It's week 4 and a week away from my departure. Had a great end of year's happening at Quelic and Carlos' place with what seemed to be a very local tradition and/or way of celebration.

Spanish Flamenco music was playing all night long til morning, which is considerably crazy for someone like me, but it was really a unique situation. And again, I pretty like to play with words and how they sound, indeed FLAMEnco is fire-y?

I tasted quite a number of local food like:
tortilla (omelette, it's like fu yung hai without the gravy? I mean fried egg with things inside, like potato)
jamón ibérico (Iberian ham which is like super expensive)
botifarra (Spanish lap cheong that tastes like heaven)
pan con tomate (bread with tomato, which is technically tomato spread over bread, not my favourite but the olive oil helps making it tasty)

and before that, I have tried and fallen in love with:
paella (apparently the Valenciana recipe is the best)

as for beverages:
beer (where in comparison to Asia, the price of beer is cheaper than water and also it is always fascinating for me because my parents forbid the kids to drink alcohol, and to hear Europian countries and even Japan that almost everyone drinks beer on daily basis, it is just mind-blowing)
cava (Spanish, or in fact Catalan champagne, and they have this glass container that is apparently unique to Catalan as well)

and other food like:
magdalena (which stands for cupcakes. I have been buying this packet butter cupcakes and they are great snacks, and also I have been using butter like there's no tomorrow and lastly, some of the paper works are folded from cupcakes paper)
bread (like Dali's)
snail-shaped pasta or galet


So, these will pretty much affecting the cookbook that will be part of the project.


And adding on to wordplay, breakfast is called 'desayunar' in spanish while 'desa' means village in indonesian.


Putting the food aside, somehow, the flowers came to me.


 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

If you noticed the similarities, all of the flowers tend to be within the color scheme of white and yellow, mostly with white petals and yellow eyes. I'm not sure why in terms of biological perspective but I can not recall encountering red or blue or any other colored flowers (a couple of tiny purples). It might have been the winter.

These flowers, both of their colors and shapes, remind me of the sun. It is quite ironic that I am looking at the sun for this project when I am here in the winter. It is pretty difficult to get the sun as the days are short.

I came up with simple folded papers in response to the flowers and the sun. The design is something that I accidentally discovered, but  am sure someone has designed it already. Apology for not being able to track who is the copyrighted design for this, or even if there is any.

What I am more interested in is not the attempt to mimic the flowers or create paper flowers but in the exploration of the form. The Mas Keong as described in the story and the relevance of mathematics and nature, use symbols which is pretty much linked to the sun on their bodies. And in an attempt to create these symbols, I look into 'mathematically correct' shapes and arrangements like the snails itself and golden means as well as origami as a cross subject between mathematics and creativity.


 

Interestingly enough, the flowers, particularly the sunflowers are 'mathematically correct'.  

It follows the Fibonacci sequence which you can read up more at:

http://www.popmath.org.uk/rpamaths/rpampages/sunflower.html


And also I came across Flower of Life which is at:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flower_of_Life

This is a little religious, but I think the process of making circles which resulted in various patterns is also the way how the drawings have been created. I use the children drawing kit where it is shaped as a ruler with holes and rotating circles which will create different patterns depending on which holes, sizes and circles you choose.

The patterns that are flower-like, which then can be translated as representatives of the sun in visual symbols.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And the gold balls in the middle of the folded papers are from Christmas decoration. The idea of having works with gold color in this period, you definitely can not escape from Christmas. The relevance is too heavy to be avoided.

I managed to get some Christmas tree decoration for really cheap price and will be using those as part of some of the works.


And I went to look at the sun.


 

 

 

 

I might not have appreciated the sun before this. It is great to realize how the sun glistens everything it touches.

And the Spanish enjoys sun bath very much, which I guess Asians or me would not have had the same appreciation towards the sun back in Singapore or Indonesia.

 

 

The circles of the sun ray, they are very poetic and romantic. Almost magical.

I wanted to capture the sensation of when your eyes staring on the sun just for a couple of seconds and look away right after. The blinking bright images would be projected towards your general vision and I find that kind of magical as well.

 

 

 

The next few images might be what Lordlake citizens see just seconds before the Sun Rune attack. (This is a canon of gensoSuikoden 5).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Staying in Camallera for 5 weeks will make me miss this place. It is a place that is incomparable at this moment, as I have never technically stayed in a village or anything like this before.

I was on the way to an event Clara had organized for the village kids, and managed to catch a couple of interesting landscapes and objects within the village.


 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I think if I were to think about the look of the Spiral and Helix Village (which i have been thinking of renaming them), they would look like Camallera.  



Back to the idea of gender, snails and Mas Keong. So, I was at Barcelona the other day and wanted to take pictures of the site I mentioned, but an unfortunate incident happened and I lost my phone. I was getting a bit paranoid and decided that I will not be carrying my cameras around. So, I don't think I can get any image documentation of anything in Barcelona and even Figueres.

I have been reading about househusbands and came across:

1. A blog called Chef and Househusband, featuring "Taste of Spain". How coincidental, the post also features recipes of Spanish cuisine:
http://chefandhousehusband.blogspot.com/2011/09/taste-of-spain.html

2. Aric Visser's journey as an American ex-pat househusband living in Spain. I think I shall write to him.
http://www.expathousehusband.com/

3. A very brief statistic on UK househusband:
http://www.money-marketuk.com/Consumer/househusbands-on-the-rise.html

4. An article by Telegraph:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/family/4600556/House-husbands-Are-you-man-enough.html

5. Wiki on Stay-at-home-Dads, quite informative:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stay-at-home_dad#Transition_to_modern_family_.281900.E2.80.93present.29

6. Stories from househusbands:
http://www.experienceproject.com/groups/Want-To-Be-A-House-Husband/49367
And a rather unusual one:
http://www.experienceproject.com/stories/Want-To-Be-A-House-Husband/1278211

7. And an article related more towards gender representation:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-467390/Househusband-backlash-high-flying-wives-ditch-men-em-em-wanted-stay-home.html

8. Japan and Korea respectively:
http://www.kyoto.zaq.ne.jp/rio/works/archive/japan_times_week.htm
http://blogs.wsj.com/korearealtime/2011/01/20/data-shows-more-husbands-making-the-beds/


In addition to all these, I have been working on presentation of work as well. Went to get couple of cheap frames and will try to try on the look of the works, mostly 2Ds with the frames as part of the piece. And also other smaller things I found last minute which I will be playing around with for the last week in Spain.