The Raven Silvers blog » Events

*SCAPE Launch Festival – Day 2

Raven — Mon, 21 Jun 2010 15:33:40 +0000

So I was at the second day of the Embrace The Now, the *SCAPE Launch Festival. Just like the first, it was pretty awesome, although I couldn’t stay for all of it ): There are some more pictures of what I missed at their Facebook page, so do look at that to see what I don’t have here! :D Some of the photos are by Seriously Sarah because mine didn’t come out properly (:

The legendary Once Upon A Milkshake now has an outlet in town! Check out their recycled cardboard seats

White Dog Cafe, at the 3rd level, is famous for their soft shell crab. But this outlet didn't have it ):

Billibowl, a mix of billiards with bowling at Zone X. Difficult but remarkably fun!

Panic Museum! It's an insanely crazy arcade shooter, but a ton of fun - also available at Zone X

Capoeira group! First time I'd seen capoeira (martial arts-dance-music hybrid) performed anywhere, so it was pretty cool

Hershey and I! :D :D

A lovely little Postbox performance at one of the indoor stages

Cheerleaders practicing at the open balcony! (Photo courtesy SeriouslySarah.com)

Movie Mania cosplayers!

*SCAPE New Ambassador finals, where they showed their special talents and stuff!

More awesome performances

Announcing the winner!

And then there was the flash mob-slash-mass dance!

SCAPE Mass Dance

*SCAPE Launch Festival – Day 1

Raven — Sat, 19 Jun 2010 17:15:23 +0000

Long story short: I had an awesome day at Embrace The Now, the *SCAPE Launch Festival! *SCAPE, if you’re not familiar with it, is a brand-new youth shopping mall and lifestyle centre. It used to be an open field, but they’re launching the brand-new shiny mall over the weekend. This is the first day, and I’m so sad I couldn’t stay to watch all of the acts at the main stage ):

Check out their Facebook page for the latest updates and pictures. The folks over there are really great at updating stuff, so there’s pretty much always something new to see.

These are pictures from just the first day! :D

The floating table attempts to run away from the Magician!

Mae and other band merch at great prices, at the bazaar!

Cosplayers! The cosplay competitions isn't until Sunday, but they were still around!

The generously-stocked Cocoa Tree. They gave us goodie bags of chocolate awesome :D

Old-school Kinder Surprise at The Cocoa Tree! Was ridiculously delighted to find these :D

Musician Nick Tan, at the Alfresco stage

Amusing annoyed cartoon cardboard creature!

Graffiti artists Mimer and Mizo (I think) work on the Nike wall near the 5-on-5 soccer court

One of the eateries on the 3rd floor. Music Cafe has cheap and good food!

*SCAPE also believes in urban greenery, even though they're right in the heart of the city.

Inch Chua, a very gifted young woman, playing at the Alfresco stage

Walking Hershey Kiss! (Bonus video at the end of the post!)

Impromptu guitar session inside the Maestro guitar shop

Performers at one of the balconies

Flea market at the custom Street Market space, in the basement has lots of interesting items to be found

Postbox, an excellent local band, performs at the Playspace (main stage)

Postbox performs again tomorrow - they'll be at Baybeats too!

AND BONUS VIDEO!

NLB Book Exchange 2010

Raven — Wed, 14 Apr 2010 08:35:57 +0000

For something free! The NLB Book Exchange is back again this year.

Bring your used books down to any NLB library from 10 to 23 April to exchange them for coupons. Then, on April 24, go down to the main library at Victoria Street to get books that other people have exchanged. All for free!

Here’s a copy-n-paste from GoLibrary:

Give a book, get a book at the Book Exchange! Drop off your used books* at any Public Library from 10 to 23 April, 11.00am to 9.00pm and get a coupon for every book** accepted. Bring your coupon down to The Plaza, National Library Building, on 24 April to redeem for new reads.

