Hi neighborhood,
It's been a while! (last post: 2007)
I've been blogging over at super-junk and was wondering if I ought to be crossposting to VOX as well. Does anyone read this thing?
-m
READ ALL ABOUT IT (click)
I hate it when people are jealous and just because they now want to branch more actively into the faceup industry for
$90 a pop (thatw as my quote for a unoa initially)
they are embarassed to target the most famous customiser on flickr directly because it looks like competing for business
so she tries another method by way of my flickr, so as not to look like she is vying for business.
Tanya has improved a lot since her early days of my lea and benny while this individual has not, she seem to be filled with jealousy with her passive aggressive stance. Tanya's business is faceup from SD to Unoas to Latis and she also sews for all sizes. Famous customisers, you can hardly get hold of them to communicate well and we all know that so Tanya is easily the most communicative accessible customiser on flickr and therefore an easy target.
Understood economy and times are bad and one has to do more than sell clothes for a living but decorum and humility should not be forgotten
I personally find this individual seem to be following mio's style and fashion but since i dont know about patterns, i can only speculate. hell even this F01 (see post / screen capture) which she said looks like her doll belongs to Mio. (thoughts run wild)..perhaps it looks more credible to first accuse other people of copying than to later be accused?
This individual first left a message on tanya's flickr in April 2008 very vague when everyone is praising but oh she had to say it LOOKS like HER OWN doll. Although i felt it wasnt right, it wasnt my place to call it anything until the benny incident . People are smart and they can decide for themselves.
I was comfortable and then All of sudden in the span of 7 hours I bought 2 expensive dolls!
THats crazy!
....................
Now I'm not comfortable and Poor.
Uh Oh now i got some explaining to do when HE comes home from the Airport.
I Should NOT be left alone to my own spending devices.
Stuff i need to pay asides from this: 2 faceups
One doll One Face
START COPY AND PASTE from my sis's blog
I revisited his site again to discover these breath-taking images of street dogs taken in India.
My heart leapt as I saw images after images of street dogs.
During my 4-month journey throughout India, I saw the same street dogs and their predecessors just like the ones David had photographed and documented in his latest work, Street Dogs of India.
India
I went to India on a mission. To finally see with my own eyes, the paintings and illustrated manuscripts that I had researched and admired from far, in the stacks of Sydney Uni.
I was an Art History student and never quite fell in love with photography; at least not mine.
I preferred looking as I was taught to look.
And since I was born without a creative bone in me, I preferred chronicling smells and sounds and etched them into the deepest recesses of my memories.
I think I fared quite well with this because now everytime I close my eyes and replay the cold nights travelling on trains, the calls of the Chai Wallah, “Chaiiiiiiieeee, Chaiiiiieeeeeeee. Garaaaamm Chaiiii “, would nearly make me tear and wonder why I am where I am now.
Kolkatta
Often, I was alone, bar the few random friendships chanced on in various dhabas and dorms I stayed at.
I spent a lot of time in Kolkatta because I love Bengali art, literature (think Tagore) and the significance of the region it had on my research thesis. When I was not at the museum library, I spent a lot of time walking up and down Sudder street, sitting around, drinking Chai, speaking in what little Hindi and Bengali I knew to the street kids no one else would bother with.
An Asian girl speaking Hindi never failed to bring smiles to their faces. Sometimes, I would tease them, saying that I was from Nepal or Nagaland.
Honestly, it was T, someone who came to India to escape military service who showed me such warmth in speaking to the street kids. How their faces would light up when you speak to them.
Amidst the scores of families who lived right on the streets, European, Israeli backpackers; there were the dogs.
In a place like India, where such poverty, plight, desperation and humbling experiences overcome you; you would be hard-pressed to notice them.
The scavengers. The mongrels. The lower-than-lower-castes. The ones even the untouchables couldn’t care less about.
But I saw them.
I gave them names and looked forward to the gangly, mange-ridden, flea-infested packs that seemed to be in the same place every time I returned from the musem.
I played with them. I gave them bits of roti, chapati and naan.
I felt guilty when I knew people were starving and you just dont feed dogs. You feed people.
India was very hard for me and I often escaped to a nice bookstore in a nicer part of Kolkatta for the air-conditioning and the sterile, happiness contained within its confines. But to get there, I needed to walk past scores of families that made the streets their homes.
After being in India for so long, you tend to block out these images and you ignore the out-stretched hands for money and the hungry children who tug and kiss your feet, saying “mem sahib, khanna, khanna.” (madam, food, eat, eat)
I could only do what I could.
Sometimes I would doggy bag some food for some families but I wasnt able to do it all the time.
But oneday on my way to the bookshop that I needed to escape to every now and then, I saw something that made me smile.
