It's work related

So this is wussup:
The dates are not set yet, but I will be in NZ for around 2 weeks in January. Auckland is where it all started for me: my interest in design, my hopeless love story, leaving my comfort zone and not knowing where I was heading. Though for the past 4 years I've had ups and downs, and times when I really felt like giving up, leaving NZ was still the hardest thing I have ever done.

And the reason why I'm so immersed in work is because I think its the only thing I have. I work so hard not because I'm a career oriented piece of rock but because I think there is still hope in it. If I had anything else, I'd do the same... at least I'd like to think so anyway.

The past 4 years have been nonstop study and work, it's finally time for me to just stand...and breathe. Someone take me back to that playground at my beach...I want to play on the swings! haha

I'll also be going there to hunt down some new clients and any designers who might be interested in working with me. (Yeah I don't think I can ever just play for 2 entire weeks.)

Hit me up if you're gonna be around! Lemme show you how its done!

So excited!

***

At the V&A for Friday Late.




Thanks Sam for this photo...


***

Royal Academy of Art for the Georg Baselitz exhibit.


One of the 'up-side down' paintings, with an obvious Munch influence.




***

At the Churchill Arms at Kensington. Cute place by the way!






***

Apart from the obvious, like visiting all the museums and galleries, here is a list of things I want to do in London:
(+) BBC Proms at the Royal Albert Hall
(+) Concert at the Barbican - hopefully the Lang Lang concert Dec 16
(+) Watch a Shakespeare at The Globe Theater
(+) Eat at Gordon Ramsey
(+) High tea at the Ritz or Brown's
(+) Watch a Puccini opera at the Royal Opera House
(+) Eat at Asia de Cuba and compare it with the one in NYC
(+) Fabric and Ministry of Sound - I don't like clubbing but these are too legendary, I have to see wussup...
(+) Make a short - as in movie

***

The video is not so impressive, but thanks Emily King for speaking what's on my mind.

Cut&Paste and V&A

Cut&Paste London was really kind of disappointing. C'mon I thought London designers knew how to party?

I went to the event in NY last year and in all honesty, I thought it was anticlimactic to start, but they held the event at some church in NY this year and had a 2000+ turn out! London was their first international event, and it looks like the smoke faded across the Atlantic...about a 300 or so turn out and the crowd was quiet and shy. Some complaints: the judges didn't comment on each of the designs before they gave a score, and the competitors didn't have a chance to explain where they were going with their work (unlike last year). The MC was funny but totally unprepared. Venue wasn't so great either. What happened??

Anyway, good to meet some new people.

A few pictures:

Guy at the drawing table is the organizer...




With Winnie from Contra, and her friend Clement, they happened to be buddies with 2 of the competitors...


With Winnie and Dan


This was taken by Sam Cho, check out what he's all about here.


***

I went to see the Golden Age of Couture exhibition at the V&A. I went especially for the evening gowns and they were amazing, in great condition considering that they were donated to the museum. (There were security guards every second step you take, otherwise I would have sneaked some photos.)

Jean Dessès, who did these gorgeous fluid chiffon gowns. Paris, 1953.


So pretty... She might look happy and comfortable, but that dress would have structure and boning inside it. Yeah, and we know how that would feel...


Check out the 3 months work of beading on this dress. Hubert de Givenchy. Paris 1955.


The exhibit ends with 3 pieces from the Dior Fall 04 haute couture collection, which I don't particularly like...

Galliano reminds me of Dali, must be the moustache. Why is it that men with moustaches are usually wack?

Sure you've all seen this already: Dior Spring 07, inspired by Puccini's Madame Butterfly, prettiest by far I think. The geisha thing is old, but no one else does it better than him.


I could totally pull this one off! hehe. From Dior Fall 07/08. Seems tacky? Take a look at the details on the bodice...




***

Eek who cut Medusa's hair off? No no, that's the glass snake chandelier hanging at the V&A. Like?


I do! It's by the American sculptor Dale Chihuly, who happens to be a RISD alumni!

***

I just saw the pics from Friday's Fendi show at the Great Wall of China. Yeah no kidding!
When I first heard about it I was thinking: No way! Somebody stop that waxy man! I can't believe they let him to do that! The Great Wall as a runway??


Why is there a huge fuss over it?
"Fendi's revenue from China has grown about 75 percent a year during the last two years and will rise around 50 percent this year, the CEO said. At that rate, Mr. Burke expects China to account for 15 percent to 20 percent of Fendi's global revenue within the next 15 to 20 years from 5 percent. That would make China as big as the U.S. market, which represents 18 percent to 20 percent of Fendi's global revenue."
- Wall Street Journal

Still, I could never have imagine it being used for something like that. And I've never been a huge fan of Fendi either, I've always thought it was for way older women. So an entire mini-collection was created just for this show plus they've added some pieces from the Spring 08 collection a few weeks back. After seeing these pictures, I might have just changed my mind. After all, I would grow old too...







The belts were my favorite...and the short pieces from the Spring 08 collection.






Big ups Du Juan for making it and rockin the top runways. Awesome.


Damn, Zhang Ziyi looks great. Kate Bosworth looks like a yeti...


Lagerfeld, as aways, looks like he's a piece of wax from Madame Toussauds.

Two great weekends

*Alex just told me that all the people on my blog look like monsters! (That the photos are fuzzy because of resizing). I'm on a Mac so it looks fine for me and I think its only for PCs, let me know if you get the same problem!


