Haunting

Its the first time I've been to a World Press Photo Exhibition (so happy they came to Singapore!)

Somehow, when I saw the huge prints (as compared to what is on the web), I felt my hair stand. The images were haunting.

It was quite mentally distressing to see so much sorrow and anguish, so much pain, so much pride, so much neglect and nonchalance all at once.

I don't know what to make of it.

Dream Stuff - Dr Seuss

Dream Stuff
Dream stuff
Funny thing about this dream stuff
First its there
Then nowhere

Dream stuff
Dream stuff
Ever fleeting ever shifting
Yet we could keep it from drifting
If we only dare

Rouse that world you’ve been to
Carry it right into bright blue day

Feel it
Seal it
Don’t let anybody steal it
Most of all keep any doubt away
Then you can make it stay

(I tried googling for the lyrics of this song by Dr Seuss from the movie Dr Seuss and the 5000 fingers of Dr.T. And I couldn't find it! So I posted it here. I can't conceive anything not being online... haha. So its a first for the internet by me. Well, if you find it elsewhere, go ahead, destroy my silly illusion. Anyway, though the movie was a flop and Dr Seuss thought that it was the low point in his career, I think the lyrics are quite beautiful)

Smooch Factor 10/10

http://www.psyop.tv/cocacola

Detailed expression, beauty, detail and a truly insane concept.

A Mail From Sri Lanka

Hai,
Sorry I took a long time reply.
I was a little bit busy searching for information for further studies, and I had to look after my mother.
She is not well, so I don't think I can get out of Sri Lanka after all.
We are three. Me, mother and sister. My sister is married and she is in London. So i want to stay with my mum.
How is your studies going on?
In Sri Lanka, the situation is going to be very bad.
The new government is not good, and the president wants to maintain his power.
The people suffer.
I resigned from my work last month, as two journalists and four media people got shot.
My mother begged me to resign from my job.
Other than all that, nothing special has happened.

With love,
"X"

The new and the old

I am kinda chirpy nowadays. I have tidied up all my files in my computer. I cannot express how great it felt to delete 18Gb of stuff within a day. How great it felt to install Quicktime 7 Pro, and Flash 8. Yep, I can now see those snazzy videos online. And Flash 8... I tried importing video into it. Quite cool. And I have Illustrator and Indesign too! Things are looking good. I even have a wmv player on my mac now. What can I say... Life feels good. =)

On the government

I say, politicians are ungrateful farmers. They dump the dung, and the crops grow. They give no credit to the rain, the seasons, the sun, and the seed. Sometimes, without the dung, things probably won't be too much different. I wonder.

A Boo Boo

Boo Boo is a cat whom i've never met. I've heard it mewing over the phone, but I don't think that counts for anything. Boo Boo's owner says he's reckless and silly - "All heart and no brain". If he weren't picked off the streets, he would've been eaten by a rat. That makes me smile.

A slient leave

I hold on so gently
Pretending to let it go.
But i stop it.
I stop it half-heartedly before it flies.
It flutters
I think it'll fly.
But it doesn't try hard enough.

One moment a blissful eternity.
The hours pass like one moment.
And in another moment, it shouldn't exist.
We pretend it didn't.

Who's enacting a farce.
Is it an act and or is it true.
Will it end, this game after game.
Maybe it hasn't begun.

You would laugh it away.
And I would too.

Look what I've found

I found this old notebook in my drawer, and flipped it open.
There was a poem I had written when I was in JC2, during GP class.

It's plainly titled 'I Feel... (during GP)"

Maggots squirm in my brain.
Am I in a grave?
I am dead.
Six feet underground this muck of knowledge.
Very dead.
This bright yet menacing afternoon,
Stuck in a casket they call a classroom.
Flies around my body the words buzz,
The stench of assignments, oh don't make me start!
Ms Tan dearest, have a heart,
And let us off before the hour's up.

Getting creative.

I wonder if I am stifling my FYP group by being around too often, talking too much about workload and deadlines.

