no sleep tonight
Saturday, January 10, 2009 x 9:40 PM
as of now, i have not slept for approximately 38 hours. it all started when i just reached home from my cousin's house. vina called.
"are you busy?"
i was already confused. she never asked that when calling. usually we just... start talking.
"uh... no"
"come to my house lah!!!!"
another confusing moment. what's with the "lah"???? is it like an unspoken agreement that if i have nothing to do, then i should just go to her house??
so it turns out, she needed help with another design project. this time, it's about making a lamp. apparently, this photo that i saw in her mobile blog, the one i gawked over:
well, it's not the final product. in fact, she planned to redesign the whole thing. after showing me some of her sketches for other lamp designs, we started making a rough model of one of them. and suddenly aaaall those maths formulas came in handy. sin rule, cosine rule, you name it!!!
unfinished rough model
but see the thing is, there was no sleeping involved.
look how messy my room became
so we started trying to come up with other ideas and designs that will actually make our lives easier and bearable (unlike the previous wearable design project).
it just looks like a whole lot of random shapes on paper huh?
failed rough models
but on every single try, we always went back to the original idea. at around 3 am i was already feeling quite tired, even lazy to open my mouth and talk.
that was when vina suggested i get coffee. she wanted to get her second cup (my first was milk tea).
and well... it seemed to work. because some time after that we were hyper and laughing at everything. it's either due to the break we took or because we were high on caffeine.
so what did we do on our breaks?
1. stretch
vina searched for stretching tips on youtube
2. draw cartoon characters
we'd come up with a cartoon character and try to draw it, then laugh over the demented faces our drawings had. you see those characters so many times but when told to draw them, you just can't figure out what exactly their faces look like!
3. play childhood games
reminds me of my primary days when we'd whip out a sheet of paper, label two ends as "start" and "finish" and draw obstacles all over the page. we'd have to take turns flicking our pencils while avoiding the obstacles, until one of us reaches the finish line.
yesterday's obstacles were something on the lines of:
typhoons and uh...
vina finished mine in a few seconds, although i took so long to try and make it seem complicated. i... couldn't finish vina's. why? IT'S IMPOSSIBLE. she had labels such as "go back to start" or "go to 2". and if you follow them, you'll just go round and round and round all over the maze but never end it. her solution? skip "go to 2".
we finally decided to make the initial idea of the lamp design.
cutting that plastic thing is a pain in the ass! thank god vina was the one who did it =p
i helped with calculation and graphs. i'm telling you this thing has maths written all over it.
ugly rough version
and then...
the beautiful version~
jab the material with a compass (difficult i'm telling you! i was afraid the compass needle would break and fly to my eyes), and then sew it on. the hole was barely enough for the needle to push you. still need to tug and push the needle through.
by the time i finally gave up on sewing, my fingers were full of needle marks. like i'd been playing the violin for a long time.
we watched the sun rise!!! except that there was no sun 'cuz it was raining. or if there had been and i somehow missed it, it's because it's blocked by all those buildings.
so what we did, was watch the sky turn brighter and brighter.
this project.... is actually worse than the wearable design. which is a very big feat since for the last one we had to stick a million straws with pealing off paint on cardboard. or maybe it's 'cuz we didn't sleep? i already felt nauseous at one point of time, and vina did too in the morning. plus her skin was feeling all prickly, she said. a sign of coming illness.
at around 7 or 8, we went down to look for food and milk. by then, soooo darn sick of coffee. i felt like puking when i saw our half-finished mugs.
vina fell asleep on the sofa when i was playing the piano. she only woke up at around 10! i must say... wow. it was already getting quite noisy. piano plus tv plus grandma yakking away loudly plus the phone ringing occasionally. that tired huh? i swore to myself not to sleep until night though. 'cuz if i do i'll just be able to get a few hours and that would only make me feel more tired.
i forgot to take a picture of how far we'd gotten with the lamp. but well looots of good luck to vina for finishing up that damned thing!!!
~suze
Labels: design project, games, lamp, sleepover, vina kosasih
full day ahead
Wednesday, November 12, 2008 x 11:19 PM
today's the scheduled movie day for me and ratna. we walked to a nearby mall and bought tons of snacks plus dvd's.
the chitato is such a rip off!!! here's what the contents looked like when first opened:
that's like less than half of the size of the package!! to be exact:
the right hand shows the amount of SPACE in the packet. meanwhile, if you buy a big big beautiful packet of doritos in america, it is full to the brim!!!! purely fantastic.
we also bought teh botol. you know the big ones sold in cardboard packaging.
let me tell you that ratna sucks at pouring!!! when she first tilted it towards the glass, it spilled aaall over the place. while it was being poured, more spilling. then when she tilted it back to stop pouring, she managed to make the drink fly towards her hand.
i just knew america's next top model is sold on dvd!!! uh... pirated ones of course. which was what we watched, along with "the eye".
once, in the middle of watching, we suddenly heard static from the next room (her mum's bed room). like static from a television with no programs running.
after a while she left the room to check, before exclaiming loudly and beckoning me. i already knew what to expect. a black and white tv screen. just like those in horror movies. but when i opened the door i was still shocked. the room was so dark!!! omg the scene looked SCARY.
you can't really see what's on the screen but just turn to a channel with no programs and you'll get that along with static.
at noon i went home, took a shower and went straight to vina's house to continue helping her finish her design project (see previous entry). i know i'm going out so much now and my mum's pretty pissed off =.= guess i'll need to lie low at home for the next couple of days.
reached there at 6.30ish and we ate dinner first before she took a shower and only then did we start on the painful job...
our work area was a messsssss
and finally.... FINALLY!!!!! after long hours of back-aching, boring, repetitive work, we were... almost finished. last finishing touches: to use acrylic paint for parts where the paint had chipped off. so those annoying straws which don't want to be black? well you ain't got a choice!!!!! >=)
the job was done at 10.30ish. less time taken compared to yesterday!!!! WE HAVE BECOME MASTERS OF STICKING STRAWS TO CARDBOARD.
holding up our (well actually her) project proudly. mind you, we would have looked prettier on another day.
it's a wearable design project btw. for those who don't get what the hell the project is about:
woohoo a unique accessory
and that, i swear, is THE WORST project ever. and now there are two people constantly pushing me to finish this post so let's publish.
~suze
Labels: chitato, design project, movie day, teh botol, wearable design
what a project
Tuesday, November 11, 2008 x 10:25 PM
i just came back from vina's! i received an SOS call from an extremely stressed and frantic vina, whose project is due the day after tomorrow. and she's not even halfway done.
picture by vina
(if you want to know what her project is: click here)
but the problem is!!! that the straws weren't black. they're spray-painted black. and hence, like low quality spray-painted objects tend to do, they peel off. cut the straw, chips of black fly off. paste the straw, peel peel peel. anyone would go nuts!!!
and imagine having to stick layers of those little annoying straws all along the borderline of the cardboard, plus more in places where one decides to create patterns.
i reached there at around 6.30 and came back home at around 10.30. 4 hours with one 10-minute break (but we might have extended it subconsciously, i didn't check the time) and a dinner break. during that time, i only covered like... i'm sure it's not even 30cm.
and now i'm all exhausted and stiff but the poor girl still has to research for another assignment. go vina!!!!!!!!
~suze
Labels: design project
unfinished rough model
look how messy my room became
it just looks like a whole lot of random shapes on paper huh?
failed rough models
typhoons and uh...
ugly rough version
and then...
the beautiful version~
holding up our (well actually her) project proudly. mind you, we would have looked prettier on another day.
woohoo a unique accessory
picture by vina