Tag: Residency

  • Fruit Wine by the River

    Fruit Wine by the River

    MRT from Woodlands towards Jurong East

    Rory and I met on Sunday evening. Earlier that day, I came home from improv training and laid on my bed with the familiar sense of raw anxiety.

    During BMT, when we’d queue in formation at Pasir Ris Bus Interchange to wait for our buses to come take us to the ferry terminal, I’d be breathless and giggly and I’d say “wow I’m so excited???” and I would find out in uni that I had anxiety.

    When I met her, she was sat next to the river. I sat down too and we made small talk, while I tried to seal my throat with my tonsils to stop my heart from doing that thing they do in Prison Break.

    4 canned fruit wines later, we got into really uncomfortable conversation territory where I asked her about “us” again, specifically lamenting how our Telegram conversations seemed so… Lame now.

    She was upset, telling me that she thought we went over this already, that she thought our small talk was already going very well and that she was tired of having The Talk every time.

    I was morose, of course, but somehow we started to see how we both wanted to reconnect again, and how the weird awkward Telegram convos were there because she wanted to draw boundaries, to stop me from having feelings and making things weird again.

    We started laughing a lot about the absurdity of the odd push/pull and how we did miss hanging out.

    She told me how hurtful it was to feel like the second banana (I was hopelessly enamoured by XM when I asked her out last year) and I apologised.

    I told her about how confusing it was for me, when she said she used to like me and said the opposite the next time we met and she apologised as well.

    We stopped being so guarded, and I started to tell her how I really wanted to just be friends again. Well, be friends again first, if it mattered, and she agreed.

    I promised to not talk about anything like this for the next year and that I’d assume that she’d never date me ever, which she replied with “I wouldn’t say ever…” but I told her to shut the fuck up and let me focus on the friendship first.

    I think we can begin hanging out and just talking shit. I sometimes fear having nothing to say, but I think things aren’t like that for now.

    I think our convo’s back to normal. We talked about booking driving lessons. I smiled the whole time.

    I don’t know. That feels like… a lot. Honesty really does a whole lot. I don’t know. I still have feelings for her. But I’m not judging my feelings. I’ll just let them stay next to me while I remember how much I love having a friend back.


    Oh yeah, Gratitude Lab 1.0 went so fucking well, you guys.

    Ping really just… Made a whole fucking workshop which people came for, and took part in wholeheartedly, and left feeling absolutely full.

    It’s Gratitude Lab 2.0 next week, then the real exhibition setup shit is gonna start.

    God, I’m fucking just… I don’t know.

    Be here now.

  • More Than You Can Chew

    More Than You Can Chew

    My Room, Pasir Ris

    I’m zipping two huge fucking files, it’s 1:43AM and meh, might as well write something here, right?

    Xue Min (my bestie) and I have somehow succeeded in submitting some proposal to NAC and RP.

    One unfortunate day, the RP people messaged us and whoop de fucking doo, we’re now Resident Artists for the “Community Arts@RP” residency.

    It just occurred to me that anyone curious about that residency could just Google it and find my blog. Welp.

    Concurrently, I also have a shiny role as a Multimedia Designer for Bound’s next project as well as their next next project.

    I realised there’s no need to zip shit, I could just copy the whole folder into my HDD which would do just fine.

    Anyway.

    This whole residency business has made me realise a couple of things, which I will present to you in point form.

    • Your next crisis is always the worst one ever.
    • Ergo, every crisis is manageable.
    • Anyone can do art.
    • To handle bureaucracy and red tape, allow for 50% more time than required.
    • Everyone is trying to help you. Let them.
    • Every time you feel a spike of anxiety at a new complication, realise that you have been through this before. Tell the spike, thank you, I’ve got this, okay?
    • Your friends are more willing to travel to Woodlands at 9am on a Saturday with only 5 days’ notice than you think.

    Okay. My new method of “just copy it” saved me half an hour of zipping and then copying, and I predict another half hour of copying back and unzipping. God, I’m a genius.

    I don’t know who’s reading this, but if you want to do a workshop to learn about mindfulness and expression of gratitude, visit bit.ly/GratitudeLab1.

    Will post more soon, okay bye love you