My new place :)

It’s close to 5 months since I last blogged here.

That’s because I’ve been building up my own Website (with my name as my domain! How cool is that).

I have loved my time blogging at dberyl.wordpress.com. It has given me so much – the opportunities to blog about my baby-steps in cooking, cool stuff like iron-board-mirror, and my Muak Lek getaways – it’ll always be here as keeper of fond memories. Not bad for getting over 10,000 + page views ya? Thanks for being awesome readers – the blog wouldn’t have been a blog without readers!

A virtual 7-11’s best chicken steak burger to you! Cheers!

So hop over to my new site! I’ve got big plans for it, so stay tuned!

My silver dragonfly bracelet

My Muak Lek Miracle getaway food trip

Last week was ultimately one of the worst weeks I’ve had.

And when I say that, I mean Monday through Friday.

It was so horrible (I was constantlyconstantlyconstantly interrupted while working) that I actually blew off at one of my colleagues.

I don’t usually do that. But the fact that I did meant that I was really, really at the edge of my seat. Thank God for Gmail chats, I was able to lepas geram (express my anger) at some of my close friends.

Although I was able to express my frustrations, I was really having a hard time being calm. I was a fireball wrap in anger.

I knew I needed to get out.

On Thursday 5:20 pm, I decided I needed a break from the campus. Being away, even though it is just mere minutes, would give me a peace of mind. Besides, I was hungry and I wanted to eat something else besides my Maggi Mee curry noodles (which is awesome by the way. But you can get sick of it if you eat it 5 days straight. Just saying!)

…I also finished the chocolates Rae gave me from South Africa. (They were sinfully delicious!)

It was already 5:30 pm and I was still in the office. I thought of calling the van, but decided it was silly to call the van because I was just going to Muak Lek, not to Saraburi or Bangkok. You know, I’m just going to rush home, quickly change, and walk really fast to the van station. If I was meant to go to Muak Lek, the van will be there.

It takes 5 minutes to go home. Another, say 3 minutes to change. Then another 10 minutes to the van station. In between, I had to cash out and was stopped by a colleague for a chat (was getting impatient at this time. Oh boy, I was really worked up!).

By the time I got to the van, it was 5:50 pm. PERFECT! But what greeted me was this:

An empty parking lot! I was so disappointed! I actually felt sad when I saw that there were no vans.

Sighing heavily, I walked slowly towards the cafeteria. I thought maybe I could ice-cream since I saw students coming out from the cafeteria and they were eating cones. Ah I’m in luck, because that means the ice-creams just came and that means there’s still the cones…

What’s that?

There was a noise. Like a vehicle coming up behind me. So I turned. And I saw:

YOU’VE GOTTA BE KIDDING ME!

I was really taken by surprised! All is not lost for there is a van for me to go down to Muak Lek! WHOA I CALL THAT A MIRACLE.

If you saw me that particular moment, you would have thought what the heck am I smiling silliness. But yes, I was instantly a bit happier when I saw the van. Thank you God!

When I got to Muak Lek, I headed towards Texas, also known as the Food Court.

With the whole miracle that happened mere minutes before, I decided that I was going to enjoy my Muak Lek excursion to the fullest. So instead of having my usual friend chicken rice at the Muslim shop,

I had

homemade soya milk with char kuay

and

kua kgai ke tiau (I call it ‘Penanglike char kuay teow’). This dish had that nolstagia wok burnt-smell, and that made me reminisce on Malaysian food. Happy thoughts came flooding in as I enjoy eating slowly (rare characteristic of Deanna).

It was my breakaway at Muak Lek and I was going to enjoy this ‘freedom’ to the fullest.

After my satisfied dinner at the food court, I shopped a little bit at Lotus Express, then head back to the university with a motorbike taxi.

(I would have insert a picture of me riding on a motorbike taxi. Unfortunately, he went very, very fast and I didn’t want the driver to think I was crazy, trying to take a picture of us on the bike while he goes on full speed)

I think this must’ve been my 3rd time to go to Muak Lek using public transportation in the past 2 weeks. Sure, I spend more on transportation and maybe I should’ve ask one of my friends to send me. But honestly speaking, I do enjoy this personal Muak Lek getaways – it’s quite liberating. I really hate to impose on people. By using this mode of transportation where I take the public van to Muak Lek and motorbike taxi back to campus, I am:
1. Not bothering anyone to menyusahkan diri / trouble themselves
2. Have personal, quality time (WITH FOOD that *I* want to eat!)

