16/04/2018
Overall, I really love how the publication turned out as a whole. To finish up the publication I added some blue handwritten text on to the brown envelope to give it some context before opening. On the envelope I wrote:
"By 2020, the government aims to remove over 100 neighborhoods in Beijing and recondition the space to build new buildings. This year they aim to remove 40 million square meters of housings and illegal constructions.
This campaign launched by the government will affect the population of migrant workers."
I wrote this in the third person, pulling research from the articles I have read to summarize the context of this publication, so the readers understand what is happening with the images and the significance of the images.
Having done that, with the thoughts for my exhibition. I will have the original posters hanging off the wall and underneath the hung posters will be my publication. In total, I want to make 16 publications and inside the brown bag, it will contain: one original backdrop poster printed in large scale, following a leaflet of my photoshoot that I took of that backdrop and a card that writes the instruction of what to do with the poster. The publication can be taken home by the visitors in the exhibition.
13/04/2018
The poster size that I needed it to be printed in several print shops couldn't do it due to my kind of request for the poster; I needed it to be at least a meter long and printed on newsprint paper for the effect I wanted it to be. That was not until I found one printing shop that could possibly print it in my two requests but they said they don't have exactly newsprint but they had a paper that was as thin as I wanted it to be, sadly, I had to improvise for the deadline because they were closed on the weekends and possibly can't get it print it for the assessment, however, I can possibly do it for the exhibition.
In the meantime I am still trying to collect all the materials for the publication and tomorrow I will test out my options. To not waste time I went on some online stores to find the materials that I need in order to make my publication. I have decided to do some printing with my own printer to have more of the control over my own publication. However, with the final images, I will print at a print shop.
I am most likely to print the images on glossy paper so it looks very high quality and the paper thickness will be 350gsm so it will feel like a poster card. The glossiness will capture more color to the pictures and it will definitely remind the viewers of back in the days printing sheets of photos in a Kodak print shop. When I was younger most of the pictures I took during vacation always get printed at the Kodak print shop, and with the gloss, it will be really cool to see a stack of images. The printed out images would possibly be mounted on a thick white cartridge card.
07/04/2018
MY ASIAN FACE: IN REVERSE
Today was my last day and I was never planning to reshoot today but my dad forced me to wake up because turns out there was no wind today. My biggest concern was how I was going to prepare the backdrop on time for the shoot in the evening. The whole morning, my dad and I spent several hours trying to find a printing shop that can print for me in a large format and also that can be done before noon. I was able to find one and I got the backdrops ready.
The shoot was at the same location we found, and I was really glad that my dad woke me up because the weather was so perfect for a reshoot. The backdrop was printed on thicker paper, which turned out better than I expected. Because the weather in the afternoon was so golden, the natural light that hit on to the model was perfect and I made sure the sun wasn't hitting directly on to the backdrop because the image will turn out very glossy and exposed.
As we were driving back home, I passed by this ghost town village that has just been turned down but not completely removed and because I really loved that location we end up driving back to do more shooting at this location:
If I didn't drive back to this location I know that I will regret it. I was able to capture a few shots under 30 minutes because i was afraid that I will get caught, especially there was a sign for no transpassing.
30/03/2018
MY ASIAN FACE: IN REVERSE
I spend the day scouting the locations and one location that I found is actually next to my school, my school is a 40-minute drive from where I live in the city. The area that it was built on were all villages, and still today there are some village houses left before it gets destroyed and the location that I picked is actually a destroyed village that has been left there and has not been cleaned up. I was surprised to still see a few houses left that has not been destroyed and that there are still people living in them. I really liked the location because there wasn't anyone there to stop me, other than one guard, but the chances are low that he will ask me to stop. It is the perfect location to shoot this project in.
24/03/2018
MY ASIAN FACE: IN REVERSE
Before I leave for Beijing, I wanted to test out ways of creating the backdrop instead of just printing it out on a big sheet of paper. I found a website that will help me assemble an image file into several sheets of A4 images or A3 images that after assembling it to a bigger image poster. I printed a random image from my research page, through exploring the option on the website I managed to print the image a larger scale on newsprint paper. The reason why I printed on a newsprint paper was from researching on Noemie Goudal's work, the poster she created are also assembled together into a large poster and the poster she made are very see through when the light bounces through the paper. I really like the effect of how the poster looks and for the final posters I want to print it on newsprint paper and assemble it together.
