a slap in the face

i have nothing worthy of sharing or writing at the moment.. so it'll be quiet here for just a while.

Grid, Corridor and Field

Proposals for a sustainable Melbourne.

Points for those who can guess which of the 3 in the title was my project. har har.

First and foremost, I'd like to thank each and everyone of you who visited it. It truly means a lot to have your support and interest in what we have come up with over the semester .

An afternoon well spent with the classmates getting our panels pinned up and ready for the exhibition. Initially we were expected to mount them onto boards, til we all decided to stinge on the extra costs and did without.

Free flow of drinks, food and a lot of exposure for all of our works! It is indeed fulfilling to see soo many people that you had never seen in your life, actually giving a few minutes of their time to stop and stare... and digesting some of the idea. The world should really come check out the exhibition the next time it is up! VEIL has promised that our work will get more exposure, and possibly put up on their website.

Enough with the babbling. Here are the long awaited pictures!

This was how our studios section looked like in the exhibition space...

People admiring Hong Yi's work.

Amanda and I's panels. Who sees chocolate cake? haha. (inside joke)

some very cool looking sky Melbourne had on the day of the opening! It looked like a waterfall in the sky....

Edit: A friend visited the exhibition on the final day and texted me with exciting news. 2 old men were standing at my panels and were impressed with what they saw! compliments!! :D

I soo hope one of those 2 men was a santa claus looking one (in hopes it was alex selenitsch moderating the works- the studio coordinator who could possibly be doing moderation on our marks) fingers crossed!

Tips on Presentations

I've learnt from presenting my work over the years that I typically do not get stage fright/ fear of public speaking. Perhaps that is because it is never a whole lecture theatre. But nevertheless, I have my strategies which are individual, and very important not to screw it all up!

The first one would always be to Make the Crits (a crit is a person who is invited to criticise our work) Laugh. I find it calming, and breaks the tense atmosphere. I warm up to the audience, and stop stumbling over what I have to say. I prepared my joke for the latest presentation, and even reminded my friends to cue the laughter amongst the crowd.

Two. Have a model! or an animation, or video, or powerpoint. It helps Distract the Crits!. Those are the recommended distractions, or perhaps you could just keep the alcohol flowing. Another method of distraction I've seen in my 4 years of education is to dress to distract. I do not recommend this, as it is highly against what I think is right. How cheap can one get? I'd only say to do this, if your work is utter crap.

Three. Begin with an introduction of yourself, and your project. Do NOT begin with an apology of how your work could of been better, or you could of done more. That is just pathetic. Be proud of what you've done. Go beyond all means to make yourself believe in what you've produced. Do whatever you can to convince them that your project is as finish as it can get. Now you wouldn't want to advertise a half baked pie and apologise for its half bakedness right? A better sales approach would be to sell it as half baked, so you can keep it in your freezer and eat it whenever you want from the comforts of your very own oven!

Four. Distract yourself. If looking at your classmates/familiar faces giggling in the back row is a distraction, hope, and pray for a hot crit to attend.

Five. Prepare. Practice. Improve. Prepare and Practice. A couple friends and myself organised a mock presentation as a test run.

So what other tricks do you use?

Stay tuned, I'll be writing about the exhibition soon.

Drunk Riding in Mornington

A few weeks back, a couple of friends and myself headed to Mornington for a horse riding winery tour which was better known to us as the drunk riding trip. This random idea was to mark the ageing of Kianson, turning the lovely age of 23. Hope you had a great 'never-been-done-before' birthday celebration!

To elaborate a little further, drunk riding was the act of riding a horse from a farm, to T'gallant winery for tasting, and to ride to the next winery from which i've forgotten its name, for tasting and then back to the farm. I loved every bit of the ride eventhough I was assigned to a rather lazy horse by the name of Betsy- i was the only one in the group given a whip to keep her going.

So here's to a great start of our winter break!

On Being Asian

Metcards are the tickets used to take any form of public transport in Melbourne. The most common multiple trip tickets that most Melbournians have with them are the 10x 2 hourly tickets, and the 5 x weekend savers. The 10 x 2 hr ticket, when punched twice gives you a validation for the rest of the day, instead of 4 hours (2x2). And when the weekend comes around, a special, and oh so worth it ticket called the weekend saver gives you access to any destination on the network for a good price.

So being asian, so long any ticket is validated to give you a whole days worth of travelling, it is best to use it whenever you can, be it 1 tram stop distance! I'd like to call it Getting you moneys worth.

haha.

This entry isn't going to be as boring as a lesson on how to use public transport in Melbourne, but what I did to get my moneys worth of my validated ticket. So on Saturday, Joyce suggests a photography shooting practice at the Shrine of Remembrance down on St Kilda Road. Cold, dark and the tad bit creepy, we walk up the hill to see the great monumental structure and a captivating view down the parks axis; right down Swanston St!

I've been looking for great opportunities to practice backlighting. Was strange, yet heaps of fun discussing shutter speeds and white balances at the steps of the shrine. The solitude of being there, overlooking the city was like a reminder of the lives lost back in the day to give each and every one of us, the Aussies, and the many nations that they fought for, the opportunity to such a peaceful and rich life. Was reminded of a story of the Aussie soldiers in Kuching that was told by my mum. Well her grandmother told her the story. During the Japanese occupation, the soldiers were held captive and ate insects to stay alive; and when they were lucky, the random local would toss some food to them, where the thin and famished men would just gobble it all down immediately.

This is also not a mere bullshitting entry to hide the fact that we were being very asian, trying to get our moneys worth of the tram ticket, and trying to practice photography! Sure enough, those were our reasons, but being in the presence of the memorial did successfully achieve what it was built to do.

Anyways, here are some of the shots. The ones of Joyce taken and edited by me, and the one shot of myself taken by Joyce. She did a good job!

Oh how holidays are good....

The Exhibition

Do pop by to support us, or why not come just because you have nothing better to do? Get some crazy ideas on how the future of Melbourne could be a sustainable one.

Lemon Mania

Try squeezing 1kg of lemons. You can try asking Ann about zesting 1kg of lemons. Try smelling an apartment of lemons for 6hours.

All that effort is definitely worth the effort.

On Friday, in all joys of completing my design presentation and afterpartying, I woke up bright and early (was definitely bright, but early could be an exaggeration in favour of my current nocturnal lifestyle) for a day of baking with my friends Joyce, Julian, Ann, and Amanda. I had a blast. Pretty sure they did too. We were baking birthday cupcakes for Kel's 23rd, simply because I didn't have a cake tray. And for toppings, we made a lemon cream, where the story of deciding on it was a funny one.

Me and my lemon craze, to eat anything and everything with lemons. Still love em, but I've had enough lemon preparation for the time being. The night before that, Julian coincidentally watched Master Chef AU where they prepared something lemon-y. I was overjoyed to hear his suggestion to bake something lemony, and that HY's mums latest blog entry featured a lemon cream!

With a couple of hours left to the planned surprise for Kel, I realised the lemon cream wasn't getting any thicker. CRAP!! we have a huge potful of a failed lemon curd! more like juice. I go into a state of panic, and try to get HY to contact her mum to find out what we I should do to fix it. Failed to get hold of her, HY suggests thickened cream. Not knowing she was gonna be the one who saves the cream, and the day!

So do visit HY's mums blog and try a recipe or two. The lemon cream is good stuff.