journal – Page 19 – Chia's Blog

November’s loved things

Reading Time: 8 minutes

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

This year, I made a decision to log the music I’ve been listening to per month. Nothing too intentional: just dumping the music that I would listen to, on repeat. I feel like someone who is very much shaped by the things I love — aren’t we all?

I want to start doing the same for the things I consume, in turn, hopefully making me more cognizant of why I love them and why I am drawn. If there’s something that has meant something to you, I would love to hear what it is, too.

Nicole Kidman / Anne Hathaway – Hana Vu

Very much digging soft, groovy songs — especially when their music videos are recorded with dreamy California visuals reminiscent of what I wished my high school film projects looked like. Hana Vu is 19 (I am also 19) and has built this cohesive, wispy sound, toured across America, and titled an album the exact way I’d imagine a nineteen-year-old would name something. There’s themes about identity and displacement that I can’t stop thinking about. There’s screaming that kicks in right where I want it to

The band’s Audiotree Live session is also wonderful. I’m in love with both their live and recorded versions, and am looking forward to more lives just because they’re cleanly different.

Hereditary (2018)

I was swamped in this weird headspace of uncertainty and quiet during the two-week stretch around halloween — just forcing myself to go out, experience things, but also not really absorbing anything. It was paralyzing and I don’t remember truly thinking. One night, I settled in alone with a bottle of vodka and just watched Hereditary the whole way through (as much as I could) for the first time; I’m the type of person who can only stomach horror when I’m in a very specific type of mood. (I can’t even read the SCP Wiki, something I love and used to contribute to a lot, unless I’m feeling that sort of energy.)

That night, I feel like I got a deeper understanding of why we sometimes must be sickening to live. Ari Aster’s brutal, ritualism that did not decimate for the sake of it but to tell of something deeper; the last 20 minutes of the film pieced like a writer wrapping everything up so rhythmically – almost throwing away every other piece of the narrative for such a sequence; me, remembering a nightmare I used to have when younger about being very aware of losing control over your own mind. I took in Toni Collette’s performance, how we consume death, and how sometimes all we want is to just give up and fall victim to things. Maybe it’s just me being a teenager drawn to Alex Wolff and forgiving Aster for some of its rushed parts, or maybe it’s the fascination with the theories about his Luciferianism. But I saw something about the absorption of our minds here. And god, if I ever make a film, I want it to kick off with something as mad, indulgent, and grotesquely raw as this.

Funner: One of my costumes this year was Alex Wolff’s King Paimon, and 8 people asked me if I broke my nose for real!

The Shrouded Isle by Kitfox Games

After seeing this on my itch.io feed, I instantly got it because of the gorgeous illustrations and point-and-click gameplay about ritual and sacrifice. Unfortunately, I’m easily amused by games that hide their core mechanics, and dilute all the UI with abstract language.

The Shrouded isle is a human sacrifice cult simulator where you play as a high priest and have to balance peace between different factions. It’s beautiful, has a DLC that I haven’t tried yet, but is crafted with such care in its sound and illustrations (and after watching Hereditary over and over, had music that complemented that too very well). The horror here isn’t in jump scares; it’s in the brooding illustrations where you know what is to come yet still haunts you, and it’s in the uncertainty of each click and in choice. There’s nothing truly eldritch except in the unknowing. There’s no path to walk that is right.

A selection of Car Seat Headrest songs

Because since the beginning of this year (with heartbreak, and all that), everyone who knows me knows that I have been listening to this band nonstop. But each month, deeper, differently.

No Passion — it might be something in the rawness of Will Toledo singing “in my wildest sexual dreams I dream that I’m watching porn, but there’s too much sunlight shining on my laptop monitor so I can’t see anything with any amount of clarity” that others will take me as misconstruing shitty, stream-of-consciousness lyrics as something far more poignant, but I am in love. This song tucks the bible, pornography, and routine in a compact 2:50 where all I could think of was getting through–or how I didn’t want to try at that any longer. Many people who are supposed to love me have told me that I am emotionless; and I constantly think it’s funny how some of the most withdrawn people in actuality can be behind some of the most evocative things. It’s as if we’re only capable of producing feelings, but never reciprocating or actually responding. This song made me think about that a lot, or, that I’m going in this direction most likely.

