Saturday 23 May 2020

Latest Obsessions #2

In the never-changing environment of quarantine, my only stimulus from the outside world comes via the internet. So I wonder, is this becoming a series?


ESSAY: The Story of Caroline Calloway & Her Ghostwriter Natalie

The nine lives of Caroline Calloway never fail to entertain and intrigue me. There was her 'creative workshop' which ended up being a complete scam but was still honest work (it was so Caroline), her new OnlyFans account (again, so Caroline), and that drama about her breaking quarantine to hang with her new e-boy 20-year-old boyfriend (I die). I'd always likened Caroline Calloway to Tana Mongeau - like, insane but in a bad bitch self-aware way. But this article blew the doors open. Caroline Calloway is NOT self-aware in the slightest. She's like that friend we've all had - the narcissistic, unreliable one who always tells you about their fantastic plans and fantastic stories when you know that's not how it happened, and you know they'll somehow never pull through. But then their entire character is just SUCH A VIBE so you choose to admire them anyway. Like, if Caroline has managed to paint herself as this random-ass famous creative bitch who can do whatever she wants, and her fan-base believes it, then who's to say she's delusional? Like, if everybody thinks she's this person, then doesn't that make her this person? I guess social media can be utilised to solidify an identity in this way, and honestly, it's kind of a great asset. A girl replied to my Instagram story saying, "I just think her whole self aware idiocy is kinda chic sometimes."



FASHION: Peggy Gou's clothing brand, Kirin

I don't think it's so much that I like the clothes than that I like Peggy Gou's entire persona. In her latest Q&A at the Oxford Union she talks about why she left design school: "I realised that I only like styling myself. Styling other people is a different story," she laughs. But now she's a major DJ with a truly amazing Instagram filled with winged eyeliner, arm tattoos, and bright printed button-down shirts and kimonos and jumpers. She's in Bali, then Japan, and she's from South Korea, and apparently she lives in Berlin? She describes her clothing line as effortless. "They look like pyjamas." "They make you feel confident." F*ck she's so cool.




YOUTUBE: Hyram on skincare

This week I did a full 180 towards self care. I began by making the Pinterest mood board above, then proceeded to eat three (and only three) meals per day, wake up by 10am, and ambitiously jog 5km before religiously following my latest Chloe Ting workout challenge outdoors. After relaying these new-found habits to a friend, she told me about her new obsession with Hyram. So of course, the next day, I spent 6 hours watching Hyram's videos, researching, and impulse buying an entire new skincare routine. I feel self-loved already.



ESSAY: How Street Culture Shaped Asian-American Identity

THIS! ESSAY! I love how it talks about how "much of what it is to be Asian-American is still up in the air" because we've always had this immigrant culture of 'keep your head down and assimilate'. We never tried to aggressively fight against racism or define ourselves. History doesn't talk about our major struggles because we didn't have any, or perhaps we just didn't speak up about the injustices we were facing. We never saw them as injustices in the first place. We're worker bees. But street culture changes that. It's a creative space where we, subtly, have a voice, creating an identity through pure aesthetics. My favourite part of this piece describes Anti-Social Social Club as probably the most Asian-American brand around, with a quote from ASSC founder Kyle Ng: "It speaks to the Asian condition. You're anti-social social! It's kids wearing supreme, but they're quiet and shy. How many nerdy Asian kids have you seen that rock the craziest fits?"



FASHION/ESSAYS: Bobblehaus

And going off that essay, there's a new streetwear brand in town. I first discovered Bobblehaus because of its blog. It's a brand bridging East and West youth culture, with a multitude of essays on their website doing exactly that. And then there's their clothes - androgynous, block colours, simplistic, effortless, confident. I freaking love this website.



MUSIC: Here's the last few songs I added to my 'pop music I run to' playlist
  1. Forever - Charli XCX
  2. In Your Eyes remix - The Weeknd, Doja Cat
  3. Waves - Kanye West
  4. Friends - Justin Bieber, BloodPop
  5. Detonate - Charli XCX
  6. Adore You - Harry Styles
  7. Faith - The Weeknd
  8. Physical - Dua Lipa
Love,
M

Sunday 17 May 2020

Latest Obsessions

I've been eating chocolate cookies like they're my sole energy source. Two chocolate cookies for sustenance and suddenly I'm finishing a 2,500 word research report in one day. Another few chocolate cookies in the evening and I'm watching a 2 hour lecture on data structures in C. Another few chocolate cookies at midnight and I'm drawing all 9 quadrants of the abdomen, listing differential diagnoses for abdominal pain. Honestly, days are short and weeks are short and time is simply flying.

