hazel llanes

Though the Tour Director gave us some money for breakfast, we decided to save it and eat in that morning. I packed so much food for the trip that doing so was quite unnecessary. Tuna and crackers for breakfast, yay!

Our first destination of the day was…

St. John’s Cathedral! This was an art trip, so we should’ve expected it, but little did we know that inside the cathedral, we’d see work by none other than Keith Haring:

As we journeyed to Central Park, we saw The Dakota where I felt an overwhelming sense of awe at the fact that little ole me was standing on the streets that John Lennon stood upon; that I was right in front of his home where he lived and that I was facing the entrance where he was shot. Part of me wished that at that moment, Yoko would peek out of her window on the top floor and look down at us. But that was just wishful thinking on my part.

From there we entered Central Park through Strawberry Fields memorial and with our teacher, sang “Strawberry Field’s Forever” as we walked.

We crossed Central Park to go to The Met which was so amazing and so big that we all sort of died when we were told that we had to leave so soon. The Met’s front steps are where the cast of Gossip Girl usually sits, but we couldn’t take a picture because it was so crowded!

I’ve been really interested in Greek mythology lately, so I looked real smart identifying the sculptures of Greek Gods that we saw not only at The Met, but all over New York City (e.g. Prometheus in front of The Rockefeller Center). Theseus over here is famous for defeating a minotaur but he also slayed this poor centaur named Bianor.

One of the highlights at our visit to The Met was seeing Miss Pandora and The Cherry Blossom Girl! I took some stalker pics because I was too scared to approach them and my French is abysmal. But it was hard to concentrate on the art after I saw them…

Next we went to the Guggenheim and then Harlem, 5th Avenue and then Time’s Square again! We went inside Sephora and guess who we bumped into again…

Yeah, I’m not creepy at all.

We had dinner at this place called Schnipper’s which to me had the best veggie burger and best name ever. Also, the manager and the restaurant itself was very nice. A++ to them!

When we got back to our hotel, they let us go to Time’s Square again again again but my feet were killing me so I opted out. I visited my friend’s room when they got back and ate some of their noodles, their cheesecake, jumped on their bed, gossiped, and took silly photos with them. 

To end the day, we climbed to the top of the Rock(efeller) and we screamed, “I LOVE NEW YORK CITYYYYY” to the top of our lungs.

Overall a very fun night :)

It’s impossible to sum up my whole trip in one word, but let’s just say that there were lots of moments where I fantasized about our bus breaking down… I knew I would enjoy my stay but I had no idea I would feel this miserable about leaving.

Suddenly, Toronto isn’t good enough anymore; it’s too cold, too boring, and it isn’t New York City.

The Empire State Building from our hotel room window.

We stayed at the Doubletree Chelsea hotel where we were given warm chocolate chip cookies upon our arrival. And that’s when I knew this place would be awesome! NOTE: Warm cookies are the key to my heart.

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(Wow, three posts in a week? I think I’m getting better at this!)

Yesterday was my birthday and though I hate to make a big deal out of the day, it always amazes me how…amazing and thoughtful people are. I am so incredibly lucky to have such great and loving people around me. Thank you very much, merci beaucoup, and muchas graçias. You know who you are.

Aside from it being my birthday on November 2nd, it is also All Soul’s Day a.k.a ‘The Day of the Dead’. This always FREAKED ME OUT as a kid because my mom told me that back home, families actually visit their deceased relatives in the graveyards on this day and stay the whole night. Now, I just find it supremely ironic that I was born on a day devoted to all the departed…Isn’t that kind of fishy?

Though I can’t claim to be Luxirare, scroll down my friends, and bear witness to my closeup shots of food! And other stuff!

These colorful French macarons, given to me by Amanda, are from a Japanese-inspired patisserie called La Bamboche which makes unique, exotic desserts from Japanese ingredients such as yuzu, ume & sake, and roasted yam. The four macarons below are Spicy Cocoa, Yuzu, Mint Chocolate, and Lavender.

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I’m sure we’ve all heard this adage before. And I’m sure we’ve all nodded our heads in unison and vowed to uphold this trite maxim multiple times (and then failed to do so in the end). But recently, I’ve begun to realize—really realize—the importance of ‘less’ in my creative life.

Illustration by Carolyn Sewell

The pursuit of ‘less’ is not just a matter of being more productive; it’s also about honing one’s creative ability and reducing the urge to imitate another designer’s work.

Aaron Heth, a recent design school graduate, says about taking inspiration from the internet:

“To a degree, these things help with our creative juices, but they mostly have the bad habit of distracting us. Seeing too much can simply overload you and lead you in to making decisions that aren’t right for a particular brief.”

Picasso’s words are also relevant here:

“Good artists copy; great artists steal.”

Essentially he’s indicating that most artists have a tendency to recycle a previous artists’ work which, in the end, produce cookie-cutter results. But a great artist will take much of the same elements to a whole new level and make it his own. I believe it’s often the case with designers also.

As Frank Chimero points out in his semi-sort of comic, we need to “kill [our] timid notion of creativity” and make “allogical [illogical?] connections”.

THE GOAL: Stop using boring clichés! Be creative! Don’t be a good designer, be a great designer!

Since it’s impossible to produce original bodies of work when you spend most of your hours drooling over other people’s masterpieces, in order to achieve my goal, I need to refrain from visiting so many ‘inspiration’ sites/galleries/blogs and reduce other forms of distraction.
So far, I’ve diminished my Twitter following to 45, my Tumblr follow list from over 100 down to 80, and my Google Reader subscriptions from almost 300 down to 150 (I’m working on it).

In addition, I think I’m going to take more showers.

Halloween this year was…kind of disappointing. I guess it’s mostly due to the fact that I no longer dress up and go door-to-door to get candy. Don’t get me wrong—I would’ve LOVED to have done just that! I’m getting pretty good at feeling shameless about certain things. But most of my neighbors usually refuse to give candy to anyone they consider “too old” (I call BS on this!!). And apparently my younger brother (who is in 8th grade) didn’t pass the test this year. It’s depressing because he’s our only source of candy for this particular holiday, and now he’s “too old”! And becoming taller than me! This is not right! This is the first year we didn’t do any post-Halloween candy trade-offs, and I think it’s saddest thing of life.

On the upside, we learned how to make cool lightstreaks in the shadows of our dark living room using only a DSLR and a flashlight. I tried writing my name but it was way too hard.

Speaking of Hallowe’en aka “Hallows’ Eve”, here’s something to commemorate the upcoming Harry Potter film: THE DEATHLY HALLOWS!!