Milan Furniture Fair: our chair exhibits

Woots! Photos of our odd-looking chairs for the Milan furniture fair are out!
#9866 on http://www.notcot.org/
or http://www.belowtheclouds.com/2008/04/11/31-studenter-skapar-5-stolar/

Chairs are based on the 5 themes: Voluptuous, Androgyn, Awkward, Vicious & Vain.
(order respective of the photo above)

Busy & lethargic

well, it's april already. time really flies! last week was a busy week. this week is gonna be pretty much the same as well.

Had design management exam last monday. our only exam, i think. didn't have time to study 3 chapters but i think i was pretty lucky 'coz they didn't come up. supposed to be a choose 6 out of 9 questions exam, but when we received the paper, we realized that there were only 6 questions and we didn't have any choice but to answer all. manz! anyway, the exam was 3 hrs long. to the swedish students, 3 hours is considered a short exam, 'coz the average exam timespan is actually 5hrs. (OMG) fortunately, you can leave the exam room when u feel like you're already done with the paper. Exam style is very different from that in Singapore where the atmosphere is dead serious and the hall is so quiet that you can hear ur neighbour scribbling away. Here, one can barely concentrate. Food is allowed. Carolina, who was sitting beside me, was munching away on an apple hahaz. there's a toilet in the exam room itself. i lost count of how many flushings i heard. the exam started at 9am. at approximately 9.30, a teacher danced into the room with a generously loud "Good Morning!" and following that, Christer (our teacher) went from table to table asking if we had questions regarding the paper. well, i would say that it's a really interactive exam experience. which was less stressful, than what we have in Singapore. Definitely.

Had presentation for the ideation phase of ikea kitchen concept 2015 last thursday. i basically presented two concepted. totally different direction from my previous concepts. i think i didn't recap on my previous presentation, which left the ikea guy feeling quite lost. oops. Anyway, presented a UFO induction pot/plate/lunchbox and also a sieving pot. My rendering skills still suck big time. The teachers suggested that i head towards the sieving pot direction, with the development of a range of cookware with ergonomic handles. and guess what, after a trip to ikea on sunday, im totally dead coz the sieve exists in ikea. arghs! back to square one now. *SOBS*

Swam on Saturday. The water was pretty cold despite the "heated" water. and the water wasn't that deep actually. it was a small indoor pool, with the length of the pool similar to the width of the toa payoh swimming pool. people swam diligently, rarely stopping. unlike how people laze around at the sides of the pool in singapore. in fact, one end of the pool was practically designed without any supporting resting platform.

Anyway, Sunday was fun. Went to Malmo with steph and deb and we met up with Hanway, a Chinese Swedish, at Varnshem. lots of amusement with how we were waiting at the wrong bustop and wondering why the bus timing was wrong while we saw the right bus zip past at the opposite lane. anyway, went to ikea to get some dimensions and inspirations (and also to doom myself with the reality of the existence of the sieving pot). Deb's from india, and from where he came from, there ain't any IKEA. so he did seem pretty fascinated by it~ haha while exploring, we even came across this electronic coffee/tea stirrer. manz! it felt pretty excessive since a simple spoon would suffice and u'd probably be thinking: who the hell would buy this?! BUT guess what? it was the last piece on the shelf. it's amazing how commercial seemingly useless products can get.
Hanway then brought us around a lil and we had dinner in a nice lil restaurant which had copperish-looking interiors. the huge oven fitted so perfectly with the decor of the restaurant. Hanway deliberated for a pretty long time over having the dinner specials, which was tuna, since tuna is becoming a somewhat endangered species in the seas of this region. In the end he had it afterall 'coz "choice" won out. i had some filet mignon thinggy with paprika salad (i hope i spelt it correctly) while steph had chicken pesto and deb had this beef thing with bearnaise sauce. the food was great =) i liked it a lot. after that i had apple pie for "dessert" while hanway had mcflurry. the apple pie here is packaged in green, which didn't look very appetising actually. but thankfully, the taste was pretty much similar. Mcflurry here has another type of cookie of a lighter colour mixed into it instead of Oreos. Versatile Macs. after that, we walked through a cemetery which was like smack right in the middle of town, pretty oddly, and headed towards a library for the fun of it. the cemetery scene with the twin rows of trees and graves by the sides very much reminded me of our cyvamp manga background on the first page. the library was half new, and half old, with a glass connecting channel which linked the two. we all agreed that the older half of the library looked better afterall. after that was back home to lund.

