i've been going through some sort of emotional roller coaster up and down and up and down it's driving me crazy. This is why i'm staying in the states for the next few years to adjust and change and start anew. to be where no one really knows me or my past, to at least try and experiment and not worry about reactions and all that.

When chrystal commented that i was a closed book, it made me reflect and wonder. I have so many insecurities within me that makes me put on masks of all sorts that even i wonder who i really am and what is truly me. Perhaps i'm not a closed book or a book that is hard to read. maybe my book is full of jumbled up letters that no one, including myself can read, cos the author herself can't make it out herself. I see others and I wish within me that i could be someone else. I want to change, but i dunno where to start and how to do it. so i stay the same.

i wonder whether it was the right decision to go to art school, one overseas at that. I'm happy that it is a form of escape, to start anew, to escape from all things bad like family and its events and dramas. I feel more like a stranger among them, unable to express myself, having to put up a false front and all that jazz. it's like broadway, but with no chance for mistakes and NGs. it's a live telecast show. yet on the other hand, you can't help but face with the siblings' jealousy of being overseas, the constant guilt and burden from the financial issues. you know you can't turn back and say i quit. and to top it off the emotional rollercoaster, i'm faced with the onslaught of the awkwardness of puberty of my brain and i suddenly realised certain stuff and the world around me. i feel stupid asking my friends such questions. questions that they had asked in lower sec. why am i so retarded???

anyhows. time to return draws nearer. and sadly, i received the news from jill herself that she is not returning to scad. i have no idea what is going to happen to the dorm. will it just be nicole and i or rather, mainly just me since nicole is hardly in the room anyway. at least i dun have to worry about blender noises in the morning when i dun have classes at 8, nor do i have anyone to make me feel competitive, i can work at my own pace, even late into the night cos jill used to sleep so early. still. it's gonna be weird not having her around after all these while. I'm more afraid of the new roommate shud i get one :S ho hum....life will be interesting.

on a happier note, caught snow white and the seven dwarfs with sarah on saturday before cg. it wasn't mind blowing fantastic. i guess it's also cos after watching those on broadway...singapore productions are really...local stuff. with your typical jokes on MM, SM and all that...and of course, the sexual innuendos.

still, it felt good watching a production :) makes me think about the past training at lasalle with nicole stinton. makes me want to turn to minoring in theatre once again. I AM SUCH A FICKLE IDIOT. hahaha. i'll just take theatre as an elective and then decide. lol.

I've been MIAing the past few days becos i was with 3 other wonderful people in not too far away hong kong where china pandas can be found :) uber cute greedy pandas. ATE AND ATE AND ATE. i wish i were a panda in an enclosure with all my good friends and have no worries and just eat all day long and dun care about dresses and skirts and being fat becos i look cuter fat if i'm a panda anyway.


this trip was an uber budget one. we lived a total budget travellor's life and the only thing we lacked to fit that image was those backpacker's backpacks. for one...we lived in an uber shabby building - the uber old hong kong HDB flat that is falling apart. check it out!!!

hahaha. but seriously. the usa hostel that we stayed in was pretty good with proper beds and toilet and aircon and all. the only thing unhotel-ish is the toilet door which is kinda like the one we had in portugal. frosted glass window at the door and no lock. except this is worse cos the toilet is so small the bathing space is the only standing space and the moment the door open u are exposed. so we had to use a chair to block off the thing to protect all our privacy. not that i think the other girls cared. haha. nonetheless, the hostel room was sufficient for the bare necessities of shitting, bathing, resting and chilling. it was the place we spent every night just playing games and having "heart to heart" talks. rather. it was more of digging out dirty secrets and hidden opinions even though to put it nicely, it was getting to know one another better.

we managed to do all that we needed to do - shopping, buying winter jacket for the cold winter in savannah, eating local food, our egg tarts, dim sum and steamed milk, ocean park, victoria peak etc etc. the typical stuff u do in hong kong anyway. i'm quite proud of myself at riding some of the rides in ocean park. i think going with friends give you more guts and for the first time i am seen smiling. not ducking in the photos of rides. perhaps taking plane rides have trained my system to the feeling of free falling as felt during turbulence. SPEAKING OF TURBULENCE, i fear for my life flying in a plane with cheryl and bobo who have their phones turned on despite reminders from the air crew to have all electronic devices, especially phones to be turned off throughout the entire duration of the flight. secret terrorists.

there was a whole load of walking during this trip. even with comfortable sport shoes my feet still hurted. hong kong is too bloody crowded for me to live there without stress. i will never forget that scary pushing and shoving into the train during peak hour. no doubt people were really orderly when it came to waiting for the train, but by the time we missed 4-5 trains no one could care less about being patient and courteous and just shoved and pushed to get on. and then there's the language barrier. my chinese has deproved so much so that i have problems even trying to order food from the chinese menu and i was stuck ordering wanton mee most of the time cos it was the only thing i recognised on the menu. saddd.

many thanks to chrystal for being our main translator for everything. i feel quite bad but ya. thanks for all the help. she's been such a mummy on this trip, dragging me around to make sure i won't get lost. helping me to settle my winter shopping otherwise i'll come back with nothing at all, and helping us to find the places we need to go. chrystal we love u!

and then there's also cheryl who was the one who planned everything. and my pacey who i love dearly. (but yet have hardly any pictures with cos cheryl kept u all to herself and i had many photos with chrystal even though she denies the fact that we have proper photos together)

and last but not least, to me, for being the epic failure and a great entertainment at the expanse of my deflating ego.

girls. what would i do without u all??? let's gather every year even though we're far apart in different corners of the world. let us never let this friendship die.

I AM OOOOLLLLDDD NOWWWWW :( i can't believe that i'm reaching the big 2 in a years time. oh my mummy. that is terrible. on the brighter side. at least i have less candles to blow out.

a big thanks to the many friends and loved ones that wished me happy birthday and it once again reminds me of the great many of you who has shown that i matter to you guys enough for you to remember my birthday (and of course many thanks to facebook who has helped many of us, including myself)

celebration for my 19th was a simple affair. i realised that as you grow older, birthdays don't really matter much (or perhaps we are just in denial of the fact that we are getting older and OLDER). no longer is there the excitement that we had when we were mere lil ones (must have been that desperate desire to grow out of school and start earning money in the workforce) perhaps also cos there's a decreased desire for parties and cakes (desire for presents still remains, though what kind has changed drastically i think). yet one desire still remains - for friends to remember and be there to celebrate with you.

anyhows, it felt like an ordinary day, apart from the constant in flood of sms wishes and the yummy meal that my family had at some zi char coffeeshop where i feasted on chilli crab all by myself and cereal prawns. YUM. gone are the days of having western food. i stick by my asian roots when it comes to food. haha.

then went for cg where they surprised/stunned me after prayer whereby i looked up and there was my cake held by kelvin. tsk. to think i thought it was normal for my grp to be the last to start praying and finish. sneaky liz chay and loke. i didn't even suspect. oh the warmth of my cee gee :D thanks everyone. they made me blow out my candles almost fish & co style - from a distance. now blowing out 10 candles in one breath is no easy feat at a distance. i wanted to kill the last 3 candles that would go out while i blew and flickered back to life the moment i went out of breath. it was frustrating to the point of fainting and with great embarassment yet amusement.

my elder bro winnie was really sweet as well to have gotten me an art book for my birthday from page one. it's entitled "all men are brothers" -__-zzz are you trying to say something??? anyhows..before you wonder what on earth is that book all about, it's really and purely a graphic design collection of works from various male artists with interviews. while i thank my brother for being so sweet and making me so touched to the verge of tears with his awesome love for me, he tries to deny his brotherly love by saying that he bought it during a sale and it was cheap cos it was printed in singapore. hahaha. oh brother.....**RUFFLES HAIR**

and now...to my quest of art supplies hunting for the next quarter. oh gosh. even while saving on what materials i have left...i will be spending a total of 120 USD on color theory stuff and partial drawing materials. oh woe....and now i know i will have a short life. my new professor doesn't want us to get rubber cement. especially when using indoors for the fumes are toxic. i wonder how much of my life i have shortened during the previous quarter at scad :S no wonder all of us can't do maths for shit.

