07.30.06
Catch ‘Em
It was Moral Education lesson.
The tables had been pushed together in the centre of the classroom. There were neat stacks of coloured paper slips in denominations of $10, $20 and $50 on the tables.
We stood about in a ring around the tables, looking, waiting.
Suddenly somebody lunged out to grab a note. It was as if he had thrown a switch. The class launched themselves at the tables to grab a piece for themselves in a breathless fluster of arms against the background of screeching table legs against the concrete floor.
“How much did you get?”
“Fifty!”
“I’ve only got a ten!”
I got a twenty.
Our teacher standing off to one side smiled cryptically.
“Who first started the grabbing?” He asked.
“Who did not take anything at all?”
He glanced at the rest of the class, each one clutching a paper slip. He took a pink coloured slip with a dollar sign and the number 10 on it.
“It’s only paper.” he says, waving it aloft.
“I did not say or tell you to take them.”
He paused, looking at us again.
“Why do you feel the need to snatch it before other people did?”
—-
There were packs of sandwiches laid out on the cardboard, egg, tuna and some other flavours.
“But I am afraid there might not be enough, so you guys will have to make a grab for the flavours you want.”
“I want tuna!” A girl besides me exclaims.
“Get two egg for me!”
“Tuna, tuna, tuna.” Somebody mutters.
I watch as they swooped down on the cardboard. Egg doesn’t seem to be a popular choice. There might still be a few sandwiches left.
“Hey, catch!”
I looked up surprised as a plastic wrapped sandwich landed in my hands. Egg. She tossed another pack to A sitting beside me who hadn’t moved either. Still kneeling at the makeshift cardboard mat, she checked that everybody in the group had a sandwich before she took hers.
“Hey, thanks… what’s your name?”
She smiled, ” S_____”.
07.26.06
Chinatown Jalan
“During the argument, I asked him what sort of girl he wants as a girlfriend.”
“He couldn’t answer.”
They had broken up after three months. My friend barely turned a hair.
(Me: “Aren’t you supposed to be all clingy etc, instead of being so…ahhh, logical..?”
Friend: “For what?”
Me: “…….”
I shall concede the point about girls being the stronger one in a breakup. Anyway….)
I thought about it a while, sucking on my straw.
“Don’t you think it takes alot of courage to answer this question?” I chewed slowly on my (poor) straw. “You are exposing yourself to another person.”
“But that is what communciation between couples is all about, isn’t it? If you tell me, I can try to accomodate and see if I can be the right girl for you and work things out. If I’m not, then I will just tell you straight… But if you don’t feel even ready to open up to me…”
I thought about the wall of silence H had built up around him. You can only wait to be invited in.
“Mmmmmm… maybe he’s not ready.”
“Maybe.”
06.25.06
Conversation
I think we Singaporeans are getting too practical for our own good.
Male friend: "So did your mother ask who you are going out with today?"
Me: "Yes. She asked me how much you are earning."
Male friend: "It's less than $1.8k."
To which I dutifully reported to my Mom and her reply:
"Too little." she sniffed, "Yang bu qi ni."
(Translation: Unable to provide for a comfortable life, in the sense.)
…. Maaaa, I am never going to get married at this rate. 
06.21.06
How To Draw A Flower
myPage.beginFill(0xFF99CC,100);
myPage.moveTo(ax+r, ay);
for (angle= 45; angle<=360; angle += 45){
// endpoint
endx = r*Math.cos(angle*Math.PI/180);
endy = r*Math.sin(angle*Math.PI/180);
// control:
// (angle-90 is used to give the correct sign)
cx =endx + r* A *Math.cos((angle-90)*Math.PI/180);
cy =endy + r* A *Math.sin((angle-90)*Math.PI/180);
myPage.curveTo (cx+ax, cy+ay, ax, ay);
myPage.curveTo(cx+ax, cy+ay, endx+ax, endy+ay);
}
myPage.endFill();
myPage.beginFill(0xFFFF00,100);
myPage.moveTo(ax+r2, ay);
for (angle= 45; angle<=360; angle += 45)
{
// endpoint
endx = r2*Math.cos(angle*Math.PI/180);
endy = r2*Math.sin(angle*Math.PI/180);
// control:
// (angle-90 is used to give the correct sign)
cx =endx + r2* A *Math.cos((angle-90)*Math.PI/180);
cy =endy + r2* A *Math.sin((angle-90)*Math.PI/180);
//myPage.curveTo (cx+ax, cy+ay, ax, ay);
myPage.curveTo(cx+ax, cy+ay, endx+ax, endy+ay);
}
myPage.endFill();
*adapted from Circle drawing code from flash-creations
06.18.06
Questions
Don over at thedesignlanguage.com wrote:
“I know I haven’t given much thought to this, even back in Singapore, I couldn’t really answer friends who would ask me such questions; why SCAD? Why animation? What are you going to do about it when you graduate? And so on and so on…. Carn, a senior graduate student, and an award winning video, broadcast designer, when approached by his family members on what he is going to do after he graduated, he said he told them he has no idea what would happen after.”
For some reason, it made me feel abit better.
49 days til school starts.
Tea Ceremony
Guests
Let Me See
Looking
Where Is My Owner
Mirror
One Heart, One Love
Together
The Image Of God
From Michelangelo & The Pope's Ceiling by Ross King:
"The sheer iconic status of this image of God, five centuries later, tends to blind modern viewers to its novelty…The Lord God in full length, complete with bare toes and kneecaps, was a rare and unaccustomed sight.
…Creation scenes in early Christian art usually ventured to show nothing more of the Creator than a giant hand emerging from the heavens … God steadily acquired more bodily attributes through the Middle Ages, though most often he was portrayed as a young man (Image from Orvieto Cathedral).
The now-familiar image of an old man with a beard and long robes did not actually start to develop until the fourteeth century.
There is, of course no biblical authority for this grandfatherly image. It was inspired instead by the many antique statues and reliefs of Jupiter and Zeus that could be seen in Rome."
Notes … “On Painting”
In 1435, Leon Battista Alberti wrote in his treatise "De pictura" (On Painting) :
"Painting possesses a truly divine power in that not only does it make the absent present, but it also represents the dead to the living many centuries later … Through painting, the faces of the dead go on living for a very long time."
Well, there's photography now, and I wonder what he'll make of Photoshop today. And apparently, painting was held in such high esteem in history, that "it was forbidden by law among the Greeks for slaves to learn to paint". I couldn't find anything on that, so I'll have to take his word for it.
His advice on depicting people in paintings:
"I like there to be someone in the 'historia' who tells the spectators what is going on, and either beckons them with his hand to look, or with ferocious expression and forbidding glance challenges them not to come near, as if he wished their business to be secret, or points to some danger or remarkable thing in the picture, or by his gestures invites you to laugh or weep with them."