Gonna complete the voluptuous chair leg for the milan fair by tomorrow. time to sleep soon! may some miracle idea for ikea kitchen come to me in my dreams. lolx

Stressed out.

been feeling really stressed. cramming txbk content into my head for exam which is 1 week away. ikea kitchen is kinda dangling around. & presentation is 3 days after exam. wth. the design management textbk is a pretty horrible thing to read. there are so so so few pictures. it's words, words and more words. and the english is like... "hur? what talking you". let ideas incubate by sleeping on it so that the unconscious mind will be at work, so the textbook says. i think it meant subconscious mind. oh well.
anyway went to school to lathe leg chair today. the workshop guy who sold me that piece of wood said maple wood is good. manz. he's damn right. it's so good and hard that the lathing machine stopped so many times i lost count. but for that big chunk of wood, having only one eye which stays in place even after lathing is quite a feat. oh well. had to change my shape of the leg coz of the freaking roughness near the surface. kept lathing so much down that my voluptuous leg chair is looking like a skinny stick with occasional boobs now. im so going to stick to juletong the nx time i use wood to lathe shapes. at least my rolling pin in yr 1 din give such problems maple is giving me. arghz.
alright i know i sound cynical and pissed off today. call it MS. forget the P. been having fk'n cramps the whole day and i feel so drained of energy. in fact i was hiding in bed to keep myself warm to ease the pain after the horrible lathing session so much so that i din bother about dinner. Ran out of RTEs too. i need to stock up more of those life-savers. here i am now, eating my last cup noodles from singapore while ranting away.
lots of errands to run too. but duno where im gonna find the time to. gotta call SIA to change my flight date, which is another ass-hole prob coz 1st july economy class seats are full and im most likely to be on the waiting list. yest to buy the train tickets from lund to nykoping as well. praying hard that the prices haven risen too much. bills to pay as well. bredband (internet) and final part of the accommodation fees. gotta change more euros for milan trip as well.
manz. bombarded!
just feel like running away from all this work & back to my baby.

I've been Missin'...

going off to kiruna in like 5 hrs time. 10 - 13 march 08 --> Kiruna. 16 - 20 march 08 --> Spain.
have yet to blog on my stockholm trip still. manz!

i miss my little pigs A LOT. sigh... miss their cuddliness, soft fur and milky baby smell. *sobs*
i miss my piano too.... can't wait to get my hands on it and play that long-awaited song kevin has given me the score to. bach's invention. cant rem what number. but the beginning of that song is forever in my head. i think my fingers are addicted to the flow of that piece.
i miss mom's cooking. it's not about the singapore food. it's just that a lot of determination is needed for me to get off my com and head to the kitchen considering im quite the otaku. i'm so seriously gonna get a dishwasher when i get back to singapore! it's much much more resource-saving compared to washing dishes the usual way (according to the ikea dudes). i think im just too lazy to wash up lolx.

alrightey just felt like ranting a lil. time for me to rush out a few more caddings of voluptuous legs, complete packing my bag and sneak a quick nap.
manz! this is gonna be the first time im gonna wear my thermal wear. haha hope they don't irritate me too much when i'm indoors.. sayonara bloggy!

Snow, finally!

Snow fell for real finally. Snow like those in my dreams; the calm, soothing kind.

it gently descended towards earth, quietly swaying with the wind. Simply beautiful.. it was soft and numbing to touch and it dissolved upon a mere caress. it's so pretty, yet so short-lived. the ground is white now, but by morning, it would probably be a invisible memory to those who had not peered out of their window blinds this night. Rain tends to wash it all away afterall...

i'm glad my impression of it was close enough, though perhaps in my imagination, snow was even more romantic. it's really easy to fall in love with it.

yanwei experienced snow late january last year. we thought spring was arriving, yet here it came, one month beyond our expectations. well, it was worth the wait =) but i kinda wonder how screwed up the earth's climate is...


ps: i couldn't open open my window anymore than 30 degrees it seems, so that's the best i could do behind the window pane. and yes, my room faces the carpark, not exactly the most romantic image of snow. could only show the aftermath rather than the snowfall coz the flecks were too tiny.