Here's my obsessions for the week:



WATCH: Now Apocalypse
One morning I discovered Karley Sciortino and spent 2 hours in bed watching Instagram video excerpts from her show Slutever - "Your p*ssy is God", "How cool would it be if you went to school and people were like, this is how to say no, and this is how to c*m. Haha. That'll never happen." She's so blatantly funny. And then I listened to her first Love in Quarantine podcast. And then, finally, I watched her television show Now Apocalypse. Like, I never knew how much I needed to see Avan Jogia (Beck from Victorious) and Tyler Posey (Scott from Teen Wolf) make out until I actually saw it happen - with all these hallucinatory fireworks going on in the background no less. And then there's Beau Mirchoff (Matty from Awkward) doing naked photo shoots and crying a lot. The gender roles are like, completely switched, with Carly, who is a dominatrix cam girl in the most nonchalant, realistic way possible, and this European genius robot lady who only wants polyamory (No monogamy. God forbid.) Like, if somebody made a chaotic mash up of all my teenage celebrity crushes in the most modern, fluid, random, constantly trashy fluorescent environment, it would be Now Apocalypse.



SHOP: Muji
Okay, I know I'm late to the party, but I finally succumbed to buying Muji paper and Muji pens in every single colour (which only came to $14. Why did I ever think this place was overpriced?) and suddenly my notes are BEAUTIFUL. It's literally magic. I can't explain it. My sister speculates that it's the delicacy of the lines on the grid paper. I speculate that it's the perfect relationship between the ink of the pens and the texture of the paper. Overall, I think that the Japanese brand has a keen eye for detail, proving once again that being rash and inpatient will never give you your desired outcome.



WATCH/LISTEN: Jhene Aiko's BS animated visual
Jhene Aiko's levelled up her vibe once again with this anime-inspired music video. Why does she get to do stuff like this? Why does she get to be so cool?



WATCH: High Fidelity
Zoe Kravitz is a record-store owner in New York City who obsessively reminisces over all her exes. She's a sad girl living her best life in the New York art scene. She makes me feel so in tune with my emotions - like it's okay to not know what I'm feeling? Also, she wears this yellow jumper with jeans and low pigtails and looks really f*cking good. And then there was that time she wore a Hawaiian shirt as a... jacket? And that time she wore a massive band t-shirt but tucked it into a pleated school skirt with vans as she tromped into some divorced eccentric art lady's house on the Upper West Side. Can I manifest that?



WATCH/LISTEN: Christian Yu play the guitar on his Instagram
I recently discovered Sydney-born past K-pop star, now video director, b-boy, dude who's been posting his jam sessions on his Instagram. I have a celebrity crush, but it's on a whole other level.



READ: A Little Life
There's a boy with no past. Well, he has a past, but it's so excruciatingly different that he may as well be a blank slate. From birth until he arrived at college he didn't exist. As somebody who attributes much of who people are to their upbringing, this is intriguing for me. You see, people are predictable. Meet enough of them and they all start to fit into (relatively flexible) boxes. The other characters in the book do. There's an eccentric boy from a large encouraging family, a confused boy from a mix-raced wealthy family, and a kind struggling actor from a broken family. But the boy with no past... he's so sad, and beautiful. I'm still only at the beginning of the book, so perhaps his past will become clearer soon. For now though, I can't put it down. This is the book I needed to get me out of my impatient, constantly buzzing, non-reading funk.

Love,
M

Thursday 14 May 2020

Lady Bird in Hindsight


The first time I watched Lady Bird I cried. It was the summer of 2017/18 - the summer I turned 18, received my acceptance letter to a university in the big city, and moved out of home. Tears spilled out of my eyes as Lady Bird described how much she loved driving in Sacramento, with shots of greenery and lakes in the picturesque suburban town she'd spent her entire senior year trying to escape. I even imagined her describing the excessive roundabouts I love about my small home city, with my favourite road alongside the hills of baby trees, driving towards the mountain and the tiny tower in the distance on a sunny day. When I first moved, the thing I missed most about home was driving too.

