Paint Stains

Thu, 14 Feb 2008 06:04:25 GMT

I'm nursing a tender calf muscle on my right leg after a weird cramp woke me yesterday morning. Doesn't quite help that this week (which still hasn't ended!) is calling for a lot of walking!

http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/singaporelocalnews/view/328424/1/.html
The above occupied my Tuesday afternoon and evening. But, how often can one say that they are required to drink on the job. :) :) :) And oh, I have no idea why it says "Triple Exchange" on the website when the newscast got it right with "Tipple".

Did a WWII tour yesterday with a class of all-male secondary school students (as opposed to NSmen)--first time, and a truckload of fun. Another tour for all guys tomorrow. With this job, I'm never going to feel lonely or ignored again. ;P

Thought-provoking read about Christianity in the US:
http://www.harpers.org/archive/2005/08/0080695

Staying In

Sat, 02 Feb 2008 04:18:37 GMT

Since starting to do Portrait Days on Saturdays at the Maad Market since October/November last year, this is the first month I'm going to miss out because my allergies are bad, I'm tired after the last hectic week, and a little bit worn out at the format of the portrait drawing/painting thing.

I dunno if this journal is read by anyone who's been at Portrait Day at the Maad Market -- if so, have you seen my work there before, and why do you or don't you think my work is worth paying for? It's just 8 Singapore dollars a pop, and that's very, VERY low. Even though the entire exercise is fun, the $ reward for the time spent there is very little, and quite a blow to the ego, esp when some of my best watercolor work is done there.

(If anyone does want to comment here to take me down a notch, go ahead. It doesn't matter.)

Doomsday Redux

Sat, 02 Feb 2008 02:44:30 GMT

Only for Doctor Who fans who have finished watching Season 2 of the new series:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P93QzjHsaBQ

This video needs more eyes on it. (Less than 2,000 views.)

I laughed till I cried. Several times.

Catch Up

Mon, 28 Jan 2008 04:16:18 GMT

It is JUST WRONG for a so-called Australian bar in Singapore to not play Australian music on Australia Day. YYMV over what Australian music is, but even if it had just been Men at Work on a loop (just kidding), it would have been at least something, ya know?

Work and work has been keeping the days quite packed. Belatedly I've realized that my day job will soon be getting to the point I won't exactly have a lighter schedule during school holidays, not if I'll be leading adult tours more often now. Training has been almost constant. What gets me miffed is that I'm not losing weight even though I'm walking all over the place. It is NOT FAIR.

Layout for the field guide is going at a good speed. It's nice that we found the perfect font. We had to pay for it (not too much), but it is worth every penny. It is in fact a bit amusing that I once looked at an old newspaper in a museum and said, "I want to print something in that font face one day" and I think this is it. We in fact have the option to make "s"s in the text look like "f"s, you know, THAT font (except we're not going that far).

Singaporeans get an unexpected mention in an article on the Organic Consumers website: Who Loves Junk Food the Most: U.K., USA, or Canada?

I thought I had more to cover in this post but it's slipped my mind. Ah well, back to work.

Pile o' art

Fri, 11 Jan 2008 13:45:22 GMT

Photo taken last week (I think, I can't remember now) of the pile of botany illustrations that took half a day to scan into the computer. (Note to self: MAKE BACK UPS!!) Yes, this is the first and only teaser for the Field Guide to date. And no, probably not be the last. At this stage I'd just rather be laying out the pages than uploading browser-friendly looks at the art. Things may look mighty different by the time the pages are done anyway....

A late-night walk down memory lane

Wed, 02 Jan 2008 16:57:30 GMT

...resulted in a half-hour's worth of utter hilarity and side stitches. You hafta laugh, otherwise you're going to cry your eyes out, Dragonlance fans.

(I don't post fantasy or entertainment related posts often, but this one, I have to, I really do.)

January 2008 is scheduled release date for the animated movie of Dragons of Autumn Twilight. (If the word "animated" doesn't send a chill up your spine, it should.)

Music Video/Sneak Peek:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=54Ure_45SSw&feature=related
The music's not bad. Background stills not spectacular, but still not bad. Try to ignore the somewhat dated-looking intro screen.

...And then it descended into TEH SUCK! Lucy Lawless could never have saved this thing.

