SAVE AMIT!
Please don’t just scroll by this!
I don’t know much about Amit Gupta but I do know that he’s a super rad person and he’s suffering from acute leukemia. He needs a bone marrow transplant from a South Asian donor. Donations are painless (like giving blood), so if you’re South Asian, no matter where you live, please please please donate (all the info you need to know can be found in the link above)!
I’m not South Asian so I can’t do anything but help spread the word, so if you’re like me, please do the same! Amit hasn’t got much time left (27 days to be exact), we’ve got until Nov. 30th to help him out!
Please help! It’s really simple and it’s a chance to save someone’s life.
2:44 pm • 3 November 2011 • 1 note • View comments
New stuff! Now I’m set for life
I like to think of my tita Leigh as a connoisseur when it comes to collecting fancy-schmancy writing/drawing materials. Her calligrapher’s dream of a blog is full of reviews about art supplies that I find myself pining for whenever I browse through.
I guess she loves hoarding up on cool stuff, and on some occasions, my sister and I are lucky enough to be the little runts who get hand-me-downs! The great thing is, most of the time these goodies are barely used if not completely new and I feel so thankful to know someone so generous.
A Cretacolor woodless pencil set, and nice wooden LYRAs.
Fountain pens and assorted nibs. I feel so posh whenever I write with these, haha.
(2nd from left to right) Two Pilot and two Akashiya brush pens that I absolutely love love love.
I’ve been using the Pentel Aquash (leftmost) for a long time now and majority of the illustrations I’ve posted up on this blog were made with it. But I spent the last two days drawing with these new brush pens and frankly, they kick the Aquash’s butt.
“Junior, meet your mommas and poppas.”
Markers that I have yet to try drawing with. I usually prefer brush and ink but I’m determined to give these bad boys a shot.
Caps off
Fineliners. I wonder how long it’ll take before I rip these out and use them to butcher paper. They look so neat all packaged up like that.
A really beautiful pen and ink set
Assorted colored ink! There’s even a bottle full of ink that smells like roses and it’s a huge step up from the cheap China ink I’ve been getting at National Bookstore.
Micro-reviews. Hey, I’m no expert when it comes to these things, alright?!
My favorite of the lot - a Kuretake Watercolor Brush Pen Pocket Set! I recently started saving up to order one on the internet, but now that I have one, I won’t have to spend money and time waiting for one. It is literally the best thing ever.
The whole set consists of a watercolor palette, a water bottle, a pocket-sized water brush, and a carrying case. It’s really handy and great for painting on the go.
Squirt the water out, get some paint, et voila!
Pencil case. I was also given a big black Beabi organizer that I’ve already brought along outside of the house twice for keeping pens and paint during trips to town.
Cutesy-tootsie novelty pens that my 13-year-old sister already claimed for herself. (Psh, tweens)
A jumble of various ballpens. Sam’s again.
And finally, paper galore! The blank white pages looked so pristine that I didn’t even want to handle them at first. But “Be not afraid of paper. Notebooks are meant for you to fill in!” my dad says.
Blank sketch pads. The blue sketchbook has great paper quality and is my fave so far.
These three have lovely watercolor-esque printed decals on each page. I like to call them ‘lady notebooks’.
A Venzi Flexy 4 Subject Squared Notebook, A Muji Notebook with dotted grid pages, Moleskine Cahiers, and a big pad with brown paper.
Big-ass 100-leaf artist pad. Booyah.
I couldn’t be more happy with all this stuff! I’ve already drawn a number sketches with some of the pens and I’m looking forward to using everything else!
5:49 pm • 2 November 2011 • 63 notes • View comments
superamit:
Two weeks ago I got a call from my doctor, who I’d gone to see the day before because I’d been feeling worn out and was losing weight, and wasn’t sure why.
He was brief: “Amit, you’ve got Acute Leukemia. You need to enter treatment right away.”
I was terrified. I packed a backpack full of clothes, went to the hospital as he’d instructed, and had transfusions through the night to allow me to take a flight home at 7am the next day. I Googled acute leukemia as I lay in my hospital bed, learning that if it hadn’t been caught, I’d have died within weeks.
—
I have a couple more months of chemo to go, then the next step is a bone marrow transplant. As Jay and Tony describe below, minorities are severely underrepresented in the bone marrow pool, and I need help.
A few ways to help:
- If you’re South Asian, get a free test by mail. You rub your cheeks with a cotton swab and mail it back. It’s easy.
- If you’re in NYC, you can go to this event my friends are putting on.
- If you know any South Asians (India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, Bhutan, Maldives, or Sri Lanka), please point ‘em to the links above.
*UPDATE 1* Organize a donor drive near you (the most helpful thing you could possibly do!) email 100kcheeks@gmail.com. They’ll send you kits, flyers, tell you what to say, and make the whole process easy cheesy.
