these days the karma's right
Nina's part of her school debate team.
NINA: could you give me a failed government project I can complain about?
*instantly*
NEL AND JOSEPH: everything.
I love my braintwin sister. I guess I was just waiting for her to be all the fourteen-ness she could be, because since I'm stuck at being twelve, and girls are more mature than boys, it's a perfect combination.
♥ to everyone from yesterday. It's not fun, but you make it easier.
Today was epic. I don't think I've ever worked that much so far this year, and funnily it wasn't exactly a lot. Ah the perspective I gain from being an unproductive Film student.
The day began at midnight; I was still up studying for my Anthropology 10 midterm. What, I just started now? What, I haven't learned from my sleepless nights in high school spent cramming? Well. No. I also had a paper for the same subject due. You know the feeling you get after spending months literally not needing Word, and suddenly having to run it to type a serious paper with a serious grade attached? The closest feeling seems to be rusty. A few paragraphs in though, I got into the groove of talking about how the evolution of Chinese wushu was a response to changing ideas of Chineseness and cultural identity, and it got easier and easier, and before I knew it I was finished.
Remember the photography midterm I aced? WELL. That day, I had to submit a three-minute long silent short concept film for my other film class which I completely forgot because both classes were under the same professor. Last Tuesday went like this:
PROFESSOR: sup foo
JOSEPH: holla yo yo, here's the photography midterm.
PROFESSOR: lol where's the other dvd for your other midterm?
JOSEPH: you trippin
*pause*
JOSEPH: no wait.
I spent last Friday conceptualizing and reconceptualizing when literally none of the people I approached could make it for filming the very next day, the following Saturday filming with Kim A and Jacques whom I kept on calling different names because I was so out of it, Sunday (that was hours ago) panicking because I had no software, no hardware, no nothing to extract the footage from my camcorder's tape to my computer which would freeze up for minutes at a time just with attempts to refresh webpages, and no friends who could help, for editing on Monday along with my Anthro midterm, so I could submit it on Tuesday. Deep breaths.
Finally, at 3 am, I was getting somewhere? I mean really, downloading a torrent for the first time (highly exciting) for Adobe Premiere which I only used once before for an hour or so, excavating dozens of differently-shaped cords, one of which was supposed to connect the camcorder to my dad's relatively faster laptop where the Premiere would be installed, which would then save my entire life, and realizing that for the first time this school year, I was very nervous.
In the end, everything worked out: Premiere got installed, Bia had an apparently Very Rare Firewire Cord, and the laptop was at 99% power (this becomes important soon) and I went to bed feeling very very awake. Lying there I vaguely remembered forgetting to continue studying for Anthro 10.
-
The alarm kind of shot me out of bed. Haphazard eating, getting ready, and dashing to school to buy blank DVDs to burn the film midterm on. Then came the Anthro 10 midterm.
It's a bit like the rusty feeling I got from writing the Anthro paper (god, this class is a lot of work). We had seven essay items worth 25 points each, and I died a little inside. Then the professor (the cool one! with the rose tattooed on her butt!) said we needed to answer just three, so I picked my battles did my best and realized that, well, my essay writing skills were coming back just as fast as my memory of the lessons, and I wrote possibly the wordiest (it's a good thing, trust me), most grammatically sound, structurally organized paragraphs I ever wrote ever. I was the first one out of the room. I felt so good.
The rest of the day was spent editing the film. Remember that 99%? WELL.
I ran out of power.
I had to walk all the way to MassComm because that's the only place I knew where you could use the electrical sockets, and when I did, I found out that I had to pay 25 pesos just to plug my laptop in to recharge for my last five minutes of editing. Seriously? After godfuckingdamn tripling the freshmen's tuition fees you start charging 25 fucking pesos?
Anyway. I finished, and that was it.
Then Patti S came along reminding me of her children's party at McDonald's. She's around 22ish. She wanted balloons and Happy Meals and cake. I said I couldn't go, and we both decided to just have one of the best talks I ever had with anyone. Do you know that I can actually slip into smooth Filipino (okay, Taglish) when I'm getting really into a conversation? WELL. Conversations about how silly most Chinese people are tend to get me excited. I was in my element.
Then Sasha came with a miniskirt she bought for herself as a celebration for finishing her thesis, the grand product of four years in film: a seven-minute short film that would make or break her. So I broke into the miniskirt for her. It was drafty, and some weird gay guys stared. I mean, obviously, but they could have been sneakier. Thank god I wore good underwear.
Then I headed off to Writer's Club, where I saw Surot for the second time this year! Yay! The first one was a two-second greeting as I rushed past her, so maybe that didn't count. She danced 5 6 7 8 by Steps, and all was right again because I knew she hadn't changed.
Moki was there too, and we were both wearing green t-shirts, blue jeans, and glasses. I really don't know how connected we both are to each other.
And then.
I went home.
And realized that I just had the busiest, most productive, and most friend-filled day in a very very long time. It feels so good to sit down at the computer right now even though I've done it every night for years.
major eta: all my classes for tomorrow were cancelled, because my two 3-hour classes are headed by the same professor *points up* and he's out of the country probably every other week. FREEDOM.