A group of homeless men had a little puppy with them on a leash fashioned crudely out of bits of string. I smiled, thinking that someone up there had a heart to give this puppy that was otherwise born with a death sentence, a ‘home’.
Days later, I walked the same route that was littered with beggars, lepers with flailing limbs and homeless families and looked for the puppy. I recognised the men who were there. They looked like they hadn’t moved at all. But the puppy was gone and they were smoking crack.
Where did it go?
Lost, amidst the poverty and desperation. It wouldn’t survive. You were just another one.
Dead Dog
Once, I was lost and instead of splurging my student allowance on a cab, I walked and walked for hours and tried to find my way back to the hostel.
I remember walking alone, cars, taxis, buses, trucks all sounding their horns (TATA, please HORN) and I walked past some dense bushes and smelt the most unmistakable smell of death. I looked into the bush and saw a bloated, purple-grey body of a dog.
It wasn’t even cremated or buried.
Who were you?
How did you die?
Did you feel compassion from the people around you?
Did you suffer?
I’m sorry you didn’t matter.
In the dusty streets of Kolkatta, the desperation was so thick you could almost suffocate.
I worked hard to document the manuscripts I needed for my research.
But one night as I was walking home to my hostel with a fellow backpacker, S, we saw one of the local Sudder street boys (who was born mute) bending over a puppy who had been run over by a cab. He tried to explain by gesturing that a car had run over the dog.
It laid there, dying and bleeding.
My heart leapt out to this poor soul and in desperation called for help to anyone in Hindi and English if I could find a vet to save the dog. People crowded around us (as they do) and just shook their heads.
” Is there no one who can help?”, I shouted.
The mute guy went around looking for poison to relieve the dog’s pain but couldnt find any.
The dog was was on the brink of death and it was suffering. If I could have taken away years of my life just for it NOT to suffer, I would.
S and I flagged a taxi and not surprisingly, no one would take us.
So I said the word, “Baksheesh” (bribe) and they relented.
We didnt even know where to go but to the local hospital thinking they would give it some lethal injection of poison to end its suffering. I cried, tears streaming down my eyes as I held the puppy in my arms.
It bled and was convulsing and I wished to God (if he existed to take away years of my life just so it wouldnt suffer).
When we finally reached the hospital, they turned us away. They wouldn’t even let us in. We had to leave the dog at the doorstep. It had stopped breathing by then and I held it in my arms in the last minutes of its life.
I held you
I loved you, As you lay there breathing and bleeding your last moments.
I told you that you had someone in your short life who loved you and that was me.
I’m sorry that I couldnt save you but I held you.
I stayed with you right to your last breath.
You may go in peace now.
They say, we cant save dogs. Humans are our priorities.
And that was when it hit home.
In a place like India, millions are starving.
Did I really think anyone could care about the ones with no voices? The helpless ones?
David’s photos made made me cry a lot.
India was a big part of me. Yes, the cliches of growing up, finding yourself - they are all true.
Everything that was ever written, glorifying India was and is true.
There is a God because he made India and gave us her to teach us humility, compassion and kindness.
Humbled by my time spent in India, I came back a better person.
I’m not sure if these attributes have stayed long with me after being in this big smoke for so long but I long to go back.
Death, heartbreaks are huge learning curves.
The photos David had taken brought back so many memories and tears to my eyes,
Thank you David for doing this.
See David Darcy’s tunning work here.
Mongrel Productions
I lingered long at the piece, titled, How much Difference will She Make?
And thought about my dog. The countless strays my friends and their friends work tirelessly for in the streets of Singapore.
How one starving, unloved street dog came into my life.
My dog, Fei is a rescue dog. She had no chance of adoption and was going to stay in a shelter forever.
But she found me and is my strength for going on here in Japan, my light at the end of the tunnel.
My soul mate. My pillar of strength, the thing that gets me up in the mornings.
I wish to God that people would give mongrels a chance. Not kick them or ignore them as they do in India, Taiwan or Singapore.
The way Fei has found me and saved me.
I want you to experience that.
END COPY & PASTE
---======================
sorry for a sad re-post
yeah!
I looked at the batch of narae/narin dolls which arrived and boy they sucked. (under the narin narae discussions on DOA)
the matte urethane one, they look worse than normal resin dolls because the urethane
looked so thick and plasticky
A few were nice but the rest..MAKEs my eyeballs scream in PAIN!
and seriously some of the dolls look like bloody tranvestites
The people who praised them ought to be shot for lying through their teeth,
If you have nothing nice to say dont say it but dont lie because it makes the owners look bloody stupid.
YEAH i feel mean today fedup with shit people on DOA a number of them writing to buy my
ELijah, discussing payments, want layaway and when everything is agreeed, they JUST DONT PAY and dissapear.
Really pissed off.
But back tot he issue of taste some are just hideous its an ABOMINATION!!
