An Old Love Rekindled

So if you haven’t heard, I got accepted to a UCLA Asian American theatre company called Lapu, The Coyote that Cares, or LCC. It took me 3 tries over 4 years, but I finally got in. The funny thing is that the good news of my acceptance almost completely passed me by.

I had auditioned Week 9 of Fall Quarter and the staff had emailed the results the next week. I found out some friends who auditioned got some rejection emails, so having received two such emails before, I checked my mailbox regularly that week, waiting for the bad news to come in. But strangely enough, the rejection email never came. In fact, nothing came. Hmmmm… OK, well I guess it’s safe to assume the worst. So I decided to continue to work on my projects on my own, hoping to find another venue to showcase my work.

Winter Break came and I jetted to New York with my posse. Jeff, who got in to LCC a few years ago, checked his email one day and he turned to me:

“Hey, congrats on getting into LCC!”

“What?”

“Yeah, you’re in!”

“Huh?”

“Yeah, you’re name’s right here.”

“Arg?”

Apparently, my email was misread, and the acceptance email got sent to the wrong address (the person at rundnob@gmail.com must be really confused right now). So that’s how I found out I got in.

When I got the news, I had this really weird, anti-climactic feeling. I mean, I was glad I got in, but emotionally, I had already accepted my rejection. Having been rejected often during my first and second years, I had learned to just move on. If X didn’t want me, I’d just take my talents elsewhere, and show X what they were missing. But now that it’s official that my talents have landed in LCC, a new question came up: do I have the stuff to belong there?

Over the past two weeks of meetings I’ve had nothing but support from everyone, especially my entering class, Generation 10 (G10!). But while the acting thing still has a certain familiarity, the stuff we do in LCC is in many ways completely new to me. The LCC staple is the 10-15 minute short scene. That means that all the introduction, conflict, resolution, and character development all happen within that short timeframe. Your character has to immediately capture the audience and take them on a journey from A to B. Being used to full, two-hour shows, I feel like a marathoner getting thrown into a sprint.

The other tough thing about LCC is improv. Improv is like performance survival, with only your wits and your fellow actors to save you. Good improv requires spontaneity, quick wit, and fearlessness, which are three things I am incredibly lacking.

For better or worse, I’m a very calculating person. When I walk to class, I think about the fastest and most efficient way to get there. When I buy video games, I don’t aim to be the first person to get the hottest release; I wait for the reviews and six months for the price to drop. When I perform, I know exactly who I am, what I need to do, my phrasing, my inflection, my quirks, and everything else I need to push the story and my character. (It’s probably the reason why I am so attracted to villains and evil-doers; they’re so deliciously calculating!) Improv doesn’t afford you such thoughtful luxury. Improv induces the fear in me, and when you perform in fear, it feels like you just wet your pants in front of the whole class.

But being forced outside my bubble of comfort has already furthered my appreciation for the theatre. In just these two short weeks with LCC, I’ve come to realize that performance is an act of love, and that the ideal performance is an act of unconditional love. It requires a love of the material, and that within its pages is something that the world should hear. It requires a love for your fellow performers and an unwavering faith in their abilities to be great. It requires a love for your character, and all of the quirks, faults, and vices that you must embody. And it requires a love for yourself, and a belief that you are worthy to be heard and seen by the entire world.

(And just to note, it has taken me two hours of thinking, typing, meandering, and editing to make me believe that this stuff is worthy to be read by the entire world.)

So with all the life lessons learned (so far), here’s to an old love rekindled. Let the fire burn.

I Need Some Advice

Which poses do you like best for my graduation picture(s)?

And The Answer Is...

It's James!

New York City: Random Picture #4

Can you guess who this is?

New York City: The Finale

Before I go on, I would first like to give thanks to my sister Michelle, who generously donated her old 1.3 Mpixel digital camera to let me document my journeys through the City That Never Sleeps. I can only wonder how my life would be different had my Kodak CX7430 worked correctly for the last 6 months.