Date: Sat, 24 April 2010
Time: 8.30am to 6.00pm
Venue: The Plaza, National Library Building, 100 Victoria Street

*We accept children’s and adults’ fiction and non-fiction books (eg. Cookbooks, travel guides and romance novels) in any four official languages. Books in other languages will not be accepted. We also accept used library books bought from previous Library Book Sales. Textbooks, magazines and audio-visual materials are not accepted. Used books for exchange should be in relatively good physical condition.

**Each person can exchange up to a maximum of 30 used books.

Borders Fair

Raven — Wed, 14 Apr 2010 08:30:29 +0000

There will be a Borders Fair at the Singapore Expo at the end of the month. Details below!

Venue: Singapore Expo Hall 6B
Date: 30 April (Fri) to 2 May 2010 (Sun)
Time: 10am – 9pm
Admission is free

I remember last year’s event had a selection of books that wasn’t half-bad, but it does get very crowded on the weekend.

There’ll also be a selection of other events happening within the Borders Fair on Saturday and Sunday, including storytelling by kid’s fiction group Monsters Under The Bed.

There’s some more info at the Expo calendar (source of the picture above, too) and more about the events at the Borders website.

24seven Bloggers Hat-Py Party

Raven — Sat, 02 Jan 2010 17:42:58 +0000

I’m not exactly big on celebrating new years, so technically I wasn’t really celebrating New Year’s Eve when I went to the Blogger’s Hat-py Party at the Singapore Art Museum a few days ago ;)

An aside: Maybe it’s because I’ve been playing a lot of Assassin’s Creed II lately, but when we went into SAM — which is housed in a colonial-era convent school that had monks and everything — my mind went something like this:

Look for the building’s highest point, which is where the viewpoint would be located: a mini-dome with a cross
Look for possible feather and glyph locations on the way: rooftop, around the cross
Identify the fastest routes for Ezio to make it up to possible feather and glyph locations

I did actually figure out all of that, and before long I was looking out for bales of hay to jump into in case enemy guards spotted me. I think I’m experiencing the bleeding effect! /aside

At any rate, I went with my minions cronies usual gang of suspects, but with new additions! I’d met Lysistarielle (of Tiramisue.com) before at STGCC — some of you might remember her as Poison Ivy. But Arrch I’d never met before, so if you’re reading this, hi Arrch! :D And of course the wonderful Seriously Sarah, Joelyn Alexandra and Avariel were along for the fun.

Arrch, Lysistarielle, Sarah, Joelyn, and Avariel

The theme: hats! Everyone had to wear a hat or headgear of some kind, hence the rather amusing name of the party. (Arrch had a Scribblenauts hat, which makes him a ton of awesome.) I wore a Mario hat, mainly because I could. Hahaha.

And what if you didn’t have a hat? 24seven.sg had a solution to that…

"24seven made me wear this because I forgot to bring my hat"

Bwahaha. The photo doesn’t accurately capture the sparkliness of the hats.

At the registration area I met people who I’ve only read about, which is always kind of strange. It was a bit like when I met Neil Gaiman, except this time I could breathe and talk at the same time! So I didn’t make a complete fool of myself in front of Ivy (of Nanyate.com), Claudia (Claudia.sg), Diana (MoleMole.sg), and Tech65.org guys Jerrick Lim (who is really big) and Hisham.

And I met lots of other bloggers, most of whom I don’t know the names of. But suffice it to say that there were many awesome hats and wigs in attendance:

Wig-eration!

Moar wigs

They opened up the dinner buffet early because it was kinda late, and everyone was hungry. It was nice food! I don’t have any pictures though. There were roasted small little round potatoes that looked like meatballs, but they were extremely yummy. They’re a bit like chocolate; you pop one into your mouth, and then you say “just one more” and before you know it…

The main party was in the Glass Hall, which housed an exhibition of works by patients with mental illnesses. I can’t really appreciate art — I’m not posh enough, and the written word has always been my area — but I was fascinated with some of them, both as a visitor and as someone who has dealt with mental illness firsthand. I’m not sure whether it’s a charity exhibition, but some of the works were very poignant.

