I was looking at the album artwork in my iTunes, and I kind of like Gidon Kremer's album artworks.They are mostly very understated but beautiful, like his music. I think for someone so talented, he keeps a low profile. Here are 2 of my favourites:

Silencio, which is a collection of minimalist music with his Kremerata Baltica orchestra. I get goosebumps when I see this picture. Especially if you've heard one of the tracks on the CD; Arvo Part's Tabula Rasa-Ludus (Blank slate-Game)
Hommage a Piazolla, which has music composed by Astor Piazolla (tango). Kremer's music has a lot of improvisations, but they work very well.

I got my Ripstik! These past few days I've been bringing it down to the basement to learn how to ride it, where the floor is smooth and flat, there are few people, and plenty of walls to cling on to. I've been making good progress, I think, but I need more before I bring it out onto the streets. It feels quite reassuringly solid, probably a bit heavier than a skateboard(it's 4 kgs, but there are lighter versions for those who like to do tricks), but I bet it's a lot more fun too. The way it's ridden makes it more similar to a snowboard than a skateboard, as in swerving the board sideways with your hips instead of pushing forwards with your legs. I also found out that it can be a good form of exercise for legs and hips. I hope I can get good enough at it to ride around Ingleside or the wharf over the Summer holidays, that would be awesome, with the scenery.

It was pretty ironic though, that when I was asking around for opinions whether I should get this, that friends my age thought it would be too dangerous, but my parents thought it was a good idea. I think it's a good idea too, if you don't try it, you'll never know whether or not you can do it, and I'd like to say that I did some caster boarding, before I get too old to be impulsive enough to try this sort of stuff.

Food pictures.

Sushi. I filled it with Japanese style fried eggs (which are sweet) and cheese. I don't have a sushi rolling mat (I have one in Malaysia which I never used before DX) so instead I used a piece of cloth, my hands and willpower. Which resulted in unevenly packed sushi, of course. Didn't bother cutting them up since the wrapping was a little loose, and the seaweed was a bit soggy and tough, since I left them in an open plastic bag for a long time. But it makes good comfort food, especially when it's about time to go grocery shopping.
Tofu-green bean-miso loaf, and my failed senbei (it was super tough, I suppose you should deep fry them after all). Incidentally, I found out what those mysterious balls in my mushroom soup came from, it was coagulated corn starch. I found out because I diluted corn starch in water to make the glaze for the loaf, and it produced that waxy looking lumpy paste. Tastes ok though, now I know what it is.

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These past few days, I've been always wanting to eat some kind of Oriental style simple noodles, so I made up this strategy to come up with a noodle soup, which is fast to prepare, so I don't have to make it in advance and end up eating cold food because I'm too lazy to heat it up. Plus it is healthy, since you can do without oil, and put in very little salt and sugar and it still tastes good. Usually the more ingredients you put in, the better it tastes. And it's fully customizable to whatever ingredients you have at hand or what you like eating, so it's good for cleaning out the fridge when you have all those odds and ends from other recipes. I kind of made it up as a fusion between jong gol/ kimchi noodles/zaru soba. What you need is:

-the salty component: soy sauce/dashi/ stock

-the sweet component: sugar/mirin

-the spicy component: chili powder/ chili oil/ sliced chili

-vegetables: anything green will do, I prefer Chinese cabbage

-protein: meat/tofu/eggs/mushrooms (which although is not exactly what you'd consider a protein, still tastes meaty)

-noodles: any oriental type will do, but I prefer soba

-water

-additionally, I add in rice wine, and sometimes toppings like green onions, bonito flakes, or sesame seeds. And serve it with tea! All that hot soup makes you feel comfortable after coming home tired on a cold day

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Here are some pictures of uni works in progress. I don't have any finished projects at this point, since for all subjects, we only have 1 project that we work on for the whole term.

Ecorche. It's building a half muscle-half skeleton model out of plasticine. We'll be starting on the muscles tomorrow, I think. The class is 6 hours long( X 15 weeks), and the lecturer demonstrates step by step how to sculpt this thing. It's like the frog man we made in TOA(in what...3 classes X 3 hours and no homework?), but this is the steroids version of that class. Every tiny bump on the bone is explained, the placement, what is the function, etc...
Organic modeling. Not much new technical things to learn, but the lecturer does give a lot of helpful anatomical tips on making good and correct looking models. Still have to bring this into Z Brush. We can choose what we want to model, mine is a copy of Richard Macdonald's Midnight (portrait sculpture of French mime artist Marcel Marceau)
Advanced texturing and lighting. The models and animation are provided. Still have to add in hair for the little boy and textures for those round monsters. In the animation, the little boy is in an abandoned house and tries to feed a Snickers bar to those monsters (I textured them as MnMs) which start fighting over the bar. Don't feed chocolate bars to chocolates, bad hyperactive things happen.

