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Saturday, November 28th, 2009
bigblackheart
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10:13p
smokeless
what a pain not being able to smoke now.
shower time.
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Friday, November 27th, 2009
bigblackheart
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2:59a
so much for
what is it?
the autumn sun?
the nightly drinks?
the idleness of not caring?
don't want the sun to disappear into darkness at four in the afternoon.
don't want the pseudo warmth the drinks bring in the ever descending cold.
don't want the comforting completeness in detachment from the material world.
someone turn the lights off, or i'm doomed.
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Thursday, November 26th, 2009
bigblackheart
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1:03a
you're not one of them
one of my favourite films as a kid was superman.
we had a vhs copy of it, and so i watched it over and over again, and would be jumping around whenever the big action scenes played out.
however, whenever the film gets to the fortress of solitude scene, i'd sit still and almost go into a trance watching it.
in recent years, youtube enabled me to revisit that scene anytime i want to. of course, i could have gotten a copy of it and just ripped that scene out, but i just didn't.
lately, i've been watching that scene quite often.
after these two years of film school, i realised what got me into the scene.
however, i'll ignore that analysis and just go by feeling and say that the scene sets the mind into an almost meditative state, and i don't mean the obvious trip montage either. instead, i refer to the part when jor-el starts talking in the beginning.
sometimes, when i get stuck in my tasks, that's one of the scenes i might watch, and more often than not, things would unravel in my mind and i could move on.
also, there's one line i will never forget:
"even though you're raised as a human being, you're not one of them."
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Wednesday, November 25th, 2009
bigblackheart
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5:25p
pointy ears vs pointy teeth
so i just arrived in school, sitting in my studio, and slurping my chicken soup.
made my arrival known via gmail chat, so we can get on with the project plan.
within five minutes, it turned to this.
why did i come to school today again?
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Tuesday, November 24th, 2009
bigblackheart
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10:52p
uroboric
i've been getting a dose of metal recently. and just hours ago, ming and i started talking about j-rock. inevitably, dir en grey would get mentioned – sometimes for the wrong reasons.
so while mister ming has gone to sleep, i'm left here with a couple of hours left before bedtime.
and what do i do? carry on alone and listen to more metal.
now, i'm listening to arguably my favourite metal band of all time – cynic.
cynic first came into my world on one idle afternoon after school. i remember i was really bored and so i went to visit the music shop. lo and behold, this compilation tape called out to me from some dark corner, so i parted with my precious pocket money.
one of the best spending of pocket money ever; but the tape deteriorated into really bad shape and it also eventually 'disappeared', to put it nicely.
i was impressed by many of the tracks, but i was completely overwhelmed by cynic's track, mystically known as uroboric forms. come on, turn it up.
if you want the 'CD-quality' version of that same recording, it's here, but sonically, the former is how i remember uroboric forms most favourably, because i first heard it on a tape.
cynic recorded it again for their debut album, but to me, the performance on the demo is still the ultimate version of uroboric forms. the album version lost some of its magic, i think.
then again, i was listening to the demo version too much before the album came out, so maybe i'm just too attached to it. hmm.
uroboric forms. proper chaos. chaos in control. a demon who has realised its full capacity and knows it's more than a demon. like god.
my friends and i were listening to a lot of brutal metal that time, but after having heard cynic, i began craving for other types of brutality. those days, if you saw me smiling when my ears are plugged, it was very likely i was listening to cynic.
funnily, i eventually ended up listening to some old nintendo soundtracks, because i realised that they had a lot in common with what cynic was doing. and yes, it explains why some of my very old demo stuff sound the way they do too. there!
ever since then, when asked what my favourite metal track is, i'd always say uroboric forms.
the sad thing was that i could only find a few people who appreciated cynic then – most people (metal fans) would just not understand when i play cynic to them.
"listen to this! jazz creamed in metal! the groove! the chaos!"
but they would be disinterested. :\
nonetheless, a few friends were enough for us to try our hands at jamming metal like that. in no way did we attempt to cover uroboric forms, but the essence of it was deep in us. sometimes, at impromptu jams, we would look up at one another and go: "that's some cynic vibes there man!"
and yes, one of my dreams is still to see cynic 'live'. maybe in february. *fingers crossed*
by the way, if you're still paying attention, try this: listen to uroboric forms once or twice. then, play it again and again on headphones, and pay attention to one instrument with each pass. then, note down how many times you have muttered "jesus" in awe.
if your score is more than ten, you owe it to yourself to download this, because if jesus played metal, that's how it would sound like.
if you make it to the last track, be patient – the gates will open at the very end.
and oh, here's their myspace.