19/03/2018
MY ASIAN FACE: IN REVERSE
Starting this two-week project, I already have an idea of what I wanted to focus on. During the Christmas break, going back home never felt the same as the streets are a lot emptier and cleaner than before. The things that used to be on the street got destroyed and rebuilt so that it is not there anymore. I was curious, I wondered where the people all went and my mom told me that the government is clearing out the migrant workers in Beijing due to overpopulation. I found that extremely ironic as I lived here in Beijing since I was 5 and people from all over the province in China came to Beijing for job opportunities but now they are kicking them back to square 1. I wanted to focus on this issue and find out how this is happening without any big protest happening or even how the government is able to do it.
As for how I want to do it, I wanted to put something that used to be there, there again and see what type of feeling it creates for the people. My vision was to set up images of the original location and place at the newly constructed location, so I am thinking of setting up an outdoor studio backdrop and asking citizens living in Beijing to participate as models.
11/03/2018
MARQUES ALMEIDA
We continued with our photoshoots and filming with different models throughout the day. Setting up the cameras exactly like they were the previous day. Since we didn't mark up the exact place we placed the cameras we had to relook at some of the clips to make sure it fits correctly.
Today we were focused on trying to minimize the amount of film we taped with the models, as yesterday we had a huge number of clips to go through, as for today we were also very organized with the questions we want to ask the model as for the poses we want her to have. Since the previous models were mostly sitting down and laying on the floor, we wanted the models for today to do more standing and dancing. In the storyboard, the edit of the film had different models in different posing and position.
08/03/2018
MARQUES ALMEIDA
Today, as a group, we spend the whole day trying out our ideas and doing several test shoots with the blue jacket. We had an idea but starting to do the test shoot made us a little confused on what exactly we are going to ask the model in terms of the interview questions. Our idea was to let whoever wearing the blue suit, they don't have to be a professional model, style the blue jacket however they want it. We will take a few pictures in the same style but with different people, and tile it all together on to an A2 poster. As for the film, we will be asking a series of personal questions of the model and of them wearing the jacket, very simple but today we will just be exploring our options.
The photos came out almost how we wanted; the model standing in front of the white background, however, putting the pictures side by side together made us realize it looks too editorial and that is not what we want. We want it to be raw because it is raw, we want to grab random people and model with the jacket the way they think it should, and standing on the white background is not what we want to communicate. We decided to leave some space out of the white background. Nonetheless, asking the questions to the models was a little difficult because we weren't sure what exactly to ask them and the questions we asked were all too repetitive and some of the answers are not what we were looking for.
In the afternoon we came up with some questions that will help us be more organized when the actual model comes:
What is your name?
How old are you?
What do you do?
How would your friend describe you?
How would you describe yourself?
Can you describe what you are wearing?
04/03/2018
MY ASIAN FACE: IMAGE STORYTELLING
I decided to have the interview divided into 3 different tracks, the first track will be a set of questions that are more personal to them; describing who themselves, introducing what she looks like, etc. The second track will be more on introducing her background, either how she moved to London or what it is like being an Asian born in London and what she consider herself to be, British or Asian? The third track was more general of what she has to say for the whole British Asian.
The interview was very successful, I did not stick to my whole list of questions because with what the other person said I tried to come up with more questions on the spot to get more story out of her. As for the images I switched around with two different cameras, one digital and one film camera. The digital images turned out to be too advertisement-like, the images looked a little too fake for such a personal interview so I decided to use the film camera photos. The final layout for this project I want to remake a box, taken inspiration from her story in the interview and print photographs out with track names on the other side so when flipping through the images it tells you what track to listen to. The box includes several photographs and a USB that contains three audio tracks.
01/03/2018
MY ASIAN FACE: IMAGE STORYTELLING - TUTORIAL
Writing myself a brief I had to be careful not to be overly detailed with writing what my outcomes will be, as I tend to write in details of what I want to create. I started out this project wanting to create an animated collage that tells someone's story but from the workshop, I found out that it was impossible to create it within a week I decided to be more realistic with my approach for this project.
Sticking with my idea of creating an archive with the voice memo I experienced with how I will publish this archive outcome, I wanted it to be on a CD format so I experimented with how the pictures will be published together with the CD. I did several mock-ups for the tutorials so that I can get feedback on my idea. I felt more confident about this idea than the collaging idea because I know that it is impossible to create a Monday deadline.
