i think God is trying to teach me to pray. 

my situation is HARD HARD HARD

my classes aren't working out well and i'm back to my state in JC where i think i'm going to be on the verge of failing...or at least losing my scholarship. 

i am homeless as of now and roommateless. 

i am scared, worried and stressed.

i want to cry, but i can't cos my roommate is here.

i am going crazy.

pray Gloria pray.

ok. it's official. i'm back to square one on housing. 

naomi bailed out on me.

i'm not blaming her though i'm pretty upset about it. she would have made such a wonderful roommate. still, it's not her fault that in this economy, everyone is just trying to save some money. I would live with her in the dorms, but being an international student who stays through summer, i can't afford having to continuously shift in and out of the dorms just because scad can't keep folks in there over breaks. 

my current dilemmas include finding a new roommate to whether i should live alone in an apartment or live with total strangers (females of course) or to go back to the original combination of emo nemo michelle, gay maggie, and disgusting druggie ally. 

oh good Lord...help me. i'm practically on breakdown for housing. it's sucking up my time and energy. HOW NOW BROWN COW?!?!

i'd really not mind living on my own in an apartment cos I wouldnt have to deal with issues of cleaning, cooking and costs. but at the same time. that means I'd not have anyone to rely on in the event of an emergency etc. also. i'll be lonely. and i'll be miserable. i don't exactly need company 24/7. that tires the crap out of me. but i dont want to be all alone. i need more friends :(

yesterday, i received an email from SCAD talking about the upcoming bad weather.

i didn't think it was any serious and just shrugged it off. 

today, i received 2 emails from them, a text message, a phone call from them about it. the tornado warnings sounded TWICE (mind u...it is soooo annoying i got a horrible headache from it.) they sent all our residence assistant to warn us to hide in our bathrooms. 

storm and tornado clouds looming. the deep, dark, ominous apocalyptic storm cloud looming over savannah. the photo does no justice. but i do like that hopefull little patch of light.

facebook game : SPOT THE DIFFERENCE!

just minutes later....the rain is so heavy the bridge has disappeared! weather in savannah is drastic. one moment it was ominous but DRY. i just turned to face my computer and next thing i know it's STORMING outside. after admiring the storm for a while i went back to my ladeedaas only to find it completely dry moments after. -__-

then...the news hit:

THE TORNADO HAS ARRIVED IN DOWNTOWN SAVANNAH!

whoot. excitingness.

except i didn't see it at all :S

not because i was in my bathroom. in fact, i was sitting right by my window the whole entire time! (talk about being safety conscious. then again, SCAD students were running outside snapping pictures of the beautiful ominous sky. welcome to art school)

sooo while some people said they saw it, i still don't think it came. the sky was too peaceful and nothing looked disturbed. even the trees are still. like not even a storm has passed. the calm after the storm? i thought it happened before the storm. oh well *shrugs*

_____

went house/apartment visiting today with naomi. the woes of being 2 completely vehicleless is endless. we dun even have bicycles and had to rely on our two little feet to carry us back and forth around savannah. out of the 4 houses we visited, 1 was awesomely beautiful and cosy and worth dying to live in. it's furnished and safe and cheap. the owners live right upstairs with their dogs so we can run to them anytime we need help. it's like having dorm parents without the bothersome nagging. :D

the next one was just downright grossly moldy and unlivable. that was a definite no no. 

the next one we saw was pretty decent. the same cost as the first, but 3 times the size. it's nice, if not for the fact that it had a disgusting stove and laundry room that was shared with 3 other houses and smelt like shit. 

the last one was a decent bachelor's pad. not beautifully attractive, but definitely livable in. 

so thus we have found possible places to live in. one problem down.

2 more pops up. 

naomi is going back for the summer. ie. i have to pay the whole rent, including her half, over summer. that's 3 mnths. that is possible for me to pay, if 

a) the housing rental is less than $800, including utilities (heating and air, electric, water, gas, garbage, cable and internet). 

or

b) the rental place has 2 rooms so we can rent her room out. 

