I tried out black-and-white-ing the photos, but didn’t really like them, but I got too lazy to change them back to the original colors. Some of them are okay, though, I think.

Watching The Radio Dept. is a little bit like sitting in your room, quietly listening to the songs, but after a quick second, you find yourself looking up into the lights, drowning in the massive thump-thumping of the bass and the voices of all those people who know the words to the songs more than you do. I don’t like going to shows of bands that I’m not very familiar with (which is partly why I skipped out on the Whitest Boy Alive), but I can sort of see now how it’s OK to be in a show where you can’t sing along. You just let the music waft through the spaces between you and the other people. And you take it for what it is, and let it move you.

Continue reading The Radio Dept. in Manila….

As promised, a film photo dump from the farm trip from Sunday. I still have a few shots on an as-of-yet unfinished LC-A+ roll, but I couldn’t wait to post these! The first semi-successful roll from my Sprocket Rocket (the first one yielded only 2 exposures), so I’m pretty glad. Used an expired film roll from Sarie—Kodak GC, 400 ASA. Colors are not too vibrant, but I’m just happy they turned out.

I also have some stragglers from an old LC-A+ roll, Kodak Gold, 200 ASA. They made the farm look extra spooky.

Click the cut for the rest. Can’t wait to try this out when I go traveling. Some of my favorite travel photos were the ones I took with my old Supersampler! I have to use nicer film, though. I think. I’ve been using Lomography and Kodak films… Any suggestions re: the best you’ve tried? :)

Continue reading LOMO DUMP: Herbana Farms….

Last Sunday was spent on some organic farmlands with Sarie and her (ex-)officemate, Jason, who’d taken up farming recently. She was shooting a film for it and I tagged along. I’d been interested in it ever since partially reading Jonathan Safran Foer’s “Eating Animals.” I learned about organic produce and community-based farming, and had been interested in it, but never really saw it in practice. Also, I was sort of in the mood for an adventure detached from the city.

The pretty photos are by Sarie. I took some with my iPhone, but I brought some film cameras, so I’m still waiting on them to be developed. Hopefully, they don’t take too long/that they actually show up. I don’t know if you know, but I’m kind of a bad estimator, so they will probably be crappy.

We ate carrots directly from the ground. Don’t be fooled by my face.
It was a lovely carrot. Might be the sweetest I’ve had.



Jason!



Sarie!



We met a guy who started an non-profit about farming called A Growing Culture. His name is Loren.
He’s been backpacking around the world for the last four months, taking pictures and exploring farms.
It’s super cool; they have essays on different farms and farming techniques from all over the world.

The farm’s pretty cool. When we got there, Gil Carandang, who owns and manages Herbana Farms, was giving a seminar to people who were interested in growing their own food. I’m not really well-versed in food technology, or you know, food in general. I just like to eat it. It’s nice to get to know the processes and the work that goes into making the food that you eventually ingest so that you can continue to exist.

It’s strange how controversial food has become (I have more to say about this, but perhaps another day, when I’ve finished reading “Eating Animals,” or when I have been more enlightened, as I’m now pretty much a n00b at it). I would love to learn how to grow my own food, though. I guess there’s something strangely thrilling and fulfilling about actually growing something that you eat.

During the interview that Sarie and Jason were filming, Gil was saying that when you give to the earth, it gives back. There’s something so noble and rousing in that statement. I think that because food is generally readily available to us (in the sense that we don’t have to grow it ourselves), we tend to forget where it comes from. That thought alone really makes me want to grow my own food, for some reason I can’t articulate.

Herbana Farms has a community garden where you can lease a 10-sq. meter long plot of land that you can plant food in. Since it’s pretty tedious to drive back and forth everyday, they take care of your plot while you’re away. You can just come by when you want to harvest your food. I’ve been toying with the idea of getting my own plot, since I have always intended to eat healthier and be more smart about buying food. It’s just so hard to do it in the Philippines.

Going to Herbana Farms, though, I saw that it could be done. It’s maybe a little more inconvenient than just going to the market to buy your produce. But I think it’s worth the extra mile to be conscious about the way we eat.

The rest of the pictures (my crappy ones) are under the cut. I’ll post the film photos in a separate entry, just because.

If anyone is interested, most information regarding Herbana Farms can be found on their website. If you want to get in touch with them, or some directions to the farm, click here.

P.S. The title of this blog post is from the shirt Gil was wearing. I’m sorry I am such a thief.

Continue reading Don’t Panic, It’s Organic….

Dear Internet:

For STATUS Magazine‘s April 2011 issue, I wrote about one of my most favorite artists, Mariano Ching. He also happens to be one of the nicest people I sort-of know. I wish I could’ve done the interview face-to-face (also did a feature on him for MEGA’s September 2010 issue), but what can you do?

Anyway, if you are interested in reading~ the feature (he talks about what he listens to, among other things), you can get copies of STATUS all over the country. The cover of this particular issue is the Far East Movement, which is a group of people that I did not know at all… but now I know because I bought the magazine.

Heh.

