!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd"> Past. Present. Future

Past. Present. Future

Tuesday, October 06, 2009

holy darkness

I lost a loved one on Monday. I’ve lost my own grandparents at a very young age and so this very special someone has become a grandfather to me over the years. He left this world early on Monday morning, … and my first reaction to the news was of shock as I did not expect it to come so soon.

This is actually the first time I went to a wake of somebody I knew personally, who watched me grow, and who really appreciated me for who I am. I was just doing a photo montage of his life and I was thinking to myself that I’m watching a person’s entire life unfold before my eyes. Imagine having your entire life condensed into a photo montage. Many of the photos were taken long before I was born, our human attempts to freeze one very special moment in our lives, a birth, a birthday celebration, functions, barbeques, or simply random snippets of life. Many of them, especially the black and white ones, have a timeless and sentimental quality to them. They reminded me of an era long gone, frozen deep in the past.

As we looked at them together, someone would ‘say hey dats kong kong’s wedding anniversary...’ and all the memories would some flooding back, as though they’ve been fished out of a very deep pool. … and random comments will start coming out. Personal anecdotes, funny moments, quirks, idiosyncrasies… its truly surreal to be reminded that a loved one was once very much alive and living life to the full. Its heart-wrenching… a moment when you fight to hold back tears.

Losing someone can be truly painful. But it is in losing that one actually, gains, receives and learns to love even more deeply.

I have tried you in fires of affliction;

I have taught your soul to grieve.

In the barren soil of your loneliness,

there I will plant my seed.

alvin ong dozed and watched the sawdust trampled night @ 6:21 PM 

Sunday, September 20, 2009

skool's out!

listening to - I gotta feelin' black eyed peas

school's out n time to play!

wait, i asked myself, arki has been my life for the past 5 weeks. now dat dats out of my life, now what? which made me feel the void in my life dat i've been avoiding for so long.

was flipping thru my army sketchbook 4 days ago, n all the memories came back once again. exactly a year ago from today i'll probably be booking in at bedok camp now. i guess with the emptiness i'm feeling in my life now, i'm starting to miss my army bunkmates. one thing about the army is dat you'll never ever be alone, even if u want to. to see these people day n night for one half years n to suddenly stop seeing n talking to them for a long while makes me feel so nostalgic now.

meanwhile, my past 5 weeks in aki have opened me up to see the world in a new perspective. u start to pay attention to details everywhere u go, be it false ceilings in shopping complexes, restaurant decors, material finishes, etc.. n u start to appreciate how design can a way of life. it reminds me of my art days because designing something can be so addictive.

at the core of design lies a problem, n a good design depends on how you will solve it. the addiction comes when you stumble on a very interesting solution, and you find it so interesting that you start to immerse urself in it. u think about it first thing in the morning when you wake, or over breakfast, or when ur in the tube on the way to school, when ur swimming at safra pool, or when ur on the way to the bakery to buy bread for the afternoon snack...

designing is a kind of drug. n the sense of achievement you get at the end of it is a kind of high. dis sem we were working on appreciating space and light. something dats always around u, even now, n its only a week ago that i've begun to appreciate their qualities. it gave me an awareness that every beautiful space derives their beauty from these 2 very simple raw materials. so its really amazing how space and light can be harnessed to move the human spirit, n hopefully change the way we see things.

alot of the focus so far lies in abstraction. analyzing something very rational like the moon, and transforming it into something else. this is where subjectivity comes in, cos every student will take the same word in interpret in totally unique and special ways. this is the beauty of design. its something so abstract that much of it lies in tinges of grey. most of the time, the answer is not A, B or C. often its D,E and F. its never a straight forward task, nor is it an easy endeavour.

one really essential thing about designing is dat you rarely design a project alone. its a social process, where every team member puts aside their own ideas n come together to work on one. as i was working on my friend's idea, i found out how quickly i became very attached to it. slowly, i adapted somebody's else's idea and added mine on top of it. n after awhile, i became so emotionally and mentally attached to the project that it became my driving force behind my work. this is the same force that saw me through the frustrations and lows.

group work can be very painful at times, but i guess this is part and parcel of the whole process. cos its through this that you test urself n push ur limits as u venture into the unknown. its all about getting used to this uncertainty. this is what roots us as designers as we continue to seek out paths in design, and learn something new about urself and your friends each day.

i am still learning.

alvin ong dozed and watched the sawdust trampled night @ 10:05 PM 

Friday, September 11, 2009

Today I experienced how victory can be so empty. Winning a competition but losing friendships seem like two very different things, but they become linked when I find myself becoming so focused and task-oriented that I lose sight of the whole purpose of this exercise; having fun.

Of course there must be work and there r other times to have fun, but it’s a challenge to be sensitive to the needs of others and at the same time filter out suggestions which you know aren’t going to work. So I asked myself today, did I win at all? Perhaps the true winners are those who learned how to work and bond with their team. Those who will take away fond memories of working so late together for days without sleep.

they say design is a journey of self-discovery... this week i discovered more about myself, and also about others, and i don't like what i see. i see my weaknesses more clearly, not just the faults of the other group members. its a real struggle with the idea of role-playing. a skill i'm totally lacking in.

Life can be so empty without friends. sigh. feeling so directionless now. then i get this daily e-gospel message about humility and setting aside time for God, n i'm reminded of what's going wrong in my life.

its so easy to forget. to feel alone in the entire arki block filled with so many people.

alvin ong dozed and watched the sawdust trampled night @ 12:39 AM