Introspection Intraspection

ANY GIVEN SUNDAY
© SYL, 2006

Any given Sunday the garlic stakes twist
Around your heart
Your vampire heart – your life sucked dry
By its feeding.
And dreams, like leeches
Drift through thoughts
White, dead
Bloated hope.

Your cracked voice swells.

There is nothing but a husk of shell
No sound but these withered bones.

Sittin' On the Dock of the Sushi Bar

You know you've been going to a restaurant long enough to be considered 'family' when the waitresses try to steal your sketch book to get a peek inside.

There's a wonderful little Japanese restaurant opposite the hospital where I have lunch once a week. The ambience is wonderful; I did and still do a lot of my sketching there because it always inspires me to do something artistic over lunch. I've been going there for over a year or more now; the staff there know me so well they feed me -extra- food sometimes. Considering their portions are already huge, this often provides me with dinner from the leftovers.

The sushi chefs and the waitresses there have always found it amusing to watch me plug away at the sketch book while waiting for food to be served. But since the sushi chefs are often kind of shy about being sketched, I have to be sneaky about it. The waitresses just find it the biggest joke ever. Today two of them caught me at it, and demanded to see what I was drawing --me being shy, I declined. One of them tried to distract me, and the other tried to steal the sketch pad off my place, and we had a splendid friendly sibling-like scuffle (which bemused a lot of the patrons.)

But I -did- manage to steal a really crooked sketch of the chap preparing a Japanese salad. It was difficult, because every few seconds I had to sort of look somewhere else and pretend I wasn't drawing at all, since he kept turning around. And every time I looked back up someone had moved something on the counter so I couldn't get a good sketch of anything, even the pots! Still...I tried.



On a different note, I'd have to say that even if I'm not famous (except maybe for a phenomenal bad temper), my life is definitely not -dull-. Tonight it rained and I tried to hail a cab to take me around the corner to my apartment, since I didn't want to get thoroughly drenched with water and rival an ark. Normally, the cab fare would run to about 3RM since base fare starts at 2RM. Mr. Taxi Driver Sir wanted to charge me TEN. TEN! For that amount, just to put things in perspective, I could get to the monorail station 15-20 minutes away!

Fortunately it was raining hard enough or else the people at the bus stop nearby would have heard 'Ah moi(standard term for 'girl' here), go there need 10RM ahhh...' and 'WHAT??? DROP DEAD!' *door slam as Ah Moi with umbrella stalks off*.

Not -all- Ah Moi's loaded with umbrellas, bulky bags and who look a little like stout, short barrels melt in the rain. This Ah Moi regularly walks the 45 minutes back home when the bus doesn't come, thank you very much.

I really wasn't very accomodating to that poor man, come to think of it.

Anyway, that being said, Happy Thanksgiving to everyone who celebrates it! Here in my culture we don't, so I don't have any turkey pictures to put up but err....will a sushi chef chopping salad do?

Cthulhu Bell and Other Random Thoughts

...So if 'taco' is 'octopus' in Japanese, does that make Taco Bell Cthulhu's own personal insidious project to lure all into the Great Deep with Nyarlahotep by disguising tentacle mind-altering goodness as the things we know as tacos?

Ahem. This image courtesy of my beloved brother who reminded me of the Japanese meaning when talking about music. All blame solely attached there.

In other news: I have picked out a shiny, new, custom-built computer system and I am happily drooling at the thought of it. Yes, after 8 years or more, I will have a -new- computer that is not a hand-me-down! I might even be able to get a tablet to go with it, like I've wanted for ages and ages...

I've been working on a piece quiet-like for about 2 weeks now, and haven't quite decided what to do with her yet. I was curious to see if I could do shading, because I never felt comfortable with it, so I did an exercise for practice.

And here she is!



Any suggestions most welcome! I want to keep a fairly stark aesthetic with her, and thought of maybe just detail on her face and shadow on the rest of her dress but my ideas are like sieves and many times don't hold water artistically that way.

And now to let Cthulhu devour my brain --err, I mean, work on a piece that's deadlined for next week. I'll post some of those studies later!

Whelks, Slow Food and Time

Whenever I'm stressed, I buy a bowl of whelks to eat with lunch.

I bought some today.

There is a little cafe near the hospital where I work, called the Bawang Merah (Red Onion) which sells the most delicious whelks in curry sauce I've ever tasted. I usually wind up with my mouth on fire after eating them, but it's worth it.

