If you have less than noble designs, I suggest you grow some ethics. It's never too late.
If you are so afraid of offending someone even when you know there is no wrong in refusing, I suggest you grow some balls. That might be a little harder considering you probably never knew what balls and courage were.
Oh and while you lot are at it, realise this. Respect others and treat them the way YOU would like to be treated.
Friday, November 6, 2009
Friday, October 30, 2009
Ralph West Hall of Residence to be Redeveloped
I read with sadness that Ralph West Hall of Residence was to be redeveloped. How it happened (that I read about it) was through a sudden wave of nostalgia that got me Googling Ralph West Hall. This article came up. In any case, I thought I'd write a short bit about Ralph West Hall.
Ralph West Hall (or RWH) was my first place of residence when I arrived in London back in 1995 as a foundation student at the Chelsea College of Art & Design.
The decor was not fancy, and the rooms were certainly small, but adequete. The food was nothing to write home about, being pretty lame in fact, but hey, it was food that was still edible. Who can forget the Sundays where no food was served and we all had to troop over to the local grocers to buy food, in an attempt to cook. That was until someone had the bright idea of bringing over a rice cooker after the Christmas holidays, allowing us to heat up some food at least, besides cooking rice.
Oh, what about the only phone we had on every floor, and sometimes Christine would be on it for hours! We all got along, we made do, we made concessions for each other's eccentricities. Sometimes we had arguments, but we very quickly made up and forgot what we were fighting about. Never did we take things personal, because we all knew, we needed to get along. It was, afterall, a long year ahead for all of us and many of us will still see each other in our new BA programs.
I have made friends there that I still keep in touch with these years. Friends like Glen, Beth, Soko and Claire (my Northern Irish neighbour who walked to school with me some days). Some friends I fondly remember were Ali(stair), Philly(Phillipa), Laura, Christine, Sinead and Jung Ah. I wonder how they are now.
I remember summer particularly well for we would all troop down to Battersea Park to get abit of sun.
I certainly enjoyed my walks to college, across Battersea Bridge, through World's End that lead to Chelsea's foundation program campus.
Who can forget Fungus Mungus, the bar that served excellent mushrooms and reasonably priced beer.
And the absolutely stunning view of the setting sun in winter, with Mother Nature's multi-coloured skies providing a beautiful backdrop to the silhouettes of buildings and riverboat houses that peppered the Thames.
Or the fact that we used to pull out the light bulb covers that adorn Albert Bridge. :-P
Well, those were fun days indeed.
For posterity sake, I found a picture of Ralph West Hall, which showed the room where I used to stay for a whole academic year.
Ralph West Hall (or RWH) was my first place of residence when I arrived in London back in 1995 as a foundation student at the Chelsea College of Art & Design.
The decor was not fancy, and the rooms were certainly small, but adequete. The food was nothing to write home about, being pretty lame in fact, but hey, it was food that was still edible. Who can forget the Sundays where no food was served and we all had to troop over to the local grocers to buy food, in an attempt to cook. That was until someone had the bright idea of bringing over a rice cooker after the Christmas holidays, allowing us to heat up some food at least, besides cooking rice.
Oh, what about the only phone we had on every floor, and sometimes Christine would be on it for hours! We all got along, we made do, we made concessions for each other's eccentricities. Sometimes we had arguments, but we very quickly made up and forgot what we were fighting about. Never did we take things personal, because we all knew, we needed to get along. It was, afterall, a long year ahead for all of us and many of us will still see each other in our new BA programs.
I have made friends there that I still keep in touch with these years. Friends like Glen, Beth, Soko and Claire (my Northern Irish neighbour who walked to school with me some days). Some friends I fondly remember were Ali(stair), Philly(Phillipa), Laura, Christine, Sinead and Jung Ah. I wonder how they are now.
I remember summer particularly well for we would all troop down to Battersea Park to get abit of sun.
I certainly enjoyed my walks to college, across Battersea Bridge, through World's End that lead to Chelsea's foundation program campus.
Who can forget Fungus Mungus, the bar that served excellent mushrooms and reasonably priced beer.
And the absolutely stunning view of the setting sun in winter, with Mother Nature's multi-coloured skies providing a beautiful backdrop to the silhouettes of buildings and riverboat houses that peppered the Thames.
