vivi torontali

Where have I been these past two weeks?! Perhaps you’ve been missing me, or perhaps you haven’t even noticed I’ve been slowing down with my writing. Most days I spend in the café and in the city, weaving in and around hoards of people in tight spaces. When I’m out of work, I become a recluse– all I want to do is be in my own space and do my own thing. I’ve been quite tired and burnt out, but I still have the energy to stay afloat.

This past week was my manager’s 25th birthday, and she invited all our colleagues as well as some ex-colleagues and other friends to her party. It was beautifully decorated, and she cooked a whole lot of delicious food and even her own cake. Everyone from the café attended this birthday bash. I may not know her very well yet, but I appreciate all the effort she puts into the team– when no one else can come in to help out, she’s the one that jumps in. My trip to her house took over an hour, and I was one of the first to arrive. Two of our colleagues arrived quite late because they were closing the café and there was a series of mishaps, and we were waiting for them to arrive before we could start eating. We had some lasagna, a variety of salads, and then some delicious homemade cake. The colleagues who closed that night told the story of one of their mishaps. I could not do the story justice because the one who told it delivered it so well, but we were all howling with laughter. I was also able to hear some ancient drama from the staff back in the day. Everyone agrees now that the team is all super helpful and nice, and thus boring. It was refreshing to see my colleagues in a non-work environment. Everyone was relaxed and having fun, and there was no pressure to refill the cutlery or clear tables. It’s also always jarring to see colleagues wearing something they normally wouldn’t wear to work. There was a noticeable shift in the team’s morale and energy in the following days. I suppose that’s another powerful managerial move the birthday girl made that night.

I’m usually really good at ignoring my phone and disappearing off the face of the earth. Most days that’s what I do, but I also have been keeping up with my friends’ lives. This bløg is meant to serve as a news reel of my family’s life, but my friends are also included in that. I’m super proud of my music production partner-in-crime Eda who just got hired for an unpaid internship in a sound studio. They helped me an unbelievable amount with my album in my last semester of college, and she was also one of my few friends at school after returning from my year abroad. She might be super embarrassed about this, but go stream their EP, In Your Absence. She and I created our own albums at the same time for our Creative Media Capstone exhibition in April. I couldn’t have done it without her.

Additionally, one of my best friends from Lexington, Nadia, recently got in their first relationship. I won’t say too much about it because it’s quite a recent development, but they seem very happy. They told me the whole story with all the cute lovey-dovey mushy details, and I’m ecstatic on their behalf. I’m not at all bitter, though I could be because I recently ended my own relationship. Unfortunately my heart wasn’t in it as much as I wanted it to be. Until I find true love of my own, I am happy on the sidelines, retracting to ‘crazy dachshund lady’ status for a while. I am truly happy for my friends with nothing but love in my heart.

Aside from my breakup and burnout, another reason I’ve been in such a reclusive state is because I’ve been so invested in my artwork. After exactly 10 hours of work, the café’s planter box mosaic project is finished. I worked on it in the back garden for a while, but the trolley I used to bring the heavy planter back and forth had two flat tires, and the residents of the garden weren’t happy with the its presence because it’s a “private garden” (which 20 Grams also belongs to, by the way). I decided to instead work on it in front of the café, and while I didn’t have to deal with transporting it back and forth with a broken trolley, I got a lot of looks from passers-by. I let some curious children glue on a piece or two if they decided to engage with me, but most people who saw me work simply stopped in their tracks and stood there staring at me with a look of judgment on their faces, as if I uprooted their entire day’s routine by sitting there and quietly working. Sometimes I felt like a circus freak sitting there on a slab of cardboard and breaking plates for all to see, but at the end of the day I served as free advertisement for 20 Grams Specialty Coffee Shop. The entire look of the brand is authentic antiques and handmade things, all coming together in beautiful chaos. I was a live spectacle showcasing the brand’s mission. On top of being an embroidery artist, musician, audio engineer, designer, illustrator, and 3D artist, I can now also add ‘performance artist’ to the list.

Now that my gallery application is finished and I’m waiting to meet with the director in person next week, I’ve been prototyping my 3D-puzzle idea. I recently found out that my town library has an entire makerspace, and it’s free aside from the materials you use. They have four of the exact kinds of 3D-printers I used back in college, the Prusa MK4. When I first saw them, I could tell my eyes had hearts in them like in a cartoon. I printed Mt Taranaki, the first of many prototypes to come. The illustration I submitted to the gallery is 92.25 x 52.5 cm (36.3 x 20.7 in), and I would love to see a 3D version of the illustration in that size. Alas, the Prusa MK4 has an 8” x 8” printing area, meaning I’d have to split the model into parts, thus the puzzle idea. I’ve been modeling cut-up versions, and the next step for me is to figure out exactly how large the pieces will have to be and how the pieces will have to be split up so that they will lock perfectly together. 

Instead of doomscrolling on my phone on the train or on the couch, I draw my Mt Kilimanjaro illustration. One layer can take me the entire half-hour train ride to and from the city, if not more. My hands have gone through a lot these past few weeks from all the drawing, ceramic cutting and gluing, dishwashing, and handwriting. Luckily they have been well taken care of by my super talented nail technician mother, who has been receiving more and more tools in the mail. I didn’t get to celebrate Halloween this year as I was working late and had no time or energy, but I had one request, that I wanted candy corn nails. I’ve been culture-shocked this past week because no one around me knew what candy corn is, so I described this true American staple: nothing but high-fructose corn syrup, sugar, and food coloring. The candy corn nails were my mom’s first attempt at gels, and I gave her a good challenge. After three hours and eight layers of gel polish, my nails turned out quite nicely, though not perfect. The lines weren’t too clean and there were some fuzzies stuck in the lacquer, but overall it was a spectacular first attempt. Good job, mom.

Now that you’re caught up on the news surrounding my personal life, I can tell you about some of the larger-scale happenings around Copenhagen. The local elections are coming up, and my entire family is eligible to vote since we’re EU citizens and permanent residents. My sister arrived just in time to get in the system and be able to vote. There are 11 political parties currently running, and from the very little information I have, some of the larger issues are about affordable housing and expanding either car or bike/public transit infrastructure. Most parties lean either left or right, but they’re all running on something different. I’m not too invested in the politics of it all, but what stands out to me is the manner in which these campaigns are taking place. Each candidate has the same size poster to hang around the municipalities, and there’s very little graffiti or hateful opinions about any of them. It’s all quite civil, but these posters are everywhere. Walking around Ballerup or leaving the train station in Copenhagen, everything is covered in these random people’s faces, on posterboards zip-tied to a pole or a fence. Back in America, you see TV ads of political candidates horrendously trash-talking each other and at the end saying “[Candidate’s name] For America™ approved and paid for this message.” Coming from one of the most divided and aggressive national elections to this super chill, super Danish local elections, it’s quite the culture shock. More so than people not knowing what candy corn is.

If you haven’t gathered this already, my life has been quite busy lately, often too busy to sit down and write. While I hope you miss me when I’m not posting, I try not to feel too pressured to write if I’m still in the process of gathering material. It’s not like I’m making money from this, anyway, as you can see from the lack of ads on my website. Here’s an ad for you, though: This blog is 100% free, 100% ad-free, and straight from my heart and soul. Please share it with your friends so that it’ll gain some traction and I’ll get paid in the form of motivation so I can keep writing.