Also, all my New York pictures will be uploaded to my album here.

So the last day was pretty chill for me. I stayed up late putting together that pictorial which meant that I got up late, around noon or so, which made me the last person inside the apartment. Everyone else was out. James and Maricar went to work at their schools. Marlowe (who I've neglected to mention is also living in the apartment, but is always at work so I never see him) was at work, naturally. Chuck was in Times Square and eventually made it onto TRL. Jackie was in Connecticut visiting her roommate. Richard was with family. And the rest... who knows ::shrug::.

I had no idea how to lock up the place, so I felt the necessity to stay until someone came back to watch the place. I didn't mind; I'm a naturally chill guy and I need those times to recharge. Add the light sprinkle outside, and staying dry in the apartment didn't sound like a bad idea. So I spent most of the time playing some darts, listening to my autographed BKLYN soundtrack, and reading up on people's beautiful comments, and wrote some responses of my own, including that last entry.

When Maricar returned from school at around 4 PM, I decided to venture out on my own. But the first struggle... finding an ATM machine. I had a total of $0 in my wallet, even though these past few days I've been budgeting like crazy because I had a $1500 rent check that was about to be cashed, and I had about $1600 with two days left on the trip. And although I had plenty of credit on my credit cards, a lot of the cheaper places only took cash. Combined with the lack of Washington Mutuals on Manhattan (Bank of America and CitiBank are the big national banks here, with a few strong regional banks), I went on a wild goose chase for an ATM. It must have taken me an hour to find one, because when I tried to meet up with friends for a final dinner in Greenwich Village, they were already gone. I was bummed, so I was in the mood for a drink. Unfortunately, I had missed happy hour by ten minutes. Sigh.

So instead of meeting up with my crew, I took to the subway again and wandered around City Hall taking some final pictures. Got back to the apartment, with everyone scrambling to get their stuff together for the taxi that would pick us up at 6 AM. Due to my affinity to West Coast timezones, I figured that sleep would not be a good idea, so I stayed up the entire night. Remembering the disgustingly astronomical prices at the airport, I thought I would take one last food run so I wouldn't have to buy anything at the airport. That's when the final adventure began.

Just some points of note: Maricar and James's apartment are on 100th St. The subway station closest to them is 96th St. And by this time, it's about 12:30 in the morning.

So anyway, I decide to venture out to find food, but since nothing local was open I took the subway to 86th St. to find some shops there. Find some late night pizza and donut places open, so I invest $6 or so in food there. When I'm done, I go back to the train station waiting for the local uptown train (Note: For those unfamiliar with New York, downtown trains go south going to decreasing streets, and uptown trains go north to increasing streets), I see workers on the track. They tell all the people there that all the uptown trains will be on the express track (Another note: There are two types of subway trains: the local and the express. Local trains stop at every stop on their path. Express trains skip every few stations). So I go down to the express track and wait...

...and wait...

...and wait some more.

By this time I've rumblings above me several times, indicating that the downtown local trains have already stopped twice. My logic and impatience told me that since local trains appear more often, it might be faster to go further downtown and find a local uptown track that was open (forget that all the uptown local tracks are linked). So I tried that and traveled to 77th Street.

As I leave the station to re-enter the station on the uptown side, I see that the uptown entrances are COMPLETELY blocked. That's kinda when I realized that ALL local uptown trains would be closed. Crap. My only chance now was to go downtown to a station where express trains stopped, take the express train to 125th St., and THEN take the local downtown train to 96th. Realizing that my arrival at the apartment would take longer than expected, I called Chuck to let him know I would be late. Sadly, when I called, he assumed that I was already downstairs and just needed to open the door, so HE HUNG UP!!!! And I couldn't miss the next train, so I raced down to the track, where I had no reception. Hmmm... wonder what Chuck'll be thinking when he doesn't see me down there....