Seriously If you are going to spend so much on a doll, have some decency to save a bit more for decent faceup
esp if you cant faceup to save the rat's ass!
This is something close to my heart and how I feel about Asia in general.
Its not I dont like my roots, but i dont like the environment of longest hours with low pay rates compared to that of Hong Kong, Japan but yet the living standards is the almost same. We also get a LOT LESS public holidays. And when public holidays happen to fall on a friday, we either have to "fight with colleagues" to manage to try to take a long weekend or try "the lucky draw roster".
In Asia, couples work late because thats the normal thing to do.In Asia, couples work late because thats the normal thing to do. If you dont work late, you're probably nobody or doing nothing important! (whats wrong with you!)
In fact in the Japanese company where i used to work, my boss has to leave later than me even though "he has nothing to do" but mope around.
On weekends, sometimes one needs to go to work too for "unofficial work reasons"
Some mothers spend almost half their salary or more on "maid/domestic help" /daycare once they have children if they dont have willing in laws to take care.
I wish I can forever live in a foreign western country mainly because it DEEPLY respects
the Boundaries between "FAMILY AND WORK".
My other half tells me, his american counterparts do not "schedule" business meetings if possible after work hours or weekends.
His asian counterparts want sleazy entertainment in karaoke bars with "karaoke girls".
The only reason to go home is family ties and sometimes thats the strong enough reason. If not, I would choose forever to stay in any country that does not make heavy demands on my other half on weekends and afterhours and respect the "FAMILY/ WORK boundaries". Food wise, it is more easy to get international "kinda taste like it" food...
In the UK, maternity leave of 6 months IS THE NORM. As my friend said, if you go back earlier than 6 months, people ask "HUH why you back" In Singapore, if you are on maternity leave, you cant help worrying if "your boss wants to get rid of you".
I see the difference in the cultures of the Asian and Western World clearly.
Asia has strong family ties,doesnt really encourage independence because an apartment is so expensive (can be a million or more), few youngesters can afford to move out. In the Western world, you're encouraged to "move out" once you stop school .
While not being Westerner, I wont say";they dont have As strong family ties"; because thats just a generalisation and degrading but i would say "seemingly in comparison".. (without going deeper )Yet their countries respect the boundaries between family & work SO MUCH MORE
But both cultures as with anything else in life as its pros and its cons. That being said, I've always envied those that has uprooted from an asian environment and permanently in a western world, only they can truly appreciate the differences and impact it has on one's quality of life. And perhaps those who had to come back from the western world back into the rat race of Asia..can appreciate how hard it will be to adjust....for some..
.
Its soooooooooooooo and i mean soooooooooooooooooooooo Good to have HK Connections! LOL
My Brainworm friend is a little busy with her business but she is helping me liason for something
very important in my WORLD
and then if it works out Candlemomo, a new mom and all will go and pick up
and today Fishmo Helped me GETZ! the creepiest baby set ever!
I'm so excited!!!!!!!! !
HOORAY FOR KIND PEOPLE!!!!!!
i have decided i prefer lightweight lens so after doing an intensive day of research
I bought a Sigma 18-200. I brought my camera and the cf card to the shop and tested 2 of them.
One display One new. When i wanted to test the new one the girl said "you already tested this"
I went "no NOT this," Girl "But its the same" Me : "no its not, Sigma is known for varying QC Control"
So she unhappily let me tried it. I noted down the serial number. And then decided what the hell
since i pay more from buying from a shop, I can exchange it if i dont like it and i decided to pay for it then.
Only to find out I didnt bring my wallet. I walked back home and checked out the pics on the CF Card at 100%
on my pc to find the display set showed sharper pics..So then I walked back to Jessops to buy the Display Unit.
She was like "huh you want the display unit"
I figure, whatever thats sharper is what I want.
I'm very happy with this Lens, Its no award winning but With this Lens, I dont have to keep changing lenses.
Its a great walk around lens so no problem with it. I can zoom out and feel the freedom and zoom in all the way to spy LOL!
Lately I've been frustrated with my Canon 100mm macro lens, I gave my 60mm Canon Macro to my dad but he never used it. =(
Sigh.I refused to pay for another of the same Macro and got a Sigma 50mm Macro for pretty cheap!
I hope it works well it isnt here yet!
and i guess i wanted to reward myself by spending money? because i've been good selling?
what a moronic reason.
We almost bought a £199 100% silk duvet because we've always wanted one (thats what i said the moment i saw it for the first time today LOL) but there was no matching bedsheet.so we ended up with only the silk pillow case.
That would be a great indulgence but a really worthy one. Nothing is more important than luxuriously sleeping your life away..not knowing what happens in the world, stopping to think...escape from the world in great luxury...
I will continue the pursuit of the 100% silk duvet and bedsheets!
note: must be more dilligent blogging because it seems memory gets worse.
