Cat Powrr

Meet Kitty the Kat. She is friendly and loves to rub her tummy on the wall. And she doesn’t mind flash from the kamera, and is exceptionally affectionate if you pretend to have food in your hands. Unfortunately, she is homeless, and extremely hungry. Please wish her well, pray for her and buy her cookies and milk if you see her behind Spinelli’s at Heeren. Thank you.

Spin Spin Sugar

“If he wasn’t Mr Perfect, then he must’ve been Mr Pretty-Damn-Close.”

Right you are my beloved Canon 30D. Though you lack the fun of shooting multiple exposures, but you’re one hell of a camera so I love you anyways. I have yet to name you yet, but I’m starting to like the sound of Peter Panick. Hmmm. We shall see then.

In All Seriousness

I admit I am a serious person, after much thought and weighing of conflicting proofs. And also because I realised that by doing so I was already proving myself to be. I expected that serious people were not much fun, and maybe I am not, but at least I make people laugh, and this comforts me. Even though…the people I that I can invoke laughter and guffaws in are serious as well. Uh, okay, damn.

But oh well, knowing what I want in life and talking about it isn’t something that I feel ashamed about. On the contrary I feel quite pleased knowing that I have made decisions and thought seriously about my future. I am glad that I no longer wonder about what I want in life, or what I want to be in the future, but instead I know for a fact and am making decisions based on the kind of goals I want to achieve.

Its not that I dislike having fun or talking about the most absurd things that make us tickle, but when the time calls for it, then yes of course I wouldn’t mind having fun and just letting my hair loose. I guess for most people, when it comes for a time for them to be serious, they will be. But for me, when it comes a time for me to have fun, then I would. I am just basically on a 24/7 serious mode, maybe because I find it easier to deal with difficult situations with a rational mind, without having to go through the switch. Or maybe because I have many more serious situations to deal with as compared to other youths like me. Hmmm.

Oh jeez louis, I need to snap out of this! I can’t believe I’m actually being serious about my obsession with seriousness. I can’t believe that I want to be serious about not wanting to be serious. Wow. This could go on forever. I entertain myself.

Interesting.

Nirvana

Photo credits - Jamie Stoker

I crave, not for stability, but for the release from this emptiness which I subsist in. I tire easily – from places, people, characters and emotions. Sometimes I wish this photograph would exist with myself in it – the image of me with my bags packed with mere necessities, and hopping onto a train without an inkling as to where this unexpected turn might take me. Stability has its pros, and they justify themselves much more than their cons. But my brother once asked me, how can you be satisfied just taking what you can, and not giving a thought as to what more you can achieve if you just dare to take the huge leap of faith. Me, being my temperamental self, replied that I can make do with what I have, that I can be easily satiatied with staying here and now, doing what I do, even though what it is is mediocral. But this nagging doubt decides to surface now, and I am caught between wanting to run and wanting to just be satisfied with what little I have, even though the ebbs and flows of happiness is inconsistent.

So what now? I am so utterly unsatisfied, more than I was months ago when I had that childish conversation (on my part) which I tried unsuccessfully to convince myself that in time to come, I would undoubtedly be content, that in time to come, I would be sanguine of the future and what it might hold for me. This emptiness which I feel, it does not come in waves, but in a steady flow, and this proves weakening to me because the waves would allow me to prepare myself, to build a wall which blocks this off. But no, this flow eats away at my core, and it is like a disease. A disease for which the cure is unknown, a disease which will in time prove to affect my views and my very functioning. I am frightened, but most of all, I am antagonized by the fact that I allowed this to happen to myself, just like how a man discovers a growth on his abdomen, puts off seeing a specialist, then when he finally does he realises he has contracted terminal cancer.

The only cure I can see for myself is to pack my bags and leave this place, not for good but not for just a while either. You can say that I need to go somewhere to “find” myself, to recover what I’ve lost and return with different perspectives on life and the games that it plays. But that’s not how I’d put it. I want to be apart from this place because it is suffocating, intoxicating even. I want to leave because I want to be able to go somewhere in the same country, and not expecting to see someone familiar, or chancing upon a friend I knew in high school. I want to leave to UK. I want to experience living in a place where I can take my camera and wander somewhere without the tarmac or even a bloody hint of it, and take pictures of people drinking tea and reading the paper, and meet other people doing the same as me.

I am lost and confused, in this place which seems to be closing in on me as the seconds pass by. I am tortured, agonized by the simple thought that Saint Martins might be too far away for the reaches of my bank account. I envy my brother. He got his recluse in Australia, although only for a year. But he got what he wanted, to experience flying, to hold the stick in his hands and see what the birds see when they take their flight. I am tired of waiting for things to come, tired of waiting for the rabbit to visit my tree. This revelation has come, and it is time I take hold of what is rightfully mine – the happiness which I am entitled to for existing as a disgusting human.

