twins bday celebration at japanese restaurant at toorak rd :) part 1

deeply sorry for not been updating my blog lately coz im juggling my time between my jobs, spending time with friends, doing laundry, exercising and cooking, seriously ive got not much time left at the end of the day and just feeling so exhausted..

anyway, just gonna go straight into the topic, twins bday was last december the 15th, and they love japanese food so chern xi suggested that we go to this japanese art gallery come restaurant place at toorak rd to celebrate their bday...so we took tram to toorak rd and along the way we were saying something that i couldnt remember, to which caused yin lih to 'spill' out a lil bit of tear frm the edge of her eyes, i guess it was some kinda funny joke lol...

and, as usual, we had some pics taken while waiting for the food to be served...

drink came first, and i ordered some sort of tea *sorry cant remember much coz this happened ages ago, my bad :(.... and then the main course was the smoke salmon with rice and salad.. delicious~~...

ohh ohh... here comes the most important part.... the dessert!!!.. some sort of cold mochi like thing which japanese eat with tea.. and the appearance and color of 'the things' changed according to season :)... i mean the way they were made, not that it will changed automatically according to season -.- ... anyway, its a 'must-eat' that no one should miss after the meal!!!

after the meal, we wander around the gallery and i was kinda amazed by the similar emotions drawn by the ancient japanese artist, all the samurai, warriors and guys in the drawings seemed to have eyebrows raised up while mouth 'pulled' down.. so i attempted to imitate their emotions, its kinda cool dont u think? i like it tho lols

1st thing i did when i get back to melbourne...

guess what i did when i got back to Melbourne two months ago?... of course heading to st kilda beach! ... i know its not the best beach... but its the nearest that i can go... 'why?' u will ask... coz its summer time! and summer is equal to soaking under the sun.... and the best way to do it is of course at the seaside.. so i grabbed y'ling and lih juinn to go to the beach together :D

ohh i managed to practice my 'paparazzi shots' too!! :P not to mention some pictures of seagulls too

P/S: the cyclops sun glasses is cool huh ;) i got it for only rm25 from Malaysia! :D

the modelling shoot for food...

the modelling shot is called 'craving for identity'.. its the photographer's (Joe) uni's project about food and identity and the whole shooting experience was quite interesting and fun as the photographer is really nice to work with...

P/S: the last photo is not featured in the project, its just that the photographer was helping me to take portrait shot to build up my portfolio...

and there's video of the whole 'craving for identity' made by Joe, the photographer...just click on the link below will do :)

Craving for identity

food in my hometown & my grandma dishes...

i stayed at my hometown again for a week after travelling to singapore and kl and what else can i do in my hometown? eat of course! lolx... i ate as much as i can before heading back to melbourne :)... it was sooo soo satisfying!

im just gonna introduce a few of the food that i ate when i was back to my hometown... the first one?? char koey teow (炒粿条) ... its some sort of fried flat rice noodles with eggs, mussels, prawns, beans sprout, chinese chives, garlic and chili sauce... my mouth is literally drooling even when i was just typing out the ingredients ~..~ ahhh how i missed char koey teow ....

next are pig's intestine in soy sauce (卤猪大肠) and pig's ears in soy sauce (卤猪耳)... the people at my hometown usually eat it with congee... and dipped it in chili sauce before eating it...

the third one is popiah (薄饼).. a sort of crepe thing filled with beans sprout, eggs, lettuce, fried tofu and chili sauce... its sort of like a snack for the local :)

finally.... my grandma's cooking!!! of course that's the best in the world!! no where on earth that has the best food which taste like homemade food as its not only delicious, it contains alot of love, memories and impulses that u picked up since you were young... its just and existing memory that can be seen, feel and touched...

kl trip + karaoke + celebrating jc bday in advance...

after shopping in Singapore for three days, i finally took the flight straight north to kl (*without heading home first) and stayed over at jc's place to save cost on accommodation :)... i didn't get to hang out much with jc and wei min as jc was busy with his assignments and project (like 24/7) while wei min had to work on weekdays... so i only managed to catch up with eng hwa and did some shopping for entire week until weekend that we all finally get to hang out and go for karaoke in red box at midvalley...

ohh whats more awesome is that y chow just got back from sabah at that time too! so it was like a really really rare occasion where all of us, the best buddies since high school, get to hang out together like it was back in high school years :) that moment was gold!

