Audrey at Home

When I heard there'd be another biography book of Audrey Hepburn, I rushed to my favorite online bookstore, searched for the title and ordered one. I was overjoyed; this new book looks perfect! It's a biography kitchen table book (how adorable does it sound?), includes more unpublished family photos, original handwritten recipes from Audrey herself and it's written by the second son, Luca Dotti (I think young Luca is the most handsome kid ever). I had to purchase it, not just because for the sake of my collection but also to support the hazy research for my Final Project.
I love Audrey at Home so much. I also treasure Audrey Hepburn, An Elegant Spirit (which was written by the first son, Sean Ferrer) but Sean shared numerous sad events all the way through the book and I literally ended up reading in tears. I love the warm vibes that Audrey at Home presents, although Luca mentioned a bit of unhappy moments as well. It's also quite fascinating to see more pictures of Audrey in her 40s and 50s because I have seen far too many Audrey in her 20s...not because it's a bad thing, of course not duh, but looking at the middle-aged version of my idol at her home is such a refreshment.
Anyway, the highlight is what happened after I posted a picture of Audrey at Home on Instagram and tagged Luca on it. He commented with three smiley faces and liked the photo, which is more than enough for me. But seven hours later, I checked my notification and apparently Luca came back to my feed, browsed through and liked some of my old photos! And he started following me too!!! I'm still shivering with joy: Audrey Hepburn's son is following me on Instagram! 

Haha I easily get overexcited about this kind of thing... when Benedict Cumberbatch's ex-girlfriend accepted my request to follow her on Twitter, I was so happy like a fool too.

Instagratitude

2014 is coming to the end and two of my biggest happinesses came at the edge of this year: a set of token of gratitude from Instagram, the social media platform which recently beat Twitter for collecting more than 300 million users. As I try to not abandon this blog (big failure, so far...), the book and the calendar motivate me to produce more and more beautiful photos, but I have come to a conclusion that I should produce more and more artworks to sharpen my skill instead of taking pictures of my dinner from above (it is not a sin as long as the meal is good-looking so I will keep doing it). So the final conclusion is that I'm going to snap whatever I'm working on; hand drawings, WIPs, sneak peek from my digital drawing, printed drawings, etc. In the beautiful way.
I hope you are not submerged in a Life of Stagnancy like me!

Suggested User

Hi, in all of sudden I was struck by an urge to share my personal stories again here..so I'm starting with (sadly) one of the biggest thing that occurred in my life: featured as Suggested User in Instagram. However, this post isn't really intended to be read so you may not keep going. I'm actually pretty embarrassed with my words. But why did I write this post? Because, yeah..
This happened nearly three months ago, when I woke up in one normal morning and noticed a dramatical change in my Followers number and checked my Direct Message; Instagram congratulated me for being listed as Suggested User for several weeks. Some of my friends and my sister were pretty cruel for not taking it as a big deal. I really didn't mean to dramatize things, but Instagram is currently one of the biggest social networking app in the world with millions of users... and out of these millions, I was chosen! I was more than thrilled and incredibly proud of myself. It was very exciting too to check how my Followers grew so fast in just one minute and how one single photo that I post gained so many Likes.
But I had a problem.
Apparently, I was not really lucky. I received new Instagram users as my followers. And those users, were actually pretty....uneducated? I didn't know what happened, but they constantly spammed on my account! Heavily and massively spammed. Hundreds of Direct Messages were sent to my inbox for weeks and when I finally was brave enough to check them out, I found creepy selfies, creepy selcas, and creepy cartoons in each message. I blocked the senders entirely. What annoyed me most was definitely "please follow me back" comments. They are EVERYWHERE. I have been greatly sick of people who keep begging for a follow-back since Twitter...and now these people are planted in my account. Thousands of them. And whenever I posted a portrait of myself, disturbing comments from male users were posted behind it as well. I'm not a good person and maybe God was punishing me. Oh and I have to inform you that I'm a little bit mentally disturbed when it comes to human-beings who don't understand the true meaning of using social media and unable to appreciate the beauty of sharing visual diary on Internet, so please excuse me.
Four weeks later, I decided to e-mail Instagram regarding Suggested User removal because I couldn't handle it anymore. I got removed a week later (I was disappointed with the slow progress because I gained around one thousand useless spammers in that one week).
Unfortunately, I'm not completely getting rid of them because it's still linked. Friends of friends of spammers still come to my account to spam. I still receive 4 or 5 Direct Messages from creepy strangers in a month. I have been seriously thinking of using IGExorcist to cull them, but I have to do it manually to prevent culling my friends, which means I have to filter 17,000 users one by one........
I promise to post something way more positive next time. Until then.

