The inspiration for this project stems from my experiences over the past decade. Ever since I started primary school, I’ve been tied down by an endless cycle of tuition classes, school and homework; I barely had any time to go out during the week. On the rare occasions my parents took me on a trip, my first instinct was to go home to return to that grid.

Then something happened that took me completely by surprise. One day, whilst staying at my grandparents’ house, my grandfather suddenly let out a cry of surprise upon spotting a macaw perched on the window. Whether it was someone’s pet that had flown away or one that had truly flown in from somewhere, I developed a profound fascination with that parrot. After all, it was the sole splash of colour amidst the concrete jungle, and it became my anchor for a time. I longed to fly into the sky like a bird, to escape from the grid (the school desk, the study at home, the cramped cram school room, and the confined spaces within my own mind).

So I decided to create a zine to describe my state of being within these walls, and that repetitive life—my yearning to break free, yet being held back by various constraints until I could do nothing but remain within the grid. The original intent of this creation is a form of reflection. We constantly invest our time in building our future, yet we forget the present. So where do we place our feelings about the here and now? This constant sacrifice of time, or this endless cycle, seems to have become an unsolvable Rubik’s Cube; we depend on it yet hope to break free, to explore the world beyond the grid.