This was one of my favorites:

'Angelic portrait of myself' by Eric Sean (white glue and sand)

At any rate, there were some games. We were sent into the gallery to take photos, and I believe this particular gallery was featuring art by Filipino artists. One of the activities was to find a picture that was made with an M16 bullet, which was this:

One of pieces from the 'Headshots' series by Alvin Zafra

A portrait of a young Imelda Marcos

And, since everyone in attendance was a blogger, it involved a lot of tech…

Well she -is- taking a photo, just not of the art

And then back to the Glass Hall for some music! We got the chance to see two really good bands perform that evening. The Black Diamond Ninjas did some rather sad songs, and Only After Coffee performed some really boppy country songs.

Black Diamond Ninjas

Only After Coffee

We ended up sitting on the floor, and I can safely say this is the first time I’ve ever done that in a museum :P We also voted for the craziest hat – congrats to the winners, your win was well-deserved.

There was bingo! I love bingo, even though I didn’t win anything.

So close to full house!

There were lots of lucky draws too, and the prizes ranged from Sentosa ride tickets to $500 Singtel vouchers and all other sorts of interesting things. It was like everyone around me was winning something except me, hahaha.

Joelyn won the grand prize, a Samsung Pixon 12 handphone! A really good Samsung phone too, not some random old model that no one wants. Her reaction was hilarious. The emcee read out the lucky number, and there was silence… And suddenly a very loud “HUH?!”

Bwahaha. I couldn’t stop laughing at her afterwards.

As the saying goes, when you’re having fun, time flies. And it did. Soon it was 10:30pm and we were taking a big group photo, silly hats and all, and it was time to go.

But because Sarah was wearing an awesome shirt, and we had name stickers that were just the right size… We left with this (:

It actually says Buffy under the sticker.

A great way to kick off the new year, no?

Hat-py Party preview!

Raven — Thu, 31 Dec 2009 12:47:14 +0000

Aheh. Full post to come soon!

Nanowrimo Singapore TGIO

Raven — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 14:50:07 +0000

This post comes a little late, but I got caught up with school! But here it is.

Last Saturday was Nanowrimo Singapore’s Thank Goodness It’s Over party!

We had a sign and everything!

We had catering, so Earshot cafe was mostly ours for the afternoon :D But yess.

Sign-in area: stickers, Vicious the Ninja Bunny, sign-in sheet, assorted condiments

So I arrived early and set up for the arrival, then Sarah of Seriously Sarah arrived with more stuff! Awesome stuff of the prizey sort.

Have a funny story: she came into the cafe with her bags and no cake. I thought the cake had met with some sort of mishap, and I experienced a moment of panic. All I could think of was “THE CAKE WAS A LIE!”.

It turns out the (extremely large and heavy) cake was in the car. She went back to get it. And this was right after I’d been joking with a Wrimo about the cake not being a lie.

More and more Wrimos started arriving so we could really get the party started.

Wrimos galore

There were quiz questions, and we gave out all sorts of prizes. There were prizes for Highest Wordcount (200,000+ words – amazing), Best Last Line, Earliest New Wrimo of 2009, among others.

It was all rather fun, even from the ML side of things. After all the prizes and quizzes, there was cake! :D

The cake isn't a lie

It was an awesome cake. The ’50′ was, of course, for Nanowrimo’s 50,000-word goal. The coins were chocolate Euros, which was amusing because I didn’t even know they made chocolate coins in Euros.

The yellow stuff next to the coins are meant to be gold bars, I think. They were made out of white chocolate colored yellow. Everybody was wondering what the heck they were, until someone cut them up into little cubes and passed it around. They were quite nice, even if the color was a bit off-putting.

The cake in all its yummy glory!

Cake cutting

After the cake, we had the refreshments catered by the Arts House: muffins (with chocolate cores), assorted mini-cakes, puffs, and beverages. Lots of sugar meant a lot of interesting conversations were had :D

While we ate some of us did readings! Mostly from Happiness At The End of The World, a collection of short stories that I’m in ($18 from the publisher, hinthintnudgenudge) but also from our Nanovels. I read the Phail Whale bits from my Nanovel :D

Sarah Coldheart reading

It was good. I had some extremely entertaining conversations, cake, and other sugary baked goods. And as we all know, cake and assorted sugary baked goods are always good.