So I went back into the station, took the train down to 59th Street, took the uptown express to 125th, and took the downtown local. After finally feeling that I had found my way back, I began to relax. "Next stop, 103rd Street." I could have gotten off there, but I was more familiar with 96th. To the pass the time, I had taken to playing chess on my cell phone. Do you know where this is going? Let me put this into equation form: fatigue + Chess = "Next stop, 86th Street."

WHAT?!? As I got up attempting to rush out of the car, it had closed. I stayed silent, but as I stood at the door watching the 96th Street station pass by, I remained silent, but internally there was another sign that New York was growing on me: I picked up the New Yorker affinity for four-letter words.

By the time I successfully landed on 96th Street, it was 3:30 AM, and way more stressed out that I desired, and only marginally less hungry than when I began the trip. I went back to the apartment, called up Chuck, he let me in, and thus ended my last foray into NYC.

The taxi van came right on schedule, and the remaining eight of us left quietly into the early morning, leaving Marlowe, Maricar, and James sleeping quietly in their beds, as we started our journey back to our lives out west.

New York City: Random Picture #3

Reflections in a Subway Car

New York City Intermission: A Case for Samahang

An old high school friend recently commented on my journal asking if I had any white friends. While there are a few here and there, most are just acquaintances that I don't really hang out with. As I got more in depth with my response, it became a whole article, so I felt that I should post my response to everyone, and hopefully it will give you some insight on my transformation in the four years I've spent at UCLA.

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Now that I think about it, it's interesting, because I totally didn't come into UCLA thinking that I'd have mostly Pilipino friends, especially with the circle that I had at St. Joe's. But a combination of being away from family, being denied by all the performance groups I tried out for, and landing in a conservative, isolating dorm environment, I ended up doing stuff with Samahang. Things clicked from there and four years later, I'm here as President.

There were two things about Samahang that really spoke to me. Number one, Samahang wasn't just a club, but an organization that worked for social change. It had a high school outreach project, a peer counseling project to make sure students graduate, cultural education, and provided dialogue and critique of things going on in campus and around the world. It wasn't like St. Joe's Filipino Club, where people just show up for the yearbook picture, raise money for Great America, and do a weak-sauce Tinikling for World Fest. It actually questioned what it meant to be Pilipino and its effects, so being Pilipino meant something much deeper beyond the food and inside cultural jokes.

Number two, when I hung around the Pilipinos in Samahang, I found them to be incredibly diverse. Most of the Pilipinos at St. Joe's, although really nice people, I didn't really click with. They felt like the "cool" kids, the type to sport Tommy Hilfiger, drive rice rockets, hang out at basketball games, and run for ASB. I didn't fit that mold. But when I came to Samahang, it didn't feel like I needed to fit any mold because there were so many of them. Yeah, you had the rice rocket drivers, but I also met people who were into raving, punk, design majors who enjoyed trips to the museum, sports fanatics, video gamers, and a whole plethora of different interests. I'm not gonna lie and say that there weren't cliques, there are, and you could say the folks I'm with on this trip represent one of the strongest cliques in Samahang. But while the cliques existed, if you were patient and spent some time meeting the folks in Samahang, you were bound to find someone you could hang out with. Even the folks who initially detest Samahang end up finding each other, and often times find themselves in Samahang leadership trying to change things.

Befriending too many Pilipinos to count over the last four years, I've become very conscious of race and how it affects us. On one level, it means absolutely nothing. Race does not describe your preferences in music, movies, gender, politics, religion, historical awareness, or anything else. Race is an arbitrary category, an imagined social construction. Yet, despite being imagined, race has a very real impact on our lives. When a White supremacist guns down a Pilipino mailcarrier because he's "not white", that's real. When a young Black man turns on the TV and only sees images of Black men as criminals or athletes and not educated professionals, that's real. When a White woman gets second looks for being with a Latino man, that's real. Like gender or sexuality, race is something that affects us every day, so much that we often take it for granted. Does race mean everything? No. Does race mean nothing? No. It's somewhere in between, and I think being around a lot of Pilipinos helped me examine that middle ground in two ways: 1) Because we were of the same race, our interactions took race of out the equation, highlighting other aspects of our persona, and 2) my interactions with Pilipinos helped contrast my interactions with non-Pilipinos. I then got a better idea of my own racial biases and how they impact my behavior.

