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I am on my first cover! Yes, it really is me. I'm on one cover, and my friend Sannah is on the other cover of this month's Catalog Magazine. I gleefully spotted it under the glass counter in the Gas jeans store in Paragon.
Some behind-the-scenes-shennanigans and Sannah's cover:
My hair always takes much longer than it does for the rest of the guys. Anywhere from half an hour to three hours. The three hour times are usually a result of client indecision rather than difficulty.
Usually you go to a job with clean hair, but I still had my hair from the day before when I arrived. I thought it was cool, potentially reusable, and too much of a pain to take out by myself.
This hair took one hour, but 15 minutes of that was undoing yesterday's braided pattern. Oh yeah, and it's blonde again.
From the jobs (still messing about in the cube):
After a brief hiatus, I return with a very fresh post. Today, yesterday, the day before, and tomorrow I have been enjoying one of modelling's stranger assignments. For two hour shifts, a group of models pose and socialize in a tinted glass box in Paragon, an upscale shopping center.
Part of the launch of their new Citibank credit card, we wear fancy clothes supplied by the mall's stores, drink champagne, listen to music, and peruse magazines for the viewing enjoyment of local shoppers.
Bright lights make the enclosed scenario visible to the outside world while the models see reflections of themselves in the dark glass. Combatting intense heat, sensory deprivation, hunger, and for some, nicotine cravings, endurance is the order of the day.
Zip up your Jean Paul Gautier, button your Kenzo, and pick up your Etro: we're going in the tank! These photos taken mere minutes ago:
First a brief recap of the past few days:
Tuesday Nov 8th
07:00 Wakeup
08:30 Go to airport
10:00 On a plane to KL
13:00 Eating Iranian food for the first time
14:00 Asleep on the couch of an advertising office
16:00 Poking around the base of Petronas towers (couldn't go up)
18:00 Waiting for Aydin and agency at the wrong spot
18:45 Call agency and find out meeting time is rescheduled to 20:00
20:00 Waiting at the wrong spot again
20:15 Aydin comes and finds me
20:45 Driving to studio
21:00 Waiting at studio for crew
22:00 Crew arrives, start hair and makeup
22:05 Everyone else finishes hair and makeup
Wednesday November 9
00:00 William finishes hair and makeup
00:30 Find out job is for Tiger Beer, not Carlsberg (on the schedule)
01:40 Finish shooting at studio and drive to location
02:00 Waiting for construction of set to finish
03:45 Start shooting
06:00 Finish shooting and get on monorail towards airport
08:05 On plane back to Singapore
09:30 Back in Singapore
11:00 Home
12:00 Sleep
14:00 Wake up
15:30 Go to hair / makeup / rehearsal for Esprit show
16:30 Realize I forgot to buy chewing gum in KL
21:00 Finish Esprit show
22:00 Go to "hawker" market for satay and murtabak (yummy food)
Thursday November 10th
00:00 Home
02:00 Sleep
11:00 Wake up
14:00 Go out shopping
17:30 Come home
18:30 Leave home
19:30 Dinner with 8 person model platoon at Little India
22:00 Crash the Guess show (free drinks, food, gifts, blah blah)
Friday November 11th
00:00 After party at Attica
02:00 Chicken rice at Putong Quay on River Valley Drive
02:30 After-after party at Velvet
04:00 After-after-after party at Living Room
06:30 Home
06:57 Writing this
So the Tiger Beer job was fun. For the few days preceding the trip, after finding out I would be doing the job with Aydin, we have all been puzzling about how the selection was made. Aydin is a big, chizzled guy with short hair and a "commercial" look. I am a skinny fashion guy with long hair and an "editorial" look.
We arrive at the job and there are three other guys also doing the ad. Two have short hair, and the only other guy with long hair has straight hair, stubble, and a scar on his chin. Can’t get more masculine than that. So add Aydin and myself and… one of these things just doesn’t belong.
From the moment we started, the director was eyeing me. No, not the queer eye. More of a very concerned who-is-this-charlatan eye. This went on for about an hour until the hair guy gave me the shocking verdict: “The director says you look too young”.
My immediate feeling was “I know I should have looked older today! What was I thinking??” Actually, the director seemed so cold and serious that I really felt bad for looking “too young” even if I rationally concluded it was not my responsibility. To make me look older, the makeup artist tried such desperate measures as darkening my eyebrows. Ok, that was the only measure. As for hair, it was made fluffier, then less fluffy, then fluffy again. Eventually the director decided I looked as close to 25 as I was going to look and gave the OK.