Happy MLs are happy

Til next year! :D

Nanowrimo Kick-off and HaTEotW launch

Raven — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 07:35:43 +0000

I don’t have many pictures for this, largely because I was too busy to take any! Quite a lot of the photos were by Nerwen.

On Saturday was the kick-off party for the Singapore chapter of Nanowrimo, of which I’m proud to be co-Municipal Liaison for. It was also the launch of Happiness at the End of the World, a collection of short stories revolving around the title theme. You can buy Happiness from our publisher, Two Trees!

Things started off really well with a gigantic cake box being delivered to my home. I was a little late because traffic was bad, but by the time I arrived at Earshot cafe things were already buzzing.

There’s quite a lot of thanks to go around, so I’ll try to fit everyone into my thirty-second speech :P

Thanks to: Seriously Sarah, Joelyn Alexandra, Nerwen, NotKieran (and family!), our long-suffering editor, publisher, typesetter and writer extraordinaire Rozen, Ziyang, Kiaace, Wena Poon, The Arts House, the National Arts Council, Singapore Writers Fest volunteers and staff, Singapore Wrimos, Hafiz aka ‘Zebra Preen’, HRH The Drama Queen Afiq, the boys who proved the cake was not a lie by finishing it (man slices!) and everybody else who came down to Earshot! :D

There were competitions and prizes given out, but everything went so fast and so crazy that I completely lost track. I had a heck of a time. I was so pleased with all our Undercover outfits – what with it being Halloween and all.

I’ll let the pictures speak for themselves.

Rozen undercover as a tourist, winner of the Best Undercover competition

Joelyn Alexandra as Lady Una

NotKieran, in characteristic black

Nerwen as a vampire, Sarah as someone with pink hair, horns and an eyepatch

Afiq aka Baghead and Hafiz aka "I'm Ris Low on the inside" (he was wearing zebra prints underneath)

A Wrimo who came underneath book covers!

Wrimos signing in

Earshot got crazy crowded as I took this - more than half were Wrimos!

Ziyang reading his story from Happiness

Aaand we actually finished our cake this year!

Meeting Neil Gaiman (and trying not to faint)

Raven — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 16:08:20 +0000

I went to see Neil Gaiman today! After waiting over four hours for tickets, you can bet I was excited as heck to see the man himself! With me was Seriously Sarah, Nerwen, Joelyn Alexandra (formerly Raven Azure, who is moving sites) and Justin from Nanowrimo.

They had to move the venue from the Chamber inside the Arts House (200 seats) to the Victoria Theatre (900 seats) because demand was so high. I learnt a lot of things about the area today, including that it’s very easy to walk from Cavenagh Bridge to Victoria Theatre and cut through to the Arts House. I’ve been going to that area for four years now, and only this year I find out… Sigh.

I was in the ticket-holders line, of course, but there was also this – and the organiser’s sense of humor really shines through…

Heh. People did try, though! Nevermind that all the tickets were gone. It’s Neil Gaiman, man. And some of them got really lucky! I saw a few people in the ticket-holders line give their extra tickets to the ticketless, largely because their friends couldn’t make it at the last minute.

The talk was 2pm, but we joined the line before 1pm. I’m not entirely sure, but we were very early. There was already a queue outside the entrance, and we were lucky enough to be standing inside the foyer, where there was shade. The line grew quickly, and the organisers were good enough to let us in early so people would be out of the sun.

Joelyn, Justin, Sarah and Nerwen

We got seats in the fourth or fifth row, so we were basically at eye-level height! While we were waiting, people passed us these little pieces of paper to write a message to Mr Gaiman. Then a drawstring back got handed around and we all put our messages inside, so we could give it to him at the signing session after the talk.

Singapore <3s Neil Gaiman!

I have giant handwriting, yes. But it was a good idea, so I was very happy to add on my message.

Just after 2pm, Mr Gaiman himself walked onstage to thunderous applause and a lot of cheering, mine included. I am a shameless Neil Gaiman fangirl.

