IDOL
Every single time I finish watching American Idol, I want to get in my car or take a shower and sing at the top of my lungs - OUT OF TUNE AND ALL! I'm no Whitney Houston (pre-Bobby Brown), Alicia Keys or Kelly Clarkson...shoot I'm not even Britney Spears (who doesn't even really do much SINGING), but when I feel it, I FEEL IT and I'll sing along to whoever and whatever is on my iTunes, Nano, radio or tv.
Some days are better than others. On a good day, what I sing actually sounds like an Anna version of the original song. On a bad day, singing the ABC's or Happy Birthday can become a vocally-challenging experience, for me and for the poor people who have to be around to hear it. Hahaha...
When I'm at home alone, I'll sing when I'm washing dishes, dusting, changing the bedsheets, folding laundry, etc. And what I sing along to could be anything - *NSYNC, Norah Jones, the CHICAG, Les Mirabes, or MISS SAIGON soundtracks. It's fun!
WHO WANTS TO GO KARAOKE?!!!
Tuesday, March 14, 2006
Monday, March 13, 2006
CLASSIFIEDS
Hey everyone! A friend asked me to put out an ad for her on my blog:
WANTED:
Single Filipina seeks to replace former homie with whom she used to share carpooling responsibilities with (see below). Travel will usually take place between Orange County (Costa Mesa to be specific) and the Los Angeles area on random days when there’s a party goin’ on. Please leave a shout on blog chatterbox if you or someone you know could be interested. Thanks!
Hey everyone! A friend asked me to put out an ad for her on my blog:
WANTED:
Single Filipina seeks to replace former homie with whom she used to share carpooling responsibilities with (see below). Travel will usually take place between Orange County (Costa Mesa to be specific) and the Los Angeles area on random days when there’s a party goin’ on. Please leave a shout on blog chatterbox if you or someone you know could be interested. Thanks!
HAHAHAHAHAHA! THANKS PAT!
MY VOICE
I finally took advantage of UCLA Extension’s Writers Program and finished 2 weekend classes on how to improve my writing skills. I admit I was a little intimidated (actually A LOT INTIMIDATED) when I finally decided to enroll. Unlike undergrad, these extension classes are administered like “workshops” where we’d do writing exercises and SHARE our work. God help me, because it was one thing to share my writing in a classroom of peers who are there to fulfill a requirement just like me, but it was another to sit in a room full of people who actually WANT to be writers and may have already been published. “Please don’t make me look like a dork,” I prayed before class. “Dork”…now THAT’S eloquence, Anna. Way to go!
So my first class was last month: THE ALCHEMY OF ART with Kate Braverman. She’s this skinny, middle-aged hippie who doesn’t own a TV, is married to a nanobiologist (the heck?) who plays the guitar when she’s doing spoken-word on the stage, and she’s all about the words on the page; writing as a way of living life, that is before commercialism gets a hold of it. Her mantra, when writing, is to KEEP GOING. “Don’t put a period anywhere! You can edit later,” she said. “If you put a period there now you won’t be able to write what you want!” And then she told us something that really got to me: DON’T BE AFRAID TO WRITE THE TRUTH – YOUR TRUTH. Our responsibility, as writers, is to tell our readers and ourselves, OUR truth It doesn’t if it’s nonsensical in the “real” world, because if it’s true to us, THEN WHO CARES? That’s stuck in me since then.
Being true to our writing was a similar theme in my second class by Maria Amparo Escandon: FINDING YOUR UNIQUE VOICE. Each person has their own voice on the page. Our voices are like fingerprints, similar to no one else’s. We read fragments of novels and short stories with a number of different voices and it’s, well, crazy that a 40-year old woman can channel a 14-year old girl’s voice in a story. I learned, based on my instructor’s theory, that each person’s got a well inside themselves….a well of shit, that is. And when we sit down to write something, we lower our bucket down into the well to draw up some…well, “shit” to extract emotions from, no matter how painful it is. I think that’s what’s keeping me from being the writer that I want to be. I’m trying to create emotion, most times, from external sources, when I should be taking them from somewhere with better resources, like my fears and failures, the things in life I often don’t LIKE to draw out.
