Cosmotized

I’m leaving in roughly a week, and although I’m extremely excited to live in France, I’m also quite sad that I’ll have to leave behind a fabulous internship at Cosmopolitan.

Initially, I thought that being an intern meant getting coffee and making copies of paperwork. My short stint in Summit isn’t close to that, thank God. In the last month, I’ve written a number of pieces for the magazine, been to one major shoot, filed documents, brainstormed ideas for articles, and gotten beauty freebies. I applied for this job because I wanted to know what it feels to work for a big publication, even just as a by-stander. What the nice staff at Cosmo did for me was much more than that. They let me be an actual part of the publication, and they let me participate and join-in on the big things.

Being an intern for Cosmopolitan magazine allowed me to explore the girl side of me that was previously masked by the seriousness of editing a business review or writing feature articles for a school paper. I understood the important of “life mantras” and although the term makes me laugh at its cheesiness, I learned how constant empowerment through “girl power” pieces was helpful to many women.

And really, Cosmo isn’t just about sex.

Good Morning, Baltimore!

Got this from Francis

1. Put Your iTunes/Windows Media Player/ETC on Shuffle.
2. For each question, press the next button to get your answer.
3. YOU MUST WRITE THAT SONG NAME DOWN NO MATTER HOW SILLY IT SOUNDS. no cheating!
4. Put any comments in brackets after the song name.
5. Put this on your journal/blog.

1. If someone says, “Is this okay?” You say?

Brown Eyed Girl – Jimmy Buffett

2. How would you describe yourself?

Pass this on – The Knife

From Work 1

The best part about working for Cosmopolitan is having a truckload of reading material at my disposal. My boss is sick today, so there isn’t much to do but contact a couple of the bachelors to get their info. I just discovered my boss’ stash of self-help books (we need this for the mag) and I’ve started on the first chapter of  Why Men Love Bitches while the beauty editor and the fashion editor are chatting about Breaking Dawn behind me.

I’ve read the first few pages of WMLB, and already, I want to rip the hair off my scalp for being too nice. I always thought that I had the whole bitch vibe going well for me, but apparently, I’m that nice girl who overcompensates. But I think I’m oversharing there a little bit.

Anyway, it’s a slow day at work today. Hence, I’m blogging from my station. I’m hoping next week will be more eventful. I heard there’s going to be another fashion shoot.

I’m back to my book, then. More updates later.

Pre-departure thoughts

I’ve been listening to a lot of MGMT lately, due to the perusal of my good friend Patrick Angeles. “Time to Pretend“, their hit single, received much publicity when it was used as the opening song for the movie 21.

There’s a line in the song that says “I’ll move to Paris, shoot some heroine, and f**k with the stars”, and I sincerely believe that no line better describes pretty much what I’m feeling right now. I’m pretty adamant about being virtually substance free, of course, but I’d really like to go to France. Now. Stat.

I think there’s just so been so much baggage over the past few weeks and I’ve been slowly detaching myself emotionally from the attachments in Manila. There are a couple of people I’d miss so much, just because it’s going to be a new feeling to not be able to call certain friends when I’m being my usual ranty self. There are, however, also a certain number of people I’d prefer not to see for at least four months. It’s just going to be a lot simpler without having them complicating status quo. And there is no need to shoot re-runs of dramas that should have ended eons ago.

Gone Fishing

Special mention to Daryll

Try practicing breathing exercises, love.

Katie has an ouchie

My tolerance for physical pain is usually high. Although, it is quite obvious that I would cry about anything that strikes a familiar emotion, I do not recall ever crying over a wound or an injection as a child. A beautiful afternoon of delightful rain, cute babies, and sappy Filipino movies may leave me tearing for hours on end, but I’m not as easily affected by scrapes and bruises.

This afternoon was quite embarrassing for me, therefore.

Let me narrate to you the series of events that lead to the downfall of my threshold for physical pain (PAIN!):

So I went to school today to run some errands for my org, but since I was early I decided to pay my good friends a visit in Matteo Ricci (the study hall). Nothing was quite extraordinary. Bixie, Daryll, and I updated each other on random girl stuff (Kee!), and Da and I were in the middle of discussing the latest on our ever tumultuous love lives when Bixie had a brilliant idea of taking a series of group pictures with her new laptop as seen here:

Long story short. I was over excited to get my picture taken, so I got off-balanced by my own clumsiness and hit the second toe on my left foot on the very hard, and very dangerous, Matteo study chairs. Panicked by the sudden stream of blood gushing from my toe and extremely freaked out by the fact that my toenail was starting to come off my skin and forming a sly smile at me, I burst into tears. My cries of anguish were mixed with a lot of short breaths coupled with the occasional utterance of “OMG. Mahapdi. Punyeta. Masakit, Stop laughing!”. And since I have the best set of friends in the world, they took incriminating pictures of me as I was trying to “heal” myself with Bixie’s miniature alcohol wipes.

