Good things must come to an end

No heart feelings, Blogger. It was a good 3 years together. But like everything else, good things must come to an end.

For someone with zero coding knowledge, I find the hosting site comes with limited options to customize templates (and the new themes are horrendous as well). In essence, it limits my creativity and would be time-consuming to code my design, no?

Or perhaps it’s just me, not you. Hi Tumblr Lane! Oh, do update your RSS feed please!

In order to live a creative life

Ho boy. I must be living the most creative life in the whole wide world. (via Little Garden)

Office, coffee shop AND home. What more can you ask?

The Cool Hunter reports:

"Creative people have started to think up solutions to meet the very clear need of cool working spaces for mobile workers. Urban Station in Buenos Aires, Argentina, has taken the best of both office and coffee shop and wrapped it all up in a funky urban space.

You sit at one of the wide tables, pay by the hour and benefit from the calm atmosphere and comforts of an office with plugs and locks for your computer and super-fast wifi. The coffee shop part comes in the form of unlimited coffee, tea, mineral water, fruit, croissants and cookies, all part of the fee.

In addition, the large and airy Urban Station offers art and business magazines and books to read, comfortable armchairs for lounging and casual meetings, fully equipped meeting rooms, printers, fax and scanners, plus lockers for your gear. If you get bored, or need to dash out for a moment, they even offer a few bikes at the door for you to borrow. It feels like office, coffee shop AND home."

Must tell my Indyhall brothers (you know who you are) about this!

Looks to steal this week

First photo is taken via Lookbook, while second is a guest of Joanna's during her wedding party at a park. I'm gonna do the first look with a proper pair of jeans, I just despise tight leggings as pants. On the second photo, I'm so into long dresses now. (P/s: Just noticed this post is done on my stay-away-from-computer day so I'm turning this piece of technology off and enjoy my day!)

My kind of distraction

What caught my eye is not the soft tones of this photo via swoone, or how the lady is offering us some picked flowers from the street perhaps - but the extension of the lens she had on her Leica D-Lux 3/ Panasonic Lumix DMC LX3 (both cameras share about the same technical specs, only that the one from Leica costs double the Lumix's because of the 'red dot' branding). I've been wanting to get some accessories for my Lumix, but in filling up the gap (and in between saving up) I bought a couple of Lomo cameras. Just great, Zana.

Nitey nite, or should I say, good morning?

via Mimpi Indah

Out of this world

I just had to post this, not only because they are spacesuits but also because they are organized neatly. Yes, there's also a blog specially for us OCD folks. Shut up, and get organized.

A majestic moment

From Pollock’s son and Hamburger Eyes photographer Jesse Pollock: “Arthur Pollock has been shooting photographs in New England for the past thirty years and at The Boston Herald for the past twenty. He was featured in Hamburger Eyes and came out with a teaser zine last year which was a run-up to his first published volume of work due out in 2010 on Unpiano Books."

Back to basics

This was Kodak's first digital camera built in 1975. Instead of saving the data on a card it used a standard cassette, and took 23 seconds to record the digitized image to the cassette. How do we retrieve the photos you were asking me? I have no idea myself, although I'd love to lug this archaic baby around just for a day to see how it felt like. (via The Science of Creativity) (Update: so here's how you retrieve the pictures - through a custom playback device)

This is how my future house set-up is going to look like

Books, books, books and more books! Yes I wish to live in a library and squeeze a sleep in between the narrow shelves and indulge myself in the musky odor of the papers and coo lovingly at Azry while my voice echoes from the highest shelves of the highest floor and ..... (goes on and on while walking and flailing her arms around)

Coffee!!!

Aside from refraining from eating, drinking during the day and misbehaving in the month of Ramadan, I vowed on a complete coffee withdrawal till the first day of Eid. It wasn't easy you see, I see photos of coffee, smooth black coffee, creamy latte, or sexy foamy capuccino like this:

and I curl up in a ball to shake the temptation. Roughly 12 days to go anyway. (squeals) OMG COFFEE!!!

Ahem. On another note, here's your handy guide to coffee brewing via Markus's tumblr.

