artificial silk", "polyester" or whatever other fibres such cloths come in.

The answer for pricing alright, though.

Must bring a fire lighter next time.

P.S. it was polyester, as suspected.

bothered

2011-05-03T11:47:00.007+01:00

On the technological vanity front, my mobile phone will soon be replaced. It was a replacement for the previous one lost (I make sure I have deep pockets since that day, or pop the phone in the 'bag.) It was old, it's been replaced with another more ~~advanced~~gadgety phone that slides open and have a bigger address book capacity, but because the later met a lovely slab of concrete its screen went berserk and I went back to the phone I picked out without thinking.

So why am I replacing it? A few days ago my dad called, asking me to turn on Skype, which comes free with my mobile network and therefore stays in my phone, I like Skype on phone, it's nice to talk to people on the go instead of being chained to a computer. But nooo, the app's too outdated, I needed to upgrade so I duly did. Skype upgrader says my phone is too old for the app upgrade.
After an hour to-ing and fro-ing, the choice boils down to two smart phones. I need Skype on it. I like a good camera and good display, and I want swipy gestures, so it's either this or that or its younger sister. Although one will mean I'm on the brand loyalty path (not my thing), and the other is like joining a Bluetooth-less cult (not my thing too.) Blackberries are strictly uninvited.

Oh man, I miss the days when mobiles were for voice-calling and texting and not much else.

tomorrow, or later on today

2011-04-29T01:37:00.005+01:00

Right. Since it's not the first time I'm frothing at the mouth talking about this, I'll keep it nice and short. It's about two posh people getting married tomorrow, less than 10 hours now. I bet she has to be up nice and early, my sister had to get up at 4 to get ready for an 8AM event and she only had two hair and make-up artists to help her. (This one has seven!)

The dress
Ah yes, the dreaded betting. My money's on Philippa Lepley, solely because ~~I work in the atelier on the dress~~ she is the only one of the biggish names who put out job notices for two extra hand-sewers a few months back.
The dress itself will have a substantial train and some form of sleeves or shoulder covering. I'm putting this down with a time stamp now, made especially clear in RSS feeds, before every soul start assuming I came up with faint facsimiles of you-know-what. Actually, I got sick of sleeveless massive dresses the last time I did my wedding party rounds in 2008.

The groom
After much thought and soul-searching, there are three reasons why I am happy he is not mine. They are:
1. I'm not the clubby type, even though Boujis was 10mins away from home
2. I'm not willing to put up with random royal groping
3. Had he come from a normal family, his family backgrounds would've caused a consternation. So that's a "no" for a blatantly strategic alliance with an eye on the R-O-Y-A-L.
4. Premature male balding.

Traffic
Not keen on it, as being a Westminster resident means that most of the roads will either tantalisingly empty yet blocked, or chock-full with revellers and well-wishers I can't cycle without crashing into every third jaywalker on the road. Tough times.

Going vs watching
Watching, because I value sleep/sewing time/home time so much I wouldn't want to sleep it rough on the pavement four days before they trot down the road (so I heard.) And the court officials suggest well-wishers to wear a hat so that they blend in looking like the guests. Hah. Stephen Jones should be put on a bed of freshly washed hair. (Or cleanly shaven head, if it was Stephen himself. That man can wear a greeting card and still look decent.)Late tonight I overheard that this woman at work got offered an invitation to the Abbey but she refused. Considering that an unofficial [wonky] camera phone recording of the event would be something worth bragging about for the next two decades, it was such a waste!

The bride
She's waited years for it. Hopefully there won't be any demonstrations or idiots staging terrorist attacks, because it'd mean they'd be upstaging the bride - why would one be so nasty to disrespect the bride's day? Even though I'm not a fan of her, I hope the day goes well, because so much hangs in the balance.

That's it for now. Enjoy the TV coverage, folks.

my ideal holiday...

2011-03-27T03:19:00.003+01:00

... would be sitting in a daybed in a swanky outfit, surrounded by miles of satin ribbons and enjoying the afternoon sun.

Something like this...?

Remind me please.

it's been a...

2011-03-17T10:46:00.004Z

~~Bad Hair Day~~ Dog Hair Day.

Out of those specific acts of effort to express love/gratitude/anger, and with financial damage in mind, this counts in as pretty serious: visiting my ex-dog. Which means seven hours of semi-outback solo driving, a half-kilo pack of Smackos, frazzled nerves, thorough post-visit laundry and a 20-minute session of four-leaf clover hunting.

Bandit is spoilt rotten and rates quite high on my list; I think out of the people I've dated what I've done to him could easily place him ahead of half of them (then again, this fact could be seen in a different light...)

That pretty much sums up a lot of things.

critical employment benefits

2011-02-25T13:20:00.005Z

Silence for a month, then three posts in three days.
"What is wrong with her," you may think?

Well, nothing much, apart from being human.
The box-ticking exercises commonly encountered on visa applications, and my parents' insistence (on a variety of issues) made me think:

What is critical to holding a proper job and being in employment?

Certain things come to mind:

1. Doing some 'work' and getting paid in return.
Example: I do 'abc' six days a week and get paid in return
Explanation: Been doing that for some years now, in various incarnations.
Comeuppance factor: parents still on my back, so it doesn't quite count.
Response: Fail.

2. Having an email address with your actual name in attached to a @domainname.type instead to something respectably generic, boring and accessible.
Example: m***** @liberty.com versus m***** @gmail.com
Explanation: It's like belonging to a club that pays you, with varying degrees of exclusivity and snobbery. Other variations on this theme would be the office business card, the office shirt, and so on. There is that "oh she works at xyz" factor, and if the workplace's website puts up your name alongside your official office photo, works wonders to proclaim to the world of your prodigious talents to be a company's kept [wo]man by a company. Seedy undertones there, but all employees are 'kept', so please stop prancing around in unsuitable undergarments.
Comeuppance factor: I can come up with that myself, email domain and business card and logo'ed shirts and all that jazz. A self-employed person can do the same too.
Response: I'm not so convinced. Let's, then, move on to...

3. Transfer the risk of uncertain earnings to an inanimate body
Example: work for M&S as lingerie designer for a five-figure sum
Explanation: Surrender your life and ideas to advance the progress of a plc/PT/Ltd, and get a steady stream of dosh in return. Your copyrights are effectively 'theirs' in the purchase deal. "That's what the money's for," is the corporate lawyer's first line of defense, should you decide to change your mind and try to claim what you think is yours.
Comeuppance factor: might be what my parents were looking for, what better to transfer their beloved daughter's savings-trashing tendencies than to let her trash a plc's instead? There's more in the current account to begin with...
Response: hire a good lawyer and/or rewrite employment and IP laws.

4. Ticking the 'employed' box
Example: describing oneself as 'employed' on Schengen visa forms.
Explanation: One is kept by the company, so consulate workers will happily think that certain amounts of money will turn up at the applicant's bank account on regular intervals. Regardless of how small the amount, or whether the employer is ready to cave in any day (OK, M&S is unlikely to cave in in the near future, but the old Woolworths is a good example.) Self-employment is frowned upon, because what can rich art dealers living in Green Park know about getting regular money out of someone else's pocket?
Comeuppance factor: some banks refuse to loan to high-net worth individuals because they lack "a steady stream of income". Yeeesh.
Response: bank with Coutts.

OK, I think that's that for now. More musings later! or when my brain/spare time can cope with it. I've exceeded my self-imposed computer usage allowance for the day.

Take care.

an expensive question

2011-02-24T14:54:00.003Z

When there is a spare €3000, what would you use it for?

1. Book a holiday: in sun, snow or other unusual climate
2. Commission a hundred metres of fabric in an unheard-of colour
3. Drink it dry on a wild night out in a pricey city
4. Donate it to charity

There you go, choices and wishes coming my way.
I'm tempted to say I prefer option #2, although to be politically correct it would be #4. Although I could technically set up a charity for myself...

when shit hits the fan...

2011-02-23T15:46:00.004Z

Improvise, keep working, and run with it.

Visitors to my previous London flat (where I learnt to sleep through throngs of drunk noisy clubbers) would have noticed a small piece of paper stuck to the wall: KEEP CALM AND CARRY ON. This is the attitude I'm holding, although if my skull has a zip whoever unzips it could clearly see the murky stress contained within.

All in all, stress and dissatisfaction do good in small doses.
For if one was entirely satisfied with life, what would one want to change for the better? Getting complacent is like a frog getting slowly simmered to death. Although yes, I could do with more time/labour help/facilities.

On a tangent, my USB stopped wanting to be 'recognised' by my dear laptop. Someone I knew (with a similar dongle, on the same network, using laptop) was so determined to use his, he would uninstall and reinstall the dongle recognition software every time he would connect to the internet. Yesterday morning his computer kicked the bucket. So today, in the spirit of preventing my laptop from kicking the bucket early, I decided to take the leap and cancel the subscription by phone. It took 30 minutes.

February tend to be my gloomy month of the year: low morale, fed up with winter, even back in the days of primary school my lowest term results would be ones released in February. But I'll plow on, because good times are just around the corner.

Take care!

P.S. on a lesser note, I find that I need to drill myself in business French. Conversational, the I-come-from-the-other-side-of-the-world, what-you-wanna-eat stuff is OK. The so-how-much-duties-will-be-charged stuff needs some work on.

Kill Kill Die Die*

2011-01-24T20:14:00.007Z

Yes, the soundtrack of frustration is back.

This season's series will include clandestine sneak-ins, roller-cutter v scissor-wielding mobs, clumsy-generated detours, money-pinching, schedule frustrations, and a lot of stained hands. With better hair.

Expect little sleep.

*the phrase was invented sometime ago out of frustration, and is best pronounced to communicate desperation when one is pressured to breaking point.

deep vs shallow

2011-01-12T17:16:00.003Z

I have a love-love, like-dislike relationship with my two pairs of (ice) skates.

The issue about skate-grinding for me is the chasm between 'deep' and 'shallow'. Both my skates are conveniently sharp enough to cut a line on my nails, and to give an illustration sometimes I appropriate my thumb nails to tighten a few screws (i.e. they are hard), so I don't really have issues with the so-called bluntness. But, since I've been lately spending time to work out how well I can hold onto a potentially unstable stance, I've developed certain likes and dislikes to them.

My first pair has a get-out-of-jail grind.
My second pair has a jump-and-land grind, I think...
The difference between the two is, the first one (being shallower and more slippery) is easier to turn in, but the second grips the ice better (but leads me to think I'm making snow cones when I turn). One of the coaches allegedly has a super-shallow grind, but I've yet to scrutinise his blades to be able settle my mind on it. But then he was a national-team coach, so who am I to argue about that? The guy could probably get on a crappy pair of hire skates and still do awesome tricks.

So, for now, I'll keep switching between the two pairs. Although I should really grow up and stick to the deeper pair...

some days...

2011-01-10T12:37:00.003Z

Some days I wish I could operate a rocket launcher, to over-injure officials who annoy me. Why do you treat me like a convict? I'm allowed to have a hairstyle change, I can dress differently, it's called human change. Unlike you, paper approval lady, who probably have been keeping the same hairstyle since you were sixteen, I like trying out different looks. My passport is not fake because it's handwritten, on the contrary it's harder to fake it because it's bloody hand-written. And you're asking me to double-print papers which I can safely say will end up on your rubbish skip within two hours, just because "it's not written there". So stop being a bloody arsehole and make me jump through hoops of fire. Unless you like your job that is, in which case keep on carrying the torture until the company finds someone sharper and prettier and it will be your turn to end up on the skip.

At which point, probably I shouldn't worry about printing extra papers because you will keep them company in the end.

On days like these it surely feels better to be in the folds of family.
(I wonder if it's some January/February thing I go through every year... hmmm...)

a few days onward

2010-12-28T13:14:00.003Z

Picking up last post's thread, here is my way of celebrating Christmas...

Operation ~~Desert~~ Kitchen Storm
I cooked an okay amount of desserts in exchange for a full English-style Christmas dinner (with a good measure of cat-stroking thrown in, lucky me.) Thickly-crumbled apple crumble and double chocolate cookies came out of a borrowed oven. Given the oven works well, they are some of the things that are almost always guaranteed to come out of the oven alright without having one to scale and measure every single ingredient to the 1/nth.
The cherry on the cooking cake was the Boxing Day culinary insomnia: waking up at 3AM without knowing why or how, before deciding that there must be better ways of killing time and going back to bed than watching TV or doing something equally mind-numbing. I then proceeded to make a pot of stew which took three hours to cook, before successfully tumbling into bed smelling like lamb stew and waking up at a respectable time.

TV ahoy
Karaoke for the musically ungifted, BBC documentaries and all things illegally possible without the possession of a TV licence. A spillover bonus of the Christmas dinner. Nice.

Glory to God in the high-street
Went to a bookshop to some books, some of them quite nice. Followed by book buying, and quite possibly book returning. Also went to this faux-village high street shopping site (my first time!) for a spot of retail exasperation, with shoppers being mildly rude and sale items strewn on the muddied floor. Yet still this semi-dedicated consuming-worshipper found a number of useful, visually pleasing and fairly priced items.
Ate at Villandry, in my Great Portland Street days a restaurant with nice food and posh aspiration, which turned out to be vile. You see, I had game pie, which turned out to be stew garnished with a circular disk of puff pastry. Wrong.

