It's no secret that I want to make my own graphic novel, someday.

It's also no secret that I can't draw shit to save my ass.

The key is to practice, practice, practice. So that even if I end up with shit at the end of it, it'll still be better-looking shit than I started with in the first place.

I'm starting small-- I'm trying to sketch something different every day. Little things. Baby steps.

As it has already been established that I am not too good at the character-design thing, I will start with drawing other people's characters first. Once I get better at that, I will give drawing my own characters a go.

So, first up: Lockon Stratos.



Hmm. Consistency issues here and there. He looks too young in some of them. I am also really bad at drawing frontview faces-- took me many, many redraw efforts to get the face shape to look right (and still not too happy with it). IDK why I find 3/4ths view so much easier-- probably something to do with perspective being an anchor I bet. And lack of symmetry. I am very bad at symmetry.

OTOH I like the hair. Hit and miss, when it comes to me and drawing hair. But I think I'm getting the hang.

Must work on more expressions.


(P.S. Should I keep posting these?)

It is no secret that I am disgustingly materialistic. I buy stuff on a whim more often than is healthy for me (or for my wallet). I always have a list of things-I-want (which often translates into a list of things-I-end-up-getting).

Here's the current list. As expected of me, it consists purely of shiny gadgets, books and clothes.

#1
Dude, what else can I say? I've been lamenting my lack of an iPhone ever since I lost mine in February and SingTel's anal iPhone policies wouldn't let me buy a new one until the no-upgrade lease in my contract was up.

And then the 3G S was announced to launch in my country one month before the lease expires. With video capability and cut-and-paste and all that fancy shit that I wished the first phone had, but didn't. Sweeet.

I am counting down the days to August when I can finally get my hands on one. So I can get back to Twittering on the train, IMing while crossing busy traffic junctions, incessantly checking my e-mail, and having tons of kick-awesome music at my fingertips.

And this time, I'm getting a chain to keep it with me always.



This completely cracks me up and I don't know why

iPhone 3GS
Price: Unknown, I'm guessing about SG $500+ with a plan
Status of acquisition: August, August, so far awaaaaaay

#2
Earlier this year my producer (who has since left the company) turned up to work in a pair of these, albeit brown. Since then they've been haunting me with their delicious retro juice and their big cups fitting snugly over ears blocking out the noise of the world.

I wanted to get a pair, but since I'd lost my iPhone and no longer had a proper MP3 player, it seemed a little silly to.

Then I went to Japan and I saw people wearing them everywhere: on the streets in the trains everywhere. Desire was rekindled.

I began looking for headphones online and eventually located these (which were produced by Panasonic, and not Audio-technica as I was originally led to believe). Sweet green cans with a brown headband... a color combination apparently now only available in Japan. Fuck the wha-!?

After a brief stint of kicking myself in the ass for not thinking of going to look for them when I was actually in the country, I finally arranged to have them delivered to me from Amazon Japan via vPost (as Amazon.co.jp doesn't ship this out of Japan).

As a matter of fact, while talking to my colleagues about my purchase I managed to somehow also talk two of them into getting the same headphones, just one in black and one in white. They are all shipping together, along with this fella, surreptitiously hitching a ride. Yun Kouga's naked space Tieria Consolidated shipping costs FTW!

Our evil plan is to simultaneously wear all three pairs in the office after they arrive, since we all sit around the same area. Yes, I know. We are undeniably awesome.

Panasonic RP-HTX7-G Headphones
Price: ¥4,482 (about US $46)
Status of acquisition: In the process of shipping

#3
I've been fascinated by Lomo cameras for a very, very long time, ever since I read about them in a news article years and years ago. In particular, I like the Colorsplash, the Horizon, Diana F+ and Lubitel cameras, for various reasons (mostly that they take pretty pictures that no amount of post-processing in Photoshop can emulate).

But they are, like all things novelty, rather pricey for something not much more than photographic conceit. And they are analogue film cameras, a format I pretty much haven't used since the turn of the century. I wondered if there was some sort of 30-day trial period for Lomo cameras.

And then I discovered that since the last time I checked, they've made these funky one-time-use disposables that come with a color filter each. That don't cost a million dollars. (And can actually be reloaded, according to the instructions that came with the box) Bingo.

After scouring the web for a while I managed to find a good shop online that sold them separately and shipped to Singapore by priority mail. I got one with a yellow filter, which was schlepped over by UPS in time for tomorrow's stayover night of drunken debauchery that my girlfriends and I have planned. We will take crazy photos (24 of them, to be exact, as provided by the single roll of 35mm film). I will then somehow get it developed. And then I will decide about the other cameras.

Lomolitos
Price: US $40 for a pack of 4, but I got one for $13 and shipped for $35
State of acquisition: I has a Lomolito at the moment. Still thinking about the actual fancy cameras themselves.

#4
I first heard of Modofly as the people who took Moleskines and laser-etched their covers. However they apparently stopped the practice after finding out that Moleskines have PVC in their covers and it's dangerous to etch them because of the tosic fumes.

So they've moved on and become an outfit that makes custom-printed, gorgeously designed notebooks and (apparently) sketchbooks. There are tons and tons of designs on their site, and a good chunk of them are incredibly lovely.

