My Glorious Day Off

This post is a response to ZLifeOfKyle‘s post “Day Off“…

You call that “glorious?” That is what happens to me pretty much everyday. I think to myself, “Tomorrow I will clean the apartment, maybe go to the gym, maybe go ‘treasure hunting’ at the thrift store…anything but sit at the computer all day.” Sometimes I even go as far as making a to-do list. But do any of these things happen? Do I actually clean, go the gym, or go ‘treasure hunting’? No – I end up sitting at the computer all day.

My idea of a “glorious day off” (more like 2 months off…) consists of waking up before 10 a.m.; having a nice, healthy, filling breakfast; going exploring and photographing somewhere I’ve never been; picnicing with Kyle and/or friends and bringing along my non-wild-when-in-public dog; coming home to spotlessness and the smell of home cooking and freshly baked chocolate chip cookies; devouring said home cooking and freshly baked chocolate chip cookies; NOT getting heartburn/indigestion after dinner; taking a nice, long, warm bath; cuddling up on the couch and sharing laughs and kisses with my loved one; then heading off to bed at a decent time, after which I do not wake up once during the night. Repeat the next day (until I get a job).

Doesn’t that sound like the bee’s knees?

Unfortunately, it is merely a fantasy and somewhere along the lines of 80% unlikely to ever happen. The following passage explains how my days really unfold:

Six out of seven days of the week I wake up at or after 10 a.m. and unless you call a half-eaten bowl of Fruity Pebbles or a chocolate-frosted donut a “nice, healthy, filling breakfast,” then that never happens. I sit at my computer and look at all the beautiful pictures of New York City, France, and Italy, then become all pissy because I’ve never been to any of them. My illness of wanderlust also severely takes its effects on me as a result. Everyone I know, especially Kyle, has a day job. This means picnicing with Kyle and/or friends. And since this “non-wild-when-in-public dog” is non-existent (looking right at you, Chloe), then the picnic idea is completely scrapped. And it’s not like I’m about to go on a picnic by myself. Not in this part of town, anyway… In reality, unless I hire a maid, there is no way this place is ever going to be “spotless,” and “the smell of home cooking” is more like “the smell of burnt $3.00 steaks on the stove.” Freshly baked cookies is sometimes an occurrence, but if I made and ate them everyday my frequent indigestion would probably kill me altogether. My bathtub is probably filthy at best – and let’s face it, I’m too lazy to clean it everyday, so I end up taking 20-minute lukewarm showers under a crappy shower head. We don’t even have a couch, and we’re way too busy doing other pointless things (like Facebooking or blogging) to cuddle and share laughs and kisses on a daily basis. Finally, I don’t end up falling asleep until around 1:30 a.m, waking up sporadically throughout the night from a certain dog jumping up on the bed (again, looking right at you, Chloe) or finally deciding to no longer attempt to get a good night’s rest on my 4-inch high tempurpedic pillow.

Anyway, this post was meant to be funny, so I’m sorry if you got cynicism out of it. (Or maybe it was meant to be cynical, so I’m sorry if you got funny out of it)…but the real point is that I want y’all to go check out Kyle’s bloggy-blog. He started it not too long ago and has big plans for it. If you follow it I’m sure you will continually be entertained (unlike you are over here). 🙂

The Epiphany

I’m going to try something that I’ve never tried on my blog before: I’m going to write, naturally, as I think.

Okay, I’ve already failed. It took me minutes just to come up with the non-existent next sentence in that last paragraph. The truth is that I’m kind of anal about my writing. Well, I’m really anal about it. A three-page, double-spaced paper for school will usually take me upwards of five hours to write. How sad is that? I guess it depends on the way you look at it; on the one hand, that’s so much time spent on a seemingly simple task. On the other, the A-grades are definitely worth it.

For the past nearly two months, I’ve experienced every emotion ranging from pure anger to pure enjoyment to pure sadness because of my unemployment. I’ve had three interviews, denied for two of those jobs, and still waiting on the last. It’s like a rollercoaster ride that never ends. I was recently asked by a long-time follower of my blog why I haven’t been writing lately. The truth is, I’m quite a lazy person. Since I got laid off, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest (I actually haven’t been on there for a while…but now I will since I just said that), looking and applying for jobs online, watching Hulu and Netflix, and occasionally working on a school project have occupied almost all my time. I haven’t done much of anything else, which I realize, is quite sad.

Before this all happened, though, I was in a happy and productive place. With school as my first-and-foremost priority, I had been looking for a relevant part-time job for about six months when I first discovered the posting for an imaging job at Fanzz. The day I found it, I got this strange feeling that it was “meant to be.” The timing was perfect and the job description was right up my alley. I might be contradicting myself now, but I feel like maybe, just maybe, I didn’t appreciate that as much as I could have. Looking back, I realize I was in too much of a hurry. I was trying to push things farther than they were meant to be pushed, and as a result, I am suffering. And yes, I can list off a bunch of “should haves” and “but ifs,” but I won’t waste anyone’s time with those.

When I really think about it, I can definitely see signs that this was all just a blessing in disguise. After much reflection, I realize that the emotional support that my fiance, my real friends, and my parents have provided to me probably would’ve never occurred if this didn’t happen. I have come to realize that these are the most important things in life. Not some job. I would probably still be chugging away, trying to fulfill the daily goals of some huge corporation that would’ve never let me see the light of day. Dare I say that maybe I just am not meant to “do” social media. Maybe I am not fit for agency life. Or maybe I am, and it’s just not my time. Or maybe, I am meant to follow a path which would ultimately lead me to my dream of becoming a travel photographer for some huge, well-known nature/travel magazine. I don’t know, and I’m not going to push it. Time will tell, and everything will fall into place eventually. We’ve all heard the saying “everything happens for a reason,” and I am pleased to say that I may have finally come to that epiphany today.

