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Hey guys!!

I finally got to post again! Glad finals are over, phiew. I'm going back to Indonesia today but I haven't done so much on packing. The thing is, I just finished my finals yesterday, on Saturday, whereas everyone has wrapped up on Friday. Sad ey?

Actually, I wrapped all my studio finals on Thursday, which is actually earlier than everyone else. My other friends still had a project critique up until Friday evening. However, sadly for us, graphic majors especially first termers, we all had to take a test for our online class. The test were open from Thursday to Saturday noon. As predicted, most of us weren't ready to take it early, so even some, including me, had to wait all the way to Saturday morning to take it.

One thing about this class: since it's an online class, the instructor only interacted with us via email, and through that method, he sent us bunch of lecture tutorial videos to watch that he said they were going to be tested on. The videos were to be watched throughout the semester, but due to heavy studio workload, almost 90% of graphic majors waited until finals week to actually cram up those videos. Though they're actually quite useful, especially for people like me who don't know much about design softwares, they're simply so boooooring to watch. I couldn't think of why we had to take an online lecture class. Nothing is more boring than that. Each video lasted for an hour. There are like more than 20 videos to watch. You do the math. I tried to watch two videos back to back and I always ended up falling asleep.

Anyway, finals week were indeed hectic. I barely got any sleep although I decided not to pull all-nighters all the way until morning. Trust me, I did that before for typography class, but I ended up staggering to class in the morning like a zombie-slash-hangover person. During the finals week, I only slept for an hour or two. Went to bed at 5 am and got up 2 hours later to catch up with my 8 am class.

Finals week is also the moment where lots of us spend money up to a 100 bucks for printing and whatever. If you're not a graphic major, you should be grateful for that.

This gigantic poster of 24x36" for Communication Design final has its own story. Let alone the content. Due to its gargantuan size, I had to print it somewhere else (definitely not at home, I don't have a printer than could print that size). It was Saturday and I went to the print shop in Art Center. The project was due on Monday two days later. I thought it'd be ready in a couple of minutes or so, so I didn't bring any homework or laptop to school. But eventually, the print shop guys told me to come back in an hour. I was like, dang, I would have wasted my time at school waiting while I could've actually done my final project for other classes. I waited, and waited. An hour later, I came back. The guy told me "Come back in 30 minutes!". I waited...again and came back at 30 minutes later. "It should be done in 10 minutes!". Ugh, this started to piss me off. When they're finally done, I found out, the poster was slightly damaged because they were cut off 1/4 inch margin. In short, the poster size was shrunk 1/4" and if I did use it, the instructor would've probably noticed and he could cut off my grade for not having the required size for the poster.

I spent more than $30 for that but good thing they returned the money for the damage, but DANG IT, THEY WASTED MY TIME.

So I had to go to Fedex near school at 6pm, only to find out their large format printers were down. They referred me to a Fedex further down in South Pasadena. They took my order and told me the poster should be up for grab in 24 hours, so I had to go back there to pick it up the next day, which is Sunday. The printing price was twice compared to school's print shop's. Dude, I haven't even mounted it on Foamcore, which would take up more time. Mounting should be an easy job if it's smaller size, but I'm talking about 24x36" project in which the requirement said that the grading includes the neatness of mounting. Dudeeee...

But as my friend said, don't whine too much. Just foamcore that sh*t! lol

The next day, I went to pick it up. it was perfect and glossy!! I went home to mount it, which turned out perfect and all flat. However, on the critique day, I put the poster in the back seat of the car. The journey from home to school only took about 15 minutes and guess what, when I reached school, I found out that the poster had bent due to being exposed to the heat. The flat surface had turned wobbly. Ugh. But my instructor ended up liking it though. I was lucky because he didn't even notice the wobbly surface of my poster thanks to sunlight.

