the wacky wombat weblog

This is actually kinda old news. Deadline for the video and report was last Thursday night, but I guess the event is worth a belated news update. :p

After labouring for 9 months, it’s finally done. phew! It’s the first time I actually shot anything I wrote, so yeah, it was a pretty interesting experience. The night before our shoots I’d be freaking out on the details, trying to go through storyboard in my head till I actually dreamed about the shoots. But the next day I wake up and it’s go go go! haha.

Glad it’s finally over. No more editing and watching the video a zillion times (although I still have to go back and design the dvd menus). But the work is done. Finally can take a rest, do homework, not skip classes and edit on weekends. yay! And watch more TV! And start having time to exercise!

Can’t wait to screen our short film. Still working out the schedule with organisers, so hopefully it’ll be good!

And thank goodness that the grant from Singapore Film Commission came through! Don’t think we can just rely on the school’s 200 bucks since our production cost already went into the thousands. But with the grant, at least we don’t have to empty our own pockets.

I guess producing this short film on our own has been quite an amazing experience. I mean, I really did learn a lot of stuff on the way (since they never really teach us much in school), and in the end, it does give me a little confidence in knowing that hey, we can actually manage to produce something that isn’t all too bad! Whether it’s good or not, I don’t know yet. Pray the project moderators won’t tear it to bits during our upcoming presentation lol.

Just finished my term paper for my Asian film module — last academic paper to write, ever! yay! So now it’s time for a well-deserved break. I’m going home tomorrow for a long weekend holiday!

After neglecting this lil’ space for so long, I guess it’s about time for me to post something interesting.  So here’s a story of something that has never happened to me before. Till now.

A couple of weeks ago, we had a shoot for our FYP video. Just before we started, we sat at the void deck and had lunch, and watched a cat that was prowling in the grass patch next to the building.

A cute black and white cat, and it obviously had its hunter/predator mode on. It was all alert, staring at something in front of it, ready to pounce. Probably a butterfly, or a lizard. Just another fun afternoon play thing for the kitty.

Then suddenly, out of nowhere, we heard a sharp hiss. Sssss! And a snake shot out of the grass, upright and within inches of the cat! And it’s not just your average garden variety green snake. It was a damn cobra!! I’ve never had to identify a cobra, but judging from what I remember from the TV documentaries (dark coloured, hooded head…) yup, definitely a cobra!

At this point, all of us went: OMG, snake!!

And the cat just sat there and stared back at the cobra. What a dumb cat.

The snake began slithering forward inch by inch, and the stupid cat could only step backwards. Until it was finally backed up against a wall.

And all of us went: OMG, cat! Run! The snake is going to get you! But of course, the cat just froze there, having a staring competition with the cobra. We’re not sure what we were supposd to do, since we can’t very well kill the snake, and it was inches away from just leaping at the cat and setting its venomous fangs upon it.

So we decided to scare the snake away, and hopefully let the cat the chance to slip away. But we had nothing, except our boom stick (to attach the boom mike to). And so we used it. Not on the snake of course. Just hit the grass patch nearby to distract it. And luckily, its concentration on the cat was broken and it slithered away.

Phew. Luckily. But then right after that, we saw the cat combing through the grass patch, obviously looking for that snake. >.<

Anyways, we had to call someone to report about this. I mean, we can’t just let a cobra run loose in a HDB block right? There were kids running past after that! (Plus, our filming location was supposed to be right next to the grass patch). But not knowing who to call, we actually called the police.

Well, 2 officers actually showed up to find the snake. But it was long gone and in hiding (or gone swimming in the canal) by then. And our shoot had to start, snake or no. Thankfully it didn’t appear again.

So that’s the first time I saw a snake out in the “wild”, and on the set of my shoot. eek.

(Kinda reminds me of that episode of Studio 60 when 1 snake went loose beneath the studio, and they sent a ferret down to hunt it. But we have no ferrets here.) :p 

Nope I don’t have a photographic memory. But I like the memories that photos bring when you look back at them. It captures the mood that I was in, or maybe a story, or it makes me think, or it simply just makes me ramble on about it to other people. hehe. :p

Grapes. I like eating grapes, especially the tiny ones. I like stuffing a few at a time in my mouth, and feeling it go ‘pop’ in my mouth when I bite on it. Yummy. But I’ve never really bought much grapes on my own. Mainly cos it’s not that cheap, and NTUC doesn’t always have the prettiest grapes. I’m picky about my grapes.

And I never go to markets. But one Sunday, I decided to go take a look at the stuff they were selling after I bought my breakfast. And I found exactly the kind of grapes that I like! Small, that goes ‘pop’ in the mouth. And they were fresh. Me happy. And I think I shall make more trips to the market next time.