A dream of snow.

Dreamt of watching falling snow yesterday night. Pristine white fluffs floating down to earth, gently embracing the land with it's calming touch. i was merely standing there watching it fall, and oddly the snow did not hit me. felt like an eternal moment, watching snow. it gave a nostalgically warm feeling moreover...
it's the first time in my life that i dream of snow falling. in fact it may not even be the real way snow falls since the one and only time i've seen snow fall was like a blizzard mess with strong winds swiping at the many tiny flecks, visible only under the streetlights, back and forth in multiple directions. But it was a nice impression my brain conjured of snow afterall. i'm anticipating the snow in kiruna. don't think i'll be able to watch it fall, but the covered landscapes would be sufficient to satiate my curiosity. was reading a manga and it seems that snowball-throwing is actually not very easy lol. im so looking forward =)

anyway searched up dream moods. this is what it says:
"To dream that you are watching the snow fall, represents a clean start and a fresh, new perspective. It is indicative of spiritual peace and tranquility."

Ah! busy week. was gonna set up a new blog just for lyrics, stories and manga. but somehow i just cant use the jimmy liao template i found on blogskins.com that i so very much love. mayb i'll have to start from the beginning. seems like some codings are wrong on the jimmy liao template. I think i'm simply not committed to writing my thoughts n feelings on yoi-travels2008. maybe because it feels so temporary. so i shall stop fooling myself and return to my safe haven here. will probably write only about my observations and trips in sweden/europe on yoi-travels2008, while the rest of my thoughts will still be updated here.

Had a horribly long lesson yesterday. started from 9am and ended at 5pm. milan meeting after that furthermore. manz! And to think that design management class starts at 8am tomorrow. i really need some rest. our watch presentation went fine, though it felt almost like a long marathon as we struggled with 46 slides in 20 minutes. we practically finished right on the dot only. arghz . There was a guess lecture today by this guy from Anoto, a company which does technological stuff such as digital pen & paper. Their technologies can be found in Logitech's products. It's cool, their dot matrix paper technology. It allows one to write on a presentation slide physically printed out on dot matrix paper using a digital pen (the ink come out like how normally writing pens do), and the scribbles on this presentation slide appears simultaneously on the computer screen display, which shows exactly the same position of the exact same slide. Infrared digital camera on the digital pen is doing the job.
Anyway. I really enjoyed the way he talked about human psychology vs technology though it may not have been all that related to the topic we were learning. He believes that computers are dumb after all. it's like when you have two similar sounding phrases, "recognise speech" & "wreck a nice beach", the human brain can discern which phrase it is, considering the context given. like if the topic is on environmental issues, it'd obviously be "wreck a nice beach" to the human brain. however, to the computer, it wouldn't have been able to discern it. The human brain, he believes, is the smartest "computer", capable of correctly identifying words or phrases as long as the context is given, regardless of how illegible words can be or how similar-sounding phrases are.
But it's odd how our brain, "this super computer", can twist and turn words, like in the game of "telepathy", where the 1st person whispers a phrase to the 2nd, the 2nd to the 3rd, etc... the last person always turns out saying a totally absurdly different phrase from the first. well, i suppose that given a normal computer doing such a "pass the message on" job, it wouldn't commit an error as such. it's really fascinating what goes on in the human mind after all.

Got a letter to collect a package. Oddly, it ain't at Willy's supermarket, as it should have been usually, but is instead at a flower shop near my place, which i have to locate tomorrow, hopefully within its opening hours. -.- i wonder if it's my ski goggles, my ski mask or the package from mom which has arrived. somehow it's not indicated on the letter.. Anyway, i've received my sunglasses! fits perfectly well and tight. haha that's a self-taken photo of me with my first ebay purchase arrival ^^

What else.. ah, yeah, we went to the milan trip meeting today after a considerable long absence. guilty as charged. we might not get a chance to go milan liao since there are too many people who wanna go now, but i guess it's alright with me lah.. considering i'll be touring it with mom n aunt in june. volunteered to help out with the webpage & i'm so looking forward! haha the chance to play with more html stuff has arrived~ really hope it'll turn out to be a gd job.

