Sweets have never been so tempting

Apparently I don't have enough spirits to post any stories significant to my recent life. Right after spring quarter was done, I only had about four days to take a deep breath then another tense life waited after the weekend.

If you ask, I've been doing just fine. Good news is...

Picture by Martin Neuhof

summer is
h e r e ! !

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Say yay, beacheessss!!

So, hello sandals, shorts, T-shirts, tank tops, BIKINI (dude, I'm saying this as if I have one), and uh thin-layered outfit. I guess I've said this for zillionth time but if I have enough time, I'll definitely post some stories here. Hopefully that time will come pretty soon, cos writing stories indeed takes up a lot of time. So full dedication is strongly required.

In the mean time, I'd like to show you guys some of my latest artworks. I'm doing this cos I don't know what to post aside of stories. I simply want to keep you guys posted.

This is the final project I have for Web design class. I gotta say it took up a lot of time and hardwork on it but I'm satisfied about how it turns out to be! Well, the professor actually only allowed max 3 pages. But I ended up making 4 and had no idea which page I had to eliminate in order to meet the qualifications!

Homepage


Premade cake selection


Cake information


Customize cake

Anyway since the theme of the final project is making a fictional self-established company website, I came up with the idea of making a unique pastry/cake shop! Apparently there was someone else in the class who had a similar idea, so I decided to alter the concept a little bit. My cake business is a bit different since I allow visitors to customize their own cake and order it.

Even the professor said this to me:
"You should open up this shop. That's your next assignment."

Ha. Right on, sir. First I need investments and I'm gonna need a couple of people to help open this business. First and foremost, the most fundamental thing ever to do is: I might need to change my major to business or culinary arts haha.

Anyway, what a fun thing to do, right?

Back to spring-summer transition. I had a great time on the weekend. Okay, I know I said I wouldn't post stories but it wouldn't be such a big trouble for me to post one of them briefly. With spring's done, a lot of my friends are transferring, moving out, moving in to a new apartment, graduating, or going back for summer vacation. I attended like 4 farewells over the weekend.

One of the farewells I attended is Agnes'. Well, she's going back to Hong Kong for summer. My friends and I planned to hang out with her before she went back.

Right after finals, we went to have lunch at KFC (we were actually going to have lunch at Curry House but then it was packed with people so...), then we had karaoke.
While waiting for the bus, we took bunch of pics.

...even the bus wasn't able to stop our narcissism mode.





It took a while for us to get to Music Tunnel. We stopped by at KFC near the bus stop. Before choosing KFC, we were thinking to have late lunch at Curry House, but unfortunately, it was still closed. So, KFC is the alternative choice.

Afterwards, we went on to release our tension in Music Tunnel! We sang songs in various languages. Mostly Chinese, Cantonese, and English for sure, but other than that, we also tested our multilingual skills through Korean and Japanese songs







Guess what song we sang to below. It's pretty easy, so if you're a fan of music, you should know about it.



Get it?

We finished our karaoke quite later than expected, but that didn't stop us to continue hanging out. I remember that Agnes also wanted to see a movie. After all, it had been planned before Karaoke, so we decided to go to AMC to check what was on cinemas.

It was such a pain to wait for the bus. It took hella long time. We were quite in a rush because we were planning to catch a movie before 9pm, otherwise we'd have to walk our way home at around 12 (by the time the movie finished, cos there were no more buses operating at that time). We got there pronto. The line for the ticket box was quite long, considering it was Friday and Friday was always the premiere day of new movies.

It was Cars premiere screening day. As a fan of Pixar movies, it's one of the most anticipated movies for me. I was kinda sad at first since Terry already watched it, but we quickly found the solution: Super 8. We all haven't seen it and I checked the rating on internet and the movie received positive reviews (It even beat up Xmen in Box Office Chart!) So yeah, we went on with it.

Overall, the movie's quite interesting. At first I thought it was quite predictable, but seeing it was produced by Steven Spielberg, I gave it an excuse and changed my mind. We were practically entertained with it. I love the storyline and the acting, especially the grown up Elle Fanning really pulled it off.

