Supplementary

Does anyone out there still visit? If you're reading this, I guess so. Anyway, this is my latest work. The official blog of the Taylor's University College:

Click to visit.

I actually update this blog, but only because it's my job to.

Cheer up though, loyal (hopefully) readers. By the end of this week I promise to upload a few pretty videos from my latest competition. It was pretty epic.

Portfoliage

Check. One, two, three.

My cbox is filled with spam. I hate it.

Here we go again.

Did you see? I created a word. I am very proud of this word.

It is a composite.

port·fo·li·o [noun]
The materials collected in a portable case, especially when representative of a person's work: a photographer's portfolio; an artist's portfolio of drawings.

fo·li·age [noun]
Plant leaves, especially tree leaves, considered as a group.

As the title suggests, this post will be dedicated to the various design projects I have assembled since the year began. I don't think I've posted any other artwork this year, have I?

Well, can't really remember but it doesn't matter anyway.

Exhibit A is my Psychology homework.

Why am I posting my homework on my blog? Because it looks good, and I like it.

I hope you're all taking notes.

On the actual presentations, Samaritanism and Conservation were two really, really easy chapters. A small part of me wishes I could have done one of the more challenging topics though - the physiological studies come to mind here - but on the whole I'm glad I got them over with early in the year.

I did this piece with Guan Xiong back in February: one of his projects for the architecture foundation. I have to admit I envy him. He's getting graded for the very things I do for kicks. But I don't think I want to be an architect... Not until I've thought about it some more anyway.

So it's a sniper on a cloud with hands for feet, ripping a pair of wings off the back of an angel with towers as legs, aiming a rifle at a nun crying bloody tears into a rippling pool above a habit that's also a graveyard, a bridge sticking out of her head and a finger missing from her hands...

Obviously a war montage.

The soldier represents, well, a soldier. He isn't a sinister character, just an ordinary man driven to atrocities by a higher authority.

The higher authority is represented by the fist in the clouds above the soldier - meaning not mere military might but also corporate greed - it is symbolic of the men in power, the real masterminds behind the war, and their motivations.

The latter can be seen clearly in the golden bridges arcing towards the fist: wealth, territory and ever self-perpetuating power.

The weeping nun represents peace under threat. The blood in her tears is the suffering of the millions the war has killed or displaced. The ripples symbolize the far-reaching effects of the war - no one anywhere is truly safe while it continues.

Her hands are raised in a pleading position, but even as she prays we see she has lost a finger in a most brutal fashion - another symbol of painful and crippling loss. The near-endless horizon of graves serves as a sombre reminder as to the heavy cost of armed conflict, a tale eternally retold in the pages of human history.

The severed bridge between her and the soldier is representative of the breakdown in communication that preceded the war. A figure dangles precariously off the edge of the bridge, the everyman caught in between opposing forces and imperiled as a result.

The bloody-winged angel represents the loss of freedom brought about by the war, and the death of dreams unfulfilled when the lives of the next generation are prematurely extinguished.

The city set against the blood red sky suggests that no matter how vast our metropolii (the dictionary gives "metropolises" but this feels right to me) and how tall our skyscrapers, a war is all it takes to turn our smug civilization on its head and bring the walls of false security crashing down around us.

And finally, the butterfly perched on the moon adds a theme of redemption to this otherwise grim portrayal - even in the darkest night, hope presents itself to those who look for it.

Did you find that a tad pretentious? Maybe.

Did I? Yes.

But I just had to explain it to you.

5W 2007 class page. This is how it would have looked - should have looked if they'd only printed them right. I swear putting this one together was the biggest pain - two pages just isn't enough, and the spread looks cluttered as a result.

The original 5C 2007 class page. The one currently within the pages of the yearbook was edited for content after the school objected. Personally, I don't see anything wrong with Delicia being Delicia.

Never used. After all the trouble me and Jason went through to come up with suitably irreverent latin for each of the monarchy, someone had to go and lose all the certificates on prom night.

