Tuesday, July 5
independence day
We're having a national holiday now so I went to
Yosemite National Park with Pat!!
I've always wanted to go ever since Janice told me about stargazing there.
mac osx 10.11
i was there at el capitan!
We first drove to Tuolumne Meadows, and headed to Glacier point in the evening. Funnily enough, we never got to Yosemite Valley, but we got to see most landmarks (El Capitan, Half dome) We stopped by anything interesting we saw. A lot of sightseeing was done in the car!
Wow
- The grandest sight of nature I've ever seen - mountains, lakes, meadows, rivers, forests. It has everything it was beautiful.
- The greatness of the mountains can't be captured in photos. It seriously made me feel so small!
- Stargazing is awesome sauce. ｡ﾟ( ﾟ^∀^ﾟ)ﾟ｡ If Singapore's sky is a baby's face, Yosemite's sky is like the face of a 101-year-old Japanese old man. So. MUCH. SKY ACNE. Okay, it was like a sea of glittering jewels... that sounds better.
I found this photo that is representative of the number of stars we saw
Not-so-wow
- Driving TO Yosemite took about 5 hours and there was a long car queue to enter. Actually it's just driving at night that is bad - you're tired and you can't see shit because everybody is highbeaming you.
- **No phone data** / internet - plan travel beforehand.
- Worst toilets I've been in - no flush, no water, no trash bin, you're literally peeing into a pot of other people's poop and pee and you can't wash up afterwards.
- Driving IN Yosemite is super scary to me - narrow and windy roads, make one slip and you fall into the mountain abyss
These are my photos of my visit!
hipsterwallpaper.mp4
some random stop
tuolumne meadows :)
olmstead point
Tenaya lake? Don't remember but the water felt light and fresh :)
I feel like the 269/400 of my facebook friends who keep posting travel pics.
Achievement unlocked ヽ(o^―^o)ﾉ
Overall, I highly recommend the place. The main problem is travelling there and maneuvering the tricky, narrow roads by car. Still, we did almost no planning but we got to see such amazing sights. I think it's perfect to visit in the summer, and would love to go in the winter!
my dreams
I want to update with a post about my thoughts about living in the U.S. compared to Singapore, but that will probably come later when I've got more time freed up
Time! When I have time, I dream of
- boothing at AFA, fanime and anime expo
- filling up my watercolour sketchbook - urban sketching!
- starting my own webcomic - I've got a bunch of comic ideas
- building an app
- working out more
- volunteering
- travelling to Japan, Taiwan, Thailand, Iceland, Sweden...
- updating this blog regularly lol
Maybe I'll get more time when I have a full-time job (Ｔ▽Ｔ)
Labels: travel, USA
Monday, June 13
mushoogler
It's been more than a month since I touched down in the San Francisco Bay Area. I rented an apartment with bf, got a US phone number, Comcast wi-fi, Chase bank account and health/dental/vision insurance. Adult things WHOA
I've been working for
a month. I never knew the right time to announce this in my blog (the only public place I had it on was LinkedIn) but here goes:
I'm interning at Google this summer!
Oh wait this is their old logo and you might not recognize it so let me use my amazing photoshop skills to edit it
OK I think you can recognize it now. As you can see from my design prowess it is no surprise I am a designer at googel ┐(￣∀￣)┌
... anyway ...
I will eventually write a post about the entire process with interview / designing tips... but it was definitely unexpected. I was really excited at the offer (because GOOGLE and my manager/interviewer is the coolest designer ever!!) and couldn't believe it for a week. I still don't know any Singaporean designers here.
It is definitely a privilege and I'm learning a lot
and eating one snack every hour (・_・;).
These cute chrome aND GMAIL PLUSHIES I CAN'T
This is Building 1900 which is the prettiest
Baadal, a cafe-restaurant in google which you can reserve and have a waiter serve you good indian food
pretty outside-my-building
pretty crittenden
pretty i-forgot-where
FRIEND
FRIEND
Labels: design, google, internship, summer, USA
Monday, December 22
hello
Sorry for the lack of updates ;_;
I am just so burned out. I've never worked so hard before in one semester.
