Early morning at Red Hill

Its a Typography Post.

Was working on a project for school where I had to design a masthead for a fictional magazine. So playing around with fonts and such, I discovered this!

How amazingly cool is it that Baskerville's brackets are so gorgeously thin and light, that it looks like it belongs with a san serif typeface? And yet, it still matches the serif letters so well, since Baskerville I feel, has a relatively light stroke as it is. So nice.

(Not that there's anything wrong with Caslon, of course.)

How about a closer look please! And you know I love italics, even more than how much I love san serifs in their thin/ultrathin versions.

Check out the even stroke of the ampersand (&) on Baskerville Regular compared to the Caslon. And the contrast on its comma is gorgeous. While I'm not to sure on the sharpness of its question mark, I really love the flourish on Baskerville Italic's ampersand and just look at the sharp tapered ends of the brackets!

Its quite an innovative solution too, I think, with regards to designing what the italicized form of the brackets should be. Ultrathin strokes on regular, and a slight belly in italics, to denote a really graceful shift in weight and angle.

Sigh.

Today, while covering lecture notes from my astronomy class that I have only attended once this entire half-semester, I learnt that the light from the sun takes 8 minutes to reach us!

I see my day by something that happened 8 minutes ago. Its a strange, strange tension between past and present.

And you know, since everything is formed and/or defined from light, colours (which are, I think, the reflection of different wavelengths of light) and light helps us define forms, I think its pretty crazy-ridiculous that our present is shaped by something that is past.

No? Anyone else see the craziness?

In any case, it'll help me feel less guilty if and when I start delving back into old sad stories, because hey, that seems to be the actual, physical condition of our lives on this planet! Hoho, nifty excuse.

This is why I wanted to take the astronomy class, I guess I see something romantic about the universe and all its systems and how they were formed. Its so massive, gorgeous but also distant.

Something humbling too, to know that Earth is part of our Solar System, which is part of a branch of one of the many lesser arms of the Milky Way Galaxy, which is part of the Local Group, smaller than another Local Group galaxy, the Andromeda Galaxy, which in itself, is minute against the unimaginable number of galaxies that probably exist in the universe.

To which I say: HOW CAN THERE NOT BE ALIENS.

I also like how my lecturer wrote in his slide:
Most of the atoms in our bodies were created in the core of a star! We are made of star stuff.

Seriously, Helter Skelter is an amazing song - both the original Beatles song and the version for Across the Universe. The rawness, the violence! GRAWR!

Do you, don't you want me to love you
I'm coming down fast but I'm miles above you
Tell me tell me tell me come on tell me the answer
Well you may be a lover but you ain't no dancer

Now helter skelter helter skelter
Helter skelter yeah
Ooh!

Will you, won't you want me to make you
I'm coming down fast but don't let me break you
Tell me tell me tell me the answer
You may be a lover but you ain't no dancer

Damn killer. I suppose my taste for music late in the night when churning out work is loud and ear-killing. The Vines!

Old project based on Symone's translation of Baudelaire's Epilogue:

With heart at rest I climbed the citadel's/ Steep height

and see the city as from a tower, /Hospital, brothel, prison, and such hells,

I love thee, infamous city!

Harlots and /Hunted have pleasures of their own to give,

The vulgar herd can never understand.

(click to enlarge to get mofo-huge image)

Wah lan eh. You know what school makes people do?

COME UP WITH EXTENSIVE VACATION PLANS.

So far, there are three equally tentative and equally awesome plans by different groups of people. I (impossibly) want to go for all!

1. Bali trip with the girlfriends
Amazing girl-time, confirmed! Will I be able to drag them to look extensively at the Balinese temples? Will I bore them with the remnants of what I (will) learn this semester from Asian Art History? An awesome bonus is that lodging is kinda sorta free!

2. Cambodia with new ADM friends
HELLO CAMBODIA AND ARCHITECTURE AND PHOTO-OPPORTUNITIES. Is Cambodia > Bali? Might be cool to get to know said friends better via rough and tumble vacation.

3. NORTH INDIA WITH LAST YEAR'S INDIA GROUP
Aiya this is the most awesome one of all la. In fact, I really hope that this plan will fall through because if it IS happening, it is honestly the most awesome one (in terms of holiday destination). Come on! I love north indian food! Which is going to be hella fantastic because indian food in its native land is 10000000000000000x better than what we get here in Singapore. And the Taj Mahal! And india is just amazing, period.

Then again: O MONEY WHEREFORE ART THOU?

Say I'm earning $120 a month from workstudy, I have somewhat three months of work coming up - that will give me $360. Other design-related shindigs as off now will (soon) be giving me $100. So, counting all my chickens before they hatch, I've got $460 which should bring me to Bali quite easily but not India...so that settles it I guess!

Now I just need to brainwash the India-Group to postpone their travel plans to the following year! :D

Lol I always come out from a jaunt through Facebook-trawling feeling pretty lame.

ANYWAYS IN BETTER NEWS!

I went to this pretty amazing gig today, the first gig I've been too in a very long time and wah lau, the music was hella awesome. At first, the $18 entry seemed like quite a drag, even though it was a for a good cause but just seeing three of the bands listed to play at the gig made it damn worth my money. First band we caught was Amateur Takes Control, who co-incidentally! Has romantic links with a super-cool friend, who now that I've made this connection, has +97213172 Cool Points lol.

Hazri disagrees with me, but I really prefer listening to shoegaze/alternative rock/post-rock/whatever! live rather than a recorded version. There's something incredible about listening to all the layered sound going from heartachingly sweet tones and then building up and then you can FEEL the vibration from the bass (guitar and drums) hitting you and then the IMMENSE sound filling my ears like the universe! Its so huge and dense but you can feel every inflection and you're in touch with every motion and then the peak hits and the strobe light flashes white -

God, its just this intense bliss.

Or maybe that's just me, channeling and projecting my own emotions into a random well of sound that some people would consider noise.

And also, we saw Great Spy Experiment which is pretty nifty! Since the (higher priced) gig they had at the Esplanade sold-out damn fast and hey, technically $6 bucks to watch a 30-minute set so hurrah! It was nice that I could sing along (lol what a fangirl..) and its always nice to hear the vocals live (i.e. wow he really does sound like that in person) and 'Siti in the City' was really great to hear live, and gah 'Late Night Request' in all of its melancholy. BUT, BUT! The greatest bit was the last song they played, called 'The Lights'? I'm not too sure whether this was on their album, but holy geez it was effin amazing! I think the vocalist had some reverb thingum somewhere and phwoar, what immense sound! It reminded me of U2, and while I don't usually like U2, it reminded me of a very, very, very good U2.

And MUON! I know they sound good on record, but live, their clear sound just cuts through the air man. Again with what I mentioned (or raved, rather ha) about hearing shoegaze live.

Lol I am being so damn superlative tonight.