Was in a pretty good mood so I decided to ajak my dad watch the game with the MyRawkites. That, and also because I needed a lift to the new venue. Bloody hell Sunway ok?
Michael Thomas dropped by today. Who, you ask? He's an ex-Liverpool player who scored against us for Arsenal. That was the goal which cost us the league in 1989. Yup I was born that year and dad mentioned it many times before.
I didn't know who was the dude who just walked in and I overheard Bernard greeting him as "Michael". Now, I only know 2 Michaels who were ex-Reds so I thought, okay that is DEFINITELY not Owen so it's gotta be Thomas. Then.. who the eff is Michael Thomas again?
Searched high and low for dad who turned out to be washing his eyes in the toilet. When he came back to the table, I told him that Michael Thomas's here and he was like, OH? Apparently he greeted him in the toilet and didn't know who he was. -___-' I think it was quite nice for him to drop by but I found it quite weird that he just slipped out unannounced.
Anyway,
Shit Loads of Luck + Xabi's Hip + Hunger + Good defending = Victory.
So, I was just telling Joe that the ending of Titanic made me cry. It's probably because i lack attention these days. The thought of 1500 people waiting for me when i die seems to mess with my head.
It's not really plausible of course. What are the chances of me dying with 1500 people? Not that I want to anyway. *touch wood*
eujoe 07595997597 says: (1:38:25 AM) yeah. not sweet if ur deathwish is to pull 1500 more ppl with you
This is an EXTREMELY long post. Please facebook my note instead for better readability.
The Danger that is Advertising Design masked as Graphic Design. Enter the world where anyone can be fooled and shameless self promotion forces you to have your face plastered at the back of the name card.
In dedication to cenfad, Miss Ami, her literature classes and my long lost love of writing long-winded essays, I have got a couple of thoughts about PJCAD right here. Brace yourselves, folks!
Before I start this piece, I would like to remind you that I have come to the realisation that yes, I might have taken the wrong option, but I knew that it was going to be a possibility right from the start.
After leaving cenfad, I had written off Limkokwing and The One Academy due to inconvenience distance-wise. That on top of the circulating rumors of course. Instead, I had paid a visit to ALIF, Sri KBU and PJCAD amongst others.
ALIF seemed like a pretty crafty art school in a building with more passageways than any mole can dig up. The administration were well-trained to put focus on the word "concept". After assuring them that this one word is what's left of cenfad's pride... they told me that I'd have to retake a whole semester in order to achieve a diploma there. Why? Because I never took 3D Design. No hate to this college though, the graduates seem to be very well-equiped in that sense.
Sri KBU was probably the worse of the lot. Most design students would undergo the Foundation+3 years major = Diploma route. Those bordering to the extreme would make it 4 years in foundation alone, ala Mr Teh. Not in Sri KBU. With a face of pure disgust, they told me that I was stupid to take that route when there's another offering what.. 3 years to a degree (or something of the sort anyway). Why waste time eh? Pure business bullshit, straight from the bull's hole itself. Even my dad was half-convinced that the local degree was sufficient enough for my future. I, of course, refused to comment on the issue.
So this was how I landed in PJCAD. I'd signed up for Graphic Design but saw a small section on Advertising Design in the booklet. I enquired about the difference and the reply I got was "it's something like Graphic Design". This was probably the decisive point as to why my mistake could have been the fault of the college- or my carelessness. Mind you though, I was 100% positive that I had signed up for a Diploma in graphic Design. Anyway, my transcripts showed that the subjects synced, credits could be transferred and the head admin seemed to be pretty alright with my portfolio. A tour of the building showed that the facilities are of top notch quality and the air-cons work. There were a few sets of final projects displayed in the gallery and I thought they looked quite impressive. Aside from the overflowing number of hand-painted shoes, all was well.
