Monday, August 29, 2005 -

Well.......This is probably gonna be one of my last few posts for the forseeable future....National Slavery awaits me ......two years of of waking up at 5.30 am and sleeping at 10.30 am.......truly an insomniac's worst fear come true...hahaha...Anyways.......been making the necessary arrangements...buying stuff,making new plastic specs......and so on..

Two weeks left.Getting used to the idea of my last day on the job as chief of Home security for my house.Not My idea.The Governments orders.National service they call it. I'm polishing my dvd player and getting myself used to the idea of saying goodbye to it.It and the twenty-odd years of sleeping and lazing and eating and Dvd-watching and more sleeping it represents.One loose end I haven't tied up.Nancy Callahan.Age eleven........OOPS.....hahaa.....ok I admit it I ripped off this whole chunk of word's From John Hartigan (Bruce Willis) in the Sin City movie........I also admit that the fact that I remember his dialogue word for word scares even me.......hahaha...go ahead Play the Dvd and match the dialogue....I dare ya!!

So anyhow.....in random but hopefully sequential order.....here's some of the more notable stuff I've done in the past few weeks up to this point.....

8th of August.My Mum's 50th birthday........ah the big five-0......its amazing how I like to think that my mum is in her 30's-40's....has so much time really passed?hahahha.........so on her 50th birthday we had a small gathering for my mum........my parents, My mum's eldest sister,Betsy and third sister,Amy and her husband: uncle Ben (REMEMBER HIM FOLKS??!!.....OOOOOOO....I BET YOU DO!!COS I SURE AS HELL DO!) went to the Swissotel at Clarke Quay for this intercontinental buffet dinner.....

The food was ok...ya know....Abalone,fresh salmon,Cray Fish,Crab,cream cheese cake,Creme brulee and other cheap foodstuff......ya know..the usual....hahahha......and thank the sweet lord that My uncle Ben was behaving himself that night. He only ate and made the necessary birthday well-wishes.No mention of fun topics like virgins.sex.Parents.Parents + Sex(!!!).Abstainence from sex. For that I am Eternally Grateful.....cos I've still been taking cold showers since my last encounter with him to wash away the shame I felt.....he made me feel.......unclean. For More information on that legendary event with My uncle Ben that previously happened, Please feel free to visit my previous blog.....http://apokolips.blogspot.com/.........Read the post untitled "Meet My Uncle Ben".........read dear readers and be thankful that your uncle is not named Benny.....hahaha...

So in addition to the peaceful tranquil dinner we had.....My Mum had a great birthday this year. She got lots of gifts.........An Expensive watch from my dad, a branded leather Bag from my aunty Amy, And a $400 diamond ring from a sterling silver,Crystal bracelet from me...........and for yerr info....she said she liked it alot!!!Yes she did.. and My mum would'nt lie to me.....Ever...............ok besides the time she said she was gonna take me to new zealand, that babies came out from the stomach, that the Thai Transvestite We saw on our cruise was a figment of my imagination, that she was gonna cook sheperd's pie in 1995 and...and....other stuff I can't remember.......other then those hundred odd times....she never lies to me!! Hell in fact my mum likes it so much that she wears it everyday.......haha.....and Nooooooo... I did'nt force her to do it!! Yup the necklace was good.....Worth Starving For.Worth buying for.Worth goin to Perlinis For.Amen...........there I go imitating Marv from Sin City again...hahha.....I just can't control myself!...GOLDIEEEEEEEEEE!!!..hahah

I'm glad she liked it. For a pauper like me that Perlini Necklace cost a whole lot. My allowance is $30 a week (FYI,this amount is roughly equal to what impoverished bangla workers earn in two days) and my old allowance in ploy was $50. So let's just say this necklace cost twice my current allowance and 1/3rd more then my old allowance.........sure it's not too expensive a gift,but I gave my mum the best I could afford.........hahha.....that's all that matters....skipped lunch for two weeks and went to the library to rent comicbooks cos I could'nt buy any comics to get the necklace...my mum asked me when am I gonna get her something wif diamonds.....hopefully by next year I can get her some ring or necklace with microscopic diamond dust with my army pay ......hahah....for the time being I can only afford crystal......but it ain't that bad.......cos If I had not skipped my lunch for two weeks......cubic zarconia would be all I could afford!!....or maybe some skull rings from Far East Plaza.....hahaha......

