~Mumbo Jumbo~

Single Men and Women

2011-04-20T23:02:00.000-07:00

As promised in my previous post, here's my actual review of an Honest-to-God Romantic comedy....Johnnie To's new film; "Don't Go Breaking My Heart"...its actually been quite some time since I've had to catch a romantic flick in the cinema...and I can't say I missed the experience at all....LOL

As uncharacteristic as it is for me to catch such a flick, much less review it, the movie does kind of explore some very interesting relationship themes that I'll touch on later in this post.... I know, How very Aunty Agony of me...well anyways here you go:

Don't Go Breaking my Heart

“Don’t Go Breaking My Heart” is one of those full-out Saccharine-sweet romantic movies that women absolutely adore and guys need to endure. Why did I agree to watch this movie you ask? Well….one reason; Johnnie To.

Johnnie To, as previously mentioned, is one my favorite Hong Kong film directors and his romantic comedy “Love on a diet” with Andy Lau and Sammi Cheng was one of the few I actually enjoyed. Even his lesser, fluffier films like the Chinese New Year cash-in movie “Fat Choi Spirit” or “Love for all seasons” were pretty entertaining and more well-executed than 90% of films in this genre.

The plot of the story presents the ultimate female fantasy; a simple plain Jane is chased by two extremely eligible bachelors, embodied by Louis Koo and Daniel Chan and she can only pick one.

Each of the two represents the opposite spectrum of the female ideal of a guy; Louis Koo is the cocky, flirtatious Bad boy/ladies’ man who struggles to stay monogamous and Daniel Wu is the artistic, sweet, dedicated nice guy who is just completely into the female lead. Both are equally matched in the looks department and are filthy rich; so let the games begin!

Over the course of the film, the two suitors pull out all the stops trying to get the girl; giant hearts made out of post-it notes, sports cars, cooking romantic lunches, performing magic shows/ puppet shows, singing love songs over the phone, last minute trips to China to watch the sunrise on a skyscraper and the ante is constantly upped all the way till the film’s finale.

My favorite corny romantic trick was taking a diamond ring and placing it in the middle of an open dictionary with the definition of “Love” highlighted, when light passes through the ring, the shadow cast in the middle of the open book will be in the shape of a heart. Creative? Sweet? Or just too much damn time on his hands? You decide!!

Underneath all the fluff, one of the interesting underlying questions posed was whether a girl would ultimately pick the “bad boy” or the “nice guy”? Now this question has always been the source of considerable debate; research shows that when polled, more than 80% of girls will say that they will go for “the nice guy” but actual field tests conducted show that this answer may not be indicative of what happens in real life and that the females polled may have only given that answer because it was the “politically correct” response.

My actual opinion on this? Well I’ll go more into more detail on that after the movie review.

I felt that one of the weaker elements of the film was the fact that the audience was almost pre-conditioned to root for Daniel Wu’s character over Louis Koo’s character right from the get-go, minimizing the suspense of who the central character is going to pick in the end. Halfway into the movie and you’ll probably know that the film will end in a politically-correct but not necessarily realistic manner.

Thankfully, Johnnie To throws a nice curveball towards the end of the film; just when the nice guy sweeps the female lead off her feet, the director introduces an unexpected element into the mix that keeps the audience guessing; that of the reformed Bad boy. And well I guess, nothing sets a girl’s heart aflutter more than the image of a reformed bad boy; having come back down to earth, all repentant and vulnerable.

All in all, despite the fact that I was lapsing into a diabetic coma from all the sweetness, I thought that this film was an entertaining enough romantic comedy, that was rather deftly directed by Johnnie To.

End of Review

Disclaimer: The findings presented in the next section of this post have been based on copious amount of personal research, observation and a decade’s worth of emo debates/discussions with male friends.

So my opinion on the eternal Bad boy/nice guy debate? It’s simple:

A girl would date the bad boy over the nice guy any day of the week.

It’s a hard pill to swallow but absolutely true.

Those that fit in the bad boy mold are generally more outwardly self-assured, exciting and have a more dangerous edge to them while Nice guys are just that…nice.

The nice guys are always dependable, always available, always willing to bend backwards to accommodate the girl they like. More often than not, their desire to please the one they like just ends up making them look like push-overs. They present no discernible challenge (I.e. No excitement) for the female species.

The bad boys play by their own rules and never act like they have got anything to lose, plus they offer the females an enticing challenge; to have the chance of being that one person that rehabilitates them and changes them for the better, where so many others have failed.

Sure the women know that its more or less a fool’s errand to think they could ever fundamentally change a person’s personality, but that doesn’t stop them from trying does it? Everyone wants to be optimistic.

The general cycle associated with this bad boy/nice guy dilemma seems to break down into two stages that are as follows:

Dating Stage:

-Girls are generally between 16-28 yrs of age and at their prime
-Value excitement and fun over dependability and stability at this stage
-More short-term rather than long-term oriented with the advantage of youth on their side (e.g. Fun and unpredictability>stability and predictability)
-Preference skews towards the bad boy archetype rather than the nice guy
-Physical attractiveness is a crucial factor in this stage
-Attracted to flirtatious, cocky-funny style of humor
-Sees a guy putting her needs above his own as not being an attractive trait (e.g. too “available” or needy)
-Given a choice, would rather love then be loved (e.g. be with someone she loves rather than someone who really loves her)

Settling down stage:

-Girls in these stage are already in the late 20’s
-Options are now limited as they approach the end of their shelf-life
-Takes on a more balanced, long-term perspective
-Stability, dependability and security are now crucial factors.
-Looks and humor are a big plus but not a must
-A guy placing her needs above his own is now seen as an extremely desirable trait
-Given a choice, would rather much be loved than to love (e.g. preference would be towards the nice guy who loves them rather than the bad boy they so desperately love)

My secondary school friend (someone in the mold of the Nice guy archetype) once posed me a simple enough question, after a long discussion about the amount of effort and thought he put into an unrequited love affair with a friend of his, who had a penchant for dating ‘jerks’, the question was something like this: “When do you think she will ever acknowledge or even appreciate the things I’ve done for her and just take a chance on me?”

My reply after hearing his whole sob story: “Probably when she’s old and grey and her options are limited or when you’ve finally and completely distanced yourself from her to avoid continual disappointment…but you’ll probably already be with someone else by then though.”

Pessimistic? Sure it is but I’ve yet to find someone who can disprove what I’ve said to him, for all purposes and intents that’s just the way life usually is. Bittersweet. Usually the former more so than the latter.

Well, there you have it; my take on this decades-long debate! Give praise underserving ones, for this day you have been privy to the superior insights and enlightened teachings of a higher being.

Next: To get this lingering sweet taste out of my mouth, I’ll be reviewing Herman Yau’s Untold story next; the most controversial Category 3 Hong Kong film of all time. Trust me, You’ll never want to eat another Char Siew Pao again. Be there.

Sassy Beast

2011-04-20T22:39:00.000-07:00

I'm back with another review of a film I've been wanting to catch on DVD for quite sometime now; Jonathan Glazer's Sexy Beast starring Ben Kingsley, Ray Winstone and Ian Mcshane.

I have been hearing rave reviews about Ben Kingsley Oscar nominated performance as Don Logan for quite some time now, so I finally decided to get the DVD from HMV after the submission date for my Korean marketing proposal. Well here's my 2 cents:

Sexy Beast

Jonathan Glazer’s Sexy Beast is one of the British Gangster flicks that is an enjoyable enough movie on its own but taken to another level by the tour de force performance of Ben Kingsley as Don Logan.

The plot of the film is fairly straightforward; Ray Winstone plays Gal Dove, an ex-convict and safecracker who’s retired with his ex-pornstar wife, DeeDee and their two friends, Aitch and Jackie to a gorgeous villa in Spain. Meanwhile, Don Logan sets out to recruit a team for a bank heist planned by gang boss, Teddy Bass and he wants Gal along for the job. Gal is happy with his life and doesn’t want to come out of retirement and Don won’t take no for an answer, wacky hi-jinks ensue.

Ben Kingsley’s Don Logan is the absolute antithesis of his role as Mahatma Gandhi in Richard Attenborough’s Gandhi Biopic. A psychotic sociopath, with a hair trigger temper and Napoléon complex, who seeks to achieve his objectives through intimidation, violence and sheer force of will. It’s terrifying yet hilarious seeing Don Logan brow-beating Ray Winstone’s Gal Dove into submission.

Here’s an excerpt of one of my favorite scenes in the movie:

Don Logan: What you think this is the wheel of fortune? You think you can make your dough and f*ck off? Leave the table? Thanks Don, see you Don, off to sunny Spain now Don, f*ck off Don. Lying in your pool like a fat blob laughing at me, you think I'm gonna have that? You really think I'm gonna have that, ya ponce. All right, I'll make it easy for you. God knows you're f*cking trying. Are you gonna do the job? It's not a difficult question, are you gonna do the job, yes or no?

Gal Dove: No.
Don Logan: Yes!
Gal Dove: No.
Don Logan: Yes!
Gal Dove: No!
Don Logan: Fat c*nt!
Gal Dove: No, No, No…
Don Logan: YES! YES! YES!

And another one of Don Logan’s monologues; pretending he got molested when he’s detained after getting thrown off a plane for smoking:

Don Logan: Yeah, that's what I said. There's me putting my bag up in the cupboard next thing ya know, I feel hands on me. Someone's touched me, touched my front... my front bottom. I can't believe it, I've gone all cold. I look around, he standing there isn't he? That steward with the guilty look on his face. I was shocked, I didn't know what to say. I had to sit down, I was that perturbed. Then his mate, the other one who was giving us all lessons on what we do if we land in the sea. How to wear your life jacket etc; He starts off, he starts looking at me all funny... suggestive. Now I don't know if they're wanting me for a twosome or something, I don't know how they work it. But I'll tell you what, it scared me. I was shaking like a leaf, so without thinking I lit up a cigarette to calm me nerves. I was trembling, I was very emotional and that when all the rest of it happened. It's very regrettable. Now, I don't want to kick up a fuss, right, press charges... contact the British embassy. I'd rather not pursue those channels, that's not my style. I'm not that sort of a bloke. I don't want to lose the man his job. Man's got to eat. And I'm sure he's not representative of all you Spanish people. But I would appreciate it if you had a word with him, let him know he's been rumbled. The one with the ginger hair.

Classic stuff.

Ray Winstone also turns in a very nuanced and subtle performance as the mellow Gal Dove that nicely complements the wild, manic energy that Kingsley brings to the film. Sure he’s an ex-con, but he’s a nice enough bloke who’s trying to put it all behind him and in walks this force of nature that turns his idyllic life upside down. Ian Mcshane’s performance as Teddy Bass was also a revelation, he played the role with greater restraint than Kingsley’s explosive Don Logan but exuded this quiet, palpable sense of menace that was in some ways even scarier. I’ll keep a look out for his performance as Blackbeard in the upcoming Pirates of the Caribbean movie.

The only element that I found jarring and not particularly effective was the inclusion of this mutated human-sized Jack Rabbit that seems to be a figment of Dove’s imagination. What the rabbit is a metaphor for, only the director knows I guess.

All in all, the film was a solid British Gangster movie elevated by the outstanding supporting cast and what I felt was the finest character performance given by Ben Kingsley.

And that's all folks...for my next post, I'll be reviewing a film nobody would ever expect me to...a Romantic comedy...>GASP!!<....plus the next post will also include my throoughly researched thesis about the eternal debate on whether chicks go for the bad boy/nice guy ...it'll be a lengthier and juicier post than normal.....Stay tuned!!

Ichi and Scratchy

2011-04-13T05:55:00.000-07:00

Well....Looks like going to be the longest night yet for me in a 3 week string of late nights spent cobbling together the marketing proposal for some Aus 500-1 billion mandate for the Australian state pension fund.....the past 3 weeks has been a blur ......and April is already alomost half over... the mind reels...

Waiting for those Kangaroo-loving mofos from the sydney branch to get back to me with their inputs/changes/feedback/comments/more changes......well its as good a time as any other to blog I guess.... So as per my last post, here's my review of Ichi the Killer, truly one of the most bizarre and nastiest movie ever comitted to film...

Ichi The Killer:

Takeshi Miike’s highly-touted Ichi the Killer is Not an easy film to watch. It is a psychological tour-de-force of violence, sado-masochism and sadism and Miike is absolutely unflinching in his exploration of these themes. The film is bold, daring and pushes the envelope, perhaps a little too far in terms of good taste.

Every character here is psychologically-damaged to the nth degree; the main protagonist, Ichi, is a seemingly mild-mannered, man-child who is prone to excessively brutal bouts of violence and can literally only get-off on violence. The antagonist, Kakihara, is a flamboyant and sado-masochistic Yakuza enforcer with a Cheshire smile stretching from ear-to-ear, held on only by his facial piercings. Add in a manipulative old-man with hypnotic abilities and a body-builder’s physique, a dominatrix prostitute who speaks in 4 languages and a pair of twin detectives who sniff women’s underwear for clues and you have got one of the most bizarre collections of characters that I have ever seen in a film.

The violence in this film is over-the-top comic book violence for the most part but there are certain sequences that are so realistic in their execution that you can’t help but flinch. While I am fine with violence that is used in service to a story, violence for the sake of violence (Hostel, Saw, etc.) is a pointless exercise to me. Unfortunately, Ichi dips into the latter a little too frequently for my tastes. The treatment of some of the female characters in particular, verged on being misogynistic.

The characters themselves are psychologically rich in their complexity and Miike explores their motivations, psychosis and quirks in a substantial amount of detail in between the mayhem. Tadanobu Asano in particular steals the show as Kakihara, one of the more memorable filmic creations in recent memory, who undoubtedly inspired Health Ledger’s version of the Joker in The Dark Knight.

If I could boil down the plot of the whole film to its basics; it is essentially a twisted love story. Kakihara is a sado-masochist who loves his boss, due to his ability to inflict pain upon him like no other. When his boss gets killed by Ichi, Kakihara wants revenge on Ichi for eliminating his greatest source of pleasure but after witnessing the massive trail of destruction left behind by Ichi, Kakihara grows to believe that Ichi may be the perfect person for him, the one that can truly inflict the level of pain he craves.

Highly regarded though the film may be, the lack of any character with redeeming qualities, the overriding theme of sado-masochism, the level of sheer brutality (especially towards the women) made for a bizarre and heady brew that ultimately…just wasn’t my cup of tea.

Next Post: More reviews!.... so many movies to watch so little time and energy...

Old Boy!

2011-03-22T01:02:00.000-07:00

And....No, The title isn't me making any references about myself transitioning to adulthood with my love of comics and cartoons strangely intact...

Whoever says I don't give Korean movies or dramas a fair shake??! While I think most Korean shows are largely formulaic and over-wrought dramas (albeit with some really cute chicks)...I am going to be reviewing a Korean movie for today's post!.....One of the best in fact...the only Korean recipient of the Grand Prix award of the Cannes film festival.....Park Chan Wook's Old Boy....

Old Boy:

If you think Korean movies are just fluffy, light, romantic melodramas with nonsensical plotlines and cardboard thin characters….well you’ll be right 99% of the time but Old Boy is one of the rare ones to fall within that 1% category of Korean films that actually elevate the medium to a whole different level.

Loosely based on a Japanese Manga of the same name, Old Boy is the second film in Park Chan Wook’s “Vengeance Trilogy” and the recipient of the coveted Grand Prix award from the Cannes film festival.

The story focuses on a middle-aged wage slave called Oh-Dae-Su who gets detained at the police station after a night of drinking and bad behavior on the night of his daughter’s birthday. His best friend bails him out and when he turns his back for a moment, Oh-Dae-Su vanishes without a trace on the rainy streets.

Oh-Dae-Su spends the next 15 years mysteriously imprisoned in an apartment. A small television set and 3 square meals of Gyoza a day are all the luxuries he is afforded. He experiences important events and watches the outside world change only through his television set.

He shadow-boxes and trains every day in the hopes that one day he can exact bloody revenge on his mysterious captor. He scars and inserts wire filaments in the flesh of his arms to mark the years that pass him by. He imagines fire ants crawling all over his body and under his skin. He attempts suicide. Several times. His bewilderment turns to rage, his rage turns to grief and his grief gives way to gradual acceptance. But his thirst for vengeance remains unsatiated.

Then one day, after 15 years of imprisonment, he is knocked out by gas emitted into his room and he awakens instead in a briefcase on the roof of a building. Oh-Dae-Su sees the sun and breathes in fresh air for the first time in 15 years.

The world has passed him by; his wife was murdered years ago and his daughter was subsequently adopted by foreigners and migrated to Europe. Thus begins Oh-Dae-Su’s odyssey of vengeance to uncover the identity of his captor and unravel the mystery behind his abduction.

Old Boy is a film that pushes the envelope, not in terms of violence (violence is not used excessively in the film but always in the most potent and effective manner when employed) but rather in terms of the themes the film explores; loss, vengeance, guilt, hatred, isolation, love and even incest.

Park Chan Wook has crafted a thought-provoking, unsettling and at times touching movie, one that actually transcends its source material.

Well there you go!....Next post, I'll be back with a review for Takeshi Miike's Ichi the Killer....one of the nastiest film I've seen...

It's Election Time...Again!!

2011-03-02T01:24:00.000-08:00

As part of my “promised” regular updates for this dusty, busted-ass old blog, I continue my look at Johnnie To’s seminal triad films: Election 1 and 2 with my short review for Election 2….

At a taut 1.5 hours, Election 2 is the one gang film that I can watch over and over again…..easily my favorite Hong Kong film of the past decade… since noboy requested for it, here ya go:

Election 2

Election 2 takes place at the end of Lok’s tenure as Chairman of the Wo Sing Triad, two years after the events of the first movie. The sequel is worthy companion piece to the first film, maintaining the same atmosphere and grittiness while considerably upping the violence quotient.

In the sequel, Lok (Simon Yam) desperately seeks to hold on to his reins of power as Chairman of Wo Sing, as a newer and younger challenger, Jimmy Li (Louis Koo) steps up as his main rival for the top spot.

Louis Koo, while not the most versatile actor around, turns in what I consider to be his finest and most subtle performance as Jimmy, under the direction of Johnnie To. His take on the character brings to mind, Al Pacino’s nuanced portrayal of Michael Corleone from the Godfather trilogy, a cool and calculating criminal with an aura of incredible violence that bubbles beneath his surface.

This “aura of incredible violence” rears its head in a grisly scene that involves hungry Alsatians, meat cleavers and grounded human meat. It’s a scene that brings to mind Herman Yau’s Untold Story (1993), with Anthony Wong’s award winning turn as the infamous Pork Bun killer.

The film work on two levels, one as a solid triad film and two, as the director’s own biting commentary on the current geo-political ties between Hong Kong and China, post-handover:

By the end of the movie, Jimmy emerges as the new chairman, only to realize that the curtailment of his business expansion plans into the China market in the beginning was all part of a ploy on the part the mainland police to manipulate him into running for chairmanship of the Wo Sing triad. They want him to remain as chairman past his 2 year tenure and for the reins of power to remain in the Li family, passed on from one generation to another, thus abolishing the centuries old Wo Shing Electoral process.

In essence, the Mainland Police’s answer to controlling crime in HK is to place their ideal candidate as the Chairman of Wo Shing, the oldest and most powerful triad in Hong Kong, thus effectively placing the whole organization under their thumb. This is essentially an accurate mirror of the socio-political relations between the China Government and the Hong Kong Triads during the 1997 British Handover, when China attempted to impose its iron-will upon the triads with minimal bloodshed. The full title of the film, “Election 2: Harmony is a virtue”, is an apt one; if you can’t beat them, recruit them!

In the end, Johnnie To’s Election 2 succeeds in being a satisfying sequel; an organic continuation of the first film, one that builds upon and broadens the existing themes and plot-points of its predecessor.

It's Election time!!

2011-02-22T23:08:00.000-08:00

I’m back again after another long hiatus….I guess there’s too much stuff on hand to be able to blog with any kind of frequency….work, outing and the stacks of Dvds and books waiting to be consumed.

Anyway I’ve been ordering loads of Dvds online for the past few months and have amassed a respectable collection of hard to find, critically acclaimed films that are not commonly available in Singapore.

Long story short, this blog is going to die a slow and painful death if I just recounted mundane anecdotes of my daily work life…e.g. “Woke at 7am, went to work, got stuck in trfafic jam, was 15 minutes late, went home at 9pm, have dinner at 10pm, surfed the net and watched ¼ of a movie before going to bed. The end.” …LOL…

So I decided, after watching this diverse range of genre films from Japan, Korea, Hong Kong and US, it’ll be an interesting change of pace if I utilized this blog more frequently, to bring some attention to some of the more obscure but interesting films I managed to catch by posting short reviews on them from time to time…

I thought I’ll start off with a review of Election 1 by Johnnie To, my favorite Hong Kong triad genre picture by my favorite Hong Kong director:

Election 1

Johnnie To’s Election 1 and Election 2 are some of the finest Hong Kong films made within the gangster genre, in the vein of Francis Ford Coppola’s sprawling Godfather Trilogy and Martin Scorscese’s Good Fellas.

While films are not as fast-paced and dynamic as Alan Mak and Andrew Lau’s ambitious Infernal affairs trilogy, what they lack in action, they more than make up for in pure atmosphere.

Johnnie To keeps the first film dark, gritty and suitably atmospheric and infuses it with a refreshingly realistic level of street-level violence that is less stylized than many of the other films in the director’s oeuvre like Exiled, Vengeance and PTU. Gone are the John Woo-esque ballet of choreographed gun-fights, replaced with down and dirty street-level brawls with knives and fists.

The sense of tradition and History that underlines the century old Wo Sing Triad and their election process (with the symbolic tradition of passing down the fabled Dragon-Baton) informs both films and adds an additional layer of authenticity and weight to the overarching plot-line.

To masterfully introduces a large and colorful cast of characters in his moody gangster melodrama but manages to make even the smaller supporting players like Lam Suet and Nick Cheung very distinct and memorable characters unto themselves. The film is peppered with excellent character vignettes that effectively introduce some of the more minor players into the film such as Nick Cheung’s deliciously over-the-top Porcelain spoon eating scene.

Another highlight of the film’s cast was the old and wizened “Uncles” of the Wo Sing triad. Retired former chairmen who represent the film’s secret puppet masters, squabbling over the merits of the triad Election candidates over tea, each faction with their own hidden agenda. The “Uncles” serve as the old guard in the film, adding a sense of history and gravitas to the proceedings and further reinforcing the film’s theme of the transfer of power across the generations.

The main protagonists in the film Lok (Simon Yam) and Big D (Tony Leung Ka Fai) are in top-form as rivals vying for the top spot in Wo Sing Triad. Lok plays the level-headed and humble gangster while Big D chews up the scenery as the hot-headed, loud mouthed thug that wants what he think is due to him, namely the top spot in the organization. Here is where Johnnie To successfully subverts his audiences expectation as the “lesser of two evils” Lok is revealed to be a bigger monster than Big D is by the end of the film.

There are no “Gangsters with a heart of gold” in this film, only power-hungry thugs who perform all manner of heinous acts in their bid to ascend their chosen field of profession.

Day Two

2010-12-02T08:08:00.000-08:00

Day Two

Woke up at 11 am today to get ready for work, which I guess is around 4am here in Züg. Its begun snowing over the morning here…the great big tree that sits directly below my hotel room is completely covered in snow, looking like something from a Tim Burton movie.

I set out my clothes, take a bath and get some reading done before heading down for some breakfast. The cheeses, cold cuts and waxed meats in Switzerland are great, I am planning to eat my weight’s worth in salami, pepperoni and chorizo by the time my trip ends.

After getting some instructions from a bald Swiss guy reeking of cigarette smoke and alcohol, I take a bus down to Baar, Züg where my work place is supposed to be. Apparently my workplace is in a sub-district of Baar which is a sub-district of Züg, which is one of the sub-states of Switzerland. Needless to say, I somehow overshot my location by 5 bus stops and had to re-trace the bus route back to my work place in zugersträusse based on the directions of passerbys. After 25 minutes of walking, I reach my destination.

The office building itself looks great. All sleek and modern, decked out in metal and glass. A piazza greets you once you pass the reception area and I reach just in time for our weekly Monday meeting with the 8 office branches. I walk into the piazza full of people, dressed like the Michelin tyre man and try to blend into the crowd. The head of the office in Seoul gives us an update of the opening of the new office branch and the current political climate over there, I almost manage to look semi-interested. Almost.

I bump into my co-worker from Singapore mid-way through the presentation and shortly after we get introduced to the marketing services team in Züg. My direct boss, Réto Börlin is a great guy, real warm and friendly without any airs to him and I meet our fellow team mates, Manuéla Korner and Cornelia Hüber. Cornelia gives me a tour of the place.

The place is great; big video conference rooms, color-coordinated office system furniture, a built-in kitchen for preparing client lunches and half of the third level is a really nicely designed cafeteria with a great view of the mountains. Its probably my favourite part of the place and a great place for having informal discussion sessions with colleagues. The pantry area is stocked chockfull of bottled drinks and I laugh at the fake Starbucks coffee logo on the wall; its called Wiestlibucks coffee, named after one of the founders of the firm, who’s apparently some kinda coffee nut.

After a few training sessions and spending a quarter of the day getting IT to work out the kinks at my temporary work-station, I knock off at 7 plus. All shops in Züg close at 7 pm and 90% of the eating places too so I decide to go back to the hotel and eat my fill in waxed meats and cheeses at the hotel buffet breakfast tomorrow morning.

To be Continued…

At the Ass-end of Nowhere...

2010-12-01T05:34:00.000-08:00

Since its helluva Boring here in Switzerland and I'm stuck here for 2 weeks... well I'm back to blogging again...

I'm gonna just write about my first day in Züg and blog about any other interesting anecdotes during my trip here....and for the heck of it and to emphasise on the dreariness of the place, I'm writing the whole thing in a super-dry,cynical, first person narrative alà Raymond Chandler in his Pulp noir stories...LOL...anyway here it goes:

My plane touches downs in Zürich airport at around 8 in the morning, Swiss time….15 mins short of me finishing my in-flight movie; ‘Despicable Me’.

The cold hits me the moment I disembark as I shuffle down to the inter-terminal rail that takes me to the customs counter and the baggage collection area at the other end of the airport.

I make my way out of the departure hall and down to the next building to get my train tickets to Züg, the Swiss train schedule and location map looks more complex then Genghis Khan’s family tree…. A half dozen transportation companies offering a whole range of routes with more travel packages then I can fathom. 450 Swiss francs for a single person train pass? I didn’t know that Day-light robbery had been legalised in this country. I grab the 99 bucks special pass, a ticket to Züg and get the hell out of there.

The train ride takes 45 minutes, my `second class’ cabin is almost empty, I set down my luggage and slump into my seat. The train speeds pass countless tunnels covered in graffiti, snow covered trees and semi-constructed buildings. Railway tracks snake off in a dozen directions as far as my eye can see….everything looks bleak and dreary from my seat.

The whole place looks like communist Russia after the fall of the Soviet Union. My train reaches its destination, I walk out and it finally hits me that I’m basically at the Ass-end of nowhere.

Züg, Switzerland is a small, quaint town in Switzerland, where any semi-interesting activity of any kind ceases by 7 pm Swiss time.....shopping malls are closed, restaurants calls for last orders at 5.30pm, entire rows of shop houses are closed for the day by evening…

I somehow forest-gump my way to the hotel, Lowén. It’s situated by the lake; a 4 star hotel apparently…I shudder to find-out what a 2 star hotel here looks like here….maybe the cardboard box that was used to package Wenjun’s new 3D flat-screen TV??

I unload my stuff and take a long hot shower. The TV in the room has 43 channels; 42 channels are in Deutch and 1 in English and its CNN. Damn. After watching 5 minutes of Spongebob in German…I give up.

There’s a flea market going on in the square below my hotel; I grab my camera and head out. Fur coats, boots, gloves, waxed and preserved meat, local treats and huge wheels of two dozen types of cheeses are all on display. I even see a couple operating the amazing Cheese contraption they had at the swiss café in Raffles city, I buy myself a plate of cheesy goodness and fall in love all over again for a second time.

After that, I go exploring with my camera. Apparently 90% of shops are closed on a Sunday; it looks like the set of Residential Evil 2 movie here. I make my way across the back-alley shop houses behind the hotel and see some bizarre procession going on, with grown men and women dressed in medieval wear, capes and wooden axes being led into a 140 year old church. I take a stroll to the pier, photographing ducks and seagulls and proceed all the way to what is supposed to be the most ‘Happening’ place in Züg; their one and only shopping mall called Metalli.

Well, the only thing ‘happening’ about this mall is…Nothing. Its closed on a Sunday. Dammit.

I go across to the shops near the railway station to see if I can find anything of interest. I find a DVD shop there…Salvation at last I thought to myself….To my abject horror, I found out that every single DVD in the store is dubbed in German. Double Dammit. So are the magazines. TRIPLE DAMMIT.

I back-track and head back towards my hotel area for dinner, I settle on a small café near my hotel and order a plate of Pasta Carbonara, it costs 22 Swiss Francs, the small glass of flat Coke that came with it costs 4.50 Swiss Francs. Apparently that’s the standard rate for food here; ain’t no food courts here.

I slink back to my hotel, huddle under the sheets and go to bed, the next day is a working day and I still have to figure out how to decipher their Public transport route system....

To Be Continued...........

