why, oh why, singapore…?

what is “van gogh” doing at this void deck : http://www.razor.tv/site/servlet/segment/main/news/66180.html

“” because… it is NOT van gogh.

i love you, my country, Singapore. but you really can be such a disgrace many times, with regards to the celebration of originality art and design. For generations (and more to come), the children in Singapore are being taught that endorsing ANYTHING famous in ANY WAYS possible, including being “inspired by” (which, come on, let’s be real, is really “COPIED from”) is nothing but good.

 

Buying a painting? – is the painter famous?

Buying a bag? – is it a famous international brand?

Painting the void deck? – there’s nothing better than using a famous artist’s work.

Singing at the NDP? – the best option would be to plagiarize a commercial hit song.

 

SO.GOD.DAMN.PROUD.OF.YOU. and very very saddened….

i remember this post i made 2 years ago : http://littleoddforest.wordpress.com/2009/04/02/sick-to-my-stomach/

i’m not sorry to say that i really hope the shop has folded long ago…

 

sick to my stomach.

isn’t this almost similar to legally producing and selling fake chanels anything and fake patek phillipe watches just so that “not so well-off” people can buy and enjoy them???? what in the world??? gahhhhh! such an atrocity!!!

bringing art to the “heartlanders” ??????
in the very first fucking place, this is exactly WHY the so-called “heartlanders” they are referring to here, will NEVER learn what art is all about! never! in this country that i call my home!

why appreciate the real thing in this or that internationally-acclaimed museum, when you can get a replica and hang in your “humble heartland flat”. why bother supporting talented current artists whose art pieces costs 4-digits and above, when you can get a FAKE van gogh for just lesser than $300 singapore dollars?????
courtesy of poor self-taught “painters” from the usual suspects – developing countries like china, vietnam and indonesia

shit!
fuck!
i’m sorry but, i’m beyond sick to my guts.

fyi, this is in today’s straits times papers, life section.

rushing off for an urgent meeting, but just had to spend a few minutes ranting my brains out here.

ciao. bad day. bad day!

before i forget…

http://www.theswitchboards.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=12652
sorry to all who have asked me about it, but unfortunately, i’m not at liberty to explicitly name this indie business, but only to people i know personally, in confidence, as i’ve been warned by many already of the backlash thingie… i might burn in indie hell for it. yeah. so good luck, maybe i was just very unlucky, twice.

rant rant rant…

so.. there’s been too much on my mind and on my hands recently, so pls forgive if i’ve been spacing out while you were talking to me or trying to tell me something.. (you know who you are people… sorry!!)

things are getting a little too tight for comfort… things have to roll, work has to roll, products have to roll, and most importantly, money has to freaking roll… if someone pays me late, then everything’s all fucked up… crash and burn like a 8-car-freak-highway-pile-up-collision… argh! no sweat… will just take it as it comes…

it’s election time in politically mundane singapore. we’ve to give some credit to our very own political loony who is on the loose, yet again.. it’s like our very own day-time soap drama… he’s very good at it… i wonder when anyone is going to have him sent for psychiatric treatment… buangkok green… very near my home… i still remember when i was in high school, me and my pals, who are all, i’m happy to claim, not “ignorant fools” (this with regards to many singapore youth these days who don’t even know who their own prime minister and mps are… gawd), witnessed that loony outside centrepoint, with a mic and speakers, distributing his party’s papers… one of my thoroughly insane friend threw him some sarcasm, verbal abuse, and spit. HAHA no kiddin’.

this politically charged pal is now working and living in a foreign country, trying his best to spread his own agenda of eliminating whatever nonsense the foreign media has been fed about singapore, our country. that we’ll whoop your arse if you’re caught with gum in your mouth (puuuhhllease spare me…), whoop your arse if you were caught jay-walking (i freaking jay walk everyday….), and whoop your arse if smoke indoors (you just get a fine, stupid, like in any other civilised country), that we’re in actual fact, a communist nation. (???) btw people, singapore is NOT in china or thailand. can you imagine i got this from a couple of people in my world politics class in college in chicago, they were going on and on about how singapore’s civil rights suck and how our democracy is a fraud, and then they ended off their fervent and heated debate by being geographically wrong. i burst out laughing so hard and had to be controlled..

in fact, where are our policemen??? i have to deal with a bunch of hooligans loitering near my home everyday, it’s getting abit annoying. when i was living in the united states, every corner i turn, there’s a cop, or police car, or the police car siren every now and then, 24 hours, every freaking day… and you call us a police-state? yeah, watever fools.

