http://racked.com/archives/2008/08/18/say_goodbye_to_mayle.php
if you know me, perhaps you know how much i looooooooved Mayle. the store and their collection was my obsession for life, my sanity in new york.. this news is one of the sensational news of the year for me :’( all of my Mayle collection is soon to be vintage… sad..
found a service(http://wordle.net/) where they create a visual map of the tags of your posts, and i got above from my blog. although it doesn’t seem that it crawled all the postings, interesting how it shows dense population of ‘time’ related words. i grew up in a culture that makes you to be aware of your age more than western culture. one of the first questions you ask to a new person is his age, so that you can figure out the hierarchy of your relationship with him and determine proper terms whether it should be respectful ones or regular. while i’ve been in the U.S. using english, i found it so much easier to make friends with people at different age and thought i’ve gotten less sensitive about age . but guess it is still in my unconsciousness that i do still think about my age and the stage in life quite a lot.
three years has passed in new york, and two days plus. kind of an awkward time span as it still gives me an opportunity to do something, but not quite enough to do anything. probably best to make use of it as moments for time forthcoming..
change can be exciting or nerve breaking, throbbing or heart breaking.
either way. bonne chance chère amie.
ground
path
? (urg my short-term memory..)
gentleness = you are not squishing your thoughts
precision = you don’t fall asleep, keep your awareness
letting go = you watch your thoughts, create space, and come back to your awareness
no judgement
no perfection
no “should”
compassionate
on your thoughts and others around you.
a note from a blog post -
“젊기는 쉽다. 모두 젊다, 처음엔. 늙기는 쉽지 않다. 세월이 걸린다. 젊음은 주어진다. 늙음은 이루어진다. 늙기 위해선 세월에 섞을 마법을 만들어 내야 한다.”
그렇다. 나이 듦은 시간이 간다고 저절로 되는 것이 아니다. 어떻게 나이 들 것인가. 지금 이 순간에도 우리는 나이 들고 있다.
“easy to be young. everyone’s young, at first. not easy to get old. it takes time. youth is given. aging is achieved. to get old, you need to produce magic to mix in time”
spending time is not equivalent to getting old. how to get old. even at this moment, time is passing.
i am not so old ‘yet’ to get sentimental on aging, but this note somehow makes me empathize.
admittedly, youth gives ruthless confidence and arrogance that makes you ignore this time passing. the difficult part is many don’t realize it was rash until they look back.
at the same time, however, this ill-advised bravery is only acceptable when you are young and perky - beginner’s luck. trial and error. only given once when it is your first time.
really, hard isn’t it to get old and wise.
since my confession about my love for silhouette drawing (also with the confession on my laziness that never brought me to actually get to work on it) in my previous post, i *finally* did it! have to say i am quite impressed how it turned out as it was purely drawn on my laptop touch pad with my right hand index finger : )
i was actually working on my new website www.plainjaneoh.com (mostly just for fun), and needed some idea to decor the hp. i was very happy when it finally occurred to me (why not earlier?) i should make a self-portrait in silhouette drawing - and voilá!
for those who are enjoying it, here, opened for custom orders for a cute lunch maybe ; )
<image from design*sponge here>
i have a huge crush on picture frames (like many others i believe). and a beautiful collection of them almost give me a fetishistic excitement.
same for the black silhouette ink drawings. believe it or not, i dreamt of illustrator at some point in my life, and started noticing those mysterious silhouette paintings from time to time in flea markets (many times in seductive old picture frames). always thought i would rather create my own, but never got to it for my lack of determination. with a little research, found out those black silhouette drawings were started as a cheaper alternative for portrait drawings in 18th century, but their flat depiction is indeed the beauty of them as it accentuates the subtle detailed line within its dull surface. the ones shown above are by Abra Ancliffe which is wittily unconventional as each face contains another face in itself as if the person is ‘thinking’ of another. i have to say i still love the original black drawings better, but definitely a combination of worn-out gold frames with those black silhouette drawings are the unbeatable charm!
While working in the business creating websites for retailers, I got to wonder how much it means to build ‘a website’ out to the world: how much impact it brings to the retailer himself, to its buyers/users, and to the world.
Since World Wide Web got huge since the 90s, internet took over every man’s everyday life. Basically, it made everything possible through its network: people read news, play games, talk with friends and family, do shopping, order food, etc etc. I recently read an article on Time magazine that there’s not only a service that broadcast weddings on the web to family and friends in a remote location but even a service that allows a groom and a bride to exchange vows over webcams! Yikes.
Despite all the doubts on the aftereffects this WWW revolution brought to the society – i.e. loss of human contact, digital quality control -, it’s undeniable it certainly plays the central role in modern life.
According to this theory, I must be working in one of the most prominent industries in this time. However, while websites are places where people spend a big chunk of their time everyday, the depth they put into each website is so shallow, it is hard to say time and energy each website took to be presented to the world (except for those amateur websites built poorly) is getting paid off with people’s enough attention and appreciation. My major suspicion is it’s because web exists in a digital form and does not have a tangible existence, thus, people tend to take it less seriously than things they can perceive the ‘realness’ of. A coffee shop one person goes to everyday certainly means more than a website he visits everyday. It just brings less memorable existence in his memory.
So websites are rather ‘useful’ in life than ‘meaningful’ - just like why Myspace is quite efficient to keep communication but not the best way to build great friendship. This argument supports why people make a big fuss about analytics and usability studies on webs. There’s big money involved, which is apparently what this world is evolving around (Not trying to sound skeptical but just trying to make better sense of what it is I am doing). So what does a website mean in life? For retailers, money. For users, easier life. For the world, well, a win-win game that makes world more convenient and profitable, not necessarily in the most graceful way, but who cares - as long as it’s quick and easy just like how McDonald’s is still surviving after all these lawsuits!
UX magazine http://www.uxmag.com/
Yahoo User Interface Blog http://yuiblog.com/blog/
Info Design http://www.informationdesign.org/
happy halloween weekend! seeing all those half-naked girls in costumes on the (chilly!) street tonight, i couldn’t help but remembering myself and my silly friends who were just like those in old days..
sometimes it is good to see people around you and think/know that “you’ve been there” - not in a snobby way but more like in a self-gratification that you already have passed that one test in life in the past.
on the other hand, sometimes it is very comforting to realize that i am lucky to have opportunities and goals to reach - that there are still so much that i haven’t done, yet there are still plenty time and chances waiting for me. having opportunities or goals can mean a lot more than that you already have achieved everything. you basically earn fuel to burn to make your life keep going.
while setting goals lies in the future, looking at people and remembering old days definitely comes from the past. people repeatedly say that we shouldn’t caught up in the past or live for the future but that we should live in the moment. true. but when you think about it, it is a good mixture of motivation for the future and gratification from the past that makes your present moment rich and well-balanced. without knowing what you want, or what you learned, it is hard to know how to live your life right, right?
just like we say, everything has its moment. also we say in my culture that you should see, experience, and learn more when there are more chances with your youth. i admit i sometimes get caught up too much in the past or miss my moment by looking out for the future. i would like to mix up my great lessons that i dig up hard with my tears and sweats with great opportunities lying out for me to make my this very moment special and memorable.. as a matter of fact, this weekend, i just had my first pumpkin carving experience as well as a corn hole throw game - living in another culture is great in a sense that you get to experience things that you wouldn’t really appreciate pass four otherwise, but it still gives you great sensation just like when you were a little kid learning and seeing things for the very first time. 