Not gonna lie, thirty-six US dollars is insanely pricey, even for a pretty fabric-bound high-quality sketchbook. It's probably not worth getting any of the designs featured on the site, even if they're really pretty.

What's interesting about them is that they do completely custom printed books. Since each of their notebooks is only printed when it gets ordered anyway, there's no difference in the charge between one of the books in their store, and a book printed with a design you supply yourself. So you could get a book printed with something you drew yourself. Or printed with an awesome crazy photograph and given as a totally unique gift to a friend. Suddenly-- gosh, it sounds like a good idea.

But if I had to pick any of the designs from their site, it would be this one. Absolutely gorgeous.


Modofly books
Price: US $36 for a large sketchbook
Status of acquisition: I'm thinking about it

#5
I stumbled across this artist's work on, of all places, ontd_political (my LJ home away from home). I can't even remember what the post was about, but I do remember homasse posting gifs of this guy's works and me going "OMFG where did you get those from?!?!" So she passed me a link to a shop that sells his artbooks-- hoo boy.

Basically, if you can't already tell from the photo, Takato Yamamoto specializes in dark sensual Ukiyo-e style paintings of beautiful, scantily-clad, somewhat androgynous young men and women, which are sometimes hard to tell apart from each other.

Needless to say, I am absolutely and utterly in love with the artwork.

(Duh.)

There are a whole bunch of artbooks that he's produced and Scarlet Maniera is the first of the lot. I don't know which of them is better than the others so I figured the first book would be an ideal place to start collecting. If I do start collecting. Much as I wish I was, I am not actually in the business of printing money.

(Why could I not have discovered all these things before I went to Japan? Why!?)


Takato Yamamoto's Scarlet Maniera
Price: ¥3,150 (about US $32)
Status of acquisition: I'm thinking about it

#6
Alright, I haven't bought anything from Threadless in a long, long time. While I love their designs, I've come to prefer long shirts with huge graphic designs that cover half of the front, which Threadless doesn't do often.

This, however, is different. I love the design. I love it. It's striking, it covers most of the shirtfront... and it has UV ink ghosts that only show up in bright sunlight. How awesome is that? Plus, it's on sale for only $12, instead of the regular $18.

On the other hand, I need to spend more money on clothes like I need a new hole in the head. So I don't know if I should. Even though it will look awesome with my wardrobe.

Also, it's been as while since I've bought from Threadless (as I've said), and in the interim they've started printing shirts on their own house brand of tees. I've not had any experience with their tees so far-- does anyone here have feedback on it? Is it light and comfy? Anyone?

"Secrets of the City" from Threadless
Price: US$12
Status of acquisition: I'm thinking about it

Well, now that I've been back from Japan for more than a week and have gained both distance and some sort of perspective on the entire affair, I think I'm finally ready to write a few summary-and-reflection posts. After hanging around listlessly doing nothing-in-particular all of last week, my previously-absent writing mojo is starting to return to me.

The problem is, there's just so much I could write about. I have a whole list of things I'd like to talk about, but I could really use some direction, or at least some inspiration that will lead to some semblance of direction (the wishy-washy-words, they are strong with this one).

So, as usual, I will do things by way of public appeal. Dear friendslist, what part about my trip to Japan would you like to hear most about? Top 10 lists, specific questions, personal reccs, etc.? Anything you want to request, I will consider. Give me an idea on what I should be focusing on! :D

In the meantime, I'm still (slowly) cherrypicking photos & videos from Japan and (slowly) uploading them to my Flickr account. I'll do a final streampost when they're all done.

Giant music-sharing-and-request post coming soon. Hurrah, I guess?

Haven't been blogging Japan because a) tired, and b) figured I was boring most of my friendslist based on the dwindling number of comments. So no full blogposts from me. Instead, have the Flickr photostreams.

Most of the streams aren't too detailed because time spent shopping == nothing particularly photograph-worthy, but I did put in some lengthy explanations on some of the photos I did take, so they're worth checking out if you're interested (particularly the Washinomiya day).

Tomorrow we head to the Tsukiji fish market in the morning so that might be something more interesting. The day after that I fly back to Singapore.


Day 6: Ikebukuro
10 photos


Day 7: The Lucky Star shrine (Washinomiya)
44 photos


Day 8: Shibuya
7 photos, 3 videos





I'm tired and I want to go home.

So! Day 1 in Japan with pkyyr and menelvir. After a long overnight journey which was so empty I got to sleep across a row of chairs in cattle class, we arrived in Japan, and spent the next six hours shuttling from highspeed train to highspeed train until we finally arrived in Kyoto.

Kyoto/Hiroshima is the scenic leg of our trip, all culture and scenery and sane, not-at-all-brain-melting things. Or at least, as un-brain-melty as it can get when it involves people like my sister and I.

A brief pictorial recap!


We arrived in Tokyo in the morning, struggled out of the airport and somehow managed to not only buy our passes, get our tickets and locate the train, but also do so without getting lost. 2 years of Japanese language studies have paid off, apparently!



