Saturday, 04 February 2012

• Tricks of the Trade

  There's a certain amount of joy in learning new things. Yet it's easy to get swallowed up by the promise of success and not fully realize the difficulty of picking up something you're not used to. 

  One of the things I can't do is sew. So last year, on a whim, I decided to learn just that in order to make a stuffed toy (amongst other things) for a friend's birthday and I didn't have much time to do it. It took a few hours of scouring the internet to learn how to make a little stuffed panda but when I finally tried it, I realized I was a little lost.
  
  Fortunately, another friend was kind enough to teach me how it's done and after a quick tutorial I set off in my attempt to make a stuffed toy. There was many complications though, chief of which being my incompetence. Plus a lot of improvisation was needed, such as the sacrificial pillow bought from IKEA which I brutally slaughtered in order to obtain its sweet, sweet stuffing.

  
  Putting the pieces in place.

  Presumably, the whole time I was going crazy trying to sew it up my mom saw me as an insane child whom keeps doing what seems to be rather spontaneous things. What would take anyone else who probably has a better background in ensuring pieces of felt were held together with thread a moment to do took a few hours till eventually my little Panda saw the light of life.

  
  Final leg not sewn in yet as more stuffing had to be put in.

  It took quite a bit of effort but I was so incredibly glad that , one , I managed to do it and, two, the receiver of the gift was very happy to receive it.

  Then there was also the time last year I took up boxing. Unfortunately, I don't have any pictures but to be honest it was daunting. I was just thrown in like all the others who's been there for a long time and it was a little scary to train with them. Plus at the time my stamina was just about a step below that of a dead fish which made it really hard to even just survive the 2 hours of try-to-not-get-punched-in-the-face.

  A philosophy I was unable to accomplish during one occasion which resulted in a slightly bloody nose but all in all, it was fun. In retrospect I'm glad to have learnt it and I still do practice it now and then as it really does teach you how to maximize the impact of a punch.

  Craft is something I was never very good at so I decided to try my best and make different things for different people throughout the year.

  
  Made a book from scratch which took a long time and a couple of iterations.
  
   
  My first pop up card. This picture was taken before I added more flourish to it like words and little leaves. 
   
  Pop-up Angry Birds angel. Why? More like why not!
  
   
  Pop up cross and angel with trumpet. The end product had a bible verse on the yellow box with silver writing for the card itself.

  
  Learning origami.
  
  And there were a couple of other things. It really did make me interested in making more craft-related things except that, unfortunately, stationary here is way too expensive and all my tools are back home. Nevertheless, it'll only be a small hiatus as i'll bring what I can from Malaysia when I'm made to come back to England for my 4th year.

  Cooking was always a mystery for me and things started off while I was still in Malaysia when a friend was kind enough to invite me to a baking class:

  
  Macaroons, ohhhhhh yeaaaaahhh.

  Plus living alone, and the forced independence has resulted in me learning to cook/bake a few other dishes. I'll admit, they're all simple things but at the very least, I'm still alive.

  Speaking of coming to England, my time here has thus far shown me that I am not to bad at using a small-bore rifle. Learning to fire a real gun has been fun. And as of tomorrow, I'll be gong for Wing Chun classes (ala Ip Man).

  There are other things but I suppose my point is this: If there's something you want to learn, then go for it. Some of you might have the free time to be more committed and some of you might not, but there's always time to learn something new. It can be scary, it can be tedious and sometimes, it could just results in failure but don't give up. There's still at least a modicum of joy that can be procured even in defeat. Even if it's just the solace of "at least I tried my best).

  Besides, what's the worst that can happen?
  Also, one final thing: I recently tried learning one of Sung-Ha Jung's guitar covers (that kid on Youtube who plays the guitar so well it makes me look like a monkey) for a friend and here's the result: 

   

  There's still a lot of room for improvement but the point is to try.

  Kuhanesh

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