I’m definitely feeling better now.

I know I haven’t been blogging lately – there are a lot of things I’m working on and I’m just exhausted in the end. But I have been reading your blogs, and enjoy seeing the pictures of recipes, awesome craft works you’re working on, and etc.

To end this entry, I shall leave you with food pictures (what else! HEHE):

cereal with milk, topped it off with CHOCOLATE RICE HAHAHAHA. (Onya gave me a packet of chocolate rice, and behind the packet, it says that you can mix it with cereal too! Of course I had to try it)

and my all-time favorite,

Secret Recipe’s Beef Lasagna and Carrot Pumpkin Soup. LOVE.

My process of designing a business card for a performer/singer-songwriter

My GypsyGoods

When Shimona asked me to help her design her business card, I was ecstatic!

Despite of the hugeeeeeee pile of workload I have in the office, I’m always psyched up to work on something fun and creative. Trust me, nothing feels more awesome than to do something you’re passionate about. Also an A+ for helping a friend!

Shimona is having a gig at the #BKKtweetup’s gathering this coming Saturday night at Coco Beach, Ratchathewi BTS station Exit 4, so I needed to finish the card designs by the middle of this week (which I did, yesterday night!).

What Do You Want In The Card
Before designing, what I usually ask is the information they want in the card, any particular images, size, color, etc. Besides her contact details and minute info, Shis gave me the liberty to wing the design (a dream, a dream!). But I had to make sure that the design is: simple, sweet and stylish and the color is reddish-orangeish.

I also added another element: minimalist.

Brainstorming
Every designer has different ways of brainstorming. For me, I start working on the card itself in Photoshop by first choosing the font. After scouting and trying, I finally settled on Segoe Print (free for download!) as the brand font. Friends following this blog knows my personal obsession with typography – so I believe Segoe Print embodies what Shimona wants to bring out – simplicity, stylo and a touch of carefree-ness! The other font I chose is Tw Cen MT, a sans-serif minimalist font used for short information.

Then I googled on business cards just to see what other people have designed for performers. After dozens of pages, I saw one that I really like: a B&W portrait of a singer, smiling carefree off-camera with her hands crossing over each other, and the contact details at the bottom of the card. I knew right then I wanted the similar sentiment for Shis’ card.

Version 1: Orange.

Version 2: Orange – Twitter info at the back.

By the way, I got the Twitter logo from here.

Shis really liked the Twitter-at-the-back design. With a better high-resolution profile picture and a change of color, the final and chosen design became this:

Shis is also going to print another version which I made: City Skyline

Shis also wanted another business card that has her profession as a counselor/teacher stated. So below are the initial designs:

Version 3: Color-Combo

Yup, you can see I experimented the colors by picking color from Google images. You can say that what appears nice on other things doesn’t necessarily mean it’ll work on your BC. A very good lesson to learn, haha!

So Shis suggested baby blue with lush purple. And this is what I came up:

Version 4: Blue&Purple-Combo

I was getting somewhere with the 3rd design (on your lowest right). The top looked a little bare, so I experimented more:

I didn’t design the treble clef, by the way – Shis found it!

So the final chosen design was:

Can’t wait to see these designs printed on hard copy!

Encourage Ivonne who’s starting out in Taiwan :)

Thought I should give a shout out to my friend, Ivonne who is starting to blog her rollercoaster adventure in Taiwan. She’s working as a ESL teacher at the moment at a Taiwan SDA cramming school in Pingtung province (hope I spelt this one correctly!).

The sentiment of moving to a new country and starting a new phase in life is way too common for us to understand. You can encourage her as she begins a new, ’scary’ yet exciting journey by visiting her blog.

What could you be doing right now?

It’s funny that as you age, you start contemplating upon life, such as

What am I doing here
Where do I go from here
What does He wants me to do

If you have the powers to do anything you want – put money, time, and people issues aside – what could you be doing right now? What would be ideal?

Share with me.

Summer 2009 in pictures

1. My first Milo Dinosaur, served at D’Chillz. Made by Alden. Not bad.

2. Kids being miniature soldiers.

3. Stopped by Phanit’s house in Australian Village after dinner at Station. Daron, you would’ve been so proud of your student! He practices, you know…”

4. Vanilla & lime with butterscotch topping at D’Chillz. I claim only Aaron and Sandy can do it right.

5. Dozens of monks trickling in on Wat Po compound. Mimi and I was giggling when we saw some of them had tattoos at their backs.