I did some Japanese studying on the train journey there, which was a rather cramped and uncomfortable affair for someone traveling with 10 days' baggage. I was up to the eyes in stuff, and I kept elbowing the poor salaryman in the seat next to mine everytime I tried to retrieve something from my bag.


It took us a bloody long time (and a lot of trekking, 10 days' baggage and all) before we managed to locate K's House Kyoto, shoved into a small side street. After checking in, a sort-of lunch and a quick shower, we set out to explore on foot and search for Kiyomizu-dera (清水寺)-- the love shrine, and I don't mean the dirty sort. It's old, it's famous, and it's also right on top of a hill overlooking the city.

( A bajillion pictures of Kyoto and Kiyomizu-dera )

And that's my very brief recap of the day. I leave you here with a video I shot while we were walking through the tiny back streets of Kyoto. I call it "The Trouble With Tomare". JSYK, "Tomare (止まれ)" means "STOP!" in Japanese.




Here's the flickr stream for Day 1. Bookmark it if you are interested in seeing more photos of Kyoto-- I have tons more, which I will probably upload after I get back to Singapore. This is a brief (very brief) recap, after all.

Up next: Day 2, Day Trip To Hiroshima! Hopefully, I'll be able to get some blogging done tomorrow since we apparently arrive back at the hostel fairly late. If not, you'll hear from me on Saturday when we finally get back to Tokyo.

It's just hit me. It's just hit me. I'm flying to Japan next week and I have not prepared anything for the trip yet. I blame recent... events for distracting me, but the key thing is that we'll be headed to Japan in a week and I haven't even given it more than a cursory thought.

Or, to be more accurate, we're going to be in Tokyo for six days and we have NO IDEA where we're about to go. Other than vague notions of "Okay, we'll spend a day in Ikebukuro, a couple of days in Shinjuku & Harajuku, some time checking out Akiba..." We're not taking any guided tours, we've never been to Japan before, and as a matter of fact I have a sinking feeling we'll spend most of our days there lost and peering at our maps and trying to figure out which intersection we're at and how many miles away it is from where we actually want to be. GOD HELP US.

Well, actually, maybe you guys can help us. If you're familiar with Tokyo, or have been there recently, maybe you might have answers to these questions!

1. What are good places for budget clothes & accessories shopping? I want to throw out half my dowdy old wardrobe to repopulate it with fancy shirts, cute skirts, stockings, boots, belts and various shiny accessories. At the same time, I don't want to spend a fortune. Anyone know of a good place to get cheap but fashionable stuff?


2. There are tons, and tons, and tons of otaku places to go in Japan. We definitely won't be able to visit them all. Anyone got reccs for the best you-can't-go-to-Japan-and-not-go-here places to get manga/doujin/anime merch?


3. What's the availability of free wireless like? Especially in K's Hostel where we'll be staying. I ask because I know I'll need regular access to email for work purposes. (The computer will be with me in Japan, yes.)


4. Because food in Japan is so expensive and we need to save costs, we'll spend our trip subsisting on peasant ramen and discount bentos. We're planning to limit ourselves to ONE good meal at a decent-but-not-too-fancy restaurant. Food reccs, anybody?

And finally, anyone want me to help buy them something from Japan? This is entirely dependent on cash flow issues and luggage space, but I can probably afford to help people buy and transport small items costing ¥2000 or less. Like manga or gashapon figurines or Pinky dolls. No guarantees I'll actually be able to find the stuff, but I can try!

(For those who will inevitably ask: We are spending a couple of days in Kyoto, taking a day trip to Hiroshima, and then spending the rest of the trip, six days in total, in Tokyo. We have Kyoto and Hiroshima more or less worked out, but the Tokyo leg of the trip is a huge blank. And we're flying off in SEVEN DAYS. HALP.)

---

Now, for something entirely different (and completely Singaporean). A plug for Aware! There's a fundraiser running from the 27th May to the 30th May in the form of Caryl Churchill's award-winning classic feminist play, Top Girls. I would love to go, but I WILL BE IN JAPAN. D'oh. Tickets range from $25 (for students), to $40 (for adults), to $80 (for the 30th May Gala night, which includes a reception that I assume involves food and wine. How can you say no to alcohol?)

Here's the pimp post I wrote for the revamped We-Are-Aware site that has more information about the play, the venue, and how to get tickets. If you're in Singapore and you have an evening to burn, why not go for this? It's for a good cause, after all.




...honestly, while I don't begrudge my trip to Japan, I'm a little bitter that I'll be missing out on so much good stuff while I'm gone. This play, my monthly writers' meetup, my company's quarterly social event in the form of a BBQ, the goddamn AMERICAN IDOL FINALE ASFDJKLA. Dangnabbit, life! Augh!

Alright, for a change, here's something completely unrelated to the ongoing Aware saga. A photoshoot of my Pinky St. girls!

I have 7 of them at the moment: the first two whose photos I've already posted, then the three that I adopted from shinrei_24, and then finally the two who arrived last week. I'm thinking of getting two more: the one of the kid from The Sky Crawlers and this one named Caine.

Yes, I am rather obsessed with collecting these, it is clear.


Here's a couple from an older shoot of Ana-Marie and Collette, when they were the only two I had. Yes, they are a couple.


