Mammals.

Quoting from Nick Hornby's novel About A Boy, reading through the passage that shared the same sentiments like I had meant that I was not the only one being a morbid mortal - this perspective is shared from a heterosexual main character, a guy: "He wanted to cut off his own penis with a kitchen knife". (p36, 1998)

Certainly, let me help you with that. Especially men who call themselves fathers and force themselves to their children; boys destroying another girl, and so on - treacherous, atrocious, disasterous stories of society that leaves you lifeless, no faith is restored in this type of mammal.

Boys to men, don't be sorry for me. I'm only one of the countless victims of your kind. Look, I don't even work in the entertainment industry - oh wait, I do - but I'm not the star everyone wants to pounce on - or the director to please. I work behind the scenes. So I clean up the mess the next day instead with a smile. Heheh. #DirtyLaundry

As simple as a flick of my sports bra the other night from my bro, is forgivable. In my head, I only roll my eyes and say, "Ah boys being just boys really" but as a matter of fact for my value as a female, it has reduced my own value as one female. It felt condescending. Degrading. But, a that's what a heterosexual boy do during adolescent years, pulling mini sets or bra straps from behind as our white uniform shows its creases and lines of it.

#MeToo. Have you not?
Don't go further on this read if you don't want me to crush your K-pop dreams and promises of faithful marriages.

Yang.

I've reached to the point where I'm slightly around the same time last year to start taking charge of things and it's halfway March 2016.

It's been a year into the new year and I'm not going to lie that the power of the fire is going to set an all-time high. Mixing with my youthful energy but my almost near the grave neurons approach, the Fire Monkey has probably never been apt in timing and combination as I, the Monkey, needs Fire as much as I can get this year. And so, I need the sun to energise me. The sun is a star full of blazing fire, therefore I'm asking the star, for a person who loves stargazing, to lend me a hand this year.

Third time's a charm, everyone say, and now my hair is done right and I'm happy.

Notions.

Earlier this month, I showed my Japan trip pictures, including the ones you readers are about to see to my visiting guy pal from BKK.

"OMG Rice, you're so pretty here! You should use make-up!" was his reaction.

The (in)famous pic with new fabulous hair colour I totally love!

That was one honest response from a straight dude right there that yes, once again, exemplified visual beauty works to appeal, whether it's comfortable or uncomfortable for the user itself. But then again, it wasn't me wearing make-up (I don't even to weddings). I shall introduce to you this transformation digital magic that instantly change you to be ultra 'pretty' within seconds - hello to Japanese photoboxes!

Pidato.

Pidato: meaning 'speech', in Indonesian.

22 and acing life - including this rather boring but most expensive paper I've earned in my life and it is entirely the most beautiful thing *tingles*

30.09.2014 LDN - I'M DONE WITH THE CITY. BUT, SO NOT DONE AND OVER WITH ALL OF YOU INSANE AND LOVABLE HUMAN BEINGS I'VE EVER MET.

I guess to recap the one year, I learn that I have to introduce myself like:
My name is Rice, short from Raisa.
45 years old mentally and going 46 as its less than 6 months away (the internal joke between a 36 and a 50 year-old classmate there), 24 - Korean age, but 22 internationally.
I have an Indonesian citizenship but to answer your beffudlement shown on your face, I'm second-generation Chinese from pops side.

But more than that, SOAS was the other world I couldn't wait to get through because of the challenges thrown to ask about my existence and sanity...

Plunge.

So, you've never seen a mermaid around here on land?
"Rambutnya biru tuh, liatin deh, biru ijo ma!" (Mom, take a look at that blue hair, its like blue-greenish!)
"Liat si tante ini, rambutnya biru tuh" (Take a look at this auntie here, her hair's blue)

Yeah, so now if you've met me then you can proudly say "I saw a mermaid on land!"
But before I became a mermaid...

Wanderlusting.

First ever couch-surfing trip and solo-tripping to Seoul, South Korea for a mission and time-out after coming back to the homeland has been accomplished. Without any frost bite. Almost...

Word must be crazy that I was by Han-gang at 9-10PM with the winds after a huge dinner from DMC... just for the night lights, really. It was my last night.

I came back, and I saw my mum probably received this calendar from the travel agency, and I was looking at it.

Friends know I have an 'ultimate dream job' is to go out and talk to people. But not just people. They're the Korean and Japanese people that everyone right now is currently fawning over. So as expected their questions upon my return was "so who did you see"

I said, "None".

I tried but in their own land it simply didn't work - it wasn't the country's USP so it would be highly neglected. Visiting on other places especially in the West, they'd be begging for some serious exposure. Time to morphin migrate I guess.

That aside, I felt that I've been slapped because the deeper story within how this trip has tweaked my high levels of skepticism and have significantly reduced it..

