Moving On

I have moved on to another site:
www.akaracquel.com

Serious Weightloss

This is a week long tackle extending from last week. If I didn’t have a job interview on Friday, I wouldn’t have been confronted with the items living on the 1^st rank of my emotional shelf. I was dreading that in particular, because it meant that i would also have to fish out 2 other boxes held captive in the laundry - and that stuff has a lot of heavy going emotional crap living within it. Well, good stuff too.

My journey begins at the laundry…

..and off into the living room for a very intense tackle…

Box titled: WORKROOM: Short Term Storage: Art – Poetry – Design (requires review)

I did well rounding the stuff up in my apartment last year. We did a major purge before our move here to Leura. We tossed out so much crap that we filled up all the garbage bins in our entire apartment complex that week! It was the equivalent of confronting our “basement” stuff (without the luxury of having an actual basement). We had a fantastic move because there was so much less stuff to cart forth between two homes. We coded the removal boxes with coloured tape to signify which room things belonged. It worked like a charm – the removalists knew which rooms to take all the boxes and had a ball with it too. It was the most organised move in my entire life.

Back to my cathartic shite that was summarised into a neat little package of 2.25 boxes about a year ago. I braced myself for an emotional journey of grand proportions. I took photographs of during my “poignant” moments of confronting the inevitable,

“Should I throw this away, or should I keep it stuff?”

Welcome, to the world of my Brain!

80s Stuff

My 80s Swatch watch. A gift from Dad when he was in Singapore. I can’t believe I tossed this into the bin as I collect watches, even the broken ones – but I guess this really was a moment of “time to move on” with this particular watch. It was a great design (at the time) – the plastic band (where the really good designed actually lived) eventually broke and it was always so difficult to tell what “hour” it was due to the watch having no official markings of the hours. This influenced why I had to insist on the proper indentation of minutes when my family set out to get me a Lolex “Rolex” from Indonesia. =D

I faced many watches claming to be waterproof and Swatch was the FIRST one that ever lived up to the title so well. I used to swim a lot, so it was great to have one that could survive so long – even after a battery change! I almost bought a genetically coded one a few years ago, but I’m glad I didn’t because plastic bands don’t last forever, which is why I also had to insist on a metal one with my Lolex.

I am a fan of design that can last a lifetime. My grandfather’s 1920s pocket watch is the only timepiece that I have any deep respect for atm – because it still works! Does anyone remember a time when things came with a “lifetime guarantee”? They sure don’t make things like they used to.

In this life, I can now expect a brand new Blanco oven to have a problem within 3 years and a Singer Quantum Futura sewing machine is bound to be thrown in for service & repairs at least 3-4 times within the first year! Imagine how much less shit would be living in landfill if people could design things that could last a lifetime?! What a disgrace to humanity. tsktsk

At least I have my grandfather’s pocket watch to enjoy in the now of life.

Thanks for “time is money”, Dad :)

Au revoir!

…to my 80s swatch watch!

Man, I loved these guys soooo much. I have some of their music now, so what’s the point of holding onto these posters?! 555

Au Revoir!

…to the posters of Roxette, who might possibly rate as total dags in this era, but I still think they totally rocked! :D

Architecture

My thanks to James Brook B.Sc ARCH @ Dino Burratini P/L for work experience & helping me out with my 2U business studies project well over a decade ago. Saying goodbye to this branch of architecture in my life. I’ll hire an architect to help me build something when I have the money.

I was using a dot matrix printer for my projects at the time – which makes me smile. I think I can still hear the sounds that the ruddy thing used to make while it was printing! {zzzzzt, zzzzzt, zzzzt} Printers can sure sing some pretty complex electronic songs these days huh?

I don’t remember needing to change the ribbon as much I have to keep buying new expensive bubble jet ink refill cartridges these days! Those printer cartridge things are seriously not good for the environment & landfill now are they?

Man, they don’t make things like they used to… 555

Au revior!

..to the dot matrix printer!

[sighs] my work in Interior Design at uni. Oh, the depression I faced when I chose to switch over to the discipline of visual communication.

In the motions of slipping into vis com but still holding onto buildings…

going… going…

gone… [sighs]

Au revior!

…to formal formal formal, interior design & architecture :)

Art

A portrait of my old music teacher and it looks exactly like her, i swear! 555 My son thought this picture was hilarious when it popped up on my monitor. I asked him why he thought it was funny and his answer to that was,

"Because it's funny!"

Au Revior!

…to the interesting looking doodle of mona lisa drifting off into space that could have possibly been done during a telephone conversation!