I didn't cry while watching Lady Bird tonight. The emotions were there, like a tiny thing of the past, but not enough to bring my eyes to water. Having come home during the virus, I've been marvelling at the beauty of my suburb. I've been climbing mountains with views of the city I know so well - the urban city, they call it; a city built amongst the lakes and the trees; each place marked by my past footsteps - climbing the mountain we drove up the summer of 2016, standing through the sun roof, wind blowing my hair and my face and my eyes, but I just had to keep them open; and finding the rock we stood at before I left for the summer, where we took off our shirts and flashed the barren landscape. Perhaps I didn't cry because this city doesn't mean as much to me as it used to, which makes me sad. In Lady Bird, after reading her college admissions essay, Sister Sarah Joan remarks, "You clearly love Sacramento... you write about Sacramento so affectionately, and with such care." to which Lady Bird responds, "do I?" I guess we all move on.

To me, now, Lady Bird is a reminiscent slice of life. In 2018, Lady Bird was symbolic of my move -  zoned in on that final summer, working shifts, her mother crying, and arriving at the airport. However, now, I see the wider picture. Perhaps Lady Bird resonated so powerfully with me because the story was relatable the entire way through, even towards the end. In 2018, Lady Bird's final scenes in New York seemed scary and surreal: getting way too drunk, saying things she didn't mean, and kissing boys she didn't care about. In hindsight, the moment I arrived in the big city, I did exactly that. And a month later, I was back on my favourite road with the tiny trees and the mountain and the tower, feeling very emotional about it all.

Lady Bird is reminiscent of going to an all girls' catholic school, with the measuring of skirt-lengths, defiantly not saying 'amen' after the prayer during school chapel, and that one girl in class who brags very loudly about the first time she had sex. Now that these things no longer matter to me, I laugh at how we needed a school co-curricular to meet boys. I laugh at how our sheltered minds, who lived off romance movies and young adult novels, could see a boy perform on stage, or at a piano recital, and immediately develop a crush. I laugh at the intensity of school socials, seeing our crush across the gym dance floor and mustering the courage to talk to him. Lady Bird makes me feel seen. It makes me feel less contempt towards my infuriatingly sheltered high school experience, and instead find the humour in it. I learned a lot.

Lady Bird is reminiscent of meeting the boy who is different from all those private school boys. He hand rolls cigarettes, listens to obscure music, and is most definitely a soft boy. He teaches you things about culture, and you admire him. He is so cool. Lady Bird is reminiscent of feeling so out of your depth as you walk into a deserted parking lot where everybody is smoking. You don't know how to smoke, you don't know what to say, but you feel as if you need to act like you belong there. Lady Bird is reminiscent of being high in someone's kitchen, waiting eagerly for food to come out of the microwave, giggling but also having no idea what's going on. In hindsight, I wonder how these experiences could have mattered so much to me back then. As stupid as they seem now, they shaped me.

In hindsight, I wish I'd figured it all out sooner. Lady Bird seems to figure out what matters to her by the time prom comes around. With every experience, she is honest, and wild, and ultimately unselfish. I was not like that.

Lady Bird makes me think about my final year at home with my mum, and all my feelings of not-enough-ness. My mum used to ask me why I was always reaching. How many times would I have to level up before I would be content?
I spent the entire year reaching for ambiguous dreams of leaving the city. Just like Lady Bird's mother, mine pushed back - "How are you going to pay for that?" "Why do you want to get away from me so badly?" She didn't want me to leave. We had the kind of relationship where we would fight every single day yet still make up. An arbitrary conversation could hit a soft point and immediately become aggressive. Her honest comments about whether a dress looked nice on me would make me defensive, because while I told her I didn't care about her opinions, and truly thought I didn't, I think her opinions always mattered the most. In hindsight, I think these were the growing pains of raising a teenage girl on the cusp of independence. I was trying to be convictional about what I wanted, while having no idea what I wanted; and she was finding it difficult to let go.

