Weekly Ketchup 19 - Do I lack ambition?

Compared to last week's grand geekstravaganza, this past week had been rather quiet, except for one Quiz Night and a couple of birthday celebrations.

Cap'n Karen celebrated her birthday at this month's Amici Quiz Night
(Photo c/o Ramon Sunico)

And once again at a party at her place last Saturday.
(Photo c/o Lynn Montejo)

My college friend Nicolai celebrated her big 3-0 at the Bowery, the Fort
(Photo c/o Andrea Roque)

Although in my case, "quiet" really hardly ever is. Neither is "alone" for that matter. I find that in those moments of solitude, which lasts from minutes to hours, that's when the voices in my head start reaching out to me.

And don't deny it - you have them too. Whether you're a geeky or creative type or both, you know they're there. Even the most pristinely ungifted among muggles have them.

Now, I don't know about you but I welcome these personas in my mind. They give me ideas. Sometimes, they offer realizations, some of which I've already shared on this blog. Most of the time, they just give me somebody to talk to.

Yes, I talk to myself. Get over it.

But sometimes, as was the case this week, they just make me question myself.

This week's final jeopardy round question was: Do I lack ambition?

Funny thing is, when one voice asks such identity-defining question, another would usually chime in with an answer. And I would have an instant fodder for a blog subject - like so. Resolutions FTW!

This time, though, I found myself grasping at straws.

I found myself thinking back to about four years ago when I was looking for a job and I kept fumbling for answers whenever my potential employers ask the question: "Where do you see yourself five years from now?"

I just imagined that if I were to face that question today, I still wouldn't know the answer. To recap, that's almost ten years in total - and that's not even counting the other times I was asked that question earlier in my career. Within that same time frame, most folks (my brother included) would want to have had a successful career or business, a family, a house, etc.

Maybe because I'm mentally stuck at 17, or maybe because I live for the moment, or maybe because I didn't experience the normal life cycle of a human being in today's structured society, but such ambitions have never once figured into any of my grand plans.

Yes, I do have them. A few years ago, I realized that what I want to do with the rest of my life is learn. There is still so much of this world I want to find the time to get into - like art and music. Does that constitute an ambition?

I'd like to think I've already set life goals - one of which to sail around the Mediterranean. Is that ambitious? What about what comes after or before?

I've always said that ultimately what I want to achieve with my life is to publish a book. Or just put out a story in one form or another. But here's thing: Whether I have a readership of one or one million, I'd be happy with just having put my work out there. That hardly counts as ambitious, does it? (And also: With the advent of ebooks, anybody can publish anything).

Right now, my career trajectory seems to be headed towards advertising, media, and production. If I could just write copy, produce ads, do the occasional photography or videography - for the rest of my life, I would be happy. I'm not in a hurry to head my own company or even my own team. Can being static be considered ambitious?

Don't get me wrong: I know my strengths. I know the extent of my own talents and my willingness to learn a new skill that I currently don't have. I know I'm a team player and self-motivated, among other things.

But why the hell can't I answer that damn question?

All of this pondering was brought about by a big looming change in my life.

Or it could it just be the heat.


Anyway, I discovered a few songs this past week, which really helped quiet these "voices" down - ironically. Yes, I know they're not really new. But that's my thing. I've established that already.

Weekly Ketchup 14 - Questions and Answers

Kids, in the summer of 2014, all the quiz nights that my friends and I regularly attend all happened on the same week. Naturally, I took it upon myself to go to all of them - just because!

Cumberbenders, Relik Quiz Night, Tuesday

I even went to the Relik Quiz Night last Tuesday despite the public transport situation briefly hinted at here and the lazy situation expounded on here.

Hat Madders, Amici Quiz Night, Thursday
(photo from Lynn's FB)

So did we win any of them? No, we won ALL OF THEM!

You can say it was legen - wait for it - dary!

Team Sausagefest, GeekFight at Boho, Friday
A bunch of guys won in a women-themed night. LOL
(From GeekFight's page)

Coincidentally, it was also the same week that the series finale of How I Met Your Mother aired - a show that I only started following on the third season. I caught an episode on cable and liked it enough to follow the rest and even borrowed my brother's DVD of the first season (or was it the other way around?). Damn, I can't remember but I do know I missed the second season.

Anyway, moving on (because I don't wanna be the guy who "lives in his stories") to the finale. Obviously, Ted finally meets the mother of his children in this episode in one of the cheesiest scenes ever and it was great! I loved it so much I had to get the song that was playing in the background.

Maybe because I was transfixed by that single scene that everything else that happened in the episode didn't matter as much to me. A lot of the disappointment seemed to stem from unmet expectations about where each of the characters ultimately wound up. Me, I just wanted to see how Ted and the mom finally meet, which is probably why I was so zen about the whole thing. Thankfully, that scene came out really well.

Did I like it? Well, I didn't hate it. It's a good enough closure for me, so I'll just leave it at that.

One of my favorite scenes from the finale

Funny enough, this finale - as well as some announcements about hosts leaving one of my favorite YouTube channels - got me thinking about some recent events in my life. It occurred to me, as I was leaving the office some time this week, an hour or so after a rather awkward conversation with the boss and a client, that I've already accomplished many things in the last four years, both personally and professionally.

