It's finally the last week in Singapore, home sweet home (as difficult as it is for me to say it) before jetsetting off to Tokyo, of which I have not the foggiest idea how the whole place would be like when I arrive. My schedule is almost fully booked. I am so sorry to Joey for pangseh-ing him at the last minute when we were supposed to be baking cookies at his house, I'm sure it is rather annoying to have someone back out of a meeting at the last moment. Still, I'm happy to have been able to thrift shop for toiletries at chinatown with Huiboon today. I think my eyeballs almost popped out of their sockets when I saw the prices. Besides stocking up on the essential stuff like shampoo and shower gel, I seized the opportunity to buy that tub of hair treatment that a certain individual in Cozycot had raved about called Ritzo Selecin that at $6.50 is VERY affordably priced (sorry if I sound like a salesgirl here). I really hope very much that it works wonders for the very dry ends of my hair. I also got that tube of L'oreal color treatment that works pretty well at smoothing out the hair and making it less damaged and brittle. It was 5 buckaroos! How could I resist!

I'm looking forward to Thursday. It's the time I'll spend with the cousin sorting out the stuff she wants to hand down to me which sounds exciting especially when I hear brands like Country Road and a Charles and Keith bag in nice chocolate brown that looks brand spanking new. Oh and I'll get those leggings altered to knee length with laced stitched on when we pay the tailor a visit. And we're gonna do fun stuff like taking digital photographs of myself which we can cut out to make passport size photographs so I save lots of money since I'll be developing about 10 photographs to bring with me to Japan.

Anyway, all in all, everything's happening so fast and I'm hardly able to sit down and grasp the sense of excitement I should be feeling at having the rare chance of studying Animation in Japan, the land of the Playstation and Square-Enix. Somehow, I also hope that even if daily life becomes full of excitment, I'll still be able to keep my head (Somewhere along the way we lost our heads) and be the kind of person that I am.

It's been about 4 months since I've been to lessons and as a result the brain hasn't undergone frequent usage. You know what they say, bodies at rest tend to remain at rest. I know I've become really sluggish and lazy even though I don't exactly feel it, and you know, the scariest thing is, I don't actually feel like doing any proper work at all. I feel unusually contented at remaining idle; not the good idle which is when its constructive daydreaming, but the bad idle, the kind where you begin to strangely take on characteristics resembling a rock. Or more like, a pile of eating, breathing, telly watching, computer using gloop that stays in one spot and wakes up every morning, eats and goes back to sleep only to wake up the next morning to start the same thing over and over again. It scares me.

It's getting closer to departure day and I've finally started to do something about packing and clearing my room. If there's one thing I sorta regret now, it's not watching more anime and drawing more when I had those few months of free time. The inertia is just so inconvenient, I feel like if I'm not careful it will slowly eat me up on the inside. Anyway, the one saving grace would be the fact that I gave some of myself to playing the Kingdom Hearts Series which I can proudly say am just about to wrap up (all 3 games) once I defeat the supposedly easy Xemnes and watch the secret ending. The sad thing is that I won't be able to complete Final Fantasy XII of which a church friend of mine has very generously given to me since I won't be able to take my dear friend the Playstation 2 along. But at least I've got Final Fantasy VII Pc Version that's gonna keep me interested for just that little while longer with the whole FFVII gimmick.

I just pray pray pray that God, you might give me the strength which I have no control of which sleeps within me (which I believe and very much hope is there), to ignite that passion like those old times for it is what I'm going to Japan for. I know I'm not able to, but by Your grace anything is possible so allow me to glorify you, Lord, in my very own way. Thank you and Amen.

I wonder how many of you actually have seen my art before? I'm willing to bet not very many have, but yet strangely, those very ego boosting rumours about how well I draw have been rather rampant. These aren't everything, of course, but I hope they will give you guys who haven't seen my art some sort of an idea and to show you guys exactly what it is that I do. Thanks and enjoy.




Notice the vest and high waisted tulip skirt, so the rage when I drew this last year, I think.



Random guy in traditional Japanese clothing, inspired partially by the dudes from Peacemaker Kurogane, an anime revolving around the Shinsengumi and Jin fom Samurai Champloo. I admit the only influence from Jin is the bracelet. I was going for the half-opened-eye, no care whatsoever kind of look. His face looks rather flat though.



Inspired by Saya from Blood+. I watched one episode and decided it was crappy and I didn't want to watch it again. She's got the typical schoolgirl look. I particularly wanted to draw the ultra short mini skirt.



Exact copy of an androgenous looking male model's face out of the Tangs leaflet. I have a thing for androgeny. An exact copy meaning I looked at it and drew it out as similarly as I possibly could. He looks more like a guy here but I'm quite sure he's gonna look like a really handsome girl if you swop the nice crop of hair with.. I don't know... longer wavy hair?



Okay, we're going further back in time. This one I drew on cheap foolscap paper when doing math problems over and over again just bored the crap outta me. I'd say it's got the typical samurai-anime-style, guy with thick hair and typical ponytail look. Think it's Peacemaker Kurogane again.



Possibly done when I was 15 or 16. I tried following these steps to drawing a face. Step 1: Draw a circle, step 2: draw 2 horizontal lines dividing the circle into thirds, step 3: draw a vertical line down the middle, step 4: fill the eyes nose and mouth according to the lines. I think the faces just ended up looking not so correct but hey, everybody's gotta start from somewhere. I only liked the face in the second pic. Because of the crappy quality I don't think you can see why I like it though...



A tree! Possibly my first attempt at drawing an inanimate living thing. I had help from the How to Draw Manga book. I didn't dare ink the leafy areas probably cos you can't possible trace anything from there.



I think I could call this one of the better drawn ones. Very very Rurouni Kenshin feel, if you ask me. The thin neck, eyebrow and eyes just made me think that way. Check out the bloody hand. The hand shape reminds me of the art from RK too.



This is one of the characters thats been with me ever since sec4. That's almost 5 years. I have a name for her. She's Kurenai and she's the kind of stoic, strong leader kind who has great tasks thrusted upon her. The unwilling heroine who just takes what life gives her and moves on.



It's a good thing I decided to color the lines in darker so you can see more detail. I have a story for this picture too that revolves around an apocalyptic, dystopian, parallel world where humans are oppressed and go in hiding, forming underground communities to escape from a race born by human greed through eugenics. This race is an amazonian type that has a larger frame, long slender limbs and pale skin. Two worlds exist in parallel so there's that world, and the other is where this race lives in proper communities, where they establish schools reminisce of those in Naruto or Garden from FFVIII where kids are brought up and trained in proper combat because they gotta defend themselves from those monsters that dwell in darkness beyond the outskirts of the communities, who area actually people of their kind whose hearts or souls have turned bad. Kind of like the concept of Norg, the Shumi from FFVIII. I think the nicest looking thing in the picture is the demon looking thing.