January 2013

Hey folks, here's a video diary of my January. I've made it a point to make a monthly video recap because I've had the longest frustration of making videos with good quality, and I finally had the opportunity to when I got a camera upgrade last December. It'd be a waste not to maximize this video capability, right?

I've been a little lax with posting on time though, mostly because my problems with Youtube have been so discouraging (let me tell you that a video like that up there could take a week to upload properly) that I've become lazy with video editing.

I figured I needed a little break from all the #THESISIT posts (the 'series' is coming to a close pretty soon anyway) as it might have burned me out a little. LOLJK or maybe I've become sick of seeing all those photos from my thesis, since I did have to deal with those images over and over again for months. (When I was done with my defense, I stared at my photos with delight, and then I just wanted to burn everything in sight HAHAHAHA love-hate relationship y'all.) Besides, I missed blogging about actual life happenings.

So, a recap of what mostly took place in January, according to this vlog:

• Tofu keeping me company on the dining table a.k.a. #THESISIT work place.
• I could not remember much about InDesign for the life of me, so I had to layout my thesis book by scratch via Photoshop. It's not as accurate as it could be, but it was better than nothing.
• My sister and her family moved to a new place and we paid them a visit.
• Re-visiting Little Tokyo and having lunch at this restaurant called Seryna.
• Buying my ticket for the Stars concert!!!
• Re-shooting Kevin for thesis.
• Watching my cousin play the first Resident Evil game and laughing at the horrible acting. (To their credit, their Wesker actor at least actually looks like Wesker.)
• Randomly having lunch with one of my godfathers at this bay/marina/idek restaurant after running some thesis errands. The weather was nice and cool that day.
• Driving to Katips for some friends' thesis exhibit. See this post.

The little note I left myself on my planner was a reminder that I had to persevere and not give up on thesis. I nearly considered dropping -- or it crossed my mind at the most -- because I was THAT deep in shat. I understood why some of my batchmates had dropped out of the race along the way, and I had to keep telling myself to fight on because I could NOT do thesis all over again after coming so close to the finish line. I just couldn't do that to myself.

Anyway, a couple of pictures:

I love passing this corridor. It's just a little bit of my childhood, as my dad and I would often have lunch at this one restaurant in the area (I can't even remember the name!) whenever I'd come along with him to work.

This makes me happy. Hehe.

Cat nap at Becky's, where we were chilling with the rain after our shoot. Related post here.

More cats.

Snacking on milk tea and lemon squares while working on thesis.

Now the thing with vlogging with magical quality is that I can't seem to find middle ground between what to document as a video and what to photograph. I'm struggling to find the balance, and I've just recently come up with a formula (by recently, I mean while I was making this post) as to which medium is to be used for what content. Except it's already mid-April so future monthly recaps will still be a little fuzzy with content.

#THESISIT: Damsel In This Dress

Going back to regular programming (M.I.A. on the wordwideweb because I've been enjoying life a.k.a. spending time with my mom while she was in town, an out-of-town trip with la familia, etc.), we have the beautiful Mica Ting as the Damsel In This Dress. This shoot was more of a contemporary play to the classic filipiniana/terno/Maria Clara-esque look, with juuuust a tiny study on the femininity of lace. I found that Mica would be such a perfect subject for this theme, and she was such a dream to shoot. Literally. I have always wanted to photograph Mica, ever since my freshman year of college. I first encountered her through my friend Aaron and his photography (Mica modeled for him from time to time), and have always really loved her look since then. (Funny story on how Aaron and I met: he was schoolmates with TerryJamMae, and so the three became our mutual friends and we'd hear about each other from them, but the first time we met in person was in Medical City. I looked like trash confined to the hospital bed with an IV stuck to my hand, but it was an interesting first meeting.)