i am so sleeppppyyy...probably becos of the huge amount of flour in my stomach from this afternoon's mee hoon kuay and from the exercise of kneading the dough to make the mee hoon kuay.

had a bit of trouble waking up this morning to go to bobo's house cos i stayed up late watching all the tuesday crime night shows of crimminal minds and some drama about missing people and whoooshh..it was 1am or smth spent alot of time yesterday playing scrabble. haha. i think now that i'm back i'm expanding my vocab. well...not much. just knowing that the word exists, but not knowing its meaning. haha. i think it's time my family invested in a scrabble dictionary :D

anyhows. back to the mee hoon kuay. i finall managed to drag myself out of bed to head to bobo's hse and when i got onto the bus i got the pleasant surprise of a new bus with beautiful and hip red and black seats :) yay. it feels good to go into the nice buses. i love the fact that there are some special buses in Singapore that are planned differently from the normal buses like the limousine bus and the bar bus. quite cool to have velvet seats/leather seats :D anyway. the weirdest thing on the bus was how they used the mrt warning signals about the closing doors and it was quite strange to be on the bus and yet here the sounds of being on hte train..that kinda threw me off and made me confused -___-

soooo....mee hoon kuay turned out pretty good, even if it required alot of work mixing and kneading, but we had fun. we even decided to not cut mee hoon kuay the usual way and made it a happy meal/mee hoon kuay by using the cookie cutters and having flower/star/christmas tree/moon shaped mee hoon kuays :D hee hee oh yumminess and happiness :)

i think the stuff we need to improve on is to not use egg yolk the next time cos the dough came out strangely yellow and to make the mee hoon kuay thinner cos it was quite tiring to chew. hahaha. and and and...WE MUST LEARN TO MAKE GOOD STOCK FOR THE SOUP. very important. but other than that....i reckon we are so good we can open a shop :) hahaha. man it was good to eat fried shallots and fried ikan billis.

and once we were full and happy we lumbered around and played with bam bam and salt and pepper. hahha. BAM IS TERRIBLE. she is so sneaky...she will be nice and gentle and cute, licking ur hands with her minute tongue and then SUDDENLY BITE YOU. damn annoying. GRRRRR...and she is sooo fussy. she only eats the sunflower seeds. horrible hamster. haha. so in the end we fed the cooler hamster food to salt and pepper the guinea pigs :) oh...i get to take care of bam for a few days while pacey is away in malaysia :D

ham ham bam bam

I think the next time i get back to Georgia i will feel homesick. it's only after i come back and re-experience my normal life again that i realise how much i treasure it. not quite the food now, but rather the people.

it definitely felt good to meet up with chrystal and chillax in her wonderful room once again, just like how we used to before i left. i realised how much i miss her, how much i miss hearing her wise words of wisdom, her randomness, just being with her. OH CHRYSTAL. DUN BE JEALOUS BOBO. hahaha.

then there was going for cg. though most of the girls pang seyed me, leaving just ziyan and i as the only girls, it still felt amazing to be back. to be back with the guys and just listen to their utter rubbish nonsense, to laugh at their ridiculousness and thick-headed silliness, to hear all things familiar and just soak myself in my comfort zone. to laugh out loud, to respond and speak without worrying about what others think. so much more.

though i was surrounded by relatively wonderful people in the states, there were many times where i had to struggle with being laughed at for the culture differences, the inability to accurately express myself cos of the lack of knowledge of singlish, to be stared at with the "you are crazy/what the hell" glare for jokes that would probably be funnier in the singaporean context or simply just my normal behaviour. no doubt the church and cell group was full of people who were passionate and definitely inspirational, i might as well have been watching a dvd of it all.

sometimes i sit at my desk looking at the facebook pictures of people back home and i think about what would life be like if i took on the place offered at NTU's ADM. it looks so tempting, so fun. many thoughts run through my mind, in my heart i long to be back to all things familiar, all things dear. and yet at the same time, i know how SCAD provides the right learning environment for me.

in the past i would tell the world that the states is where i want to spend the rest of my life if i could. now? i say i like their family culture, but I don't think I want to stay there anymore. I want to be in Singapore, and adopt the kind of close knitted family culture in the states. not the kind u see on nanny 911 and shows like that.

enough of the emo-ness. i was glad to see my boss once again. one of the whole bunch of people i missed dearly over in Savannah. i heard she hasn't been going to church and i was fortunate enough to see her today. it was quite funny how she was right behind me and when i turned and saw her i screamed and she screamed and we just both gave each other a big hug :) <3

my sunday school kids were missing and i only managed to spot 2 of which both were just shocked at my appearance they didn't quite know what to do. haha. jocelyn's reaction was really adorable. her eyes grew so huge and she stared at me in shock scratching her head. poor child. haha.

cheryl, chrystal and i headed down to j8 and thai express where we had our lunch with bobo. this is the highlight of the day. hahahaha. anyhows, i had the soft shell crab black pepper claypot rice noodle instead of the usual pad thai cos i figured it's time to explore other thai foods. anyways...we were having our dessert when this lady came and placed a bill on our table and told us merry christmas. all of us were stunned and seriously. the first thought that came to my mind was WHY IS SHE GIVING US HER BILL?!?! crazy woman. tell us merry christmas and make us pay for her meal. what the hell. and then when she realised the state of confusion and shock the 4 of us were in, she asked us if we were from church and we were like yeahhh....and then she said blessed christmas before she left and it took me rather long to realise she paid for our meal : that was a whopping 60 bucks meal among the 4 of us and we didn't have to pay a single cent. to think i was worried about spending so much considering how many other grps of friends i will meet over the next few weeks : YEEKS. so thank God for His provision and wonderful surprises He drops on us :D

go to cheryl's blog for more details and pictures. hahaha. oh God is wonderful. THANK YOU DADDY!

and then and then...i chilled away the rest of the day at chrystal's hse once again

oh happiness is when you are back where you belong

i finally stopped nuah-ing today. (ok. not really finally cos i went out on tuesday..which was 2 days ago. but time has really passed so slowly especially since i awake at 5.30 am ish every day cos of jet lag. can't help it. i am so tired by the time it is 5pm that i have to sleep at 10pm). ahem. anyhows. i finally got out of the house again and it felt REALLY REALLY good. like there is so much fresh air outside and it felt good to just take a deep breath and fill my lungs :) and i have thus concluded that despite the fact that no one else believes me (like how the pink ice lolly biscuits taste different from the rest) that singapore air smells different from overseas air. especially that in ang moh land/land of the whites. perhaps it's the humidity. idk.

anyhows. met up with huang in the morning to go recce cheryl's hse function room and discuss about the christmas outreach and we just sat and talked about art, school, what God has taught us and thoughts about the end times. somehow the two of us always end up talking about it. MUST BE HIS ARTWORK LA. always so symbolic and chronicles of narnia-ish. nonetheless, it was a good session of just sharing with him some thoughts. somehow i always end up in such situations where i share what God has taught me over the years, my experiences and all that with people around me. which is kinda cool :)

then huang abandoned me to meet his dad for lunch. haha. and so i wandered around j8 for a while cos i was scared of the lunch time crowd at the food court. and i tell you. there was this whole bunch of girls STALKING me. i was standing outside the cinema looking at what kind of shows to watch when i heard this giggling bunch behind me. thinking they were up to no good i hurry up left. when i got to popular they were still behind me giggling and whispering to one another. how annoying. oh my gosh. i felt like slapping them. then they finally approached me and asked me all sorts of funny questions like whether i could recommend any book to read, where i stayed, how old i was and stuff, all these questions interrupted with giggles and shoving between the 2 girls. i was like...bish *SLAP FOREHEAD*. the moment they took out a sketchbook i knew it was going to be some christian evangelism thing and i just told them i was christian so as not to waste their time and encouraged them abit and they ran away with this huge look of relief. as i continued to browse at the bookstore i felt another pair of girls staring at me and then whispering again and FOLLOWING ME AROUND POPULAR AND ASKING THE SAME QUESTIONS. omg...within the same location and within a span of less than 5 minutes. HELLO....firstly...if u want to evangelise. dun frighten people by stalking them and dun irritate them with your giggles and all. gosh. so disappointing. people. GET TRAINING FIRST. nonetheless. i should not be so mean to them since i myself never found the guts to do such things. i will probably humiliate the christian faith. hence. i shall applaud them for even taking the first leap of faith in doing street evangelism.