Culture as a necessity for how I feel with all the Fridays and Sundays in house shows with no one from Yale around me, streaming our broken college radio site and talking to no one but listening always, and how my last attempt at relation and understanding is exactly with this; pieces of things that I can talk to people a bit more about. It’s not working so well.

Sober to Death (Mirror to Mirror) screaming “lovely, lovely” in the face of things you want to destroy is something that speaks to me. I am obsessed at the question of whether the person I will end up with for the rest of my life will be much like myself in delusion and in breakdown. Or, if anyone that has the chance to do that with me will end up as fragile as I am — me destroying their body or selfhood as they do I. I’m relearning the fact that we love everyone in a unique way and that no love will be the same, and that love is allowed to be destructive.
This song will stick with me as a college song. When I’m done sleeping in Twin XL beds, having nightmares and panic attacks and sharing empty space with people and have no room to think about love for the future — I’ll be looking back at this. I’m scared to move beyond where I am now, and scared about the type of love I have to give.

Moonlight (2016)

Image result for moonlight film screencap

It took me a long time to feel actual intimacy after my first heartbreak. (Or, I don’t think I have felt it–yet.)

My first watch of Moonlight was a few weeks ago and I very strongly know that I need to take it in again, but I haven’t had the heart to do so. “You’re the only one” reminded me again of what people must go through to be who they are, and how that conceals so much of ourselves. I ran back to my bed, laptop the only light in the fucking freezing cold, and sobbed long for the first time in a long time. I can talk about the magnificence of the movie, how A24 is doing well at being flawless, how each act is unrelentless and moving and will stand the test of time, but all I can tell you is that I saw everything I have known about love in this film so vividly; I saw queerness in this new lens and running around broken buildings in provinces. But I can only see, not truly know.

The Strategist by Jasmine Dreame Wagner

Half the time in my two Fall 2019 Computer Science classes, all I read is poetry. I’m not going to stay sane if I lose out on this part of me, I frequently tell others–along with my decision to double major in computer science and art; which probably shouldn’t mean that I lose out on lectures about k-d trees and piecing them together because I am busy building beautiful structures and narratives in my head, but this is what I do. In particular, Wagner’s piece published on Hyperallergic is something that has been on my mind in a bit. A lot of my poetry in my first creative writing class followed the structure here, but could not achieve the meaning she has. I want to drop god, royalty, and all those things easily and madly.

Canela

My design skills are still constrained by the shiny new font that I have fallen in love with recently, and lately that’s Canela. I used it quite a bit in a website I made for the Yale Politic that was just released in the evening I’m writing of this.

OGRE YOU ASSHOLE

In love with soft J-rock lately, close runner-up is Mass of the Fermenting Dregs. Tight and reminiscent of Talking Heads but more beachy and laidback, I walk down Hillhouse Avenue (apparently called as “the most beautiful street in America” by Charles Dickens, which is disgusting) with this while being pelted with dying yellow leaves, balconies I’ve walked past hundreds of times but will never peak over. These songs in particular make me feel so much more empty and wishing for the other life I could have had. Other songs that come to mind when I walk past these spaces: Communist Daughter by Neutral Milk Hotel, Rabbit by waveform* (local!)

Product to Product Podcast

Ever since discovering what product management was (read: this semester), I’ve found so much enjoyment in listening to product podcasts, this being one of my favorites. There’s so much intentionality and craft in the things we use that I had never even regarded — neither in the weight of how I already weigh and consider these things, or in my usage of them. Product to Product is a listen I lean to a bit more frequently because of how empathetic it is. I visibly drone at some pieces that so clearly favor machinations or optimization over people; but the host and guests here never veer into that territory. They’re not afraid to disagree, be raw about more sensitive subjects and from the few dozen episodes I’ve listened to, speak up when necessary.

Just something that I digest better and immediately pick up in 2x speed strolls to class, but also, I feel like there are nuggets and tidbits that are deeper in me now. Undoubtedly do I think a lot more about what I say, and how I say things, too.

