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. 

where does creativity hide?

amy tan talks about how things like childhood trauma or negative impacts could influence our creativity. examples of more darker influences are depression, psychosis, or temporal lobe seizures (which she experienced while writing her book). painter vincent van gogh went through these, she said. to a more mentally healthy person, they would view the artworks as much more creative since they are rarely exposed to it. creativity can also come from the universe in the form of hints and coincidences and they are often just right in front of our eyes, but we have not noticed them yet.

amy tan also says that uncertainty is a good thing and rather than be afraid of it, we should address is head-on since uncertainty allows us to think of more ideas and solutions for our problems.

the first secret of great design

in the video, tony fadell talks about how we usually don't notice the little things in life since we are already too used to them. he gives the stickers on apples as an example and how at first people were very aware of it but as time passes, they became used to it. this is because if we notice everything, it would become too exhausting.

but if one notices the smallest details, they could make a big change. for example, mary anderson invented the windshield wipers when she noticed that the drivers had to stop and brush off snow from the car windows every once in a while and thought what could make it easier for the drivers so that they don't have to stop and go outside to get rid of the snow on the windows?

another example tony fadell gave is when steve jobs told his employees to look at their products as a buyer. one common problem is that new gadgets are not yet fully charged so one as to wait a while for it to charge before using it, so they decided to make their products all fully charged and ready to use immediately once bought.

tony fadell teaches us that we should stop accepting things as what they are and try to notice and question them more to realise what we are missing and what we could do to improve them.

nct dream

i think it's no longer a secret that i like korean groups, although i tried to keep it as lowkey as possible (and i failed). i told myself i wouldn't get invested in any more groups yet here i am.

sm entertainment debuted their newest group three days ago, nct dream, which is a sub-unit of nct. nct stands for neo culture technology and how they work is that they have an 'unlimited' number of male members from korea, china, thailand, japan, canada and america which will be divided into various sub-units based in different cities. at first i thought it was a funny idea, but now i think that it's actually pretty unique. nct's main unit nct u debuted this april with 'the 7th sense', followed by nct 127 (which is based in south korea, and fun fact: 127 is the coordinates of south korea) in july with 'fire truck'.

unlike nct u and nct 127 who debuted with members with the average age of 20, nct dream's average age is less than 16. their debut song is also much more cute and pop, unlike their predecessors', since they want to appeal to younger audiences.

from left to right: renjun (chinese, 16 years old), mark (leader of the group, previously in nct u and nct 127, canadian, 17 years old), haechan (previously in nct 127, korean, 16 years old), chenle (chinese, 14 years old),  jisung (korean, 14 years old), jaemin (korean, 16 years old), jeno (korean, 16 years old)

what blew me away the most, other than the fact that they're all so young, is that part of their choreography involves hoverboards. they are dancing on hoverboards. how even. (video of their performance at a music show below)

i know k-pop might not be everyone's cup of tea, but you've got to admit that these kids are talented and they have a lot of potential!

here's the music video for their title song 'chewing gum'! there's also a chinese version.

the music video for nct u's 'the 7th sense'.

the music video for nct 127's 'fire truck'. 

lateral thinking

Imagine this room: the window at the back is open. In front of the window there is a table with a vase, in which a fresh rose stands. A painting of flowers hangs on the opposite wall (at the whiteboard area). A bee flies into the room through the open window, straight to the painting and not the rose. Why?!?!?!

singapore night festival

i decided to stop by the singapore night festival at bras basah on friday night. this year's theme was inventions and innovations. it was interesting to see the streets of singapore late at night since i rarely ever go out at night. i really liked seeing all the various exhibits on the streets!

moving images were projected onto the singapore art museum building which depicted the world of author jules verne.

the 'corals' in this exhibit were made out of sugar and chocolate.

 a lot of kids (and also adults) used the little lights to spell out their names and make shapes.

 this is my favourite exhibit! i waited in line for more than an hour to see it.

you get locked in a room for a while full of changing lights. it was very breathtaking! it literally made me question the meaning of life. 

nail art

i've been binge watching a lot of youtube videos lately revolving around nail art. i find it amazing how people have the patience to make such intricate designs on their own nails whereas i can't even paint a solid colour on my nails without making a mess.

here are some very simple yet elegant designs! 

this is literally like painting on a very tiny canvas HOW DO PEOPLE DO THIS.

i have a newfound appreciation for those who work at nail salons/people who do nail art in general. i'lll leave with you with a tutorial on how to do suicide squad themed nails! 

where good ideas come from

in his talk, steven johnson talks about where good ideas are born. he says that to create good ideas, there has to be a place where people from different walks of life with different experiences can come together and talk, like a coffee shop.
some ideas come from simple ideas during conversations (like the story of Guier and Weiffenbach who were talking about picking up signals from the newly launched Soviet satellite, which they succeeded in, and later on their invention becomes something now known as the GPS) and some ideas take a longer time to grow as they linger in your mind.
he also says that ideas should be shared rather than protected, since sharing them will result in more better solutions, because after all it isn't the idea that's important but it's how you execute it.

tie up a ribbon

just picked up my copy of beast's 3rd full album 'highlight' today! i'm totally in love with it. it's such a great album and it has such a great concept!

(why is the cover like this though? why did they separate the members? i find it weird.)

lyrics from the title song 'ribbon', which was written by the group's rapper (and producer) yong junhyung. "i came up with 'ribbon' because i was wearing the hotel gown and i went to the corridor and the gown all of a sudden became undone. i went back to my room and i thought, "i tied it so tightly, why did it become undone so easily?" so i compared this to lovers. we thought we really had each other but we broke up really easily. i compared it to a ribbon," he explained during a tv broadcast. 

a card that is included in the album featuring two of the members. when the card is opened, the string is pulled taut and a knot is formed, corresponding to the title song. i was very impressed when i first opened the card! (imagine how long it took for people to punch holes and tie a string through them for this omg) 

the music video for 'ribbon'. 

dreaming days

these are some of my favourite pictures from bts' now3 dreaming days photobook. it cost me quite some money but it was all worth it! the pictures are all very beautiful and there are also some quotes inside (i'm pretty sure the members came up with them) which i really like.

my favourite quote is probably the first one ("now, i am standing in front of this door intimidated by perfectionism, mistakes and hopes"). i relate to it, in a way. here i am, fresh out of secondary 4, alone in a foreign country. of course i would be intimidated. intimidated by the unfamiliar surroundings, the expectations people placed upon me, the mistakes i have and will make and the hopes that i have.