and i didn't even had to make my out of the maze

This month, a lot of my friends have asked me to be the labrat in their omnifarious avocations.
There was my friend Ping, an upcoming, IED-schooled women's clothing designer from Bangkok, who wanted me to sit in as a 'living mannequin'. The idea was cute until i realized that his fingers and hands would be all over my fragile and sensitive body, pricking layers upon layers of textile (and probably, into my skin, along the process). Oh, that, and to stand around in a dress the whole day? Ugh.

A girl friend of mine, Tina, who teaches at the Wall Street Institute, also asked me to come in for a seminar on "being uprooted". I guess she wanted me to talk about my experiences moving from one palce to another, starting new lives and starting from scratch. This one, i could get into... if not for the fact that the seminar would be held in one of the schools in Rome. Right.... with my work sched as of the moment, scratch that.

Then Albie, this aspiring photographer asked me to do a shoot with him for a series he's doing for one of the smaller but edgier galleries of Milan. I could have said yes, but then i learned that the project is to be entitled: The Naked Truth About My Gay Friend. It wasn't so much the posing around naked, but that i would have to pose around (and probably, intimately close to (on top, under and i-don't-even-want-to-think-about-it) his other women models). Sorry Albie, im just not that brave yet.

And then, Mario, this Latino guy that i volunteer with every week at the Unicef office, asked for some of my pictures because he was finishing a thesis on photography and he wanted some Asian blood for the so-called "Black" series. Now, this one was feasible enough. As i already have a ton of pictures of myself taken by me and by other people.

I don't really know for what specific purpose he used them, or what point he was trying to make, but he was kind enough to give me copies of the "edited pictures". I think these weren't just cs2-ed. But, heck how would i know. here they are.

yes, sometimes being a labrat can have advantages. For the mannequin stint, i was promised a spectacular Thai dinner. For the seminar, travel fare. For the photo shoot, a special invite to the opening and a bit of remuneration. For the black series? A free lunch at McDonald's (where we met up to give him the pictures) and where I, after months and months of not eating junk food, was magically reacquainted with the hateful but deliciously captivating world of : grease.