Also caught Charlie and the Chocolate Factory a week or so after My mum's birthday...........with Liang Jie,Felix,huiling,Wenjun and Ben.... and it was pretty okay.....I loved Tim Burton's very quirky Gothic Style and the haunting Danny Elfman scores in all his movies are always good........so anyway some of the stuff was downright bizarre and quirky but the visual style of the movie was great.......I'm sure that I would love this movie if I was a kid ...or.......an oompa loompa..

I remember loving Roald Dahl's stories when I was in Primary school.....he had a very distinctive and charming style of writing. A giant chocolate factory producing all kinds of candies , complete with its own edible gardens,chcocolate waterfalls,river of chocolate and other stuff is a fantasy only a child could imagine...heck it would be like the Ultimate fantasy for a child of 3-10yrs old.........but somehow Roald Dahl was able to tap into a child-like imagination and come up with a story like this, that is well-loved by kids for decades. I remember the book as being well-liked by Children and charming to even adults............the film was a pretty faithful adaptation and was interesting when combined with Tim Burton's own style....I'll rate it like 6.5 0r 7 out of 10.........oompa loompas are the bomb!!yo!!.....I wonder how they breed though....cos it'll be hell of a sad day if my suspicions that both male and female oompa loompas have the exact same features is true....imagine making out with yourself.......holy moley...

I was mentioning earlier that I have been borrowing comcicbook tpbs from Orchard Library and they have a pretty damn good selection.....read some comics I could have never afford to read like the $150 Green Lantern/Green Arrow Hardcover..............anyway I borrowed this book called "Understanding Comics" by Scott Mcloud and it was a real eye opener............great,great book that explains all the subtleties of the comic form.......even though I've come a long way in my artwork......I still learn new things everyday about this artform ........

I just don't get the bad rep tacked onto comicbooks......many perceive it to be a childish medium, that may be true in the 1930's to 1970's when comics was in its infancy.......but definietly not now,comic nowadays are written,drawn and priced for teenagers and adults......comics don't all feature supeheros......romance,war,supernatural,the occult,sci-fi,autobiographical life stories,crime,horror,humor genres are all available in different comics.........Hollywood is turning to the comics industry for ideas in fact. Constantine, American Splendor and even the oscar nominated Road to Perdition starring Jude Law and Tom hanks don't seem like kiddie stuff do they?Did you know all these adult-oriented films were based straight on comicbooks......in fact the content of the movies were toned down compared to the comicbooks........pick up any constantine comic and compare it with the movie........the movie seems like a sturday morning cartoon compared to the comics......

Comics is probably the most intimate form of entertainment that exists. More so then movies or television or radio because it is the only medium that requires you to fill in the blanks with your own imagination rather then having everything spelt out or shown to you. Like for eample in films, there are plot twists and stuff but everything is shown to you and all the creative choices are already taken by the makers of the film not by you..you watch a film but you don't make any contributions to the film itself.....this is not so with comics where certain panels require the reader themselves to imagine and shape scenes according to their own imaginations with what visual information is provided......yes I know....at these point I'm probably speaking Kryptonian to you.....lemme illustrate what I mean with a simple illustration......

Imagine this two panels on a page,one following another:

Panel 1: This panel features a drawing of a mustached man screaming, sweat dripping from his face and another tall man standing inches behind him with a knife raised high, smiling sinisterly...

Panel 2: This panel features a drawing of the exterior of a apartment building with the sound effects "AAAAAAAAAAAAARGH!!!!" coming out of a window of the apartment building.

If I ask ten people to intrepretate this scene. Ten out of ten will tell me that what happened in the span of this two panels was thatt the mustached man got stabbed or killed by the tall man........why do you say that? It's because you filled in the blanks with your imagination and made your conclusion based on what visual images was given on the page...........The artist did'nt show you a clear drawing of the man actually being stabbed by another man, did he? no...He drew you these two panels and you made your own conclusions based on what information you saw. For all we know the tall man might have tripped and fall and the scream came from him, for all we know the mustached man could have tackled the tall man,who screamed as he fell........it's possible cos nothing is shown visually that contradicts this possibilities.the artist did'nt exactly show what happened,rather he made you an intimate part of the process by letting you make your own creative choice about what happened based on what info he gave you............