Sore throat, GO! Sexy voice, you can stay...

If there's a talk show that I could stand, it would be Rachael Ray Show. I love Rachael. I love her non-scripted yakking in her playful raspy voice coupled with her virtuoso cooking demo at the end of every episode which could dangerously flood your salivary glands. Did I mention I love her raspy voice too? That is how I sound like after my fourth day of enduring coughing and sore throat. Yesterday I told Azry I want this coughing & sore throat to go away but I want to keep this voice, and he looked at me as if I just threw a cat in the dustbin. (Kidding, you know I won't do that!)

I know this is pointless, but hey, this voice is sexy, especially when I laugh! I wanted to do you a favor by recording it and put it up here and but then I thought I might would have gone overboard... (Picture credit)

The proverbial red pen

This is why article like this is needed - I'm too tired to draft this post properly and coughing my brains out and if I don't post this today, I might forget all about this tomorrow amidst my work hoopla. This circle never ends. Enjoy! Designing like a writer (or writing like a designer?)

Tyler's wisdom

I see all this potential, and I see squandering. An entire generation wasted. Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don’t need. We’ve all been raised on television to believe that one day we’d all be millionaires, and movie gods, and rock stars. But we won’t. - Tyler Durden.

Yes, you and me won't, but Brad Pitt will. Life is unfair. Random info: I used to have a cat I named Tyler Durden, but he was afraid of everything, especially the vacuum cleaner. (Fight Club movie snippets via this isn't happiness)

Current status

I know, not very inventive, although we could add another bar labeled 'money' there which ranks lower than 'time'. (Illustration via helloiamamisfit)

An anxious reach for a machine

Alain de Botton on distraction: "One of the more embarrassing and self-indulgent challenges of our time is the task of relearning how to concentrate. The past decade has seen an unparalleled assault on our capacity to fix our minds steadily on anything. To sit still and think, without succumbing to an anxious reach for a machine, has become almost impossible."

If it helps, I currently dedicate my Sunday to be my stay-away-from-computer-day, although the iPod Touch is still fairly within reach. At the risk of hearing "That is just an excuse!" from Azah I will try to take one step at a time. After all you know what the zen masters are saying, "you cannot see your reflection in running water, only still water". (Photo from brookelyn photography)

A burst of colors!

My good friend, Shafina and I share this silly ambition, well not so silly if you think of it - we'd like to open a cute cafe. Something like this cafe in Mexico. I love it that they use pastel instead of shouty colors. I could sit here for hours and perhaps come up with great ideas on how to set up more cafes with pastel colors. More: how colors can transform a rusty town into a lively one!

Sometimes we left the hottest, most glamorous place to search our soul

"The philosophy behind much advertising is based on the old observation that every man is really two men --

the man he is and the man he wants to be."

-- William Feather

Alex Bogusky, the Dadaist of the advertising industry, took a leap of faith when he decided to leave the industy altogether. Is this a New Age midlife crisis or his greatest rebranding campaign?

It is quite a long read, but you would be indulging in it if you are in advertising, or aspires to be in the industry but feels like too old to do so (like moi).

See you

I made a vow to myself early this month is Sunday is my stay-away-from-the-computer day. So, in all my glorious absence tomorrow, here's a photo of me during my short escapade to Penang last month, daydreaming to buy one of those MYR1 million condo overlooking the sea with a view of Penang Bridge, and these cute turtles clip-on earrings from Jessi (my new favorite blog!) I'd love to get Nora for her engagement day.

A treasure chest of newfound knowledge

"Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate.

Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.

It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us.'

We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?

Actually, who are you not to be?" - A Return to Love.