The poster for the freshly-minted student council's April '08 CAL Nite.

And the accompanying ticket. I like this one.

The ticket for the CAL '08 Grad Ball.

Which was later shrunk to cut costs. Did I mention I somehow got a fifty dollar discount on printing? Some people refuse to believe I didn't pick up a couple of STDs in the process.

I'm not too happy with either design, by the way. I just don't like designing stuff for proms. It's so stiffy and formal and I can't bring myself to think out of the box.

Besides, once is enough.

Controversy. This poster was never published because the office deemed it too provocative. I still think it's pretty cool though.

Scrachess tournament. I am not a part of this club. But I am very happy with the design.

For the TCLink newsletter. Look it's Hitler!

And again. Personally I prefer this one, but it could just be all the bottles at the top.

Maybe next time I'll put up a proper post? This was never meant to be such anyway.

Public Service

So I promised updates and I lied.

Blame MSN. Eiffel towers and cardinal sins.

Well I thought I would blog about my party (I didn't) but this is just more compelling. Tragedy is always more compelling.

This is today's tragedy.

What is it? It's our bloody yearbook.

Kind of late, isn't it? Already April, and now they decide to drop it. Well all the better. If they came up to us and handed us this while we were still in school, I would have killed them.

Of course, although I say "they" I'm not sure who exactly to blame for this mess... yet.

Well, let's start from the top.

Okay personally, I kinda like the way this page looks. I mean, if you stand really far back and sort of squint a little, it almost looks like a celebrity feature in a magazine.

Really far back.

Peako had a lot to say about this particular page though (along with the rest of the magazine). Doesn't it say loads about my writing style when I find out about this thing at seven, go online at eight and still not have a post up by midnight?

It's midnight now.

Even Peako finished his post. And I only told him about it at eleven or so.

Hell Hath No Fury Like The Class Of 2007.

His rant today is of course, perfectly justified.

You know how they say that a million monkeys banging on a million typewriters forever would eventually reproduce the entire works of Shakespeare?

Well I'm guessing the school tried a similar experiment here. Only using monkeys with Photoshop. Or maybe Microsoft Word. It sure looks more like the latter. I'm not exactly sure what they were trying to produce here.

Something half decent, maybe?

Looks like we're going to need more monkeys.

Hands up those of you who can actually make out the words "Clubs and Societies" in the above picture. It looks like one of those colorblind tests you'd expect to find at a hospital. I mean, white on white?

Oh and by the way, this is just one amongst the many title pages in the book. And they all look like they belong on the wall of a physician's waiting room. I remember how we used to have simple titles, with just a simple drawing or two. What happened to that? I miss them already.

Why in the name of good taste would you ever stretch a photograph you're planning to print? Have you ever seen them do it in TIME? Playboy maybe? No?

Then WHY THE HELL WOULD YOU DO IT?

She's short, we get it already. You don't have to make it worse. You stretched like half the pictures in here and didn't even have the decency to keep the proportions straight. And I guess none of you have ever heard of dots-per-inch either. What were you using? A camera phone?

And I guess you hate words. Why do you hate words? One of my siblings mentioned that the official explanation given for the almost complete castration of text from the yearbook was because "no one reads it anyway".

I'm sorry. Did I hear that right? No one reads it anyway so no more words? No more poems, no more stories and no more reports? Because no one reads it anyway? What planet are you from?

Get your head out of your ass and pay attention.

I usually don't make that big a deal about it when you mess up. Well, there was the concert. But that was just one time. But you don't just do something like this to our yearbook and expect to get away with it. This isn't some bi-weekly rag no one cares about that we're talking about here.

The school prints these once a year. But for students... we get the chance to be seniors once in a lifetime. And we were supposed to have the chance to design this ourselves. To properly immortalize the time of our lives within these pages.

You can't imagine what that might feel like? We were looking for something we could hold on to for the rest of our lives. We were hoping to be able to flip through these pages at sixty and feel the memories come rushing back.

How was this supposed to help?