That was my Typography final exam. I had to memorize over 30 fonts. We're not talking about easily distinguished fonts like Comic Sans (no, definitely not that particular font) and Monotype Corsiva. There are some easily distinguished fonts on the final, but at one point, we had to memorize Serif fonts WHICH THEY ALL LOOKED ALMOST THE SAME. You can see that from the screenshot above. I literally dropped my jaw. I mean, seriously, how can you tell the difference between Palatino and Baskerville? My friend suggested that I looked at the letter "Q" since it was drawn differently in each font. This method of looking only at the letter "Q" worked but on the final exam, it just went poof. I ended up getting a decent grade though :)

This book that I created above also cost me a lot. Basically it cost a lot in terms of time that was taken to create it, and the printing process. Since it was going to be the first book I made in Art Center, I put quite a lot of effort to it that I even had to set my motion graphic final aside (the motion turned out crappy but at least my instructor loves my concept). The book turned out to be 70 pages long. I had expected the teacher would put bunch of lovely comments on it after I turned it in and even considered to saving it for the next class, but apparenly, she only looked at it briefly, made some brief compliments (which are lovely, I love the teacher. She's such a sweetie compared to my other instructors). But the comments only took like a minute or so before she handed it back to me with a smile - a smile I replied with an expression that says "Soo...do I get an A?"

The apartment after clean-up. I should've put the Before picture so you can tell the difference.

Although I still had final on Saturday, I went out with my "now-free" roommates on Friday night to Ihop. I miss this Sirloin Steak Tips for dinner!!

Well, I finished my final exam on Saturday right at noon. We had a quick stop at Starbucks

They got my name right!!!

Afterwards, my fellow friends and I strolled down in Old Town for a shopping spree. I got myself a nice shirt from H&M, but I'm a little sad the jacket I always wanted to buy there was no longer there :(

Then, my roommate and my indonesian friend, Jessica, went to Little Tokyo for this!!!!!

Waiting for an hour but it's worth the wait!

Later on, we were actually planning to see a movie on the cinema afterwards, but I had to pack and I was so exhausted yesterday, so the plan was scraped. I literally couldn't sleep the night before, fearing that I'd fail my exam (I ended up not watching all of the videos, but the test questions were easier than I thought). I passed though!

The poster looks good!

While packing, I saw a movie on my laptop called Little Buddha, directed by Bernardo Bertolucci who also directed The Last Emperor. Actually, before I watched Little Buddha, I rewatched The Last Emperor while doing my project. The movie was just another form of boredom-killer, because doing a project without a music or a movie could be so boring. I thought that, since the movie was sad, I had a reason to look away during the sad scene and focused on my project instead of seeing the sad scene.

But it totally didn't work out. I was too drawn into The Last Emperor all the way to the end, up to the saddest and the most ironic moment in the movie that once brought tears to me. I had to stop doing my project to, again, absorb the whole atmosphere of the movie. I did cry though, even if it was my second time watching it.

Well, anyway, since then I started to look up for the movies Bertolucci produced and bumped into Little Buddha. It looked promising so I watched it last night and dang, it was GOOD! The good thing about it is, it wasn't as sad as The Last Emperor but it was quite emotion-stirring. Briefly about the movie, it tells the story of a group of Tibethan monks who travelled all the way to Seattle to find a great Buddhist teacher's reincarnation. The reincarnation takes form of a little American boy. As the story goes, the bond between the monks and the boy, as well as his skeptical parents, were formed. Also, a story about Prince Siddharta was added on to the movie as the plot goes. I think the story of the prince itself was the highlight of the movie.

I was surprised to find out that Keanu Reeves (yes, that Matrix guy) played Prince Siddharta.

The story wasn't as sad or ironic, but the whole ambience Bertolucci gave was totally emotion-stirring. I was even more touched by the bond the American boy formed not only with the monks, but as well as an Indian boy and girl, as they all followed the trace of who they really were in their past life.

Well, anyway, that's all I had to say for today. I have to go back to my packing business. I'll be leaving tonight so see you guys soon with hopefully, a post from Indonesia!