It's one of those days when I felt like I have hit a jackpot: all sorts of design resources found via one website, specifically Design Is History. I just spent hours going through Humble Pied (videos of advice from designers), Typotheque (a collection of essays from designers), Design Matters (interviews with designers) and loads more. All through only one channel: Design Is History. My life is now complete. (photo via Freunde von Freunden)

Thank you

It's true what they said: you'd never know how much somebody meant to you until they left for good. I did not have the chance to develop this roll of film from my Golden Half, which was taken during the time late Mazlee took his fiancee, Azry and I to see his best friend, Alan all the way in Bentong, Pahang. The six of us (Mazlee, his fiancee Juni, me, Azry, Alan and his girlfriend) later went for a picnic at Chamang waterfalls, of which moment I wished would last forever. I never got to thank him for this wonderful gift of friendship (and extension of his friendship to his other friends).

For those of you who are still reading this, I'd like to take the time to thank all of you for your friendship, your support, your kind words etc. Because we never know when it's too late to thank someone. Love ya.

Levitt

I don't get what it is so charming about this guy - he could look like one of those guys who boarded the same school bus with me but that childish smirk just gets me every time. (Photo via helloiamamisfit)

Hold me secure in flight

Here's a secret: I am so in love with literature and poetic prose I secretly wanted to be a lyricist, how's that? Only I still could not get around poetry, Azry said I didn't quite have the 'soul' (he used to do poetry in Bahasa Malaysia at school, competing at schools and such but that was a long time ago). I believe some lyrics are so beautiful, so here's one from Owl City I'm sharing with you via Lyrics Quote.

I might come up with more, so watch this space.

The right moment to photograph

via swissmiss

Support a Malaysian filmmaker in NY!

Nadiah Hamzah, a Malaysian filmmaker is raising funds for Hujan Panas (Afternoon Rain) S.O.S on Kickstarter! The film is her thesis film for her MFA (Film & TV) degree from Tisch School of the Arts, NYU. There's no proper embed link but you can have a look at the trailer here.

In defense of cookies & milk

Here's a a little cookie trivia for your Wednesday morning (what it's Wednesday already?): Do you know that the name 'cookie' originates from Dutch 'koekje', meaning 'little cakes'? And that the first commercial cookie in the U.S. was the Animal Cracker, introduced in 1902? Either way, here are cookie pictures from What Katie Ate and a genius invention of a mug that won't spill your milk when you dip in your cookies by Entlo.1A.

How to explain it all to my parents

When I first knew my good, gorgeous friend Zunaira, she was an instructional designer. She told me at one of our coffee sessions that her youngest sister, 'Aliya wanted to be like her second sister, a doctor-to-be, instead of becoming like her, because she said, "But Along, I don't know what you do for a living."

We all had that moment of having no idea how to tell our families or our friends what we do for a living. It's a creatives' thing. When I was in university having fun with all the paint brushes and multimedia applications and theatre classes, my nosy aunt whose daughters and sons pursue accounts and engineering and law came up to me, "You had it easy. All you had to do at school is draw." I only went, "Pfbhtt yeah, but we had the most fun, innit?"

Here's what reminded me of that moment: Amsterdam-based artists Lernert & Sander teamed up with a bunch of other artists to create a 9 episode film with creative heads who explain their works to their parents. Have a look and maybe we could learn a thing or two. I'm lucky my parents are the coolest.

If you're happy in your head then solitude is blessed and alone is okay

Poet and singer-songwriter Tanya Davis and filmmaker Andrea Dorfman address this forgotten art in How To Be Alone — a beautifully hand-illustrated, simply yet eloquently narrated visual poem full of all these things we so often need to tell ourselves and believe, yet so rarely do. (via swissmiss)

In loving memory

"We stared at the walls of the morgue in utter disbelief and when we finally snapped out of it, we went, "What are WE doing here?""

I had typed a number of drafts for this post, but every piece of my writing is pale in comparison to how much Mazlee and his friendship means to both Azry and I. Al-Fatihah, Mazlee Mohd Saludin, you will be greatly missed.

"A resume is only the skin of a career"

Both inspiring and terrifying, here's a good read from Richard Morgan if you are contemplating any kind of freelance career. (via twittering @BrandDNA)

The good times:

"There's a lot of good times in freelancing! I had a bet with a Times reporter about who could get the phrase “that’s how we roll, yo” in the paper without quotes; I won (though somewhat on a technicality), with an essay that, upon submission, got my editor to come over to me and give me an actual explicit compliment."

