Last Painting Class

Completed my fourth and final painting tonight, this concludes my second 3-month oil painting course.  Will repeat the course again (using different reference photos of course) for next semester.  Why?  Because this is probably the cheapest way to learn and practice something I increasingly enjoy doing, it’s cheapest at least until I save enough money to rent myself an industrial flat as studio space.

Sunday without Dim Sum

20121021-202032.jpgParents are away on their first ever cruise trip, so our usual family dim sum didn’t take place after church today. I spent the extra couple of hours this afternoon to cleanup my bedroom and home studio, that’s on top of my regular weekly grooming of plants and aquariums.

Enjoying being home alone, there’s no one nagging me about what or when to have meals, and there’s also no one telling me not to spend so much time working (so as to avoid radiation from monitors). Making good use of the occasional freedom, I ended up eating a couple meals of forbidden food (ie. cup noodle) and working a couple nights till 3 or 4 am! =)

Gatherings

After treating my family for sushi last Sunday night, I used the prize money for the design award to treat my friends BBQ this afternoon.  I figured the best way to use the prize money is to spend it on family and friends.

There was another friends’ birthday gathering at night, and it was all the way in HK Island.  I got home and took a shower after the BBQ and then napped, I felt almost unconscious for an hour and ended up late for close to an hour for dinner!

We went for drinks after dinner, but I left early as there’s Sunday service to attend in the morning.

Although I do enjoy meeting up and chatting with friends occasionally, today was a bit too much for me.

Running Resumed

Finally resumed running again, the last time I ran was a 10k race back in Nov. 2011!  Since I haven’t ran for such a long time, I took it easy and just ran a little bit over 3km.

Will try to slowly climb back up to running 10k, and hopefully I’ll be able finish it within 55 minutes just as I’ve marked down for one of my New Year’s resolutions.

Back to the Drawing Board

Resumed my painting class after the public holiday last Monday.  It’s good to be in a familiar environment, indulging in doing something I enjoy without getting too much attention.

Let life resumes to normal after the award ceremony this past weekend, I really don’t quite enjoy to be under the spotlight.  I recall reading a devotional material earlier, Pastor Rick Warren noted that in order to live out God’s purpose in us, we often need to avoid many distractions – Popularity, Pleasure, Profit, and Possessions.

Got about 75-80% done on a website revamp project last week (well ahead of schedule), I think I’ll take a little break this week to finish off a few small design projects.

First Design Award!

Finally picked up my first ever design-related award today after knowing the wonderful news for more than a month, it’s been a rather difficult task keeping in the happy news all to myself.  I’m really thankful that my self-taught amateurish design was being appreciated by design professionals working in the industry, the award is quite a confident booster for me.

But then I recall the little incident I had with the blind last Sunday, what value does this “pretty” design add to the blind (and other less fortunate) people in the society?  Would it be great to design something that’s aesthetically pleasing and can help others at the same time?  So, although admittedly helping very little, I’ve made a decision to donate a tenth of the prize money to a charity that helps to save/improve the environment so that all people on Earth may benefit!

May all glory and praise be directed to Lord, my God, who lavishly gave me all that I have today!

Planning for Work

Took a little break in the last couple of days to do some planning for my work for the next few months.  It looks like I’ll have my hands full till the end of the year!  On top of the IT projects, there are also some non-profit design projects on the side for my creative outlet.

Now that I think of it, this is almost exactly what I aimed to achieve when I set out to kick-start my career again – having a full-time job with a relatively stable income, and still have time to do some part-time creative design projects that usually pays less.  It would be great to do art/design full time, but sadly that just don’t seem too realistic in this environment, at least not now.

I do feel God’s help in my career path because what I’m able to achieve now don’t seem to have much to do with my own effort, projects just seem to be coming my way one after another in a well-timed manner.  I’m very thankful for this.

An Incident

It was an evangelical Sunday worship at my church this morning, a few people accepted God into their lives, thank God! The invited speaker shared a scripture about how God is able to make the blinds see, and I just happened to encounter an interesting and somewhat relevant experience shortly after the service.

While rushing to meet my family for our regular Sunday dim sum, I was stopped by a blind (or weak sighted) elderly who asked me to lead her the way to the nearby intersection to cross the road. There was actually a footbridge, but the old woman didn’t like that route (probably because of the long flight of stairs). Without touching her, I kind of used my voice to slowly guide her to cross the road. Just after we had successfully crossed the road and she thankfully greeted me, I heard a big bang just in front of us. Apparently, another old woman just accidentally tripped over and fell down abruptly. Her companion and a couple of young adults seemed to have the situation under control, so I just left and rushed to meet my family.

I couldn’t quite get the incident out of my head the whole day, is God trying to speak to me? The fact is that there are a lot of less fortunate people in this “prosperous” city whom we can help without risking too much of our time/money, we (including me) just chose to have our hearts hardened to offer our assistance.

Dear Lord, please help me understand what it is (if any) that You’re trying to tell me, let me not lose a merciful heart and not have my senses numbed towards the less fortunate people in the society.

As a side note, why can’t city planners design streets to be more pedestrian friendly? Why does the poorer and less fortunate people have to give way to the richer people and their vehicles? And not to mention that cars are actually one of the main polluters of city!

Poppy Flowers

IMG_3711

Fellowship & Friends

My design of the fellowship’s quarterly programme card was handed out yesterday.  Looked at it side by side with last quarter’s card, I’m really liking this newspaper-cartoon-subscription kind of approach.  I sure hope the fellowship b/s liked the cards too.

I was given many opportunities to serve in my church and fellowship ever since I took over the unfinished design of last year’s CNY red pockets.  I really do enjoy these somewhat spontaneous opportunities to serve with my amateur design skills, thankful that God is using what He has given me to serve Him and his people this way.

During fellowship last night, we were asked whether we have 5 or more friends outside of church whom we’ve known for more than 10 years.  I thought for a moment and I realized that almost all the friends (except my soccer buddies) I hang out with outside of church have been known to me for more than 10 years.  There are actually a few friends I’ve known since primary school and whom I still meet up with regularly!  I feel forever thankful to have so many friends who know each other so well as to easily read through each others’ minds and complete each others’ sentences.

In comparison, I’ve only known my fellowship b/s for as long as I’ve attended fellowship (2-3 years), not too sure how long it would take (or whether at all possible) for me to get to know them as well as my good old friends.

  • FEB
    2026
    S M T W T F S
    1234567
    891011121314
    15161718192021
    22232425262728
  • 723 Studio