These tiny little shellfish, usually no bigger than half my thumb or a little longer, take some skill to eat because basically we have to suck them out of the shell without the aid of pins or forks - the tines are too big to go through the small hole at the end of the shell anyway. As the process involves generally a minute amount of rather strange sucking noises reminiscent of tentacle monsters sucking out eyeballs, a reasonable amount of tolerance amongst the diners in the cafe is usually a good thing, plus the ability to be thick-skinned and pretend to not notice when a particularly loud slurp brings all eyes in your direction.

Whelks take time to eat. I only order then when I have a long, leisurely full lunch break because they can't be enjoyed in a hurry. Today I was able to do that, and even have enough time to do a five minute sketch with a self-inking Chinese calligraphy brush.

A bowlful of whelks reminds me that there's all the time in the world. That for one hour, life slows down just enough for me to take a breath and enjoy, moment by moment.

I need those reminders more often.

Revenge...of the LAPTOP!

First a disclaimer: the following was entirely Marcos' fault. The image his comment conjured up stayed in my head all afternoon to the point where I doodled around between patients just to see how to lay it all out.

So! Specially for you, Marcos, I present my very first comic page ever - *cue DUN DUN DUN music* The Laptop's Revenge:



Top points to anyone who can name which show and which episode, precisely, the title parodies. Because dude, you're as obscure-geekish as ME and that's SCARY.

Rain Rain Come NOW (But Only When I'm Sleeping)

I love rain, and there seems to be quite a bit of it floating around at this point. I do object to being drenched two days in a row, nevertheless. If it's going to pour, do it when I'm sleeping! That way I can definitely have an excuse to curl up under the blankets and snooze.

The Saga of the Computer continues. I replaced the network card. Computer still refuses to work. So I've started pricing new systems. The scanner refuses to work with the laptop. Yeah, I'm upholding my record for Comic Book Life *coughMarcoscough*

Given everything that's going on right now (including trying to stop reacting to dust in this place) I think I could use a little of my version of this:



Lady Luck of the Origami Fortuneteller. She was one of my first complete pieces about 2 years ago, and she's oil crayons, ink, and half-dry magic markers which I almost threw away but didn't. I discovered that those do -marvellous- things over oil crayons; adds a whole new layer of richness and texture.

Not throwing all my old art supplies -really- comes in handy sometimes!

Movie, Anyone?

All right. I give up. WAY give up.

I come back from vacation. Enough drama, right, you'd think?

Right?

Of -course- not. My desktop network card is fried. I thought it was the modem but by sheer fluke I plugged the modem into my laptop - and it worked FINE. So it looks like the network card.

Not to mention I got soaked getting ONTO the bus yesterday and today when I went to get a wireless USB port as well as a new cable in the hopes that it would fix the problem. As it turns out I didn't need the wireless port and the problem ISN'T the modem, but it'll come in handy anyway since I've been planning on getting one for a while.

*sigh*

Or maybe I just need a new computer altogether since 128 megs of RAM and Win 98SE is kind of obsolete. It's amazing it runs everything it needs to - Photoshop, my music stuff, the lot. But it may be time to start looking at a new machine with at least 1 gig processing speed.

So while I'm still scanning and transferring stuff, have something from the archives:

Rain. Pour. That Stuff.

Text message from my brother, 4am: Our van just burnt up. We lost everything. Please pray.

He's in a band, currently touring. All he could tell me since his phone was running out of battery, was that the van just went up in flames for no reason. There's nothing left of it, more or less. No one knows what happened. Thank GOD no one was hurt, everyone was ok. But they lost all their equipment, including the pride-of-his-heart drumset, all his snares and his cymbals. Which weren't insured. They're spending the night in Memphis right now, heading back to NY tomorrow.

Any good thoughts and prayers, I'd be grateful if you'd send it their way.

I'm just thankful he's alive.

Wonder if anyone wants a furguppy from the archives?

Life, The Soap Opera

The Great Sewage Saga ain't over yet. The plumber came on Saturday and made things -worse-. Now the entire kitchen smells like the inside of a drain. Upstairs neighbours, whose fault this entire mess is, don't want to pay compensation. Our pipes are still leaking every time someone a couple floors up turn on the water. -I- have promised to help housemate take someone apart if things aren't fixed soon because I can't -cook- or heat up stuff without being in a welter of swampland miasma.

Oh, and to add to the Soap Opera theme - I pulled a groin muscle. I've no idea HOW, other than it was too much standing and kneeling to ink yesterday's bulletin board piece, since my table's tiny and wouldn't properly hold an A3 sheet of paper. I can sit on anything with a stable centre of gravity but the minute it wobbles and I have to engage my abdominals to keep balance, OWW. Walking's also not a very fun thing to do, and any heavy lifting's out of the question. I'm hoping it goes away by tomorrow; I'm sure bumping home today on the bus for 2.5 hours didn't help.

