Hello

I'm still alive. and working in the system. life is long and good.

I used to blog late in the night on a black background. it was escapism.

the present becomes the past as soon as it happens.

requiem

i'm finishing 3 shows in march... which must be a record; but satisfying nonetheless.

just found out i got nominated for best set at Life! Theatre Awards... my second nomination!!!

i will be a civil servant this time next year...

i'll be doing cinderellah at the esplanade end of the year, should be up to 30 shows by the end of the year!! since i started at 19, this means i'm averaging 6 shows a year... i actually wish it was 14 a year.

i'm getting my financial portfolio managed with ippfa, good to start young, since i've got quite a bit of savings now...

but i still need to move faster if i'm already 25.

really need to set up my furniture design brand soon!

i think i will start being more selective with my shows too.

i can't wait to get assignments overseas!!!

i am in a good place in my life now.

but somehow i feel like things are waiting to capsize around me.

between the start and end of a song, entering the title and finishing this sentence, i have already been thrown off my balance.

ah. life is not perfect. but the evening pretty darned much was.

i love my new job

did i tell you about the client whose parking lot is bigger than my house?

and about the david gan saloon in her bathroom?

and the indoor basketball court next to the living room?

strangely enough, the thing i loved most was the wet morning breeze.

因为你是我的影子情人。

午後傾斜照進來的光
和你之間已經告終
我不能告訴你
這一季存留多少美麗

我選擇絕對或者零
不要一些或者中間
假如還有回憶
留給你自己

過去在你身邊
猶如沉默的影子
這一季已結束
夢也該醒了

過去在你身邊
猶如沉默的影子
這一天已結束
我也該走




保重。

2am symptoms

was brushing my teeth in the kitchen when the furniture struck me with its arrangement logic. as my parents lay sleeping in the next room, i began to wonder how many more years and permutations my kitchen furniture will see. its morbid to be pondering our mortality at 2am in the morning. but the christmas tree reminds me to appreciate the moment.

am already 25. i'm not making my millions yet. so the existential crisis set in last night after meeting up with chuanyang jiaming and zhenghan. thankfully my passion for set design was reaffirmed by morning time. sure the USD$9000 starting pay makes banking sound good, but would i rather be stuck in a bank when i'm 40 or working on my hundredth set design, somewhere nearer to broadway than if i remained a corporate slave?

passion. love. city. theatre. history. games. i just hope there's enough money along the way to not starve.

Empire

'From the ruins (of the stock market crash),
lonely and inexplicable as the sphinx,
rises the Empire State Building and,
just as it had been a tradition of mine to climb to the Plaza Roof to take leave of the beautiful city,
extending as far as the eyes could reach,
so now I went to the roof of the last and most magnificent of towers.

Then I understood -everything was explained:
I had discovered the crowing error of the city, its Pandora's box.
Full of jaunty pride the New Yorker had climbed here and seen with dismay what he had never suspected,
that the city was not the endless sucession of canyons that he saw for the first time
that it faded out into the country on all sides,
into a expanse of green and blue that alone was limitless.
And with the awful realization that New York was a city after and not a universe,
the whole shining edifice that he had reared in his imagination came crashing to the ground.'

-F. Scott Fitzgerald, 1932


On the night of May 1st, 1931, from Washington, President Hoover pushed a button that he enlighted for the first time, in New York, the Empire State Building:

The Metropolis of Tomorrow

BUILDINGS like crystals
Walls of translucent glass.
Sheer glass blocks sheathing a steel grill.
No Gothic branch: no Acanthus leaf: no recollection of the plant world.
A mineral kingdom.
Gleaming stalagmites.
Forms as cold as ice.
Mathematics.
Night in the Science Zone.

-Hugh Ferriss

Jan Kempenaers' Spomenik

Car Free Times Square?!

Please follow link:

Car-free Times Square in New York


NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO WAYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY

Iceland Moto Park

This is a beautiful project drawing on the genius loci of the site, sometimes, you only need to look to the sky for inspiration. How is our own Changi Racing Circuit (etc 2011) going to react to its context in Changi?

WKCD - etc 2031

Field of dreams?
A global forum on the city's arts hub has praised the direction the project is taking but also raised concerns
24 April 2009
South China Morning Post

When the HK$21.6 billion West Kowloon Cultural District is fully up and running in 2031, 15 venues with grandiose architecture will grace the skyline of the 40 hectares of reclaimed land.

Before that, by 2015, 12 venues are slated to offer up to 24,400 seats for assorted cultural programmes. However, there are already doubts about whether those seats can be filled. The question is how to cultivate an audience to ensure a steady stream of faithful patrons.

One of the biggest concerns is that, in a city which holds some of the biggest private collections of Chinese art in the world, the museum might be disappointing, rather than a leading attraction that showcased Chinese art and helped to educate people about it.

"The whole thing has fallen into a repeated, extremely slow, never-ending cycle of consultation and discussions which are then overturned," he said. "The government does not seem to have any stance about what it wants, and doesn't take the initiative to ask for ideas and opinions from established art institutions, practitioners, artists, collectors and galleries in Hong Kong. The core spirit and idea of the whole West Kowloon Project is still lacking."

Back.

Took this photo when i came back to Singapore this year. So much to look forward to.

Rambling words of a madman

Ever since i've been back, i've randomly missed summertime episodes of being in Midwest America, taking boat rides and driving under endless skies. Of course, i was also in the Maldives; this makes my current week all the more unbearable. I've bumped in 2 shows back to back whilst working on my graduation submission. This is almost as bad as the time i was doing Rag in the night and theatre in the day back in 06.

Singapore is really a shithole.

Oh, next week seems so far away... i really need the summer to unwind and live again.

Please let this all be worth it...

All in a day's work

9.30: SGH to pick up props
11.00: NUS for lesson
12.30: Sembawang factory to pick out plastic leaves
2.00: NUS for meeting
4.00: Plaza Singapura to buy plastic tubes
4.30: Theatre for stage measurement
5.30: Upper Paya Lebar for set inspection

Sigh. a gazillion things to do. I'm always saying yes.