chaka chaka

heard from my friend in leo burnett that yasmin ahmad passed away just minutes ago.

i’ve always looked forward to being able to work with her one day, but now i will never have that honour. from everything i’ve heard from friends and acquaintances, she embodied none of the rampant cynicism or nastiness or work-related politics in our industry. i regret never meeting her or telling her how much her work moved me.

malaysia has lost someone special today.

i’m crushed.

laptop + cooling pad

R2D2 speakers

cup of pencils + cutter + pens + ringgit notes + cuticle pencil

Balvenie single malt empty bottle

staedtler water colour pencil box

blue felt car brooch

heart-shaped sunnies

white faux wayfarers

singapore maps

moo moo notebook

black + red nail varnish

nail varnish remover

2 ikea plastic cups

sony t33 digital camera

3 rings (black/red set from hk + silver daily staple)

lomolito box + instructions

r.a.salvatore thousand orcs series

red heart necklace + bead art casette necklace

golden half chelsea maika box

meds from last doctors visit

pp photo shop evelope

CD sleeve with 2 photo album CDs

can of shieldtox

white skull candy low riders

mikona flash

small tub of vaseline

couple of black plastic ties

USB card reader

house keys

car keys (with attached pepper spray)

shark bag (with nintendo dsl)

yellow lighter

cow lighter

single, lonely cotton pad

googling brought up a few hot spots in KL:

Leo’s at Ampang Park
Keat Camera at Jalan Pudu
E-Six at Pudu Plaza
Engtong at SS2 PJ
Central Kodak Shop At Central Market

apparently kodak professional b&w 400 cn is going for approximately RM17 outside. bought mine at mid valley for RM30. sucker!

i also asked the great guitarman where he got his first rolls of kodak elitechrome ebx.

yes, i simply love everyone. you chui ah?

happiness (or a very very very close relative) is:

buying a new pair of (shiny!) shoes at RM80 off.

having an elektro party in the car, by yourself.
control yourself/take only what you need from it/a family of trees wanted/to be haunted

sending 3 rolls of film (from 3 different cameras) for developing and being able to collect them tomorrow.

buying a yummy daging double special cheese tomato (hold the sayur) and finding out it’s only si kuai wu mau (i bet the guys never giggled and said that to mr music).

now i have lapsap’s 2nd anniversary and my first yoga class (with the scary but awesome mei) to look forward to.

feels like i’ve reached one of those milestones that everyone has at some point in their lives. wondering what to do with my life. in fact, i’ve still not figured out what it is exactly that i want. i have no plans to stay in advertising forever. most of my family could (and still are) but i wonder if it was by choice or the lack of.

sure, i want to do something great. who doesn’t? but it doesn’t help when i haven’t defined it. no, i do not want to write the next malaysian novel based in a quaint little mining town or some horrible adolescent trash masquerading as child prodigy literature. i just want to do something that i will look back on and think “now holy shit, that was awesome, wasn’t it?” what is success? is it to be rolling in dough, supporting my family? winning international awards? getting married and settling down?

there must be other things out there to do but for some reason i’m stumped. what else can i do? i write ads, think of ideas to sell stuff, build brands, create awareness. and then we reach the end of the road. what else do i know how to do?

i don’t know.

i hereby pledge to:

buy new film every month. like, stop wasting money on clothes and start buying slide film before they all vanish off the face of the earth. let’s say: 1 roll slide film and 5 rolls negative film.

start expiring my own rolls. technically cheaper to buy expired film, but i don’t like how they’re charging RM7 per roll. wow, a whole RM2 discount, fucking higway robbery. might as well buy it, age it, use it myself.

get off my ass and go somewhere interesting. no point shooting rolls and rolls of my dog. my feet. my shadow. and other mundane shit. when is malacca happening? :(

finish the fucking roll in the matchbox pinhole. i just haven’t been able to bring myself to. firstly, JT made it for me. secondly, i’ll have to rip it to shreds to develop it. lastly, it’s made of a matchbox that says SEE NO EVIL. it doesn’t get any more awesome than that.

make some pinhole cameras! i did buy a bloody book with templates from singapore for SGD35 (which i arguably could have downloaded for free on the internet. haha, sucker!) and so i better bloody use it.

flickr pro account? what for? really? itchy fingers? long run? affordable what? what can i say, the glint of my credit card is just so mesmerising.

decide what giant camera purchase to make. panasonic lumix lx3? fujifilm finepix f200exr? nikon fm2? (and of course but of course i just read joyce wong’s olympus pen advertorial after seeing the banners all over the damn place but it’s a whole thousand five hundred over my budget.)

sigh.

so this has been the best weekend in yonks.

firstly, no work. secondly, adik khairul aka hanip proclaimed awhile back that he had never (like never) experienced the trashy guilty pleasure that is karaoke. for real, i never knew people like this existed. so off we went to pop his k-cherry with aplomb.

but before that, some asianposes with my lovely.

they made us, VIP red box “members” wait a whole 7 minutes for the room. oh, the travesty.

the only logical karaoke joint was red box at the curve, which we dropped by at 11pm. cipet, missed the buffet. i officiated the cherry-popping ceremony with “北京一夜” which elicited what i could only imagine was a mixture of chagrin, amazement and horror. haniff was wondering what the hell he got himself into.

hello. like only the bestest fun ever. there was no mic-hogging solo bullshit that night. every song was a group anthem to be yelled out at the top of our lungs. so much so in fact, i secretly had to lower the mic volume more than a couple of times. (sorry, by.)

haniff, i hope you appreciated this. just for you.

6 jugs of beer worked their magic, loosening tongues and ridding us all of that nasty habit we call manners. soon there was dancing and jumping and gyrating to: michael learns to rock. fool’s garden. queen. cranberries. britney. kanye “i am the biggest douchbag in the history of mankind” west featuring estelle. backstreet boys. KRU. peterpan. beatles. carpenters. the darkness.

anthemic. that’s right.

we sang ourselves hoarse.

kanye west still fucking sucks.

i was initially worried we wouldn’t last till 4am. but of course none of them wanted to leave when the time came because awesome karaoke sessions with the awesome evil gang are well, awesome.

pump enough beer into ‘em and suddenly everyone wants their 5 minutes.

no prizes for guessing what poses these are.

thanks to all the attendees of justincat’s evil karaoke cherry-popping red box session, do come again. we’ll miss you, hanip. x

so i picked up my singapore rolls on the way to the doctor (yeah, sick on the fucking weekend. go fucking figure.) and while JT loves the cross processed look, i’m still not too sure how i feel about it. no doubt it’s interesting, but i think my money could be better spent on other things (RM38 per roll as opposed to the usual RM9). maybe i’m just not fond of the tint. shot sensia 200 at 400 to underexpose. have read about its red/green hue. like… huh, really? mine were blue/green. i want a slide that shifts red! anyway still have another roll in my golden half and a roll of kodak professional b&w lying around.<3

[update: JT rescanned the negatives and i love them!]