Anyway, that aside, the novelty of Christmas holiday is wearing off. I'm keen for things to swing back into normal gear.

hark the herald angels sing

2010-12-25T01:11:00.008Z

I went for a midnight mass here. Funny isn't it, how I only got around to doing this after four years... (it's actually my second Christmas up north here.) I went with my camera in hand. It was packed!

So I snooped around for a seat and found one spot on the bench, which has the obstructive view of a pillar. Ah, it was either an obstruction of sights, or an obstruction of concentration, and I chose the former. Plus I was way too unmotivated - not to go in the first place, but to change seats.

The sermon referred a contemporary tendency to celebrate Christmas the consumptive way, with people struggling to pay off their bills because they have overspent on their Christmas celebrations. Like new clothes, excessive food, gesture-gift toys. And he mentioned a few ironic catchphrases like "happy X-mas" [read: ex-mas] and "the glory of God on the high-street". (Well when one listens to spoken words one can't always work out what the proper lettering is like, that's my stance.)

Another thing that I learned was there was this carved wooden platform/balcony where the preacher stood. I saw two of them in the Cathedral in Jakarta, but never really knew what it was for because I had never seen anyone use them. When I was a kid, I used to think that they would be used for people who would then be 'enraptured' to the skies. Really.

Anyhow, needless to say I enjoyed the service very much, plenty of singing and phone-ignoring and geeky photographing after all was done. I had the pleasure of company of a dear old English man (in the they-exist-in-picturebooks sense), in a camel wool coat and wearing a tweed suit, as Next-Sitter-on-the-Pew who said some kind words about my singing. You're welcome to speculate on what he says and what he originally meant to express, but I'm not even going to read into what he said... I'll just take it as a compliment ;))

Facts about St Martin-in-the-Fields:
It's the Royal church (huh?) and church of the homeless (also 'huh')
It was recently reopened after a lengthy refurbishment
It has a crypt!It's 10 minutes' walk away from mine.

Have a happy and joyous Christmas everyone.

gaaaaaaaaaaaah

2010-12-12T14:40:00.004Z

....... and I went berserk with knitwear-shopping. Again.

It was "oooh look there's free delivery" (for the inner shopping couch potato that I am), "oooh it's on sale", "oooh look I got price-off vouchers" and "oooh I don't have this colour" (my layering-up knitwear pieces are predominantly of the black/grey range and as a colour whore I am keen to change the mix.) By this stage it should be obvious where the money is draning away to. This pre-Christmas's tally count is five. The First-Year replacement remains elusive, though, as I find myself dragging my heels to actually go to a brick-and-mortar store. As a rule of thumb, I don't purchase trousers/pants online due to a plethora of possible fitting issues. Yet I don't like queueing in store.

Also, someone thinks dear WW is my father.
(Hell yeah!! Different surnames there, love.)
I blog quite a bit for some years now, but it doesn't mean everyone in my family is as keen as I am, the way I'm not so keen on playing tennis or practising on the piano. But yeah, like my real father, I like airborne-related sports.......... cue in horses, flying jumps, and speeding bicycles. When I lose my balance, gravity wins. But I'd probably do parkour if I were grittier.

Anyways, time to go now. Bye bye!

featuring: my local pest controller

2010-12-08T00:27:00.007Z

On Monday, I met this lovely man-and-bird team traipsing about ~~my local rink~~ this place. Meet Mr I-didn't-ask-for-his-name and his hawk Hera, working as pest controller. (it's a she.)

So, the deal was, Mr IDAFHN brings hungry Hera (and Hera's snacks) to work sites. Hera then spots errant pest and ideally scare them away. Pigeons being plentiful here, they form the bulk of Hera's target, although Mr IDAFHN mentioned that she had gone for rodents and that her favourite hunt-victim are rabbits. Over time, there are less and less for her to hunt/scare away, and that's where the snacks come in. It's a nice way of getting rid of open-air pests without having to resort to poisons and without the risk of accidentally poisoning pets that happened to be around. But yeah, if your pet is a hamster, I wouldn't walk it on a leash when Hera's around...

Some of us who happened to be there had the treat of watching Hera the Harris hawk in action. She swooped and grabbed a pigeon, which fell onto the pavement with a thud, and which she plucked clean 'for lunch'. Later we found out that her lunch, instead of being freshly hunter-earned, was actually a pigeon that had died due to cold weather... in other words it was cold lunch.

Hawkie facts:
Harris hawks can live up to 25-30 years in captivity
Harris hawks mature 18 weeks after hatching
Hera is 4 years old
It took two weeks to train Hera to come back to Mr IDAFHN
Hera and Mr IDAFHN comes to Somerset House once a week
They travel in a car (Hera in a cage)

Cool stuff.

after all these years...

2010-12-05T23:52:00.003Z

...just realised that I was a ditz.
Finished dinner, washed the dishes, sat down. Drank water and took supplements (cod liver oil and glucosamine for the record.) Got up and turned on the kitchen tap to wash the dishes, only to realise they had been washed by these very hands a few minutes earlier.

It's amazing how allotting tasks to remember in short-term memory induces goldfish memory syndrome.

On the social front...

The pub across the road sounds enjoyable; something from Backstreet Boys is playing at the moment. Earlier on I ran down to check it out when a track from Outkast was playing - sounds like late nineties/early noughties pop music!
Anyway. I'm not hanging out there, but I guess tonight I'll benefit from its playlist.

we like arctic freeze

2010-12-02T00:36:00.005Z

The scene outside my window. Right now.

Tonight's snow is nice and dry. It's still piling up, and since public transport for tomorrow is bound to be screwed anyway, the more the better. London has a habit of waking up to a blanket of snow when it falls overnight (as opposed to the slushy goo when snow falls in daytime.)

OK, cold haters. I like all sorts of winter sports because it's what I did not have as a kid.
The grass is greener on the other side: always.

progress on the skating front

2010-11-21T09:43:00.007Z

Yesterday, the adult learn-to-skate group I'm in passed the informal test and progressed to a higher stage. I am glad because it was about time to move on to something else! Such as going forward with one leg up and arms flailing ungracefully.

It was quite funny/frustrating that it took me a lot of unlearning to be able to stop (those instructors I had when I was 13 - grrr!), and now that I managed to do all the basic things correctly, I'm struggling to do what I had learnt when I was 13.

I do have little kiddo envy, because:
1. They're tiny enough for instructors to hurl and hold whilst they keep their feet up in air, so they can get a foretaste of 'what it feels like to hold that move'.
2. There's a lack of awareness that there are knives on their feet.
3. Arse-to-ground distance is one foot. Much lighter mass. Fearless, basically. At times like these, I wish I hadn't known anything about physics and the force of gravity. And therefore, when they jerk, they shake less.

So basically, I have to work on dropping my ~~fear~~ ~~reservations~~ issues to improve my balance because it translates into a very funny stance: neck craning, arse backward... not right at all (it's a pity how cameras are off-limits at the rink.) And start jumping higher, because although I can run fast, I don't think I can jump high enough to save my life.

Must eat more veg and dairy.

we love animals

2010-11-17T17:46:00.001Z

what was the name again?

2010-11-09T01:06:00.006Z

Mustering up the appetite to post...

1.
This has been a bit manic. Actually, that's an understatement. The task of writing for someone else, which (after a few years' practice here) is tricky as I'm so used to writing on my own behalf. I'd rather edit a non-pedant's work than do it from scratch myself. Not least the onerous task of sampling, sourcing, cutting, making and promoting the stuff in order to SELL it. Oh yes, we've got a sales manager...

2.
And, because of #1, this has taken a back seat....... ummm that's not a commendable habit dearie.

3.
There is such a thing as interning after graduation...

4.
...and to add to the roster, my little claim to good exercise habit (aside from mad nighttime cycling to collect receipts) is furthered by the fact. That. I'm. Learning to skate. Again. When I started 13 years ago, I wasn't anywhere as naturally good as Rez. Time will tell whether all those tambourine- and ballroom Latin dancing pays off in some form of grace, torque or gravity-defying leverage. Last weekend's new lessons were gliding backwards and stopping. Well, I'm still learning to stop 13 years on (the lady instructor pulled out a trick that incited a scream, but still I glided a few further metres before stopping. Trick FAIL.) The helpful thing is I learnt to fall safely and get up this time around, instead of hurtling down and scraping my shins on ice the way I used to do towards the end of a session. Serious stuff.

5.
There is such a thing as forgetting a word in one's native tongue.
Chef: "Western tourists really tried all the normal stuff natives do"
Me: "Like what?"
Chef: "Like, not be fussy and eat local food."
Me: "Well yeah. And they need carbon tablets afterwards."
Chef: "Each part of the country has its own specialties, like in Sumatra..."
Me: "Like beras (rice) in Berastagi? And in Prapat, that fruit...?"
Chef: "Yeah, that fruit."
*silence*
Me: "The one that's black outside and yellow inside?"
Chef: "Yeah, that one."
*silence*
Me: "It's not passionfruit, is it..."
Chef: "No, it's not."
*silence*
Chef: "I forgot the word for it."
*silence*
Me: "I know what you mean, it's the one made into syrup?"
Chef: "That's the one, what's the name?"
Me: "Dunno. I can't remember too."
The following morning, at shower-time, only did I remember the fruit we were talking about was markisa. Ouch.

Anyway. Off to bed. Interning tomorrow.

not as rare as hen's teeth, but close enough

2010-09-17T16:53:00.004+01:00

Well, well. Seems like the iMac gobbled up my text.

Anyway, in the midst of mini-hunger and anticipation of free dinner at workplace, I feel compelled to share a tale of shopping. One that is still yet to complete.

For the past few years, September (the month of college-starts-next-month behaviour) has meant one thing to my wallet: jeans-buying. Because, of course, jeans is a wardrobe staple... and how every brand's doing it so tight thighs look like vacuum-packed chicken... and why that cut you got at the bottom of the pile is so great, if only the colour was right... and how, after defecting to the men's section, I had to admit [temporary] defeat that those cool men's jeans comes in its smallest size which is a full 4 inches larger than my girth. So. There goes the drama of finding one.

On the issue of college-starts-next-month behaviour. I have no college for now, alas, and hopefully not for the long run (not if I have to pay for it anyway.) The jeans-buying was borne out of reasons such as (1) "jeans is so easy to wear for college" and (2) "the weather will get cold", which I can comfortably refute by (1) only if your contemporary definition of 'easy' involves cutting off blood circulation to the feet and (2) it is warmer to wear two layers of skirts and wool tights and boots than one flimsy layer of cotton twill. And, from historical records, I tend to wear dresses and skirts to college anyway.

That aside, I have three pairs of jeans (so biblically I can give two pairs away to a homeless person, except that I need to find one who can get into them.) And these three pairs of jeans, they are very personal to me. There's Pinstitched, a navy/indigo semi bootcut pair that dates back to me and my sister's days of shopping at Review, one that was purchased one size larger because I had to have them peeled off me. There's Final Year, a bog-standard blue indigo boyfriend slim fit Mr 70-cm-waist #2* could fit into, purchased under the pretext "it will be easier to sit and sew wearing this pair". There's First Year, a grey/black slim/straight fit pair that I bought because of the buttons and hemming details, and the one that's giving me headache, because... it's got a worn-out hole at the crotch.

Because of how pants/trousers/bifurcated-leg garments are cut, crutches tend to lay on the off-grain and are reinforced merely by the way the garments are assembled i.e. by the machine stitches alone. Hence the profusion of flat-felled seams. Crutches are a point of stress in bifurcated garments, where legs swing and fabric twists and stretch to accomodate for the movement. The fact that cructhes lay off-grain also makes it impossible to darn or patch. Many moons ago I tried to fix such a problem to a pair belonging to Mag (who split hers whilst she was rollerblading. For the record, I didn't split mine due to some high-impact activity.) It only lasted for three further weeks, at which point we decided that it would be better to save threads and buy a new pair instead.

So, back to jeans-hunting. I'm still looking for a dark grey/black pair, with tapered legs that doesn't cut off blood circulation to my feet, yet one fitted I can tuck into boots. I went back to the store where I got First Year in the hope of scoring a replacement, but to no avail.

So maybe, once I have the heart to dissect it, First Year will be taken apart seam-by-seam to be pattern-traced and remade into a new garment...

*I affectionately/respectfully refer to persons of past relationship as 'Mr', and there had been two such persons with impossibly slim waists. Hence the numbering.

the week in numbers so far...

2010-08-26T14:09:00.004+01:00

Had some good days at the restaurant this week, so far so good.

Casualty count:
2 "talk to this man, he speaks Indonesian" introductions
1 English girl who speaks fluent Indonesian with a Manado accent
1 Dutch guy (in a party of 5) hilariously made speechless by de Hems*
1 very happy table/party of twelve
3 crap dinners, two more to come
1 forwarded remark from the manager that one of the regulars (a male gynaecologist) referred to me as 'your posh waitress', and hence...
1 extra work outfit on the drawing/drafting board
????? numbers of office workers who tipped graciously

Ah, the funny walks of life.
Work goggles are getting the betters of me.

"de Hems" story: back in July, I passed through this Dutch pub a few times on the final day of World Cup. There was a queue by midday and it was in full swing by four (kick-off was at 7 or 8.) And I thought to myself, with all the rowdy-ness, there would be a very sorry bunch of people if the Netherlands team became three times the bridesmaid. (Ooops. I'm guessing the Dutch guy was in the crowd.)

list of ten...

