mukuge

practising a method I gleaned off somewhere...

2013-08-14T08:36:00.002+01:00

I've been spending the past few weeks working my own Happiness Project after listening to a TED talk a few months ago. My bad, I have not been keeping tabs on the original talk so no video link as for now. It boils down to...

Getting myself to work better by practising one of these methods daily: being thankful of three things, and meditation (these are the two points I remember, there are four in total.)

I started off by being quite easy-going about it for the first month - doing a recount either in bed before falling asleep or first thing in the morning. A few weeks ago I started writing down my thankful items to track how my emotions and the way I see things change according to circumstances.

The past few weeks I have been doing the Happiness Project, I find that there may be tough days when all I could find are two things to be thankful of. There are also plenty of days where six or eight events to be thankful of are too few to summarise the gladness I experience. I am not sure if this is going to be a long term project, and probably the monitoring factors will be adjusted as time passes, although sure it is heartwarming to do such a project.

I did not do my Happiness Project because a birthday/event/deadline was approaching. I simply thought that if I wanted to harness my power of thought, maybe I could give this method a try and something good would come out of it.

Take care :)

Out here

2013-03-23T02:09:00.001+00:00

So, after much preparation and to signal there is more to come, I'm introducing:
Marie + Lu
Reliably stylish, with lots of wearable pieces can fit right into your wardrobe.

Do buy, enjoy and refer Marie + Lu around :)

thrice struck

2012-12-14T17:18:00.005+00:00

The first instance I recognised a piece of clothing I really liked was when I came across an article about a particular paletot and a bulbous cape I saw in a magazine article. The creator had passed away a good few decades before. I came across the article by chance, as it was kept in the house-helpers' room, and a few times I sneaked away from rote learning to read and re-read the article. I was not even fourteen when this took place.

A few years later I went on an art class trip to this museum. During the requisite guided tour, I saw my first saw-it-in-books-and-like-it-even-more-in-live painting (a Rembrandt with amazing cut gemstone rendering). After the tour I went over to the bookshop section and bought a book on... beautiful clothes. Of all things. In hindsight, I'm not sure if my art teacher felt joy or exasperation that I bought something which was related to the exhibition by merit of being next to it.

So business school came into life, and with it the RWL (manga central, coffee table colour books, no studying please). I hung out there regularly to get an eye-hunger fix. One of the books that I revisited repeatedly was this.

Can you guess the fashion designer whose name was fixed onto my mind?
His name is Cristobal Balenciaga.
I came across his body of work three times without remembering his name and each time I liked it. That man is a genius.

This is my little patch of motivational memory, the one designers conjure when they get asked why they got into fashion. It was only after I was out of college did I remember the events and marvelled how I kept on gushing over 'this designer I just read about' on three different episodes, and they all point to the one and same person.

And thus thrice struck was I by the Cristobal - Balenciaga the dead, I'd clarify to friends at college.

Good night.

it's not meat fruit, it's meat dress

2012-08-09T10:25:00.003+01:00

I came across this article regarding older people dressed in meat that forms a collection of artworks. It raises up a few thoughts regarding dressing in meat.

1.
I did not pay so much attention to the fact that the meat dress was seen by the interpreter/commentator as something that looks offensive because it was meat on an old person. What I experienced was this vague awareness that the skin of the person in the picture was vaguely older, and that the texture of that beige thing occupying the visual expanse I would usually denote to feminine clothing items were interesting - no thought of meat or the feel of cold carcass on skin. It was just interesting and engaging. Scale and resolution of print versus screen resolution may have something to do with it.

2.
Gaga is not the first one that did it, and even though it is the most publicised meat-wearing event to date, it's not the first. I have this obsession with finding out who is first to come up with ideas, and Mr Formichetti chronologically is not when it comes to wearing meat. I'm glad to find out wearing something made out of meat is a lot less pop than I had made it out to be (not that it's something I'd like to do).

