Here today, Gone tomorrow.

I love how things in life can change so quickly. One day I'm single, the next I'm married. When I go to bed the house is nice and clean, I wake up in the morning and there's an inch of water covering our bedroom floor. My hair is long in the morning, then short and messy in the afternoon. I wake up at home and go to sleep that night on the other side of the world.

On Monday I was registered for summer classes, and on Tuesday I dropped all of them.

As it turns out, I filed my FAFSA too soon. Had I waited a month until after I had gotten married, I would be getting grant money to go to school right now. But because I filled it out when I was still single, I was considered dependent on my parents. It just so happens that the 2009 FAFSA is still being used for summer term, and there's nothing I can do to change it even though my situation is drastically different than it was eight months ago.

So to avoid getting a loan for as long as I possibly can, I'm just pushing my classes back another year. I'll finish my GE's this fall, while I should be getting some nice grant money, and then in January I'll take the classes that I was going to take now. That means I won't get to apply for sophomore year of Industrial Design until August of next year.

As frustrating as it is, I've decided to stop trying to rush it. The fact is, I'm not going to graduate any sooner, and I might as well try to enjoy life instead of trying to rush through it to get to a final end point. I need to enjoy where I am now, wherever that is. Besides, Bob still has at least four years of school left, so it's not like we'll really be going anywhere anytime soon.

Now I need to find a job. I was going to wait until August to find one, when I finished summer term, but since I'm no longer taking classes I need something to do. Plus, Bob isn't really making enough income by himself at the moment, and we've been hurting a bit for cash since I quit mine back in April. I searched on-campus jobs at BYU and only found three that I'm interested in, and then I found a few others on Craigslist. I'm surprisingly motivated about this too-- yesterday I made a resume in half an hour, and I think it's pretty awesome.

(https://acrobat.com/#d=Towitc6GfueosOBk9uCucg)

Then today I made an online portfolio to go along with my resume. Most of the things in the portfolio are likely graphics you've already seen in an earlier blog, but I like the effect of having them all together in a nice and neat slide show display. (After clicking on it you can use your mouse or left and right arrow keys to navigate through.)

(https://acrobat.com/#d=4grH5CmqSpiAfdsc85X9Tg&x=s)

So if anyone knows of anywhere in Provo or Orem or any other nearby place that could use a designer with my abilities, let me know. I would really love to get a job doing something I like that will also help me in my career goals.

Also, the other day a friend of mine sent me a message via Facebook. I met her and her family in San Antonio while I was serving as a missionary there. I love them a lot. So in this message she tells me that she wants to stop at my place on her way back to Texas from Washington state. She'd gone up there with her mom and siblings because they moved there recently, but she needed to get out and find a place to work. So rather than just stop here for a night, I told her she was welcome to stay here for a little while if she needed to. So Chelsie and her cat, Tiger, are staying here for about a month now. She'd like to get a job, but I 'm not sure if she'll be staying long enough to find one. She's planning on leaving in August, so we'll see.

As I was discussing this decision with Bob, I was reminded of my own mother. I remember letting a few people live with us from time to time. My mom was so willing to open up our home to friends and family if they needed a place to stay. I guess some people might think it's a little weird, but I feel like it's my way of serving others when there's not much else I can do. Plus, when I was 19 I remember wishing there was somewhere I could go and get away from life and my problems, a haven of sorts. If I'm able to do that for someone--especially a friend I care about--and help to get their life in order, why shouldn't I? Besides, we have fun together. She does remind me a lot of myself a little bit when I was 19.

And on a random note, I found this cool website the other day. If you like fabric and have some extra money, or if you need something for a specific sewing project and you can't find it, here's a solution:

SpoonFlower.com

I think it's a great idea. I just wish it wasn't so expensive.

Favorite ID Assignments

In case you don't know, I'm studying Industrial Design and BYU. I changed my major about 8 times before I found this one, which is what I was looking for all along. Let me explain why this is my chosen major. I'm a hands-on learner. I don't do well in lectures or on tests, I struggle to stay focused on what I read when I study text books, and I can't stand writing research essays about something I have no interest in.

So why am I in college? Because I need an education. I'd often catch myself drawing or sketching instead of reading, looking around myself and analyzing how poorly things are constructed or made instead of listening, and enjoying interesting images and nicely designed things online instead of typing papers.