Or the fact that we used to pull out the light bulb covers that adorn Albert Bridge. :-P
Well, those were fun days indeed.
For posterity sake, I found a picture of Ralph West Hall, which showed the room where I used to stay for a whole academic year.
Sunday, October 25, 2009
It's Been Awhile, Hasn't It?
It's been awhile since I blogged, reason being I have been tied up with several things, one of which is a job I took on in July.
I have since tendered my resignation as I felt I did not fit in to the company culture but I will not dwell on it. Suffice to say, it was for the best that I did something else altogether.
In any case, I am embarking on a new journey, with support from Sweetie I might add. It's a wonderful feeling, having someone give their support to you, even though the future is but a blur. It spurs you to keep trying and to remember that no matter how hard, all we need to do is hang on and never give up.
Obviously, hanging on blindly to a cause is not exactly a healthy thing but if one can evaluate the cause, take calculated risks and then go in with eyes wide open, learning and adjusting along the way, one can probably do great things.
I am all geared up for the long and hard road ahead, let's see how this all pans out.
This post is pretty much a warm up, I might add, as I have not been writing for quite awhile. Not for leisure anyway.
I have since tendered my resignation as I felt I did not fit in to the company culture but I will not dwell on it. Suffice to say, it was for the best that I did something else altogether.
In any case, I am embarking on a new journey, with support from Sweetie I might add. It's a wonderful feeling, having someone give their support to you, even though the future is but a blur. It spurs you to keep trying and to remember that no matter how hard, all we need to do is hang on and never give up.
Obviously, hanging on blindly to a cause is not exactly a healthy thing but if one can evaluate the cause, take calculated risks and then go in with eyes wide open, learning and adjusting along the way, one can probably do great things.
I am all geared up for the long and hard road ahead, let's see how this all pans out.
This post is pretty much a warm up, I might add, as I have not been writing for quite awhile. Not for leisure anyway.
Monday, February 23, 2009
Beautiful Clouds & The Last Rays Of The Setting Sun
I was at Pasir Ris, Downtown East, when I saw some beautiful cloud formations amidst the last bits of available light from a fast setting sun.
Here're the pics
And just as I was heading towards Tampines, this caught my eye!
Here're the pics
And just as I was heading towards Tampines, this caught my eye!
Monday, February 9, 2009
Chungking Express
I first watched Chungking Express on video back in 1996 when I was a student in London. The show left a deep impression on me as it was the first Wong Kar Wai movie I watched and recently, I decided to watch it again. The movie stars Brigette Lin (Lin Ching Hsia), Faye Wong, Tony Leung Chiu Wai & Takeshi Kaneshiro & is directed by Wong Kar Wai in 1994. It comprises two stories, shown back to back.
The first story sees Takeshi Kaneshiro playing an out-of-luck-in-love plainclothes cop who was dumped by his girlfriend on 1 April (April Fools' Day). He waits for a month to see if it was a joke she has played on him and decides that if after a month, she does not return, it is like the expiry date found on tinned food. He eats a tin of pineapples a day for a whole month, every tin being one that expires on 1 May, before he decides to move on. In the meantime, Takeshi goes to his regular snack joint, The Midnight Express, where the owner tries to get him to date one of his staff after learning that he (Takeshi) has been dumped. He meets a lady in a blond wig, played by Brigette Lin, in a bar called Bottoms Up, who is trying to survive in the seedy underworld of drug trafficking when a deal goes sour.
In the second story, which centres around The Midnight Express snack bar, Tony Leung plays a uniformed cop who goes to The Midnight Express and often orders the usual fish and chips for his girlfriend until one day he orders something completely different. When the owner of the snack bar asks him why, he claims it is because his girlfriend has already left him. Over time, the owner's assistant, played by Faye Wong, has fallen for him in secret and goes about doing things for him without his knowledge, such as cleaning his house when he is not in. She manages to do this as she stumbled upon a set of keys returned to him by his ex-girlfriend. When Leung realises that she has been the one who has entered his flat to clean it whenever he is not around, he has fallen for her. Before they can embark on anything, she stands him up on a date. One year later, she returns, as a flight attendant, to find that he (Leung) has bought over the snack bar and intends to turn it into a restaurant.