3.
I don't have to punish myself internally for not being so instantly popular. For someone whose career is often made or broken on the point of "whether people want to adopt my idea so much they are willing to part with their cash for it", it's quite a soothing point to learn... it's a revelation some readers may find a bit silly, but that's how I see it at the moment.

patience, forgiveness, and unwillingness to eat shit all the time

2012-07-09T13:26:00.003+01:00

Cheating exists in all sorts of forms. It exists in fields as diverse as student plagiarism, to two-timing and tax evasion. Usually it involves some sort of dishonesty or lack of disclosure, misrepresentation, and a lot of grief (or fines or bribes) if it is uncovered.

Basically, I had my first student-cheat today. I was marking some sewing work and it was just so obvious that the work was entirely not part of a natural progression (or even a freak natural progression) of something that a student could make. I had the student re-do certain parts of the work afresh to gauge how genuine this done-and-submitted work could be. At the end of the day, whatever understanding and benefits of doubt I had given her was negated with at least two very obvious mistakes she did - after taking into account the handicaps that could have been in completing this 'believe-me' task.

I'm actually rather generous and understanding and occasionally forgiving (as of last count) when I'm on the receiving end of not-so-honest behaviour. At the end of the day it boils down to the dissonance between being able to overlook the disappointment of being cheated and not wanting to eat sh*t all the time. I'm not always able to resolve this dissonance on the spot, for every case is different.

If you're wondering what I did on the case of today's plagiarism discovery, as per college policy, the project's a fail.

Actually, if that student was at LCF, it would have been instant expulsion.

So... I still have lots of work to mark, I'm going back to my pile of work. Dum dee dum dum.

seeing skills

2012-07-06T05:49:00.003+01:00

I don't profess to have an extensive knowledge of Japanese language, nor read it fluently, but when I saw the first four character of this blog's title I smiled. It is "one day one flower" - or a flower a day. Like an apple a day for the soul I suppose.

Yes, a flower a day would be nice. Now where is that posy of peonies?

shameless?

2012-07-02T07:08:00.004+01:00

The truly famous don't need online networks to network, they just need to drop their names.

I hope I'm on my way there.
Not that I'm craving for fame, but because the industry I'm in is so amnesic a good whack on the head (in the form of a big name) is quite handy to have. I prefer to be famous professionally, and for all the right reasons too, just to make life easier.

A few weeks ago I had a conversation with Sylv over how some of us tremble at the thought of adding our more infamously difficult ex-teachers on Facebook. It's quite amusing to observe myself finally acquiesce onto linking with my ex-teachers on LinkedIn because, well, two years after graduation is enough time to grow out of the they-were-my-tutors mentality. Not to mention that LinkedIn is free of drinking-spree pictures, which means that it is politically correctly preferred than to add them on Facebook.

So yes, I've been recalling names and going through stacks of name cards to keep on top of my network. The best thing, really, is just to pop down for a coffee with the person in question.

Now, back to garment sampling.

one-way trade?

2012-04-11T16:50:00.004+01:00

Read an article about David Cameron coming over for a two-day visit to Jakarta.

First: poor Dave. Brits worship sunshine, but I don't know what he'd make out of combined sunshine, pollution, and humidity.

Second: poor Dave. Fillon beat him by almost a year.

Third: poor/hello Dave. France sent a Second-in-Command (not Sarkozy - I wonder how it would turn out if he had walked the tarmac instead).

The more important issues: What kind of talks did Dave and Bambang* have? Did Dave talk with Marty? I'm not so well-versed in defense strategies so I will give that topic a pass, but what about trade? Is it really equally bilateral, is it we-come-here-for-favours type of bilateral, or is it something else? I smell Perry's black ships in the air... but then again, I might be overcautious, I might be irrationally historically referential, I might be right, or I might be plain wrong. Interesting stuff.

On trade, I would rather be able to ship my things to UK (to sell there) without incurring crazy customs fees. £35 is nowhere near enough for sending anything. Maybe the audience can share a few things about these potentially nefarious webs of knowledge?

Also, how did they converse?