Sneakers. Practical and fun footwear. That’s why I like ‘em. And I really liked this one that I saw at Converse. And it’s only S$59. But sadly, I didn’t buy it.

Because my feet is midget-sized. I can’t wear their size 4 and that’s the smallest they’ve got for adults. So ok, I can always take kids’ sizing, and kids’ range is cheaper haha. But nope, biggest for kids is a 2. And it’s not that there’s no stock for 3. Size 3 just doesn’t exist it seems.

Sigh oh well. Maybe I was those feet binding girls in my past past life or something. bleah. I wish I’d grow. But it’s too late lol. 24 this year, this coming year of the pig. oink.

Lake. Lakes are calming, but I don’t usually go to one here, cos the weather is too damn hot. But yesterday was different. We had to recee for a location for a photoshoot for our fyp project.

Not your average Singapore landscape, but I like it. A little buffer of calmness from the mad rush outside of it. And I’ve lived so near it for the past 3 years but never visited it until now.

Taken at Jurong lake, next to Lakeside MRT.

Red. Not the kind of colour that I’d pick to paint my house with. But it fits this old shophouse at Amoy Street perfectly well. Bold, and traditional at the same time.

I’m gonna wear red this Chinese New Year too.

** photos all taken with the 1.3megapix camera my 703SH phone. Convenient photo-taking. :p

I got a pretty pretty, ultra slim 2GB iPod nano from Au Yong last December. It was a nice anniversary surprise.

It’s got a name: nana の nano. (read as: nana no nano. Meaning nana’s nano. It’s engraved on the back of it, just because it sounds funny when you say it all really fast.)

But it hadn’t got a home. We took a while going through the different types of casings available at the Apple store and all, but ended up with nothing.

Then we saw the designs on Fabrix, and it’s beautiful!

I like how the stripes contrast nicely with the denim red on the front. And on the inside, bold stripes all over, and that little red velcro bit. Plus clear plastic to house and protect the nano, very snug fit, without reducing the sensitivity of the click wheel. So cool!

They’ve also got some lovely laptop sleeves, but I’ve got one already for MacMac so no need to spend on another.

The order did take a little long to confirm and all that, but I’m happy with the end product that arrived at my doorstep.

After almost 3 weeks of waiting, my MacBook is finally here!!! Wheeee!

So happy. This slick white shiny lil’ laptop not only looks good, but it feels great too.

I’ve named it MacMac (even before I bought it).

I’m also considering buying the Undercover protection for MacMac, in case of theft and all. It’ll track down the evil lair of the thief, and MacMac will occationally use the built-in iSight camera to take photo of the thief and send it back so can get the police to find that person and recover the laptop! How smart is that!

I guess this means I’ll be saying byebye to my good old polarbear, the Dell Inspiron 700m. I’ll miss it. I hope he’s not angry at me for getting a new one to replace him. He’ll be going to a new home, and work on creative design work.

One thing though, MacMac is heavier than polarbear (and bigger). Hopefully I won’t have a tough time lugging it to school next year.

In the week before christmas, my fyp short-film shoot has finally ended. The weather held out for us on Saturday, even though angry gray clouds were looming ahead, threatening us with rain any second, yet the harsh sun came out to tease (and roast) us every so often. But it’s done. For now. Phew. yippie aye aye yippie yippie aye…

I can finally sleep more than 5 hours, and my feet finally does not hurt after resting for 2 days. I can ditch my sneakers and wear heels again. Dreams of the 1001 things that can go wrong on set have left me alone in my sleep, at least until we start editing, hehe. The shoot took about 8 days, but it felt wayyyy longer than that.

It’s the week before christmas, and I have officially NOT bought any Christmas gifts yet. So I am doomed, to squeeze myself through the turtle-ish* crowd of Orchard Road, to find gifts to which I have no idea yet. Doom.

It’s tough to find a good gift, and I am really against the idea of getting gift vouchers. But i’m not partial to receiving them though. hehe. I welcome all vouchers for spa treatments, massages, and books. hehehe. I just don’t like giving them. Receiving is plenty fine with me. :p

The week before christmas, I’m eagerly counting down the days, waiting for his return. I still have 6 days left till Au Yong finally comes back from Japan. And 8 days left till we head back to KL together. I can finally take a break from work, if only for a while until the madness returns when school begins in January.

The best place to relax is home. It always works. Even though I really don’t do much at home. I just hang out with my family, friends, eat, watch tv, but it feels good. And most importantly, I’ll finally get to see Au Yong again after over 4 months! yay!

I hope the Christmas tree at home is up. I miss decorating it.