BUT, this is not the case for any one of them :( 

another problem. she talked to her dad and she just realised that she has $4500 from scholarship for her housing. which means her dad might not agree to her living off campus where it is more expensive for her. 

so if she can't live off campus, it's back to square one for me

WOE WOE WOE IS MEEEEEE :(

spring time savannah is a rather happy period. flowers magically POP everywhere. there are trees that are bare with no leaves, but covered in flowers. so instead of having green trees, you see pink or white ones. it's pretty cool. they actually started appearing end of winter when it was still cold and they're still pretty much in full bloom now. so by chrystal's request, here are some pictures of savannah in spring :)

if only singapore did look like this in spring....

but yes. of course when u have flowers....spring also brings about many insects. especially bees. which is kinda gross. and in some places, annoying gnats that FLY IN YOUR FACE AND SUCK UR BLOOD. thankfully it doesn't really occur very often. 

the temperature here is still flipping up and down, warm and cold. naomi the polar bear from new york being so used to the cold decided to wrap her hand knitted scarf by her mum around my neck to keep me singaporean nice and warm. here we are on the bus bringing us to arnold (the supposed safe area) to check out a few housing options....

house hunting was FINALLY successful in the sense that we finally found a good neighbourhood downtown which is not only close to the scad buildings but also safe and nice and affordable. we're gonna have to make a few appointments to arrange going down there on saturday to go see the insides of the house now that we've checked the outside out. to show u how much effort we took into house hunting, we practically WALKED the whole of savannah downtown which is possibly the whole of SCAD map. and savannah, being savannah, is surrounded in ghetto areas. you can have one street being a nice neighbourhood and the other side of the street being the ghetto. which sucks for safety and parental approval but is a plus for price. oh well. but, thankfully due to my persuasion and map studying skills and persistence and stubbornness, i finally got naomi to agree to look at some of the houses i found near the graphic design department. this was finally one neighbourhood that naomi was very very pleased with and it was in no way surrounded by ghetto. i am hoping with all my heart that God will provide so wonderfully for the 2 of us <3 

i now have one problem settled. 

another problem settled was my project with the stupid adobe illustrator's mesh gradient tool which is SERIOUSLY A PAIN IN THE ASS. we had to paint a realistic apple using it and it was definitely not my cup of tea or coffee or milo peng. 

this is really not as simple as it looks.

1.5 problems down. the other half is when we finally secure the house.

ok. time to sit down and update after a very frustrating moment of house hunting.

first and foremost. spring break was AWESOME. i'm too lazy to update with pictures from alternative spring break down at Miami Florida but you can check out the pictures on facebook. hahaha

so basically i was "fortunate" enough to be on the bus with the newbies since like half the team came from previous trips and were already buddy buddy enough and hoarded themselves onto the first van. the lucky newbies consisted of all international people from columbia, Puerto rica, the 3 koreans (sang, aidan and kimchi boy. hur hur) and the singaporean and 2 americans. it started off as a slow and quiet ride all the way from savannah to florida with everyone except me and the driver of course sleeping throughout..hardly any conversations with anyone but we started talking after that. the bus ride was surprisingly very comfortable as we got the better van and less people so it was not just comfy but very spacious too. it was just.....boring. thankfully i had naomi who was also stuck and bored in florida at her grandparents and she decided to call me to keep me company though i dunno who is keeping who company in reality. I dislike having phone calls if you don't know me by now. my mind just wanders and i think i just can't be bothered after a while. 

anyhows. the hostel isn't fantastic and we longed for the comfort of our dorms, with all of us spoilt silly. the weather was still cooler than singapore nonetheless, but way warmer than savannah and people were complaining about how hot it was and the some girls were very tempted to sleep naked. among the 18 of us....there were 3 private toilets, 2 for the advisors and 1 for 2 girls sharing a private room and the remaining 14 of us had to share 2 bathrooms among the other hostel customers. sounds like fun no? it was hard to shit because u felt stressed by the time limit cos u had to be considerate and hot showers were rare (i only managed to steal ONE hot shower the whole trip) because of the limited hot water in the hostel. nonetheless, we survived. life in the hostel was pretty fun and though we had only 1 computer to share among the WHOLE ENTIRE hostel with 3 other schools there, we managed to spend time chillaxing with books, games of catchphrase and best of all, filming our james bond movie. 