I imagined that I was in the vicinity of these decision-makers, somehow got roped into a chat with them and got asked about where I used to live (somewhere unsalubrious) and what I used to do (something vain). Then somehow I got recruited as 'special advisor' (Dave's preferably), got overworked and overpaid and overnetworked, and... return to my field in the next few years. Or maybe not at all. I might end up a prime minister! Ha.

Anyhoo, good night people.

*I do not like his usual moniker, and since his first name sounded a bit off, I settled for his second name instead.

jaaaaa! neiiiiin!

2012-04-10T15:57:00.004+01:00

So. I spent a good part of today sitting on the way from one place to another... expanding my [hopefully] mighty little tentacles of professional knowledge.

A friend of mine made cute elephant breads (with sausage cheeks and sausage smiles) over the Easter weekend. He's not geeky, his [fashion] designs are pretty respectable, he's not overly gay-flamboyant (he might even be straight), he cooks well, he's socially gracious, he's on Ben Sherman's ad as of the moment, and he is doing MA at RCA. Good man, I'm happy for him.

I remember him from college days as a hard worker, but not one who visibly sacrifices his personal life. Okay, fashion school is a substantial sacrifice of time and money, but he wasn't the type who adhered to the "school or die" philosophy... as a certain cross-dressing classmate of mine is ~~was~~ was prone to do. Is this type of life outlook what enables him to cross-fertilise his creativity from beyond the cutting table onto the kitchen table? Or maybe he learnt to make bread in his past life? Or did he get help?

I've been reading a little of Black Swan, so it's high time for me to shoot my arguments down "to cater to [my] hidden weakness for imparting explanations". And actually start creating the second, more complicated print design I need to come up with by the end of tonight. Such is my life.

Oh, and if you were interested, I had some TV time tonight. I switched between two programs, one about Kodiak bears and the other a culinary tour of Madrid.

Bye-bye.

culinary choices

2012-03-25T19:23:00.003+01:00

What I felt like eating: something savoury, with a slightly bitter drink
What I had in mind: Indomie Goreng with a side of mugicha
What I ended up having: a banana.

That is a triumph of nutritional temperance over wild tastebud desires. However way it is spun, I feel a bit sad...

0.068% of the time

2012-02-29T13:12:00.005+00:00

Today is obviously the ~~14th~~ 29th of February.
It comes once every four years.

There is an old tradition dating back to the 13th century that states women are allowed to propose to men on the day of the leap year. That makes it once every 1461 days. Four years ago my emotional head was messing around with me; four years before that a similar thing was happening (no, I wasn't thinking of marriages at the tender old age of 15 if you were about to ask me on earlier 29 Feb's state-of-mind). Which means that this is the first year I actually have my head around on this very special day, am mature enough to propose to a member of the opposite sex, and actually have the financial means to buy two very simple engagement rings.

Men and boys, I strike terror into your heart. Be meek and very afraid.
(There are still a few hours left.)

Other than that, happy leap year day!

accurate down to the last 0.5mm

2012-02-25T05:05:00.010+00:00

The studio front has been a bit quiet these past few days - I also have the need to declutter my brain every now and again so, you know, some things got to give.

Yesterday I finally kicked myself and organised my studio's expenses bookkeeping. It took less than 15 minutes and it gives me a sense of satisfaction knowing that the taxman won't be able to twist my arm so much if he decides to pop round looking for some extra cash to extort. My handbag interior looks a lot less like a paper shredder's bin, too.

I then decided to kick myself to look into precise manufacturing. Erm, apparently I need a table that's at least 8 metres long. Which means that a lot of things (power points, light switches etc) will have to get reshuffled around to fit an at-least-eight-metre-long table. That, and a few other details (such as a loading bay, specific electricity requirements and a bigger vehicle access road) mean that there are a lot things I need to sort. They're not great news to my ears and budget. It makes me feel operationally incompetent when in truth I am probably, well, operationally incompetent.

