~ because keeping a diary supports personal development ~
Thoughts, discoveries and other cerebral miscellanies
Tagline update: September 2010
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When this website was being conceptualized, I included a little feature: the tagline. Highly inspired by the ever changing and witty tagline of McSweeney’s , I wanted my own and you will find mine right underneath where it says ‘misterdibster’ at the top of the page.
What goes there will be on my whim but I think it will be probably be changed on a monthly basis.
Here’s some taglines that I’ve had so far:
May 2010: Documenting digital miscellany since 2010
July 2010: One man’s journey through life, design and writingToday, a new tagline for September inspired by a quote from one of my design heroes, Stefan Sagmeister :
Because keeping a diary supports personal development
Thank you for the awesomeness
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Rojak 16 was held yesterday on a humid tropical evening at the Waterloo Center void deck and it was another awesome event which saw Boo Junfeng presenting his feature film Sandcastle (the dragonflies were CGI and the cats were not), Frayn with his amazing fragile structures and Justin with his study of the graphic design history of Singapore among others. A few residents of the area were also seen strolling in, grabbing a beer from our rubber dingy and joining in the audience and just to make sure that it was one memorable Rojak, some drunk guy stood up at the end of the last presentation and expressed his disgust at Singapore’s culture (or its lack of) before ending it all with a “Thank You, Goodnight and F*** Off”.
Last night also happened to be Mr. Kelvin Ang’s last session as Rojak host before he leaves for London in September and we will now see Yi-Sheng stepping up to take over the mantle in future editions. As pointed out by Torrance’s closing remarks yesterday, Kelvin has been a stalwart for Rojak, hosting it since the very first edition and it is an understatement to say that this man has been a torchbearer of sorts for the local creative community.
For a moment there, I recalled my first ever Rojak session- Rojak 08 at the National Stadium to be exact. I was barely out of architecture school, all naive and eager , and I was there to kick off the Magical Spaces project. That was my introduction to Kelvin and the rest of FARM.
Fast forward 3 years on and I’m somewhat a seasoned person in the Rojak setup. I now look over and find my younger colleagues taking over some parts of the presentation proper and I find that the presenters at Rojak are actually made up of my peers and people I actually know as compared to folks who seem like creative mythical creatures then. More importantly, I must acknowledge how Kelvin has been an influence in my professional and personal development over recent years. He has helped to open doors for me, shown me where are those that I can open on my own and advised me on how I can go about doing so. You can say that without realizing it, he has been my mentor.
So as Rojak 16 wraps and we wait for number 17 to be organized, I say thank you to my friend Kelvin for making Rojak as awesome as it is now and on a more personal level, thank you for being such a wonderful person, awesome friend, mentor and inspiration to me with your energy, honesty, enthusiasm and knowledge. I’m truly grateful for all the advice and help that you’ve given me so far.
So as you embark on your voyage, I say, godspeed my friend. Thank you for all the awesomeness.
Riding the momentum
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As most of my fellow designers would agree, being a ‘creative’ isn’t all about being cool and having fun. Yes we do that most of the time but it also comes with it’s fair share of slogging it out in producing drawings, managing consultants, clients, writing emails, meeting minutes and other mundane stuff. In addition to that, we are also expected to be creative at the snap of a finger.
All this is hard work, especially when you just don’t feel like it. You know, those days when you are feeling jaded, tired, or simply uninspired? Yes, I thought so too.
One approach to innovation and brainstorming is to wait for the muse to appear, to hope that it alights on your shoulder, to be ready to write down whatever comes to you.
The other is to seek it out, will it to appear, train it to arrive on time and on command.
I for one needs some effort to put myself back in ‘the zone’ and since my university days, I’ve been spending much effort in finding my own way to put myself back in there. What I’ve discovered is that a short walk or some coffee and snacks will give me enough time to calm down, recollect myself and hopefully put me back in the correct state of mind to work.
But of course, it doesn’t always work and another Seth Godin piece of wisdom captures it succinctly. (He is a bit of a guru isn’t he?)
Some days, even the best dentist doesn’t feel like being a dentist. And a lifeguard might not feel like being a lifeguard.
Fortunately, they have appointments, commitments and jobs. They have to show up. They have to start doing the work. And most of the time, this jump start is sufficient to get them over the hump, and then they go back to being in the zone and doing their best work.
Ok, I don’t ALWAYS get back into the zone but knowing that I absolutely HAVE to attend a meeting or knowing that some people are EXPECTING some drawings from me forces me to push on. It’s tough to slog it out but it’s something that needs to be done. Powered by a sense of responsibility and the conscious of a spirit called professionalism, I just force on and persevere through and slowly, find myself back into the swing of things.
But if all else fails, I say just take a break and don’t work on that day. Come back and do battle on another day.
Rojak 16
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This time, it’s at the void deck of our very own office! Come! More here.
Ideals – a poem by James Allen
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As you think you travel,
as you love, you attract.You are today where your thoughts have brought you;
you will be tomorrow where your thoughts take you.You cannot escape the result of your thoughts.
but you can endure and learn, can accept and be glad.You will realize the vision (not the idle wish) of your heart,
be it base or beautiful, or a mixture of both,
for you will always gravitate towards that which you
secretly most love.In your hands will be placed the exact result of
your thoughts; you will receive that which you
earn, find no more, no less.Whatever your present environment may be
you will fall, remain, or rise with your thoughts,
your wisdom, your ideal.You will become as small as your controlling desire,
as great as your dominant aspiration.Poem by James Allen
Suprebed
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In the spirit of awesomeness, I’m switching from being bitly to supr. Oh, I’m just referring to the Url shortener service that’s installed on this blog of mine.
