We got the free community newspaper in our mailbox last week and there was an ad about the upcoming St Kilda Festival. There wasn’t much information on the events during the festival so I just made a mental note of checking it out later online.

We went to St Kilda yesterday to have lunch at Tien Tien, a Vietnamese restaurant in Barkly Street. We tried the pandan chicken since hubby’s been craving for the Sukho Thai (Thai restaurant in the Philippines) version but the ones we got yesterday didn’t taste the same. We walked in and around Acland street after lunch and people watched. I then remembered that there’s the St Kilda festival coming up and made another mental note of checking it out later.

St Kilda’s most recognizable icon, Luna park’s entrance. Click here for more photos

Late last night I finally remembered and googled for the festival’s site. I browsed through the site and came across one of the events called Yooralla kiss for a cause. They are inviting couples to go to the event and kiss for at least 10 seconds in an attempt to snatch the Guinness world record for most couples kissing simultaneously from the Philippines! Whoa, I didn’t even know the Philippines currently hold the record!

One google search later, I found out that there was a Valentine’s day event held last year in Manila called Close-up Lovapalooza wherein 5,122 couples made their way to the Guinness records by locking lips for 10 seconds. The event was sponsored by the government and toothpaste maker, Close-Up and drew both conservative and not-so-conservative couples alike.

Which now makes me want to see Australia try and beat the record. Don’t know yet if we’d participate. If we did participate, wouldn’t that mean being unloyal to our home country? On the other hand, Australia’s our home now so would it be too bad if we join in the event to beat the record set by the Philippines? In any case, we plan to attend the event and see what happens.

For people who’d like to have some fun on the day and join Kiss for a cause, you could register online and pucker up on the day.

* To know more about current Pinoy world records, click here.

Just finished watching the finale of Nip/tuck. To those who’ve never heard of the show, it’s a drama about two plastic surgeons, Dr. Christian Troy (Julian McMahon) and Dr. Sean McNamara (Dylan Walsh), who happen to be best friends since college and are now business partners. The story revolves around these two main characters and their personal lives as well as the interesting personalities they encounter through their work.

We initially watched the show out of curiousity, we’re big fans of Julian McMahon and would like to know if this new show is a better gig for him. We first noticed McMahon in Charmed as Alyssa Milano’s love interest, Cole Turner. As one of the lead stars of the now Golden Globe awardee for Best Television Series for Drama, I’d say he got a better deal indeed.

Anyway, as I was saying, the finale for the second season was aired today and I’m left wanting more. Which led me to think about what made the show click with me, as I once thought that a show about plastic surgeons is incredibly shallow. I had no illusions that it would regularly feature people who’d like to change their appearance for vanity’s sake. So what has changed?

Well, for one, the situations the protagonists get into were interesting and sometimes even hilarious. One recent episode shown was of a pretty Latina lady who’d like to go under the knife to be a copy of Jennifer Lopez. She’s under the impression that once she looks like J.Lo, stardom would automatically follow. How would they convince her that life doesn’t work out that way and that being a copy of J.Lo just makes her that, a cheap copy?

Then there’s the steady memorable women - wife Julia McNamara, gay anesthesiologist Liz Winters, psycho model Kimber Henry, sex addict Gina Russo, cancer victim Megan O’Hara, female circumcision sufferer Manya Mabika, Saks applicant Bobbi Broderick, disfigured model Naomi Gaines, stigmatist Agatha Ripp, conjoined twins Rose and Raven Rosenberg, blind Natasha Charles and the fascinating Ava Moore (played by Famke Jannsen). As you can see, women have a big role in the show perhaps because a lot of plastic surgery patients are women.

Although all of these women are flawed and mostly misguided, they come across as being strong in their own way. They have their own problems and they may not choose the right thing but somehow you find something in them to love and admire anyway. Take Kimber for example, she has given everything for her love for Dr. Troy and has gotten into one bad situation to the next. And yet she’s still there, still loves Christian but now realises that maybe she’ll never have him. She’s currently trying to set up a business on her own. Sure she’s producing porn movies but at least she’s not crying in some corner still pining hopelessly for Christian. Maybe she’s moving on in her own way and maybe, just maybe, there’s hope for her yet.

Some people say that the show lacks moral center because it may glorify vanity, drugs and sex. Maybe so, but it also teaches us that there’s redemption for everyone, that changing your appearance may make you look attractive but it won’t give you happiness, that everything you do have consequences and you’ll have to face them sooner or later. Watching the characters in the show does not make me want to emulate them, instead I live vicariously through them. I watch them do the dangerous things they do and see that none of them are happy despite plastic surgery, money and fame. But then again maybe they’ll finally find salvation next season. Here’s to hoping they do…

Midst Raquel was scrivening her account, she catechized me for a surrogate word for ‘calefaction’ ergo I grubbed for one on a concordance and I acquired a plethora of highfalutin interchangeable words for it. As a manifestation of substantiation, I shall impute a further aberrant word from the wordbook to supplant sundry words from this thesis. The metamorphosed treatise may not be coherent in the expiration except congenerous to what I conveyed, it is a substantiation.