My class was so…supportive. I got to be around 16 other writers whose curiosity and understanding about such a timeless art form was level, if not higher than, my own. Listening to everyone read their impromptu stories – humorous, poignant, exciting, etc – made me love every minute I was there. I made new friends who I hope to see and talk to again, possibly proofread something I’ve written. Cile said I need to hang out with other weird people, other writers. And I was like, “Ummm, not all writers are weird.” I stand corrected. Hahaha…jk! Writers aren’t weird, they (we?) just process information differently, like everyone else. We like to write stuff down…and then go home and write about what we wrote down. Hahaha!
I finally took advantage of UCLA Extension’s Writers Program and finished 2 weekend classes on how to improve my writing skills. I admit I was a little intimidated (actually A LOT INTIMIDATED) when I finally decided to enroll. Unlike undergrad, these extension classes are administered like “workshops” where we’d do writing exercises and SHARE our work. God help me, because it was one thing to share my writing in a classroom of peers who are there to fulfill a requirement just like me, but it was another to sit in a room full of people who actually WANT to be writers and may have already been published. “Please don’t make me look like a dork,” I prayed before class. “Dork”…now THAT’S eloquence, Anna. Way to go!
So my first class was last month: THE ALCHEMY OF ART with Kate Braverman. She’s this skinny, middle-aged hippie who doesn’t own a TV, is married to a nanobiologist (the heck?) who plays the guitar when she’s doing spoken-word on the stage, and she’s all about the words on the page; writing as a way of living life, that is before commercialism gets a hold of it. Her mantra, when writing, is to KEEP GOING. “Don’t put a period anywhere! You can edit later,” she said. “If you put a period there now you won’t be able to write what you want!” And then she told us something that really got to me: DON’T BE AFRAID TO WRITE THE TRUTH – YOUR TRUTH. Our responsibility, as writers, is to tell our readers and ourselves, OUR truth It doesn’t if it’s nonsensical in the “real” world, because if it’s true to us, THEN WHO CARES? That’s stuck in me since then.
Being true to our writing was a similar theme in my second class by Maria Amparo Escandon: FINDING YOUR UNIQUE VOICE. Each person has their own voice on the page. Our voices are like fingerprints, similar to no one else’s. We read fragments of novels and short stories with a number of different voices and it’s, well, crazy that a 40-year old woman can channel a 14-year old girl’s voice in a story. I learned, based on my instructor’s theory, that each person’s got a well inside themselves….a well of shit, that is. And when we sit down to write something, we lower our bucket down into the well to draw up some…well, “shit” to extract emotions from, no matter how painful it is. I think that’s what’s keeping me from being the writer that I want to be. I’m trying to create emotion, most times, from external sources, when I should be taking them from somewhere with better resources, like my fears and failures, the things in life I often don’t LIKE to draw out.
My class was so…supportive. I got to be around 16 other writers whose curiosity and understanding about such a timeless art form was level, if not higher than, my own. Listening to everyone read their impromptu stories – humorous, poignant, exciting, etc – made me love every minute I was there. I made new friends who I hope to see and talk to again, possibly proofread something I’ve written. Cile said I need to hang out with other weird people, other writers. And I was like, “Ummm, not all writers are weird.” I stand corrected. Hahaha…jk! Writers aren’t weird, they (we?) just process information differently, like everyone else. We like to write stuff down…and then go home and write about what we wrote down. Hahaha!