Industrial Design requires no text books, we have no tests or final exams, and lectures are rarely longer than 20 or 30 minutes. For homework, we get really vague, ambiguous assignments and we have to complete them by the next class period. They involve the various elements of design, both on 2-dimensional and 3-dimensional levels. In other words, we have to make things look pretty--both images on paper and models you can pick up and hold. And it took me three years of misery in majors that I hated to find this four year program that I adore. Yes, I still have three more years of it even though I've already done four years of schooling. The timing is my main regret.

So I love my major and I'm super excited to continue on in learning and making tons of projects when summer term starts on Monday. But I still have this incomplete that I took for a class last fall when I was dealing with, well, lots of things. I wanted to finish the incomplete grade and get all those assignments turned in before summer term began, but I just feel stuck--like I can't get creative enough to finish all of the assignments.

The other hold up was that I have to take pictures of all the projects and assignments I do. I lost Bob's camera battery charger around the time that I went to Singapore. So I've been trying to finish assignments and find a good deal on a charger (especially since we literally have zero money to spend ever since I quit my job). I looked online and found the charger for about $25. That's a quarter of $100! Do you have any idea what I can do with $25??? So then I felt a ping of inspiration and looked on Craigslist. No luck. I went to KSL, and just a day earlier someone had posted an ad selling the exact charger I need--plus a battery (which, batteries are expensive!) and transfer cord, all for $10! I LOVE when inspiration comes. We went and picked that up yesterday.

So back to my dilemma of not feeling creative. The assignments I have to do are all 3-D. In other words I have to build things out of card-stock, balsa wood, and foam-core board.  I've got one and a half of the 7+ assignments done. So how do I find inspiration to finish the rest of them before August?

I remember getting some ideas from looking at my 2-D assignments for some of my classes. So I found my USB drive that I had them all stored on, and took a look at them again.

I impressed myself. It's been eight or so months since I've looked at them, and I really like some of them! I wish I could print out my favorites, frame them, then hang them around our office so I could inspire myself. However, a lack of money is keeping me from doing that.

So next best thing, I'll post them on here and see how other people feel about them. I'm not really fishing for compliments, just encouragement...

Okay, if you want to call that fishing for compliments, maybe it is. But really, I just need a little reassurance and a pick-me-up.

So to explain a bit on these, I used Adobe Illustrator to create them. There was no right or wrong way to do our projects, as long as we were using our knowledge and understanding of design to do them. And our assignments were extremely vague, which I quickly learned just gave us more freedom in creating them. For example, one assignment from that class was to make a composition using four squares to demonstrate the word 'tension'.

Wait, what?

                     Exactly.

An assignment on rhythm and emphasis.

Another assignment on emphasis. 

Notice how your eye travels as you look at it. I learned to manipulate lines and space to have you look where I want you to without you really knowing it.

Assignment on rhythm and how to make it nice instead of annoyingly repetitive.

Another on emphasis and movement. 

(This one was inspire by a photo of sand dunes. Can you tell?)

Inspired by the way fabric moves in the wind (like a flag).

Inspired by stairs. 

(It's hard to make it interesting and not boring. You try it!)

I love brick and cobblestone roads and walkways. Can't you tell?

This was a fun assignment! We had to come up with and present a product of limited edition M&Ms in honor of the Olympics. This was mine. I really like it.

 An assignment on pattern exploration and presentation.

Can you find the single shape I created the whole thing from? 

I highlighted it somewhere.

My final project for that class, called a "Perceptual Painting".

We were to create something that expressed ourselves using all the elements of design that we'd learned so far in the class. This is my explanation of it:

I love sketching, especially with charcoal. I created the squares using lines that resemble the way different sketching mediums look on paper. 

I always want to be unique and different. Sometimes I feel like people are expecting me to be this perfect little person, a 'square' just like everyone else. So I do that for a while, but before long I have to break out of it and be me again. Hence, the squares and the one in the background that is being destroyed. 

I picked the various shades of brown because it seems like such a boring color to many people, but if you look carefully, it can turn into some of the richest, most warm and comfortable hues you'll ever find. Similarly, I hope that people can see more in me than what first meets the eye.

Lastly, I love literature and poetry, both reading and writing it. With that in mind, I incorporated some favorite lines of a favorite poet. The words leave an open-ended question, because I'm curious to see what others will make of this creation of mine.

That's all I'll post on here. It's kind of a lot, but we had tons of assignments like these. I just included my favorites.

