You may have heard of a similar concept with yearbookyourself.com where you can create your own yearbook photos with all sorts of hairstyles from different eras? Well this website works off a similar concept, except you can put your face on billboards, bus advertisements and other fascinating places.

Photofunia got me thinking…. If someone came up to me and told me I could make any advertisement/publishing I wanted and they would pay for it, what would I do?

Well first and foremost, I would put my ongoing idea of cat-books into action. These books would provide a series of interesting things for cats to view at their pleasure. My first book would educate cats on “The 10 most entertaining characters in the 1990s”:

Then I would provide some public announcements in order to help the community and do my part for society.

Queensland is a great place and factually better than all other states in Australia according to the internet but we still have minor issues. One minor issue is Queensland public transport. The bus way is a great concept if there were actual buses and they weren’t driven by misanthropic people with no common sense (of course this is a stereotype and the bus driver you‘re friends with or related to does not fall under this category). Anyway… to lower the expectations of outsiders and ease any frustration of people who are using the bus system for the very first time, I would like to make a sign like this one:

I have seen a few building construction sites come up in Brisbane recently. The trend seems to be that people don’t like new buildings. They always have something to say about it… “oh it’s blocking my view” etc. I have also noticed that people in the CBD are usually in a rush and have serious faces on all the time. Just because you’re in the business district doesn’t mean you have to keep a business face on! So with that in mind and the fact that most new buildings are often located in the CBD I would like to have a banner like this one:

1. Play with a gun

I was so sad that I couldn’t get to play with a gun. This was the major thing I wanted to do but no matter how much money I flashed I couldn’t get a gun to my hand. Apparently they would lose their job if they let me play with their piece but I think I just didn’t have the right connections because my cousins have been able to play with guns in the past. It may have been easier during the war I guess? This is as close as I got:

2. Chase a monkey

3. Play cricket with street kids

4. Ride an elephant

I bought this elephant for $40

5. Give a poor person lots of money

I was initially going to give one person a lot of money but ended up giving away a lot of money to various people that told me sob stories. They need the money more than me anyway. I took a photo just for the purpose of completing my ‘to do’ list of the money I gave to our driver.

15,000Rps is around $150. I thought it was a nice figure considering the fact that he gets paid that amount for a month of work. He was highly appreciative.

6. Slap a cow on the arse

I had a failed attempt at slapping cows on the arse but promise you I was able to slap a buffalo on the arse. It took off in the opposite direction and it was quite hilarious. The cows are so skinny over there compared to the Aussie cows here. P.S My hair is oily because I had just gotten some weird body massage where they tried to break me in half after rubbing oil everywhere and told me to keep it on for a few hours. WEIRD!

7. Wear a stupid cap everywhere

8. Find a giant guava

I was hoping I’d find a larger one. Last time I was in Malaysia I found a guava that was the size of a rock melon. It was ridiculous. This one doesn’t compare but is still larger than the usual. I guess it just wasn’t the right time for the giant, mutated, rock melon guava.

9. Get drunk with a non-english speaker

This is Dinesh, our driver. He doesn’t speak a word of English. Well I taught him how to say sperm but that’s about it. We got along like a house on fire. He would listen to what I had to say and just smile. I got him really drunk on pina coladas. It was the first time he’s ever had a cocktail and loved it.

10. Ride a scooter in a hotel hall

We bought electric scooters in Malaysia for about $100 and decided to charge them up in the hotel room then take it for a spin at night. That was kind of fun. I kept banging into hotel room doors.

11. Buy a single cigarette

This is my single cigarette! I bought it for 19Rps which is about 19 cents. You basically just walk into a food store and go… 1 cigarette please. They pull it out of a packet and give it to you…. huh!

I thought, wow cigarettes are so cheap. I should start smoking…Why don’t I smoke?

And then I started acting pompous with my single cigarette and realised… that’s why I don’t smoke.

12. Bribe a cop

I was worried about this challenge. I didn’t know how I could get this done without looking like a total idiot and having a valid reason to bribe a cop but the challenge dropped in my lap (so to speak).

Our driver was charged with overtaking dangerously – a fine of 500Rps which is $5AU (haha). Later, on inspection of the driver’s license, the police officer found that he was driving a heavy vehicle without a heavy vehicle license. The driver had to stop driving and make his way to the police station to pay the fine. I walked in with him as I was paying for the fine. The cop that actually booked him took the money. I gave him an extra 500Rps and asked if our same driver could drive us to the van depot so we could get another driver (even though we kept the same driver because he was cool). The cop said yeah… so I said … can I also take a photo? And he was fine with it…after all I paid for it hehe!

The police over there actually get a commission for handing out a certain amount of fines. They are happy to take bribes.

13. Challenge a local at pool

It was close. We ran out of time. He was really good! I won the first game, he won the second, I won the 3^rd but we really needed to play to the best of 5.

14. Drink out of a jug

The jug is made out of pure glass (not plastic). It’s heavy and could do a lot of damage across someone’s face.

15. Eat something I’ve never had before

In Malaysia I ate some deer chilli dish. Apparently deer meat is eaten often in New Zealand but I have never had it before so I was keen on trying some. It tasted great! I don’t know if it was just the way it was prepared or the meat itself but I smashed the plate of deer meat. Recommend++

16. Drive a trishaw/tuktuk

These are actually quite hard to drive. They have scooter like gears. You have to turn the handle down to drop gears and turn it back towards you to hit a lower gear.  The clutch is sensitive and I found myself holding it down and just revving the juice out of the lawn-mower-like engine.

