We Live In A Textured World

On Sunday, I was overworked and highly irritable. I wondered if it was worth it for minimal hourly wage.

I came in at 9.30AM, duty at Snackbar. I was alone doing opening. However, 4 people were scheduled to come in at 12, so I thought, "3 hours alone couldn't be all that bad right?"

But it was indeed really bad. First of all, I had to complete all the customers' orders by myself! Nobody to run errands for me. Basically I was doing everything on my own.

There was a couple of boys, who ordered about 10 bucks worth of snacks which included a cup corn. So I had to prepare the freaking cup corn, right?! Then one of the boys decided to be insensitive and said, "Can you hurry up?"

I slammed the ice into their drinks and half-glared at him.

I hastily gave them their snacks to get them outta my face. I cannot stand the faces of disgusting people. It's as though my being 'slow' in serving them caused them to miss the start of their movie. I really cannot help it if they're late for their show. I get extremely miffed when people become insensitive when I'm already trying my best to be quick.

It was 12.00NN. I was busy serving customers, ALONE.

It was 1.00PM. Still serving customers. This time, STILL ALONE.

It was not until 1.45PM onwards that I had more people turning up for work. Nevertheless, we were still understaffed. And I was bloody overworked. I was practically on my feet from 9.30AM to fucking 6.00PM lah! Definitely not worth the work and energy for what I'm being paid.

After work, I went to meet Ghani. Bugging me to mention his name here, 'or else my blog not worth reading'. I helped him do some drawing, because apparently, I'm really one of those people that CAN draw. I'm used to believe that there was no such thing as CAN or CANNOT draw.

Then I saw Ghani's drawing of a cuboidal trash bin and I knew immediately that he CANNOT draw for nuts. Hence he needed divine help; from yours truly.




Ghani's original drawing was not what you'd call ideal, because it really was an ugly piece. However, ugly CAN be beautiful. Many things look ugly, but they're usually ARTFULLY UGLY(self-coined term: art-gly), which makes the world a much more interesting place.

I associate 'visual interest' with 'texture'. Hence, I just kinda came up with a slogan, "We Live In A Textured World".

I went to the Lee Kong Chian Reference Library, got a type specimen book, and just kinda xerox-ed the typefaces that I like. I know, it's so bloody cheapo. But I honour intellectual property, so obviously I only zapped a few typefaces that were truly versatile. The last thing I wanna do is to infringe copyright law lah!

Here, I traced out my slogan using Helvetica and a touch of Stymie. Just a simple typographic composition; I'm so intrigued by perpendicular baselines!



I attempted a more complicated composition with "We Love Graphic Design". But as I've said, 'complicated', so I didn't really finish it 'cause I got confused halfway through.

I'm really just thinking of screenprinting when tracing out my slogans. The really great thing being in Lasalle is that my screenprinting skills actually come in quite helpful. I seem to be able to find something to screenprint for ALL the subjects. I LOVE SCREENPRINTING!

Back in NYP, I was so deprived. I was constantly trying to bring screenprinting into my school work, but it was always a futile attempt.



Okay, back to Lasalle. Graphic Communication class today. The lecturer facilitating a class critique for our 'Singapore Olympics' logos.



I was 30 minutes late for the class, so I ended up having to sit right behind. The lecturer whispers to the rest of the group because she 'doesn't want to distract the other groups by speaking loudly'. (P.S. It's a large open studio with 4 class discussions held simultaneously.)

However, that's not what the other lecturers think, because I could hear more clearly what the OTHER lecturers were saying. I tried my best to pay attention to her careless whispers. But of course, I was still distracted in the end.



Duh, every moment is a good moment to cam-whore. Ghani says that I'm a freaking narcissist, but let's just put it this way: I have an incredible sense of self-worth.

SELF-WORTH, okay, Ghani? Not narcissism.

Plus ar, it didn't help that Junniee kept offering sweets! She got 20 bucks the other day for JUST DOING A SURVEY, so she bought like tons of snacks. Ya lah, go class eat sweets and Oreo cookies only...



To distract me further, Junniee whips out a DSLR, which totally 'owned' me because I was using a COMPACT CAMERA only. Being the avid pro photographer she is, she started shooting. I started posing for her. Then she asked for me to do a 'shi lian pai' meaning 10 continuous shots, where I'll have to change my expression every single shot.

Yeah! Believe it! Got critique going on, you know, but we just sit at the back at take photos! Haha!... We had so much fun because I've got a wealth of facial expressions THAT ARE FUNNY.

Class ended at 12.00nn. IT WAS POURING OUTSIDE!

We were basically trapped in campus like rats beneath draincaps. People were cursing the architecture of the school, saying that it doesn't really work during wet weather. Which is quite true, because the fibreglass roof isn't totally sealed up, resulting in leaks.

The synthetic grass got wet, and I kinda just slipped on it. Jasmine couldn't but to laugh at my misfortune because 'it's really damned funny'. Haha!... Okay lah, who doesn't enjoy a sight of slip-and-tries-to-regain-balance act?

It was still freaking raining after lunch, so I decided to use the studio to finalise my slogan tracing.



I really only got down to my tracing in the evening because I spent the afternoon with Terence and Satasha doing paper sculptures. I guess I just got the feel for paper art lah, huh. I taught them how to do that zig-zag ribbed thingy since they were so interested in it.

Then we just went on to origami. We were following instructions from a book, which didn't really make sense to them. Hence they needed my divine help to 'decipher' the instructions for them. But frankly, some of the instructions and diagrams are rather cryptic, even to me.

It was a trying period for them because it was quite taxing on the mind. A lot of patience was required as well, but they definitely felt a sense of accomplishment, okay! UNDER MY GUIDANCE. Haha!... Terence was delirious after figuring out this looks-simple-but-actually-very-very-challenging paper floral pot.

I obviously had fun personally lah... In this aspect, I'm a complete fucking weirdo.

Before I knew it, it was dark!




And then I realised that in that huge studio, I WAS ALONE.