Believe it or not, I don’t seem to have the time to update a blog anymore. Though, I’ve recently taken on a liking in Tumblr for their nice photos and stuff. But still don’t get the hang of finding nice photos other than those that pop right in front of my screen.

Anyhow, am gonna make a conscious decision to make use of my DSLR that I’m lugging to Suntec everyday, but not using it. That’s just weird. But then again, there’s not much to take. Yet. Not many people around. Haha.

Side note, think sometimes I fret too much, or think too much, or imagine too many bad things at the sight of a small little thing. Please assure me that’s normal… I hope I’m not bonkers. I’m just genuinely… Interested and concerned.

If anyone were smart enough, he/she will know where to find me.

The response to a phone call, says a lot about the r/s between the 2 parties.

I figured, that maybe if I were to write more on this page without withdrawing from whether people are actually viewing it or not, there might actually be more content of my life being poured into this electronic place.

Not that I keep a paper diary of sorts, but at some point in time I did write on another blog, a password-protected one. But that blog also went dead because of the changes in my life. There were loopholes in that system to say the least. Trust and doubt was the main issue I suppose.

So for the most part of the time when I’m not blogging, I’ve been blogging in my mind, or “blogging” with God. Having chats with Him were, and still is, comforting.

So yeah, some what of a a revelation from a close friend, I was reminded that WordPress does have a feature where you can password protect selected entries. Now why didn’t I think of that. So now I could just focus on digitizing all my brain matter, all in one place. Here.

Sometimes when I read blogs, it amazed me how little someone can say, but it means a lot. I really admire the power of language in that sense. Poems, songs. So much underlying meanings to them. Frankly, am still struggling with trying to pick up productivity every since GKS’s grand idea kicked into my life, not that I have a choice for that matter.

Past couple of weeks, mostly the weekends, have been wonderful. Always appreciate the great company that God has blessed me with. Every single day, I always thank God for the few people in my life that I truly appreciate with all of my heart. Because of the things that they have done for me, however insignificant it might be, I truly appreciate it.

.

Now I’m just wondering, will anyone actually remember. Did that “social experiment” thing last year, but the results were kinda woozy. And also, have a great idea of how to spend the day, preferably with chosen friends, oh dreams are so great.

Though there’s always the fears. Overcoming is a mad thought when you have no idea what’s on the other side, especially when you’re so comfy with the current side right now. I need guidance. And if the horoscope thingy (which for a long time I’ve been treating as a “coincidence where possible”), at SG Flyer is true, then God just guide me. If it isn’t already glaring out in the open for all to see already?

Or perhaps this is the way guys and girls are wired individually, still trying to make sense of it all. But God has His timings, and by experience, they are always at the right time, at the most awesomeness of times. But the process of awaiting those timings are sometimes, in extreme cases, excruciatingly annoyingly painful to wait.

For what it’s worth, “no one puts new wine in old wineskin”. Mentioned 4 times in the Bible. Must mean something doesn’t it. Obvious enough no?

Faith, Love, Hope. Oh God bless my English too.

Had an amazing start to the new year. Not how I had imagined it be say… 2 years before. But nonetheless, God has been good. New opportunities arose, new projects undertaken. It’s just amazing.

Was handling graphics and media for the Siloso Beach Countdown Party 2010/11. In particular, doing the countdown video for the whole beach and Sentosa to see. You know that one that goes 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 on the video screens as you shout yourself horse? Yeah, that was done by me. The only challenging part was to sync it with the exact correct timing. Cos since the whole to Sentosa was probably there, and the event is also broadcasted live on 987FM! How awesome is that. And everyone is looking to the screens to countdown, that’s one big stress boulder.

The original 50-sec cue failed. Missed it by almost a full-second. Luckily the 30-sec cue was precise and then it went ‘live’. Whoa.

Another eventful thing that happened. While operating the crane camera, almost got burned by the pyrotechnics that went off right behind me as I was craning out of stage, which meant that my ass was facing the pops. Boom they went without warning, and sparks landed on my hair and hand. Well done man.

Anyhow, be glad that 2011 is here. ORD-ing in less than 6mths time. Totally looking forward to it, actually don’t feel like doing any work right about now. Not too sure what they’re going to revocate me as either, or where I’ll be for my reservice. How about having reservist while doing NDP or doing photography, or media consultation? That would be awesome. Woo.

Thanking God for all the great things that has been happening in my life, and of course all the great people that I have around me, in ministry, in church, in zone. :D

Edit: Perhaps I should do a collage of photos from key events in 2010. That’s provided if I have the time to do that to begin with. Bummer NS.

