By day—at least when school’s in—he spends his time with his head down in readings, pursuing a double degree in Law and Liberal Arts at the National University of Singapore and Yale-NUS College respectively. By night, he plays the guitar in 4-piece local music act Sphaeras, with bandmates Zakhran Khan (drummer), Axel Serik (bassist) and Wun Chun Kit (guitarist).
Since its humble beginnings in mid-2013 as an accidental project of four musicians who met online and who desperately wanted to use music to express themselves, Sphaeras has played several local gigs and venues, including Baybeats and at the Hard Rock Café. They’ve collaborated with numerous local and international acts including Weish and Brazilian Odradek, and to date, the band has released two albums.This slideshow requires JavaScript.
Haokai’s love for music and his band is plain to see. Despite them each having highly busy schedules—Zakhran studies architecture, Exel is a freelance music producer and photographer, and Chun Kit is a freelance sound engineer—they make it a point to jam at least once a week. Aside from a passion for music, he’s also very interested in law. “On an intellectual level, law is attractive because it provides a neat and systematic way of formulating arguments,” he shares. “Having a legal mind can help me better navigate the rules of society.” Music and law—an odd match, it might seem. But Haokai doesn’t see why it has to be either music or law. He seems to have found a sweet spot right in between, describing the two as “complementary.” Through a rigorous law training, he’s learned to be disciplined and sharp, although over the years, he’s discovered that you can’t put a hard deadline on creativity. “I approach music at my own pace. I am more productive and creative that way.” Not only has he conditioned himself to be a consistently hard worker, he’s also learnt to ‘switch off’ from time to time, and to lose himself in music—something not a lot of us know how to do in this relentlessly fast-paced hubbub we call Singapore.This slideshow requires JavaScript.
Prompted by a school assignment with the theme ‘Local Identity in a Global Context’, what started as a design project that sought to house all of Singapore’s traits—her good, her bad, and her ugly—in one piece of work gave rise to a game many of us Singaporeans are itching to have a go at with our friends. Tan Yong Heng, the man, the jokester, the straight-speaking 20-year-old, and co-creator, Gabriel Leow, created this game with different intentions in mind; Yong Heng wanted to prove to others that pursuing and creating art does not necessarily mean a bleak, unsuccessful future. Gabriel, on the other hand, hopes this will spark a movement towards pride in and support of locally made games.Her name is Nur Aida Sai’ad but most people know her by her alias “Yellow Mushmellow”. If you haven’t heard of her, maybe you’ve seen some of her work—those commissioned by the likes of Redbull and McDonald's, or even the personal projects she embarks on just for fun. The latter includes <a href=" drawn onto barf bags with mouths that open and close and <a href=" cakes she draws for everyone who wishes her a happy birthday, among others.
The story behind “Yellow Mushmellow” is… Well, there isn’t a badass story—she admits she wishes she had one. She just likes yellow and marshmallows. Beyond the name, she thinks of Yellow Mushmellow as her superhero alter-ego, “the brand behind which I mask my anti-social desire to draw all day and never leave home.”This slideshow requires JavaScript.
Art, for most of Aida’s life, was just a hobby. Even though she grew up in a fairly artistic family (both her parents are in creative fields), Aida never took classes for it, not even in school. It wasn’t until after her A-level exams that she realised her enjoyment in creating little doodles was something worth exploring, not just in University, but also as a profession.Copyright © 2023 GRVTY Media Pte Ltd (Co. Reg. 201431998C). All Rights Reserved.