The feedback I got from the tutorial was to put the voice memo on a USB instead of a CD because a CD is a less common media now, which I agree so I had to reconsider my publication layout. The idea I had, they are all very curious to what I create for my final outcome. It was a pretty successful tutorial, but the only thing that I had to keep in mind was my images and how I will take them, and this all narrows down to how the interview goes. Base on what the other person say, this will determine how my images will be taken.
27/02/2018
MY ASIAN FACE: IMAGE STORYTELLING
I struggled with writing a brief for my first ever self-directed project, my overarching theme for unit 7 is culture and identity. I wanted to take the advantage of these one-week projects and extend on my previous project @myasianface, using this project as a starting point for my future projects. For this project I wanted to explore collaging, so my mind was more focusing on researching about collaging which made writing the brief difficult. I was being too specific with my project that it turns out I am writing my outcome for this project instead of being experimental to find my outcome within this week. I know that I want to create this project related to collage, because during my commune week I exchanged the skill of collage among my group members.
My project description: This project will be based on exploring the idea of collage that ties in the overall theme of my Unit 7, which is the Asian culture and identity. The collage should investigate an Asian side’s story through a series of interview question, consider the collected interview audios as the main source of the storing telling of the collage. Experimenting with my own taken images and or found images to create the animated collage. This style of creating work should bring out a more interesting visual and narrating on to the social media platform.
13/02/2018
COMMUNE DAY 4 - KX
Today's main goal of the meeting was not only to complete our manifesto but to also carry out another commune day. In the morning we got to explore more of what KX has to offer, everyone had an hour to talk about themselves while the rest are listeners. This is a skill that I took out from the group, we had 3 group members that were fantastic listeners and the other 2 considering myself, is more of a talker. I exchanged this skill with the listeners and started to become the listener and less of a talker. Exchanging this skill was a lot harder than I would have thought, spending and hour not focusing on what I have to say but give advice and listen to what my group has to say.
I think we have finalized what our commune group is really all about; through the manifesto, to exchange to colive, connect and collect. A simple way to summarize what our group has been doing and how we want to improve for the next day. The idea of exchanging our skills with each other and using this time to learn off from each other.
12/02/2018
COMMUNE DAY 3 - ARCHWAY
One of our group members found a very cozy cafe, it was the perfect setting for a day to do commune; it was quiet and the table allowed us to talk face to face. Today we mostly, talked, ate, and relaxed. It has gotten to the point now where the conversation slowly became more about each other talking like friends rather than as classmates, I think this is because we are actually starting to spend our time outside of classes.
One of the most talked conversations was about health and body, setting goals that motivate each other as a group. All of us decided to start a workout, eating healthy and feeling the best. This group almost became a checkup group, where we updated each other how we are doing without 'goals'.
Another really interesting topic that came up was how we met each other and how did we become so close, it was such a nice moment as we try and figure out how this group becomes the five of us. We thought a lot about how everything happens for a reason and that we really appreciate having the company of each other, as we decided this should be a weekly thing.
05/02/2018
COMMUNE DAY 1 - KX
For day 1, we met as a big table of 6 inside the KX library, for the whole morning we carried out a small meeting to discuss what exactly what we want to do for our commune project, we discussed on topics of identity, race, culture, art, activism, leaving ones home. We noticed that all of us are not from London locally, as for that, we decided to stay in London and explore areas of London like a tourist. Not only because of that, all of us, since college has started we have only traveled from point A to B every day, we never had the chance to actually explore London properly. Due to the large number of people we had in this group, a total of 5 group members, we wanted to start the commune days earlier and carry it out throughout the two weeks. We met as a group and decided to make each day during the commune day dedicated to one group member. We have all agreed on to learn each other's skills and exchange them among us, we will also listen to whatever they want to say for their unit 7 project.
During lunchtime, we shared a meal and talked about how food can represent our culture and after we also explored our surroundings. It is very interesting how having a meal together can bring our group closer together, with so many things we want to open up ourselves to each other.
Just before the day ended we went back to the library and talked about what we have learned from each other and what we can change for day 2 of the commune. We realized sometimes when it gets quiet during a discussion, one person would pick up their phone and exclude themselves from the awkward silence, and that is how we came up with the no phone rule.
14/04/2018
These are my experimentation with the publication.