2010-08-19T16:05:00.006+01:00

Reasons why it's about time I grow up from waitressing:

10. Having two degrees and working in one that needs neither.
9. Being asked "do you speak English?" by unsuspecting patrons.
8. Being the go-to person to deal with non-English-speaking patrons (even when I don't speak their language.)
7. Being mildly trilingual.
6. Dealing with customers who think the restaurant owes them big.
5. Replaying a particular 70s pop song in my brain on an afternoon off.
4. Wanting to be able to freely spend £20 on desserts alone.
3. Wanting to eat different foods, not just what is served at the restaurant.
2. Wanting to have earlier hours (go to bed earlier, wake up earlier...)
1. Spending 'down time' at work drawing on paper covers, and bringing them home.

Peace. (And I'm hungry.)

the wringing realities of looking for a job

2010-08-18T16:51:00.005+01:00

I think it's about time to address this issue that's been mulling in my head.

I am a two-times bachelor-level graduate, the most recent being in fashion design and making (the other one, as you can read from posts a few year back, was in commerce.) As far as I can tell, the last time around I half-heartedly knocked out 30 applications (CV and a half-arsed attempt at why I wanted these companies to employ me), secured two interviews (with two different companies on two different sides of the world), and got a job offer. On the side, I was tutoring for about 6 hours a week, and working in jewellery sales two days a week... that makes it four half-days of booked-in activity.

In the weeks after my graduation I have knocked out 11 in-response applications (all personalised and with freebies like "what I visually think your brand is about" put in at the cost of one project per two days), 4 cold-call applications, attended four interviews/test hour/whatnots, and still no firm offers. On the side: I'm making my own clothes in the morning, I waitress five nights a week, I tidy up my portfolios. My vice is a weekly gelati from Gelupo.

I keep on getting told, either "we need you to have two-year experience for a starting position" or "we cannot afford to employ a graduate [with pay]".

There was one test-hour I went to, I sat down and made what was asked. Another woman, also on test hour, did the same thing nearby. Time she spent in relevant employment: five years. Result: the same.

Anyway, these made me think of the saying "looking for a job is like cari jodoh". Maybe cari jodoh is indeed easier, because it doesn't involve obsessively calling potential employers to hear about rejection at the rate of two a week.

My flatmate said that my CV/application/interview presentation is too perfect employers become reluctant to employ me.
Then, if that is the case, I can say the decades I spend shaping myself to be a decent person is wasted, because they can see to flaw in me?
Are they sure their lenses are wiped clean and notice that I apply for work because I need a relevant paid job, since my spunky haircut is because I save up the money I could've spent on haircuts for food instead?
Do they know that I took off the phrase "fluent in Indonesian" simply because some people on the other side may think I could rock up with a face veil? (well I can, but that means I'd need to buy some black fabric to make them...)
Are they really, really afraid to learn that I may actually have something of value to offer to them in exchange for some decent salary?

You know what, I'm happy to take your employment.

P.S. someone told me not to take the first job I'm offered, so as you can see, a lot of these spoken wisdom conflict with each other...

stern warning

2010-08-15T00:43:00.006+01:00

Dear self,

I have noticed you have been spending an increasing amount of time surrounded by fillies whose skills in speaking English (on most cases) surely made decoding secret messages easier.

Your musical surrounding around them doesn't amount to much consolation either, songs being sung in another hip-gyration inducement language.

You are therefore charged to ban all Japanese and Chinese songs from your playlist, and prescribed to take aural refuge in the form of songs à la Gaga, Florence et al. This may well prove a most fitting opportunity to expand your backdated digital music collection.

Generate the necessary ka-CHING! to finance these imperatives.
And, as always, work on your portfolio.

Love,

Marsha.

domesticity spurring

2010-08-01T22:13:00.004+01:00

Today being Sunday (one of my assigned day offs), I bothered to cook dinner from scratch. The menu was oxtail and carrot stew with a serving of rice, steamed broccoli and steamed egg. I used a rice cooker to cook rice and steam at the same time... yea I know it sounds pedantic but it saves me some washing-up and the added health benefit (less oil) isn't too bad.

Being hungry, I was pretty impatient with the beef and all, and barely put up with the leisurely rice cooker. A few minutes before the cooker said 'bing!', I scooped out some rice, fished out a few cuts of tail, poured some sauce on the rice, and dumped the sides on the plate. And I ate.

Gnawing oxtail meat isn't pleasant.
(Lesson #1: cook it before getting out of the house. Rice, oxtail and all.)

A while later, I did some dental work. Some rogue stringy meat had made its way in between my teeth, making me feel as if my gums had multiplied and suffocated my teeth overnight. A few metres of floss were employed, as did a variety of other, ahem, homely devices. After cleaning the mess inside my mouth and realising it had all transferred onto the sink, I cleaned the sink and all (my flatmate would later be wondering what had gone so wrong whilst she was away.) Which brought me to a realisation...

Lesson #2: Cif (a.k.a. Jif) had just found a new cleaning role.
Whilst cleaning the sink, I accidentally found out that:
Cif + hot water + stainless steel watch = one very clean watch
I was very nervous when I decided to sink my watch (excuse the pun) into the solution. But an hour later my watch still runs good. So, it looks like cleaning my watch is similar to cleaning the sink. Albeit more gentle.

One more thing, I am endearing myself to the mammoth that is the cycle hire bike. The weight itself isn't much of a problem, but cycling uphill is a gruesome task. I prefer downhill with a good set of brakes.

Oh well, that's all for today.

lightbulb moment

2010-07-27T11:49:00.002+01:00

I came across a group of websites dedicated to one issue that perfectly summed up aesthetic frustations I had in first year, first term. It's called infographics! Visualising data in cleaner, more informative ways other than boring Excel graphs and piecharts. I actually tried it with a particular piece of music, but my previous attempts weren't as good as this one.

Why infographics?
Because it can inform, incense and make readers laugh.
And I'm a sucker for all nicely drawn things.

Back to work.

of colours and nuts

2010-07-26T00:02:00.006+01:00

Hiya. This is a picture of mine. Now, what do you notice?

Today I intended to rant on about something more intellectually sophisticated. That is, until I went through blog updates and came across this article.

I am personally of the opinion that heuristics, in line with accounting theories, are believed to trigger correlations which may be illogical. But what I believe is more relevant is the amount of experience one has of wearing certain colours. For example, I got some flak for wearing highlighter red/orange tights because they were of a highlighter colour, even though they were proportionally balanced by vast swathes of navy and grey. Most people back home tend to pull that are-they-from-Monaco association flag and completely wrote off entertaining the idea of making it work.

I decided on the outfit pretty much in less than 30 seconds. Open dresser, pull out relevant skirt (because I wanted to wear something I've made myself), pull out jacket in an 'outfit maker' colour, pull out shirts for accent colours. Since I knew I would be drowned in a black robe, red was the better option. And, lucky me, I happened to have a pair of shoes that would set off the black robe. Say yippee to outfit creation.

I didn't think of the flag-colours heuristic when I got dressed, not until we got onto the taxi back home. I hope I've shed some light on how I get my gears together.

Ah, and now I remember what I wanted to say in first place.
Walnuts.

A lovely picture of walnuts in the papers triggered it.
Some years back, I bought a packet of walnuts-in-shell for sentimental and [retrospectively] clearly ludicrous reasons. I don't know why it was walnuts-in-in shell in particular; I can't remember the sentimentality of it at all (not like it would help me get a job, or win £1 million.) But I remembered I had some plans and bought it, and scuppered my own plan by forgetting to take it with me. It'd probably be fun to remember what it was for. In the end, it just shows that no matter how I can hold onto small memories, I am prone to amnesiac outbursts.
Or, as I told Anne, 'Data deleted'.

Now, 'walnuts' is not as intellectually sophisticated as I pined to remember.

Have a good day.

fortnightly self-review (just 'cause I like it)

2010-07-20T01:35:00.003+01:00

During my spare time, I end up making pretty-pretty things.
Florals, gathered details and dresses... maybe that's where I'm headed to.

Maybe it's just plain laziness though. Marking a line 'here and there' before shoving them under the needle full-speed. I find it to be a bit therapeutic, and it'd be nice to have lots of gathery summer dresses. Also, it could also be some sort of creative kneejerk/revenge, having found out a particular fabric I wanted is not available.

Okay, my cool sheets are waiting for me. I like jumping into cool sheets, although the mattress leaves a lot to be desired.

better keep myself buckled

2010-07-13T13:12:00.003+01:00

Back from cruise.
It's something I wouldn't really spend my money on, at least while my knees are still working alright, but I had a relaxing time indeed (thank you parents!) And some girly sisterly pursuits when the conditions are right. (Spare cash: check. Sister: check. Time: check. Language: monkey gestures suffice. My sister said communication will work out when one intends to do commerce.)

On the teaching front, my student's next proposed project initially looks like a leap. She herself wanted to make things she hasn't made before and 'not repeat', which is good on the progressive learning attitude to say the least. The challenge, I suspect, is largely mental for me. It is probably what it feels like if suddenly your kid grows 5cm taller over the night.

And yes, I am still job hunting. Offers?

Take care.

cruising

2010-06-28T20:22:00.001+01:00

a.k.a. fertile grounds for bitchfest.
I am the intrepid type, and being led by the nose infuriates me. It's as if I'm cattle, commodity or whatnot.

4 years of college

2010-06-17T14:22:00.002+01:00

...and it's all over.
No, it's not yet graduation, but it does make me feel ancient. Creaky. Especially hearing things like "you won't use [insert specialised machine name here] for a project anymore".

SOB SOB.

So yeah, today is the beginning of my job hunting saga. Amongst other things like finding Ultrasew and fine-gauge Dubied machines (or at least places where I can use them), making things to wear for Paris (again) and the cruise, and realising Rob won't be sarcastic at my ears anymore (big AWWW). And battling with that nasty voice that says "you'll never find a gainful employment in your industry up here."

I wonder why I can't quite manage to *spot* high summer by weather. It's always late spring or wet summer, before suddenly trees shed their leaves.

Ah, life.

at row #725

2010-06-06T16:14:00.005+01:00

As you have read on the last post, much reworking and maybe 2000 stitches later (I am not counting anymore) the thing is ready for assembly. And I'm hungry. And I've got the paperwork to sort out.

God knows how things are going to get done by tomorrow.

When 'kill kill die die' doesn't work, it's just patience and perseverance. I never thought I would brace unravelling and reknitting especially when it got to the edges (i.e. super fiddly), but I did. Hey. I went from "&£(*%(£)!!!!" at first signs of trouble last week to imperceptible emotional reaction today. I learnt how to unravel stitches neatly (the first 20 were murder but the rest was plain sailing.) My eyes were fixed at my work so much the colour seemed to warp from a fire engine red to some sort of vinyl bright pink. Luckily now it's back to red again.

Alright then, back to work.

disappointment at 3,500 stitches

2010-06-05T13:08:00.003+01:00

Hiya.

I just had a look at the college's smattering of press show releases. It was a good event. On my side, I feel left out and deflated after browsing through it. So much work goes into the 200+ collections submitted in March, and only 26 made it into the press show.

I must stop looking. (But I will buy the DVD, and watch it after Monday.)

Currently I am battling with knitting a garment. On the fourth try, it looks so far so alright. Except that it got to the part where I needed to use a see-through yarn, the yarn wasn't happy to sit there and it went all twirly. So it's disappointing to have to write off the yarn, and painstaking to unravel it back to where I was last night. And expensive to have to buy replacement supplies.
Also, it takes so much time to transfer everything when at least 100 stitches are being moved left and right, and my transfer tool is three stitches wide. Pain.

Back to work, then.

365 days later

2010-06-02T11:06:00.002+01:00

Happy birthday to me!
Thank God I make it to this stage in life. Big thank you hug to my parents who persevere and have put up with much irritating behaviour to bring me up. A special mention to my sister, who was punchbag buddy in my younger days and a good phone buddy these days.

I ran as fast as I could to Princi last night, arriving at (what the doorman said) 4 minutes before midnight, ordered a slice of passionfruit cheesecake and gulped it down as the day turned! So that's how celebratory I was last night. I guess as I get older I think more about how to spend the day (work to do and self-errands to run) than actually cutting into a cake. Although, if we do make it to a restaurant tonight, there is bound to be some candles and group singing.
We: myself, Anne and KY.

This is, by the way, a pre-emptive message.
Thank you for your birthday wishes and have a nice day!

it's 4:30 and not 4:45

2010-05-29T10:10:00.003+01:00

...it was a bit of drama, but just one hand-in left.

Anyway, I didn't mention the complete drama of moving around on the reflective summary at all. I had it on my skeleton notes, but somehow it didn't quite make it in. Despite the initial shock, I think in the end I handled the matter better than last year. In the end, the written piece was 2,306 words long, down from the original 2700 (and that was without the moving drama.)

I'm under stressstressstressstress because I'm getting into a situation I had not been in before. It's as if I have to read the minds of some official with a stamp. Sometimes I wonder how far can a visa or passport be faked for is to pass undetected?

My laptop's left click button has sunk in. Even when most times I tap on the touchpad instead. (And Delete button's a bit temperamental. Pets are like their owners, some say.)

Anyway, \ˈləv\ and %*&$ from this annoyed person.

do I have to type it out thrice?

