Pure Morning

I am back with a new obsession : postcrossing. ... or you know, just postcards in general. I haven't been sending postcards for at least the last 3 years. I don't really have memories with postcards, but now I do think it's really exciting to get back to old school way of communicating with people.

In 2004-2005, I used to send some Japanese postcards to my friends in Jakarta. I also sent some handmade ones for my family in 2008-ish. ... I don't think they ever reached my family.

I got into postcrossing just recently, and I was so eager to start. But I really don't want to post too many postcard stuff on my fandom blog so I think I would post it here. Apparently it is not easy to find good postcards here in Jakarta, so I'm just going to document stuff I got, price and where to get it.

Maybe it's time for me to change my mindset and face my fear. All this time I wrote blogs about fandoms, online stuff, artificial things and never about my real life because I was afraid to face it. I set myself back from anything that reminds me of real life, which is one of the reasons why I hate facebook. Maybe I should just face it. Maybe I should get back to my old habit - blogging about real life, real people, real situation and not continuously trying to avoid things that are in front of my very eyes. Maybe it's time for another transition.

So I made spelling mistakes while working in the last couple of days and that made me seriously wonder if I have dyslexia. I've been wondering for a while, but considering how far I got in life, I always simply thought I just worry too much. However, today I searched about dyslexia and even took an online test. The result? That I likely show indication of dyslexia.


Looking at the symptoms, I do think I have some of them; difficulty of telling right from left, have long term memory of experiences, locations, faces, but not on information or fact that I don't experience. I don't like reading. I find it very torturing. I most definitely don't read long books and I also hate math. I dislike counting or tables of numbers. I would stare at them for a long time without wanting/knowing how to start to work on them. I do better in arts. I'm easily distracted by sounds, even the tiniest noises wake me up.


Anyway, other dyslexia symptoms doesn't seem to fit me. I don't like reading, but I like writing (blogs, lol). I love maps and I don't find them confusing (except if they're really really bad maps, lol). I don't have significant spelling problems and my handwriting is just fine. I even learn and use languages other than my mother language on daily basis.

But again, a website on dyslexia said "Most dyslexics will exhibit about 10 of the following traits and behaviors. These characteristics can vary from day-to-day or minute-to-minute. The most consistent thing about dyslexics is their inconsistency." And yeah, I have about 10 of those behaviors.

If I do have dyslexia, do I need treatment? I made it this far in life without problems.

A nice morning at the office, and also this is my first time ever being photographed with office folks. Also hot damn Mrs. Reni IS WORKING IT.

I've never worked with tulle before, but now that I did, tulle is like, the most awesome fabric, isn't it?

I wanted to make a fabric flower brooch for a friend's wedding, so I bought some pieces of fabric. The first one is purple french tulle, and the second one is a chiffon two tone with an awesome color gradient. I didn't have much time til the wedding, so I made the flower with what I have, which is basically thread and needle.

I like the result, and it's not bad for something I created in less than 3 hours, but honestly, I'm not crazy about it. It's kind of too big and bulky because I have to fold the fabric into two to avoid showing the edges (didn't have time to trim them).

Then I had this idea to make a head piece, inspired by Ongina, RuPaul's Drag Race Season 1 contestant. Ongina is bald, yet she's one of the fiercest queens out there. Her significant style is to wear head pieces, and it works well for her. I was thinking, women in hijabs don't have hair to decorate, and our heads are almost the same with bald people. But with fabric which we can pin things on, which is better.

Now back to tulle, and why it is awesome :
1. There are a lot of types and colors of tulle to choose from, and they are CHEAP.
2. No trim. You can cut it into whatever shape you want without any worry about how you should trim the edges.
3. Rumple it a little, and voila you got yourself a couture piece, lol.

I mean look at this awesome photo: (that I stole from Austin Young's facebook)

And all you need to get that awesome head piece is some yards of black tulle.

I combined the chiffon two tone flower with my rumpled tulle, pin them to my head and here's the result :

Love the culture, love the crafts, love the colors.

Brian Molko in Pure Morning Music Video

How do you choose your online names?

Though the url of this blog is taxcha, I decided to title it with Pure Morning. Pure Morning is a song by Placebo, released in 1998. I just graduated from middle school back then, and I was completely hooked on this song. I didn't know Placebo. I didn't know Brian Molko or how awesome his androgynous self was back then. I didn't even know anything about the music video or the rest of the band members. But I heard this song on the radio often, and for some reason I considered this song as my anthem. I still love it. I could listen to it forever. Related to that, I took some lines from the lyrics for my subtitle; a friend in need's a friend indeed, my Japanese is better. I know that doesn't make any sense, but I'm pretty sure my Japanese is better than average non-Japanese people around the world :p

Here's the music video of Pure Morning :


Other than this blog, I also use parts of lyrics from Pure Morning for my rant blog; Day is Dawning.