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kuroki
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2:45p
it doesnt apply to everybody
I have been solus at work for a very long time, my frontliner colleagues even joked about how i have the luxury to work on 2 computers, have 2 telephone lines and that i have the entire storeroom space all to myself. And because my boss only drops by once a while to check on my stuff i am pretty much on my own. In another words.. i rule my own time and space.
Sadly, people who knows me know that i dont even utilise my break time at all. in fact, for most of the time, i will dabao and eat in.. and i almost immediately resume working after that. There is one good thing though, is that i have no restrictions on when i can go for my smoke breaks-- but its not like i hit the smoking point often also.
As it is boring to smoke alone, i will ask fellow smokers to join me as well. but I had totally forgotten and am glad that a close colleague indirectly pointed out how other colleagues who dont smoke will view the ones joining me as an opportunity for themselves to eat snake.
I shall be more careful with the frequencies and the timings when jioing people in the future.
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Monday, November 23rd, 2009
bigblackheart
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11:42p
objectified
finally found the time to watch objectified.
enjoyed it. as a film, it is quite well done, i think.
it brought back many questions that i stopped thinking about – whether for better or for worse, i'm unsure, though i'd think it's likely for worse.
also, it brought me through a memory lane.
i remember when i got my first computer when i was eight, one thing that bothered me was why it had to be so inhuman in the way it was presented to the user.
fast forward to seven years later and i was just starting to make websites out of curiosity.
the person who taught me the basics was this managing director of an IT company, and he gave me web space on his company's server for me to fool around with, which would have otherwise been unaffordable for an idle student.
one goal i had was to make the website usable by anybody, even by my parents. that means that not only does it have to have that emotional connection, it should only have visual cues that matter.
eventually, i started making spare money doing odd design jobs like that. a few years later, the kind of design that i was doing became known as interactive design in the real world – in other words, design of interfaces.
unknowingly then, i had channeled that little inclination into my presentations in school at that time. i had utmost confidence in communicating any idea in a presentation – as long as i had powerpoint.
in fact, i was almost always disgusted by my own lecturers' slides, which are often non-emotive and are often losing too many ideas with every slide that followed.
out of arrogance, i'd make sure my own presentations would make theirs look like shit, just to show that i am better than they are – yes, i am cringing deeply now.
eventually, it got to a point where i was making money preparing powerpoint presentations for people who need to impress but just do not have what it takes – time, learning, IT, etc. don't get me wrong though, i wasn't making money off my schoolmates. if you were ever my schoolmate, you'd know i'll never ever do anyone's school work for money.
instead, the people who were willing to pay were CEOs and directors of companies – the folks with more money than time. i was also sometimes asked to read their notes and rewrite them. eventually, through word of mouth, i got passed around.
some of the gigs were really fun. one of my favourites was for the director of walt disney asia, and it was a presentation that involved a lot of visuals of cartoon characters – anime ones included. with that kind of material to work with, who wouldn't be in bliss?
thinking back, i find it funny that their requests were secondary to my mood and my desire to make money. if i got bored and wanted to play instead of staying home after school to do their presentation, i'd say that i'd prefer to do my thing instead. delightfully, i got a pay bump once to override my laziness. tempting, i know, but i had never misused that!
as life is, things got into a full circle, and i landed an internship at a web design company.
yay, i thought.
what i liked about the company was that it was very design-oriented. before, i would contemplate working with others to get some freelance money flowing, but almost always, my ideology on web design differed with theirs, so it was hard to convince myself to do it.
then there's the other school of kids, who believe that as long as it looks beautiful, it was good design. i wasn't humble enough to not laugh at their superficiality. i wanted nothing to do with them. their designs were simply self-centred ejaculation! nobody paid you to make flat braille! there has to be both form and meaning! how hard is that..?
wow. i actually got worked up. haha.
anyway, back at the web design company, i could work on flash content and actually had some creative control over them. flash was a pretty new thing at that time, and because i had meddled around with it at home before, i could get my hands pretty deep into it and my boss started to hand flash assignments to me.
however, i really hate flash now. the bloated piece of shit has lost its meaning. HTML 5 is the future!
on top of that, this company allowed me the freedom to come and go any time i liked, as long as i know the work was done for the day. i could work here for real, i thought.
alas, as with everything with me, i lost interest in interactive design. it wasn't fun anymore.
