Art is always eventful, but it has been a particularly eventful week, thanks and no thanks to Coursework.
If you don't happen to be within earshot of my perpetual whining, Coursework refers to the year-long Art project each final-year student has to submit for the GCE A/O Level examinations. Which, of course, doesn't
sound half bad if you actually like Art - as Claire commented when I first talked to her as she waited for her AEP acceptance notice (tender, young one! She has not my callouses.): " How hard can it be? You only have to produce one Masterpiece. That takes, what, three days?" She now takes it all back, of course. I can't decide what exactly it is about Coursework that's so unbearable (what could possibly not be right about unlimited funding to do your favourite thing in the world, self-initiated and directed, for one whole year?) Recently, I've been convinced that it's because my brain simply works too quickly for such a long drawn project. The result is a consistently evolving and unmanageable Bogart. My tutors though, refuse to believe that Coursework is a tool of discrimination against Superbrains like me.
But anyway, back to the point: it was a very eventful week.
I suppose it started because it finally sank in that the deadline for submission is less than a week away, which prompted a trip down to some godforsaken corner of the earth to purchase large sheets of perspex for my installation. Mr Tan, who promised to get them for me, was away on a rather long sick leave, so I was frantically trying to get cab fare sponsorship, taking measurements and re-measurements, and hunting down the factory's address in rare display independence. But then Mr Lee, God Bless his soul, who technically isn't even a college teacher, offered to drive me there. He also paid for the perspex, because I didn't think to bring enough money.
Do you wonder why everybody adores him?
So we rushed out of school between my math tutorial and my math lecture, circumventing all offical sanction, as with AEP custom and let conversation take us to the factor. But what I really want to say is, my resepct for him as a teacher has doubled when he didn't bother censoring the word "fucker" when he related his University Degree show experience to me. Rare, isn't it? I didn't so much notice the fact that he used it, but that it did not impede him (although I thought he included it only after a brief moment of consideration - but hey, what was there to lose since he had already, technically, abducted a student?) And it has been from mentors like that, who do not feel the need to excessively shelter students (less out of moral obligation than out of an uncomprehended knee-jerk reaction), but relate the world as it is with an analytical mind, that I have been truly educated.
The factory,I must say, was Impressive. Run like one of those Starhub reception centres, with pretty ladies behind booths calling your number in a fully carpeted and air conditioned office. Never underestimate godforsaken factories. I think it has become one of my notable quirky places.
Now, this is where the exciting part begins. We decided to be really ambitious, and bought two sheets of 4 ft by 6 ft, nearly twice the size we knew a regular car could fit. Let me describe Mr Lee's car: it measures 3 ft wide, and 4 ft high. The factory men thought we were crazy.
It was also raining heavily to compound the drama. So I stood under the uselessly porous shelter of the loading bay, trying to spread my blind conviction that we would somehow manage to get the perspex in to the factory men who kept calling me "Silly Child" (somewhat affectionately) while Mr Lee drove his obtrusively small car in. Several attempts later, the factory men (whom, I suspected bothered to try only because of our peculiar stubbornness) gave up.
I shall get the photograph of the eventual Car+Perspex frankenstein put together. But the point is - WE DID IT.
So we drove back, with Mr Lee in a relatively constricted position, and me crouched snuggly between the backseat and the plastic, feeling somewhat proud. And we STILL managed to discuss Bjork and his neighbourhood. We are fantastic. I think.
But see, when people tell you pride comes before a fall, listen to them - because the interior of the car was horrifyingly scratched and the rubber torn in several places. This is where my conscience starts to tingle. I was all ready to be murdered, but this man not only did not mind his car being scratched, he said it ADDED VALUE to it.
I wanted to pinch his cheeks to see if he was real. Quick, women of the world, marry him.
And this wasn't all that made the week one to remember. Yunsong and Liangwei truly became superheroes when they came twice to paint my gallery walls blue.
And here's a memory, because I've already tried to say too much:
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