... and of course, the downside of it:

"Freelancing requires such strict adherence to toadyism, to sycophancy, to the grubbiest, lowliest submissions. It is an on-spec life and it is full of what can only be described as insane serendipity (or serendipitous insanity)."

I haven't even budged, yet. Honest! (photo via papertissue)

Hi Mom! I'm in a magazine!

Well, let's just cut to the chase and let's say that I am honored to be part of the contributing writers for this issue's CUTOUT magazine, Malaysia's most popular & fast selling graphic design magazine and self-claimed sole provider of creative platform for all local talents.

Turn to page 30 to read about my version of 'text playlist', a term coined by brilliant Frank Chimero. And yes, I do believe that if people were rewarded based on the passion we have, I'm easily one of the richest person alive. Have an enlightening weekend, you wonderful people!

We make a great team

In 2002, he said to me, "I am surprised that you loved me back". 1st photo via swissmiss.

Are you suffering from one of these writing maladies?

This is funny, and somehow the classifications hold true. I'm guilty for all except Chatty Cathy & stilted dialogue. Nathan Bransford writes (via wordlife, photo via weheartit):

Yoda Effect: Difficult to read, sentences are, when reversing sentences an author is. Cart before horse, I’m putting, and confused, readers will be.

Overstuffed Sentences: An overstuffed sentence happens when a writer tries to pack too many things into one sentence in convoluted fashion, making it difficult for the intent of the sentence to come through and to follow it becomes an exercise in re-reading the sentence while making the sentence clearer in our brains so we can understand the overstuffed sentence, which is the point of reading.

Imprecision: When writers just miss the target ground with their word using they on occasion elicit a type of sentence experiential feeling that creates a backtracking necessity.

Chatty Cathy: So, like, I don’t know if you’ve noticed but OMG teenagers use so much freaking slang!!! And multiple exclamation points!!! In a novel not a blog post!!! And so I’m all putting tons of freaking repetitious verbal tics into totes every sentence and it’s majorly exhausting the reader because WAIT I NEED TO USE ALL CAPS.

Repetition: Sometimes when authors get lyrical, lyrical in a mystical, wondrous sense, they use repetition, repetition that used sparingly can be effective, effective in a way that makes us pause and focus, focus on the thing they’re repeating, but when used too many times, so many times again and again, it can drive us insane, insane in a way that will land the reader in the loony bin, the loony bin for aggrieved readers.

Shorter Hemingway: Clipped sentences. Muscular. Am dropping articles. The death. It spreads. No sentence more than six words. Dear god the monotony. The monotony like death.

Non Sequiturs: Sometimes when authors are in a paragraph one thing won’t flow to the next. They’ll describe one thing, wow can you believe that thing that happened three days ago?, and keep describing the first thing.

Description Overload: Upon this page there is a period. It is not just any period, it is a period following a sentence. It follows this sentence in a way befitting a period of its kind, possessing a roundness that is pleasing to the eye and hearty to the soul. This period has the bearing of a regal tennis ball combined with the utility of a used spoon. It is an unpretentious period, just like any other, the result of hundreds of years of typesetting innovations that allows it to be used, almost forgotten, like oxygen to the sentence only darker, more visible. And it is after this period, which will neither reappear nor matter in any sense whatsoever to the rest of the novel, that our story begins.

Stilted dialogue:

Character #1: “I am saying precisely what I mean!”

Character #2: “Wait. What is that you are trying to tell me?”

Character #1: “Are you frickin’ listening to me? I am telling you precisely what I am feeling in this given moment. And I’m showing you I’m really angry by using pointed rhetorical questions and petulant exhortations. God.”

Character #2: “Sheesh! Well, I’m responding with leading questions that allow you to tell me exactly what you mean while adding little of value to the conversation on my own. Am I not?”

Character #1:”You are totally doing that. You totally frickin’ are. Ugh! I’m so mad right now!”