Thomas Bayrle Film

Stumbled from the recent additions of UbuWeb, I’ve been thinking a lot about this “documentation”. Mixing biology of the ephemeral is something I tend to veer away from, but this process that is rhythmic, natural, beautiful, and moving in that where it should not is entrancing. Maybe it’s because I recently had to do a film only out of stop motion, but planes of people walking, dispersing, dancing around and captured on things that should not hold them is just so entrancing. I’m not familiar with the technique used here but I do see the depth of it. Another is his Superstar piece that reminds me of beginner “I want the computer to interact with my face” baby tutorials. For its time, the commentary on mass media and zoom that makes a very “out there” comment is fascinating.

November 18, 2019

Impossibility as normalcy

Reading Time: 8 minutes

September 14th.

I left Manila on the 25th — not even a month in and I’m waiting for routine to kick in. Walking to Walgreens alone at 4am looking for potassium supplements, making the walk from Chapel to Hillhouse and sitting in the Department of Computer Science waiting rooms — lifechanging if anyone says hello, drinking beer cans alone in my room.

The Yale undergraduate enrollment nears 6,000 people and I feel like I know about 30 faces.

(more…)

September 15, 2019

Chia’s Failure Resume

Reading Time: 6 minutes

Aside from my every waking moment being a disastrous anti-portfolio in itself, I wanted to take some time to be mildly introspective on my setbacks since I’m already overly self-deprecating on the regular anyway. Putting this together (and maintaining it) — I’m most ashamed about not having more failures to list down. (I am also ashamed with how bad this title is.)

I was inspired by seeing Kat Huang’s failure resume on my Twitter feed. Sometimes it’s nice to be open about our challenges as they happen; especially in that rush of being young and feeling our achievements lose their glamour as you leave your teens and enter ‘normalcy’. I feel like I often only hear about failure once someone’s writing rigid LinkedIn posts and selling their coaching services, or on the keynotes of conferences where we’re sitting in the back and so far removed from the speaker’s journey. Not that their stories are any less inspiring – but when looking at academics, celebrities, or C-levels reflecting on things a decade ago – it’s not particularly moving.

With our current landscape, I want to surround myself with people who are unapologetically open about process as they are with resume bullet points and humblebrags. I feel like I tend to walk between groups that are afraid of taking any amount of pride in what they do, undervaluing themselves – but also with people who ingest failure so regularly that it becomes procedure without insight. I’m no stranger to extremes: falling into this mentality where I’m undeserving of anything but also – if I didn’t get something I really wanted and even in the slightest, perceive my resume to be a point better than someone else’s – believe everything is all rigged. It’s ridiculously toxic, and I know I’m not alone with it. Hopefully this list helps in developing a more intentional consciousness about yeah – the randomness and unfairness of trying (especially with things like college applications maybe) – but also how we’re just not meant for most things, and that’s okay.

This isn’t a new or special concept. There’s a New York Times article about it. I do hope to see more of these from people my age. We need to celebrate losses as much as we do our wins. I hope you learn something from me.

2020

Google APM Internship Rejection at resume round (maybe cos of my tweet)
4 first round design internship rejections
Rejected as a Dorm Room Fund Investment Partner, no interview
Rejected as a Dorm Room Fund Design Partner on the Final Round after my second time applying
Lost two internship offers because of COVID
Nearly got kicked out of my dorm room, and the country of America!
I got rejected from 80+ internship, ghosted from 300+ more and failed so many design screens. My internship application list hit 400+ companies, and when I was panicking around March–April I continued applying and applying to dozens more companies that I never heard back from. I heard back from fewer than 3% of companies (like ? 12? LOL), especially for product design postings.
Selected rejections: rejected from Facebook University for Product Design, Pinterest Engage, my 100+ cold outreaches to design recruiters, etc.
Made it as a Kleiner Perkins Fellowship Design Finalist––but didn’t end up matching with any company
Not a ‘failure’, but: I work 20 hours a week during the school year to make ends meet and to earn enough for the tech work I do personally and for Developh. Because of COVID, my three on-campus jobs cut down on hours and I had to beg alumni and other students for work to make up for the money lost.