Yeapyeap, upcoming stuff to do [this is a self reminder list]
- WATCH project report (due fri 7 mar)
- Bank transfer for spain trip
- ask about credit card monthly slip
- return library books and cds
- Electroscience quiz
- Design management project with Craig & Carolina
- Ikea project
- Collect packet from flower shop
- Milan meeting Fri 12pm lunch
- Blog on stockholm trip


I understand now why dad always nags at me to do stuff immediately instead of waiting liao. it's like the act of resisting procrastination for every small action builds up into a momentum which makes you feel motivated to work hard for other stuff as well. Well, now i know why he nags le. it's a new feeling to me afterall. some things have to be self-explored i suppose.

I'm out, seeing the world, in my very own way =)

The Case of the Ringing Fire Alarm

For the first 2 days that I moved into Delfi, my fire alarm went off everytime after i bathed. Curious, I opened the door to check what had happened outside. The weirder thing was that the moment I opened my door, the jarring noise ceased.
I finally realised that the heat from the bath actually triggered the fire alarm, and that when I opened the door, the hot air escaped. It didn't even feel as hot as Singapore yet. I guess there's a limit as to how much one can heat up the room. The fire alarms don't use smoke detectors here. Most people light candles here to warm up their rooms and create ambience, so I guess that's the reason.
Well, a small but fairly amusing incident afterall.

Well, it has been around a month since I arrived at Lund, Sweden. Time to start blogging! Thanks to the slow diary edrick gave me, i'm able to store my memory somewhere. Ok, here goes Yoi Travels 2008 =)

8th Jan
The 13 hours to Sweden was kinda boring. I guess i'm not used to sitting still in a small space for such a long time. kept wanting to fidget about. Watched kung fu hustle and secret, both of which i've watched before but i wasn't tempted to watch something new. I so miss zhou xin ci's Across the Universe. Think it had started showing in Singapore. Anyway that's beside the point. Nice meals on the plane, and there was blueberry cake which looked like it comprised of 50mm cream and 5mm cake. Well, it was good to fatten up before we got off at Copenhagen where it was cold. We took a 40 minutes straight train to lund and bunked at Marona's for the night. Marona's an Industrial Design student too and her room was not surprisingly artsy. She paints as well~ I liked her lamp, which had lil ancient slides attached to them. had a good rest and marona brought us around lund as well, which was very nice of her~


9th jan :
the worst day i ever had in lund. it was moving-in day. luggage was so horribly heavy and we had to drag it up the stony slope. well, i'm already dreading the day when i have to leave my hostel. Arghz!! Well, i moved into Delfi. Thank God i lived on the 2nd floor and not the 4th. I would have screamed bloody murder.Bought cheap stuff from ikea to make my room look more decent. Anyway the pic here's that of an old cathedral, which was on my way to the AF Building where I ran all my errands and got my allocated housing. i love the aged stone look.

My corridor people are all very nice. It's a Swedish corridor and there are only 2 exchange students there, including me. The other guy is Deb, an exchange student from India, but he's on some programme where he will be going to a few countries to study before heading back home. Lund is his 2nd stop after UK. Steph often comes over to cook with me. Here, electric and induction stoves are used. I haven seen any gas stoves here. I got kinda sick of pasta after the 1st week so i'm back to rice again. Microwaving a lot too. Been eating lots of fruits and yoghurt. Much much more healthier lifestyle than in Singapore. Plus, everyone here walks and cycles more frequently than they take bus since bus rides are very expensive. The people here all look very fit. In fact i don't recall any overweight people in my ID class at all.

Anyway the next few days were spent running errands and going for language classes. Swedish is interesting, but the pronunciations are just as tough as Deutsch. "Hej" (Pronounced as Hey) or "Hejsan" is the easiest and most basic greeting we can get.

