New Year Resolution 2012

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Flat Sharing 103: Smoking

When I was searching for flatmates, I always put "non-smoker" as a very top priority criteria.

Unfortunately among my 4 (in reality, 5) flatmates: 2 are smokers.

I don't like its smell, and I have the rights to not have cancer.

I made it really clear to them, no smoking is allowed in the living room/kitchen/dining room..etc shared compound.

It is all well in the beginning. Until once I saw lighter in the bathroom. and I smell something fishy: smell of cigarette in the bathroom.

Oh gosh

At least....its only in the bathroom...i thought, after switching on the ventilation fan before I shower.

Not too long after that, I smell cigarette in the dining room.

Damn it.

I started questioning them indivually , of course they didn't admit, blaming the other guy instead.

There was once I was trying to clean up the place, and discover one single cigarette butt beside the table in my living room. Angrily, I took my broom and try to swipe it prepare to confront them later. I conveniently swipe under the table as well, and a dozen or so cigarette butts came out with an empty bottle of coke and some peanuts shells.

Good job.

As I am about to explode, one of the smoking flatmate (nicknamed :Flatemate A, as depicted in the cartoon above) came out from his room and quickly explained that it was the other flatmate's doing: he brought his friend here from some crazy drinking: it was Friday.

I sent him a message:

Found your cigarette butts in the living room. We agreed that no smoking is allowed in the common area. You might want to find another place before this happens the 2nd time.

However, flatmate A is no better. He is actually the one who smoke in the bathroom. The thing is, at least the other flatmate admits that he smoke. Flatmate A always acted as if he is obeying the rules, but he do it secretly.

I found a huge amount of half filled beer can in the place...I always thought how come they would leave beer on the table/living room overnight, that would spoiled the beer.

Until once the 'half filled beer can' was toppled, and a stream of black smelly, disgusting liquid flow from its opening.The "cans" are his ashtray...plus water..=__=

He also leave a polystyrene beside the balcony door for his cigarette butts: its okay..as long as he smokes in the balcony. BUT he never clean the bowl, the bowl is there for a few months, with the butts pounding up.

A few days ago, I stay up really late to work. I walk out of the room at 4AM for a toilet break and VOILA, he is smoking with a unusually large cigarette! It looks like he rolled extra tobacco in it.He gave me his "oh shit' expression.

I was in toilet rush so I didn't say anything but walked quickly passed him to the toilet.

As I came out, it was gone. Not a trace.

He probably quickly put it into one of his 'half filled beer can', or he smoked out the entire gigantic cigarette in 1 minutes...if the latter is true, I have to admire his skills and pity his lung.

This morning I was cleaning again. There is an empty "Mr. potato chips" tall container around the corner, filled with some usual food packaging that my flatmates usually will not throw into the garbage can but store it in some random places around the house (this will be featured in the future cartoon). I thought it was just that, but when I threw it into the public garbage disposal site, the water flow out on my hand accidentally from the Mr. Potato Chips.

Damn you "half filled beer can".

Anyway, Yeeteng and Juliana (my 2 most craziest fans..lol) suggested I make my characters in the cartoon more recognizable so its easier to tell each person apart.

As a very good cartoon artist (ehem), I decided to lay out some characters in the future flat sharing series, here are the first 2, thats ME and FLATMATE A. =)

Flat Sharing 102: House Keys

Hi guys! Its flat sharing experience again!

This experience happened in the early days of my flat sharing.

I simplified a collection of situations in which the house keys are involved in this comics strip (I am lazy to draw hhaha)

Basically they would forget to bring keys when they come back home, and would rather shout my name REALLY LOUDLY so that I come down to open the door for them.

I guess the entire village know there is an Alex Yap in 250 Tai Poi Tsai Village now.

What went through my mind :" hey, the cell phone is invented for some kinda purpose"

The other experience is that they would give me a call and say:" Alex, I need to get back home, forget my keys, can you pass me the key..like now?" ....

And normally this happens when I was in a hurry on my way to somewhere. I can always say no, but I am very soft-hearted, I cant imagine my housemate cant go back home and have to stay out until someone comes back.

Unfortunately, they forget keys almost every other day in the early days.

And the worse part is, after borrowing your keys, they would normally forget to give it back to you. And you become the one who cant get in. So you call them, but they normally wont response to you (either sleeping, doing some sports, dint pay attention to phone, or drunk...)

