obligatory food post

this post will be filled with food so don't read it if you haven't had your meal!

on wednesday (the 5th), my mom and aunt came to visit me from jakarta. it was very nice to see them again after so long! yesterday we went to sorae, located in plaza singapura, to eat dinner. i had been craving korean bbq for a while now but obviously i can't afford it on my own so i was very happy when i got to finally eat it.

people were giving out free packets of jagabee by orchard road as some sort of promotion for their new wasabi flavoured snacks.

watermelon mocktail! this was very refreshing and i enjoyed it a lot. you can choose if you want a mocktail or cocktail (served with soju) but since i'm still underage and my cousin (from my other aunt who lives in singapore) is too, we went for the non-alcoholic option.

japchae and kimchi jjigae! i love kimchi jjigae~

and the main event - the bbq! we got a serving of samgyeobsal (pork belly) and three servings of woosamgyeob (us beef). the uncle there said that night's woosamgyeob was in very good condition. usually there's some oil/fat but that night's servings were great.

and today, we went to ramen champion in bugis for lunch. i love ramen and i got myself the sapporo miso ramen from the stall near the front, whose name i forgot.

for dinner, we went to jumbo at clarke quay. 

i didn't take individual pictures of the food but my mom made a collage so she could post it on her path account. we got mantous, baby squid, tofu, chilli crab and kangkung. i did take a picture of the chilli crab though. 

look at that beauty. 

inktober

every october, there's this thing called inktober, which is when you draw using inks for every day of the month. there are prompts given but it is not necessary for you to follow them, such as these ones from the inktober website.

i decided to actually try it out this year even though i can't commit to anything. i didn't follow the prompts though. instead i just drew what i felt like drawing and what i was feeling like that day, so it was quite therapeutic for me. i stopped after the third day, which is no surprise, because i had to focus more on my school assignments since assessment week is coming up.

the materials i used are: winsor & newton drawing ink in black, winsor & newton watercolours, a g-pen, uniball white pen, dr ph martin's pen-white white ink, dr ph martin's concentrated watercolours, a moleskine sketchbook & a moleskine watercolour book. 

i think inktober is a great idea since it motivates people to do more with ink and will help develop their techniques. i have not touched inks for a few months so inktober is a great excuse for me to play with ink around more. i would love to continue my inktober drawings if given the chance! 

empathy

today in class we learned about empathy. what is empathy? according to the dictionary, empathy is the ability to understand and share the feelings of another.
a question was asked: how will empathy benefit our school life and then our professional life?
empathy, in general, will feel really good especially when you start to understand someone better, and it also feels good to be empathically understood. it's a win-win situation. it is proven that empathy helps reduce depression, anxiety and stress. empathy will also help develop better relationships with your friends, peers, teachers, etc. it also reduces conflict. empathy expands our perspective on things and this will help our creative process, especially in times when we are stuck on what to do.
focusing more on the professional life part of the question, empathy allows us to understand the clients more, which will lead to consumer satisfaction and that will lead to loyalty. empathy brings people together and creates trust, which are very important.
all in all, empathy has a lot of benefits and it will help our school life and professional life to be much more easier and things will run smoother, not to mention that it also positively affects our mentality, allowing us to see and understand the world in a different light.

boy meets evil

one of my favourite boy groups is coming back with a new album this october. they released a new teaser video yesterday, the intro, featuring one of the group's rappers and main dancer. i decided to draw out some of the dance moves i found interesting in the video since i could use the practice!

here's the teaser video!

individual exercise: force connection

we were tasked with choosing one adjective and one object for an individual exercise and we had to write out a description. i chose sad pencil. 

when one is sad, their body tend to slump/slouch, so i thought what if the pencil could bend! 

the pencil could also be made out of 90% eraser and he is sad because he made a lot of mistakes, or that he could break easily. 

i tried making sketches for brave clock and passionate candle too. for brave clock, i thought what if and alarm clock is durable (because if you can't switch off the alarm you throw it against the wall, am i right) and it is hard to switch off? and for the candle, it is passionate because of its undying flame. 

biomimicry

biomimicry, according to the dictionary, is the design and production of materials, structures, and systems that are modelled on biological entities and processes. this can be seen as a form of analogical thinking. one very interesting example that i found is the shinkansen bullet train, which was inspired by the kingfisher.
due to the birdwatching hobbies of engineer nakatsu, he remembers that the kingfisher dives cleanly at high speeds from one medium (water) to another that is 800 times more denser (air) and surmised that the shape of its bill was what allowed the bird to do so.
due to being inspired by the kingfisher, the bullet train is now more efficient and it does not need to exert so much energy. it is faster, less money, fuel and power is used, and it is also quieter.

richard siken

i've always been very interested in poetry. my favourite poet has got to be richard siken. his book crush won the 2004 yale series of younger poets prize and he released another book titled war of the foxes just last year. i decided to go to kinokuniya to treat myself and bought both of his books since most of the poems in the book are not available in full on the internet.



i decided to read crush first. my favourite siken poem is called little beast, which i have attached below. i find his poems sort of fast paced and very effortless. recurring themes in his poems are panic, obsession, love and lust.

my favourite part of the poem is the last verse, more specifically the last few lines. "Sorry about the blood in your mouth. I wish it was mine. I couldn't get the boy to kill me, but I wore his jacket for the longest time." there's just something haunting and achingly desperate about it.