Look at the chronology of events:

Scene 1: First look at blood

Scene 2: Applying alcohol wipes

Scene 3: Extreme display of courage

Scene 4: More tears plus a very vain couple

I had to mail a few issues of the Guidon with my friend and co-staffer Ardi, so I wobbled my way to the pub room to meet him. We went to the UP Post Office but that old hag at the reception would not grant our request because of a lack of paperwork. To make me feel better about my toe and our inability to do something productive for the day, Ardi invited me to sample some of UP’s great delicacies: isaw and fishball. Yum!

Well, the unhealthy fare made me feel better for a while, but I had to go back to Ateneo to get the wound checked by the doctor. She prescribed a multitude of medicine and asked me to get tetanus shots taken. I’m still deciding if I should follow her prescription. The infirmary is usually unreliable when it comes to these things.

So now I’m typing the keys to this blog entry while my toe throbs in agony. I want to sleep through the pain (PAIN!), but I have to go and make a living first.

After Hours

In between working at my internship and helping myself to a healthy serving of hot bachelors (I’ll give you a prize if you guess where I’m working!) while I’m at it and preparing for my trip in three weeks, I’ve been rediscovering the old books I liked and getting more in touch with myself.

Magical Realism has always been a literary style that has appealed to me. My liking for it spurred from high school nights spent poring over Gabriel Garcia Marquez, and I have recently ventured Eastwards to appreciate works from Haruki Murakami. I  finished a short novel from the author called After Hours while I was getting my hair colored a while ago, and I was positively disturbed at the richness of his symbolism. Being a nocturne, I am quite fascinated at how Murakami was able to create a vivid and discerning picture of Tokyo at night. His ingenious use of time and space boundaries is seamless and he creates a narrative that is personal, and yet, somehow distant–as he intends it to be.

Anyway, I normally don’t write about all the books I read, but there was something particularly beautiful in this book that struck me and coincidentally reverberates some of the thoughts swimming in my head for the past few days. As I have stated in an earlier post, I took on an internship for one of the country’s magazines. Although the job did not require me to dress as I expected, there were quite a few quirks I learned from my three days of working. First, that magazine editors as not as terrible Miranda Priestley and second, models are not as plastic and lifeless as I thought they would be.

Well, you see, dear reader, one of the lesser characters of Murakami’s After Hours is a Japanese model who has been sleeping for two months. She’s utterly flawless and she has a natural grace to her, but it seems that she is caught up in her own time, bound by the rise and fall of her breath as she slumbers. She seems to be perturbed by her own lack of direction–always looking pretty, never really doing anything. Personally, I’ve always regarded this kind of profession with a hint of condescension. I thought that people who are born pretty have got it going for them, but thanks to a couple of new friends I met in the last few days, I’ve been proven wrong.

I was asked to assist in the photoshoot of a couple of male models (yes, I love my job too) a few days ago, and in the process, I made a few good friends. Male models were always such an enigma to me, and I’ve always thought that they were a little stuck-up. Talking to them, however, made me realize how down-to-earth they actually are. They’re not as obsessed with themselves as I previously thought, but they are just normal boys who happen to be pretty. I’d love to stereotype them into Derek Zoolander types who do nothing but practice identical poses all day, but there is some substance to these walking poster boys.

After Hours explores the B sides of everyday life and freely discusses the nuances of common experiences. Stepping out of my comfort zone of spending time with grade-conscious drones and into an industry I’ve never had any previous experience with, I was made to realize how limiting my point of view was. Stuck in my own 5-year plans, I never really looked beyond what I thought was superficial to explore the many different stories that bring things together.

In any case, exploring those same stories make the superficial become less material and more meaningful.

Join the Ateneo Student Business Review

The image isn’t very clear, but it says: “Send the following to katrina_paredes@yahoo.com: Resume, letter of intent, and sample work (if applicable)”.

Androgyny for work

It’s a half-past two in the afternoon, and I just woke up. Sleep is a luxury I haven’t had in a long time, and I’m making the most of it to make up for all those sleepless nights last semester. Enough about that, though.