(The rest of the girls are just friends. ;))

Now this one is specially for pigtail78:

And poor Matt's all, "I guess I'm not getting any..." Bawwww.

OMG WHY AM I SLASHING AI CONTESTANTS NAO WTF JUNE WTFF

Some backstory. I RP Ribbons Almark on the #g00tweets Gundam00 Twitter RP. We get to talking about skittles a lot. Not the candy, the Innovators. Sometime during one of our exchanges I was suddenly compelled to go to Skittles.com and check them out. Which was when I discovered that the Skittles.com homepage had been transformed into the Twitter search page for the word "Skittles" and that ALL OUR SKITTLE-RELATED TWEETS WERE SHOWING UP ON IT.**

Several hours of clicking on links and pictures later, I had developed a horrifying craving for Skittles. (GOD DAMN BUT THOSE INSIDIOUS MARKETING TACTICS WORK.)

So before I headed for Japanese class this week I went Skittles-hunting in town. I managed to corner a packet of the damn things in a 7-11 and made away with them. As we walked into a narrow, crowded underpass roped into half to manage the traffic flow, I giggled to my sister, "Who needs food when you have Skittles?"

And just then, as we were crammed into the crowd at the barrier's edge, next to the stream of folks going in the opposite direction...


A RANDOM SETSUNA WALKED PAST ME.


... ..."WTF?!?!?!"

It was a random group of cosplayers; aside from the Setsuna in the red scarf and the mad spiky hair, there was at least one character from Bleach amongst their number. Walking around the heart of town in full costume. I have no idea what they were doing, but I very much regret that the crowds were moving too fast in either direction for me to go up to the Setsuna cosplayer and intone, "SETSUNA F. SEIEI". Or, as my sister suggested, "INNOVATOR". Before running away giggling like the madwoman that I am.

Missed chances, missed chances!

But at least I didn't miss the chance to do a Skittle and gunpla/gashapon photoshoot after I got home.





In case you're asking: yes, I nommed all the Skittles in those pictures after that. No, I obviously don't give a flying fuck about poisoning from lead in paints. IT IS CRIMINAL TO HAVE SKITTLES AND NOT EAT THEM, OKAY?


**(Screencaps of Skittles.com or it didn't happen!)

I was supposed to spend the long weekend catching up on my Japanese studies.

Predictably, what I actually got to doing was watching American Idol videos online, and revamping my lj user profile. Yay! Shiny new user profile!

Still want to revamp the bugger some; I lifted a lot of stuff from the old one because I was too lazy to rewrite the whole thing from scratch. But it could use some rewriting.

I predict for myself a swift death by language misunderstanding when I hit Japan in May. It's going to play out like a cross between Lost In Translation and 28 Days Later.

In the meantime, here's something delicious that I got from konami, whom I met through the #g00tweets Twitter RP.







Can we say PORKIEST PROJECT EVER? The Republicans would be all over this like mold on a week-old orange.

But wait!! If the US had a Gundam, then the US would totally be able to kick all that TERRIST ass and make sure everyone is safe and sound for ever and ever more! So it's defense spending and it's a good thing! Yet--! OMG! If the Dems came up with it it's gotta be wasteful spending! But--!

The neocon heads exploding over this would be awesome.

(konami you are awesome and ILU ♥)



(Should I run another round of Testimonial!Get for the new user profile, you think? Should I?)

RANDOM MINI PICSPAM TIEMZ.

Last night I skipped gym to rearrange the posters on the wall of my room. Took off a few old LOTR/Star Trek pinups, as well as a few dull-looking Death Note promo flyers, and put up a few new things, including a giant LaMB poster illustrated by the head dude @ IFS (aka artgerm on DA--he's apparently a huge hit there, I hear). His art is effin' gorgeous. Hell, the only thing I got when I went to AFA last year was an eighty-dollar artbook put up by IFS that I got him to autograph. Heh.

I'm quite pleased with the results (mmm, widescreen function on my camera):


Now. I've recently moved tables in the office, of my own accord, and have given up the iMac that I was using on the account of it being old and slower than a bowl of molasses floating backwards in a bathtub. As a result, the Virtue gunpla that was sitting in front of said iMac has been orphaned, and plunked on my neighbor's desk for the sheer amusement value.

Virtue has been having several... adventures on her desk.




Disney 1, Bandai 0!


ETA: THANKS TO A COMMENT BY french_noodles:

EEEEK MOM IT'S LOOKING AT ME MAKE IT STOPPPPPPP

ETA 2: THANKS TO A COMMENT BY piyomon:


IT WAS AN ACCIDENT :3

Blogged with the Flock Browser

Do you believe in serendipity? In words having the power to jinx? In days that just plain want to fuck your life up the ass?

The story goes thus. Yesterday afternoon I met up with bluewings_lagoo to pass her the Mr. Bushido Prop Plus Petit figurine she'd bought from me. We got to animated conversation in the middle of the weekend crush in the train station in the middle of town, which eventually fell to me gushing on about how my awesome my iPhone is. I told her about the time I'd left at my phone at home, and it felt like I had lost an arm and a leg. No music, no Twitter, no email, no nothing! I'd felt so alone.