I still really like both, however, thinking about it more, looking at the clear packaging all it is to it is how aesthetically pleasing it is being in the clear cover but I keep asking myself, why. Why is the clear packaging so significant? What kind of story does it tell? How does it portray and fits my publication? Thinking harder and trying to make sense of what my actual point of the publication is I realized that it was probably not a good idea to keep the publication in clear wrapping. Moreover, it was best to stick with the brown envelope because my thought was, the whole point of the publication is to show the top secretness of the images that I took. Reminding myself how illegal these images actually are in China, I wanted to keep that sense of secrecy for my publication so when the publication is revealed to others there is a sudden gasp and eagerness, as well as a curiosity of what is in the brown envelope. Inside the brown envelope will be the clipped publication (middle picture), the idea of having the clip was to not only clip the publications together but it was also visually effective of the 'protected secret documents'.
11/04/2018
MY ASIAN FACE: IN REVERSE
With my publication ideas I didn't want to create a booklet, instead, I wanted to explore on creating a big poster as my publication. During the tutorial, it was suggested that it will be really cool if I could blow up the original backdrop into the actual size I used for the photo shoot and behind the poster somehow combine my image to the poster. In the tutorial discussion yesterday we talked about how if the poster was folded down the image facing front would be my picture with the quotes of the migrant workers.
Doing more research today I think I want to do the publication separately; meaning that it will have the poster but the image that I took will come separately instead of being printed on the same paper as the poster. I was juggling between two different ideas for the packaging of the publication; the first idea was to wrap it in clear plastic and the second idea was to put it in a brown envelope. I really like both of the packagings ideas, since I don't have any of the materials so my next step is to collect all the materials ready and print the poster so I know what size the folders need to be when the poster is folded down.
06/04/2018
MY ASIAN FACE: IN REVERSE
The shooting at the location was extremely unsuccessful, today and only today the weather chose to be extremely windy before even getting the chance of shooting the first image, the posters were all flying everywhere and it kept on breaking and falling apart because of how strong the wind was. By this point, the whole shoot is just going downhill no hope at all to restore everything because I am flying back to London in two days and I don't have the chance to redo the shoot. Even if I were to redo it tomorrow, there was no way I can reassemble new posters for tomorrow.
I was able to take some images when the wind was a little settled down so from this point I think I might collage images on to the photos that I was able to take and through photoshop I can manage to create something.
05/04/2018
MY ASIAN FACE: IN REVERSE
To not risk anything, I asked a few friends to help me model instead of asking people that live here to model, again, the chances of them rejecting me is high especially seeing the images I chose for the backdrop.
By this point, I have already created three posters and I still have one more poster to go to assemble. I originally have five images to create the poster however because of how long it is taking I can only do four since the shoot is tomorrow. The picture I excluded was an image that was not very relevant compared to the other images as the backdrop. Two images have my friend to help model for and the other two images can be shot without having models because it will speak on its own. Each backdrop contains at least over 42 sheets of A4 newsprint papers, the height and width are all around 156 cm and 136 cm, the posters will perfectly fit the backdrop just right.
The posters wrinkle very easily because of how fragile the papers are, and so to keep it from breaking easily I taped a lot of tapes on the back of the paper to have support over how often the posters are been moved around.
27/03/2018
MY ASIAN FACE: IN REVERSE
After reading on several articles about this issue that I want to focus on for this project, most of the articles that I read were all in English, which also means that news media that covered on this project are reporters that can’t be read in China. The news site that I looked upon are sites that are blocked in China, and when I search up news on the Chinese news site, there is no news that covers on this issue. By reading the news article, I was able to collect some good quality images to use for the backdrop. Now I have to narrow it down to what kind of images for what location. For a fact, I know that assembling the images will take me a few days so I have to have maximum five total of images to use for the backdrop and I need to save a few days to put the backdrop together before I start shooting.
I also explained to my parents on my idea and they told me that it will be very risky to the photoshoot in locations like the Sanlitun bar street because this issue with moving out the migrant workers from the city is not known to everyone, it is something the government don't want the citizens to see and know about. Plus, the amount of polices in the city is insane, I will get caught no matter how fast I make the shoot to be. I needed to come up with a plan B, and my plan B is to scout for one location that is not in the city so I can take different images around that one location.
22/03/2018
MY ASIAN FACE: IN REVERSE - TUTORIAL #2
The second time around for the tutorial I had more research and a solid idea of what I want to do so when I presented I had locations of where I potentially will shoot in. This tutorial made me realize that even if I have looked at locations, articles and finding the backdrop images, however, I never thought about how the image wants to be taken; the aesthetic of the images. I was told to look up Jeff Wall's photography, and from his work I really like how the photos look very plastic and fake and I think that because of the bright lighting and the clean background, as well as how random the model is staged for this setting. At the same time Jeff's works gives off a little bit of National Geography feel to it, and I really like the realness of the image. Although I do prefer his digital camera works than the film camera images, but this also means that on the day of the shoot I should try with both and see how both style turned out.