What do you think?

Singapore Trip: Part 2 + Coming Home

Both Sundays we went to church . And it was just like church back home! Except, instead of Spanish translation, there was Chinese translation for those who needed it. And everyone had Asian accents. One of the missionaries serving in the ward we went to is actually from San Antonio! It was fun to meet and talk to him. I really love how no matter where I go in the world, the church will still be the same. There I am in this completely foreign country where nothing is the same as home, but as soon as I step inside the chapel it's all so familiar and comfortable. I just love that.

A few of us went for a walk one Sunday afternoon. We passed the rich neighborhood where the homes were like duplex-style townhouses. They were huge and beautiful! They were white and looked very western, but there was still that Asian influence in them. Then just past those houses we stumbled upon this crazy place. It was like a huge park devoted to Asian and Buddhist culture, full of painted statues from folklore and stories. It was so big we didn't even get to see the whole thing before we had to leave.

One part was so weird though, and kind of grotesque. In the eastern religions here, they mostly believe in reincarnation. So their doctrine is that after you die you get judged and depending on how well you did in life you cross one of three bridges to your next life. The golden and silver bridges are good, but the third bridge is the one to the 10 Courts of Hell. You have to go to each court and if you committed a crime punishable by that court, you have to suffer a punishment. Some of the punishments are really horrible, and there were little statues and figures demonstrating of all of it. Some punishments were getting sawed in half, having your guts pulled out through your belly button, being thrown on a hill of knives, being boiled in hot oil, and other really gruesome things that I won't mention more. It was so weird!! There were some I couldn't even look at because of how graphic they were. Talk about disturbing. Not exactly what I'd planned on doing on a Sunday afternoon--church in the morning, walking through Hell in the afternoon... But it made me again very glad to know the truth. Quite comforting to know that when I die I don't have to feel more pain--no arms getting chopped off or getting ground by a stone. I'm also glad that I only have to deal with mortality once, rather than being reincarnated over and over until I can become good enough to break the cycle. The spirit world and kingdoms of glory just sound so much better to me, plus they make more sense and the Spirit constantly confirms the truth of it to me all the time.

Monday the 24th  we got out of class at noon. The NUS students love taking us around to tour places and trying to get us to eat different foods and things. So we went to the Steamboat restaurant for lunch, and as expensive as it was, it was really fun. It was like a buffet, but way different than a US buffet. They bring these huge pots of soup to our table and put them on these hot plates to cook. Then we go and grab all this raw food--meat, noodles, and all kinds of things that I don't know the names for-- and we put what we want in the soup. It was SO good! And then the broth left over after having so many things cooked in it tastes amazing! There was this mango flavored pudding and some rose flavored ice cream for dessert. Both were delicious!! If it didn't cost so much money I'd definitely go back!

Afterward we went to Sentosa! It's a little island off the southern edge of the country and is still part of Singapore. It's a big tourist attraction, but being Monday there was hardly anyone there. We spent all of our time at the beach because it was so gorgeous and there was so much to do. We had a blast and took some amazing pictures as well. We stayed until after the sunset, then walked around the island some. There's this huge Merlion (mermaid + lion) statue there that is just beautiful and is all lit up at night. It's about 10 stories tall and is very majestic looking. It was a really fun afternoon, even though I'm pretty sure a responsible student would have been doing homework and research with all that free time instead of having so much fun.

The following days were mostly just full of lectures in class and group work outside of class. My group consisted of myself and three other people: Sin Lian, Siraj, and Wayne. Sin Liang and Wayne are Chinese, and Siraj is Indian, I think. We decided to redesign a product that would better accommodate a person transferring from the wheelchair to another surface (bed, toilet, couch, etc.) and still keep it affordable. We explored so many ideas, such as a wheelchair-friendly bed, some crazy transfer devices, and the wheelchair itself. Our final design is a wheelchair with a transfer board built into the armrest. It took forever to get to that point though! We ended up actually buying a used wheelchair and building a very rough, functional prototype and I made some final sketches of what it would look like if produced commercially (see below, though they're not as good as I'd like them to be). I really like how everything turned out, but getting there was really difficult. Three very different engineering-minded people and an industrial designer rarely see things the same way to start with, add a communication barrier in there with people who speak the same language at different levels and with really thick accents and you get a lot of stubbornness and frustration from everyone, though I think I felt it most. Though the thing I learned most from all of this was patience and perseverance.