A Head Trip

2010-09-18T00:42:00.000-07:00

It is interesting how people see you and how you really perceive yourself to be, in your mind’s eye.
.
I find it fascinating to hear my old friends talk about my character and their perceptions of who I am or was years ago and try to reconcile the difference of how I really see myself….but many times an outsider’s opinion does give me a greater insight on certain aspects of myself.
.
Sometimes when I catch up with my secondary school buddies and wax nostalgic about the good ol’ days, they bring up various anecdotes, some relating to me and these are stories that I’ve forgotten, or still vaguely remember and I get a good chuckle out of them. These anecdotes help provide me a interesting snapshot of who I was 10 years ago…and an indication of how much or little I’ve changed over time and how certain core personality traits have remarkably remained virtually intact over time.
.
I think this French phrase sums it up best for me:
.
“plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose”
.
A few weeks ago, I was shooting pool with an old friend I’ve known since Secondary 1, we used to hang out in school all the time and we’ve bumped into each other and had long chats a few times over the years but we’ve not hung out for a solid block of time for over 9 years by my estimate.
.
Anyway, we met each other and within a few minutes we were hitting off like it was 1997 all over again. He said he was afraid that I’ve cleaned up my act and gone decent after all these years but was relieved that I’m still the laid-back prankster he knew way back when…make what you will of that statement …haha
.
Anyway he was telling me quite enthusiastically about his most vivid and unforgettable memory of our secondary school days; it was a prank I pulled on one of the guys from our clique involving one of the girls he liked. Anyway Long story, there was a letter written by me that was part of the prank….and my friend was reciting the contents that short letter, line for line….10 years after I played the prank!!
.
I still remember the prank of course in a fuzzy way but was frankly amazed by my friend’s vivid recollection about the sequence of events in the prank and the contents of the letter……to me, it was just one of the many semi-harmless pranks I pulled during my 4 years in secondary school…certainly it wasn’t anywhere as memorable for me as it was for me….
.
It’s weird but kinda funny to me what impression or effect (positive or negative) you have on someone, as a friend. In many instances, A friend’s first exposure to you is how he/ she will probably how they’ll see you from thereon in.
.
I was the Happy-go-lucky, outspoken, devil-may-care Prankster back then, that’s how he met me and that’s how he will define me for the rest of our friendship…haha
.
The fact is that Everybody goes through different phases of their lives, I was the Prankster in Secondary school, the “Artsy Fartsy” art student in Laselle, The funny but odd guy in Polytechnic, the Guy who “got along with everyone” in Army, The quiet, enigmatic but hardworking guy who took charge of projects in University and the occasionally funny ,straight-shooter who makes his stand in work now…..
.
The one thing however that has not changed despite the different phases I gone through…is my Core personality……despite whichever phase of my life someone first came to know me, ask anybody from whichever group of friends….and I firmly believe that all my different group of friends will arrive on the same conclusion about the type of person I really am underneath all the humor and sarcasm…….
.
Like for example, I realize Humor is a constant in my personality and has been no matter what phase of life I am in…..I cannot not joke…..even if I try to maintain a more stoic stance when people first meet me, but inevitably that humorous aspects just seeps out…whether that’s a good thing, well it remains to be seen…haha
.
If someone told a particular group of friends that I was a quiet, private and unsociable guy, they would probably laugh-out loud. Likewise if someone told another group that I am this incredibly outspoken, sociable extrovert, they would probably laugh in disbelief….
.
Am I a Quiet or sociable Person? Compromising or Uncompromising? Nice or mean? Artsy or business-oriented?....the answer is quite simply: All of the Above.
.
When I’m in the mood, relaxed and with the right people, I can be belting jokes out like homeruns one after the other, holding the attention of the large group and literally have them eating out of my hands….I have done so before and can do so again….But on the other hand, when I am in one of my more contemplative moods, I can also project this impenetrable aura of silence that people and even friends will find it hard to work around…..being sociable and quiet are both aspects of my personality because they are NOT mutually exclusive….Most people are not just simply “quiet” or just “talkative”…most people are both depending on the situation…
.
As is our nature, People always try to pigeon-hole others because its more comfortable to do so and nobody likes to deal with a wild-card, somebody they can’t define…that’s why as humans, we always try to throw a label on others….”The Clown”, “The nice guy”, “ The Asshole”, “The Quiet guy”, “The bimbo”…….
.
The truth is that no one is a 2 dimensional construct and everyone has a 3-dimensional personality and various aspects to their personality that can manifest depending on the people he/she is with, the situation and their mood on a given day.
.
“The clown” probably has his bad days too when he dun wanna joke….”the asshole” is probably capable of doing something nice once in a while….”The nice guy” probably also thinks about wringing the neck of some people he dislikes…..
.
It’s not always possible, but I do always try my very best to judge my friends by his/her core personality and not their personality quirks….to determine whether he or she is somebody who I would like to be around with…but of course, I am only human and also prone to letting someone’s secondary traits color my perceptions from time to time
.
For example, I realised that I have always been on good terms with a lot of Ah Bengs throughout my Pri/Sec/Army days….sure they’re loud, brusque, speak horrible English, prone to excessive cursing…but I recognize and acknowledge the fact that underneath the Sturm und Drang, a lot of them are stand-up guys…..they honor their word, and are loyal and straight-forward….so why won’t I want to hang out with them? Because they can’t speak proper English?
.
Anyway what’s the whole point of this whole post again????LOL!.....I guess it’s just my random musings about the interesting discrepancies or matching facts we uncover when various friends tell you about their perception of your personality…..and utimately how we sometimes recognize and are amused by being labeled in a certain way by friends but yet also are guilty of labeling or writing people off based on our own perceptions of them without making the effort to recognize them for the kind of people they really are underneath it all…
.
Alright…Ow……My head hurts. Why do Stuff like this actually consume my waking thoughts….Jeez….
.
Anyway this post is dedicated to my old friend ;”Mighty Mouse”……his insights on my personality and my own opinions on the matter have strangely aligned and he has confirmed my worst suspicions that I was a Smart-ass, Nothing-better-to-do Prankster back then and 10 years later that Streak is still alive and well in me…LOL!!
.
Well…. plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose indeed eh?hahaha...

FELIZ NAVIDAD

2009-12-24T21:50:00.000-08:00

Welcome one and all to my Annual Christmas Blog post......Its been God knows how long since my last post.....but I'm back for a special entry....

.
I thought that it would be interesting to provide a behind -the-scenes look at how the Anthology of vignettes I gave for Christmas was put together over a year-long period....you know...like a sort of Director's commentary on this project that nobody asked for...lol
.

THE GENESIS

Let's start with the Genesis of the project; It was December last year when I started putting this project together.....I was job-hunting and since who knows how long it would be till I got myself a job in the midst of the Economic Crisis.....I decided that to prevent myself from being discouraged, depressed and frustrated with the whole job-hunting process....I needed to somehow focus myself mentally and physically....

Besides exercising daily and going to the gym a few times a week....I of course went back to what I had loved doing most; Drawing funnybooks......normal folks don't know what a mentally stimulating process it is to do a comic.........so many problems to solve when staring at a blank page; How to tell a story that flows visually, how to get a character from point A to B, how many panels to have on a page, which areas of the drawings should be grey-toned for more visual impact.....and how to get the images in your head and translate them onto paper....

I thought what the heck, I have some free-time between job interviews....so let me just flex some of my old muscles and draw a short story to see how much I have improved....

I decided to do A spaghetti Western featuring Jonah Hex (Soon to be in a movie starring Josh Brolin and Megan Fox)......The sory is completely wordless except for a quote at the beginning because the whole point was to teach myself how to tell a story visually without the aid of words.....

I watched some of my favorite Western films; Unforgiven, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly to prepare for this project, did my research on the canadian mounties and 18th Century revolvers and wrote a pretty detailed script that broke down the story beat for beat.....

Long Story short.....I actually completed all 6 pages and completely fell in love with drawing again.....

It's been a fantasy of Mine to put together a collection of my artwork since I was 15 years old and making my own mini-comics using My Dad's fax machine.....I kinda knew that since I was going to be starting my worklife soon that putting together a collection of artwork together would probably just remain a childish fantasy....

Then Something clicked for me....It was also around Christmas 2008 at that time and for that year I didn't give anyone any drawings or cards or anything like that, so I decided that I was going to do something special for Christmas 2009....

I would put together a year-long project.....to draw all new stories, complete some old stories, draw new pin-ups and basically collect every piece of animated style art I've done between 1999 and 2009 in a book completely designed by me....and that I would promise myself to work on this even after I got a job...

There would only be 5 copies printed for each of the five of us.....not a copy more and none of the vignettes and artwork would ever see print again........I thought that would be a fantastic gift, as personalized and exclusive as It'll ever get.......and that It would KICK THE ASS of Candy's puny Valentine's day Card in terms of effort and complexity.....

I gave myself exactly A Year to put this together....and thus It Began:

.
THE INITIAL PLANNING

By late January 2009, I had finished Drawing my Jonah Hex story and revised my script to the story. In the interim period I had been thinking about the structure of the whole Book and the stories that I wanted to put together......how they fit...

I thought about this long and hard during bus rides to and from my house and some downtimes during my weekend......I let it stew in my head and by March 2009, I had the whole structure of the book and the order of the pages and story in my head.....and I would mentally go through it regularly.....

On the First week of April, the week I started my job, I spent about 30 minutes drawing small thumbnails of the whole book on two sheets of A4 paper....it was relatively easy since the whole structure had been in my head for months..

.
The scans of those two pages are below

The Ticks and asterixes were added over the many months to help me keep track of the outstanding and completed pages.

It should be noted that I was going to draw a two page Origin of Two-Face for the collection but decided to add in more new pin-ups and generally finish up all the additional art needed to tie the collection together.
.

This checklist of thumbnails was immensely helpful to me in putting this project together and really helped me visualise the whole thing as one entity instead of dozens of seperate pages.

THE BREAKDOWN

I'll be giving some short comments of the various sections on the whole book in this section:

The Book basically Breaks down into 4 main sections: 1.) The main Stories, 2.)The Oddities, Dabblings and Other Miscellany, 3.) The Scripts , 4.) The Sketches and 5.) Christmas 2009: Dedications and Well-wishes.....

Most of the stories in the collection are not to be taken too literally as a long-form stories with a beginning, middle and end.......they're merely vignettes that I came up with to explore my favorite genres and give me an excuse to draw cool stuff like monsters, abbes, city scapes,etc...

ok here we go:

1.) Front Cover:

I wanted a more sturdy paper stock to house the contents of the book in, so I went to Popular bookstore during one of my lunchbreaks and selected a paper with the right texture and thickness I wanted. Needless to say....Of course it would be black....

I then went to a Sticker Fabricating shop in Bras Basar to obtain the fabircated Dark Knight Logo stickers. They were hand-pasted at exactly 6.5 cm from the top of the page and at the Head of the bat is attached at the 10.5cm mark of the page; which is the centre of an A4 page.

The Fake Barcode at the back was modified to have the words GTM CTY in them. Just an additional touch of geekiness. They were the last things to be pasted on the finished book.

2.) Inner Cover:

I dug up some 1930's reprint of Detective comics where Batman first appeared and did my best to replicate the same font and lettering by hand.

Just my own Sardonic Brand of Humor; modifying it to "Defective comics".

.

There are 3 "E" s in "DEFECTIVE" and if you notice, they actually look all the same. After I had lettered the Font by hand, I realized the I only liked how the first "E" looked, so I photocopied two copies of the title, cut out the first "E" from both copies and pasted them over the 2nd and third "E"S, so that they would look right.

The corrected version was then photocopied in high resolution and I drew Batman onto the Cover and lettered in the 10 cents sign.

3.) Odds and Ends Title splash

As a design element I wanted a Two Page Splash of Gotham city to open the book and I wanted to incorporate the name of the Anthology : "Odds and Ends" into part of the city scape...

You can see Baman over the city, framed by the moon on the right side and this was a conscious choice since I wanted this two page splash to somehow segue directly into the first story. So in actuality, Batman is bounding across Gotham city in this opening titles and by the first story he's already made his way to the Gotham Harbor.

That's why there was no Title Card and intro to my first Batman story, I didn't want to break the flow.

Because the drawing was in A3 and had to be folded; when the book was binded, the page before you see the 2 page splash would have been blank, So I drew up a dedication to Wenjun, Huiling, Geraldine and Felix and hand-pasted them over the 5 photocopies....to get rid of the blank page.

4.) Bruce Wayne's Pledge to his Parents

I wanted to kick off the story with Batman's famous pledge to his parents. I love the idea of drawing a snap-shot in time of a 9 year old kid, kneeling by his bed under the candle light, making a vow to his dead parents and making a decision that altered the rest of his life.

5.) Batman: THERE BE MONSTERS!

This was the last story I drew for the collection and features my best work ever. The Art was done in a combination of Ink Wash, HB Pencils, Pigment Markers and White paint.

Each Page took me 1 week to 1 1/2 weeks to draw. I would pencil and ink one panel a day between 9.00pm to 12.30am after I got off work, leaving the bigger panels for the weekends (burning quite a few staurdays). I did this for about 2 over months, seldom missing any deadlines set and I finished it before my trip to Taiwan.

I did not have an introduction or title card for the story because like I said I did'nt want to break the flow.

The whole concept of the story is this: Some People believe that Cities or Buildings are actually living Urban organisms that have a unique rhythm, life and pulse to them that differs from city to city....

What if Gotham City was like this sentient organism, that corrupts good innocent people and transforms them into crazed criminals and psychopaths? A city so corrupt that you'll be taking you life into your own hands by walking down the streets at night.....It's like some Psychopath-manufacturing Urban factory that sucks good people in, soils them and vomits them out.

If that were the case, then When Batman puts on his cape every night; he is not taking on Criminals and Gangsters....He's Taking on the Whole City. An anti-body in a Rotting Urban system fighting for his sanity and trying not to allow the city to corrupt him and turn him into another of the monsters he's been fighting.

You'll have to read the captions to kinda semi-grasp the premise of the story. If You read the dialogue alone, the story doesn't really makes sense at the end.

Anyway the story basically goes like this: Batman arrives at Gotham Harbor to prevent Madam X from poisoning the city with her Hallucinogens, from his internal narration its clear that he thinks of Gotham as this evil place that transforms normal people into monsters and freaks, he gets hit by Madam X's hallucinogens and as a side-effect he starts seeing the whole city literally the way he imagines with Everybody literally becoming monsters.

So great is his force of will that he beats the hallucinogens, grabs Madam X and is about to choke the life out of her in his drugged up state but he regains his faculties and releases her.

Once again, this corrupt city and its denizens have failed to make him cross the line and break his tenet of not taking lives......what seperates Batman from other costumed criminals is that he won't sink to their level and won't kill no matter how the city and situations test him.

The Last few Panels of him lying flat on his back, exhausted from the drugs is a very abstract ending that I'm sure no one but me understands...My Mum was puzzled for sure...LOL!....Basically when Someone has a near death experience and wakes up from it alive; the air is sweeter and somehow tomorrow is going to be a beautiful day.......

So Batman collapses in exhaustion after the ordeal and you can see a nice serenity washing over him as he smirks to himself, enjoying the night sky above.......that cocky smirk is basically him looking up and telling the city: "Nyah, Nyah, Nyah, Nyah, Nyah......You didn't get me tonight...try Harder Next Time!!

Of course there is always tomorrow night again.....night after night Batman fights for his own soul and sanity in a city full of freaks...and I imagine...one day the city is going to get to him...

6.) Catwoman: Pussy Cat and Batman: Going To Work Pin-ups:

Both of these were old Pin-ups done around 2004.....The Catwoman one in particular was drawn using a fat marker and hasn't aged too well....

7.) Hex, Death Be Thy Name

I believe the One page intro to the story sums up everything well. If You have gone through the story and understood what is going on in the pictures from panel to panel even without the dialogue, Then I've done my job.

The script for this story was included in the back of the book, to give you an idea of How I break down a story in Long-form, especially for silent stories which needs to be broken down to the minute details because you have no captions or dialogue to rely on.

8.) Old Fake Advertisments:

There are Three advertisements in the book, The Car one is an authentic ad, the other two were taken from old comics, scanned in and touched up and edited....intended to be parody of Actual advertisements that used to run in the 60's/70's comics like those old advertisements on Mail-ordering Sea-monkeys and the famous Charles Atlas Body-Building ad found here:

http://www.steveconley.com/pages/atlas.jpg

9.) Human Values

My Favorite Story.
.

I thought there was a meaningful point made in this story. I finished the first 2 panels in 2001 and completed the other few few panels in 2009 after I finished the Western story.

I've always wanted to finish it up and I'm glad I did.

10.) Heart to Heart

I had this image of Superman hanging out with a Polar Bear in the south pole....like those in a Coca-cola advertisement.

Its kinda cute, its kinda bizarre and it highlights just how solitary an existence a man with the weight of the world on his shoulders, leads.

11.) Trinity

Probably one of the more ambitious stories in this collection, Spanning over 30 years from the dawn of the atomic age, World War 2 to the Korean War.....

The First 3 page framing sequence was first drawn in 2004 and sets up the political and social climate that necessitated the alliance beween Wonder Woman, Superman and Batman:

The Next 3 pages was drawn in 2009 and is a "fly on the wall" sort of moment where we are privvy the the beginning of the alliance and friendship between the 3 of DC's greates heroes.

I love inserting fictional characters into real-life events; it creates endless story possibilities.

12.) Origin of The Joker

A 2 page vignette that was my attempt at storyboarding the Joker's transformation sequence from the Red Hood into the Clown prince of Crime.

It was during this story I believe that I switched to the 0.03mm Multiliner pen for inking; which I believe is the finest and sharpest pen nib ever manufactured. It was quite a chore to try to master such a fragile and delicate pen.

I wanted the story to be a B&W/ Monochromoatic world and for the Red Hood to be the one character/color element that really pops out. So I handcolored all the final Photocopied pages with a Red Prisma Color Marker.

13.) May The Floss be with You

I actually did not want to include this story due to how crude the art was but I decided to include it in the end for the sake of being complete.

It also kinda shows my artistic progression over the 10 years. I believe this 7 page story was drawn back when I was in sec 3 and had No idea what tools were used for inking.

14.) A Date with Bruce Wayne

A short 3 page, wordless story that I had in mind for quite a while, I actually used the story and recycled it was a 3 part triptych advertisement for one of my University projects on Wine Bos.

That's why there is so much space at the bottom of each page. I had wanted to insert some of my marketing Taglines in each page.

The 3 pages were done in a rush...I think within a day.

15.) Dini the Meanie

A strip where a demented kid tries to kill his pet Hyena in every installment. Obviously a parody of Calvin & Hobbes and Dennis The Menace.

I did this for the sheer heck of it while trying to play around with newspaper comic strip format.

16.) The Scripts: Hex, Death Be Thy Name

I included this because I beleive it sheds a little light on the 6 page silent story included in the earlier part of the collection, plus it does kinda give some insights into my thought processes when I concact a story.

This is a Long-form script with very detailed breakdowns. Normally I don't work this way, I prefer more spontaneity so I usually handwrite bits of dialogue and scribble thumbnails of each page and then refine the dialogue when I letter it in.

Very rarely is there a completed script. I think I've only done long-form scripting only 2-3 times.

17.) Sketches:

My favorite part of drawing is the sketching and doodling; where the art doesn't have to be polished,where you draw anything you like and where you work out how you want to portray characters visually...

I really had fun drawing the third page of doodles in particular; the Adam west Batman from the 60's TV show, Joker and Harley Quinn fooling around in their twilight years (I was watching Adam Sandler's Wedding Singer when I drew it I think...

And If you notice...I like some of the sketches so much that I included them in some finalized art pages......A less goofy version of The Catwoman & Batman sketch was used as one of the Christmas Ornaments in the A3 christmas Drawing....

I also had my breakdowns for one of the pages of my Batman story printed on tracing paper and overlayed on the final page to give a glimpse of how the art work evolves from rough breakdowns to the final art and how the placement of characters have to be all worked out beforehand.

18.) Batman: After Uncle Sam, Catwoman:Repose, The Princess and The Frog and Joker: Santa Clown Pin-ups:

The Batman Pin-up was a breeze to draw and it is of course a throwback o the World war 2 "WE WANT YOU!" Uncle Sam Poster found here

http://www.sonofthesouth.net/uncle-sam/images/uncle-sam.jpg

I like the Catwoman Pin-up a lot......especially the eye-lashes....Selina Kyle in a rare moment of contemplation...

The Princess and the Frog is my favorite pin-up....It has more whimsy and Life than May of the other pin-ups. I love drawing frogs and I love the Mature readers title that DC puts out called "Fables" that deals with Fairytale characters.

Lastly, for the Joker as Santa pin-up ; if you look at the botton right, you'll see that there's this small expoding snow ball that has hit the roof.

That was actually a mistake; I spilled a big drop of white paint on the drawing while using the toothbrush to spray on all the white specks of snow....so I had to use my brush and create this spontaneous looking mass of exploding snow out of the drop of paint. I kinda liked it in the end though.

19.) Christmas Dedications and Well-wishes:

I Thought it was weird to just give a collection of comic stories for Christmas so I decided to have a Christmas themed section that oddly enough integrated various Comic characters that appeared in some of the stories earlier on.....to kinda provide some thematic link.

The first page would be a framing page that explained why was this project put together and it would lead to a big A3 flip out pster that had all our pictures integrated into it.

The first page drawing was kinda based on the Valentine's Day Card drawing For Candy in terms of layout, where it that lead your eye fro the top left of the page to the bottom right.....

Here's a scan of the drawing at 400 DPI :

Next We get to the Centrepiece drawing of this whole Collection: The A3 christmas Drawing. I knew I wanted to incorporate photographs of our group into a 2-d Comic type drawing and luckily I stumbled onto the idea of including our group/individual photographs as Ornaments on a Christmas Tree.

Here's how the drawing was created:

1.)I started by choosing some of the Indiviudal and Group photos that I wanted to include in the drawing and I cropped them digitally using a Spherical cropping tool.

They were printed on sheets of A4 paper because I wanted to have a sense of scale of how big the circles were, in proportion to an A3 Page.
.
The Bigger Ornaments were then Indivually cut out and pasted on An A3 Sized sheet of Drawing paper

.
Step One:The Bigger Ornaments were first carefully laid out and pasted on the blank sheet of A3 paper

.

Staring helplessly down at a very empty sheet of paper that needed filling in...LOL

Next I wanted to work out the placement of the Comic Character Ornaments that would be drawn onto the page and integrated with the Photo-Ornaments.

.

Since there was no way I would be able to hand-draw symmetrical looking ornaments , I folded sheets of paper in Half, drew the shapes of the ornaments onto the folded paper and cut it out, thus getting perfectly symmetrical shapes.

These shapes were then placed on the A3 paper and I would hand-trace their shapes onto the area I wanted them to be.

These are the Ornament Cut outs that I used to help me get the symmetrical shapes I wanted

Once All the major Ornaments had been pasted or laid out in Pencil on the Page, I started pencilling all the details in, around the ornaments.

This is the half-completed Pencil drawing that took one saturday to layout and draw.

If You notice carefully in the picture: In order to blur the lines between what is drawn on page and what is pasted on, I pasted a Circular Ornament that overlapped Huiling's picture; her name would be subsequently lettered in by hand.

.
The whole thing took about three days to pencil; The 17th,18th and 19th Of December.

This is the fully penciled A3 Artwork with the smaller Photo ornaments now pasted in.

Once the drawing has been completed in pencil, its time to ink the whole thing and add in all the black areas. We start by "spotting blacks"....which is the process of identifying areas that are to be covered in shadows to make various parts of the drawings pop in the final art.

This is the Partially Inked page, with the majority of the shadows and feathering already in the drawing.

One of the most tiring things to do was feathering.....the feathered edges are all the edges of the black areas that are really finely inked and look like brush tips or fur....

Basically to do feathering, I ink all the edges of the black areas with a very fine 0.03 pen, then I slap in large chunks of the black with a fat waterproof marker, the thickness of the marker strokes does not blend in with the finely feathered edges, so I use a o.o5 pen to kinda of blend the areas between the fine lines and the thick marker strokes. I then come back in with the 0.03 mm pen and do the final feathering which involves me scracthing my pen on the edges of the black areas until the edges are razor sharp and the areas of black are completely blended together.

The problem is that the feathering requires my hand to zig-zag across the area rapidly to blend the black areas and create razor sharp lines and this takes forever to do. And the rough texture of the A3 paper absolutely kills my delicate 0.03 pen......You feather non-stop for an hour on the rough paper and I guarantee your 0.03 pen nib would be worn down to nothing.

I killed 3 pens working on this drawing and They cost $7.95 a pen.....LOL!

This is a close-up shot of some of the details from the drawing. Yo can see the Feathered black edges.

Next I had to think of what drawings to fill up the Comic-related ornaments with; so I decided to depict some of the comic characters sharing in some yule tide joy; Catwoman about to Kiss a smirking Batman under the Mistletoe, The Joker pinching Harley Quinn's cheek affectionately and Wonder Woman shedding her battle armor for a more festive look...

Finally I lettered all our individual names in the Circular ornaments, finished drawing the small ornaments (The star-patterned one was created using a Star-shapped cut-out stencil, a Toothbrush and white paint)

A ribbon was also cut out and pasted onto's wenjun's ornament to further blur the lines between what is drawn or pasted onto the A3 page.

The Final Inked drawing took another 3 days to do: 20,21st,22nd of December.

I started on this drawing on the 17th, sleeping at 5 am that day and continued throughout the weekdays from 9pm to 2am every day, till the 23rd of december where I slept at 5am writing out all the personalized messages and grey-toning the whole drawing.

The grey-toning is aboslutely necessary to give more dimension to a drawing and also to help differentiate/highligh tbetween the areas. Before the Grey-toning, the Christmas tree areas and the fluffy streamers were all in white, but after I grey-toned the whole drawing, its quite obvious the Christmas tree areas were the darker, grey-washed areas.

The Final, Ink-washed Drawing scanned in at 400 DPI to be colored by Photoshop.

BUT Wait I was still not done yet, I love the drawing in Black,white and grey but I thought that this particular drawing needed some color to make it look more festive.

I didn't want to risk ruining my drawing that took me days to do by coloring directly onto the drawing.

So I got a crash-course in photoshop and digitally colored the Ornaments in the Drawing to pop them out from the grey background.

My First attempt at Coloring in Photoshop. Not too Bad, Not Too Good either.

My 2nd attempt with all those Photoshop special effects thrown in.
.

I wanted to fill in the grey areas with green but it made the whole drawing look really patchy and over-colored and due to all the intricate lines I filled the page with, the Magic wand function and the Magnetic lasso function was not precise enough and there was a lot of bleeding.

So I thought what the hell I'll just do it the old fashioned way and colored a High Resolution laser photocopy of my Grey-toned drawings using this really great but expensive Water-proof Color Pigment ink Pro Markers (Another $40 bucks down the drain) on the 24th Dec morning.
.

Finally in the afternoon of 24th Dec I went to the binders to get my book binded and My A-3 colored drawings printed on High-quality Poster paper in Bras Basar Complex....

I realized that I had left out the Joker's Purple jacket, so I went to Art-friend and bought another promarker and went around finding a place to color the small bit........couldn't find no seats so I just went to the Cetntral Library...while in the toilet cubicle, I saw a nice flat raised Ceramic top that covered the Toilet's water cabinet....I placed the drawing onto the ceramic top, colored the thing in under a minute and got the darn thing printed....
.

I went to Artfriend to walk around a bit while they printed the posters and saw them selling small bags of googly eyes, so I bought a pack and out of the blue decided to glue them onto the Gingerbread man's eyes on the poster

When I finally got the Binded books and the Printed posters in my hands, I literally felt like I just finished running some long-ass marathon........
.

The Folder full of printed pages that were rejected by me due to a variety of reasons from wrong font types to wrong tone of the grey wash reproduced. There's more than a 150 pages in this folder.

In all Honesty, Completing this book is the single most mentally and physically tiring project I have undertaken in a very, very long time.......all the late nights and burnt weekends......whatever rest time I had ,I'd put into this project...

Sometimes, It kinda felt like I got two full-time jobs.....doing my normal job and going back home and drawing till 12.30 am or 2am.... there were days that I really couldn't draw anything after a full day's work and staring at a blank page....and vice versa, there would be times where I went to work and my mind was completely blank and then all my accounts started not tallying...haha

But I'm glad I had the discipline and drive to actually put together this book for the 5 of us..... Its not only something I always wanted to do do....but I thought it'll be a great keepsake for the 5 of us that has no real material value but its one we can look back fondly on......and most importantly if not now...when eh?

I have a Zip-lock bag that I call my "Graveyard of Pens" that contains Every Pen and Marker I've used up over the course of this past five years; Almost half of them were Killed in Action while putting together this project. RIP my friends...You've all served me well....LOL
.

Anyways, I am still in the midst of resting and recovering from this project even as I type this and there's a whole stack of comics, dvds and books I've hadn't had the time to go through which I will slowly savor and enjoy now that my work is done.....

I'll be taking a break from drawing after this....but I have already planned that my next and final comic project...it will probably be a 150-200 page Batman story that I will be drawing in bits and pieces over the next 2o-30 years( This time I'm being realistic about not killing myself!...LOL)......maybe a leisurely half dozen pages a year............I'll also be upgrading all my future art from A4 to the Larger sized B4 Comic art paper.....

Gonna start doing some prepatory work next year; study and dissect the work of my favorite noir-artists and hone my art.....my artistic style for this last project is gonna be pretty rough, raw and dark.....and by dark I really mean it will be Pitch-black........This time next year, I gonna be owning the artistic ass of my 2009-self .....haha

Alright Hope you all had fun with this Long behind-the-scenes post on how the book was put together..... enjoy the book and keep in a nice, dry place...haha......well...This is me signing off...

MERRY CHRISTMAS AND HAPPY HOLIDAYS FOLKS!!

A Quickie

2009-06-08T21:48:00.000-07:00

Yup….another post by me…..just roughly a week or so from my last post….my boss is out for a workshop in Pulau Ubin for the next three days….so as everyone can see…I’m really putting in a lot of effort to earn my keep…LOL…

This will be a post of moderate length though…..just killing some time while I answer some e-mails…..

As I’ve mentioned last post….I went on a DVD marathon while my parents were away in Yunnan and I caught a whole bunch of movies…..here’s some of my thoughts on those movies I’ve caught:

1.) The Exorcist – Hands down the scariest horror movie of all time. For a movie made in 1973, all the special effects and make-up work still holds up incredibly well.

The scene with a possessed/ rotting little girl (Linda Blair) cursing and screaming obscenities in this demonic male voice and projectile-vomiting is still disturbing stuff….especially when you watch it alone at 2-3am…hahaha

2.) Out of Sight - This Film is not high-art or anything but I really adore this movie starring George Clooney as a crook and Jennifer Lopez as a federal Marshall. Their chemistry is amazing.

Probably my favorite romantic flick….if you can call it that. It has none of that usual sappy/ feel-good shit.

3.) Sukiyaki Western Django – A Japanese Spaghetti Western guest-starring Quentin Tarantino with Japanese actors speaking their lines in English. A pretty interesting experiment. The visuals and action scenes are really solid but the overall story is pretty wonky. The female lead in the film is stunning though.

4.) The Exorcism of Emily Rose – A pretty engaging horror film/court-room drama rolled into one based on a true story. It’s not as scary as The Exorcist but it’s a smart and solid horror flick with really tragic elements.

5.) Body of Lies – I love Ridley Scott films and Body of Lies is a solid political thriller about the United States and their war against Islamic terrorists.

The film drags on in parts and some of the political commentary are not as subtle as the film-makers think (A fat, bloated and over-confident Russell Crowe is supposed to be a symbolic representative of the entire United States itself.)

6.) Australia – A film that harkens back to the epic, love stories of Hollywood…but falls short. The film is visually stunning but the story about a battle over cattle is not a particularly interesting one. Plus the film suddenly turned into Pearl Harbor 2 during the middle part.

The whole part about the racism rampant in Australia’s past was pretty interesting though and I’m sure the girls will swoon over the various scenes with Hugh Jackman in various state of undress, doing macho stuff. As a guy though, those scenes are dullsville.

Next up is Milk with Sean Penn, Obama: All access documentary and the Frost/Nixon movie….I’m really looking to the last one, heard rave reviews about Frank Langella’s performance as Richard Nixon.

Anyway, I finally had some spare time and dedicated the bulk of my Saturday to drawing my comics stuff….and I really felt like kicking myself in the ass when working on this particular comic page…

Now I’ve never had any formal drawing on perspective drawing…but through the years I kinda self-taught myself through trial and error…..this particular panel I was working on depicted a scene at the city docks with a back-shot of the character jumping down from a smoke stack with lots of buildings in the back and foreground….

After I drew the figure in, I started adding in all the buildings and the harbor; every little window, and plank of wood included in full pencils…I figured that I’ve been doing this for long enough that my natural artistic instincts will help me depict the buildings and stuff in the proper perspective…I was WRONG….

The perspective was somehow off in a weird way and everything just seemed to float in a strange way; totally screwed up the way the main figure was juxtaposed into the scene. I had to erase Every. Goddamn. Building. The Entire. Dock. The Effing Sea-line. Everything………2 1/1 hours of drawing down the drain.

I should have done the whole drawing in the old-fashioned way….but I didn’t because it was longer, harder and infinitely more troublesome….and ended up the whole thing….I should have set the Horizon sea-line and then ruled in the perspective grids and lines one by one in pencil before I proceeded to draw all the buildings in.

I know….None of you know what the hell I’m talking about, Here’s a rough Ball-point pen illustration of a much simplified cityscape to illustrate my points:

The perspective grids are ruled in using red-ink for clarity’s sake.You see the sea line? (horizontal Line)……..the sea line is the Horizon line that all other grid lines should converge on. The other Perpective line would be the angle that you want the buildings to skew towards and the last one is just a straight vertical line.
.
ALL buildings you draw should be either parallel or perpendicular to these perspective lines and they should be bigger in the foreground and smaller in the background leading towards the horizon line.
.
If you follow these rules; the structures you draw will be in perfect perspective and relate to each other perfectly spatially. I didn’t because I didn’t want to erase the dozens of perspective lines away one by one after I finished drawing….just had to be a smart ass didn’t I?
.
Anyway I was so exhausted with drawing everything in and then having to erase everything that I ruled in all the perspective lines and just did simple place-markings for where I wanted the buildings to be and went to bed……I then spent another 4 hrs on Sunday drawing all the buildings in great detail and finishing everything up in pencil….
.
And I still got the whole damn thing to ink these few days…..which usually takes longer than the penciling. I think that’s why I draw so sporadically nowadays….its really too exhausting liao….I can only sit and draw for 3 straight hrs before my shoulders ache and my eyes start hurting ….any more drawing thereafter and the quality is going to suffer….
.
A small panel that takes somebody 3 seconds to read…takes me three hours to draw….that’s no exaggeration at all…..A whole page takes an upwards of a week or more to complete, at 3 hrs a day……I’m getting too old for this…LOL
.
Alright, I've spent enough time procreastinating, gotta get back to my work now…….Adios…

The Return of Da King.

