Found myself a hobby!
Perhaps it’s card making, or paper cutting. Whatever it is, it helps me zen from a hard day’s work!
Presenting my proudest achievement.
A pop up card! Inspired by own birthday pop up card from last year.
Took a while to figure out the science of it..
Inspired by Kikki K cards.
And my latest creation… Done just tonight.. Little houses! 
What’s your hobby? What helps you let go of all the unhappy events of the day?
I took the stick of sugar out of my breast pocket and gave it to the homeless woman. Not sure what good it be to her but I felt a sense of heaviness lifted from my chest.
Today at work I teared as I was making desserts. Perhaps it was my incompetence in dealing with peak hour rush or knowing that it’s high possibility that I will return to Singapore and feel smaller than I ever will. Or perhaps I was sorry for myself for bring drunk, intoxicated and foolishly so.
I went outside and fought the pigeon. How does chocolate taste like to them? Is it sweet like the way we enjoy it? Or maybe pigeons have got different tasting sensations. Dry, hard, left over chocolate might be bitter to them. They come back for more because they too are foolishly in love with what hurts more than what pleasures.
Oh Pigeons! You fools! You fool…
With sunshine through my half drawn curtains and to the racket of the Melbourne cup goers, I woke from a 15-hour sleep.
It’s been long since I’d the heart to take in the mornings with such tranquil clarity.
Post film school crisis and stormy turbulences.
Caught in the middle of interpersonal relationships and habouring a painful infatuation.
Ideals and politics and the lost for words.
Immortality of the human race and broken marriages under the guises of social conformity.
I am a watchful eye, a tree, a wallflower. I am distant but awake.
In my dreams last night , I thought of you. Of the little sacrifices you’ve made after my foolish demands.
I dreamt about being a puppy. Of how I am so ever readily at your beck and call.
I woke today with power to take ownership of the little of the world I can control. I keep my emotions in check.
Drones of the far away passing tram. The slight drizzling rain outside. Fanta, the lost cat on an adventure.
The world is still alive and breathing with or without…
A disastrous beauty can wither under my commands and that is with you,
my unrequited desire for you.
You say goodbye and I say hello.
Hello life after film school. I’m ready to face you!
Man overboard,
I’ve capsized.
The wind took a change in course
and I just couldn’t fight it.
I hiked out. I tried, I fought the wind with all my might.
Gybe.
Turn around.
The boom swings exceptionally hard.
Knocked me on the head.
Knocked some sense into me.
The sea is perilous.
My heart is weak.
I said to myself that if you don’t reply, I’ll give it up.
But I check my phone every other second to find reasons not to.
Love makes us all do stupid things. If only it came with a manual then I wouldn’t have broken so many boy’s hearts.
Then I would know what to do with you.
You’re like the face of karma, coming back to haunt me.
Reminding me of all the great things boys have done for me, to which in return I stab a knife right through their hearts.
I get what I gave. Karma karma..
Pack up, I’m locking the doors. I’m wrapping my feelings in a dumpling.
I hold a bouquet of roses in my hand, wishing I’d given it to you.
Instead I gave it to the world. To the many others who would take it, devour it and forget about it.
I’m returning into the kitchen, hiding from the crowd.
There I’m safe. There, I indulge in my own tears.
Why is the dumpling crying?
Not because it has too much feelings.
It wishes it had courage. Courage to face the truth,
that it will never be.
You never replied.
For most of my childhood, I spent it hiding underneath my sister’s wooden table.
It was my home within my home.
I promised my teddy bears that one day I’d build a proper home for them,
with pretty furnitures and nice chairs.
Every us would have a nice chair to sit on and we’ll have dinner parties in summertime.
We’ll have our personalised cup with pictures of things we like.
I woke up instantly when my alarm rang the other day. It wasn’t a typical post drunken morning. I woke up wide awake. Almost as though I had never slept, as though I’ve slept through a blink.