Sunday, March 12, 2006
Friday, March 10, 2006
Thursday, March 09, 2006
Tuesday, March 07, 2006
THEY GOT GAME
Tin and I woke up at 6:45 am this past Sunday morning so we could go to the 7:30 am mass, so we could head to Sherman Oaks to play basketball…well, Tin played basketball. I took pictures, and Pinay and Fernand went to Trader Joe’s to buy some Mochi Balls and Pirate’s Booty. Hahaha…
It was Team Bev-Tin-Ja vs. Team Mel-Pat-James. These people were serious, driving the ball to the hoop without fear, passin’ the ball all fancy, shooting 3’s galore. Wow, I didn’t know it was gonna be like that. It got kind of rough at one point. Bev scratched Melissa’s arm! Hahaha…oh you Canonigo Sisters, so competitive!
During a break between games (they played 4 I think), these guys came onto the court and started shooting. Mel was like, “Umm, hello we’re still playing.” Then they offered to play for the court and all of us were like, hmmm, interesting. There was another court that had been occupied since before WE got there (and those people took up full-court), and another game going on the other half of our court. Why did they come up to THIS side? What dude, cuz we’re Asian? Cuz we got girls on this team? Mel and Pinay were all over it. Hahaha…So they left.
Fernand was like, oh God if they come back with their posse we should run. Hahaha…
After, we had lunch at THE STAND, this sitdown hot dog place on Ventura. Mmmm....Tin had so much fun that she made a slideshow of the pictures I took (Cile I think she IS your sister. hahaha!), complete with slide transition effects, music and everything. Too bad I don't know how to put it on a dvd. It's pretty good actually. Anyhow, the little sister hadn't played in two weeks since her season ended (Their JV Team won the title in their division!), so she was sore as all hell. She starts weight training in a couple of weeks then she has summer league, then conditioning in the fall before the season starts again in December. Hopefully playing with these folks teaches her a thing or two about bball. (See more pics to the right!)
Monday, March 06, 2006
DOMINO DAYS
I woke up 5 minutes late this morning. I know it doesn’t sound like much, but when there lies a 40-mile commute on the 101 North, 5 minutes is the difference between an uninterrupted drive through the Ventura hills at 7:00 am and an unlucky encounter with 7:00 am traffic in the city, or in my case today, a most unfortunate date with Monday morning destiny.
So back to getting up 5 minutes late...I thought it would be okay since I already laid out an outfit Sunday night. I often do this to avoid half-awake staring contests with my closet. Unfortunately, the long-sleeve shirt, cardigan and skirt looked better on the hanger the night before and I ended up changing into khaki slacks and, in order to save time (that was my intention anyway), I left my brown tights on under my pants. But I started to feel hot, so I decided to rid myself of the brown tights. If only the pants slid off as easily as I imagined. Instead they scraped roughly over the stockings and I struggled through this already irritating morning. There goes 10 minutes I’ll never get back.
By the time I shower, dress, undress and re-dress, it was 6:15 am (I leave the house at 6:30). Do I have to time to dry my hair and run a curling iron through it? I was provoked by thought for awhile. I didn’t have very much time so I haphazardly damp-dried my hair and threw on a headband. What else could I do? Thermasilk couldn’t help this staticky confection of nappiness now.
I left the house 6:35 am, hopped on the 5 North, then sat on the 134 West for what felt like an hour. Close. I sat there until I got to the 101…at 7:15 am! I was supposed to be at work in 15 minutes and I was 30 miles away. Restlessness does not begin to explain the agitation in that car.
When I finally got to the exit lane at 7:50, I thought I was home free. I’d never been so happy to get to work. But the mischievous Muses were not done with me just yet, because “Exit lane,” I learned, does not necessarily equal “Exit.” Today the Rancho Conejo off-ramp was just a way to take another stab at my already lacerated morning.
Apparently, the traffic light by the exit was broken. Oh well…
So I get to work and, because I arrived later than usual, I had to park farther from the entrance to the building. Did I mention it was drizzling? And that aside from forgetting my jacket, I also forgot my umbrella? Ho hum…
Except for an episode with the copy machine and paper towel dispenser, the rest of the day has been fairly quiet. Then again, it’s only 2:30 pm.
Thursday, March 02, 2006
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)