////

i told my parents to not come for my graduation convo. to pay rm120 per person is downright bloody RIDICULOUS. rm360 for some stupid dance and dinner?

forget it.

you would think that after paying rm50k+ worth of fees for a diploma, scooping out wads of cash for art materials and printing fees – not to mention at the very end – getting thrown into a compulsory subject that requires you to raise funds (funds that runs in tens of thousands) from scratch – and not receiving a single CENT and help from the college (grad campaign), that they would at the VERY least let your family attend your convo for free.

well apparently NOT.

frankly, i was pretty angry when i read that letter. i’m sorry but no matter HOW fanciful you word it – it doesn’t make you look any less cheap. sure, i admit, it’s the best college out of the entire lot, but that doesn’t make it worth it and “good” in terms of quality.

i had half a mind to write a letter in response, but i’m wondering – is it really worth it? (and since it requires a reply of attendance via snail mail, YOU WOULD THINK THAT THEY WOULD AT LEAST, FOR THE LOVE OF GOD PAY FOR YOUR BLOODY FREAKING STAMP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!)

when you win awards based on YOUR own efforts, the college gets merits. and after your win, you get the option to buy the certificate (which cost rm80, mind you), and does the college, in it’s amazing generosity, offer to pay it for you?

HAH.
try betting your ass till the next generation and see if they would.

seems to me that they certainly have no qualms in riding on your success for free publicity.

after you get the cert, they call for you to pass it to them to scan it into their system for “documentation purposes”. what if i didn’t buy the cert? how the hell would you document it then?

okay fine, every college has it’s flaws. no one is perfect. but you would think that they would at least TRY to rectify things? even posting up the results on the internet has been SUCH a long and tiring issue, it’s so ridiculous.

faulty cards. jackass counselors. rules that are so absurd that you just want to slap someone (just to install a damn FONT into the computer requires me to fill in a form, wait for 3 days to process and in the end i find out that it’s “illegal” to do so because “fonts” aren’t in my “syllabus”. yeah, try telling that to my typography lecturer, GENIUS.)

unprofessional-ism to the highest level from the faculty. but almost in almost every section – they’re just cheap. bloody cheap asses so much to the point where you just … ARGHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

CHEAP!!!!!

+ + + +

Finally met up with my sayang before she left for Australia again!
That girl is awesome. She has SUCH a happening life over there, so very happy for her. One of my favourite people, no joke. Love you Rhayma:)
(Even though you always take secret pictures of me! agh!)

+ + + +

Emma has left for India :(
But we had a farewell cum birthday dinner in her honour!

And yet I love how I’m in the middle, ha!
Good night talking chatting gossiping with the girls.

+ + + +

Was playing with my friend’s lomo filter thing! LOVE the colours, makes me want to get oneeee :)

+ + + +

“Spontaneous” outing for lunch today – It was a bit comical because Y.E and I were rushing out (not supposed to go out cause we had lots of work to do!) and we were only supposed to meet up with my friends, but in the end that woman managed to get so many of her classmates to tag along:) Much fun, SO LOVELY to see them all again! Very short meeting though :(

I miss them already x.
Probably one of the shortest lunches ever, which took us SO MUCH MORE TIME to get there than to eat there, ha!

Just so sad that Y.E isn’t in the picture!

+ + + +

Life can be such a struggle at times.
Moments of difficulty, frustration, and just going through moments where I feel like strangling the lights out of particular people.

But THANK GOD, in the midst of such shit, I still have happy things. Happy people. Happy God. A happy God who gives me happy people and happy things which in turn really makes me happy.
Like something as irrelevant as having warm blankets in the midst of a rainy night, I feel so lucky.
Amazing friends, family and cupcakes to get me back on my feet.

I’m still sane and healthy. Safe and sheltered.
Putting life into perspective always make my struggles seem smaller.

x.

+ + + +

PS: I miss you guys.

:)

Life’s been pretty monotonous, but interesting in the sense that I’m learning constantly in my work place. Monotonous where weekdays start with -

7:00am – alarm rings
7:01am – snooze

i’ll wake up every 5 minutes and continue snoozing until-

9:00am – no choice but to get my ass off the bed
9:10am – 9.40am – breakfast + check email + whatever else that i’m supposed to check
9:45am – shower
10:10am – leave the house

10:30am – 6:30/7:00/7:30pm – work

Normally I have some sort of homework, but I never get it done. Because when I’m back, I just wanna get away from the computer, enjoy some telly, and just SLEEP.
Monday – Friday is basically on repeat.