The week before Christmas, that’s when all the TV shows come up with their Christmas episodes! I’m happy that Las Vegas has finally put up a good ep this season! I’ve been disappointed with Las Vegas when the new fall season started. It went off to a wrong start with too many loose ends to fix up from the previous season and that left it a bit directionless, all action but no character development. I guess this Christmas ep has a little more meaning to it, a more personal ep of the characters I suppose. And that made things up a bit for me.

Another nice Christmas episode I like is Studio 60’s The Christmas Show. Or rather, I just really liked the whole trumpets story and O Holy Night at the show finale. Very simple, yet it moves you.

And the whole Danny + Jordan story is great! So excited to find out what more’s gonna happen. Too bad American viewers are dumb, cos the ratings are going down (just when the story is getting good!). I just hope it doesn’t get canned by NBC. It’s like Arrested Development all over again. Great script, but some people just don’t get it! Dumb I tell you. Don’t you guys speak English!? What don’t you get in the show?!?

Maybe I’m just biased cos Studio 60 is about the behind-the-scenes story of a studio show and I love doing studio! haha.

It’s the week before Christmas, so I guess I should make my wishlist. Let’s see, first at the top, my stupid MacBook!!!! Yes, it’s still not here yet. Let me say it again: Stupid 8Flags (the computer shop in NTU)!! There better be compensation. hmmph.

The rest of the list would read like this: free massages, free spa treatment, accessories for my (not-here-yet) MacBook, new sneakers, nice black pumps with gold heels (saw one in Nine West! haha), big bag that can fit everything (file, books, water bottle). Yup, that’s it.

The week before Christmas, it can’t stop raining. How am I suppose to go gift shopping? I think the island might flood if this goes on any longer.

* turtle-ish: because there seem to be a lot of people who walk excruciatingly slow on Orchard Road. Not only slow, but they are ignorant of the fact that there are other people more pressed for time right behind them. You ’siam’ one turtle, only to encounter another turtle. >.<

There are so many things I wanna rant about.

1. Where the heck is my Macbook!?!?!

8flags, you suck. You said it’ll arrive within 14 days! It’s already been 15 days. You have such a crappy vendor to supply your Macbooks in such small quantities. Ugh. I hope it gets here by next week before I go back to PJ. Grrr…

2. Why must it rain?

Or rather, why must FYP period be during December, the great monsoon season!?!?! Pray the rain stays away so that we can wrap up our shoot already.

3. Uncle, why must you play your stupid tetno handphone music so loud in the bus?!?!

I don’t understand people who play music on their mp3 phones loudly on public commute. Like, do I care about your ah-beng music? There’s such an invention as earphones you know. And almost always, it is bad tetno. But this is the first tetno-listening uncle I encountered. There should be a rule, like in Japan, where phones must be switched to silent on the train and buses and no one is allowed to yak loudly into their phones and disturb old ladies sitting next to them.

4. Why doesn’t it feel like Christmas?!

I think I’ve been stuck in my FYP shoot for too long. That I haven’t visited town area for ages, and have not seen a Christmas tree for over a week. Gotta drag myself downtown to see some blinking trees, dancing lights, frenzied shoppers, and possibly get attacked by yet another credit card promoter in Orchard Road. Meanwhile, just have to rely on my limited collection of Christmas carols, and that tiny Christmas deco I have on my room door. By the by, I was at Marina Square a couple of weeks back, and I think their deco is real classy. Simple, yes. But the purple and gold cascade of ribbon, lights and baubles is definitely classy. Not tacky like Tangs and their weird plastic gems.

Okay. Enouigh rants. On the bright side…

1. my darling is coming back next weekend!! woohoo! finally!

2. We’re going back home to PJ for Christmas week! Woohoo again! I miss home. ( I heard there’s now a watermelon patch in my house’s garden. Gotta go and see what that’s about. And hopefully really got watermelons to eat. haha.)

3. Good food. Been eating a lot lately, despite it being my FYP shoot. In fact, it is precisely because we allocated meal times that I now eat more. >.< My tummy had a nice treat of bbq chicken wings and stingray at Bedok 85. W00t. Yummy! And I think there's gonna be more good food waiting for me at home! Christmas parties, new year parties. omg. 0_o hahaha. This reminds me of one stupid Christmas carol: “Christmas is coming, the geese are getting fat…” I think now it should be changed to “Christmas is coming, and I am getting fat…”

I realise nothing can be better than a hot hot shower and a nice scrub after a long hard day of shooting. Plus a good bed later of course! It’ll be even better if I had a foot scrub and massage. ahhh. But it’s ok.

Today was the first day of my short-film shoot for my group’s final year project. So stressful, because it was a shoot at the MRT station in land of ulu-ness Buangkok, and we only had 6 hours to finish everything.