The Official Trailer, apparently first shown at GenCon 2007:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UHrOfJ8_D0o&feature=related

I had to watch it twice to comprehend the badness. The best to hope for is Eye of Argon goodbadness to save this thing from the levels of hell below that reached by the D&D movie. My favorite comment somewhere among the 700 comments was something like "This looks like 3 kinds of ass".

Solace (hurhur) thereafter could only be found in old fan vids/trailers.

From Turkish fans:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7hv305sXgqI&NR=1 (Autumn Twilight and Winter Night)

And another one:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EpFZnfzVjsY&NR=1 (Autumn Twilight only)

And the German fans beat them ALL: (If you don't watch any of the others, watch this one.)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cvhTFm_RwYY

Really got to get to bed now, but it may be a struggle with this bad case of giggles. I think my brain still can't comprehend that level of suck...

Must-read

Wed, 02 Jan 2008 02:14:57 GMT

Via Adrian Monck:

"You Don't Understand Our Audience"
What I learned about network television at Dateline NBC.
By John Hockenberry (Techonology Review)

I can't recommend it enough, especially if TV is your main news source. And there are just too many choice quotes.

At the moment Zucker blew in and interrupted, I had been in Corvo's office to propose a series of stories about al-Qaeda, which was just emerging as a suspect in the attacks. While well known in security circles and among journalists who tried to cover international Islamist movements, al-Qaeda as a terrorist organization and a story line was still obscure in the early days after September 11. It had occurred to me and a number of other journalists that a core mission of NBC News would now be to explain, even belatedly, the origins and significance of these organizations. But Zucker insisted that Dateline stay focused on the firefighters. The story of firefighters trapped in the crumbling towers, Zucker said, was the emotional center of this whole event.

[...]

This was one in a series of lessons I learned about how television news had lost its most basic journalistic instincts in its search for the audience-driven sweet spot, the "emotional center" of the American people. Gone was the mission of using technology to veer out onto the edge of American understanding in order to introduce something fundamentally new into the national debate. The informational edge was perilous, it was unpredictable, and it required the news audience to be willing to learn something it did not already know. Stories from the edge were not typically reassuring about the future. In this sense they were like actual news, unpredictable flashes from the unknown. On the other hand, the coveted emotional center was reliable, it was predictable, and its story lines could be duplicated over and over. It reassured the audience by telling it what it already knew rather than challenging it to learn. This explains why TV news voices all use similar cadences, why all anchors seem to sound alike, why reporters in the field all use the identical tone of urgency no matter whether the story is about the devastating aftermath of an earthquake or someone's lost kitty.

On advertisers understanding TV audiences better than news anchors:

That disjunction remains: at the precise moment that Apple cast John Hodgman and Justin Long as dead-on avatars of the PC and the Mac, news anchors on networks that ran those ads were introducing people to multibillion-dollar phenomena like MySpace and Facebook with the cringingly naïve attitude of "What will those nerds think of next?"

Entertainment programs often took on issues that would never fly on Dateline. On a Thursday night, ER could do a story line on the medically uninsured, but a night later, such a "downer policy story" was a much harder sell. In the time I was at NBC, you were more likely to hear federal agriculture policy discussed on The West Wing, or even on Jon Stewart, than you were to see it reported in any depth on Dateline.

There's more, so much more about the stories that get dropped from the news. Link to the article

Er...

Tue, 01 Jan 2008 13:43:53 GMT

How Not to Display Your Artwork on the Web

Every conceivable and worthy piece of advice is covered. It is a righteous, if scary, rant for an online artist to read, so much so that I found myself grabbing my chest while reading in case the upcoming thou-shalt-not would describe one of my sins. I think I'm OK, but I have done some dumb shit before, and my bio and some other pages probably could use a clean-up.

That said, I have been to those sites which take over your whole screen with no escape (and without asking) and/or that display thumbnails the size of ants, and yeah, those sites are annoying. Glad I'm not alone in thinking so...

And oh,

Happy new year to you! ;)

New painting

Sat, 29 Dec 2007 16:00:30 GMT

My Christmas present to myself this year was (finally) working on a picture that wasn't a plant. (Seriously, I needed it.) No sign of botany anywhere in this pic.

