Week Eighteen: Candyland

Candyland of cupcake houses, candy cane street lamps, lollipop postboxes, cotton candy trees, mint chocolate chip ice-cream mountains, gumdrop-lined waffle streets. Too sweet to live in. 

Halfway To Joining The Yakuza

The problems with blunt knives. Well it was deep and I think it kinda hit bone. Could not stop the bleeding for a an hour till I got mom to come with the special miracle oil we have at home. Everyone is grossed out, and probably wonders if I do not feel pain. Guess it is about mind over matter. What mattered more was stopping the bleed rather than the pain. Damn knife!

Week Seventeen: Favourite Animal

My favourite land-dwelling animal, the elephant. This one is a little out of proportion I think. 

Week Sixteen: Music

Because I'm all about that bass, 'bout that bass... Haha

Week Fifteen: Two

Another one that gave me a headache, but I am quite happy with my final drawing. "2" and "Two" together and with two colours. Wonder how 3 would have turned out....

Week Fourteen: Brand New

How do you draw "brand new"? The question had bugged me for more than a week and I finally thought about the ribbon-cutting ceremony as something usually associated with brand new things. 

Week Thirteen: Framed

Did not know what to frame, and I could not draw a nice frame to save my life. So after finding this cute quote by my favourite blue puppet, Cookie Monster, an idea finally popped up in mind. Got to work on the lettering for sure. 

R.I.P. Mr Lee

He created a modern city from a filthy island and that is what I appreciate most about what he has done in his lifetime. No matter what people might say about his tactics about getting things done, it has been done. 

“I am often accused of interfering in the private lives of citizens. Yes, if I did not, had I not done that, we wouldn’t be here today. And I say without the slightest remorse, that we wouldn’t be here, we would not have made economic progress, if we had not intervened on very personal matters – who your neighbour is, how you live, the noise you make, how you spit, or what language you use. We decide what is right. Never mind what the people think.”

Appreciate the fact that we can travel far and wide, have drinkable water on tap no matter how high we live, no chewing gum stuck to out behinds, have cool public restrooms, yet still have our flora and fauna to enjoy. 

“Even from my sick bed, even if you are going to lower me into the grave and I feel something is going wrong, I will get up.”

May he rest in peace. 

Week Twelve: Wings

"Mama told me not to waste my life,
She said spread your wings my little butterfly
Don't let what they say keep you up at night
And they can't detain you
'Cause wings are made to fly...."

Week Eleven: Favourite Place

Mom said I should just draw a building with glass doors and the word "supermarket" on it. I thought about it and I felt I preferred a farmers' market and decided to try and draw one. My market is rather empty though, the stall holders are still setting up. 

Don't Judge A Book By Its Cover

"Everyone will go through some hard times at some point. Life isn't easy. Just something to think about. Did you know the people that are the strongest are usually the most sensitive? Did you know the people who exhibit the most kindness are the first to get mistreated? Did you know the ones who take care of others all the time are usually the ones who need it the most? Did you know the three hardest things to say are "I love you", "I'm sorry", and "Please help me"? Sometimes just because a person looks happy, you have to look past their smile to see how much pain they may be in."

If only people know better....

Week Ten: Inspire

One word to describe the inspiration that covers my thirst for knowledge, passion for travel, love for food and the joy of discovery. 

I Thought I Had A Little More Time

Received a really sad message on my phone this morning that informed me of the passing of my former colleague from my hotel internship. Eugenie was working there as one of the two main telephone operators and she was one cool lady who partied with us, and was not shy about anything.

After I completed my internship, she seems to have been dealt a really bad hand when it came to her health. There was also a time where she had two heart attacks and was on the brink of death but managed to fight back.

Recently, she fought cervical cancer and was doing quite good. That is, until recently when it seems that her organs were failing her. Just two days ago, I just asked how she was doing and I received a call from her brother informing me that she was not doing so good, and had been in the hospital for the last three weeks. She had had a stroke and with her failing organs, it sounded quite grave.

I was actually planning to visit her this afternoon and instead was told about her death. I just hope that she can finally rest in peace now.

Goodbye Genie.

