Teller

Just a short appreciation post for Juergen Teller. Like many others I became familiar with his works through Marc Jacobs, saw countless MJ ads by Teller and instantly fell in love with his candid style.

So iconic... you could've thought he just happened to stumble upon Dakota. Borrowing a line from a magazine I once read, his photos are just so iconic people actually forgot what MJ was like before Teller. 

Five Things I Will Remember Forever From This Year's Eid Al Fitr

The (rather lonely and vulnerable) sight of five praying mats, arranged in proper position, in my living room this morning. Every other year my family and I would perform the Eid prayer at the tennis court next to our house, along with other people who happen to live close by (read: neighbors). The fact that this year, because of the pandemic, people are forced to perform the mandatory Eid prayer on their own will be remembered forever.

The sight of my big family in 720p. We had a short Zoom conference this morning in lieu of the annual 'salam-salaman'.

The unusually quiet queue for the Eid dishes my mom spent three days preparing. They all taste very good though, like usual.

Honestly new clothes for Eid is the last thing someone should be worrying about in unthinkable times like this (and I really am glad that I didn't even think about it) but spending the first day of Eid in your pajamas is quite something. It's bizarrely nice. I like it though, I like eating opor and watching the television in shorts and ratty T-shirt.

The sound of my dad's voice cracking as he wrapped up his handwritten khutbah, praying for his wife, for his kids, for his family, his parents, asking for help and acceptance. And the small choke that managed to slip from the back of my throat, willing myself not to cry because I couldn't stand both seeing or let alone hearing my parents cry and crying myself.

I like this year's Ramadhan just fine after all, I have everything served in a silver platter right in front of me so there is nothing I should complain about. But I really really don't want a repeat of this, thank you.

Happy Eid Al Fitr everyone. 

I hate my face. I hate my body. I hate my hair. I hate myself.

Ikegami Yoriyuki (source)

I hate how easily my breath hitches every time a contestant gets kicked out of Masterchef Junior. I hate that I can never hold my feelings down. I hate how I’m almost always unnecessarily vulnerable to people I’m close with. I hate how I cannot run without feeling like my lungs are about to combust. I hate how I can never seem to find a perfect fitting top; it’s either too tight on the sleeves or too tight on the bust. I wish I’m skinnier so I can wear nice clothes. I wish I have a thigh gap so I wouldn’t look ridiculous in shorts. I wish I’m skinny so I wouldn’t look out of place in group photos. I wish I have slimmer thighs and a more defined behind so I wouldn’t have to struggle and squeeze just to get into my jeans. 

I wish my eyes, and my eyelids, are even. My right eye is much smaller than my left, I have to flip my selfies so I wouldn’t look weird. I hate that no matter how hard I try to look ‘nice’ I’d still look like I saw people’s heads off for fun. I wish I like nicer music, music with some ‘depth’ to it - whatever that means. I wish I have nicer hair that doesn’t gave in to humidity so I wouldn’t have to fuss with flat iron every day. 

I hate that I can never just look nice.

I hate how my body can never seem to get anything right. 

I hate that I am the way I am. 

-

But I secretly love my ability to symphatize to even the cruelest stories. I like that people rely on me and that some of them even trust me with their secrets. I like that a lot of people think I’m nice. People think I’m nice and they want to get to know me better because I look like I’m nice. I like how people always compliment my handwriting, saying it looks like a computer font. I like that some people think I have great taste and that I am always able to appreciate people’s taste. I like how I never forget to say please and thank you, and how I am able to stay pleasant regardless of my mood. I’m surprised that there are actually quite a lot of people who want to be friends with me. I’m not pretty per se, but I have had my own fair share of compliments, appearance wise. I like my eyes because it looks sharp. I even like my mouth because it makes me look fierce, although sometimes I came across as menacing instead. I like how my hair attracts compliments sometimes - I get people asking me are my curls real? Did I get them professionally curled? I also like how pouffy it gets sometimes, I like to believe it makes me look lively. And you should see just how nice the color looks under the sun! 

I love that despite how many times I’ve cursed my body and my self - constantly putting it under ridiculously tight and unfair scrutiny and through ridiculous ‘diets’ - it never breaks down. It doesn’t even listen to the mean things in my head, it keeps on being strong and not buckling down, providing me with healthy working organs and supporting me even at the toughest of times. The stretch marks on the back of my knees, acne scars on my back, they’ve become my own personal crests and badges of courage. 