Moderator Lim Cheng Tju and the man himself

Neil Gaiman is brilliant, funny, witty and so very interesting. He told us the ‘Scary Trousers’ story, which was hilarious – he even did Alan Moore’s voice, which was fantastic and really funny. I kind of regret missing his reading yesterday, but I was at the Nanowrimo Kick-Off party so I couldn’t go. ):

He told us that he didn’t mind turning 50 next year, and that he was happy with all that he’s been able to do, in his personal and professional life. He mentioned that if the plane went down tomorrow, he wouldn’t be going “Oh no, I didn’t have time to do X”. When he said that, there was a lot of knocking on wood. No sense in tempting fate, after all, though the value of his autographed items would skyrocket if that did happen. (Choy choy choy, touch wood!)

Someone asked about his bees, and that was really interesting. Apparently it was an idea he had 16 years ago, but his assistant Lorraine had a pathological fear of bees (the type where you believe you’ll die from whatever you’re afraid from). It was only about four years ago when he was reading about colony collapse disorder – basically when honey bees suddenly start dying in huge numbers for no apparent reason. Mr Gaiman wanted to do his part, and he met up with a friend who was passionate about wildlife.

By the end of the afternoon, it was decided that his friend Sharon would take a professional beekeeping course and become head beekeeper, and Mr Gaiman would pay for the course and become junior beekeeper. The bees would be on his land. Apparently Lorraine and Sharon’s husband were convinced this was a bizarre suicide pact.

When the bees arrived, Mr Gaiman was away on a signing and so Lorraine had to put the bees in the hives. Poor girl. By the time he came back, though, she seemed to have one of those rare spiritual moments after facing her life fear, and she was at peace with the bees.

And so they have bees. They entered the honey into the county fair as a joke, and they got blue ribbon! They were convinced it was a fluke, so they entered honey and a comb into the county fair last year – and won blue ribbon again. He said that his top few highlights of his career was something like this: 1. Newbery Medal, 2. Hugo Award, 3. Blue ribbons for the bees, and then all the other literary awards. Hee.

He told us the famous Scary Trousers story, and he did Alan Moore’s voice so it was extra funny. The other 899 people and I were laughing away.

I liked what he said about adapting his works from one medium to another. The key is translate, he said, not transliterate. I wholly agree. Some stories work on paper, but won’t make a good movie if you transliterate it directly. But if you translate, like how Henry Selick adapted Coraline for a movie, if you change certain things so that they’re suited for the other medium, then it can work.

Which is basically how I feel about comics-to-movies, or movies-to-books, etc. adaptations. I can get quite catty with people who complain that a movie is really bad compared to the book, or they changed X and they hate it. Things have to change when the medium changes, because not everything works across media.

But yes. There was more, but I can’t really remember all of it. Sarah did take a video though, so I shall post that as soon as she uploads it.

The talk itself lasted about an hour, so after that it was signing. It was limited to one item per person, which is totally understandable because there were 900 people there. Mr was quite funny about it; he announced, before the end, that it was one item per head because his flight was at 3am and he really wanted to make it, haha.

And then cue running across to the Arts House, where the signing was to take place. It was a bit nuts as everyone rushed outside. Nerwen nearly got hit by a car and didn’t even know it, but my heart skipped a beat when I saw the car move. (Good grief, Nerwen, be more careful next time!)

Only ticket-holders could get things signed, and the organisers gave each of us a paper with the rules and a space to write the name that you want Mr Gaiman to dedicate the item to.

In the end we got a place in the first 300 or so people, so that was good. Joelyn got lucky and somehow ended up pushed into the queue at the front, but she still waited with us after she’d gotten her stuff signed.

The line ahead of us...

... and the line behind us, which stretched to the river

The line ahead of us was about 2.5 hours long, and I think they took a five-minute break so Mr Gaiman could rest his hand. He was really accomodating, which was really awesome of him.

Totally worth it.

Unfortunately, when we reached him, I turned into a gibbering idiot. *facepalm* I could barely think, and I wanted to ask him a question but I totally forgot.

