8 days in San Jose

So it's been a week and more since I've landed here with CDG and my brother. And so far, it has been pure purgatory. This has probably got to do with this horrible coughing virus that we all got on the plane here. 5 days of convulsive coughing fits, the sick baby, and add the jet lag for everybody and by day 3, I was seriously thinking of buying my ticket home. That aside, it also will take me a while to get used to life out here in a very safe but dull neighbourhood. This place is like Tuas but filled with business parks, sans malls or supermarkets except when you drive out. There's nothing within walking distance, no shops, cafes, convenience stores, nothing but monotonous blocks inhabited by faceless corporations. I miss home utterly and completely! It is very hard to think that I will have to stick it out here for a year at least before going back home.

Till now, CDG is still sleeping past 10pm every night and it has hard to get him to sleep at the right time without resorting to sleep-training, which I will implement once he has completely stopped coughing and when we do finally buy him a cot. Till then, it's co-sleeping with him on the floor beside his mattress which isn't as bad as it sounds. I miss his sleep by 8pm routine he had down pat in SG.

Instead of ranting about how miserable I have really been feeling, I shall take this opportunity to think of the good things about being here.

1) Family bonding with CDG and D. Really this is the ONLY reason why I am sticking it out here. I try to focus on the quality time D gets with CDG and how they are always so happy around each other. I also think D has a much more active role with CDG here since all the time he gets outside of work is purely with family.

2) Learning how to cook. Abundance of organic food.
3) Depending on God.
4) My brother showing how amazing of a brother he really is. Truly I could not have survived the past couple of days without my brother cooking for me and David and helping out, ditto for the plane ride here.
5) No mosquitoes.
6) Cut-flowers last longer without having to change water.
7) Amazon and iherb. At this point I think it is becoming evident I am grasping at straws here.
8) D getting to work at Google. Ha, this one is a big one. It should belong at number 2.

Ok, CDG is asleep now. Gonna go watching something with D then try to sleep myself.

Verse to start the new journey and the new year with.

"Fear not, for I am with you; be not dismayed, for I am your God; I will strengthen you, I will help you, I will uphold you with my righteous right hand." Isaiah 41:10 ESV

Faith is not knowing, yet trusting. Not knowing what lies ahead, and how I will be able to handle it, but trusting in God's grace and provision. Also, one of the things I constantly tell myself so far, is not to look back, only forward.

Restart

Hello again!

No, I have not abandoned you, dear little blog. 3 years have passed and I have recently remembered that once upon a time, I used to blog here. I guess the big event that started my absence was getting married. And thereafter, life kinda took its own hold on me and I lost touch with my virtual space.

What complete and utter bliss I've been in though! I doubt I have ever been happier. Nobody told me that marrying the guy you've been with for 6 years could make so much of a difference. And the fun part is, it just keeps getting better.

So here I am again. Not that I have been any less happy, but perhaps less smug about it. (Wow, look at me boasting but who cares!) Here's to hoping I can keep this up and my little artistic endeavours.

Refreshed, with golf-ruined shoulders

Bali was a balm. I highly recommend anybody in dire need of a retreat to take a day or two from work over the weekend and just escape to a beautiful resort and live life at the pace of bebel gilberto's bossa nova for a stretch.

They say that geography changes everything. It's true. The mind mellows, grinds down to the stillness and the sublimity of an environment so completely tamed and dominated by nature. Perspectives are lost, gained, and castles rebuilt. The love of things and people is found. For a few precious days, the world is perfect. Then goodbye bali, goodbye bubble, hello real world.

God restores, things have shifted and the heart sees just a little more clearly. The process is slow, but no doubt radical at the root.

Beached

From Mood

From Mood

From Mood

From Mood

I've been exhausting myself in every way possible with work. Breaking point. I guess this is the part where the waves hit the shore. I'm insomniac at 4.30am, mind, body and heart given away to such a state that I can't go any further. Now if only there was a place to crash.

Wonderland

The past week or two have been so so blessed. I don't know how else to describe it and it's a pretty long tale. Still, this was one of the best, who would have expected a day in winter in the midst of spring?

Always on the outside looking in

"Remember the weight of the world, it's a sound we used to buy."

The only stars I've seen here were the splendid projected ones in the great planetarium dome at the museum of emerging sciences. And this one.

The Value of Hope

From Friends

The thing about this profession is that it inflicts upon you little sense of value. I'm not about to start on my disgruntled rant about the kind of exploitation that goes on in the industry because it helps nothing. I am going to say this though, that in April, I'll be working for my dad. With this, I've come full circle, rather unexpectedly, but I'm hoping this will bring me forward, in becoming closer to the things that I hope to materialize. Perhaps dreams have shifted. But the heart is no less the same.

Nippon-jin arimasen desu. Shashin mo arimasen desu yo.

From Blogger Pictures

That's why above is an old photo i made in new york, that kinda reminds me of japan.

Well, I'm here. I doubt the fact that I'm going to be working here for a month as a lowly unpaid intern will register until it actually happens on Thursday. I used to think doing this sorta thing was stupidity.

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I still think so.