I like that I can always seem to find positive things to be grateful about. 

I like that I never give up on me. 

I like that I am the way I am. 

-

I like that even though I hate myself so much, 

the paragraph of me listing the things I love about myself 

ended up being much longer

than the one listing the things I hate. 

What Coronavirus Has Taught Me (or so I think)

I came across this tweet today:

The last sentence kind of stuck. An endless today, never tomorrow. 

As someone whose coping mechanism is to always see the silver lining even in the deepest depths of darkness, I find myself automatically pushing negativity to the very back of my mind every time I receive a piece of bad news and pretending it doesn't exist. It's always been like that for me, as it's easy. The time I almost broke my ankle, I thought okay, at least I didn't break my ankle. Then I went on to look forward to the days to come, days where my ankle would finally heal and I would be walking like a normal person again. Sure enough those days came, and I don't have to deal with being sad and being in pain ever again.

That was exactly what I did and what I went through the first time I heard about Coronavirus. Uneasiness grew surely but surely, from the time China declared lockdown, death tolls peaked in Italy, but somehow I always managed to suppress my fear and keep thinking it's going to be okay, at least it's not me. It's happening somewhere far, thousands, or even millions of kilometers away from me. Even by the time the local government declared lockdown (scratch that, large scale social distancing), as I sat down waiting for my dad to pick me up from what would be my last time stepping foot on campus grounds, looking at the barren campus grounds, no lively chatter to be heard and none of the usual early afternoon in-campus traffic, I still have the strength to think that this too, shall pass. What I didn't know was that I was actually trying to tell myself that this isn't happening, that no matter how real is this, this is all just some ridiculously realistic nightmare.

For the first few days of lockdown, I was on full alert: I kept track of death tolls and recoveries in my diary.  I started to sing Happy Birthday whenever I wash my hands to make sure I followed the twenty seconds WHO protocol. I stopped taking notes twelve days later, I muted all Coronavirus-related keywords on Twitter to keep myself from panicking, I stopped holding my breath whenever I did so much as taking a single step out of the house. But at the same time I'm still denying everything: I keep on making fun, possible scenarios of what to do after this pandemic ends. The first few scenarios start with 'I'm going to...' but later it changed to 'I will...' I remember my English teacher saying, when you're sure you're going to do something, then you use the phrase 'I'm going to...' but when you're not so sure you can do something, use the phrase 'I will...' instead. It suddenly became clear: this is happening. There's no way out. No silver lining to look forward to. Everyone around the world is just as unsafe as I am. I tried to push this negativity all the way to the back of my mind like I usually do, but to no avail. It kept coming back.

Instead of realizing that this is very well happening, I'm launched into yet another level of denial - the 'help I don't know what to do so I'm just going to be mean to everyone and myself while hoping things will magically improve' stage. I lost my appetite, I only ate once in the span of two days, I barely have the energy to walk around the house. I have to keep holding my stomach to keep myself from retching. I snap at everyone. My head is screaming at me and I just don't know how to shut it down. I can only scream back at the various voices in my head, "Calm the fuck DOWN I'M JUST AS CLUELESS AS YOU ARE!" 

Then I saw the tweet and had the strangest reaction: "Oh. So this is really happening. Okay." It was strange at first to be saying the word 'okay' and actually meant it, but it was liberating at the same time. I was finally honest with myself. I'm not okay! I'm scared! I'm readily admitting that I, am scared! Shitless, for that matter!

-

So if there's anything this pandemic (or Coronavirus for that matter) has taught me, is to not dismiss my own feelings. To address fear. To be able to admit that I am not okay, to actually face my fears and drown myself in toxic positivity.

I guess I ought to thank Coronavirus for that. Funny how I have to go through a fucking global pandemic just to be honest with myself.

What I've been up to lately:

1. Had a real step up in my current relationship, but as for now it's something I'd like to completely forgot ever happened. Some nasty, real nasty, snot-on-the-pillow head-pounding shit that was.
2. Recovered a day after that, lost my appetite almost completely. Managed to eat a bowl of noodles.

3. Online classes. Assignments. Bailing out of online classes. Not doing assignments.
4. Rewatching a Korean drama - Descendants of The Sun (2016) and I plan to rewatch another favorite of mine later, Reply 1988. These two are among the very few Korean dramas I actually managed to finish.
5. Don't forget to wash your hands and be merry! Actually no, you don't need to be merry in order to be happy or be acceptably happy (is there even such a term?), at times like this you just need to be able to survive. I wouldn't know about survival per se as I'm still living under my parents' roof and mooching off of them, but do your part and when you're as privileged as I am, you know what to do. Stay at home.