My school results will be out tomorrow, so I can post
module reviews (and make public the negative ones) soon! However, my new semester resources are already up in onedrive!!
Other than that, I don't have much to say.
All I've been doing is slogging on personal projects!(see below)
I'm posting from Toronto, Canada now.
But I don't want to talk much about travel because I think it's boring to listen to people talk about travel. I'll post up some photos later to bore you anyway.
The past semester
This is the summary of my crazy past semester:
- Week 1: Start of long distance relationship. ITS OK I'LL BURY MYSELF IN WORK. RUSHED 14 badges for Doujima. Sold stuff at Doujima.
- Week 2-10: Lots of school projects and midterms.
- Week 7: Selected works for my portfolio, coded the entire thing, and designed my resume. http://portfolio.mushopea.com
- Week 11-13: RUSHED 10+ drawings for AFA, found a shop to print acrylic charms, made the order with my boothmates, all while studying for finals (including Statistics and Database papers!).
- Week 13: End of finals! Movie marathon with friends - Mockingjay and Interstellar. At night, prepare my AFA booth.
- Week 14: Next day - AFA for 3 days non stop. 12 hour shifts.
Once AFA ended, I rushed to Changi Airport to board a plane to Pittsburgh, USA to meet bf.
Would I do this again?
AFA
MY FIRST TIME BOOTHING @ AFA was crazy but awesome!
I sold badges, acrylic charms and a Pokemon pencilcase!
Before the event started, I saw some of our printed goods for the first time. Quality was terrible and THE COLORS LOOKED SO WASHED OUT! :( I was worried and sad. But luckily, sales still went great!
BAD COLOR! :( Just compare!
But she still sold out *_*
I couldn't even do commissions. It was all standing up, shouting through the noise in the crowd to customers, grabbing merchandise, giving change, and attending to the next buyer.
DON'T EVEN THINK ABOUT SITTING. I developed severe body aches and sore throat after the first day because we had to stand for 10 hours straight selling our stuff QAQ
Because of my
poor Doujima sales (I had over HALF of my badges left over!!), I did not expect to sell much badges. So, I sold out of some badge designs because I didn't make enough. I have to thank Nicole, my darling boothmate, who helped to take over while I rushed to another Suntec tower to print more. ARHG! I feel so bad still.
- Selling out on the first day
Having to sacrifice my finals (omg grades... please don't die tmr) to draw for AFA was bad enough, although I don't regret it one bit!
What was worse was going home after standing for 12 hours and HAVING TO SACRIFICE SLEEP TO MAKE MORE BADGES BECAUSE I UNDERPREDICTED SALES.
To stay up making badges, I slept only 2 hours on the first day, 3 hours on the second day.
I've never felt more stressed. Can you imagine having to stand and shout and interact with customers for 10 hours straight, after only having 2 hours of sleep?!! MOtheRFUCK!!!!
I have to thank my brother who made most of my badges. And nic for lending me her badge parts because I didn't even buy enough.
I DON'T FUCKING KNOW WHAT I'D DO WITHOUT HIM AND NICOLE
I predict this is what will happen for the next AFAs, because no one can predict this shit!
Namie's artbook and free psychopass merch!!
Did you know? On the last day, fellow exhibitors exchange leftover stock with each other.
Here I talk about how to be
more successfoo exhibitor/doujin boother at AFA after what i learNT!!
- Predicting the series to draw fanart of is 80% of the work. PEOPLE DON'T CARE HOW SHIT YOUR ART IS, HOW LOW QUALITY YOUR MERCH IS. If you drew their favourite character from a popular series, THEY WILL BUY IT. But yeah, even though I'll save time, I can't bring myself to draw shit drawings! But ok lah!! you really don't have to put so much effort into making the art look super nice and detailed. Just get the right character and its right expression!
- IDEALLY: Choose a popular series no one else is doing. How?! I guess it's based on luck. I had the Amagi Brilliant Park (one of the top series that season) charms monopoly and Akame Ga Kill oligopoly (only two others did this series), so those series sold like hotcakes.