I NEED YOUR HELP!

GUYS I NEED YOUR HELP TO VOTE ME !

CLICK HERE! Every single vote means a lot for me! Thank you so much!

Creative Allies held a Poster Design Contest for Owl City and when I heard about this for the first time I wanted to faint. Here is the brief project : Owl City is looking for original art to celebrate his latest album, The Midsummer Station. The winning design will win $500 and your art will be turned into limited edition merchandise. For this contest, illustrate your own fantasy-like depiction based on the new album title, The Midsummer Station. Let Owl City's music create the soundtrack to your original art. Feel free to use song titles as inspiration for your images. Do not draw owls, cityscapes or depictions of Adam Young. No photos. Reading the regulations that they stated above drove me asdfghjkl because Owl City's songs ALWAYS make me ridiculously eager to draw a lot of things... like some bizarre, surrealistic and uncanny drawings. I started to make the poster a couple of days before the deadline. Not only because I'm one of the world's greatest procrastinators, but it was really difficult and confusing to think about the whole concept. Too many things to pour down to the drawings yet I can't put them all. After I finally finished it with a big relief, the deadline was officially closed and a few days later I received an e-mail from Creative Allies... my poster was featured on their Editor's Picks page.

It made my day! I also saw the other picks and those posters are really great and some of them are seriously breathtaking. A few days later again, I received another e-mail from Creative Allies, with the subject : Owl City Finalists Selected. My heart pounded like crazy....

... I saw my poster on the finalist page. On Owl City's official Facebook fan page. It means the whole universe to me because... man, I'm just so thrilled to see something that I made, with a big pure love (lol) for my idol, Adam Young, is featured on his official page. I have done a lot of stupid things to catch his attention (with endless tweets, posts on Tumblr and many more...) because all I want is his recognition!

So guys, care to help me out? I really appreciate everyone of you for giving your vote for me!

CLICK HERE CLICK HERE CLICK HERE CLICK HERE

(I hope I don't sound like a ambitious obsessed fan who will turn into a harmful beast if I lose in this contest!)

A Post With So Many Labels (and Words)...

I had a big thing to announce but I will talk about it later. Maybe next year. If only you guys care. Meanwhile....

Sights of Europe with South-East map as background. The Eiffel Tower, the swan, and the harbor were captured by Thia (Instagram : ThiaElz) with her Lomo. I went to her place last week and she got this pocket, full of these kind of hipster photos (that was what she said) and well yeah, I HAD to grab some of them, hehe. Her new kitchen is cool, one side of its wall is fully covered with cork, a pin board material. So yeah... she is free to pin anything up there. A giant pin board, I'll totally get one for my future working space, or bedroom.

Those photos are so... postcard.

And I just bought my second Paul Arden book (I worship him), Whatever You Think, Think The Opposite. I terribly need a BIG self-help right now so, I thank God for these readings. It's Not How Good You Are, It's How Good You Want To Be was actually a birthday gift for a friend, but I took it back because it is much more useful to me. I will replace the book with another, better gift. I hope he will read this.

Again, today, I just finished watching Moonrise Kingdom, movie of the year in my version. Errr I didn't watch a lot of movies this year (confession : the last time I went to cinema was when I went to watch The Avengers) and the excuse is not I don't have any company, but simply because I wasn't really interested, I'd rather spend my money for shopping and I'm easily distracted with any kind of annoying audiences around my seat. Too many bunch of chatty girls who discussed the whole story during the film or screaming babies.