Monotonous.

I only ever look forward to weekends now where I would spend the entire two days with family and friends.

There are some frustrating bits here and there which has been getting me pretty down about work, but.. I .. I don’t know. I don’t want to complain about it, but I really need to express myself, but technically I CAN’T say a word about it, but THEN AGAIN, if it weren’t irrationally stupid I wouldn’t be as mad sort of thing.

Well I’m not mad, I’m just .. irritated. Beyond. And I’m not the only one who is sort-of harbouring these feelings to be dreadfully honest.
But then again, I’m still new, inexperienced, etc etc to have these sort of reactions. It’s like, you’re new, therefore you’re not allowed to feel negatively about anything. So really, who am I to complain? It’ll just come out extremely brattish and spoilt. The best way is suck it all up and just go with the flow.

But REALLY. I just get SO irritated every time I think about it…

Sigh.

Sometimes the monotonous mood of everything can really get me a bit down. When I’m not really enjoying my work I’ll start wondering if I’m right for this. Can I do this for the rest of my life? Corporate agency stuff that (I personally feel) are so geometrical and irrational expectations with ultimate zero resources – sometimes it can be pretty damaging.

I would start to question, am I really cut out to be a so-called designer? I feel like my typography sense isn’t improving. My works are just so below-the-line-of-approval. Whatever happened to my sense in aesthetic value? Colour combinations? Am I even qualified to be even labeled as a “creative” ? Whatever happened to that drive to learn as much as I can?

.. So this is where worship and the Holy Scriptures come in. The spiritual side of things. Balance. Time for the positivity to eat up the crap and put myself back into the correct posture of believing that good will come out from whatever difficulty.

When things get too down, I would look to my God, and I remember His words of reassurance, words of comfort that are FULL of life, joy, and peace. And this makes me feel tremendously better. I need to constantly remind myself to have a heart of thanksgiving. Don’t always look at things as it is, look at it in context. The bigger picture, the silver lining. After all, even gold has to go through the refiner’s fire to be what it is.

I always mentally slap myself whenever I have such complaints even in my heart, about work, because it shows that I’m really not toughening up. If I REALLY do believe that my God is as good and amazing as I constantly say that He is, then I should work on my faith and just let God be God.

If I always say that my God is good to me, but I act like my life is pretty much shit in some ways, then I’m being the person that I hate – a hypocrite. Walk the talk, Joyce. Walk the talk.

Life’s really just begun, and by right I REALLY should enjoy tough times. Tough, struggling and difficult times are perfect opportunities for miracles to happen – which would make life so much more exciting and magical!

I think this is what (to me) makes life so exciting.
I know my life is going to be amazing because I have an amazing God.
Likewise, if you, as a human being believe in God, and you think that your God is good, then you should expect your life to be good. My faith in God’s amazing goodness lifts me up to such levels in such times, I really have nothing to worry about.

In conclusion, I started writing this post with a heavy heart, but as I continued … I realized all I need is bible hope. Confident, expectation of good because I have a very extremely superly good God. Faith is such a wonderful thing.

It turned a sour puss to a happy bunny.

x.

+ + + + + + + + +

So I’ve started work, and have graciously entered the wonderful world of taxes.
New direction, another phase in life. It’s amazing how I used to think to myself constantly, “When I grow up I’m going to be an astronaut.” or “When I grow up I’m going to be a librarian.”, or just … something along those lines. And yet, here it is. The when is finally here.

Scary.

One of the things I realized about work is that – there’s no term break. The day you get a holiday (counting in terms of weeks/or at least a month off) is either when you a) quit your job, or b) the day you die.

When it registered, I felt so sad. Seriously.
Based on that thought alone, I’m missing college already. But mostly the people, of course!

The type of people in the office are different as well – in coll everyone’s learning. You get to learn together, fail together, cry together, discover things together for the very first time.. Sure, you can have those things in an office environment as well, but it’s different. For me it was an easier environment in college, since you fit in slightly easier because everyone’s at the same standing.

Whereas in the other scenario, you get art directors or creative group heads with 10, 20 years of experience, seniority that’s older and probably worth more than your entire existence … it’s intimidating. In a way it’s pretty cold too, because even though you’re there to learn, you need to meet new and different expectations now, and there’s also that thin layer of pressure.

