March Favorites
It’s that time of year again! Spring showers, days that feel like summer, and daylight savings to keep you on your toes (for the U.S. peeps). This month also brought about a couple of surprising firsts.
I had my first client meeting / business “trip” (the client was in South San Francisco so really it was only an hour bart ride away at most haha but that still counts right?). Even though I didn’t have any speaking parts and was there more to shadow and to meet everybody, I was so nervous the night before. I could barely sleep. I didn’t really know any of the people from the company side of the team because I was brought onto the customer’s account recently due to my mentor and I hadn’t met our team in person yet because my company has a flexible work from home policy. When the time came, I ended up hitting it off super well with my team. Everybody was very welcoming, accommodating, and we cracked a lot of jokes with each other that helped make the entire experience less intimidating. Although I didn’t chat as much with the customers (I got nervous again lol), it was still a great experience.
Then I went on my first road trip that wasn’t with family or with a family friend aka A Real Adult™. My boyfriend and I went on a trip to Lake Tahoe with my friend and her boyfriend for a weekend and it was amazing. I tried skiing confirmed that I hate skiing lol. And I went sledding and confirmed that I loved sledding as much as I thought I would (yayy!) We also fulfilled my snowy fantasies of making a snowman . . . but it took a terribly wrong turn.
This was also the first spring where I didn’t get a spring break. Isn’t that crazy? All my life, I’ve had school, and with school, came breaks. Now with work, that’s just not a thing anymore. But that’s not entirely true for me either. Luckily, our company had a week-long conference the same week when I’d usually get my spring break. As an associate at the bottom of the corporate ladder, my team and I weren’t invited to the conference (lol) but that also meant we got to work from home for almost the whole week. Not a real break but hey, working in pjs? I’ll take it.
This month is also the first month in the year when I tackled my new year’s resolution to work out more. We all know where that went HAH (hint: it went nowhere). Our company has a new building with a shiny new gym to boot so my coworkers frequently would work out there after work. This month I finally put my foot down and somehow got my butt over to the gym. It took me a while to figure out which buttons to push, but I am proud to say that I now know how to use a treadmill and elliptical without embarrassing myself.
Throughout this month of trying new things (but also plenty of lounging around), I got to watch quite a few shows (tbh this isn’t a March thing — this is always going to be me let’s be real), discovered some new songs, and tried a few things.
In the words of Ariana Grande (or really Julie Andrews??), here are a few of my favorite things from this month ☺️
? ♪ ♫ Bops ♪ ♫ ?
Songs that make me feel like I’m the main character of a music video:
Purple Feelings – Jerry Folk (ft. Rainsford)
What’s Up Danger – Blackway, Black Caviar [any other Spiderverse fans??]
~ Hipster ~ v i b e s
Remember – KATIE [this has been my fav since the start of the year, i had to sneak this in heh]
Hijo de Su Madre – Omar Apollo
If U Wanna – Dounia, Breakfast n Vegas
Songs that make me feel warm and fuzzy inside:
Home Sweet Home – Car, the Garden [yes, that’s the band’s name lol]
Like the Movie – We are the Night
Summer Goes By – iamalex [instrumental, but you feel like you’re in a Yoplait commercial]
Songs that make me want to sing like Adele but I physically cannot
Songs I just like ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Superior Emotion – AlunaGeorge, Cautious Clay
Throwback songs I rediscovered:
Me and My Broken Heart – Rixton
Scars to Your Beautiful – Alessia Cara
??Eye Candy ??
Umbrella Academy [Netflix]
Plot: Seven orphans with supernatural abilities are adopted by this scientist who trains them to become a crime fighting/superhero squad. Years later, the kids move away and the family drifts apart. The death of their father reunites the gang once again, and they find that they need to work together to prevent what seems to be the world apocalypse.
I can see how this type of show may not be for everybody. In fact, I had initially scoffed at this show when Netflix started promoting this on their homepage. The trailer was terrible. It was painted to be like a badly produced teen flick with supernatural abilities thrown in the mix to make it different. I gave it a shot though after a second trailer played that was MUCH better than the first and it actually piqued my interest. I’m a huge sucker for films that have any supernatural or mythical elements anyway.