Defy Stereotypes; Be Yourself

How often do you see a girl doing this? Defy stereotypes as if you could defy gravity. Photo taken September 25, 2011

America: the land of stereotypes and preconceived assumptions; where only hipsters wear big glasses, “playas” spray Abercrombie cologne, all Asians are good at math, all “skaters” are middle-school boys, men from Utah have five wives, and everybody loves to party.

When my Hong Kong classmate and friend recently visited Utah, I just couldn’t pass up the opportunity to see her. After all, it had been four years since we last met.

We all know that people change – sometimes for worse, and sometimes for better – and honestly, I was quite surprised at the person she had become since our good ol’ school days.

She wore an outfit that was completely against the grain of any trendy fashion, complete with a bright green beanie she had just bought at one of those “skater stores” at the mall. Skateboarding: the somewhat uncommon pastime in America (and even less popular in a country like China) – especially for females – became her passion, out of all things to become passionate about. Oh, but it doesn’t stop there; she took to liking AT40 hip hop, and I sat across from her as the latest Chris Brown and Ne-Yo tunes played from my computer. I also must not forget to mention her awesome Lomography film camera that accompanied us and documented our every fun moment. We even discovered a mutual desire to get a tattoo (which is mostly looked down upon in the Chinese culture).

So how does a skater listen to hip hop, have “hipster” belongings, and defy the traditional expectations of a Chinese adolescent all at once? I don’t know, but that must be my Americanized-self talking. I haven’t seen this level of label-mixing before.

The truth of the matter is that this whole time I have been running from trends, stereotypes, and labels in an effort to be my own person; but she showed me up – big time. I must say that I highly and genuinely admire the individual she has become. She is interested in things that make her happy and isn’t afraid of the stereotypes or the people around her who disapprove of them. She is completely confident and into her own interests. I think this characteristic is the most valuable one can have, and I aim to further garner it for myself.

With that said, I will share some facts about me that go against the stereotype of me. You know me as that Asian-American girly-girl, which means I must love (Japanese) pop music, the vintage trend, getting my nails done, and traveling to paradise-like locations such as Cancun or Phuket. In actuality, although I used to love pop music, I am indifferent toward it now. I would much prefer post-hardcore (screaming and all), classical, or acoustic. I wear whatever I want, which means I don’t have to change my whole wardrobe every year. I have never had my nails done professionally. I seriously don’t care for materialistic luxuries like purses and $200 shoes. I swear I’m a country girl at heart. I like to get my hands dirty, and if a little of it gets on my shirt, I’m alright with that. Oh, and I am completely content that my future does not lie in medicine or science, as it would be expected for most Asian-Americans (aspiring writer, here!).

What stereotypes do you challenge? Tell me the story of YOU 🙂

An Evil Art: Expression Through Words

…And another semester comes to an end!

For the past three months, I have been following Malevolent MC for a semester-long project for my Documentary Photography class. If you have been following my blog for a while, you probably know of him or will recognize him from previous photo shoots that I’ve done with him. Over the past two weeks, I wrote a story to accompany the photos I captured from the 6-7 times that I met with him throughout the three months and assembled the material into a magazine-style documentary spread. I have been anticipating this moment of finally being done and being able to publish it to my blog!

Please note that due to image sizes, downloading may be slow.
Please also read my comments below the gallery.
Enjoy!

“An Evil Art: Expression Through Words
…A photography documentary on the life of Malevolent MC, a freestyle hip hop artist living in the suburbs of Salt Lake City.”

Commentary:

I originally wanted to use “malevolence” as part of the theme but found supporting it with a story and images would be difficult, so it was changed to “the life of”.

There were many accommodations made on both mine and Malevolent MC’s part. For me, it was having to make myself available to attend his scheduled events/performances, since they would happen only one time. This meant having to miss school some nights.

I wasn’t really into the whole hip hop/rap scene before the project, but having followed Malevolent MC really opened my eyes to the “foreign” culture and I did find myself enjoying the events, in particular: the Rap Battle and his opening performance at Kilby Court.

From the 6-7 times that we met, I had taken over 300 photos, yet I only chose to incorporate 16 of them into the documentary. The ones I chose, I feel, really display Malevolent MC’s story. In the text I describe a lot of things in detail so I wanted to give a visual to perhaps the more significant or interesting ones, for example: the photo of the crowd hollering to “vote” him into the next round and the photo of burning incense.

All placing of images is relative to the text and to each other. For example, the photo of his shoe collection would only make sense if placed on the same page as the text that describes it.

You may have noticed that the documentary starts out with the Rap Battle. Rather than placing that towards the end, I wanted to entice people with the rather interesting imagery. Metaphorically, on another note, it represents how we see an artist as just a performer instead of realizing the amount of work that is first put in before they are able to actually perform.

Lastly, let it be pointed out that all photos are black and white. Initially, desaturation of the images was brought because there were usually too many colors in each shot, making them confusing and the colors distracting. By making them black and white, I hoped to reduce that effect. However, from interviewing Malevolent MC, he mentioned that he views his music in “shades of gray” because he is still trying to find his musical identity, and using black and white took the issue of ‘identity’ out completely.

I hope you all enjoyed it. I’d like to thank everyone for being so patient with me this semester, especially with the lack of blog posts. However, now that school is out…you all know what that means: we’re back in business, baby!

Expect a continuance of great photography soon 🙂