2010-05-27T10:33:00.006+01:00

After a few seconds' worth of violence against the laptop (on count of a non-optimally scripted page re visiting Indonesia without a visa - how ironic did that sound?), I am *sigh grunt glower* retyping whatever little I typed before and lost. Quite possibly one of the last posts with a Y3 tag. Lessons from the restaurant floor for the design studio.

Sometimes, whilst it is not busy and there isn't much to do other than waiting for passer-bys to turn into customers, I would feel angsty because it was as if time was being wasted away. If there was nothing to do, I would start to come up with thoughts like "I wish I wasn't here so I could do something else more productive"... which is a bit pointless considering I was physically at work and nowhere near equipped to do the tasks I went through in my mind. This also meant that at one level my waitressing performance was affected - not to the point that my work noticeably deteriorates, but running suboptimally at part-time work because my mind was preoccupied with something else was doubly irritating. It was one of the reasons I took a break from part-time work to concentrate on my studies. So anyway it was done, I took a study break which was helpful, but I probably could've done something else to handle the whole situation better.

Anyhow. I was working again yesterday.

It was a busy evening to start with (which was good even though it was a bit of a hassle), and it grew progressively quieter. There was one point at which I was pretty desperate to get customers I sent my colleagues and myself to distribute promotional flyers on three separate occasions throughout the night. Business or no business, time flows on. It's just preferable to make money for the business as I work.

A friend's brother-in-law stood by this principle when he was mildly harrassed for leaving his workplace on time and before his manager leaves. He said that his assigned jobs were done, so what productivity does he serve by staying back when there is nothing else to do? There is a saying that says 'as long as things get done things will be alright'. It is somewhat true, but it needs updating. Things need to get done, and I'd rather get as many of them as I possibly can done.

I cannot sleep peacefully

2010-05-26T01:55:00.006+01:00

...because the reflective discourse (can I hand in a mirror?) is due in on Friday. Amongst other things like knitting a garment, embroidering a garment, and beading a garment. So that's anything between an essay and a garment, and an essay and three garments....... depending on your reading. Oh, and please remember the portfolio. Did I mention visa too?

I am in s***.

Anyhow.
A few days ago, feeling rather dejected after rushing across London to find out that 'sorry this [CR] laser cutter does not cut plastic', Anne and I went to our favourite biltong seller on Liverpool Street. We bought a bottle of cider out of thirst and hot weather, only to realise nobody could open it. So I decided to go to hers (of course to taste the cider!) We walked to the appropriate bus stop, and waited.
A man on bicycle went pass. He looked like this guy, but older.
And Anne said, "wasn't that Giles?" (she once worked for him)
"With that much grey hair?"
"He looked old."
Oh. "I thought he's supposed to look much younger."

Next commuting tale.
I was sitting on the bus on my way home earlier today (it's still Tuesday in my head) -slumped, deflated and hungry- when a DOM sat next to me. Now, DOM stands for dodgy ~~dirty~~ old men. So a DOM means one dodgy ~~dirty~~ old man sitting next to me, with a hand that is magnetised towards my thigh. Feeling cross, I hissed an excuse-me and strategically positioned 2kg of yarns and my slingbag between his seat and mine. A few minutes later, he took it as a cue to conduct a conversation:
"Where are you from?"
(Who do you think you are, a border official at Heathrow?)
"Japan?"
(Stare forward.)
"Thailand?"
(Getting warmer.)
"Hong Kong?"
(Meh.)
"China?"
(Still wrong.)
"................."
(Look out the window)
"...Korea?"
"Nevermind." (which is the only other word I uttered to him.)
He got out two stops later.

Seriously, the rate at which people say 'Japan' and 'China' (HK included) is phenomenally blasé. I wonder if next time I should say Armenia or Kuwait instead. I stand up for my country, I don't let stakeholders know my nationality even more, and I dislike the ill-ease of my passport too. Or maybe it's just Europe picking its navel whenever I beckon my sight there for some trade show, like what this HSBC guy said in some pamphlet re investing in Asia. Maybe Europe's just too snotty to move on. Or maybe UK's got too much nannyish health and safety considerations. It's as if the creative thinking energy is redirected from tackling problems to conjuring up imaginary scenarios in which citizens become exposed to danger because they do not realise a heating cabinet is hot, or that a packet of nuts contain nuts.
More creativity is being used to coerce people into fear of what could happen 0.03% of the time.

Anyway, it's bed time, knitting time or typing time.
I choose the duvet. Take care!

can someone get me a fan?

2010-05-24T15:43:00.005+01:00

Hello.
Have I mentioned before, the benefits and suckers of living in central Central London?

The benefits basically fall into one broad category: envy-inducing.
Where I live now (the eastern edge of W1 which should really join WC2), it takes me little more than 30 minutes to get a snack at Princi, do some fabric research, pick up groceries and walk home through Gaytown. I've got Chinatown at my doorstep too, which could be handy or annoying depending on what time of the day it is.

And so, I do not have a view of greenery. On weekends one could almost always guarantee some rowdy noises at 4 in the morning. It's dusty, cramped and badly ventilated. Which is why, on hot days like Friday onwards (average of 28°C) I become very irritable and listless. I'm even switching on the stove extraction fan to make it less suffocating. The bathroom is somewhat worse; the perenially running heater that was morning shower comfort a few weeks back turned the room into not-quite-sauna facility (which is unnecessary when it is this hot!) My sister chuckled and wondered how on earth I would cope with the temperatures back home...

Coming back into the millieu of college, the other day whilst printing some files I saw a fashion student in CSM doing her journal pages on Photoshop. Since the computer I was using took its time loading up a few PDFs, I simply paid attention at what she was doing. Initially I thought she was just pasting photographs of garment mock-ups alongside inspiration pictures and design drawings to illustrate how her idea evolves. But then she manicured her garment mock-up photos on the spirit of 'the mock up didn't look right so I'll give its photo a helping hand'. If she had time to laboriously nudge and reform her photographs, she could have fixed the root of the problem itself. Man.

A lot of the third-years in my program are also getting disinterested in coursework. I find it hard to pull myself together and produce work when it is this hot (it's not the holiday effect; my brain runs slow under excessive heat.) But then I negotiated a project that will benefit me in the long run, so it is not like a box-ticking exercise the major project once was. Most of my classmates are already in summer holiday mode. Talking to a mid-aged couple over dinner last night, my conscious view of June to September is of the professional industry entry/self-employment/unemployment nature, which means I will tsk-tsk-tsk myself for behaving in any remotely unproductive way. I'm not really keen on holidaying, except if the place I'm going to is set to be breezier and cooler than London.

On the domestic menial front, I wonder where my flatmate keeps the vacuum cleaner, or whether she has one at all. I found a small dustpan + brush set and the mop so far.

Also, this Supermalt thing tastes 22% of malt only. Most of the taste hit comes from carbonated bubbles, then sugar, then this flavour that reminds me of hot drink mix I used to have in my teens.

OK, I'm gonna get drawing now. Enough chattering. Take care!

moreness

2010-05-14T14:07:00.003+01:00

On Wednesday after college (and as work started), I made myself a scribble-list of things I wanted/needed to do re college work progress. In the past week I had been caught up with 'lots of other things', and focus is definitely one of the things I need to exercise in abundance.

Roughly, the work is categorised into two sections: the paperwork (portfolio - not my favourite bit for those who know me) and prac work. This term, the project is self-negotiated. Initially I wanted to do two outfits of a new collection, until a wise soul in form of a classmate looked at the pile of stuff/work I brought to the first tutorial session and mentioned 'book of samples'. That comment got passed on to the tutor, who (after some consultation and in light of time available) made me choose either 'a book of calico silhouette samples' or 'a book of embellishment samples'. So I chose the latter one. I need to learn to knit and embroider properly, after all...

Portfolio work is alright, sometimes.
It is alright when I am on a momentum, and all the pieces/materials for flatwork are gathered on one table. It is not alright when bits haven't been printed off, template figures are missing, etc etc. Now that I have done my templates and almost all images are printed out, it's high time to hit the portfolio work.

Next bit: the reflective summary.
I've been keeping an eye on the girl-next-bay (me sitting in computer lab) on what she is doing for her reflective summary. To be honest, I feel jealous of her lovingly hand-written and panda-embellished journal she is scanning, which of course I do not do. (I blog, and whatever I do not cover on the blog is written down... when my hands are free.)

On the plus side, keeping my hands free of journal-writing enables me to type super-fast and bead super-fast too. I find it quite funny I managed to go through one 100g pack of seed beads (which is well over 1500 of them, by the way I count it) within one sitting of beading. It took three hours, including the time it took me to dash off to the beadshop and exchange some of them. I guess however much I hate to be interned to bead dresses doesn't really run parallel to the fact that I bead my samples.

On the not-so-related study front, I have not been doing any illustrative work for the past week or two. I know I planned it some time ago, but since it isn't exactly in the unit completion requirement it keeps getting put off till I don't know when. I've got half of the things I need for it, and I was originally delaying for some more goodies (rolling pin and rolling guides)... until I checked out that the guides were for sheets 1.5mm thick. Pah! No gingerbread in my memory is of that thickness. So uneven hand moulding it is, then.

I'm a bit worried about my progress for the coming week, especially since the upcoming Tuesday morning is earmarked for non-college work, and since I'm taking on a few more shifts at work (not exactly avoidable unless I want to lose the job and networking for good.) I wrote myself a list of things that I need to do, but whether by Tuesday evening all things have all been accounted for is something I do not have an answer for. And why does duchess satin cost so much?

Well, nevertheless, I will try to be as balanced as possible. No late nighters, seven hours of sleep a day, and a regular dose of culture. That means books, movies, exhibitions maybe once a week? I want to read more Orwell; or more accurately, I want to read funny satirical shorter pieces like Animal Farm.

Take care.

ululu falala

2010-05-05T23:07:00.006+01:00

Hiya,
as promised before. The collection.

In the next six months, my homeworks are:
- personal portfolio website
- collection/show
- a particular competition
- setting up production

Busy life, eh? Or maybe not quite... I've been sleeping upwards of 10 hours a day lately. Most of the time, whenever I managed to fall asleep with the lights on, it is much more likely for me to sleep for longer. (Note to self: switch off lights, wake up earlier.)

In the past two weeks, I have been generating samples (colloquially called stuff or c*** depending on whether I liked it or not) slower than I would have liked to achieve, and pretty good (faster?) than what the tutor expects. He's a fresh breath of air, given that I had had the same design tutor for the past year ending March 31. And some contemporaries in college give me the cold shudder whilst others actually get friendlier.

Remember Rob and his educatively entertaining talk a few months back on Mongolian fashion? (Well maybe I haven't mentioned it on this blog, but anyhow.)
Today I got to confront him. That his joke on fashion in Outer Mongolia is becoming true. With this.

And the poor man wailed that nothing is sacred anymore. *pat pat*

On the essay front:
Reflective summary is due in, according to rumours, on 28 May. It has not been confirmed on the online noticeboard, nor have I consulted a member of teaching staff on the matter. Regardless, it's time to start. I'd probably do it by categories, given the fact I'm prone to covering a good few diverse topics in one post. I wonder how nitpicky the marking team will be on bibliography (references to one's diary? doesn't that count as self-promotion or bogus referencing?)

I want to post an intellectual topic on music as well, as a way of philosophical and technical progress from where I was three years ago, but I guess it'll have to wait till the near future.

Take care!

therefore you shall do as I like

2010-04-29T14:08:00.003+01:00

Dear G***** employee lady,

I am sadly informing you that my hearing wasn't superhuman. Given that (1) the phone call hailed from across two seas, (2) the canteen was loudly noisy, and (3) my ears aren't exactly the most tuned on earth, it was therefore reasonable behaviour that compelled me to receive a phone call on the hallowed stairways our college shares with your workplace.

That is, unless you would rather direct me into your office to continue conducting said phone conversation. You may also alternatively choose to forego shared usage of the above-mentioned staircase and proceed to exit through your windows instead.

Oh, and since you carried food and drinks up the stairs into your office, may I mention that food items are strictly consumable within cafeteria area only? It will greatly reduce infestation issues within these premises.

Cheers.

[I don't like] today

2010-04-22T12:11:00.003+01:00

Reporting straight from within the disaster zone.

It's show time!

Well yes, it is a disaster zone. Much of it is self-inflicted. There is serious need for me to change my behaviours. Ouch. I don't like the way I handle myself up to today.

Anyhoo, for those watching, you know it's my turn when you see my name and this...

and you know it's the end of my turn with this:

(That is, if the running order is correct.)
Alright then, take care.

on femalefolk self-classification

2010-04-18T22:09:00.011+01:00

For the common man, one is usually referred to as 'Mr' in English.
For the common woman, there are three terms available. They are 'Miss', 'Mrs' and 'Ms' respectively

In the past decade or so of Anglo-Saxon form-filling, I have become rather inveterate in classifying myself. However, I find myself switching between the three and having some sort of mixed reactions to the experience (which in turn feeds back into myself, who would condition her responses/actions accordingly in the next time around).

Ms
I was a fan of this appellation due to the fact that it hides a multitude of information regarding the female person. A bit like Mr for the femalefolk, with the exception that it may have a bit of a personal tarnish due to someone I knew yonks ago who was referred to as 'Ms'. She was quite possibly in her late forties and unconventionally relationshipped. Made me think whether I was happy lumping myself with a possible divorcée, spinster or mistress. And, since I was planning to get married and realised how temporary a bourgeoise privilege of being called proper 'miss' would be, I switched to...

