Gun and a pack of sandwiches

New love - Simon's Cat

2010-12-19T15:51:00.000-08:00

2010-12-06T20:29:00.001-08:00

My favourite online nosey arounds

2010-11-07T12:32:00.000-08:00

http://deadfleurette.blogspot.com
http://lolaisbeauty.blogspot.com

Lily Allen "Not Fair" at Chanel S/S10

2010-02-04T22:18:00.001-08:00

Emmanuelle Alt, Vogue Paris

2009-12-26T15:23:00.000-08:00

"Bitch, you ain't even kissed me yet!"

Emmanuelle Alt, damn fierce...

To my beloved 50A Fir Street

2009-07-25T23:32:00.000-07:00

Tonight, I am too troubled for sleep for I cannot stop thinking that in two months time, my Sheffield home will be on sale (oh my beloved Sheffield home). Not too long ago, it robbed me of a peaceful night's sleep. Once, I even jolted up awake from this very real nightmare.

Let me paint you a realistic picture. Whilst I enjoy all of the privileges living alone, especially in a comfortable homely all-expenses-paid house that most people with a successful career will only indulge in in their late twenties, coming home to a deserted place is always a bummer. Once the novelty wears off, being alone most of the time is a drag. When you’ve had a terrible day of use and abuse at work or you wake up feeling just not that good in your self, there’s no-one else around to share your burden with, and if you call someone up, the chances are that they’re just not that involved to be bothered. At times like these, nothing beats a hug and a personal ‘you’ll be okay’. When you wake up, there’s no breakfast on the table for you. It’s a trip down to the local with a plethora of plastic bags when you’re feeling worse for wear. At two in the morning when you fall in late from work and exhausted, there’s no dinner in the microwave waiting for you to heat up. The weekly late-night drinking, smoking and rolling in at god knows what hour can only make up for a small amount of what living alone otherwise lacks. After sometime living alone, you really start to question the concreteness of your friendships, and why the fuck they’re not here visiting you everyday.

But once the nightmare of not having this place anymore dawns, all I can remember are the good. I even toss and turn late at night, worrying that I might never enjoy the privilege of being utterly free in such a way ever again and losing everything and being I hold dear to me now. For sure, never again will I find myself in a cozy place I call home alone with bills cared for. And the freedom, oh the freedom is incredible. Oh how romantic a view, of staying up late into the early hours, alone with my thoughts and creativity, disturbed by nay a single soul. All I can hear around me – shh - quiet, peace. In this place, I can roll out of bed at three in the afternoon, messy-haired, and spend the entire day photographing everything. It’s my prerogative to fritter away the day naked in bed deciphering a Cecil Beaton biography. If the mood takes me, heck, I’ll even hop on the latest train, disappear into some strange city for a couple of days, and when I come back, I know there’ll be no hassle about where I’ve been or having to explain myself about why the feeling took me. Needless to mention, there’s always the partying and coming home whenever you like, with whomever you like, doing whatever you prefer and not being disturbed in any single way. This is a haven I get away to, uninterrupted by human traffic from the outside world. Silence is its upmost beauty. And soon, I am to lose this haven, my refuge, and it fills me up with deep despair. It feels like utter bleakness.

I’ve thought of solutions out of this problem. If by miracle, the entire house is rented out within the next two months, it might rescue the situation. But even then, the rent would only balance the mortgage, and what my parents are looking for is to release all of the money from this home to put towards a house upgrade in Nottingham. That’s a hundred thousand plus I will never find. I know they’re doing it for good reasons, such as there are not enough rooms with go around when one day my sister is old enough to have her own and she ought to be in an area with a better school. But selfishly, I can’t help but think that if they only neglected her needs for three more years until I graduate, I could buy this house off them. She is only four after all. What are her needs for a separate room or a more decent primary school soon? Heck, I grew up in a communist state and didn’t have my own room until I was thirteen. It didn’t do me any harm. More pressingly (and perhaps thoughtlessly), this home holds all that I feel is dear. To me, this is my childhood house, the place in a city I’ve stayed for the longest and therefore hold all of my most precious memories. It represents such high sentimental values. Surely then three more years is not too outrageous to ask?

It’s thinking like this that I know will make for a more painful parting two months on. In a world where pragmatism is valued above sentimentality, my request is just too outrageous to be accepted. In the real world, the kid deserves her richer than me upbringing, and I deserve to relinquish my whimsical sentimentality. As much as it upsets me night after night, I’ll soon have to get used to saying, “Sheffield home, goodbye”.

Fierce.

2009-05-19T11:35:00.001-07:00

No dress that has taken that many (wo)man hours of hand work should ever be covered.