2019

Resume round reject: GoDaddy, Google APM, Honey Product Design, etc.
Rejected from Microsoft Diversity Conference Scholarship
Rejected from Pinterest Scholars, MongoDB Summit, and a lot of other event scholarships that I apply to on a whim
Rejected (i.e. ghosted) from over fifty software engineering internships (Explore Microsoft, Dropbox Launch [though I think this is only for second-years])
In retrospect, I should have applied to *way* more.
Denied from Fast Forward’s tech nonprofit accelerator
Didn’t get Forbes 30 under 30 Asia (first year trying, many more attempts will soon be made…)
End of sophomore fall: seriously considered dropping out of Yale and going to college back in the Philippines to end the financial strain being put on my parents and siblings so that they can get better opportunities. (Piling on internship rejections really fueled this!) I did not fly home during the winter, and spent my time in a shared hotel room with other international students eating leftovers and watching Little Women as a Christmas gift to myself.

2018

Rejected from Lesbians Who Tech Scholarship Ticket from a handful of sources (from in-school/external sponsors)
Zero press attention (after a near-hundred emails and a dozen warm introductions) in the Philippines for my achievement at the Grace Hopper Celebration
I thought I could easily get at least a release or something to elevate the work being done with my organization Developh, but I didn’t – and subsequently feel like I failed my team since I’ve always been terrible with the media
Interviewed -> Rejected as a Dorm Room Fund partner
Wasn’t too engaged with startups in the North American sphere yet since I just got on-campus!
Rejected from Google Computer Science Summer Institute & Generation Google Scholarship
Wasn’t directed to any other programs/future career opportunities, unlike many other applicants
In my first week of college, I was spiraling and heavily depressed (and blogging about it) and someone called the university to check in on me. At 2am, cops came into my dorm room and I had to talk to them for half an hour, trying to convince them that I wasn’t a danger to myself or others and that I would not need to be admitted. My freshman year’s first semester was disgustingly painful: I was sick all the time physically and mentally, frequently skipped meals, got out of an abusive relationship, had little contact with anyone–not even my suitemates.
The day of my high school graduation (where I gave a valedictory address and shit) was one of the worst days and fights of my life!
No acknowledgement for Developh in my high school’s club awarding
It was as if we hadn’t done anything — mostly felt bad for my team and friends who had built this group up with me
Applied to over 23 colleges and got rejected/waitlisted from all but eight
I have multiple blog posts that essentially document me breaking down crying every single night for months in fear of my college results. It didn’t help that I went through the application process so late and carelessly. The one that hurt the most was my waitlist from Wellesley since I was so in love with it; Stanford, Harvard, Brown, etc. were pretty much expected (I’m a poor international.)
No Ateneo Dean’s List/Freshman Merit Scholarship or DLSU Star Scholars
Probably because my test scores were terrible (lmaooo)

There aren’t as many experiences down here since these were all pre-senior year — but hopefully someone (from my high school, probably) can still get value from these half-rambles:

2017

Dropped out of a talk for the Philippine Robotics Team at the last minute because I was having a breakdown over an educator who I was sickened by (and was verbally abusive to students over, and physically if you count making 13-year-olds work 16+ hours a day with) and with the general state of everything around me. Fought with my parents over it, who said that I would never amount to any success if I don’t commit even if it was heavy to me–to this day they don’t believe that he’s problematic despite over a dozen complaints sent about him to try and relieve him of the authority and power to teach students.
Made the shittiest video ever for the Cards Against Humanity Science Ambassador Scholarship (no response/next round)
Rejected from every Student Judiciary Board position I had applied to in De La Salle Santiago Zobel’s student council (which is an inherently broken and useless position)
In the interview, they requested me to “do a cheer dance coming into the room”, made me lead a prayer (I’m atheist), and asked me who they were and who my crush was. They flashed the position’s responsibilities on the screen that would literally not be known to anyone but them — also highlighting the excellent lack of transparency in this position. Hopefully this will be helpful to any Zobel people who read this?

2016

Finalist (amongst all La Salle schools in the Philippines) –> rejected for a full-ride scholarship to an international high school with IB programs
I was convinced that this rejection was my biggest missed opportunity at changing my ‘life’s trajectory’. The final round interview was a huge wake-up call: they asked me about my hobbies, skills, extracurriculars, generic bullshit that would look good on a college application. All I did this time was play League of Legends 🙂

This list also leaves out how I’m not putting myself out there (read: afraid of connecting with people, being a bad communicator in general) or maximizing the opportunities I can get (read: being way too lazy to apply to things I would love to try for).

August 10, 2019