Now what was my mother doing with the visual arts curriculum when she was teaching ESL here? Ah – thanks mum, for the way you somehow paved the way for me to become pretty good at this subject. I think I kept this in hope that it might come in handy to teach a future child of mine all about it someday – but hey – we’ve got cool things like Google for that sort of stuff now!

Au revoir!

…visual arts curriculum from 1974.

How embarrassment. This used to be a piece of artwork once. Got first prize in some environmental art thing and I think it’s pretty bad now. Why on earth am I still keeping these guys?

I ask my husband,

“We don’t have any use for these as coasters do we? We never use coasters here though…”

“They’re not coasters! You should never throw away your art!”

From a wall hanging to a bunch of coasters – geeze, I can be so sacrilegious with my work sometimes.

The funny thing about these guys was that they were done in oils. They’re finally dry after spending well over a decade of being so heavily stuck together! Dry as a mouse with a hollow tap to it’s body! I swear! ccc

Ok, keeping them for now, but I dunno - we don’t have much use for things like coasters here… Does anyone need coasters out there?!

Live nudes on speed classes.

I couldn’t stand this class but I think the lecturer loved it for the oogling opportunity, especially when the "man" arrived. I can still remember the nudie man’s poses captured in time for some of the specific drawings too. Just the poses though, not the details like of what his face or floppy dick looked like at the time. 555

Au revoir!

…to the old me who didn’t have the guts to tell the lecturers to fuck off and walk out of the classroom because I seriously didn’t enjoy these classes!

… thanks to those horrid classes, I was introduced to “speed-sketching” and have kept the numerous sketches of my husband done in various mediums. He was a much nicer subject to be taking on compared to those weird hippy exhibitionists, that’s for sure!

these morphs were interesting

goodbye morphing thingies :)

Time warp again, dating back to 1993. A poignant moment in my life. I spent a decade trying to achieve “the style of objective accuracy”. This specific illustration was my “light-bulb-moment” – the day of my final break-through. The beginning of the end!

Nup, can’t toss that one out yet. That was intense.

No – no point in showing the world everything, but drawings like this did lead towards a form of psychosis after a while. What’s the point of spending so much time trying to create something that looks like a photograph, when you can just simply take a bloody photograph of it anyway?! It’s enough to inspire anyone to cut off their ears and go Picasso I think.

And I guess that’s what happened. Life began to detour towards the cubist deconstructivisimisticallyishvalist dada gaga shit. Mondrian, Rothko & Rauschenburg were making a shitload of sense after that that anal phase of drawing facial pores by shifting lead around with a 9H pencil!

I went mad!…

Soooooo many articles relating to surrealism, which had a big impact on me. In hindsight, I don’t feel that it was a very healthy genre of art for young teen to get immersed into.

Au revior!

…to surrealism & the Marquis de Sade!

I have absolutely no idea of why I had to photograph this. It’s just “another one bites the dust” moment in my life. It’s in the bin now.

Au revoir!

…to another bloody Doodle!

Oh man, was I into cars during the time or what?! An extension from the technical drawing stemming off from architecture/engineering/mechanics thread? What the?!….[gaaaaaa] The Mazda Rx-7 – my dream car at the time. hmm. I’ve obviously moved on since then! 555

My dream car moved on to become a green Jaguar 10 years later – this was after I became a mother and so the 4 door sedan kind of set up became more important than a 2 seater job. [cack]

… but my desire for the Green Jag quickly waned after I busted my guts trying to buy one on Grand Turismo. What a let down. You pay over $100K for a car and it still requires another few hundred thousands dollars to soup it up for speed racing? The car was absolutely useless! Like, how dreadfully disappointing – but I’m sure it’s a lovely car to cruise on that strip in Miami which has water on both sides of it. I’ve driven up that particular strip so many times in computer games that I’d love to drive down that very same road in real life one day.

Can I throw these in the bin now? Why can’t I throw these out? One of them isn’t even finished! What on earth was it?! A Citroen?

..and there I was wondering where my son could have gotten his V8 engine from a few weeks ago too. Changing my son’s nappies was so much like a wheel change during the tour de france. Grand Turismo is the only computer game that my husband can beat me at so I still think he gets more of his “car thing” from his Dad, for sure ;)

It's not finished, but i'm holding onto this one, for now.

Autism Project – Professional Practise

It was very sad to say goodbye to this baby today. Process work for the prototype of an interactive game for Autistic kids. Newsworthy achievement.

I feel sad because I wasn’t able to attend the meeting with the Austism association that was looking into raising funs for the further development of the game. I had so many other uni projects due that week and was burning out quite seriously. I was already following up work for the presentation well beyond the deadline of the project which was well & truly over.

