Thank You Emila for this creative "let us spread the love" award. I have become a fan of Emila site lately. She does an amazing work on her varied illustrations. One of her work is here too - the "I am Proud All Malaysia Blogger." Well, she creates another creative work that is the "I love You This Much Award"-with an intention to spread out love to other bloggers. And so there it is (pic above-the red cartoon), but then i just add some doodling of my own and some words, mix them all together using Adobe Illustrator. Ohh, if you are wondering what doodling is about, just continue reading below. Back to love award, I am happy to present Emila award to these people. The honored ones are ida, dbab, roxychicks, abah, didi, bidarlah, bali, abnerd, ourelog, mangosteenskin and ruanmt. Well, dont worry yaa.. this is not another tag homework. Just feels like passing the award. huhu. Anyway, if you feel like passing it along, please give credit to Emila for her creative work yaa. You can do this by following these :
1.You can just copy the award and paste it in your editor box or you can download them into your computer and later upload in your blog.
2.If you get tagged (and want to play along), write a post with links to blogs that you love,
3. Link to this post so that people can easily find the exact origin of the meme.


Now!! Lets doodle but not about rattan crafts yaa... I stumble upon chrysalis site mentioning about doodling - doing it the..Zentagle way. I like her doodle. Looks cool in its own way. There are few things which i like on her site, that i might give it a try one or two. According to Zentangle site - "We wondered if it was possible to create a simple system so others could enjoy a similar experience. And so began our journey towards discovering this simple and elegant system we call Zentangle." Never have thought that you can doodle yourself into something cool. Zentangle- i assume the word is a combination of two words - Zen and tangle. Zen yourself, like meditating through tangle-like-scribbling or repetitive drawings. You can buy your own starter Kit from Zentangle if you choose to explore your inner creative and critical self. :) Well, it seems that ordering would be too hassle for me, and second, things provided inside the kit are basically things that i always have with me. So, I thought earlier " Why don't i try and see how it goes?"



Taa raaa!!..... so here is my doodle. Hey, i strongly recommend that you should try this on your spare time.
I name mine "CHAOS in Orderly Fashion." I did this yesterday armed with a mug of caffein @ coffee. It took me 30 minutes to fully draw all the repetitive design/ pattern ( if you like to call it). I said to myself, "no matter how it goes, you must not erase but keep on going." No doubt i was really into it. I was focus and in a strange way, it was like some sort of meditating-freeing yourself from your surround world, just concentrating on task at hand. It did help me to stay focus and channel out what was inside me. The drawing was quick, but that black scribbling took me hours to finish. Patient was the key word. I did it section by section, admiring each time i completed one section :) sweat sweat. I decided to use only ink pen for this purpose doodling on my sketch book. So, here it is at last. Doodling is a great way to get creative. Make a few of them and you can frame and hang em on the wall. If you find this to be a bit challenging, I would recommend doing it on a smaller scale - like 10cm x 10cm. Yeahhh.. give it a try and see how it goes. You might end up with a surprise. As for me, where does it lead from here? hehe (evil grin), One thing for sure, tomorrow, 13 students of mine will be getting the same task as i had before. Well, hopefully there will be a second part in which i ll post their zen-like-doodling. Cheers and hepi blogging yaa. Oh btw, do post and let me know if you happen to do this.

Di atas ini adalah produk kraf anyaman rotan yang dihasilkan secara "ekspress" oleh para pelajar. Projek ini sengaja diberi untuk melihat keseluruhan pemikiran secara tersirat, samada mampu untuk mengolah sesuatu hasil daripada PnP. Bakul rotan, bekas buah, lampu dan pasu bunga antara produk2 sinonim yang dihasilkan. Seperti biasa, ada yang cemerlang, ada yang biasa dan segelintir yang boleh dikira belum lagi mencapai tahap kompetensi yang diharapkan. Apa2 pun sempena cuti minggu, saya ingin selamat ber"Blog" ..dan "enjoy.."

Rattan crafts - these are all works done by my students..again :). It was a quick project - no specific instructions were given though - The idea was to see their strength in terms of design and skill. It was an open-free-to-do whatever-you-want type of quick project. At the end, fews are interesting, half of those are just quite average and there are few lots which need to be whiplashed - whoopissshhh! (hehe just kidding.) I am not going to blog more on this since today is saturday. So, my "Happi.Happi Joy Joy" mood is here. Just sharing these rattan crafts (pictures) is all i want to do today. Hope you enjoy seeing them as i have enjoyed in compiling them. Have a great weekend, Heppi blogging and enjoy yaaa..cheers

Ohh my, I was tagged by Bali. Thanks! (hehe). hey Bali look on the screen ya. See something familiar? So here it is, my little internet working space. I guess it falls under the category small and messy. I have had that cabinet for so long since i was 15 years old. It has served me well through all these years, kinda reminiscence of my school years. So.. How do I arm myself for my internet therapy session? - My necessities would include a mug (coffee usually - to keep my mind in tip top conditions heh..), a pack of cigarette ( a love and hate relationship), a notebook for jotting down interesting stuffs found on the net, my nokia5500 as a modem, N80 (which isn't in the picture - for answering calls), and some stuffs for quick grab on the upper shelf. So..any nice views to look out of the windows? Nada.. Just some back lot houses..haha.. so there you go.. My little internet working sanctuary. Just Click the picture to get a better view.