I thought I would have a lot to say to accompany this link to the image on my site, but now, not really. Just that I hope you take a peek.

A Link for Later

Sun, 23 Dec 2007 09:04:23 GMT

(Since it takes time to download and watch videos, particularly multi-parters...)

Essential BBC documentaries not shown on US TV
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2007/12/22/212041/57/454/425671

X'mas from Wal-Mart

Sat, 15 Dec 2007 06:34:38 GMT

Comes to you via child labor. There's something really twisted and sick about putting up a holiday "for kids and kids at heart" while kids in other countries are working over 60 hours a week to produce cheap plastic crap for slave wages. (And is the same reason I hate Disney, BTW.)

I know some news networks have covered it (in brief 20-second pieces), but all the dirty details really need more airing. So, here's (link via plaidder) The National Labor Committee's December 2007 report, A Wal-Mart Christmas Brought to you from a Sweatshop in China. Photos and documents attached, and I assure you, the Chinese translations of the workers' Violation Notification Receipts (in the photographs shown) are legit. Needless to say, it'll be nice to send this link along to Wal-Mart and shopping addicts.

In the summer of 2007, the Guangzhou Huanya Ornaments factory hired 500 to 600 sixteen-year-old high school students, who were promised they would never be required to work more than 10 hours a day, six days a week, while earning more than 1,000 RMB ($132.63) a month. Once in the factory, the teenagers found themselves forced to work 12 to 14 hours a day, seven days a week, for wages nowhere near what they were promised. After a few weeks, many students were so exhausted they could barely walk.

The students had had enough and went on strike on July 8, also filing a legal suit against the company. Student representatives went to the local labor bureau not only to denounce the grueling hours, seven days a week, for payment below the legal minimum wage, but also to inform the labor officials that several children, some as young as 12 years of age, worked in the plant. The high school teenagers were able to quickly recognize and document gross human and worker rights violations, including child labor, at the plant, while Wal-Mart—the largest retailer in the world—was apparently unable to discover any such abuses over the course of years.

Squeak

Thu, 06 Dec 2007 02:40:44 GMT

Squeak Sleeping
Originally uploaded by marrael

Captured this morning on pixels was Squeak, our pearl/mottled dwarf hamster adopted from the SPCA. Honestly, after a few years of having pet hamsters, Squeak takes the cake for the weirdest behavior and sleeping positions. This position's actually pretty normal as hamsters go. (Squeak's weird sleeping positions are hard to photograph, being that they often happen in the plastic tubing...) He's horribly cute nonetheless. My kind cousin will be taking care of him when we're in Hong Kong from Friday (tomorrow) to next Tuesday.

Ten! Ten plants left to paint!

Mon, 03 Dec 2007 07:29:30 GMT

Two pictures are drying on my desk right now, waiting for further watercolor work. But since there's been precious little updates on the Surreal Botany project on my blog, consider this, well, me announcing that we're THIS close to getting the art done for the book! That's 10 left out of 48. What actually surprises even myself is that I do have 38 plant illustrations done already. The past few weeks actually gave me some days where I was able to complete 3 or 4 of them in a day, so 9 to complete before this Friday (when we're leaving for Kong Kong) is looking doable, although I stupidly left the "hard" ones for the last... you know, the ones with the architectural and historical details. (THOSE writers should know who they are...)

Another MAAD Market went by this weekend with yours truly in attendance on Saturday, feverishly splashing up watercolor portraits alongside other artists from OIC. Things started slow, but we got swamped, I think, from 3:30pm onwards, and it was non-stop after that, and it was pairs of people nearly the whole day through. That means actually drawing and completing 2 people in 15 minutes flat. That doubles the work compared to a single portrait, people! Be kinder to the artists, and purchase more pieces when you do that -- credit cards are accepted... all to make it easier to support starving artists, y'know? :)

And alas, I brought a lot of pieces home (as opposed to getting them sold) this time. It ain't a big deal, but even if I say so myself, most of my results were pretty good looking and it sucks only slightly that I just have to bring them home to put them in my "If I ever want to be a courtroom artist one day" portfolio. Haha!

Two plant paintings finished while typing this up. Which means only 8 plants left to go!