Why the change?
- I like the su.pr name better than bit.ly.
- I’m putting faith in the discoverability factor of stumbleupon for the future of the internet.
- I haven’t figured out reason no. 3.
Towards being su.pr!
I choose awesomeness
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Let me tell you about a little thing I like to call ‘mind over body’ … You see, whenever I start feeling sick, I just stop being sick and be awesome instead. True story. – Barney Stinson, How I Met Your Mother.
I was bummed for most of last week but like everything else, I knew it wouldn’t last forever and that old adage held true once more. Then on Monday morning, I stirred from my snooze and felt it in my bones: “Life is awesome and this week will be an awesome week”.
And what a week this has been! A small-ish family dinner for my sister’s birthday, late evenings playing Wii, awesome cakes in the office, good football games, sunny weather for most of the week, I slept well at night, played board games, ate superb crabs, had super-fun karaoke session and all of it with the company of great people around me.
It is awesomeness like this that reminds me to be grateful to have a family to hang out with, grateful for friends old and new and very grateful for my extended family of FARMers who are one bunch of funness. Grateful for the health and prosperity that has been given to me. And grateful for the ability to see the world with love and fun.
Of course not all things within the week went my way and it will never be. But you see, there is awesomeness everywhere around us, only if we choose to create it , to look for it and to feel it. And I simply have a thing for awesomeness.
In awe of awesomeness,
Dibs
Are you happy?
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The word Happy will mean many different things depending on who you ask. Some of us are constantly in search of a definition for it while others are on a journey to create it .
Similarly, the concept of ‘Happiness’ has been a theme that have captured my interest for a very long time and was once fodder for a project that I did some years back and there also used to be a little project called Happyesque done by yours truly. Today, I find myself producing a video installation for this year’s Archifest which has been themed ‘Happy Cities’ which if all goes to plan, you will be able to see in October this year and that only skims the surface of my deep obsession with the topic.
Update, 30 August 2010: The project has been shelved. More here.
Recently, in the midst of a walk around the vast digital internet land, I stumbled upon a wonderful New York Times article titled “But will it make you Happy?”. It explores how and if the acquisition of material goods will make us happy and this then led me to discovering the happy movie, a documentary exploring that very theme.
One of the trailers on the film’s website touched a nerve deep inside me and set me thinking about my own definition of happiness and the things I do in life to achieve that state. More on this another time but meanwhile, I hope you find the following clip as meaningful as I did. More information about the film at the official website http://thehappymovie.com/
Unspecific
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I glance at the digital clock at the top right corner of my laptop screen and I see 11.11pm, a number that some people believe to carry a mythical message- perhaps someone is thinking of me right now and I can only hope it’s for all the right reasons. Meanwhile, a warm and still tropical air hangs around the house and the electric fan stands at the corner of the room, trying to artificially create a breeze to comfort the skin. The mechanical, low, drone-like humming of the electric applicance becomes the soundtrack of the moment while I transcribe these unspecific thoughts in my analogue brain into characters in the digital world.
Today more than any other day in recent history, I felt so bummed out. Focus waned, energy dipped, enthusiasm fizzled. In fact, I now recall that this odd feeling has been brewing since the beginning of the week.
In some ways, the week has felt rather transformative. By this, I do not mean that anything significant actually happened but rather a tingling that I can feel in my bones, my brain and my heart. As i stare at my own reflection in the screen and reflect deeper into some of these thoughts, I can vaguely pick out the silhouettes of the reason for my recent lack of focus and zing.
Without going into specifics, I would say that recent events have nudged me to a new position in life and the vantage point here is making me wonder what should be done next. It feels like a moment that will require me to make a leap of faith is creeping up and this is what has been distracting me from being fully present in life.
Somehow, it feels as though the wheels for another shift in my life has already been put in motion and it will be a matter of time before I realize what this all means. But for now,these instinctive feeling in the gut can only be described as ‘unspecific’.
Looking back, I wonder if it is a coincidence that many past Augusts have been somewhat life changing. It was about 5 years ago in August 2005 that I took a leap of faith and made a rather rude and shocking exit from my parent’s place to stay with my brother. Somewhere around August 2007, I took a huge leap of faith in developing something called FIVEFOOTWAY and contemplated thoughts of joining FARM which I eventually did a couple of months later. And it was somewhere around this time last year that I became conscious of myself moving into unfamiliar mental territories which later proved to be a turning point in my life.
But this time, it feels really different. It feels as though most of what i’ve gone through for the past few years was in preparation for me to be in this position. Oh, how amazing life can be!
So while I look for clarity within my heart and my head, I have also been on a parallel search of an explanation to these unspecific thoughts that I’m having. And I think the answer might lie in the cosmic movements in these weeks or by the beard that I’m trying to grow.
Well, i guess I won’t really know for sure would I? I’ll just have to trust my heart in figuring things out. Meanwhile, keep loving the world dear unknown reader of my blog.
Unspecifically yours,
Adib
Maybe on one fine day
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Not maybe, not someday,
But tomorrow, yesterday, everyday.
And right now at this moment, today,
My heart beats for you in a different way.I’m still looking for the right words to say,
To capture these feelings that make me astray,
A most wonderful dream in my waking day,
You’re the reason I wake up every single day.But you’ve already given your heart away,
So these words in me shall stay,
Perhaps manifested on some future day,
When caution is in the wind and come what may.