Volume 01 Issue 10 part 1
October 26-31, 2020
It’s a busy season at work, and busy at home too, splitting babysitting duties. That hasn’t left me with much time to decompress; once again, there was little hairwashing/healthy eating/exercising to be had. I’m not beating myself up for it though; it is what it is, and the most I can do is just… try my best. Right now, this is my best.
I did come across something on Instagram, shared by @bumblebizz: “Start focusing on the little moments throughout the day. Your morning coffee. A funny Slack from a coworker. Crossing something off your to-do-list. Getting a random burst of energy. A walk around the neighborhood. The feeling of closing your laptop after a long day.”
In a way, that’s what this newsletter is for. A way to keep the little things from slipping through my fingers, trying to stop them from being lost to pandemic blur inside my head.
As I write this, we’re bracing for the impact of the biggest typhoon of the year. Crossing my fingers and toes that people are taking it seriously and evacuating to higher ground, that the storm weakens, that the damage isn’t too bad. I really don’t have the emotional bandwidth to hear about how “resilient” Filipinos are, when the reality is, we’re suffering from poor leadership that isn’t doing enough to prevent the shitty situation in the first place.
Shop Small, Love Local
A recent purchase that’s brought so much joy is personalized Oppa notecards from Pepa Prints. I got a set for myself and a second set for Aia as a graduation gift because she introduced me to Park Seo Joon (our Kdrama oppa) early this year. As Lara Jean Song Covey girls, we treasure gift-giving and letter-writing, and so have been sending gifts to our friends with PSJ’s face on our love notes the past few months. Now we’re on the BTS ARMY journey together, hand in hand, and it’s been the most fun. Aia is my same person and we go back and forth influencing each other. She just launched her own newsletter last week! It’s prettier than mine for sure, because she’s a designer. She had me from the very first issue with the You’ve Got Mail x Waitress crossover. Check it out and subscribe.
Currently…
Drinking a lot of tea because I impulse-bought a Grosche teapot from my friend Ralph. It’s so well-designed! I also rediscovered a brand of tea I used to keep at my office desk about seven years ago (Clipper - Snore and Peace). <3 Ralph still has a few teapots on-hand; you can reach out to him if you’re interested.
Feeling sustained by a few interactions I’ve had with good friends this week: Timmy sending me Rodic’s tapsilog as ayuda after I whined to her that they don’t deliver to my area; talking to Jus through my window while she was on her balcony, just like we used to when we were kids; and a 2-hour-long impromptu telebabad session with Jota Pe. I miss hanging out with my friends so much.
Reading “Somewhere Only We Know” by Maurene Goo. Roman Holiday but she’s a K-pop idol at the peak of her career, and he’s a budding paparazzo. I stayed up until 5:00 a.m. reading it because I wanted to get to the happy ending. Adored it!
Realizing it’s November tomorrow and I have yet to update my holiday movies tracker!!! Yes, I am that girl. Have you watched any of the new holiday movies yet? Let me know what you think of the ones you’ve seen. Historically, I have a high tolerance for bad/corny/cheesy holiday movies as long as they have happy endings, so it’s a matter of “Which one will I watch first?” (I used to call these “Hallmark Christmas movies” but all the networks are making them now, and I’m trying to be more inclusive in everything I do and say, so now they are holiday movies.)
Longreads
Like Dionysus —Yung In Chae, Eidolon.
This starts off about BTS but is about so much more than that. It’s an essay about art, K-pop, Western narcissism and imperialism, and the author’s own history as a Korean-American and the struggles that come with assimilation. It’s so rich and compelling. If you read just one link from this week, make it this one, I’m begging you. I think you’ll find value in it even if you don’t care for BTS at all.
A room, a bar, and a classroom: how the coronavirus is spread through the air — Mariano Zafra and Javier Salas, El País.
El País has been excellent with these graphics. Super clear and easy to understand. “During the simulations, the subjects maintain the recommended safe distance, eliminating the risk of transmission via droplets. But they can still become infected if all possible preventive measures are not simultaneously applied: correct ventilation, shortening the encounters, reducing the number of participants and wearing face masks.”
Holidays Must Look Different This Year. Lives Are at Stake. — The Editorial Board, The New York Times.
"Low risk is not the same as no risk, and when it comes to the coronavirus, all risk is ultimately shared. The danger is not individual — it’s collective. The decisions you make are not only about whether you might infect your own grandmother, they’re about whether your family gathering will seed an outbreak that could ultimately infect someone else’s grandmother."
How I Learned to Find Joy During Times of Grief — Marisa Renee Lee, Vogue.
"The ability to experience joy during difficult times requires a degree of intentionality. You don’t just wake up feeling full of joy when it feels like the world is falling apart (or at least I know I don’t). Instead you have to make a plan to celebrate and enjoy the things that you love. The things that will sustain you."
How not to feel like crap right now — Anne Helen Petersen, Culture Study.
“Like a lot of people, I've spent the last three months swinging wildly back and forth between fury and despair, fear and despondency. There are so many things out of my control, that I don't have power over — or the skillset to change. But volunteering for someone else has helped take me out of my own head. I can't control the whole world or fix most of its problems, but I can do my part to make the lives of others around me better. Doing something, especially with my hands (ie community gardening, paper sorting, typing) has helped to curb my raging thoughts and concerns, at least for the time that I'm performing those tasks.”
D.C. woman, 90, watches gym classes from her window all day. When the gym found out, they painted her a mural. — Sydney Page, The Washington Post.
I cried reading this. “You think you’re doing something for yourself, but it’s really a thread of life that’s being extended to someone else.”
Hi. — Chrissy Teigen on Medium.
[TW: pregnancy loss] “I cannot express how little I care that you hate the photos. How little I care that it’s something you wouldn’t have done. I lived it, I chose to do it, and more than anything, these photos aren’t for anyone but the people who have lived this or are curious enough to wonder what something like this is like. These photos are only for the people who need them. The thoughts of others do not matter to me.”
Desperate voters book last-minute flights to the polls: ‘Five hours of flying is more than worth it’ — Teo Armus, The Washington Post.
My election anxiety is skyrocketing. This was comforting, at least a little bit, at least for a moment.
John Steinbeck on Falling in Love: A 1958 Letter — Maria Popova, The Atlantic.
This always crosses my path right when I need it: “Don’t worry about losing. If it is right, it happens — The main thing is not to hurry. Nothing good gets away.”
Feel free to share this newsletter, it’s open to the public. I always get excited any time people engage with me about things that I post, so please don’t hesitate to share your thoughts. Unless it’s mean or mansplainy: in that case, no thank you. <3 If this is your first time reading this, you can subscribe via the button below and then the next issues will land in your inbox.
Yours from afar,
Pinky