But that doesn't stop me from feeling super-excited, does it? ;p

El Egg

From El Egg

From El Egg

Chinese new year means that i have daylight and some time to run out and grab some eggs, get some help frying them, then stick them to a canvas that always seemed incomplete without some food on it.

Focus

From Phuket 2010

In the spirit of travelling light, I am trying to focus on what is essential. It gets easier. What is light, becomes all the more apparent in the darkness.

Taken on new year's eve, 2009 in phuket.

Note about Format

From Krabi 2010

Most of you might not have realised this, in the off-chance that anybody did, I'm trying to change the format of my blog. Kinda like me breaking out a little, it's awkward now, but what I envision for it ultimately is to have large-format images that are totally in your face, sucking the viewer right into the picture, instead of the kind, conveniently-small, carefully-framed photographs that I used to put up here.

Krabi and the Blur

From Krabi 2010

From Krabi 2010

From Krabi 2010

From Krabi 2010

From Krabi 2010

From Krabi 2010

From Krabi 2010

Mostly a trip of eating tons of pad thai, getting sun-burnt, being mosquito bait, and getting strangely invigorated by swimming long distances around and into some pretty sublime sea-caves.

By some strange virtue of a defect completely on the part of my poor camera skills, I have come to really like blurred subjects in my pictures, or blurred images. I think this penchant for blurred photographs came about from the mix of early noughties new york art exhibits and bad overtly feely architecture school montages.

However, if you want some idea of the beauty of the natural limestone beach landscapes in Krabi albeit through some grossly unthinking bad photography of mine, I've provided a link to my photo album below. It was a fun trip! ^_^

album link

Rendezvous in the City

From Dana

From Dana

From Dana

From Dana

You are one of a kind.

And ps: I <3 my new second-hand nikon 50mm 1.4 lens!

It's thursday night, but it feels like a friday. i'm meeting an old friend, and i just procured for myself a first- a new lens, and i am mighty excited. She seems to be the perfect muse, for a Wong-Kar-Wai-esque night out in the city.

You, again.

From Macro

I guess i don't want to lose momentum. ^_^ Putting pictures up, no matter how insignificant always reminds me that there is stuff out there that have yet to be taken, sewn, edited, drawn, printed, painted, experimented on. I want to not be able to help myself but to make, make, and make again.

Anything but Mellow

From Macro

From Macro

From Macro

From Macro

From Macro

Dying solo- a chrysanthemum.

Full Season, and some fond old Mushroom Swiss

I wish the picture was sharper, but warm lighting tends to do that to you. However, this isn't the season to be a perfectionist. Some of us are more than willing to put 2009 to a close. I'm one of them. To say the least, 2009 was a hard year. And the school of hard-knocks teaches you many things- one, that there are more hard knocks to come, some, even harder. Two, be glad for the good food and the good moments, all the other blessings that come with it. Three, you could have it worse, and yes, you could have it better. You just gotta take what you got and run with it. Four, don't stop looking up. ever.

Not the cheeriest of posts, eh? Well, I've abandoned my camera for long enough. I've left the paint to harden in their half rusty tubes, and pencils to rest, deep beneath layers of papers. Bills, mostly.

It rained in today, but I got out, and walked about. I found my camera lens 3mm away from destruction, salvaged from being smashed in, I decided to use it. Just when you think that you've laid some things aside for a happier season, they come out at you, and demand your attention. You can't say no, and feel the better for it.

Lull

So I haven't been making anything remotely beautiful these days. Slowly, my life has yellowed, and over 3 months since my return, become an adult shade of mud. There hasn't been much of a fight. Just a gradual process of slow resignation. Before the stars in my twenty-something year old eyes completely fall out and die in quiet tragedy- mourned by only me, I resort to posting one of those pictures I took in better times. Hopefully, my bank of old photos will tide me through till the next image I make.

><

Tiger Mountain Peasant Song

I've been listening to this song alot by Fleet Foxes, First Aid Kit does a good version of it too on youtube. (link)

Oh yeah, I'm officially a working gal now, holed myself up in a budding interiors firm on a hill, in an old school building. I like the place. X3



Wanderers this morning came by
Where did they go
Graceful in the morning light
To banner fair
To follow you softly
In the cold mountain air

Through the forest
Down to your grave
Where the birds wait
And the tall grasses wave
They do not
Know you anymore

Dear shadow alive and well
How can the body die
You tell me everything
Anything true

What's the Buzz?

The Shopping Bee!

okay. *deep breath*

~SHAMELESS SELF PROMOTION WARNING!~

I'm shopping again! But this time, professionally, as a part of a small entrepreneurial effort with a partner back in sunny Sporeville. ^_^

It's not anything artsy, but rather the opposite. It's more of something tailored to your evil and sometimes unabashedly consumerist desires. Make your guilty pleasures just a little less guilty. Let's undercut Takashimaya, or Isetan or whatchamacallit big shopping mall that proliferates on Orchard Road. What is The Shopping Bee? That's me, the bee. Busy doing all this buzzing.

http://theshoppingbee.blogspot.com/

Dusty Sketches

From Bored

I miss Europe!

Scarfman

From Bored

Honestly, there, it takes a month of advertising proper, to get rid of a used bunk bed. SOLD. Now this will have to suffice.