Day 17 to 22: more steady sailing

Note: Here’s the second half of the post! Enjoy!

[Day 17//12.09.10]

Hangover. Can’t remember what I did. But I was too tired to do anything.

[Day 18//13.09.10]

Monday. Typography minor. We didn’t do much except work in groups in the library. This class is so lax. Lol.
Joao, Pauliina and I made a group together since we literally have the same schedule. The topic we decided on was about devising new standards for legibility of text on the web/new media. Or something like that. We called it “designing for the infinite”, LOL.

For the rest of the day Stefan, Susanne and Baptiste (another exchange student, this time from Strausbourg! Ooooh.) invited us to go to a workshop at the letterpress. Naturally I agreed to go, I mean why not? If I’m allowed to use it then I should take the opportunity to learn it! Joao and Pauliina declined though.

The letterpress room, which is located in the basement next to the photo labs, is a dream come true. In Emily Carr we have the same thing except stripped to a bare minimum of incomplete typefaces/cases and a few hand powered machines. I think the only thing we have a “one up” is the foil press, which can press foil into pages/book covers to make shiny things. But in WdKA, there’s an complete array of Helvetica (from 8pt to GIGANTIC), Perpetua, Bodoni, Gill Sans, etc. Not all of them are complete, in fact the most complete is Helvetica (no surprise there), but it’s very amazing nonetheless. At the entrance there’s a paper cutter machine that looks like a monster, except it’s completely safe with sensors and foot pedals and the like. And finally, to the left wall there’s two letterpress machines that operate on the push of a button. SO FANCY AND COOL.

The guy who takes care of the room’s stuff introduced himself as Wim and at the point of writing this (Sept 25) I’ve met him about… 5-6 times. We’re practically chums but not really because I get scared of him sometimes. I can’t tell when he’s mad or just making a joke! Agh. Dutch people are particularly hard to read, and I’m pretty good at reading people too. We on the other hand introduced ourselves as Stefan, Susanne, Baptiste, Erica and Namso. I really had no idea what Namso was doing here since she’s in Audio-Visual design with the Italians, but she seemed quite earnest. And considerably less drunk compared to Saturday.

Overall, t’was fun!

[Day 19//14.09.10]

Tuesday. Graphic design. Except not really. Why? Because my instructor was sick! Yay! I mean… um, ooh what a shame it is to miss a day of learning. *snorts*

It sort of sucked because I rushed to school too thinking I was going to be late, and came in looking like a sweaty hot ass mess as per usual. Other than that I don’t remember doing much. I played with Timothy a little bit, lol. By playing I mean we decided it would be a good waste use of our time to do the Netherlands Citizenship Test. It was seriously stupid and hard. Halfway it seemed like a personal survey, asking ridiculous questions like “if you got robbed would you a) call the police; b) stop and survey the damage before calling the police or c) do nothing” or “if you were holding a party would you tell your neighbours about the noise?” or “if your third daughter got drunk and passed out…” and blahblahblah. I got 3.8/10 .___.

On the other hand, Timothy got 65% on the Canadian Citizenship Test! Damn it! It’s too easy to be a Canadian!

[Day 20//15.09.10]

Wednesday. Day off. The highlight of the day came in the evening, when I scheduled myself to do a self photoshoot. When I booked the shoot I figured I wouldn’t need anyone but myself. But nooooo, the technician didn’t tell me that I needed someone else to push the buttons for me! Argh. But anyways. The concept of my shoot was to do multiple exposures in one frame to express my multiple identities in my typography magazine, and this would be done with multiple flashes. What was really nice was that the technician actually helped me to set it up (because I was new) and with my student card I got to loan a pretty sweet ass Nikon, a power supply-thing, a light meter and a flash kit. The tripod was already installed onto this bar thing that reached the ceiling, and was moved with the help of hydraulics (or something). Pretty cool. But it was useless unless I had someone there with me, so I called up Mary-Alice and THANK THE HEAVENS she came after work. I cannot fully express my gratitude for her being there!

Once everything was set up it was a pretty fun shoot; we played around a lot with the flash bulb a lot. Some of my stalkers can see the results of the shoot on my facebook, but later I might post up some unseen ones here as well.

[Day 21//16.09.10]

Typography. Last time we were basically dicking around and this class wasn’t very different, except we had to actually show our progress. And I had progressed since last week thanks to my photo shoot! Hehehehe.

Obviously the rest of the day was not very interesting because I can’t remember much else worthy of talking about. Oh wait, I had my first Dutch culture class. The presentation was disorganized and underwhelming. It was supposed to be about humor in Dutch design, and although the material could have proved interesting (droog design is actually really similar to my interests) the presentation was an unfunny mess. I mean, basically the guy was talking about how he idolized a douche bag. The coolness of Prezi couldn’t save it! Our homework was to add more examples to the mess.

ETA: I forgot to add, at the beginning of the Dutch Culture class there was a woman that introduced the course and the like. Joao and I had a very interesting exchange that went something like this:

Joao: the teacher… she has a male voice.
Me: you mean she speaks like a man?
Joao: yes.

LOL. That totally made my day.

[Day 22//17.09.10]

Finally. Friday again. Crosslab. We were supposed to have stuff on iGoogle/NetVibes, but I was really running low on ideas. I still am actually, and it’s over a week later! Omg. Anyways, we started off by waiting outside for the class before us to finish using the classroom. Earlier that day I was ironing my clothes on my couch and I accidentally burned my knee. I started off the conversation with that (“So this morning I burned my knee with an iron..”) and they laughed at me .__. Fernando tried to kick my knee too. Tsch that kid. Doesn’t he know I got martial arts running deep in my veins? Hahaha. Timothy also tried to do the same (after he deadpanned, “so you really burned your knee huh..”)

For the majority of the class Fernando and I were really just dicking around, having this random non-sequitur of a conversation (involving ironing knees, pranking people with money on fishing poles, piggy banks, blenders, all that jazz) and it reminded me of Bevin. Actually he really does remind me of Bevin, except he’s White and less perverted.

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(P.S – WordPress has a function where I can see where I get my traffic, and for some reason I’m linked to this site Financial Info Zone. Lol! I think they might be following the wrong person… )