so after having enough of being stalked i headed over to the bishan library where i grabbed a handful of design magazines to read, a habit i picked up after Professor Ramsey told me to expose myself to designers and works so that i could improve on my compositional skills. those magazines are truly eye candy. haha. maybe i should ask for book vouchers and magazine subscriptions for christmas. i dun want to get clothes and other stuff that i prob won't use. at least i can get books and magazines that could help me develop my skills :) especially good are those with featured sites/designs and tutorials :) WHOO..

haha. anyhows. then i met up with derric, huang and mugen to further discuss christmas outreach. so there went my whole day. that was a long amount of time spent in the library for not studying. lol. finally not studying at the library and staying so long. haha. bishan library is like a giant fridge though. but i guess they have to do that to prevent people from studying too long there. it is seriously unbearable. u have to be a polar bear to sit there without a jacket.

meh heh. sleepy.

on the brighter side....my friends are done with their exams. YAY :) i shall no longer fear being alone :D

i woke up too early today : it's only 10 and i keep wanting lunch. i'm too used to waking up at 11 and then eating lunch within the next hour. oh boo. stupid jet lag. damn the time difference.



i need to get out of the house. bahhh. i miss having friends barging in and being literally next door. before i came back i had so many plans but now i'm just too lazy to do it. HAHAHA. i am such an ass.



dumdeedum.

NEW LAYOUT. done in my utter boredness here in singapore while most of my mates are too busy with school and exam to chillax with me. sob. i'm too used to dorm life - having my friends all around me every single day and it's so easy to just find one another to talk and hug and go crazy :( oh michelle. i miss having you BARGING into my room every 5 minutes :(

sooo..this layout features both art and scenes of savannah (the bridge to south carolina or smth that we see from our dorms, river street and the famous fountain at forsyth park). photos and photoshop brushes from deviantart and image was done in photoshop.

anyhow. pacey and i wanted to go to amy's hse coffeeshop to have our favouritely delicious roast duck, char siew and shao rou but lo and behold. when we got there it was closed :( so in the end we headed to the jap food at LHK3 where we spent most of our lunch breaks during our internship at church. it's so funny how despite it being 5 months the people there hasn't forgotten us. the moment we approached the coffeeshop, the drink uncle spotted us and immediately shouted MILO PENG TEH PENG (our usual drink orders) despite us being a few metres away from even entering the coffeeshop. haha. and then when i went to order my jap food the lady was like tentama don??? hahaha. YUMM.

then bobo and i headed down to junction 8 where we got bobo's hammie's cage. it's such a pretty and cute cage, what with the colorful parts and all :) it was such a made-for-bobo cage. haha. cheryl's hammies are uber cute. all them lil babies. so small, so delicate. reminds me of how i used to have a whole entire brood of ham hams. sigh. now i want to have hammies all over again. for one they are alot easier to have as pets especially for lazy people like me since they are way easier to take care of and yet they are still so loving and adorable.

oh the post of ham hams and bam bams (pacey's new hammie's name..what kind of name is that man..haha)

HAHAHA. i just saw a funny ad on facebook. it states singapore girls forum but the picture showed wu zun's face. lol.

anyhows. GUESS WHAT PEOPLE!!!!!!

I'M BACCCCCCKKKK :D :D

hahaa. so the last few days of scad had been quite an adventure what with all the fire alarms going off at wee hours in the morning. not quite wee hours, but nonetheless, very unpleasant experience with uber high pitched alarms that is equivalent to the annoying high pitched sounds that irritate dogs. apart from the very rude awakenings from slumber, there's also the tolerating of the freezing cold weather in your PJs while you are ordered to stand outside turner house despite the fact that there is CLEARLY no sign of fire.

the first time it went off the first thing that came to my mind was my roommate nicole for she is fearful of the cold and she smokes. put the two together and she is likely to cause the fire alarm to go off by smoking in the room. the other girls in my floor were doing their finals together with nicole in the other room and when the alarm went off all i heard was them screaming and laughing. thus i immediately came to the conclusion that it was them. but it wasn't. the next person that came to mind was michelle, whose final projects had burning rubber cement on paper involved and i was pretty worried for her room was just next door and i can imagine the horror and panic that she will be in if that should happen to her. the first thing i did was to check the walkway to see if the fire was nearby and i immediately grabbed my wachovia bag which contained all my impt documents - bank, immigration, passport, school etc. and then i debated bringing my beloved blankie from my grandma. as i stood downstairs with my friends i was uber worried that if there was truly a fire, i will bawl over the loss of my blankie, fighting the fire fighters for access to my room to get it back, risking life and limb just to save it in the most dramatic way i could envision. hahahaha.

so the fire department came in it's full glory, rushing first to dyson house where the fire alarm goes off on a regular basis before making a u-turn to turner house. that was seriously quite funny. i thought it was some dudes in hte art sch smoking pot or drugs that set it off i mean..we are in america and we are in college. i didn't expect any idiot to pull the alarm on the second last night at turner. but apparently. it was an idiot who pulled the alarm. seriously. we are in college people. this is so embarassing. the fire department obviously knew this was all a joke and they were strolling. and i tell you. american fire department does not stroll when it comes to such things.

so the next day as people started going home i joked with maggie saying that i would pull the fire alarm that night just to see how many people were left and true enough, an hour into my deep sleep the fire alarm rudely awakened me. the moment i saw maggie she was like GLORIA. and for a moment it didn't register with me and then it struck me that i was a potential asshole waiting to be jumped on by the many other turner house residence. but it obviously can't be me cos i'm too guai and too cowardly. being the typical singaporean, afraid to break the law. we are taught that playing a fool with such things is no fun and you will get into deep shitzazz.

anyhows. i'm very thankful and touched that ben ben shared his big coat with me cos i was FREEZING in my PJs. he saved me from dying from hyperdermia or smth. haha. they have thus decided that i am utterly adorable and have decided that i am butters from southpark among the grp. -___-'''

oh i miss my friends back at scad :( lunchie maggie, cute ben ben, vulgar zahari, smart jill, silly kel, crazy michelle who barges into my dorm every 5 minutes. man. when they all left i felt all alone and lost. without them, homesickness finally stepped in and my heart was filled with conflicting emotions. part of me wanted to stay in savannah cos i loved it so, part of me missed my friends so much, part of me wanted to go home and oh gosh. so much emotions at one shot. it was hard to handle. thank goodness for the many chores of cleaning my dorm that i had to do that kept me sane. i had fun cleaning the fridge as i scrapped off the ice in the freezer to prevent it from flooding as i defrosted the fridge, making lil snowballs in the freezer just for the fun of it :D

anyhows, i stayed over at my adopted mum's hse. she lives in a superbly nice neighborhood. it's seriously like what u see in television shows. lol. she has two uber cute and uber friendly dogs that were spoilt silly by me with all the pampering as the two of us sat there watching a musical on the tele with her two dogs on my lap. even the two cats that visitors rarely see came out to greet me :) i am an animal person :D

her house is uberly nice and cosy, located next to the forrest, they have deers and ducks and herons visiting them. with a lake right in the backyard, ducks come wading by for food and in the spring you get to see the ducklings too :)

then...off i go..back to singapore. my first flight all by myself was a horror. was utterly bored to tears at the houston airport, having 9 hrs to burn all by myself. i still can't believe they make you pay for the lil trolley thingies that u use for the luggage. i paid 4 bucks, only to have to return the trolley cos i couldn't bring it onto the shuttle which will bring me to the international airport. and then..i couldn't find the check in counter for singapore airlines and i had to try asking around and BOY WERE THEY UNFRIENDLY. grrr. in a sense i am thankful for the fact that i had so much time in between. i cannot imagine panicking and being in great danger of missing my flight back home. geez.