Another thing that I need to organise is my patterns. I have boxfuls of them, garment patterns, and apparently I first need to number the styles (not too big an inconvenience), before proceeding to assign a number. To. Every. Single. Pattern. Piece.
When we talk about patterns generated for my designs, in every collection I have a few styles that consist of 40+ different pieces. That works out to around 100 different panels for each style, some of them measuring as small as 5cm across (where do I get the space to write all the information on them?!) Numbering them all doesn't sound like fun work.
I would really like to hire a pattern professional to help me out, but sadly in here they are few and far between... and they're not always 0.5mm accurate as I would like them (and myself) to be.

There is also the added irritation of going from hi-fi to lo-fi. I interned at a high-tech textile print company after graduation. I get used to shuffling things around on computers because it's faster and tidier that way. What is geographically available to me where I am now based is a lot of this rather labour-intensive thing called batik... which I generally do not like in many of its traditional insurrections. Batik is one demon that I need to master, too, if I want to be the master of all evil fashiony things.

Alright, that's all for now. There's enough things now on my metaphorical 'in' box.

words of (temporary) wisdom

2012-02-21T04:40:00.003+00:00

Someone said to me:
"Money cannot buy you happiness, but it can get you temporary happiness."

Sounds kinda appealing, doesn't it?

movement or paralysis?

2012-02-11T16:01:00.005+00:00

Olla people.

Probably two non-blogging months is a respectable distance to start putting my experiences into perspective, or write some sort of narrative to them.

First up: teaching.
It goes pretty well so far. My assigned classes are alright. The syllabus, which is pretty much standardised (and which I got to jig about a few months back), is showing me how I can make my life more liveable. I write an immense amount of comments on the works I mark: in itself the act is not exactly a chore as I tend to chortle a lot on paper. However, multiply that by 20+ and the tasks get pretty intense by the end of the day. I was told that the amount of time that I spend marking students' works is "way too much." Students, if you are reading this then be thankful that you have a lecturer who actually bothers correcting almost every single mistake you make. They do find out about me from my virtual paper trails, but that's another story in itself...

Second topic: digital consumer ware.
I managed to bungle my dad's pocket camera's lens motion software, and I haven't exactly saved up enough to buy a nice new digipocket camera, so it's the Drone Phone's job (minus t3h personal assistant yours truly.) It's boring black in colour, as opposed to whingey white. Not exactly the easiest personal electronic device to extract picture files from. Sulk please.
Following the limitations that (1) numbers cannot be carried over across different mobile network providers (boo!) and (2) the Drone Phone's minuscule SIM card slot, I got myself a new mobile phone number... which comes with an easily recitable number and a sometimes-dodgy network coverage. Oh well.

Third topic: socialising.
Sometime in December I met up with Mr John of the Orford fame, who happened to be soaking up some winter sun and culture. Quite an interesting man whom I hope would make the sun-seeking behaviour a more regular part of his travel itinerary. Hoping to see him again at in a year's time, and hoping to extract that photo of him in flip-flops out of my mum's now-defunct mobile phone.
Also, there was a picture of me in a glossy magazine out earlier this month. It wasn't exactly for my work, though. Well, there's room for improvement I guess :)

Fourth topic: culinary pursuit.
Out of all those mint tisanes I drank in the past few months, I finally managed to get a green-tinged ice cream using only mint and no colouring. Considering my first attempt for mint stracciatella resulted in a sand-coloured concoction, it's a progress in the right direction.
I'm also looking forward to honing my no-yolk recipe as a form of homage to my favourite ice-cream joint. For the record, the runner-up is Gentong, surprisingly enough a native of Jakarta. Lickme is third, and that Lygon gelati place is off the charts - I don't miss it anymore. I haven't practised my mini-cake skills for almost a year. Geez, that means I haven't seen Bandit for almost a year.