I regret not having the guts to forgo my other deadlines to continue with this work. I would have had plausible grounds to seek extensions in hindsight but this was the sad the nature of me at the time. I could never miss those deadlines and had no crystal ball to show me that would like this would have been more fulfilling than corporate design.

The upside was that this work enabled me to continue using the medium to play with my son, which then enabled him to learn how to read – and now I just sit back and watch him teach himself, the same way that my mother was able to inspire me to do too.

Thanks mum ;)

Au revoir!

…autism project. It’s time for me to close that chapter.

Depression aka Mismanaged Sleep vs Workaholism

I wasn't unable to sleep properly. I think that was a significant part of the problem.

Or maybe I listened to far too much Metallica at the time.

I don't understand why an addictive depressant like alcohol is legal in this country. I'm glad i quit. It was the best weight loss regime ever too. The kilo's kept dropping off without any exercise.

that was a pretty good self portrait at the time, on a good day...

My adventures with Sylvia Plath during 3U English. We had a lot in common.

I'm anti-depressant free now :)

Acute sleep-deprivation will eventually lead to acute psychosis. My thanks to Seroquel for helping me manage my levels of sleep accordingly. Like, phew!

Au revoir!

…to suicide & clinical depression! Life’s Good :)

Design

Mrs.Jane McPhillips told me that these notes on the elements & principles of design would last me a lifetime. She was right. I'm still holding onto them. :D

My first encounter with “Branding” – which at the time, had the wanky terminology known as “Polymedia”. A fat lot of that good that did when trying to sign up with a design agency!

Ah well, it's known as “Branding” now and that's what I love doing with my work.

Man, I used to be so bloody cheeky with my essays sometimes. tsktsk. 555

Au revior!

..to the pathetic lecturers that I didn’t like at uni! [blech!]

goodbye...

goodbye...

goodbye...

Documentary

Reflexivity in Documentary… man, this probably belongs in the department of semantics.

Au revior!

…to academic papers with very seductive titles.

This definitely belongs to the department of semiotics & semantics. The beginnings of my thesis work. Holding on to that one with an iron fist?! [bang!]

Oh good - edit notes for the documentary i did about my late father in law. These will come in hand for the director's cut. I still haven't listen to my FIL's "last statement" audio tape and it's been well over a year since i received it. That's another confronting tackle on it's own. I'm too scared to listen to it at the moment.

Geography

This project got me rather obsessed with sustainable agricultural practises. This was a live case study project of the gnarly salinity issues in the Murrumbidgee area. Salt rising to the surface of the earth. That’s not very good for farming. I still apply the concepts that i learnt in geography to my daily life but i have never required something like calculus to measure the s-bend of a toilet yet... lol

Au revoir!

..to my geography projects.

There’s no way in hell that I could ever toss out an atlas. NO WAY JOSE! I used to spend hours going through my father’s big one – travelling all the roads and rainforests with my eyes. All that geological earth & space stuff at the beginning. This explains why I SCREAMED LIKE A GIRL on the day that I discovered Google Earth. My Dad’s too scared to install it on his computer because he’s terrified of getting addicted.

I’m a weather junkie.

I’m a statistics junkie.

I am also a map junkie who feels proud to be a woman that knows how to read maps really well, especially when it comes to providing navigation tips for my husband in the car! Will my husband be as good as me when it’s my turn to drive? I sure hope so! [eep]

Thanks Dad :)

Geometry

The very daggy beginnings of my obsession with geometry as a kid…

The teacher wanted us to draw a mushroom. Check out my hallucinogenic mushroom man. 555

…but it’s never ceased to stop since the day I began. I indulge computer-aided embroidery with this stuff now ;)

Language

Linguistics – the missing link in my vis com degree. My life is not too far off from the Forest Gump dude in The Davinci Code sometimes. Keep! Keep! Keep!

Is it possible to beat the Italians at Italian when you’re not an Italian?

You most certainly can!

Au revoir!

…to my Italian book.

The beginning of my addiction with dictionaries, which lead onto thesaurus & then the mighty realms of lexicon & beyond…. I was finding it very hard to decipher John Whyndham’s “Consider her ways” back in 1991. It was so funny to re-read this story a few weeks ago and find myself confronting the very same words that I had to look up the meanings of about 15 years ago. :O It’s no wonder why “The Surgeon of Crowthorne” is one of my favourite books ;)

An important letter from the desk of Dr.Lyn Barrow @ the SMH, dated 22^nd October 1976. A few months before I was born. Providing advice for my father on how to raise a bi-lingual child. Quite funny to read, because this Doctor’s command of the English language was not very good and quite poor compared by today’s standards.