on the other hand, singapore youth should know our country’s own history, go read up! go rent some video archives and see how it was lee kuan yew and not really sir s.raffles or for that matter, sang nila utama, who “founded” singapore. gawd. don’t embarrass me, or us, when you go abroad, and actually agree with some baseless criticisms of your very own gawd damn country, made by some foreign fella who hasn’t even step foot here! know your roots, and know that to have such a country as your home, comes with a price. nothing is free, or perfect, in this world. look around the world today! you don’t even have to look that far for that matter…

quit complaining if you aren’t going to do anything else about what you just complained about either. quit complaining, especially if you are that person who don’t know the facts, don’t know the history, don’t know that you have to stand on the left side of the escalator so that whoever is in a hurry can whiz by your big backside, pretend to be asleep when a pregnant/old person is in sight, for that matter, don’t even realise that your country was built from kampong village to vibrant infastructurally developed country in less than 40 years. which other nation can claim that? if you’d rather exchange your safe trip back home alone from zouk at 4am, for having to be alert and preferably in a group if out at night in case you were mugged (which i was, twice in chicago, one of which whereby all 7 of us in a group were, by 2 men with what i believe were toy guns), then i guess you’ll have to leave for greener pastures elsewhere.

vote with a rational mind. not an emotional heart. this is not a soccer game, nor lunch time at some hawker place. we don’t support the underdogs just because they are the underdogs, we don’t support the minority just because it’s cool to go against the flow and be different, we don’t try someone out just to give them a chance to do some business. i don’t wish for my country to go down in flames when i’m old, just because some dopes like you ruined it.

domokun

anyone owns a domokun toy? or knows of its existence? or have seen it before?
http://cardhouse.com/travel/japan/domokun.htm

well i’ve owned a domokun key chain thingie, a gift from a japanese friend, for more than a year

and while taking a break from my design work, i went to browse the samplersampler journal, and saw something so familiar…

big corporations

a friend just told me to read this, it’s crazily all over myspace and lj, i was told -
http://www.johnnycupcakes.com

and now i feel so ashamed

i’ve been a big fan of uo since my first year college in chicago, it was just so easy to decorate my own little pad with the colorful cool stuff i could find there, esp when there was a sale…

i’ve many clothes and accessories from there too… fortunately i got only the other brands that they carry, and not the uo brand.. and alot of my x’mas presents were from there too… courtesy of my pals who were in new york…

and i almost sent in some samples of my stuff mid of last year, backed out in the last minute because i didn’t think i could or wanted to meet their quantity requirements and also have heard that they will push your prices to the very bare minimum…

in chinese, we call them “jian” or “cheap”… must big corporations be so “jian” in order to become big or maintain their bigness? or must anyone be “jian” in order to become big? pardon my horrendous english :p

tsk tsk tsk…

as you can see with the jonny cupcakes incident, it is a case of “concept theft”, and that is not legally covered as far as i know, because concepts cannot be copyrighted..

i never knew they were fucking so many young and small designers out there, if i had known earlier, i wouldn’t have contributed to their profits… i love anthropologie too, which belongs to the same coroporation as uo… heck, their boutique is just right below my apt in chicago… and uo was just a 10 mins walk away… i shouldn’t have stayed downtown so near my school huh…

anywayss…

denise! i’ve replied your email! did you get it? got the package yet?

lots of emails from our forestprints account are going into people’s junk mail folder… so to all of you out there, if you’re waiting for an email reply from us, or have signed up for our mailing list, please add our email addy to your safe list and address book

i managed to find a new part-time sewer last week, am trying out her skills and workmanship, so will hope for good news when i get to see the “trial” order i’ve let her work on *keeping fingers, toes, and eyes crossed*

professional enough?

Hi ABCD,

You are receiving this email because of a recent survey you took at our shoppe/ an email feedback you had sent to us.

We are so sorry to hear that it has been a frustrating experience for you to shop at our small indie design boutique because all the items you had wanted to purchase were sold out.

Many of our items sell out very fast because they are all one or few-of-a-kind very limited creations, as stated clearly in their descriptions, they are all tenderly handmade and not mass produced by a factory etc.

All our popular designs and items sell out very fast because of their popularity, and also because we have a very extensive number of mailing list members (you may sign up to be on it to be notified when there are updates), and also waiting list orders for selected items, which we are very busy fulfilling backscene.

We are also currently very busy working on re-stocks and adding new designs and items, which has already started this month, and will stretch all the way til March.

It would be of much help if you could let us know specifically which item(s) you had wanted that are currently sold out, and we would be able to let you know if there is a waiting list that you may sign up for.

Hope this helps a little. Have a nice weekend.

Best Rgds,
Forestprints.com Customer Service Representative

disclaimer

Disclaimer:

“Products Are Unsuitable For Grumpy PMS-sy Menopausal Nasty Mean Types of Human Specie”

muahahahaha!

thanks tscd ^o~

1-half person operation… sucks

“how can you run a shop with half of your stock sold out? that really sucks.”

“i want my order to reach before christmas. please do something about it.”

((

what i got in the email today, 11 days away from Christmas

……

……

not in these exact words, since it was said in mandarin…

“hahaha, you’re so young and so wet behind your ears. what is so special about your products? so what if they are all your so-called tenderly handmade and limited editions or one-of-a-kind? i can just buy a sample from you, give it to a factory in china, mass produce it in tens of thousands and at the cheapest prices, with the best factory workmanship and quality control, sell them like hotcakes and earn so much for profit for so little effort, and there’s nothing you can do about it… you’ve so much more to learn, too idealistic and naive to make it in this industry, like so many of your generation today.”

just interested to know how you would respond to that…