Painting

Watched “I am Sam” on DVD when I was in Bangkok a couple of days ago for a weekend trip with some friends. It’s an old movie starring Sean Penn about a mentally retarded man fighting for custody of his 7-year old daughter played by Dakota Fanning. In case you wonder why I was watching DVD on a holiday trip, I was bloody ill for the entire trip and spent the first day doing nothing but lounge in the nice Ascott apartment.

Anyway, the movie was good as expected since it won some Oscar, probably for Sean Penn but what I remember from the movie was a scene of Dakota painting at her foster parent’s home. Looking at her paint, I feel an urge to go back and pick up my brushes again. She was just painting like in a totally random way or what the art world would call “abstract”. No drawings, patterns, anything to guide her. She was really “just dip brush in paint and put brush on paper” and then repeating it all over again.

I was never taught to paint like that. I spent many years as a kid learning painting/drawing under a professional art teacher (whom I realized later when I was an adult that he is actually the current Vice-Chairman of the Singapore Chinese Painting Association) who signed me up for all sorts of local art competitions. He always said that I was an impatient kid (he could tell when I was that young – I started learning from him when I was seven) and painting would make me less so. I wonder if it helped. But what I clearly remember were his instructions on how to paint. Painting to me is always deliberate, structured, orderly and purposeful. It’s about discipline. It’s also demanding. Demanding because I always need to be fully concentrated or I might make a “mistake”. So sometimes, painting can be stressful, although it’s still mostly enjoyment to me.

I want to try doing it again but this time without plan or purpose. At the end of it, I want to see what I would get and how I would feel. And I’ll blog about it. :)

A biped dog

This is 'Faith'. This dog was born on Christmas Eve in the year 2002. He was born with 3 legs - 2 healthy hind legs and 1 abnormal front leg which had to be amputated. He of course could not walk when he was born. Even his mother did not want him. His first owner also did not think that he could survive and he was thinking of 'putting him to sleep'. But then, his present owner, Jude Stringfellow, met him and wanted to take care of him. She became determined to teach and train this little dog to walk by himself. She named him 'Faith'. In the beginning, she put Faith on a surfboard to let him feel the movement. Later she used peanut butter on a spoon as a lure and reward for him for standing up and jumping around. Even the other dog at home encouraged him to walk. Amazingly, only after 6 months, like a miracle, Faith learned to balance on his hind legs and to jump to move forward. After further training in the snow, he could now walk like a human being. Faith loves to walk around now. No matter where he goes, he attracts people to him. He is fast becoming famous on the international scene and has appeared on various newspapers and TV shows. There is now a book entitled 'With a Little Faith' being published about him. His present owner Jude Stringfellow has given up her teaching post and plans to take him around the world to preach that even without a perfect body, one can have a perfect soul'.

Reading this made my utterly horrid day much much better.

Yu Chang

A great contemporary haiku poet. Vivid, layered and stirring imagery gives haiku its true spirit.

distant thunder
a revolutionary cannon
green with age


biology conference room

all eyes

on the stuffed owl


summer sunset

a trail of red ants

in the rusty freight car

different pace

at the water's edge

the sandpiper and I

bumblebee

deeper in the petunia

summer heat

starry night –

biting into a melon

full of seeds

first frost

a homeless man appears

in the new development

Knitting can be fun

Kawaii ne? They all have names!

Available here => http://sandrajuto.bigcartel.com/

Nudge

Another book on behavioural economics, a topic that has been around for like 20 years but I guess gained popularity only in the recent years. The theory here is similar to that of a lot of behavioural finance/econs books that have surfaced over the past few years: "Predictably Irrational" is one. Honestly, I did not find this book as interesting as I thought. The first part explaining the theory was ok but I got more bored when I hit the chapters on "Save more for tomorrow". But the book has its merits in enhancing awareness, especially during economic decision-making. Makes one less susceptible to marketing ploys.

The New Yorker has a good article that reviewed books in this area, including Nudge.

Health Matters

I have never really been a fan of hawker food, especially food that is for sustenance rather than for enjoyment. But my salary does not allow me to lunch at nice restaurants or have $10 sandwiches everyday so sometimes I do trudge to the hawker to feed. And I always regret it. After the meal, I would feel bloated, sleepy and generally dumb/numb (can't tell the diff). Yes, the MSG and refined carbs can really make me feel bad. I wonder why I never really felt it all my life until I had to eat it almost daily when I came out to work. But I guess it must be the frequency of having such food and the more sedentary life that I'm leading now as compared to when I was a kid running around in school. So I suspect the carbs (or crap rather) that I'm eating is really doing me no good but I never really knew how bad they were until I found this on NaturalNews.com:

"Bad carbs, on the other hand, include all refined carbohydrates -- basically, anything that's been milled and stripped of its original, natural elements such as fiber, healthy oils, vitamins and minerals. All white flour is nutritionally deadly. Really. White flour kills you. If you tried to live off of white flour for 60 days, you would literally die. That's because white flour lacks all of the healthy elements found in the whole grain of the wheat berry. Whole wheat grains contain important minerals like magnesium, healthy oils like vitamin E, health-enhancing insoluble fiber, and a long list of important vitamins. Virtually all of these are stripped out during processing, leading to a product so nutritionally depleted that millers are required by federal law to add certain vitamins back in! That's the source of so-called "enriched white flour," which is actually, "enriched just enough to make sure it doesn't kill you too quickly with obvious nutritional deficiencies."

In other words, they take out 100 vitamins and minerals, then add three or four back in. That way, most people don't notice the white flour is actually killing them by promoting chronic disease and illness. That's why white flour earns one of the top positions on my list of metabolic disruptors -- food ingredients known to interfere with the normal healthy physiology of the human body...."

No more Bak Chor Mee for me man.

Weekend and Friends

Jewellery fun

Via Alan's Camera

Jewellery/Accessories

A good friend has been actively building her business in sustainable jewellery. I thought I would put up her site here, as it's a more convenient way of telling folks about it. Guys, check out the cuff-links and collar stays that I have been talking about. Made in Solid Sterling silver/Gold! With tiny sparklers too!

For more => Choo Yilin Artisan Jewellery

Lovely prints

Love the style. These are designs for note-cards but I can see them being used for invites.

via Gadabout Paper

Inching towards the week---end

My new apartment! (I wish)

Apartment-hunting is a real pain.

1. I hate travelling up and down. Very poor stamina, me. There are lifts but the exhaustion is not just physical. And to think, I'm only focusing on one single area.
2. I am uncomfortable dealing with owners and agents. Everything they say sounds fishy..Really!!
3. Weather has been really crapppy. So adds to my pain.
4. I get angry looking at dirty spaces. Shabby is fine but not grime or odour.

Photo via My Little Apartment