Filming the james bond movie (part 1 & part 2) has to be one of the best parts of the trip i must say, and it was definitely one of my dreams of doing while i was here at art school. I longed to do something as fun as that and i finally did with the help of crazy josh as james bond and our wonderful director and cameraman keith, the ever serious film major. that guy was so serious he had a color card every where he go just to adjust the lighting for his camera. the irony was he wasn't a photo major yet he was more serious than the ACTUAL photo major and all he had was a basic point and shoot and he had his tripod everywhere he went. how crazy is that. he called me unprofessional for refusing his offer of borrowing his tripod for my pictures. haha. oh well. here u are....the crazy serious film majors. my role in the film was james bond's boss, M. , and i sure had great fun with that role. no one else had power over bond except me. haha. i could boss him both on screen and off screen and it was just plain fun. :) 

other things entertaining was one of our very gay advisor (our resident queen bitch who was also the queen bitch in the james bond movie) who would seriously DANCE like ballet dance in the carpark whenever a piece of classical music was on. there was once where he said that he thinks he is a rather straightforward person and the only thing that came to my mind was the fact that he probably isn't straight. our advisors for this trip must have been the weirdest people to select. they hated the outdoors and were scared of animals...which were basically EVERYTHING we were going to do :S nonetheless, it was also entertaining watching the 2 of them whine and complain and get grossed out. even by the sea. they  refused to get wet. *shrug*

work at the outpost (the everglades wildlife refuge) wasn't quite what i had expected or wanted it to be. though there were interactions with the animals, our work mainly involved clearing the plants and cleaning out the shed with encounters of mice and roaches. not my favourite part of the trip but we definitely made a big difference to the place. i got to pet a florida panther who was pretty much just a large kitty that could be walked on a leash and scratched and pet and snuggled. a pretty pregnant white wolf that was like a dog who would whine to be scratched and petted when u past its cage, crazy ostrich, chewy the camel who chewed on anything within reach including u and ur clothes ( a few of the boys got pulled by him. it was gross. camel spit is not the best spit ever), bobo the cute lil monkey who was super friendly, king george the turkey who wasn't afraid of the tiger and pecked at its keeper who refused to let it enter the tiger cage and so much more. oh. the tiger was super sweet too. u can bring it out on a leash for its walks and according to its keeper it's so gay. it will prance around in the meadow and roll in flowerbeds and REFUSE to leave. hahaa. MEOW. we got to meet whacky and intelligent parrots who caught on to our phrases and laughter and imitated us immediately and watched how both constrictor snakes and poisonous snakes attack and devour their prey. all our work and fun were often concluded and celebrated with a cup of refreshing fruit smoothie from the fruit plantation "Robert is Here" where we sat on picnic tables under the scorching sun slurping our ice cold and healthy smoothies. :)

the remaining 2 days of the trip was spent serving in the soup kitchen and helping out at the equestrian centre, grooming the horses, repairing the fences, building a chicken coop and weeding. weeding is a horrendous job. it felt like the moment u turn ur back on ur empty plot of just weeded land, the weeds grow up 3 times more immediately. it was not just painstaking but frustrating. thank goodness the weather was gorgeously cloudy and cool. 

