Art and I wish I could take Physics HL

I never managed to muster up any more fucks to give interest about my own art anymore and now the painting I was so proud of and excited about working on is left unfinished... like most other projects I have started in the past.

by Nozmo

Thinking about it is about as embarrassing as going back to visit my old SmackJeeves account (which I finally deleted thank goodness) and seeing how alive and immature my personality was and what my aesthetic interests at the time were. I was in middle school, and nothing about myself back then makes me proud in any way, though I guess I should be happy that for whatever reason I'm much wiser about what to say, what to draw and what to watch on the internet now as a result. Life is funny.

When I did go back to Smackjeeves, and it's been five years, I revisited some old friends' accounts, and then friends of theirs, and then friends of theirs, and in the end I discovered some really extraordinary artists. Every artist gets into sequential art it seems, and only a handful can keep up with continuing their stories, for instance, Nozmo, who I really admire for her comics Alternate and Todd & Petunia.

So, It's really disappointing to see great stories discontinue, or even bad stories but wonderful pictures. Out of the many beautiful yet discontinued comics I read today on SmackJeeves, a comic by Jillian Iscaro really stuck out to me. Her comic was based on Michio Kaku's Hyperspace so the art alone was wonderful and I wanted to find more of her work, and as someone who doesn't really like to talk I simply added her to my watchlist on DeviantART and followed her Tumblr, which I encourage everyone to do too, and here's why:

I love the variety in her work from style to color but what I find so interesting is her perspective, and I guess that's what happens when an artist takes an interest in physics.
Finding and admiring artists I find on the internet does give me some motivation to draw again, but from the time I've taken today to read and blog, and given that I have one week left before the school year begins and I need to dedicate all of this time to START and finish my summer assignments, I'm just going to continue sitting here in this pit of non-creativity and rot while I breath in allllll my jealousy and angst.

Kirkland Signature products

I was shopping at Costco today and found that Kirkland has now launched a skincare line at the beginning of this month and already has received very positive feedback. I was particularly drawn to the "Revitalizing Face Serum" and pretty much anchored myself in Costco's cosmetics aisle for a while. I was surprised and I didn't know what to think about it because while I do like Kirkland for their consumable products, I remembered how bad it was for my skin last time I bought a "Vitamin-enriched" skincare product (Thank you, Trader Joe's...) and so decided it was much safer to drop the temptation of buying it and to just go home to read what other people say about it.

Now, honestly people don't know how to help other people with their reviews, but regardless, I'm impressed and have no qualms about shedding some more cash to buy the face serum next time I'm there. It's $20, and it's from Kirkland.

Here's why I like Kirkland:

A few years ago I cut dairy milk from my diet and asked my parents to let me live on soymilk. They were okay with buying Silk Soymilk for a while. It was the soymilk my lactose-intolerant cousin drinks and it was a good brand to start with. Though it was really good, it quickly became expensive per half-gallon, so I had to go back to dairy milk. Easy enough to deal with, I just had to skip breakfast from then on. I'm not lactose-intolerant to the degree of legitimately allergic children, but I couldn't and cannot deal with dairy milk anymore. I did buy other brands of soymilk occasionally on the days I was craving cereal, but nothing else was as good as Silk. One day at Costco we found Kirkland Signature soymilk and my parents decided to buy it because in the end we'd have more soymilk for less money. Kirkland held the same promise for satisfaction as Silk, and both brands have provided me with delicious soymilk. Today I still drink Kirkland soymilk because it's delicious and really does give the most bang for my buck.

Another Kirkland product won my heart this summer when I was in pursuit of good and affordable green tea. My aunt likes to bring bags of loose tea leaves (of tea I don't even know the names of in English) from Vietnam when she visits, and loose-leaf teas take too much time and effort for me to prepare and as an American, I like things to be instant. Sometimes my mom buys small boxes of green tea that hold 20 tea bags but they are expensive to keep buying in the long run when we want to drink green tea every day for 365 days. Some years ago my dad's friend gave us a box of a hundred green tea bags from a Korean tea brand and it was so great to make delicious tea effortlessly for months and months, but when we were out we couldn't seem to find the same brand in the Asian supermarkets here. (I'm sure they're here, but my mom's sense of only noticing things of low-price must not have picked it up... AKA too much $$$.) One time we bought a really cheap box of 100 green tea-bags and it was really worth its price ($1.99). I've only rarely had good green tea since.
By the end of the Vietnamese summer seminars program I was attending, we had a party and by the tea station I found Kirkland green tea. (It's not all Kirkland, the tea blend belongs to Ito En which is supposedly the top manufacturer of green tea in Japan but is packaged under Kirkland.) It was a blend of matcha and sencha and I was really digging it from the first sip. :) My mom was impressed too and we both sought out to find it on our next trip to Costco. And what a deal! 100 bags of really GOOD green tea for only $14! For 100 bags of less-than-Ito En-good green tea, that's $20 roughly, so I was ecstatic from picking it out of the aisle to lining up to buy it. To anyone who is interested in green tea, this blend is really interesting. Sencha typically brews yellow in 3 minutes, but this sencha-matcha blend brews light green in 30 seconds, and really, you could brew this blend of green tea for 3 minutes even, but I stop at 30 seconds because I like drinking it green.

Today I don't touch other brands of soymilk or green tea, and that's why I'm really looking forward to trying out the Kirkland skincare products or just the face serum at least. Now, if only I could find some cheap and delicious mooncakes seeing as it's almost time for the harvest moon...