so after enduring a great length of time on the plane and seriously going crazy. like i really really wanted to go crazy. like i imagined myself screaming and tearing my hair out and fighting with the air stewardess to open the door of the plane and jumping out to freedom and air. goodness gracious. thank goodness the person i sat with was a really nice singaporean so it wasn't hard for me to make trips to the bathroom.

all i can say after all that is that i am thankful to be back to the land i am familar with and i wanted to belt out the singapore songs going "THIS IS HOME...TRULY..WHERE I KNOW I MUST BE..WHERE MY DREAMS WAIT FOR ME..WHERE THE RIVER ALWAYS FLOWS..THIS IS HOME...SURELY. AS MY SENSES TELL ME. THIS IS WHERE. I WON"T BE ALONNNNNEEEEEEEEEE....FOR THIS IS WHERE....I KNOOOWWWW...I"MMMMMMMMM HOOOOOMMMMMMMEEEEE :D :D :D :D

welcome back!

how's my day?? here's how...

apart from waking and packing my stuff for home and then going for sushi lunch with my lunchie maggie.... majority of my day flew past without me knowing doing this: 

PAINTING for my 2d finals. 

i am UTTERLY EXHAUSTED. i've been working CONTINUOUSLY on a painting since 1pm and its almost 11pm and i'm just done. i still have to do touch ups though, but i am UTTERLY exhausted. i was seriously losing my senses. like after 91288423495 hrs of work (abit of hyperbole there) i couldn't see the people coming in through the door. i felt faint while painting the little itsy bitty details. omg... and it doesn't help that i am nursing a cold, blocked and runny nose, sneezing, congestion, sore throat and cough. it made painting my 2d finals really a PAINting. 

there is of course, no one to blame for the suffering that i am in because I played myself in it. yes. i am stupid and retarded. becos...EVERYONE ELSE HAS SIMPLE DESIGNS BUT ME BEING OH SO DETAILED HAVE GONE HAPPILY CRAZY DETAILED AND I HAVE DIED PAINTING THIS THING. omg...nonetheless..i reckon the pain has been worthy. i never felt happy/pleased about a painting before. in the past i seriously would have denied any connections with my paintings and throw them aside before anyone can see it and identify it as mine. but this...oh yes this i am proud to say it's mine. i will hang it up everywhere and sign my name and declare it is mine. yes yes :)

all that using 2 split complimentary hues (yellow-orange and violet (yes. we dun call purple purple)) in various tones, tints and shades. haha i bet you don't know the difference. there is my dear friend. VERY BIG DIFFERENCES that we art students ought to know. in fact...we are going to have a test on color. doesnt it sound super trivial and lame???

and this is also all thanks to my handy dandy size 2 and size 0 brush for fine details and of course, my 1/4" flat brush and my angled brush, excellent for doing straight and curved edges :) but of course...they cost a bomb too. bloody 7 bucks for ONE stupid brush. BLOODY HELL. MADE OF WHAT. HAIR OF AN ANGEL AH. GANASAI. NO WONDER ARTISTS STARVE..GRRRR...o_o

anyhow..my masterpiece for drawing finals. am uber proud of this one too. though after seeing it on picture i once again see things to be changed/edited. i am amazed at my talents. oh my gloria. you are talented. hahaha.

good Lord...i am exhausted..REST REST. another painting to do for tmr. oh lord. give me the strength. (and money to afford more paint and brushes)

foggy night...foggy night. all is fog. all is blur....

oohhh...orbs in the skyyyy...

they say chocolate helps release stress. 

in the midst of finals, abit of a party won't kill. FONDUE NIGHT :) 

jill, kel and michelle went shopping while i had to go for art hist extra class and apparently they came back with 16 shopping bags.0.0 they bought ALOT of stuff for the fondue night. it was fun. check out the cute hershey shits fondue pots :D they even came with the lil fondue pitch forks. :D

in order to not set the fire alarm off with the little fire from the fondue jill covered the fire alarm thingamajig and opened the windows. hahaha. we had a PARTAY in the room. there was michelle, maggie, kel, naomi, heather, rachel, pat, orlando, jill and myself. it was such a tight squeeze in the room with all the food in the middle. :)

to add to the whole celebration is the fact that we only have 4 more days of classes left, a week before i fly back and see my beloveds and to all the hard work that we've put in and the times we had spent together as friends :) and of course, not to mention the big thanksgiving and christmas! you have no idea how big a christmas and thanksgiving thing my friends here are. haha. jill even has christmas lights in our room and if we had time, she would decorate our room. 

and and and....we watched a christmassy movie - elf on my big mac screen. not very big, but the biggest that we have for now. it was fun :) all these in return for slogging the entire of last night and the whole day. 5 hrs straight of standing and breathing in charcoal dust. i am PLEASED with my final drawing. Prof Ramsey is very pleased too...maybe i'll get another 100 like i did on my white conte drawing. hahaha :D but yea...this is definitely de BEST i have done i would think. in to the foundation studies competition. i think i am seriously showing all my effort into my work and my professors can see that :D

kel told me how professor davies kept praising my work during her make up class with another section today and kel said the other kids were quite annoyed. OOPS. sorry to be a market spoiler. i am afterall...a typical singaporean...SI BEH KIASU SIA!! ;) 

time for a well deserved restful night :) joy joy joy :D

oh i am exhausted. mentally and physically.

oh Lord. grant me the strength to get through finals.

on a happier note. i experienced my first fog today :) like seriously. it was soooo cool. visibility was like within 3 blocks of houses and then the world disappears into this dreamlike dimension. at night all the street lamps just look like floating orbs. 

fog is cool.

and i like fall.

the trees are pretty and they are nice and brown.

ain't it nice to run through those crispy leaves??

i love fall :)

ok. as promised. not really promised, but another piece of my drawing class stuff. white conte pastel on black canson pastel paper. 

sooo...i am TIRED from drawing class >.< 

like we had to buy the arches paper and apparently we are just going to try out the texture and get used to it. so we are going to do our finals TWICE. bloody hell. draw the same thing twice?!??! i am sick of that stupid still life. i am going to dream about it. ack. and the texture of arches is dis-the-gus-the-ting.  the feeling is like nails on chalkboard. ACKERS. like srsly. it's ICKY. 

i am glad scad quarters last for 10 weeks. i am tired now and i need a break from classes. >.<

on a side....do i have a confused face?? cos my drawing professor always say that i look lost/confused and asks me if i'm alright. :S

ok. i haven't posted my work for some time already. 1 reason mainly being we've been working on the same stupid sequence of monkeys for the LONGEST period EVERRR for 2d...and there hasn't been much to post up and 2 i just forgot. hahaha. 

so here's our final project for 2d design....spent the whole weekend driving my ass crazy trying to come up with all these radial designs. they are 10" by 10" done using graphite on drawing paper. tools being a crappy cheapo compass made in china, french curves, circle template and ruler. 

so here was my first design: the tikis. 

it was inspired by tiki land with tiki and their spears, feathers, palm trees and aboriginal doodles. hahaha. i worked on it for soooo long that i even dreamt of it. 

