Scribble scrabble.
#2083 | Clap your hands for tinkerbell
My time in london has had the unintended effect of endearing candles to me — previously unable to understand why anyone would drop fifty dollars on a scented lump of wax, now I gaze longingly at the likes of the Jo Malone and Diptyque shop windows, painfully aware that I am shedding layers of my skin only for the most basic of chinese girls to emerge. Was this the metamorphosis marketed to me regarding adulthood? One would have hoped for more political astuteness, or clarity of mind, but I suppose there are worse things than a keen appreciation of a citrus scented home environment. You know, the word I think I’m searching for, is hmm.
x
Jem
#2082 | I have become the sort of person who..
.. takes photos of myself in mirror-selfie style. It is an unintended consequence of a solitary life led in london, the result of internal warring: increased effort to dress up due to the cosmopolitan and weather conditions here, a desire to document this change, a painful reluctance to ask a stranger to snap a shot for me… etcetera etcetera. So many thoughts that flash through ones mind before a rather superficially happy smile.
x
Jem
#2081 | Another one from another life
Hi guys,
Another one of late. I knew I was going to be taking a break from entertainment for the year end to work on the literary side of things, so the months leading up to November were actually insanely busy, crammed with shoots and revisions and scripts and projects yet to come to fruition, but promising promising, busy yet still promising. I am equal parts excited and intimidated, the tension between the up down up down up down is enough to wreck. A. Girl. I’m telling you! And yet I would not have it any other way. I wake up everyday horrified at all the things I have yet to do. Everyday I feel like all I’m doing is catching up. And on and on we go.
Anyway here is what I was talking about, re: another one. I hosted the Secrets of Okinawa travel episode for Okinawa Tourism Board x Jetstar Asia, a 5 day shoot that ended in a typhoon (!!!). Which obviously didnt make the final cut. For reasons.
I adore Okinawa. It’s my second time back – the first I was also hosting a travel video, a mini travel series in three parts that was more lifestyle and fun. This one is a little more documentary style. I actually prefer this one because of the homestay I got to do, which let me really sit down and get to know my hosts even after the cameras stopped rolling. Also – the extremely uncoordinated me got to do some hiking, which I have steadily refused my entire life, just knowing I would fall on my face and have my front teeth knocked out.. well, I didn’t, which is a nice surprise, though all it really does is reaffirm the extreme paranoia I carry around with me. Etcetera. Aside: that’s one way to get me to do physical activity I normally refuse – have a client request it. Ah well.
Because so much happened in between the shoot and release date, I actually forgot all about it.. until I saw it online. And then the memories all came rushing back. I thought to myself: Gosh. I love camera work. I actually really love it. When I go on set it’s like a different version of myself surfaces, a more extroverted, excitable, playful version, and it’s like running on an adrenaline high. It is second only to writing – which brings with it a different, deeper, more settled joy. And then when the camera cuts I settle back into my regular person. I guess that’s why it always feels like I’m watching a self from another life when I watch my own camera work after it releases, that shock of uncanniness not entirely unpleasant, but not exactly comfortable either. But then again I have become accustomed to discomfort.
Till next time.
x
Jem
#2080| Exuberance!
Hey guys,
Just on here again because I realised how doom and gloom I sounded the last couple of posts, and wanted visual, solid proof that much of my being is really exuberance!!!! and more!!!! and that it is only in the quiet of writing that my retrospective, and thus, sombre side emerges. It is what it is. Regardless, part of the reason October flew by so fast was because I was basically filming nonstop for various travel shows and also other things. You know the going is good when the show launches and you’re just mourning all the good footage that didn’t make it into the cut thanks to time restrictions or whatever. But, yknw, brevity is not my strong suit, so it is probably for the best that judicious cuts be made on my behalf, anyway.
Here we go! The DFS shoot I did a couple of weeks ago. When DFS Changi asked me to host an episode of their #ShowYourCraft series and told me I’d be basically making cocktails all day.. I was like, guys. Is this a prank? That doesnt sound like work at all. It turns out, as you’ll see in the episode, that the plan all along was to lure me in with whiskey then prank me. Gasp! Diabolical.
Another thing that just launched – the travel show Roz and I were filming in Osaka last month (insanely quick turnaround time, props to the crew!) which was one of the most fun shoots I’ve done, ever!
It’s always so great when you work with people you love. Everytime Roz and I get together on set it’s almost like people are just hiring us to hang out and have fun, which is what we do all the time anyway. Happiness and hilarity ensues, etcetera etcetera. My university professor messaged me after watching it to ask if she could show it at next year’s open house; ergo, the moral of the story is that a masters degree in English Literature can lead to an illustrious career in rapping bad puns onscreen. Let nobody accuse academia of inflexibility, is what Im sayin.
x
Jem
#2079 | Of course and of course not
Here again and it is end-October now. A crossroads of sorts has sprung up and taken root in my mind of late, not that it’s a bad thing, just different. And obsessive as I am I cannot help but obsess! Obsess obsess obsess. It is like standing atop a snow pile and deciding whether or not to take off the wool coat when your toes are already starting to prickle and curl from the bite of ice. It is all very exciting, every three days is exciting and the fourth you cannot help but think, writing is so lonely. Then the fifth day comes and again the winds of excitement!!! Anyway. To bastardise shakespeare, to do or not to do; that is the question.
The answer, obviously, is of course, and of course not.
x
Jem
#2078 | October?
How many times have I opened and started a blog post draft then left it half-formed and aborted the whole thing? Too many, I think. I have been in a strange mood w.r.t. public writing and there are reasons why but they are not reasons i can really put a finger on, not coherently or right now anyway. Will this attempt make it to published status? Who knows. It’s just a blogpost, I think to myself, lighten up.
The other day I opened my phone’s twitter app and wanted to express my shock at how fast time was going by, how it was already september, when I realised that it was october. Major, major what the heck moment. At the start of the year there were so many things I had set out for myself to do, in 2018, and it is already rapidly approaching the fourth quarter of the year and what have we? Actually, scrap that. It is already the fourth quarter, I dont know why I pretended otherwise. Weirdly, I have been watching cartoons. That bit seems important to state for the records.
This year has gone by so fast, which is the same thing I said about last year, and the year before that. Etcetera. But this year (or at least, the second half of this year), I have started to feel a bit more hopeful, a bit more optimistic about things. I have made no secret about the fact that I’ve been off my game, creatively, for the last two years, events that threw me off kilter collided into my previously dandy existence and I have more or less been struggling to catch some internal balance ever since. At some point it was bleak. As someone who is naturally pre-disposed towards cheeriness (self-diagnosis, take it as you will), the feeling of constant distress hurt. A lot of forced onward trudging had to be self-implemented, with vague hope that eventually things would change. Life does go on.
Which is why the second half of this year was so important to me: and for the first time, the speeding by of months and days and hours induced less panic than it did a kind of determination, with a sense of challenge and fulfilment. My best friend and I are old school, we write letters, emails to each other, we find it helps gather our thoughts. There is a very solid kind of happiness that one derives from taking stock of the ways we have come, from the ways we were before, not in terms of accomplishments, as one might expect, but in terms of the friendships we have built upon, the deepening of understanding and support and love. All this is to say that I am thankful at the end of the day, I suppose.
Here comes the year end, hurtling towards us, too fast.
x
Jem
Camera Info
I shoot on a Nikon D750 with a 35f/1.8 lens, a Fujifilm x100v, or my Samsung Note 20 Ultra. Pictures are edited in Lightroom Mobile or VSCO