The trip gave the needed feels and good angst coming out... and how pure luck and magic of life's unseen algorithms (like The Secret? but we never know) I just need the world to prove to me that I may be optimistic about the bleak future of the earth we're directing ourselves to. Thanks to this trip I reflected what I have accumulated from friends and memories of such to say "Hey, it would be nice after all not to die alone!" - slap!

On the other hand... these quotes from the calendar are all true - slap! as seen below.

A photo posted by ら/ㄹ/R. "Rice" (@ghostxhearts) on Mar 20, 2015 at 6:32am PDT

A photo posted by ら/ㄹ/R. "Rice" (@ghostxhearts) on Mar 20, 2015 at 6:32am PDT

A photo posted by ら/ㄹ/R. "Rice" (@ghostxhearts) on Mar 20, 2015 at 6:33am PDT

A photo posted by ら/ㄹ/R. "Rice" (@ghostxhearts) on Mar 20, 2015 at 6:34am PDT

And this quote was especially befitting with the 7-day getaway out to unplug unfinished issues from where I came from:

A photo posted by ら/ㄹ/R. "Rice" (@ghostxhearts) on Mar 20, 2015 at 6:36am PDT

Can you hear the slap! ?

Hahaha.

I won't lament skepticism about the world's bleak future with current signs and sighs. However power has been given back with new inspiration, perspiration, expectation and new knowledge with each step I route myself to venture out in the city.

Love has returned, as I witnessed something I've never seen in my life for me to believe that such thing does exist. But in order to be able to find it, how simple and hidden can this be? This is still a journey in progress.

While this idea of being a skeptic is magnanimously lifted to some point

Traveling for me, has sowed its seed inside me and grew to be fed with oxygen. Like the air we breathe, we need to step out and do it - I have to do it to fill in this oxygen tank.

Seems like meeting new people that sends the same positive vibes or energy gives me much more strength - an extrovert at its finest?

This couple has lifted my skepticism by an immense amount

Don't count on me after 2 weeks - I'll be hibernating for a month close doors in my room without speaking to anyone because business and leisure trip took quite the energy to speak both ends - speak professionally and to speak with friends after it all ends but it means double energy speaking.

With the success of me couchsurfing (but this includes a LOT of random luck, really, it's been a very interesting trip), I was let for more, more, mooooooore.



Couchsurfing allows us to learn and live from locals, and immediately have friends to tell you about the society. That itself is such a thrill for me and I can testify how perfect, its tagline is:

You have friends all over the world - you just haven't met them yet

(A little Buble here?)

I'm dying to go out now and meet. Rinse, repeat, and do it all over again with the right people, friends, and memories to be made despite all of these havoc - ISIS, global warming, carbon footprints, rainforest depletions, any other plane crashes, natural disasters, anything - going on....

Let's just try and continue to enjoy what's left, live in the life you have, while also trying to find the best solution to all of this.

Live it. I'm going to work my ass off and get some moolah in exchange for another trip out and bounce positive vibes around the globe and fill in my oxygen tank or else I can't live.It's a lust I think I'd have to cave in.

"You are here! We found it!" that tricky Eat Your Kimchi cafe but we found it thanks to my usual map-reading prowess. In Seoul.

Till the next journey.
(see the archive)

화이팅!!!!!!!!!

 

Wanderlusting in 10 words or less...

Open skyscanner.com and book to a place you've never been

No. 3

Hello. A "designer's studio" feature. Korean version below. See how much I've suffered?

Which was more important, the home first or the admittance to school?
While yes, the importance of being admitted to the primary institution of choice is absolutely the greatest thing, I decided to rank it No. 4 because, all in all, the humble abode will house you no matter what when you are tired from the city's lights and frights of deadline rush.

To have lived in zone 1, having a London address, a London postcode is something not everyone can have. I was immensely lucky to immediately have found a place that caters everything and for me to move in without problems.

So yes, that is the no. 3.

Old, for Old Street, the zone between central and East London; the tech roundabout, London's answer to Silicon Valley; Google Campus; and of course, my home area for my year in London.

Where it all started:

I arrived in Heathrow with one suitcase, one handcarry, 21 clothing article, 3 pairs of shoes, and a mix of poundsterling and euros and I used it to this cab which no one told me about...

It's been one year, intensely crazy, I bid farewell to the political world of academia forever as a student but to return as a lecturer...

Who knew Old Street would be such a gem? What's a real, real, real pity is the fact that I didn't explore the area when I was living in the area. Everyone can shoot me now that I realised how Shoreditch market/ Old Spitalfields was just 15 mins. away from me? That I discovered somewhere in my second semester in London. Say, February?

Mhmm. I've moved out to the northern area of London in zone 3 for the next two months until 26 Nov, my flight from Gatwick. It'll be my first time to try on Garuda Indonesia, stopover Amsterdam, and to arrive back in CGK within 15.5 hours. Let's give it until 17 shall we.