And I forgot to bring my camera battery charger back so of course my digicam's dead as a dodo. Bah. I had a sketch on it I wanted to upload!

On the plus side however: I'm home! I'm home for five days! I'm not in a sewage infested apartment any more! (at least for a little while.) The awards ceremony on Sunday went -marvellously- well, and I made my Designing Debut with The Dress. It was a hit! (yeesh, that sounds so...self-aggrandizing. But people did like it a lot and I kept getting asked where I bought it!)

And everyone who sent well-wishes to my housemate's father, I'm delighted to report that he's back from hospital and doing just fine, aside of a slight glitch with accidentally ripping off the scab on his foot. He's convalescing at home and doing very well. Thank you all so much!

So in lieu of what I -wasn't- able to post, I went back into the files looking for history and came up with:



She's from a game I used to play on a while back - Ro'sllendrin en'Vrdhatru. Initially she started out as just someone in my head called Gothic Alice..and then she sort of turned into this.

And Xinh! Xinh'duronh Shaha, originally from a Star Wars universe. The MUSH folded, but I do miss her sometimes.



Newer stuff is gonna have to wait till I get home in a couple days and by then I hope the drama's going to be over.

OH! OH! I went with my mother to see Open Season and it was -cute- as all get out...and there was Marcelo Vignali's name in the credits at the end, which was just great.

*whistles her way through Joshua Kadison's 'Cherry Bowl Drive-In as she sits very carefully to do some work*

Buns Are Nice But Not On My Head

So a couple weeks back my writers' group had a bulletin board that needed decorating, and me, being the masochist that I am, volunteered caricatures of the members to be put up. We decided to do the core team committee first - which didn't sound so bad initially because there are only four of us anyways. One of the girls created a tagline poster that was very 1950s comic-book feel, so I decided to sketch us four goons in as comic-booky type characters too.

The result, after about 45-60 minutes of inking and half an hour more of frantic colouring before group leader came to pick it up, is certainly...interesting.

We have: The Narnia Queen of snow and ice, for Jan who loves chewing on ice cubes. Gambit, for Jon, who loves staves and blades and who wanted to be Wolverine but the artist had a brain fart and did not have the cool ability to draw that character, alas. Cheryl, who just -begs- for a Disney-style look and so got Kim Possible. And me. As Chun Li. Because I hit things and like explosions. And the paper was way too big for my scanner so I had to break the entire sheet of A3 paper up into two scans.





It isn't the BEST something-whatsoever, but I'm happy it's DONE at least. Now to type out the taglines for each character and send it in for someone else to comic-book-script since I don't have time to do it before I leave...

Y'know, I really do like Chun Li, but NOT THOSE STUPID HAIR BUNS!

The Anatomy of Lesser Known Things

I.
The force [F = Ma, or, Force = Mass x acceleration] of taking (a) a plate of food (m) off a high counter will cause gravy to fly with glee in a fan-shaped pattern and splatter your clothes, ergo:



II.
Being blindsided hard (F) by even a slow-closing lift door can cause you to stagger (a) and thus displace your innards and your ribs (m), or so it feels like for about five seconds.

III.
Being cracked in the sternum by the bony elbow of your equally bony, tall counter nurse can feel like a kick from a really skinny mule. Especially after collision with abovementioned lift door.

IV.
I didn't even know you could get a paper cut from new dollar bills.

V.
Light really does reflect on skin.

VI.
Directional spotlights, recessed ones too, really do cast triangular shadows. Even in broad daylight, ergo:



VII.
The day gets a trifle surreal when you're trotting back to your clinic counter bearing leftover pizza from a doctors' meeting. In a brown envelope. (Ok, fine, there weren't any available containers or plastic bags in there. It is still surreal, yes.)

VIII.
I am currently engaged in taking apart a thirty-six dollar skirt and turning it into a layered samurai-style outfit for a national awards ceremony I'm helping with on Sunday. Cloud Strife style overskirt, Issey Miyake style weird folded jacket. I have an ENTIRE wardrobe of suitable stuff for the occasion. Why am I doing this? BECAUSE I'M INSANE. I think. Yeah.

...Ok. So today got just a liiiiiiiiiittle surreal. Mostly. It was probably a bad idea to walk 3 miles home in the muggy heat too.

So much disproving the idea that a certain life could be a movie script. Right?