Fifth topic: daily commuting.
Er, it's not exactly commuting because I drive a car to get around. Verrrrry bad for the environment, unless I ride a manually leg-powered bicycle. When I get to choose between the two, I choose the car, because I'd rather turn up at work smelling olfactorily inoffensive. It's almost impossible not to sweat when travelling by public transportation in Jakarta (taxis excluded.)
Plus, in the past three days I got hit/swiped by motorcycles on two different occasions. On both times my car was stationary when my rear bumper got hit. On hit #1 the errant gap-weaving motorcycler ran off (I wish I have some sort of projectile weaponry to deal with this sort of road users), and on hit #2 I managed to fan off my frustrations to the remorseful-looking motorcycler (his mind was somewhere else when he squarely ran into the middle of my bumper.) Really, it takes lots of patience to drive myself here.

On Anne, Mag, KY, Heidi and those VIPs in London:
I miss them. My work (both teaching and studio work) excites me but when I catch glimpses of their life online (when I actually have some time off) it makes me wonder what they would say to get my arse moving better. Maybe their reactions would be a mixture of wonderment, disgust and laissez-faire... who knows. I care about them anyway.

Which brings me to this rather existentialist question:

am I in movement or paralysis?

And so, closing the post, I would like to check my mattress...

by popular demand

2011-12-01T07:57:00.002+00:00

It's not exactly when the fashion people release this stuff, but anyway. Here goes my Spring/Summer 2012 work.*

I'm currently working for what I think will be relevant next winter, in case anyone's interested. It's stretching my sensory imagination and logistical accuracy, because it's just so hot in Jakarta and it's no easy feat procuring materials and services. I've been keeping myself in a severely airconditioned room to compensate for the heat, although coming out is a bit like walking into the Tube :))

*have to put them up for a competition, wish me all the best of everything!

service cleaning complaint

2011-11-26T16:18:00.006+00:00

Have you met my favourite sailor jumper?

A few days ago, I took it for a deep clean at a supposedly high-quality service shop. Took it back earlier tonight on my way out to town. I checked for tears and frays on the spot - the most serious of professional cleaning sins (as done by Aqualis on two of my dad's batik shirts) - and there were none. So I went out, came back home and hung it on my wardrobe door. That was, until I noticed something was amiss. The jumper went slightly pink, and its pilling had spread from primarily at the sleeve hems to all around the bust area.

So OK, in a badly lit distribution outlet (i.e. the one near home) it's difficult to discern whether there were any unwanted cleaning-triggered changes. But this jumper in my room? Of course I've seen it many times before. Being someone who has two crates of nearly-white fabrics in all sort of shades, and under constant lighting condition, of course I know there was some red-tone bleeding my jumper had picked up during the wash. To make it worse, the jumper's yarn is primarily cotton: colours only set into cotton when it's wash-treated at temperatures above 40 degrees, so it must have been chucked into the washing drum along with some other suspect-coloured garments. Knitted garments are not meant to be agitated when they are washed to prevent surface lint from forming; it happens more obviously on wool than cotton ceteris paribus... meaning it was agitated pretty bad while wet. To make it even worse, it wasn't supposed to even be washed in the first place - the care label says bloody dry clean it!

I think I will give the head office a call on this matter. If people in there are ashamed enough with the way they do business, they would compensate me. The supposed tenfold-of-cost compensation (as written on their bill) is not high enough as a deterrent for the company to do its work dilligently, nor will it get me any good replacement for the damage done. What I could do with it, though, is to pay for a nice dinner with my peer group and spread the word about the [unpleasant] experience.

Moral of the story: do NOT use Londré to clean any of your expensive knitwear.

(There, I've said it.)

Point #2: must get more cute Sonia Rykiel items to placate anger.

taking out nerves the jittery way

2011-11-22T15:36:00.004+00:00

Fruit-shopping today yielded an interesting result. Check picture below.

I'm snowing myself under lots of work. It's the usual combination of pleasure derived from overachievement mixed with addiction to cramming-induced adrenaline. I find myself doing things like a gnat: jumping from reading a book to reading online articles to Facebooking, and checking my phone for missed calls when the buzzing noise happened to come from the aircon. In short, it's super jumpy mode, which is truly a reverse of 'the usual' blue screen of death™ panic variety.

Well I guess, when in doubt take care of yourself and brush your teeth.
I really, really miss eating biltong.

an entire month went by...

