Chasing Dreams

DAY FOUR. Internet, coffee, and friends are awesome when you’re stuck in a building along a flooded and impassable Metro Manila road on a Sunday night. (Oh hai from the Philippines, where traffic and floods are nothing out of ordinary.)

4/30. Thank God for Internet, Coffee, and Friends

I’m not going to describe how it’s like to be stranded though, and will just leave the photos to speak for itself. I dare not say that it’s an awesome thing either, being stranded, because, in spite of the many unexpectedly awesome things that came out of this experience, I’m sure these people I’m stranded with right now are all tired and just wanting to go home, crawl in bed, and stay there for the next two days. And I’m not about to describe also what the situation is outside this building, how the flood has gone waist-deep, and how some cars have remained stationary in the middle of the road for hours, not because the traffic is not moving, but because their engines have been drown by floodwater and have given up on them, i.e., this girl driving an automatic Toyota Vios, stranded across the street with a dead engine for the past 2 hours (take note, an automatic! ouch!), desperately trying to contact anyone for help. (My sentences are far too long sometimes, sorry.)

Oh yeah, I said I wasn’t going to describe it.

What I’m just trying to say now is, when you imposed on yourself to think (and blog) of everyday’s awesome things, surely you are bound to see the silver lining in every cloud.

Like, for me, in spite of being stranded, having internet and coffee and a bunch of friends around me, unlike that Toyota Vios girl who’s imprisoned in her own car, alone in the middle of the flood. (Then again, if I was that girl, I’d have thought of other silverlinings too.)

Or like, being able to check email, get some work done, order a Pluey, buy a thrifted dress, watch some Harry Potter clips over YouTube, leave comments over Flickr, upload photos, check Facebook, read celebrity news, tweet a bit, chat a bit — and all of these while stranded, and sipping a cup of coffee with friends.

I. Am. Saying. A. Lot. Of. Jibberish. I think I already made my point.

Flood, not cool. Being stranded, not cool.
Having reasons to enjoy being stranded, awesome.

P.S. When one is consistently late in publishing her 30-day challenge posts, is that considered creating a habit too? :)

30 Days of Awesome, 4/30.

DAY THREE. I think guitars are not only photogenic, they’re also awesome decorative elements wherever you place them. Truckloads of photos, coming up! :)

3/30. Collecting Guitars and Displaying Them

[The guitars in this photo: Acoustic guitar -- the only one that is actually making any sound; the red toy guitar made in Cebu, from Ivy; and the two guitar magnets -- the bigger one I got from the Detroit Metro Airport during a stopover from last year's US trip, and the smaller one from my brother who got it also from Cebu.]

I have not played my guitar in a long time (and have stopped being guitarchic, too, if you haven’t noticed, lol) but I’m still fond of anything guitar, mostly because I like taking photos of them and seeing them displayed. And okay, playing them once in a while.

Collect and display, there goes a rule to live by. If you have guitars in your house, whether you’re using them or not, take them out of your closets and display them.

Let’s try visual now, shall we? Here are two ways to use guitars as decorative elements.

» Read the rest of this entry «

DAY TWO. Tonight, as I walked away from Office Warehouse with my brand new Olympia Traveller Deluxe, I was momentarily in deep thought: how was it possible that I have been in and out of that place, unaware that I was sharing a room with a shelf full of typewriters? How, Riz?

Let it be known that today, July 24, 2009, I found my first typewriter. At Office Warehouse. In the same shelf where the printers, calculators, and USB gadgets are. Right beside the office desks where I’d usually hang out checking out stuff I need for my home office. How come I didn’t notice the typewriters there before?

2/30. Meet Henry, My Olympia Traveller Deluxe

It wasn’t love at first sight though, mind you. You see, a few hours earlier, I was able to get my hands on an actual, oh-wow-I-can-feel-it-in-my-fingers vintage Hermes 3000 at the Grand Thrift Shop at Cubao Expo. The guy was selling it to us at PhP 2900, waaay cheaper than the $250 (+$150 shipping) unit I’ve been considering to purchase from an Etsy store. But the Hermes 3000 at Cubao-X was old and rickety and unmaintained. It could type a bit, but it kept getting stuck. The owner said he was selling it mostly as a decorative element.

But I wanted a typewriter I can use!