I wish we'd had more time there for sight-seeing. I didn't have time to ride an elephant, swim with dolphins, or go on the Singapore Flyer. The last Friday there we presented our final designs to the class, and then at 3:00am that night we were on our way to the airport. But we made the best of it, and a bunch of us went out to have fun that last night.

We went to Orchard Boulevard, the busiest and most crowded street in the entire country I think, and walked around, shopped, and watched street performers. We went to this spa to try one of their services too. They have these little fish that eat the dead skin off of your feet. All of us Americans had to try it. My friend Brian and I went in first, and as soon as he stuck his feet in all these little tiny fish immediately covered his feet and went to town. I had the hardest time putting my feet in after I saw that, because it reminded me of leeches for a minute. But Brian talked me into it. It was the weirdest sensation in the world! My feet are the only place I'm not ticklish, but it tickled so much, especially when they'd wiggle themselves between my toes! We were all laughing and squealing while trying to be quiet in this nice relaxing place where people were in the next room getting massages and pedicures. My feet did feel pretty nice afterward though. It was so much fun! I want to do it again.

Then we found this huge playground. I mean, I'm not kidding. We didn't even get to see all of it because it was so humongous! And there were fun things for adults too! It started out with this small merry-go-round thing that maybe four people can stand on, and as it started spinning you'd lean in and it would speed up. It was so funny to see people try and stay on it when it started spinning really fast. It became a game to see who could stay on the longest and who could walk in a straight line after being on it. There was also a two-story high pyramid with a web of ropes inside it for climbing on. And then my favorite part were these short zip-lines. I seriously want to build a playground like that in Provo because tons college students would seriously love it, along with kids.

None of us went to sleep that night, and then on the flight back I slept for five hours during the first flight, and about three for the second one. Jet lag is kind of rough, but coming home was great! It was wonderful to see Bob again. I got dropped off by a shuttle at my house, and Bob came out to get my suitcase. As soon as I saw him my heart did a flip and I couldn't stop smiling. It felt just like old times when I'd visit him before we ever lived closer than 12 hours away from one another. He'd put his hair in this little faux-hawk thing that I think is super hott, And as soon as we stepped inside our house and closed the front door we just stood there and hugged for several minutes. I don't know how to explain it, but something about his touch just relaxes me like nothing else in this world.

I fell asleep for most of the day. I couldn't sleep much that night, and around 3am I found myself completely awake and unable to even close my eyes, much less fall asleep again. It turned out that Bob was awake too (since his sleep schedule was all thrown off from staying up too late playing video games and things, and not liking to sleep without me there). So we got up, I made some pumpkin bread and we played Halo on the X Box for a few hours until it was daylight. (See, Bob had borrowed our friend Scott's X Box soon after I left, since Scott had recently gotten some other gaming consoles and never uses this one anymore... and it might just end up ours, who knows...) Then we both fell asleep at about 10:30am, and I didn't wake up until 3pm, which meant we completely slept through church. And then I somehow woke up again at 7:30pm, even though I don't remember falling asleep again. Adjusting to the time here is proving a bit more of a challenge than I thought it might.

Lastly, I am so glad to get back to familiar food again! In Singapore there are food stalls and restaurants that claim to have "Western Food." Never go to any if you ever happen to be in that country. I tried one, just to see what they thought American food was like. I got barbecued chicken, and it came with French fries that reminded me of cardboard, some vegetables that I didn't entirely recognize, and an omelet. The chicken tasted more like it was fried in lard and then covered in Catalina salad dressing. Needless to say, it was horrible. Now, I loved the authentic food in Singapore, but my insides did not like it very much. I had a stomach ache almost every day from it, and my intestines just did not like absorbing all these weird, new things. The last night there we ate fish head something, frog legs, shark fin soup, and of course--rice. It was really delicious, but a few hours afterward I had to find a bathroom every half hour, because I definitely ate something I should not have. Not fun, especially having to fly home shortly thereafter.

 (Fish head. See it  on the right side of the platter?)

So on Saturday night I cooked again. I missed cooking! I missed being able to read food labels too. Even though the national language is English, everything is still in Chinese or Malay for the most part. So I made barbecued chicken sandwiches with peas and carrots on the side, something I am familiar with that is cooked right and didn't give me abdominal problems the next day. Such a relief, and it tasted so good.

It was a fun trip, but it's good to be home.