Semi-random linkage

Tue, 27 Nov 2007 09:24:03 GMT

Too many tabs and windows open on my browser, so pasting the links into this post for later reference. First one's a depressing read:

Joseph E. Stiglitz: The Economic Consequences of Mr. Bush

Students Wear Confederate Flag Shirts To Oppose Peace-Shirt Group

Environment plays key role in children's readiness for school

Scientists explore how violent video games are exemplary aggression teachers

Study reveals 'huffing' household chemicals connected to teen suicide (VOCs are being suspected for depression symptoms...)

Psychologists publish three new studies on violent video game effects on youths

EDIT
Adding another one: Violent TV, games pack a powerful public health threat U of MI

Work Rant

Fri, 09 Nov 2007 08:44:34 GMT

Fifteen tours later, I ran into my first group of students who genuinely made me want to strangle them. No love and equanimity for these ones. I thought some of them were really monsters. And they were just 10 years old.

Just a general observation first: Convent girl schools have the most hard-to-control students. I keep expecting these students to be better behaved and I am always disappointed, if not shocked. Co-ed "secular" schools have their difficult students of course, but they are a minority, not the norm.

Today, I had the most whining I'd ever gotten from students of any age, the most outright disobedience, the most disrespect, the most ADD-addled students, and either the most dumb logic I'd ever heard concerning bathroom visits, or the most brilliant passive-aggressive tactic I've yet to encounter. (Hard to tell, seriously.) I actually had to yell for the first time, to embarrass them in public (with no consequences to their pride, by the looks of it) and just, really, give up. Quite frankly, some of them made it obvious they were absolutely spoiled.

To say I've had a difficult day today is a bit of an understatement because I kept seeing a lot of crap even after work ended. I am grateful for the few people who made it better, but overall, if humanity heads toward hell, I feel, it wouldn't be because the majority of humans don't deserve it.

I hate people right now.

So I CAN blame TV

Tue, 06 Nov 2007 03:08:41 GMT

at least partly, for the difficult kids...

Early exposure to violent TV promotes aggression in boys: study

Study: Educational TV for Toddlers OK (Read: But other stuff is not.)

Pushing at limits

Thu, 01 Nov 2007 10:26:11 GMT

Sometimes, there are things we never know we can do until we thrust ourselves into the situation.

Consciously or unconsciously, I think my college and career choices were made on the basis of me wondering if I could do [insert job/major here]. If I knew I could do it, that a certain choice was a cakewalk, there was just no mystery and just no attraction for me there. It's the biggest reason my CV looks like, well, someone who could never stick to just one thing. I find little to regret though. The stories I've got...

Well, if myself from 3 months ago had know that the Today Me had to be responsible for 20 to 40 kids at a time, traveling from public place to public place on foot and on buses, trying to control them amidst crowds and cemeteries, tell them stories, ask them questions, make them ask questions, and stay calm under bad weather, mixed-up bus arrangements, mixed-up class arrangements, and various unforeseen circumstances... The Old Me would have slapped Today Me for taking up an impossible challenge, and run away.

The upside is the realization that I'm actually managing to do this. In the very worst moments, I can even stop to watch my breathing, and realize I'm not freaking out.

However, this does not mean that I don't feel some irritation at the behavior of some kids. I'm curious enough I may try to find a book on child behavior. But I'm starting to notice clear patterns: teachers who have a light touch with their students' discipline (or any touch at all) when a heavier hand is needed have the most students acting up, and constantly. I don't want to dump on these teachers -- they may be naturally meek people in a tough situation, or on a mental holiday while finally another shmuck is responsible for the group, or some kids are totally out of control... but it does make my job hard when a school can't even impress upon their students, today's youth, that how these young people carry themselves now and in the future makes a big impact on everbody and everything around them. The real tragedy is when you can tell a lot of these young ones already do not care.

And I can't do much to change that in 3 hours out of their lifetime.

That is both a curse and a huge blessing, I think.

24 Hour Comics Day

Sat, 20 Oct 2007 02:41:00 GMT

As aaronace just posted on his LJ and reminded me... October 20 is 24 Hour Comics Day. Crap on a cracker, I'm 11 hours into Oct 20th already and got other things to do. :(

Maybe next year (yet again)...