So we left, had dinner, and passed by Office Warehouse because I still couldn’t get over the fact that I almost got myself a Hermes 3000. And there it was. The Olympia Traveller Deluxe. It wasn’t eyecandy as the other typewriters I saw online, but I had to try it. The moment I started typing, and heard the clickity-clackity sound that came with each press of a key, I knew I found my first typewriter.

I have to forgive myself for breaking the habit and posting 2 hours late (MNL time), on my 2nd-friggin-day into this 30-day challenge. I prepared a different post for this day, but that was before I knew I was going home with an Olympia tonight.

July 24′s awesome thing has got to be this: finding a typewriter in the most everyday of places and finally getting myself one. A close second would be, finding out that a typewriter ribbon costs 16 pesos at Office Warehouse. That, ladies and gentlemen, was how much technology costed in the yesteryears. Awesomecakes.

And so, my first typecast. (Whut? You don’t know what typecasting is? Hello, Strikethru.)

Reference to the novel by Audrey Niffenegger, “The Time Traveler’s Wife”,
where Clare is the Wife, and Henry, the Traveler.

Jody says she’s a dinosaur for getting attracted to typewriters. So what am I now, giving names to typewriters and writing typing them love letters? A trilobite? Awesome.

30 Days of Awesome, 2/30.

DAY ONE. In real life, however, “polaroid” is different from “instax”, I just like using the word “polaroid” because it sounds so Audrey Hepburn ♥, while “instax” sounds so.. hi tech. Yes, Jody, that’s an instax photo you saw in the previous post. After drooling over it for months, I finally got myself a Fujifilm Instax Mini.

1/30. Polaroid Cameras and Instant Photographs

As of Wednesday last week, I’m a proud owner of this baby. And as of today, I’ve consumed two boxes of instax films already, and have started using the last stack, albeit sparingly.

Some people ask me if it’s worth it, spending more than 30 PHP on a single instax photo (and about 50 PHP on polaroid, if you ever find one), in an era where digital cameras and phone cams are a way of life. But I say, I think the fact that you pay a certain amount to preserve a moment puts even more value to the photograph, right? Nod, I have a point. ;)

Don’t get me wrong, I’m a sucker for DSLRs and digital cameras, I can’t live without having one close to me wherever I go. But capturing moments through films and polaroids is special. With film, there’s that element of surprise — you’ll never know how your photos will turn out to be until you develop your rolls of film. With polaroid/instax, on the other hand, there’s that giddy excitement of watching the colors and images develop before your eyes.

It’s an expense that won’t give you ROI, alright, unless maybe you want to be like Jennie Castillo, who made a buy-and-sell business out of it; or Scott Hammond and Jenifer Altman, who are by far the best polaroid photographers I’ve seen online, who can get away with selling their polaroid shots at about $25 a piece. (Whew.)

As for me, I don’t mind being just Riz for now, wasting on polaroid sheets, just because they’re awesome. :x

P.S. A bunch of people asked me where I got the “R” pendant. I got it from a friend, Elaine of Artecrafts. She sells made-to-order charms and keychains just like mine. :)

30 Days of Awesome, 1/30.

I’m hitting two birds with one stone. Since I can’t possibly do 1000 Awesome Things because I’m not that patient and my attention span can only handle so much, I’m listing down awesome things the 30-day blog challenge way instead. ;)

30 Days of Awesome

I don’t know if you noticed it, but I’ve been practicing for the past 5 days (July 16-20), just to see if I can really post one blog a day. That’s how sigurista I can be sometimes. I want to make sure I won’t fail again, the way I dropped Project 365.

Oh you don’t have to point out that I wasn’t really successful in my 5-day trial, in case you checked, I know I missed a day. So maybe I can’t do it, maybe I’m a real failure when it comes to being consistent. However, the apprehensions only make me want to prove to myself even more that I can. Of course this is just 30 days, not 365. Besides, I managed to post one photo a day for 60 consecutive days anyway, so my hopes are high. I’ll do my utmost and breeze through these 30 days, the way she did.

“It takes 30 days to create a habit,” she keeps on saying. I think I’d like to see that for myself.

So I’m taking off my pessimist coat and putting on my happy, sunshiney self. For the next 30 days, I’ll be blogging and taking photos of (what I think are) awesome things. Wish me luck! :)

*Photo inspired by Kathryn and Julie‘s tabletop photography. ;)