2011-11-12T15:29:00.009+00:00

Apologies for the few-weeks' break. I'm blaming an excess surge of happy hormones and lack of machinists that make keeping my feet on the ground (and blog-posting) that little bit harder. I find myself staring onto the screen some nights, working out what to say (complaints? socio-economic observations? education?) whilst rolling about and giggling. Not exactly the first image one would come up with reading this blog, but it was truthful.

On the current affairs front, the delays involved with sprucing up the SEA Games complex reminded me of the Delhi Commonwealth Games fiasco last year. It made me think what is seriously wrong with this side of the world's propensity towards lax time-keeping in project management and execution? Does it have something to do with countries whose name start with I-N-D? How much of this inherent cultural laxness that resides in me that I can expel, reduce or control?
(I felt tempted to float the idea 'channel laxness towards other more lax-friendly areas in life', but laxness is like rotting teeth - not good.)

On the analogy front, I came up with a good phrase at the end of my gastro-intestinal problems. I haven't been in my physiologically prime since I came back: twisting my ankle, getting a cold, falling into a ditch... but nothing beats October's spectacle of eating cheap ice-cream. My sister suggested it; in the heat of the day (and worlds away from my favourite gelateria) it seemed like a good thing. Until I finished the two sticks I bought, realised they weren't that good to begin with, wondered why I compromised myself in the ice-cream stake... and got diarrhoea. It was a bit like going for one-night stands and getting a nasty VD. (Well, toldja.)
So I got an ice-cream maker at the end of the month and started churning my own stuff for personal consumption. My grandma's feedback was that 'it was cold and it melted'. Yes grandma, it's ice-cream.

On the socialising front, I'm spending a lot more time with my sister compared to what it was like between May and August. Also, I bumped into a certain Mr, which was enjoyable and quite funny towards the end. Maybe we can swap yams with gelati, or even do a yam-flavoured collaboration.

(If my dad asked to do me a gelati flavour I'd do cassava leaf, in honour of his fondness of the stuff.)

Anyway, more serious posts coming up. I've got a teaching gig starting in early December, I've gone through each subject's syllabus, and I'm doing prep work for them. Stay tuned for actions from the classroom front, on earning a 'Miss Killer' moniker without creating any mutiny, running a workshop and heavy-duty socialising. Challenging days ahead!

€93 shipping fee

2011-09-30T09:18:00.003+01:00

Invoices had just started coming in. And with such a grand example of sum one is likely to forfeit for one-time shipping, it's high time to get a courier account.

Reading contracts in Indonesian doesn't come as naturally to me.
Talk about sounding snobbish; such a fact can be 'read' in many different ways depending on the reader's state of mind. It's just because my brain finds it easier that way.

more to learn

2011-09-23T10:12:00.003+01:00

The irrefutable proof of one's mastery of foreign language is being able to complain about a problem and bitch about it fluently. Proper slangs and all.

Unfortunately my French classes in high school didn't cover this topic.

just quick, generally

2011-09-21T01:37:00.003+01:00

It's Paris time for me.

Today, I came to a particular company's stand in search of a particular fabric. I've bought from [let's call it] Company K before, so I know how it works and I was a lot more at ease with myself. I had the sheer luck of being served by Company K's director (again); now he has a bigger stand than the one I visited two years ago.

I'm not surprised he did not recall me at first because: (a) I did not talk much with him two years ago - someone Japanese did the job for me (b) we didn't order a shipping container full of fabric so we were pretty negligible (c) I neither had a spunky hairstyle nor wore an outfit sufficiently memorable enough, and (d) the made-up company/label name back then was probably pretty hard to remember.

Anyway, we talked quite a bit and hit a rapport. I'm alright in dealing with おじさん and older people in general. The label's name, which is real this time around, is more memorable I guess. Then I left, went round other booths etc, went to the station to head back to town and gazed at the train network map....... until I heard someone say, "hey number one!"