So, I am tagging few people of mine to see how do their internet working sanctuary look like?
And the lucky ones are :
Ida
Didi
Abah
Roxychicks
Syeri
Bidarlah
Sameer
Dbab

And may the "tagging" continues

Mari mari semua senyum senyum gembira yer..

I have a friend who thinks his life is miserable. He keeps telling me how this is not fair, that is not right, they shouldn’t have done this, things should have been like this, and the list goes on and on. Frankly, I think he is very talented at what he does-as a designer that is. Sadly, he thinks too much on the darker side more than to see what the opportunity awaits. He chooses to be miserable for sure. It is true that they say – Happy is how you make up your mind- and that fact still remains. You choose how you want to react to life events. But being Happy is not easy. It requires strength, determination and focus. Stray a bit and you will fall back into those miserable pitfalls. Do not let people or things stray you away from your happiness. You should be responsible on your own “Happy”. No one can control your thoughts but you, yourself. I sometimes wonder how we can only remember compliments from people for few minutes, but we manage to cling for days, weeks, months or even years insults thrown at us. Stop letting ourselves be the garbage collectors. We need to flush out all these garbage from our thinking system if we want to choose the “Happy” life. If others see a dirty window, then make yourself see an intricate beautiful window of life. See life as your painting canvas and you decide how it is going to end. Simply put, let s be HAPPY.

Have a good weekend yer all. 2008 has kicked off in its own surprising way in my life. Initially, i thought it was going to be a smooth ride. Boy was i wrong. For the past two weeks, I have been in a midst of uncertainty about lots of things, especially life. Everything seems to be fallen perfectly apart. Ideas and principles are shaken. Happiness seems to be sucked out of my life in spite of many good things. I seem to be losing my "simple pleasures of life." Disasters seem to be in every corner and stare right in my face. Life seems to be a series of painful experiences. But wait a minute..we do need some painful experiences in order to improve ourselves. As we get better the game gets bigger and tougher. That is one way to look at it. These problems that present themselves are hopefully signs for us to learn, adapt and make new changes. As creatures of habit, we may have been doing the same thing for way too long. When ignoring the life signals for too long, they smack at you hard,really really hard. It is time to grow. Growth is most painful when we resist. For instance, why do some people start talking again to God? When life is falling apart. When life hangs on his/her throat. So, it seems we learn our biggest lesson when things are too hot for us too handle. Ahhhh.. everything seems very clear now. Cloudy skies seem to give ways to bright shiny days. (Smile) One thing for sure, i am going to enjoy my usual simple pleasures of life over the weekend. A trip to a movie with friends... hmmm.. I wonder how good is that "Cloverfield" movie. Time to check it out i guess. :)

Fellow bloggers, this is only my small part that i can do to help the campaign. I pray for Sharlinie 's safety and hope she is to be found soon. It is alarmingly disturbing to see the current situation in our society. Children are no longer safe to play outside by themselves. I still remember growing up, running hysterically "amuk" with my friends at night. Sadly, the same experience cannot be said for nowadays children. Please be on alert in your neighborhood. Small details like noticing unusual bikes,cars or people may make a difference in avoiding such incident. Neighborhood watch is a good thing to practice now. To the abductor, have a heart and please return Sharlinie back to her parents. My hope, may she is in GOD good hands. Amiiinnn..

P/S : Click the pix if it s too small
Gambar ni sebenarnya adalah hasil kerja para pelajar melalui pembelajaran dan pengajaran di Insitut Kraf Negara. Lampu anyaman rotan merupakan projek "favourite" yang suka diberikan kepada pelajar-pelajar tahun 2.
The rattan floor lamp project, unmistakably, has become one of my favorite 3d rattan projects - from the educational viewpoint of course. True, there are many ideas that can be exercised into doing 3d rattan werks, (coffee table, wall mirror, single seater n such..), but i often feel that the floor lamp project is the best way to evaluate the students understanding on creative and critical design thinking learned in year one. It serves as a window to their thoughts of understanding. It isnt too difficult, and it isnt too easy either. It is just right for the students to start exploring the world in 3d space - vertical, horizontal or diagonal. Should the final outcomes are somewhat disappointed, then, there are two areas needed to be reanalyzed-1st year aka foundation year or my method of teachings. Huhu. It is a good transition too from their usual basketry, to something more complex and difficult. So, hopefully, when doing projects like "a living room set", they could improvise based on lessons learned during their rattan lamp project.

