Storm Water Pipes as Creative Urban Installation by Urfun Lab

I stumbled upon this design article via designboom.com.

It's a simple and creative improvisation of a mundane (or sometimes left-over) infrastructure like the storm water pipe into a catchy design for the street.  This public art installation is not a formal project commissioned by the city or anything like that.  It was done spontaneously by urfun lab, a group of young professionals ranging from architects, urban designers, graphic designers, landscape architects, to event managers.  They are just a group of people who love to have fun with their city, and decided to spice up the street with some colours on a lazy Sunday morning.

On first glance, I thought they painted the inside of the pipes, but it turns out that it's just the diffused lights from the colourful cellophane.  And that's all that they did - taped the transparent coloured cellophane to the back of the pipes and then the sun did the rest. 


All images are reblogged from the website.

 

Love Your Trams

Images | Melbourne's Yarra Tram

Camera | iPhone 3GS using Diptic

Raisin Bread Pudding

 (with chocolate fudge hidden inside!)

I had some left-over raisin breads and have always wanted to try make a bread pudding.  But, I could only make do with what I have in the kitchen.  Since the ingredients that I have like eggs, caster sugar, milk and butter seem to be the main ingredients in a bread pudding recipe, theoretically, I could still bake a bread pudding.

Here’s how I made my raisin bread pudding:

1. Cut bread into little squares
2. In a bowl, whisk 3 eggs, 3 tablespoons of caster sugar, a cup of warm milk and a dollop of butter.
3. Soak bread squares into the egg mix.
4. Arrange soaked bread squares into a baking dish.
5. I have some left-over chocolate fudge, so I drizzled some choc fudge in between the layers of the breads.
6. Bake at 180C for 30 minutes.
7. Serve warm, with more choc fudge drizzled on top :)

Andiamo! by Kelly Barber

 

 

I started buying and collecting guide books and maps about three years back: starting with our road trip from Kuala Lumpur to Terengganu and Kelantan, and then for our first visit to Melbourne and Sydney.  Initially and partly for my research, I became more interested in different types of guidebooks and maps - not necessarily buying them because I plan to visit those places, but to understand how places are depicted in guide books.  And it's always nice to imagine traveling to those places one day, and at the very least, see the visual experiences from those books.

I bought "Andiamo!" by Kelly Barber in July 2009.  I was attracted to its pictorial essay, which is a lot of visuals compared to texts.  Simply said, it's like looking through a travel album of someone else.  It's nice to see the photos people take - some are of scenery while some are of mundane yet fascinating things like a wall decor of a shop.  I haven't seriously had the intention to visit Italy in the near future, but sure, I'd love to visit that part of the world one day.  As it turns out, there's a conference coming up in Italy in November this year.  Seems like a great opportunity for me to lengthen my foot steps there, don't you think?

Turn your photos into wonders!

I love using instant photo filters when taking snapshots from my phone.  They help me to add certain moods for that snapshot.  iPhone users are pretty lucky that there's heaps of photo editing applications.  My favourites are Instagram and Hipstamatic.  But I know not all phones can use these filters.  Recently I found out from a new blog-friend, Ms Aim that she's been using picplz for some of her snapshots.  And I've always thought how easy it would be to use art filters for photos from the computer, without the hassle of manually editing in Photoshop or using the limited iPhoto editing tools.  I just love looking at Aim's snapshots that I just had to ask her what she uses.

Well, question answered :) There's an online application called Picnik.  As it turns out, I've registered for this account two years back already and have totally forgotten about it!  It's free and there's tons of really cool filters.  You know how some photos have that very warm fuzzy retro look?  Well you can now do them too!  Or you've always liked photos with a lomo effect? Take your pick and mix-and-match the filters as you wish.  I tried one last night, so here's the outcome.

Image | Fruit Stall at Rundle Mall, Adelaide

Camera | Olympus PEN

Edit | picnik.com

Filters | vignette, 1960, cross-processed

Try it out, you'll definitely get hooked to it.  Editing has never been so easy! :)

Coffee Culture

I've only started to get into the coffee culture since we've been here in Melbourne.  For one thing, you can't find Teh O Ais Limau (ice lemon tea using lime), Teh Ais (ice tea with milk) or Teh Tarik (hot milk tea with froth) as easily as we can find them in Malaysia.  There are Malaysian shops in Melbourne, but you'll definitely find more coffee shops around.  The price of a cup of coffee here can be considered equivalent to buying Teh Tarik in Malaysia - as long as you don't convert the currency.  So it's nothing fancy really, it's just a cup of coffee to replace a cup of hot milk tea.  But the coffee here - referring to a cafe latte (coffee and milk) is better than those that you can get at Starbucks in Malaysia.  It's probably the coffee that they use and the fresh milk too.  I will not compare latte or cappuccino with Kopi Susu or Nescafe Tarik, because the former is the western version, while the latter is the Malaysian version.  I like them equally, according to where I am.

