Bottled Sky

This is a page from my doodle journal where I gush about one of my favorite novels of all time, Richard Adam’s Watership Down. Here’s what I wrote in case you can’t decipher my handwriting:

Although I’ve never had or want to have one as a pet, rabbits will always have a special place in my heart because of Watership Down.

That’s a classic right there! My parents all but forced me to read it when I was 8 years old, but the copy they gave me was moth eaten and brown with age—not exactly appealing to the average second grader. I saw it again at a bookstore when I was in high school, and the rest, as they like to say, was history.

I recommend it to everyone, even if I get the strangest looks when I say that it’s about the secret lives of rabbits. So far I’ve managed to convert only one person to the “Lapine” side. It’s their loss! Long live the warren!

I regretted not taking the book with me when I moved to Singapore, so I’ll make sure to grab it from my old bedroom the next time I visit my parents in Manila. I did find another copy at a thrift store two years ago, the same edition that my parents first tried to make me read, but I passed it to a coworker in the hopes that she would fall in love with it, too.

Care to share your favorite book?

I love owls, cats, tin lunch boxes, storybook illustrations, and biscuits on their own. Put them all together and I start hyperventillating with joy. Literally. Oh, it was quite the scene when I first laid eyes on Artisan’s limited edition Two by Two biscuits, 16 owl- and cat-shaped organic butter biscuits stored in a tin lunch box covered in illustrations inspired by the classic Edward Lear poem, The Owl and the Pussycat. I went stupid — there’s just no other way to put it. For two whole minutes afterward all I could say was “WAAAANT”.

I bought mine from Jones the Grocer at Mandarin Gallery in case anyone’s interested. I must admit though that, as wonderfully presented as they were, the biscuits tasted average.

When I was seven, my homeroom teacher called my parents for a meeting to discuss my apparent lack of sociability. Here’s a random scan from my doodle journal that shows exactly what I think about that:

Whenever I come across beautifully packaged food, a battle wages inside my brain. The side of me that loves to eat has to duke it out with the side that appreciates good design. Whichever side wins gets to decide what to do.

Yogurt biscuits. Verdict? Eat.

Blackcurrant candies. Verdict? Keep.

Last June my friends and I went on a trip to Cebu, where we jumped off waterfalls and took naps on the beach. The post-vacation high somehow managed to seduce my web design muse out of wherever the hell she’d been hiding for the past year.

When I got back to Singapore, I started working on a remake of the summer-inspired layout that I created back in 2006. (Translation: I was too lazy and not quite inspired enough to start from scratch.) Unfortunately real work got in the way and sent my muse packing. I never got around to finishing the layout.

Well, not until now! You see, I went on another trip recently, this time to Batam, Indonesia with two of my fellow slaves colleagues. We went cable skiing, gorged on surprisingly fantastic pizza, tanned poolside, and spent hours being massaged into blissful, boneless relaxation. The trip gave me just the right amount of juice to finish what I started months ago.

I’m kind of in love with it, if I may be so immodest. I found a few bugs just now that would have normally sent my anal side on a rampage, but I’m just so happy that I don’t even mind. Take that, obsessive-compulsive tendencies! Let me know, if the layout isn’t working right on your end, though. I’m not too far gone to not care about that.

Continue reading Summer Makes a Comeback »