21/03/2018
MY ASIAN FACE: IN REVERSE - EXHIBITION VISIT
At the Another Kind of Life Photography on the Margins Exhibition at the Barbican Art Gallery, there was a work by Alec Soth that captured my attention it was a disco ball placed in the middle of a forest. It was not only entertaining to look at but you also wonder why is it placed there and how normal is it to see it placed in a space that you are not supposed to place it in. From his work, I want to take inspiration of how he takes the image and somehow give it the same effect on how I saw his work the first time I reacted to it. I did some research on his further work and I really like the images that he documented, the expression of the people in his work and how unnaturally natural the poses are. I also noticed that the images he took are all in either nice weather or gloomy weather, but somehow all images that he has taken seems very cold and real. In his series of Sleeping by the Mississippi, from the images, I can almost hear how silent the places are. Through my photography, I want to show that too, with my images I want to make the viewers feel the sadness and emptiness of the places that got destroyed and how it used to be a place full of life and happiness.
20/03/2018
MY ASIAN FACE: IN REVERSE - TUTORIAL #1
With the idea that I have now I was told to look up the work by Noemie Goudal, I am very inspired by her work because of how the image overall looked; it looked like a realistic fantasy.
During the tutorial, it was suggested that with the found images of the original location, I should find the images for the backdrop online since I don’t have my own images of the location. I will have to spend a few days finding the correct and HQ images for the backdrop, even though even if the images were blurry when it is blown big and the actual images are taken further the backdrop will still probably look clearer further away. My task now is to find the images for the backdrop. I also must put in to consideration of who will be a part of my photoshoot, as I don’t want to find professional models because it won’t fit with the theme of the shoot, however, if I get people to help me model off the street the chances of them rejecting me will be high. Especially with the locations that I pick, the risk of having many polices around is also high. Now I not only have to figure out the backdrop images but also who and what will be in my photoshoot. Keeping in mind that the backdrop images should somehow fit in with the location background that I am going to use.
12/03/2018
MARQUES ALMEIDA - SHOW DAY
Displaying our work among the others made us realize that everyone had a very different vision towards their Marques Almeida piece.
Seeing our posters and our video with fresh eyes, I think that we have successfully communicated our vision across. The tile poster especially was more visually effective for this campaign, I think that because of the poster's layout and the images in that poster, on the bottom of the poster includes the hashtag that summarizes the purpose of the poster. My personal favorite outcome would be the video, I like it because it is entertaining and also the quality of the video is all shot on 2006 digital Canon camera which gives off a very old vibe.
With many research reference, I think it really helped with successfully communicating our idea across and I do believe that it is a very Marques Almeida type of campaign. Something that I would change in the future would probably be trying out our own take on brands instead of trying to make what they have already.
10/03/2018
MARQUES ALMEIDA
We had our official shoot today, it went faster than we thought. The shoot went really smoothly, and the model we cast was amazing, the blue jacket matched very well with her blue hair and it was very fun. The shoot was very spontaneous, the previous day we did manage to location scout and look at the locations that we will be shooting at, we also had created a mood board as well as a storyboard for the model. The shoot overall was very successful.
As for the film, before shooting the film we decided to ask only two questions to the model because during our test shoot we realized that six questions took over 5 minutes and it will take us way too long to cut it down, so we end up asking two questions, your name and describe what you are wearing. The shoot included four cameras on one model and each model had over 10 short clips, we realized that we will have a lot of clips to go through when editing the final film. We decided as a group to have each model assign to each person, one person will take charge and choose out the best clips a eliminate it to five or less and edit the film altogether. The film's film style we have already test edited it and agreed on that particular style but we still wanted to edit the whole thing together. For tomorrow, we will continue to do the same thing as we did for today, the same camera setups but try to reduce the number of clips we film.
06/03/2018
MARQUES ALMEIDA - TUTORIAL
On Monday we got to know about the designers as well as getting one specific garment for the shoot. My group got a denim textured blue suit jacket.
Our idea that we have so far for the film is to make different diverse people/model style the blue suit jacket however they will wear it, the style is very playful with a white background. It was suggested that we might have a leading question that guides the model to be spontaneous about this film because it could get very difficult and over complicate this idea we have.