Just a small thing. Nothing much really.

NS stinks. Face it. 80% of NSFs will probably tell you that.

But on a brighter note, it does expose you to people that you’ll probably never meet in your life otherwise. And learn about different people and their characters.

If there’s something worthwhile about NS, it’s about observing and learning the good and bad points of other people, whoever they might be.

Bottomline, the battlefield and the office are two completely separate environments. You can’t expect to use the same leadership tactics in both environments, it’s personal suicide.

We’re all NSFs, bo bian have to serve 2 yrs (in some cases 1yr 8mths). So stop making life difficult for others of the same kind, even when the regulars aren’t. There’s gotta be some basic (read: BASIC) mutual respect between each other.

And please do try (just try) to keep yourself in check from the new found power that have been (I won’t say deservingly) bestowed on you. Good leaders come from the best servants.

To me, NS is just like another “school” that you go to. Go in, learn some shit, come out to the working world and never actually use them. Face it, how often are you gonna drive a tank and shoot rifles?

So I’m gonna say this once and I’m gonna say it clear. Stop treating people like they owe you a living, no one does, and no one ever will (unless you saved his life or something, but that’s another thing altogether). Have some basic mutual respect, even when communicating via SMS or email. The world doesn’t revolve just around you, think about others too, if you can. Unless of course, you’re intending to sign on for life, then I have nothing to say.

I rest my case. Sheesh.

iUnspoken’s the name.

But what’s DARK Productions [SG] you might ask. It’s the company name that I often link myself to when liaising with overseas merchants or clients. It was formed in 2004 when I was still in secondary school. Part of a theatre drama, a group of us created it to give our production a name. Why DARK? It’s quite simple. Because for the most part of our beginnings, our shots and videos were all underexposed. Hence the name.

But more recently, we changed it to all CAPS. Supposedly to stand for ‘Doing-Acts-of-Random-Kindness’. The idea behind it is that we help young students like what we used to be, to fulfill their filmmaking or media dreams where possible, for free. Tutoring, mentoring, etc etc. Okay that’s the DARK Productions [SG] part.

.

The ‘iUnspoken’ part, didn’t actually start out as iUnspoken. As you might know, the blogging world pretty much started around 2003, as hype was building up. I too started a blog, got an email address, etc etc, that sort of thing. My first blog wasn’t with Blogger or WordPress though. It was with this now-defunct journalling service called ‘Diary-X’, via a recommendation from a friend. Apparently according to them, they never referred themselves as a blogging service, but rather a journalling service that was, online, which in my opinion equates to blogging. Whatever makes them happy I suppose.

Anyhow, my initial blog name was ‘x-unspoken-x’. Mighty long eh? After a while I realized it was a pain to type all the hyphen and stuff, but I didn’t have a choice to change it.

Then as the blogging world would know, Diary-X’s main server drive containing all the saved dairies, failed in Feb 2006. The owners of the website sent it for data recovery, but afterwards announced that the drive was irrevocably damaged and all data was indeed lost. Rather than reconstruct the site, they decided to close the site down, officially dated on 31 March, 2006. That was the end of my initial blogging life.

Diary-X did launch some other project I think. Attempts to revive the site, and integrate it with other features of more popular blogging sites, kinda failed? The forums, IRC channels was basically dormant. They’ve never made any progress since then. Bummers.

So I decided to change my name then, to ‘iUnspoken’, moving to the more popular service then called Blogger, and started blogging there since Apr 2006. Uncanny as it might sound, it was quite refreshing to blog from a new perspective, on a new service. Why uncanny? It’s because I had just received Christ a few months before the server crashed. I kinda took it as a turning point to forget about the life that I used to have, one that I’m not particularly proud of in sec sch, and start a new one, in Christ, in poly, on Blogger.

‘iUnspoken’ was what I chose because I used to be rather clammed up in sec sch. Partially due to the fact that I didn’t really get along in a all-guys school, I would rather hang out with girls. (We’ll leave that for some other time.)

In Apr 2008, I bought myself a domain name, which actually is not all that expensive really. Just USD10 a year. So iunspoken.blogspot.com became just ‘iUnspoken.com’.

In Feb 2009, I switch blogging service again to WordPress, for the basic reason that their interface was much more pleasant than Blogger’s. Blogspot always gave me a feeling that I was coding my blog entries rather than really writing them. Half the time I was more focussed on HTML coding instead.