Comic panels are static unmoving images,snapshots of certain moments in time arranged in a sequential order....these static images cannot show you every single detail like a tv show or movie can....so instead these static images require active partcipation from the readers , the gutters(the space between panels) between each panel/static image is where the reader can take part and intrepretate what happened from one panel to the next.....Panel 1: A man raising his fists at another man, panel two: an unconscious man on the floor...........take apart this two panels and they are completely unrelated,place them side by side and your mind feels in the blanks and intrepretate it as a man getting knocked out by another man even though no fists was shown being actually thrown......fascinating stuff...

The intimacy of this medium stems from the fact that it makes full use of the readers' imagination and also because comics is an entertianment medium that is so close to us, more attainable than tv or film..........any kid with a crayon,pen or pencil can fold sheets of papers,staple them together,draw, and produce their very own comicbook........you don't need a video camera,high tech equipment or a degree in film school.........you only need common everyday items.....and your imagination......... that's the whole appeal.

So now that the comic lesson is over and all of you are asleep or on the verge of slitting your wrists...let's go on to other stuff............recently I packed my entire room, threw out every single unecessary item that cluttered my room,arranged everything perfectly,categorized my comic tpbs (161 tpbs in my room alone,ranging from $20 - $90 per tpb) in alphabetical order and spent hours upon hours going through all my old stuff i've collected over my decade in the house......

My parents had called the air-con service people down to our house to check our air-con units.......so whenever there is people in the house,my mum makes sure its spick and span.........and so she told me to pack up my room........now my room itself is pretty tidy except for some tpbs and comics placed here and there.......but I decided to completely pack the whole room from top to bottom since I would be going army soon and I wan't my room to be preserved flawlessly.........You know I have what I would like to call A self-adjustment mechanism( Fun fact:International economics term from Poly year two!!)....whereby I know that certain things are not up to standards and I let it be until a certain point in time ,where my own self-adjustment mechanism kicks in and I pull a 360 degree change and completely eradicate each and every detail of the problem ..nothing is spared....hhaha.......like when my sec school maths was bad,some point in time I told myself that enough is enough and locked myself up in my room everyday for 3 months and study my maths until the problem is resolved............so when I am meticulous....I'm REALLY Meticulous....all sorts of interesting and random stuff i uncovered while clearing my room.....

I started by packing my comics in alphabetical order and sorting out my collection of art...........all my drawings from 1995 to 2005....you can imagine the amount of A4 paper drawings I have had ,since I seldom throw whatever stuff I drew in order to make comparisons and just reflect back on my early work......it was as thick as two and a half packs of printer paper (500 sheets per pack)..........10 years of drawings

I said artwork from 1995 to 2003 because I started drawing regularly from 1995......like every kid I had a passing interest in art since I was young.....but I did'nt show any exceptional artistic merits whatsoever....but in 1995, My dad started his bicycle business.......so for the next 6-7 years since 1995, I stayed in the shop 6 days a week....my family weekend outings were completely nil for these period of time........I had to find some ways to kill my boredom since I was at the shop 6 days a week......so I cycled,roller bladed,watched tv and I started to discover drawing..........

My mum would give me an A4 size sheet of paper and I would just spent countless hours doodling away..........It was the first time I started drawing and learning the basics of drawing seriously.....I spent many an afternnoon just drawing for hours upon hours, I studied comicbooks and learned how they were put together and made my own crude mini- comicbooks (A4 paper folded in half).......and I self-taught myself how to draw the human body,muscles,sapceships,animals,faces,human expressions from trial and error.............I still have alot of artwork from that early period.........I cringe when I look at them.....those min-comics were drawn in freaking blue colored ballpoint pen for god's sake!!!...........I had raw enthusiams and energy but I lacked the skill and techniques.....