Yes, it was Mr Company K president.
(I quite like him, actually. Not in that way, but in a platonic easygoing way.)

Later on (after I've had my fill of map-gazing) I caught up with him and another man he seemed to know on the platform. So to cut the story short, we all chatted, got into the crowded train and traded stories one to another. It turned out to be very fruitful, I got asked to share my views on tricky issues I never thought anyone would ask me on a train (religion/faith), I got to share why I choose to live thrifty (to use up the cash on good things of course), I got to retort an offhand command made in a language I did not master in that very language I did not master ("うそ," "そうでない") (that was gold), I got to meet someone whose body language reminds me of someone I knew (I was quite amused actually), and I had a very nice train journey back to town.

It was a very good day, a productive one, and one I actually like. I'm glad I have the opportunity to create new connections and strengthen existing ones. The experience contrasts with traveling with friends who keep company and take your silly pictures. Sometimes traveling alone is not a bad thing because it makes me reach out to others I wouldn't, had I got people I already know around to chat with.

Also, knowing more foreign languages is good, because being able to work out what other people are talking about is helpful. Especially in my line of work where a simple garment can have its components sourced from four different countries.

Which means, tomorrow is a long day for me because I am running out of business cards and I need to get more printed, pronto.

Big P.S.
Asking for things to be shipped to Indonesia is sometimes a disadvantage as I come across companies who are very wary of sending things to anywhere east of the Bosphorus (or getting less than 300 metres, or actually having dared to approach them.) However, with it comes the fun of explaining 'why' and proving that the inside of my head is genuinely not a bad copy of someone else's.

P.P.S. this post says plenty about the ilks and vagaries of Eurostar travel. I second it.

balancing act

2011-09-12T12:16:00.006+01:00

Last night I chatted with a few people about the relevance of one's geographical location when designing.

There's one element that's clear as hell for people design: light type/colour balance is different in each region. Some colours get 'hidden' and unpleasantly come out when they're brought to other places, others 'translate' quite well and are generally bearable when compared to the selection of colours originally chosen.

I have a white linen dress with white guipure lace trimmings purchased in Singapore; I thought they were of the same colour until I looked at my reflection in the bus a few weeks ago and caught sight of....... ivory-coloured lace on optic white linen fabric. It wasn't obvious, but as someone who scrutinise colour cards on a regular basis, this was vexing.

There are other elements to the game as well, such as slight tints of contacts and hard lenses, which complicates the game. This token of wisdom is courtesy of my sister - when we went to NZ yonks ago she regularly took off her glasses 'to enjoy the colours'. I noticed a similar thing as well when I wore coloured contacts for fun, I barely pop them on these days.

Also, I notice that clothes lose their colour when they are hung out under direct sun. They go crispy and all faded out - which happens to a lot of stuff that gets washed in Jakarta. The crispness might have come from hard water, but the fading definitely comes from UV rays. When I lived in Melbourne, the colours fade faster in summer, when clothes are hung to dry on the backyard instead of being tumble dried. I don't advocate tumble drying, but I do think drying clothes in shade will preserve its colour better, ceteris paribus*.
*oh how I love using this economist-like phrase...

I'm looking at getting a second Pantone deck soon. It's time to graduate to proper fabric swatches and you will be sure as hell it will be locked away in a dark place ;))

a fortnight on

2011-09-08T22:03:00.006+01:00

In the grand scheme of things, that thing came into being, stars got cajoled into alignment, et cetera. Which enabled me to stream through copious amounts of imagery, store layouts, lectures and gain some valuable tokens of thought. Discussions flow, both design-y and personal. Spare carnets got used up, new carnets bought, one's self chastised for not noticing the Navigo semaine deal.

So yes, I did Paris.

This time around, the city gave me a different feel. Maybe it was a by-product of dragging portfolio across town, noticing the post-it note trend on office windows. Maybe it was the determination that focused me and bolted me onto finishing my work. Maybe the reason was as simple as my peers.