- My pokemon pencilcase didn't sell well with adults (but kids liked it). I'm guessing people who go to AFA go for the anime-ish stuff. But I think, pokemon sells better at Doujima or cosfest. Was also disappointed because I meant it to be a 3DS case but it was too small to fit. Now it's my makeup pouch XD
- If you want to be safe, do series that are at least in the Top 10. Shirobako badge sales were the poorest, even though I liked the art the best. I thought it would be a niche series - it definitely was. No one else did it. But the anime itself is dry, and ranks #17 overall, which means it's not watched much. There arent any super loveable characters that people will want to buy.
- Have a nice pricing strategy! Generally badges sell for $3-4, and charms $5-6. Lots of people go with group of friends, so I had a Buy 3 Get 1 Free, which prompted people to buy 3 charms, sometimes to split with friends, to get the fourth one free! :) It helped that I did 4 characters per series! Sell your badge series in sets too (that's common knowledge hahaha) my AGK sets sold like hotcakes.
- Lastly, please try to make some friends so that said friends can dabao food for you. I guarantee you won't be able to fucking leave your booth! THank you liboon, sugi, zixuan for the food. I AM SO GRAPEFRUL
Last but not least, I thought I needed to be a popular doujin name to sell stuff. I was worried because
I wasn't well known and it was my first time. That wasn't true. The most important thing is to pick the right anime and have decent-ish art! People don't care how famous you are. I don't even care how many likes or faves or views my art gets now. Fuck that! People bought my stuff; I can't be that terrible!!
Despite all the stress, this event was simply amazing. Every time
someone wanted to buy something I drew, I felt warm and fuzzy inside. I saw people use my badges and secretly took photos because I was so touched.
I made
friends at AFA too, and grew closer to my boothmates! Earlier this year, I wanted to participate in these events to force myself to draw. I was so afraid that I would make losses, and that I would be looked down on and ostracised by other artists because I was new to this thing and no one would be friends with me.
But I was wrong. The people there are all really friendly and helpful! Lots of people came to bring food and chocolate and talk and exchange goods and even the boother next door was friendly and we exchanged some conversations about where we were from/what we did!
korra
Watched the finale of Legend of Korra.
Wow. Just wow.
First of all, the main character is female and the show isn't a chickflick/about men. IS YOU KNOW HOW RARE IS I????????? Secondly, the villain, and conqueror, is also female. NAME ANOTHER SHOW WITH A FEMALE CONQUEROR || WORLD DICTATOR. I can't think of any.
The finale fight between both of them tho. JUST NAME A SHOW THAT HAS TWO FEMALES BATTLING IN THE SHOW'S MAIN ARC, THAT ISN"T LIKE A CATFIGHT OVER A MAN BUT IS ACTUALLY ABOUT TAKNG OVER WORLD.
Can u? I can name many male hero-vs-male villain final battles, maybe a few male vs female. THIS IS THE ONLY FEMALE VS FEMALE! I have!! SEEN!!!
LGBTQ friendly! No sexualisation but manages to have hot characters!
I am so glad I stuck with the shitty first two seasons to see Korra blossom into the fine young powerful lady who changed the world so much :')
Clip Studio Paint
I finally bought it, but can anyone tell me why the UI LOOKS LIKE THIS
This is more complicated than Photoshop!!!
HOW DOES ANYONE LEARN THIS
However, I love the Effects brush. Instant sakura petals omG!!
America/Canada
I'm in Toronto and it's really cold here!! First time I saw snow/been in sub zero temperature. I bought a goose down jacket from taobao for only around ~SGD$60 and it's my savior
^ Niagara falls
^ ???
^Carnegie mellon university ETC^
We went to a premium outlet..
I bought new snow boots and scarf
OK NO MORE BORING TRAVEL SHIT for this post
pokemon
Currently very addicted to Rune Factory 4 and courting my waifu but here are some Pokemon screenshots (old)
BW2
Named my legendaries after programming languages Q_Q
Alpha Sapphire
U DONT CB
Labels: AFA, art, canada, clip studio paint, doujin, Pokemon, shows, USA
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