Singapore's Tourism

My father dragged the family to the zoo. Which basically meant staring at caged animals that were placed there so our country can earn tourism revenue by flaunting wildlife that is not even native (foreign talent even with animals lolol)

I love how our national pride and international image is based on our compensation for inherent inadequacy.

It was pretty meh. Animals in enclosures; humans in a bigger enclosure, the usual.

It's kind of meta how the illusion of free roam in the zoo mirrors the illusion of free roam in animal enclosures. You think you can go wherever you want, but you pay a price for being there, and are subtly guided in specific directions.

On another note, the Singapore Flyer seems to be a largely redundant feature of our tourism industry. Sure, it makes our skyline look nice. But I doubt it earns enough revenue to sustain itself. 

Not only is it boring and pointless, it is overpriced. Which sucker would ride that thing?

I think tourist attractions are hard to sustain unless they earn revenue from locals (eg the zoo), but the only people who ride the ferris wheel are tourists who have never seen Singapore before, and are duped into thinking it's an essential part of the Singapore vacation experience.

Actually it's not our fault that Singapore doesn't have enough of a history to have cultural charm exuding from its constantly renovated walls the way England's brick and stone buildings do.

More Awful Questions

Do I have the right to want fulfilment in my life?
I'm only bloody seventeen. Shouldn't I just be putting everything aside for the sake of schoolwork? Isn't that what's supposed to matter?
Shouldn't I be concentrating on making this sacrifice for the long run?

Am I being self indulgent in wanting more than this? Especially since I don't actually have the time for anything more than schoolwork?
Is it wrong if I take the time to do things I can't afford to?

Am I being unreasonably whiny if I am dissatisfied with the current state of affairs?
Is the only acceptable course of action to just suck it up and deal with it?

I can't remember the last time I did anything worthwhile. Ms Yeo is going to be judging my Deviantart gallery like "Lol what is she doing, there's nothing here" -.-


Sometimes I think NJ was the worst choice I ever could have made. It has done nothing but waste my time and make a depressive cynic of me.
My only consolation is the small number amazing people I have met here. Although there are also a lot of other people I wouldn't have wasted my time on if I could do things over. So is it really a consolation? I don't know. I feel like I should be putting my time and effort into things that are more than a paper grade.
Again, back to the question: who the hell am I to be wanting so much? I should know my place and just do what I'm supposed to, right? Sit down and fucking study for once.

Argh A-Levels

It's probably my fault that I can't just shut up, sit down, and do what every other student is doing. I feel so fucking dumb.

Also I keep having these awful periods of doubt where I question all my commitments. Whether I'm as committed as I should be, whether I should have made them, whether they're going to go anywhere. Like my tuesday sculpture class. Signing up for that may have been suicide. Is it even going to be worth it? Sculpture is not my forte in the first place. But then again isn't that why I signed up? Is it worth it, sacrificing a whole day every week and coming back home at 11pm? This, among other things.

Okay I am shutting up now.

Art, and the things that plague me.

My eloquence is dwindling. I can feel my ability to express myself deteriorate with every passing year. Increasingly I find my self faced with the frustration of not knowing how to phrase things without losing their nuance. Maybe it's because I've given up writing. Maybe it's because I don't read anymore. Maybe it's because I'm just lazy.


My recent trip to London made me question a lot of things. Questions that had always been there, but I was never forced to address.
Stereotypical questions like the definition of art, and where one draws the line between art and mere design, and if art always has to have a meaning.

Looking at some of the works in London, I tried to keep an open mind. But sometimes you cannot help but think, "Wtf are even doing. Do you even know? I sure as hell don't."
I guess every piece of work deserves the benefit of the doubt, but then how do you decide what has meaning and what doesn't?
And if it doesn't have meaning, does that in itself say something? What if the irony wasn't intended? And then again, what if it was?
And maybe sometimes art isn't about the end-point, it's about the process. Then does the end product say anything in itself?
Art doesn't always have to be visually appealing, but then if it doesn't, does it lose value?


I also now grapple with my sense of self-identification as an aspiring artist. Up until recently I've always been primarily aesthetically driven. I always thought I was going to do something mindless and commissioned, like illustration.

