Murdered by gradients

I draw a lot. Mostly on paper with pencils and inks. If you see someone on train with a pen and notebook, that's probably me. But I don't draw for work. The things I do at work usually involves stock photography, typography and some simple vectors here and there. These things pay the bills.

I've been bitching about not having the opportunity to do illustrations for a while but I've since came to regret it. My recent job required me to design a character for a logo. My eyes brightened up when I read the brief. I even read it twice and usually I don't until meeting time, which is a bad habit. Rather enthusiastic about my work for the first time, I whipped out my pencils and doodled away. Minutes later, I went to check what my other colleagues were designing.

Logo name. That's all they did. Fancy fonts and all that. Fine, maybe they hadn't started drawing yet. Minutes later, they were still designing the bloody name, in different colours now! Turned out that they don't draw. Not sure if they could but they didn't. Even when my art director "forced" them to draw something, it wasn't close to what the brief asked for. Then with a flick of his magic wand, I became the designated team leader of the project.

Which was great in most cases but when your head creative director is a jerk whose blindly in love with bright contrasting gradients, this meant disaster. Over the days, I tried to argue my case on why his ideas and so-called style won't work with my drawings and over the days, I gave up as I witnessed my designs butchered and murdered with multi-coloured shiny glows.

There was one day when I sent him some refinements of the logos without any gradients or glows. He was overseas then and couldn't oversee what we were doing during the day. He then responded via e-mail, "Where are my gradients?!"

I screamed.

Yeah I'm that protective of my stuff. Super-overprotective. Grudgingly, I did all the changes he wanted. He's the boss after all. But I'm not happy. Right now, I'm planning how to wrap his office and furniture with psychedelic rainbow wallpaper and wait for his screams.

Yearly obligation

The thing about festivities and me is that I like preparation part of it, all the decorations and tv specials, but I do not like the practice. I dread the practice. In the case of the Lunar New Year festival, I really do.

You see, my mom is an Australian, a foreigner with blonde hair in a foreign country. And my dad is Asian, a Singaporean in his familiar homeland. You can see how awkward is it for my mom to sit through a hundred-year old tradition of things you can and cannot do of the festival with my dad's rather conservative family. For me, the mongrel born outside of this country but carry the family name, it still can get really confusing sometimes.

For this year, mom tried her best to (hopelessly) blend in by putting on a "qipao", a traditional Chinese dress. You may have seen one wore by Nicole Kidman once. But I really didn't think looking like the actress was the best way to do it. I'm sure my dad's family meant well by "teaching" her the traditions with laughter and giggles, but still I cringed.

For me, I get away with it relatively easy every year. Partly because I'm not that blonde. The ability to switch accents at will come in handy too. Yet people assume that I do not understand their language which sometimes can be quite a shocking ice-breaker to my aunties and uncles whom I rarely meet.

At the end of the day, I'm glad I've got out of it alive. It's one of those you got to do to get it over with. Like a flu shot. Coz if you don't, it will feel kind of strange, won't it?

This is where the heart aches

Valentine's Day started with a box of chocolates, a mysterious one in fact. There wasn't any card or indication of who the sender was, but it's on my desk. My guess would be one of the freelancers in my agency, but really if you don't leave at least a hint or two, I couldn't really be bothered. The chocs were very yummy though...

Then I felt sick. No, it wasn't the chocolates. The culprit was that new air freshener installed in the morning. It was one of those automatic bowl of swirling perfumed water with a plastic lid that was shaped like a big green leaf. On full blast, it was stinky as hell. I hate perfumes. Can't stand them. A little bit is fine but a whopping whiff enough to my head spin. That air freshener scent did not smell ocean breeze, not matter what the label said.

I had to take a walk outside. For some real fresh air. There was a toy shop nearby that specialized in kooky "designery" collectors' items like Kubricks and Scary Girl, so what the heck, I decided to drop by. There was also another person browsing in the shop, just the two of us, me and him.

Then my headaches went away (Hey it's Valentine's Day!). You know how in movies, two people would accidentally bumped into each other and they got to talk to each other? Well, half the time I was hoping for the big "bump" (Didn't happened), and the other half, I was thinking, "C'mon, talk to me! Dude, talk to me!" (That didn't happen either).

Truth is I could've said something, to get the ball rolling. But I froze. I don't know how or why, but I froze. Standing there like a twit. So when I got back to the office, my accounts executive asked me how I was feeling. I said, "My heart aches but I will be banging my head to stop it from bleeding."