Maybe I ought to take a backseat... Just slow it down a little, and give everyone time to think.

So I'll give lesser opinions, and keep quiet until I am asked. Yay.

Anyway, I am so glad Pling is back.

Get Real?

The closer you get to what is real, the more unreal things you will see and hear.

Greenspan and Quarterlife Crisis

Read in ST today that Alan Greenspan (who stepped down as US Fed Reserve Chairman) played the saxaphone with Stan Getz in his younger days, but gave it up to study economics at New York University. He picked economics because he developed the philosophy that money is a good thing for people to have (Hey, don't we all think the same? Haha).

Anyway, if anyone was playing beside a future jazz legend, bloody hell, no matter how good one was, relativity would set in, and one would sound bad.

Greenspan's choice made me consider. At that point in his life, if he knew, it would've been a choice between good jazz musician and great economist.

Worse...

I think I am stressed.

I'm impatiently waiting for this NGO chairwoman to arrange a date and time for me to interview her in Batam.

So last night, I dreamt she wanted us to be in Batam at 8.am. And somehow, I forgot to bring the lavalier mic, and only realised it at 6.30am in the morning on the way to Harbourfront Ferry Terminal. No way I could find a lavalier mic anywhere at 6.30am. So I freaked out. And then I woke up. Hahahahaha... ain't that funny? That's like the worst thing that can happen...

I totally adore her.

There is a feisty 4 year old girl, that I unexplainably adore. She only comes to church once in eons, and her mom is from the filipino (Pi-lee-pin, she says it) service.

She came up to me from behind and tugged my skirt. I turned around, and when I saw her smiling so ever sweetly, I just felt so happy. I have no idea why I adore her so much. I hugged her and just looked at her delightfully for a long time.

There's something in us that just clicks. Its one of the unexplainable strange things in life.

My FYP team

From left to right,
Pling, me, pH, Asmi, Ishi and Dei.

I suspect Ishi would want to kill me for posting such an unglam picture of him in his glasses. But I have to say I've been kind by not posting the even more unglam ones. The ladies at the money changer at the Batam Centre ferry terminal recognised him as one of the actors in a channel 8 drama, and this led to a nice video shot we wanted or S$ being changed to rupiah. Lucky =).

Asmi's our nice trustworthy taxi driver. We trust him so much we leave our possessions in the taxi and let him drive off with them while we go for lunch. I wonder what would happen if he drives away with our passports though. Haha. Through him, we got to interview Mami(aka pimp) Lisa. I can't wait for the interview to be transcribed!!

Both Pling and pH are wearing the 'f*** you' caps. They bought it at the roadside stalls in Batam. Pling bought the cap first, and persuaded pH to get it too. What a cap to buy when we are doing a video documentary like ours.

Dei, as you should know by now, is our translator. This trip, pH and Ishi told us a mami hit on him. Hahaha. Not a bad thing if a girl doesn't mind supporting you rite? Dei told me Asmi brought them to every ktv and brothel he knew, and had to call his other friends to ask if they knew of any other entertainment nightspots. By now, I think the guys are experts about the night entertainment scene in Batam. And I kinda wish I had the opportunity to see it all too, but too bad I am a girl.

Lollipop Diaster

A picture Asmi, our Batam taxi driver took of me and this little girl at the junction to Barelang Bridge. The place we call 'perfect competition' because EVERY shop sells the same thing.

The little girl was holding two lollipops, one in each hand. One of her lollipops got caught in my hair when the picture was being taken. At the point when the shot was taken, we had no idea of the upcoming diaster.

Click. Then, the girl found out. She panicked. She tugged hard. She got her lollipop back, and I feel kinda bad because I know she would just continue eating it.

Even better...

My FYP group finally met Dei... and we all clicked. We totally adore him. Its the charisma. We are now a cult... haha.

Wonderful. I can't be happier. And I must stop raving.

When a person drops from heaven...

Wednesday, 7th September.