You somehow managed to screw up what little text you did see fit to include. So how did you do it? Did you play spin-the-bottle with colors and themes? Maybe Russian Roulette would have been a better choice. I hear it's a lot more fun fully loaded.

Oh and Esmonde looks like a pedophile. Bet he really appreciates that.

You wanna know what i hate most? Guess. It's not that hard. I'll even throw you a couple of clues.

Number one. It's something we worked on for almost two entire years.

Number two. It's something you asked for, and received, complete documentation on. I should know. The folder for the report was thicker than your sorry excuse of a yearbook.

I can't believe we only got one page. I didn't actually spot it the first time I flipped through. I blinked. Same with the Leo, same with the Prefects. Don't we deserve more?

For as long as I can remember, if you were a board member in a club, you'd get your name in the yearbook. Which is the way it should be. How did we manage to end up the first year ever without the ghost of a mention as to who the President of the club even was?

No roll call for the committee.

Not even a picture of the club and its members.

You made us look like we had one fucking project. What's your excuse? Didn't you have enough pictures? We sent you tons. And with half the Editorial Board in the fucking club, forgive me if I fail to see why you weren't motivated enough to maybe work a little harder on your own club's page.

You couldn't even get the color of the badge right?

At least Leo were better represented in the photographs. At least you can see the club and the board.

Don't we deserve it at all? We raised thirty thousand dollars this year. I guess no one's ever going to know about that now. No one's ever going to remember the Famine, or I.U. Day, or the World Cup, or any other project we've ever done.

Why us?

You never did this to any of our seniors. And we gave you the results you wanted. We were perfect and they'll be chasing our record forever.

You even screwed up the class pages we spent weeks agonizing over. Maybe the new orientation doesn't allow for more a traditional view of the pages. It doesn't mean you have to stick them so you have to turn the fucking page to see the other half of your class!

We wanted this to be good. Really we did.

If you needed help, why the hell didn't you ask for it? In the first place, why didn't you finish the yearbook last year, like a normal institution? Then maybe we could have worked on it instead. And then if it didn't turn out the way we liked we would have no one else to blame but ourselves.
But you had to go and hand it to... who? People who I'm guessing don't even really care what happens to the yearbook at the end of the day. It isn't their year. Why should they?

You could have just let us do it. We wanted to do it.

And now this is what we get to live with.

I guess if the yearbook was a joke, this would be the punch. The page devoted to chapel service features myself and Liwen (the Buddhists) prominently, while the actual Christians feature in little boxes near the margins of the page.

I guess that's ironic.

But I'm not laughing.

Not Quite An Update

Like the title suggests. I know it's been a while, but patience. My holidays start next week. Then you will all wish I'd stayed inactive.

Hah. Anyway, these are important matters.

AUDITIONS FOR PERFORMANCES FOR THE CAL GRAD BALL 2008 

Details are as such :

It will be held between the 21st of April to the 25th of April 2008 

Please tell ALL your friends about it. the performers are not restricted to merely Taylors students, but people from OUTSIDE of Taylors as well! :) 
Feel free to inform anyone and everyone about our auditions!

We also welcome all kinds of performances, not just the usual dance or band performances! so feel free to contact us regarding any talents / performances (i.e. clogging, beatboxing, miming whatsoever! ) 

DO remind them to email us at www.junian@gmail.com (mind you the www. is part of the email ) or contact Jun Ian at 0169554388 to set up a slot !! :) 

Notice how it's MY name attached to the advertisement? Yeah, you got that right.

That's because this is MY department! Important stuff.

Help me push this one to all your friends and sundry. Performing in front of seven hundred graduating students is a great way to get exposure.

Oh and my birthday was yesterday. I'm having a (last-minute) party on Friday. Cheers to my quickest post ever!

Just The First Of Many

And... it rolls to life again.

It's been almost a full month since I last posted. The sheer content of life in the last twenty days makes me feel like writing the entire blog in point form. Of course, doing so would serve virtually no purpose besides illustrating a level of sloth fast approaching sin.