The Old Spice Guy Effect (excessive rug-pulling): The character was standing on a rug. He falls through his floor to his death! The rug was actually a trap door. But wait, the character was already dead. He merely faked falling through the trap door. But wait, the trap door was actually a portal into another world. The character was actually alive, he just thought he was dead. Now he’s really dead. Or is he? I’m in a chair.

What do people use to get things done?

I'm tempted to answer the questions myself (what can you do, as with other bloggers I'm as narcissistic) but here are what people use to get things done. How's your first day fasting so far? (via tweeting baliomega, father to the newly-born heartbreaker Naurah Delyssa)

What if this is our last Ramadhan?

Every time Ramadhan creeps in, I always ask myself, "What if this is my last Ramadhan?". Yet due to pure ignorance I continue to go through the month going about doing my worldly chores without tinkering a bit in perfecting my prayers and so on so forth, and when Syawal steps in I begin to miss Ramadhan more than ever. I've never been a good Muslim as a whole, and here's to hoping this year will change. Azah (of whom I nicked the above photo from) could you please remind me?

Salaam Ramadhan to everyone.

What reminds me

We don’t have many nice places within a few kilometers of the range of where we live, so whenever we need a quick getaway in less than 20 minutes, we’d find ourselves in Putrajaya. I don’t know if you noticed this, but the place is brimming with young couples and their babies and sometimes it depresses me because it reminds me of what some people were saying about us, we are not complete because we haven’t even hit that ‘children’ milestone yet. Yet we are always so blissful in the arms of each other :)

Also, I’ve taken on my former practice before – taking my camera everywhere I go and try to take pictures of everything whenever possible. Because I discovered that when I looked back at these photos of all these short escapades and the people I love, my life is not as bad as I thought it was.

Logged in

Good morning. I can safely say this video sums up our daily online routine. I can definitely relate when it comes to the birthday part. Thanks swissmiss!

How nice it would be

“We didn’t have a stick of furniture. We would have picnics in the living room. We ate when we felt like it. Stayed up all night when we wanted. We vowed never to fall into routine, to go to bed or wake up at the same time. We lived on that mattress.” The Curious Case of Benjamin Button via movieoftheday.

A tale of two char kuey teow stalls

How people treat you is their karma;

how you react is yours

-Wayne Dyer

Once upon a time there were two char kuey teow stalls in our neighborhood. One is run by a well-mannered man in his 40s, his wife and his two children. Their stall has been around since last year. Recently another char kuey teow ran by a group of young men in their early 20s opened right next to theirs. We decided to pay a visit to this new stall, you know, just for change.

We have to admit, the new stall's char kuey teow tasted a lot better. It had a hint of buttery, creamy taste to it, the kind of what my father used to make. We went to the new stall for our weekly dose of char kuey teow more often than the time we used to go the old one. However, as people keep pouring in, the new stall attracted more young hooligans and we noticed that they preferred to entertain their friends who came in for not more than mere drinks and a couple of boisterous, loud chats than us customers. We, and the other customers, had noticed also that they somehow had become ruder than usual. When we asked politely about the delay of our char kuey teow orders, the boys would go, "We have a lot of people waiting. Can't you just wait?"

One day Azry and I grew tired of this sort of treatment, so we just walked away from their stall and went to the old one. The man in his 40s greeted us as courteously as usual. Our char kuey teow arrived in less than 10 minutes, perhaps not as nice as the one from the new stall, but because the owner was so nice, we quickly dismissed that thought, devoured our dish and went home happy and full.

As days passed by, we noticed the man in his 40s received more customers day by day while the number of customers in the new stall slowly lessened. Soon, the new stall was no longer around. We never knew what exactly happened to them, just as much as we are not the rightful person to conclude, but I think we all knew why. (Photo from Little Garden)

How much does that Leica KE-7A Military cost please?

Oh, not much, just your arms, your limbs, your ears, your wife and your first born. Only $29,700, Sir. (via YMFY)

Made me look: the curtain as the door and ample wall space for brainstorming

One & Co.'s San Francisco Studio. Also love how the studio's neutral color palette is contrasted with hot pink surfaces on the wall. I'm having an urge to turn every wall in my house into a writing/drawing board. (via NOTCOT)