The way London made me engage with art opened up the new possibility of going into fine arts. I find this to be rather frightening, this idea of entering a void that is seemingly directionless, unguided, and infinite. Do I even have anything to say with my art? Will I ever have anything worthwhile to say? If my work is ironic, would people even understand that?

I don't even know what university courses I want to consider, I have no niche. People ask me what I'm good at, and I don't know how to answer them. I kind of do a bit of everything and suck at most of it, really.


People tell me I'm good at what I do but the truth is that I have no idea what the fuck I'm doing. You'd think that I have a solid sense of where I stand, given my reputation. But the truth is that I'm insecure as an artist and it is entirely warranted. Complacency is dangerous.

Also another thing that people tell me is that I'm talented. Maybe in the past I took it as a compliment but now it's bittersweet. I have no talent, just a lot of interest. I look back at all my work prior to JH3/4, and I fucking sucked. Maybe I still do.
I got where I am (not very far) through stubborn persistence, sacrifice of grades, investment of time, and a lot of effort (not all of which was fruitful).
When people say that it's talent, that I've been blessed, I feel like all of that is discounted and attributed to lucky genetics. Well fuck you. It's not easy. It never has been. Things don't come to me as naturally as you think they do, okay?


I am terrified of the A-levels. Hell, I'm terrified of the promos. My cohort doesn't get to retain, the school would rather kick us out to be someone else's problem than keep us as a black mark on the record. Like a failed experiment. I hate being the guinea pig.
They say not to put all your eggs in one basket, they tell you that you have to put effort into all your subjects. Well what if ALL your baskets end up inadequate because you split your eggs? What the fuck do I do then?
Hell, what scares me is that even if I do put all my effort into art, I might still never be anything more than mediocre. I mean mediocre among the art students. I don't need people to console me with the fact that I'm above mediocre compared to rest of the population, that's a given. But where I am now is not good enough. I don't know if I have the capacity to be good enough.

Sorry right now I just suck at everything, I can't even do GP. Mrs Tan wanted to see my name in the top 10 for LA, and every year I let her down.
I've never scored among the top art students either.

Okay I should stop typing now. I have like a lot of History to catch up on.
Life right now is charlie foxtrot.

Somehow I'm human after all. Who knew? (Warning: OOC Cheesiness)

Hello. As you might have noticed, I've made changes to this blog.
Firstly, it's no longer password protected, the purpose of which is to motivate myself to write things that are not entirely idiotic and hormonally-driven.
Secondly, I've moved all previous posts to storage. For obvious reasons.
And thus we start afresh.

Today Bo and I went to Hwachong because they required caricature artists. We were told next to nothing about the event.
We were instructed to arrive at 2pm, when in fact we were only needed at 5pm. In the meantime we did various tasks that the logistics team was supposed to do.
All in all, it was boring, tiring, and a little lonely when he abandoned me to talk to others (whom I was not familiar with).
Also, we later found out that it was a carnival/sportsmeet for the intellectually disabled. I admit I was a little frightened. Plus.....retarded people are hard to draw. I was a little disturbed at my low capacity for compassion.

I wasn't exactly in the most welcoming or warm of moods when the carnival event started at 5, but somehow... the moment I started drawing, everything just melted away. Judgement, complaints, everything.
It was hectic. One drawing after another, 5 minutes for each piece. Insanity. And yet there was this calm that settled over me. Like there was no conscious thought. There was only their face, and my charcoal.
And suddenly they were beautiful people. There's an intimacy you feel when you draw a person. You study their features. You notice the darkness under their eyes. The lopsided way they smile. The way some of them find it almost traumatic to smile. Some of them were so awkward.
And somehow I felt the compulsion to smile at them (you know how unlike me that is). Genuinely smile. The kind of smile that tries to reach them, that encourages them to smile back so I can capture that part of them.

I can't remember the last time I had a heart for anyone. Usually I'm apathetic or disdainful of everything. Especially people. But somehow, maybe, I'm not as hardened as I thought.

On another note, I drew a half naked angel for fun, and one of the volunteers asked if he could keep it HAHAHAHA. Also, I tried to draw Aisyah and failed miserably lol.