It turned out (as it usually does) that the director was a nice, friendly guy, just with a quiet style. Speaking of which, next time you see someone standing aloof at a party or gathering, consider the possibility he or she might not know people rather than dismissing it as snobbery.
The first part of the shoot was done in the studio. The second part was done at Finnegan’s Irish Pub, skilfully reinvented as “The Queen’s Arms” complete with new lettering, neon signage, and sandwich board listing prices in British Pounds. Hamburger for ₤3.50? Guess we’re not in London. We had to pause a couple of times for M troubles as the letter fell down and “The Queen’s Arms” became “The Queen’s Posterior” (albeit misspelled).
The tall, gloomy skyline
All hair
At the studio
Plugs are for wussies, put a screwdriver in the ground socket and shove the wires straight in
Taking a break
Queen's Rms
Well, I am back from Kuala Lumpur. I flew home Wednesday morning, went home, then jumped in a taxi to go do the Esprit show. I have some fun stories, but no time to tell them right now as I am off to dinner.
Instead, I will leave you with some interesting information. Concessionary fares on public transit in Singapore for children are based on height rather than age. I think this is a simple, fair, and consistent arrangement. No messing around with ID or parents telling their kids to lie. If you are under 0.9 meters tall, you ride for free. If you are well above the age group this rule is meant to apply to and still under 0.9 meters, I think life has dealt you enough blows that you deserve a free trip.
Here is a picture from earlier in the week. Looks like I don't need a ticket.
I am off to Kuala Lumpur on Tuesday for a Carlsberg shoot! I am being flown in with one of my friends and I am really excited to finally see Malaysia. I spent a year at University with a couple of Malaysian roommates and heard much about the country.
Sing-Yoong, and Chin-Ho, if you are out there or someone reading this knows your whereabouts, drop me a line.
Wish me luck and see you when I get back.
The computer occupies more and more and more of my time.
Without Internet access at my various points of accommodation through Europe, and without the income to justify that kind of big expenditure, I (dis)contented myself with foul smelling ergonomically inferior Internet cafes. Like a dialysis machine, it kept me going but it's not the real thing.
When I reached Singapore I decided it was finally time to replace my ailing laptop, a Dell Inspiron 7000 so humble it was more trouble than benefit to take with me, with something current.
Casual research determined there were two places advisable for the purchase of electronics: Sim Lim Square and Funan IT Mall. Whilst theory holds that it is possible to find better deals at Sim Lim, my friend Ming kindly put it this way: "Even locals get ripped off". So despite the enjoyable thrill of walking into the merchants den wearing the universal skin colour of "sucker" (white) and fighting a greedy salesman, tooth and nail, down to 10% above the Manufacturer's Suggested Retail Price, I opted for the sanitized comfort of Funan IT Mall.
I approached Funan with the giddy anticipation of a 7-year-old boy about to discover Toys R Us. Ok, any male of the species about to discover Toys R Us. For the female readers, I suppose it would be like walking into a shoe store.
I stepped through the sliding glass doors into a blast of air conditioning, a blanket of light, and a surge of serotonin. The giant, cavernous atrium revealed level upon level; a thousand little shops full of expensive shiny little treats in brushed aluminium and moulded plastic. Computers, cameras, parts, books, videos, and accessories.
My research was conducted over days and through many shops. In Singapore, the prescribed style of service is as follows. Shop clerks see the customer (tourist?) approaching from a distance. They ready themselves by ceasing conversation and face the shop front. When the customer crosses the invisible line delimiting store territory, the nearest clerk quickly zones in on the mark. "Can I help you sir?"
"No thanks, I'm just looking"
If you have heard of "Singlish", you will know that although the people of Singapore speak English, they speak with their own cute dialect and pronunciation reducing all forms of confirmation (such as "Are you available Tuesday" or "Does the jacket fit?") simply to "Can?" and peppering all their expressions with "La". I discovered that in Singlish "No thanks, I'm just looking" means:
"Please follow me around the store. Do not exceed a distance of 0.5 meters from my person at any time. Keep your eyes keenly focused on me should I have any questions or feel the need to damage or steal something."
After plenty of looking, fantasizing, changing requirements, and personal surveillance, I decided on the Acer travelmate 3210. Since all the shops in the mall sell the same notebooks at the same price points, it took some more looking around to find a deal. The store I eventually went to knocked the tax off and doubled the RAM. The computer came with a bag which I was not even expecting, making this one of my most satisfying purchases ever.