Mica was such a darling. She was so game and even drove up to my place (which was where we shot) and even got lost along the way but she was just so lovely about it, especially considering how we had never met before this and hardly talked (save for our text messaging about the theme a few weeks prior to the shoot) and I JUST THINK THERE'S SOMETHING REALLY SHADY ABOUT ME TEXTING HER OUT OF THE BLUE SAYING I WAS FRIENDS WITH HER FRIENDS (although technically it was the truth) AND INVITING HER TO COME TO MY HOUSE I MEAN AM I THAT MUCH OF A CREEP?!??!??? i probably am loljk

What makes this shoot special are the following details: 1.) It was my first shoot with Mica; 2.) It was my first time shooting someone I contacted outside my circle of friends/usual roster of models/someone I had never met irl; 3.) It was my first shoot with my new camera. I kid you not when I say I only received my camera just a few hours (maybe idk 2 hours including lunchtime??? IT'S ALL AN EMOTIONAL BLUR) before Mica arrived, so there might've been a tiny bit of ~*~wingin' it~*~ vibes. Canon's pretty user-friendly but I was so accustomed to my 400D that my shooting with this theme wasn't as fluid as it could've been since I had to fumble with where certain controls are and whatnot as I didn't have time to thoroughly study the manual.

Mica being so naturally gorgeous made everything easy though. So many shots from this shoot are pretty much some all-time favorites from my entire thesis. Anyway, here are some outtakes:

Thank you so much Mica for being so game!!! You are so, so beautiful, and I look forward to working with you again in the future!

Powderpuff

There comes a time in every person's life when they decide to cut their hair short.

Lolz, I'm jk, I had short hair last summer, I decided on this haircut some time last year in July or something, w/e. But hey, I got one of my dream hair colors today! Well yesterday, according to the time of this post being typed up. My friend called me a powderpuff when he saw a picture of me with my new hair, and I find it so rad and magical and appropriate. Powderpuff. Has a nice ring to it.

I've always wanted gray hair. And mint green. And powder blue. And lavender. And cotton candy pink. Pastels, obviously. BASICALLY, ALL THE HAIR COLORS I'VE ALWAYS WANTED REQUIRED SEVERE BLEACHING. But heeeyyy I went for it anyway. The bleaching process took so long (apparently they were trying to get rid of the red pigments in my hair from my previous dye job), and at first I didn't even realize my hair was being bleached. All I knew was that my hair was getting colored to an ash blonde, and I thought the dye that was being placed in would be the color itself without any bleaching (so naive right), but then I wondered why the dye didn't reach up to my very roots. Later on I felt an itch on my scalp (I suppose the bleach was leaking) and then the hairstylist added on more dye, this time to the roots itself. And then my entire scalp began to burn, and that was when I realized my hair was actually being bleached. (Also because I noticed that my hair turned blonde. Duh Ina, duh.)

That wasn't the worst of it though. When they placed the ash dye after bleaching was when my scalp REALLY began to burn. So much that after a few minutes I was getting sleepy because my scalp was numbing and the burning sensation was beginning to feel like a cooling sensation LOL Totes worth it because happiness. They also placed some black dye near my roots or some other layers and it felt like heaven because the cool dye was such a relief after all the burning. My scalp's still a little sore after these hair escapades.

Back and side view! In a nutshell, my haircut is a bowl cut with an undercut. There is a wonderful satisfaction from chopping off so much hair after having to deal with a thick mane for several months. Also, my hair color seems to register as gray in photos. In real life it comes off greenish, sometimes near-white under some lightning, and other times I don't even know.

I have no intention of maintaining this hair color or cut, mostly because doing so will be such a pain, literally and figuratively. I think it'll be fun to see how this color fades (my blue hair faded nicely into blonde) and how the cut grows out, and that way I get to experience several colors and cuts along the way. My deader than dead hair needs to recuperate as well anyway.

This is the shortest I've ever cut my hair since I was a kid -- shorter than when I hacked off my long hair last summer -- and I find it slightly ironic that I choose to cut my hair so short when I'm not even at my slimmest. (I gained approximately 10+ pounds last year and haven't been able to shake it off. #THESISIT stress eating, curse you.) I already have a vague idea for my next haircut (by vague, I mean a 0.01% semblance of an idea), and now that I've gone to the dark side (loljk, more like light side) of bleaching, I might end up dyeing my hair into another dream shade!

Anyway, I just got back from an out-of-town trip the other day, and I haven't found any time to sit down and go through my computer. I seem to go out a lot whenever my mom's in town; in fact we'll be out again later, and it'll most likely stretch on into the night again. I think I've been out of the house everyday since she got back, and that was on the 22nd of March. The 'clickety-clack' that I hear from my laptop when I type sounds so foreign to me now, and I'm having a hard time getting back into the groove of the worldwideweb. I haven't touched my laptop in almost a week until today, and going through so much backlog is a little... menacing. How people can maintain a fluid amount of posts on their blog on an almost daily basis, I'll never know.