one-way trade?

Read an article about David Cameron coming over for a two-day visit to Jakarta.

First: poor Dave. Brits worship sunshine, but I don't know what he'd make out of combined sunshine, pollution, and humidity.

Second: poor Dave. Fillon beat him by almost a year.

Third: poor/hello Dave. France sent a Second-in-Command (not Sarkozy - I wonder how it would turn out if he had walked the tarmac instead).

The more important issues: What kind of talks did Dave and Bambang* have? Did Dave talk with Marty? I'm not so well-versed in defense strategies so I will give that topic a pass, but what about trade? Is it really equally bilateral, is it we-come-here-for-favours type of bilateral, or is it something else? I smell Perry's black ships in the air... but then again, I might be overcautious, I might be irrationally historically referential, I might be right, or I might be plain wrong. Interesting stuff.

On trade, I would rather be able to ship my things to UK (to sell there) without incurring crazy customs fees. £35 is nowhere near enough for sending anything. Maybe the audience can share a few things about these potentially nefarious webs of knowledge?

Also, how did they converse?

I imagined that I was in the vicinity of these decision-makers, somehow got roped into a chat with them and got asked about where I used to live (somewhere unsalubrious) and what I used to do (something vain). Then somehow I got recruited as 'special advisor' (Dave's preferably), got overworked and overpaid and overnetworked, and... return to my field in the next few years. Or maybe not at all. I might end up a prime minister! Ha.

Anyhoo, good night people.

*I do not like his usual moniker, and since his first name sounded a bit off, I settled for his second name instead.

an entire month went by...

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!

just quick, generally

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.

pissed.

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.

sharp rage

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.

tomorrow, or later on today

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.

critical employment benefits

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.

list of ten...

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.)

4 years of college

...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.

do I have to type it out thrice?

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

...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!

moreness

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

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!

[I don't like] today

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

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.

prescience

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.

little laborious enjoyments

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.

this plus this plus that

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

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!

proverb-twisting

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

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

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

There you go.