Week Nine: Favourite Book

The book that sent my imagination to Japan and actually started my small love affair with books. The way the story was written also kept me so interested that I had to force myself to put it down as I needed to sleep. Oddly enough, I have not read any of Aruthur Golden's other books. 

Week Eight: Your Name

There is something about drawing something about yourself that seems to give me a mental block. The challenge this time was to draw my name, and although writing my name seems easy enough, drawing it was much tougher than I thought. I honestly could not decide on how to draw my name and that is probably because I am just as complicated as the number of ideas I had. The final results already show that there is no consistency in the style or fonts, but it probably indicates I am a little loopy. 

Week Seven: Something You Love

I love travelling. I love flying but I dislike the turbulence. I would love to learn to fly a plane and a helicopter. I would love to travel the world. So here is a rather complete picture of something I love and a lot of it's components, which includes a (attempted) Boeing 747.

This reminds me that I need to renew my passport!

Week Six: Tool

My choice of a tool is a chef's knife. It is the one tool that helps me relief stress through all the slicing  and dicing. The feel of cutting through something with a sharp blade also gives a strange sense of pleasure and joy, especially when it is so sharp that paper-thin slices can be easily achieved. This knife might be slightly bent at the top though. 

Now Even The Manager Knows

So I get to talking to the Japanese manager of the company, one question led to another, and I got asked if I did not like working with anyone in particular. I immediately mentioned that I disliked working with the Marketing Genius of the company.

From the very first day I worked with her, she actually talked down to me, like I was some student, fresh out of school, who had not worked a day in their life. No other staff had actually talked to me like that, and my first day meeting her was actually my fourth or fifth day on the job.

So other than the bad impression from the very first meeting, there was the incident where I gave her the title of Marketing Genius, then the day when she broke my bottle (and just buried the incident under the fridge apparently), and the day she thought her opinion mattered.

Today I get another point to add to the hate list. This was actually after telling the manager that I dislike her, and just simply telling him that "she cannot work" as the reason. She actually did something to prove my whole point, albeit only to me.

Due to some incident happening in the Scotts outlet, the boss of the company brought back three trays of food and the manager told me to try sell it off even if it meant lowing the price. This was midway through him carting in a van-load of stocks which we both had been stacking into the walk-in fridge. During the whole time, she apparently was outside just watching him push the stock in.

After all the stock was brought in, I had about an hour to sell a total of five trays of food. Cleared all the pans and fryer baskets, and placed them in the sink to soak in soapy water before I started packing the food for sale. Then for the hour I was trying to get as many packets sold, I got some help from the boy manning the counter next to me while the marketing genius just stood at the fruit juice counter, staring at what I was doing. Worse bit was when I finished packing, I found everything left in the sink and there was no attempt to rinse anything off.

Not only does she not help with sales, she did not help with washing up and then she expects people to help her when it is time to clear the vegetables back into the walk-in fridge. Perhaps a little teamwork would get you more help? I guess you thought I would stupidly carry three baskets of vegetables into the fridge for you rather than make you do slightly more work? Sorry, but I have no sympathy for you and your sad stories, and you just HAD to pull your weight for once!

Week Five: Profile

This is not my profile, but of someone who I definitely look like. I was inspired by the Alfred Hitchcock silhouette and was attempting to do something similar. Mine definitely turned out a bit messier and I am just drawing the main lines I see on my mom's face. I am noot good with shading, and definitely not with a marker. 

My Third Bouquet Actually

Yesterday I finally get taught how to put a bouquet of flowers together by the Flower King and this is the second bouquet I did with all the really short flowers that were supposed to be thrown away. I managed to get it almost right, and needed his help to suggest a bit more stuffing on one side to make it more even. So this bouquet is actually the third bouquet I did. 

The first one I had to put together was a bouquet of roses for someone's anniversary gift to his wife. That was my first attempt and I tried my best and he thought I was trying to be creative, but that was me just trying. The second one is probably still in the store but that was more like me just helping to hold the flowers together while the Flower King told me which flower or filler went where.

He says there will be more for me to do tomorrow, so hopefully the bouquets start looking better soon.