One issue kept bugging me though - Flash. I was told that semester 5 students in PJCAD are required to compile their portfolio in Flash. He even showed me an example of a senior's work (which I came to realise, was probably done by a Multimedia Student) It wasn't just basic flash, but those fancy kind which I thought yelled pure Ah Beng. I mean, come on! Fire flies, empty bottles and a monotonous cheesy ballad? The truth of the matter is that we had very little experience with Flash in cenfad and in my case, close to nada. We focused on Director, a programme I was still struggling with and seem to be used nowhere else but in that little house at Jalan Kia Peng. Thus, in a typical kiasu move of mine, I decided to start my fifth semester three months late, in the time which I would spend taking Flash classes every week. I would also be completing what's left of my LAN subjects - Moral Studies.
How wrong I was to have mistaken PJCAD as a Graphic Design college. It's a pure shame to the posters of Paul Randt and Milton Glaser hung along the walls of the stairwell. As months passed by and classes came and go, I realised that PJCAD seems to be a lot different from cenfad in terms of attention paid to the design. I'd brushed off the fact that the word "IDEA" kept popping up more often than anything else, thinking that it's just the main lesson of the exercise. Unfortunately, that word never left and the word "DESIGN" seemed to play no other role than another six letters on a brief. The word is viewed as a process, an action, more than an art form or the main focus itself. They had made a gradual maneuver from graphic to advertising.
These were my subjects: Digital Design, Marketing, Professional Practice, Tutorials and Advertising Design. So one could write off Digital Design and Marketing as they focus more on Adobe Flash and brainstorming respectively. I'd expected a lot of design work from the other subjects. Unfortunately, I found myself stuck with an old man who turned out to be from the Advertising industry. He was more obsessed with shameless self-promotion than anything else. The man makes the lamest jokes, carries himself as an entertaining character- a queer old man not to be fooled for he is wise, or so he deems himself to be seen as. Nothing is wrong- but nothing is right either. One day it's this, the next day it's that. He's like that, one would think of him as wise but I think of him as stupid in terms of 1, absolutely-no-spoonfeeding methods like that has been used much effectively by my previous lecturers to great results. 2, my classmates never seem to get the point he's trying to make and neither can I and 3, he still provides loopholes for those who want to escape this mess he's made. He reeks of "let's just get this over with". No drilling, nothing. It's possibly a way of his to earn some sort of gratitude from students. Who knows? I fell for it a couple of times myself.
On top of that, all his assignments were tied to awards, awards and more awards. Well I found that weird for never in my life had I heard of design students so hungry for awards and designing only for the sake of winning them. And the funny thing was- there wasn't a single design element to it! That would have been the Kancil Awards. A ceremony created by the AAAA to celebrate the glorious minds of advertisers in the world. I said ADVERTISERS. Not advertising DESIGN students. The winner from the previous year was a student from Limkokwing who submitted an entry with 2 columns of badly kerned text and an image of a dog at the bottom. Reason for winning was tied to the importance of being able to research and its importance towards a good career of a copywriter. Now, what the fuck has that got to do with advertising design? Oh wait, there is- the idea part... which in my eyes, seems to fall into the hands of those advertising people anyway.
99% of my assignments are competition-based. In other words, they have stringent deadlines and in many cases, VERY frustrating. We had only 2 days to complete the Kancil Student Awards entries with the idea of squeezing out gold from a desperate situation. That risk even came with a hefty RM 50 bill to pay for each entry submitted. Needless to say, I was quite unhappy. The only consolation I thought I could have taken from the exercise was the discussion. Unfortunately, the discussion that followed the end of the project wasn't a very fruitful one as well. I'd only learned that I'd submitted an idea- not a concept. (Urm, okay, confusing much?) That did make me ponder for nights as to what I could have done to get it right. Well one may argue that I might have connected with my inner creative side and come up with something brilliant which combines both idea and design together as an entry but HECK, I had absofuckinglutely no clue as to what was happening and I'd only wanted it done, dusted with a 50 ringgit cheque and forgotten. In the end, I had selfishly come to the conclusion that perhaps, the lecturer could have started the project much earlier, have a discussion, make some changes, brief us on what to improve and what not before sending in the entries!
I am sure the advertising design students who had completed their internship would tell you "that's the way it works" but that's where they are right and my mistake came in. I am dumbfounded to find myself in the wrong major by accident.