I remember. I felt horrible. I was about to go to Sri Lanka the next week. Things were not sure at that point and Tekwani said we might be going to the South and not the East, or we might just go to India if the ceasefire was breached. I was waiting for 5pm to come, so that Tekwani might pass us our flight details.

I was sitting at an area called the benches struggling to do an After Effects tutorial. Didn't want to waste time.

I was worried sick about my FYP because I had to write a proposal that would get my group funding by the first week of October. The Sri Lanka trip made it terribly difficult to make another trip to Batam for my FYP. We had no content that would ensure the Singapore Film Commission would give us money to do such a documentary. I had nothing. No translators. The only one we thought we had in Batam turned to be quite a dodgy person. I felt stuck. Horrible.

I had to have something by October 1st. All I saw was a brick wall. My contacts led me to nothing.

Then somebody came and sat on the same table as me. I heard him speak. His voice had an Indonesian accent.

To cut the long story short, he loved to help my group, would make phonecalls for us, find out about ferry timings, offer his valuable suggestions, and he is familiar with Sundanese, Javanese and Bahasa Indonesia.

Because of him, he could also recommend us his network of Indonesian friends. We had a transcript of an interview for SFC. I believe it got us the money, on top of our well-planned proposal... heh. (And thanks to Norman too).

He is amazingly trustworthy and responsible. I cannot imagine ever meeting a better candidate.

Now that I have my funding and can pay him a token sum, he says he wants to do it for free so that I can save the money and hire a translator in January when he can't help us due to his internship and other commitments.

I don't know what I have done to deserve this and I really think he dropped from heaven on the bench where I was sitting. He does what he says, and more than what I expect, which is cool.

I will still pay him at the end of it all. Anyway, my group is so blessed to have met him. I am happy. Oh happy day.

Stress

We're all learning After Effects and I am damn stressed about my final project.

I know it when I am stressed. I get macabre dreams.

The other day, I dreamt that I was in a country that had fallen into a civil conflict. The skies were a bluish grey, an dark grey train was moving along the rail road. The scene looked desaturated, except for a man that looked pale, in a rich red coat who was standing inside the train. A group of young boys were held captive in one of the cabins. They were in their tattered clothes. Some men in military attire shoved the children military attire to change into.

A boy was already in military attire. He was unwillingly, and terribly scared. The pale man in the rich red coat shoved him a rifle. He asked the boy to shoot a few POWs behind him. The train came to a sudden stop. The boy almost lost his balance, while still holding the rifle. The man in the red coat shouted at him to shoot. He was angry.

The boy pointed his gun upwards, and started firing at the roof of the cabin, also painted in the same red colour. Both him and the red man could see that soldiers were falling down from the roof of the cabin through the cabin windows. The bodies made a loud continuous thudding noise as they fell to the ground. The boy then realised that he had killed the soldiers standing on the roof of the cabin. Blood was dripping through the bullet holes on the roof. He had killed when he didn't mean to.

The man in red was shocked into silence and he glared at the boy.

Then, I woke up.

Bleh. I hope I dream the next episode.

Be Glad

I rushed up a non-airconditioned 179 bus today, trying to make my way to the the Unifem office.

I climbed up the double decker bus, sat down, and I saw the kopi uncle sitting opposite me.

What a surprise. The kopi uncle makes coffee at canteen 3. He constantly asks me to study hard, and always reprimmands me. He said I looked pale and listless today, when I was buying coffee from him earlier today. I said I was tired, lacked sleep, and that his coffee would make me feel better.

He said nobody gets tired from studying.

So there in the bus, I asked the uncle if he was going home. He said no. I asked where he lived, and he said Boon Lay. I asked where he's going, and he said to West Coast to work. He works til 12am everyday at West Coast, and starts work at 6am in NTU.

So I guess its my dose of reality. I felt really dead beat today after continuously doing my sch and church work for many long days. But now, I think my lack of rest is temporary, and I love what I do. For others like the kopi uncle, I guess they do it out of necessity.

Be glad.