As usual with every few of our shoots, some technical issue will crop up, and no one will be able to fix it, even if we called the school, which we did. So, we went ahead anyway despite the picture not being exactly what we wanted, because we only had this one chance today at the MRT.

So basically it was just us 4 girls running around with our camera equipment, hoping on and off trains, pointing camera everywhere, drawing stares from everyone, and attracted some kids to come inspect further. >.<

Sigh, we barely managed to finish everything. But thank god we did, albeit having to do with just 1 takes for many shots. Although the very pretty opening sequence will probably have to be dumped cos it only looked pretty in my mind but not in real life when it didn’t work out on camera. Argh! Heartache. But ok, I’ll leave that to worry in post-production.

I think the most heartaching thing, is to know of all the creative possibilities that you can have with your mind, but you’re just restricted by money by equipment by skills. OK, correction, basically it’s just by money. Money means we can rent better and lighter cameras (not bulky ancient non-industry-practice D9s, tho’ it does look good). Money means we can hire people to work for us and get tons of extras and PAs and professional crew (not just 4 of us scramble here and there).

I was just watching Studio 60, and I’m like, if only we have money! We could have proper set design, wardrobe, proper lighting, great cameras, use tracks, steadycams and omg cranes! And everyone will fall over themselves to agree to let us use their place to shoot and what not. haha ok maybe not that. But yeah, they’re Hollywood and I’m a pathetic zero-budget student production on 20-year-old technology and only 4 pair of hands.

Nonetheless, stress aside, it was kinda exciting. And damn scary at the same time. Ugh. That’s why I like and hate production. Why didn’t I just go and be a journalist? But I guess I’m not that type of intellectual.

Anyways, shoot continues again on Saturday, and it’s gonna be a marathon all the way till next Thurs. Hopefully it’ll be a wrap by then (stretching it any longer means saying sayonara to more of our precious moolah). Pray everything goes well, and pray someone decides to sponsor us 3k! haha. Anyone out there know anyone with money to spare for a group of budding filmmakers? hehe.

Tomorrow we’ll be dressing our next set (and also, I suspect, the crew’s ‘home’ for the next few days). Meanwhile, I’m just gonna go clear out my brain a bit before populating it with a new list of to-dos and shot list and etc tomorrow.  Wish me luck for the week!

A follow up on my previous mobile-ramblings: I didn’t know that every time I load a webpage on my cellphone via WAP connection, the images are getting loaded too even though they are not displayed on my cellphone screen. So yeah, so smart of me, happily using WAP and blogging away without paragraphing tool, without noticing all the $$$ zipping away at high speed. Oh well, that’s the end of that. :p

anyways, today, I’m here to bring everyone a fun fact for the day:

Did you know, that a loofah (or luffa/loofa — yeah that shower sponge thingy), is a vegetable?

Yup. I always thought all sorts of sponges came from the sea (I probably got that from watching Spongebob haha). Turns out, they actually have green skin, and grow on vines, like bittergourds and all that.

Somebody’s actually grown the luffa plant and harvested it as shower sponge. (read it here)
And Wikipedia tells me that the plant is actually Chinese Okra, and it grows well in warm temperatures.

Which gives me an idea: I want to plant my own loofah!! hahaha. It’d be so cool, if I had a house, and crawling vines of luffa plant that ends up becoming my shower sponge!

Ok, so besides the obvious problems of finding the seeds to start planting with, and also the obvious lack of garden space, there’s also the fact that I am no green fingers to deal with. I once bought a potted plant, coz I thought it looked so cute, sitting atop a lil’ shelf in Ikea. But being the forgetful and bad gardener that I am, it died. Either from basking too much in the hot sun, or from drowning on the occasions when I remember to water. Till now I still don’t have a good idea of its cause of death.

So, yeah, maybe I’ll spare this little loofah plant, and ask my mom to grow it hahaha. She’ll be happy to add another plant to the jungle-that-is-really-a-garden at home in PJ. Then I can get the seeds, and tips to being a good gardener from her next time. But of course, to be a gardener, I gotta find meself a garden first. :p So I guess it’s back to buying my loofahs from Body Shop.

Just had a brain wave. I’ve a 3G phone, so i’m putting it to good use beyond just calling n sms-ing n snapping photos. Unleashing my inner geek: This is mobile bloging, aboard an mrt! (n i’m bored.) Exams are finally over! I can finally stop reading text books n think about my fyp, n not feel guilty watching too much tv. (i’m so sad that gilmore girls n Las Vegas are no longer as good). But in any case, i just realise i can’t paragraph this. >.< So here ends the mobile blogging experiment!