Miss
The current default classification. I have been using it with some sort of glee, until I reclassify myself when purchasing Eurostar tickets as 'Adult'. At which point selecting the option 'Miss' gave a rather unpleasant tug. (I was purchasing tickets for two on a certain journey, one for this Miss and another for a Miss who could still get away travelling on a cheaper Youth ticket. Although probably the other Miss would have preferred to be classified 'Ms', or 'Mr' just for the sake of stomping the excess girliness.) Is it sprouts of societal pressure? Probably. Does the fact that "this miss and that miss are homonym" mean they stem from the same meaning? By means of linguistic history, is being female and unmarried inseparable from being a, *shock* *horror* failure?

Mrs
It would be roughly translated into Indonesian as 'ibu', with which I have been intermittently referred since as young/old as 21. Recently I classified myself as 'Mrs' on a form, although it may have more to do with the French referring female adult customers as 'Madame' (and the only other option being 'Mr') than socially/legally being joined at the hip with a male person. I see it as a bit of an identity crisis classification - I've long been referred to as someone else's sister/daughter/[insert relationship status] and I quite like being recognised as a person of one's own, instead of someone else's auxilliary. But then, hold this view as a temporary preference, because it may change for a multitude of reasons (which may or may not be covered at a later point in this blog.)

A few more tangential points to cover...

Eurostar
Website sucks big time. First my browser failed me, then when I retried the website complained that 'I had taken too much time on completing the purchase', decided that I was therefore unworthy of the £69 return fee and tried to charge me for £119. To make it worse, I was purchasing for a friend who qualifies for 'Youth' ticket as well as my own 'Adult' ticket and selected the correct options accordingly, but the site kept on thinking that 1 Youth [cheaper] + 1 Adult = 2 Adults. **t**.
I cleaned the cookies and re-tried for the third time, only to be greeted by a white screen saying 'erreur'. After checking that no money was deducted from my account and another cookies-cleaning session, my fourth attempt was rewarded with.......
...the bank suspecting my card might have been used for fraud. (Two transactions on the same web vendor, the exact same amounts, some twenty minutes apart.) Sometimes the software-run box-ticking gets too much. I'll have to risk missing the cheap fares, and do a trek to the bank to kindly get the bloody transaction bar off my card pronto. And call Eurostar. Eurostar website, you suck.

Knowledge
The important truth is that success stems from how knowledge is applied. Knowing much may as much help as distract. So, there it is: apply and do. Having encyclopaedic knowledge isn't going to help much if it isn't being used for a definite and achievable goal within a specific timeframe.

Sampling
Fashion college has made me into a tangibly sceptic person, re-questioning myself and demanding physical proof/dissertation that a certain thing is not aesthetically pleasing. In some sense it's good to know and communicate what one expects another to produce, but on a greater level many things cannot be toiled.

Dressmaker v Designer
Many so-called sewing blogs are run by, um, people who seem to be not making much test garments before setting off to do a completed garment. [Academic] fashion designing, on the other hand, is not quite satisfied when a completed garment is not the culmination of some obscene numbers of test garments. Within the functioning fashion design industry, what is the average/usual number of toiles that tend to be made prior to the final garment being produced? (Please don't tell me a flat 'it depends on the design' answer because I'm not looking for theoretical responses; I'm doing statistics here.) And what is the practical dividing line between dressmaker and designer? Do dressmakers stick to simple shapes whereas designers do not? If that was the case, what would Phoebe Philo's AW10 collection for Chloe would be classified? A dressmaker's work? A quasi-dressmaker's work? Is her professional status as fashion designer rescued by virtue of using leather (or slapping bits of leather where wool or some other traditionally dressmakery fabric would have gone, e.g. on pocket welts etc) on every single garment sent down the runway? If it were the pocket welts, how can I still feel insufficient (despite having done similarly with pocket welts) whenever I see my friends' works?

As you can see, my undergraduate degree doesn't cleanly solve the problem of infusing confidence into my practical work. It adds a dose of cynicism/scepticality, I shall say. Quite dampingly enough.

Okay, enough blogging for now.
I think I managed to clock out some extra 300 (wishfully 600?) words for the reflective summary assignment. I guess that's one of my strengths, intrapersonal knowledge. But then, maybe it comes with the plain passage of time instead of some innate talents or supernatural gifts (I don't quite know for sure.) Or maybe this unsureness is just old-style British non-show-off-ance instead of American all-can-be-done attitude.

Anyhow.
Good day, everyone.

dawgie

2010-04-17T14:21:00.004+01:00

Departure is one place I like to hang out in.
One Thursday afternoon (Friday night movie showings being off-limit for now), I went there to chill for free... and guess what I encountered?

Dog.

A black labrador.

One that doesn't mind me stroking its head and tugging its ears.

O, joy. Its owner said that she usually comes in for group knitting sessions, which takes place during term time on Thursday afternoons. Pity that next Thursday is show day.

I guess this sort of arrangement (someone's dog up for strokes) probably works well in light of my pet cravings. It saves me the hassles of maintaining a dog whilst temporarily relieving the owner from having to keep it entertained/civilised in public at all time.

P.S. tube announcements braying 'all flights cancelled due to volcanic eruption' was a bit funny in the sense that I went asking "does England have a volcano?" I hail from the Ring of Fire, so an erupting volcano two seas away isn't exactly daunting business. Although the addition of not having to fly, melting glaciers etc may have more to do with the indifference...

pettering about

2010-04-08T20:27:00.004+01:00

I was looking at this post and thought "how nice it is to have an overweight, strokes-friendly ginger cat." Except that, from past pet-keeping experience, it would be a pretty expensive affair.

Cats are nice to stroke and dogs to kiss... I kinda miss my dog. I'm definitely happy not to have to pay for pet fees, though.

Yet in response to Suhu's non-reward quiz/meme, I said my chosen pet would a pterodactyl.

P.S. I also went to teach dressmaking today, in the grand tradition of accounting/maths/English private tutoring I've done in the past. My student and I finished a dress she had made earlier, and re-styled a top. Knowing the right demo/hands-on practice balance and setting the pace are things I'm learning on the job (those hair modeling sessions help give an idea!) Also, the endless sample-making college work requires was definitely helpful enough to take my worries off from the fact that we were ripping and mutilating what is essentially a pricey branded fashion merchandise. Only when I walked home did I realise the graveness of what we had been doing.

Take care.

just for personal consumption

2010-04-06T11:51:00.002+01:00

With less than two weeks left for spring break, I wanted to make myself a summer-weight dress. It was initially mocked up in calico (being nitpicky, since the standard model-sized dress block is too big for me.)

The calico version looked alright, but a bit roomy as expected.
I pinched things out to make it more fitted, altered the patterns and made it in the 'supposed' fabric. And that was when things went horribly wrong.
The end result looked like a definite encim-encim.

Back to the drawing board it goes.

things...

2010-03-22T16:16:00.004Z

Hello.

I had my hand-in earlier today - maybe about two hours ago? But it doesn't mean the storm is over yet. There are things I need to finish for the show/photoshoot (both garments and accessories), as well as tidy up/pack/clean the flat. And visa stuff. It's a holiday that's bound not a holiday...

Let's say I feel a bit lost and off the hook without my work. I definitely dislike the deadlines and learning the hard way that I still need to be more decisive in developing designs. If there is something I learn about my personality in times of trouble, it definitely belongs to the 'blue screen of death' variety. Or 'rabbit hops on front of incoming trailer'.

I like pattern-cutting and sewing up samples, although I tend to stress and have a bad luck making final/press samples out of expensive materials (well, maybe I haven't clocked up enough experience?) Yesterday, I was happily doing two of these cream-coloured tailored jacket when one accidentally brushed against the machine needle pole (oiled) and got stained. And to think that I had wiped the work surface clean! That's one thing to watch out for. Spitting domestic irons are another category to watch out for. And, despite their pristine appearance, domestic sewing machines can gobble up white threads and spit them out grey.

...and I need a haircut. As well as decide which portfolio project to take on for next term. Out of the two: image-making and research, which one do you think will be great for me?

Awh, I'm just gonna take a break and actually surf the net proper. And eat good food. And sleep.

Take care!

gossips from the sweatshop stable

2010-03-11T13:16:00.003Z

Greetings.

Yesterday I heard a third-year student purportedly spent £90 for a pair of tights. (what, made from gold? or maybe uranium...) This course surely has amazing hidden fees, indeed. I must say the extra £1,400 is closer to the average figure each student would probably fork out to complete their final year. To make things worse, there is no longer free B&W printing available on campus, tutor attendance hours are cut, and there is no colour photocopier in a building where tutors constantly ask for colour copies (there used to be one but who knows where it is now?) 'Insane' and 'administratively messed up' give good allusion to the state of chaos my college puts itself into...

This morning, I broke my machine's needle again. Five times. All under an hour.
From thinking it was jinxed to actual statistics, something must definitely be wrong, no? Either way, it's a downtime for me. I called a machine engineer to take a look at the problem but he's scrabbling for time allotment because I asked him to come before the weekend.

To be honest I feel quite lost without a reliable, working sewing machine.

it doesn't really make sense

2010-03-07T17:51:00.007Z

Why do I still blog?

Thread cops run out...

Stocks of pencil lead are drained...

Because sometimes, I try to look sullen (sleepy?) in the tube...

...and college work drives me mad I wish money and time grows on flowers free to be picked - by me, that is!

Well, this was the third needle I broke in the week. Maybe it's the near-prodigious amount of sewing, or simply I was being too rude whilst tugging and manipulating fabric at the machine.

Anyhoo.
Have a nice day for you, and a productive (21-hour-long-awake) one for me.

parboiling

2010-02-26T21:53:00.005Z

Boiling an egg (amongst preparing other things) for dinner.

Whilst standing near the stove, a story came to mind. Back in the days of kiddyhood, my mother used to tell me 'papa kamu' (i.e. my dad - her speak) was a very thrifty student when the country sent him to study overseas. It was apparent from the way he prepared his breakfast: pop an egg into a pot of water, heat it up until it boils, pick up the egg and use the water to brew his coffee (and I presume he'd have some toast on the side? for carbs? It'd be a hard sell to believe he had no morning dose of carbs.)

A breakfast that remains largely unchanged as he gets on with life. I still have a love-hate relationship with parboiled egg to this day.

And, apparently, one that is fading as mod-cons come specifically for boiling water and poaching eggs.

Take care.

prescience

2010-02-22T14:48:00.009Z

Well.

Many things seem to be happening in my head a few months before they actually happened. People call it deja-vu, maybe? Today it happened twice. The first - classified under 'unconscious' - was when I was talking to a kouhai about last week's fashion academic life new pet peeve in the IT room (and ensuing little wisdom learnt.) And this fella's usually stationed near the giant hot rolling presser. Which, somehow, has been pre-reharsed in a dream sometime last summer. Oooo... okay. Maybe the strip lighting glared a bit in my sleepless eyes.

A few minutes later, proceed to email-blog-Facebook rounds.
(Courtesy of college facility and as a by-product of finishing my monthly internet allowance about 13 days into the month.) Aha, normal weekend, a few ~~dozen~~ new updates here and there. Oh, .... Oh. I see. Mmmmmmmmm.

Cue in a mental replay of this (does anyone knows where to get the alien shoes at 3:30 from?), having aurally overdosed on it last weekend. It is a better sleep-preventing drug than coffee, though. [A good timekeeper at under 5 minutes, and it got my productivity up too, but can't do it three days in a row.] I've caught myself ra-ma-ma-ma-ma-ma-ma-ing and swinging my head around whilst pattern cutting, so that's probably enough illustration of how much listening there was last weekend.
Cue in ~~conversation~~ shouting to Person XYZ, "what the hell are you doing? stop tarrying around and either do it or not, learn from your bloody mistake"... in August/September-ish? So vivid and punctuated with XYZ's trademark why-did-you-bring-it-up-lozah silence. (Maybe 'critic' or 'busybody' provide better-suited alternatives to 'lozah'.)
Cue in fashion sketches for personal consumption made over the weekend. Not relevant to the FMP - so not, other than cutting into valuable sleeping time.
Cue in Y3 T3 file list, which - according to my laptop- is about a month old. This file has crazy bats*** notes of what I want to do next term (i.e. what is not relevant in the immediate future but I'm keen to do before graduating anyway.) Which kinda goes with the fashion sketches, the mental convo, and Gaga.
Cue in November mental note on Person XYZ's behaviour. Oh, now it does make sense. Note that I never physically carried out the ~~convo~~ ~~threats~~ shouting with Person XYZ. Oooo, spooky.

It does get very, very spooky if I thought about the range of dreams I've been having in the past decade. Things like running away from an infectious scary thing/demon/soul-eater which leaves me tired but too worried to go back to sleep (as I have fallen back into 'Part 2' of certain dreams before.) The loud mental shouting, as they take on more ordinary tableaux, are not as scary, but post-even recognition gives an even stronger chill because it is so prescient and much more probable to take place.

Back to fashiony things.
If you were wondering whether I make my own clothes, well I don't do it very often. The sampling process for making one outfit (lovingly cut x 1 as my paper patterns read) gives approximately the same amount of mental hassle as that of five or six of the same thing for making multiples. The final fabric cutting and sewing for making multiples is more of a hassle given the larger amounts of fabric, but one can establish a rhytm and end up with a better time-spent-per-garment result as opposed to sampling just one thing. A brussel sprout split is smaller than a brussel sprout and therefore less bitter, thus my tastebud dictates. Which goes with costing principles.

