I'm still haunted by michelle's unhappiness that I am not going to stay with her next year :S rather..she haunts me. and the past few months with maggie and her has definitely confirmed that it was definitely a GOOD LIFE CHOICE to move AWAY from the 2 monstrosity. I was dealt with a very sudden outburst from maggie on monday when I suggested that she would find stuff more easily if she cleared her desk. Perhaps...it is a good idea that i lived with strangers...well..not so familiar friends since we are now technically acquaintances. Life with Naomi is still in fluff mode <3

human vs zombies has finally ended though it was premature ending since the zombies won and on the final stand only 6 people survive. their death to zombies was mainly due to the evil and sudden turn of the weather. it's the usual unexpected weather of savannah. it was nice and sunny, clear skies, gorgeous weather in the day. without warning, it thunderstormed and hailed and the whole savannah was thrown into darkness. the storm cut short the power to the whole downtown. it was pretty cool considering the fact that we(naomi, sang woo and I) were walking back to the dorms from the student centre in total darkness. it was amusing as girls screamed as they sloshed into giant pool puddles from the rain while i took the hint from those in front of me and avoided every single puddle and remained dry. yay for me :)

anyhows, we were at the student centre attending a lecture out of own free will. yes. I would attend a lecture on my own free will...AMAZING. but that's only because it was one of our scad alumni who was working in pixar as he showed us his demo reel from finding nemo, toy story, madagascar, monster inc and the likes. i have decided, together with the help of my computer application maya assignments that animation is not my thing. for one thing, it's too complicated. You train to be an animator, with the desire of creating your own production that you can call your own. but in the real industry, all you're doing is focusing on either one scene, or one specialty. in Brian Young's case (the speaker), his specialty was mainly lighting. I dont think I want to be stuck in that rut. yuck. and the second reason for not becoming an animation major is the fact that MAYA makes me sick. 

no. not just because i hate using it and suck at it, but also because having to rotate the scene to check angles and position of objects make me motion sick. ACKKK...

also received news on monday morning that the work that i submitted for the competition won. YAY MONEY <3

oh. speaking of money, a friend of mine sold me her DSLR at half price. I got a basic Nikon D40 DSLR with the lens for $250 together with a 3 year warranty. hohoho. God is AWESOMO :D

the school currently has a whole "zombie vs humans" game going around campus and basically they start out with a whole population of humans who try to fight the infection of zombies and try to stay human for the entire length of the game. These humans wear bandanas on their arms and they carry nerf guns. which are really toy guns which shoot out sponge darts. Then, there is one person who is a zombie, whose mission is to turn as many people to zombies as fast as possible. They basically do so by touching a human with 2 hands. when you become a zombie, you wear your bandana around your neck or head. People here treat the game so seriously it's INTENSE. there are people who carry around machine gun nerf guns, some people have dressed up as bounty hunters, with duct tape belts and guns and what nots. it's interesting. the play areas are basically non-SCAD buildings, which makes everyone super nervous whenever they head out, especially to crowded places. it's very amusing. apparently, the original zombie is a girl who has only tagged less than 6 people and now practically everyone are zombies. the power of multiplication. AHA

anyhows, I'm glad my housing is more or less settled for more housing issues for the rest has resurfaced. my batch must be down with the guinea pig curse. everywhere i go, no matter singapore or the states, somehow...my batch always ends up the guinea pig bunch :S ok. so they did a new housing registration system and sooo many kids are either in lousy housing or no housing. which seriously sucks. i'm just glad i don;t have to deal with all that shit anymore. 

on the bright side, i've submitted 3 works for a foundation honors competition and 2 got shortlisted and are now on display in the scad building. Now I have to wait for the results that will be out on the 1st of May. If i'm lucky, i get to win $200 f, $150 or $50 for each category. if the school thinks it's fantasmo, i get an extra $350 if they buy it. *cross fingers*

on a side note...more photoshopping and photo manipulation...check out the original photo below...