Does the thesauraphilia get annoying sometimes?

I swear. You haven't seen anything yet.

I almost fell asleep driving to college this morning. Potentially fatal as though this might have been, I guess it really shouldn't come as a surprise. My grandmother's birthday party last night forced me to stay up until past two in the morning writing my four page-Psychology essays. Classes today were from eight to three, with a one hour break at twelve. I fell asleep sitting up during Maths, Chemistry and Biology. From three to four thirty I had a student council subcommittee meeting, and after that I dropped in to see the dance club at the ECA studio before for all of five minutes before heading home. I have to design a poster for a paintball tournament next week, consider doing a sample piece for the HELP Charity Auction on Friday, and get in touch with the Sheraton Imperial - a possible venue for the CAL '07 Prom in June. There's an e-mail in my inbox from the Taylors AIESEC about a meeting in the business school tomorrow... and I don't even plan to be in college then because our SPM results are due that morning. I'll have to keep checking my mail, too - Jason said he'd get back to us on the proposal for the Inter-College Dance Competition in April by the end of the week. Brian hasn't called me back to confirm practice tonight, but I don't think we have any other choice because our performance at INTI is this Friday (the same day as my Maths test) and we're running out of time. I have to finish my LAN video project by Monday, along with the slides for my Psychology presentation next Wednesday. Not to mention my regular homework.

I'm keeping my fingers crossed that my head of department at the Newsletter Club doesn't suddenly decide to contact me about next month's issue... despite the fact that he's long overdue.

I think... life probably doesn't get much better than this.

Some highlights of the past few weeks.

Alex's birthday party at Secret Recipe. Someone thought it'd be a good idea to send him diabetes in a box. I mean. Fifteen sticks of Mentos should be enough to kill a horse.

Somehow, neither I nor anyone else really took any pictures of people. The real star of the afternoon was this marvel of modern architecture anyway.

This is Alex. While there's nothing really exceptional about the above picture, I thought it would only be proper to include a snap of the birthday boy.

Free coffee day at Starbucks. Underestimating its potency, I added roughly four packets of white sugar and a further three packets of brown to my espresso. The resulting mixture took six hours to down. Refusing to waste even a single drop, I dutifully carried the cup to all my classes and even lunch. There's probably a lesson to be learned here.

The bomb scare at INTI. For one afternoon in late February, our adjacent college was literally the bomb.

The crowd gathered outside INTI was a perfect demonstration of the moths-to-a-flame cliche - human beings drawn to the scene of a tragedy, a cocktail of curiosity and anticipation overpowering the sense of self-preservation supposedly inherent in all higher beings. Darwin would have been appalled.

Though I must admit, an explosion would have been spectacular.

Our performance at the Taylor's SAM Fiesta last Thursday night was set against a backdrop of high drama, nerves and desperation. Okay, maybe there wasn't that much drama. But this is how it went down. When we first joined the Dance Club in late February, our president Jason mentioned a request by the SAM student council for a performance or two by the club's members at the event.

Auditions, he said, would be held soon.

And so we waited for these, but nothing came. By the weekend before the event, we'd pretty much given up on the possibility.

Then fate came knocking.

On the fourth of March - two days before the SAM Fiesta - we met in the ECA dance studio. Myself, Yee Mun, Shevie, Hsien Ming, Hui Ning, Melissa, Yuh Miin, Ivan, Huong Ket, Eric and Ching Yu. We were for the most part complete strangers to each other, in the studio that day for our own reasons. But when Ms Yeap came in to tell us the SAM Fiesta didn't have any performing crew, and asked us if we could please do something that night, although it was on extremely short notice, for who ever heard of a dance night without a dance performance? - none of it mattered.

That night, I called Ellen and Hau, who brought in Tze Shen, completing the crew.

For practice space, we put the old staff lounge next to the cafeteria to good use, even bringing in a couple of laptops and speakers. We had only two days, but we were determined.

And the rest, they say, is history (thanks to Shevie for the screens).