Work:

Last week I briefly freelanced at Gyro. It was one of the biggest agencies I've worked at, kind of sweatshop like, but no surprises there.

Here's that one off thing I did for the US company I mentioned last week (click on the image to see it larger):

Supposedly one of those Ts would retail at 300 USD. Eek!

***

Play:

Two young PhDs. Stephen and his friend Yunshan from Cambridge came over to London for the weekend. Stephan and I went to the same high school in Auckland, hadn't seen him in 4 years.

Chinatown

By the way, I have to say, London Chinatown kicks NYC Chinatown's ass! Its half the size of the one in NY, but the food here is 100 times better, and its MUCH cleaner (no fish market dumping goo-y stuff on the sidewalk!). Still doesn't beat the San Fransisco one though.

Buckingham Palace




St James Park

Dress is Catherine Malandrino.

For dinner we went to Tamarai. Now this place reminds me of Lotus in NY. They both have the lotus theme, both serve pan-Asian fusion food, both act as a restaurant/bar/club combo, both have cocky waiters etc... But the food at Tamarai was impressive, especially the starters. We were seated at the lounge right infront of the DJ booth which gave us almost full view of the place. I give it a 7/10. -1 point for the maitre-d who kept taking our menu away from us, -2 for not being able to give me my usual after-dinner White Russian – supposedly because it takes too long to make as it was clubbing time and too many people were at the bar! So I ordered a Mojito instead...(which takes longer to make than a White Russian! What was that all about?!)














Dress is Nanette Lepore.

***

The previous weekend, Toshi came to visit from NY. Toshi is a graphic designer but his real passion is in beats and DJing. We took a day tour to Stonehenge and Bath. The Stonehenge was really kind of underwhelming... Bath was nice, its this little Roman architectural styled city with natural hot springs where the wealthy used to go and bathe. Also home to Bath University where Edith went to school! The whole city is built with limestone so all the buildings are this monochromatic yellow-ish color. The weather got cloudy and rather gloomy the second half of the day, nonetheless, great to get away from the city for a day.



















At some lousy bar near Leicester Sq, joined by Daniel (see previous post).




With Toshi's friend Sayaka



More pictures on my flickr.

***

Cut&Paste London is next weekend. Looking forward to that.

***

Damn, this song is good (video too):
Apologize by One Republic. The video was made by this guy.

Designer friends

Here are some of my friends in the design industry who have recently launched new/updated websites:

Will Wong used to work in the building right next to where I used to work on West 39th (he was at this big gated community - R/GA, and I was at a small ghetto building - 4Corners). Will is now the art director for the BMW account at dotglu, part of Kirshenbaum Bond + Partners.

Chang Hyun Jeong and I used to live at opposite ends of the building at RISD. He has a degree in industrial design from RISD and now is now pursuing a MFA at Parsons in design and technology. He mixes music by night!

Adrienne Yang and I were in almost every class together at RISD! Soon to be a MFA graduate from Cranbrook Academy of Art, she also has a degree in biology. Adrienne, I miss yooouuu!

Dorothea Chang aka. D*ro recently graduated from RISD and is now doing the fellowship program at Chronicle Books in San Fransisco. Go D*ro!

Spencer Zhou and I met randomly in the summer of 05 when I visited the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing (that's the biggest and best art school in China). He has a MFA in graphic design from CAFA and now works at the Beijing Art Museum (that's the equivalent of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in NY).

Daniel Morrison is a graphic designer to be. We met at Contra, where he was interning. He's always excited. He's in his last year of art school and he's one of the hardest working people I know (after me of course). Haha.

From NYC to London

Finally, I get a moment to properly start this new blog!

So here's an update on what I've been up to:

1. I've just completed a series of projects at Contra for the launch of Blyk, a new mobile service for young people. Here's one of the things I did there:


Click here too see more of this stuff.

2. I've also been working with a studio back in the US called Cytek on a site for a new clothing line. And we communicate with AIM, email and their online business management system. Isn't it weird how you don't even have to be in the same country or have met them to be part of the team?

3. And finally, I've registered my own company in HK and in Auckland, mainly cos those are the two places I have permanent addresses. (I'll disclose what its called next week!) And I got my first client! A HK company that supplies lighting to hotels, luxury homes and big venues...like those lights where you can control the dimness...I'm designing their site. NYC is next!

I know, I've been so busy and spending every minute I have to spare on my own company. Last week I got sooo sick because I was literally working 3 jobs, and I'm still recovering. Now that the Contra thing is all done I can take a short break and have some time for my own work.

I REALLY hope my health isn't going to stop me from doing all the things I wanna do.

***

Here's a picture, after some shopping, with Edith (thanks Angel for hookin us up! hehe):


***

Big ups to my friend Holly Shin for launching her new portfolio site. Holly's an award winning video artist based in Auckland. Here's a photo of us when she visited NYC back in January. Holly, When are you coming to see me in London?



***



Last weekend I went to check out Designers Block. It was their 10th anniversary and it was full of young designers (mostly from the UK but some international ones) with brilliant ideas trying to get noticed.

***

I was browsing on Youtube found this beautiful French girl who sings beautiful songs, even her music videos are gorgeous! Emilie Simon. This one's my favorite:

Very wonderland!

***

Speaking of Emilys, I just got the new Emily King album from iTunes and I play it nonstop. Really good stuff. Her songs make me miss NYC, though there's nothing in particular I miss about it...except for maybe hanging out with Justin and Kaori!