D.E.F.Y

Suddenly got an idea on what I can do after graduation... Well I may even do it before I graduate.

I shall open a Production Shop near SDE, probably beside Feng Seng, providing printing and model-making services. I will visit SDE every semester like Basheer to do promotion and recruitment. Employees will be from SDE with the "experiences”, for $5/hour for day-shift and $7.50/hour for night-shift. They will be my spies to update me the interim, submission and final crit dates of all the levels from Archi and ID. And I'll open my shop for 24 hours 3 days before the dates.

Paper services in the shop include digital colour printing up to A0 – matt and glossy, mounting up to A1, plotting up to A0, photo-printing – matt and glossy, laminating up to A3, binding, namecard and flyer printing.

The front of my shop will be like Poster Connection, where the students will automatically transfer their print jobs to my network in numbered folders with information like paper size, paper type and finish. While my workers and plotters work at the back of the shop, the students may crash into one of my couches that have stickers pasted above on the wall in black on white “at full throttle for 40 hours”, “lend me your sleep”, “wake me when it’s done”, “disturb me and I’ll slash you”.

Last minute changes to their panels may be done at two of the computers equipped with licensed Photoshop, AutoCAD, 3DS Max, SketchUp, CorelDraw etc. Usage is limited to 15 minutes per person. Unless there is no queue, they will have to queue again. Important messages at the counters are “stop me if I’m overtiming”, “scream, yell, shout, don’t curse, I’m hard of hearing”, “one minute late is half a grade down, don’t lose your grade”.

The second storey will house my Epilog for material cutting and engraving. No materials on sale (I don’t want to operate like Art Fiend) but I will provide scrap materials, salvage from home, peers and end-of-semester studio. Machine usage will be charged at $5/hour. Vast cutting mat tables and foam cutter provided free-of-charge. And I can do the sweeping after their war.

Then at one end I intend to have a “Perking Corner”, serving mocha, latte, cappuccino, kopi, kopi-o, kopi-c, kopi-c-gosong, kopi-gau, kopi-gosong (erks), red bull, beer etc. If it's an outdoor space like a balcony, then I'll do a yellow box on the floor as well (smoking corner). Stuffs that can provide the energy for another 48 hours of qiong-ing. The wall will be totally occupied with clocks moving backwards with the “12” replaced with “SUBMISSION”. Scary isn’t it?

My shop name is considered too! It shall be LET’S DEFY! Underlying meaning is “Let’s do ease to you". How does that sound? Who wants to joint venture?