So, this is actually the Finals' week, but I only had one paper, which was on Monday. I also decided to finish up my last assignment on Monday. What we didn't fully expect was for us to score so badly in GAM that we had to squeeze marks through appeals and all that to help Jeryl to pass the module, and apparently we did that too late + there were some lack of organisation in the way we did it which kind of seemed to piss Michael and Elie off.
But that's not what I wanted to talk about in this post; I wanted to talk about two unrelated things.
Seeing the DTVM Lecturers (some of them)
To be honest, ever since I got into SIT, I'd been wondering whether I should visit the DTVM lecturers, but I kept telling myself that if I were a lecturer, a student would just be one of my "clients" and once he's gone, I get to take a breather and remove him from my memory. Plus, the lecturers must be super busy and all that which was why I kept deciding against awkwardly visiting them on my own.
But I ran into Ms Gamar, Mark, and a new journalism lecturer on Monday. It was actually pretty nice catching up to them and it reminded me of how different polytechnic and university are. Polytechnic, as Pascal put it, was "playtime", in which we literally stress ourselves out over a 6-page concept paper (to be fair, it's more of the quality rather than the quantity). In university, we easily write a 50-page rule book in a matter of days; we make an entire game in a week (I like to exaggerate this fact; it's not really true but please just let me frame it like that) and we do not treat using photoshop like some super difficult thing (tbh, it's probably just the fact that writing students are generally less software-savvy). Here, we learn illustrator like it's nothing in one day. I'm quite impressed with myself.
No matter what, though, my roots are always in writing. I take my English minor really seriously, I'm always writing, always trying to get writing jobs and I'll join competitions. In GAM, I also try to convince my group to let me write. This is because, as much as I love games, I know that my greatest strength is still in writing and I'm actively working to use that as an edge. Sorry if I sound super serious and career-driven, but we all need thoughts like this sometimes.
So I guess, a theme in my life is that I never really know where to land. I'm not 100% a writer, not 100% a game guy, not 100% a film guy (I think I'm <10% a film guy at this point), and there are still a number of things I want to do: Software development (sometimes I kind of envy the RTIS and their sadistic courses), web design, and teaching.
Which leads to my next point:
Acorn
Between the this-blog-is-dead period and now, a number of things happened. Because I treasure this blog and I want to write everything in it, I'll eventually get to those other things, but for now, I just want to mention that I had a short run with Acorn Training, in which we would go to primary and secondary schools to facilitate workshops about character development, leadership, and stuff like that.
What it made me realise was that my methods had been wrong. I'd always been too soft when put in leadership positions, be it in NS or in Uber or when dealing with kids. I need to be firm. Also, experience can be 10 times more important than whatever principles I have, because everyone has principles.
Anyway, I also realised that I really dislike dealing with kids. They can be cute and innocent and all that but I really dislike having to put on a facade when talking to them. I don't like talking slowly, sugar-coating my words, and speaking in proper English. I guess I have to speak proper English in proper situations and that is okay, but somehow, talking to kids just tire me out.
I'd stopped working in Acorn for now because Digipen was stressful and I didn't feel like I was earning much there. I spent half the time travelling to a project, which usually only lasted for 2 hours, and maybe I got $20+ per project? I can't remember but it's really not a good source of extra cash for me, unfortunately. If I could commit to doing one project after another, it would be great, but maybe not now.
Since Wei Jian is back from Australia, though, maybe we can do one together. We'll see how it goes.
Labels: digipen, dtvm, teaching, things that happened, writing
So, after the week where I said I would try to blog every week, I kind of ran out of time to do anything personal, because there were a number of things I had to do, including assignments, a pitch, and a wedding. Fortunately, I managed to find time to meet with Cx, Avelin, and Stefanie for Crimes of Grindelwald, but I was pretty much left with little enough free time for me to not feel compelled to blog.
Anyway, those things that kept me busy were, for the most part, good things, so let me talk about some of them chronologically.
Participated in SAS's Pitchfest
For the first time ever, I got shortlisted in a writing competition. It is a whole new experience for me to be pitching to a panel for any reason other than an assignment, but I guess there must be a first step somewhere, sometime. I was so out of touch with the whole pitching thing. In Digipen, no one really cares about how well you pitch, but back in DTVM, pitching was a huge focus and there were so many things to take note of. To make matters worse, it was crunch time for the game project in school, so I had very little mental capacity to be doing this.
Still, I recognised that it was completely not worth it to not put effort into this just because there were some assignments, so I gave it my all and survived the day.
There were twelve other finalists whom I was "competing" against, but really, it was more of a networking session. Once again, I have never networked before, so I was pretty bad at it. Two of us ended up sticking to ourselves and chatting, which I guess wasn't a good idea. I guess I'll have to work on stuff like that. Also, I really do need to return to watching some local TV shows if I'm considering writing for them.
The other ideas were of variety. There were some that I really liked. The idea by the person I stuck to the whole time was pretty cool, but I shall not talk about it here because it isn't my idea.
Flora's Wedding
It is my cousin, Flora's, turn to get married. It is the age, or at least it is soon to be the age. I believe the only weddings I ever attended were Chinese ones and they were all my relatives. No one I was close enough to had gotten married and invited me. Heck, the DTVM gang (me included) are still all single. It's quite funny. We even dubbed ourselves the "self-love club".
