Lovers in bohemia

one of the things i love most about my relationship with marlon is that we enjoy the same things. it makes time together utterly blissful. today's art attack was a great example.

after rolling out of bed at noon, we went to the red dot design museum on maxwell street for the market of artists and designers (MAAD), which i first heard about two years ago. it's a monthly market where all the goods must be handmade -- which made for an amazing browsing experience. i was getting a little mall-weary and starting to wonder where to find one-offs from indie designers and artists; i had begun to pine away for the rockwell urban bazaar, and the salcedo and legaspi markets. MAAD was just enough to save me from mass-manufactured insanity.

the red dot design museum

looking for an atm gave us a nice little look at chinatown, an area of singapore i've never poked around in. in fact, i don't think i've ever been to any chinatown, not even in manila.

the temple at chinatown

at the maxwell market: and i thought only pinoys could come up with signs like this

at MAAD, we found a surfeit of cute handmade jewelry, t-shirts, postcards, artwork, picture frames, bags, macbook stickers, magnets, accessories, dresses, notebooks, books and journals. (i'm actually thinking of selling at MAAD this year.) but hands down, the only thing i really, really gushed over and wanted to take home was the world's skinniest dog.

so tell me, ever thought about modeling?

this italian greyhound, aptly named "hungry", is owned by one of the sellers and seems like the perfect poster dog for figure-conscious singapore. adorable little hungry proved that he was also hungry for affection as he jumped all over me and marlon for big wet doggie kisses. sooooo cute!

we went to MAAD mainly for the portrait session -- you sit for ten minutes as a gaggle of illustrators draw your portrait. if you like one of the portraits drawn of you, you can buy it for $8.


marlon and i could barely keep still. i realized this is my fourth time to sit for a portrait in my whole life. i'll post the portraits we bought, and my four past portrait kwentos, in another entry.

we bought books from basheer graphic books -- an illustration book for me and a creative project/collage book for marlon, which sort of seemed like a swap of interests.


i also got a cute necklace with pendants made from a 1970's chinese-english dictionary. great concept -- the pendants were cutouts of interesting word pairs like "dangerous" and "adventure", "filial" and "loyalty", "air" and "vital". this was the word pair i chose, which is both apt for marlon and me, and how we chose to spend today.


later on, we went to the main basheer graphic bookstore at the bras basah complex in bugis (also known as the site of ze famous one-dollar bookstore), a discount art book xanadu for any artist/designer. picked up an old book of textile-patterned gift wrap up plus some art materials nearby -- did you think these two art-starved stragglers were about to let all this indie inspiration just slide by without tossing off a few projects of our own?

crossed the from bras basah complex and walked past the mint museum of toys (which should be another great weekend outing) to va va voom cafe for a tasty, light and south beach-friendly vietnamese dinner.

and now, after returning home to do some vacuuming with my spanking new hot pink vacuum cleaner (every couchwife should have one!)...


the hubby and i are putting those art materials to good use; he's working on an acrylic portrait of a rajasthani woman we photographed on our honeymoon, while i found a year-old sketch of hilda from the mahotella queens that i am turning into a collage with some new papers and marlon's old art materials.

so enough blogging, it's back to bohemia for now ;-)