I feel the need to wash the slate clean - more like 'throw the rubbish out' after last fortnight's post, especially when things in life move so fast and in ways I didn't foresee before. I'm not a fan of bitter-tasting things, but sometimes some tartness (or acidity or bitterness) is needed to bring out the sweet flavour. If the previous post was nasty, this one makes it up.

Anyway, for now peace is restored.

pissed.

2011-08-25T16:56:00.014+01:00

Despite my cheery demeanour that most people in life see me in, I don't lack things that piss me.

I would like to say here that with less than two days before my planned departure to Paris (hotel and travel booked and paid for in advance in June), I still do not have a visa. Oh, of course, sarcastically do blame me for the following:
1. For not being able to get an initial visa appointment before September when the travel takes place in August and the requesting-for-appointment (complete with prepaid bookings) was initiated in late June.
2. For having a third-rate passport from a country that surely could care less about how its citizens are treated diplomatically.
3. For knowing sure as hell that a visa could be produced in less than an hour.
4. For knowing it really only took less than a few hours for the Schengen office to send the confirmation that I am not a security threat.
5. For having seen how in the consulate the dot matrix printer prints visas non-stop. It will print everyone else's visas, but not mine.

I have more than enough reason to be wound up for having to submit the same visa application twice for the upcoming trip, having to change travel plans twice, pay premiums for changing travel plans (even though it was really bureucratic inefficiencies that made me do it), paid first-night stay penalty for not turning up at the hotels I booked, and get angry for ending up being less productive at work.

If anyone wonders why there's no internationally recognised fashion designers hailing from Indonesia, well, amongst other things the diplomatic barriers to entry are enormous (I could probably devote a few posts on why the place just wasn't conducive enough, but that's not the point of this post.) They eat up a lot of time and concentration, and I scale them at least twice a year.

I am sick and tired of the bureucratic game. I do hope something gravely good comes out of the Eurozone crisis, like the break-up of Schengen travel areas - I mainly go to France anyway (plus, francs as a currency name sound better than €.) A gravely good alternative would be successful terrorists holding no-visa passports, which is an emerging security issue, but surely the knee-jerk reaction would be to grant even fewer visas for those already so much discriminated against. Schengen doesn't need to worry I fall into that category because I only have one passport anyway, and it's not a no-visa-required one; otherwise I would've spent the €60 fee on something more economically helpful.

Mr François Fillon and his June trip to Jakarta - well, bless the man and his jet-lag.

churnin'

2011-08-20T20:02:00.008+01:00

Hello, it's a rare post today, one dedicated to culinary techniques!

A few weeks back my sister and I [re]discovered our mutual interest in gastronomic delights. Having said that, there was one thing that stuck after many nights spent watching cooking shows: making my own butter (cow not included.) So, having done my day job, I proceeded to do this butter-making thing. There are plenty of instructions of how to make butter available online, so I'm going to concentrate on the experience of making it.

I'm quite familiar with an electric beater/mixer, having used them extensively for cakes and pastries and all sorts of things in the past. I'm also familiar with how things like eggs and cream turn choppy-liquid-fluffy when they are run under a mixer. Well, butter-making takes cream-beating to another level: curdly and separatist*.
*we ain't militants.

I took a few pictures of the venture so that you could see what I mean:

And a video so that we can share how the butter-wrapping process went:

The whole process takes about 20 minutes from start to clean-up, and since butter is roughly 80% fat, you can work out your per-pot yield from the fat content of your pot of cream. Plus, for happy cats and happy humans, there's the added bonus of buttermilk at the end of it. As for myself, the fact that butter-making is so technical (i.e. "watch until physical properties turn XYZ") appeals to me and my that-line-is-almost-straight sensibility. Maybe this is the attraction that draws guys towards steak-making pyrotechnics.

A few tips if you decide to go butter-making:
- get your paper rounds ready before you start beating the cream
- a standing mixer is a great boon (KitchenAid, anyone?)
- spatter-guard helps guard clothes from spatters (especially towards the end)
- a silicone scraper and clean cheesecloth are handy for packaging

Alright then, that's all for now, I better get back to the pattern table!