But before everything else, the wonderful one year in my home that I dub as the lost Grand Budapest Hotel (our lobby is entirely powder pink!).

Then, let me introduce my 'London workshop' for the year. A designer will always be a designer. laughs I had editorial design withdrawal symptoms because my assignments were all words-based. If only, I could paint a picture with 5000 words, that would be nice.

"The Grand Lobby"

"...at the enormous Dining Room"

Peering through that rare London sunlight

"Doing mundane things, like World Cup at home's comfort"

"Monsieur Gustave H.'s room full of love letters"

(which actually, are my 'junk' of flyers, posters, and everything else)

The original beginning, Sept-Nov 2013

Guests around the year... and to see how long my tresses have grown for the year to denote change:

LOOKING BACK RIGHT NOW ^ I'M STARTING TO WALK DOWN THE PAINFUL MEMORY LANE.
OK London, time to see you properly now! At the time of writing, I have crossed of "for the first time" bucket list: Tate, Sloan Square, Saatchi, Hampstead, Stratford Westfield, North Greenwich, and the V&A at night, stunning.

(At the time of writing, TRIED) To Do: More museums, Observatory, Wimbledon, Wembley Park, Queen's Park, do the Independent bookstore map, and other cities and Wales, highly recommended by Luke.

No. 46

 46. Only know Yoshitomo Nara to visit London the day before - Contact PR rep for interview - Nab a schedule - Attend his sold-out artist talk

This bucket list number is totally new, unexpected, and mission accomplished on the day itself (technically it was worked out from the day before, waiting for a response).


Who said that the artist's audience cannot be as manic and eccentric the artist and to what they are presenting? I digress the idea. Herein, proven. Ha.



I will admit I've activated press power in order to snake through the event's sold out - in two hours about 600 waiting list names have been in - and to get a reserved seat, while everyone else was on the floor. I didn't get to use it for No. 32 - no outlet for it :(

But, but, but, it's Nara. (see right)

And for this new exhibition, I am ever more obsessed the way he paints his character's eyes. With the fact that he has shared with us the process, his layering technique with ever more beautiful colors are just beyond words.

So yes, I would like to own a piece of him one day (not just postcards). And no, he doesn't sign signatures. Moreover, during the long queue for the artist talk (see it here) there were that weird odds from the universe to place me behind an Indonesian girl talking to her mum-now-I-know-she's-her-aunt in Indonesian (so I know) and casually asked her if this was the right queue. Was I to queue or to skip them all through and go to the desk's guest list? To my spectacular amazement she said that she had no idea how because she was invited, because her aunt is the artist's friend. Let me translate that to you in English: Her aunt is a friend of Nara. One simple reason that happens is because her aunt is an artist herself, confirmed by the girl who I now know as Robyn, studying at Imperial. Sweetness.

Did I tell you I'll be visiting Tochigi next year? This comes in very handy


While I didn't nab an interview schedule, I was pleased to have asked him 3 questions during his talk. That will be saved for a Dear exclusive exhibition coverage for the London special I'm now trying very hard to collate within one month.

See and reblog my favourite artworks from this exhibition here.



  Statistically, 1 out of 100 of your friends will stand out as the weird one. I'm that one weird friend of yours - here goes!

 Finally, about the dress.
Megumi-san couldn't contain herself when I posed.
I said, "it is politically-correct layered dress and the attitude I'm suppose to give - it's all a fake"

This was the quickest OOTD decision with careful thought ever and the subliminal message I fold through is the best yet. I could drop in a 2K essay on theories of dress, but in a nutshell, this is what today's dress meant: I layered a metallic pastel dress, a color scheme the artist uses so ever often. Above it is a shirt, peeking collar on top. Where usually one wears inside a dress, I wore it out. Shows the abrupt layering and forceful show of being a slackety-slack girl.  I wore 'yakuza-like' mermaid stockings, which I DID NOT DRAW MYSELF BUT designed from a lovely friend in Hong Kong, RI by Carrie. Go buy. It was particularly white and the mermaid has geisha-pertaining make-up, which is somewhat the geisha's way of powdering herself complete.

While my question to Nara, or rather a stating point that his works are mukokuseki, it's hard not to delve that he's still a Japanese artist, hence the get-up that has that 'Asian kawaiiness' to it you can't help but dote or pacify... But to package it, a cream top with bold black slogan that states 'FAKE'.So, no. I bite, just like Nara's characters. We're angsty young beings.


Cutesy, kawaii, slackety, we're really just going against the world, really, and it's all just fake.


The shoes? Of course it meant something. Having similar resemblance to roses stuck in a bush, I'm only being a fake and getting the world's slaps by walking on thorns.