Original Text:

While Raquel was writing her blog, she asked me for another word for ‘heat’ so I searched for one on a thesaurus and I found a lot of contrived synonyms for it. As a sort of experiment, I will select a more uncommon word from the thesaurus to replace some of the words from this text. The converted text may not make sense in the end but like I said, it is an experiment.

Wow, it’s hot! Summer is really here with the temperature reaching 35 degrees Celcius today. And that’s just a prelude for an even hotter day tomorrow which is forecast to reach 37. Phew!

I don’t really mind the dry heat but I do detest the flies that come out during this season. For those who don’t know, Australia is home to a lot of flies who’re mostly attracted to people. Unlike the flies in the Philippines that would only bug you whenever you have food, the flies in Australia seem to have a peculiar interest in being mindless satellites to people going about their business.

I remember a friend from Manila who once came here on business during summer. He mentioned that the minute he stepped out of his hotel, he noticed a fly following him around the city for several blocks. He was puzzled as he just had a shower and contrary to what you may believe, these flies don’t care whether you smell of soap or sweat. I just had to explain to the poor guy that it’s not him, it’s just the nature of the flies here to do that.

It wouldn’t be too bad if these flies just hover above your head or land on your back for a free ride. That wouldn’t be too bad at all. But these flies have other ideas, they like to hover in and around your face, threatening to land on your lips, nose, ears or worse, your eyes. You could try to wave them off (known as an Australian salute) and they’d momentarily fly away, only to come back with a vengence. Next time they may even come back with their mates! Careful on leaving your mouth open or sucking in air at an inopportune time or you’ll suddenly have an extra dose of protein shooting through your system. Nasty.

This afternoon, I signed up for a Story Boarding for Animations class at the CAE near work in the city. It’s a weekly two-hour six-session class starting on the 23rd of February.

According to the Class Ticket/Tax Invoice I was handed after enrolling, I need to bring to class the following: A3 cartridge paper, 3B lead pencil, watercolour paints (didn’t specify if tubes or not), A3 watercolour paper pad, brushes (didn’t say which brushes) and a Video8 tape cassette (huh?).

When I first thought about enrolling for this class, I was thinking that story boarding must just be similar to comicbook drawing without the dialogue balloons. I got that idea watching story boards of animation and movies from DVDs with Special Features that show them. I didn’t realise that it may be more complicated than planning out scenes and drawing them.

After seeing that I need to bring in watercolouring materials, I realised that I was in for more than just doodling sequential art 4×3 proportioned boxes. And of course there is the Video8 tape requirement that I have totally no clue as to what it’s going to be used for.

Still, I’m pretty excited to start. One of the motivations I have for joining this class was that I was hoping to meet people in this class I can be friends with. Hopefully, they’d be people who’d be at around my age group and interested in cartooning, movies, anime/animation, geekiness, computer games or all of the above. I’ll just have to wait and see.

When I was in Canberra, I joined a short art class too for the same reason I guess. But it was a charcoal art class which is more traditional art than cartooning (which I’m more comfortable with). The problem with that is that my classmates were generally not of the same age group as I am and they do not share the same interests I do.

Of course they are at least interested in art (that’s why they were there after all) but I realise now that I’m really more into cartooning/comicbook drawing even though I could probably carry on doing more traditional art.

So when I decided that I want to take another form of art class, I consciously looked for an art class that is more tied in to cartooning. I’m hoping that I’d be more at ease with the story boarding class and that I get to know people there that I can probably be friends with.

Also, since I’ve read a lot about cartooning and drawing already from books, I hope that this class will have something new to teach me considering the $199 price tag. Lastly, since I’m going to continue drawing my webcomic now, I’m hoping that I learn stuff from the class that I can apply to comicbook making. We’ll see.

I’ve posted a while back that I may have found somebody who drew a character that looked like Nadine. But then Xellos informed me that the character that looked like Nadine in that shot is actually a character called Saber in an H-Game called Fate/Stay Night (see the character on the right). Here is an unofficial Fate/Stay Night Game Homepage. Unfortunately I cannot link the official site (in Japanese) because it contains rude pictures that may cause me to violate some rules on my host.

Click on the character to see more pics from the Fate/Stay Night game. And also click here for a fanart of the same character.

Wow. Seems like I made a fool of myself in the older post as this character seems to be popular among Japanese or people who follow Japanese trends. It’s just uncanny how the character designs are similar.

I wonder when this character was created because I fear that people will think that it was I who copied this character’s design when in fact I’ve never heard of this Saber character till now. I wonder.

When I opened our post box yesterday, we got several bills, pangarap pages and what’s that small piece of paper? I reached in and fished it out. Ohhh… what’s this? “Get fit and earn money” was the first line that caught my eye. Hmmm… interesting. Maybe I could do my daily stroll, get fit and earn extra cash in the process? A hit- 3-birds-with-one-stone sort of deal? But wait, that sounded like it’s too good to be true so what’s the catch?

I read on and I just had to smile. So this is how they recruit people who stuff our post boxes with the pangarap pages. Officially, they’re called Leaflet distributor(Walker), and not spammers as I call them.

Anyway, here’s the ad (with some of the details blocked out). For those who may be interested, there’s still enough information in it for you to be able to contact them.