6. Trust the Thais to come up something innovative (and low-budget) like this recyclable Windex sprayer using Pepsi and Lipton Ice tea bottles.

7. Saturday nights at Dr Pak Lee’s, playing Wii. This guy can ski like nobody’s business okay! LOL

8. One of the six cats of the Lee’s…CUTE KAN. This is my first time of my seven years here to even be near one!

9. Farewell potluck for Bob at the Lampadans.

10. Bob and friends before he left for good.

11. Had awesome green noodles with Ivonne, Onya, Teds, Jun and Fian.

12. …wouldn’t be complete without the most awesome Thai chai yen on earth (though it’s diluted, by the time this picture was taken)

13. Simple activity during Ivonne’s farewell dinner. Wrote messages of encouragement to Ivonne, read it to her, and make it into a star! (though most of the time, we forgot to read and we concentrated on making the papers into stars…haha)

14. Ivonne sorting out two of her huge bags to fit 46 kgs, the max. luggage requirement of KLM.

Sharing my favorite inspirational quotes

My favorite logo/web/graphic designer Jacob Cass shared responses towards his Twitter on “What’s your favorite inspirational quote”.

He shared about 40+ quotes and here are some of my favorites:

AIU (formerly MC) at Muak Lek

1. “Unless you move, the place where you are is the place where you will always be.” ~Ashleigh Brilliant
Note: DEANNA, MOVE. You’ve been in Muak Lek far too long (7 years+!)

2. “Do what you love to do, but don’t do it to the point where you don’t love it anymore.”
Note: I’m concerned for those who loved what they’re doing, but slowly burning out. Don’t burn out! Hang on.

3. “I don’t want to be one of those who say ‘I wish I had’. I want to be one of those who say ‘I’m glad I did’.”
Note: Deanna, be brave! Take courage. Take a leap lah you adui.

4. “Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life.”
Note: This is the ultimate dream.

Designing MC Christmas card using Adobe Illustrator for the 1st time.

5. “To live a creative life, we must lose our fear of being wrong.” ~ Joseph Chilton Pearce
Note: Deanna, don’t be afraid of making mistakes. It’s okay. Let go of that perfectionist-a attitude.

6. “Be a fountain, not a drain.” ~Rex Hudler
Note: Don’t be stagnant, Deanna. Move it! Always think of what you could do better.

7. “Graphic design is the spit and polish but not the shoe.” ~Ellen Lupton
Note: The learning process, Deanna. The Journey.

8. “Don’t get set into one form, adapt it and build your own, and let it grow, be like water.” ~Li Zhènfan
Note: Don’t be a drain – be a fountain!

My very first Newsbyte. Cried a lot especially in the first few months; people calling it names and whatnot. But with lots of trials and errors and perseverance, fast forward 3 years and Newsbyte news and design does not look like how it first came out. We came a long way.

9. “Success is falling down 7 times but getting up 8.”
Note: Persevere. This is going to be hard…

10. “Nothing is original. Steal from anywhere that resonates with inspiration or fuels your imagination.” ~Jim Jarmush
Note: Continue blog-surfing. Read up. See what others in the field have done. Always want to keep learning.

11. “Nothing is original. Steal from anywhere that resonates with inspiration or fuels your imagination.” ~Jim Jarmush
Note: Continue blog-surfing. Read up. See what others in the field have done. Always want to keep learning.

12. “Keep her lit” ~Anyone from Northern Ireland
Note: My point exactly (refer #11)

Subscribed to dozens of blogs and sites that promote inspiration, design and creativity. I use Bloglines to handle my rss reads

13. “Art is creativity, creativity is passion, passion is love.” ~Andrew Brynjulson.
Note: I think I know my passion, but I’m a little afraid. I mean, what if what you think is your passion is not your passion? What if I’m wrong? Argh…life.

14.“Design that doesn’t take a chance doesn’t stand a chance”
Note: TAKE A CHANCE lah, Deanna haiyoh you really scared is it

15.“In order to know what is right, you’ve got to know what is wrong.”
Self-explanatory

16.“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.” ~Mark Twain

Note: Refer #3.

Joining my first 5km jogging-marathon called Joggerthon in February 2008. Also my first medal for a ’sports’ activity.

See more inspirational quotes here

Help Remedies

HELP remedies

Structure and form: Chapps Malina
Graphics: Little Fury

Ironing Board Mirror

Ironing Board Mirror

Designed by Therese Glimskär.