I got Much,much better in my secondary school days after years of drawing....I changed my drawing tools to more professional stuff cos now I pencilled my art and then inked it instead of drawing straight on the paper with a blue pen..... many of my friends loved my stuff and you could see me passing photocopied and stapled stacks of super hero pin-ups or my own a4 sized comicbooks around the class or drawing free tatoos in marker for my classmates back at my desk........I rememebered one comic I did in partcular: one of my friends in sec school had a crush on this girl from another class......so for the sheer heck of it,I drew this humorous 12 page comicbook complete with fake advertisements.....My friend was buck-tooth so I drew the comic with him as Mighty Mouse going after that girl he liked and it ended quite bizarrely if I remembered.......I think I married them and the story ended with them having a animal hybrid kid who looked like Pikachu from Pokemon(who was damn poupular back then)...yup it was bizarre.........the class loved it and my friend really liked it so I gave him a copy of the comic and I kept another one....I've lost the art to that particular story though...

So By sec 3, My drawing had become pretty professional looking,although some of the tools I used were still not very pro.........I did more reaserch and studied specific artists and their drawing styles and during my sec 3 dec holidays.......I decided to go all out in perfecting my art......I would draw in the still of the night, from 10 pm to 5am the next day and produced a complete page of penciled and inked comic page every day for 20 days until I finished drawing my comic..........It was a great learning experience and by sec 4 I wanted to do my most ambitious project.....My fav comic series was a 70's series called Jack Kirby's New Gods and it was cancelled before the creator could end his story....so I wrote,penciled,inked and lettered my own conclusion to the series......it would have been two parts, each consisting of 25 pages each............the first part was to set up the story and the second part was a 25 page fight of the proheized battle between the hero and his father in a coloseum filled with hundreds of my favorite comic characters and some cameos from my classmates,done in double splash pages for greater impact( double splash page is when a huge drawing is spread across two entire pages)......I managed to finish the first 25 page chapter the second chapter....I finished pencilling 8 pages (4 double splash pages) before i had to stop to concentrate on my o-levels....

I never finished it..........I gave copies of the first part to my friends and some of them still ask me when I'm gonna finish the entire thing till this day...........probably never since My drawing now looks so different from then that the stylistic change would be too jaring to reconcile......I have the complete inked artwork from the first 25 pages and the 8 pencilled pages I never inked....my very first work that I thought looked professional......I was looking through it when I packed my room and I was glad I did'nt ink the 8 pages then......cos my tools were all wrong and I gotta say the artwork still holds up quite well in my very critical eye.............its energetic and spontaneous...

It was an interesting experience looking back at 10 years worth of artwork and doodles and seeing how my drawings have changed over the years........every few years I seem to evolve......since I won't be drawing regularly for the next 2 years...it'll be intriguing to find out how my art will look after that.......currently I'm shifting from my usual hyper-detailed stuff to a more animated and fluid style........who knows wth my stuff will look in the future....

Anyhoo.......I also packed some of my cupboards and dug out all kinds of stuff I had forgotten........man I keep all sort of random stuff or junk that either I don't feel like throwing or stuff that I think may be nostalgic to me in the future.....gifts,photos,cards and other momentoes all stored in my special cupboard........

So here's some of the diverse range of bizarre stuff I realized I've been keeping in my drawer of oddities since I last did a massive repacking 5 years ago.......crazy stuff like Empty red packets from Two chinese New Years ago, dozen of IC photos from 1994 till now, My sec school yearbooks from 1997 to 2000, birthday cards from my parents since 1997 till now, cards from friends, birthday or valentine day's gifts from friends, a box of Straw Berry Flavored Body foam and lotion that I dunno wat to do with, A FERRARI!!.....the size of a matchbox, my badges and Name tag from the Boy's Brigade, CDs containing photos of friends or colleagues or video clips involving certain individuals dancing emabrassingly to Dragoste Tin Tei, my favorite action figure;Darkseid made in 1984 preserved in perfect condition, friendship bands from god knows when and God knows who, TONS of neoprints even though I hate taking neoprints, My very first Pay envelope for my first job I folded neatly( just the envelope....no cash of course!!), old baby pictures, important issues of comics from the 1970's like the first appearance of wolverine, Ra's Al Ghul and Teen Titans issue one, an original black and white photo of the cast of Star wars from 1979, a penguin keychain,some self-made bookmark from friends in the shape of that ice-cream stick thingy the doctor puts in your mouth , a heart shaped cushion, a tiny handmade paper bag with ribbons as handles with hershey kisses wrappers inside it(WTH?!!), christmas cards from friends and my secondary 4 leaving school certificate........

