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CNY (Chinese New Year for you fellow foreigners) is around the corner (but doesn’t feel like it is).

I need to do before CNY (which is next weekend, gasp, yawn…) –

1. get my car washed. it has been un-washed for…er 6 months? maybe more? i know i’m lazy like that.

2. make tiramisu for 1st day of CNY so my relatives can go ‘oohh aaa’ and forget to ask me ‘how’s-business-and-all-that-usual”

3. uhm, that’s pretty much it.

Pic above by Unit Editions

I grew up in an unconventional household. Most furniture in our (now old) home were mostly custom made – we never had a sofa (even in our current home). I loved my old house I grew up in.

My parents had stacks of design books, letrasets, art and design tools around the house.

I grew up in a very artistic background…and my sister and I grew up really ‘westernized’ – we watched Western cartoons, tv shows, sitcoms, movies (Tom & Jerry, F.R.I.E.N.D.S, Beverly Hills 90210, etc)…we read Western books (Enid Blyton, Roald Dahl, Christopher Pike, etc); we grew up eating pasta, M&Ms, McDonalds, etc – and we spoke mostly in English to friends and family, occasionally in Chinese Cantonese but very minimal.

That’s just a handful and on top of my head, the things we grew up with.

In short, we were brought up 90% Western-influenced, 10% Chinese-influenced.

I never really felt I fit in to my surroundings early on in life. It never really bothered me that much, until a couple of years ago and most recently.

With all these things in between here and there happening in and around my country, I don’t feel like I belong here. There’s too many things to describe, and I will spare myself the agony and depression of writing them, but I know for sure I have had enough of all of this.

It’s time for a change.

Been lacking motivation to post anything.

Be back soon, when I get my momentum back.

XO

Thought of the day:

“Because anyone with a computer can call themselves a graphic designer. As a result our field has become oversaturated with hacks who undercut the value of what we do and make it harder for people to recognise the worth of competent graphic graphic design.” – via September Industry

Off to Singapore on Nov 7. Be back on Nov 17. Looking forward to spending time away from gritty smog city I call home.

Pic above is taken during work in progress on a wayfinding/signage project, Oct 2009.

Excerpt from - A long wait in St Moritz by Tyler Brûlé –

“Before turning my attention to the envelope, I fixed myself a coffee and then tore into the package. As my e-mail chimed in the background, it made me wonder if there is a digital media equivalent of the whole experience: this funny foreplay that one can have with some pulped trees, glue and ink – the ritual of waiting for a prized magazine or book and the ceremony of regarding a front cover? And then that tentative first flip through the pages to tempt the eye. Then, with your appetite whetted, you close it, so that it can be savoured later when you’re properly settled. I couldn’t think of a new media equivalent. I’ve rarely been that excited about a website launch, never been that filled with anticipation to see something on YouTube.”

That, is how I feel with Monocle. And magazines in general, since I was a kid. And I love the smell…the smell of print.

Pic above is of Monocle’s office taken by Wolfiewolf