Adding more fuel to the flames would be telling me to "forget the past". Yes I am now a PJCAD student but honestly, it was truly the staff at cenfad that taught me the chops. Did I feel like crediting PJCAD when I submitted the entries? Well, I knew that for the sake of formality, I really should. Given the option, I would have said no. They gave me the chance, but not the materials nor the skills. As a paying student (no longer on scholarship) I felt like I had the rights to not have the college name typed under my name. Especially when they have yet to earn my respect.. or possibly vice versa. Then again, people don't use the line "accepted into college" for no reason. Best leave this issue alone then.
Of all the assignments given, I only found one which seems decent enough to be deemed as a design project. Bank Negara's 3rd Circulative Coin Series competition. I tried my best in that, expressed what I thought should have been done and obviously, did not even make the cut. The looks I get when I presented my work to the class bordered on "what the fuck?" and "okaaay". Seriously, would you even be in the mood to listen to long-winded explanations when you don't even fully understand the language spoken or even hear the person speaking at the other end of the table? All this in a bloody cafe which serves set lunch for RM10. Oh, and there was no constructive feedback from this project. Maybe it's the attitude from the majority of the class. The collective attitude from those who can't be bothered, can't speak English and those filled with doubt and uncertainty only makes room for the lecturer to not conduct a discussion. In this, I am very disappointed.
Putting that aside, I won 600 bucks from the Initial Hygiene Comic Sketch competition. Not blowing my own trumpets here but that was bloody easy. It would be for any design student in cenfad. There were only about 10 people competing in this and half of them can't even make a proper joke. As for the AVIA Soul Shoe Design competition, it was all good until I found out that the top 8 finalists have to fork out 180 each to purchase a pair of shoes to be painted on. Now, any sensible student would tell you that it might not be a very good risk to take, especially when the consolation prize would see you walking away with RM200- just twenty bucks more than what you started with after all the time and materials spent painting the shoe. Half the number of finalists were PJCAD students. What a haul eh? No wonder the old man, filled with pride, referred to the class as a "winning class". Sorry man but I think you need to wipe that smile off your face as I don't think you were much help. The submissions for the shoe design competition were made in November 2008. It's already end of February 2009.
At the end of semester came another competition-based assignment. This was conducted in the Professional Practise classes that were held on Saturdays with the senior students. Not unlike our Marketing classes, a few of us found ourselves in the unfavorable position of single/double-handedly hauling the whole group through the competition. This is the way it works in the old man's classes. You can once again just smell the stench of gratitude from the delinquents.
There is so much more that I would like to vent about but I think this would suffice for the time being. The conclusion is that I had found myself in Advertising Design instead of Graphic Design. I was lied to. It was partially my fault for believing the the general name of the major and not its subjects but as the saying goes, "you learn from your mistakes". I truly did. I learned the line that separates the commercial from the true blues, saw the line that divides Advertising, Advertising Design and Graphic Design. I also realised how some people scheme their way through responsibilities and just how design in viewed in different industries- no matter how closely related they are.
Fans of great power pop can rejoice. A number of top purveyors of the genre are coming together to form a pop "super group" of sorts and Hitfix has exclusive details about recording plans.
Tinted Windows is Hanson vocalist Taylor Hanson, Fountains of Wayne bassist Adam Schlesinger, former Smashing Pumpkins' guitarist James Iha and Cheap Trick drummer Bun E. Carlos.
Hallelujah! The music is alive. There is a chance for better music on the radio!
..or so I hope. These boys sound like they mean business and I have faith in their music. I have a rough idea on how the music would sound like but I am not always right. I miss the burning passion in Tay's voice (Suki would know what I mean, do u!?!!) and pop/rock that for once, isn't screaming "cheesy works". (PLEASE DO NOT BE CHEESY)
Okay I don't think it's possible to keep calm and not worry about any side projects that are Hanson-related. They usually don't move past 2nd gear publicity-wise -___-'
Anyway, I am very very excited upon the breaking of this piece of news. It sounds like the best of spring, summer, autumn and winter mashed up together after an extremely mundane phase in life. I feel rejuvenated!