With wireless Internet access at the apartment, I spend most of my time on the computer. It is a part of me I have been missing for a long time. An extension of my brain. Like Paris Hilton without a sex tape, The Netherlands without Amsterdam, or a Japanese girl without a Louis Vuitton handbag, I am nothing without a computer.
In the event you might find this information useful, Sim Lim Square is near Bugis MRT station and Funan is near City Hall MRT station.
And now for some unrelated photos.
For years you ate us. Now I am giant. Prepare to die human!
Amongst other things, do not try to ride your wheel chair up the escalator.
No durians! Penalty to be determined.
My life is a little insane. Really fun, but kind of crazy. Just like I have to be careful which pictures I post, I have to be careful regarding what I write about who. It might seem like this is a private chat between you and me, but I had 39714 hits last month.
Ok, I was just using that dramatic, meaningless statistic to sound impressive. A more realistic measure would be the total number of unique sites last month: 2066. Though the same person might check from home and work which would result in two readings instead of one, this is a rough estimate of the number of different people (or automatons) that stumble across this page. If accurate, it means of those who visit this site, the people I don't know far outnumber the people I know.
Some of you are regulars and I thank you for your continued patronage. Some of you are addicted to reading blogs, making it here by following the links of friends of friends of friends, and I kindly sympathize. Some of you came here by searching for "gyaru" (again, I sympathize). Others by checking out pictures of mine that were linked to or posted on forums. Finally, perhaps some of you were looking for the unique brand of entertainment only offered by a net-savvy, camera-wielding, world-travelling model. If you are in the latter category I have some news.
My friend Jeff sent me a link to the blog of Elyse Sewell, a former contestant on season one of the show America's Next Top Model. Though she did not win the competition, she did embark upon a successful modelling career and documents the experience online. Frankly, she has completely outdone me.
The writing is witty, articulate, candid, and most importantly, frequent. While you are getting the odd "change of country" notice or an immodest, self-promotional photograph from me, she is beaming the true, colourful, and unpredictable lifestyle directly into your bedroom.
In defence (of my own attack), you witnessed through me some of the raw modelling experience while I was in Milan. Recently I have been taking more time to live the experience rather than document it. I also consider, as Elyse recently began to, that people you know and work with can and will read your publicly disclosed journal. You must be very careful lest you violate one of the many rules of modelling: You love the clothes, you love the people, you love the weather, everything's great!.
Despite these excuses, however, I have a far worse reason for the sagging standards of globalconquest.ca: complacency. Anyone with staying power knows that the greatest enemy of success is success. While I begin to enjoy the rewards of having regular traffic to the site and a comfortable flow of bookings for shows and editorials, I forget the work, patience, and perseverance that made it possible. You reap in the future what you sow today.
So today I grabbed my camera and marched out into the 3 AM darkness. I got a couple of interesting photos, but here is the real gem, just around the corner of my house. This man is sleeping face down on a table. Nearby, another man sleeps in a moulded plastic chair. I wonder if the one on the table is the one who delivers newspapers to our block at 4 am.
Click 'Continue reading' below for the obligatory Halloween pics.
Sannah and Me on the MRT. Whilst I like to think the gawking had something to do with my hard hat, I believe credit goes to Sannah's short skirt and fishnets.
The lead singer of the cover band that always plays at Thumper. He is usually this scary.
Bernard, Florine, and Me - from the "Sleeveless-shirt-is-a-costume department"
Me and Daniel - Blue faced devil with crimson ball-cap of death
Live snakes and dance clubs. Tune in next week for guns and alcohol.
Sebastian making a brave attempt to convince us his "costume" is no cover for a humiliating defeat in the bar room brawl
Sorry officer... I um... stole that... thing over there.. I'm turning myself in. Oh, and I'm a flight risk. Cuff me.
Cucurbitanecrophilia (You saw it first on globalconquest.ca!)
Hello gay rabbits, I seem to have lost the rest of the Village People.
Thanks again to Jeff for costume inspiration.
I have recently taken the photo galleries offline. I did this for a number of reasons.
Creating a gallery, weeding out bad photos, and writing captions is extremely time consuming. With the volume of photos I take, I could spend all my computer time maintaining galleries.
The number of anonymous visitors here will only grow. The amount of my private life I wish to reveal will only shrink.
For the past few months I have been posting inline photos and I think they are a sufficient graphical supplement to my already over-exposed lifestyle.
Finally, I have better things to do with my bandwidth.
For friends, family, and wealthy financiers: Send me an email if there is a particular gallery to which you want access and I can create an account.
As a farewell to the gallery, here is one last look at my most popular bandwidth-sucking photo:
"Gyaru" style on the streets of Osaka near Dontonbori