MALAYA SAYS A JOKE to a room full of people, and nobody laughs.
It's a funny joke, but nobody in this room is allowed to laugh. She's filming another episode of her hugely popular web series, and if anyone laughs, the microphone and camera will record it and she'll have to start all over again. At this point, nobody wants to laugh anyway – it's her sixth take and the joke has been repeated ad nauseum, people would rather just groan. But that's not allowed either. No unnecessary sound is. After she finishes filming this episode, she goes to her dressing room and changes into another outfit and redoes her hair and make-up. While she's doing that, the crew is busy readjusting the cameras, switching the props, and fixing the green screen. They're done filming one episode, and they're hoping to film three more before the day ends. It's only 10 am, and already, it's been a long day. One of the greatest ironies of show business is that you get into the industry thinking it's going to be fun and exciting, but you end up getting the exact opposite: hectic and tedious. You have to get to the studio early so you can set up and get ready before shooting starts. After, you have to go over lines, make last-minute adjustments to the script, and get your star or yourself ready for the camera. Finally, you have to shoot the episode, scene by scene, and each scene takes five or six takes to get it right - if you're lucky. And then, you have to do the entire process all over again for the next episode. But any outsider can see that for Malaya, this routine is all part of the thrill. Malaya isn't fazed by this at all, and if she is, she doesn't show it. She practically radiates energy the minute she's in front of the camera. Every take, she gives it her all and never falters for a minute, even if she has to repeat the same line for the 7th time. She takes directions like a pro and isn't embarrassed to do anything. She is a wonder to work with.
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Everyone in the class had gotten a fever.
That must've been the case, because nobody bothered to show up. People have a tendency not to take vocational school seriously. I've gotten my fair share of scoffs, of side glances, of "You only took one year of advertising?" and "You only have a certificate?" Some people just don't like things out of the traditional. But if there's one kind of people that don't take vocational school seriously the most, it's the vocational students themselves. 10 am, it said on the schedule. Advertising class starts at 10 am. What it should've said was 12 pm, because that was the time everyone was present and we could finally start. Only Sir Zen and I ever showed up on time. WE LIVE in a world filled with girl power. And that’s amazing. Sure, we still have a long way to go before we truly achieve feminism, but the world is changing and progressing, and I love that. But I just recently watched The Intern and Anne Hathaway’s character made a very good point — somewhere along the way, empowering boys in a positive way was forgotten. "So we were always told we could be anything, do anything. And I think guys got, maybe not left behind, but not quite as nurtured, you know? I mean, like, we were the generation of “you go, girl.” We had Oprah. And I wonder sometimes how guys fit in, you know? They still seem to be trying to figure it out." Instead, boys are expected to live up to masculine stereotypes, degraded when they act feminine, and taught their problematic behavior is okay because “boys will be boys.” So in order to contribute to fixing that, here’s an open letter to all the boys out there: It's late at night, and I'm staring at my laptop, editing my story for the 7th time.
Editing is an understatement, really. It's more like I'm rewriting it. The submission deadline is tomorrow, and yet here I am, scraping everything and starting over from scratch. The story was already fine by its 3rd edit, really - the grammatical errors were all fixed and the misspellings were all cleared up. All it needed was some tweaks in the writing here and there, and the story would've been good for submission. But the more I read it, the more things I found that I could've done differently. And the more people read it, the more things they found that I could've done differently. And those things continued to pile up and up until, well, until I felt like I needed the rewrite the story completely. |
Thanks for finding your way to my writing portfolio. If you're here, that means you want to read my works, so I'm hoping that you'll find something to love in my writing samples. (Maybe even a lot.)
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