Anyway, am not feeling well again. My legs are a tad bit less stiff compared to yesterday and I am VERY sleepy. Left Chimera at 6.30-ish but got stuck in a jam towards Taman Desa for 50 mins. Felt really nauseous. I didn't feel like going for the swing social but it's Tasha's last for the next couple of months to come so I made myself go. Best buddy mar.
Ducky made a couple of new friends but I was content in being silent. Big sign of things to come. So as much as I doubt that I can dance properly tonight, I knew that there was no way in hell I can resist the great music. Thus, after a torturous hour of sitting out - I thought "to hell with these aching legs" and danced... and screwed up badly. I attempted a few more but I was still as muddled. I was so full of self-disgust (like wtf right? swing is supposed to be a fun social dance) and still am. Sorry Aizat, sorry Sean -___-'
I am not looking forward to rolling out of bed tomorrow.
And for those who care enough to know what yours truly did to pass the day- you're in for a surprise.
I got a haircut.
I asked for a shorter 'do. Then I got curious so I asked how hard would it be to maintain those flat-ish bangs. Upon hearing the stylist's lack of confidence in her answer (okay lah...) I requested for my OLD bangs. The more she snipped away, the more I felt like something's not right... and then.... my nightmare came true. A GHASTLY HAIRCUT WHICH I WILL HAVE TO ENDURE FOR 2 MORE MONTHS!!! ALL THOSE PRECIOUS YEARS OF NO LAYERS AND NO BANGS HAVE BOILED DOWN TO THIS!!!!! But to fully grasp the disgust that I feel for my new bangs... please watch the 1st minute of the video embedded below- where beast gets a bath. (ps: Dao, this song is still unromantic)
Anyway, I then went home to watch Titanic, Music&Lyrics and The Heartbreak Kid. (May, I think Ben Stiller is hotter than Jack Black) Pffffft.
Okay Sha here's a pic.
I feel hideous. My gramps thinks I should start speaking Taiwanese after hearing my !@£$%^& about how "san ba" I feel.
My day started real pathetic, ended work feeling really miserable and unsatisfied, got home, cancelled a COD and then visited Aunty Wendy at the hospital.
Oh and I got a replacement keyboard.
Yup, the slim one.
NEVER EVER PUT ANY SORT OF WINE NEAR YOUR KEYBOARD.
Especially when the replacement will cost you 169 bucks :( Thank goodness for my Machines' rebate card. Had 60 bucks in there but I've only got a pathetic 80 cents left in there. No points from Apple accessories apparently.
PS: I don't really like the new keyboard. WHY CHANGE THE KEYS?!?!?!?
Dropped by Midvalley again this afternoon. Met up with Shasha, exchanged my dad's jersey at Adidas and then left for Jusco to search for Hannah Montana memorabilia for Mimi. Plaster her face on anything and you can jack up the product's price to 150%. Geez. I then shopped for Azalea's birthday present and along the way, got myself 2 pairs of ballet flats. Same design, different colors. WHAT LA I COULDN'T MAKE UP MY MIND OKAY? The crowd in Vincci can seriously affect your thinking.
Since MVM was quite crowded and I couldn't find anything nice for Rach there- I bought her a necklace in Bangsar's ELO. I was searching for something quite symbolic. In this case, a necklace with 5 objects and preferably supported by another to represent Force5 and our rara group. Haha!
Anyway, Rachel's farewell dinner at King Crab was pretty awesome. I think the bill came up to a 160-ish for the five of us and the food was VERY good. Oh and they had the lamest karaoke videos on shuffle. Simple Plan's "Perfect" to some Alps scenery shots, Spice Girls, Michael Learns to Rock, "My Heart Will Go On" to a yacht and of course... Westlife!
Good luck and all the best in Melbourne, Rachel!
Now, back to the football...