this was the 3rd one that i worked on. decided to experiment with the whole pinwheel/spinning fan blades to try and create like movement and all with the star like arrows and increasing/decreasing spheres. whatever...
last one that i did. once again i tried to experiment with the fan blades, this time decreasing the width and increasing the repetition. incorporated various elements from previous designs like the spears, fan blades and the aboriginal circle border thingy. you can tell i couldn't be bothered anymore cos the bg is totally empty and i just like left my drafting lines there and darkened it cos i didn't want the blank bg anyway. hahaha. crappy effort.
last but not least, this was the second one i did. it has like crazy creatures wearing leaf/feather caps. can you see it???? hahahaha i went abit crazy filling up the middle squares with swirlies cos it looked absolutely plain and me being me, dislike white blank stuff on my designs. i am insane on details!!! so anyhows....this is going to be the final piece that i work on using acrylic gouache, some opaque watercolor shit.  

anyhows. it really wasn't supposed to be so detailed cos we were going to paint but i just couldn't stop myself from being so detailed. i got teased quite alot for being so insanely insane with the details. it was on the only insane one in the class. most people just had rough sketches. mine was the few that was like....ready ready. ho hum.....

i will post up pictures of my white conte pastel on black canson pastel paper drawing tmr cos it's night time and i dun like the lighting in the room. it makes everything look yellowy. ickyyy...

i have thus concluded that my roommate who procrastinates has NOT learnt her lesson. like seriously.. jill and i are quite irritated with her cos we have to deal with her mood swings everytime she panics when her work is still not done and the deadline is in a few hours time. 

you would think that after having a huge blank piece of paper unpainted or drawn on would require ALOT of time spent to catch up. but noooo....she has spent the past 2 nights out with her bunch of crazy friends till the next morning, returning at noon to sleep all the way till night and then it repeats all over again. she might as well go live in Singapore since that's the kind of time she's spending awake anyways. 

so why are we irritated? becos 

1) when she sleeps in the afternoon, it's hard to live like a normal person cos we have to be really silent and it's rather annoying and anti-social cos jill and i can't even talk. 

2) we have to deal with her panic attacks 

3) her mess is ALL over the place. like seriously. she has PILES of dirty clothes like from her desk to the halfway mark of the bed length. like srsly girl....you are rich, you are "busy" partying..still...have some sense of responsibility pls. 

grrr..

ok. i'm rather tired out from spending a whole afternoon at wallin drawing and i still have 3 more very tedious 10 by 10"radial patterns/designs to come up with. my poor back is acheing.....

yawn. -__- zzzzz

anyhows. i was on the bus back from wallin when i overheard this conversation between these 2 girls. apparently some scad kids got hauled off to jail for trespassing. haha. well...the story is that these photo majors found an AMAZING shooting location which is at a concrete mill so they snuck in at night, throwing their bags across the fence then climbing over, setting up the lighting and all that. and of course...they aren't allowed there since it's not public property nor did they have permission. so the police came and caught them for trespassing and now they have to get people to bail them out. 

that was quite amusing. heh heh heh. 

[edit]

soo...i met up with my adopted mum (Sandra) from church today with michelle cos i am totally awkward with strangers...and it was awesome. Sandra came to our dorm to pick the two of us up and i was kinda worried about not being able to identify her when like this crazy old lady starts YELLING my name. oh my gosh. so embarassing. soo...she has this uber cool car which is DAMN high tech. i suspect she is batman's butler's wife. hahaha

anyhow Sandra is DAMN knowledgeable. She knows ALL KINDS OF THINGS...ranging from the history of Savannah to charitable societies to medical stuff and novels and everything under the moon stars and planets. so before she took us out for dinner she drove us down to river street and explained how the cobbled streets came about and we saw this UBER HUGE CARGO SHIP UP CLOSE and she drove us around the important park squares and told us the significance of the monuments/statues erected and all sorts of other cool stuff :) suddenly savannah means so much more now. :)

sooo..she brings us to this thai restaurant, the King and I, which is a pretty famous thai restaurant here and omg..it was SOOOO GOOD. and i am soooo happy that both michelle and her loved the food. Sandra isn't very adventurous with food but she tried some thai curry and she loved it. she never tried anything with coconut milk but she absolutely loves it now <3>

i am blessed to have her as my adopted mum :) and i get to stay with her when i get kicked out of the dorms at the end of the quarter and meet her 2 cats and 2 dogs :)

oh what a fabulous night. now...back to work. 

so just within the past few days i had to handle HUGE ROLLERCOASTERS OF EMOTIONS. not mine. the people around me. it doesn't help when both your roommates bleed together. period. 

soo....

rollercoaster 1: 

obama wins, mccain supporter jill is very upset. she is not only pissed, she sounds like she is on the verge of tears. I for one am unable to comprehend why there is such a huge fuss over that. gloria is speechless.

rollercoaster 2: 

michelle is stressed over her perspective drawing and she comes into my room to work as usual. after struggling for a while she gets all stressed and frustrated and she starts tearing. gloria is speechless.

rollercoaster 3: 

by far the most exciting rollercoaster. procrastination is bad. or so i learnt from my other roommate, nicole. she is often pulling all nighters and today has been by far, the most exciting day living with her. 

see...when people procrastinate, they have to rush their work out by a deadline. and art, unlike other work, CANNOT be rushed out within a short frame of time. and what happens?? people panic. art students being art students come up with creative stories to trick our professors into believing our stories so as to extend the deadline. 

my roommate brilliantly told her professor that our room flooded and ruined her work. her BRILLIANT professor demanded a letter from the maintenance people. roomie comes home PANICKING LIKE CRAP. she's SO FREAKED OUT...she's shaking...she needs to smoke. she runs down with a HUGE GROUP OF HER GIRLFRIENDS for moral support. smokes till she REEKS of smoke, comes back, can barely talk coherently so much so that her girlfriends have to explain what on earth was happening and said that we have to flood our room. 

!!! 0.0 !!! WHAT?!??

YES. FLOOD OUR ROOM.

so jill and i are like.....omg...how should we respond to that? i mean..she's FREAKING out. we dun really have a choice. hence we compromise. we try and figure out a way to get the letter WITHOUT flooding the room. 

nicole runs to the RA's room to get the letter and you can hear her SCREAMING and peeing in her pants...well..metaphorically of course. you can tell she starts crying. it was pretty intense. 

while she was in the room, gloria was speechless. 

but now she's not. she's blogging about it cos as she thinks about it, that was pretty hilarious >.<

i wonder if she will ever learn to 

1) not procrastinate

2) not lie to a professor

on a happier note, class registration has worked out for the better. they expanded the classes so now i've managed to get the professors i wanted. HAPPINESS. i am paying my moneys worth now. 

another happy thing is that my 2d professor kept my work for display :) she might submit them for a competition. i don't know, but i know i will submit my work to win money. 

yes. 

win money.

i need money.

writing in short sentences is fun. it sounds more dramatic/poetic. hahah. 

 

OBAMA WON...

hence americans go crazy/wild/happy

americans are cheering like monkeys released from their cages. 

the courtyard is INSANE NOW. :|

the police comes. 

all is silent and calm once again....but only on the outside.

you can;t stop young wild americans from partying.

i never got this excited for a package. not even for my mac or for my adobe creative suites. i was as excited as a kid during christmas opening a present that knew it was going to be like an all time wanted xbox or smth. YES. I WAS JUMPING IN EXCITEMENT AS I RECEIVED THE EMAIL THAT MY PACKAGE FROM SINGAPORE HAS ARRIVED <3

as i got my package in my hands, i was so happy happy beams shot out of every pore of my body. i wanted to cry tears of joy as i was overwhelmed with the knowledge that things oh so familiar hid within the box, with the wonderful love of my pacey, a sister and an oh-so-dear friend. 

apart from my favourite nestle honey stars and yummy prima singaporean food seasoning and pocky sticks to share with my ang moh friends, i got a pleasant surprise from the noah's ark bible index tabs which i have been searching for like forever in all the local bible shops in singapore. how my dear pacey found it. i don't know. she works miracles all in the name of love <3>

"THE FRIENDS"

THE FRIENDS can connect in a mysterious way without even speaking.