Lessons in life.

2009-04-14T08:53:00.001-07:00

Be brave, have confidence and determination.

Know and always remember your own worth.

Don't fear.

Don't take offence. Only small people take offence.

Don't expect so much from others and forgive. No one is perfect.

Have your own space to be your own.

Aim to be happy. Keep a sunny disposition.

A short story.

2008-07-09T17:52:00.000-07:00

There once was a girl. The most beautiful girl of them all, she had long flowing hair made of daffodales that blossomed so beautifully after the warm summer rain, while the mist still hung loose and wet in the still damp air. A girl by no name in particular, but was the embodiment of a langourous humid summer eve, when the people, affected by the temperate climate, were blissfully lazy, and the grass, softly swaying in the gentle breeze, so slight that it could easily elude one's notice. To call her by Summer would be a cliche, but with a quiet utter of Raindrops, she would be hastily summoned to within your presence. The fact was that no one knew her real name. It was as much a mystery as that which shrouded the legends of Shangri-La. It was said that once the hazy summer mist lift, her identity would be revealed.
Summer left almost as hastily as it had arrived. Before anyone unravelled the stupefying location of Shangri-La, or even discovered the origin of the tale, summer had left. Its presence merely remembered as nothing more than a grazing imprint, like the soft memory of the touch of a gentle kiss, or the slightest brush of hands that were once held. And with summer had disappeared the girl. True to her given name, she vaporised like raindrops upon the touch of a warm, sun-kissed stone. If summer had left nothing but a faint comforting touch upon the skin of the people, she swept away leaving only enigma in her wake. Then it was discovered that she was not a girl. Or a girl who was the pure embodiment of warm content. She was summer. And like a fleeting mid-summer night's dream, she was wonderful, the most fantastical while the dream lasted, but when it came to a cessation, she was only vague vast memories, that were different with every recollection.

YSL is dead. Long live YSL.

2008-06-01T16:33:00.000-07:00

Is it the summer heat, or there a lack of, that is causing some of the great creators of our decade to drop off like lethargic flies?

Yves Saint Laurent passed away tonight in Paris, aged 71, after a battle with long-term illnesses since 2002.

Mr. Saint Laurent may have been of the "live fast, die young" crowd. But if any lesson is to be learnt from his trajectory, it is this: smoking sure hates your health. A hundred-twenty a day, Mr. Saint Laurent honourably puffed away to the end. In both the literal and the chronical sense.

It will be an almighty shame if his triumphs in conquering, what were back then, new territories in design aesthetics, become shrouded by his perennial taste for the drink, drugs and smokes, when his death is publicised.

"The audience was on its feet, screaming, shouting, weeping, a deluge of hysteria... Tears at a fashion show - Perhaps this is the crux of Yves Saint Laurent's genius. He has an ability to touch people and arouse emotion through cothes. This is what makes his clothes memorable: not their newness or innovation, not their femininity or colour, but their power to stir and evoke emotion." - The beautiful fall by Alicia Drake, on his renowned "Opera" collection of 1976.

His recreational preferences should not be by which he is remember. Instead, the man who single-handedly concocted "le smoking" suit and resurrected couture in the post war 50's whilst bringing into popularity pret-a-porter truely deserves our reverence.

Mr. Saint Laurent, We adulate you!

A farewell to Robert Rauschenberg

2008-05-13T13:06:00.000-07:00

Let's all take a moment, ladies and gentlemen, to commemorate the pop art giant who was Robert Rauschenberg, who passed away yesterday aged 82.

Long live Mr. Robert Rauschenberg. May the heavens smile upon him and his magical brush strokes.

It's my burrfday (tomorrow)

2008-04-06T13:14:00.000-07:00

So let's all join me now in wishing myself a grand day, and in return, you can all have a lightly smiling sara.

(ooo, chapped lips close up!)

Oh Topshop, what a wonderful pair of dark shewd eyes you have!

2008-03-27T23:36:00.000-07:00

It is humorous (albeit strategically clever) that Topshop have been reduced to knocking off even their own designs. You may have noticed that since Kate Moss' pansy dress last year, Topshop have been churning out endless lines of "tea dresses". Kate Moss' one-shoulder frill dress has also popped up in Topshop's own collections in its various forms, all doubtlessly "inspired" but looking suspiciously similar. I've noticed too that a sun dress which looked identical to that in Kate Moss' current collection which is retailing for 40+, but in cream was sold on the Topshop website 2 weeks before and demanded a much less challenging price of 25 pounds.