*UPDATE 2* Want to get a free test, but not in the US. Here’s a list of international donor registries that are globally searchable.
jayparkinsonmd:
My friend Amit Gupta founded my favorite photography site Photojojo. A few weeks ago, he was diagnosed with leukemia. Amit is one of the nicest, most genuine, most creative people you could ever meet. Prior to founding the awesome Photojojo, he also co-founded Jelly in 2006 in NYC, a coworking community, that’s now spread to 60 cities across the world and helped spark the coworking revolution. It looks like Amit will need a bone marrow transplant quite soon. We can help him with that.
tony b:
Unlike blood transfusions, finding a genetic match for bone marrow that his body will accept is no easy task. The national bone marrow registry has 9.5 million records on file, yet the chances of someone from South Asian descent of finding a match are only 1 in 20,000.
This is where we come in. We’re going to destroy those odds.
How? By finding and registering as many people of South Asian descent as we possibly can.
Tests are easy– a simple swab of the cheek. If you’re a match, the donation involves an outpatient procedure. It’s not fun, but it’s not dangerous either. And doing it could save a life.
We are encouraging anyone of South Asian descent to take a test to see if you’re a match.
You can get a free test by mail, or, if you’re in New York, you can join us Friday, October 14th for a special party to rally support.
We’ll have test kits on hand at the party, as well as music, booze, and maybe even a photo booth. It will, for the first time, combine a House 2.0-style party with a New Work City-style party, and if you’ve ever been to either, you know they are always something special.
Please spread the word and please do everything you can to help Amit beat leukemia. He’s a superstar.
Much thanks to Tony and pals for organizing this event, and EVERYONE who’s been tweeting and reblogging.
Please help get the word out any way you can. My life quite literally depends on it.
(via twistedfork)
8:52 pm • 11 October 2011 • 8,568 notes • View comments
Just got home! At the moment I can’t seem to haul my lazy ass outside of my room to scan some new drawings so in the meantime here’s an anonymous hipster dude.
9:30 pm • 8 October 2011 • 2 notes • View comments
Family Theme Waltz by Sondre Leche
The soundtrack to Dan In Real Life is nostalgic and deeeeelightful.
10:09 pm • 7 October 2011 • 9 notes • View comments
Here’s the “”“packaging”“” for a mix-CD I put together for a friend who turned sixteen last week! I couldn’t find a proper case, plus I didn’t want to hand it over in a sad little piece of plastic so I whipped some pens and paper out and got biz-ay. I love making playlists for people on their birthdays.
10:08 pm • 7 October 2011 • 17 notes • View comments
Hi
Mr. Jobs
I’ve never
Met you
And I never
Will, but
You’ve been part of
my life since
my four-year-old fingers first touched
Dad’s new Apple Powerbook
Bald head
Black
faded sweater,
jeans and
New Balance 991s
Forever you’ll be remembered
On a podium
With an iPhone
in your hand
shining like the sun
Cannot
Believe
You’ve left
So suddenly
I hope
You’ve found
a better place
now
So here’s
to you
And the things
You’ve done
Good night
Old man
Hope you’re having fun
10:13 pm • 6 October 2011 • 40 notes • View comments
“Rodrigo never told his buds at the construction site about his days as a drag queen…”
IDK, OK? I always find myself sketching random people and I end up making up weird-ass stories about them in my head. I’ll probably post more of these in the future.
10:29 pm • 1 October 2011 • 7 notes • View comments
“Panic begins to set in. I can’t stay here. Flight is essential…But I can’t let my fear show”.
Katniss Everdeen. Click through for hi-res!
9:11 pm • 28 September 2011 • 8 notes • View comments
Just some presents my mom picked up during a business trip in Singapore. I assumed she’d have a tight schedule so I didn’t really ask for anything, but she still took the time to do some shopping and, surprisingly enough, inadvertently got me just what I wanted!
I recently fell in love with HBO’s Game of Thrones and the thought of buying and reading the books that the show is adapted from had been lingering in my mind for a while; I was so happy when my mom pulled the entire A Song of Ice and Fire box set out of her suitcase and I am now well on my way to finishing Book One.
Apparently Singaporeans are big on caffeine, so Mom took home a huge bag full of assorted Malaysian joe including a pack of Old Town White Milk Tea, which is quite frankly the best eff’ing drink my taste buds have ever had the pleasure of being acquainted with.
Lastly, spankin’ Sennheiser HD220 Originals to replace the mangy, half-broken headphones I’ve had for five years. I really hope these babies don’t die out, the sound quality’s amazing!
At the moment, there’s a typhoon roaring outside my house and I’m stuck inside; luckily a good story, a warm drink, and some music all put together make for a rainy day well spent.
8:46 am • 27 September 2011 • 3 notes • View comments