Perhaps they have AMAZING MAGICAL POWERS. (yes pacey. we do ;p)

Perhaps they are both just PECULIAR IN THE HEAD. (yes indeed we are ;p) 

i heart you pacey!

ack. the weather here is nuts i tell u. it dropped by 10 degrees F from yesterday to today and it's BRR COOLLLDDD... this morning was like 5 degrees celcius. surprisingly, it is still pretty tolerable considering that all i have here is my hoodie, jeans and normal singapore clothes. 

so this week is rather crazy, with our insane art hist exam 2 coming on thursday and homework due during the week, which is really rare since most of our homework is given for the weekends. so it's been pretty tight :| nonetheless, i will survive! tis no sweat compared to the A levels ;p

so things haven't been very awesome. all my teachers have decided that i do not need help and their critique comments for my work has dwindled to a pathetic that's very good work and then moving on, which makes me irritated cos it's not mindblowingly great, but simply just skimming the surface of what is required. this is not why i go to school for. i go to school to learn and improve and be the best!!! grr...

sooo...after doing a few charcoal drawings for drawing class, i have thus decided to crown charcoal my favourite medium. graphite has been kicked off it's throne. though messy and outragously harmful to health, charcoal has been easy to apply, covering a massive surface area with one swipe of the hand, easy to darken, easy to erase, best of all, you can just smudge it easily :) it creates works of high contrast, giving it a more finished feel. so TA DAAAAA

work 1: 1st drawing class homework

2nd drawing class assignment/homework:

it's both soft compressed charcoal on newsprint. the only difference is the surrounding lighting. amazing how lighting affects the look and color eh? so after all that i still prefer my first charcoal drawing. think i got abit xianed-ded with all the stupid details in the second one. now that i posted the second drawing i notice a few problems with it. HAHAHA. oh well. i will edit it later on. i'm too clean to get charcoal on myself again. meh heh

there's such strange people here in art sch. i was on the bus on my way back to the dorms after drawing class when like this weird dude sits next to me and starts demanding in this rough, mean, gruff voice. this was our conversation:

dude: ARE YOU HAPPY?

me: i'm alright.

dude: WHAT DOES THAT MEAN? WHY ARE YOU NOT HAPPY?

me: becos there's nothing much going on to make me happy or sad?

dude: BE HAPPY. SHOW ME A SMILE. AND NOT ONE OF THOSE CRAPPY FAKE SMILES

me: *smiles a REAL happy smile*

girl behind him: is he making you feel happy?

me: no

dude: SMILE!

me: *i smile*

dude: SEE. NOW YOU ARE GOING TO BE HAPPY FOR THE REST OF THE DAY

me: great. i will.

dude: YES. YOU WILL BE FANTASTIC

me: awesome. *thinking yeah right...now i'm just feeling weird cos of u*

dude: do you know ___ ___?? some guy's name la

me: nope (not thinking if there's any problem with not know that person)

dude: GOSH *shakes head with the what the hell is wrong with this world attitude and turns his back on me :S *

.....

so the ride goes on with him yelling at the top of his lungs nonsense rubbish, trying to be racist against the whites (ironically, he is white) and then forcing people to want to learn a song that consists of vulgarities.

what the hell man.... 

CRAZY PEOPLE. must be too much charcoal and fixatives in their brain. 

MASQUERADE BALL. 

had fun dressing up. the actual event...not so much. pretty boring since dancing ain't my thang anyway. nonetheless, it was cool to see people in their costumes. alot of indiana jones and jokers. there was one who was REALLY REALLY GOOD. walked and talked and ACTED like him. cool stuff. he did some creepy thing by fogging up the glass at the student centre and then writing on it with his finger and then signing off with the creepy joker face. 0.0

there were creepy zombies too, robots, elmos, banana and grapes, chronicles of narnia that half goat half human dude, sweeney todd, jack sparrows etc.

more pictures on facebook :D

it's been a highly eventful day :D :D :D only bobo knows why. HAHAHAH :D :D

2d class yesterday which was uber fun cos it was superly slack. like half the class didnt turn up for some reason so we spent alot of time just CHILLING at the staircase and talking utter CRAP with maggie and ben tugging at my hoodie strings trying to strangle me. hahhaa. so we had our mid-term conferences with professor davies and she told me i had to repeat my 2d design class. She simply utterly loves me :D :D my mid term grades are amazing and i scored 4 full scores for my projects and 2 95s which is like all we have for midterm grades. i AM AMAZING. :D :D 

after my utterly boring art history class on the damn annoying greeks and roman art which span spam a whole load of pages in our text, kaleigh, jill, maggie and i (maggie and i tagged along) went around savannah area for house hunting since they were thinking of moving into an apartment next quarter cos they are such desperate housewives that love cooking. haha. i'm still thinking of whether or not i should move into an apartment but i'm still considering and weighing out options since i can't drive, can't/won't really have time/bother to cook although a break from scafe (tonight we dine in hell....) or JOs or the sub shop is definitely welcoming (hence we have chinese pizza nights!) . still..there's a need to consider the cost of living off campus and transportation and food (which really shouldnt be a problem. when is food ever a problem unless all we have left is vegetables...) so yeah. house hunting was pretty exciting as we checked out cute little houses with fireplaces and all that jazz >.<

drawing class next. kinda dragged myself to that class now that it's starting to get increasingly out of my comfort zone. sigh. we're finally starting on value and charcoal. and NOW I KNOW WHY I HATED AEP. cos i hate newsprint. it's disgustingly brown and rough and yucky to draw and make marks on. yes yes. and it's sooooo flimsy and fragile. ACKKK..

soo...the way we are using charcoal now is sooo different from what i'm used to (COS WILKIE NEVER TAUGHT MUCH ANYWAY) and like charcoal has to cover the entire span of newsprint and i have breathed in SOOO MUCH CHARCOAL DUST. i just blew my nose and out came BLACK mucus. THIS IS GROSSSSS.. but pretty cool at the same time. black mucus just shouts out the fact that i AM AN ART STUDENT :D :D gotta loveee it :D charcoal hands, charcoal face, charcoal lungs. which is why i need my doctor bobo <3

and thennnnnn....exciting thing on the bus..BUT IT'S SECRET >.<

and then and then....we went to savannah mall with the girls to do halloween costume shopping/shopping for masquerade ball....we were all planning to pon it until the girls saw pretty homecoming prom dresses and they were like all excited. BUT SCREW. I AM NOT WEARING A DRESS. esp when all those dresses are revealing so much flesh in the freezing 13 degree in the afternoon kind of weather. so anyhows....I AM GOING AS A CAT and i am sooo excited. MY FIRST HALLOWEEEEEEEEEENNNNNNNie haha WEENIE ;P 

OH HAPPY DAY PACEY :D :D :D

i can't believe i forgot about Gender Bender Ball :( oh welll.....there's always next year. anyhows. gender bender ball is part of our halloween celebrations whereby guys dress as girls and girls dress as boys. now i know why dresses are meant for girls ONLY. it's just disturbing to see a guy in a girl's dress unless we're talking about kumar or hossan leong. but that's a different story. 

michelle and i were in the courtyard playing speed when we heard this strange female voice greeting us. i looked up and got t

he shock of my life. ok. not really the shock of my life, but nonetheless, it was a rude shock. a guy in a dressed. i was completely stunned, not knowing how to respond to that. any-o-hows....i will go next year..yes i will..meanwhile...i need to think about what i should do for haloween's masquerade ball. oh me oh my....in the past i 

used to be so sad that i can't celebrate haloween, but now i'm like oh me oh my...what do i wear and what shall i be?? zzzz...