There have been many of these little ironic incidents, and at first I too chuckled with ridicule. But this isn't surprising if you think that Topshop are a giant fashion power which survive on the sole appeal that it copies trends and designs off the catwalk at affordable prices, before the catwalk hits the shops. So here they've demonstrated what they are best at, which is basically copying. It was ironic that high street chains even dared to approach designers to do collaborations in the beginning, because the designers basically copy, or what they call "translate", their own catwalk designs for these stores, something that these stores were already brilliant at, without the need for these designers. It is a cunning commercial plan that saw using a designer's name on a label automatically warranted a mark-up of 50%, more money for Phillip Green's cash-hungry appetite (let's not even mention what they are doing to children in third world countries).

I digress, these collaborations which pull in an incredibly high mark-up have materialised through no fault of the designers or their will to participate. In the end, it looks like an ultimatum: collaborate with us and we will give you 20% of the inflated prices, or we will knock you off anyway and give you nothing.

Lost in the city of Ubar

2008-03-27T20:27:00.000-07:00

They say that at any one time there are always five people who love us, and if this were frankly true, please would those five paramours of mine "put your hands up like you just don't care"?

I used to spend handsome portions of the day being preoccupied with this matter. In the end, I could never find those mysterious five. Just who were these teary eyed admirers, and where the hell were they?!

One day, I struck gold, oil and all of the frankinscence in the lost city of Ubar. All of this puzzlement and all of the lengthy periods of time with which I devoted with gusto to the subject left me jilted in a sea of constant brain activity, albeit confused brain activity, segregated from the rest of green mother earth, where the main mode of communication is not to dwell substantially within one's own brainwaves, but to make those brainwaves vocally explicit (but it is worth noting that audience and context are key). All this time I was focused so inward, I let "living" pass me by.

It has to be accepted that struggle with perceived notions of one's own self-worth will go on, like man-o-rexia or diabulimia, growing rampantly like a modern disease in these modern times (promoted by our media worship of the young, rich and beautiful, or perhaps vice versa? The chicken or the egg, which came first?)

But everyone has a chink in their armour as surely as everyone has two eyes (nota bene: they need not to be visible). A dominant mode of thinking that is not so introverted helps. Anything that provides a divertion away from intrinsic worries is surely healthy, right? In the end in retrospect, I chuckle with warm ridicule. All of the time I'd frittered away nervously pondering with uneasiness what others perceived of me, if I had a penny for every one of those minutes, I surely would be a millionaire now (... perhaps in Japanese Yen).

Simian Mobile Disco - Hustler

2008-03-24T15:52:00.000-07:00

Promises and letdowns

2008-03-07T13:36:00.000-08:00

1) Is life one spiral from birth, where from early on, we and those around us set impossible targets for ourselves that we are rarely going to meet, thus there is inevitable but surely crippling letdown?

2) Must we in the bitter end accept the duller alternative in lieu of the more exciting, albeit ephemeral option in trade for security?

(How will we ever know if the aforementioned "exciting but ephemeral" option will ever befall us? Shall we just close our eyes, hope and believe? Is hope and believe all we will have to survive on? And what if the only two reliances we grasp onto in the end betrays us, and nothing "exciting" ever comes?)

Hypothetically, we swing from day to day "accepting the duller alternative". It's not unbearable, but it is somehow not quite as electrifying as we've come to imagine, even though we are not entirely sure what our imaginative alternative life would be anyway.

Should we have, since the start, lowered the standard bar so we never shall again set those sky-high aims to avoid the constant mediocrity? Haven't we, inadvertently, accepted the "duller alternative", in order to avoid disappointment?

(Moreover, does exhilarating and exciting always need to be accompanied by brevity? Are there any occurrences which are stimulating, yet still long-lasting? Few, very few I imagine...)

Suppose one day (whilst still holding out for something better to befall), we decided to get up and act instead of perpetually "hoping and believing" by relocating to a bustling metropolis, or heck, even to Peru to open a llama farm in the open country. But after a long period of settling in to the point where we could comfortably call the new destination "home", the sense of "excitement" begins to pale and mediocrity settles back in, and we realise that life now is not so different from back then. So is it true that we may as well not actively persue the "better", and has this proven that the "better" always has brevity trailing in its wake? Can it never be lasting?

After the initial rush passes, doesn't everything degrade to the "duller alternative"?

Does this mean that we are presented with no other choice but to always accept the "duller alternative"?

"On beauty"

2008-02-24T19:11:00.001-08:00

Why is it that we like the people that we do?

People tend to think that sexual relationships are more complex to contemplate, but perhaps it is the simpler and more frequently encountered friendships or even day-to-day contacts that elude the easiest one-sentence explanations.