And oh about the Moonrise Kingdom itself, it was set in 1965, which is already a huge reason why do I love this movie so much. The two protagonists, Suzy and Sam, make an undeniably lovely couple although their look contrasted with each other. Suzy is so beautiful, she has a 24-years-old look in 12-years-old figure. Sam, oh, Sam, he is tremendously cute like a baby. Their story was written in an uncanny plot, and totally enjoyable.

I liked Moonrise Kingdom's Fan Page months before I managed to watch this movie. Tavi Gevinson was the one who introduced this movie on her blog. And speaking about Tavi....

She liked the self-portrait artwork that I made for her on Instagram!!! And I realized it after the notification was sent five days ago. Couldn't be happier! She has became my big muse since I started to stalk her a few weeks ago, and a lot of weird projects popped up in my mind. Involving old Barbie toys and another abandoned stuffs that I kept inside the treasure box of my childhood.

This ultra cute painting of me was made by Hanna, so surprised when she sent me this hehe... and as an art trade, I sent her this. Quite similar because of the pink-ness, bunny, Wonderland-theme and cupcake?

Nah that's all what I have got so far. I talked quite a lot, I feel better.

Giant Inflatable Porpoise

One of the most beautiful thing that ever happened to me : my most favorite guy, poet, and musician ever, Adam Young from Owl City, REPLIED TO MY TWEET during the Q&A session last Friday.

I have been joining this weekly Q&A session since the first one but always not lucky enough to get a reply (even on my birthday when I have screamed to myself at the top of my lungs) because one second after Adam announced the start of the Q&A, more than 200 questions per minute (according to the "Search" on the Twitter application that I use, Echofon) were sent to him. So I gave myself a suggestion to use my other account with my old username (@weirdoinpink) with the hope that my chance could be bigger. AND IT WORKED, PEOPLE. I was busily spamming my timeline with questions that I have prepared before for a week on TextEdit and suddenly I took a glimpse... I read the word "weirdoinpink" on my timeline and asdfghjkl...that word "weirdoinpink" came from @owlcity's tweet. I gasped, trembled (not kidding) and yeah...pretty dying in excitement. I have promised to myself that, if Adam replied me for real, I will make a t-shirt with his reply printed on it. Yes, weirdo. 

So far, I have made this,  I was pretending that "Giant Inflatable Porpoise" was a new single from Owl City and this is the childish version of the cover :

I'm so happy because the word that he gave to me was "Giant Inflatable Porpoise" because it's so drawable, haha! I wish I could find a decent custom t-shirt digital printing a.s.a.p to make that t-shirt. Looks like porpoise is my lucky charm from now on. If I had a chance to find a inflatable porpoise (not the giant one, it'll be a waste of space in my tiny room), I would definitely buy that thing.

The Awarding Ceremony

Just received my prize and certificate from CESI's 2011 High School Blog Competition. Thanks to my Mom's excessive anxiety (she was afraid of Jakarta's awful traffic jam), I arrived with my sister 2 hours before the Awarding Ceremony. To kill the time, we wandered around the ANZ Square.

We went to Grand Indonesia afterwards.

Lucky enough to see the musical fountain...

A creepy experience at GI : I was walking with my sister at the Entertainment District when this nerd-looking tall Chinese guy approached us and suddenly asked, "It's a stocking, isn't it?" (pointed to my hose I was wearing) ...I answered, "Yes..?" and then he asked if he could touch the stocking. I gave him my knee (yesss that was extremely reckless) but he said I could take off my shoes. I did it. (Could I be more idiot?) He bent and looked so interested in my stocking.
He murmured to himself for a few minutes and after he's done with the observation (I think he could eat my toes at that moment), he asked why do I wear that stocking. I said, because I wore a mini skirt so I need something to cover my legs. (That's the truth...)
Me and my sister bursted into a guffaw after the freaky guy left. Seriously strange, but I think there's nothing to be worried about. Lol, what a day.