and after photo manipulation....the lighting was annoying and cutting the tree out of the picture was annoying. i decided to restrain from being over ambitious and just stop at 3 images with color adjustments and shadow and highlights added. I must say...i'm pretty proud of myself <3

I got to meet up with joy to take a look at her furniture. not the best looking stuff, but definitely basic and sufficiently cheap for all that i need. She's gonna give some of it to me free and overall i got a few tables, desks, organising plastic boxes and shelves, bed, lamp, mirror etc all under $100. which is awesomo. It's the power of singaporeans. she inherited all that from the previous singaporean and from what it seems....it's going to be a singaporean inheritance for scad. LOL. it was a good time just sitting down and chit chatting. it's amazing how we spent like FOREVER talking when this is only the second time we've met. indeed. it's the bond of fellow countryman :) <3

happiness

to satisfy your desires (yes you chrystal!! haha kidding) i'm back to update :)

like i promised, attached below is a photograph of my first 3d project. not as bad as i thought it would turn out. My new friend is the wood glue who dries amazingly clear and clean, allowing me to score a bonus point with my professor for craftsmanship. YIPPEE :) I'm glad that i managed to keep my expenditure for this project low, with the whole project including the maquette at a total cost of below $10. YAY for cardboard, toothpicks and satay sticks (which i have been unable to find. those used below are bamboo skewers. and many thanks to having useful boys next door to lend me their useful hand saw. YES. I AM A MAN! I CAN SAW. haha really no. I think if anyone saw me saw they might have dug their eyeballs out and run through all the walls of turner house. my professor would probably saw my arm off just to show me how to saw correctly. BUT HECK. i achieved what i wanted. i managed to cut through all my sticks. HEH HEH

I would very much prefer to come up with something non-objective and abstract for my 3d projects, but my professor is one who would prefer something conceptual and it's hard to be conceptual with a non-objective object without being the cliche curvilinear form. so thus, i have stuck to recreating already made objects. For my next project, I aim to recreate a knight's armour out of paper. WISH ME LUCK....cos i'll need alot of it :S

Computer applications has been the bane of my existence. haha. ok not really. as i mentioned in my previous entry, my professor is anal about making things look realistic. While other professors are just asking students to cut and paste objects from pictures in photoshop and slapping them on like a photo montage, my professor thinks we are advanced visual effects students and require that our photos appear realistically part of the scene. This wasn't as easy as i thought as i struggled to fix the lighting effects. GRRRR. after this...i don't think i like photoshop very much. HEH.

shown below is the BEFORE adjustments..

and AFTER adjustments layers and shadows and highlights have been edited/added. 

blah....to make matters worse, my stupid thumbdrive screwed me over and i lost all my files. I wouldn't be so grumpy if not for the fact that I had to re-search my pictures, wasting time re-scanning deviantart for them. !@#$%. to make me stresser...it was due tomorrow. YAY. i heart my life. <3

and now....to figure out how to construct my paper armour....GRRRR.

and OH! i failed to get a job. FAIL. looks like i need to take advantage of the summer when everyone's gone :D :D :D

OH. i forgot about habitat for humanity! yes yes. i went for my first habitat for humanity project in the states on saturday and it was mighty fun. in between good friday and easter, it was a perfect session since we were tearing an old house down and recycling the wood to re-build a church :) it was sooo fun just yanking old nails out of the planks and tearing the house down. i felt like a macho man :D :D :D 

my favourite job of the day. hacking down the cork covering of the house was way too polluting. 