Love,
Carina

And because I champion! at sharing things people rarely care about, here is a post about such. Currently juggling a few things and it’s taken its toll on me today (as it seems that today has been designated The Deadline For Everything) so I am going to show you the messy state of my room, which is gross and yucky. Funnily enough, I can’t really work well if my workspace turns out to be a certain kind of messy (i.e. this kind), but sometimes, you gotta hustle.

Yucky desk! I wish I could explain just how I move around the garbage on my desk. Alas, I also do not know.

Crap on my bed, AKA things on my desk and chair that I had to clear away so I could work.
Fortunately, my sister is away so I can sleep around these things. For now.

Crap on the floor. I have been making collages. It’s been enjoyable.

Ta-da! The End. All photos were taken by my iPhone 4, which I still love to frakking death.

So many things have been happening lately, I don’t even know where to start. (The beginning should be a logical start, yeah, but where do things begin?)

For the past few months that I’ve been unemployed, I’ve been working on design odd jobs here and there, but I was also in the middle of making this portfolio. I finally had to hustle and finish making it by yesterday afternoon, because I had to send it to a publishing house in San Francisco. It’s been a sort-of secret (I’ve only told a few friends… and a few acquaintances when I run out of Small Talk Topics), but I’m trying to apply for a publishing design fellowship.

I almost actually chickened out and bailed on it, because it was so hard to concentrate on finishing the portfolio. Also, because of the compounding paranoia creeping up on me, as it is wont to do. I’m probably not good enough for this, I would think. Why would they pick me? I think that’s also why it took me so long to finish it on time. If I didn’t finish it, I would have nothing to send, and I wouldn’t have opened up this whole range of possibilities for rejection.

A lot of things helped me through it. Friends coached me on particularly hard days. Other friends cheered me up on particularly hopeless/helpless ones. Other friends’ successes motivated me to pursue my own. A lot of books, snippets, essays and words of wisdom really helped me out, but when my time was running out and I felt like I was losing this fight, I was in the middle of Norton Juster’s “The Phantom Tollbooth.” I end this post with a few quotes from the book:

• “‘You see,’ he went on, ‘it’s very much like your trying to reach Infinity. You know it’s there, but you just don’t know where—but just because you can never reach it doesn’t mean it’s not worth looking for.”
• “So many things are possible just as long as you don’t know they are impossible.”
• “It’s learning what to do with what you learn and learning why you learn things at all that matter.”
• “But you had the courage to try; and what you can do is often simply a matter of what you will do.”

I haven’t a lot more to add. I just hope that those excerpts help out someone who’s going through similar situations. I’ve been thinking about this, and right after I dropped the package of at FedEx, my mind went crazy. What if I don’t get it? But then I thought—what if I do? I’m not going to lie and say that I won’t be devastated if I don’t get picked, because I truly will be. This is something that I’ve been wanting for a while… but I feel really good that I did at least try.

And now, I’m going to wait and hope for the best.

Not a lot of people know this, but I used to be a massive Candy girl. Candy magazine was the first magazine I subscribed to, and I would just amass the copies and read through everything obsessively. I would read it from cover to cover, pick out the clothes I liked (LOL) and was pretty active on their message board. Funny story: I unknowingly gushed about Haley Joel Osment on it with my best friend, Isa, who totally knew it was me. (I didn’t know it was her.) I think our friendship might have been written in the stars?

I’ve since grown out of Candy. Mostly because my interests have morphed into other things, and I guess I also just grew up. But I do still check their website from time to time and occasionally write for them. (Incidentally, all these web features are about Harry Potter.)

This is a late post, since all the new issues are out on the stands right now, but I suppose it’s still worth mentioning. I got a small feature on the March cover for this blog (I realize that’s kind of weird and self-referential to post about it, but well—)! The April issue has BBV on it, but if you still wanna read the tiny blurb on Nothing Spaces, try looking for the March issue with Taylor Swift on it:

It was kind of strange (in a pleasant way!) to be leafing through the issue again, because I couldn’t really relate all that much anymore, but a tiny part of me was feeling a familiar kind of comfort. And, you know, I actually was able to learn a few new things because of really practical tips. Who knew! It’s also kind of funny when I read about boy-related things and thinking about how I used to be so into these things.

Candy was such a big part of my life. I always wanted to have something I sent in posted on Anything Goes! I think I might have been part of it once, and it thrilled me so much. It was such a big deal when my friends’ letters would get published, and when I won a contest~ for e-mailing in a blurb about my life hero, it felt like such a high high. I would read the embarrassing stories with my sister and we’d vote on the worst ones. I would also always attempt to do the Candy wink… to no success. I’m pretty glad digital cameras were a rarity back then.

The variety of people who alerted me to the news was pretty funny and surprising. I knew I was going to be featured (the editor of Candymag.com, Macy, asked me for a photo), but I didn’t expect these strange variety of people to be the ones to tell me about it. People I knew from high school, college, church, and the Internet told me, and I guess I was surprised that Candy was still a part of the lives of so many people I knew.

I think that no matter what happens, I can’t ever deny my Candy roots. I’ve changed a lot since my obsessive Candy-reading days, and I’ll probably change again, but I think that Candy will always have a tiny pocket in my heart.