So my blogging life was pretty much dead from Feb 2009 for quite a number of months. Never more than an entry per month, I can’t even remember the frequency of updates anymore. But it was quite, dead. Partially because of what was happening in my life at that time, and cause I was trying real hard to have a decent transfer of blog entries from Blogger to WordPress, which as you might have guessed, didn’t work out too well. So I started a new blog on WordPress, not on the dotcom, but on my own server, which gives my WordPress the ability to do funky stuff. I just never had the time to work on the older entries since then cos NS took up most of my (otherwise interesting and happening) life. Ahem.

So that’s my blogging name’s history! Or rather, my entire blogging history. Hope it ain’t too long.

On a side note, iUnspoken is also my online alias. Anywhere that you see a profile with the name ‘iUnspoken’, chances are 99.99%, it’s me. Haven’t come across a point where I need to find another username before, perhaps because what I’ve chosen is unique enough? Awesome stuff.

Comment comments.

Taken during a shoot for NDP2010 at Padang. To me, I think this is one of the best looking profile photos I had in a long long time.

1. Any, and I mean ANY, electronic item that passes through my hands in daily usage and still survives, is a proven working product. Don’t believe? Average lifespan of a Mac device before it conks out (on me or vice versa), 2.5 years. Average lifespan of a Windows product in that same usage pattern, 2 days. My iPod Nano has been to the freezer, microwave oven, and even under the tire of a truck. Still works. Need anymore proof?

2. I take a while to match names to faces. English names does better. But I look at you with a weird look, it means “you look familiar but I can’t pinpoint your name.” No offence really, I still remember your face if that’s what counts.

3. I used to love durians. Now I can’t stand the smell of them. Anyone knows if puberty changes that?

4. I’m a clean freak. My table and room might not actually show that. Maybe it’s just because I haven’t found a proper management system for all my stuff. But trust me, I’m a clean freak. I would take apart a computer to clean out the dust in the heatsink.

5. I absolutely cannot stand it when things don’t work. I need speed. When I click on something, it better do what it’s supposed to do, and fast. No patience you might say, depends on mood really. But the general idea is that I like things when they work. Which is why I ditched Windows. It didn’t work for me.

6. I’m very particular about the quality of food. Though served and might not be up to expectations, I won’t actually not eat it unless it’s absolute garbage. Think the starving kids.

7. I like taking risks. Trying new stuff, stuff that never been tried before. Though 99% of the time, people freak out on me because of that. Odd. Life’s about challenges right?

8. I LOVE Starbucks. Not just coffee, Starbucks. Coffeebean doesn’t really cut it cos their beans aren’t flavorful enough. You might not realize that though, but I’m quite picky on the quality of coffee made. I once made one SB outlet do my drink again too. And, my dad switch beans in the home espresso machine from SB to CB, and I could tell the difference from the first sip. Coffee lover I am.

9. I don’t like them trendy hairstyles. Think it’s boring. Not that my hairstyle is anything close to exciting, but at least it’s easier to recognize me in a crowd rather than to look over hundreds of the same hair. Uniqueness.

10. I think I’m generally quite critical about most stuff, especially media. But leaning towards having constructive criticism. Think that’s what makes things better and more appealing too. Though of course it leads to having more people not like me in the process, though the process is largely dependent on their reception to criticism in general. To learn or not to learn.

11. I like to teach, to people who want to learn. I could consider teaching as a career if not for the marking and setting of tests and stuff.

12. I think maternity photography is the most interesting, to me at least. It’s time-limited, resource-limited etc etc, and challenges the reception and openness of people. I like. Think it’s the most beautiful thing, maternity.

13. I like school uniforms. UNIQUE school uniforms mind you. It says a lot about the school, the design, the colors, the sizing, style, etc etc. Guys uniforms look generally the same though, that’s unfortunately boring. The girl’s uniform are the interesting ones. Lots of different designs and styles. And like I said, from the uniform, you can tell what kinda school it is.

14. I think I’m generally cheerful? Not that my face shows it all the time though, and unless I’m totally conked out too. I can’t really give a shit of people who try to demoralize me, though I do take their comments constructively where applicable.

15. I put my best in everything that I do. For the most part, I believe that if you wanna do something right, you do it once to the best of your ability. No point try and error cos by the time you reach the final leg, you’ve cause so much unnecessary hurt in the process. Loyalty is the key. If you think you are or have been missing out on better stuff, or people or guys or girls, then you’ve gonna be miserable all your life.

.

Okay seriously, 15 points is nowhere near enough to describe a person. Things like this, the first point is the hardest to start off with, and you can’t stop at 15. Odd eh? But nonetheless…

So what ya think?