She said, "Wow, in that case, you'll die if you ever lose your phone."

I concurred.

Later that day, I went to the washroom after a shopping trip to Kinokuniya. As I was laying my iPhone flat on top of the toilet roll holder in the cubicle, I recalled the conversation I had earlier. I thought, "Well, then I'd better not leave my phone in the toilet, then."

Guess what happened next?

Yep. I left my phone in the toilet.

By the time I realized it on the way to Japanese class the phone was long gone. Enquiries at the Lost/Found counter came to naught. Frantic calls made to my number were refused. Someone had taken my phone, and was quite obviously intent on keeping it.

I immediately called my service provider and had the phone's SIM card suspended. Later the same day, directly after my Japanese classes, I went and got a replacement iPhone-- I wasn't kidding when I said I couldn't live without a phone.

I really don't get it. If I 'd found somebody's wallet in the washroom, I'd return it. Even if it had a thousand dollars cash in it, I'd still return the damn thing because hey, not mine, and what if that person really needed that money? Hell, if I'd found a thousand dollars cold hard cash lying on the ground in an anonymous bundle I'd still turn the thing over to the Lost/Found counter on the off chance that the original owner would come claim it because, you know, hey-- maybe somebody really needed this!

So what in the world would make it okay, in anybody's mind, to keep a stranger's thousand-dollar electronic device filled with several MB worth of phone numbers and text messages and movies music emails photographs which you just happened to come across in a public restroom? I had a whole list of personal contacts there, including ones glaringly labelled "MOM" and "DAD". It would not have been a stretch to get in contact with me.

Instead, the first thing the person did upon finding the phone was to turn it off so that it couldn't be found.

What the hell.

What really, really gets me about this is that the person who did it was just a random person off the street who just happened to go into the same washroom cubicle after I did. No sociopaths or serial lawbreakers here. Just some ordinary person who walked into a toilet stall and decided to keep (and almost certainly sell) a lost phone rather than turn it over to Lost/Found or at least try get in contact with its owner (because god forbid you actually use a communications device to try to communicate with people, amirite?).

And before anyone tries to say that "Oh, you were just unlucky, the person who picked up your phone was just dishonest", let me add that this was certainly not an isolated case. I've had it happen before-- one of my old-school Nokia candybars got taken when I left it behind in a washroom when I was 17. My sister also had her phone taken last year, in town; few of my friends have also lost their phones in this manner. When I told the Lost/Found counter lady about my plight she said, "You left it in the washroom? Difficult, I don't think you'll get it back." Most people who lose their phones in public restrooms never do.

(And to be completely honest, the moment I realized I'd left my phone in the washroom I already knew, deep down inside, that I was going to have to get a new one-- and events turned out to confirm my most pessimistic fears.)

There's a silver lining to it all-- once again, Apple got to show me how far its awesomeness stretches when it comes to Being Kind To The End User. When I connected my new iPhone to my Powerbook, it said, hey! New iPhone! Do you want to sync it with the old iPhone backup? One click of a "yes" later, my new phone had inherited all the apps, settings, and contacts et. al that had been on the old one. Camera roll? Check. Text message archives? Check. Email accounts? Check (albeit missing the account passwords--good call).

The only things that weren't synced back were the music and the videos, which was just as well since I had to downgrade from a 16GB model to an 8GB model-- I very well couldn't afford to buy another 16GB phone. With less disk space on hand I had to manually decide what stuff I liked enough to keep on the go with me (and that didn't take long). Kudos to Apple, seriously, for turning what I'd feared would be a long and difficult process into a short and relatively pain-free one.

One notch up for faith in technology. One notch down for that in humanity.

Very quick announcemnt, before I have to run off for a dinner appointment.

The results came in the mail today, and:

I PASSED THE JLPT4!
できた！合格しました！よっかた！

370/400-- lost 5 points on writing & vocabulary, 15 on reading & grammar. Wish they gave a detailed breakdown on what I got right and what I got wrong, but tough luck. (I bet at least half the points I lost on the grammar paper were lost from the sections testing on bloody PARTICLES.)

But at least I got a perfect score on listening. ALL THAT WATCHING B00BIES WITHOUT SUBS PAID OFF ALRIGHT BITCHCAKES. And they said you couldn't learn anything from watching anime...

Off to celebrate with sushi dinner. \o/ Yey!

I've had my 3G-enabled iPhone for about half a year now, and I've gotten used to having the Internet in my pocket: instant access to email, IM, Twitter and LJ no matter where I am in the country, even sixteen feet underground on a moving subway train. Nifty? You bet. I've sent work emails while on the bus to the train station, browsed ontd_political on the cycle machine at the gym for breaking news during the election season, even carried out 2 IM conversations while jaywalking across a busy 6-lane traffic junction. I've done lots of neat stuff.

But it was today that I realized the iPhone's true, gobsmacking potential for awesome.

The backstory: in the morning my boss pounced on me and announced, out of the blue, "Around four-ish today we're going to our partner studio to discuss the project we'll be working on, you and I." Fine and well. I'd been there before, not a big deal. 'Cept for the part where I had exactly six hours to jazz up the project pitch I'd written a week before so that it would be presentable.