2009-03-31T00:20:00.000-07:00

My first new post for the year!!

Between my last post and this....2008 has come and gone, I've from SIM, went back to camp for my first reservice session and spent the last few months job hunting right on the cusp of the worst recession Singapore has experienced in the past 7 years.....Fun Times..LOL!

And what a frustrating and trying time the last few months has been.......the whole job search thing just pushes so many of your buttons in so many different ways....some days you're hopeful,sometimes you feel bummed out, somedays you feel just plain helpless about the situation, somedays you just fall into a deep ,melancholic funk waiting for your phone to ring........but finally after 3-4 mths,after some near-misses....I finally got a job as a Marketing executive for an Architectural firm and its subsidiary art gallery and wine bar.

The Boss is a pretty nice guy, young entrepreneur who's pretty prominent in the local architectural scene....I was surprised to find out from my research on the firm that he was the guy who spearheaded the restoration project that turned the old St James Powerstation into the club.

The pay could be better of course...haha... but I guess its a semi-decent rate with regards to current market standard......but anyway the creative nature of the job and the sheer weariness of sending out 10-20 resumes a day/every day for the past 4 mths convinced me to just go for it.......at best the job will a nice stepping stone, at worst it'll be something to tide me over for this economic slum while earning some much needed funds..hahaha

While I think my whole personal job search process may not be worst I've heard of....but I think its pretty high up there in the shitty meter amongst my group of sec,poly and uni friends.....haha.....boy do I have some absolute horror stories.........

- Going for an interview with this "Multinational Company" that specialises in global conferences and realizing that this huge conglomerate was housed in a shop house above a kopitiam selling braised pig trotters and bak ku teh.

-Taking a 1 1/2 hr test and then waiting another 1 hr at the reception area with another 4 people to see the interviewer for a job as a junior Marketing Executive at K-Box and then running off after waiting for one hour to Toshiba Data dynamics (which went pretty good) and a local firm selling medical equipment (which was shitty) all within the kallang industrial area and then taking a cab all the way back to k-box and waiting another 1 1/2 hr to see the interviewer.

-The aforementioned Medical firm? After running all the way to the address given, I found out from the receptionist that they gave the wrong link in the e-mail which contained an out-dated address. So I had to run 4 blocks down t the actual address, only to be informed promptly within 10 mins of reaching by the hiring manager that her secretary made a mistake because they're looking for someone who has a class 3 license so sorry they had to waste my time.

-And the utimate Killer interview with the Kidney Dialysis foundation that left me feeling mentally raped when I walked out their door. Another tale for another time...haha

Not to mention all those worthless interviews where countless Insurance firms try to trick you to come down early in the morning to their firms by withholding their names in the hiring ads then advertising for positions such as business development executives, Marketing executives, Public relations executive and financial advisor which all equals to basically: Insurance Agent. I got smart after my first month of job hunting and developed this "spider-sense" that could detect an insurance company-related advertisement or phone-recruiter from a mile away.....

And then there's those "near-misses" where I made it to the final round of interviews but was informed basically that "we liked you and all and you did good for the interview but at the end of the day, if its a choice between somebody with experience and someone without. It's just not justifiable to hire a green horn"..........and there were those firms that offered me jobs but at a pay rate that was really difficult to carve a decent living out of......$1600, Pure Comission jobs,etc....

All in All, I'm just kinda glad that the whole process of job-hunting process is temporarily at a stand-still.......what a goddamn relief not having to sort through 2 dozen job ads and sending out 10 resumes the first thing in the morning once I wake up, pore through the classified recruit section over and over again every day and sending out a second wave of resumes before I go to bed and worst of all hoping and waiting that some kind soul will give you a call and call you down for an interview at a firm that is at least half-way decent.....

But its not all doom and gloom....I'm thankful for some of the personal time that I had to myself while job-hunting too.......I convinced myself that this is my last big break before entering the working life......I've had time to do some stuff I always wanted to get to someday.....not only did I get to exercise on a daily basis and keep in shape but I've drawn and produced more comic pages that I have within this 4 mths than the last 5 years combined......I even went back and finished up various pieces of art that I worked on but left unfinished 5-6 years ago.....

Art and exercise kept me focused through the more difficult patches in between......and I do think that physically and artistically, I'm at a better state that when I started out few months ago......so that's a plus point....the other day, I finished pencilling and inking this page that I thought contained my all-time best inking ever........lines so razor-thin that you'll need prescription specs to see them..........I managed to hone my line art to the amost needle-like point that I have been trying to get for ages.....good stuff...hahaha...

I also read voraciously during these period and must have consumed a dozen or more books (NOT COMICS)....I pick a specialist subject that I'm interested in and then read all the material on it that I can get my hands on from the library or online.......Started with the Zodiac killings, worked my way down to the Richard Nixon/Watergate Scandal, brushed up on my history on American organized crime and structure(Of which I'm a certifiable expert), learnt about the Healthcare systems of America compared to the rest of the world, got interested and read up on the Cuban Revolution in which Fidel Castro and Che Guevara toppleed the US-Puppet President of Cuba;Batsista and more recently I've been studying the Jidaigeki films of legendary Japanese Filmmaker Akira kurosawa (Seven Samurai, Yojimbo,Kagemusha,etc) and immersing myself in research about feudal japan;mainly the edo period.....everything from the legend of the 47 ronin to their eating habits and customs......its actually some pretty interesting stuff....Of course I've also been reading up on art instructional books in an attempt to improve my art in new ways.....how to ink properly, what tools to use...blah,blah...

Anyway I'm currently finishing up the Making of Raging Bull book(pretty good) and I'll be jumping straight into Che Guevara's Cuban diaries and the Art of James Jean hardcover I bought..cool stuff...

Well....back to the topic....with regards to my new job,besides all my marketing and accounts-related duties, I just got assigned a new project: coming up with the submission pitch for one of the major Christmas 2009 displays.......I've completed the creative brief and storyline and I'm now knee-deep in drawing up all the conceptual sketches for the proposed displays........which will be handed over to some 3D web-designer who'll turn my 2D art into 3D structures that will be super-imposed on the various locations and submitted for the pitch........

More updates to come I guess...and think I'll post a couple of drawings in my next post......Stay Tuned Mes Amis...

The Dark Knight

2008-07-19T20:27:00.000-07:00

I just watched The Dark Knight movie at The Cathay......and OMFG IT ROXXORS!!!!......lol

.
Seriously, I think it's THE Best damn comicbook movie ever......and you can trust me...since I've seen almost all of them..haha.. The level of realism, complexity, emotional and psychological intensity in the movie really sets it apart from the rest of the comic films.I went in with Sky-High expectations and they were exceeded....that has never happened to me.....EVER!!....OMFG IT RO.......>ahem<...haha
.
If You noticed....Comic films always have a very standard 3 act sequence to every one of them.....Origin, Big action-set piece in the middle and then big fight with the baddie at the end. I've always said as enjoyable as films like Ironman, Hulk, Spider-man are.....it always comes down to two guys knocking the crap out of each other.
.
The Dark knight completely does away with this rigid 3 act structure and for a 2 hr 30 min film....it really holds your attention and never lets up. After the first 40 mins....Its chock full of twists and turns and every one of them is like a punch to the gut,emotionally......so watching it was getting punched in the gut repeatedly.....haha...by the end of the film....you're completely exhausted......kinda saddened by the events, aghast at the insanity of the Joker's scheme and won over by the quality of the film.
.
I think my favorite thing about the movie...is that all the lead characters deliver bloody good performances......not a single one of them slips up.......in Batman Begins, you clearly know that Katie Holmes' acting was severly lacking when put alongside actors like Gary Oldman and Christian Bale............this time around Christian Bale was still awesome and the best Batman actor to date, Maggie Gyllenhall's Rachel Dawes was a more 3-dimensional character then Katie Holme's version( if rachel was still played by Katie...I'm sure 80% of the audience would have cheered when the character got blown up), Gary Oldman was great as very human and relatable comissioner Gordon ( who used to be be a lame supporting character in the prev bat films shouting stuff like ("Batman! There's a new villain in Gotham....he's frozen the new antiquities week.......He's calling himself.....Mister Freeze!!!") and Aaron Eckhart's Harvey/ Two-face was a stellar performance as well.....by the time he becomes two-face, there's no going back....he's a pure engine of hate......
.
The only thing why Aaron Eckhart's work as Two-face will be sadly overlooked by the general audiences is because even his acting is completely overshadowed by Heath Ledger's Joker......who seems to be operating on an entirely other level......I mean Jack Nicholson's Joker was good for its time but at the end of the day he was still a portly, middle-aged man caked in clown make-up and dancing to music from "the artist formerly known as Prince"........Heath Ledger's Joker is almost like a force of nature........a new kind of urban terrorist......a comic film villain that audiences have never ever encountered before and I'm not sure they are ready to...LOL....
.
Heath Ledger's Joker is like this awkward, shifty figure prone to occasional bouts of extreme violent outbursts, who's riddled with weird nervous tics....you see the way his eyes shift around constantly and how he uses his fingers franatically to articulate his points and wadles like a duck from the hospital........at first, I thought it was kinda weird seeing him licking his lips and playing with his tongue constantly.......then I realized why his tongue always seem to be slithering about in his mouth.....he was tongue-ing the scars on his lips from within the wall of his mouth....like a kid would use his tongue to play with the ulcers in his mouth......Cool.....haha
.
You know why the Joker is always 2-steps ahead of Batman in the film? Because he's so goddamn insane that no rational mind can think on the same wave length as him.......Batman can predict how mobsters or normal criminals act because he can identify with certain human desires (wealth, power or revenge)....he's stumped with the Joker.....The Joker don't give a shit about money, he doesn't want to be the top gangster in town, he's not in it for revenge (" Believe me when I say its nothing personal Harvey".....oh yeah...bl0wing up someones fiancee is nothing personal..y'know...just the usual routine...lol)........if Batman could anticipate what the Joker is doing and put himself in the same frame of mind......then err.....that would mean he would be in essence, as psychotic as the Joker....
.
The whole structure of the Joker's seemingly chaotic series of robberies,assasinations and bombings kinda bothered me a bit.........The ultimate goal was of course simple: To Prove a point....to Batman that humans, no matter how decent, are still inherently savages when the chips are down......so he takes the Most decent man in Gotham City/ who represented the hope of Gotham and completely destroy him physically,emotionally, psychologically........and then rebuild him as an agent of anarchy shaped in the Joker's own twisted image........Two-face is therefore something like The Joker's greatest work of Art....his masterpiece......his walking thesis proving that humans are inherently evil and all they need is a little push........but I wondered how does the Bank Robbery at the beginning fit in with his grand scheme since The Joker did'nt even want any cash...why bother with the robbery?
.
I thought about it......and the way his scheme plays out is perfectly logical but still very difficult to understand or digest after watching the show......comic films never had this kind of intricacy...its usually just "I wanna take over the world!" or "I wanna Kill (fill-in the blank)-man ".........here's the whole scheme as I understand it ...

.
1.)The Joker robs the Mob bank at the start because he wants to grab the attention of the Mob bosses in a big way And to demonstrate to them that their dirty money is not safe in the banks of Gotham from cops or even simple freaks like himself........which plays a major role in convincing the mob bosses to go along with Ng Chin Han's plan to safekeep all their money for them and then escape back to HK away from the Gotham police's jurisdiction....Joker told them that Ng Chin Han would sell them out eventually (which the Joker is counting on)......he also probably (correctly) predicted that Batman would get his hands on the Ng Chin Han guy even if he was in HK.......and the captured NG Chin Han did indeed rat on his mob partners like the Joker predicted.............and all of the mob bosses were rounded up in one swift swoop....
.
Phase one of his plan is complete: he wanted to prove to the Mob bosses that Batman was a super-credible threat who could get to them anywhere and any place and he wanted to gain the trust of the mob bosses.....which he achieved when Ng Chin Han ratted them out just like the Joker told them he would and the fact that all of the bosses got indicted further convinced them that they needed some help and The Joker might be the man to solve their problems for them.....why does he want to gain their trust and convince them that Batman is their number one problem? He's still pretty small-time and needs the mob resources to back up his grand plan.......especially resources like the crooked cops within the GCPD like Berg and Ramirez who he would use to stay ahead of the cops and to kidnap Harvey Dent and Rachel dawes...

2.) The Joker targets the Judge, Comissioner Loeb and Harvey Dent for execution....and promises that people will die unless Batman reveals his secret identity......these 3 civil servants were most instrumental in rounding up and the mob and charging them....the Mob at this point still believe that the Joker is working in their best interests by killing these three characters so they continued supporting the Joker( who they think is in it for the money)....and if you notice.....the Joker's crew only consists of psychotics and mental patients like the schizo guy in the police outfit or the fat guy with the cell-phone bomb......this psychos are easily swayed, can't provide the police with any useful info even when they're captured and whose testimonies probably don't count anyway since they are insane....

Phase two of his plan is completed too: The Joker's main goals in this phase seems to be to introduce himself to Gotham in a grand scale and establish himself as one scary muther-focker...LOL......and to draw Batman into the open (Batman initially thought that the mob was more important then going after some clown when talking to Gordon at the bank)...The Mob think that the Joker's methods are extreme but he's earned their trust by targetting the biggest threats to them.....but actually he could give a rat's ass about the gangsters and he picked this few targets....including the mayor later on because they are the linch pins of the city..........and by killing such prominent people.....he'll elicit panic and fear on a inhumanly wide scale from the citizens of Gotham..... and by threatening to kill more people unless Batman reveals his secret identity....he's in fact turning the whole city against Batman............which illustrates the point that he makes to Batman later that the people of Gotham may need Batman now but like the animals they are, they'll just as easily turn against Batman one day...

3.) The city turns against Batman and calls for him to turn himself in.....Harvey Dent "reveals" himself as Batman and is taken into custody and the Joker plans this massive attack in a "Slaughter is the best medicine" semi-trailer ,the night that Harvey is being transported to prison, with the intention of being caught and he implements the end game by having the crooked cops on Salvatore maroni's pay-roll kidnap Rachel Dawes and Harvey Dent while in jail, the Mob is of no more use to The Joker at this juncture. Rachel get blown to bits and Harvey Dent went from original to crispy after his face caught fire.

Phase 3: The Joker planned to be captured because like all criminals, he is afterall vain, and he (like in the comics) can't resist having a sit down with Batman and layout his symbiotic relationship he shares with Batman and mess with his head since he knows fully well that his plan regarding dent is already put into play and cannot be stopped. The conversation about how fragile the human psyche is and how easily people can turn into animals is fairly important since from here-on in.....now that the Harvey Dent situation is more or less reaching its inevitable conclusion, The Joker's schemes after his escape from jail both involve setting up life and death situations,proving to Batman that what he said about people and their loose morals is true........he knew that Batman would go after Rachel dawes and have the GCPD go after Dent from the moment he saw Batman dive out of the penthouse to save her.........so he switches the locations of where Dent and dawes are siuated in.........knowing that Batman will get to the place more quickly then the police can........he's taking a gamble that Batman will save Dent because at this stage....he's not finished with Harvey Dent yet.........and his plan went according to plan.......Harvey was rescued and Rachel was blown up.........which plunged Batman in semi-depression and pushed Harvey Dent completely over the edge......

4.) The Joker tells the whole city that he's going blow up a hospital unless Reese, the guy who found out Batman's identity, was killed within 60 mins......which gets the whole city riled up and many of them out for blood and the Joker takes the time to symbolically pass the torch to his logical successor...his creation...Two-face....who he's counting on to take his plan to its logical conclusion......I have no doubt that The Joker would'nt have mind one bit if Two-face had really blown his brains out....since his work was already done.......he's re-made Two-face into his own twisted creation.....a more psychologically dangerious villain than he could ever be. Although the Joker is one scary pyscho, he is like this cypher, an unknown force of evil with no ties to anyone...........Harvey Dent as two-face can do more emtional and psychological damage then Joker ever could..........he went from being Gotham's perfect white knight that will usher in a golden era to this disfigured, psychotic half-a-man and he was Batman's and Gordon's partner and friend and they trusted each other with their lives........so imagine the kinda emotional and pyschological turmoil that each of the 3 men face when dealing each other other as enemies......he is indeed the perfect successor....and The Joker's pride and joy....LOL

Phase 4 is done too: The conversation between The Joker and Batman in the interrogation room now begins to make complete sense as the Joker illustrates whatever he told Batman with dramatic examples............he turns a large percentage of the city into a blood-hungry crowd willing to take a life by threatening to blow up a hospital.....The Joker demonstrates that under the right circumstances , normal decent people can be brought down to his level.....he could tell Gotham to shoot Reese, or a 70 year old lady or a small child and there would be people willing to do this......because Humans are selfish and self-preservation of their lives and their normal status quo can take precedence over the lives of others...........also at this stage, Harvey's transformation is complete and the Joker goes down personally to meet his creation.......to personally put the weapon in his hands and set him on a personal quest for vengeance that there's no going back from......Two-face at this stage is of course so emotionally and psychologically battered that he becomes everything he's fought against...

5.) The end Game. The Joker, by now is the most feared person in Gotham city and so when he threatens the entire city and force them to evacuate.....that's exactly what they do.....the criminals and civilians are seperated into two barges........and each of the barge is rigged to blow......and each barge is given the choice and means to blow the other one up, otherwise when the clock strikes midnight, The Joker will blow them up anyway.....all this is of course just Joker proving his point draatically again(its not even the main event) and distracting both Gordon and Batman while Harvey dent go around killing the people who betrayed him.....so that they don't have a clue that their friend is doing to himself and by the time the 3 of them are reunited...Harvey Dent would have already crossed the point of no return.

Phase 5 has a few hiccups: For the first time in the movie, The Joker is thwarted.......Batman proves him completely wrong......this part really highlights the fact that Christopher Nolan really understands the characters.............The Joker sees THE worst in people, he belives that nature will always oversome nurture that humans are inherently animals who put on a hypocritical moral front........and Batman, underneath it all, despite what he has seen and experienced like his Parents bleedin to death in front of him,is still an eternal optimist, he sees the BEST in people,he believes in them............and both men are so confident in what they beleive in, The Joker has no doubt that by 12am...one barge would have blown up the other and Batman also does not doubt for a second that none of the barges will destroy the other..........the last part is not a physical battle but basically down to a battle between Both men's belief systems...and Batman won............Batman proves to the Joker that normal people can have the moral fibre to make the right decisions...that maybe not everyone cracks or reverts to a blood-thirsty state when facing a tough situation....maybe it was just HIM all along......snapping and turning insane because he was too much of a coward to face reality...

The Batman of course denies Joker his final and biggest victory, at a super high cost, he ensures that the image of Gotham's white knight, Harvey Dent, remains untarnished in the eyes of its cictizens.......because imagine the spirit of the city if it gets out.........they have witnessed their chief judge blown up, the comissioner of Police dying after ingesting hydrochloric acid, their "hero-cop" Jim Gordon apprently falling in the line of duty, the city's second leading D.A Rachel Dawes blown up, a hospital completely destroyed, The Joker turning their fellow citizens into blood-thirsty crowds and then have a major life/death decison placed in their hands during the incident with the rigged barges......and if they find out that their one biggest hope, the person who was mostly likely to lead them out of all this misery and into a Golden age has been turned into a deformed, grotesque murderer who's no different from The Joker.....I think any sane person would be on the first plane or boat out of the city rather then live in Gotham....which is hell on earth or the next best thing.....

The sacrifice Batman makes just sums up the character perfectly for me........he may act like the nastiest, craziest super-hero around but he is the most Moral one.......he takes on the weight of the world willingly and without complaints,he's sacrificed everything for his mission and his promise to his parents;his mental health, his physical health, any possibilities of companionship or love, any chance at happiness............and he blames himself for every death he fails to prevent.....in the comics,he even blames himself for the people Joker kills.....he, personally refuses to break his non-killing code but by letting the Joker live, he believes that for each person the Joker kills.....he's indirectly responsible.....

Even the title of the movie made complete sense.........Harvey Dent was Gotham's White knight, operating within the confines of the law, trying to save the city, loved and respected by the People of Gotham.................and Batman is its Dark knight; feared, hated, misunderstood by the people of Gotham, a man who has given everything but expects Nothing...hunted by criminals and the police alike.........talk about over-worked, Under-paid!!...LOL

In conclusion,if you think about it, all the deaths, all the bombings and assasinations and double-crossing was just so Joker could give a 2 hr 30 min lecture to Batman about the fragility and violatility of the human psyche with practical examples along the way to illustrate his points.....To get Batman to admit that all those moral codes and principles were all Bullshit.......Boy would I love him to be a guest lecturer in RMIT!!!.......It's weird I usually don't understand lectures by noted professors or doctors or professionals in the industry but I understood this lecture by a crazed clown perfectly....hahaha..and wrote a mini-thesis on it!!

For your information, to write this blog post, I had to dress up in clown make-up, purple suits, dye my hair green and slit both corners of my mouth and stuff lint and knives in my pocket to get into the correct mind-frame so I could dissect the film's overall plot..........hahaha...the sacrifices I make for journalistic integrity....

I'll rate this film 10/10.........Comicbook films are probably never ever gonna get this good again......hell it's not a great comicbook film...its a great film..Period.

Update: The Dark Knight movie just made 66.4 million dollars on its opening day alone. The Biggest oppening for any film in History.EVER.........deserves every cent....

Anyway This post has killed most of my brain cells today........hahahha.....so I'll end with THE funniest thing I have seen all week......its an mtv movie awards spoof segment.....where Ben Stiller, Robert Downey Jr and Jack Black get together to discuss how to promote their new film; Tropic Thunder now that both KungFu Panda and Iron Man are Box-office smashes.......you get to see Ironman kick Kungfu Panda in the nuts...LOL...it has to be seen to be believed:

http://http//www.youtube.com/watch?v=VBNVJG15tGs

Enjoy it.......after this long,psychological review.....everyone needs a laugh.....c'mon......

WHY SO SERIOUS?!?!

Green and Mean

2008-06-22T06:05:00.000-07:00

Just came back from a one-day trip to JB with my parents and Aunty's family on saturday.... I'm just spending the whole sunday today just resting and relaxing.........so I'm back with yet another post....

What's first on the agenda?

More Comics-related stuff lar.......I mean what else is new with me, Right?! ....hahaha

Anyway the new Incredible Hulk starring Edward Norton just came out and I'm glad to say its MUCH better than the Ang Lee version that came out a few years back......this year is a pretty solid year for comicbook films.....Iron Man, The Hulk, Wanted, Dark Knight and then The Spirit directed by Frank Miller.......Its a great time to be a comic fan nowadays.......even the general movie-going public are eating up all these comic films with a spoon and asking for more......well what can I say?....Geek is the new Chic......hahaha

Anyway I'm tired of posting any long, detailed reviews of comicbook movies with useless background information nobody semi-sane would give two-hoots about....so I'm getting a guest reviewer today to talk about the movie; The Hulk himself!!!

Hello. Me am Hulk. Me review my very own new movie that came out last week. Me hope movie am big success this time....otherwise Hulk's boss at Marvel comics tell Hulk that Hulk's Gamma-irradiated ass is on the line.....

First let Hulk state for the record that Hulk no like Ang Lee's first movie.......Hulk do No Smashing in that movie, instead movie was like sitting through 2 1/2 hours of Bruce Banner's therapy session.......ok....So Hulk got some big Daddy issues.....but to spend whole 2 1/2 hrs harping about it.......ahhh.....give Hulk a break!!....but to be honest, Hulk did'nt finish watching the movie....cos Hulk FREAKING FELL ASLEEP AFTER FIRST 20 MINS!!!BAH!! HULK SMASH ANG LEE!!! Ang Lee Brokeback mountain-ize Hulk...FOR THAT YOU'LL PAY!!!.........Audience no want Emo-Hulk!!!....Audience want Savage Hulk!!

>Ahem<......Anyway back to Hulk's review.......Hulk am pleased with New movie......new Hulk movie kicks ass.......In Hulk's not-so humble opinion that is.....here's a brief summary of the whole movie: Banner goes to kickapoo soda factory in Brazil. Hulk SMASH factory. Then Banner go to University in US. Hulk SMASH university. Lastly Banner goes to heart of the city. Hulk SMASH City.........and that am just about the whole plot for the movie.....Oh well....guess Hulk not be winning any Oscars anytime soon......

Oh, Oh!! And Movie have surprise cameo by famous hollywood drunkard and Hulk's Good friend; Robert Downey junior......him and Hulk became best buddies after we met each other in Rehab together......him and Hulk project mates for our Alcoholic Anonymous and Anger Management classes......Once Hulk asked Robert Downey why he became drunkard? He tell Hulk that if Hulk was dating Sarah Jessica Parker, Hulk would be drinking heavily too.........Hulk can sympathize.....Sarah Jessica Parker look like hybrid of racing horse and the Wicked-witch of the west.....only when Hulk am dead-drunk and under heavy influence of alcohol will Hulk take a second glance at her.......sorry Sarah Jessica....but it am true.....no way am you getting any "Sex" in Hulk's "city"!!!

Anyway Hulk am big Fan of Edward Norton. Hulk love his performance in Primal fear, American History X and Fight Club. He made Hulk cry when Hulk watch The Score cos Hulk thought he was really retarded. and Live Tyler.......WOOoooooo.....Liv make Hulk feel weird but happy sensation in Hulk's purple pants. But Alas Hulk cannot consummate Hulk's passion for Liv......because if Banner "Hulk-out" in moment of passion with Liv........then let's just say that Liv will need to buy second-hand wheel chair from Professor X the next time she visits the X-mansion.....Hoho

Hulk sorry for digressing.......So in conclusion.....Please support New Hulk Movie.....or else it's back to the unemployment line with the other losers like Daredevil, Elektra and Ghost Rider for Hulk.....Hulk hear that Daredevil am selling packets of tissue now with him other blind friends from the School for the Visually impaired....So Please.....Go out and plunk down hard-earned money for movie ticket.For only $9.50 per head.....you can make a difference in Hulk's life. Please Don't let Hulk get his ass kicked by a Kung Fu Panda in box office. Peace Out.

And thus endeth the Hulk's review of his own movie. Maybe we'll get Yoda to do a guest review for the new animated Clone Wars movie when it comes out....but I'm gonna get a bloody headache typing out the backwards-speech impediment Yoda has...haha...can you imagine:

" New Clone Wars animated movie...arrive in theatre it has. Invited to the premiere by George Lucas...Yoda was...Mmmmm.....Yes....Brought along Miss Piggy as my date I did...yes......showed her my lightsabre after the movie....Yoda has......Impressed she wasn't....."

Anyway here's a deleted scene from the new Hulk movie........and Edward Norton is absolutely hilarious in it....check out the link....the new footage starts at the 0.30 sec mark of the clip....where Edward Norton attempts to agitate himself in order to confront his inner Hulk....Its better than the Abomination VS Hulk fight....its a spectacular clip....Best thing you'll watch all week..Trust Me.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ne3YC339myg

Alright onto other stuff.....recently I finally got the chance to do what I've been planning to do since 2-3 years ago but did'nt have the time or inclination to do so.....I wanted to go back and re-read my 11 volume tpb Collection of the 100 Bullets series....Its Bar None my favorite Ongoing comic series Ever. I've been following the series for nearly 10 years.

The interesting thing is that I don't collect the 100 Bullets series in normal monthly issue form.....because the series its an intensely complicated and multi-layered series where some seemingly throw-away elements in a particular issue could take 20 issues to finally pay-off...I may forget all the intricate details from one monthly issue to the next.....so I prefer to collect the series in TPB format, whereby they collect an entire story arc within the larger series. The series will run for exactly 100 issues, so far DC just published the 92nd issue and released the 11th tpb which collects the series up to the 88th issue.

I love super hero stuff but I also really like crime/ film-noir kinda pulp fiction comics....100 Bullets is a title from the Vertigo imprint owned by DC Comics; and it only publishes mature readers kinda R21 comics that are only intended for older readers......which means that in any given issue of the series....there can be excessive swearing, very strong violence and a above average helping of nudity or other racy content.......the series was created by writer Brian Azzarello and has been drawn by only one artist for the past 92 issues: Eduardo Risso....

One Vision, One writer. One Artist for one hundred consecutive issues that has spanned the past decade. The Premise of the series is brilliantly simple but as the series progresses......the story takes on a whole new level of complexity, the underlying premise according to the writer Brian azzarello is this:

Have you ever really wanted to just blow the brains out of someone who's completely destroyed your life, who's hurt your loved ones and who have done heinious and unforgivable things to you, your family, friends......just kill them and get away scot-free with murder?

Agent Graves is a man who gives you the opportunity and means to do ust that. He's like the meanest/ most weathered looking version of Clint Eastwood, dressed in sun Glasses and a black suit........and what he does is to approach selected people from all walks of life who's lives are completely screwed up and he gives them a brief case.

In the brief case is 100 rounds of untraceable ammunition and a gun and irrefutable evidence and photographs of the person directly responsible for completely ruining the recipient's life. Agent Graves gives them the brief case and whether or not they choose to kill their intended target is completely up to them....but if they do to use the bullets and kill their targets. They have Carte blanche. Which means they can walk up to the person in broad day-light and blow his/her brains out in front of a large crowd and when the police conducts an investigation into the murder, they will be immediately forced to drop all ongoing investigations, return the gun and release the person under official government orders.

However once the intended target has been terminated, the rounds become very traceable by law and the recipient loses all immunity. Which means basically as long as the target is not eliminated and alive, the recipient can go on a massive killing spree with the 100 bullets and he/she will still have immunity against the law but once the target is dead......mysteriously the rounds become traceable by law. If the target is killed by any other weapon beside the bullets, then the recipient will still be tried and prosecuted under the normal laws. How Agent Graves can force the authorities to drop ongoing investigations and give his recipients immunity....Nobody knows yet.

While Agent Graves' little morality game forms the foundation of the series.......the series is much more multi-layered and complex then that. Agent Graves is the guy in charge of the minutemen.........7 of the most highly skilled and efficient killers around........and the Minutemen work for The Trust.

The Trust is basically 13 families who rule the world. They are the illuminati... the secret leaders of the world that nobody knows about. The Trust was first established in the 16th century during the founding of The New World when 13th of the most ancient and powerful famillies descended from european loyalty decided to pool their resources and basically run the whole show........and the Trust has survived to this day....when the head of any family dies.....his/her heirs take over his position in The Trust.......and if there are no heirs.....then that family's stake will be absorbed and divided beween the rest of the families.

The Minute Men serve the Trust. If One family of the trust should ever act against another in order to consolidate their own power base, the minute men will then retaliate against the pepertrating family. An eye for an eye. The minute men balance the scales so that no one family will have an unfair advantage over the others.

The Minute men have a warlord; Mr. Sheperd who acts as a liason between the minute men and the Trust. He's the one who was responsible for training each and every one of the minute men.

So anyway what happens is that The Trust wanted the Minute Men to perform something really big for them: " The crime of the century" ( It hasn't been revealed what yet)....but Agent Graves as leader of the Minute Men flat out refused to do so....thereby putting the lives of his men in jeopardy for refusing the Trust orders. So The Trust decided the Minute men's usefulness was up and that they would be better served by governing themselves on their own rather than through the Minute Men....they ordered Mr. Sheperd to eliminate all 7 of the minute men and Agent Graves....

Mr.Sheperd ( whether his loyalty lies with Graves or the trust is debatable) agreed to eliminate the Minute Men and reported back to the Trust that all of them have been eliminated BUT what he and Agent Graves did was to brain-wash all of them for their protection and then scatter them all over the state, back to their former normal lives, leaving them with no memory of their time as the Minute Men......who all can be activated by a post-hypnotic key word "Croatoa"........which removes the memory blocks and false memory implants and releases their old memories in a flash flood........

So at the start of the series......Agent Graves is basically playing his morality games by giving away attache cases of bullets ( a practice of Graves that has been going on for at least the past 3-4 decades) and he's also activating his Minute Men all over the country in a very specific sequence and manner.........getting ready for his big show down with the Trust and systematically eliminating each family one by one.......till he gets to the Medica family, currently the Most powerful family in the Trust........headed by Augustus Medici.........who is revealed to have been Agent Graves' One-time Best friend who helped Graves get promoted to the leader of the Minute men in the first place but who also spear-headed the campaign to do away with the Minute men.....

