ampulets

27 Jan click for flickr view Visiting emporium-like bookstores is a little like travelling. You either visit the sites you have obvious interest with the hope of deepening your knowledge and acquiring more of what you love, or you escape to the towns where you cannot entirely navigate the street signs and have no expectation of what you may encounter. For the latter, your eye scans the shelves and you pick up whatever it is that triggers a memory, a latent question, a curiosity. With little background in that field, the links are sometimes tenuous but the views almost always expansive. I've been doing a lot more of the latter - escapist bookstore travel - in the nature and science shelves of Kinokuniya. Admittedly, the pop science and coffeetable books make easy the approach for subjects like water, lobotomy, stars...and sea turtles.

Taken from youtube , 1938 version of Lonely Planet. Footage from this film is available for licensing from www.globalimageworks.com. This 11min clip is titled "Singapore - Cross-roads of the East 1938". 71 years later, I think we are still hawking the same thing about this island. Ah, the legacy of a colonial imagination. And the streets are surprisingly clean!

J sun bathing The sun is back on our island. I almost forgot about the sun. But still, there is something reassuring in its return. Not for its monotonous heat, but for the semblance of a pattern or season that it brings. Another season, of which this island has three: hot & humid; rainy & sleepy; indoor and aircon. J is watching online the live CNN coverage of Barack Obama's inauguration as US President, the rehearsed process of ceremony. I guess everything happens in a sequence of patterns, order, influence - whether or not we recognise it at its occurrence. And maybe this makes historians a kind of sequential artists. Artwork by Jose Munoz When I first heard the term "sequential art", it seemed an odd way of describing what was explained to me as comics. My first "graphic novel", a second-hand 1987 English copy of Joe's Bar by J. Munoz and C. Sanpayo, but I didn't recognise it as "sequential art". Though composed of distinct fra...

the shape of the land Amps is spotted on Culture Push , thanks much to contributor Michele! J mentioned in it one of his favourite design projects, the quarterly newsletter for this school that ampulets design has been developing since 2007 (image above). The rest of the designs are here where, more importantly, you can read about the good work the school has been doing with the talented kids.

30 Dec, 31 Dec, 2 Jan, 5 Jan... click on images for flickr view Regret is not something productive, motivated and generally forward-looking folks are prone to feel. I don't have such ambition, but I don't want to regret wasting the time-off from work that I've been blessed with this year. So for a start, exercising some discipline for a drawing a day when I'm not at class or working on any assignments is the plan. That and spending more time with other folks. Y: Boss, how about you? How's the new year looking like for you? J: Must get our website up. Y: OK. J: And one or two more good, regular clients. Y: Wah. Very task-focused. J Well, as I'm aging... Y: [ aging?! ] J: ...I want to adjust and come to terms with the new rhythm of life. Y: [ what "new rhythm of life"?! ] J: You know, energy levels are down - physically, mentally. I don't want it to be an excuse. Must find the energy to want to do things. Not just exercise ...