The video is shaky and the lighting awful, but you can get a rough idea of what we were doing on stage that night. Not enough and all too much at the same time. Well, under the circumstances...

The rest of the night was pretty awesome too. The dance floor at the SAM Fiesta, once it got warmed up, was one of the best I've ever experienced. The crowd danced wildly and sang along to hits like Me Love and Low. There was even a rapper, and the photographer could beatbox. All and any incidents of shuffling were brief and isolated.

Now that's how you throw a party.

Not all of us are in this picture, but... oh well.

Here's to the first of many.

Literature Extraordinaire

New artwork. They do seem to be coming rather fast all of a sudden, don't they?

As usual, you may click to embiggen.

For the uneducated - that is to say, everyone out there who isn't Peako, Dexter or Pia - this is Mr Wong, my form five English Literature teacher. Again, most of you probably won't get what the whole thing is about, but I'm confident the pretty colors will assuage any grievances that may arise as a result of this confusion. In case you haven't noticed, it was done in a new coloring style. Colors!

Just a couple of pictures to unload here.

Daniel's match with Tze Chiang's brother on Saturday night was the stuff of legend (if you consider comedy to be legend).

On Wednesday, a lion came to college.

Thursday was Valentine's day. A box of cakes came for Cassie.

Overall, the second week of February was a good one but childish, disjointed sentences aside, I don't really have much to say today.

Dexter's party on Friday was teh sex. I met old friends I never knew I had.

Jun Ian: Wait, what do you mean the power's out? When did that happen?
Angeline: While you were in the pool.
Jun Ian: What? How long were we in there?
Eliot: Long enough! The Berlin Wall's back up!

And... well, I guess that's about it. I have to start taking my camera more places. Or maybe my brain.

Yours.

The Learning Seasons, Part Four

Pandamonium presents our word of the day!

sex burger [seks-BUR-ger] noun

HELP College slang, meaning a well-crafted answer to an English Literature question. Also used as a nickname for a certain Jason C.

Miss Tan: Okay class, good literature answers turn me on! Now Jason, why don't you try this question?
Jason: *elaborate answer*
Miss Tan: Oh, Jason. That's a sex burger.

And now, keep an eye out for horsemen... The comic has actually been actually updated.

Click to embiggen.

Thank you, friends and strangers alike for your continued support. I promise the next one won't take nearly half as long.

Here's one you might have heard before...

Three old friends meet on a dance floor.

Nick: So what are you guys doing here?
Yow Hwui: Swimming.

Captain obvious to the rescue!

And on an unrelated note.

Support Liverpool. We have the best fans.

You just have to believe.

The Model

I have a friend who is going to be a L'Oreal model.

He so is.

He just needs your help a little.

Click here to vote for Lim Ben Kane!

Spread the word alright?

What goes around comes around, and who knows, all the good karma you generate might one day help you achieve something YOU want!

Don't be lame. Vote Ben Kane.

Monday

Oh hello there. It's been a while hasn't it? Are you sure you even remember how to do this?

Well, I guess you're right. But let's start slow.

Backwards? I suppose that's one way to do it.

I had a late supper(?) Monday night with my cousins. Sketchy memory ensures a complete failure to recall the name of the place, but we played a variant of pass-the-hot-potato. Only the potato in question was not the titular potato but instead a variety of pabulum, all of which had to be consumed (within seconds!) by each member of the party as its orbit crossed his atmospheric pull.

A basic knowledge of Indian cuisine is required to fully appreciate the comedy in the following exchange.

Joolee: Are we going to order now? So what kind of naans are there?
Jun Ian: Oh uhm, Catholic...
Yee Wei: Protestant...

So what's the difference between a round indian flatbread and a woman who lives in a monastery?

Definitely not the proNUNciation!

I do apologize for that awful bit of humor. As I mentioned to Caitlin - just seconds after I wrote it - polite society should adopt a system that allows bad jokes to be thrown off a bridge into a river or left in the wilderness to die just as the Spartans do to weak or unwanted offspring.