It's brilliant stuff.......Its comics like 100 Bullets that transcend the comics medium and stand shoulder to shoulder with great works of crime/pulp fiction from authors like Dashiel Hammet and Mickey Spillane.

Ok anyway enough Comic stuff.......let's talk about normal mundane every day stuff....As I previously mentioned some posts ago....My Mum is a graduate of the Yah! College.......which I think is some college for senior citizens and stuff.....

So she's been taking all sorts of lessons with her senior citizen friends like Singing classes on Monday, Drama classes on thursday and computer classes at SMU on Saturday.......

You know what that means? That means She's been singing and practicing the SAME chinese song for the past month......5-6 times a day........EVERY DAY.......wah lau I've been hearing that same darn song until it is burned into the cerebal cortex......and get this.....after she and her friends perform this song in front of some live crowd........they'll be doing a hokkien song next......oh man.....Please......Kill.......Me.......Lucky thing school is re-opening in like a week and a half.......cos very soon It's gonna be like some Hokkien Getai in my house 7 days a week....

PLUS.....the other day, My mum was recounting some incident with her friends during one of her drama classes.........and my mum was weaving this big, grossly exaggerated tale to me and my father.......and then I told her :"Hey Mum......wah are you sure that's what happened,?I think you're being too dramatic lar!"

Her Reply?

>Sarcastic tone< "OH.....Haven't you heard??......your mum is taking Drama classes now you know!!"

LOL.....hahaha.....diao.......I think my mum should go write comics or something... after going for numerous drama classes.....she can now make a simple walk from my house to Bukit Panjang Plaza sound like she went on a freaking "Journey to the West"....hahhaha....

As for what little of her acting I've seen......from an objective point of view.......I gotta say......she ain't no Meryl Streep !!!...hahaha

Whoa......this week is going to be a cool week......I'm going to the First Toy/Comic convention in Singapore at Suntec and then I'm gonna watch Wanted, the comic book movie with James McAvoy and the future mother of my kids in an alternate dimension; Angelina Jolie.........

On a scale of 1-10 on how Geeky this week is gonna be.....I think it's gonna be a solid 9.

And that's the way...Uh-Huh, Uh-huh....I like it...uh-huh, uh-huh!

Ok Now after that sentence I jumped from a 9 to a perfect score of 10 outta 10 on the Geek scale....hahaha......

Alright I'm outta here.....

New and old

2008-05-22T07:41:00.000-07:00

Well.....It's a brand new year....yup....in with the new and out with the old......since my current school term has officially ended and ny holidays is here.....I thought it would be nice to update my blog with my first post for the new year......so TA-DA:

Anyway this term Felix and me finally found a pretty solid project group for once....after the literal nightmare that was the previous term.....haha.....yeah it's cool......the project meetings were so much better than last year....where towards the end .....the project meetings with the other group was basically like sitting through an awkward mexican stand-off between Felix and his number one fan-girl....hahahah

Yeah....the three new group members: Janis, Limaran and Melissa are a breath of fresh air compared to the grp from year one.......

Janis is Felix's smoking buddy.....and participant of a weird bodily gas discharge situation......that left me feeling like a Jew being gased in the Auschwitz Death Camp........ok......I take back my "Breath of fresh air" comment then......because the air was NOT fresh that day....believe you me....hahahha

Limaran....a girl who'll believe almost anything that comes out of Felix or my mouth, no matter how over-the-top...as long as we give a straight-face......within the first 3 weeks....we actually had her convinced we served some time at Boy's Town for juvenile misdemeanour....LOL....

And...Melissa.....she's got an excellent sense of humor I must say.....not on par with my advanced level of humor yet of course...haha....but pretty darn good for a girl.......from making fun of banglas to joking about Ceceilia Cheung's crotch-afro.....impressive....hahaha.....and she corrected my English......haha......that has not happened since I was in primary 2.......damn I must be going senile...

Of Course this term.....Felix and Myself also met one of the WORST project mates EVER......an inhuman force of nature, a pimple on the backside of humanity, a girl who looks like her face has been going out on regular dates with the asphalt of the road........OK Its not so nice to reveal her real name so let's just call her..... "J"...LOL

She's just plain bad inside and out....Lazy, heck-care,put on airs,....its ok if you're not pretty or obese but man if you don't have any personality or good characteristics too....well....Its time to put a 16 gauge shotgun in your mouth and play Russian Roulette!!!**

I think a quote from one of my favorite directors, Quetin Tarantino sums her up pretty well: "It's like she fell off the ugly tree and hit every branch on the way down"

* *If you did'nt get the joke....man you're not as fast as you think...Russian roulette features two players taking turns to point a gun loaded with one bullet in a 6 bullet barrel and fire......a shotgun ain't got no barrel......which means.....yup....Hole in one.....haha

Anyway enough about Joan......OOOOOPS!!!.....guess the cat is out of the bag....hahaha...

Now......let's talk about Iron Man!!

I finally saw Iron Man after the exams ended....after abstaining from all form of sensory pleasure during my exam period.....and I have to say it's a bloody good flick.....not just a good comic film but a good film. period.

The Iron man suit looked great and the CGI was practically flawless.....and Robert Downey JR is a helluva actor.......you take the comic Tony Stark, get him addicted on drugs, sex and booze and what do you get? Robert Downey Jr of course!!......cool....perfect fit with the character like Christopher Reeve and Superman....

I also loved all the extra bits for the Marvel Comic fans......like Captain America's shield on Tony stark's work bench, Stan Lee( the creator of Iron man) being mistaken for Hugh Hefner (the owner of Playboy magazine) and Samuel L. Jackson as Nick "Don't call me Nigga" Fury.....

I think I'll rate it 8.5/10.....its the kinda film that makes me proud to embrace my comicbook geekery....

Oh and below is a digitally reworked pic of how War Machine is probably going to look like in Iron man 2.....niiiice....

And the marketing for the new Dark Knight film is also in its advanced stages.....I think this film has one of the most creative marketing campaigns in recent memory for a blockbuster......I think if one film can top Iron Man this season....it'll probably be the Dark Knight.....here's some new stuff that were just released:

Above is the new Film poster for the film and the best on in my opinion....the burning Bat signal in the building is very fight Club-ish....

The two pictures on top are some new pics featuring the late Heath ledger as Joker........instead of having his skin bleached permanently white like in the comics....the film version of the Joker is some psychotic criminal who scars the corners of his mouth into a permanent smile and then lathers white make-up and lipstick all over it.....I quite like it....if I were 5 years old.....he'll scar the shit outta me....

And Below was the newly released concept art of Two-face........this picture was pulled by Warner Bros ..

I'm really looking forward to the flick......One more month away!.....Anyway I also caught a host of other shows in the cinema......Indiana Jones (which was okay...but the ending was semi-lame), Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian ( Pretty boring-ass flick and the CGI Lion was a much better actor than the Caspian guy..haha), Drill-Bit Taylor ( kinda bland.....cliched kinda feel-good comedy) and lastly Kung Fu Panda.....which I thought was a lot of fun....great animation...interesting characters......If I was maybe 10 years old, I would've really eaten up this kinda film with a spoon....
.
Well anyway enough about movies......on the personal side of things......I recently finished a short half-a week job the company my Dad is working at........the company was having a massive price hike for their products across the board and had to sort out a couple of thousand accounts and send each one a letter of notification and the corresponding updated price-list......so I told me dad to help me enquire abt the job cos I was getting kinda bored after the 2nd week of holidays....

So I was given 3 days to sort out everything, match everything,sub-divide the dirrect customer lists into the different product categories and then by the different sales teams, staple the whole load of lists and then mail it out........I managed to to finish the whole thing in two days......

So the last day....I assisted the company Secretary in sorting out the past 4 months worth of price quotations and customers orders......I managed to finish sorting and filing everything properly by 5.20pm on the dot....went down collected my pay and went home with my dad......

I like the way his company works....they pay you immediately and in cash and extra overtime(if any) better than going through some crummy job agency who deduct their cut of your pay and then another sum for your CPF.........cool.....earned 210 bucks for a few days of work.....haha....but they got their money's worth lar......the moment I start work at 8.00am.....I don't laze around or procrastinate.....I consecutively work all the way till like 5.30pm- 6pm or until I finish my stipulated workload.....only breaking for lunch and maybe a toilet break or two........plus everything was finished ahead of schedule.....so yeah.....HIRE ME!! I'M AN ASSET to any company!!!....

The first day I went to work was the same bizzare stuff man....a dozen of my father colleagues, subordinates or even the canteen uncle telling my dad that " Your son Looks like you"....or ...."Your son don't look like you at all" ...or ...."Your son looks more like his mum".....wah lau.....of course I either have some of my dad's or mum's features lar....since.....they ....are after all.....MY PARENTS!!!...LOL....

Hahaha...Not like my dad brought an African american kid to his workplace....then I could see some confusion arising...."Hmmm.....eerrr...your son don't look like you....he looks kinda....sun-tanned or burnt.....did you leave him in the microwave oven on high for too long...?"...hahaha

After army,I have a strong aversion to kinda staying at home and relaxing or watching tv all day long......I used to like having such a lifestyle during my poly days...I could watch like one movie on DVD a day then watch the special features and then watch the movie again with the director's commentary........but nowadays takes me at least two days to finish watching one dvd.....and I skip the commentary......hahaha....can't be as hardcore as I used to be....

Yeah plus I put on some weight during my exam period.....because my weight rarely increases during the 1 month of studying period due to the stress and stuff....so I always use this time to abuse the situation and eat whatever junk I want...knowing that the weight gain will be minimal......for the 1 mth it was so boring that I just binged on snacks....I ate 2 tubs of King's ice cream, 2 small pints of walls Ice-cream, 6 Potong ice-cream, one mango ice cream cake, 12 sticks of Split ( There was a warehouse sales at Walls' warehouse in Jurong), 5 packets of sea weed, 6 boxes of Hello Panda, 3 chocolate bars, 2 bag of gummies, 3 sticks of fruitella, approximately 2 cans of soft drinks a day, 3 packets of Farmer Brand peanuts, two packets of pistachio nuts in addition to my normal meals everyday.....

so I was 61 kg when the exam period started.......I was 64.5 kg when it was done.....so just a 3.5 kg weight gain......not a bad deal for indulging myself in all those snacks...haha...Plus I know that I can hit 61-62 kg within 2 weeks with solid jogging and a stricter diet........65 kg is the upper limit of my weight.......65 kg and above, I'll feel sluggish, the mid-section area will feel kinda flabby, sitting down after meals will be a tad uncomfortable, my face will start looking like I am in the early stages of having mumps and I won't feel that at ease in my own skin.......the Maximum weight I ever hit was 68 kg and that was a one time thing which I quickly rectified.....hahaha

So anyway......I knew I was going to hit the reset button and shed all the weight during the Holidays.....because once I hit a certain weight that I'm nt too comfortable at.....I'll automatically get rid of it....

Since the Holidays, I jog about 5 km a day around my house area (40 mins), skip 1000 times ( 200 times x 5 repititions lasting 25 mins), do 500 crunches after the skipping, some toning of the arm area with weights for 30 mins and before I go to bed...I do another 500 crunches.......on the food side....I've cut off any soft drinks and fast food for an entire month so far, no snacks, not too much fried stuff, try to eat two small meals a day or just one big one....and eat till I'm only roughly 70% full for every meal.....

So anyway I managed to lose 4.5 kg.....cos I'm now at 60 kg on the dot after the 1st mth.....after which comes the tricky part....depending on your weight, there's only a certain amount of weight you can lose before your weight plateaus and stagnates at a certain level.........after that it'll be very hard to shed any pounds......so anyway I wanna hit a target weight of 57 kg (the weight I was at after my 7 day field camp in BMT).....at that weight....running, jogging, pull-ups are no longer a chore....they're become a pleasure......seriously....after my field camp....4.8km run in boots was no longer a problem.....pull-ups started becoming fun....my lower limit weight should never be lesser then 55kg ....any lower means that I've hit unhealthily low levels of weight......

So 3 more kg to go....its attainable......but nt that easy.....the problem is though it took me a month to lose the previously gained excess weight....now that my weight plateaus at 60kg......it'll take twice as long to lose a single kg....losing 1 kg now could take 2-3 weeks of serious working out plus the usual dietary restrictions.....but by the time my new term starts......I'm pretty sure that I would have attained the ideal weight......oh well....not gonna be scarfing down any McGirdle burgers and Onion rings anytime soon....or Old Chang Kee.......or Potatoe chips......or ice-cream..........or any damn food that's even remotely tasty.....LOL

Anyway I was surfing this website the other day and I uncovered so many of the really Cool and bizarre toys that I used to own......wah....I haven't seen those toys in years.....nice walk down memory lane......I dunno why but My parents always had really really good taste in toys since I was young.......they never got me those lousy superman/ Spider-man china knock-offs from our neighborhood provision shops......I always got some quality stuff......many of which passed on to me like some family heirloom by my brother......hahaha....

The Toys these days really suck ass......horrible designs, damn expensive.....zero variety.......I'm glad that I'm a child of the 80's that's when all the best stuff came out........G.I.Joe, Transformers, Thudercats, He-man, Visionaries, Dino-Riders, Jayce and the Wheeled warriors.....the cream of the crop......the best cartoon nowadays that the kids have is about a Talking Sponge wearing pants for pity's sake.....LOL...

Ok....I said I had really cool toys but that's nt to say that I was some Aristocratix child with everything he wants.....my parents seldom buy me any toys from department stores themselves.....I only occasionally got the fresh on the shelves toys.........they usually wait for the annual super-huge Toy's sales at Alexandria district park ware house every year and then they'll buy one ass-load of toys that they will ration and let me open over the course of the year......if I behave......hahha......so I only started getting my He-man toys 2 years after the cartoon had gone off the air in Singapore.....hahahha

Anyway this are some of the more obscure toys that I used to have......may they rest in pieces.....somewhere in my storeroom....hahaha

There are only two things I loved back when I was kindergarten........one was my smelly bolster and the other was dinosaurs.....so Kenner toys had this super-cool range of toys that featured cave men and Dinosaurs (albeit in skeletal form) and you had to assemble the different pieces of bones together to build your own dinosaur or you could built a small base for your cave man using the bones.......This "Dynacus" dinosaur was the first one in the series I owned.....hahaha

It came with a spring-loaded prjectile tail...I'm nt talking abt the sissy-field spring loaded projectiles today.....this tail could blind you if you launced it into your eye......Perfect for a clueless 4 year old kid like myself...haha....anyway if I had been blinded by the projectile at that edge I did'nt think I would have minded it......I would've just gotten my mum to buy me an eye-patch....cos I remembered being torn between wanting to become a ninja or a pirate when I grew up at age 4.....hahaha...yeah maybe get me a wooden peg for my leg while she's at it.....

My second dinosaur was a Pterodactyl caller.....err..."Ptero"......and this one was a much larger dinosaur......it looked fantastic and the toy's wing span was Gino-normous to me back then....and it could throw rocks with its spring-loaded feet......cool....I saw it in a flea market for sale like 2 mths ago.......haha......Of Course I did'nt buy it!!.....

So back then, when you bought toys from Kenner that came in a box, they would always include this full-colored mini-catalogue of all their toys that were coming out for the season.......and I would spend afternoons upon afternoons just going through the catalogues again and again......one particular toy caught my fancy and I managed to convince my mum to buy it for my 5th birthday......

It was the biggest dinosaur in the series....the T-rex....it was pretty damn big.......it stand up to about my knee-cap today........ok......bad example....that's admittedly not too tall...hahahah.....but back then it was a 4 year old's wet dream come true......

I spent weeks and weeks psychologically wearing my mum out so that she would get me the toy for my birthday.....hahaha.....I was subliminally convincing my mother to buy the toy before they even coined the term Subliminal!!!

Y' see.....at that age, I would get pretty excited abt my birthday once November hit....even though my actual birthday was towards the end of November.......so anyway for the 3 weeks leading up to my Birthday.....I would show her the catalogue with a picture of the T-Rex before I left for Kindergarten, in the afternoon, while she made dinner and even when she dozed off in her bed......she would feel little fingers tapping on her.......telling her to take a look at the T-rex.....I swear.....hahaha......I still remember it was damn funny.......my mum was talking to me in slurry tones, with her eyes closed and I was going on and on abt the T-rex......and towards the end she would always be spouting some incomprehensible gibber-ish like " Yar...the coke is in the fridge...."....hhahahha.....and when she started zoning out.....I would tap on her again and do my sales-pitch once more....

I was EVERYWHERE......there was no escaping me and my toy catalogue....which I carried with me everyday like the 10 commandments itself......I was like Chucky the Killer Doll or something......eventually....little by little.....I finally broke her down psychologically and she got me the T-Rex for my birthday.....hahaha.....another successful ploy!

The next figure......My Dad actually bought for me out of the blue at Yaohan depertmental store that used to be located opposite Tang Dynasty at Jurong area.......he just told me that the toy looked cool and bought it for me without me asking.......It was like I won the lottery!!!! I dunno who the hell this "Tex Hex" is......but he was the leader of the bad guys in the Brave Starr cartoon and that was good enough for me.......

This toy was much larger then the regular toys..abt 2 1/2 times a regular G.I.Joe figure's size and came with all sorts of guns, knives and this red, stranslucent energy crystals they called Kheribium...I can't even remember what I ate yesterday but why I still remember the name of the crystals 20 years later.....I have no idea!!!...hahhaa.......the Figure was cool...he looked like the dead corpse of Clint Eastwood with transvestite boots....

But WAIT......my dad even bought me the Skull-rider horse (below) the figure rode in the cartoon as an acessory.....WAS I DREAMING?!......I thought Aliens had abducted my father....cos I don't think my father ever offered to buy me toys without some grovelling on my part....but this time he volunteered......hahaha.....That memory is almost burnt in my head.....hahah

I dunno what the hell is the Skull-rider supposed to be........but it was the evil-horse or the evil guy from the cartoon so i loved it too...like it was mah own child....haha

Anyway like I previously mentioned....I only liked the bad guys in cartoons....I thought they looked cooler, I thoght they had the best lines in the show and had the most fun hatching evil schemes and what not.......so I would always collect only figures of the bad guys and especially the leader of those baddies......it did'nt matter.....as long as the toy was a bad guy and the leader of the outfit I'm totally begging my parents for that toy!

This figure below is Donctor Scarab...from the bionic-6 cartoons which came out when I was in K1 and the whole series of figures were made with both plastic and Cast Iron metal......in fact this particular figure....his whole tummy area was made with die-cast metal...

Fat+ Bald+ Evil+ metal pot-belly + nasty surgical tools?....I'm SOLD!

This are the bad guys below:

....And...The Good guys......I have a couple of figures here and there from both the good and bad side.........as for doctor Scarab.......after 2-3 months or so.....I think I managed to wrench both his legs off some how and Dr Scarab's decapitated body is probably at the bottom of some dusty box I haven't opned in at least a decade....

Next is the visionaries.....This one below is called......Cindar I think.....anyway the vsionaries were like these really cool medieval version of G.I.Joe and the first toys to incorporate holographic stickers in the toys.......each figure had a mystical creature on their chest plate (which you could snap out) and their stuff.......and when you shifted the figure in different angles...the Gorilla would roar or something.......plus in the cartoon, each character had a really catchy rhyme they read out that would unleash the avatars in their chest plates and staff....

These are the complete series of the bad guys....I think I had quite a few of them....and yes.....they've been maimed and crippled beyond all recognition by now...

Next up....is the Dino-riders.........One of my favorite toy-lines EVER!!....I got these pterodactyl figure....which was a standard dinosaur figure that had some wing-flapping action and you could attach the guns, armor and brain box on the figure and the toy came with a reptillian pilot and this trap to snare the dinosaur.....

I watched the dino-riders cartoon religiously last time on Tv Satu the malaysian channel which I was somehow able to receive on my television......totally loved the show....I had to endure those damn malaysian Nespray Milk commercials with this small girl singinging her "Ibu Ibu" mother's day song for every commercial break during the cartoon.......and on fridays I even sat through the televised prayer sessions from a Malaysia Mosque that would appear in the middle of the cartoon.....I remember the first time I impersonated anything....was when I did my impersonation of the malays chanting their prayers that I had picked up......complete with serious expression, closed eyes and everything....and I think I did a pretty good job cos my parents and brother would always be laughing hard everytime I did it....
.
This toy below is again my Holy Grail back then...but I think it was too expensive or something......I never did get my hands on this toy.......but back then I had like an infatuation with T-rexes or something.....hahaa...oh and I remembered the reptillian commander on the top plaform was this frog in a space suit called Kruulos.......I have a photographic memory of completely useless information I tell you!

Ok.......Then we hav Silver Hawks........this series of vac-metallized bird-like toys who faced off against weird mutants led by the evil....MonStar......Monstar from the stars= Monstar....oh how clever.....LOL

Monstar was the leader of the baddies so of course i gravitated towards him and this figure had this really cool feature...he could chnage faces......if you squeeze his legs together....his chest plate would lower open and his furry looking alter-ego head would flip in to reveal this spiky robotic head.....

The First drawing i ever got from a friend......was this kid who used to do color pencil drawings of the Silver Hawk characters for his classmates and I requested for a picture of Monstar back in K1.......I have a vague impression of the drawing........it wasn't very good....to say the least...looks like somebody spilled pasta sauce on a piece of A4 paper and wanted to pass it off as a drawing....hahaha

I also psychoed my mum to get me Monstar's giant Sotong-like vehiclethat he could fly on......this toy was literally a giant sotong and space craft hybrid where you could tigthen his tentacles on a figure between them by pulling this lever on the back of the craft.....one thing I never figured out was why the sotong would be red instead of shite and purple.....Monstar probably marinated the squid Japanese style or something....

And......my final and biggest toy that I had from this series was the life-sized replica of Monstar's Pet Bat......it was HUGE and when you squeezed the legs.....the wings would flap spastically....

Oddly...My dad bought this toy for me at Sungei Road (where old folks sold junk, stuff they picked up, broken keyboards on the streets...)when he brought us to buy some elctrical plugs and tools and somewhere amongst all the junk was this Bat in mint condition.....so My dad got it for me but I made my mum wash it in dettol before I would play with it....

.
The funny thing is.....if you look at the pic below....the Bat had this retractable line with a claw attached at the end of it and you could pull the cord all the way out of the bat's mouth and when you pushed the purple button on the Bat's body......the line would retract super-quick into the bat's mouth......well first time I tried it.......The plastic claw at the end knocked one of the bat's front teeth completely off......damaging it....and I just stood there horrified looking at my mum with the toothless bat in my hands...

That very day.......after leaving many a broken toy in my time....my mum finally dubbed me "The Destroyer"......for destroying nearly every toy I ever had.....LOL.......I think I played so rough back then that I probably needed Nasa or some place had to field-test my toys to ensure they could stand up to me...haha

May those poor leg-less G.I.Joe and He-man figures and my headless Mr.T action figure forgive me for my youthful indiscretions....

Now here are some of my brother's toys that he passed on to me....My brother's favorite toy-line was this really gross and hands-on line of toys called "Mad scientist"........you could have your own monsters......pay with goop and weird ass plasticine....
.
These are some of the figures we had....we had the blue ogre creature below....complete with really foul-smelling plasticine and the mould for the creature...

And next.....we have the glow in the dark alien compound.......the texture was quite thick imagine snot from yor nose that had the texture of muar chee....yeah that's about it.....

And speaking of snot.....we had this figure where you could load the glow-in-the dark booger juice and have Sammy Sneeze the alien ooze it out of his nose in big gushes.....LOL

And my brother got this next toy for one of his birthdays.....one of the most disgusting toys I ever played with.......it was some latex, rubbery goblin hand puppet thing that came in a plastic cage and it literally looked like shit.........

The hands were horribly soft like braised chcken feet and the skin was this really shitty brown and the version we had, had this really sick, purplish tongue.......

You see the two white nozzles underneath the goblin......your supposed to make the goblin's glass eyes bulge outta their sockets by using two fingers to push them out.....hahahha.....that was the puppets only action feature....you could make his eyes bulge so that it looked like it was choking to death.......with its tongue out and everything...

Lastly I had almost all the toys from the BeetleJuice movie series......and those toys were bizarre....here's a sample:

And my mum even bought me Beetlejuice's convertible which came with its own snake pit at the back of the car....

LASTLY......I got the ultimate BeetleJuice Toy EVER....I had the life size mask....complete with synthetic hair, moss covered fless and this controller connected to the mask which was shaped like the thorex of a huge ugly beetle and when you pushed the button down .....the top part of his scalp would rip off and out popped this three ghoulish worm creatures....Cool

I remembered rollerblading ard Rail mall, where my parents used to have their bike shop at like 9.30pm while my mum was tallying the accounts in the shop.......and on the day of Halloween.....which nobody celebrated.....I was wearing this exact mask, holding a plastic/foam axe I head bought at K-mart and rollerblading around the row of shop houses........I scared the crap outta this elderly own man, Mr. Woo I think, who was the father-in-law of the owner of the Russian restaurant there and was also working there.....hahahahah......what a sight in the middle of the night!!...having Beetlejuice rollerblading past your shop house with a black foam axe saying hello to you........

Ok enough of all these stuff about toys........This post has made me seem many times more geeky then I normally am......but I would like to state for the record that I no longer play with toys anymore and only indulge in the occasional figure for display purposes.......hahaha.....otherwise I've remained sober and successfully battled my addiction to plastic T-Rexes for more than a decade now....hahaha

Alright.......I'm really beat after writing this post.........I'm gonna go watch the 3 hr long movie Gandhi now to cultivate my love and respect for my fellow indian brothers....hahaha....plus this week: The Incredible Hulk...........hope its good....

ADIOS!!

'Twas the Knight Before Christmas...

2007-12-15T05:31:00.000-08:00

Time for yet another update...this one is going to be a relatively short one......art-related blog...I'm just going to post a new piece I did that i'm >GASP<> ....happy with?!

.
I did it in one long, practically,uninterrupted session... . But before I post it....let me digress a bit and say that the new viral marketing campaign for the new Batman Dark Knight campaign is absolutely brilliant and impressing the hell out of me.....I say that with absolutely no bias...haha

.
Viral marketing is a new form of marketing...its almost guerilla marketing...ignoring the usual television and print ads and using cheaper and more innovative publicity stunts that actually involve people piecing together clues to get their hands on exclusive photos or poster from the movie....

.
The Second campaign was a state-wide hunt for clues that will lead up to some big reveal, where the film makers left different clues(e.g alphabets) at different spots in various states in the United States and Fans throughout the united states had to work together with people from different states had to work online to decipher the message and get their hands on a exclusive picture of the new Joker....

.
After that stunt, the marketers of the film staged a more elaborate stunt, the first couple of dozen people who submitted the deciphered message previously and also their addresses were sent a big actual cake and when they dug into the cake.....they found messagse, a charger, an actual hand phone and a bag of evidence and clue that would lead them to uncovering the very first teaser poster of the Film.......which they would then post online and share with the rest of the world....check out this link for what the participants received :
.

http://www.comicbookresources.com/news/newsitem.cgi?id=12526

.
The whole campaign is unconventional,effective and is ramping up the anticipation for the film a couple of hundred notches......here were some exclusive pictures that were unveiled recently...
.

Above is one of the latest and clearest pictures of Heath Ledger(Brokeback mountain) as the Joker.....he said that in order to get himself ready to play the Joker, he locked himself up in his hotel room for a month.....trying to come up with a suitable tone of voice and laugh for the character and wrote this diary that had a list of things that he as the Joker considered to be amusing.....apparently "Aids" was one of the things on the list....and "dead babies":......siao.....I only got one item on my list ..."Siew Yong"......hahaha

.

This is the first official teaser trailer of the film that all those guys who got the cake managed to uncover....I really like it......its simple but creative....without all the crazy photoshopping they do nowadays.....and manages to juxtapose both Batman and the Joker in one image with just simple shapes,symbols and colors....

.

This one is very nice......Batman standing in his office surveying his city......a little known fact is that Batman did operate out of his building:The Wayne foundation for a period of time in the 70's and it served as his part time headquarters when he decided to close Wayne Manor and the Batcave down for awhile...........

The Joker with his back to us and a Butter knife(??!!) in his hand....either he's working part time at delifrance or he's getting ready to stab the hell outta somebody who left the Joker cards in the deck during their last game of Tai-Dee...

.

The next one is my favorite poster so far.......its creepy.....

Imagine turning around and seeing this poster being displayed at one of the local bus stop while you're taking a bus in the dead of the night with no one else around......it'll be cool....hahha....it looks like The Joker is scrawling his message from the other side of the glass....

.
I've seen the bootleg trailer of this film and its really good.......My Prediction for this film is that Heath Ledger's Joker is going to make an entire generation of kids scared of clowns again......as if my generation did'nt spent enough time wetting our beds after seeing Pennywise the clown from Stephen King's IT...haha

.

*Here's an update.....Watch the the bootleg edition of the first 6 minutes of The Dark Knight movie featuring a bank heist by a group of clowns headed by the Joker....turns out that the bank is a storage place for the Mob and the clowns get their asses shot by the bank manager.....played by the same guy who played the psychotically relentless Agent Mahon from Prison break........cool stuff....lots of dead clowns and double crossing....hurry....Warner Bros will shut it down in no time...

.
http://http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&videoid=24055665

*Ooo!Ooo!Ooo! another update! The official trailer for Dark Knight is up in glorious quicktime format.....and its pretty damn good.....Heath Ledger looks like one crazy clown with the eye shadow and white paint and lipstick smeared all over his scarred face......and I think he's got a pretty good take on the Joker's voice and insane laughter......Go forth and enjoy this glorious trailer...

http://atasteforthetheatrical.com/deathtrap/default.htm

.
Alright .....now.....back to the main item......

.
Anyway about a week ago, I suddenly realized that I had only like 2 weeks to finish 4 complete and presentable drawings since its a yearly tradition that I give a complete drawing to Wenjun,Huiling,Gerald and Felix during our annual gift exchange session complete with some well-wishes or musings...anyway.....after taking a look at the pieces of work that have laid on my desk since I was in secondary school......I thought i better get my ass in gear and start cranking out some stuff...

.
So after brainstorming for daws on what to draw for whom, I finally got off my duff and started drawing.....I took 3 days to finish Wenjun's drawing since it was the first drawing and I needed to warm up, I spent the next two days drawing Huiling's...finished two pieces in two days because I wasn't very sure about the first drawing I did ...sometimes I like it quite a bit sometimes it looks off to me so I redid one which I was happy with....then two days later I did Gerald's drawing.....never drew that character before so I spent a few hours trying to draw the character's face based on any animation model sheets or references I could find and then I drew it in one long session.....and lastly I drew Felix's one....I did'nt know what to draw him so as usual I drew him what I wanted...hahaha

.
Anyway the piece I'll post here is not some sneak peek at their Christmas drawings...its just a drawing I did for myself since I finished all their drawings way before schedule...and I needed to detox myself from drawing all those cutesy crap and just draw something endlessly bleak and dark to perk myself up....haha

.
Its a drawing of.......Batman (Who else??).....and I think its one of my best drawings of him to date....it captured what I wanted.....this piece is just dripping with ink....the whole paper is soft from the amount of ink I slapped on the drawing........I don't think I'll be topping this drawing anytime soon....

.
The picture is drawn in Frank Miller's Sin City style which I've been studying since 2001.....I usually draw Batman in three different styles.........my normal everyday style which is a conventional-looking Batman with all the muscles and cross-hatching and six packs.....my animated style, which I spent two years studying and practicing and can draw with my eyes closed nowadays...haha... and the darker, Charoscuro Sin City style Frank Miller uses which I thought is perfect for a character like Batman....and its the most bloody difficult to master

.
I first Read the Dark Knight Returns when I was 10 years old and the image of Batman riding in Gotham city on a horse during a nuclear winter after Russia detonated a warhead above America is seared in my brains........so I wanted to do my own iconic take of Batman riding on jet-black horse alone in the night....

.

Below is a close-up shot of the horse only.......I wanted it to be semi-menacing so I left his eyes white....

Next is a close-up of Batman right atop the horse.......his eyes are always piercingly cold and emotionless......almost demon-like....I put in the streaks of lightning for dramatic effect and because it serves to provide an explanation of why the character is so dramatically-lit in an otherwise black sky....oh and those little slits of rain are a BITCH to draw......hahaha....