Here's the remarks from my leaving school certificate:

" He is respectful and obedient towards teachers and co-operative among classmates. He always puts on a smile, bringing joy to the class"

Respectful???Obedient?? Bring joy?! What kinda drugs has my Form teacher Mrs Ramu been taking? Wwhat frigging Planet is she from?? That bangla must have eaten too much stale curry!!......I am respectful and obedient towards her?? Hello Ramu!! you should see my spot-on impersonations of you............Puts on a smile?! This one is insane since I dun remember ever smiling since hmmmm.......I was born?Bring Joy to the class??!............I doubt my indian classmates will agree with you there Ramu........since I always left them in tears.......and It sure as hell ain't tears of joy!!

Haiz how I accumulated so much stuff I don't know.....I dun even remember owning some stuff I had or even know who some of the stuff came from............ah well.......no harm keeping some keepsakes.....who knows when I go through those stuff ten years down the road, I may have fond memories from some of them.....hell....when I start feeling nostalgic over the stuff it means I'm really getting old.....hahaha

Well besides Repacking............I also have been living at an accelerated pace for this week....cos I am living on borrowed time!!haha.....Felix told me to enjoy myself as much as I can before NS......so I've been like trying to watch as many movies and read as many trade paper backs as I can every day.........been renting VCDs regulalry from a vcd rental shop at Bukit Panjang Plaza.......or buying some TVB boxed sets...I finished watching loads of movies: Legend Of Zu,Troublesome nights 3 and 4, Alien VS predator, Elf, Daredevil Director's cut,Kung Fu Mahjong, A Karena Lam/Ekin Cheng romantic comedy (She's sooooo Cute!!), Women are from Mars and a 30 episode TVB series called Detective investigation Files IV and other movies I can't remember............plus Me and my accomplice in crime,Huiling just ordered sixty bucks worth of pirated movies.........so I'll be just about done after watching my Seinfeld Season 1 and 2 boxed set....my favorite all-time comedy series EVER...

Also My dad finally installed SCV at home after more then a decade of deciding against it...........so Hopefully I can completely immerse myself in 24 hrs worth of HBO,Star movies and Cartoon Network until my retina's burst........haiz just when I'm about to enter NS, suddenly my home has become so much better.....new air-con, plasma television and SCV...........wow....I'm gonna miss them.........err....my parents I mean......haha....

Speaking about My parents.....they've been behaving a little weird lately.....My dad is getting so techo-savvy nowadays, he reads Stuff magazine religiously,carries the latest PDA/Hp and walks everywhere looking like a bookie with this portable DVD player under his arm that came free from our SCV Subscription........hell when I went for dinner with them lately, I was stunned when i Realized that My dad had Techno cds in his car,he was listening to some crazy English dance remix of Jolin Tsai's 72 bian and grooving to the music......oh lord......

As forMy mum, she is kinda listless and sad looking nowadays especially when she sees young kids playing she looks sad........yup she's gonna miss me....hahaha.........even when My brother went army my mum felt very weird for months......I'm much closer to my mum so she's gonna be even more lonely........suddenly she dun have anyone to nag at,watch tv with,go for lunch with or to accompany her to bukit panjang central..........it'll be difficult for her to adjust.........plus recently she has had some serious back problems where she was in complete pain for an entire week ,unable to lift stuff or even walk properly....luckily she's recovered......haiz....i'm going NS and my brother is always home late or sometimes not all all....so my folks are gonna be a little lonely for the time being..........they're already making plans to go overseas and take up courses to help them pass time.......well they have to adapt to changes and so will I..........in the mean time before I go in, I'll try to spend as much time with them as possible.......

Well that's about it for this post..............two more weeks....excited yet kinda sian at the same time........hahhahha.... hopefully I'll be able to squueeze in one last post before My date of enlistment........in the mean time all the junk from this post will keep you occupied for at least a week.....hahha.....September 10th me hearties.....The countdown begins.....

8:06 AM