Once in a while, i do encounter some creative and crafty things such as these. A method of basketry can be turned into decorative items, suite perfectly for your home. A simple idea of using weaving structures (the bird nest like structure) can create wonders. You can it use for your garden wedding theme, incorporate to your arts n crafts theme display or simply use them as gifts and souvenirs bags for your guest. I bet by applying some strands of hot colors such as red or orange in the middle section would create a distinctive look. Hey, put some thoughts into it, i can see how this bird nest like structure can be turned into a floor lamp.


When speaking of rattan, i rarely see rattan furniture (in Malaysia of course) using fully "rotan sega" (small diameter canes somewhat in range of 10mm in dia.) You can use "rotan sega" in making your furniture, but constructing it is somewhat very technical, more if you are trying to use fewer materials. Unlike "rotan manau" which is thicker, "rotan sega" will require you to do more weaving in order to get that firm and strong structure, much like "twinning" instead of "stake and strand" method in basketry to get that firm structure. Same as when making a rattan ball (see picture below). But the outcome is always distinctive. Since you only use one material, and you keep that design principle of repetition, you ll get that simple clean cut without clutter style piece of work. And if keep producing the same style believing that it would work, you may end up famous like the furniture above. Above : Super Elastica. was first designed by Marco Zanuso Jr. and Giuseppe Roboni for Vittorio Bonacina. Founded in 1889, Bonacina to this day, remains a specialist, family-run manufacturer of rattan furniture-proof that with the application of carftsmanship, traditional methods and materials can stand the test of time.

So..what did i do yesterday? Nothing much other than filling half of my day tidying up my office room. What a mess .. I often got remarks of "Hey ni ofis ker store kamdar?" Hehe. But the remarks were all true. However, it was a good exercise. Unclogging my room was somewhat a good therapy for me. It did clear my mind and helped me to stay focus on many things. It was also like looking back at 2007 as i shredded and dumped away many files. Came up too with few plans for this year direction as i put some rattan crafts on their supposed selves. Ohhhh man, while cleaning, i accidentally dropped a bowl of water on my carpet floor. Made such a big spot. Luckily it was filled with scented water. Phewww!!. So this morning, as i entered, i was greeted with a scent of refreshing citrus air.

-Later that evening -
Yes.. it was that special time again. My jogging time. For the past two days, i had been running at Tasik Perdana aka Lake Garden. This is my another therapy session and my sanctuary. -Well, A little bit about Tasik Perdana: Built around two lakes and sprawled over 200 acres, it provides a refreshing recreational spot with its pleasant surroundings for jog and "kaki jalan" lovers. Its easy, medium and hard trails cater to various joggers or walkers of all fitness levels. All you need to do is plan where you are going and the rest, as they say, just enjoy its lush surroundings. Tasek Perdana is surrounded by Orchid & Hibiscus Garden, Deer Park, Kl Butterfly Park and Kl Bird Park. And if you re lucky, there are monkeys watching you as you jog, hoping to get some free peanuts. - So how did i do? It wasn't that good. Probably I was a bit dehydrated in spite of cool weather. Ran for 28minutes (minus the warming up and cool down), covered 4km, burned 279cal at an average speed of 8km/h. The previous day, the stat was 36min, 4.93km,350cal,8km/h. Well, at least i was glad that i ran. I did some exercise didnt i? 20minit satu sessi 3 kali seminggu. Jangan katakan "tak nak tak nak.." Katakan "Nak.." Ohhh btw, if you are confusing with all these "tak nak tak nak" and "nak," i am just retyping that madam advertisement on tv which is now stuck in my head. :)

What a better way to start your 2008 post than supporting your own Malaysia awareness campaign. Travel Malaysia Guide has started its wildlife awareness campaign reaching out to all its readers. The seriousness of losing many of our malaysia's mammals is indeed alarming. As year 2008 starts, I am sure Malaysia is going to lay out more plans in the name of the Nation progress and development. However, i hope that such future or current plans do take into accounts the survival of our valuable wildlife. I hope our younger generations would still be able to see many of our beautiful and exotic animals in the future. Fellow bloggers and readers, let us do our part in promoting the awareness campaign to give these animals a chance of securing their fate in the future.

To have the awareness campaign banner on your site, please click the "Travel Malaysia Guide."

To read more about the Malaysia environment conservation organization, please click here.

Thank you.

What a good way to start your 2008 by contemplating your thoughts on last year progress. Right now, i am just taking time to slow things down appreciating life.