After the movie, it turns out that I needed to walk all the way home since the bus was no longer operating (it was around 11pm that night, and I was only wearing shorts, slippers, and thin, 3/4-sleeved cardigan). Good heavens my apartment is located nearly two blocks away from the cinema, but with all the darkness surrounding me, it was quite a challenge.

The night was still seemingly young, as I crashed into a neighbor/friend's party and thankfully managed to stay myself sober. My neighbor was transferring to SoCal, so it was going to be her last weekend before moving out.

Anyway, I don't know why but I'm always having this identity-crisis. Nothing big or whatsoever but a lot of people have mistaken me as a Vietnamese, Thai, Filipino, Taiwanese, and Chinese. Never Indonesian, despite that's what I really am.

It really struck me when an international student I met in Anthropology class went on to me and said. "Are you a resident here?" I don't know why she could identify me as an American. Not just once, but I've encountered quite few people saying that. I feel flattered though, maybe it's a sign for me that my English has slightly improved (yay), but still, I'm proud of being an Indonesian!

Speaking of nationalism, I've got one story I really feel like sharing.
So stay tuned yo! XD

From L A with ♥ pt. 8: End

Previously: The train that was about to take off once we got to the station was apparently the last train. Good thing we caught it on time, otherwise we needed to wait for...I don't know, tomorrow morning? I guess? Eventually, we spent the rest of the night packing and tried to reassembled all the items we bought in LA and the clothes as well. Phiew, what a night.

Okay, I know this is already beyond expired and even unnecessary to brought up again. But thing is, it came to my realization that I haven't posted the last part!!! *lame*, I know. Anyway, let's just get on with it.

It was our last day to spend in LA before going back in the afternoon.

We woke up a little bit late than days before, seeing how worn and spent we were. Seeing it was our last day in LA, we decided to shop a little more in Japantown. We dropped by at some souvenir shops we'd visited before and see if there was anything else we were interested in buying.

In one of them, three of us decided to buy identical umbrellas with different colors. Mine is pink, Elda's is blue, and Aymee's is red. The umbrella's very worth it for sure, because mine and Elda's have broken off a bit and can no longer be used.

Bidding farewell with Japantown!

The restaurant we had our dinner in after Universal Studios

There should be Koreatown on the sign as well :)

Gonna miss this place

Yeah, we basically strolled around Japantown just to get a glimpse before we departed back to San Jose. Really worth the walk!


Downtown LA from Japantown

My two most favorite pictures among all pictures taken during our LA Trip.
Gotta love it!


Shadow play

While checking out if we left anything behind in the room for the last time, we managed to take some pictures. The lighting was good if you kept the curtain open!!!

It was around midday and we skipped lunch in order to get ready to go to the airport. The shuttle scheduled to pick us up finally arrived at the lobby.
See you Japantown! Looking forward to seeing you again in the future.

Last picture taken in front of the lobby of Kyoto Grand Hotel.
Taken by Super shuttle driver who complimented on how we looked.

We happened to pass Staples Center and got a close look of it. Suddenly the whole SMTown drama emerged in my mind again.

The check-in procedure was a bit complicated since we had to self-check-in in order to save more time. The line for the scanning process was unbelievably long, but glad the whole procedures ran smoothly until we reached the gate at the very end on time. Aymee had lunch with a sandwich she bought during the last minutes before boarding.

Our trip mascot: Snowball

Snowball and its owner

The flight back to San Jose was okay. Nothing special or different than the last flight except I couldn't sleep. Even it was freaking hot inside the cabin!

Touching down at San Jose, I began to realize how San Jose and Los Angeles were two completely different cities in terms of vibe! For the last four days, I've been indulged too much with nice sights, crowded places, tall, colorful buildings, and San Jose was just the opposite of it. Somehow the Silicon Valley atmosphere I felt when I walked out of the arrival hall made me miss Los Angeles, despite the fact that we just went there for the last four days lol.

AYMEE'S BIRTHDAY SURPRISE
On the way home in the shuttle, my friend called me. It hit me that it was the day my friends, Elda, and I were planning to surprise Aymee in the evening. My friend, Poe, called that day, reminding me of the plan and what to do. What a good timing though, because Aymee was sleeping, but still I couldn't talk loudly about the plan. She might be awake at anytime.