Why do you like your sexual partner? The answer often prevails within a beat. The cliched "we have so and so in common" or "he makes me feel at ease" are often heard tiredly cited. Heck, if all else evades and one is edging dangerously close to divulging the fact there is really no solid territory on which the relationship is built, and the unbearable silence is becoming ever more awkward (and the other person is beginning to ponder whether you are a decent human being at all), there is always the text book life-savers of "oh, he's excellent in bed" or "he has a lovely face" to fall back on. (Not that this will stop the other person questioning whether or not you are a decent human being...)

When the same is asked about friendship, people baffingly proffer instead "oh I don't know, I just do!". So perhaps it is curious that in romantic engagements, we have a clear notion of what we are searching for, but in something that we have known all our lives such as friendship, the ideal in our opposites (note: spatially adjacent) become undecidedly blurry.

So in friendships, why do we like the people we do?

Is it because there is some shared common ground of understanding, such as a common interest? In this commercialised and publicised world where everyone eats the same cereal and wears the same Topshop dress, it leaves a cynic (such as myself) speculating over whether there still exists true pioneering originality. If everything is a derivative of a precendent, surely it would not be challenging to find a hundred or two people with the same derived interests as oneself in a single institute. So why do we only possess half a handful of great friends? What is it about them that make them intrinsically more likable than the rejects of the hundred?

...

Share the wealth

2008-02-20T15:16:00.000-08:00

Speaking of this photo, which I photographed recently for a photography project and although it looks intriguing, does it not appear uncannily like a propaganda poster? Namely, a communist Soviet propaganda poster, a salut to Stalin, rather like the one below?

Astonishingly, the propaganda poster in question is by one of the two Russian artists whom I favour named G. G. Klutsis, whom I based another project on last year. Here, he creeps up on me again...

Let me digress because the eponymous Franz Ferdinand album is playing on loop, and the rhythmic drum beats are pounding away the thoughts that are the far and few in between. It sound more enticing than I remembered, which goes to show that some things are better the second time around. (and others, such as peaches both the artist and the fruit, are not however...)

Where is Rihanna and her umbrella?

2008-02-12T20:13:00.001-08:00

Right on the mark

2008-02-12T19:33:00.000-08:00

A friend said today, "stop putting yourself in the victimised heroine position", and unfortunately he was right. What has resulted in today's narrow-minded views, the ones in which I am always willing to paint myself as the faultless casualty? The sequence of today's events are a direct result of one's own doing and not the repercussions of others, especially those who exercise power over us' "villainous" trauma. What happened to the work ethic, the courage to admit and most noticibly, the dignity with which one should always carry oneself?

"Dance", said the fire flies

2008-02-11T20:31:00.000-08:00

Morning glory

2008-02-11T18:08:00.000-08:00

So it's two in the morning, and I am awake relentlessly editing some photos, sipping on dregs of yesterday's tea, and talking to Mike on MSN.

It is serene times like these that set my mind speculating, namely currently the truth behind the need for and the existence of photography and travels, the former of which does it exist purely as a desire to capture life, or to exaggerate it beyond its mean confines and reach a haven that is perennially beautiful, or at least suitable or desirable to one's own temperamental moods?

It's been a while since I've had a chance to travel for its handsome merits. There is the optimism of finding something new, more hopeful and more beautiful than the current spot of residence. The belief that while loitering down a charming and whimsical street a place more copacetic befalls that one will be more happy in is alluring. So perhaps once one finds such a refuge, there'll be no more will to travel in such a stargazing way.

Sheffield is becoming monotonous to me. I know every nook and cranny like it's the back of my hand, and those I do not know, I have no interest in exploring. The sense of the unknown is gone so perhaps now would be a fitting time to move on.

Therein travel and photography draw a parallel. One explores in travels to unearth a place that is as beautiful as he imagines, so that he hopes he will be perpetually content there. On the other hand, photography lends a portal into an imaginatively beautiful haven that may be improbable in reality but one always tries to create for himself so that he may achieve such a place of true contentment.

Both provide certain hope behind the motivation to plough through in life, hope that something more befitting to our individual contentment might befall us, the optimism that we all sometimes need. So at the end of the road, there is hope we can all say, "wasn't life beautiful?".

Allow me to introduce myself...

2008-02-11T13:35:00.000-08:00

Hurray, there is a new blog in the blog-o-spheres, which is always rather exciting!

"Gun and a pack of sandwiches" will cover arts, musing... and more, until later notice.

It's the same old art blog, nothing that has not been covered by others antecedently. However, what is new is that this has been cleverly deviced and disguised in a new packaging with an even shinier forefront, so passerbys, like magpies, will find themselves unwillingly attracted to it!