But I pulled it off. Skin of my teeth. Sent the final document to print at four on the dot. Breathed a sigh of relief, started packing my stuff in order to hit the road.

Then Bossman came up to me and said, "Alright, you'll be joining us at the studio for a short while to pitch your story. After that, you'll be taking this to meet my wife at Dempsey Road for another project meeting." And he handed me a mockup sample of a book we wanted to put into printing.

Meet her what where?

He explained in the cab on the way to the studio. Botanical Gardens, British embassy, Gleneagles Hospital... somewhere in that vicinity. I nodded. I knew the general area. Big fucking wilderness somewhere in between a nature reserve and downtown. I have a hard enough time navigating urban areas with right-angle roads and plenty of landmarks, much less remote suburbs with road layouts like birds' intestines. Just great. I got the bosses' wife's number, figuring that I could call her in the very likely event I got lost on the way.

We met up with the studio guys, I pitched my thing, it all went well. 5.30 my boss said, "I think you'd better go. You know the place, right? It's at Dempsey Hill... some place called Jones The Grocer."

No, I didn't know the place, and I had no idea why there would be a meeting in a grocer's place, either. Fantastic. Full of misgivings, I hailed a cab from the street. "I'm going to Dempsey Hill," I told the driver. "Someplace called Joe The Grocer, I think."

He frowned at me. "Dempsey Road?"

"No, Dempsey Hill. Er, it's near the Botanical Gardens, I think."

"Oh. Okay."

I got in, clutching the book mockup, and he drove off.

Half an hour later, as the taxi idled in a snarl of traffic just off the Botanical Gardens, the driver said to me, pointing out the windscreen: "Look, it's all jammed up down here, all the cars trying to turn into Dempsey Road. It might take another half-hour just to get all the way in. Why don't I drop you here, and you can walk right up? Dempsey Road is just up that hill, and you'll get there faster walking." And he waved his hand in the direction of the window, where a path by the road led up a slope crested by a car park.

I got out of the taxi. See, the thing was, I did recognize the place. I had been there once, when we had a joint company dinner at some fancy Indian restaurant with the folks from Animax over the LaMB project. At that time, I had been in a producer's car, and he had known where we were going. And we had gotten lost on Dempsey Hill, because the area was a labyrinth of tiny curving interconnecting roads all labeled "DEMPSEY RD", peppered with dozens upon dozens of chi-chi little eateries and specialty shops snuggled against each other. Finding the hill was not an issue. Finding the exact spot we were supposed to go on the hill itself? Not so easy.

I dialed my bosses' wife. No answer. I remembered what my boss said: she would be starting the meeting without me, because of my pitch. She wouldn't be picking up the phone.

So. There I was. Alone, standing in the middle of the road with my book mockup and my lousy sense of direction and not even a clue as to whether I was to meet them in a cafe cleverly named Joe The Grocer's or an actual grocer's shop. Fuck. It looked like I was screwed. Dead. Done for.

And then I thought: Hang on, doesn't my iPhone come with a Maps application? The one I thought I'd never get to use?

I slid the app panels over and tapped on the Maps icon. Splash screen came up: "Maps would like to make use of your current location." Another tap: ALLOW.

A target icon flashed up for a few minutes, and then: a big blue dot on a satellite picture of the big fucking wilderness. Why hello there GoogleMaps. I switched to pure Map view, and here I was, on an unlabelled road parallel to Holland Road, and there it was, the fabled tangled multi-tongued self-consuming ouroboros of Dempsey Road, not a hundred meters ahead.

I began walking, and as I walked, the big blue dot started to move. In the direction away from Dempsey Road.

"This thing," I said to myself in wonder, "live updates itself! Holy crap!"

I reoriented the map in my mind, and started walking the right way, towards Dempsey Road. iPhone before me as I tracked my progress, I felt like an extra on the set of a Star Trek film, holding up my tricorder as scanned the vicinity for Joe The Grocer's.

Up the main fork of Dempsey road. A welcome fountain, with dozens of little signs pointing the way to various eateries. A tiny blue one read: JONES THE GROCER. Fine, Jones the Grocer, not Joe. I had remembered the name wrongly, with a hearty "fuck you" in the direction of Joe The Plumber. The blue sign had a little arrow that seemed to be pointing in no particular direction at all, so I continued down the road in hopes that Jones The Grocer would eventually show up.

Five hundred meters later and coming to a curve in the road that vanished somewhere in the horizon, I realized that with the dozens of shops in the area, I might take hours on foot to comb the hill and find the one I wanted. There was no-one around to ask for directions, except for the occasional passing car. And even if they knew what I was talking about, I was lousy with remembering directions.

I looked down at my iPhone screen, and saw a big blue button labelled "Directions". And thought, ah, fuck it. What have I got to lose?

I dropped a pin on my current location, fired up Directions, and in the "To:" field, filled up JONES THE GROCER. Not even an address. Just a painfully generic name. With a shrug I hit ENTER and sent my request flying out to the wide world with its million places that might be associated with "JONES" and "GROCER". My wild shot in the dark.

The map came back. A red pin appeared. A thick purple line, down the roads. And the words: "408 m 1 minute".