I have several names online, the most common one I use is taxcha, I use it for almost all of my accounts. Taxcha doesn't mean anything, it's just a play on my nickname, replacing the 's' with an 'x' to make it interesting because apparently adding an 'x' was a popular internet trend.

When I don't use taxcha, sometimes I'm battlerain. Battlerain is a funny name I got because a Japanese couldn't pronounce my last name. Of course the person didn't exactly say Battlerain, but it's my English interpretation of "batorurein".

I had a blog I created for my crafts, but I no longer update that one. It's called paperbutterflies. I love butterflies, and I thought it's a good name for a craft blog. Some other names of mine had been a combination of butterfly and battlerain, just because I think they sound good together.

I'm looking at my other names online, and I realized that a lot of them are related to color names.

My youtube name was taxcha until I got suspended, thanks to a Japanese band called Orange Range (I uploaded their MVs which are copyrighted materials). I needed YouTube in my life, so I immediately created another account, called PinkFancyPanic. Fancy Panic was taken from Orange Range's album Panic Fancy (uh, I was a big fan back then), because it written on a merchandise which was right in front of me when I was thinking about what name to choose. I switch the order and added Pink in the front and voila. That's my youtube name (the most active one, I mean, I have a lot of youtube accounts).

I created a graphics community for icon making, it's called milledlavender (no longer updated though). It's really hard to find online names that are still available! Milledlavender was taken from the name of a color from Tim Holtz' distressed ink collection. It's a very pretty color. I was looking for a name and decided to use my stacks of distressed inks as reference.

When I registered to colourlovers.com, I chose the name fashionfuchsia. I've always loved pink, and Fashion Fuchsia was popular at that time. My room was all about Fashion Fuchsia.

So, what's the story behind your online names?

*entri ini tidak ada hubungannya dengan oncom
**gambar tidak ada hubungannya dengan tulisan :p

Saya termasuk anak muda yang suka mengeksploitasi kata-kata tertentu yang dipilih secara acak dan tidak sadar untuk menghindari mengumpat dengan kata-kata kotor atau kasar, dan juga menambah nilai humor dalam umpatan tersebut. Contoh kata-kata yang digunakan oleh beberapa teman dekat saya adalah 'cumi', 'lontong', dan 'sayur'. Tidak ada yang salah dengan cumi, lontong atau sayur, tapi ketika kata-kata tersebut digunakan dalam konteks mengejek, memang jadi lucu.

Entah sejak kapan saya secara tidak sadar memilih kata 'oncom' untuk dieksploitasi secara pribadi, contohnya dalam tweet saya yang ini. Saya tidak peduli kalau orang lain tidak menangkap maksudnya, itu cuma cara saya untuk bermain-main dengan kata.

Tapi hari ini ketika halaman tumblr tidak juga mau terbuka, keluarlah kata oncom dan terjadilah percakapan berikut :

Saya : Ah, oncom
Ibu saya : Ada tuh oncom di lemari es, mau?
Saya : ....

I know new episode of ABDC is airing tonight so this is very late, but if you haven't seen I.Am.Me's performance last week, go watch it. Nao.

I'm easily obsessed. And when I'm obsessed, I would dedicate my everything for it. I've been obsessed of a lot of things in the past, hobbies, bands, people ... they have one thing in common : expiration date.

Every obsession has an expiration date. And after an intense time of obsessing on something, there is always the perfect time to move on to another obsession.

I was obsessed about Tommy for more than one year, and I was tired of everything. I know I will get back there eventually though. I run a major site for Tommy fandom, I started it, it's my baby and I don't want it to die. More than anything, I have a lot of friends and dedicated people working on the site, and I don't want to lose them. But I did need a fandom fling so there I went, rooting for my queen, Raja.

After 70 days and 616 tumblr posts ... I knew it's time. I was tired. But one more thing I realized, is that more than I was obsessing about Raja and her fierceness or her gorgeous make up or outfits, ... I was obsessing over something for myself. The thrill of finding new pics, the adrenaline rush when I want to be the first to post something, the fun of getting funny comments and a lot of notes, the great feeling looking at the site hit counter and number of followers, the chance of being creative with Photoshop, the fun of meeting new people in the fandom, all of the awesome feelings. More than doing this to root for Raja, I was doing this for myself. To chase the feelings I wanted to feel that I couldn't find in my old fandom.

After doing the same thing consecutively for more than a month, my obsession started fall out. The fun were replaced by pressure, something that was a hobby now was an obligation and this was not how it supposed to work. Not long after Raja was crowned, there were rarely any exciting pics out there and there was no more videos to make gifs of, it was the perfect time to quit. I haven't posted in 3 days and I don't know if I ever will again. I'm satisfied with the result, I don't care if people think what I did was a waste because it wasn't. Because I was doing this for myself and I got what I wanted. I love Raja, I love Sutan and I do think he is a gorgeous man, but really it's time to get back to me.