NINA: could you give me a failed government project I can complain about?
*instantly*
NEL AND JOSEPH: everything.
I love my braintwin sister. I guess I was just waiting for her to be all the fourteen-ness she could be, because since I'm stuck at being twelve, and girls are more mature than boys, it's a perfect combination.
♥ to everyone from yesterday. It's not fun, but you make it easier.
Today was epic. I don't think I've ever worked that much so far this year, and funnily it wasn't exactly a lot. Ah the perspective I gain from being an unproductive Film student.
The day began at midnight; I was still up studying for my Anthropology 10 midterm. What, I just started now? What, I haven't learned from my sleepless nights in high school spent cramming? Well. No. I also had a paper for the same subject due. You know the feeling you get after spending months literally not needing Word, and suddenly having to run it to type a serious paper with a serious grade attached? The closest feeling seems to be rusty. A few paragraphs in though, I got into the groove of talking about how the evolution of Chinese wushu was a response to changing ideas of Chineseness and cultural identity, and it got easier and easier, and before I knew it I was finished.
Remember the photography midterm I aced? WELL. That day, I had to submit a three-minute long silent short concept film for my other film class which I completely forgot because both classes were under the same professor. Last Tuesday went like this:
PROFESSOR: sup foo
JOSEPH: holla yo yo, here's the photography midterm.
PROFESSOR: lol where's the other dvd for your other midterm?
JOSEPH: you trippin
*pause*
JOSEPH: no wait.
I spent last Friday conceptualizing and reconceptualizing when literally none of the people I approached could make it for filming the very next day, the following Saturday filming with Kim A and Jacques whom I kept on calling different names because I was so out of it, Sunday (that was hours ago) panicking because I had no software, no hardware, no nothing to extract the footage from my camcorder's tape to my computer which would freeze up for minutes at a time just with attempts to refresh webpages, and no friends who could help, for editing on Monday along with my Anthro midterm, so I could submit it on Tuesday. Deep breaths.
Finally, at 3 am, I was getting somewhere? I mean really, downloading a torrent for the first time (highly exciting) for Adobe Premiere which I only used once before for an hour or so, excavating dozens of differently-shaped cords, one of which was supposed to connect the camcorder to my dad's relatively faster laptop where the Premiere would be installed, which would then save my entire life, and realizing that for the first time this school year, I was very nervous.
In the end, everything worked out: Premiere got installed, Bia had an apparently Very Rare Firewire Cord, and the laptop was at 99% power (this becomes important soon) and I went to bed feeling very very awake. Lying there I vaguely remembered forgetting to continue studying for Anthro 10.
-
The alarm kind of shot me out of bed. Haphazard eating, getting ready, and dashing to school to buy blank DVDs to burn the film midterm on. Then came the Anthro 10 midterm.
It's a bit like the rusty feeling I got from writing the Anthro paper (god, this class is a lot of work). We had seven essay items worth 25 points each, and I died a little inside. Then the professor (the cool one! with the rose tattooed on her butt!) said we needed to answer just three, so I picked my battles did my best and realized that, well, my essay writing skills were coming back just as fast as my memory of the lessons, and I wrote possibly the wordiest (it's a good thing, trust me), most grammatically sound, structurally organized paragraphs I ever wrote ever. I was the first one out of the room. I felt so good.
The rest of the day was spent editing the film. Remember that 99%? WELL.
I ran out of power.
I had to walk all the way to MassComm because that's the only place I knew where you could use the electrical sockets, and when I did, I found out that I had to pay 25 pesos just to plug my laptop in to recharge for my last five minutes of editing. Seriously? After godfuckingdamn tripling the freshmen's tuition fees you start charging 25 fucking pesos?
Anyway. I finished, and that was it.
Then Patti S came along reminding me of her children's party at McDonald's. She's around 22ish. She wanted balloons and Happy Meals and cake. I said I couldn't go, and we both decided to just have one of the best talks I ever had with anyone. Do you know that I can actually slip into smooth Filipino (okay, Taglish) when I'm getting really into a conversation? WELL. Conversations about how silly most Chinese people are tend to get me excited. I was in my element.
Then Sasha came with a miniskirt she bought for herself as a celebration for finishing her thesis, the grand product of four years in film: a seven-minute short film that would make or break her. So I broke into the miniskirt for her. It was drafty, and some weird gay guys stared. I mean, obviously, but they could have been sneakier. Thank god I wore good underwear.
Then I headed off to Writer's Club, where I saw Surot for the second time this year! Yay! The first one was a two-second greeting as I rushed past her, so maybe that didn't count. She danced 5 6 7 8 by Steps, and all was right again because I knew she hadn't changed.
Moki was there too, and we were both wearing green t-shirts, blue jeans, and glasses. I really don't know how connected we both are to each other.
And then.
I went home.
And realized that I just had the busiest, most productive, and most friend-filled day in a very very long time. It feels so good to sit down at the computer right now even though I've done it every night for years.
major eta: all my classes for tomorrow were cancelled, because my two 3-hour classes are headed by the same professor *points up* and he's out of the country probably every other week. FREEDOM.