Now I just look forward to after work hours and weekends, and it’s really slowly becoming a routine. It’s so technical, very robot and it’s pretty tiring.
But then again, I’m still super new in all of these new found .. things and experiences, so I’m going to give it a go before I come to any conclusions. Still too early to judge, …. but one doesn’t help but wonder.

Everything’s worth a try:)

http://joycebean.net

I swear it seemed like it took forever
Will continue this post tomorrow, it’s already 3am! Slept at 4.30am this morning, really screwing up my system meh.

On Phenomena 75
It’ll be pretty damn awesome if you were to check us out at our:
official website: PHENOMENA75.COM
facebook page: click

I’ve been busying myself to the point of insanity (on so many levels) with Graduation Campaign, sowing in every ounce of energy, blood (literally), sweat and sometimes – just buckets of tears behind my monitor screen.

Despite the frustration and the constant shit that people had crapped on my face, I had my fair share of fun. The rollercoaster ride of emotions which Phenomena75 has brought me through has made launching night so much more meaningful.

Most of Phenomena75 during our launching night

I teared up a few times when Doreen (president) gave her speech, about batch75’s effort and the countless sleepless nights to make Phenomena75 a success.

Reflecting back, the whole journey was certainly no bed of roses. And the shit that tampered with me sometimes outweighed the pros of the situation. Which would make me wonder if it was all worth it – worth my energy, worth my patience and tolerance – because sometimes I felt so low it was pretty damn overwhelming. Especially the people drama – that was what wore and tore me down the most.

However, if I were fortunate enough to be given a second chance…… I can say that I’ll do it all over again. Willingly and wholeheartedly, including the entire whirldwind package of shit as well. Because in the end, it was so damn worth it.

So

FREAKING

BLOODY

DAMN

WORTH

IT!

Every single damn second.

Every sacrifice, every drop of energy, every tear and just… so worth it.

This is why Phenomena75 means so much more to me. At first it was just.. a campaign, a subject. But as time went by and things started happening, I’ve really grown so much more attached to it. Even as a class rep – slowly (and unknowingly), I’ve grown more attached to my class (Yay mm75 I love you!)

A performance during our launching night – 30/4/2010

Phenomena75. A collection of amazing efforts, creativity and talent, not to mention the setbacks and disappointments encountered that were eventually overcame. Our graduation campaign. I feel so bangga with the entire batch 75, to the point of tears (no joke). Batch 75! Fantastic job. I’m so extremely super proud of you guys. Gila BANGGA. Kebangaan yang tidak terhingga:)

(Oh and Kellie Ong, you worked your ass off as well, JUST SO YOU KNOW! Because sometimes it doesn’t seem like you do! Especially for Neonite – you know what you did, I know what you did and everyone knows what you did. Things would’nt have happened if it weren’t for you. I’m so proud of you as well!)

Phenomena75’s official website which my team and I have been working on:

Do pay a visit!

On personal artworks
I had the sudden itch today to sketch something, anything. To grab a pencil and draw something on a piece of paper (haven’t done that in AGES). As you can see my shading still sucks, as with my shadow and lighting.

left: started in the afternoon // right: continued a little at night, yet to be finished

Hopefully I’ll be able to finish it soon! And get myself an eraser zz.

On something else
My adv web team and I won the silver for our project at the Summit International Awards!:)
I somewhat believe that it’s somewhat a divine intervention that we got silver, ha! So thank you Jesus. You are awesome. It had to be you, seriously. THANKS ♥ ♥

Congratulations to Aurelia + team for winning silver for their video project, and Kellie + team for winning silver for their web project as well! Good job MM75!

On Genting
I finally visited Genting, ha!

The girls and I (Kellie + Karo + Lesha + Travin) took a trip to Genting last Thursday (6th May 2010), it was nice to feel some cooling weather! Down where we are/were (in the city) – it’s been hot like AMAZING hell. Five minutes after a cold shower I can be sweating like a pig due to the intense heat.

It was really fun for me, I especially LOVED the cooling weather! We spent the entire night just sitting down and chatting at the carpark area, it was really lovely.
Slept over at Kellie’s place and watched Iron Man 2 the next day, which was totally awesome. Ok I’m supposed to write more + blog about 3C, but I’m getting so lazy.