A few days before Mother's Day, I went through old photo albums from when she was my age. I saw her at 20, wearing the hoodie she's now passed down to me. I saw her at her 21st birthday party, opening presents, her face so much like mine. I saw her a little older than me, with my dad, travelling all around the world. I saw that she had a life, and I saw the parallels between her experiences and mine. I forget that she wanted things too, and that she once moved away from home too. In the final scene, Lady Bird asks her mum, "Hey mom: did you feel emotional the first time that you drove in Sacramento? I did and I wanted to tell you, but we weren't really talking when it happened."

After leaving the cinema in 2018, my mum and I sat in the car in silence. We had both just wiped tears from our eyes, and just like in the first scene of Lady Bird, I brought up my leaving and she got mad at me.

Love,
M

Friday 8 May 2020

Currently: Feels like I'm on Adderall 24/7

We're well into the second month of quarantine so you'd think it'd be the perfect time to relax. Most people have succumbed to new routines with heaps of free time to do, well, whatever they please. Theoretically I should be tanning, or staring into space, or feeling calm, or like, not feeling like I have somewhere to be and something to do. Instead I feel more rushed than ever.

I won't cook anything more complicated than an omelette because I'm scared it'll take up too much time. Perhaps I just don't like cooking. Even exercise feels like too much of an unproductive time commitment. Is Chloe Ting effective? What's the point of doing a second booty burn video when it didn't even hurt that much the first time round? I can't binge watch shows, or sit through a movie without going on my phone. I attempted watching anime. Subtitles are hard to read when you're distracted. The only reason I can get through an entire 20 minute episode of Community is because I'm holding out for the end scene between Troy and Abed - the best part of the show. My brain is just bzzzzz... like real world rush hour but with instant teleportation, from one safari tab to the next, constantly doing something.

Quarantine has been like this build up of projects. With all that daunting endless time laid out before me, I felt pressured into being productive... doing every single thing I've ever been meaning to do... which is a lot. It started with writing too much on this blog, then learning how to code, then treating binge watching television shows like a race rather than enjoyment:
  • Russian Doll to be completed in a day - what an incredible chaotic New York vibe. I would like to manifest a part of Nadia.
  • Money Heist to take up all my time - I couldn't do it. 4 seasons in Spanish was too much of a commitment.
  • And now Hollywood for the eye candy - It seems as if 1 season, 8 episodes is the largest commitment I can make right now. And even after a cliff hanger, my fingers are still drawn to checking my phone, over and over... I need to assert my opinions. It's a one-way assertion when it's online.
And then came the obsessive writing - personal essays with fake deadlines, portraying ideas half-formed, writing with nothing really to write about anymore, because supposedly nothing is happening. But with the addition of my extremely difficult now-online degree (medicine, who would've thought that would be hard) there is so much happening. I find myself in the middle of class obsessing over different projects. I find myself unable to sleep because I'm obsessing over different projects. I have 50 million passions right now, and 50 million deadlines, and I'm exhausted. I'm bzzzzzzzz exhausted. 

It's a new manic episode every day. One day I'll fixate on making the most colourful, diagrammatic A3 notes on the mind-numbing topic of syncope - textas strewn across my desk, textbooks open, notes on my monitor, notes on my laptop - for 8 hours straight. The next day I'll be sitting on the floor surrounded by 100 of my dad's old photo albums. The next day I'll be covered in glue and scrap paper. I decided to become a collage-artist. I want to learn how to journal with washy tape. I want to do a workout challenge religiously. I want to become a better med student than I've ever been. I want to become a better piano player than I ever was.

I look at my definitive timetable, and our country's almost-definitive situation, and it seems as if things are going back to normal. That endless time isn't endless anymore. In 2 weeks I'll probably be invited to dinner parties again. Restaurants will be open again. Only 2 more online teaching blocks, which seem incredibly short now, and I'll be in the hospital 5 days a week. I'll have to dress up again. I'll have to talk to people again. I don't think I know how to do that anymore.

Quarantine is like a new life for me. I'm in so far deep, a different person. But I'm not emerging a butterfly. I feel like I'm emerging an alien. Nothing from the old world sparks enjoyment for me. Right now it's just me in my bubble, bare face, hoodie and leggings... and I don't really want to leave just yet. There's so much more to do.

Love,
M