Earlier that afternoon, I paid a visit to Sri KDU. Remember, we are traveling backwards chronologically.

Commit this to memory: the security team at KDU can be a bitch.

The school's impregnable front entrance.

In a way, it was kinda my fault. When the guard asked for my IC, I thoughtlessly flipped it onto the desk in front of him. I guess his parents made him sit in the corner a whole lot as a kid, since he got really pissed off at my (unintentional) dismissive gesture. He started yelling at me about manners and threw my IC back at me, then forbade me to enter the school and told me to wait outside until my other friends were done visiting.

Wow, really? I didn't know security guards could do that. Anyway, there were about five or six guards hanging around the front desk at the time, so I wasn't going to argue.

Now, I wish I could show you where exactly the back entrance is on this map, but I'm not really familiar with the school's aerial layout. Here's a hint though: it's near the back.

After the episode with the guard, I pretty much had my mind set on getting into the school, so I strolled around the exterior a bit and came across this student waiting in the parking lot.

Jun Ian: So say I wanted to get into your school, without having to go past the guards in the front... how would I go about doing that?
Student: Oh... I don't know. I think there's another entrance around the side but it could be locked.

Well, following his directions I found the side entrance locked, but as I walked a little more I discovered the school's built really funny. Five or six guys hanging around guarding the front, and they leave the kitchen service entrance wide open.

Once inside, I ran into the guys I'd come with, who were all pretty surprised to see me. About half an hour was then spent pretending to be an alumnus of the school as the gang went around pressing their faces against classroom windows and making cryptic hand gestures to teachers.

Are you by any chance wondering how I got out of KDU?

I didn't go through the kitchens.

I was actually considering walking out the front gate just to see the look on the guard's face, but that probably would have gotten my new friends into trouble. You know.

So I came across this window.

Hey, it's not every day you piss off a security guard, sneak into a private school and jump out a window on the first floor.

All shenanigans aside, I wasn't supposed to be at KDU at all that day.

The reason for my unexpected detour would lie with the owners of this delightful vehicle, a HELP duo by the names of Kevin and Matt, both formerly of Sri KDU.

I had gotten into their car at HELP - already filled to capacity with five passengers in the backseat - with the understanding that I would be ferried to 1 Utama, where I was expected for lunch. As you already know, they had other ideas.

Interestingly, Matt already knew a few things about me, even before I'd ever gotten into his car.

Matt: OH MY GOD! You're the same Jun Ian [x] has a [x] [x] on!

Sorry guys, privacy reasons. If you really wanna know go ahead and ask me.

Kevin and Matt could best be described as accident pros - hardly a stretch of road went by without a sudden jerk of the wheel, the smell of burning rubber or a cheerful recollection of some previous mishap at the location.

The Saga was to be replaced the next day, and it celebrated its impending retirement by running a flat tyre just outside the college.

So I did end up learning a couple of tricks that day. Not how to jack off a car, but rather how to jack it up.

The difference is subtle but crucial.

I found three pairs of safety glasses in the trunk, next to a set of starter cables. Sometimes in life, there are questions we just don't need the answers to.

However, I had loads of fun riding with Matt and Kevin. At one memorable red light, Tze Chiang pulled up right next to us, and Kevin and Alex wound down their respective windows to play a game of catch with a scrunched up timetable between the two cars.

Moving earlier on into the morning, I managed to taste a sample of life in HELP when Dexter and Alex led me to a restaurant in a double-storey bungalow near the Wisma building. If you can't tell from the name alone that Jarrod & Rawlins isn't the type of eatery one might normally find college students, the fare we consumed (gourmet sausages and white wine) should be a dead giveaway as to the type of extravagant lifestyles Dexter and Jason have been leading since the semester began in January.

Over lunch we discussed high school and college life, the meanings of various sexual slang (pearl necklaces and Soulja Boy's hit single, anyone?) and probably the most disturbing of all, the existence of a female Ming Yi.