This ‘to do’ list brought some great memories on a trip that came with natural adventure and challenges. Why not try make a ‘to do’ list on your next trip abroad? I’m sure you’ll find it just as fun as I did!

1. I enjoy the vibrant colours and mesmerising patterns which are evident in a lot of artwork and I’ve been totally missing out
2. This was a great indication that I don’t know Brisbane

With an adventure trip to the museum prior to my GOMA expedition; it seems I learnt a lot that day. The biggest lesson I learnt from GOMA was that apart from admiring art for its aesthetics, I don’t really get art in its ‘artsy’ form at all but this in itself brought great novelty when browsing through the artwork.

Let me tell you, even the walk towards GOMA is interesting and fun. The State Library (located next to GOMA) has a weird patch of grass that is the same colour of the building and looks a bit like moss, but I don’t think it is moss. There was discussion over this grass/moss for at least a minute. It was intense. The entrance to GOMA is pure glass and it was hard to spot what was window and what was door… This made it slightly hard for some to enter (I won’t say who). Enough about the building though. I want to talk about some of the art which I really enjoyed….

William Yang and his bendy text

As soon as you walk in you will see the start of ‘The China Project’: Part of it was a strange collection from a photographer named William Yang. This was one of the few collections I understood (or at least I think I do). It’s basically a few photographs and some text which tells you about his experience growing up as a Chinese kid in Australia. He battles as a minority with a Chinese background and later on reveals his homosexuality. The hardest part about reading this art was the fact that the text went all bendy and I found myself reading the same line over and over again. I thought… so far so good this art stuff is pretty easy.

 We walked on a little further and I was totally impressed and fixated on the giant post-its that covered a massive wall. They were huge pieces of paper overlapped and stuck on the wall like post-its. Seriously if you haven’t seen giant post-its on a wall, do yourself a favour and go have a look. It’s awesome. The writing on these giant post-its had either deliberate misspellings or the people who created them only knew Engrish but it had things like ‘D&G and Cucci’ instead of ‘Gucci’ and other weird stuff that made no sense (No photos, I guess you will have to go see for yourself).

A little further from the giant 2 story post-it wall and we found a city of all the famous buildings in the world made out of clay. Around the city were TV screens showing some clay animation. The best part about this piece of art was that the clay had a colour and texture which resembled Cadbury chocolate to uncanny levels. Unfortunately again I cannot find a photo of this to show.

We made our way up to level 2… Here I found art from a person that I found really intriguing. Spencer Finch is (in all respects) a mad man. Here is a man that is more fascinated by colours, lighting, shading and shadows than me. His art is all about trying to draw these things in hope to conceptualise our perception of sight (I think). His first display didn’t really impress me much. It was a bunch of Polaroid looking photos which just looked like grey gradients and they were cloned and pasted all over the wall (something I could do in photoshop quite easily). Then he got a little stranger… I walked into a dark room and I think I shouted “Holy shit balls!” in an art gallery. I’m still not sure if an Art Gallery follows the library etiquette where you have to keep quiet but I felt bad about it… Anyway I found myself looking at his TV setup which looked like something out of a hybrid movie sequel for the Poltergeist and The Ring:

Holy Shit Balls!

I still don’t know what the aforementioned piece is about and I don’t think I will ever understand it but if he was trying to express his creepiness and insanity; this piece is perfect. If you find yourself in the Art Gallery, take the time to read the descriptions of his art though, they may help you more than it did me. They also add to the art as some of the descriptions are amusing and bemusing.

My favourite piece of his has to be his triumphant feat in capturing rainbow legs with black and white photos. I had to think about it for a long time… and the more I thought about it… the more it didn’t make sense at all.

Left leg of the rainbow.... in black and white

The man claims to have chased down the left leg of a rainbow and taken a photo of it… If you can see it in this photo please point it out to me as I cannot see a rainbow in this black and white shot.

The right leg of the rainbow... black and white

Again, he has claimed to have chased the right leg of this rainbow. It reminds me of the following motivational poster:

I have the urge to create art like this

Spencer also has a great book available from the Gallery Store which has a blank piece of paper tarnished by wind caught from the backyard of Emily Dickinson’s house…..

Although Spencer won my heart that day, I was also impressed with some of the Aboriginal art displayed at GOMA. Some of the patterns really had me thinking that these were in fact magic eyes so I spent a few moments trying to cross my eyes (to no unearthing). Even this lovely couple felt like they had to try:

A couple having a go at Magic Eye

There was a strange painting on the wall which I thought I should mention just in case someone can actually explain it to me: It had a kangaroo with sunglasses on, standing in a crowd of white people with stockings over their faces… but one of the guys had a condom on his head instead of stockings. This came with no description as I’m sure even the artist himself had no idea what was going on here (needless to say I can’t find a picture of this to show).

I feel I have to mention the giant hole in the wall as well. At first I thought, wow is this a massive subwoofer? I bet it pumps out some bass. Then I thought… gee this better not be a representation of genitalia…. and then I thought, wouldn’t it be cool to get inside this thing… and then I thought, what if they made the inside like a jumping castle… that would be awesome:

Anish Kapoor's gaping hole

A special mentioning of some artsy video clips and the tree and kangaroos covered in pieces of fine China (which had me totally mesmerised) needs to be made here. Even apart from that pretty much everything is worth looking at. If you haven’t been there before or even in a while, I suggest you go have a look right after a stop at the museum. The transition from giant things hanging from a ceiling to giant post-it notes stuck to a wall really makes for a great day.