The Long Recap
April 30th
April 30th was my last day at Royalefam and as such I remembered I was given the most hardcore errand which required me to run to various places and to find places I never been to before. King George Avenue, Lavender, Bugis, Queensway, Commonwealth.. I conquered all and was fairly please with myself. But i know i had to leave RF since I had to work on stuff i really want to do..
At night, Bjorn swing by and went for a beer to have a mini celebration in Malaysia in some random club there. They were playing Malaysian Electro.. which was.. groovy. The beer was awesome.. We witness a fight and we laugh at the people there thankful that we didn't get into any trouble.. made me shiver at the event at butter when I almost fought with a bouncer.. geez I have lots of stored angst in me. Strength I never knew existed which scared the hell out of me.
May 2nd
It was the second day of working on my own and I had been planning to convert my room into a bedroom studio since it wasn't working big time. I drew up plans and decided to start video logging my progress since I am starting afresh and I thought it be awesome to document everything down. I wrote down a list of stuff that is missing in my room and the many changes to be made.
Even went down to swee lee in Katong to hunt for speaker stands and microphone stands. It was way too expensive and i was contemplating of building my own speaker stands..
Yan Ru popped by on a usual Saturday and my room was empty. We discussed about the room and Bjorn called..
We met up for dinner and made an impromptu decision to head to Ikea for inspiration. During our trip there, we got many possible materials of making acoustic panels. We sure had fun and brainstorming was awesome. Its good to have many perspective in this and alot of moral support which is greatly appreciated.
May 3rd
I was figuring out the placement of all the objects in my room because I believed in Fengshui, though there are many areas in my room which is not working out well, I figured it would be an awesome guide to get some tips. I headed down to tampines one on my own and it was probably one of the first few times I figured I have to work by myself without anyone and the fact that i headed out alone made me feel pretty awkward as I always head out with friends etc. I got inspired looking at random books and strolling to home fix DIY to see what paint is available. i took the catalogue home feeling pretty vexed about changing the room color. I wondered what color would suit the walls and did my research accordingly online. Only to find no impact or whatsoever in the suggested pale colors.
May 4th
My focus for that day was to source for other materials that could be used to tame and improve my room acoustics. I managed to found some relatively cheap ones and expensive ones and obviously it all didn't fit the budget. I am jobless and I am back at square one where I only had very little money to work with. I enjoyed the research process nonetheless and it is nice to walk around since I never had the time to do this kinda stuff when I was busy at work.
May 6th
It was the beginning of executing The Bedroom Studio Project and I got hold of the paint based on an impromptu decision despite so much research the day before .. I decided that the green looks prestigious and the love of vintage cars made me think that it be a great idea to go with cream. I only wanted to paint the ceiling cream at first so I got a 5l of green and 1l of cream to begin with.. little did i know i was in for a hard time where I will be eventually spending alot of money which is not part of my consideration... such as the vacuum cleaner which was never my intention to buy but my old one was.. lets just say not usable..
Also I started my first video log and got use to filming myself behind the camera and made many silly mistakes like scrapping a huge chunk off the wall but the process made me learn many things I never would have learn if I didnt take any action.. so I am thankful cause all these are pretty basic skills and I hardly know any of them..
I shifted out all my furniture to the hall which will be my resting place for several days and it all begun..
May 8th - May 9th
It was a tiring 2 days when I actually got down to painting, following the simple instructions from the nippon paint website which made think " hmm its easy to paint.. if he can do it.. i can.."
I started to get hold of all the equipment needed to get the job done and realize each time i tried to get something done, I need to get more equipment, new paint.. and after painting my first wall, I was totally demoralize as I couldn't foresee my whole wall to be green in color. It made me rather stressed out and it was then I realize I couldn't handle such a task on my own..
It was my fault i never asked for help in the first place specifically. I didn't made it clear enough that I needed lots of help and even though I did ask many random people for help knowing in full nobody would actually come.. I guess I manifested the wrong thing.. but after the celling, I was dead tired and my body started to strain. I was breathless and I was almost having an asthma attack. I texted Ling and Andy mentioning I could use a brother now.. only to find out that they were doing their own stuff and Andy replied much later.
He came in to the rescue after I was done with my first wall and said the coolest stuff at that moment in time.. "Need a bro? Here I am!"
Andy offered me perspective I never thought off which really made me felt like we are double dragon once again.. He took my role when I was helping him to paint his room 2 years back.. and we sure did reminisce the old times. He suggested that I paint more cream colors on the wall and since I have already purchased 5l worth of green I figured i would be needing more paint.. there goes my budget for this project.. its already busted before it has begun!
During the painting progress I thought of a elementary math question i used to solve when I was a kid.. "Ali takes 3 hours to paint a room, how long would Ali and Muthu take to paint the wall?" I didn't knew what inverse proportion was at that time but figured it would definitely take a shorter time.. but you know what? Its Bull shit.. nobody can paint the room in 3 hours by himself... fuck that shit. Inverse proportion is for sure but hell no its 3 hours.... but we did it anyways finished up as much as we could.
It was already 6am and the place was in a huge mess but the rough paint work is done up and I am pretty pleased with its outcome. I never knew so much could be achieved within a day..
May 11th - May 17th
I have finally cleared the basic mess that was on the floor and thanks to my new vacuum cleaner, i have managed to vacuum most of the dirt out but there will be the inevitable tough paint stains that is hard to get rid off. I was tired and all out of strength but still going strong. I took this period to look at my room giving it a new arrangement, scouting and researching on how to make the acoustic panels and turns out that I found a place that sells even cheaper
acoustic foams!
It really took me lot of figuring out how to get my stuff in the best possible arrangement, getting hold of new speaker stands, fixing the table up, researching , a little bit of rest, More researching and finally getting down to executing on the panels. There is lot of pre planning which I am not used to but since I am calling the shots, I went ahead to get hold of materials with only a rough plan.
The constrains I had was to mount my TV setup, getting the electrical guy to fix up new powerpoint, figuring out tonnes of shit like where to get the plywood , dealing with the ongoing mess, Scrapping the floors making sure its clean, dealing with the low morale when I look at the unfinished work that has been in my space all this while, figuring out what to do with my queen size bed, I am demoralized by the fact that the bed gives me the comfort yet reduces the environments morale. Its uninspiring exchanged for comfort something I cant deal with for now...
I will end todays blog by saying this.. "Everyday is a new day and there is always new things to do. Life is too short to tolerate.. i figured if i am going to live this lifetime.. I gonna want to do things i wanna do." You be amazed by how fast you see results .. I mean I have been wanting to change my room for about two years and when i finally gotten down to it, it took me 2 weeks to get the place changed up and now I am ongoing improving the place as much as I can.. I cant believe it took me two years... not doing anything about it!
If there is something you want to do.. I would say.. just go and do it. You will find a way... :)