Follow the purple brick road! [1]

I realized at that moment that my iPhone, like Jack Sparrow's magic compass or Sophie's ring in Howl's Moving Castle, was showing me, live, a guide from where I was to the place I wanted. Every single step of the way.

I started walking. My blue dot started moving down the purple path. Down, down, down, until I came to a very Frostian fork in the road. I started down the one on the left, and I watched as the blue dot wandered off the purple path and into the grey unmarked wilderness-- a side road so insignificant it didn't even merit showing on a street directory. I went back, took the road not travelled, and the blue dot resumed its journey down the Road To Jones The Grocer.

"Holy fuck," I said, lost for all words save sacred profanity. "Holy flying fuck."


Lay on, MacPhone!

The walk, in fact, took me five minutes, as the instructions given had actually been meant for a car. Tapping on the pedestrian symbol gave you the exact same thing, except that the route was labelled "408m 4 minutes". 1 minute for photography. No separate paths for pedestrians-- everyone was expected to drive in. Too crazy to make it in on foot. Apparently.

Jones The Grocer turned out to be a fancy affair that sold both light meals and provisions, situated in a cluster of outlets at one of Dempsey's many stump ends. I walked in, triumphant, to find the bosses' wife in animated conversation. She seemed to delighted to see me. "Oh, you managed to find your way in here!"

"I did! I followed my iPhone's instructions!"

"I didn't know it could do that."

"Well, neither did I. I'm really impressed."

And I truly was.

You can only imagine what this discovery means for a geographically-challenged halfwit like myself. I don't have to go crazy finding places that are hard to get to anymore. Like middle-of-fucking-nowhere industrial complex offices. Or thurisaz83's house, one semi-detached in a labyrinthine estate of hundreds, fondly nicknamed "Longkang (rural storm drain) Land" for its refusal to be easily navigated. I've memorized the way in now, but the first time I tried finding the way myself I only remembered the first half of the route correctly, and spent half an hour wandering the inroads of the estate in a daze of confusion before thurisaz83 managed to rescue me.

Had I had my iPhone then, I might have saved everyone the trouble. Drop location pin. Type in 33 [ADDRESS REDACTED]. Follow purple line. Reach destination.

I thought that with my background as a science major, fully trained to work in a research lab, I would cease to be amazed by technological advancements. Nothing would be too wondrous for me, I would have seen it all, cloning and molecular histochemistry and nanotech.

And then things like these happen.

Of course, if I were a real child of the Web 2.0 I would have been firing up my Twitter client and live-updating everyone with my progress as I made my discovery. As it were, unfortunately, I was too busy squeeing "OMG OMG I'M NOT GOING TO GET LOST OMG!!!!!1!!!!oneoneone!!!" to remember. Darn!


In conclusion: Google + iPhone == EPIC LEGENDARY WIN. I was having a pretty awesome day already, but this? Made it a million times better.




[1] The blue dot looks like it's off the road, but it's really because I was under the foliage at the side of the road, so that sunlight wouldn't mess with the iPod screen for photographing. Sensitive GPS is sensitive. Also, if you'll notice, the entire clusterfuck of roads there constitutes the existence of Dempsey Road in all its plurality. Excellent stuff.

[2] Also Relevant: Lyrics to Immaculate Machine's Dear Confessor, where I got the title from. Refer also to this post, I have the song for D/L. It's fucking awesome.

Presenting: a pictorial essay on the annotation of Yun Kouga's illustration book for Mobile Suit Gundam 00 with Post-Its, as performed in public by misshallelujah and thurisaz83 (not into the show, just into the madness) a couple of Fridays ago.

Tools Needed:

• 1 (one) copy of Mobile Suit Gundam 00 Yun Kouga Design Works
• 1 (one) misshallelujah
• 1 (one) small pad of Post-Its
• Appropriate markers & pens
• 1 (one) giggling thurisaz83 to hold the book open for (documentation purposes)
• 1 (one) mid-range (or up) compact digital camera for (documentation purposes)
• A well-ventilated venue with good lighting, a large enough table, and enough ambient noise to cover up the giggling (for this particular procedure, a McDonalds' was utilized)

( Actual annotation of the book under the cut )

Lacking the time to post anything concrete today, I present to you: a couple of photos of the candy I ate today (sitting in the designers' area == plenty of food around, always). And a screenshot of my desktop.


skittles club


gummi bear death row


iDock

I have a sneaking suspicion that I miiiight have a problem.

Look, look, I still have a scanner, and it still works! I bring to you: a scan of a day's worth of workplace scribbles!


January 20th workplace scribbles!




All of them were sketched yesterday, with the exception of the dude going horizontally across the page (I'd started on him earlier).

One of them, in particular, bears drawing more attention to:


I woke up this morning to people giggling on about how Obama flubbed his oath of office because the Chief Justice messed up the second line of the oath. >w< (Obama's "WTF, man?" expression was priceless.) HISTORIC MOMENT IS HISTORIC.

