The haunted house was just.

Let’s put it this way – Elen and I underestimated the high school kids. Japanese high school kids. No one would’ve expected two fearless grown ups to be screaming their way out of the dark classroom, hand in hand. That was some good fun we had in a while!

It has been a year since our show! There’ve been changes, yet everyone is still quite the same. To those friends who hadn’t attended the show/whom I haven’t met for ages: how have you been? :)

Photos taken by Hajar, Justin and Charissa.

Temasek Design Show 2010

Venue: Temasek Convention Centre, Temasek Polytechnic

25 March (Thu), 6.30pm | Show Opening & Reception
26 March (Fri), 10am – 9pm
27 March (Sat), 10am – 5pm | Alumni Forum & Network Reception @ 2.30pm

Graduate works for 2010: http://www.go4imd.com/graduation10/

The highly anticipated event was held this evening at Shangri-la Hotel! Crowbars was a blast; I had a great time viewing the exhibited works of other designers and through the projections during the award ceremony. This must be only the tip of the iceberg of how competitive the design industry actually is. The overall standard was sky-high too.

At the end of the ceremony when the rankings came up, TP didn’t do as well as last year with 1 Gold, 6 Silvers, 6 Bronze and 9 Finalists. It’s probably because a hell lot of people never submitted their works.. where were all the VSC-ers?? I think they would have stood a good chance against all the others in the Design category.

In retrospect, I honestly think my project as compared to many others was not diverse nor did it have an excellent concept, just simply too linear. It was like, hey, that’s about all I could ever produce. But I thank God that I was awarded two Crowbars; Gold for Interactive and Silver for Illustration, both for the same project REALise. For this project alone, I have had a lot of good opportunities and it makes me wonder how often actually will these come by in future? Hardly. I’ve been working on REALise for the longest time and I’m so glad to be seeing the outcome now.

This year the certificates are printed on big, thick and shiny paper! 8D And by the way, their ballroom was too cold for my liking tough. Gahh.

Highlight of the award ceremony: Lim Si Ping from Lasalle bagged a handful of awards for her project “I M PERFECT”, winning the Best of Interactive, Best of Design (two categories; truly a record breaker!) and also Best of Show. ZOMG!

With this, Crowbars marks the end of my student life; I no longer qualify next year.. The road ahead (aka working life, haha) is too vague, so I’m just hoping for a chance to study again when I find work too tiring, preferably in Japan XD somewhere overseas.

Like I said, it all depends on that Dream Chance ;D
「ドリーーーームチャンス！」を待っているね！

I thank GOD for everything I have been through for the past 3 years. I couldn’t have imagined how my life would turn out if I went straight to Junior College instead. I can now proudly declare myself a designer (yeah no more crappy student-designer rates for freelance); design and art is my life and they are what I cannot live without.

I can’t wait for the grad ceremony later in the evening, this is the last time we all will gather as a cohort and as a course here in school. Let’s all enjoy the final dazzling and defining moment, just don’t let it slip by too quickly!

Con-GRAD-ulations! <3
みんな、卒業おめでとう！そして、さようなら．．．

Friday, 27th March – Tuesday, 31st March 2009
Weekdays: 12noon to 9pm
Saturday: 10am to 5pm
Closed on Sunday

www.TemasekDesignShow.com

We’ve (almost) officially ended our 4-month long FINAL YEAR PROJECT. What’s left for half of us is the presentation this week to the external examiner from overseas, though we already did to a local ee and our course lecturers. Time passed exceptionally slowly, it seems now, that within a 4-month period so many things happened in a flash. Ironic I know. Well it did speed up when submission was near, and there was just not enough time at all. I’m glad – with addition to furrowed brows, clenched teeth, sleepless nights and mornings, depressed thoughts, cramping hands from long hours of holding the mouse and typing, hurting knees due to too much sitting, massive headaches and backaches and all – it is over, and I am certain this is not even exaggerating what we all went through.

We… made it, somehow :)

I’m making my longest to-do list ever (longer than yours WJ haha) and will relish the taste of being absolutely free from school work for a long time to come. Meanwhile, congratulations to everyone – diploma showcase and graduation is near.

Final Year Project is ongoing. On some days I think of flunking, on some days I berate myself for thinking stupid thoughts, on some days I dream about my project complete and working on full scale, on some days I can’t see the goal or anything at all, on some days I think thought I was doing fine and doing something I really wanted to do for now (illustrations, vsc stuff) etc.

And then those days came to an end, I now think of alternatives, of what else is there that I can finish in three weeks, think about priorities, whether to insist on conceptualising it my way and end up 10% complete, or throw in the towel and just do it for the fear of failing. Drawing the entire storyboard took half my life, and almost paralysed my hand.. like for real. It probably looked easy and I guess you could do it in three days, but no, I couldn’t draw properly and it’s something I have never done before, on this scale. I am spent. Dump it all? Gosh I don’t know anymore.