I feel like I've already worked out a lot of my issues, some of which I detailed in previous blog entries. Though there are still some bugs to work on here and there, I feel like I finally have it together (more or less).

I also feel like I've crossed off so many things on my to-do list that I keep making up random silly goals just to give myself something to look forward to. Of course, I could also just be over-thinking it.

And so I feel like there's only one last thing for me to do: Pack up and leave.

When my friends asked last Friday why I only booked a one-way trip, I replied "because that was always the plan". It was, supposedly right after college graduation nine years ago (around the same time that HIMYM premiered) - but then money mattered, and so here I am.

I just feel like that's the natural progression of my story. BUT, much like what many fans argued about the HIMYM series finale, so much growth has happened in nine years that sticking to the original plan just doesn't make sense.

Obviously I've already built up quite a life here, and leaving means I'll have to start over. And, if my 2011 trip is any indication, there's almost nothing on the other side that I can't get access to here. There's also no certainty that there'll be more opportunities for one of my skill set.

Just then I realized I wouldn't be leaving to get away neither would I be moving towards something in particular.

You see, kids, I already knew what I would be leaving behind. It's safe, sure, and convenient.
In other words: comfortable.

But what I have to look forward to? It's everything but. It's unknown, scary, risky.
It's gonna be adventure.

Weekly Ketchup 11 - Direction vs. Management

These past three days had been rather busy for me, work-wise. I directed a photo shoot for a client's advertising and marketing campaign. I got to work with an awesome photographer who, as cliche as this may sound, really brought to life the ideas in my head.

The experience gave me an insight into the relationship between a film director and a cinematographer. Although I had a dictionary definition of each other's scope of work in a film set, I never had a working knowledge about the difference between the two disciplines - until I found myself giving our photographer directions about what I wanted to see and then let him masterfully wove light, shadow, and depth to give me the photos that I needed.

I get it now!

Thankfully, this was our second campaign for the client and we also booked the same photographer as the last time, so there's already a level of familiarity that made the workload a bit smoother and easier than the first time. Of course, that doesn't necessarily mean things went off without any glitches.

While I was essentially on board the project as creative director, my previous training in production management constantly kicked in and I found myself micro-managing every aspect of the shoot, including logistics, which was supposed to be the client's responsibility. Because we were trying to accomplish more than 50 sets of photos in different rooms with different groups of people over a period of three 12-hour days, I often had to serve as vanguard and prep the next location before our photographer came in, which was the system we worked with in our previous project.

I'm seriously awed by how they control the lighting of their set.

However, as director, I really shouldn't leave my set. That was a mistake I learned from the very first set that we shot. I left to prep the next set and someone from the client side thought they could supercede my direction, so they took a photo that I would never use in the campaign. We ended up re-shooting the damn thing on the very last day. Time and effort wasted but lesson learned.

If that sounds like a rookie mistake, that's because it is. It was, after all, my first time to handle directorial duties. However, when it comes to production management, I'm your man. That much, I can take pride in. I knew how to control my sets, isolate variable elements, and give our team a controlled environment to work in.

Production work is as close to military dictatorship as it gets.

There were several instances when pre-determined locations suddenly weren't available and I practically dictated to the client which alternative locations I preferred to shoot in instead of waiting for them to decide. In one instance, they did offer an alternative but, knowing that the location wasn't conducive for the type of shoot I wanted to do, I strongly insisted on another specific location, which was ultimately granted. I feel that in those instances, the creative director and production manager part of my brain were working in tandem.

One thing I learned about myself throughout the whole process was that I'm quick on my feet when it comes to creative direction but I make crappy decisions on the spot as production manager. Is it the nature of the job? As director, I had to make something out of what is immediately in front of me. As manager, I needed to know everything beforehand. In production management, especially in events, one of the very first things that we learned is to gain control of every aspect of production, which meant that we had to adopt a "begin-with-the-end-in-mind" mentality.

Get it?

My experience as a student leader in college also inculcated that line of thinking, and I've thankfully developed a sense of foresight that helps me weed out "unforeseen circumstances". But I also have the foresight to know that no matter what I do, there will always be "unforeseen circumstances". I even have the foresight to realize that the commands I barked on the spot were stupid and reversed them before they did any damage, which served us well during the shoot.

On a somewhat related note, we had a meeting with another client - a project management specialist - who brought up a very interesting insight: Apparently the strict, follow-instructions-to-the-dot approach to project management is more closely followed in engineering, construction, and other rigid industries and is hardly used in the creative disciplines, which follows a more flexible approach to project management. In my head, I was like "Bitch, unless you've actually managed live productions and events, your understanding is theoretical!"

Also this week: I bought a new game from Google Play! Venture Towns is a simulation game from Kairosoft similar to Sim City. It was on sale as part of the Play Store's 2nd anniversary promote, so I thought I'd snatch it. So far, I've been loving it - I even played it on breaks during the shoot!

Hmm, now that I think about it, I wonder if there's a correlation between my preference for third-person POV RPGs, simulations, and strategy games and my "seeing the big picture" approach to production management.