On a side note.....I drew this drawing when it was raining cats and dogs outside my house.....and it put me in the perfect mindset to finish this drawing.....

.

For this kind of drawing style.......even after looking at the completed pencil drawing, I have no idea how the final picture will look like until I start laying down large chunks of ink......

.

So its fun...its like excavating......I slowly add in large chunks of inks and watch how the drawing slowly come together before my very eyes....I draw in a full figured horse and batman very roughly with muscles and limbs and everything and in the inking stage I start to start omitting all kinds of pointless detail and lines......to make it as abstract as possible but maintaining just enough clarity that at the end of the day......you can look at this picture and still tell its supposed to be a picture of Batman ridding a horse.....

.

If you look clearly I don't actually draw a complete hand or a leg or a head........I just merely visually suggest the presence of a hand and as the viewer you feel up the blanks mentally....but you don't see 5 fingers do you? you're just manipulated to think you're seeing a hand.....based on the limited visual info provided...

.

And the last step.....I get my mum to look at the picture and tell me what she thinks it is........if she can tell what is in the drawing despite the abstract nature of it then the drawing is successful because my mum usually dunno how to make heads or tails of the stuff I draw....hahaha

.

There you have it.............The Dark knight and his trusty steed.....

Its one of the rare pieces that I'm actually happy with when I was done........I can't believe that this page was completely white and blank before I'm started but when I was done....80% of the whole piece of paper was covered in ink....

.

I've always liked the solitary nature of Batman.........he's like the ultimate loner......I tried to convey that with him riding alone in the dark......with the rain beating down on him.....there's this line from the movie Taxi driver written by Paul Shrader that sums up my feelings on Batman....

.
Robert Deniro is Travis Bickle, a cab driver and as he walks alone in New York across the homeless,destitute and a sea of prostitutes......he's utterly alone despite living in a city of millions.....like God is playing a big cosmic joke on him.....and he mutters this great line:

.

"I am God's lonely man."

Its a Nice Movie.....haha...very uplifting and inspirational......in fact it inspired the 1981 assasination attempt on the President of the United states....the shooter wanted to assasinate the President like Robert Deniro did in the movie because he wanted to impress Jodie Foster who was also a character in the movie......LOL....

Lastly..........we have a comparison shot of the previous picture I drew in this style.......

I like how the lightning from the new picture is actually striking at the same angle as the previous drawing was.......it's unintentional though and the lightning itself doesn't actually link up in both pictures.......I thought this drawing is slightly more successful then the previous one......even Darker and even more abstract......almost like a bangla crossing the road at 4 am when the lights are out...hahaha

.

Anyway that is it for now............Christmas is around the corner.......and I forgot that after finishing 4 drawings.......now I gotta come up with another 4 goddamn Christmas messages that's supposed to fill-up an A4 sized paper attached behind the drawings.........each personalized and you-niquelly different....must be long and semi-meaningful and relate to the person....what a chore......BAH HUMBUG!!!

.

Alright I'm off......cos I seem to be spreading more Christmas Jeer then cheer......hahaha......this year if anybody wants to make a special request for me to draw them a particular character or make any changes to their drawings, or if you just like me to add in more snow in the background.......then all you gotta do is stand underneath a mistletoe......so you can Kiss..................Both Sides....Of My Ass!!!hahaha.....

.

Well......that's all folks....Good night one and all......

~23rd Birthday~

2007-11-25T04:15:00.000-08:00

(A close-up shot of a self-potrait I drew myself.....haha....pretty good likeness.....got my whole attitude down pat.....the whole picture is posted right at the back of this post......)

It's that time of the year again.......time for my annual Birthday post......with the usual pictures, exclusive commentary, reflections for the year and where I thank a whole list of people.....haha...

So I'm officially 23 Years old as of today........the youngest one among my Secondary school friends and the oldest One among my Poly mates......well at least for another couple of months anyway......

How do I feel???..........OLD!!.........Older then I should.....haha...I almost feel shy reading comicbooks and fake comic Newspapers in public places nowadays........the key word being "Almost".......need another decade or so before "Almost" becomes "Definitely"........hahaha

Anyway I celebrated my birthday with the Poly gang on saturday the 24th of November and on my actual Birthday on monday....I just had a simple dinner with my folks and handed back home to cut my cake and catch a movie together.......haha

Well......here are some Photos from my actual Birthday......with me and my Folks.......after we had dinner together......nice,quiet,low-key affair just as I like it......

Me and my Parents.......that cheese cake they got from Sweet Secrets is some tasty grub......haha...

I noticed I left my specs on the TV after realizing that I could'nt focus properly on the camera in front.........always glancing away from the centre like I'm doing some impersonation of Stevie Wonder and Ray Charle's love child......hahaha

AND.......Blowing out the candles.......after I did that I was back in my home clothes watching HBO....faster then a speeding bullet.......

Next up are the photos of me and the gang took on the 24th of November........we went to Outback steakhouse and I know folks are too polite to tell me so.....but Damn did the restaurant I pick suck some serious hairy-ass donkey balls......haha....My bad......my sincerest apologies for my lack of culinary foresight.....haha........Outback? I should take the chefs out back in the alley and gun them down.....haha....

My juniors and some of my army mates told me that the food there was supposed to be good.....I sincerely fear that they were comparing the food from the restaurant to SAF cookshouse food because your definition of good food changes after you've been eating SAF food for 2 years.....haha.......food from any damn place is considered good if we were to classify SAF food as normal food.......well anyway......everyone makes mistakes so I'm not going to blame them......because I'm sure they're not going to blame me as well when I phone in an anonymous bomb threat that will keep them confined in camp till after Christmas....for their delightful recommendation......hahaha

So Anyway talk is cheap.........Here are some of the pictures taken of the gang and me on the 24th with a bonus director's commentary track by yours truly......

First of all.....we'll start the picture parade with a tried and tested, old Favorite:

Felix doing that thing he do.....haha.......The Blurry Effect perfectly complements Felix's expression and reinforces the dangers of drug abuse.......

Wenjun......

Huiling......

AND.....the both of them together in black...My all-time favorite color and the constant shade of color expression on my face.......haha

Two clowns clowning around.......as always

The two of us re-enacting the day when Felix forgot to send me his completed part from one of our projects...notice me giving him the evil eye...haha

Huiling and me....and Felix's decapitated hand giving me the mickey mouse years I always wanted..haha

Wenjun and me... when she's around me....I seem to always have the weight of the world on my shoulders..haha

And Gerald and Me...her expression leads me to believe that she's going to embarass many a indonesian waiter before the night is through...

Wenjun and Huiling after I told them that the theme for the Christmas presents this year is "Lockets and Sweets"......hahaha

The three girls together...yeah....Friends forever and all that jazz....hoho

Aand next up is rare photographic evidence that I do have more than one facial expression nowadays....

I can't figure whether this is my "Jolly" or "retarded" face........probably a bit of both..haha

My "Kiam Pah" face......

Me showing some teeth for once......the weird thing abt my teeth is that my front 4 teeth are unaturally straight.....all lined up in the same line with no even the slightest gap without the aid of Braces......my mum said they look more like dentures...

Blowing out the candles on my cake.......I forgot what Wish I made....all I know is that last year's wish did'nt come true....nor the last ,last year.....and the year before that,etc...haha

Me cutting the cake......it actually tasted pretty nice.......with the rum-soaked base and boysen-berries....but after eating my Huge share of the cake....I found out that There IS such a thing as too much of a good thing...

My Chocolate Birthday Plaque which I promptly consumed.....

Snap shots of the gang having their cake and eating it too...

First up is Felix......who ate surprisingly moderately during dinner and had problems finishing his steak....

Gerald.....who scrapped out all the cream from her cake and left a huge wad of cream on her plate that I think seriously turned off the indonesian waiter who collected her plate from eating any cream-based food for the near future....haha

Wenjun.....who spent much of her time convincing people to swallow sizzling hot pieces of steak and explosively-hot deep fried whole mushrooms......haha......she convinced to Felix to stuff the super hot Mushroom while she shot photos and videos of the whole process.....haha....and he did it....TWICE!!

Huiling...who ate a bigger piece of steak and left a much cleaner plate then Felix by the end of dinner.....

Me with my boat load of presents this year......which nearly completely obscured me from view.....I kinda reminded myself of Gwenyeth Paltrow's head in the Movie Seven......

The Collector's Edition Batman Monopoly which Wenjun and Huiling got me.....

I got a good laugh when Wenjun and Huiling asked me whether I really DID like the present because they could'nt tell from my expression......never underestimate how neutral I can still look even to people who have known me for years....hahaha...I doubt My expression would be any different if they had gift-wrapped Angelina Jolie, dipped her in honey and sat her at my feet.....hahahaha..... cos that's the happiest I can look....call it facial paralysis or poker face syndrome.....haha

Haha......If I had my hands on this board game when I was younger....I would never leave my house or allow my parents to leave the house!!haha....my dad would have needed to break the board in half if he wanted me to stop bugging him...haha

So anyway I told them that I did really like this unexpected gift but Wwenjun said "Like" was not enough....she wanted me to "love" it.....so I did....all night long...and now the playing board are stuck together by something that shall remain unspoken.....hahaha

The first present from Gerald and Felix.....which paved the way for the most challenging gift-unwrapping I have ever encountered in the past two decades.......haha

As Galactus is my witness, I swear there were like 10-12 layers I had to unwrap to reach the final present within......haha......its a cleverly designed package designed to drive its receiver mad...haha....I had to cut through all the layers with a steak knife and best of all.....after tearing through 5 layers of tape and brown paper, the 6th layer was Orange-ish paper so I thought I finally reached my end goal....but no such luck...after that orange-ish layer came off it was another 4 layers of brown paper and tape before I uncovered a message taunting me that I was not even halfway there!!....Haha....

This is another pic of me still trying to unravel it hahaha......wah lau.......It was mentally and physically exhausting and when I finally reached the present within......I was seeing stars......Literally!!

And this was what was inside.......a glass bottle of stars and a custome made Batman key-chain within the bottle....the problem with the keychain is that it kinds of give away my true identity behind my crime fighting alter-ego...haha

This is the black Adidas shirt from Felix and Gerald......its black and has a skull on it so I guess there's no excuse for me not to wear it....hahaha.....well I 'll wear it soon....its casual and seems pretty much like something I would wear to school

They also gave me a deck of Sin City cards which I saw at Bugis Junction....Its cool......there's different pin-ups and panels all drawn by Frank Miller there are enlarged or shrunk into playing card size......

Here's a sample of some of the cards......Frank Miller's black and white artwork is cool.....very iconic and stylized.....the art really pops out.......When I have the time....I'll try to arrange the cards in sequence of story just for the heck of it.....haha

Here's a picture of Hartigan and Marv from Sin City relaxing and playing a nice game of cards during their break time.......haha

This is the Jack Kirby Fourth world Omnibus Wenjun and Huiling gave me........its cool stuff.....it collects four different titles drawn by Jack Kirby in chronological order in terms of their date of publication and it contains some of the very first comics I have ever read from the 1970's.......I grew up on these comics...

Jack Kirby is the artist who co-created or created the entire Marvel Universe...he created and drew The Hulk, X-men, Fantastic Four, Captain america, Iron Man, The Silver Surfer, The avengers, The mighty Thor..........the only major character he did'nt create was Spider-man...anyway he did'nt make one cent from any of his creations since Marvel considered him a hired hand.....so in 1970 he moved to DC (Batman,Superman,etc) and created his Fourth world saga...

Its called the Fourthworld because he wrote, drew and edited 4 monthly titles on his own featuring different characters but were all interlinked into one big saga.......he did 4 books a month.....artists nowadays can barely draw a book a month and be on time......anyway i loved this series since I was a kid after reading some reprints here and there.....

But all 4 of the titles were cancelled in the mid-70's due to poor sales and Jack Kirby produced a total of 55 issues and never got a chance to finish the big saga where the main character(featured on the cover) would face his father in one final prophesized battle.....and ever since I found out I've tried since I was 12 years old to draw my own version of the conclusion of the saga...I used to fold A4 paper in half and do my own mini-comics on it but I gave up and the closest I got was when I was in Sec 3 till sec 4 and I drew abot 35 pages to the 50 page conclusion I wanted to do.......I have all the art.....the last 10 pages were done in pencil only though and I think I've shown it to Wenjun,Huiling,Felix and Gerald....alas I never did finish it due to my O'levels and that was 8 years ago.....

Anyway here's a picture of the Omnibus with a drawing I did in 1999 featuring the main Character Orion...

I've already started reading this hardcover.....should be done in a couple of days......hahaha.....they even printed it on the old newsprint paper that old comics are printed on rather then glossy paper for a more authentic feel...Kewl....

Next its the Batman Black and White statue designed by the top artist in the industry.....Jim Lee....Its my fifth statue from this particular line of statues......hahaha....come Chinese New Year, I'll add my sixth one when the Frank Miller B&W statue comes out.....hoho.......this is the shot of the statue box with the piece of artwork the statue is based on..

Here's a Close-Up of the statue.......

Another close up.....at an angle similar to the artwork on the box.....

And.......Here's my entire collection of Cold-cast Batman Black and white statues......all of them are based on the artwork and designs of my All-time Favorite Batman artists.....Brian Bolland, Mike Mignola, Alex Ross, Steve Rude and now......Jim Lee.........I got the Steve Rude BW statue from Wenjun and Huiling last year.....the one with the cool swishing Cape........anyway the Jim Lee one is pretty solid.....Batman Crouching with his cape flaring outwards......haha.....I think they look quite impressive lined up together........the same character intrepreted in so many different art styles......

And even MORE Bat-Goodness next....hahahaha.....

The Collector's edition Batman Monopoly from Wenjun and Huiling...haha.....based on the artwork of the most popular Bat-artist for the past decade....Jim Lee.......I once contemplated buying this board game or the Sin City one myself when I saw it in Bugis Junction back when the Government still paid my wages......haha....but I figured who was I gonna get to play it with me?

But I DID get to play the game this time.....hahaha.......the group spent Almost 4 hrs playing Batman monopoly at a cafe in Cineleisure......though sad to say that despite being the one who used the pewter Batman figurine in the game.........I lost the game....BAD!!Haha.......while everybody was buying property......I was going to jail for the 4th or 5th time.....haha....by the time I got out.....I was paying everybody cash for practically every time I threw the dice....haha.....I did managed to buy a batmobile and Penguin Ice Lounge at the end......and eearned a tidy sum of less then 200 bucks in total from the others through fines......while personally shelling out a good 300-400 bucks every time I made a complete round on the board....hahaha,.....and to top it off this Batman served more Jail time then the joker,two-face and catwoman put together!!!haha

There should be some damn rule stating that the player in possession of the Batman figure has immunity and cannot lose the game....since technically The whole game is named after him!!hahaha........Its not Bat Signal Monopoly or Catwoman Monopoly or Joker's freaking chattering teeth monopoly......Its the Godamn batman monopoly!!hahaha....

Well ok......even though I lost.....it was still kind of fun....there'sreally nothing quite like 5 individuals above 21 years old playing a Batman-related game in a very public place.....so thanks for indulging me in the game...hahaha......the last time I convinced others in indulge in a Batman related activity I had to bribe my cousins with the promise of free drawings...haha

And I'll be damned if the artwork featured on the box doesn't look familliar.......hhmmm......the problem is that there has been hundreds of artists who have drawn thousands of Batman drawings for the past 6 decades........it'll take like some Bat Historian to identify a single image out of the thousands......

Oh well I'll give it a try........if my memory serves me correctly........I think this image was taken from the 3rd panel of the 17th page of the 614th issue of Batman........just a random guess.....

Why.......YES IT IS!!! ........A Lucky guess??!!....or just too much comic-reading??!?....haha...anyway.....The art from the Monolpoly packaging was actually a single panel in Batman#614 blown up to like 20 times the size............ featuring a pissed off Batman preparing to lay the smack down on Joker......said issue is of course comfortably tucked away in my filing cabinets...... though I do own the story in both Hardcover and tpb form too......haha

The Monopoly Board itself.......that particular image of Batman running is actually a blown-up version of one of the Batman covers drawn by Jim Lee...and despite there being 700 over issues of Batman published over the past 60 years......let me try to guesswhich issue that drawing was printed from.....its really tough.....hoho.....hmmmm.....Batman#615???

Why YES IT IS Again!!!.....OOoooo I'm good.....hahaha....and whatta do you know?! I do own that issue!!!Hahahha.....here's a shot of the cover courtesy of the private Collection of Barry Tan.....

Here's an interesting fact that is kinda neat and useless..........hahaha...both the statue and the Batman Monopoly were inspired by the artwork of Jim Lee, who's this Korean millionaire that's one of the comic industry's top artists....anyway he has only drawn 12 issues of the regular Batman comic and all the artwork featured in both gifts were taken from those issues....

The interesting thing is the first time the whole of TB31 discovered that I had a Batman fetish was when my laptop was chosen to be used for a class presentation and I had the Cover of an issue of Batman set as my wallpaper which was projected like 20 times the size in front of the whole class......which resulted in much snickering and awkward silence on my part....haha....anyway the cover was drawn by the same Jim Lee and that first issue of his came out on the very same month I started my first term in poly.......hahaha......more then 5 years later...things come full circle...bet you did'nt know that bit of trivia...haha.....and Yes....its true I do chart my years and months according to the publication of various Batman issues....

Well.....Next up are actually my favorite things to receive during birthdays.......the birthday cards.....haha...I love getting them and its always fun to read whatever comments are written......I probably have kept every single card made out to me for the past 15 years in my drawer......I like glancing through all of them once awhile......reading the comments and stuff......

So......this is the card from Gerald and Felix........written and colored by Gerald......cos if I know Felix and I DO know Felix......he can't do such fancy lettering nor coloring.....haha....and the little message there foreshadows the most difficult gift-unwrapping session I have ever gone through........since....well.....EVER!!

This triple gate-fold card is from Wenjun and Huiling.......detailing the "Do's" and "Don'ts" of Birthdays which I can confidently say I did'nt follow at all.....haha

Their Hand written birthday messages......"Bestest, Bestest Friend" and "Many best wishes".........hoho......awwww nice bit of lying there by the dynamic duo......hahaha.....

And lastly..........Here's the full picture I drew........Nobody that I know can draw or are even interested in drawing.....so I usually draw cards and pictures and give them to friends but usually I don't receive much drawings from anyone.......so every year I try to draw myself a picture for my own birthday on my own birthday to make myself happy.......they're usually very rough drawings........for my personal pleasure...

The previous one I drew last year was when I was working in camp from 11pm of 25th November all the way to my birthday on the next day at 7am......and for this eight hours I drew every DC and Marvel Character I liked on an A4 piece of paper....almost 30-35 characters all very roughly drawn....with this two large candles and 2 small candles in the background.............(which one of my super-gay Pass office colleagues told me looked like four A4 sized schlongs....diao.....)....anyway Its still displayed on the Bulletin board of Pass office now I think....haha...

So This is the full picture I drew myself this year.............I think its suits me well.......I was born in the year of the Rat so I drew a grumpy, hairy,disgruntled Rat giving the finger Salute to anybody that's unlucky enough to get in his way.....haha

It really captures my good side I think....it's a symbolic drawing of me in one of my better moods....hahaha....me being my usual cheerful self.....haha

Anyway that's about all the pictures for this birthday-themed post........Another year past, Another Birthday, another year older...haha...I think everybody gets less enthusiastic about their birthdays with each passing year........I was an early bloomer......I stop being enthusiastic about pretty much anything since I hit puberty....haha

Ok maybe let's not be so extreme and say that everyone becomes totally unenthusiastic about Birthdays as they get older......people just become enthusiastic about different aspects of their birthday as the years go by....

Back when I was a kid.......it was all about the presents........my Birthday was the one day in the year my mum would take me to the neighborhood toy Store "Jo Xin" (Not Toy'r R Us mind you!!) in Jurong West and buy me anything I wanted.......

I would get excited right at the beginning of november and spend hrs going through that same bloody Kenner Toys catalogue while lying on my parents' bed.......though that store did'nt carry 80% of anything in that catalgue.......hahaha......but even though I had free reign.....I made some pretty bad choices......haha.....my Dad would offer to get me some gameboy or Computer game consoles which were pricey back then.....and I would tell them that I just want a $8.90 Teenage Mutant Ninja turtle figure: the Foot Soldier and a $10.90 Cobra commander from g.I Joe with talking back pack.......and I would be so damn happy with those......hahaha.....I thought I made a helluva good deal....haha

I remember My Brother wanted a 16 bit Sega game console with 4 games for his birthday in October and when it came to my turn a month later...I told my dad I just wanted a Spider-man: Maximum Carnage game catridge so i could play my game on his console.......I ended up getting that Game catridge of the game which was pirated and had to request for my dad to buy me a red-colored Sega attachment so that I could play my fake game on the game console........I had to slot the red attachment on the catridge slot and then attached my game on top of it before I could play because it was pirated.......hahaha......and I was so happy abt it...hahah....dumb kid...

Now of course we look forward to different things......when you're a kid...you would love inviting everybody and having a big birthday party.....when you get older you just want a small,nice gathering.........I think the thing I look forward to now is having some nice company and the actual gathering itself.......the gifts are mostly secondary......though of course its an added bonus that I do derive a lot of pleasure from... and i'm not being Facetious when I say that, I do mean it.

Its the crux of the whole event for me personally........no point having kick-ass gifts if the actual company sucks like or you're not with people that you actually like being with...like if you have a big party and your mum or dad's colleagues or friends who you don't know are invited bearing nice expensive gifts......which did happen a long time ago I think but I did'nt mind it back then.....

Yeah........this is a little known fact but this gatherings and special events are what made things easier when I was in the Army........I remember the week of Christmas 2006.......I was in my full uniform,helmet and bag under the block we stayed at, drenched completely in sweat in 2.30 am in the morning.....another turn-out cum torture session from My superiors........and I was running around buildings, doing crunches, pumping, emptying my waterbottle and refilling them repeatedly and when my officer had us remain in push up position with my face 1 1/2 inch from the carpark floor.......and I told myself, in a few more days I'll be out in the company of friends and having fun bitching and chatting.......all this shit would be over and it'll be all worth it......just bear with it till the end of the week.......and I did........and every subsequent week, when I was turned out night after night and wondering how did I ever get so lucky........I just think about my weekends or gatherings and I would psyche myself up........kept me positive throughout my trainee days......

SO to conclude my yearly Birthday post........I would to thank Wenjun, Gerald, Huiling and Felix for my Birthday celebration and all the Birthday presents.........they were lovely......and of course for effort put in the entire event itself.........not just this year but for the past 4 years.......not counting our first year( since many people claim I was making myself more invisible then Jessica Alba in Fantastic four back then...haha).....but anyway I complained and bugged my way to getting a birthday celebration out of all of you by year two and as they say the rest is history....haha

So.......THANK YOU ALL!!!!

Yup....the closest I can come to emoting is by expanding and bolding my fonts.......its still more expressive then my facial expressions though...haha

So thus endeth another year and post........6 mins before my birthday is officially over to boot....haha.....well.....Good nite one and all.

2007-11-11T04:50:00.000-08:00

It is Officially OVER.

After 1 and 1/2 months of exams preparation and studying.........finally the whole damn thing is over and done with on friday....... I must have gone through each subject 7 times from start to finish....and I'm glad as hell.........I kind of regretted jumping into Uni before I even ORDed from army cos it was like jumping from one 2 year comittment to another.....with no break in between.....

The first few weeks of University were more relaxed without project deadlines and everything but all the rest time was for the naught since I had to alternate between school and army for those few weeks and by the time I was officially out of the army.....My projects were all due, plus mid-terms and then the final exams......so after almost 2 1/2 years of hustle and bustle.......I finally reached my long awaited break........honestly that night I finished my exams was the best sleep I had in ages.......was damn good...........felt so free and unburdened for the first time in 2 years when I woke up the next day.....

The next two weeks will be a nice period of detoxification...........I'm gonna be working out every day, relaxing, reading or watching some of the stuff that I haven't previously had time for........I'm going to sleep early and most importantly I'm gonna sleep peacefully.........the two years of grave yard shifts have effed me up pretty bad in some ways......mostly physical,I'm constantly exhausted during the day, I don't sleep well at night........and I wake up periodically through the night........or when I hear any sounds......cos let's face it that was what I was trained to do for two years......I walk and talk with a certain weariness........from now till the end of november.....its gonna be working out every morning, jogging every day, controlled and planned meals, earlier sleep time, lesser stress, more relaxation......... so I'm hoping this two weeks can help undo some of the damage from the two years.....hahaha......looking forward to it.....

I went to Changi with my parents for dinner today and it was to me, very much like coming full circle.........the car passed the ferry terminal where I would be at EVERY sunday, scanning my 11 B and taking the slow bumpy ferry ride back to Tekong for another week of training........wearing my goofy jonkey cap, carrying my field pack with a completely down-cast look on my face.......every week without fail.......I would be so goddamn-happy on saturdays when I booked out and so bloody bummed out less then 24 hrs later when I had to book in the next day.....hahaha.....passing the terminal sure brings back some fun times....hahaha....

I don't think I'm completely out of my army mode yet though, putting an M-16 and asking me to guard 14 hrs alone in a spot wouldnt be too much of a stretch even though I ORDed exactly 2 mths ago......could still do it......with no problem at all.......then I look at my 11B ID card and see the "NS Men" label pasted over "NSF" under my current Military status.......and I know......I know I've served my 2 year term and that I can close the chapter on that phase of my life now...

Well I'm going to write a good,long post about my reflections on my time with the military within this few days now that I have the time...........but rather then go through specific events again and all the stuff I've done.....field camps, route march and whatever.....I don't think I wanna do it in that kind of straightforward,detailed and verbose manner.......which would make the post longer and dryer then the dead sea scrolls....haha....I would just like to specifically talk about my feelings or opinions about the whole thing........the kind of fundamental changes that these period has made on me.......like to critically dissect myself and look at everything with a fresh perspective.......help myself make sense of things to be honest.....well in my next post anyway....

One thing though.........I honestly think that the whole affair has been a positive one.......despite the ass-load of shit and pricks I've met or kow-towed under......despite getting shouted at by everybody from the canteen aunty to construction site foremen to firemen to colonels......despite working ungodly hours and coming back and sleeping on bed sheets stained yellow and brown with the sweat of god know how many people...........I think the whole experience wasn't a waste of my two years....haha.....honestly.......I think I'm more positive person now.......hahaha.....

After having a shit load of problems happening on a pretty much weekly basis for 2 years.......I don't stress myself, engage in hysterical behavious like some of my army mates ALWAYS do or curse and swear at the whole world for the bout of bad luck..........I just kind of anticipate the fact that bad shit is always going to happen no matter what and get started with my game plan on how to pull my ass out of the fire............hahaha.....I think that's great...... when I know the shit is going to hit the fan but I'm rational and ready for it......hahaha......

Damaged the roof of a car? Chicken Feed!.......LapTop flew off the bloody table and is in pieces? No problem!......Letting a drill bomb in the base while working with a semi-retard? Hey...it ain't the end of the world!......Having a new Government policy passed down about active NS guys not being able to study using their leave 2 weeks before my school terms started and 7 days before the $6000 I had already paid would be forfeit?? Hoho......Bring it on!!...........hahaha......I remembered all my colleagues that were enrolled in NUS, NTU and SIM were running like chickens with their heads cut off when that bloody policy was past down a couple of weeks before everyone was going to study.......but I had these crazy calm and expressionless look on my face thinking "Bad things happening during the last minute AGAIN??.....you worked 2 effing years in this base and you're actually surprised by this...HUH??!?!"........haha....

It was hilarious.....so much bad shit had happened to me for like months upon months up till that point that I WOULD have been surprised if thinsg went well........people thought I was insane....when I told them these matter would eventually be resolved and not to worry too much.......and it did......after some blackmailing, puppy dog eyeing........I did start my school term as orginally planned after all....sure it was three times as hard for me to do so then most people I knew....but it did finally go according to plan ......hahaha.....I had no doubts about it in my mind....none at all......that I could have pulled an ace despite the shitty deck of cards I was dealt with......haha

Ah well.........the complete Reflection of my experiences will be in the next post.......for now......its time to relax.....I've finally hunted down the movie, Chopper with Eric Bana and I rented Ridley Scott's Aalien plus the Bruce Almighty flick..........and I bought the 3 disc Gladiator ( my favorite swords and Sandals movie......more then 300 even)extended edition with Russel crowe and Joaquin pheonix that was on sale at HMV and I got the all new Director's cut of Troy with 30 mins of additional story, nudity and violence......hahaha.......and I can finally read the art of Barry Windsor Smith artbook I bought 2 mths ago..........I sound like I'm semi-starved of any entertainment.......hahah...but you know....we should enjoy the small pleasures we get out of life.....no matter how small....haha......ok that's it for now.........going to turn in early today........morning jog for me tommorrow.........So this is me signing off.....

Mundanely yours....

2007-11-02T08:29:00.000-07:00

Hi Folks.......another quick update from me........I just finished going through my Market Research notes for like the 4-5th time in preparation for my MR exam on monday so I thought I'll blog since I finished earlier then expected today..........that and I'm bloody irritated staying in my living room because of that moaning pair of cats under my block that are deep in the throes of their passion.......goddamn man......4-5 times a week I can hear the cats making the loudest moans I have ever heard.....I live on the bloody top floor in my block and I can still bloody hear them.......MEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEOWWWWWREEEEEOOOOoooow.......REEEEEEEEEEoooooow I swear these two cats probably has a better sex life then my whole block put together or the entire Bukit Panjang for that matter.......hahaha.....I think I'm gonna hire Germaine or someone to blow at them during their lovemaking and piss them off.....hahahaha.....Germaine if you're out there can you help me take care of these two cats....don't kill them.....just make sure their eyes can't open and they don't move at all.....you know....put them in one of those "hovering between life and death" comas all your hamsters end up in....hahaha

Alright..........enough talk about...puss.....err...cats......this whole month has been studying,studying and more studying...........I think one whole month of studying is probably a bit too long for me.....the 2-3 weeks in ploy was just nice........well anyway I think I got my groove back.......I think that I'm almost back to my oldself again as far as memorising is concerned.......

If you're my neighbors or my family members you can hear me shouting nonsensical words throughout the month of october......that's how I memorise my stuff......if there are 12 atrributes or points in the slide, I just take the first alphabet and make my own nonsensical words....

Knowlege
Ideas
Perceptions
Order of presentation
Lifestyle
Attitude
Norms
Interests
Likes/dislikes
Activities

AHA!! .....KIPOLANILA!!.........you can hear me exclaim make-believe shit like that all the time at home...........COBLANIGA!! WWEFUABITO!!!! CABKIPME!!!..........I sound like some tribal chief doing an ancient war chant all day long or something.....freaks my parents out.....The worst is when the words don't sound good when its read out loud like CRBLLNRR.........those don't have a nice ring to them so for those kinda words that don't sound good I make low growls and animal noises like......CRBLLNRR will be broken into a series of growls like CR-BLL-N-RR..........that's even worse because instead of sounding like a African tribesmen.....I sound like some down-syndrome patient with speech impediments who can only communicate through a series of blinks and noises........hahahaa

Only one subject proved quite a handful, buyer behavior.......the notes are one ring-file worth and it would be practically impossible for a normal human being to memorise everything..........but I did manage to memorise everything once through, line for line.......that was the first week of studying.......fast forward to the 4th week, I found that because of the sheer amount of info...I could'nt hang on to what I've learnt.......Anyway I only had 4 days before the test and if I had it my way I will just plough through the notes learning everything.......but then this time was too much so i wised up.....I started highlighting important stuff and internalizing stuff.......not memorising but internalizing stuff............so anyway I think this new, "smarter" way of studying worked out pretty well in the end..........I was so frustrated using my old way........so I guess old dogs can learn new tricks too.....hahaha

I'm looking forward to having a short break after the exams...........its been really tiring, after two years of army I jumped straight into University without any break or rest.........I think I'm going to relax and train up for the last two weeks of November.....rest and detoxify myself....do whatever recreational stuff I wanna do....and starting December, I'll either work part-time and start taking driving lessons...........after army....I just need to be on the go.......I can't burn 2 months at home enjoying life and reading comics and watching DVDs like I used to............I think my lifestyle habits have had some major changes since then.............I could afford to burn a week procrastinating back in my poly days.......now I think its better to maximize my time........make something out of it....Not like I'm getting any younger.....hahaha

Speaking of that.................after my BB exam on tuesday, I went with Felix to Bukit Panjang Plaza for some food and to chat a while.......and I met my old english teacher, Mrs Maddhu..................so damn nice to meet her again.....the last time I saw her was 7 years ago when I got my o'levels results.......I absolutely adore meeting old faces....y'know people you were on good terms with but haven't though about them much at all for many years......its always a pleasant surprise......