this weekend has been pretty kickass, with drawing mid-terms out of the way, i only have homework for 2d design, out of which i already completed 2/3 of it during the week and i just had to do my characterisation and updating

 of my notebook work. :) got some of my midterm grades already, got an A for my drawing 

(WHOOOPPIIEEE) and a B for my art history..not bad considering how i hate it though i could have gotten an A if not for my carelessness and lack of details (COS HE BLOODY SAID THERE WASN'T A NEED TO PUT THAT DOWN!!.. GRRR) 

anyways...for this week's 2d project, we have to create a book. at first i thought she meant like design a book cover cos it's 2d after all and i'm like COOL. i can give this to my pacey when i;m done for her journal! and then my bubble got smashed when she told us we were going to create characters for a story :( i suck at creating imaginary things :( not good for someone going into creative arts..so here was my shot at creating characters. ... MONKEY SEE MONKEY DO.MONKEY HOO HOOO HOO HOO HOO ;D

initial stage...i wish more of the basic skeletal marks could be seen cos it really made me feel like i'm going into animation, which after this exercise i have determined that though i dont really suck at creating cartoon creatures...this is not what i want to do cos i had such a hard time struggling with this..grrr....

after inking...we weren't allowed to make them all uniformly coloured. hence the alternation

highlight of the week....

LOW COUNTRY SHRIMP BOIL with 180 and downpour @ the Bamboo Gardens!

bamboo gardens...how cheesy is that?!?! sounds so cheena-fied like it comes from china. lol. didn't really see much bamboos though :S 

pumpkin patch...see that pile of orange? that's the pumpkin. the patch is pretty much a patch now cos there's nothing much there anymore. 

naomi, rachel, heather, orlando and i played frisbee on the grass patch next to the pumpkin patch :) great time to run cos it was soooo colddddd...it's getting colder and cold-errrr....michelle is even wearing her winter coat. eekkssss...

you can't really tell how much food there is on the tables, but it's ALOT. not everything is out at this point of time anyway, but joe bought all the corns in savannah for this and that was aloottttt..he bought over a 100 corns for this and it was still not his target :S

so we had more than a 100 pounds of sausages, a 100 pounds/number of potatoes. 90 pounds of fresh shrimp. YUMMYYY...the shrimp/prawn had uber soft and thin shells, not like those we have in Singapore that cut ur hands cos it's so hard. it's super soft like the epidermal layer of the onion. just push and peel it off the prawns. easy peasy :)

after we ate we danced to the music. yes. i danced too. haha. jill, naomi and michelle dragged me to the dance floor and most of the time it was awkward. i don't know what to do with my hips, hands and legs. lol. there was this jumping song and like everyone was CRAZY jumping and you could see the whole platform bend. IT WAS SOOO SCARY I WAS SOOO WORRIED IT WOULD BREAK AND WE WOULD ALL WALL INTO THE WATER. aye-yai-yai....

twas was my week. i had fun :) 

Being an international student is my excuse :) 

when you're a yellow among the sea of whites and blacks especially. 

if you don't pronounce words properly, you catch things slower than others etc, professors will just think that it's because english is not your first language ;p 

which was the case with me during yesterday's 2d design class critique. we had to rate our classmate's work for each of the various criteria within a range of 0-4 with  4 being the best and 0 being the worst...apparently professor davies found it rather amusing that i kept pronouncing "three" as "tree". and she was like what?? tree?? tree again? very soon we are going to get a FOURrest (forrest). I FELT SO EMBARASSED I WANTED TO BURY MYSELF IN A HOLE AND NEVER SEE THE DAYLIGHT AGAIN. i could feel myself blushing and i am very very thankful that no one pointed it out or that would have been even worse. i guess she realised she embarassed me so she immediately tried to soften the blow with "but it's alright. i think your english is amazing. i can't even speak your language) and my friends behind her are like giving the "haha. what do you know" kinda smiling face cos they all know that english is my first language. LOL. 

so hence. i am asian who needs extra help and attention :) be more lenient with me pls! ahahaha

i'm kinda half excited and half scared about our new 2d project. we are to make a little illustrated story book with 10 characters that are visually united. sounds fun eh...only that i'm worried about creating the characters. i kinda suck at imaginary drawing and making them look nice :S oh woe is meeee :(

i am going to get muscles by the time i graduate. the portfolio and supplies we have to lug to and from class everyday is heaaaavyyyyy. and it's annoyingly big for small little me. now i know how it feels like when chrystal's dog tasha had the loudhailer collar around her. poor thing...poor us. i keep banging into things and getting stuck as i walk carrying my drawing board, portfolio bag with my drawing pads and my supplies kit. -__-'''

twas the night of chinese pizza. or so we call chinese take out meals simply because u order it and it gets delivered to the dorm...like pizza. all thanks to our dear kaleigh who miss-named it by accident. lol. we love chinese food so much that monday nights are our chinese pizza nights >.< 

and it was also partly a celebration for finishing our 2d design project after 5 weeks of working on the same thing. and also becos we're all suck obi wan kanobi's that create EPIC pieces. lol. my 2d class rocks! i got all 4s on every category. ahhahaa i am powerful!! FEAR ME FOR I AM ASIAN!!!!! I AM SINGAPOREAN. all the more to fear me. heh heh heh ;p simply because we are such kiasu and kiasi people and we are used to working our asses off ;p

any-o-house...for the first time, we found out that chinese pizza comes with fortune cookies too!!! mine says.."You will be showered with good luck before your next birthday" that is kick ass awesome! sadly though..my birthday will arrive in a few months which means i only have a few months of good luck. haha. nonetheless...better than nothing!!! 

once again..i repeat myself...NO PHOTOS of me in the dress and heeled boots that michelle the fashionista put me in okk.....she got them for me to TRY ON. i refused to let her buy them for me even though she offered. meh heh. 

anyhows. though this is the week of mid terms, professor davies for 2d design postponed it cos she has no time to mark it. hahahaha. and prof hamilton for art hist cancelled class last thurs. apparently it's because he was building a tree house for his son. haha. so sweet. i can't help but wonder whether that makes him a good mad cos one...he is putting personal stuff before his job..which will determine OUR jobs even though we wont complain if he cancels more classes ;p but it's also so sweet that he loves his son so much. haha. cant imagine him playing with his son though. he is such a monotonous bore in art history. he DRONES on and on and seriously puts the whole class to sleep. everyone confesses that they try to stay awake, but somehow they can't force their eyes open! he should just change his occupation and go be some sleep therapist for people having sleeping problems. any-o-hows...he let us out early today so it was good. no more waiting in line for the stupid scad bus :)

ohh...so with no mid terms for 2d design and art hist...all i'm left with is drawing. ack. drawing the same bloody still life 3 times for ramsey. nonetheless..i still love that guy. oh i'm nervousssss.. :( 

wish me luck..wish me joy..wish me marry me handsome boy..hahaha OH ELEMENTARY SCHOOL POETRY. 

i should rephrase what i wrote in my previous journal. michelle got me a pair of boots and dress to TRY ON at the store. no photos. sorry loves. 

so...after talking to debby about the wonderful sunny weather here, on the very same day, it's been pouring up till now. it stops and rains stops and rains and due to waiting in the rain for the stupid scad bus, i have caught a cold :( 

tis is bad. especially since this week is mid-terms. oh hallelujah :( awesome shizzaz. 