This leads to: fashion creation is a circular loop. There is street trends, then high-end designer, then somewhere more commercial like this, then... ASOS copy for £5? [Sometimes.] Or maybe that thing in Spitalfields market was discarded excess stock or production leftover.

Anyhow. Shudder. Not for the circular loop, but for the prescience. Go back to the first bit of the post to read it. And maybe because of the cold. Multiple possible reasons.

(The general contemporary art school dogma is inspiration can come from multiple sources at the same time without predetemined flow and linear timeflows can be disrupted, although I dare part with my industrial sewing machine if anyone can re-jig time for me and get me a few extra weeks before hand in. Well, maybe these guys can oneday. )

Take care.

Mental note: Sassenach version of cullen skink = potato+leek+onion cream soup with flaked haddock poached in milk. Wouldn't last a day.

bleurgh

2010-02-19T15:01:00.006Z

Logging onto the university online noticeboard system, I encountered this lovely and helpful-but-could-they-have-told-us-earlier-than-today notice on Reflective Discourse (i.e. what you learnt from the academic year.)

Let's zoom in a little bit more...

Ouch.

I somewhat expected them to expect third-years to drum up something more academical-reading, but to the extent of referencing one's own diary? What kind of tortured soul am I supposed to be, Orson Welles? Does it not pleasure the teaching staff enough to see us final-year students going through the grind, only adding to the hoi polloi that we should be caged literary souls alongside that of OCD'ed freaks as well?

One thing I learnt is, design tutors tend to forget things more easily as opposed to technical tutors, who keep track of minutiae increments filed in mind. It does make me wonder whether successful designers end up having goldfish attention span length (hence the Galliano-like behaviour spectacles.) This year also gives an outlook on how tutors mark one's work - the system employed to enable tutors mark academic work makes it look as if it's certainly worth behaving like a donkey early on during the year as tutors set their expectations on various students. It is after all an academic circuit and not quite the professional fashion show circuit. But then, sticking to the regime helps develop professional discipline.

Referring to professional designers, it does make me rethink of my work experiences to date. There is no shortage of professional designers who [is forced/chooses to] merchandise*, as opposed to design, to round up their collection for the showroom, which eventually makes money for their living. Maybe because the design units are too small? Maybe there should be more duo designers to share the grey matter burden?

And now, to the issue of geographical cluttering.
Fashion capitals exist not only because of the resources promptly available (as for Paris and Milan) or number of designers clustered within one city. Culture plays a big part, too. For example, Indonesians would be aware of the fact that Jakarta spins money whilst Bandung comes up with ideas. The extensive endowments towards the setting up of public cultural spaces such as well-curated museums and performance halls has given most of Western Europe its cultural heft. (And the fact that it used to colonise vast swathes of the world, with artefacts available for not-so-voluntary picking on the natives' side.) Call it the rich man's cabinet like Banksy did if you like, but going to museums does help. I didn't exactly have an idea of what makes quilting it is, despite the wealth of craft books the college retained and that I read through, and all the shopping/market research that entailed (the shops only had those lousy square-diamond-quilted stuff as copied from Chanel. Ew.) I proceeded to hand-quilt a jacket lining for a friend's Christmas present, got thirdway through, went to the museum (whilst waiting for my visa), saw a quilt from the 15th century and realised where I went wrong. And how dedicated they were back then: white coarse threads on white fabric, with lousy needles, and nothing showing that is bigger than a pinprick on a quilt 4 metres by 6 wide. Try doing that under candlelight, if your eyes won't give out on you. (But then, they had the whole village and it took them a good few years to complete, I only have myself and maybe a few helpers and a few months to outdo that by a factor of three.)

Indonesia is still very weak on the culture dissemination factor, which is why I cringe everytime I think of going back to Jakarta for good. Lack of good museums, lack of good publications, and it can take a good two hours to reach the other side of town. Madness. I try to find jobs over here too, on this island and across the Channel and Atlantic pond, which is why I find this year so draining. Home and EU students can kick back their job hunting until after graduation by virtue of being able to stay back without needing a visa after graduation. Some tutors occasionally seem unable to comprehend the matter at hand because they need no visa to secure jobs around the world, and consequently thinks that me doing the job hunting early is having mixed priorities. I think they just don't get it. (Maybe I should try marrying an EU national for the passport. Two hours can get me to another country over here.)

Or, as one recent graduate put it, karena kita bukan seperti mereka. Discrimination still runs; maybe rather unintentionally because it's harder to employ non-EU individuals, but could also due to the whole past-colonialism issue (G will be happy to fill you in on this.)

This post definitely deserves the Y3 tag.
If there is one major issue I hold against the college, it's for its abysmal administration. Getting one's timetable released after the term started brings the term 'fashionably late' to a new level, albeit one that is callous instead of chi-chi.

Alright then, that's enough reference material for now.
I don't like complaining on my blog, but for the bloody discourse then I complain it is.

Take care.

*merchandise: re-presenting the same garment cut in different fabrics and different colours

little laborious enjoyments

2010-02-06T16:19:00.005Z

My family had just caught up with the Skype phenomenon... hohoho finally... but anyhow.

I was talking to my sister earlier over the phone, and whilst we had a little bit of commiserating over our little patch of not-so-illustrious luck in life, I had to admit I enjoyed the following:

- genuinely using up stationery
I had always been an avid stationery purchaser, and having accumulated a sizable stash, now I am just starting to gnaw at it (read: using it in a productive manner.) There is a sense of accomplishment, besides the slight panic, when one discovers the pencil lead refills in that little tube has gone flat. Same goes with erasers, which previously were replaced because (a) I was bored of them or (b) I lost them. Also, for being able to use four different pairs of scissors with legitimately justified different reasons: fabric, sticky tape, paper and threads. And a pair for kitchen business.

- looking at different, interesting things
Exhibitions, museums, library roaming, taking in street trends. Looking around with justification, and side effect of not actually taking time off work. Or being inspired whilst actually not working. It generally lasts for approximately two weeks at the beginning of every project, before hermit studio mode kicks in... which takes something like, three months? six months? That probably explains why some legendary fashion designers have equally legendary interpersonal skills (but then, it's not always the case, there are nice fashion designers out there these days.)

- fabrics galore
Many of those around me would attest that I have a passion (unhealthy obsession?) for satin ribbons. I can recall enjoying the touch of them since as young as three years of age. So, my little desire of running my hands on different textures of fabric actually gets an academic/professional justification these days. I don't design with satin that much these days, but I still use the first half-minute of entering any fabric store to run my hands up and down bolts of satin fabrics. It's such a joy.
Oh, and please don't cheat and try to sell off any satin-weave fabric as silk to me. I can tell.

- having a physical result at end of heavy toil
Actually being able to show and tell the results of my work is one of the joys of doing what I do now. Not just spreadsheets or arguments, actual physical stuff. It comes with a side effect of non-recognition of endless preceding failures (only the good stuff gets presented and circulated around) and distinct amnesia of "it actually takes hard work to get to the glamour bit", but hey. I can wear my final pieces around town. Spreadsheets sit on nicely labelled yet nondescript virtual corners of a hard-disk; printed out, their blank reverse sides become notepaper (if they are blank. Otherwise they get shredded right away.) Oh well, to each object their own end use. Old clothes bits end up as rags for shoes.
The downside is, if the produce is c***, I wouldn't want to show them around. And people will think I've been spending the past few months doing nothing, since nothing was being paraded around.

Take care, people.

when things can go wrong, they will do

2010-02-04T11:39:00.002Z

Such vexations, all in one swoop, and with the most unfortunate timing too.

uncomfortable cossetting

2010-02-02T13:18:00.002Z

To illustrate how deeply and almost singularly enmeshed I am with the task at hand (i.e. major project which counts for two-thirds of graduating mark), I have missed quite a few bits of news like this and a few other deaths. Rather late given the fact I used to work for the conglomerate, and only because a fellow ex-worker said something about it on Facebook (which I don't check often/thoroughly these days.)

Cooping up to work drives productivity high, but at what price?

moda panica à la студент

2010-01-29T13:05:00.006Z

According to R Phillips (yesterday), a design practitioner is supposed to get through something in the range of 3000-4000 drawings a week. Which works out to be around 500 drawings a day, more or less. Which made me wonder how he managed to do his supposed part of practising design.

And which, last night, resulted in this:

Seems like I need to learn to parla italiano, or 中国語を話しなさい, or 러시아어를 말하십시오 for that sake.

Just for fun, lovely readers.

discomfort produces results

2010-01-28T20:57:00.004Z

Pardon the title.

Having been raised in the little-supervision-and-maybe-not-enough-discipline camp, I have noted that I tend to work best under pressure. Not undue pressure, but just enough to perk up concentration and effort. Such as times like these... ah, for goodness sake I am meant to pattern-cut, not wail on my blog.

Anyhow.
Look at what I did last night! Here comes visualbite:

(Guess how it went for me last night.)

So yes, probably mild hunger is good. Although prolonged hunger is not preferred, and rational-sounding hunger ("I must be 8-stone skinny" types) are not quite physiologically justified.

And after attending a visual communication lecture earlier, ~~why didn't we have this talk two months earlier~~ I feel like this blog needs to be typed out or laid out in InDesign... any pointers, dear readers?

Take care.

this plus this plus that

2009-12-11T00:40:00.002Z

I've been trashing my living room floor with photocopies, tear sheets and fabric scraps for the past some time (was it November when it had some semblance of a normal living room?) Yeah, yeah - blame three projects running at the same time, blame my preference for a warm bed, blame the overcommitment, blame me in general...

Anyway.
My course is notorious for the lack of academic writing its students are expected to dish out - the lack of reading other than visual imagery vampirism. Or, exposure to non-picturebooks.
I've also been happily traveling around a very small area on the continent (as dear blog-reader once read/heard/came across), picking up bits and bobs of fabric. Whatever fine fabric, or dream material, or strange invention I would sample in the faint hopes of actually marginally benefiting a textile manufacturer. And preferably share the courier cost with some other folk from my intake. Oh yeah.

Almost three months down the line, I find myself replying to a forwarded email on how VAT charges work, and how much should be paid to the supplier and courier respectively, etc etc etc. (It's not 20 bloody percent, it's 7.6) Managed to come up with two possible alternatives, which is probably doing not much comfort to my courier-share other half and probably not what a tax consultant would give to its customer. (Note to self: you have just reduced your chance of working in tax/finance consultancy. Cue boos.) But then, non-awareness of tax and tariff is everywhere - myself included - and probably it's good that there is some sort of information available to clarify how much charges are applicable to different types of goods, and at which point in time they become payable. The commerce degree makes me comfortable mucking around numbers and reading self-looping circular logic of T&T. I may have just found myself a niche area in fashion I can work on.

I am truly my mother's offspring.

=.=

Why am I doing tax stuff at midnight?!
Whatever happened to designing and cutting and job-hunting?

In light of £45 courier charges, I. Must. Order. Fabric. In. One. Shot.
Next learning hurdle: How to buy just enough to sample, all in one order.
I guess this is what Adele meant by 'they didn't teach us this stuff in college'...

Marsha,
wanting a daschund,
been reading Suhu lately.

[ex]changing minds

2009-11-28T12:03:00.002Z

I'm quite happy to have design tutorials again, even when it means working myself crazy over the things I need to prepare (why does mmy head feel so giddy these days?) It means there is someone I can bounce things off with.

Also, I suspect my assigned design tutor is probably happier with Hoxton-type folks, which I tend not to be, even though I live in Hoxton. My mannerisms are probably too Sloaney for college folks. Or mumsy, depending on who you hear from. Last night I went to bed early in the morning - a combination of late finish at work, bus-waiting and a drawing spree - but it was very strictly in bed at home, granny style, and living in the heart of clubland hasn't increased the appeal of changing and trotting down for a long night at the clubs... although it's helpful to have a 24-hour neighbour dealing in electricity and gas. And two doing late-night (early-morning?) trade in kebabs and fast food.

Last weekend I met up with a certain ex-Miss (from 3 years back). She, her London-based friend and I went for tea, and only from this non-domiciled girl did we find out that M&S has a beauty line! How strange is that. Note: actually, how normal is that, considering that apparel companies have a hobby to branch into beauty products.

Coming back to designing, I'm finding myself to be a serial polygamist when it comes to sketchbook and log-keeping. Two sketchbooks (each with mutating functions), a to-work-on photocopy pile, a reject-but-potential photocopy pile, endless loose sheets of paper, drawings on bits of design on torn-off-from patern paper. And a somewhat catalogued database of digitally collected imageries and photographs. I do think a lot. And I find myself to be quite scatty, too.

Sewing-wise, this has led me to start bagging cut-up fabric pieces that belong to different garments into a bag of their own. Hopefully this approach would help.

And, erm, actually, I quite like darts in sleeves... if they are somewhoat horizontal. Because they blend with elbow-area wrinkling (thanks to Bertrand.)

Shoes are in the pipeline, although for now I am rather freaking out and feel like running around like a headless chicken. This giddy head addition isn't doing me a favour, either.