It's a pretty beautiful wedding. There were the exchange of vows, some preach, some songs, and generally a nice atmosphere. Despite not being a Christian, one thing I like about Christian weddings (or at least the only one I've ever been to) is how significant the day is made to be, complete with the long aisle, confetti, and long speeches. The Chinese ones just care about tea.
GAM Project
The rest of my time were spent doing miscellaneous stuff, assignments, and the game project. To repeat the context, we have a semester or year-long game project every semester. The current one my level is working on is a year-long project in which the team is made of three "departments"; the programmers had to build a game engine, the artist(s) had to draw and animate, and the designers had to design and implement the game.
It was super stressful because a lot needed to be done with very little time. Everyone ended up being really demoralised. I tried my best to stay calm and chill for the most part, but I lost my shit on Jaryl (the producer) once and Min Teck (another guy) multiple times. I'd also been super pessimistic and I regret that. However, to be fair, I didn't lose my shit on Jaryl because of stress, but because of something else which I shouldn't talk about.
So, as of submission, our game wasn't in a super good state. It was quite sad because we were rushing so much that we didn't get to see other people's presentations. The whole thing felt like a huge mess, but we'll probably fix it in the time to come.
Manga: A Silent Voice
I just want to point out that the manga I had been reading in pockets of time was really good and made me feel all sorts of things inside. It is about a deaf girl and a reformed bully and how the bully is trying to redeem himself by becoming friends with the deaf girl, falling in love with her as a result. The romance part of it is predictable, but it is the whole idea about the deaf girl and the fact that she really hates herself but is trying her best that gets to me. On one hand, it can be a little annoying; on the other, in a particular scene where she cried and said that she wanted to die, it really dug straight into my heart.
This manga also portrayed suicide and pretty heavy themes without dramatising them. I found it impressive. There is an animated film for it and I'm probably going to find a way to watch it now that I'm almost freed up.
So, yeah. The upcoming holiday is almost 3.5 weeks and a lot can be done. I had been neglecting my body, so it's time to hit the gym again and watch lots of stuff I wanted to watch, play lots of games I wanted to play, go for that Vietnam trip, and do some stuff in preparation of the next semester, such as practicing on C++ and doing a bit of the game project.
On a parting note, I have been pretty moody these few days over some stuff and I hope I get over them soon, but taking some time away from Digipen will probably help. Let's just hope we don't return to a situation where I postpone my unhappiness only to face them in bulk when I am re-exposed to the stimulus.
Labels: digipen, family, things that happened, writing
For the first time apart from the other time when DTVM brought us, I went to the Singapore Writer's Festival today. I didn't exactly know what to expect but I had planned to attend the following:
- Living in Chains: Beyond Taboo (screening)
- Some buffer
- Short Stories by Migrant Workers (reading)
- Many buffers
- Worldbuilding in Video Games (panel)
I ended up only attending the first three, including the buffer, because I realised that it was too tiring to just sit there and listen to panels after panels.
However, Living in Chains and Short Stories by Migrant Workers were great.
Living in Chains is a FYP screening by some Wee Kim Wee students about this Indonesian practice known as Pasung, where mental patients are chained up in the name of treatment. It was a pretty sad idea and what the filmmakers did was to present the points of view of both the patients and the staff of the facility.
Apparently, because of their film, Dr Radiah Salim, a physician, is currently leading a project to bring some form of discussion over to some of such facilities in Indonesia, as well as some help in the form of better facilities. It is great and ideal that writing and documentary-making sometimes do make a difference, although it is up to really passionate people to get these things done.
Short Stories by Migrant Workers was a free reading where seven migrant workers out of a number who won in a 300-word story competition read their story to anyone who was there. Out of coincidence, most of them were Indonesian domestic workers.
Their perspectives of how domestic workers' lives work were really interesting; as Singaporeans, there are just some things that do not occur to us. For example, one of them wrote a story about "herself" falling in love with a Singaporean employer, telling herself that she was just a maid, living with him for years, and then watching him get married to a beautiful wife. It was really sad.
Bigger issues regarding how migrant workers are treated aside, it is inspiring that these people have not only demonstrated that they have artistic talents, but that they are willing to do something about it. Even without computers, they write with their phones during their lunch breaks, before they sleep, and so on. They do not just get to write because feel like it; their employers' approval matter. Yet, they managed. And they wrote in a language that they were not comfortable in. Really commendable.
The other day, Min Teck (a friend from school) was reinforcing my opinion that it is important to learn other languages. For people in the game industry, Japanese and Korean were really important. I've always wanted to learn Japanese but learning a foreign language is tough. Maybe I should get to it.
I was honestly expecting SWF to be kind of boring, but the stories were really interesting and some of the stuff were really thought-provoking. Back to the domestic helpers, some employers apparently used "writing" as an excuse to scold the helpers when they screw up. That sucks.
Anyway, I hope to go back there maybe the next weekend and catch some panel discussions and stuff. I've got to make the $25 festival pass worth it.
Labels: reflection, things that happened, writing