My brother is now multi-lingual in various spoken & programming languages, while I pursue the sign/symbolic/pictographic/body-language side of it.

It’s been an interesting journey – one that my brother & I haven’t haven’t quite finished yet. We lovingly blame our parents for this curious obsession that we share together in our own different ways. If there is a quest for a certain kind of holly grail in my life – the letter in this envelope is probably the seed that gave birth to it ;)

Passing notes in English. Our teacher was a slack arse.

Life Tokens - Jeton Lütfen...

I lost $16,000+ in shares when this company collapsed. Yikes!

Does this company still exist? What an old logo!

Another very old logo!

AGL – still running strong.

Au revoir!

…to my old bills dating far back as 1995!

If felt so good to pay that off in one lump sum.

Au Revoir!

…to my stupid $13K HECS uni fees. It’s over!

Very old textile design piece. Marbled fabric, quilted. 16 years old now. :O Confronting to open and see “International pen friends” stuff in there. Best to keep that one closed and confront at another time & sort it out later!

…and I did sort it out later with my 2^nd review.

Momentos from a round-the-world trip. Tickets & tokens – you name it.

Au revior!

..it was a great trip!

Au revoir!

…to the asshole who clamped our moving van with their illegal racket on Missenden Rd in Newtown.

Au revoir!

… to my bus & rail pass for my final years 11 & 12, which I categorically loathed. I remember counting my last days of “school” – I’m so glad it’s over! Why the hell did I need to hold onto these? For typography!

Au revoir!

… to the term-deposit account that I had to cancel in order to survive after being disowned & kicked out of home. I have since reconciled with my parents ;) Another piece held onto for the sake of it’s typography. =D

Dear “Mandom Page”,

I wish I could’ve been with you guys in this photo here. It always makes me feel so envious when I see it. I’m keeping this photo so I can live to see the day that I will participate in at least one round of skirmish in this lifetime.

Thanks for the most memorable:

- taste of Dexter’s fried rice
- volley ball match
- water bomb fight
- rollercoaster rides
- rounds of debating
- letter writing
- & happy new year

..moments in my entire life.

I hope you’re well & still singing!

Sincerely,
An old friend who aims well with a gun ;)

OMFG – shhhhh! Don’t let my husband know about this! {{{cack}}} I loved this guy’s songs but I think my hubby can’t stand it! I’m secretly tossing it into the bin now, so shhhhh! 555

Au revoir!

… to learning the guitar. The violin is sooooooooooooooo much easier now!

A very memorable night of performing at the Sydney Opera House as a child. It was such a magical night. The date made me laugh. I was married on the 21^st of November twelve years later…

Menstruation

Like, duh – and oh boy, didn’t I hate being such a second class citizen in the world at the time too! [blech!]

BULLSHIT! It fucking sucked. The curses of womanhood. My thanks to the person who answered my deep prayers that science would find a way to help women stop bleeding one day. Periods SUCK!

Hey, I think the girl on the right *almost* looks like Mrs.Lifecruiser in her youth! =D

Au revoir!

…to bloody periods!

Orthodontics

Beware of the barbaric practise known as extraction orthodontics.

I’m glad I found this. It no longer fits in my mouth. My teeth have continued to shift in my adult life. Taking this to my new orthodontist to show him how things used to be in my teens, so I can get a better idea of just how bad my former orthodontist screwed my twisted jaw up. That’s …after I have saved up the $5500 to fix it first. :S

Photography

[sighs] My parents said “no” to photography but I’m glad I said “yes” to it in my adult life. Keeping this photographic paper to have some fun in the sun with my son! =D

can’t get more aussie than that, or can you?

Another favourite – a photograph of my husband’s reflection on a saucepan lid in the kitchen of the place that we first moved into together. He sure looked young in those days but I guess I did too! :D

Religion

A not-catholic-enough captain duxes the subject of religion for the year at a catholic school. Man, this was funnier than beating the Italians at Italian.

Au revoir!

… to the irony.

Thank you :)

typography

Thank you Mrs. 2S teacher,

For teaching me why it was so important to have really neat handwriting and adopt such a perfectionist’s attitude towards life – because that way, I could get into your good books and not face the same fate as poor Kuyen did when you threw him across the classroom in a fit of violent rage and never ceased to use him as a scapegoat for your mismanaged anger. Kuyen has grounds to sue you to buggery but you’re possibly dead now and who knows, maybe Kuyen isn’t alive anymore either. I hope your life eventually found peace.