We are living in a bitter world or sweet world, and it's a reality that it's bittersweet. It's only how you make it, really. :)

Thank you Megumi-san for accompanying this nut head today! Www~

The full artist talk lowdown, snippets of the artist's holiday, more speeches and drawings and everything from His Heart will be on www.dearzine.com *promo, promo, I'm trying to revive it while I'm at it*

Plug-in promotion in 10 words or less...

Bored of art exhibitions? Enjoy it your way (see above)

Wednesday.

There was that infamous Monday, then it was a famous Friday. Yesterday, it was a wonderful Wednesday . The days that somehow worked for me like magic.

My closest friends in London pointed out, "Networking really does work for you like a charm" whereas I said "I still really don't know how to network in a networking event to just 'hello, what do you do?'"

But somehow, on cue like an actor who approached K and I yesterday out of the blue, he came behind us and said, "Are you involved in the media by any way or from the press?"

If we said no, then he's ask, "what do you do?" and then we'll politely answer what we do which is a start of a short or long conversation on how you bring it. How things work, very interesting.

So it was the time where I was in the cinema and I knew who I would be sitting beside with. Somehow he lost his phone somewhere and I offered him to key in his mobile (with a ready +81 but that was Japan and Korea is +82, ding dong) to call and somehow hope his phone to light up and for him to trace where it is. Smooth gesture and a quick introduce and the card's in my hand. That's my first and best gesture yet, it pays off being a specialist in the countries I aim to work in. Feat!

Even Y only told us yesterday the first time she met J while waiting for the radio, in the next 5 minutes of saying hello and talking they were on the topic of depression and suicide. She ranted, "To talk to a stranger about suicide! Literally!" Now that works wonders.

Wednesday was wonderful because of a catch-up lunch meeting at the Strand and new ideas are pushed forth and more forces are combined to have the opportunity for project collaboration, in LOOOOOONDOOOOOOOOOON.

Technically, there is some job happening! And if it really goes well with the plan then it fits perfectly for me to actually attend my graduation which I'm too lazy to drag myself half way around the world for and start working on more creative pursuit. Oh boy! So exciting (can drag on).

The night ended with meeting Yang-kangdongnim. Creator of IRIS drama. And he's so amicable.
One thing I knew now is that there's no problem for SK to make dramas/movies about NK, and portray it however they want. Now that's, one enlightening and serious tidbit.

Yeah, we look like we're bloodshot killers in this light.

Yell.

My editor-in-chief Lily-san and I at the historical Olympic stadium. It was soo bright we couldn't open our eyes, thank you.

YELL FOR JAPAN and, JAPAN TO THE WORLD.

Two days of Japanese music festival to commemorate and celebrate the final days of Tokyo's National Olympic Stadium before it gets demolished and rebuild for Tokyo Olympics 2020 (it was ready in 1963 or -4) - the day I got to firstly visit the stadium after the work begins with a proper press meeting, this is the account of the 2nd day of the trip and I made it to the stadium, where the Olympic flames were lit up among the huge attendees!

See what happened on the first day to catch up where I left off - including meeting the musician and producer Aiji after being Twitter friends what it looks like at the Shibuya scramble at 3AM - is it busy, or empty?

Bookmark this link as this gets into major details from morning to night of day 2. To enable the full experience read it bit by bit and play the music later!

Den-effing-tsu.

YELL FOR JAPAN and, JAPAN TO THE WORLD.

Two days of Japanese music festival to commemorate and celebrate the final days of Tokyo's National Olympic Stadium before it gets demolished and rebuild for Tokyo Olympics 2020 (it was ready in 1963 or -4).

The invitation came along with us (my editor and I of Animonstar Magazine in Indonesia) being smacked for 3 days in the heart of Tokyo. So much things to do, what can I really do? Too overwhelming to have been given an amazing direct return flights, a lucky room that's abuzz in Time Out Japan edition that it's only for hotel residents with room numbers -01 at the end to get the full panoramic view of Tokyo through Shibuya. If you've seen it on my Instagram, that very Shibuya scramble basically justifies the amazement upon my check-in:

This was possible because of the swift response and mailing of visa requirement letters, and who knew it was from Den-effing-tsu behind the JAPANNIGHT project - which without doubt, we'll only receive the best from the rest in terms of service. It was my dream/one of those places I wished to intern!

Being really glum on that particular Monday, and post-travel that left me in such disappointing mood (I was extremely in the down side of everything, which I'm telling you after the break), I finally am able to literally scream and yell out that it was a great trip - I can now focus on the happiest and laughable things I did within the 3 nights I was there.

Here's the lowdown on the first day...

Unleashed!

Unleashing the side we are not fearful of to show to the world...

I proudly present *with that dramatic drum roll* the professors in the making of the unofficial SOAS: Not School of Oriental and African Studies but, School of Otaku and Anime Studies!

Left to right: Anthea-sama, Jeanne, me, Eran, and Kash

 Yeah, this is school stuff we're doing ^