Easter was good too. the message was really good at church, with a very different perspective of an easter service. Instead of talking directly about the cross and the sacrifice made, the pastor talked about the perspective of relationships and love and how God made the first move :) i didn't even realise until naomi pointed out to me that it was a gospel message (which OPPS...meant that the message wasn't really conveyed if doops like me didn't get it). easter was superbly fun too. Naomi was sooo sweet to hide easter eggs all over my room for me to have my first easter egg hunt and boy was it fun. i felt like a wee lil girl again all excited for it. but i was too good. haha i found all 10 or was it 12 eggs in 5 minutes. HO HO HO. treasure hunt queen here!! 

speaking of easter eggs, you would think that the states, being a predominantly christian population (i think), would be more aware of the true meaning of easter. Sadly, even the singapore atmosphere of easter is stronger. true atmosphere meaning know the true meaning behind easter. here, easter is a time of bunny rabbits, color dyed eggs and candy. LOTS OF IT. which is kinda sad....i dont even know where the bunnies came from :S imagine your death anniversary celebrated in this manner :S oh well. good friday is not even a holiday. WHAT IS THIS?!??!?!? i totally forgot about easter if it's not for the whole egg fuss. 

update on my status :)

as noted by the smiley face, things are finally working out well. 

God has been awesome and He not only found me a bunch of wonderful girls to live with, but also a wonderful house in an AWESOME location at a wonderful affordable price that was within my budget. The house is located in one of the safest part of downtown savannah, and is NOWHERE near a ghetto. It is a 5 minute walk to the shopping area and one of the school dorms that EVERY bus goes to, a few blocks away from my graphic design building, scad health center and security center and it's directly across the street from a good printing shop which will be very very useful when i start my graphic design classes :D it is located next door above a lil cafe which i can always go down to get food when i'm hungry, above a lil art shop for inspiration and across a park square. the landlord for the apartment was in charge of the whole area so everyone in there knew him and he was so friendly, like a fatherly figure to all of us <3

once we have moved things in and set the house up, i'll post up pictures. for now it's really cluttered with boxes because the current tenant is moving. but yeah. i'm really really glad that everything worked out and i'll still be within walking distance to naomi, whom have been spending ALOT of time with me. LOL. it's insane. PLUS...though the house is unfurnished, my singaporean friend who has just graduated is selling her furniture to be at $10 a piece. this includes 2 mattresses, 2 desks and even a television. AND AND AND. in the midst of my house hunting, I found a bike selling for $30! WHOOT. wonderfulness :) God is good and He has certainly provided for my every need :) 

I'm living with 3 other girls in the house and will have my own room. They have very wonderfully agreed to pay their share of rent over the summer when they are not here so I dont have to carry the burden or worry about subletting the place. they were really friendly and it was pretty easy to clique and they were so considerate in asking me about where my boundaries were so that I would be sure that I made the right decision. once we agreed to be roommates they introduced me to their friends bit by bit and it was just an awesome time of making new friends. 

speaking of new friends, I realised i've become friendlier this quarter and have decided to become more involved. must be bauer's influential motivational talks. Bauer is my 3d professor who behaves really horribly. cursing and talking about shit and his testicles. it is very very awkward when he touches them to shift them around his pants. very gross. i am very disturbed by him in class but at the same time, it's amusing and i'm finding 3d to be one of my favourite classes for the quarter. but then again....it's not that hard since i only have 3 classes and i hate english. 

nonetheless, classes has been going on decently and i am learning stuff. My jurassic park visual effects professor is really anal and it's soooo hard to get a good grade in that class. GRRRRR. goodness gracious me :( will post up pictures of my first 3d project soon...or once i get it back. i forgot to take a picture of it before i submitted it and now it's on display. hoho. 

so while i'm starting to catch up with my work and re-juggle everything, I've managed to find time to watch a few shows while working on projects or just slacking away. This week alone, I managed to watch peter pan, lion king and a troll in central park. old cartoons reminiscent of my childhood. ok...not peter pan. not really a fan of it, but michelle wanted to watch it. oh well. 

anyhows...gonna have to re-submit some works for another foundation honors competition. it's an awesome opportunity to sell your work for $350 a piece and still win $100-200 on top of that. since it requires matting and framing, i'm hoping less people will bother with it. HUR HUR HUR. thankfully baronian made us make BIG SCALE drawings so i am excused from having to mat or frame it cos it's too ridiculously expensive. YAY. wish me luck! 

here's a lil update.

my complete Illustrator vector stamp for my survey of computer applications class. 