Intensity

I could hear the emptiness, taste the silence, and smell the solitude, and I wanted it more than I’ve ever wanted anything before. And what does that say about me? What kind of sensualist craves nothingness? 

I am a simple girl, looking for simple love. There is no need for movies, extravagant dates, flowers, or even anniversaries. All I long for are picnics with a guitar, long talks somewhere where silence prevails, or moments spent with nothing but cigarettes and steaming cups of chamomile tea by the grass, coupled with the whispering night sky. 

 I don’t need someone to tell me he loves me, I just need someone who shows it, who means it with as much sincerity, and puts his faith in this future that is unexpected. This person who seems perfect – somehow he’s starting to sound like a person who is ominous, and goes by the name of God. None of you have the answer to why he created a world with pain, suffering, misery. And those who have the answer, all of you give me the reason that he is putting us through a test, or that he didn’t want to create a world of robots.

Why then, if he did mean to put us through tests of character, will he willingly punish us and send us to Hell if we failed this test, if we find that this test is too difficult for us to complete? Why is it that people who commit suicide are condemned, just because they cannot cope with this suffering, this conflict of hearts and minds?

I do not doubt that God does not know the suffering which we face, nor do I doubt that he is upset by this. But I do not see the reasoning, and also because its just me. I don’t even have faith in myself, much less enough faith to believe in someone whose existence is unknown. Maybe you will tell me, all I have to do is open my heart and my mind, to give everything that I am to Him, then will he reciprocate with love and kindness.

But I am sick of opening my heart, I am sick of showing vulnerability, and I am utterly sick of  being poisoned with this belief that all I have to do is show that I want to be loved. Because I have done it twice, and both times the returns have been far from appropriate. 

It is time that I have to eat my words. I once said to a friend, maybe all you have to do is care and love without expecting anything in return, because if you keep expecting and you don’t get reciprocated, then you in turn become upset and unsettled. I now eat my words, and I swallow them with bitterness and true understanding. How can you love and give so much, and not expect anything in return when all of us are merely humans? 

“Katie was right. You spent your life giving everything to other people, so they could drift away, to school, to college, to the office, to Hornsey, to Ealing. So little of the love came back.“ 

Obey Propaganda

Saint Martins

CSM BA (Honours) Graphic Design

The BA Graphic Design course at Central Saint Martins is a three-year full time course for students of graphic design and design for communication media. Students are encouraged to experiment creatively and critically. The philosophy of the course is probably unique amongst UK undergraduate graphic design courses. It is analytical and diagnostic with emphasis on solving visual communication problems through the development of original and often surprising solutions, rather than simply focussing on technical media or applying formulaic solutions. Our student centred ethos encourages students to develop their creative practice in divergent career opportunities at graduation. The philosophy of the graphic design course at Central Saint Martins is that students define their goals, experiment with ideas and challenge current practices to produce work that is outside commercial constraints. The course helps to develop individual student’s creative potential through improvisation, speculation and experimentation. After a first year introductory common programme, students are offered a choice of specialist areas at the beginning of their second year – Advertising, Design or Illustration.

Advertising reflects but also challenges the rhetoric of advertising and creates new, original and design orientated ways of developing creative campaign strategies.

Design explores the formal skills of ideas generation, conceptual development, problem solving, compositions, use of type and image and utilises these skills to challenge and develop the subject of graphic design.

Illustration shares much with design but is grounded in a more overtly visual/pictorial approach, and explores issues relating to narrative and the coherence and articulation of image making.

UK/EU: £3,070 per annum
International: £10,095 per annum
Please note that these fees are given as guidance only and are subject to review.

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But. I. Want. This. So. Badly.

Delicate

I wish my eyes were a film camera, so I can capture moments which take my breathe away so I could share them with you.  I wish I had a Pensieve, so I can take these moments and keep them somewhere else safe, when it gets too much for my heart to handle.

You are empyral, and when my mind wanders, it is of you that I am enraptured by. No, not by your virile features, but by your boyish charms and tickling dalliances of which your eyes portray. Indeed, it is your eyes of which my heart is captivated and bewitched. The casualness of your coquetry, it is this which I find amusing and wicked. But then, I haven’t touched on your smile. It is beauteous, as is the rest of you. Your wandering glances, your surreptitious expensive smiles – all of it, is delicate. Delicate, but when I experience it, it hits like a train, speeding and hard, but nonetheless, it makes my heart flutter and excite like it is intoxicated with E.

It is you, who has made me experience what its like to Feel again. It is you, who has made me alive. It is you, who repairs what has broken – slowly, but nonetheless, mending with invisible scars.

Pipe dreams, indeed they are A. We shall keep them in our hearts, and long silently for the day we never need to prepare ourselves for fridays. A dozen eggs, more wicked bike rides and stolen make-out sessions on the wide empty field, these are what we have to prepare ourselves for, aye?