I know I'm infamous for mocking teachers......in fact its one of my major in U...ahahaha.....but I've never mocked this particular teacher, Mrs Maddhu..............she was an awesome teacher man.......patient,nice, soft-spoken and well-tempered.............you'see me and those secondary school friends that I was closest with....we were a bunch of slackers and kinda rogue-ish but we kinda had our own code of "Ethics and principles" as well..........hahaha....unbelievable but true.....the nicer and more patient the teacher is, the more we respect them and don't mock them......the fiercer they are, the more intolerant they are about our antics.....the more we'll hound them.......hahaha....my class drove 2 teachers mad in our 4 years there so when I mean hound...I REALLY mean hound...hahaha.....one went to IMH and never returned to class the other took a long leave of absense...like 2 mths...haha

Anyway I remember her getting pissed with the class only once, and it was a funny incident.......haha......she assigned us some homework or assignment that was difficult to do and If I remembered correctly....like 90% of us went to school without doing the English assignment so hwen Mrs Maddhu got to to class.....she told us without any hysterics that If We're not bothered to do our work then She would'nt be bothered to teached us....so with that she took her bag and stormed out of the classroom's front door.......BUT immediately after walking out of the class she came back in through the back door of the class..........so everyone was wondering what the hell was going on? Why did she walk out from the front door and walk in straight again from the backdoor?!...........hahaha.....turns out that when she stormed out, My Principal, old black boy Gopal Saminathan was doing his rounds around the school and walked passed the corridor so she was taken aback and went straight back in to the class.....hahaha.....EVERYBODY burst out laughing at her....hahaha........and then well she decided it was better to stay ...hahaha

Anyway it was great to see her again.............she looked exactly the same as 7 years ago....whenever my sec school friends and I meet, we always talk about her when we discuss about our old teachers......we don't go back on teacher's day anymore because my school is just so radically different now.....everything is so proper and all the students are meek as mice compared to the kind of havoc we wreaked.....hahaha......but she was very nice to us and we'll always remember that.......and treat her in kind..........well she said that she can't believe its been 7 years since we last met......and that its been a long time and I spent 10-15 minutes with her....updating her on how some of the guys are doing now.........where I'm studying now.....blah,blah...

She can't believe that my friend Sakthi, who was once this laidback,smart-mouth slacker who would tease and mock every teacher he could get his hands on would end up being a teacher himself now................how time flies and things change.......we had a good laugh about that.....and I wished her well and thanked her and told her it was a pleasure meeting her again after all this time......

Its strange how things have turned out isnce secondary school...........my entire concept of time between secondary 3-4 and now is just kind of a blur........it wasn't all that long ago to me in my mind......but goddamn, the facts says otherwise.........its been a solid 7 years........holy hell thats long......I don't even know whether I have changed much since then.........or Am I a completely different person now? I'm still full of crap and laid back but on the other hand I am much more responsible and disciplined now..........I don't have the kind of energy now though............when I look at some of my old friends, they kinda behave and talk the same but there's something different about all of us........our eyes, they look more tired and weary...........I don't see that same mischievous spark and wild abandon in any of us anymore....even the most playful and wilder ones have all been kind of tamed.......some of them are even married with kids.......hahaha....its mind-boggling.....

I remember going to Ngee Ann poly with Felix for lunch a few months ago........and there was this Singh guy sitting in front of us and I recognized him..........its was the little Singh Boy who lived behind my father's bicycle shop........we used to cycle and play together from 4 to 6pm everyday......I was primary 5 or 6 and I think he was in Primary 3.........that small kid with his two front teeth missing and his hair in a ball was now a 1.8m-ish tall full-grown Singh with a full turban a completely bearded face...........there's no mistake, I remembered his face......it was surreal man..........haha

At this age, its weird.........you're not too old neither are you that young.....you're kind of making the transition from teenager/young adult to a full fledged adult..........there's a bit of childish-ness mixed with cynicism and weariness..........all sort of existential questions are popping up.......you can no longer let your hair down as freely as you used too, there always some kind of weight or issue you're carrying around..............but on the other hand you realise all this is a necessary progression everybody goes through...........either adapt or die....either shape up or be left behind in life.......and you start wondering what can you do to succeed and stand out from the others....to prevent yourself from becoming some wage slave......chances are only 10% or less are those that really attain some level of notable achievement in life.....the rest are all the same.... just studying for the first 1/4 of their life, working for the next 1/2 and succumbing to the ravages of old age and disease in the last 1/4..........if that's all there is to it....then its all just kinda bizarre....hahaha...... wow.......really optimist and go-getter I am eh?hahaha

All the exams stress plus all these heavy contemplation is making me a certified grouch....hahaha....I've been watching seasons of seinfeld and comedies like Hitch, As Good as it gets, the Wedding Singer and About Schmidt to perk me up........haha......Hitch was quite touching and funny and As Good as it gets is one of the most well-written romance comedies ever......Jack Nicholson and Helent Hunt are awesome in it.......its about her this single mum/waitress makes a eccentric, sarcastic old grouch with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder want to be a better man in life....nice stuff.....

Well..........enough of the heavy stuff,......speaking of bizarre.......yesterday was bizarre, I went down to town to pick up my comics and I reached home around 7.30pm and then there was this old indian lady who called my house, demanded to know who call her, screamed at me and kupped my phone.....damn man.....it was insane and I did'nt even know that Bangla beeyotch..... this is a rough script of how the conversation went:

Unknown Indian woman:" Hello.....who called me??"

Me: "Hello who is this?"

Unknown Indian woman:" I want to know who called me, your house number is on my ID......who called me?"

Me:" I don't know who called you, I did'nt call you and there's nobody home now so I don't know who called you.....who're you?

Unknown Indian woman: Your number is on my ID.......where do you live, go ask your housekeeper and other family members.....somebody called me...tell me your parent's name....."

Me:" I'm not going to tell you anything.....there's nobody home now except me so I can't ask them anything....who're you?"

Unknown Indian woman : "I'm Nelly....I'm sure somebody called me from your phone ,its in my ID!!"

Me:" I don't know any Nelly, there's nobody here and I'm the only one so I don't see how anybody here could have called you."

Unknown Indian Woman: " THEN WHO CALLED ME....DID THE DEVIL PUT YOUR NUMBER IN MY ID???wWHAT IS YOUR NAME, GOT GET YOUR HOUSEKEEPER!"

Me:"...............maybe he did......I don't have any housekeeper and I'm not going to tell some unknown person ANYTHING."

Unknown Indian Woman: "OK DEN THE DEVIL PUT YOUR NUMBER ON MY ID LAR......YOU'RE SUPPOSED TO BE EDUCATED......YOU'RE A REAL RASCAL YOU!!!!

and she hung up on me.

OOOOOooooooooooooooo.....I'm a weal wascal.....I'm a weal wascally wabbit.........If She's Nelly then I'm Lil' Bow wow......Bow wow wow yippee yo yippee yay get off my phone BEEYOTCH!!!.........Nelly sia..... Well If your second name ain't Furtado...I don't know you and I don't wanna know you fool!!!! Nelly Nelly bo belly banana fanna fo Nelly, Fi far fo smelly,Nelly!!!!

Damn man.......crazy indian lady............I just hope she's not one of my mum's senior citizen friends that go for the same handi-craft course as her......hahaha.......otherwise its going to be awkward......haha....oh well maybe she forgot to take her medication....I recommend 2 tablets of cyanide a day after meals, drink lots of battery acid and two spoons of patented nitro-glycerine..........lucky I like indians and old people......otherwise I would have let fly the tamil expletives......"You pundak......cannot locate who called you ar??....den call woonberde-woonberde-woonberde and ask the police for directions you kunji munji para chee sunni!!!hahahaa

Well folks...........that's about it for this update...........exams are finishing next week.....den I get to rest for a while then its my birthday...........another year older......whoop-dee-freaking do.......hahaha.........well maybe it'll be fun.....haha......

The last and final time I was excited about my birthday was probably when my mum got me a Ice-age build it yourself T-Rex skeleton toy with miniature caveman plus an action figure of Krang, the pink brain from Teenage mutant Ninja Turtles.................I could'nt sleep a week before my birthday......hahaha......and when my parents bought me the Thundercats mini-race set with hand-controlled vehicles and tracks....I knew I was honor-bound to provide for them for the rest of their lives ....hahahaha....

Back then anything makes me happy....50 cents magic tricks like x-ray glasses, fake blood, fart gas capsules and dinosaurs that grow in water made me gleeful as a pig in mud....Now? You could invite me on stage with david blaine,david copperfield and the re-animated corpse of harry houdini and I'll be like " Ok....thats nice......tell you what why don't you just saw me in half and let's call it a day?"........hahha.....well alright enough crap......that's about it, Till next time then......

Clowning around

2007-10-13T04:59:00.000-07:00

Hi Folks.....I'm back for another update...this one is going to feature some of the more light-heareted and weird stuff I encountered on the web for the past few weeks .......I just finished studying 2 subjects out of the four so far and I'm a bit ahead of schedule today so I thought I just update this blog a bit......with some funny stuff links and videos I seen online.......haha

First, go check 0ut this website featuring every single funny-ass quote that has been uttered by Homer Simpson since the 1st season of the Simpsons and have a good laugh.....I swear some of the crap that comes out of his mouth are the most hilarious quotes I have ever read.........Homer Simpson is THE funniest fictional tv character EVER siar....bar none....hahaha...

Some randome quotes from there:

"Bart, with $10,000, we'd be millionaires! We could buy all kinds of useful things like...love!"
- Homer Simpson

"Don't eat me. I have a wife and kids. Eat them. "(to aliens who abducted Simpson family)
- Homer Simpson

"Don't let Krusty's death get you down, boy. People die all the time, just like that. Why, you could wake up dead tomorrow! Well, good night." - Homer Simpson

"That's it! You people have stood in my way long enough. I'm going to clown college!"
- Homer Simpson

"No, no, no, Lisa. If adults don't like their jobs, they don't go on strike. They just go in every day and do it really half-assed." - Homer Simpson

"You know Moe, my mom once said something that really stuck with me. She said, `Homer, you're a big disappointment', and God bless her soul, she was really onto something."
- Homer Simpson

Hilarious stuff...check out the rest of the thousands of quotes here:

http://www.allgreatquotes.com/simpsons_quotes_homer6.shtml

And next on our list of randomly funny but bizarre stuff........as far as plastic surgery is concerned,I'm sure everybody know that there's more plastic walking around in Hollywood then Mattel's toy factory in China.......well every wondered who are the 15 all-time worst celebrity plastic surgery cases? Wonder no more this site ranks them in order.......and I think nobody will be surprised who the number 1 most fugly post-plastic surgery celebrity is.....hahaha...Marvel at Janet Jackson's dented boobs, Donatella Versace's fright mask and Melanie Griffith's inhuman mug......haha...

http://www.topsocialite.com/the-15-worst-celebrity-plastic-surgery-disasters-you-will-ever-see/

wah lau......there's some freaky stuff in there.....hahha....all-celebrities,all-ugly, all-the-time.....the worst thing was that some of them were MUCH better-looking before they had all that surgery done to themselves....

Ok......for the next item I found......Let's just say its my favorite clip of the week.........we get to see the spoilt-brat whiny bimbo Paris Hilton gets her skinny ass absolutely owned by David letterman in front of an audience of thousands.....you can see Paris Hilton about to break into tears and in complete discomfort as David Letterman grills her about her Jail-term......and all of his audience are laughing their asses off at her on live tv.........If you can only watch one clip this Season, let this clip be the one!!

http://www.wwtdd.com/post.phtml?pk=2945

Hahaha...David Letterman is my top two comedic idols......him and Jerry Seinfeld.......I've been watching their stuff since I was in Primary school and I think I've unconsciously modelled alot of my approach to humor based on theirs.........I used to watch David Letterman's late night talk show when they aired in in Singapore on Central in the late 90's but then they took it off the air and replaced it with...........>Drum Roll Please>...........Tonight with Gurmit......D'OH!!!

My favorite bits in the clip:

Paris Hilton: "I really don't wanna talk about it anymore" (About her jail term)

David Letterman: "Well you see Paris......ahem......this is where you and I differ.......see....becos this is all I wanna talk about!!"
.
.
.
.
.
Member of the Audience:" I LOVE YOU PARIS!"

Paris Hilton: " I love you too!!"

David Letterman :" Somebody you met in prison?"

hahaha...and see what David Letterman does with her new perfume "Can-can" towards the end of the clip......pure comedy gold....hahaha

Alright now onto the main-item..........this one is a little closer to home.....it features Felix and his new sworn enemy in class...hahaha............well long story short, this particular girl is pretty sensitive and overprotective of her work.........she can't take any criticisms or even neutral comments about her work, gets super worked up and defensive everytime somebody corrects or edits herself even though the quality of the work is nowhere near satisfactory..........

So anyways Felix got into an argument with her and accidentally in the heat of argument,lets slip that he thinks she's stupid for skipping one of her tests so that she can attend her boyfirend's POP in tekong.........and then from then on.......things on bad to worse, the girl is unhappy with whatever Felix does or suggests and the girl is doing some interesting write-ups on the man himself on her blog....hahaha.....and at first Felix was some a "Plain mean and brainless" person and then recently she thinks that he's "thinks he's so great and expect everyone to kow-tow to him and that he's an MCP".............Insane siar....hahaha.....funny but insane....

But here's the kicker.....after she chastises Felix about getting off his high horse and being bossy.......we kinda found out that a couple of weeks ago, she herself got up her high horse and in her blog, she criticizes this 19 year old pregnent girl for having a child at such a young age, makes all kinds of criticisms on the girl and her choices, mentions that the husband must be some drug dealer or something and then posts a link to the 19 yr old girl's blog............what follows is HILARIOUS.......the 19 year old girl somehow finds out abt her posts, goes to felix's foe's blog and flames and floods the hell out of her in her tag board and then writes her own rebuttal in her blog with dozens of hokkien expletives and other vulgarities.......hahhaa......who needs Reality TV when this kind of shit happens in real life?!...

Anyway here's the link to the 19 year old mom's blog, her comments are not for the faint of heart...........hahaha....but she was kinda provoked into it..........whatever it is, no matter who loses.....the audience wins!!....hahaha....check it out but don't tag there...LOL......scroll down to the entry dated September 11th and break out the pop corn:

http://candybliss-islove.blogspot.com/2007_09_01_archive.html

Hahhaha.......yeah....cool stuff.......anyway.... I'm hunting down this movie called "Chopper"...........its Eric Bana's (Troy and Hulk) first major dramatic role and from the reviews I've read and the various snippets I seen..........his performance in that flick is nothing short of phenomenal........it's based on the life of Australia's most popular writer who just so happens to be a convicted murderer who has killed 9 men so far, has been out of jail for 13 mths in the past 18 years and went on to release his biograpghy to become a national celerbity there......

Check out the actual person's profile at wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Brandon_Read

Check out Eric Bana's film version of him in the Chopper wikipedia entry:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xeXy8BnhhxQ

The trailer for the film ( Don't worry Huiling and wenjun.....no gory or violent stuff..haha):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xeXy8BnhhxQ

AND watch a clip from the film that totally convinces you that Eric Bana can go bat-shit insane when he wants to:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eSftS2XK_bM

For some special features check out the real "Chopper" verbally relating a funny anecdote to Eric Bana about how he told his friend to cut off his ears so he could escape the Division H part of Prison (No violence):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ggh7HMIZF0&mode=related&search=

This is the movie slogan taken from the guy himself:

" To the human filth I've bashed, belted, iron-barred, axed, shot, stabbed, knee capped, set on fire and driven to their graves....I regret NOTHING."

HARDCORE man......haha....pirates of the carribean and Spider-man and flicks like that are nice, entertaining stuff but the really excellent films are the ones when the actor submerges himself so deeply in the role and transforms himself that he absolutely convinces you he is THAT character........its fascinating stuff to watch.....

Of course if I do watch this film.........I won't be surprised if I watch some aninmated cartoons or comedies after that to clear the palette.............hahahha.........its always good to broaden your tastes to have more diversity in your film choice.....cos it I watch nothing but serious art films you'll go mad and if you watch nothing but comedies....I'll also go mad....hahaha....

Well that's the end of my post.....hope everyone had fun with the links..........hoho....two more subjects to go...........I'm halfway there so far and not slacking off yet......one more project to hand in on monday........hahaha......and I BET something funny is going to come out of that...........I'm gonna go "Chopper' on some of my project mates' asses soon if I have to edit the whole project again.....yeah.....here's my new slogan:

"To all the project mates I've bashed, belted, iron-barred,axed, shot,stabbed,knee-capped,set on fire and driven to their graves (In my drawings and sketches).......I regret NOTHING."

Hahaha.....I just need to put on 20 kg and grow a handle-bar mustache and get an Aussie accent and my transformation is complete.............O-kai enough wif the fecking tok'ing I got meself an arseload of studying ere' to do and can't jolly well be arsed to write nut'ing more..............G'day Mates....Have a good one......

On a murderous Rampage...

2007-09-21T08:18:00.001-07:00

My Major Projects are FINALLY completed.........so I got time for a quick update....just handed up a Big- Ass Distribution Channel project today........8200 words, over 60 pages of report, pictures, statistical figures.........I spent three weeks including weekends slowly working on this project......

I can safely say that I wrote a good 75% of the 8200 words and Felix did the other 25% while our other two group mates did'nt do shit or have a single line of work in the report that they could call their own.........and then I had to edit the whole damn project from 7pm last night to 6.45 am this morning...............scrolling through 60 pages gave me an bloody headache......went to bed around 7.00 am when the sun was up and My dad was going off to work....woke up 3 hours later at 10 am to hand in the project..........man am I beat......

This is not the first time I have to edit projects until the morning.......the last project I did for MR, I edited and rewrote stuff till 7.30 am.........the project before that I edited till 8.30 am in the morning ............I was unofficial editor of all those projects, completely rewriting other people's parts after I handed mine on time becuase of the pure shittiness of their stuff........nor is this the first time I've worked with unprofessional dead beats........don't wanna work, can't take criticism, give shitty work, don't want to stay for project meetings, wanna go home early, don't want to work on weekends, want to spend time with boyfriends, don't want to make corrections to their parts.....the list goes on.....

Me and Felix were joined with 3 groups for the different projects.....a total of 8 people from those 3 groups.............and only one produced work that was of a semi-decent standard........the rest are incorrigible by human standards........hahaha

Oh well..........when faced project stress and with all this fools.....its good to keep a good, twisted sense of humor about things.........so instead of internalizing my stress.........I decide to express it by doodling.........some rough bizarre, weird-ass doodles to amuse myself.....hahha.....I drew the one below in like 14-20 mins for fun after I had just completed my MR project with 3 she-devils.....hahaha....

It's a rough drawing that gives an idea of how my normal project meetings usually goes.......haha.......it's titled :" My Project Meetings so Far".....haha

The far-away look and the nodding and smirks when facing them during group meetings?? Chances are I'm imagining myself as some crazed savage barbarian taking a axe to their heads.....hahhahha....while they're blabbing away...and doing my best impersonation of Mr Burns from the Simpsons.....hahaha

Somehow I think I've been reading one too many Conan the barbarian comics....hahaha.....after I watched the Lord of the Rings extended trilogy on DVD.....and enjoyed the work of the conceptual designers.....I've been getting more and more into Fantasy art and have been studying the work of the all-time greats of Fantasy artists like Frank Frazetta and Barry windsor-smith......both who redefined the popularity of Conan the barbarian.....and I think their influence is rubbing off on me.....hahaha

Here's a close up of the My insane blood rage.........watch the head fly....Weeeeeeee( Ben 2002).....haha....I gotta say adding all the trails of blood with a red marker was better then therapy..........hahaha...who says art isn't relaxing??

Rather then send me for some psychiatric sessions....My Mum was kinda amused by this drawing......hahha....she saw me doodling this picture and when I showed it to her, she said: "Are your project mates that bad?!"............when I gave a resounding :'YES!!' ...She started laughing........

.
Well the drawing was a nice fun outlet for stress release I guess ......hahah.....the projects have left me with zero time to draw and I've been itching to start drawing.............so this doodle killed two birds with one stone..............it let me have some fun sketching and helped me let off some steam without having to do time in changi prison..........hahha

Alright that's about the end of this update...I thought it'll be fun to share my internal thought processes during project group meetings nowadays.....hahahah......another short post from me again? Wat are the chances aye?haha........hope I have time to post my ORD reflections soon..........till next time folks..........

ORD LOH!!!!

2007-09-09T08:11:00.000-07:00

Today is the 9th of September............after 2 long years.....24 mths of wearing the green......of training, duty, sweat and blood and tears......Its finally Over.

ORD LOH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I can't believe that its been exactly 2 years since the day I set foot on Pulau Tekong for my first day of BMT.........3 months of BMT, 3 1/2 Months of Field defence course to be a Regimental Policeman, 6 Months of Duty as an RP at Paya lebar, 4 1/2 mths of Duty as an RP at Tengah Airbase and 7 mths working at the Pass office......and I finally finished serving my National sentence.

I've been so swamped with tests and projects that it did'nt really register how soon I was going to be finishing my NS...its was only on monday this week that I realized that I was going to swap my base pass for my Pink IC in a few days time.

Since I orded today,which was a sunday......I was allowed to collect my IC two days before on friday......Finally held my IC for the first time in years since I traded it for my 11B on the first day of BMT........I honestly dunno how I feel........feels weird..........and My official status on the back of my 11B has been officially changed from active NSF......to NS man.......Guess my physical fitness can only go downhill from here...hahaha....Pot Bellies,love handles and a bucket Load of kids...Here I come!!!!haha

Well........I just posted to commemorate this day.......its a long time coming......I'm SO glad that I stuck through all the tough times without quitting or resorting to taking the easy way out like some of the NS mates I know........makes this day seems all the more sweeter. Good things come to those who wait.

I'm so swamped with projects and my upcoming test that i really don't have time for a Long, Big ass post......so needless to say I'll write up a big,long-ass post reflecting on my 2 years in NS when I have the time......soon....hahha....

Is this my shortest post ever or wat huh?!?hahahahahha...lucky you....

Alright I'm off for now.........Congratulations to my other army mates as well.......we made it folks.

Knick Knacks

2007-08-10T10:21:00.000-07:00

Okay.....I've returned once again for yet another post.............nice,short and sweet update on what I've been up to now that I'm studying full-time and pretty much altogether out of camp........Last post was a thick,artsy fartsy kinda post so this post is going to be a lighter,breezier post........Yeah this time I'm going to break down how I compose a blog post from start to finish.....from writing it in pencil,to inking the pencilled words and then tranferring it onto blogger.com.........hahahahaha........Just kidding.........

Anyways a Couple of weeks back...........I managed to catch The Simpsons Movie with Wenjun and Huiling and then we met up with Gerald for dinner after that......Felix did'nt go because at that point of time he was in Kota Tinggi on some outdoor trip, partnered with some fat,black indian chick called Pushpa(was anyone really expecting Felix to have been assigned to a nice,normal pretty chick??...based on past experiences.....I DUN think so..hahha)........

Damn man......... The Simpsons movie was a really,really funny flick.........it did'nt feel like a normal 30 mins episode strecthed on for 1 and 1/2 hrs...........they managed to fill the movie with all kinds of crazy throwaway gags,jokes, and celebrity paraodies(Tom Hanks and Arnold Schwarzenneger) for the entire duration of the movie.........that's amazing considering for a cartoon like the simpsons, they have to have some sorta joke or gag with a frequency of every 30-40 seconds or so to retain the viewer's audience.........cos if any episode goes on for 5 minutes without a single gag, chances are people are'nt even going to be bothered watching the entire show............it was pretty damn funny, I pretty much laughed consistently through the entire movie..................stuff like Nelson's mum laughing exactly like nelson, Green Day's parody of the Titanic movie, Moe getting robbed blind when the electricity is off, Homer' trying to pass himself off as a general in a hotel bell boy outfit,"Spider-Pig" and pretty much all the homer-related scenes are pure comedy gold!!!haha........They even had a touching moment of Marge taping her message over their wedding video to show her disappointment in Homer.........I 'll rate the movie 4.5/5 Duff beers.....hahaha

After the movie we met up with Gerald at Cafe Cartel at PS for dinner.......had a good long chit chat session, primarily about a certain someone ,"She who's name must not be mentioned" (Hint: It ain't Veldermort!!).......haha........recently I stumbled onto some information concerning that old acquaintance that dropped the missing piece of a puzzle right on my lap, crystallizing(Goh Siow Meng, 2003) certain events that took place years ago.........hahaha...usually I hate gossiping....but Damn those girls dragged me into it.....their enthusiasm was infectious....haha........also once again during the course of the meal, Gerald did her famous sonny Phua hands and Rolling Eyes combo..........hahhaha.....dammit that girl takes eye-rolling to new heights, eye-rolling is transformed into a freaking art form in her hands....hahhaa.....she can roll here eyes so far back that Xia shun, the blind guy from the "Heavenly Sword and Dragon Sabre" tvb drama can take some lessons from her........haha

The week after I managed to catch Die Hard 0.4 with my sec school buddy, Sakthi...........probably one of my oldest friends that I'm still in regular contact with........imagine me covered in black paint and that's basically him.....hahaha........laidback,sarcastic,wear only sandles and bermudas, same taste in movies, same taste in women (Chinese.........Indian girls ain't really my bag baby!!).........anyways met up with him for the first time in quite a few mths, I noticed something was wrong with him since there was a distinct lack of insults........so we started to catch up with each other and he told me something major had happened to him......and we talked late into the night........he asked about what I thought and I gave him my frank opinion.......no flowery,sugar coating and false empathy that would have reeked of Patronization on my part......

He asked me whether Should we think with our hearts or think with our heads because sometimes emotions can totally overwhelm logic.........it got me thinking....and I told him that that's a dilema everybody faces, the best would be to have an optimum balance between logic and emotion, but how many people can achieve the right balance in their lifetime?.........

When you think with your head, many times that involves detaching yourself from your personal feelings and you can seem heartless or cold or indifferent by being objective..........but when you think with your heart....many times you do stuff that you know is not very logical, stuff that will be at your own expense and at the end of the day.......you put yourself out there and 9 out of 10 times......and you'll probably be at the losing end.......when you invest youself emotionally you can get hurt......when you don't invest anything...you don't get hurt......so its kinda a dilema....

When you lose a loved one? Do you think with your heart and spent years reminiscing about the person and holding onto old memories with an iron grip? Or Do you think with your head and move on?.........when a friend becomes a toxic influence or a liability....do you think with your head and do the logical thing and cut the person loose or think with your heart and try not to write him/her off in hopes that something may improve..........I honestly don't know.....there's really no right and wrong.......no black and white.....everything is just... in shades of grey.

He says that both of us tend to skew towards thinking with the heart instead of head.........that that's not good........sometimes its best to ruled by your logic and remain detached......safer this way,protects yourself from being hurt.....I don't know.........I told him that I did'nt have any definite answers and that we'll probably be grappling with achieving an optimum balance of both for the forseeable future..........so just go with the flow......

Well anyway......after our long talk about both current events and our old school days.......he told me about the direction he was going to take.....I told him that that's probably the same thing I would do in his position and that for the past 10 years, I've known him to be an absolutley rational person, one of the more intellectually "well put-together" individual in our clique and that I have no doubts that he'll make the right choices............which I'm sure he will.

As for my review of Die Hard 4.........well it was ok I think.....I wasn't really concentrating after he dropped that bombshell before we entered the theatre.......I think I rate it 3/5 because of Maggie Q alone...haha

As for this week............I caught Rush Hour 3 with Huiling and Felix and had dinner with 2 of them plus Gerald and Wenjun at Plaza Singapura. Gerald could'nt go for the movie cos she had her trip to malaysia in the early morning and originally wenjun was supposed to join us and she even bought a ticket but because she got got this really bad headache after dinner( exarcerbated by the lack of tinely delivery of her sashimi..hahah), she could'nt join us............even after we dolled her up like a Japanese Kamikaze pilot with the cool fever plaster on her head......but I think she would have enjoyed the movie.....oh well she can always watch it when I get it on Dvd....hahhaa.....

Rush Hour 3 was light on plot but kinda entertaining.......the same old jokes are re-used albeit with some touch-ups, the "falling-out" plot trick was used again and Chris Tucker's "Black dude" jokes are starting to wear thin and Jackie Chan's stunts were tame this time around but it was not that bad...........I loved the opening sequence with chris Tucker dancing and directing traffic and him forcing the American-hating French cab driver under gun point to sing the US national Anthem was the highlight of the movie..........the bloopers were the funniest part of the movie though.......hahah.....I rate it 3/5......

Anyway other then relaxing and watching flicks like rush hour 3...........I got projects galore and a MR test on 21st August.......and in the middle of this was Mum's Birthday.........my dad and her decided to spend her birthday in JB this year.......so I had to make arrangements for my projects before I could leave for JB in peace on the 7th and 8th......

I completed my OB inidividual essay 9 days before the dead line on the 13th........and reworked the draft and refined it all the way till the morning of 7th August............and for the other project, my group mates were still NOT very keen on picking a subject topic for our MR project even though we had less then a week to the due date.........we were scheduled to have a meeting on the 8th of Aaugust, but since I was going to Malaysia......I did not want to leave without completing some parts of the project.......its just not right to dump the work toothers and leave....but if they did'nt pick a topic by the 6th, I could'nt get started on anything.........

so I said screw it! and I just picked the topic that me and felix want and I told felix to meet me at Mcdonald's at Bukit Pnajang Plaza........and since the girls did'nt want to start on nothing, the both of us brainstormed different parts of the project till 11.30 pm that night before I left...........at the end of it we filled up every segment of the project that we could possibly fill-up on our own like the intro,objectives,budget,sampling plan....and I went back and typed everything in Microsoft word and sent it to Felix and told him to bring it to the project discussion on the 8th........so even though I can't be there, I left them with a solid base from which to start the project and they even had something tangible to show Jonas Lee and consult with him that day itself............if the both of us had'nt started work on the project they would'nt have shit to show Jonas much less consult him......Those Flat Chest BBBBB****tches!!!Hahahha.......

Anway the 2 day JB trip was good for me.............spend some quality time away from Singapore and Projects and Army...........had a nice time with my mum and dad, ate intercontinental breakfasts everyday, had a relaxing time soaking in the bath tub every night, shopping for clothes, reading my 1000 page Marlon Brando biography on long car rides and I even visited every single Pirated DVD shop in Holiday Inn...hahaha......

Anyway the 8th was my Mum's 52nd Birthday and we had a nice time........had breakfast at the Hotel together, then I went to change a faulty Dvd I bought......haha.......then we went to one of the new Shopping centres in JB to shop, had sushi, tea eggs and toast for lunch washed down by a bottle of yoghurt drink and then we went Pelangi shopping centre to buy some donuts for my aunty and hunt for more DVDS (Naturally!!)...........and after that we went back to the hotel for dinner at one of their chinese restaurants.........the food was good and my mum and dad had some wine, anyway My mum got some light rash after drinking the wine (Note....I keep Typing "Wine" as "Whine" in this freaking sentence....dammit!!!) and we went back to the hotel room to cut the cake...here are some pictures we took......

The Birthday girl Herself........My Mum!! (The no. of candles is misleading though)

My Parents cutting the cake..........They look so happy!! (Editor's Note: This was before I told them I had bought 16 DVDs)

Me and My Mum...............Happy 52nd Birthday!!!

A group shot of the three of us.........My brother could'nt make it for the trip so the Lamp's standing in for him.....haha

Blowing out the candle together.......

Another group shot and I think this is the closest I ever got to smiling!!! Buy Lottery Today Mum!!!

Ok.....one last picture.....This is me multi-tasking....winking and Smiling at the same time!!! a rarer sight you'll never find!!!