No...they are not really drunk all the time...they are drunk sometimes.

But it really make no difference if they didn't answer their call. Right?

Peace!

[p.s. Luckily it didnt happen as often now =) ]

My 1st Comicsblog: Flat Sharing Series & How Comics Inspires

Always wanted to try this, although my drawing is pretty mediocre.(Laugh =D)

I love drawing =) I drew on small pieces of paper when I am bored/sad/disappointed/[fill in the blank with negative feelings]...mostly because when I draw I thought of my childhood: I love drawing on small pieces of paper when I was really really young.

Also, I love comics in particular. If you don't know, my family operates a comics/manga rental shop back in penang =)

I think comics is a very strong medium to express oneself. It can deliver a very layman message in a very compact way yet the audience will not be stressed out by the amount of information. Many times it inspired people to think more about the topic; it is so powerful, it once caused tension and even assaults between two religions, remembering the Prophet Comics Series a few years back.

Lately, a berita harian comics depicting Ultraman ran away from the tsunami, of cause this is referencing to the Japanese Earthquake.

Many regard this as nonsensitive.

I disagree. I think without understand the message the author wanted to deliver and judge is not very fair.

What message do you see from this comic?

What I saw is a disaster that is so massive, even the mighty Japan, represented by Ultraman, cannot handle.

There is nothing about being not sensitive.

But I admit he could have drawn it a different way, that would avoid being slammed they way he was.

And don't get me wrong, I hated Berita Harian to the bone, for 2 reasons:
1. It is controlled

2.And I was forced to write summary report from this paper when I was in my secondary school.

Nevertheless, I have to repeat, the ultraman comic, is really nothing compare to the attempt to relate the earthquake to "Green Technology" and "Climate Change", especially from a person who seems to use 5 bottles of aerosol on her hair everyday.

Hey, I didn't say who.

Moments Captured: Hand phone version

Sometimes you just bump into scenes thats so memorable but then your DSLR(AKA Big Camera) is back at home and someone has leased your compact camera(AKA Small Camera) permanently.

You will just have to make do with an alternative: Your hand phone camera.

They are typically not such a beauty like those I would share on Flickr (as shown above), but the object of the scene and its implicit meaning could have compensated its lack in beauty.

Here it goes:

Scene 1: Dinner in office

Location: IDS Lifung Centre, Shatin HK

Description: 8:30pm in the office, dinner? Mini Pizza hot dog, fried fish skins (YES! Say "OMG they eat fish skin " my westerner friends) and a can of iced lemon tea.

Worked till 10:30pm after this quick dinner.

Scene 2: A crystal-ed SLK

Location: The Element, West Kowloon, HK

Description: wow....

Scene 3: 搵雞唔洗返大陸 又平又靚根記有

("You don't have to travel to Mainland to look for CHICKEN, we have them here nice and cheap!"--$29)

Location: Wo Che 禾輋, Shatin

Description: A good laugh... saw this during a supper gathering with my colleagues in Wo Che. (In case you don't know, chicken is the alternative tongue-in-cheek expression for prostitute in Cantonese/Mandarin)

Scene 4: I thought it was a bus ticket

Location: LCC-T, Sepang, Malaysia

Description: The boarding pass Airasia gave me in my last return trip from KL. Handwritten, almost like another bus ticket I had on my trip from Penang to KL.

Is this how they cut cost? (Note: Airasia is an airline, and I am suppose to board a plane with this ....bus ticket-look alike thing)

Scene 5: LP 3427

Location: Siu Lek Yuen, Shatin, HK

Description: To all my Penang friends=YES THEY HAVE "LP" NUMBER PLATES! (To my non-hokkien speaking friends, thats not a nice word to use in hokkien, period.)

Scene 6: The Earth House

Location: Yongding Perfecture, Fujian Province, China

Description: A visit to my mum's ancestral culture (after being in the city where my dad's ancestral culture originated from-Xiamen), the Hakka people's Earth House 土楼。

This one is well known for its tilted pillars. According to our guide, the carpenter of this structure were pissed by the commissioner of this earth house, decided to show him how good he is, so he made the pillars tilted but still the entire house is as good as other earth houses.

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Hope you enjoy, would you leave me a comment and tell me:

1. Which scene is your favorite/least favorite?

2. Whats your most memorable hand phone moment captured?