God knows how much I hate being idle, and to remedy my growing restlessness this ever tragic thing called ennui, I’ve taken to accepting writing jobs for an internet company. The pay is decent and I’m grateful it takes so much of my boredom away. However, sitting in front of my laptop for hours on end just isn’t my definition of fruitful activity. I have an increasing collection of unread books on my bedside table, and I’m starting to feel that my newly purchased/downloaded copies of Palahniuk and Kerouac are starting to resent me. Although reading is probably one of my more fruitful past times, it still falls short in keeping me busy.

So I applied for a part-time job, and on Monday, I have an interview.

Now, if this were with any other company, I would not have spend so much time troubling myself with what to wear. I have a wonderful ensemble of corporate clothes thanks to flurry of panel defenses last semester. I applied for an internship at one of the city’s more popular women’s publications, however, and I am at a complete loss on what to wear. I want to don something that would somehow show me as a “fun, fearless, female”. Should I put on a dress? Or should I go the conservative route and wear slacks and a nice polo?

I looked at favorites from The Sartorialist’s archive for inspiration, and realized that I have a more natural affinity for men’s wear like these ones:

Thankfully, some women have made it easier for tomboys like me to achieve this look:

Beautiful. Now, I’m off to making money to buy those outrageously expensive Hermes belts.

The start of a vacation

Some rest, finally

For the first time in months, I watched a film in the movie house. Not on Sidereel.com, not via Torrent, not even on my newly bought pirated DVD player for pirated stuff. I watched Dark Knight in a real life theater, and it was worth it.

I’m not going to write a review of the movie because I’ve seen too many blog entries dedicated to it. I’m just glad that I was able to go out with good friends without having to worry about a looming deadline. I don’t think I’ve ever felt this relieved to be doing absolutely nothing. I literally spend about an hour just staring at the ceiling when I wake up in the morning. I almost forgot how blissful it is to have this kind of freedom, and I’m making sure to enjoy every minute of it.

I got through JTA semester part 1 in one piece. The finals week was the craziest and most tiring of my entire life, but I have never felt so fulfilled after all of it was done. My combined sleeping hours were not enough to compensate for the hours I spent editing papers, studying for exams, and doing interviews for my organization, but it just makes me appreciate the time I now have to bum around and watch Jdrama on Crunchyroll.

Absolute Boyfriend

My friend Gian would probably laugh at me for writing about this, but I’ve been spending an unhealthy amount of time watching Japanese films and television shows.

It all started when Cam introduced me to this drama called Hana Kimi on one of our Marketing nights. We watched one episode while waiting for our groupmates’ contributions, and I got hooked on the whole schoolgirl-schoolboy plot the Japs are very fond of.

What I appreciate about Asian dramas is their capacity to create a love story without making the characters go at it on the first date. There is so much culture embedded within these stories, and it’s refreshing to see ways in which love and other emotions are translated through scenes that don’t involve ripping off each other’s clothes. I appreciate how hard it is for Asians to express love explicitly. It makes the act of revealing true love more special.

Take the example of Absolute Boyfriend. The drama is based on a Manga of the same name depicting a girl’s predicament of accidentally ordering an ideal robot lover. This robot is programmed to suit her personal preferences and is created in order to please and love her as no human would. Predictably, the robot is more attractive than the average male. He also knows how too cook, clean, and do laundry.

Somehow, Rikko, the owner, is peeved by the robot. She thinks that he is somewhat intrusive and is disgusted at the thought of a robot loving her. She’s quite unlucky when it comes to relationships, and has experienced a series of consecutive failures attributing to her “neediness”.

Her real love is for her boss, played by a very hot Mizushima Hiro. Secretly, he likes her too, but he believes that he should not cause any harm to Rikko’s damage to her “boyfriend”, Tenjou Night. So she leaves Night frequently to tend to the needs of this boss.

Here’s Hiro, by the way:

Robot Night doesn’t seem to mind at first, but his jealousy programming soon goes haywire when he realizes that Rikko might be developing deep feelings for her boss.

Anyway, I wouldn’t want to give too much of the story away because you might want to go and watch it. Without watching this show, you’d know that there is a possibility that the robot might develop real feelings for his owner. What the drama does, in fact, is create ways in which that love is played out without taking out the mushy card too often. It’s really just an honest film that characterizes real human emotion.

And really, if the sight of topless half-Filipino Hayami Mokomichi isn’t enough to make you want to watch, I don’t know what is.