As soon as I started watching, I could not stop. I literally finished watching in two days (much to the regret of my future self at work who would be running only on 3-4 hours of sleep. Would not recommend kids.) What really sucked me in was the world they built in this show. It was extraordinary. All of the characters are bizarre in their own way with emotional baggage to boot. To add on top of all the plot twists and drama, there’s also time travel involved.
My favorite character is Five played by Aiden Ghallagher and I lowkey have a celebrity crush on him. His acting is incredible, especially when you consider that he’s technically a child actor and may not understand the depth of emotions he needs to portray (simply from lack of life experience) but color me impressed. And this is the fangirl me speaking but he also has these striking blue eyes that really get you. He’s also like 15 so had to shut that down real fast.
You [Netflix]
Plot: A bookstore seller develops an infatuation with a grad student who aspires to be a writer.
This show is so so so so good. I was pleasantly surprised when I started watching this. To be honest, I had zero expectations coming into it. The plot description written on Netflix made me raise an eyebrow… because c’mon, major creeper vibes here. And I’m not really a psychological thriller/crime type of gal. But I kept hearing good things about this from my coworkers, and I had nothing better to do so I figured — eh why not.
What I love about this: The narrative. The show is pretty much completely filmed from the perspective of the main guy, who develops an unhealthy obsession with a girl he likes. Very much like a book, all of his thoughts are shared out loud, everything from his observations about people to how he makes decisions is portrayed to the viewer. It becomes quite apparent that this becomes a mechanism for the viewer to relate to a person who shouldn’t be relatable at all. It begins to feel like you’re a close friend whom he is confiding all of his inner thoughts to. We start to excuse him for his behaviors. It reminds me of the show “Breaking Bad” in the sense that in both that show and this show, we see that the good guy ends up becoming the bad guy, but as an audience member, because we’ve been there with them since the start, we can’t help but almost sympathize with the person they end up becoming in the end.
I also really like that this is a blend of both the psychological thriller and romance genres. The dialogue (or more like the inner dialogue of the main guy) is super witty and the chemistry between the main couple feels very real. (Plus the main guy’s voice is super charming lol). Hats off to the superb acting of everybody in the show — even the supporting characters killed it.
Conversations with a Killer: The Ted Bundy Tapes [Netflix]
Plot (?): Docuseries covering one of America’s most notorious serial killers.
This was one of the first documentaries I’ve ever watched on Netflix and is also the first time I’ve encountered a documentary that’s stretched over multiple episodes. I was blown away by the clever pacing of the story-telling and by the atrocities of Ted Bundy, the serial killer that it’s based on. It uses audio tapings of interviews with the man himself along with interviews of investigators, journalists, and other people who crossed paths with him. What was most interesting about this, was how you come to learn about the history of how terrible the police was at tracking crimes of this nature. Back then, there was no collective system in the U.S. for police units of different states to share information. This meant that a suspect could escape their crimes simply by travelling to a different state…which is what Ted Bundy did. Anyways, I digress. This was fascinating to watch even though the subject was rather gruesome. As someone who doesn’t usually watch documentaries nor is into crime, I’d give it a try if you want something new.
Spider-Man: Into the Spiderverse
Plot: The “Spider-man” from different dimensions gather in one universe to defeat the big baddie.
I’m the type of person who hates rewatching films, but this is one of the very very few movies on my list that I would watch again in a heartbeat. Everything about it was great. I freaking love how they played with different animation styles to indicate the different worlds each character came from.You can tell that this film was the product of passion from a very talented group of people.
And the voice acting was something else — everybody had a unique vocal color and each person captured the emotions to the T. It really built the foundation for the character development that happens to the main character and it doesn’t feel fake or forced, which I find happens to a lot of films because it’s just something that’s “supposed” to happen. My inner fangirl came out when I found out after the movie that Jake Johnson was the voice of Spider-Man. (Any New Girl fans? No wonder he was my favorite character in the movie haha.)
Another thing I liked about this was the storyline and upbringing of Miles (main guy) that lends to his character development. Miles is an Afro-Latino teen from a middle class family in Brooklyn — it’s something you don’t see featured a lot in Hollywood and has long been past due. I’m glad to see more representation and diverse stories in the industry.