The stories are not interconnected but what struck me were the visuals, colours and cinematography. I was greatly impressed with how Wong Kar Wai weaves the mundane lifestyle of various Hong Kongers with realism, and stylish art direction. The significance of the visuals show a certain sensitivity to aesthetics, yet retain their contextual relevance.
The first story sees Takeshi Kaneshiro playing an out-of-luck-in-love plainclothes cop who was dumped by his girlfriend on 1 April (April Fools' Day). He waits for a month to see if it was a joke she has played on him and decides that if after a month, she does not return, it is like the expiry date found on tinned food. He eats a tin of pineapples a day for a whole month, every tin being one that expires on 1 May, before he decides to move on. In the meantime, Takeshi goes to his regular snack joint, The Midnight Express, where the owner tries to get him to date one of his staff after learning that he (Takeshi) has been dumped. He meets a lady in a blond wig, played by Brigette Lin, in a bar called Bottoms Up, who is trying to survive in the seedy underworld of drug trafficking when a deal goes sour.
In the second story, which centres around The Midnight Express snack bar, Tony Leung plays a uniformed cop who goes to The Midnight Express and often orders the usual fish and chips for his girlfriend until one day he orders something completely different. When the owner of the snack bar asks him why, he claims it is because his girlfriend has already left him. Over time, the owner's assistant, played by Faye Wong, has fallen for him in secret and goes about doing things for him without his knowledge, such as cleaning his house when he is not in. She manages to do this as she stumbled upon a set of keys returned to him by his ex-girlfriend. When Leung realises that she has been the one who has entered his flat to clean it whenever he is not around, he has fallen for her. Before they can embark on anything, she stands him up on a date. One year later, she returns, as a flight attendant, to find that he (Leung) has bought over the snack bar and intends to turn it into a restaurant.
The stories are not interconnected but what struck me were the visuals, colours and cinematography. I was greatly impressed with how Wong Kar Wai weaves the mundane lifestyle of various Hong Kongers with realism, and stylish art direction. The significance of the visuals show a certain sensitivity to aesthetics, yet retain their contextual relevance.
Wednesday, February 4, 2009
Inconsiderate & Selfish Idiots
Wow, it's been more than a month since I've blogged, due to various ongoing projects that have taken up a fair amount of my time.
Well, it is still the Lunar New Year so, here's wishing everyone a successful, prosperous and happy 2009 ahead. Tough times do not last, but tough people do, so hang in there!
In any case, I witnessed something that I really want to blog about. Inconsiderate people! Yes, they irk me and cause no amount of irritation to those around them, but the worst ones are the ones who either pretend not to know the effect their irritation have on others or those who just cannot be bothered.
I was taking bus 48 to Parkway Parade this evening when a family boarded the bus somewhere near Mandarin Gardens. It was a family of four, two kids, the parents and they had a pram.
Get a load of what they did when they got on the bus after sitting down!
Like seriously, WTF! You leave your pram, UNFOLDED in between the aisle of a bus, JUST after the entrance, expecting others to have to side step and squeeze through a narrow path to get to a seat. Despite several people boarding the bus, and having to squeeze through their UNFOLDED pram to get to a seat, the parents did not give a damn and were oblivious to the inconvenience they have caused others.
This is bloody inconsiderate and you wonder what some people have for brains. Sheesh.
Well, it is still the Lunar New Year so, here's wishing everyone a successful, prosperous and happy 2009 ahead. Tough times do not last, but tough people do, so hang in there!
In any case, I witnessed something that I really want to blog about. Inconsiderate people! Yes, they irk me and cause no amount of irritation to those around them, but the worst ones are the ones who either pretend not to know the effect their irritation have on others or those who just cannot be bothered.
I was taking bus 48 to Parkway Parade this evening when a family boarded the bus somewhere near Mandarin Gardens. It was a family of four, two kids, the parents and they had a pram.
Get a load of what they did when they got on the bus after sitting down!
Like seriously, WTF! You leave your pram, UNFOLDED in between the aisle of a bus, JUST after the entrance, expecting others to have to side step and squeeze through a narrow path to get to a seat. Despite several people boarding the bus, and having to squeeze through their UNFOLDED pram to get to a seat, the parents did not give a damn and were oblivious to the inconvenience they have caused others.
This is bloody inconsiderate and you wonder what some people have for brains. Sheesh.
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