This issue of finding different circles between high school and college has been on my mind for some time, and finding the discussion to bridge that gap had been a challenge until now. The company you keep speaks novels about who you are, and hopefully this chapter helps you get a better idea of the story of my life.

New York City: Day 6 (An Essay with Pictures)

Upon my waking up on the 2nd day of the New Year, I was greeted by the latest player in our story:

Maricar
She had just arrived this morning after spending some quality time with her loved ones in California.  Maricar and James are both doing Teach for America and are on their first year of their two year commitment to teach elementary school in New York.  With our cast now complete, we set off to Queens to an Indian buffet for brunch:


While tasty, the food left some of us with that not-so-nice-feeling inside:


When we were finished, we wished Jeff a safe flight back to California, who needed to get back to work Monday morning.  Chuck and Jackie weren't feeling so hot after brunch, so they returned to the apartment to recharge while Maricar and James took us around Queens to find "Pilipinotown".  It was more like "Pilipinoblock", but nevertheless, it was good to see familiar faces and hear familiar languages.  We returned to the subway station, waiting for our train to arrive:


With some of us paying more attention than others:


It was cool to see the folks I had come to know and love for the past four years be reunited again:


We also caught a glimpse of some exquisite graff art as we sped by:




We rode the subway to the end of the line in Times Square:


Habits of old resurfaced, like nipple-rubbing:


James and John were especially absorbed in the New York environment, greeting me with New York's official salute:


We toured the Museum of Arts and Design for a few hours, after which, with the sun going down, and our wallets running empty, we decided that staying in Times Square would not be the smartest financial decision, so we took our pocketbooks to Greenwich Village for dinner.  It took us a while to get there however, getting distracted by the many stores in Times Square, including the NBA store, Barnes and Noble, and the Pokemon Center.When we finally reached Greenwich Village, we wandered around, finally settling on a place called John's Pizzeria on Bleecker St. opposite Jones St.  We waited in line as old friends reminisced:



Richard attempted to tell a joke:



And Jonathan did his best Neo impersonation:


"Remember, you are in the Matrix."
As we were seated for dinner, Richard left to have dinner with relatives, and Chuck rejoined us, feeling better since brunch (while Jackie rested at the apartment with a fever =( ).  We had some pizza, and after James and Maricar left to prepare their lessons for their classes tomorrow morning, the reat of us treated ourselves to some amazing dessert, which included gelato, canoli, and peanut butter tarts (Hands down, New York has the absolute best food around).  We returned to the apartment where we bore gifts to our gracious hosts (a toaster, a George Foreman grill, and two science kits) and Lara treated us to some cute Lego keychains (I got R2-D2).  And as I stay up finishing this account and the rest of the apartment sleeps, I meditate upon this past week, which seemed to breeze by like a subway express car, and wonder what will transpire in the last few hours of a trip I will never forget.

New York City: Random Picture #2

A Naked Cowboy

New York City: Happy F***in' New Year

So my first New Year's Celebration in New York was pretty awesome. Saw Chicago (pretty disappointing), had dinner at a Brazilian Grill, and wandered the bars drinking Cider and being merry. Ended up in the Asian bar called Apple when midnight struck, hanging out with the LA crew and a couple of Jeff's friends.

The first day of 2005 was pretty low key. Just walked around with Jeff around Central Park and saw BKLYN, which was really impressive. Honestly, I've never been to a professional musical performance that has truly impressed me, but this one did. It's only been playing since October, but I'm pretty sure you'll be hearing about this musical real soon.

Oh, and enter a new player into our play. Enter James, one of our New York immigrants:



Soon, one player will be leaving, and another will join us soon.