No one deserves anything if they don’t work hard for it. I totally deserve it by working in the wrong direction.

自分には負けたくない
自分には負けたくない
自分には負けたくない

If I keep thinking about this, then I might be able to pull through.
Simply because: I don’t want to lose to myself.

Meanwhile, I will busy myself with everything else except for school and be distracted… until a solution comes by. Let this be a brand new year, and a chance for me to restart in not just areas of my project but myself as a whole. Start growing, start feeling, start living.

I don’t want to lose to – you.
(and, happy moo moo to everyone out there. yeah)

Suddenly I had to pick up the pieces where I left it three months ago, and, when I have yet to finish documenting about the internship experience, it’s hard to continue with anything else. Yes I cut bangs, hello to the end of my very bad hair cycle that lasted for almost a year, and had my braces wires changed (dentist said it’s the last stage and I may be able to remove it by the end of this year) and am wearing two 3/16″ rubber bands which constantly snaps when I eat my food or try to yawn that pull both rows of my teeth inwards forming a nice neat curve.

Got myself new handphone accessories while I was there, in a giftshop in Shanghai. Apparently Jimmy Liao’s works are really well received; they can be found printed on tissue boxes, packs, made into handphone straps, pencil holders, snowglobes, and whatever you can think of. And yes you haven’t seen my new phone, have you? I got it a short while before my Taiwan trip back in April, SE Z770i, a very lovely flip phone that I always wanted to own. Now it has got figurines of the two main characters from one of my favourite stories “A Chance of Sunshine”.

School started, with this being our very last semester. The LAST! Goodness all the semesters and blocks flew by just like this T.T Anyway, there was the comm session with Mos, though we attended the one meant for year 2s due to (heheh) some circumstances. Had no chance to listen to what Mos had to say about the Diploma Show, however. Over the course of three months in SH, there was no chance of eating western food, as in the proper kind lol, so the DES chicken chop was greatly missed by yours truly. Now that we’re back, they’ve added a new dish – spaghetti with chicken sausage – and it’s my new fave XD

Gave out edamame soy beans (the exact replica of the ones found on Strapya.. I guess their products are ALL made in China, but the price difference is…….), shared by all four of us who went to SH, on the first day of school to the whole of IMD. Absolutely the best way to destress, that squishy thing :D just in time for the commencement of THE FINAL YEAR PROJECT. See for yourself~

Visual Presentation Essentials and 1/4 of FYP is over! It totally feels like the holidays, not that there wasn’t any work to be done, but I spent the past 4 weeks being a useless unproductive bum. FYP proposal was crap. Plus, some two random cat themed posters for VPESS. I sorta only liked the last assignment, a book design based on a nursery rhyme, which was rushed out at the last minute and I’m not going to show it cause I used a couple of images off the internet (was allowed, so don’t you complain) to add on the the illustrations.

Outing on Saturday with the usual gang, minus half the number because we went to Marina Sq to catch ~~~~~ .REC, roar!! One of the better zombie + handheld camera technique films around, or so I heard. Language was Spanish that sounded very very much like Italian. Ah! La porta! The 5.30pm show was sold out, so we went for the 7.30pm show and got first row seats (as I was telling them, if only I got first row seats for Arashi concerts XD). Separated; Hajar Jacq and I at the extreme right, and Justin Joshua Daniel and Azmi on the other side. For a long time I haven’t seen horror flicks in the cinema and I didn’t really knew what to expect, thus, in the “worst case senario” I planned to peep through my fingers or just bury my face in Hajar’s shoulder and scream haha! Sure enough there was much tension built up and scenes which induced series of screams from the audience, just nearly not creepy enough to leave you sick in the stomach and sleepless at night. *PHEW* A very cool film to watch with friends.. because while anticipating shock and mutated-virus-infected-bloody-human-turned-zombies (and looking out for the bloody funny insane woman), you get screams accompanied with much laughter, which gets more frequent towards the end for some reason. Do watch it while it’s still screening!

While in SH, we visited a place at Tai Kang road which they claimed is similar to Holland V here. Both had the same feel, but the latter took up a smaller area of course. After .REC we dropped by and chilled at Cold Rock (their version in SH is called Cold Stone. Talk about originality..). I had an expensive banana smoothie lol. Holland V is so far away! By the time I got home it was like after midnight, haha.

The guys said that they’ve a plan to set aside Thursday evenings to jog, you know be healthy and all that, I really want to engage in some form of exercise recently but not this week. I’ll be joining them, mentally, in Shanghai 8D