My Mum says that I look more "Jolly" in these pics...........Of course I look happy.........not only did I have a grand time snickering at words like Bisikal (bicyle), Farmasi( Pharmacy),etc.......I wonder who's the country's fav american rapper.....50 sen(50 cents)?!??!Haahhaa......AND I was practically dancing in aisles upon aisles of DVDs further then the eye can see........my very eyes became wide,silvery discs of pure delight........... I even managed to buy obscure stuff like Last Tango in Paris (1972) by Marlon Brando and Reservoir dogs by Quetin Tranatino....Films I have been dying to watch and never thought I could find........but guess what...I did!!!!...hoho.......I gotta say nothing brightens up my day then lying on my sofa,drink in hand, watching a good DVD( Preferably Pirated of course...DUH!!!!)...hahahha

PLUS!!!...............I got less then one month to my ORD date!!!!!!!! Goodness Gracious me!!..........no more duty,no more turn outs and no more of "my rifle and my buddy and me-ee-ee".......It's finally come........and I still can't wrap my head around it..............you know that last pic? That's me winking at my juniors in camp.......Enjoy Your time in HELL privates...I've served my sentence !!!!Hahahaa.........now I only got 10 more years of re-service to serve.....Hhahaha......ha..ha......h.....hmmmm......well I guess you win some and you lose some.....haha

Alrighty then................That's it for this post Folks.....Next post: ORD TIME!!!!!

Let's get Artsy Fartsy......

2007-07-21T08:46:00.000-07:00

"In my opinion, Comic art is the most proliferating form of printed communication today. It is the new literacy." - Will Eisner ( Creator of the Spirit ~1917-2005~)

Yup....I'm back with a brand-spanking new post as I promised........and as You can see I'm already brushing up on my referencing skills for my upcoming school projects......hahaha.....this is a completely art-related post........quite a few people have been curious as to how I do what I do......and I've posted some examples of Finished artwork on my blog......but usually I can't be bothered with detailing the entire long ,ardous process of getting a drawing done but now that I got some spare time in my hands...so I thought why the hell not? So for the very first time I'll breaking down the different steps in the creative process of completing a piece of artwork in substantial detail.....giving all you folks an intimate tour inside my head......and trust me my head is not a nice place to be.....remember to take a shower after you're done reading this post....hahhaha

Let me start off doing what I'm best at and giving you a brief(Yeah right...BWAHAHA!!) history of how I first dabbled with drawing....and what is it I'm best at you ask? Why being Long winded of course!!!!Ha!.....

I started drawing around the time I was in Kindergarten......and I did like drawing a whole lot but did'nt feel I was particularly gifted in drawing or anything...I was pretty much as sucky in art as any kid I knew.......and usually I drew out of pure boredom....my mum would be fixing dinner after She picked me from school and since she was busy...so I had to kill some time cos I could'nt irritate her........hahhaha......and I remember my mum enrolled me for art classes but I dropped out after my very FIRST lesson!!.......holy H Christ!! I think I set a new record for the fastest art class drop-out in 1988...haha....

After that time.....it all gets kinda blurry......Ihough I do distinctively remember that my chinese textbooks and PETS workbook were filled with drawings of Mighty Max,Galactus and the Silver Surfer from the front page to the back cover of the book...

Flashforward to 1995, My dad and my uncle set up a bike shop and everyday I would be at school till noon and then take a 10 mins bus to railmall and stay till around 10-11pm everyday......for weekends I would be there for 12 solid hours 10am to 10pm.........and since my parents were busy as hell.......my mum would give me a stack of A4 sized paper and just leave me to draw or watch TV..........and this was the period that I REALLY started to take drawing seriously........I would draw for hours and hours....with whatever tools I had...markers,highlighters,ball-point pens,pencils...whatever........and I would fill these A4 paper to the brim with crazy doodles and random stuff.

Problem was....I sucked. I sucked BIG TIME!! and I knew it..........I was folding A4 paper in half to make my own mini-comics, drawing the comics in pencils and color pencils and even at age 11........even then I was practical enough to know that I was no damn good.....because I was reading quite a few comics at that point ........and My art sure as hell did'nt look anything like what I've been reading!! My comics were drawn in ballpoint pen (!) and color pencils(!!) and those Pilot High-Techpoint V5 pens(!!!) that would bleed like hell on the paper when you applied too much pressure........

So One day I just decided I wasn'y any good and stopped drawing cold turkey......my parents said my stuff was great but PUH-LEASE....I knew better...hahha.....I was serious about wanting to get really really good at drawing and around age 14 and I decided then That I would self-teach myself human anatomy, sequential storytelling,pacing,inking and basically just learn the tools of the trade by heart.........so its either I improve dramatically or I do everybody a favor and refrain myself from polluting the local art scene with my shoddy drawings........ahhaha.....see if you think I'm harsh to fat girls and banglas.....I can promise that I'm 3 times as harsh to myself when drawing is involved..........hahha...

So for the next few years, I drew very little but I researched and studied a lot............I wanted to learn from the very best....from the masters of the comicbook medium itself.......so I would read up on these thick books on comics history from the 1930's till the present and I would select artists that I really liked from each era.....the cream of the crop.....artists who changed the medium,who were innovators, who pushed the envelope............and I would hunt down reprints of their work and just immerse myself in them,trying my best to learn from their work......from the Golden Age(1938 to 1955) I would religiously study the work of Will Eisner(Creator of the Spirit), Jack Kirby (Co-creator of the whole Marvel Universe) and Dick Sprang (Batman), from the Silver Age(1956- 1970-ish) Neal adams(Batman), Steve Ditko( co-creator of Spider-man), Wally Wood (Tales from the crypt), Alex Toth( Zorro) and from the Bronze Age (1970's to 1990's) I studied the work of John Byrne(X-men and Fantastic Four), Walter Simonson(The Mighty Thor), Frank Miller( Daredevil), the Kubert Brothers(Hulk and Kazaar), Darwyn Cooke(New Frontier) and Bruce Timm( The Batman animated series).....blah,blah

So long story short, within the next 2-3 years........I pored through whatever comics,interviews or artwork by these artists and soak up as much as I could,mixing and matching the elements I like and trying to apply it to my own work..........It was this time that I taught myself foreshortening,perspective,layouts,storytelling,panel arrangement, spotting blacks,anatomy, cross-hatching,lettering and etc.....by 1999, I had the basic foundations and knowledge I required......and this was probably my most productive period ever.........I did 4 short 8-10 page stories and 1 extended story (30 pages or so) and 3 dozen pin-ups within the span of the 1999-2001............

Iit was a real baptism by fire man....learning and solving artistic problems as I worked.......I was young and on fire.......churning out work on a regular basis...problem was I was still using pilot G-tech pens and High-tech V5 pens that really muddied up my art.....I realized that I still did'nt know shit about inking properly.....

Around year one of Poly, I decided It was time to work on another major project.....So I did this Batman story sat in the future and this time I wanted to use the RIGHT tools.......I wanted my work to look as professional as humanly possible.....sharp,clean and delicate lines....no muddy,blunt lines........it was during this period that I switched to the Micron 0.05 Nip pen which produces a line that still remains THE sharpest and thinnest line I have seen...and I have been using the same tools from 2001 till now.....

Anyway to make sure everyone isn't falling asleep by now..haha....let's have some visual examples.....to give you an example of the fundamental differences between my inking back in 1999 and the kind of inking I do now.......

HERE'S WHERE I GET TECHNICAL!!!Quick...Drink some coffee!!

The 1st drawing is the original drawing I did in 1999 and the 2nd drawing is the new one I did two weeks ago.......I drew the second drawing completely based on my first drawing in pencil and inked it in the style I employ now......it may not be that noticeable but here are some of the differences.....

1)Concrete( circa 1999)

-The entire drawing was inked by Markers

- Notice the lines on the body, they are inked with the same marker and therefore there are no variations in line thickness and weight which makes everything looks flat

- The lines of the cracks and crevices do not go from thick to thin,they're are of only one thickness

-The edges of all the lines are blunt at the end/edge

-The eyeball is the worst part of the entire piece and is extremely poorly inked

2.) Concrete (circa 2007)

-The entire drawing outline of the character was inked by a combination of markers(thin and thick) and the 0.05 Micron pens for detailing

-The outline of the face was inked with a thicker marker to help it look distinctive when contrasted with the thin lines of the body...

-Every Single line and crack on the body has varying line thickness, so the lines gradually goes from thick in the middle to thin at the edge.....giving variations in line thickness and weight,therefore providing some "texture" and added craggy-ness to Concrete's body....instead of the flat marker lines used in the first drawing that added no depth to the lines.

-The edge of each and every line on concrete has been sharpened to a razor's edge......rather than the blunt lines evidenced in the first drawing...

-The Eye has been corrected and the inking and placement of eye reflections looks much better in this drawing

- An added background of splattered white paint has been added, a visual technique that I wasn't yet capable of employing back in 1999....

So the above is just a small look back and illustration in terms of the kind of advances that have been made in terms of basic fundamentals and some of the old mistakes that were committted in past work........but now onto THE MAIN ITEM:

I'm finally clearing my off and ORD leave in army and what better way for me to commemorate my new found freedom then to start drawing again?And what better character to draw then my all-time favorite character, the very central theme of my blog...........Gotham City's very own Knight in Blood-caked armor.....Batman.

This drawing will be drawn in an entirely different style from my usual stuff. .After going through the work of so many artist, I realized the one that I'm head over heels with is Frank Miller's work..........I personally prefer drawing in Black and white (B&W) and to me Frank Miller's "Chiaroscuro" style in Sin City Makes FULL use of the B&w Format............because most of the time Black and white art just looks like art that is uncolored....... Frank Miller's art completely POPS in B&W and adding color will only dilute and muddy its effect.....that to me is the epitome of Good B&W art.....when the drawing stands completely on its own and any coloring is a distraction rather then enhancement....

>I have set some guidelines for myself. This piece is supposed to be as close to the"Chiaroscuro" style of drawing featured in Sin City as I can make it. The drawing will be consistent with My take on Batman in that he's virtually a creature of the shadows, an almost mythic creature who is extension of the darkness, draped in the shadows......white,cold,inhuman eyes......I want the whole page to drip with black ink.....so the drawing will be unapologetically dark and gritty.

Anyway enough ranting,here now is a detailed,step by step breakdown of how I plan and produce a piece of artwork from start to finish..........and if I'm successful the final drawing should look like a page taken right out of Frank Miller's work in Sin City.

1.) Research and development:

Pictured here is a stack of comics I read for >ahem<....R&D purposes....hahhaha....The most important thing when planning to revamp your current art style or understand the innerworkings of your favorite artists is to do extensive research. I've been studying Frank Miller's Sin City comics since around 2000..........so in preparation of this piece, I read through every single Sin City story he's done and tried to absorb as much as I could visually, I also read through interview books that Frank miller has been involved in.......interviews from 1970 to 2001 and sometimes in these interviews Frank miller may elaborate on the kind of tools he uses or his working style employed or the different flourishes he puts in his work and basically I combined this information with whatever elements I pick up through my own personal observation of his comics to form my own theories on the how his creative process works......

2.) Tools of the Trade:

Ok here's a check list of the tools I use from right to left:

-Eraser

-Mechanical pencil (For stuctural drawing)

-HB pencil (For shading purposes)

-micron 0.05 pens (Detailing,inking)

-Red and Black Marker (For rough sketching and preliminary drawings)

-Uniflo Permanent marker( For inking the large areas of black)

-Pain brush,Toothbrush and white paint( For the various special effects applied to the drawing)

3.) Preliminary Concept Sketches

Usually either you have a clear image of the picture you want to draw in your head or you can just doodle various poses or concepts on a piece of paper until you stumble on something you like. This are just warmy-up practices for me have some fun and to pin down the pose I want for my final drawing so the drawings are very rough and unfinished........anatomy need not be correct at this stage......and anyway as you can see, I sketched out 3 different poses and I'm settling for the rough pose on the right of the paper.......and with the pose in mind, we can move on to the next stage.

4.) Finalized Marker sketch:

For this stage I do a tighter,more detailed marker sketch of the final drawing I intend to do. Whatever important details is more or less worked out at this stage of drawing. I draw it using black and red markers because underneath any drawing,minus the armor or the costume and whatever....the figure needs to be proportionate and anatomically correct so it is always a good idea to draw a "naked" anatomically correct body before adding any details to it therefore the underlying basic figure is drawn in black and then I add his cloak and cape and gloves in red..........so that I know how the body works and the red allows me to know how the figure will look like with clothes,gloves and etc on him without obscuring the main figure.......

This marker sketch gives a damn good indication of the direction the final drawing will take and already I can identify some of the things that needs to be corrected for the final drawing like the placement of the figure(Too high and not centralized), his right arm (not properly foreshortened)and thigh(too fat and anatomically incorrect)............

5.) Structural Preliminary Pencils

With the marker sketch as a guide, I begin work on the actual piece itself. The basic figure,the placement and anatomical problems are ALL worked out at this stage.......any mistakes is corrected at this stage.......the problems with the thigh and arm have been corrected in this stage...also I marked out the areas that are supposed to be in black with these little infinity symbols(Shorthand for indicating areas to be inked) but don't shade any of the areas yet. Usually I can ink the drawings at this stage but for the benefit of you folks....I'll add another stage which is the tigthening up the Final pencils next.

I prefer my pencils to be looser and less detailed when I ink my own art because if my pencil art is too complete and every detail is worked out then inking is going to be boring and basically you just trace the image with little to add. But if my pencils are looser ....then I can have alot of fun and more spontaneity when I'm inking....adding different flourishes and additional details in the inking stage.Think about it..........when you are inking your own work why pencil so tightly and add so much details at this stage....everything is going to be covered in ink anyway!You take the fun out of inking......its best that you ONLY pencil tightly and super detailed when someone else is inking your work,so since everything is already worked out by you in the pencilling stage it helps minimizes of the inker misintrepretating your work and screwing up the final look of your work ....

6) Final tightened Pencils:

This is the final,tightened pencils and I will ink Directly over this pencilled drawing. As you can see, the difference with this stage and the previous one is that most of the areas that are supposed to be black have already been shaded with the HB pencil and all the different lines have been tightened and finalized in anticipation of the inking.

An Important note I like to make is that I regard Pencils as a structural tool/ a stylus......and I regard ink as the actual drawing medium. What do I mean? Pencils are used to provide the basic structure and foundations of EVERY drawing, however pencils can be rubbed off and changed.......while inking is final and so only when pencils are inked can the drawing be finalised. Without inking......pencils just provide an unfinished foundation and not a completed work of art.

Case In point; This Drawing above Completely does not work at all while in Pencil form. Look at it, in this current form, the drawing is a muddy mess and the main figure itself does not stand out at all.......in this pencil form...this drawing has zero impact......the magic behind it is that this drawing will only work when it is finally inked, when I start laying the inks in the next few stages you will see how this picture slowly comes together.........however looking at this finalised pencils, I am already mentally inking it and have a pretty good idea of how the final piece will look like in my head....so far I'm happy with it....

7.) Initial Inks

This is the stage where I ink the entire figure itself,the background lightning and the other more intricate lines and details with the 0.05 micron pen. I do not fill in the Large areas of black in the picture yet because that is done with a thick uniflo marker . I added the lightning in the background because firstly it serves as a homage of Frank Miller's cover to Dark Knight Returns#1 and secondly because it serves as a dramatic element in the picture that helps pop the main character out(rather then placing him in a complete black background) and it also serves as an explanation for the dramatic lighting of the main figure( I want it to seem that Batman is completely submerged in the shadows and this bolt of lightning behind him illuminates him just for a brief instant in the most drmatic fashion possible)

8.) Intermission( Resting and Reflecting)

Ok now at this stage all that remains is to fill in the large chunks of black and see the drawing take its final form. I detach myself from this drawing and return to it in a few hours because when you're in the middle of drawing,and you're in the heat of things.......you might not be able to spot some of your mistakes if you were to complete the drawing in one entire go. However by resting and reflecting for a while......you return to the drawing with fresh eyes and can spot certain mistakes you were'nt able to when you were in the midst of drawing....

The paper is of course weighted down by my Brand-spanking new King Leonidas helmet paper weight that comes included with every deluxe,boxed version of the 300 DVD!! GET YOURS NOW!!!

9.) Laying in the blacks

Yup those are my dainty fingers inking in all the areas marked with the infinity symbol with my uniflo markers...hahha...I ALWAYS start inking the face/head first and if i screw it up,I abandon the drawing completely because it'll be deemed unsalvageable....I generally use the 0.05 micron pens for inking the fine details and the markers are used to fill in areas that require large chunks of black.....after inking with the marker,I go back and sharpen everything up with 0.05 micron pen........the paper underneath my hand(overlapping the drawing) is to prevent my hand from smudging the pencils as my hand moves across the page....

10.) Work in progress

As you can see here, the drawing is partially inked and you can actually start to see how the picture is gradually coming together. This "chiaroscuro" style is a super stylized and high-contrast sort of drawing and the positive areas(white spaces) is completely defined by the negative areas( black spaces) and black merges with black and white merges with white.....i bet my Frank Miller collection that y'all dunno what the hell am I talking aboutat all...hahaha...simple:

Take a look at the part where the lightning makes contact with the figure. When I was drawing in pencil, I drew the figure first and then the lightning in the background afterwards but if you notice, when I ink it....there is no line seperating the white areas......the lighting is completely merged with the rim-light of the figure(lighted silhoutte).... whenever two white areas meet....They're merged as one in the inking process....no lines to seperate them

Another example....Look at the head of the figure. when I was drawing, I drew the head as I normally would but when inking it....I erase all the pencil lines and let the shape of the head be defined by the black areas instead. I'm speaking kryptonian?hahha... well look at the lines of the cape..........they all converge on the head and they're all cut off by a circular area of white and extend no further......so as you can see the area where the black lines stop short actually forms the outline of the head and therefore the entire white area of the head is defined by the black area...and the white areas of the cape is merged into the white area of the head without lines to seperate them...this creates the pure black and white/high contrast look I wanted to achieve....

My father took some pictures of me while I was knee-deep at working on the drawing........and NO. I don't usually draw in such poor lighting. My Father wanted to light and photograph me in a more dramatic fashion...hahaha

Another shot of me at the drawing table with my scowl intact......hahaha....one important thing, I hate to draw with my spectacles on......the proximity of the page is close enough so I prefer drawing without any visual enhancement.....

11.) The ALMOST final drawing

So there you have it........The Drawing is completely inked and you can see how much more effective it looks fully inked as compared to the fully pencilled version. The Lighning and the figure finally makes sense once all areas of blacks have been filled in. BUT WAIT......the inking is done but the drawing isn't finished yet....one Final step.

12.) The White paint 'Splatter' test

I'm going to be applying some minor "special effects" with white paint to the picture to finish it off and I gotta say that white paint is an unpredictable medium. When you're flinging white paint on a drawing with a brush or toothbrush....You never know where the specks of paint are going to land on and how the final look is going to be like....but what you can do, is try your best to control the chaostic nature of the white paint.

Therefore it is best that you do a small practice piece first to warm up yourself .Diluting the brush with water before flinging the paint and using a dry brush to fling the paint produces different results.........what we're after its "Controlled Chaos"...where although you do not know how the final piece will look like.....you try to minimize the risk of things going wrong by doing trial tests.
.

As you can see above, different paint splatter effects can be achieved with varying speeds of flicking your thumb over the tooth brush.The bottom two panels are something different......the bottom left panel is done by coating a brush with paint and just flinging it downward as fast as you can and the bottom right panel is a practical application of white paint effects on a test drawing... I never understood why artists drew blood instead of spraying some paint on the paper which will produce the most realistic spurts of blood that no hand can recreate....paint and blood are both liquid....a spray of paint on paper achieves the same basic look as spraying blood on paper...

Yet another shot of me finishing up and correcting some other flaws I overlooked before I let the white paint fly. The drawing is basically covered with 4 other sheets of paper and only the area I want to spray the white paint on remains exposed.

AAAAAND I'm DONE.This is me (in normal lighting) finally putting down my pen with the completed drawing on the table........with what is possibly as humanly close to a smirk as I can muster...hahaha

13.) The Final drawing

This is the FINAL completed drawing. As you can see I added a fine spray of white paint at the bottom right of the drawing just underneath his boots. Why??? What the hell does it add to the overall look?!
.

Everything happens for a reason... Comic art is a static medium. Unlike film So we can only convey movement to the readers using certain stylistic tricks like blowing bits of paper or leaves to indicate wind being present for example. The spray of white paint is precisely located underneath the boots to indicate movement......look at the drawing: by adding the white paint the figure looks like he leapt out of a rain-swept pavement and into the sky instead of it just being a static figure in the sky.......AND the direction in which the lightning strikes is NO accident....the bolt of lighning strikes from the left to the bottom right,precisely where the splatter of white paint is...to enhance the explosive nature of the spray of white paint.
.

So There you have it:

THE DARK KNIGHT OF GOTHAM!

>whew< .....so that's it Folks........I told you it was going to be a comprehensive,step by step look into my personal creative process.........hahaha....Overall I'm quite happy with the final piece......could be better of course but it does more or less capture the kind of approach that I wanted to achieve...so I'm satisfied.........

Alright I'm off to watch my new ,super-cool-kick-yo-momma-ass-blue and black jive-turkey ! boxed set of the extended Lord of The Rings trilogy............I'm the kind of guy who can never get enough of Special features BUT shit! the sheer comprehensiveness of this 12 disc DVD set is exhausting thes hit out of me.....there are times I pray that peter Jackson could just stop featuring every tom,Dick and harry who worked on the film in the behind the scenes featurettes.........hahaha.....I mean...spemding 10 mins on the guy who glues the hair on frodo's feet?!??! WTH!!!...... what's next ?The guy who handpaints the liver spots on Gandalf's ass???ahhahaha

Anyway Ta-Ta folks.............STAY TUNED GENTLE READERS FOR THE NEXT PULSE-POUNDING,SENSE-SHATTERING CHAPTER!!!!

~To Be Continued~

School Daze....

2007-07-14T06:35:00.000-07:00

~And thus today.....So Endeth the first two weeks of university for me.......~

Yup.......today is the last day for my first 2 weeks of studies at SIM.........6 days of lectures a week for the past 2 weeks.....plus doing duty back in base after lessons..........its been a long-ass week and man am I beat....hahaha....but its over....Fer now that is......

The First 2 weeks of lessons has been a surreal experience for me.....I don't know if it's because I'm still in my army mode or what but it feels weird to be rushing for classes,listening to lectures and taking down notes,buying textbooks,checking my timetables and seeing so many girls in one place............just being in a lecture theatre again.....it feels familliar yet foreign...man...my head is still trying hard to process coming back to school......hahaha.....

I think part of my confusion is due to the fact that most of the days,after lessons I gotta report back to base for duty from mid afternoon till about 9-10pm........because when I'm at school I have to switch to student mode,then 2 hrs later....I'm dressed in full uniform and completely in army mode.......so switching from one mode to another just screws with my head.........Am I student or am I a soldier now? Somewhere in between?!.......a schooling soldier? A combat ready student?!.............haha...I sometimes I am in the school's LT with my full uniform folded in my bag and sometimes I'm in my camp with a bag full of school notes.....haha....I feel like freaking Clark kent or something....mild mannered student by day, field defence trooper by night!!....hahhaa

The first day of school was a real killer though........dunno what the hell I ate but I think I kanna food poisoning........so at 2.00am on the first day of school, I was like curled in a foetal position on the floor of my toilet after puking my guts out and feverish.....yup.....as always Starting the Term with BANG!!!hahhaa......Dammit......felt like shit on the first day of school.......headache, loud growling tummy,fever....the whole freaking package!!!.........and ater school?! why....Its 6 more hours of Duty Time!!wow......hip-hip-frickin' Hooray.....hahaha......

I think the whole fever/vomiting thing lasted for 4 days........on the second day,my fever was down but I had a vomiting relapse and puked all the way from the bus stop to my camp ....on my third day, against my better judgement.......haha....I went out with Wenjun and Huiling for the whole day........and I had a fever relapse during the evening........man when they were looking at shoes and cosmetics....I was just staring off somewhere and my head felt like a 10 kg sandbag........by the time they were looking at DVDs and Fridges, I was looking at my whole life flashing past me...hahah.... lasted all the way till I got back home when I promptly crashed in bed and slept..........and the 4th day, the puking was mild and the fever was gone...........man......I went from like 64 kg to 59 kgs now........hahaa....why exercise when you can shat those unwanted pounds?!hahaha.....I felt like the possessed little girl from The Exorcist...projectile vomiting and projectile pooping at the same time......Now THAT'S Multi-tasking !!hahaha

And guess who's the Familliar Face that's my one companion for my studies at SIM??!?! Who Pray tell?....why it's none other then my old mocking partner and the nightmare of Japanese School Girls all over God's green Earth....FELIX!!!!hahaha......after a 2 year hiatus....once again we've reunited and joined forces against all that is fat,buck-toothed and sharpie-browed.......hahahaa............man somethings just never change I tell you......right on the first day we were back on form,firing at all cylinders and mocking everything in our way......ahhaa...everytime there was anything even remotely funny,Felix would turn and look at me and give me that face....hahhaa

Felix being Felix of course Gravitated to the fattest guy in the module.....for the first 3 days, he wasn't looking at any girls instead he was always keeping an eye on what the fat guy was doing , walking near to the fat boy and telling me that he wants to go approach the fat boy and be friends.......and I told him that the only reason he wants to befriend the Fat guy is so he can mock him over and over again behind his back....ahahha.....while seeming like a nice,sincere, friendly school mate who just has a penchance for gravitating towards befriending overweight folks......hahaha...

Felix is back doing what he does best.....errr....embarassing himself repeatedly?!hahahah......within the first 5 days, he was on stage doing a presentation and telling the most groan-inducing jokes EVER.....ahhaha......he was presenting a question of how to promote a new cigarette made of cocoa and citrus....and Felix was on stage yammering about how he wanted to promote the cigarette by bundling it with Mcdonald Happy meals so that when Kids open the box....they get a nice Nicotine surprise.......dammit....hahaha

Oh and today? guess wat folks.....He FARTED in lecture.haahaha..........a girl from our project group was sitted with us and Felix was right in the middle of 3 of us.....and halfway through the lecture....I heard double farting sounds breaking the tranquility of the LT......damn...not one but TWINS!!!hahaha....the girl could'nt believe her ears and kinda turned to felix with an expression of disbelief..........and I looked and felix and said "What the hell was that dude?"......and Felix turns over to me with the most innocent eyes he could muster,with the most sincere look he had and pursed his lips and started making Farting sounds.....and replied"Hmm....Nothing....I'm just making some weird noises"...and he continued making fart noises.........but since I KNOW every freaking trick in Felix's book.....I saw right through his painfully obvious ruse....hahaha

I did'nt want to embarass him in front of the girl so during lunch I looked at Felix and said:"Dude.....You Freaking FARTED in the LT just now did'nt you?"....hahahaa....and Felix looks at me,laughs and said.."No dude... I swear I did'nt....did you smell anything?...no right....I was just making noises lar dude...I swear sia!!.........hahaha...so I replied:"Aye please lar dude..........i know you for how long sia....you freaking farted and then pretended conceal the truth by trying to make farting noises to pretend like those noises actaully came from your mouth and not your fricking' ass!!hahaha...Admit it fool!!"..................hahahah...Felix of course burst out laughing and said:"Dude...I think you know every trick in my book sia....wah lau...aye Please don't tell the girls about it man!!!"...........hahaha.....So I told him how can I let him live this down......He knows I don't keep anything from Wenjun and Huiling....hahaha...Of Course i'll tell them!! DUH!!!....ahhaha......sorry dude.....but the truth will set you free!!!hahahah.......but if the truth smells like your farts then Jack Nicholson was right:"I CAN'T HANDLE THE TRUTH!!!"......Hahaha

Hahhaha.......its a wonder how easy we both slip into our old roles and old habits so quickly,........when I was given a piece of foolscap.....the very first thing I did was to doodle on it just like I did back in my poly days..........and when we see odd-looking people or whatever fat girls ,the mocking will just start flying...fast and furious....I remember that on saturday, after lessons.....me and Felix went to town...............and we were passing Takashimaya when we saw that this big Cos Play event was going on and there were LOADS of Over weight Inuyashas,Card captor Sakuras and sailor moons just walking around the exterior of Takashimaya..........hahha....Man It was Early Christmas for us!!!haha.....we were like kids in the candy store......who to mock first?!?! So many to mock so little time!!..........back in SIM,we only mocked people here and there......but now this was an entire sea of weirdos concentrated in one area....parading around for our benefit.....hahhahaa......so me and Felix got some Old Chang kee Curry puffs, propped our selves on one of the seats.........and just mocked a whole afternoon away....hahahhaa.......aaaaaaaaahhhhh......reliving the good ol' days.....hahaha

But I REALLY gotta say..........that both Felix and me are MUCH more serious about our studies this time around when compared to our poly days.........ya know....mocking people is only our way of killing time and just a form of relaxation but I think we're both pretty serious as far as work and school is concerned.........I can see quite a big chnage in Felix's overall attitude.......back in Poly he's either snacking,making fun of the lecturer or doing his own crazy versions of pop songs dedicated to Siew Yong.........but now he's always taking down notes,highlighting stuff,never skips lectures.....heck he was even early for lectures for the first 3 days of class(BUT OF COURSE.....It did'nt last...hahha).......and he even went to the SIM library to borrow Books on Organizational Behavior to read up on......HAHAHAHA.....I felt like i just walked into the twilight zone or something!!.............as For me, I'm glad to say that I've not skipped a single day of lecture despite being really tired and having to go back to cap regularly, I've NEVER been late for class for the past two weeks and I'm taking an ASSLOAD of notes down in every lecture........(back in Poly days,i only copied notes when ABSOLUTELY necessary...otherwise they're mostly blank except for sketches of Batman that is...hahaha).......and I've got a very short attention span but I find myself really working as hard as I can to concentrate on the lectures instead of just wandering off...........I'm really trying my best to not stray off in my own thoughts like I always did in poly.....

I think Army has indeed made us more serious about a lot of things in life, after being goose stepped on by all those high ranking officers in charge of you..........telling you what to do,controlling your every step,forcing you to do everything according to their specifications............it all just kinda cultivates a dislike for Authority figures in you, you just wanna work hard when you get out of army to ensure that you get good grades,get a good job and take charge of your own destiny......to ensure that in the future instead of having people step all over you and order your around for the next 20 years...........you'll be the one in charge, the one running things and making your own decisions.......all I know that I freaking' want that Degree with Distinction Reeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaaaal Bad!!!hahahhaa...

Studywise, a lot of the stuff that the lecturers are teaching I already know, so I pretty much walk out of all the lectures knowing what is going on instead of scratching me head...........although after 2 years, I really got this nagging worry that I won't be able to perform up to snuff...............I mean its been a long time since I studied,2 whole years of brain dead duties...........I dunno whether I can memorise the assload of notes that I used to, I don't know whether My project skills have gone to shit by now or if I can put together a cohesive essay for my individual essay...........this is just kind of nagging at me.....what if after 2 years, I just can't perform as well as I did........I was thinking the other day that instead of waiting for the day where I go for a test and can't regurgitate everything word for word...haha....I better start going through the lecture notes gradually day by day, so if today lecture is on chapter 12,after school I'm going to spend 2 hrs maybe going through the notes again and trying to commit it to memory..............hahhahaha....if I really do bother reading up on the notes ta home,every day after lecture.....My God.......I'll be a changed man!!!hahaha.....it'll be like a new milestone in my road to Personal enlightenment.....hahhaa...I've never been so hardworking.....EVER.....hahaha

.
I also had the chance to see many old faces in the first 2 weeks,most of them from my old marketing cohort....it's really a small world.......I saw Cai Hong and Adeline my old TB31 classmates,JianNing,Gavin, Eve and Gloria from TB03, Kat and one of my old secondary school friend Kai Qi and my BMT platoon seargent are in the same Marketing course as me.....man what a coincidence........hahaha....well in any case I had a nice chat with all the old faces I met and it was nice seeing them again........I was telling Gloria that It did'nt seem that long the last time I saw her during Graduation....then I realized Graduation was 2 years ago.........damn....time flies.....but it's always delightful to meet some old faces again........