This looks even more fun! It's a Ripstik caster board, which only has 2 wheels and moves by you rocking your feet in opposite directions, so you don't have to push off the ground. From reviews online, most people say they like it a lot(and the users range from little kids to working adults), except that the wheels wear out very fast. It looks difficult to learn how to use it though, but most people say they can pick it up reasonably fast. Plus it looks cool :D. It's more expensive than a Soleskate though, and seems to be more for riding for fun than for commuting.

Oh yeah, FYI, the Soleskate is $26 and the Ripstik is $50 if you buy it online, much cheaper than if you buy it on site.

Currently wondering if I should buy some sort of non-motorised transport item since I don't have any form of transport around SF except my feet and public transport. I was thinking somewhere along the lines of bike/ scooter/skateboard. But then again, SF is pretty hilly, so it might be tiring to go uphill and dangerous to go downhill. Did some research, and found out that a bike would cost around (meaning the cheapest) $150, and the rest, $50. What do you think? It'll be good for those medium distance places which take a long time to reach even if it's not tiring.

And I came across this thing, which is a soleskate by Razor. It looks kind of fun and I like that it's so small (17"). One of my concerns is bringing the mode of transport around when I'm not riding it. I'd like if it was light and I can put it in my bag.

What is with this recent spate of movies based on fairy tales? The Red Riding Hood thing going on this year, and the Snow White thing that will be happening next year.

Red Riding Hood. It looks visually nice, but it's so Twilight that I'm not surprised most people don't want to see it.

Hoodwinked 2, which I only know about from a poster I saw around the city, but I think it's only limited release. Looks a bit amateur though, with Shrek type lame jokes.

And next year will be Snow White's turn. I hope both movies will do better, especially Tarsem's Snow White (with Relativity Media). Looking at his record though, I'm guessing Tarsem's will be visually superb with a kind of just-alright storyline.

Done with the patina for my sculptures, I think. Here's how they look like now.

Heavy cream patina. Actually I skimmed the milk fat off one of my soups and used it to gloss this sculpture. Awesome,right? Surprisingly, it really does make it waterproof ( I got the idea from a book, not made up myself). Hopefully the colour will stay this dark and shiny and not dry off. The mounting wasn't really successful, I was supposed to use epoxy putty to glue it down, but that only made the bottom lift off the board even more, so in desperation, I used all-purpose glue. I have a feeling someone will overestimate the bond strength, tilt the entire thing, and the sculpture will slide off the board and onto the floor...

I think the base came out nice though. Cut and beveled it myself. I like the 3 tones of brown thing going on (wood base/clay base/feet).

Gold acrylic patina. It's semi transparent, so it's kind of a reddish-gold colour, but I think it looks good that way. Usually when people mention patina, it's the green rusted colour, which you can also achieve from a chemical reaction of 2 kinds of paints, or more commonly, you can fake different kinds of metal or stone using many layers of acrylic or powdered pigments in floor wax. But I think the fake metal/stone thing looks really gimmicky, I want something more natural and wabi-sabi.

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Food picture time. Lots of soups (and recently too much fat and sugar)
What is supposed to be cream of broccoli, if it was blended. So let's just call it broccoli potage. Bytheway, I found out that boiling is the worse way of cooking broccoli if you want to maintain it's nutritional value, although it's probably the most common way people cook it.
Fruktsoppa, or Swedish fruit soup. Followed the amount of sugar mentioned in the recipe this time, and guess what...too sweet. But just add water, and it tastes good again.
Garlic soup. It sounded nice, since I'm a fan of garlic (1 whole bulb for 2 servings) but then it has less than 5 ingredients, so it's kind of bland. Even the texture is monotonous.
Vichysoisse, a leek potage with milk in it (milk fat patina came from here). It tasted a bit too fatty, or maybe it's a psychological thing, after I read the nutrition facts on the box of heavy whipping cream that I used. *why am I complaining about all my cooking...*
Dorayaki. I made some triangular just because it's easier to fry and then cut it up. The filling I used was chunky red bean paste, not the creamy one you usually have from stalls, but it tastes just as good. I was wondering why the pastry part tasted familiar. My guess is that it's the same pastry that is used for apam balik, just substitute red beans with peanuts and corn! I should test this theory sometime.

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And here's another picture of the Palace of Fine Arts that didn't get transfered from my camera the last time.

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I think my sleeping pattern is coming back to normal again. Last few weeks, I've only been able to sleep sometime between 3:30 and 4:30am, the bar opposite also did not help. But now it's getting to be more like 1:30am. I could actually feel my IQ dropping a bit and my complexion getting even worse. Let's see if I can make myself sleep even earlier.