Without you in my life, my handwriting would have never become so shit hot. You we’re right – that was not my absolute best.

~

My thanks to all the teachers who taught me why presentation was so important. The formula for high marks at school was very simple. 100% = 99% presentation & delivery + 1% content. My thanks to the teachers who didn’t let me get away with that as much as others did.

The reason why I couldn’t stand typography at uni and found an old dinosaur lecturer to be very patronising at the time. I was doing hand-drawn typography as a 10yo kid, long before geotype arrived so it was really annoying to face this ‘expert’ who said we knew nothing about typo because we were doing it on computers at the time.

This archaic stuff will be of use for my son to have a lot of fun with now :)

Au revoir!

…to transferable Geotype! Like, wake up world! We use computers for typography now!

Women In Media

Holding on to this beauty – though she’s lost one half of her bra and her media boobies have gotten rather squashed in storage. There’s a deck of cards in there. The kings/queens/jacks etc were famous women in politics, theatre, sport …and I forget the rest. This probably belongs in the women in media department. Like, my life needed empowerment at the time – but these days, that word means “why don’t you just bend over and be a slut because it’s your god given birth rite as a woman!”. (shit) 555

Oh – hang on a minute, maybe I should toss these in the bin?! Help! 555

To the creators of Duke Nukem 3D.

I was a woman who was such a major fan of this series until you wankers thought it would be fun to place a little bit of paper pussy innuendo into the game. Hello! I’m a female gamer! You think it’s only just guys who enjoy shooting things up with a big fucking gun huh? Well shoot this, you mother-fuckers!

*HN*

Sincerely,

A Mother

Oh wait! Maybe there was a female on the team who thought it might’ve been “empowering”.

Like, eat my bloody “John Howard” shit then!

[snorts]

Au revoir!

…to the advertising standards board of that era too!

Then again, maybe not. Upon my second review – I found it very difficult to toss this stuff out.

borderline anorexia 1988

I now understand just how dangerous this affliction can be when you finally start getting very close to the edge of getting hooked.

My goodness, I was cheeky!

goodbye…

goodbye…

goodbye…

goodbye…

goodbye to many things.

The end of round 1. The pile on the left was tossed into the bin. It weighed 9.4kg.

The end of round 2 after re-reviewing it all again. The photo journaling helped me to toss even more of it out. It weighed 3.2kg.

I lost a lot of weight this week.

How does my emotional shelf stack up to last week?

My husband’s Java books have returned on shelf 3 – dang.

He walked in with,

“These things have no place in my shop”

Well those things have no place on my self either, so I’m just gonna have to house those things elsewhere aren’t I? ;)

The 5^th shelf housed our old floppy disks & I dumped an entire boxful this week! Does anyone remember the days of MS DOS or OS/2 Warp even?! [*cack*] I mean, the former operating system can possibly be forgivable but not OS/2 Warp! What a sad one-hit-wonder that one was! [LAMO]

The 4^th shelf is leaner this week because I made a declaration to the world that I would be getting up to a fair bit of sewing last week. If I hadn’t done that, it’s likely that I would’ve procrastinated, so I forcefully put myself through the motions of sewing 3 shirts & a pair of pants for Aidan…

…and one lonesome shirt for myself that I can’t quite take pictures of because I’m currently wearing it…

It feels like I’ve been running in a marathon. The muscles in my legs & ass are soooo sore. I didn’t realise that sewing could be such a physical sport in this household.

So many things to address, acknowledge and then get rid of. What a major tackle.

Time to move on with the rest of my life!

See ya next week ;)

The Book of Poo

I feel so nervous, but here it is – The Book of Poo by Newtown Mums. It’s our first book of gags, which is something we’ve been meaning to try and accomplish for a long time. It’s a small A5 hand-bound, self-published piece consisting of 21 pages.

$5.50 AUD

free postage & delivery worldwide

Our first issue features two of our funniest yarns.

Childbirth & After-Birth Poo

Somehow, the subject of the amount of shitting that occurred during & after childbirth came up and we found ourselves laughing. Childbirth poo, during the journey of motherhood, was never mentioned in any of the books published by the experts that we’ve read out there, so we thought it was high time that the world knew about it.

Why Do Hotels have Telephones Next To The Toilet?

It’s a question that we still haven’t quite found the answers to, but in other ways – we have!

Written by a crazy group of mums’n’moms who come from the land known as “Down Under” (aka Austrlaia or Oz). We’re trying to raise funds for our next publication where we can pay mums to write. For those interested in purchasing or advertising with our next issue, you can find more details about it here.