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.

last night

i guess it really doesn't sink in anymore. to be having supper with RJ Rosales and Emma Yong in the same table, Tan Kheng Hua, Chua Enlai and Gurmit Singh just behind, along with the rest of the luminaries of Beauty and the Beast... I didn't imagine i would be designing panto 5 years on from watching Aladdin at the Jubilee Hall in 2004, so i certainly haven't quite gotten round to the idea of actually having rubbed shoulders with some of my lifelong idols at the same kopitiam table in Victoria Street Food Center. I'm not sure if taking thrill is some form of superficial behaviour, because actors are just human beings with social circles just like the least of us, but i was genuinely starstruck by the company.

Like i was telling junfeng in new york last winter, i still freak out working with the so-and-sos in theatre. (thank god i wasn't the one who had to meet tom cruise in park hotel the night before.)

And i wouldn't have lasted if i was only motivated by the celebrity encounters in this profession.

famous people are just people who happen to be famous. how's that for a quoteworthy phrase.

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.

cannot blog anymore

cos i not abroad anymore mah.

but ya, as i was telling tomaso the other day, free time in sg is supper / homework / play games / earn money time. no time to blog anymore.

we'll see.

rearranged my imeempod to play all my sg emo songs. no more quirky americana like luis miguel, john lennon and josh rouse in yo face.

aight.

thanks for reading. peaceout.

now that i'm back,

CRAP I DIDN'T GET TO SAY 'NIGGA' IN AMERICA.

i dun advocate chainmails but...

A Japanese company (Toyota) and an American company (Ford Motors) decided to have a canoe race on the Missouri River Both teams practiced long and hard to reach their peak performance before the race.

On the big day, the Japanese won by a mile.

The Americans, very discouraged and depressed, decided to investigate the reason for the crushing defeat. A management team made up of senior management was formed to investigate and recommend appropriate action.

Their conclusion was the Japanese had 8 people rowing and 1 person steering, while the American team had 7 people steering and 2 people rowing.

Feeling a deeper study was in order; American management hired a consulting company and paid them a large amount of money for a second opinion.

They advised, of course, that too many people were steering the boat, while not enough people were rowing.

Not sure of how to utilize that information, but wanting to prevent another loss to the Japanese, the rowing team's management structure was totally reorganized to 4 steering supervisors, 2 area steering superintendents and 1 assistant superintendent steering manager.

They also implemented a new performance system that would give the 2 people rowing the boat greater incentive to work harder. It was called the 'Rowing Team Quality First Program,' with meetings, dinners and free pens for the rowers. There was discussion of getting new paddles, canoes and other equipment, extra vacation days for practices and bonuses. The pension program was trimmed to 'equal the competition' and some of the resultant savings were channeled into morale boosting programs and teamwork posters.

The next year the Japanese won by two miles.

Humiliated, the American management laid-off one rower, halted development of a new canoe, sold all the paddles, and canceled all capital investments for new equipment. The money saved was distributed to the Senior Executives as bonuses.

The next year, try as he might, the lone designated rower was unable to even finish the race (having no paddles,) so he was laid off for unacceptable performance, all canoe equipment was sold and the next year's racing team was out-sourced to India .

Sadly, the End.

Here's something else to think about: Ford has spent the last thirty years moving all its factories out of the US, claiming they can't make money paying American wages.

TOYOTA has spent the last thirty years building more than a dozen plants inside the US. The last quarter's results:

TOYOTA makes 4 billion in profits while Ford racked up 9 billion in losses.

Ford folks are still scratching their heads, and collecting bonuses...

IF THIS WEREN'T SO TRUE IT MIGHT BE FUNNY

dun worry singapore

we will get there...


GFCI just listed Singapore as Asia's most important financial center, ahead of HK this year. Movie industry ppl are placing their bet on Singapore because of MDA. Movie stars and finance gurus are moving to Singapore cos of the weather. So, dunch worry lah. just be ourselves lor. and take more OT.