No, I ain’t dead. I’ve also been bad at responding to emails. :-S Bad Jeffery! I’ve been a bit busy, but also just chilling out with the family, I suppose. ;-) Anyway, here’s some news:

I had a wonderful connip-fit this past Thursday morning. I woke for my usual 4 AM class and was greeted with the realisation that my first assignment was to be due this coming Monday. I was bothered by this because a) I had overlooked the assignment while working on other previous tasks for school, and b) the lack of information or proper updates coming from the school about my faulted enrollment or certain class specifics has been slim to none at all. Anyway, I was pissed-off. I hate feeling I am behind on responsibilities, and being uninformed about such. Regardless, I’ve reviewed my priorities and am going to work with what I’ve got, such as it is. Thankfully the assignment was pushed back to next Friday, so I’m not completely lost at sea.

As such, I’m knee deep in Canadian, international intellectual property rights as it pertains to my professional practice, with a special focus on the internet and Creative Commons licenses. I’m a proponent of these licenses because I don’t like or believe that traditional copyright should be as restricting or limited as it has become. It’s meant to protect the authors’ rights but not cripple future authors. Years before I had heard of CC, I had wanted to basically do as they are outlining - explicitly say that people could use my work freely for performance, and even in some cases use it to create derivative works. Anyway, I won’t go on about the specifics of the licenses here. Suffice it to say that I appreciate them and do use them for my work.

Now, I’ve been home for a month already, and it’s a week and a half until my scheduled departure. I am inclined to stay another week perhaps - but I have to decide and check with the airlines for alternate dates. Something I really need to get on. As it is, I have already bypassed a planned outing of province I had tentatively slated for this weekend. (I had been planning on Montreal or Vancouver.) So far I have only even been to Toronto once! And I haven’t really even been talking to many of my friends here or back in BKK that much (with the exception of a few people). Which is not usual for me really.

I just seem to really be in a sedentary mode, surprisingly - staying here in my brother’s basement, hanging out with my my bro, sister-in-law, and of course my neices. :-D And of course, I have been seeing my parents every other day or so. I’ve also seen my cousins, aunts and uncles numerous times as well, which has been great. And I’ve been sucked into watching TV way too much. Or at least more than I think is necessary. ;-) But as my brother says, I’m on holiday so why not? hehe. Brotherly wisdom. ;-)

Knowing I have to be online for my classes each week, as well as the loom of impending homework, has also kept me from being more extroverted than I would have been otherwise, perhaps. This has also changed my view on my timeline for when I get back to BKK. I need to have internet access wherever I reside while in BKK, and beyond BKK - I have to do research and attend my virtual classes. That, as well as the niceties of being in a normal home, with a normal kitchen, and comfortable rooms and things I am accustomed to, makes me feel that after I leave here I should just settle down relatively quickly, find a well-paying gig, and focus on the next year of my MA and my personal project. So, sadly, I may not travel around Thailand or Laos as I had vaguely hoped to on my return. But then I’m forgetting the term break midway through December, of course. So, we shall see.

Anyway, I should really go do some actual work. I spent all day yesterday reconfiguring and revamping my laptop, after a much needed reinstall. So, I still have a 1800 word essay to write. ;-) Will try and write more soon.

Well, I finally was able to get online for my distance learning MA last week. So, today (and for quite a few more weeks to come) I have rised at 3:45 AM so I can log on to a virtual classroom at 4 AM for three hours. The virtual classroom really is just a pumped up Java chat app with a virtual whiteboard. But it is nice to have an immediate chat log on the site afterwards. But jeez, it sure is early! Suprisingly, my mental agility has been less sleepy than I had supposed it might have been. It will be nice being back in Thailand, if only for the time zone change. ;-)

I am still quite behind others, catching up from the delayed start - so I am stressing over what I have to do, and the fact that I feel like I have not been brought up to date as quickly or completely as should be… but so far it has been nice that there are some stimulating ideas being covered. I usually assume that higher education ends up being, for the most part, boring and irrelevant, ‘hoops to be jumped through’ as well (unless you’re at MIT perhaps ;-), but gladly I am finding some good moments of interest so far. :-)

The ‘Reflective Practice’ I will be doing in my MA needs actual practice to reflect upon, and I intend to do that with my personal professional practice. Now, without a job I have all the time in the world to work on those two things. But when I am thrown back into the workforce it will be interesting to see how I balance it all - a job, professional practice, as well as the reflection upon the practice. I can see how the program was probably built to complement and fit along side designers’ professional work practice, since the MADP program is a part-time program after all.

I have to do a ‘Learning Contract’ up really soon, which basically explains what design practice I plan to reflect upon and the aims/capabilities I hope to cultivate from that. I’ve whittled my list of four possible avenues of what to pursue for my professional practice down to two. But I will probably choose to work on the libretto and score, musical and visual, for a new operetta.

The biggest practical goal of this project is to produce a full source of material (printed and/or digital) that would be used to perform the work. Basically, anyone could pick up the score and have all the material necessary to put on or stage the operetta. I’ve long wanted to be able to plop something down in front of someone and say, ‘Here, look. This is what I do. Here is the proof.’ From most of my previous artistic ventures, I have had very little presentable material or documentation after the fact. I also want to produce a substantial (or hefty ;-) creative piece of work - something that leads into the ephemeral world of performance (which is hard to document) but which also can stand alone as its own body of work.

I had planned to do this with Homo genius, but it ended up being a bit too big and unweildly for a first attempt - and rather naive as well on my part. Especially since it was one of a series of four full performances! So, a smaller performance of about 30-40 minutes should be much more manageable.

That brings me to the big goal for the reflective side of the practice: to actually finish a full score; to watch and reflect upon my design practice as I am doing it; and after the fact, to see where I am strongest and where and when I fell off the tracks; so as to help me with any issues that arise the next time I end up working on such a big project.

Anyway, I will post more about that as I progress on it. Which actually does need to be rather sooner than later. ;-)

Oh, and a small note. All posts relevant to my MA Design Practice program will be listed in the same Category for ease of viewing, and to help me in archiving it for future purposes. So, if you want to watch my progress through my MA Design program, just click on the “MA Design” link in the Categories menu on the right.

Cheers.

Warning! Yellow Alert!

Yellow Alert is now active. If you’ve arrived here expecting a big pink, red and gold blog by the name of A Gentle Chaos - it has been retired. To access it point your browser to this page. This will now be the default blog which I will be posting to for the foreseeable future.

I may actually still make a post to the old blog since I still haven’t posted photos from my friend Gaew’s wedding, and a few people have expressed wanting to hear about that event. I will cross post here when such is done.

I have a lot of photos and things to update since I’ve been home in Ontario for a few weeks now. I’ve been waiting until the new design for the new blog design to finish before posting.

Small changes to the design may crop up for the next little bit as I see what I have missed.

Hope you all enjoy the new design. ;-)