Me and steph managed to rent a new bike together. Cycling is really common here. And it's not illegal to cycle when you're drunk. The bike Yanwei left us was terribly tough to cycle with at first, until we realised that it was because of the deflated tyres & went to pump them up. We eventually bought diy cardboard boxes from Ikea to use as makeshift bicycle baskets. Some photos of the town as shown. I particularly liked this street lamp. The colour and shape kinda reminded me of a bee hive. It's cold here, and you have super fat pigeons and ravens here. The toy shops here sell snowboards (it's my first time seeing one) and tons of marbles too~
Got a bank account with Nordea, which was an irritating experience at some points. We did not get our bank account numbers even after waiting for 2 weeks plus ( they promised us 1 week), so we went down to the bank. And we kept missing documents and needing to go back to Delfi retrieve them. Worse it was not a one shot thing, different staffs that we encountered told us that we needed to bring different documents. WTH. Oh well, now we got our account numbers but seems like our ATM card is lost among the post. So the guy told us to ask our neighbours before going down again to get a new card. That'd be the 6th trip to the bank already!
The closest supermarket to Delfi is Willy's, which is approximately an 8 minutes walk, or even faster by bike. Willy's meatballs are much softer and tastier than those in Ikea. Here in Lund, all the post offices are located in supermarkets. It's practically a dead town on Sundays but the display lights in fashion shops are still switched on, which can be kinda misleading. The first time i saw it, i was reminded of manipulated town in House of Wax. A lil spooky. Shops don't open for long hours as well here since the sun sets at around 3pm. it looks like it's 8pm in Singapore when it's only about 4pm here in Lund. Takes some getting used to~

We got a SIM card from the IHO which we topped up at 7-Eleven. I got Skype credits as well to call home at a much cheaper rate. Crystal, who's in Shang Hai doing internship now recommends Pfingo, but i have yet to try that one out.
Went exploring Ikea in Malmo as well . The room displays felt different from those in Singapore. I liked the idea of having a couch beneath a bed. feels so cozy. and the way they hung up the bike looked good too.

Lund's library rocks. We can borrow up to 200 books at one shot, return it 1 month later, and there are tons of CDs and music manuscripts that we can borrow too! If only i could play the piano here! arghz! Their checking out system was cute too. You had to put in a magnetic strip card, key in your pin, feed the book into the machine, and the machine will process and then spit it out. I love the library manz.

ID is located at IKDC in LTH. The building is sponsored by Ikea and the workshop is much larger than the one we have in Singapore. ID here lets us choose our own projects according to our interest. I'll be working on the Ikea Kitchen 2015 project. We had our first presentation on 31st Jan Thursday. It was the research phase and the ones doin the ikea kitchen project split up the workload and research various areas. Me and steph researched on Asian kitchens. Our presentation went pretty well. It was an interesting presentation coz we got to see and learn about kitchens from various parts of the world, ie North & South America, Asia, UK, USA and Africa. I was really amazed by the Africa presentation. The Africans bend 90 degrees and cook like that for an hour. And then they sit 90 degrees, eat and play music through the night. Whew, amazing backs! It's really fun learning about the cultures all over the world.

18th Jan:
Welcome Party for exchange students at Karhuset, LTH. We hung out with the Singapore "gang" , Nikki, Sherman, Hui Yan, Winston & Nicholas. Got to know more people from Hongkong as well (in photo). Didn't really get that high though, but huiyan really could dance =) Hot! Had my first French greeting with the guy from my Swedish lang class. For a moment I was stunned coz i wasn't expecting it lol. Party was nice, my shoes got super soaked coz of the rain and was squeaking as i walked home.

26th Jan:
Corridor Party! Well, i loved it. We had some sort of tour de room thing where we went from one room to another drinking alcoholic drinks that the room owner made. I made Bailey's with hot chocolate, topped with whipped cream and a sprinkle of cinnamon. My corridor mates liked it =) Haha, taiko first try. There were like 30+ rooms and i was already kinda tipsy after the 2nd room coz of a absolut vodka mix. Everybody's room was unique and nicely decorated. Most had candles, which brought a very nice effect =) Mine and Deb's room was quite bare though haha.. Funny incident happened at Deb's. We were gonna take a mass photo and everybody squeezed on his bed and his bed suddenly collapsed. The wood splintered in fact. I was super amused when he just laid there laughing. Alcoholic high! I hope his bed is alright now~ Music and alcohol made me high and I felt pretty knocked out after that, so slept early. The day after the party was big cleaning day, and with everybody helping, the job was done really fast =)

Alright, guess i should stop here for now =) Time for my RTE (ready-to-eat) dinner. More ingestion of microwave particles! wheeeee......