We didn't have a solid idea for the photoshoot, so during our tutorial, we were recommended to look at works by Richard Avedon and Juergen Teller. We were instantly attracted to Juergen Teller's work in his Go Sees book, the rawness of how the photo is taken with the same location but different faces, and how the image is taken. We did know that for our photo shoot we wanted to make it completely different from the film and that we wanted to keep the designer's overarching idea of a natural photoshoot. Instead of the model following the camera, the camera will instead follow the designer.
05/03/2018
MY ASIAN FACE: IMAGE STORYTELLING - CRIT
Something I would change would probably be the voice memo in the USB because from this critique people said having a box filled with photographs remind them of the old times, and the USB made it feel too modern. Putting the voice memo in a CD will fit better with the theme of this project.
28/02/2018
MY ASIAN FACE: IMAGE STORYTELLING - WORKSHOP
Since my brief was about interviewing an Asian and telling their story through creating an animated collage, I did research on how to create animations so today in class I wanted to explore digital and physical animation.
My whole morning I experimented with digital collaging creating each frame with photoshop and combining the frames on to final cut pro. It was a 10-second animation that took the whole morning, which was not efficient at all which also means that I needed to come up with a plan B. In the afternoon I looked started to research on collaging physically with paper and taking animated picture frames. Before experimenting with this idea I had a brainstorm session with a tutor that helped me to investigate a little bit further on what I wanted to explore in this project. Some important discussion came up such as, who is the Asian I am interviewing? How long will the collage be (the longer the animation collage the more frames it needs)? What will the interview questions cover? Would it be their culture, their story, etc? I thought a lot harder about what I wanted to explore, and I figured that for my previous interviews for @myasianface I interviewed Asians living in America for college and their experience in America and in China, so since I am currently in London, I wanted to take advantage of that and give investigate Asian born British or Asian that has been living in England for a long period of time. Keeping these questions on the back of my mind while exploring collaging through printed images, that also took way too long so I decided to not stick with the idea of collaging and start brainstorming more about this project.
The importance of the interview is very important, so I related this idea to the masculinity project and archives. What if I made a piece of an archive with the interview memos I documented, produced them into a CD with images corresponding to the voice memo that relates to what it is saying? This is a much more effective and realistic approach to the storytelling project, and for now, I just have to come up with interview questions that will determine how my photos will be taken.
19/02/2018
COMMUNE DAY 5 - COVENT GARDEN
Spontaneously deciding to spend our day at Covent Graden, a location that I rarely go to. Using the phone tool as only a tool for documenting and not communicating, we decided to randomly walk around Covent Garden to find a restaurant to dine in. It was more difficult than it actually sounds because it was too cold and every restaurant seemed like a good option. As a group together, we don't have a particular leader, so when it comes to making decisions everyone is very considerate of each other. This sometimes is a good thing and sometimes is a bad thing, we decided not to choose a leader because the leader is whomever that day is with.
As today was my day, I talked about my ideas for my unit 7 and try to ask my group for some advice, letting me in on their own culture and how they have felt when they are being stereotyped. We also discussed our deepest and darkest secrets which made the conversation a bit more fun and joyful. We pretty much covered whatever topic to talk about in our minds, and sometimes there are awkward silences, but I realized that there will always be someone that will speak up to break the silence.
This commune group became not only for the purpose of the project but we have decided at the end of the day to continue meeting up as a group and talk over with food. Eating together became a source of intimacy between us, as eating is a way to get together and talk about things. This commune group project has brought us closer than ever.
6/02/2018
COMMUNE DAY 2 - HYDE PARK
We planned on having a picnic in the park, but the plan was soon changed due to the freezing weather. We found a cafe near the park, and we spend most of our time in this cafe. Sticking to our rule with no phones at the table, we ended up having drinks and talking about topics that we normally wouldn't talk about in class. The topic that we mostly talked about together was food addiction and how comfort food is actually affecting our health and body. We then went on to analyze how the different ways of eating could showcase our respected culture, through the utensils we use to the order of how we eat. The topic then changed on to talking about boys, and on to sharing our most embarrassing moments as well as our darkest secrets. By simply opening ourselves up to each other, made us feel closer and how common/different we actually are.
We tried our very best to avoid conversation we normally talk about in class and try to talk about subjects that we wouldn't talk about when we see each other. It felt really good to not only open up to each other but also finally getting the chance to actually get to know each other. After today, I realized how excited I am for day 3 of the commune.