uni-verse × music monthly • you got me feeling like a papillon

I am still alive!

A lot of things happened since my last post in January. I sort of aced (and probably also assed) my thesis defense. I fidgeted and smiled a lot, answered the questions like one of my professors taught (word by word quotation translated into English: "That's a very interesting question, but..."), and cried a little because I had a feelings vomit right after I stepped out of the door. Well, a short awkward waiting minutes later, the professors declared that I made it. I officially survived the biggest turbulence of my filmmaking career in undergraduate school setting.

And here's few obligatory after-thesis-defense pictures:

(This is a screenshot from my Instagram page so please pardon the awkward cropping.)

What comes after is a whirlwind of minor revisions, going around hunting for the professors' signatures of approval for my thesis, and finally, finally submitting the bound hard cover copy of that seventy something papers to uni administration. All that while simultaneously trying to score an internship somewhere.

Internship was fun!

The people are very, very nice. What was not nice, however, is the golden hours of commuting back and forth from the big mother city (hehe, this is what my friends and I used to call Jakarta) to the tiny humble suburb I grew up in. I cannot emphasize just how brutal it was, hahaha. I got lots of boobs in my face situation when I am sitting and limbs (mine) to boobs (some random short in height mbak-mbak) contact when I am standing. Sometimes I can't feel the ground and resigned to just floating around with the masses like one giant big blob of atoms.

It was nicer at night, since the people ain't too tight. I guess the crowd went home earlier than I did?

Long story short, I did my internship, curated and salvaged some random most often times chronological plus several crappy footages and made few videos I proudly dubbed my babies. In between, I also got some kind of pneumonia and appendicitis warning. I got away pretty much unscathed, tho.

This is the office I spent my three months in. I love the windows, the view was pretty great! Some might say it's a premium ~river view~ but well, you know how crappy Jakarta's rivers are. The sunsets are quite golden, tho. I am very thankful to everyone in this small company for having me and letting me messes around with their travel footages and website's narratives. Although we have some Monster problem that has yet to be solved, according to my supervisor. I guess it's an old building so they got pests; a hoard of jelly beans loving pests. Huh.

[Side note - PROMO CORNER] Do check out my #InternLife babies here: Featuring: Kostuba Travel ✩°｡⋆⸜(ू｡•ω•｡)

With my Final Project and Internship checked, I am finally (unofficially) done with my undergraduate gig! So now I am just being a dormant soul waiting for my official graduation certificate and ceremony like Rapunzel in her tower waiting for her life to begin. So, I guess what's next up in life is getting a proper job and all those adulthood things.

But! Before! That! I finally got a chance to go on legit holiday! (≧▽≦)

So the next time I write here, it'll most likely be about what I think is a well-deserved trip. I did my waiting!

Only four years of it, tho, with random day outs in between. Like that one time we went to the beach for final exam photoshoot, or a week in the middle of inhabited island shooting a short film, or hiking in the dark for yet to be used footages of fogs and sunrise, and let's not forget about planting some mangroves in an island far far away. Not that they weren't fun, it's just. I need a proper slow life time. Hehe.

So, I guess I'll wrap this post up with my monthly playlist (which I neglected for half a year, I'm sorry!):

1. 내일, 오늘 (Tomorrow, Today) • JJ Project

2. 1-800-273-8255 • Logic, Alessia Cara, Khalid 

3.  Thunder • Imagine Dragon
4. Well Done Again My Friend • DAY6 (OKDAL English Cover)
5. How Far I'll Go • Auli'i Cravalho (from Disney's Moana)
6. Papillon • Jackson Wang
7. No Way • YUGYEOM ft. G2 (Prod. Effn)
8. Carry On Wayward Son • Kansas
9. Kids • Two Door Cinema Club
10. IMMATURE • WINNER

I guess this pretty much sum up my concerns for the future to come and some reassurance and power songs to go through it. Hehe. Well, I am sorry in advance but there's various forms of GOT7 in that list (although none of them are as a whole group) because I enjoy their solos/unit a lot too. And it's quite a short list with 50:50 K-songs and Western because I think I either: 1) Listen to too much royalty free songs of various genres for videos during my internship that I lost my groove or 2) Marathoning too much videos on the internet that consisted too much of people talking so music is kinda secondary? IDK.

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(Title taken from Jackson Wang's Papillon)