Have a good day!

the bait too bloody obvious

2009-11-18T01:45:00.005Z

Pet hates
- "where are you from? did you go back home this summer?" (on first design lesson)
- "do something with batik/ulos/songket/[insert your favourite textile tradition here]"
- certain types of I-am-too-proud-of-my-country final year collections
- 50 collections of laser-cut dresses, or 50 of digitally printed collections, or 50 collections illustrated on gaunt boxy-shouldered tweepy females, or "I am inspired by draping and bias cut" x50... just anything in quantity within a graduating year
- chiffon on satin evening dresses (next, please)
- darts

Also, but what is it with these?

Visual juxtaposition? Re-exercising Antwerp RA's third year brief? Or can he get away with this because he's bloody not colonialised to be classified as 'ethnic'?

Bruno said: vassever. Bloody hell to whatever 'do this' or pet hates. The more "multiple readings" I can cram into a collection, the better. Whether the exercise is seen as me bending to their [so-called] cultural will and the inevitable forces of globalisation is auxiliary.

I'm off to bed. Good day.

food thoughts

2009-11-01T11:56:00.003Z

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

2009-10-27T12:31:00.004Z

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

2009-10-26T07:10:00.005Z

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?

2009-10-22T13:33:00.006+01:00

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

2009-10-20T10:38:00.003+01:00

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

2009-09-06T14:17:00.004+01:00

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...

2009-09-04T14:21:00.003+01:00

...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!

new name given

2009-08-28T19:47:00.002+01:00

In London the standard pick-up line I come across is 'ni hao'; in here it's 'genki yo'.
...from being Chinese to being Japanese. So, anyhoo.

I'm in Paris.

France hasn't relatively changed much. The internet (yes there is wi-fi) is shamefully slow, 3G access is even slower, and food is expensive (and I keep on getting hungry.) Métro is well-organised but the signages suck. I should take more pictures.

On the other hand, even MacDo's serve good desserts. I bought one for €2 - its name start with Choco****** - and art books are relatively cheaper. Not that I have a generous travel budget and plan to help my luggage procreate, but this museum's bookshop is top-notch. Its exhibitions are top-notch, too. This evening I'm off to yet another museum (with a library - how cool is that.) If vendredi really means Friday, it means today it's closed at 11PM.

I also managed to go see Colette and, later on, walked around and got lost in Saint-Honoré looking for the station entrance and... tragically, found that I went in a circle and ended up back at the museum.

Please remind me to edit this post and insert the appropriate pictures, as I'd like to get on with museum visiting and not get bogged down trying to upload pictures on snail surfing :))

Alright, that's all for now. Time to set off once more.
Have a good day!

preparedness costs (sometimes)

2009-08-09T11:33:00.002+01:00

Last week, I enrolled myself into a summer short course (due to take place in late August) and paid the requisite fee in full. I decided to do this as soon as I could because there had been an occasion where a certain course I was interested in was cancelled due to lack of subscribers - I wasn't quick enough to register. Fees for a cancelled course are usually refunded in full, but there is an element of wasted time and opportunity when one could have been accomplishing something productive.

Anyhoo. This week, I went to said short course provider's website. It was to check on the course dates so that I could manage my internship and part-time work schedules. And guess what, I found out that the course prices were slashed... by 20%! That's enough savings to spend on materials for the course, modest sandwiches for lunch etc. I feel stung, very financially stung.

It does make me think whether being prepared comes with a price tag of paying price premiums - no discounts on course fees on this case. Or whether there are costs associated with being prepared in other sets of situations: getting turned down for pre-empting initiatives, etc etc.

On the brighter side, there is no course cancellation this time around. Hurrah to no delays on my learning outcomes ;))

Alright then, I'm off - Sunday is market time! I haven't been to Brick Lane, Camden Lock et al for a long time. Time to hunt for a cheap frying wok and some cool.

Miss-ing some hairs

2009-07-26T11:06:00.004+01:00

The newly crowned Miss England is an athlete, her runner-up a soldier commended for bravery in Iraq (excerpts here and there). This year's Miss Indonesia's list of achievements (sourced from e-very-where) sounded like a shrinking violet next to what her MW competitors are up to.

Don't get me wrong; I like multilinguists, especially those who can communicate their ideas in their non-native languages. But when the comparison game is on (and it happens in full force in pageants), six homeschooled diplomas seem somewhat insubstantial to root up claims of the Olympics training and war soldier types. There isn't much information as to why Karenina wanted to do MI09, but... I've long felt as if beauty pageant contestants in Indonesia are more of the 'careerist' types: set off and do modelling, then do beauty pageants, then find film work or something in the entertainment industry.

My dad once joked that if I had not been callously fed to formula milk on the day of my birth, I would have been taller than my sister and would've won the contest. To which I replied, "but then I would become an artis" (note the italicised spelling and context-specific meaning.) And I wouldn't be doing something I believe in, the way I am now. So never mind the smaller frame, I quite like it.

Back to the beauty queen talks...
If these Misses give a good representation of the countries and societies they hail from, I'm pretty sure Indonesians score pretty high on the thy-image-is-of-primary-importance column. Which is what would probably come in handy in the long run, since I'll be funding my livelihood from some sort of sartorial vanity fulfillment.

Ah well, so there went commentaries on current affairs.

Also, a friend commented on the chain picture I posted here. She asked me whether I was "really as chubby as the picture showed." Well, to that query I respond with the latest picture taken yesterday (along with online image distribution of the new haircut, albeit three weeks old):

Voilà. I believe I've done my blogging duties.
Have a good day!

One and Other

2009-07-12T11:51:00.001+01:00

pants on fire

2009-07-12T11:31:00.003+01:00

So when I went to work on Friday, I got off the bus at Cambridge Circus and was greeted with what seems to be an unusually smoky atmosphere.
(By the way, if you're expecting this blog to be a twittering source of up-to-the-minute journalistic news, it is with regretful pain I remind you that Mr Google could supply you with an abundance of that, and sadly this blog-writer comes loaded with satire and grossly inobjective opinions. Well, whatever you make of it, really.)

What made it interesting was because the said fire started in an office building. Office building = papers + computers + aircon system. No fire, noting the smoking ban in public spaces. So... I felt rather inclined to adopt a Soho restaurant manager's suggestion (after being asked "does that building house a restaurant?") that is more conspiratorial than Englishly decent, that maybe someone got disgruntled and set fire to the building. Which made my opinion of bankers and financiers inch slightly more towards that 'debit' side of journals, personality-wise. Of course, this opinion is a crude collective average, and individuals may do rather well to debunk this myth.

Aside from this issue, other bits of news from me are:
- I didn't know Fanny Hill is a period drama
- I signed up for the Fourth Plinth... hee hee heee

Alright then, that's all for now - have a good day!

sweatbag notes

2009-07-06T09:41:00.006+01:00

Hello!
I've been having some sort of holiday for the past two weeks. With second year now firmly behind me, the trials and tribulations of third year awaits (it actually have started quite gently this summer.) My academic course leader sternly told us to 'get fit and start going to the gym now' because third year would be like a boot camp... although I prefer swimming over treadmills. I would use the Eurostar more often. And I would probably sport this kind of expression more often:

That aside, I have been holidaying on the right side of the Channel last week. It... was....... niiiiiice. I like it! :D Although this year it was quite hot in summer with temperatures reaching (and occasionally exceeding) 30°C, which means I was walking around like a sweatbag. Not an appetising description, I know, but illustrative and quite accurate. It was like Jakarta minus the smoke and abang-abang.

One thing that I really liked about summer, despite the temperature, is the amount of extra sunlight we get. In London, the sun rises up before 5AM in high summer. When he was around, my father made a remark about how I was late for work because it was already 6:30 in the morning and I was still in bed (the plan was to 'tube' for 20 minutes to catch a train departing Waterloo at 6:50AM.) To which... I sleepily told him that it was still 4AM. Bright, blue-sky 4AM. Well... the sunset helps too - it's still quite bright at 9PM, the darkness only setting in about half an hour later. Summer equals a whole lot more of sunlight.

Which bring me to the point of An Inconvenient Truth. I borrowed this book from the library out of unplanned curiosity, and read about Earth's annual cycle of 'breathing in' and 'breathing out'. Since most of the landmass (and by implication greeneries) are north of the equator line, and since there is more photosynthesis happening at summertime due to increased sunlight, there is more CO2 absorbed from the world during the northern hemisphere's spring and summer seasons. Vice versa, there is less CO2 absorbed during the winter seasons. This may partially explain why I feel so energised in spring and summer... maybe it's psychological and physiological after all.

There were a few solutions I was thinking of as well: meltwater pools absorb more heat and fasten the disappearance of icebergs... use mirrors? Reflect more light back into space?? This kind of solution is BandAid-style and would probably mitigate very little problems.

Anyhoo, that's probably what I have to say for now.
Comments?

me and my group mates

2009-06-12T15:09:00.005+01:00

Lookin' good... or at least feigning to.

(move move move)

2009-05-10T17:41:00.002+01:00

Needless to say, it is daunting to sign my name on a money-draining flat tenancy contract.

I recently moved to a flat a stone's throw away from college. Guess it means there is no excuse for being late, playing truant or general-purpose slothness. Friends and classmates have warned me of the imminent danger and, currently staying alone, I must find ways of keeping myself productive throughout the day. As a note, blaming a brand-new bed is not within the scope of 'being productive'.

The previous occupant has kindly left me with a few cleaning products, but I still need to buy a new mop (and floor disinfectant) in order to mop clean the flat. I've decided to scrimp and save, and asked my now ex-flatmate's mom to lend me her spare crockeries and dining utensils... as well as one of her microwaves. As she will be coming towards the end of the following week, for now I'm making do with takeaways from work. It's a good thing the takeaway boxes are made out of some aluminium, so I could happily pop them on the hotplates to heat them up.

And... I think I'm missing a door for the kitchen. Gotta ask the agent where that has gone off to, and whether he can get one for me.

Also, I think I've got the home decorating bug happening. This is dangerous stuff.

The internet is, happily, not quite connected for now.
It's a strange response, but I find working in group works better without the 'net's distractions.

Alright then, take care!

sayings

2009-04-15T08:37:00.002+01:00

Do you remember the old saying "you reap what you sow"?

Well, here are some takes on the classic:

The minimalist
"If you don't sow, you don't reap."

The ecological rice farmer
"Even if you sow, when it floods you won't reap."

That's all for today - thank you folks!

shifty billing practices

2009-04-12T15:11:00.002+01:00

What it costs to:
Receive your itemised phone bills by post £3
Not set up a direct debit to pay for bills £3
Pay your bills with cheque through the post £4

So, if you have your bill on paper to thoroughly check it, distrust unscrutinised-for-ever direct debits to clear your bills and like to post a cheque for your bill to keep the little paper-y bit to file, this lovely mobile phone network will be charging you an extra £10 a month plus VAT (note seething sarcasm.) And all these changes happen without them being communicated - these amounts are simply added on to my bills.

It was as if 3 is trying to get customers who don't scrutinise their bills, don't check their finances thoroughly, and discriminate against elderly and business customers who find more security (and comply with paperwork) by paying by cheque. Any other deviation from this standard, 18-30yo money-loose customers will result in the customer in question being penalised for not conforming to their easy-to-deal-with, voiceless customer.

I don't buy into direct debits, given that I like to keep a bare minimum amount on my card (in case of loss or theft.) I like to know exactly when and how much money comes out of my account - i.e. actually making the payment for my bills. When I try to do so online, the system barred me from doing so because my bill and bank account postcodes do not match. Ha! I have asked them to update it almost three months ago, and by stupid reason I was told that the bill postcode is one of last year - when the previous month's bill had been paid exactly in the same manner, and was approved. Out-of-date records? Ha! Your company's fault and not mine. If you had the guts to have overseas call centres to slash costs, at least keep your records synchronised at all times.

And no, I'm not buying into the 'paperless bills save the environment' argument. It's way too blatant they're trying to eke out 3 quid per month by way of green guilt exploitation. They still send me loads of promotional mail, all of them printed on glossy paper, and all of them sent to my current address. If they liked their bill paper so much, they can eat it and not have my contract.

I will rub this on their face. Seriously.
They have the cheek to charge me without proper disclosure!

Somebody can remind me to harass the contract sales guy the next time he gives me a call.

something that went past

2009-04-10T20:38:00.002+01:00

The portico entrace to National Gallery is flanked by two Neoclassical-looking stone vases. These vases are filled with fresh flowers.

Today I made my visit there. Again. For the third time this week. (Yes.)

Tonight I just realised the flowers were blooming; they gave off a fragrance that drew me to willingly spend twenty minutes sitting underneath some floral arrangement to enjoy the smell and silhouette. It's a strange realisation that comes only after going there a few times, each time a day after another, that these flowers need to bloom before their fragrances can be sensed.

As for the more mundane details of its visual effects: white fragrant lilies (major contributor to most noticeable smell), garden variety-style white English roses, orange spray flowers, yellow blooms on straight branches, more blooming yellow blooms on smaller branches (that droop down), and plenty of lily foliage forming the mass of green filler as backdrop to other flowers. A seasonally appropriate arrangement in light of the Easter weekend. And sorry, dim museum lighting means no pictures.

