02-23-2007: Office Adventures

There's a lion on the loose on my little office desk. Thankfully, there are some hunters (soldiers contemplating to be mercenaries soon!) who have tracked him down and cornered him. Life in the office is safe.

Or will the lion outwit the three soldiers. Will quantity (three soldiers with ammunition) be outnumbered by quality (one clever lion).

02-22-2007: Patience & Persistence

Got this image in my e-mail from a cousin. The art in the picture is made out of eggs. Yes, real unbroken eggs. If this isn't a showcase of the power of patience and persistence, then what is? Who said art was easy??

02-21-2007: Circus of Life

It's a story of world-spanning fantasy. Likewise, our life is also sort of a reality circus.

02-20-2007: Babel

Intense is one word to capture the Babel experience. So watch it and more importantly listen.

02-19-2007: Simple + Complex = Simple

An unusual equation arises from the event where a bunch of simple everyday objects like a pencil is arranged in a complex, but symmetric way to produce another simple object - a flower.

Meanwhile, also stumbled on to Russell Davies' blog entry in defence of that simple object called the pencil.

02-18-2007: Gong Xi Fa Cai!

Or congratulations and have a happy and prosperous new year ahead. Prosperity awaits in the Year of the Pig.

02-17-2007: A Short History of America

The story of America in 12 cartoon strip boxes. Robert Crumb captures it in elegiac detail.

02-16-2007: Eternal Christmas Gag

This famous New Yorker cartoon by Charles Addams is a classic in the true sense. It captures the essence of a great gag. Every moment, shading, visualization of this single piece is perfectly timed. Like the Christmas carolers standing and singing; the white spotlight shading on the carolers and the oil in the cauldron; the mischievous glee on the face of the Addams family members; the perspective of the church from top to bottom.

As the cartoonist Ivan Brunetti explains in the book 'In The Studio: Visits with Contemporary Cartoonists' (from which I got this picture):

"This gag sort of straddles the knife edge of Schadenfreude. We just get enough to see that they are carolers, and thus their implied impending pain amuses us. If all we saw was some people running around with their eyeballs melting, with no idea of the backstory, all of this simply would be pointlessly cruel and much less funny..."

02-15-2007: The Work Comes First

Yet another day as we ramble and scramble into the night trying to crack the big idea for a client meeting the next day, this image (from the amazing W+K London blokes) makes the big motivation clear in our mind.

02-14-2007: LOVE

It is Valentine's Day. What a coincidence that when I was walking down to a store near my office that sells fine cheese, I stumbled on this Robert Indiana LOVE sculpture. In Singapore, it is on Penang Road which is parallel to Orchard Road. It is quite amazing that I had not really paid attention or noticed it earlier. Is it because today is lovers day?

I had seen one of these in New York City. The original and first one was installed in Philadelphia.

02-13-2007: G Love & Special Sauce

Sometimes posters just make you smile and feel happy. This is one such wonder. G Love & Special Sauce with loads of love from the W+K Portland guys.

02-12-2007: X is the New Y

This is another experiment in bizarre data mapping. Here, an attempt is made to capture and document every instance of the phrase "is the new" encountered from various sources in 2005.

02-11-2007: Sign Sex Story

This is absolutely fantastic. I have no words to describe it. Just click on it and read the story yourselves.

02-10-2007: Car as Art

Weekend inspiration came in the form of some of the most renowned masters of pop art leaving their imprint on some classic BMW cars. The works of Roy Lichtenstein, Andy Warhol, Frank Stella and Ken Done made it to the Singapore shores as a part of the BMW Car Arts Collection.

02-09-2007: Walking in the Shadow of Legends

Had to go down to a meeting with a rather demanding client on Friday evening. It was my first meeting with them. As we approached their office the tension and frustration was building. But when the car turned into their drive, which to my surprise was named after the great Indian poet and Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore, the mission became more important, now that we couldn't let down the great man's name. Such is the strange power of motivation and inspiration when it suddenly bounces on you from the unlikliest of places.

02-08-2007: Eno Therapy

Chaos + The Ambient Genius of Brian Eno = 77 Million Paintings

Spaced out inspiration for us poor souls.

[Image from Wired magazine - Issue 15.02 | February 2007]

02-07-2007: Asianess

Today is our big presentation to a key European client about 'Asianess' - the underlying premise or theme that is a commonality or binding factor among the many disparate Asian cultures. This image (generated with Flickr Toys) is a mosaic of some of the Asian distinctiveness.

02-06-2007: Something Fishy

Found this image on The Painted Chef blog. If you are a fishhead (or seafood lover), like me, this image definitely puts a smile on the face. Especially when you are working on a presentation late into the night and your are famished. I know, its only bones left. But I love the bones too.

02-05-2007: One Year After

Going through my old journal notebooks, I stumbled on to this ticket stub from exactly a year back. On Feb 5th 2006, I had gone and watched the Bollywood flick Rang De Basanti at the Regal cinema in New Brunswick, New Jersey, near my sister's place. A year has passed and my life has moved from one continent to another. But it somehow still feels like yesterday.

02-04-2007: Magic Mushrooms

There's a kindergarten under my apartment block. In Singapore, the kindergarten apartment blocks usually have murals of colorful characters painted on its walls outside. I was surprised to see these colorful mushrooms on the walls of my apartment. Does these mushrooms signify magic for the kids or is it only for adults who look at it with a child's eye. Or is it the mushrooms that powered up the Super Mario Bros that kids connect to?

02-03-2007: Remastered

In my job, I'm finding out day-after-day, that when we are working with brands and coming up with new briefs, strategies and what-not, we are more of recycling or reordering or reconnecting the same old formulas, structures and ideas. It is more in tune with the Eastern philosophy that the environment changes, we are essentially same. Just adapting to it in ways that please us and bring good results or harmony.

This weekend, while cracking my brain over one such brand project, this cover reminded me even more about how we are just sort of masters of remastering.

The book Remastered is about how new age artists and designers deconstruct some of the masterpiece art works of the Renaissance and Middle Ages to today's context.

02-02-2007: Baghdad

This image from last weekend's FT has captured an aspect of America that many don't see. Even though it's a shot of director Spike Lee (who's new documentary is on New Orleans called "When the Levees Broke") in a neighborhood of New Orleans dilapidated by hurricane Katrina, there is an interesting element that caught my eye.

In the background, on the wall there is a graffiti which says Baghdad. Whoever wrote it, is he trying to give the message that their misery is almost akin to that of the people of Baghdad, Iraq. Or is it that while the Bush government created the mess in Baghdad, nature took it's course on New Orleans and devastated it. Either ways it is a stark reminder of the fact that we are not immune to the dark powers of nature as well as those of fellow human beings.

02-01-2007: Fuck Off

Stumbled once again on to this piece of advice that my old VCU Adcenter professor, Pat Burnham, had hand-stamped for us when we were ready to graduate in spring 2002. It is quite a stark and funny advice, I would say. Just fuck off from here. And then get out into the real world and kick some ass and take name and do spectacular fuckin' work, as Pat has invisibly stamped on the paper.