Everything, from the background to the stamp shape, to the lion logo to the singapore zoo logo was painfully done using the pen tool on illustrator. i spent a painful 8-9 hours on this.

 

thankfully, it turned out good. and now i'm thankful that i am a graphic design major. cos i can always ctrl-z when i make a mistake.

sadly, that's not how life works. 

and so my house hunt continues.

it was a horrible day to house hunt today with it pouring like crazy. by the time i was done my jeans were half soaked and so were my shoes and socks. savannah needs better drainage system. it's impossible to cross roads without having 

to cross the rivers first. 

on a happier note, at least my class for 3d was cancelled. I can't imagine carrying my cardboard towers and stuff through this weather. i'll be wasting my time, money and effort. heh. 

anyhows. there is no way i'm ever trusting real estate agents anymore. they don't care about the condition of the house and all they want is your money. every single house from mopper stapen is in a horrible condition. For example, the one i went to today was flooding in the rain. so in a sense, i'm thankful that it did rain. but even if it didn't, the house was in such a disgusting condition i don't think anyone would ever buy it or

 rent it even for a dollar. haha. unless u are willing to re-do the house and work on it. 

apart from that, the other houses that i checked out were musty and mouldy. totally grossed. oh well

more house hunting for me in the next few days as i meet up with "potential" roommates. 

hopefully those will turn out better. 

on the brighter side of my life, naomi and i have been spending practically every single day together and it's been a wonderful time of laughter, fun, fellowship and tetris on facebook. hahaha. yes. we dorks. she was so sweet to celebrate my birthday with me yesterday with a chocolate cake (very belated, but better late than never :) ) she wrote me a card and we both realised that we were the friends that we both prayed for. friends which we true and supportive, reliable and trustworthy, a firm spiritual support (well..she is for me...i dunno about the other way round. heh) it's been such a wonderful time with her that i'm so happy that i found her, but terribly upset that she's not going to be my roommate. 

naomi is my second bobo. i miss bobo and chrystal and cheryl and all my friends back home :( 

i've gotten a sudden bout of homesickness over the past few days as i've emo-ed about my work and housing situation. i suddenly remembered the times where my family, especially my brothers and my dad, would travel at night to find supper down back in Ang Mo Kio for roti prata or carrot cake or hokkien mee and the likes. surprisingly it's not the food, but the whole experience and their presence that i miss so much. I miss the childlike teasing of my father who loves me very much but refuses to admit so. 

right now i feel very very much alone. :'(

anyhows. if i didn't update, my roommate got a pet bunny. just because one of my neighbours saw it and she wanted one. she was well supported by michelle. very immature people for their age. very next day they went out to get one with the cage and all. pets are illegal in the dorms by the way, but i don't really care cos i love. but i was not supportive of this idea, knowing how my roommate is like. she can't even care for herself let alone a bunny. i was labelled "unloving" and "too practical" for objecting to having a bunny.

just as i expected, the bunny is now shoved to one side. my roommate used to attend to the bunny every single moment. now she comes in and she doesn't even bother saying hi to the rabbit. worse, the cage is real bad and the bunny's white paws are now yellow from the poo poo and pee pee. she used to feed it 3-5 times a day. yesterday, it was only fed once. today, she left and has gone the whole afternoon and it is not fed at all. poor bunny.

what will happen to you when she moves out into another house with a housemate who is equally or dirtier than her??? you're gonna die young from inhaling all that cigarette smoke and huka pipe. poor bunny. so nice and sweet. i would take care of you and take u away from her...but only if ally supports the funding. i have no money to feed myself. let alone u.