sooo...this few days/weeks haven't been much except for the occasional texas-hold'em or poker game with the girls (jill and michelle) which was fun cos we ran out of poker chips so we used food instead..like the old animal cookies and sweets cos jill's church sent her a care package full of sweets and goodies (not very caring considering how sweets are bad for health and jill's a health nut anyway. so she didn't benefit from it at all. lol) 

and then there was chinese take out night where the boys (mark, ben and zahari), the girls (maggie, kaleigh, jill, sydney) and myself ordered 50 dollars worth of chinese food and ate to our great delight! yummy. free delivery too. ain't that awesome?!?! one of these days we're heading out to sushi zen to get good sushi. :D

went to the mall with michelle and jill on saturday..or was it friday...wadeva. i've lost track of time. haha. and it was pretty fun. the 2 of them shopped while i just wandered around being the usual shopping me. haha. michelle was like u sure u dun want anything and i'm like uh-huh...i dun shop. and she's like oh no...we need to change that...she stared at me and her fashion brain started ticking away and she zipped me around the shop and got me this dress and a pair of UBER HIGH BOOTS ON UBER HIGH HEELS. i am now in love with boots cos they are gorgeous thanks to that girl. she is now my fashionista consultant. hahaha. she and jill will give me a makeover and teach me make up and they are excited about it cos i'm like their little doll that they could play with..and i'm like them in....what....5th grade?!?!? i am stuck in my childhood. haha. i'm such a lil kid! nonetheless...i am coming home the same way as i used to be in my wonderful jeans and comfy shirts. hahahaha. i have no money to invest in clothes. oh ya...i walked into victoria secrets with them and i got cute undies. hahaha. i can't believe i found them cute...i got pink undies now. hahahaa. oh no...what is gloria becoming?!?!?! rest assured. i am still who i used to be....i think ;p (even if some people think i have an american accent now......hmmm...)

anyhows...then there's bible study and cell grp which has been awesome. it truly is a rock-tumbling session (rock tumbling is where u put unpolished rocks in a rock tumbler and you shake it such that they rub against one another and polish each other). i'm not much good for a rubbing and polishing of other stones cos i just sit there like a sponge. inactive and simply absorbing. the girls in bible study and cell group are uber inspiring as they share insights and how God has spoken into their lives and stuff. i've been utterly blessed with a wonderfully enthusiastic cell leader - jenna. uber sweet and uber happy :D gotta love that girl. and  then there's wonderful joe who cooks us wonderful meals every thursday night and he's really passionate about what he does as well. he reminds me of the coach in facing the giants..i keep expecting him to say "take a knee" when we are going to pray..but nah..we don't. joe is a wonderful man...courtney is a lucky lassie :)

i am thankful for all my friends here. the occasional movie nights where we sit in my room and watch a movie on my 20" mac screen or just watch friends on the china youtube - youku or smth.. while we do our work :) that's what happiness is. doing work together in a grp so we can all complain about how lousy we all are (when in truth...we aren't. we are just trying to be humble/fishing for compliments.) lol. welcome to art school where everyone thinks/pretends to think that they suck when in truth, they know/want to know that they are amazing. 

i must confess...i am one of them. oh we horrible artist. what i make makes who i am. this ish bad. i must not let my work rule my identity and self worth. bad bad bad. utter rambles. i am stuffed up my head with a cold. forgive me! 

if you've been wondering where i have disappeared to..be it disneyland or in the bed of a guy...it is neither. i have been a very good girl and art school nerd and doing my work all week long. the following pictures are from my 2d design class. i never knew i was capable of such things so i am really as talented as people have been telling me and it's not because they are nice even if it is party the reason why they tell me i am gifted. hahaha. 

we had to do a project on positive and negative sp

ace where we had to use the viewfinder and draw and object close up and cropped. it was meant to be abstract, but mine obviously isn't since the bloody object was so small and anything nearer would mean nothing to me. and me being the realism person likes things looking what it actually is. so because of that and abit of craftmanship, i got 87/100 for this one :( sad. thankfully..my prof says this will be my lowest grade. 

so brudders. if u remember the yakbone necklaces that anne marie gave us...this is it! done on bristol paper in pen and ink (prismacolor black marker and micron technical pens)

after which, we had to practice our value scale thingy..as shown last entry...and apply it with texture to our work...we had to come up with 5 different ones....so this shows a progression..my first one is really cluttered and crappy cos it was all experimental so i was just playing around to see what suit best. 

Texture 1:

Texture 2: Equally experimental..though i learnt a few lessons from the first one. DUN SHADE TOO MUCH....

texture 3: 

this was fun. this was actually my first one that i worked on. i was patient then and had a vision. the first 2 experimental ones was when i knew not what to do.

texture 4: played abit more and got pretty decent results >.<

Texture 5: My final piece. DAMN HAPPY with this one. i am the obi one kanoby for this class. BOW DOWN TO ME LOSERS!! hahaha. yeah. i was the only kid in class that didn't need to work on the project. i moved on in life and to the next phase which was patterning. FUN :D

you gotta wait for that though ;p

My whole week has been awesome. it was filled with christian activities. You;d think that Art School, let alone ART SCHOOL IN AMERICA would have so much christian stuff going on. My school has 2 christian fellowship, CSF and RUF which operates on Tuesdays and Wednesdays respectively. and then I have the awesome kickass bible study - Downpour on Thursday nights followed by Bible study by CSF at bull st baptist church on sunday mornings followed by normal church service and a college students lunch fellowship and then at 7.30 there's 180 which is a youth fellowship for college students. WHEEEEEE :D :D

On saturday evening the bible study grp took us out to Weston Gardens which is a retreat centre that belongs to the church (it was donated to them) and it's like on this island surrounded by a lake with gorgeous holiday houses and lo

g cabins and a small open area where we can have a grill and next to it is a camp site :D The bus came to pick us up at the dorm and there we were chugging along. a whole bus full of us freshman girls :D 

we were there kayaking and obviously...i can't take my

 camera along with me :( sad. it was so fun :) michelle and i just can't go in a straight line though and it was nice and peaceful with the sun setting and ducks and birds around us and yeah...the weather was awesome. like it got hotter again, but it was cool but not too cold to kayak in fbts :) 

the seniors were really nice to help us get into and out of our kayaks, but we had to carry our kayaks from the house to the dock and after that i just couldn't feel my arms. but it was a damn good workout! :D 

then we had a bbq. which was all ready for us by joe and gang by the time we got back from kayaking. hotdogs and burgers and chips :) not the kind of stuff i get at bbqs back home. this is like the american bbq man. haha. after which we had a campfire going. it was massive and it was SOOO hot we couldn't roast our marshmallows after a short while. picture below!! we used MASSIVE crates thingy to burn. oh yeah. and we use twigs to poke our marshmallows to roast them over the fire. like we just pick them off the ground and put our marshmallows through. no sterilization or whatever. like in barney :D 

we started out really small...we had a big of a pyrogenic problem but then they got all crazy with the palm leaves and spanish moss. ..which resulted in...TAADAAAA...BOOM. no more making smores over the fire. 

the fire just got bigger. so no more roasting marshmallows over the fire :(  so smores are basically roasted marshmallows sandwiched between two chocolate biscuits and a square of 6 rectangles of hershey chocolates and it is SOOO GOOD. picture of me and my stick and my smore :D my very first smore :D that's me standing inside the bbq hut with tables and stuff..like those cabins u see on tv in the US :)

church wasn't quite what i expected cos it leaned towards the traditional side with hymns and stuff, but the sermon was good and i did enjoy the sermon. the people there are fantastic. and they prepare lunch for us college students and we sit down for fellowship and stuff. so i signed myself up for a small grp and i'm putting myself up for adoption so i can have some "parents" from the church to take care of me and bring me out for dinner and provide a place to stay when i need to. haha. yay ness :D

soo..this weekend is thankfully less stressful. just a chapter of reading for art history, shading practice for 2d Design and 8 drawings for drawing. which was the most stressful cos we had to draw cubes at different eye levels and we had to make sure the lines were straight and parallel where they should be and no rulers or straight line drawing. so i haven't gotten back my first project for 2d design...but here is my second one. shading using black micron pens and the usual gradients followed by using gradient to create volumes, using pure shading, no lines allowed. TAADAA!!