*looks at above list* I don't think I NEED to answer that question, not after this...

Hit the Road, Jack...No, Wait, That's Water

Hey Marcos? You were not kidding when you mentioned 'all the happenings in my life right now'.

*sigh*

Half an hour up to the -eyeballs- in foul-smelling water left over from the Great Sewage Saga, I've come to the conclusion that I'm Real Life's alternative to John Constantine. The water's not draining out of the kitchen from when housemate hosed it down, and we didn't realize that -under- the stove was a puddle of Stygian horror. We'll have to mop it out again tomorrow after one round today - it'll require two people and neither of us are feeling well tonight after that stench.

Oh, and that means I have to clean the bathroom -again- because we had to clean crap out of the mops. The bathroom cleaning usually leaves me with lower back pains that require me to take muscle relaxants if they're bad enough.

I can't take the muscle relaxants on a week night; I won't wake up the next day.

The only thing -good- out of all this is that next week, I'm going home for five days on break again.

And on -that- note, here's what I -really- feel like doing, from another hissing session sometime ago:



Now if only I could get a BIGGER cast-iron yoyo.

Sunrise, Sunrise

...looks like morning in your eyes
But the clock's held nine-fifteen for hours...

Ahh, Nora Jones. It's been a long, long day interspersed with medical drama of the Not Good Kind. Had to chase my housemate off to a doctor with her father in case he had gangrene after a motorbike ran over his foot some days ago. Am hoping and praying everything's gonna be just fine; situation's complicated enough as is without more fuel chucked onto it.

So, just because we've really needed an angel, this is in honour of that. It's an old piece done as a commission three years ago; the client specified 'black and white and sort of unfinished'. Watercolour, colour pencils, ink and a wee bit of crayons.



Sometimes, strange places have strange angels unawares.

...Man I'm tired. I think I need to go to sleep soon and put the sketching ideas on hold for now.

Blossoms, Homecomings, and Domestic Disasters

Four hours, rest-stop-jammed-up-to-highway, and tons of rain later, I'm finally back in my apartment.

Only to discover that my upstairs neighbours have once again clogged up the water pipes and pounded a broomstick or something down the u-bend - resulting in the ENTIRE lot of sewage, rotting food and foul water coming down onto our kitchen. AGAIN. Yes, this happened last year and I was the only one at home to clean it up. This year it was my housemate's turn.

We'd rather skip that yearly duty and move onto greener pastures, thankyouverymuch.

And since upstairs won't pay for the damage and we're going to have to get a plumber in to fix it and, and, and...

Never mind. I'm throwing someone off the balcony tomorrow and it'll be one of the upstairs neighbours if they don't cough up compensation.

Oh, and someone stole our mop off the balcony as well. A MOP. I've no idea why and I don't think I want to know either but...a MOP.

In other news, as promised, the flowers I drew from dinner the other night. I'm not entirely too pleased with the way the colours came out - I am -so- not good with watercolour - but it's an attempt and I'm glad of that, at least.

The Embroiderer...Err, Artist's Floral

Some years ago when I was still working in a fibre arts store in VA, I came across a book called the Embroiderer's Floral. It was, as the title states, a treasury of floral designs and techniques for embroiderers. Fascinating book; I regret not buying it. Maybe I might be able to pick it up at Kinokuniya some time...

...though that wasn't quite the point of the post but the lead-in for it. At dinner tonight, a beautiful cozy little place called Paprika Cafe, we were served flowers with our food --sweet peas for my father's chocolate cake, and two lovely unknown blossoms for mine. I've been trying to take one artist's advice and sketch/paint every day. Which means I carry my sketchbook just about anywhere I can fit it into my ragged canvas bag, and a couple Sakura Pigma Microns of varying sizes.

So I yanked out the drawing paraphernalia and sketched away all through dinner. The waiter and my parents were highly amused. The colours of the flowers were so lovely I took them back with me so I could attempt (note the operative word) to paint in the drawings.

Haven't got a scanner here, but will post when I get back to my apartment in two days.

In the meantime, have another Beldame and Dominic sketch:



"Nic? Soooooooooo not in Chicago any more."
"I noticed."

It isn't the best sketch, but it's my first time attempting a bloody -building- and since I hate 'em I'm trying to make myself do them.

Ooof. VACATION!

CONCERT DONE! CONCERT DONE!

We played to three shows - 2 full and one almost full - and it went off -so- well. The quartet rocked the house. They did so well, I cried off-stage when we got done. It was one of the best shows we've done I think. People want to hear it in another state! They want the same program! And for the cast party I dressed up as Cloud, complete with blond hair, and it went off well and...