We heart shoes forever

I bought a pair of shoes recently. I call them my Tony Hawks. They're a pair a skateboarding sneakers in "Pumpkin Harvest" colours. (No, I'm not a skateboarder; I just play one on my PS2.). They will sit next to my Pharrell Williamses and Jim Carreys, my Air Force 1 sneakers and black canvas high tops respectively. I'm not really sure if a sneaker freaker like Pharrell owns one of these but I'm pretty sure Mr. Carrey used to wear one of those when he was on In Living Color.

Yeah, I love sneakers and yeah, I give them names too. Maybe because most people I know in the creative industry don't wear sandals to work but for me, I don't enjoy showing off my toes in public. I also like to know that if for some reason that I'm kidnapped and escaped to some jungle, I can run around and jump over thick vines with ease. And personally, I don't understand why so many Singaporeans wear slippers everywhere. Warm humid weather + feet out in the open = funky smell.

While I also don't understand most girls' need for endless pairs of Pradas or Hush Puppies (Paris Hiltons and Heather Grahams in my book), I'm certain everyone share will the same insecurities of just owning of just one pair of the same thing. You just can't have one pair. You just can't. You got to have multiple colours and hundreds of varieties. Sometimes I think shoes have telepathic powers, stronger than those of a puppy's eyes. Buy me in red today... Buy me in blue tomorrow... Maybe that's why people wear those Crocs.

Office affairs, part deux

It was hard to concentrate on my work when Miller the freelancer had just announced that he was single. It was even harder when he played Foo Fighters on his iTunes instead of his usual blend of electronica.

"This is for you," he MSN-ed me and added a smiley icon after it. It was revoltingly charming and rude at the same time. Like eating wasabi ice-cream in one go.

I knew what he was trying to do. But I didn't know was what I was trying to do when I transferred more of my songs to his desktop. What was I thinking? Trying to convert a clubhead into a rock connoisseur? Gosh!

More MSN messages with more-than-obvious hints followed. It was amusing in the beginning but now it was just sad. I had to put an end to it and so I asked, "Do you know what you are doing?"

The music stopped and hours passed by, nary a word. Lunch time came and Miller didn't join me and my colleagues. Then I heard that he got back together with that airhead bimbo of his who managed to fall for his bag of tricks. By the end of the day, I had also found out that I wasn't invited to a party that he was going to. How old was he?! Five?

So much for being nice to jerks. Now how do I get my songs back? Hmm, this calls for some ninja action...

Office affairs

"Anymore freelancers flirting with you today?" asked my friend Karin, rather amusingly.

"No, not today," I replied dryly.

I've told Karin a while back that there was a freelancer in my agency whom I had thought was being more than playful with me. Miller is the kind of person who looks like one those punks from a J-pop band and sets iTunes to play electronica on loop.

And I think I've a crush on that bastard.

Miller have been freelancing in my agency for some time now and I've got to know him a bit better. Good enough for him to ask me to see a movie together. Even though he has an airhead of a girlfriend, for free tickets, I said okay. What the heck, I've went out with other people as platonic friends before, so it wasn't much of a problem.

Miller is one of those people who smarter than he or anyone else gives him credit for, but yet he acts like jock. Sometimes I wonder if it was a act or maybe if he's like one of those superheroes who hasn't discover his potential.

But still, there's a limit to all the cheeky chit-chat. Airhead girlfriend or not, it's getting a bit uncomfortable for me. So for now, the game plan is to play along and feign ignorance till the crush dies out. Anytime now...

A "Holy shit!" moment

There are not many times in my life where I let out a vulgarity in public, however mild it may seems. I like to believe that my brain has control of my mouth. But yesterday, I found myself covering my mouth between the doors of the train, hoping that I didn't shout it out loud.

It has Dylan. My ex whom I can't seemed to get over. At least I think it was Dylan. There I was, mind my own business, getting out of the train to go catch Clerks II in a cinema, when I spotted that bugger getting into the train.

Pause. Here's a little history between us: We got together, broke up, got together and broke up again. Very soap opera. And recently, in my weakest of moments, I remade contact (electronically) again but we have neither spoken nor met up. Then I found out from unofficial sources that Dylan wasn't single anymore.

That was weeks ago. I went through a rudimentary suicidal phase of watching every episode of The O.C. and finally got over it. Then I had to go see a Kevin Smith movie.

I think the stars above are punk'd-ing me again.

Press start to continue

It's feel kinda funny, posting my first entry since returning from exile from the blogsphere. Very strange and yet familiar at the same time, but still very strange.

I was in university then and it has been 1 year since I've left my graduation party in Australia. Now I'm back in Singapore, working and I still feel like a tourist.