and we celebrate jc's bday in advance in the karaoke box... it was a surprise for him as we were stealing mic from each other at the time and fighting to sing the Chinese version of 'black black heart', called "分开旅行" when everything stopped all of a sudden and bday music started replacing the song what we were singing on... he was shock and stoned for a minute before realizing that its a celebration for him! =D

trip back home and to singapore...

i went back to my hometown roughly around 2 months ago.. hmm around end of october time.... so i managed to take some photos around my house during one of the rainy days (when the containers were taken out to store rainwater to wash the floor).. oh now that i mentioned it, my grandma is really environmentally friendly and been practicing it since like she was born?! far before someones proposing 'taking care of environement stuffs' wow... thats cool..

fast forward to a week later when i catched a flight to singapore from penang.... arrived singapore and walked around with my good friend from singapore, val :) havent seen her since she got back to singapore after finishing her study in melbourne a year ago.. its so good to be able to finally see her again after a long time... and we walked around chinatown area (as the hotel that im staying at is just around the corner, The Royal Peacock Hotel at Keong Saik Road) *yes i know it sounds hilarious, but the hotel itself is actually quite cool coz the hotel was previously shophouses that were constructed during colonial period...

i spent the nex two days (*it was a three days two nights trip) shopped around the famous Orchard Road, hopping from this shopping complex to the next... it was great! i was able to find the brand that i love which i cant find in australia or malaysia: Uniqlo at the newly opened ION shopping mall :) i didnt know that buying things does not only require ones money, but it will eats out ones physical energy and stamina too until it became a painful process when i was pulling and hand-carrying the luggage filled with newly purchased stuffs that helped contributing to the growth of Singaporean economics lols..

z-corp printer & my new plant...

u must b wondering whats z-corp printer... let me tell ya, its a kinda 3d model-making machine that uses some sort of dusty powder to construct model through layer, pray glue, layer, spray glue process (its layering process to be exact)... the 3d model from 3d surface generative program such as rhino, will be sent to another program called magic to fix up all the holes and joints, so if ure using solidworks, u dont have to go thru this process of fixing holes and joints as solidworks' 3d model is generated from solid, not surfaces....

so, instead of generating an entirely new 3d models from scratch, the elective's lecturer asked us to find some existing objects (anything) and then placed it in front of a 3d scanner (its just a scanner, but instead of scanner 2d things, it scans multiple images of an object from multiple angles, then stitches them together to generate a 3d form) and scan it.... after that, the 3d form is then altered using 3d software (rhino, magic, 3d max, etc)... i personally didnt alter much of the scanned object, just poke thru some holes in between to show my alteration as well as serving as a pencil/pen holder... instead of talking, im just gonna show u where i get the scanned object from...

its from ultraman's monter "twintail" (ツインテール) lolx!!! (coz ive got the collection of the action figure, so i thought why dot i just scan it as it look weirdly cool)

and... ive got myself a new plant two months ago.. guess what, its a venus fly trap!! so cool aye! (*ok im not intentionally trying to sound like a canadian here but putting 'aye' here seems appropriate lolx)

videos that i would love to share...

ive been very addicted to 'how i met your mother' lately, i became obsess in a way that i even went to youtube to search at the music video appear at one of the episodes from season 2... its called "let's go to the mall"... but u have to watch that show to really get the jokes...



and i went to watch 'lovely bones' (it was quite good) yesterday with my friend and before the show started, there were heaps of advertisements and trailers... one of the trailers caught my eyes, "nine", not because of the actresses (altho it does attract me alot) and not because of the plot (altho it might contribute to some attractions), but its the one sentence that appear in the conversation of the trailer that totally attracted me... it goes like this "i'll be here waiting for u, with my legs open' lolx man, thats legendary! i think its gonna b the famous quote that comes out frm the movie...

ohh ohh... i almost forgot to say somethin... ~HAPPY 2010~

elective homeworks... milling & vac forming

i just realized that i havent talked much about my other subject than design studio.... so this elective that i took was collaborating with the design studio that i was taking, its by far the most interesting elective that ive had... the idea of the elective was to let us, students discover other machines or programs used in assisting the design process or realizing the design ideas that cant be manually achieved merely through cutting papers and pasting them together....

so the pics below are the works for my second last submission... its about using milling machine drill out the surface from jelutong generated by rhino program...

then from there, the drilled jelutong was sent to vac forming machine to serve as a cast to create both translucent and opaque mold...it was a really cool process :D

Final Week's Presentation Board...

im just gonna post the presentation board up without explaining it here as the board itself should be clear enough to explain my idea in creating those interactive studio spaces...