On my way home, I encountered an elderly man with a soft woolen cap who was keen to talk to me; I happily obliged. (What I mean by 'old' here is 70-80yo kind of ancient, not the 40-50yo kind.) Nevertheless, whenever I get praised I feel uncomfortable. Being comparatively independent in domestic matters made me get into the autopilot of "I can do it" and "if I don't do it myself/supervise directly/hold a decent amount of control then I'm gonna lose it" problem-dealing principle. Ice this stance with "solve problem myself", and I've got myself a recipe for disaster and breakdowns. Ow. I still find it hard to trust people other than myself. D:

Well, in the meantime: three days left for the Easter weekend, three more days before start of short course, two more days of lent. There is a slow food fair held this weekend at Southbank - it sells spit-roasted pork and lamb (!) which I will come back for on Monday. Although going pescatarian was quite a trick, I think I've outgrown the challenge of staying off certain types of food. A friend confessed to giving up speaking in the first person back in high school, therefore answering for teachers' queries in third person singular... which should be not too weird in English, but apparently quite frustrating to his teachers (they couldn't tell him off for being religious. Ha.)

Anyhoo, it's early days but with the benefit of retrospective sight: happy Easter!

stir-fried secrets

2009-03-25T15:08:00.003Z

Given my decision to go pescatarian for Lent, I've been pushing the kitchen guys at work to prepare nice vegetables-based dishes - staff members aren't allowed to order fish dishes to bring home due to exorbitant piscine prices. Veg satay (sans peanut sauce) is good, and the head chef is particularly talented with stir-fries, so I've been ordering broccoli in ginger and garlic sauce (along with sauce-less veg satay) for takeaways. So, what is the secret to mouth-watering stir fried vegetables?

Apparently, they are "hot wok" and "parboiled vegetables".

Something worth trying when I get my hands on a good stove.

deep-set tube lines

2009-03-23T23:38:00.000Z

This post shall revolve around the bane that is London public commuting.
(References: here, there and another one.)
If you aren't familiar with London Underground, I'd recommend reading the reference material first to benefit from the added knowledge. Anyhoo, here it comes.

Victoria Line

Having lived on and around the Victoria line since my early days in London, I know a tube line's reputation can change: it used to be the reliable line I rely on to get around on weekends when the unsalubrious duo of Circle and District lines are "closed for engineering works" (God knows what is fundamentally wrong with the design of these two lines) before it started to close early at night to help Victoria line cope with more people being crammed onto its platforms at peak times.

Changing for the Victoria line at Victoria in morning rush hour is possibly comparable to the feeling of sardines being crammed into a tin can - except that we're alive, wriggling and there's that chance of having one's face wedged into someone else's sweaty armpit. Sometimes I had to let two or three train services pass before I could get onto the platform edge, and it took two good minutes for people to unload and more people to hopelessly crush themselves into the carriages (myself included, plus portfolio.) This was one of the reasons why I moved to Holborn. When I moved to my current place, I discovered (to my pleasure) that I could still get a seat on my way to internship if I get onto Victoria line before the service passes Victoria station. Those on District line, eat your heart out ;))

Central Line

Always busy in the morning.
There are odd times when a 9:40AM Eastbound service from Oxford Circus station is busier than one at 9:10 (considering offices start at 9), but in general cramming is more necessary when the gaps between services are longer - 5 minutes means no seats whereas 2-3 minutes still leaves plenty of room to breathe.

Not my favourite line, but reasonably reliable and has possibly the best track record for all deep-set tube lines. The main irritation these days comes when I make trips to Shepherd's Bush on a Saturday, which means the carriages are packed with strollers, excessively sized shopping bags and people who try to act posh and cool because they are planning to spend part of their day at Westfield. It means I have to jostle for seats and space - a problem I never had in the past, even when I have four bags of fabric to lug.

Northern Line

A working train comes every 2-3 minutes, which (for my standard) is really good. There's a good selection of places I can get to (college/Southbank/Soho/Angel), but travelling for classes in Shepherd's Bush was a hassle and takes 90 minutes. Services on both northern branches are pretty good, but the carriages are much less crowded on the more west-leaning Edgware branch and I can still pick and choose seats even at morning rush hours.

I used to live on this line, until the daily twelve-minute hike to the station and twice-weekly disruptions took its toll and I decided it was high time to move. No more Northern line for me now, except for trips to KY's and other necessities.

Jubilee Line

I once tried to ingratiate myself to this line by taking a service from Baker Street (home to Sherlock Holmes) to Stratford (future Olympics-related rejuvenation site)... only to learn that I have to touch in and out (and got an extra charge) to change to Central line at Stratford. It's a strange line that has two different types of looks: the 1930's art deco lines observed on the northwest half, and the concrete-steel-glass aesthetic apparent on the southeast extension.

Lately, it's been having its share of engineering works over the weekend, making it rather unappealing and counter-productive in terms of having interchange lines for a Soho-roamer like me. Moreover, I've been making two trips on this line in the past week, and both were quite disastrous in terms of timeliness. One time it was partially closed exactly where and when commuters most need it, and earlier today due to "a person who has been disallowed on deep-set tube lines" being asked by the train driver to get off at Westminster. To that person, congratulations on succeeding to make others wait for you. To the CCTV operators, I didn't expect that style of Big Brother health and safety supervision to actually intervene with my commuting. So in short, Jubilee line is strange in a non-comforting manner.

Piccadilly Line

Let's leave this for another day - it goes to Heathrow for the airport, therefore its services are reliable and it is most supervised to prevent gaffes and harm to the national/regional injury from being done. As for self, avoid Knightsbridge station at Harrods' closing time, and avoid the Piccadilly Circus - Kings Cross section as much as possible. There are way too many commuters, platforms could be closed if they were overcrowded, and the services run at substantially slower speed. Moreover, who'd like to tube it from Leicester Square to Covent Garden when you can spend some leisurely time walking?

In general

London Underground is quite unreliable, but luckily its deep-set are quite okay. Well, it's okay when compared to the 15-plus-minute wait I was subjected to in Melbourne. Its carriages are a bit on the short side for taller people, and nobody really wants to know what colour Victoria line's seat covers were like originally. But, despite Big Brother-style monitoring, there's one thing I can do:

Bring strange objects into the tube and take pictures within the carriages.

So yes, with the picture today's rant ends here!

seemingly carefree, but actually dragged around

2009-03-05T01:51:00.002Z

Having been way more than happy to drop dead after dinner, I put aside my online/virtual presentation aside, and now it's high time for more other bloggers' posts-inspired talks. Of this nature.

The circumstances surrounding a scholarship student's life in Singapore may be as far removed as it could be by one parental-funded thousands of miles away in good old Blighty. But regardless of how financially easy life can be, for students mettling their skills overseas one thing remains true: the weight of expectations heaved upon shoulders are potentially crippling.

It is almost common fare to hear comments along the spectrum of "since you studied overseas you can definitely be on top of everyone else". Comments of this genre are pervasive. The issue here is not about the seemingly mediocre quality of education that Indonesia offers (interestingly there is a younger generation of home-raised bloggers who emulate their thoughts at least on the same level with their internationally educated counterparts.) The issue here is about how a period of a few years, culminating with a piece of paper and photos of youths in togas, is seen as a talisman that bestows enviable skills and a securely fast-tracked career path.

In art schools, a particular emphasis is put on the final degree show. This is where usually heavyweights of the sectors descend to lend their gravity and legitimation to what the media believes will be those 'to watch'. (And quite unsettlingly, the 'to watch' posse will be on show in the media much to the chagrin of those the media deems to be more difficult to pull a selling story from.) More specifically, in fashion design pathways it is common bitter medicine to learn about how and why a final degree show collection could be stolen, shredded into pieces and/or burned to bits. There is an almost feverish quality about 'making it in the degree show' as a finished and perfect end product of design education. Given the fact that talent is developed and nurtured to mature over an extended period of time, this kind of instant noodle mentality is disturbing. (If not ultimately destructive, that is.)

I personally feel these burdens are starting to creep up, niggling my consciousness. There will be times when my errant mind (whilst the body is in commute) runs financial simulations of "what next year will cost", compares it with "what I know is available plus what I can earn", then consider the time burdens of "what I can earn" against "how much time I can reasonably spend in life next year". Or when I consider in which direction I might need to expand my skills, how much extra learning and extra cash I must put it, and how it relates to gainful employment. They invariably leave me feeling depressed/negative/pessimistic at worst, and mildly amused at my own adventurousness at best. Decorate the dreaded cake with an icing of pride stemming from a desire to be financially independent, and you get an unpleasant dessert to consume.

Oh man...
Despite of how relaxed the image of an art student is, an image is a representation of reality and in itself is not the reality - the reflection in the mirror is not the actual object, no? I barely have time to read more literature works that I want to read for the sake of reading them. I promised myself to watch Australia, Che, Valkyrie, Doubt, Bride Wars, Benjamin Button and a host of other highly fantastic popular movies, yet I haven't gotten around to them... and this is March already.

If you see me acting a bit insane and morose, please be understanding and help me accommodate the slice of life served on my plate.

Hope you have a good day :D

behind the studio

2009-02-25T08:19:00.004Z

I hope this post covers a bit of what I've been going through this term - work experience at a fashion company.

I opened myself to a slew of areas I could stick my hands and teeth into: research and design, manufacturing, sales/marketing/management and media positions. I believe I was well-equipped to tackle any of the above areas without much problems, and my CV probably has enough backing in its own right. I took two sessions and whittled down my CV from four pages to an unbelievable page count of two! Apparently the placement broker halve every page number figure we came up wth. Or maybe it happened only to me and another girl.

The hunt for internship started in September, and by early November I was frustrated since I clocked only two interviews with paltry reception and became quite desperate to secure one in order to pass this term's learning objective (10-week internship and a 3000-word report on the internship.) Early December came, over half of the class seemed to have secured an internship and I still belonged on the unsecured side of things. Should I take the Melbourne offer and miss a winter? Or should I go back to Indonesia for a decent internship? I was rapping my fingers on the desk and wham - three offers came in hours apart from each other! They were all studio jobs in design and development. I picked one and rejected the other two.
(I realised I've been making choices out of threes, so maybe it's time to learn to be patient and reasonably wait for 'that one offer' to come.)

I've got to admit that I'm quite lucky relative to what my classmates land themselves onto. The hours are 10-6 weekdays, with the unsavoury-yet-almost-ubiquitous weekend extensions a few weeks prior to a catwalk or a trade show. The extensions themselves can run either at quite reasonable hours or simply be nothing more than a desperate attempt to create show pieces (or even core collection for some time-challenged designers), although I doubt people would actually be sane enough to sew and embellish at 2AM - interns may be endearingly kind to do it for your, though. According to the sample machinist at work, this is usually the case for higher-end brands. No thank you, I love to droll along supermarket aisles and have my dinner at home before the short hand points to 9. I'm glad this isn't my lot.

Other than that, I had minor trips to source trimmings - four trips so far out of 33 days.
Two trips to deliver garments.
Four factory visits.
I scourge over their purchase invoices and try to determine where they get their supplies from and who ordered what, and learnt that they tried to push people to purchase in GBP because it's financially more advantageous due to current exchange rates.
I learnt that there are 10,000 different classifications of garments and uniforms currently used for exporting purposes (with different tax implications) and that the company uses about... 50 of them, maybe?
I learnt that grading a dress into one size costs £90.
I learnt that saving fabric is not always the method that saves the most money (depending on how you value your time laying out the pattern pieces), that cabbage is a curse of the outsorcer and a right of the manufacturer.
I learnt that many who work in fashion design are either vegetarians, pescatarians or partial to marinated olives.
I learnt that 'factory' really meant CMT employing less than ten workers, that you'd need to converse in Polish to understand the gossips around the machines, that Angela McRobbie's book frighteningly represents the reality and is a more elaborate explanation of why my mum was opposed to a career path in this industry.

These factors lead me to three conclusions:
- let's look for a paid internship in a related but different area
- maybe I should look for a career in the academic field
- what about post-study work experience?

To be continued - I need to go to work.

summer 2009 plan

2009-02-25T07:39:00.005Z

Hello.

I plan to spend my summer in the northern hemisphere this year. It's still unclear whether this means "London", "travel the world" or something else.

I've been getting advices on how to spend my summer this year, namely:

1. Go home
The option I dread the most. I would be way too unproductive in preparation for my third year, not to mention four long-haul flights to get there and back. The saving grace is finding factories for sample production. There's also the chance to test out AirAsia's new London Stansted - KL service (price-wise it's better to book with Emirates or Etihad in January though.) Last year I missed the chance to grit myself with short courses... and given my love of learning, I'd probably skip this option.

2. Take courses across the Channel
I was told to take on a short course in Milan or Paris for networking purposes. Which sounds great, until I worked out the finance part (half of a year's school fees for a three-week short course? Those continentals are nuts.) The execution is, sadly and rather inevitably, shelved due a chronic lack of funds.

4. Work experience
Add another name onto the growing list on CV. Opportunity to network and source HR are greatly increased. Getting the right label to write a reference letter for your is a covetable pearl, but with that comes the shark of getting worked to the bones under a thinly veiled reason of 'training' and 'self-development'. So much for apprenticeship. And you'd think sweatshopping is dead. (Quite the opposite, actually.)

5. Travel to China and HK
For obvious reasons: find factories. Buy fabrics. Stay for free.
(Learn Mandarin phrases above "tuoshao", "xie xie" and "wo ai hong bao" - but they'll arise out of necessity. The Chinese community in London would be pleased with the vocabulary progress.)

6. Holiday travel
Lovely opportunity to relax, but who'd pay for me?

[Well, there was no number 3 and I intend to keep it that way.]

As for the more boring details of life this month... I believe they deserve a post of their own. Coming up soon!