life on this service trip is super relaxed as compared to what we have in Singapore. our work sessions were mainly from 9 to 2pm and the rest of the day was recreation, with visits to the alligator farm where we sat on an air boat ride which was AWESOME FUN travelling through the marshes and tall grass at 40 miles per hour and turning at sudden angles. it felt strange when the vibrations from the speed of the fan sent chills down ur spine and in your ears through ur ear muffs and sometimes wind was rushing at such a speed in ur face u could hardly breathe. but it was sooooo enjoyable :) i would do it again if i could :) we also tried alligator meat there which isn't really very yummy though it is very edible to my stomach. it tastes like chicken with a half fish half chicken texture. the other recreational time were spent down at the beaches. one at the fake beach where we had a cook out. fake beach because it was really a segregated natural swimming pool with seaweed due to the presence of crocodiles in the area. so swimming the proper wave waters were prohibited. due to the disappointment of the team the advisors decided to bring us down to miami beach 2 days later. the sand at miami beach is coarse like singapore but the water was a GORGEOUS blue. it was too cold, windy and wet for a beach day and i do wish that it could have been warmer out. i was freezing in my tee and fbt shorts. the wind was so strong even the seagulls got blown backwards. that was pretty amusing watching them flying or rather...getting blown away. 

during this trip i got to know kimchii boy alot better and lo and behold, i fell deeper in love with him. he led us in a time of worship on sunday when he randomly played a song and the christians started gathering around him and we started sharing about our spiritual walks and he shared with us about his dreams and goals. that was nice. and his humor is so my kind too. haha. and he is soooo gentlemenly and sweet and and and...he plays the drums, guitar and piano. what's not to love??? the scary part is the two of us are so alike in our mischievousness and awkwardness around strangers. sadly, i found out that he is attached to a fellow korean girl and he shared about her with all of us and i was kinda broken hearted. but they are so cute together i can't bear to break the 2 up. not that it would ever cross my mind, but it definitely helped to make me kill my feelings for him. I still do feel for him though. oh well. 

anyhows. i got to take quite alot of photos this trip and have enjoyed and gotten used to poking my lens in people's faces even if it was awkward and now i'm itching to get a proper DSLR camera. still thinking about it and i need to check with my muther if it's fine. i'm going to need one anyway when i have my photog and graphic design classes :)

ok. the remaining time of my spring break was spent with naomi since no one else was back except her and we sat in my room watching death note 1 and 2 which is seriously awesome in terms of plot. not effects. that was horrible. had her sleeping over with me too :) 

had some time off meeting with a fellow singaporean student who has sadly graduated from scad and is leaving in may :( we finally met up and headed down to the oakland island wildlife refuge centre which was a great disappointment because the animals were either too far away in the ginormous unkept enclosure or they were hidden from sight. it was a pretty badly maintained zoo. even the everglades wildlife refuge was better. the crocodiles at oakland island

were so small they were practically the size of my keyboard -_-'''

anyhows, together with her 2 taiwanese friends and one ang moh friend, we headed down to the Crab Shack at tybee island where we had our spread of boiled seafood sample platter. alaskan crab legs, crab pincers, crayfish, prawns, mussels and corn, potatoes and sausages. that was a crazy amount of seafood. i can't believe it was a platter for 2. that's INSANE. the ang moh left and all was left were us asians and we headed down to metro to have bubble tea where we just sat and talked and just chilled. it was a good time, reminiscent of times spent back at home in nice little cafes like grapevine. though it wasn't with close friends, it was definitely a good time being away from people all so familiar and meeting new ones, hearing my all so familiar chinese and singaporean accents and getting tips and tricks from my fellow singaporean here. oh joy....dun leave yet!!!

so there u go. my awesome spring break was a wonderful time developing old friendships with naomi and getting to know many new people and expanding my social circle of friends. happiness :D

and now. on to my housing saga. if you've been reading my blog, you would have been aware about my frustrations with michelle and her emotions, my filthy roommate and her possible drug issues and my oh so frustrations about rooming with them in a house for the next 1 year. God being the AWESOME God came down to save me. Michelle's mum came down to view the house and she disliked the area so she had to pull out and it was a perfect excuse for me to pull out of my rooming with my current gross roommate. but now that i pulled out, maggie doesn't want to stay anymore either cos she doesn't know my roommates (yes yes...all that drama).  SOOOOOOO....since naomi has a roommate issue now that her korean friends MIGHT not stay on at scad anymore, both of us have decided to stay with her. yes. naomi and i have bonded over the spring break and i've found not just someone who i'm comfortable with living with, but also an accountability partner whom i can trust and rely on. dun worry pacey, you're not replaced, but naomi follows closely after u in terms of accountability for my spiritual walk while i'm here away from u girls. our only issue is that naomi is really fussy about the housing and the location. i can't afford anything too expensive and she wants something close to the school buildings where we can catch the buses and most are too expensive to afford and those affordable are too far. i'm having such trouble house hunting. grrrr. 

