Category: journal

personal drabbles, what would be my journal ?

February’s loved things

Reading Time: < 1 minute


Starting a series where I can document pieces of media that transform me, even for a bit.

The Past Is a Grotesque Animal by of Montreal

I saved a comment from YouTube’s audio-only playthrough of this song that just said: “have you ever felt every emotion at once?”

I’ve only ever listened to Cherry Peel-era of Montreal works, which took place a good decade before this song was released. Seeing comparisons to Car Seat Headrest’s Beach Life-in-Death drew me to Hissing Fauna, Are You the Destroyer? in the first place. (This is of Montreal’s 8th studio album.)

And wow, I can feel the influence, the reading off literary influences and hysterics to the clear psychedelic influences that punctuate the track. Kevin Barnes’ vocals aren’t particularly strong, but the composition of this piece is something else. It’s relentless and moving; you need to take this in with a serious listen to feel it enveloping you.

I took a walk a few blocks around downtown New Haven, trying to feel the grandness of this album and tell myself that I was worth it. I’ve never heard a breakdown orchestrated like this: as if everything bad has been renewed and transformed and is out to be defeated once more.

March 7, 2020

Making the choice of technology

Reading Time: 6 minutes

A reflection on how I knew I wanted to go into technology since I was a young girl, and why I’m not so sure of that career path anymore.

I’ve been having a bad job hunt. It is so bad that I feel like I’m genuinely in the worst state of mind I have ever been in, am dissociating more often, and feel like my self-improvement is simply feeding into this slate that has already run past its time.
Lately, I’ve been joking and telling people that I should just become a music journalist. I am likely better at writing than I am at design, though I’m really not too good at either. It seems like I know as much about the music industry than I do the design one, and it feels like I have a perspective to share about it. It feels like it’s something I genuinely want to do. This of course, won’t happen–but it’s sincerely the first time that something has even been at a stage for consideration and commitment: that you know, this is impractical and just as impossible to break into–but given the miracle, I wouldn’t mind doing it for the rest of my life. I think I know why.

When I was a young girl, I already knew that I was going to enter the field of tech. I just feared saying it.

(more…)

February 25, 2020

Chia, in Spring

Reading Time: 2 minutes

I am doing things, at least I hope so.

In the holidays, I did not go home and spent most of my time working (earning money, and working on side projects) and watching a lot of movies. Other things I got into at different points of time were incremental games (quite significantly, as I was trying to piece together what made Universal Paperclips was so different from other games).

  • Leading User Experience Society at Yale — we’re one of few (? the first?) design organizations at Yale. UXSociety is a chapter of an undergraduate design organization first started in Ateneo by Alexis Collado (alexis if you see this i am very worried about meeting your expectations). We have big plans on projects we want to ship, and I have big ideas on how to instill a new design culture across the entire student body.
  • Developh launched a site, is working on a website redesign, and is actually more active in output and impact than ever. With the growth of our leadership and the expansion of our scope and skill, I’m coming to terms with how organizational structures and systems best operate–especially when working with remote teams across shifting cultures–which is a interesting dimension that not a lot of Manila-based people think about. I’m interested in exploring that more since it has been fundamental to my approach and attitudes towards our work, but objectively: the growth of our community and education programs has been amazing.
  • Continuing creative work at the Yale Center for Collaborative Arts & Media, my favorite place on-campus that is still a bit of a secret.
  • I’m organizing Yale’s largest interdisciplinary anti-hackathon! it will be a really cool day of talks, building, and more.
  • There is almost no record of me on-campus. There will be little to no footage of how I have lived here. I will never be able to pick apart these same nights from one another in the most special four years of live. I think that’s incredibly endearing of me—to live so little.

Stuff

  • Intern.ph, an interactive fiction page…

Future

  • In First Reformed (2017), a main gripe is a character who is an extreme environmental activist (not exaggerated anyway, but raw in despair and so, hauntingly empathetic — someone truly fighting) that believes it’s unjust to bring humans into this dying world. This is a main point of contention until he kills himself. I have been thinking a lot about how, in the midst of the Taal eruption, the deaths of people I know, the deaths of people I love, an ongoing virus, the disgusting racism, and the realization that the crowds back home and here are truly the same in essence make me think: is it worth it to try and love? Is it worth this toil? It seems like with every ounce of success I find, I am pulled back and exposed to the dying of dreams. I accepted that I never would be happy in life at a young age; but to know that life is not only bland or hard, but so incredibly depressing makes me rethink things: especially when the disappearance of one makes it at least, a bit more tolerable for everyone around you.
  • I still don’t have an internship. This is entirely my fault but may also be beneficial to all of us since I will likely not be here by the summer.

Start writing.

January 27, 2020