56 | Addiction

Coffee Fest was a blast - of caffeine and cold air.

It was a great way to close the #lastchillweekday of my life 

and it's also the reason why I still can't sleep at this hour.

I blame it on the coffee.

55 | The Start

The Start is always the hardest.

Should I do it this way or that?

Will this work the way I want it to?

The Start is something I've been struggling with for a long time.

I have a grand idea playing in my head,

the curves, the tune, the colors

bursting

But when I do actually Start

it fades,

it changes,

it fails,

it just looks different.

This isn't what I wanted.

Is This Art?

And then before I could give what I created

life,

I kill it.

I hide it in the depths of ideas I will never speak of.

If it isn't what people like,

it's not good.

If it's different,

it's not good.

What is ever right?

What is ever art?

Will this path ever be as good as the rest?

________________________________________

You think.

You ponder.

You doubt.

And then you just abandon.

And you go with the flow.

Blending,

Disappearing,

Into the sea of sameness.

You will never be who you want to be.

You will never do what you want to do.

________________________________________

Don't stop at The Start.

Start at The Start,

And keep moving, 

until you reach the reasons why you started in the first place.

54 | New, new

Top | Korea; Bottom | TEMT; Shoes | Scape; Hat | Forever 21

A Lunar New Year means new clothes, angbaos and gorging down whatever food that's placed within your vision. It's also the only time you can strut down the streets with a hat on your head, a ribbon around your neck and call it your New Year's outfit. Have a blessed Monkey year!

53 | Film Series II

(Taken with Pentax K1000, Kodak Portra 200 Film)

Working with a manual film camera was the most challenging and exciting thing ever. Bring it along with me to a city that I've never been to before adds to the whole challenging thing. It's never easy carrying a camera around. It weighs you down, quite literally. And it's always a risk. A risk to take that one shot, praying hard that you are in focus, your hands didn't shake up or that someone didn't run right into your lens because that would really be a bummer. But I did got out of focus, shook up and had someone walked right in just as I hit the button. I also had the pleasure of experiencing the top woes of shooting on film - wasting a roll of film. I was devastated but I expected it. However I'm glad I at least got a roll of films to look back on and it encourages me to continue learning and challenging myself. Cause hey, nobody said it was easy; you just got to try try try.



(I contemplated hard whether to edit these or even align them properly but I decided to just leave them as how they were captured, I think I like them better that way.)

52 | The End

It's currently 10:01 PM in Seoul, Korea where I am. Korea has been an eye opener although half of the time I'm trying to squint my eyes as small as possible to minimize the wind blowing into my eyes. I have no idea how the girls do it here in Winter, keep warm I mean. I've seen a fair amount of girls in flawless hair, short skirts/dresses and heels without any gloves and they don't look the least bit cold. It's like as if I'm overreacting to the temperature. I'm pretty much like this ball of yarn, tightly bundled together everyday. I broke the record of wearing 7 layers today and I still can't feel my face (yups I finally get the song).

I've been really happy eating out of convenient stores. The options are endless although I've been tricked like about 5 times into buying a can of coffee thinking its pure espresso but after a sip I taste that essence of milk in it. Bah. But today I finally realize the trick to keeping your hands warm without a glove. Hot Americano. It's like this magical portable heater. And it keeps you awake. Totes-amaze- balls. 

Okay I realize I'm talking to much. I know I should be sticking plenty of gorgeous photos here but to be honest the weather is making me so sleepy. Everyday I only have energy to transfer the photos of the day up on to my laptop and that's about it. Picking photos takes energy. Editing them takes energy. Organizing them takes energy. See, so much energy needed. Ok I admit I am being lazy but I AM on a holiday. Sometimes I don't even bother putting my photos through VSCO and just use Instagram to edit them. However the lighting is magical here in Korea so most of the time I don't really need to do much touch up just a bit of brightness/contrast/saturation/temperature edits and the photo is more than good to go. I'm talking too much again right? My point is, if you want to get a little something out of reading all the way till here, I've pushed my laziness out of the way a little bit and posted some photos here which you can check out. No edits. Like raw raw. So, enjoy and drop some love there :)

On another note, one side of my strap broke on the second day and the camera fell onto the floor but it's so sturdy I can't find a single scratch on it (thank God) so all is good. But, I may have exposed the first roll of film TWICE to light :( so I'm just crossing my fingers the pictures are not too ruined. I'm really truly excited to see how the photos turn out. Running on full manual mode hasn't been easy especially when I'm trying to capture a certain moment that disappears so quickly. I've missed plenty of opportunities this trip and I can only trained my frozen fingers to turn the dial faster and be as fast as a bumblebee. Shall share them here when I get them developed back in Singapore!

Alright this is most probably the last post of the year. Like everyone in the world, I can't believe 2016 is approaching in a day's time. Just like what the boyfriend said, we are nearer to 2020 than 2010. Time, oh how you fly. Happy New Year in advance y'all.

Cheers!