such great frustrations. classes this quarter ain't fantastic either. i'm frustrated with illustrator and it's stupid gradient mesh, which is similar to 3d modelling. i'm not used to coloring an object using a 3d mesh and i just keep wanting to draw it like in real life. it's frustrating me so much. then there's 3D design. another acky thing to have. and then i have english. possibly my least favourite class. ARGHZ. i hate this quarter. sucky sucky sucky :(

i hope i dun lose my scholarship. boo hoo. 

so there. updated.

i am sorry for the delayed updates. pls be contented with my recent photos of alternative spring break in Miami on facebook. 

i am currently caught up in many friendly gatherings and events, new school quarter, and worst of all...finding a stupid apartment that my new roommate will agree to. she's fussy. which i guess means i get a good house, but it makes my searching a pain in the ass. 

oh pray pray pray. 

i will update u guys on the whole roommate saga and drama, the fun filled miami trip and my recent outing to the zoo with a fellow singaporean and her chinese friends :) in other words...an eventful spring break. oh yes. i need to talk about my new classes. oh gosh. this is overwhelming. this is what happens when u procrastinate...crap

finals are finally over and everyone is pretty much gone back home for spring break which is pretty much sad and lonely.

this quarter hasn't been a fantastic one with a wide range of new experiences, new roommates, getting homesick, frustrations with friends and what nots. i can't believe i've been "lucky" enough to have another new roommate every quarter. Still, i'm thankful to have been able to know my other old roommate nicole better. apparently she didn't like jill cos jill was always 2 faced when i was around and it made nicole feel super awkward around her. there were misunderstandings between nicole and i and we both funnily thought that the other didn't like us. nonetheless, i got to see more of her, not just physically, but also who she is too. nicole's been a wonderful roommate and i've witnessed alot of the good side of her this quarter. just as i'm glad to have her as a roommate, she had to leave the dorms and move out to another apartment. sigh. boy am i fortunate.

as of now, i'm stuck with a gross roommate. for those of u unaware of my poor plight, my roommate is gross in the sense that she seldom bathes, doesn't brush her teeth and when she does bathe, she makes a mess in hte bathroom. her recent labour to gross us out involved the leaving of hair in the bathtub. and i'm not talking about head hair cos it was too short. it's definitely hair cut by the razor and it was seriously all over the bathtub. to put things into perspective, it looked as though a black sunbear invaded our bathtub and shed all over it. to make matters worse, nicole had to take a shower after her painted nude body photoshoot for her friend's project. after she showered, our bathtub was in an un-usable condition and it pretty much looked like someone had puked in it after witnessing the grossness of the tub. i dun gag very easy at gross things, but the sight of the bathtub made me gag. the worst part is that ally (my new roommate this quarter) complained about the state of the tub even though she was part of the whole mess. woe is me.

oh well. friends on the other hand, like michelle and maggi, have pretty much been the people i hung out with all quarter and it's really kind of sad. i mean...they've been getting on my nerves lately, but at the same time, i'm lonely without them cos i pretty much have no other close friends around. i'm such a loser. BAH

then there are projects. though i have excellent grades with a perfect GPA this quarter, i havent quite found a piece i'm really proud of except my translucency painting of the dog. but even then...it was painted upon a picture so it wasn't my ability at proportions. there were large scale drawings but...though i finished it relatively well, there's something either missing or something wrong with it. i don't know, but it's definitely disappointing.

anyhows...here are the 2 finals for drawing and color theory.