Yeah. It was a good show.

And now I am on vacation after two of the craziest weeks ever since the show ended. Work has been absolutely and totally insane. It's been so stressy everything's been making me cry. But since it's Deepavali and Hari Raya and my boss abruptly took Monday off I get to GO HOME till Wednesday! I haven't been home for 7 months over, and it's just lovely to be back to see my parents and my fish and the guppies and my dog. I plan on having a lovely few days before going back to work, definitely.

Oh, yes, the artistic muse bit my brain the other night when I was doing some work on a character. Captain Jishu Kijahng Thalasa, and her best friend, Quinton Arundell, sitting in the sun being cheeky. It's kind of big an image so it's got to go behind a cut. It wasn't even going to be a proper sketch, and it's still pretty rough so...it's not the best thing ever but I'm happy with it because of the expressions. I never finish anything and this time I did!

So, without further ado: Introducing Jishu and Quin!

Maybe I'll do some more sketching later, but for now this redhead is going to relaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaax.

Public Service Announcement

Dear people:

If you have a problem with me? I'd appreciate you actually coming to y'know, -tell- me about it to my face. Not me finding out in a public setting that, apparently, that I'm bidding fair to be queen of kissing butt.

Yes, I'm probably tired and need a good night's sleep, and I'll probably be just fine tomorrow, and I should probably laugh it off because it's for fun.

Except for the part where it hurts like fucking hell, I'm sure it's all in good fun.

Werewolves and Weird Detectives Come To Town

A werewolf and a detective found my brain, sat down, and wouldn't leave.

It's Dominic 'Nic' O'Reilly and Beldame. Now I've finally set them down on paper, maybe they'll give me a break and let me get some peace. Yeesh. Characters.


"That looks icky."
"Yeah."
"REALLY icky."
"I know."
"I won't touch it if you won't."
"Ok."

If It's Nerves, They Can Go Die Now K Thx Bai

There's an industrial-sized wrecking ball making short work of the inside of my skull at the moment. The nerves of my entire face feel like someone just tweezed them apart bit by bit with an ice-pick, especially around my eyes. When I coughed, whichever -entire- set of receptors that went from the top of my head to the back of my neck promptly went, "BURN BABY BURN". As a result, my cranium feels heavier than a lead cannonball balanced on a toothpick.

I hate having migraines.

...On the other hand, I'm not entirely sure why having a migraine - and the first signs of it some five hours ago - prompted me to walk to the mall, shop for groceries, thumpity-thud back in a taxi caught in the biggest traffic jam I've seen in a while, sweep my room, MOP my room, prepare vegetables, and promptly proceed to spend the next hour and a half cooking dinner.

I just tried to put some wall decorations up. My head is starting to get ornery and give conscription orders.

I think it's time for bed.

OWW. Yes, I should have been in bed five hours ago. It's called Live and Don't Learn.

Owwww. OWW.

Head, Meet Wall Meet Sticky Surface Meet...et. al.

October isn't even here yet and I'm already choking on apprehension.

The quartet premiers my composition for 'A Malaysian Affair', the Young KL Singers' big yearly concert. They have been absolutely wonderful about practicing and trying their best to get it sounding as good as they can for the last three weeks.

That's where the apprehensive sets in.

I feel like I'm letting them down by not being able to give them more help with vocal technique to sing it right because I don't know how to. I feel I've let them down by not writing a -better- song for them to sing, after listening to the rest of the solo acts. It intimidates the -heck- out of me, truth to be told. Listening to what everyone's done and the little voice in my head keeps whispering, 'Yours is so simple it doesn't hold up, it's not complicated or fantastically ear-catching like some of the other pieces by the rest.' Even though it took me months and three rewrites to finally come up with something that worked, that wouldn't totally defeat people with no music training to sing (it was originally for a whole choir, and I didn't want it to be too daunting. It isn't fair, not to people who genuinely have a musical ear but can't read notes, plus there are so many other songs.)

It requires spot-on pitch precision because it's acapella. It has a canon that has every means of going wrong if one of us loses the thread. Much breath control and technique needed to keep it light and lyrical, and it's demanding only because it requires so much -precision-.

The quartet's just been so good trying to put it together at such short notice. And I keep thinking that it's not good enough, that they deserve so much better, that I could have done SO much better with it. I'm supposed to be a classical musician.

My choir mistress gave me such an honour to compose for this event.

And I can't get rid of the nagging little whisper in my mind saying that I've let her down and everyone else.