Anybody I know doing this?

The sound of the world heading toward hell in a handbasket goes a bit like this

Wed, 17 Oct 2007 07:50:05 GMT

BBC: Gore rules out presidential bid

EDIT: Over at DailyKos, some are now arguing semantics over Gore's statement and how it is "not definitive" and that the news outlets are putting words in Gore's mouth. Hope continues to spring for some, I guess.

Because it's Friday

Fri, 12 Oct 2007 09:42:36 GMT

Tee hee.

Busy

Wed, 10 Oct 2007 06:59:46 GMT

Finished two botany pictures yesterday, one of which was hilarious.

Monday, converted the US dollars in my Paypal account to Singaporean dollars. And closed my local bank account that was a US currency account. The bank officer was flabbergasted.

"You want to convert your US money to Singapore dollars today? But the exchange rate is so terrible!"

"It's not going to get better anytime soon," I said. And yes, I should have done this months ago, because I freakin' saw it coming. Anything I earn now in USD is worth less and less here. I'm not typing a sob story or anything, just a statement of fact. The US dollar is heading downwards measured against most of the world's currencies.

Saturday morning: had to go to Ikea the second time in 2 days to make an exchange. Buying new furniture is a last resort when I can't find something second hand - like a map chest. It also irritated me that I'd looked for months for something, and when I finally caved in to buy the Alex, the box we picked up on Friday had a badly chipped board - the last board I removed from the flatpacked box, to boot. Punishment for buying new furniture, I bet.

Saturday afternoon: I had very, very fun 5 hours at the Red Dot Traffic Museum that's between the business district and Chinatown here. It was an afternoon of doing quick portraits of people, with the possibility of getting your work bought if they liked it. (You're sitting to be drawn by several artists at one go.) It was my first time doing portraits from life in over 10 years. The challenge? Drawing and painting the pictures in 10 minutes, as opposed to 3 hours back when I was an art student. 10 minutes! hahaha (Results can be seen on my Facebook page, but you'll have to be on my f-list there to see this album. Hollar if you're there.) Really, it was a lot of fun. And very addictive - can't wait to do it some more. Pity it only happens there once a month!

Longer post after this one, I promise

Wed, 10 Oct 2007 06:34:39 GMT

Conpassionate Conservatism at work: SCHIP family being Freeped
Read the comments pulled from (shudder) the right wing blogs. And this is the party and their supporters who claim to want to protect the "sanctity of life" and the "sanctity of the family", whatever the hell they think the second one means. Obviously it doesn't apply to any family that has a member speaking up for SCHIP. Any messenger of bad news must be deestroyed.

Free Burma

Thu, 04 Oct 2007 03:46:06 GMT

I don't feel I'm doing much by just posting this, but I guess it can't hurt either.

I should be sleeping

Thu, 27 Sep 2007 17:16:16 GMT

But wanted to post a link to this brilliant post from Digby:

http://commonsense.ourfuture.org/no_way_baby

I realized something not long ago. I was in the US for both the 2000 and the 2004 US presidential elections. Not that that did anyone any good, since I'm not a US citizen, but even my 2000 self--ignorant as she was in US politics--could see the cultural and political divide in the US between the states in which I experienced racism (sorry, but till now my gut reaction to the words "Southern hospitality" is to say "my ass") and the states in which no one even brought up (or sometimes even suspected) that I was from out of the country. I'd been in parts of the US where I've been cornered in really uncomfortable situations (till now I wonder if I was in danger), where black families were still receiving burning crosses on their lawns (really), and where the tension was undeniable, where people would look at me in fear out of the corners of their eyes, not looking, but still looking every few seconds, as if they were just fighting the urge to kick me into a crate and ship me "back to China", where they always assumed I was from. Always.

I do recognize my experiences as mild, really. What I always hated more, was telling my experiences to Southerner friends (non-racist, obviously) and getting complete denial from some of them. "No way! You were being over-sensitive! Probably just your imagination." Yeah, right. Can we please now acknowledge I wasn't imagining?

19 September 2007

Wed, 19 Sep 2007 02:52:36 GMT

I sometimes use computer jARRRRGGHgon.
I like gAARRGHdening.
I also like Peter SAAARRRGHsgard.

Just sayin'.