After arriving at Elda's and my apartment, the shuttle was off to drop Aymee at hers. Elda and I dropped our luggages at our apartment first before we headed off to Pho for late lunch (it was around 5 o'clock, or maybe I should call it as early dinner), also to talk about our surprise plan for Aymee.

We took a bus to the restaurant, which was located across my campus. Poe, who called earlier, caught up with us to discuss about our plan. He bought with him some snacks and games just in case we wanted to stay a little longer at Aymee's place after the surprise.

Elda, Poe, and I went to my apartment to wrap the present and to prepare the cake. Another friend of ours that we invited, Kevin, arrived at my apartment as well to proceed the surprise. After everything was set, we took off to Aymee's without telling her.

Anyway, we already told her cousin Nancy about the surprise so that she could keep it a secret from Aymee.

Here came the moment of surprise....

Aymee, the Happy Birthday girl :)

Unwrapping the presents


Don't cut yourself!

We munched on our snacks although we didn't get to play games on the projector Kevin had brought. But still it was fun though! We laughed and saw each other dance to celebrate Aymee's birthday.

What an exhausting yet a long day! XD

E N D

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N O T E : Aymee's birthday marks the end of our whole LA trip. Overall, it was a very impressive and memorable vacation. Actually this is the second vacation I had after Denver trip for Thanksgiving 2010. Huge thanks for Elda and Aymee for making it all happen. Thanks for all readers to keep up with the reading even though there was a huge gap between part 6 and part 7, but I somehow managed to finish it. Hope you guys enjoyed the whole story and I'll make sure to come up with more exciting stories!

<< Part 7

Artsy week

Long time no see! I'm pretty sure I've missed out a lot of important things to tell here. Great deal of experiences have happened throughout my absence in the blog and if I wanted to share all the magnificent things here, there will be way too many.

This post will be dedicated yours truly to my recent digital artwork. Yeah, I gotta say I've been quite productive when it comes to art these days, thanks to my Web Design class.

The idea is, I was to create three homepage designs based on three different themes.

Corporate
It has to be somehow professional, formal, and clean-looking and must be related to technology or business...

...and I kinda hate how mine turns out to be.

Small Business
Got any company to establish in mind? I came up with a private cinema where you can basically rent movies, watch them there, or simply bring them home.


Scratch #1: Normal mode

Scratch #2: Hover mode
If you hover over one of the option boxes (that take form as a film roll), one of the box will enlarge and a light will be reflected out of the projector at the bottom of the page.

Pop Culture
The concept is basically anything flashy, extreme, and dynamic that easily draws people (particularly teenagers). Too bad I couldn't come up with something specific cos the theme is just way too wide. Considering I'm a teenager, there are too much themes popping up in mind. Anyway I managed to come up with one and I'm not even sure you can sense the pop culture theme here.

Yeah, I came up with Greek myth theme. Too boring, you think?

Version 1.0

Version 2.0


Version 3.0
Most favorite version. You can tell, can't you?

Aside of doing website sketches on Photoshop, I used up my Photoshop trial as a chance to produce as many as artwork before it's expired. Well, no jaw dropping works as of now. But good thing that this month is quite an artsy productive month for me.

Anyway, speaking of artsy... (well this entire post does speak about it, doesn't it?), I've recently got elected as the graphic designer of my college's International Student Volunteer Club. Starting from late May, I've been in charge for graphic and design-related issues. Some of my works below are stuff I did for the club.







Right now I'm working on the club logo. It should be done pretty soon.

Here's another digital work I did. This one, requested by my friends, is for my college's graduation and prom. At first, the design was a bit cluttered in all sides of it, even until the invitation itself reaches the point of being printed out and given away to the attendees. Well, I hope they didn't notice all the clutter and the slight mistake.



Well, that's all I have so far. I'm looking forward to posting more, now I'm getting back to my homework and studies...or at least I'm trying to.

Have a nice weekend!! :)