As for meeting new people, well me and Felix already manage to source out two different groups that we can join for different subjects............so in the coming weeks ahead...should be knowing these folks a little better...........although Felix and I are still mourning the loss of 3 extremely pretty potential project group mates...after Felix TURNED them down when they approached us to join them.........hahaha....Thanks Dude!! the highlight of my day is reminding him that its the biggest mistke of his life...everytime they walk past us......and seeing him clutch his head in shame!!!hhaaha.........but oh well,no point crying over spilled milk,the lack of pretty group mates will ensure that i'll be more hardworking because instead of looking at my current group mates...I Think I'll rather look at my lap top screen.....hahaha.....yup....can you see that I'm trying to console myself?!hahaa.....

Felix tells me that when they asked us about joining them,he could'nt believe himself and was speechless when he was looking at the girls and anyway he said some mumbo jumbo about how his subconscious mind was telling him that there was no way he could get such pretty project mates and so he just decided to reject their offer.....WHA-HUH?!......thanks dude....hahaha

As for me..........man its the first 2 weeks of school, so as usual I'm about as sociable as a menstruating Bear.......ahhahaha....I just hate the whole breaking the Ice process man......I'm getting too old for it.....having people ask you the same old basic questions again and again and again and having to introduce yourself once again repeatedly and trying my best not to roll my eyes and not being able to make any sarcastic jokes because the new people will not be able to handle it just yet........hahaha...plus after being a Regimental Policeman who's bread and butter is to put the fear of God into hundreds of base personnel......my socializing skills are even worse.......hahaha.....sometimes instead of giving a friendly "Hey...Let's be friends" face...I flash my "Do Not F*CK with me in my base" face instead....hahahah....but still Its going to fine later on....I just prefer to observe and draw my own conclusions rather then shoot my mouth off when I first meet people....a trait somebody I KNOW could learn from....bwahhaha....

But seriously I told Felix that we need to compliment each other......he needs to tell me to snap out of it whenever I'm not being too responsive and I need to tell him to tone it down whenever he's about to make a flaming ass of himself.....in other words.....I need to hype myslef up and he needs to tone himself down......hahha..........ah well, it always takes a long time to develop some chemistry and synergy between school mates..........yeah....it takes about 5 years of beating,screaming,scolding,demanding,online death threats and hand bag bludgeoning to develop a super high level of synergy and chemistry where everything runs as smooth as clock work.....hahhaha.....right Wenjun?!?hahaha.....

Oh well...........the first two weeks are over and my Juniors have finally completed their job training...........so come next week I officially start clearing my leave and off....No More Duty For EVER!!!!hahaha...........I have to go for my m-16 firing range/combat shoot on the 16th and 17th of July though..............sian man....well at least....me and my platoon mates get to go on one last big event together in our original group before we ORD.....the last time we did our range was 1 1/1 year ago when we were still trainees...hahha....and this time since we're no longer the newbies,I think the range will be a fun experience for the old gang......have to skip lectures on this two days though for this compulsory event.....hahah.....but after 17th...I get a 6 day break until 23rd July...............Man I'm going to really ENJOY myself and rest for these 6 days. REALLY looking forward to taking a break and having some time to myself.....

Alright that's about it for this post.............I already planned my next post which I will be posting Very,Very soon............to celebrate my new found freedom and return to the drawing board, I'm going to Draw an all-new picture of Batman in the Black and white Chiaroscuro "Sin City"style that I've spent months trying to master through constant research and I'm going to post pictures detailing the process it takes to complete the drawing............from the preliminary pencil layouts to the finalised marker roughs, white paint splatter experiments, the loose pencils,the final pencils, the partially inked version and the final inked version........also I'll post a comparision of two of what is essentially the same drawings ...one I did in 1999 and one I just completed today and show you the evolution of my inking and drawing style.....and I'll take pics of the drawing in the different stages while I'm working on it and break down my whole drawing process for you............Its going to be good....an intimate look at the creative process..........REVEALED for the first time EVER....hahha....it'll show everybody that it takes a HELLUVA lot of planning and hard work before a final art piece is finished and drawings don't just flow out of my pen fully formed......STAY TUNED True believers!!.......hahaha

Well Lemme end this post with what I think is PURE Genius for a marketing strategy....as part of FOX's promotion for the upcoming Simpson's movie, they're signed a deal with 7-11 that will allow 7-11 to change various of their outlets in US into Apu's Kwik-E mart.........selling Donuts,Duff Beer,Krusty-O's and stuff we only get to see in the cartoon!!amazing stuff that will give the hardcore Simpsons fans multiple geek-gasms.....D'OH!!...ahhaha....Enjoy.......

http://flickr.com/photos/rdr07/sets/72157600590001691/

Ok Folks..........I'll be signing off now.........stay tuned for my upcoming Post!!I promise It's gonna be a good one........haha.... alright Adios mi hombres!!

2007-07-02T09:17:00.000-07:00

Well Folks….its been quite some time since my last post and lots of big-ass changes are coming my way so its Update time!!! General feedback seems to indicate that my last post was my shortest post since…EVER…hahhaha…..well Please allow me to correct that oversight with this post…..hahaha….

Like I said the wind of change is blowing right now……my new batch of juniors have graduated from their course and completed their two weeks On The Job(OJT) training at my RP headquarters side……and actually My OC promised Pass office that the new batch of personnel picked to go pass office would come to Pass office for their OJT straight after graduation and did not have to go through the two weeks OJT at the HQ side first…….but once again my OC went back on his word and said that their performance was so poor that he wanted them to stay for one week before coming to Pass office for their two weeks OJT……but WAIT……that Mole-ridden ass changed his mind again and said that he wanted them to finish the two weeks there before coming to pass office for another two weeks….(1 ENTIRE MONTH!!!)….well my OC not keeping his word..….. WOW…Ain’t that a surprise ?! hahaha…

So anyway because of the delay…..All my RP friends can start clearing their leave on 26Th June because the newbies have finished training at their side….but I can only clear my leave and off days on mid of July instead of 1st July as originally worked out by my superiors…..and my school starts on 2nd July…….which means….instead of attending classes peacefully….for the first two weeks of school(where I have classes 6 days a week) I would have to attend classes in the morning and then rush to camp for duty and go home late at night and go for class in the morning and report to work after that…so on so forth…..for two weeks…..hahah…But whatever……The end is nigh…..

When Bad shit happens to me in camp……I’m not surprised….I’m really not….I’ve learnt that Whatever that can Possibly go wrong WILL most probably go wrong in my camp….I’m not being cynical but when bad shit happens to me….I always kinda expect it to….and I’m really genuinely surprised if things go according to plan for me as far as my NS is concerned……Case in point:

Less then a month or so ago, just as I paid all my School fees and accepted my place in SIM….3 days before the day that my school fees would be non-refundable in the event of pulling out of course…My CO announced that a new SAF directive is being passed that states we would not longer be able to clear our leave and off days in order to study……..which means we can clear our off and leave as planned….and sit on our asses and watch tv and shake our legs all day long BUT we can’t do anything productive like work or study and if we study during this period we would be hunted down, charged and sent to the detention barracks and would thus no longer be eligible for any University at all upon finishing our term in military prison……

A Mad scramble ensued of course….those who already confirmed their places were stuck…….BUT those who attended NUS,NTU,SMU have the option of Disrupting the last few mths of their National service and go for their studies? Those in SIM like me……well they said that SIM was not recognized as a local university and we don’t even have the option of disrupting or national service even if we wanted to…………so I had the best of both worlds…..I couldn’t clear my off days and leave for the purpose of studying and I couldn’t even disrupt my NS to study like those in the other Unis can……..and I already paid up and was days away from having all my fees forfeited……I had 3 days to pull some kind of plan outta my ass to get my money back since my Co broke their news so late………My mum said that I lead a Cursed NS life when I told her the news…….I’ll be hard pressed to disagree….hahaha.

So within that 3 days……I ran all over the place….I approached SIM about switching to the January BMGT course in case my CO wouldn’t back down from his stand and allow me to continue to study in July…..I had to call the department heads, draft an e-mail pleading my case and give them a solid reason for pulling out of course and transferring to another…..I told her I will try to work it out and give her a final answer soon and she said that by Wednesday I HAD to e-mail her an official letter seeking full refund of fees, the reason and the course I wanted to transfer to and it has to reach her by 7.30 pm on Wednesday otherwise my fees would be forfeit under their rules….

I also went to my S1 (in charge of manpower issues and leave)day after day to ask her plead my case to the SAF manpower branch, talk to my CO about the matter because I was very near the deadline …..my S1 promised that I would get an answer ON the final day where I could still get my money back which was wednesday…..since I had work on wed itself….I drafted a letter on Tuesday night before I booked in to tell the Lady in charge of the Marketing course that It was really with great regret that I have to pull out due to circumstances beyond my control and would like to seek a full refund and thanked them for their kind understanding on the matter and patience……and told my dad that since I was in camp and could not send the e-mail myself, I will tell him whether my S1 convinced my CO to allow me to go ahead and study and if he did not……I needed my dad to help me e-mail my letter using my e-mail acc to SIM immediately so that it would reach them during office hours……

On that day I had to ask my S1 to set up a meeting with my big boss about this matter because I was literally going to lose $6000 if I didn’t get an immediate answer……..so she told me my CO was on a holiday now (Of all times!!) and that she would schedule a meeting with my S3 who was a Major and second in command and a MUCH nicer guy…..I went to see him and told him about what is going on and apparently my incessant bugging of my S1 had resulted in her pleading my case to my CO and she actually convinced my CO to allow me to go for my studies……and he passed down that instruction to my S3……..so my S3 told me that my CO is not os Cold-blooded as to see me forfeit my fees since I didn’t have the option of disrupting my NS……and that they would allow me to study on “Grounds of compassion”……but to never forget who we really belong to……we’re SAF property….they have us on a short leash…we have to Pick SAF over School if the situation arises…we would be charged for any failure to do so….YADDA,YADDA,YADDA………BUT bottom line….I could study on my leave and off days!!!.......when I called my parents ….they damn were relieved that I finally got a concrete answer…..so was I….

I forgot what week that was…..I think the same week Huiling, Wenjun and Gerald were supposed to get their results…..but I really ran myself ragged that week…….had to spend all my rest time in camp running around and pleading with the right people, compose e-mails when I was back home, calling dozens of people in SIM up, skipped meals cos I was running around or just did’nt plain have the appetite………….by the end of the week I lost like 4 kg…from 65 kg to 61kg now and worse of all………on the Sunday that week….My mum found a single strand of WHITE HAIR on my head…..man…my hair is Black as hell and very thick and dense and I’ve never had any white hair before…..my mum said that it was because I was probably stressed out for the whole week…..Hhahaha……but PHEW…..I was so glad it was over……..(see this post is already longer then my last post and only after my first Rant!!hahaha)

So anyway the new guys just arrived this Wednesday after my OC’s constant delays and now I’m training them to take over us so that we old birds can F.O from P.O…….hahahha….but this bunch has got to be one of the sorriest bunch of Ne’er Do wells I have ever seen……but in my time, only the best were given the opportunity to work in Pass office but now? They are whatever rejects my OC choose to throw our way…..These 9 guys were told to write a composition about themselves and hand it up so the Sergeants could gain a better understanding of them……anyway my shift SGT told me to read their compos and have a good laugh….and have a good laugh I did……hahahah

Man…..this was one bizarre batch….not a single Poly graduate in the entire group, most are from ITE or are poly dropouts and some of them are truly bizarre………there’s this guy who was a skin-head gang member and has a police record after being jailed for a couple of days for doing some stupid stuff, there was this guy who said he had a picture perfect family except for the fact that his brother was a Jehovah witness and had to be jailed in DB because of his religion, that was this guy whose first line in his compo was:” I’m 22 yrs old this year, I live with my parents and my sister. She is 24 yrs old and is a butch……which means she doesn’t like guys”……Err…DUH!!!!.....and there was this guy who said his life was “all about skate board and sex”…and goes on to say that he first started having sex when he was 18yrs old and has done it over and over and over again with dozens of different partners before falling in love…….and how older women are the best sex partners and blah,blah……..man I was telling me colleague that based on this guy’s compo he seems to have had more sex then the entire pass office combined including my staff sergeant ….who’s married with 2 kids!.....hahaha…..so I was anxious to see who was this amazing sexual God king that women threw themselves at……did he look like a cross between Brad Pitt and Louis Koo??.........well I saw him…..turns out that he was this small ,half-thai, dark skinned chubby guy who’s smaller sized then me……….man….I could’nt believe it………I wanted to walk up to him and ask him “How come ur getting so much action? You look like crap man…..err…What’s ur secret?” hahhaha…….

Bizarre man……….oh well……two more weeks and then I retire………one phase of my life is almost done…….one more phase is beginning…such is life…..the one thing I really want to do when I finally ORD?
I want to have a LONG good sleep…….I want to take a nap in the afternoon and not wake up feeling that I lost so much precious time…..I want to be able to watch TV regularly again and follow some tv series, day after day……..but really I just one to get a Good, long solid day of rest………

I haven’t had a decent night’s rest whenever I’m in camp, due maybe being a little mentally affected and paranoid after the constant turn-outs and countless days working the grave yard shifts…….I sleep like a baby at home literally the moment I lay down on my bed…but in camp? I’m a super light sleeper…I can only sleep up to 3 hrs at a time……and I keep waking up throughout the night due to being ultra sensitive to disturbances after all the training…..So that’s what I want….A good solid day of rest….I don’t want to wake up every morning knowing full well that I’m not fully rested…I don’t like the fact that scientifically an average person needs 6-7 hrs of sleep but my body can make do with 4hrs and proceed to do 12 hrs of continuous duty……its very unhealthy……….when normal people are awake, I am sleeping….when normal people are sleeping…I am awake doing duty……….two more weeks and I’ll rest peacefully without feeling guilty that I’m squandering the little time I have out of camp….cos I’ll have all the time in the world…

I also wanna just slow down my pace significantly…….after joining NS…I’ve had to learn to maximize my time and multi-task by necessity ….so any day that I’m out of camp….I will be back home, trying to get myself ready to go out again, watch parts of a dvd and surf the web all at once…….and once I’m out of the house…I’ll be meeting my friends for movies, meals, chat sessions or speed-walking from one side of town to the other then to bugis, city hall and maybe Marina and sometimes all in the same day……..and if I reach home earlier…I’ll go for a 1 hr jog, try to have dinner with my folks and thereafter I’ll be back packing my stuff, watching some tv (jumping from channel to channel mostly) and surfing the net concurrently and before I sleep…..I’ll be doing a couple hundred crunches wile watching a DVD in my room….try to read some comics maybe and I should be in bed by 2 am and ready to wake up at 5.30 am for duty the next day………….When I ORD…..I wanna burn one entire day just sleeping at home and watching TV….why??…. cos I CAN afford to that’s why!!! Hahaha…..No longer need to be dangling from puppet strings and getting manipulated by some outside source……. Hahhaa…..that day is soon….

Well enough army talk………when I’m out of camp….nothing gives me more satisfaction then watching a movie with the company friends or even enjoying a excellent new DVD at home……….and since this season is chockfull of big summer films, three-quels and new DVD releases….here’s a short review of all the big summer films I watched for the past few mths…………..

1.) Spider-man 3 – I’m a big comic fan but that also means I’m a whole lot more critical then your average movie Go-er……..Spider-man 3 is probably the worst of the trilogy man…….the first two were really good comic book films and even my parents enjoyed them a whole load when I watched the films with my parents prior to the opening of the 3rd film….but the third one ain’t that good man……..the CGI stuff is top-notch but the love dovey aspects of the film were really draggy, Mary Jane’s screaming and damsel in distress act is getting DAMN old and having 3 villains was overkill and neither got enough screen time as a result,( Venom looked cool but was the worse villain of the lot(He’s a 1 dimensional cypher and doesn’t have the necessary motivation brought on by personal tragedies like Dr Octopus, Green Goblin and even Sandman)………the worst scene? When The evil Peter Parker started dancing in the jazz club with the use of his spider-powers….I though I was watching Jim Carrey’s The Mask instead…..2.5/5

2.) Pirates of the Carribean 3 – You know why sequels make big bucks? Because of good will generated by the first film……..in subsequent films, the audience is already emotionally invested in the characters after the first film, they love the characters and want to find out what happens to them next………During the opening scene of POTC 3… I remember thinking………man I practically like the whole cast except Orlando Bloom…..Jack Sparrow is great, Davey Jones is a good villain…I even like Mr. Gibbs, the Dumb guy with the talking parrot, the midget pirate, the Two dumbbells(one with a wooden eye) even the monkey…….but when I continue watching the film, whatever goodwill I had seem to slowly disappear………..the film is draggy and convoluted, everybody seems to be double-crossing everybody else multiple times, the CGI was really overkill and Jack Sparrow’s novelty as a character seems to be wearing thin………and Orlando Blooms ends up looking like he walked right out of the cover of a Danielle steel romance novel………..Dammit…..2.5/5

3.)Shrek 3 – Things took an upswing after I watched Shrek 3………it wasn’t as funny or original as the 1st one or second one and a lot of the tried and tested gags are recycled but it’s a hell lot of a better then Pirates of the Carribean 3 and Spider-man 3…….the animation is good, the characters are cute and there’s enough funny bits to carry the movie and it doesn’t seem to take itself as seriously as the other big blockbusters which is a good thing……..Its nice albeit forgettable… light-hearted fun…..3.5/5

4.) Ocean’s 13 – This movie is GOOD……at last…..the final chapter of a trilogy that is actually quite solid……expectations for this film were definetly lower then those big movies like POTC 3 and Spider-man but it’s so much better…..it’s a nice, entertaining, caper movie…..I was especially excited that Al Pacino was going to be the big bad guy in this movie….and he was quite cool……I love seeing this same gang of likable rogues back in Las Vegas doing what they do best…..robbing some asshole blind and having fun…..hahaha….and the fact this time they’re pulling this heist as payback for one of their friends makes you root for them even more……all the gags are funny and the dialogue is sharp and the film looks great…….Best three-quel of the summer in my opinion….not as good as Ocean’s 11 but better then Ocean’s 12…..4/5

5.) Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer – I detested the first movie…….but surprisingly I kinda enjoyed this film……this film is designed to appeal to kids,the plot is thin and the villains are as 1 dimensional as all hell….but as long as you turn of your brain and don’t think about how great a Fantastic Four movie could be with a better director and cast……..it kind of works……The Sequences with the Silver Surfer is good, he was wonderfully translated to screen and looked damn good…..but you don’t actually feel that the Fantastic four just emerged from the greatest fight of their lives at the end of the movie after going up against a God….cos silver surfer’s big boss, the planet devourer, Galactus looked more like a Cosmic Fart that was swirling above Earth’s atmosphere…haha…..its a fun enough movie though……..3/5

In addition to all these movies…..I also managed to catch an assload of other movies on DVD or vcd during my free time …..Here’s the movies I caught in no particular order: Something’s Gotta Give, Ocean’s 11,Ocean’s 12, Sea of Love, Frankie and Johnny, Free Money, Wag the Dog, The Awakenings, City by the sea, 15 minutes, The Last king of Scotland, Rocky Balboa, Letter to Iwo Jima, Blade Runner , Dick Tracy, Dog day afternoon, Carlito’s way, Primal Fear, Protégé, Simone, The insider, Insomnia, China Town, Robocop 2,Troublesome Nights IV……….now that the HMV is having their big sale….I foresee me getting my grubby mitts on many more movies……….hahaha…..Mine, mine, mine…..ALL MINE!!!

I’ve also been reading more books nowadays, in an attempt to diversify my reading habits and branch away from just reading Comics alone….in the past few weeks I’ve finished reading Marlon Brando’s Biography, Robert Deniro’s Biography, Al Pacino’s Biography, Stephen King’s Dark Tower volume 1:The Gun slinger, Stephen King’s The Shining, Giles Forbes’s Last King of Scotlang and I’m now reading Dashiel Hammet’s (the Originator of Hardboiled detective pulp fiction)The Maltese Falcon…….all good stuff…..

I’m also thinking about re-arranging and classifying my Trade paperbacks….instead of dividing them into 3 categories; Marvel Comics, Dc Comics and alternative Comics……..I’m going to divide them into 4 categories……Marvel, DC,alternative and Frank Miller….hahaha….That’s right!!!! I have so many Frank Miller books that starting next month, Frank Miller is going to get his very own category……..I have the complete run of Sin City, all his Batman stuff, His entire body of work on Daredevil, and various tpbs of his other works like 300, Ronin, Hardboiled, Martha Washington, Bad Boy, Robocop and various other are Frank Miller oddities and interview books that I’ve managed to uncover over the years………..hell I trawl the aisles of Kinokuniya’s graphic novel section trying to find works of Frank Miller that I haven’t read or missed out previously…….and sadly I don’t think there is any….hahaha……imagine if my future kids or nephew and nieces start becoming big fans of Frank Miller works and one day the old fart version of me tells them: ”I have something for you”……..”Issit the keys to a Ferrari??”……..”NO! Better!!!! Its a whole box full of Yellowing Frank Miller comics that encapsulates his entire body of work for the past 25 years!!!”…….I can already imagine them lining their bird cages with my treasured comics…..hahaha

But on to other things…….. Talking with a very old friend of mine the other day and going with My parents to my old neighborhood in Jurong West for dinner…… helped raised some very interesting questions for me…like Just how much of a person’s likes and dislikes, attitude and basic core principles from their childhood remain intact decades later when they’ve reached adulthood??……..I realized that my very likes and dislikes , attitude, personality traits and principles remained pretty much unchanged up for the past 2 decades.………..

The moment me and my parents went to our old neighborhood for dinner….I immediately gravitated towards ordering from the same old stores I ate from nearly 13 years ago when I first moved from Jurong west to Bukit Panjang…..I bought the same popiah from the same stall and the same uncle who I have been buying from since I was in primary 2……..I remember bringing my mum to that store and buying two rolls of popiah everyday after school without fail, rain or shine….and 13 years later….I’ll be damned if I dun still love the hell outta his stuff!!.......and I can’t believe its been about a good 12 years since I last ate there……

Whatever Food I loved as a kid……I still love now, whatever food I won’t touch when I was young…I still don’t touch them now……..whatever guiding principles I followed back then…I still adhere to now……….My old friend was asking me….”since the day I know you…you’ve never smoked, drink or gambled….what the hell man….you would have been better off moving to a monastery and becoming a monk!!!”.....

I dunno why my sec school friends think that there is some great mystery or fantastic reasons or some complicated back story as to why I don’t do all this stuff…….the reason I don’t is simplicity itself……….I did’nt smoke, gamble or drink when I was young….and twenty years later I still don’t see the need to….its not so utterly difficult to undertsand......

I don’t Smoke because when I was a kid…..My mum told me that smoking is harmful, that only bad kids do so and that I should never become heavy smokers like my mum’s brothers………and she went through all the hazards of smoking with me using my Health Ed textbooks…..so I believed that and promised her that I would never touch a stick of cigarette…………and its as simple as that….a child’s promise……..I hate smoking then and I hate it now…….and boy have I had the opportunity to start smoking………My sec school friends were like 75% smokers and when we hung out after school…..there would be literally 6 of us sitting near the overhead bridge and all of them were puffing away except me…….when they offered me a stick and I turned them down….they always looked at me like I just landed from mars……hahaha……..and even in army, goddamn so many people pick up smoking because of the stress or whatever……but I’ve never had the urge to……I hated the smell ,the smoke, the wear the scent clings to your clothes……..still do….

I don’t Drink because when I was young…..my family and I would go for dinner at the coffeeshop near our block and on many occasions……..there were always some groups of old, sun-bitten looking old farts, chinese and malay folks, who would get drunk and start yelling hokkien expletives, create a scene and start getting in fights right at the coffeeshop………and the police would come and separate them or even take the rowdier ones in……and this did’nt just happen once……….it just seemed dumb to me,getting drunk and behaving like a complete ass in public………..further more back then, My dad was only a sales executive and no sales manager so his boss always sent him to entertain overseas clients and he would have to take them out to dinner and drink with them to the wee hours of the morning to close whetever business deals…..and on occasions my dad would come back, not very sober, try jangling his keys for 5 mins before he could open the door and he would be real quiet and just crashed and slept at our sofa set once he was in………and neither me and my mum had the strength to get him to the bed……….and the stench of alchohol was helluva bad……….so I never really liked drinking….I always felt it made perfectly sensible people do perfectly senseless things………I don’t mind the occasional drink for social purposes but I prefer to generally stay away……….

I don’t Gamble but to be honest of all the three vices…….I don’t really mind gambling as much as smoking and drinking…….I don’t mind playing cards and mahjong and making small bets during Chinese New year for the fun of it………..but other then that I never really felt the need to buy 4D,Toto or bet on soccer matches….even though I have no problem with anybody doing so….my parents and grand parents and various relatives buy 4D regularly too……..but I always thought that instead of waiting for some divine miracle, heavenly blessing or a one in a million chance to be rich…the sure way of getting money was just getting off your ass and working for an honest day’s wage……seemed more practical…instead of building sandcastles in the air……

Hahha….Every time my mum complains that I’ve been buying too many comics…..I tell her that Comics is my one and only indulgence/vice in life, instead of relaxing or taking a break from your problems with cigarettes and alchohol……….ain’t reading comics a much more decent way of entertaining yourself and keeping your mind off things??? It’s safe, stimulates your mind artistically and you can read them again and again and they actually have a high resale value…it’s a win win situation Mum!!!

Also since I was a kid……..I never liked relying on people to solve my problems for me………I always thought that you should always work through your problems yourselves instead of making your problems your friends’ problems……….my parents always told me to “not be dependent on people, to help yourself instead of relying on outside sources….because if you don’t help yourself….who will???”………..now I don’t mind bitching and confiding about all my problems with my friends but I would never do them the disservice of burdening anyone with my personal problems by getting them directly involved……..I think you should be the one to work through all your own problems, take whatever advice or bits of info your friends can give but at the end of the day you have to solve your own problems instead of unfairly expecting people to………….

Hoho…..This was kinda a weird rant but man…….So many traits you picked up as a child practically follow you for life….. There’s an old saying: “The more things change, The more they stay the same.”…….how true….hahhaha……

Lastly……… the first day of School at SIM was Today!!! It’s feels good studying again but its kind of take some getting used to, I’m still in army mode and haven’t been studying at all for almost the past 2 years……..so I dunno whether I should feel happy, excited or indifferent that the next phase of my life has begun……….just came home from my camp, I went to school in the morning and back to camp for duty right after it……its going to be a tiring two weeks……….on a Side note , after going with Felix to Ngee Ann poly for lunch….I ‘ve observed that the dressing of SIM females is SO much better then the way poly girls dress……..man…..just a difference of a couple of years…..but their dress sense has really taken a quantum leap in quality…..hahha…its like Miranda Priestly from the Devil Wears Prada gave them a crash course in style or something…..hahaha

The best part of my 1st day of school ?? :I’ve not fallen sick for practically the past two years but of all times to fall sick….I fell sick on the day before school………just when I was thinking that I could finally clear my leave, relax and study…..just when I let down my defenses for a brief moment……I fell sick….shit………I dunno what happened …I was still chatting with Huiling, Wenjun and Felix…..then just as I was finishing up……I felt real woozy and the next thing I know I’m staring at my toilet bowl at 2.00 am puking my guts out……..had a bad case of diahorea too and started feeling feverish……….

So I attended my very first day of Uni feeling feverish, as nauseous as an 8 mths pregnant woman who was about to shit in her pants at any given second……I was walking around looking constipated,with my ass firmly clenched….because if I ever lose my concentration for even a second….there was going to be some free warm, chocolate fondue in my pants……hahahaha……Reported back to camp after that, puked twice before taking over the pass office counter from my shift mate and sat for 6 straight hours feeling feverish and giddy with an ass full of liquid fire……hahaahha…….

So anway….. I Just got home and took my stomach medicine and some panadol………so lets end this post and If y’all kind folks would kindly excuse me….I think I’ll go shit my pants now……haha….Adios!!!

Art Attack!

2007-05-23T08:21:00.000-07:00

Yessiree.....yet another post from yours truly....this one is going to be a short,art-related post.......

A week or so ago,when Huiling,Wenjun and me met up for.......errr.....shopping....for Kuromi products throughout town......hahhaa....we started trailing off and talking about Nick names......anyway Huiling had previously gave Wenjun the nick name "Geeky Vampire" and I suggested that since Huiling's idea of recreation involves her downloading free movies and drama serials off the web.....she should be a pirate.....and since that picky fella ONLY downloads DVD QUALITY MOVIES...... She should just call herself "Picky Pirate"......hahha

So flashforward to A few days ago.....Wenjun called me up at 10.30pm and told me to go read her blog,cos she had updated it with some anime-ish artwork she drew of herself and Huiling.......as the Geeky vampire and Picky pirate...since I was in camp and had a 6 hrs long duty starting in 3 hrs time....I just mumbled that I would go look at her new posts when I got home and promptly went to bed.....

Well anyway my duty started at 2am.....and since it was going to last for the next 6 hours.....I started watching Al Pacino's Serpico on the office computer and I remembered about Wenjun telling about her drawings.....so I took a piece of A4 paper,some pens and highlighters and began to doodle my idea of what a Picky Pirate and Vampire would look like....

Many people might not know.....but I started off being A BIGGER fan of Jap comics then English comics...I was an Avid Reader of Akira Toriyama's DragonBall since I was in primary one all the way till Primary 6.......and I still have a HUGE soft spot for them........and a few months ago,for the sheer heck of it ....I pencilled this 2 page Gag strip featuring a anime-ish version of a well-known american comic character(Not Batman lar!),that I drew completely in the "Big eyes,Button nose" manga style except for the last panel where I had the character,drawn in the normal american comic style comment about how much he hates manga....hahha......so since I did some research before drawing the 2 pages......switching to the "Manga" style for this pin-up was pretty easy....

Since I don't have a scanner...here's some pics of what I drew..........

The preliminary rough sketches.....

Before you start on ANY drawing....You gotta start doodling and putting your rough ideas to paper by sketching and refining whatever's in your mind.......so this is my first crude doodles I did in my office...... Geeky Vampire was actually going to be a western vampire but I thought that the Chinese vampire would be a cuter version to draw.....I also did some Joke-ish drawings of Davy Jones and Sao Feng too.......

The Completed Drawing....

I really like the rough sketches I did.....I thought whatever ideas I had came out quite well on paper....and i thought It would be a fun piece to work on....so I went back home and drew a quick but complete drawing of The Geeky Vampire and Picky Pirate......there wasn't much pre-planning and I added things spontaneously as I went....took me longer then expected though...5 hrs of my freaking life!!....hahha...and I even Threw in Davy Jones in the background cos I really LIKED the Takopachi Davy Jones that I doodled....haha

Close-up of Davy "Takopachi" Jones......

I drew Davy jones in really THICK lines because I wanted him to look almost exactly like the cartoon mascot of the popular Takopachi balls outlet.....and I wanted to change the skull emblem on his hate to differentiate it from Picky Pirates...so I did a skeletal star-fish..

Huiling A.K.A "The Picky Pirate"

This is Huiling as the Picky Pirate complete with Jack Sparrow breads,big-ass hoop earrings she likes to wear....skull-handled sabre and perched on her arm is her cute little pet Sparrow.....called.... Jack!!!

Wenjun A.K.A "The Geeky Vampire"

I decked her out in classic Chinese Vampire duds....tiny fangs,sharp claws,flock of pet bats,big-ass geeky specs, a top hat with bushy cotton ball and Smiley face.....and originally I wanted the emblem on the chest to be her SirName "Chua" in chinese....but I did'nt know how to write "Chua" in chinese....hahaha...so I put in a Dragon emblem....

A little Hair Ball.......

When I did the drawing....towards the end....I wondered out loud how would I look if I were to draw myself as a cartoon character......since being the artist of this piece....drawing myself in would be quite self-indulgent and since I hate manga.....I decided to draw this tiny Human Hair ball at the extreme right hand coner of the drawing which would be 90% close to how I would interpretate myself as a cartoon character....hahaha

Close-up of both The Geeky Vampire and The Picky Pirate

There ya go......The Geeky Vampire and Picky Pirate and their pets teaming up against Davy Jones and his Takopachi balls.....

Well..........alright This Drawing is dedicated to Huiling and Wenjun......So Enjoy....and The Squid is dedicated to Squid-lover Felix.....hahhaha....and with that.....let's put this post to bed....Its a wraaaaap!!