I have so many, many thoughts about why this makes me so happy that I can't fully articulate them all right now, when I have a series bible to polish up and make omgLOLfunny! so we can send it to a potentially-interested broadcaster. So for now I'm just gonna leave it at: PRESIDENT BARACK HUSSEIN OBAMA TEH SECOND FTFW. AMERRRIIIKA, FUCK YEAH!!!

Now I'll end off with something completely different: STICK FIGURE INNOVATOR PORN.

( omg whut r u doin bring stabity )



(Be back to reply to comments on these last two posts later. Have lots of work to do nao. O SHIGOTO O SHIGOTO~♪)

Yesterday afternoon I got a long-coveted from Kinokuniya. An order I'd placed months ago had finally arrived! I told them I'd pick it up Saturday afternoon, on the way to class.

Oh yes. It had been something I had been waiting eagerly for indeed.


Okay, first off, I have to say: book is expensive. Barely a hundred pages and it set me back more than forty dollars. But, with price comes quality, and the pages are made of deliciously heavy matte paper, almost card-stock-like in its thickness, and the printing is excellent. The pages are laid out neatly and are fairly easy on the eye, giving the entire book a rather pleasing overall aesthetic.

Now, as for the contents.

( MEISTERS PINUP POSTER )

( COLOR SKETCHES )

( B/W CHARACTER DESIGNS )

Overall verdict: I love this book and I don't regret a single cent I spent on it. The book is beautifully made and designed, and I could never get sick of staring at Yun Kouga's gorgeous artwork, so this one's definitely a keeper. Hopefully there'll be a S2 edition of this, as I am dying to see her conceptual sketches for all the fan-fucking-fabulous Innovators.

And now, I get to my other point.

I want to scan this book. I really do.

Yet, at the same time, I don't.

See, the thing is, the scanning process has quite literally destroyed the bindings and in some cases the entire structure of every book I've ever scanned. The worst victim was the World Report, whose pages I had to literally cellotape back into place on the day I bought it because the glue came off the binding after I'd spent two hours pressing it flat to the scanner bed while scanning twenty pages out of it. And that's just with standard-thickness paper.  The paper on this artbook is really stiff-- from my white fingertips in the pictures above you can see how hard I had to press down just to hold the book open--  I can't even imagine how much force I'd have to use to convince it to stay perfectly straight flat on the scanner bed.

So. I'm kind of torn.

On one hand, it's a pretty book! And it ought to be shared! And collectively squealed over!

On the other hand, I'm pretty sure that scanning any part of the book is going to royally fuck it up. Which is made of Do Not Want, and then some.

Decisions, decisions.

One thing's for sure, though: any scanning I do will definitely be limited to a small section of the book, probably no more than ten pages. In that vein, a poll to help me decide which part of the book I scan, if I eventually decide to do it. Pick one option!

Poll #1332777
This poll is closed.
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All

Which part of Yun Kouga's artbook would you most like to see scanned?

View Answers

The pinup poster
7 (33.3%)

The color sketches (I will probably only do the ones of the Meisters which don't go over two pages)
6 (28.6%)

The character designs (Selected items which I think are particularly interesting)
8 (38.1%)

As a further caveat, I'll most likely not have the time to scan the book until the week after next, so it might be a while in the making anyway.

ETA After sleeping on it, I've decided that I'm not going to scan anything. I have discovered that I am no longer willing to spill the blood of books on the scanner bed to please others, as dramatic as that sounds. But it's true. There are plenty of others who are willing to make that sacrifice; I am no longer amongst their number.

Sorry.

In that same vein: Sorry, guys, but there's probably not going to be a Gunday Capfest this week. :/ I have work that needs to get done, deadline Monday, so everything else goes on the back burner, unfortunately. I kind of enjoy being employed, know what I mean?

On the plus side, aforementioned work is probably going to involve heavy references to LOLcats and Pedobear, so it all works out in the end.

So I'm thinking of getting a haircut.

See, the thing is, I made a mistake the last time I went to the hairdressers', and I didn't get my hair trimmed all that much. Thus, less than four months later, it's long enough for me to need to tie it up on hotter days, which annoys me immensely. Since the Chinese New Year is round the corner, a traditional time to get haircuts (before, not during or after), it seems a good time as any to get the locks shorn.

Except that, with my trip to Japan coming up, I need to save money. And I certainly can't afford the five hundred dollar cut/color/perm extravaganza that happens each time I hit the hairdressers'. My solution: skip the color and the perm, and jazz up the hair by going for a really short cut.

Like, really, really short.

Rachel Maddow-short.




The more I've thought about it, the more it appeals to me. Why not? It's easy to comb and maintain, and without the curls I won't have to spend an absurd amount of time in the mornings primping and preening and applying solutions. Plus, it might make a good conversation piece for a couple of weeks at least.

I still have my reservations, though. Not everybody can carry off a page cut, and I wonder if I have the bone structure, and the sass, to make the cut (pardon the pun). Will super-short hair make me look plain? Will it go with the berets I love wearing? Will everybody instantly assume I'm totally butch the moment they look at me?

DECISIONS, DECISIONS.

I shall not tempt myself by thinking of getting a Revive-style duck cut, goddam


Also, sigh. If only we could all be as intelligent, gorgeous, articulate and openly queer as Rachel is. She's amazing.