drawing below was supposed to be 3 different views of a conceptual self portrait. if you think my previous drawing was large/larger than me, this was twice the size. but amazingly, i accomplished that within 21 hrs, which was a shorter time as compared to the previous still life.

so here you are. this one utilized the whole paper which was 52 inches (132 cm) by 72 inches (183 cm) i tried to make it as realistic as possible but FAILED. i'm quite happy with the color and the achievement in size and time accomplished though, but other than that, i'm quite disgusted with this.

this one below is for color theory. we had to pick a theme song for this and paint what we feel/saw. and then we had to camouflage an object within it. my obect's a bird feather.

like the drawing...something feels wrong with this.

maybe i'm just sick of my work.

ack.

i need more friends :(

i tagged along with naomi to join her group of korean friends for a gathering. i thought it was going to be a small one but NOOOOO...and they are not the friendliest people around. they didn't bother introducing themselves and though naomi barely understood korean and i not at all except HELLO and LOVE, they continued talking in korean THROUGHOUT THE WHOLE SESSION and they were playing poker. i only stayed for naomi and i felt so awkward. it's hard to break through cliques when people already know one another. havent i learnt this lesson in secondary school before???

grrrr

emo.

it's time for hell week once again. it's FINALS. yes. it's super fast and it's CRAZY. i'm kinda sad that the quarter is so short. ever since i've discovered sketchbook and it's helpfulness i'm just craving for more. not to have to do it for grades, but more to improve my skills. so sadly, i wish i had more time to explore with the help of my professor. ah wells. 

nonetheless, this quarter meant working in color so here's my second pastel work. it was my v.day date but now in color. ladies and gents, this below is the still life, 36 x 48 inches large, done in cursed pastel. 

and me with it....
then. this is another pain in the ass - optical mixing. aka pointillism. ie. painting with DOTS. it's not just stippling. it's mixing two different colored dots optically to get a color. it was paintful to not be able to just paint broad strokes into huge areas. my dots were so small people couldn't tell they were dots :S yes. i tend to kill myself by being an overachiever sometimes. i ask for it. boo. 

and yes. my secret admirer is finally out. no. it's not kimchi boy. told you guys so!!!

 it is....

*gasp*

 a girl! 

thankfully, it's dear naomi. she's such a sweetie pie. so at least i'm thankful it's not some weirdo lesbian chick. yeek. she did send it to my other friends, but SOMEHOW....they didn't get it. FLAWED STUDENT SERVICES. tsk. so unreliable. so yeah. the end. hahahahah anti climatic after the previous post. 

[add] oh yea. i found out the reason why my room stinks occasionally. it's cos my newest roommate doesn't brush her teeth at all. she wakes up, changes, grabs a can of soda and goes. i am also aware that she just goes to bed without brushing her teeth either. so she's not one of those i dun brush my teeth in the morning because it's already clean from last night. i think she uses the acid in the soda to clean her teeth :S and the reason why it stinks is cos when she sleeps...all the grossness comes out..you know...like when you snore or breathe through ur mouth when u sleep??? 

this fact only striked me when i came in to my room after being out the whole afternoon and she was already in bed sleeping. now if she tells me again that she saw a ghost in the room i would slap her. the last time she said that happen also happened to be the time my friends and i were in the room doing work and she went to bed early. i was like dude. what the heck are you talking about. at 1am you were asleep cos i slept at 2am and she went to bed at like what...10pm!!!?? craziness.

ANYHOWS. exciting fact of the day. disney came to my school to talk about internship and boy am i excited for it. can't wait to get through some of my major classes and then go attend it. it'll be an amazing adventure. thinking about it just makes me want to cry tears of passion and joy. ho ho ho. excitingness :D :D :D :D :D and I REALISED...people who work in disney change. they talk like disney characters. very cartoon and hyper and optimistic and overly happy. hahahha. it's funny. lol. MAYBE I'LL COME BACK LIKE THAT AND ANNOY EVERYONE ELSE WITH MY OVER HAPPINESS :D MUAHAHAHAHAHHAA