If you're the kind of person that enjoy having a drink at the cafe, or sitting outdoors in the evening, you'll surely do the same wherever you are.

 I spotted this man and a boy sitting at the table by the street drinking milk tea and coffee on a nice evening last week.  It's always nice to be outdoors when the weather is good, right?

Camera | iPhone 3GS, Instagram

Doing some brainstorming at the cafe is also something I find enjoyable, provided that you're not in the middle of a large, noisy crowd.  It's a good change of environment from the office.

Camera | Olympus PEN in Monochrome

And sometimes the barista might surprise you with something cute in your cup!

Camera | iPhone 3GS, Instagram

Glenelg Beach, Adelaide

It was a sunny yet cool evening, and we were waiting for the sun to set.

The ferris wheel was not operating that time but the colours of each passenger car created a vibrant contrast against the clear blue sky.  The beach sand was very fine and soft, and we can see this from the trace of possibly thousands of footsteps.

City Wonders: Adelaide

The city is very much different from the countryside.  It's more active, denser and more compact in terms of scale.  What fascinate me about a city is how things around you move very quickly at varying speed and direction.  Then there are the buildings, textures, street furniture, people sitting, people walking, people standing, windows, walls, columns, lights, small kiosks, big shops, and the list goes on.  It's so visually rich that at times I find a black and white image can help to "silent" the city for a brief moment.

These photos are from Rundle Mall, Adelaide.

  

Natural Wonders

I had the opportunity to go on a 5-day road trip to South Australia very recently with my husband and a group of friends.  Driving across cities, towns and landscape is one of the best ways to understand the geography of a place.

Just try to stay awake as much as you can during the drive, open your eyes to your surrounding, and you'll see all the wonderful and beautiful things the earth has to offer.

All of these images were shot using Olympus PEN E-PL1 with the 14-42mm lens.

We drove by rainbows 3 times.  Imagine that, Subhanallah! Magical!

12 Apostles at Great Ocean Road, VIC - limestone rock formations

Wild flowers look gorgeous under the sunlight @ Mount Gamber, SA

Real stalactites in a real cave @ Tantanoola Caves Conservaton Park, SA

Landscape of South Australia between Mount Gambier to Adelaide

 My favourite, which I call "beautiful, beautiful, beautiful layers"

blue sky, hills, salt creek, roadside grass, the road, soil

Some colouful things

To be able to see if a privilege we often take for granted.

Images | sunset and ferris wheel at Glenelg Beach, Adelaide; colourful rubber balls at The Grampians

Camera | iPhone, instagram, hipstamatic

Books: slanting, sitting, standing

Images | books currently around my table in my workstation

Camera | Olympus PEN

Edit | Photoshop, Curves: adjusted Red, Blue and RGB

(it's fun playing around with this edit to see the possible results that you might get)

I've read some, browsed some, cited some, but sure got a lot more to dig into!

Share me the books around your table? :)

Coffees and Cafes in Black & White

Image | Coffee at Secret Recipe, Melbourne

Camera | iPhone, B/W using PS Express

Grabbed from my inspiracities posted a month ago

Image | notebook, coffee, tram

Camera | iPhone, B/W using PS Express

Grabbed from my inspiracities posted 2 weeks ago

Image | "I should remember that most city cafes close at 6. -__-"

Camera | iPhone, B/W using PS Express

Grabbed from my inspiracities posted 1 day ago

Seeing RED: maybe because CNY is around the corner

Image 1 | Ceiling decorations at Oporto, Melbourne Central

Image 2 | Roof sculpture aka 'the tongue' near escalator to Melbourne Central

Image 3 | One of my mapping books

Camera | iPhone, Instagram using Hefe filter

The color of Red in Chinese culture usually means good luck. [via] 

Since its Chinese New Year tomorrow, I'm sure there's heaps of reds in cities where there's people celebrating CNY.  I don't celebrate CNY as I'm not Chinese, but having grown up and lived in Malaysia, I'm starting to realize how much multi-culturalism add richness to a city.  A cross-cultural harmony is not an easy thing to achieve, just like living in a multi-faith society; but like any type of relationships, it's about working out our differences and finding some common grounds.

The colour red is often associated with something bold, as it is a bold colour.  Red can also be a sign of warning, like how our teachers used to mark our assignments using red pen (or red marker!).  Wearing red can be an attention-grabber, especially if you stand amongst a crowd that wears black.  But then again, any colour against a majority of another colour will definitely stand out.  At the end of the day, colours are just colours.  What they mean are only a result of what we prescribe to them, what we associate with them.  Different society, culture, people, age group, gender would probably have different interpretations of red.  And who knows, in the next century, red may have a whole other definition.

into the greens, reds and blues

 

Images | Bairnsdale & Lakes Entrance, Victoria, Australia

Camera | Olympus PEN

Layout | iPhoto Book Layout