We gave him a copy of Happiness at the End of the World, our book of genre short stories, with messages from us. And then he shook our hands. Which basically broke my brain and made my day.

The conversation went something like this:

Mr Gaiman: Hullo!
Me: Hi. *giggle*
Mr Gaiman: [takes book, sees the dedication paper] And this is for Viki.
Me: Yes. *giggle*
Mr Gaiman: I’ll draw you a Sandman.
Me: Okay. Thank you. *giggle*
Mr Gaiman: [draws Dream, signs name]
Me: *giggles madly* *hyperventilates slightly*
Nerwen, Sarah, Joelyn: Breathe! Remember to breathe!
Mr Gaiman: Are you okay?
Me: Yes.
Mr Gaiman: Do you want a hug?
Me: [not thinking] No, it’s fine, thankyousomuchMrGaimansir.

I said no to the hug because I’m still sick with a respiratory tract infection and I didn’t want to pass it to him, but also because I thought I might faint on him. Which would be extremely embarrasing, to say the least.

He drew on my Absolute Sandman! He drew on it!

The inside cover of my Absolute Sandman Vol. 1 - joy!

Am I a huge fangirl? Yes, unabashedly so. I hope he comes back soon! I would love to see him again. Singapore loves Neil Gaiman, and I’m proud to be one of his legion of fans.

A Tale of Two Consoles

Raven — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 15:14:30 +0000

On Sunday I was out and about, and two of my stops were the Wii Sports Resort Carnival at Takashimaya and the Xbox Gaming Showdown at VivoCity.

Both were underwhelming, especially XGS. Maybe it was because I went at an off-hour, in the middle of the afternoon, so it wasn’t as exciting as it otherwise have been.

The Wii Sports Resort Carnival was organised by Maxsoft, the sole distributor of Nintendo products in SEA. I wandered through Takashimaya looking for it, but eventually I found out that it was actually outside. -_-

Kids trying out the cycling event

It wasn’t very interesting for me, likely because I already own a Wii and know what Wii Sports Resort is all about. Basically you joined a main queue and waited your turn to try any one of the Wii Sports Resort events. Most, if not all, the events were there to be tried: I saw cycling, swordfighting, canoeing, and basketball, among others.

Sword/stick fighting

They were also selling Wii consoles, MotionPlus and a few games, but I felt that the games were overpriced somewhat. Wii games generally don’t depreciate over time, but why would I pay $81 for Super Smash Bros Brawl there, when I can get it for $69 at Funan?

I don’t know. I think it’s a good way to demo the Wii to parents and younger kids, not so much to promote any games.

I hopped onto a train and headed down to VivoCity to see XGS. I was severely underwhelmed by the whole set up, since I expected it to be much larger. The XGS area was just in a corridor, with maybe a dozen Xboxes hooked up to game demos.

They had some really sweet setups though! Especially the one for Forza 3.

Forza 3's sweet, sweet set-up

Three 32-inch plasma TVs set up to give a semi-realistic view of the road, plus one of those nifty racing simulator chairs. The graphics are really awesome, and the AI seems to be up to scratch. It was pretty cool to see the car turning on the middle screen, NPCs on the left, and the background on the right.

I was, however, there to see the DJ Hero demo/preview. To the best of my knowledge, this is the first time that the DJ Hero is actually being physically shown here. I wanted to see how one’s fingers actually move on the turntable.

DJ Hero turntable (Renegade edition), buttons largely obscured by player's hands

I wasn’t disappointed. They were showing off the Renegade Edition, which is slightly different and more expensive than the normal DJ Hero. There’s a gold trim to the round bit that spins, and a carrying case that can be set up as a waist-height table to play standing up – you can see that in the picture above.

It looks simple enough. It’s remarkably similar to Guitar Hero’s gameplay, except at the higher difficulties you have to deal with two hands doing two different actions at the same time. For example, you have to hold a button and spin the turntable with your right hand while your left moves a dial.

I’m still undecided about getting DJ Hero, but at least now I know the controller is not the monster I was afraid it was.