2014/11/16

Weekly Ketchup 46 - Science and Sensitivities

I got to see Big Hero 6 earlier this week for no other reason than it's a Disney-animated movie featuring Marvel characters, obscure as though they are. I guess I was interested mainly because of brand loyalty more than anything else. I'm not sure that I would've been as keen to see it had it been a Dreamworks production featuring a set of original characters, which it might as well have been given how much the movie veered away from the original material.

The movie touched on all the right bases, meeting all the expectations I had of it but not surpassing them, which is okay. I thought the plot did get predictable but I still enjoyed it. And while I'm not as crazy about this film as much as I was with Book of Life or How To Train Your Dragon, the reason I'm devoting much of this week's blog talking about it is because I love how the film made science cool for kids. Even I wanted to get into science after watching the movie. I don't know if that was the filmmakers' intention but it certainly came off that way to me.


Speaking of science, this past week was a big one for space exploration. Comet-landing! Yay!

Except that, all this time, I thought that landing probes on anything floating in space was such a common occurrence already, which was why I didn't really give the matter much attention when I first learned about it. It wasn't until the YouTube channels I'm subscribed to started talking about it that I fully realized what a big deal this really was.





Yet what really drew my attention to this milestone as I read more about it was that it's not even NASA that accomplished this feat but the European Space Agency! There's this strange part of me that's delighted that another part of the world was able to expand humanity's reach. No, it's really not borne out of some anti-American sentiment. Far from it, really. I just feel like the more agencies out there in the world are as capable as NASA, the more efficiently we can advance our understanding of the universe. I get excited thinking about the competitive and cooperative element of having multiple agencies and nations working towards practically the same goals without the political shadow of the Cold War looming over them. It's an interesting and optimistically hopeful scenario that just makes me happy.

Still on the subject of science, a conversation I had with a friend over Google+ got the wheels in my head turning again this past week.


It's certainly a good idea but how do make this series watchable? How do we attract an audience? Am I capable of producing it? I toyed around with the idea a little bit and thought it might be something worthwhile to pursue. Then I realized I'm comfortable with the idea of producing something like this. I have the right contacts both in science and communications. I know where to secure space and equipment. I have some money saved, though I was saving it for another thing. I can make this happen right now if I wanted to.

Granted, my immediate future is up in the air right now and I already have another project in the works but I am enjoying this sense of confidence and assertiveness about being capable of producing a new project off of a simple online exchange. It more than made up for the helplessness and inadequacy I also felt this past week as I realized that I'm extremely under-qualified for a lot of the open positions on Buzzfeed, which I just learned about a few days ago.


Yes, I was looking for new opportunities. No, this is quite different from the writer position I talked about last week, which I haven't even gotten around to attending to because after the Piolo Pascual article, I was immediately given my next assignment: an Anne Curtis article. If I keep this up, I'll be writing about local stars and celebrities for a long while. They maybe vapid pieces (much like this blog) but hey! They're easy money and they're also work that I can be proud of, so let me at 'em!

Speaking of last week, I feel like I more than made up for the lack of documentation of the shenanigans I talked about by bombarding my Facebook and Instagram feed this past week with real time updates of my adventures - from getting my face marked on last Thursday night after a game of Kaiju tower to the bizarre way I got my gift from geek friend Alec yesterday.

A photo posted by Niki Yarte (@pinoyavenger) on

A photo posted by Niki Yarte (@pinoyavenger) on

Yeah, I've had a fun week. I do regret not having had enough time to visit UST yesterday though because one of the programs I launched as president of the Communication Arts Students Association is apparently still ongoing and on its tenth year. That validation about having left a legacy behind just makes me feel like I did well during my time. Ah, memories.

1 comment:

  1. My favorite thing about Big Hero 6 was the focus on education and STEM at the beginning. The company I'm working with now is focused on the US Education market and I've had to learn a lot about their education system and it makes me ache knowing how far behind we are here. They may be behind the rest of the world when it comes to EDU, but we're no where in the vicinity.

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