Understanding

Its true that I don’t want Germaine to be Germaine anymore. I want her to be structurally the same – the girl who still takes comfort in the silence, who has loved and lost. I won’t even mind that she has been broken and smacked around. I just don’t want that constant perpetual distance between her brain and her heart, the inability in which she is unable to push things out of her mind. In fact, is it really that hard for her to pick herself up, for her to like (we’re not even talking about loving here) herself more?

Yes it is, its really too much for you guys to ask for, really.

Choices

Which is better, being able to feel every single emotion or not being able to experience anything at all?

DPD

Tired and ashamed of being dependent.

Just utterly sickened with each feeble attempt to pretend, each ending with the same results: failure.

Maybe its time to give up.

The Pursuit Of Happiness

The essence of happiness is the most sought after, and also one of the most misunderstood things in the world. People crave for stability, material gains and most of all, they crave love, of which they are certain will most definitely bring them this thing called Happiness. I myself admit that I do seek happiness, but I do know that happiness does not come from affluence or other worldly possessions, and most of all, happiness does not come from love.

 Instead, happiness comes from within oneself, and from my point of view, happiness is basically satisfaction. Love, wealth, material possessions; these are only the criteria in which equates to self satisfaction, and with this we can then achieve happiness.

So, it is not difficult to be happy, but of course, it is difficult to be satisfied, because we humans are made as we are, wanting more and more each day and seeking more than we can possibly quantify. “The grass always looks greener on the other side”, as the sayings go, and I guess it is true we will never stop wanting. But we can always be reminded that this saying exists for a reason, and that will be that it only looks greener, but whoever said that it was?

Discipline

From blog.smeek

“Question the purpose of why something is there. Ask why it is there, and is it needed. Some things have to be there, for order, structure and meaning. But if it’s not needed, trash it out. When things are there because of personal preference, it can change because somewhere down the road, some joker will come and change it to his personal preference. However, if it’s there for unity and order, it has to be there. We call it discipline.”

 

Wanting to be a designer, to be involved in art, it has always been a dream of mine ever since my brother made me draw fireworks for his primary school art homework. When I was accepted and enrolled in the course of my choice, I was all ready to begin my journey to becoming a designer, to create works of art that inspired and stopped people in their tracks. But the reality of truth is, things never come easy.

The formula is simple: hard work , commitment, drive and of course, not forgetting the big p, Passion. But formulas are just what they are, simple. They make complex things seem easy enough. I thought it would be easy enough in my first few months in VSC, until things started going wrong. Once again, the P word comes into the picture, and this time, its Priorities. Having the passion is not enough, having the interest is not enough. You’ve got to have discipline, and you have got to set your priorities straight and put your mind in the right place.

I misplaced my priorities, lost a bit of my passion, completely lost my discipline, and not to mention, my mind. Basically, I screwed up, big time. Now I’m not even sure if I’m going to make it up in time for my internship, or even make it into next semester for that matter. I fucked it up, and now when I’m all ready to unfuck it, it might be too late. This seems to be a trend these days, in everything I do, I tend to screw it up and most times, its always almost too late to save what’s left. Relationships, friendships, family, schoolwork, you name it, I’ve fucked it up before.

You’d think that at least I’ve got myself to depend on, but the truth is, no I haven’t. Because with everything that I’ve failed at, I lost a little bit of myself along the way, and now there’s just nothing left to lose anymore.

USSR Smena 8m

Triplet 43 / 40mm, f/4
An excellent high-contrast glass lens. Consisting of three separate elements and an anti-glare coating, it yields exceptionally sharp images and deep, punchy colors. Created by the same Leningrad engineering team that designed our beloved Lomo LC-A Minitar lens.

Manually Variable Shutter Speed
A steel shutter ring cycles between the following speeds 1/250, 1/125, 1/60, 1/30, 1/15, and “B” (the shutter will remain open for as long as you depress the shutter release /button). For extra icing on your Smena cake, each shutter speed is matched with a charming weather icon.

Manually Variable Aperture
Manual aperture controls enable you to select the size of your lens diaphragm opening, across the possible f-stops of f/4 (greatest possible aperture, f/5.6, f/8, f/11, and f/16 (smallest possible aperture). The greater the aperture, the more light is admitted through the lens. The smaller the aperture, the greater the possible depth of field (total amount of your image in focus).

Mechanical Shutter Cock
The shutter cock function (preparing the shutter for immediate release) is done manually and is not connected to the film advance function. The benefit to this: you can cock and fire the shutter as many times as you like on the same frame – allowing for limitless multiple-exposure mayhem.

Faux-Leather Carry Case
Carried around your neck or over your shoulder, this carry case keeps Smena protected and available. A bottom screw allows you to shoot right out of the case, just flip the top down and F-I-R-E. The pebble grain exterior gives you the fine feel of leather, while keeping our cow friends alive to frolic through the pastures.

My birthday – October 7th. If someone gives me this, I’d be forever indebted.
Hmmm, then again, a Lomo LC-A 1991 or a Yasuhara T012 would be even better, but beggars can’t be choosers.