Portsmouth 2-3 Liverpool
What loco? Rafa's managed to rest the two key attacking players AND get a win. There's no better way to cap off a match that ends at 3.30am than two extreeemely sweet goals (better still, LATE goals). And Nando is so rockin' that Juan Carlos hairdo, even Kuyt's got himself the same color!*
God knows what lack of respect the commentator was referring to. I doubt that anyone has ever fielded 6 defenders against Pompey! It was definitely bizarre but heck, that was one quirkily entertaining game. It brought out the attacking quality from most of our defenders and you'd never know which part of the field will they appear at. It kinda reminded me of that hammer-a-mole game at the arcade back in Amcorp mall. Personally, I think that anyone who recognises each and every liverpool player's quality would have enjoyed the game no matter what. Futhermore, Kuyt got himself onto the scoresheet.
Best moment of the match? When Aurelio scored that goal. I told my mum that Aurelio will take the shot and it'd spin right through Crouchy's legs..... and it bloody did! Ha!
(* is total made-up bull, except for the juan carlos part :P)
Felt a little feverish at work this morning. Then again, who wouldn't if they had a glass of coke, 2 slices of coffee sponge cake and a maggi cup for breakfast?
Anyway I just got back from the MyRAWK lou sang. Lou sang to You'll Never Walk Alone was goddamn fun!
Chris picked us up and guess what? We were early. LOL. I think the waiting part got to me when we were longing for the food to be served so I started zoning in and out most of the time- which of course led to 1. excessive laughing 2. extracina eyes 3. semi-deafness which led to yelling (poor jonno) 4. lack of mood to camwhore
Oh and guess what? The bill came up to 60 per person (+crabs) and I FREAKING grabbed the wrong angpau on the way out. -___-' It turned out to be empty
Okay screw it la I wanna sleep ady. More crabs at King Crabs with Sze, Rachel, Florence, Kit+Mum, Miss B tomorrow.
PS, I was making a COD outside HELP this morning... when down came Adnan (from swing dance, ducky) who walked towards a stranger who had been standing behind me, by his car, for the past 3 minutes. They shook hands, signed some documents and only then did I realise...
Why do I get the feeling that these are mainly favors for a close friend or two.. at the price of a free bulldog training session/ hair treatment voucher? 0:23 of the 1st video is a MUST watch.
You're TOO nice. This boy should be elected as some big shot whose life is dedicated solely to pat-on-the-back-and-smile goodwill publicity. -__-'
Clearly I am quite good at being sneaky. I think Mr Teh's version of "paranoid" is more like it. I work extremely slow cause I tend to meddle with the same thing over and over again.... and most of the time, to not much of a difference from the original work.
The day was alright except for the part where my dad purposely walked into my meeting just because I didn't pick up the phone. Like...OI??!?! *coughGOAWAYplease*
Left 2 hours later than usual :D and then rushed home for gramp's birthday.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!!
Oh btw, I am LOVING swing dancing.
I really wanna go for David Trinh's workshop on Saturday but I have Rachel's farewell dinner to attend. Oh well. :P
What an exhilarating match. The scales may have tipped tremendously when the Alonso curse had Frank Lampard wrongly sent off but there was no denying that Liverpool had the lion's share of possession and chances. It's been quite some time since I held my breath for a full 90 minutes so the result was extremely satisfying. (...and no good for my fever)
I thought every player on the field gave their best.. and boy did Alonso grab the award for "paling gaya" tonight. Gerrard was impressive in keeping possession of the ball to barge forward while Kuyt and Masch snapped away at the heels of those in blue. Furthermore, Skrtel is back to his best so I'll be expecting more annoying Agger transfer rumours soon.
Last but not least-Fernando Torres.
Damn you for keeping your word. HAHA! 2 bloody goals and a brand new pose to end the Anfield drought for the season and made it a total of three goals against Chelsea. Anfield was definitely bouncing for that boy.
Here's something you don't see captured on tv. A smiling Keane. See? No problems! ...and we're back in 2nd place. :)
PS: Do those yanks need a personally written speech by Obama to unite and be seated 20 chairs closer to each other? How can two men who share a passion for football and own the damned club be seated so far apart for such a big game? They probably don't give a flying banana about what the fans think about them nowadays. Total lack of tact.
"It doesn't matter. If you don't win you will always have someone talking about this decision or the other decision, football is like that - the best players when you lose are always in the stands or on the bench. "