the projects started to feel like the same old thing. everybody wanted the same thing.
one of the last straws was this horrible movie poster that i had done as a freelancer. fun to work on, but there was just so much that was out of my control, and of course, i wasn't happy with the result.
it feels like no one cares about good design as long as the product can be sold.
yikes.
on top of that, i foresaw that this whole web stuff would be a cutthroat business. another kid like me will pop up somewhere and will do it for cheap. he doesn't have to be as good as i am – just cheaper.
still, i'm glad for that strand of exposure. i suspect i am not as vehement about things like that anymore though. if it sucks, i just won't bother to look or care. why fuss myself with it? unless it bears a meaning that i am dying to peruse – in other words, beta stuff.
although i say at the beginning of this post that it may be for worse that i stopped asking these questions, there is the better reason, or at least i hope it is. simply, harmony with others. i may lose some of what i used to stand for, but hey, people around me are happier.
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bigblackheart
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9:57p
the dreamers
watched the dreamers.
the film had been sitting in my archive for ages and i even forgotten why i got it in the first place – until i went to its imdb page, that is.
two names: bernardo bertolucci and eva green.
was it good? was it fucking good? no, but it's really good.
one of those films that gets me nodding to almost every line.
watch it with someone you trust.
now, where's that french girl of mine..
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bigblackheart
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1:32a
which excuse?
just made myself a cup of hot tea. should really be asleep right now.
not sure which excuse it is this time.
did i make the tea so that i can listen to more music?
or am i listening to the music so that i can have tea?
whatever it is, avoiding sleep is definitely not the plan.
actually, i made the hot tea so that i can sleep better. the music is a bonus.
yes, indeed.
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Saturday, November 21st, 2009
kuroki
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4:11p
Batch order
Shit! at first i wanted to comment on Yesasia's prompt delivery but then i discovered they screwed up on the title of 1 DVD!
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kuroki
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2:08p
Thai Pubs
Recently because of Chewy and Alan, i have been hitting alot of Thai pubs, mainly Sabai Sabai and Club Atlantis. When i was younger, i will definitely prefer clubs over pubs but this time round, maybe because of age catching up on me, i now find sitting there doing five ten with friends and grooving to the performances damn enjoyable as well.
I must say that when you are in those places you don't even get to feel a speck of the economic downturn at all. People are spending money on liquor and especially the flower rings for the performers like nobodies business!
The clubs may have a big number of Thai performers but they come on or even share the stage on a rotating basis and they will sing a rojak of mainly thai and also english and chinese songs. At the peak of the night, people will actually bombard them with so many flower rings that after putting over their necks you can barely see their faces. Then when they make their way to backstage they looked damn funny la.. like Humpy Dumpy retreating.
But despite all the smiles they give out on the stage i was told that if the thai performers don't get enough flower rings they will be asked to leave.
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Friday, November 20th, 2009
bigblackheart
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12:32p
rammstein fucked up
marianne and i were checking out some old rammstein tracks when i discovered this.
gosh, i'd never expect rammstein to fuck up.
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Thursday, November 19th, 2009
bigblackheart
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2:23a
into nowhere
when you were staring into nowhere,
i couldn't stop looking at your eyes.
you were breathing, and then you blinked.
my heart gave way.
and i thought, sometimes, i really do care for you.
just don't hold me to these words.
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Wednesday, November 18th, 2009
bigblackheart
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8:09p
fantastic
our school screened fantastic mr fox today.
and i love it.
really funny and entertaining. also love the 1-2-go attitude that embodies the whole film.
highly recommended, and remember to bring a good friend.
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Tuesday, November 17th, 2009
bigblackheart
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7:48p
fallen into comfort
it's been three days since the party.
i am still having a little sniffy cold, and marianne is down with an audible sore throat.
despite that, we have been going to school to work every day – with a smile.
and the reason is clear.
this may be hyperbolic, but for me, the party was almost life-changing. that description is to be taken with a bucket of salt, but i'm sure a mild truth somewhat exists within it.
something struck me deep during plaid's set. it was like a ray of divine essence had connected to me from many universes away, and all i could do was to be happy.
the world hasn't become brighter for me now or anything like that. in fact, it has become a little darker, but i am feeling alright. and that's how i've been floating into school for the past few days. without a care, without a sigh, without a doubt.
i don't care that i'm still moderately ill. i don't care that i may not make my deadlines.
i wish this feeling would never go away. it's another way of falling in love.
even now, i am still feeling that very moment from that night.
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