When I was a little girl, dolls, tea party & dress up were never my interest at all despite having 2 elder sisters to play with. I loved toys that could allow me to build or to create new things such as wood blocks, train tracks & definitely not forgetting many of our childhood favourite, Logos. Unfortunately, it did not sustain an inquisitive, active little girl for a long time. Soon, the 2 year old me could be seen searching through every trash bin in the house, my favourite was the study rooms! Envelope’s transparency, scrap ribbons from presents, cute images from newspapers, boxes & so many more treasures could be found there!

As a little girl, I perceived these as toys, these “toys” I could never get bored of even after 20 years. These “toys” were limitless, it did not have a fixed way of building, unlike wood blocks or Logos. Soon I found myself addicted, it was a daily routine to search through the bins for treasures & hiding them in my secret box before my mum wakes up, clears the trash & catches me red-handed. There was so much I could be creative to use it for, I would create a paper bag out of Cereal boxes, made cards from the scraps, mini drawers from plastic bottles or even creating games through what I have collected! There are just tons of things I could do with these ordinary items around us, too much to be listed!

Till this day, I am still creating & have not gotten bored of it because every day is a different creation, there’s the beauty mandane, ordinary materials found in the trash bin which holds so many values in my eyes. I saw potential in these ordinary mandane items. The value possesses that is flexible & allows me to be creative to recreate so many versions of things which through the process has allowed me to understand the character of the materials better, what tape could stick better with paper versus plastic etc. Exploring & discovering new things through the process is something that could never become standard.