1. Monocle back issue #25 from the Monocle shop (now only missing issue #15 and our Monocle collection will be complete, save for a few new current issues)

2. Memoblokke memo pads

3. ‘Grow you own Serano Seeds’ from Wahaca, a Mexican restaurant

4. Mar Mar & Co card

5. Vintage Oxford Bridge slide from thrift market

6. ‘Emergency Chocolate’ by Bloomsberry Labs

7. Design Museum brochure and postcard

8. (not pictured) H&M bangles

Thanks @LDNKitty.

▲ A summer house at the island Gotland, Sweden, photo by Johan Carlson for skona-hem — via emmas designblogg

▲ Work by Danish, heyhome — via from Scandinavia with love

▲ The office of three Stockholm based photographers, photo by Oskar Kullande — via from Scandinavia with love

——

Other people’s dream is to get married and plan the perfect wedding. That’s not on my priority list.

My dream, since I was a kid, is to own my own home / studio and furnish it with the things I like.

Furniture and items from The Lollipop Shoppe.

Continuing my obsession with nicely designed cafés (I have posted a few on here previously)…we finally have a contender in our shores (to rival our Singaporean neighbours).

Finally. I haven’t personally checked it out yet, but I am stealing some photos off Chelle’s post.

Newly opened in Empire Shopping Gallery (yes, that nice glass building adorned with the hideously huge signage that probably can be viewed from the skies) in Subang, the café is called Whisk –

More pics on Chelle’s blog here.

Now, I have been meaning to post this other café I came across some few months back last year (before Monocle featured them in their Singapore Survey). Love the simplicity.

Kith, Singapore (identity designed by Hjgher) –

pics of Kith taken from Hjgher’s blog.

I love receiving leaflets, brochures, books from London and Europe…love the quality of work that comes out from that continent.

Photographs never do justice to the subject, always best to view in actual and to touch and feel in your hands. But here are some pics anyway.

Bravo Charlie Mike Hotel is a London-based graphic design and branding consultancy. We work across various media from posters, books, brand identities, stationery and typefaces to exhibition and installation design, signage and websites, as well as having a wealth of experience in a wide scope of platforms and disciplines from interface and icon design to environmental and experiential design.

View more of their work on their site here.

Readings:
“Design thinking = how designers think” – Warren Berger at the FUSE 2010 conference.
Tyler Brûlé’s weekly Fast Lane column.
Michael Beirut at Design Observer.

Overdosing on:
Earl Grey tea.

Trying to:
Get past the failures.

I learned:
Things do not get easier when we get older.

Finally making a path for a way out. A long way up the top of the stairs, but it will be worth it in the end.

On another note, loungehere.com’s 8th anniversary is coming up, and yes there will be something new…after a 4 year hiatus.

Keeping myself focused, in the meantime.

Pic above taken at PJ Trade Centre.

CTRL Spring / Summer 10 Lookbook > view

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.

Be back soon, when I get my momentum back.

XO