If I were to attend or be invited to a Halloween party some time in the future...

...I would totally wear either one of these looks. I can never get over the 2007 Christian Dior Couture Collection show because it was THAT crazy. As for (haute) Comme des Garcons, they make amazing toilet papers.

Quarantine Diary #1

Quarantine day-xx

I stopped keeping count of quarantine ages ago. Some of things I initially picked up to relieve some the boredom are now long forgotten - now I can't remember half of the title of the books I started reading (and rereading). Norwegian Wood was one of them, but I'm stuck at Chapter 7 and have no idea when I can go again because I really can't deal with other people's emotions right now, let alone fictional characters', at the moment. I also spend an abundant of my time staring out of the window. Also, most of my clothes' status are now reduced to rags since my goal at the moment is just to keep myself properly clothed.

A Useless Guide To Petak Sembilan

Long long ago, when the world was as normal as it could be, my friends and I took a little trip to Petak Sembilan, the Chinatown of Jakarta. 

All of us live pretty far away from Petak Sembilan and are not at all familiar with the area, so we did a little research on how to get there, and ended up getting directions from this nice man who asked for a picture. Which was proven pretty useless since we're bad at taking (and remembering) directions anyway. Eventually we got to Petak Sembilan but it was a bit different that what we imagined. We did manage to find the famous Kopi Es Tak Kie though. 

It got hot real quick and we ended up going to PIK that day. There wasn't much to do at PIK, so we booked a Grabcar to Bintaro and had dinner at Taman Jajan Bintaro.

Happy friend after his happy dinner at Taman Jajan Bintaro!

The Strange Library

A few crappy pictures I took the first time I experimented with 35mm photography. I like to pass these off as 'aesthetically mediocre', a part of my very own strange library (no offense, Murakami). Taken with a Yashica T2 and Kodak Colorplus 200.

Comfort Movie: The Goonies (1985)

Is in the middle of doing an assignment but I got bored and decided to write about a favorite movie of mine... The Goonies.

Nothing particularly special about The Goonies, it's not even the kind of movie I'd actually take a great liking to, but I like it, like actually love it? A bittersweet reminder of good old childhood days, I don't know but I always have a soft spot for the soft edges of an eighties American movie, no matter how ridiculous.

And yes he's (was?) also Will Byers' dorky, lovable almost-stepdad but I used to have the biggest crush on Mikey Walsh, aka the poster boy of Good American Movie Boy.

Picture credit goes to Google.

Just a heads up.

1. Stop putting others down in order to feel good about yourself.
2. Just because you think something's not good doesn't mean it's not good. (I sound so local but well, I am)
3. You don't date someone out of loneliness.
4. Stop blaming pseudoscience.
5. For the love of God, BE NICE.

Because I've seen too many horrible, unmentionable, unthinkable things for the past few days. Don't forget to wash your hands and be merry!

Heltered and Skeltered

(Not a Charles Manson fan, no. Actually it's Helter Skelter as in the Helter Skelter Beatles song, but not much of a fan of the song either... too scream-y and I remember having quite severe nightmares the first time I heard it)

It's 08.24 in the morning as I'm writing (typing, some righteous minds would say) this in my bedroom, ready for a day of nothing since it's day-xx of C word quarantine. This is not my first time writing in a blog, some time ago I had a pretty good one going but I fussed too much about the layout and all that stuff, and as fun as it is to deal with HTML and CSS, eventually it got too stressful that I decided that I've had enough and ended the whole thing in one click.

Anyways I came back because I miss writing in a blog, it used to be fun - greeting my nonexistent readers and talking to no one in particular. It's still fun actually, I think the one thing that stops something from being fun is when you get too technical about it (which is exactly what happened to my old blog). I'm not sure what I'll write and post here, I used to post pictures and writings so short they're actually mere captions (this guy once said it didn't qualify as a blog, it's only like a slightly more complicated version of Instagram) but since I can't exactly take pictures right now, it's pretty much going to stay barren for quite a long time I guess? But who knows, maybe I'll write about, well, stuff. We'll see.

Tune in for world domination plans. Don't forget to wash your hands and be merry!