As a character, Miles was quite endearing and relatable. He felt like a little brother to me. And at times, I saw myself in him. Miles is a teen who just switched to a new high school, which just amplifies the awkwardness of his struggles as a teen to fit in even more. Seeing him go through that transition made it easy for the audience to relate to him — after all we’ve all been through that phase in life, of crushing on someone and totally looking like a derp, dealing with family expectations, of being boxed into somebody you really aren’t, and of trying to discover who you are and who you want to be.
Some other things I appreciated about this movie: It was surprisingly funny and I found myself bursting out into laughter throughout the showing. Plus all the songs from this movie were such a BOP.
~ s e m i spoilers below, read at own risk ~
There were also a couple of scenes that were very symbolic and artsy. One of my favorite scenes shows Miles embracing his new identity as Spider-man by wearing his own version of the Spider-man suit (black ensemble with a hoodie). Miles is getting ready to jump off the side of a skyscraper building (something he was deathly afraid of trying throughout the film). As he leaps off, bits of glass from where his hands were holding on to break off and the camera inverts and follows Miles falling down, except, he looks like he’s rising up because of the inverted view. I really love everything that’s going on in this scene including the “I’m turning into a badass” song vibes that’s paired with this scene and it’s a clip I keep rewatching on Youtube. To me, the glass that breaks off represents the glass ceiling of expectations that was holding Miles back breaking. Even though he’s scared, Miles makes a leap of faith. And by taking that leap of faith in himself, he’s becoming the best version of himself which is indicated by the perspective that it looks like he’s rising up rather than falling down. Here’s a clip for those who are curious to see it in action.
⚙️? Beep Boop ?⚙️
1SE
This is something I started at the beginning of the year, but since this is my first Favorites post, this still counts right? 1SE is a really neat app that allows you to capture one second of your day for every day of the year. You can take a video clip directly on the app and trim from there or upload an existing video clip from your phone. As time passes by, it’s slowly becoming more like 1 second a week for me haha but it’s been really nice to look back and reflect on how my 2019 year is going so far and I’m sure this is something I’ll appreciate at the end of the year. I’m excited to see how what I’ll do over the year and how I’ll change. Even if that’s something that can’t be explicitly capture in the app, I think that seeing a second from each day is going to spark some nice trip down memory lane.
Splitwise
I was introduced to this by my friend who was raving about it for the longest time and for the longest time I just refused to use it (idk why I’m so stubborn sometimes buuuut it be like that sometimes ¯\_(ツ)_/¯). I finally used it when we went on a trip together and I admit, it is a godsend. Essentially, it’s a financial tool app that allows you to create groups in the app, record down group purchases, and it automatically calculates how much each person owes the other.
Good-bye to feeling like you can’t adult because you won’t need to stare at your calculator for minutes on end and wondering if you even know how to do subtraction with this baby. With a few quick taps, you can identify who splits which costs (if, for example, only 3 out of the group of 5 people decided to split a dish). At the end of the hangout or whatever it is, the app will do all the finessing to calculate the end total that each person owes you (or whoever it is who fronted the money for each group purchase) after taking into account what YOU owe them.
You can also link Venmo or Paypal to the app or you can mark that repayments if you gave it in cash for record keeping.
eBates
I downloaded this a while ago but I never religiously used it until now. This comes in both app and Chrome extension form, but basically, eBates gives you cash back for online purchases from a bunch of retailers. Each business gives a different % cash back, but over time, this chump change can get you a thicc burrito WITH GUAC (yes you read that right) and let’s be real, we can always use a free burrito in our lives. The only downside is that you need to remember to click activate and start your shopping trip from eBates otherwise there’s no way they can track that you made your purchase and you won’t be able to get that burrito with guac.
JustFly
I’ve also been using this since the start of the year (actually more like since October ish of last year but hey this is my first Favorites post sooo…) and this app/website has saved me SO much money with flights. JustFly essentially scours the interwebs for you to find THE cheapest deals available. Literally, I have used a bunch of other websites/apps that claim to help you find the cheapest flights (e.g. Expedia, StudentUniverse, Kayak, etc.) and JustFly absolutely takes the cake because they actually find the cheapest flights available and don’t tack on a commission/referral fee on top of the flight fare. Plus eBates gives cash back on JustFly purchases… you see where I’m going here? ?
And that about wraps up my month! Looking back, I’d say March was alright. What I’m really looking forward to though is next month — there’s going to be plenty of traveling in the books and I’m PUMPED!