Fenwick Island

Just came back from my last beach trip of the summer. Looking back, my summer was pretty alright.
I didn't get any creative projects I had planned to get to during the school year done, but I got loads of sleep and saw some movies and animes I really wanted to watch. I didn't even practice as much as I wanted to. Summer just makes me so dull... until I go to the beach. I guess my three beach trips this summer is all I'll remember about this year when I look back. Which is alright. I don't remember much these days anyway.

I do remember to pack my camera every time I'm out though, and to set my camera's picture quality to VGA when I take photos hundreds at a time for stop motion projects.

So......

 

Aaaand I leave this blog post with this:

644 photos used;

"Who's Theme" by Nujabes and MINMI

(from Samurai Champloo)

Concerts I'm sorry I whine.

I really just need to go see an orchestra concert. I have missed three opportunities last year. Three.

Conductor Christopher Zimmerman

The first opportunity was a week after my birthday, the FSO was playing Stravinky's Firebird Suite, then Liszt and Sibelius concertos. Honestly I don't care much for those concertos but hey, the chance to see and hear FIREBIRD? Missed. and pissed because I saw the conductor's schedule and saw that in June the FSO will be playing...

Debussy's La Mer next to Ravel's Piano Concerto for the Left Hand.
That's my two favorite composers back-to-back.

So, knowing that I thought "Hey, knowing Mom, I'm only allowed out once a year. I might as well wait."

Nope. IB Exams. I forgot, and so just because of IB exams I wasn't allowed one night out that month.

More Zimmerman

At the time I also really just wanted to see this man again and thank him for the help he gave our school orchestra back in February.
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While we were working on Villa-Lobos' Bachianas Brasileiras no. 5, he pulled us together and helped us win Superior ratings at Festival the next month. He also complimented me loads and since then I felt a strikingly painful -similar to a- sexual desire to see him conduct another orchestra.       

Phew. So the last chance for this year was to see my friend's community orchestra playing Bizet's Carmen. I was pretty pumped and ready to go until I saw that the location was in Maryland, and there was no way I was allowed to go to Maryland just for a concert. 

I'm sorry I whine. It's just that the beginning of a fresh new season is coming up and I intend to get my ass into the FSO concert hall and sit down for a good two hours to soak up what I have been yearning for years.

Insert more photos of Christopher Zimmerman here ok buye.

Texture that shakes my bones

I know very well already that orchestral and Latin and even LATIN ORCHESTRAL music moves me so easily like driftwood, yet I still don't know why I startle myself even today each time I feel the need to dance when I listen to bossa nova and/or samba.

This happened at Bed Bath and Beyond yesterday at the CD listening station when I selected "Brazil" repeatedly. I was listening to the same excerpt over and over and it didn't matter, not until my mom was catching up to me and almost saw me swaying at least.

More on orchestral music, on the same YouTube channel which hosted a video of my favorite performance of Drdla's Carmen Fantasy, I found a bunch of orchestrated (strings only) performances of famous samba and bossa nova songs!

The arranger I believe is Ukrainian and I know for a fact the conductor of this.. Ukrainian orchestra... is Ukrainian. So I'm really bummed that 1) It's not popular enough to have download links and 2) I have to man up and ask to order a CD via Google Translate. You never get anything done in Google Translate. I wish I had Fairy God Parents and could wish for a multi-lingual tongue and be able to converse with these guys and compliment the arranger especially for his work because they really are spectacular arrangements.

And I say this because of texture. I didn't realize until these performances that part of Brazilian music is big on texture next to rhythm, which really helps to create the texture anyway, along with instrumentation. Because instrumental bossa nova isn't authentic without the Classical guitar, and when you hear chords on a Classical guitar, it's so much more calm than on steel. It's gentle and deserves a percussion rhythm just as calm, and together, that's the texture of linen, to me. I really do want to say silk but that is more Chinese music.

What I find so enjoyable about these performances, also, is that I get the same feeling when I listen to authentic bossa nova when I listen to these. I guess I also feel a little more sexier too. The natural texture of Brazilian music is really channeled well through a string orchestra, so it feels reeaallly good to listen to.

As I count the next 342 days until I get to see Rio de Janeiro with my own eyes, I leave you with a link to this orchestra's channel: http://www.youtube.com/user/pavliygeo It's a fantastic orchestra and I hope you enjoy!

I want to go to Brazil what do

In the near future I have two opportunities: World Youth Day 2013 and the next Olympics; and by then I guess I should have the means to travel. Wishful thinking.

Gil and Adriana

I'm equally interested in meeting Catholics around the world as well as seeing the greatest athletes together, but even more so, I just want to walk the streets of Rio and absorb the culture. I love Brazil in the same way Gil from Woody Allen's Midnight in Paris loves France.

I don't know too much about life in Brazil, just some of the architecture and other important sites. Should I go with a nearby parish to World Youth Day 2013 though, I'd be so psyched to visit the Cristo Redentor. Sure, there are plenty of tall statues of Jesus where I live and in places I've visited like La Vang, but it's because I think it is the most famous tall statue of Jesus and that it's in the city of SAMBA that attracts me. <cough>And speaking of samba</cough>

Anyway, if I ever go to Mass in Brazil, I bet my weak little conscious will end up singing the tune of Corcovado behind the Our Father. Sad but true. I really only love Brazil for the music. But hopefully, if I go to any of these events, I'd be able to see so much more. And find a Brazilian boyfriend who plays drum set.

All fantasies aside, the bigger dilemma in all this is what to do with my money now that I'm working (violin + piano teacher). I do really want a DSLR. It's time to upgrade from my 12 year-old Fujifilm pseudo-DSLR, which hasn't ever done me wrong, ever, it's just time. I also need a car, because aside from travel, I actually live in the US, and you need to drive to get to places here in the US.

Siiiigggggh. What do I neeeeeeeeeeeeed