During the whole day, I was in a daze. I was trying to piece together the conversations the night before. Can’t remember anything. d wish I did. This 23rd made up for the 18th n 21st I’d spent alone. Can’t be any happier.
Like how having bad luck before a shoot makes the shoot runs smoothly, good and bad balance out. Yin and yang. After all that goodness, somethings are broken. I’ve got to pluck up courage to mend them in my life.
Speaking of broken, my favourite watch had stopped and if anyone knows where I can go to to fix in new battery, I’ll appreciate it. Please let me know specifics cos I’m quite rather dumb..
I particularly enjoy taking a walk down Victoria St in Richmond. Today I was there on a hunt for pig’s skin (production shoot..gross…).
It wasn’t the most joyous of activities so I welcomed any distraction. I love the smell of victoria street. It smells like home. It smells like Toa Payoh where my mum’s provision shop is. The weather was kind, I could smell the sweat of the old hunched vietnamese grannys amongst the sour foul odour of meat from the butcheries. And then there was the dry provision stock smell.
I followed that familiar scent into a shop. And immediately, I was transported back into ’96.
They had dried packet food packed to the ceiling and handwritten price tags. The boss speaks only viet and canto and little english.
I can do english, manadarin and almost no canto. With some caricaturing and pointing, smiling, thumbs up, nodding excessively, I managed to convinced him to let me take a photo of him.
Melbourne is a funny place. Everyday I find something not so new about this place, makes me question ‘where am i?’
I remember watching Sophie’s first film last year and telling her that her grandma has the same plates as my grandma.
And then there was that day when I walked into a Chinese takeaway and they were playing xiaobazhi and shixiaolong!!!
It was the same old Cantonese movie, dubbed over in crappy Chinese with even crappier English subtitles! Just like the way it was!
Then when ariel and I went opshopping for crockeries for her shoot, I found my favourite dinner bowl! The teddy bear one!
Madness. Melbourne comprises of snippets of my childhood but involving people of different races and speaking languages.
It feels slightly nightmarish but not quite. Like the memories are warped but not quite.. Very strange and very moving at the same time.
So here I am, 2011, in a vietnamese provision shop which reminds me of my mum’s before the upgrading authorities made her renovate.
We used to play hide and seek between the shelves. If you’re wearing a red t-shirt, you can easily camouflage with the dried spices.
Don’t you think the edges of the packets look like sleeves?
I used to be really slow at finding the boys.
Then my sister told me that I could use to mirrors to see where everyone’s hiding. Because they’re meant for spotting thieves and thieves hide too.
decorations from 14083204983209428 new years ago..
I guess when I talk about home, I don’t mean Singapore.. I don’t mean the country or the place.
It’s the lazy sunday mornings I’m talking about. Lazing in bed till the afternoon, stretching my legs over to my sister’s side of the bed.
My father making ham and eggs. My sisters chatting about big girls stuff. And every part of the house being very noisy.
I love the smells and the noises of the chaos, of being part of a big family.
And knowing comfortably that while all these madness is going on, I’m safe to drift in and out of sleep, in between consciousness.
22 birthdays had came and go. Somehow the world had changed and I grew up.
And I’m in a new world of chaos too quick for me to grasp. please slow down!!!
Ying & Summer
Fun Fact #1 -
While Gladys sometimes prefer to go by her alter ego Donna, Gladys’ sister Grace, calls herself Summer.
Fun Fact #2 -
Ying, in a different chinese character but of the same pronunciation, is my niece’s name.
Michael & Victoria
Fun Fact #3 -
What inspired you to make a film about a couple not able to conceive, you ask?
Perhaps looking at many many ultra scan pictures of my niece has something to do with it.
Fun Fact #4 -
Prior to making M&V that year, Gladys’d made a tiny 2-minute project which involves birth giving of some sort.
Love is a Chair
Fun Fact #5 -
A little girl wishes she was the chair her sister sits on so that she can be her support when she’s upset.
AWWWWWWWW MUSH OVERLOAD HAHAHA
