Designed and made a couple of shelving units at the studio using some old Ikea boards, papertubes, and custom 3D printed joints. The extra shelving units added some much needed space for organizing miscellaneous things at the studio.
After a few weeks of dedicated work, the studio is now more or less cleaned up! My next step will be to start moving stuff from home to the studio. My home will need to be cleared out before I move back to Canada. Target to have this done in 2 to 3 weeks time. Add oil!! 💪🏻
As preluded in last week’s post, I had spent much of my time last week cleaning up the studio. Made some decent progress. Will continue the seemingly never ending chore this week! I continued to experiment with multicolor 3D printing while cleaning up the studio. The milestone this past week was being able to incorporate my ink art into the prints, this opened up a world of possibilities in future product designs!
Also had a number of meetups in the past week. Had dinner with my calligraphy class on Thursday night, one of my classmates insisted on paying to farewell me even though I explained that my return to Canada had been postponed. Had lunch with the class again the next day, this time the classmate who treated us earlier couldn’t make it, and my teacher’s wife and an ex-classmate joined. My classmates paid the bill saying to farewell me even though I explained many times that I had postponed my trip and the exact date is yet to be determined. A uni friend from Canada was visiting town, me and another couple of friends had lunch with him and his wife on Sunday. We were planning to treat the couple of visiting friends, I ended up being treated as well, also partly due to “farewell”.
Even though I had told friends about postponing my return to Canada and that the exact date was still not set, many of them still want to know when I’ll be leaving. Maybe they think I’ll just be gone suddenly without properly saying goodbye? It’s not like I’ll never come back again, right? Regardless, I’m very grateful for friends who cared and wished to offer their farewell blessings, I’ll try my best to meetup everyone after I have the date set.
The scorching heat last week had drenched out much of my energy. It was unbearably hot here in HK last summer too, but this year seemed worse. Monday was a public holiday, I turned down my fellowship b&s’ invitation to visit Macau and instead stayed home drenched in sweat and simply wasted the day away. Stayed home on Tuesday as well to finish up the final piece of calligraphy work – the hundred surnames in seal script.
After getting all the calligraphy work over with, I immediately shifted my focus to cleaning up the studio. Made considerable progress, but the work was interrupted by a couple of meetup with friends on Thursday and Friday evenings. This long overdue studio cleanup project will be my main focus next week!
Still don’t wanna turn on the ac in my living room at home during the day in this drenching heat, so I had been, and will likely continue to be, spending much of my time in the studio in the next week or so!
Finished the 4th and last class of the paper-making course on Monday. I can now resume my regular routines on Mondays. I started going to work at the studio early in the morning because I desperately needed AC during the day in this extremely hot weather. Started the long process of cleaning up the messy studio. Started with the neglected Garden of Eden project. Dusted off the table and added automated lighting. The abandoned piece of land had now been turned into a land flowing with milk and honey. It’s now ready for the addition of new plants.
There’s an agave plant at a park near my studio that is blooming. The rare 2-3 storey high flower got me visiting nearly everyday for the past few weeks. This is one of the most exciting occasions for a succulent lover!
Finally read the “Loss Adjustment Report” from our studio neighbor who is seeking compensations from the disastrous sprinkler incident that happened in our unit back in January. I deterred reading the report last week after seeing the crazy large amount of compensations that the neighbour is seeking from us. But after spending some time to read the report in more details this week, I felt utter relief! The report was one of the most unprofessional reports I have ever read, and most of the items that they’re claiming compensations from us had no proof of damages and were obviously fraudulent claims. If they decide to go ahead with their legal prosecutions on us, they might end up needing to explain to the judge how this wasn’t a case of extortion instead!
Q2 had gone by in a whiff. Q3 will be a quarter of thorough cleanup for both my studio and my home. Hopefully it wouldn’t take up the whole quarter, will see.
Helped my friend move his new giant 3D printer up into his workshop on Wednesday. It required the effort of 5 ppl (including 1 stranger) to move it up a ramp. It was my first time visiting the spacious workshop my friend started renting earlier this year together with an artist friend and another company. I couldn’t help but reminisce the time I moved into my current studio about 10 years ago. So full of hope and dreams back then, and now after many years of effort and little accomplishments, and with my upcoming plans to return to Canada, it felt a bit like I had just been wasting my time.
Nonetheless, I did reach a milestone this week at the studio when I finally had time to experiment with multi-color 3D printing. The result was much better than I thought! The little breakthrough opened up some product ideas that I hope to roll out before returning to Canada.
I finally started the long overdue project of clearing out my apt yesterday. Will probably continue doing this for both my apt and studio for at least a couple more weeks.
Since picking up my cartooning hobby again on my bday a couple weeks ago, I kept up with drawing and posting a single panel each week. Drew up the latest one this afternoon. Happy to be infusing art into my depressiing life again.
