Tag: writing

A Quarter Of A Century Around The Sun

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The best part about having a summer birthday is being able to spend it by some body of water, enjoying the sunshine and beautiful summer weather.

The worst part about having a summer birthday (in the realm of first world problems) is that no one is ever around for the summer, making it difficult to actually have any company around said body of water to enjoy the sunshine with.

But a few of my friends would still be in the city for my birthday this year, so I planned to get a girl gang together to spend the day at Long Beach.

The vision

It would be a “hot girl summer birthday,” as Megan Thee Stallion would probably put it. Me and my friends would be soaking up sun and saltwater, lounging on a clean, pristine beach, while fantasizing that we were in San Tropez instead.

The plan was to make a pitcher of sangria in a half-gallon reusable water bottle and distribute it using mason jars. We would get lunch from one of the fabulous dining establishments that lead up to the beach, and at the end of the afternoon we would walk down the boardwalk for soft serve ice cream, covered in artificially-colored, confectioned sugar, and swirled prettily in waffle cones. We would have the makings of a perfect beach day, having everything but tiny paper umbrellas to stick in our drinks. 

There were several issues with this plan.

First: no alcohol was allowed on the beach.

Second: no glass was allowed on the beach.

Third: it was raining on the beach.

My hot girl summer birthday party was off to a rocky start.

The backup plan was to go to a karaoke bar, get a private room, and scream-sing angry girl music from the 90s while downing a pitcher of margaritas. Once it was obvious that it was going to rain all day, that was the plan we stuck with.

We decided to brave the storm at RPM Underground, a basement-like karaoke bar in Hell’s Kitchen that looks how I imagined it would if a bomb shelter had neon lights. 

My friends arrived one at a time, wind-blown and damp, but ready to sing. 

If the experience taught me anything, it’s that karaoke is one of the best ways to spend a rainy day and one of the best ways to spend a birthday.

RPM Underground didn’t have a pitcher of margaritas, but they did have a bucket of soju and there was plenty of angry girl music to go around.

My go-to karaoke song is “Bitch” by Meredith Brooks, the perfect song to let off steam as a woman. There was also Avril Lavigne, Alanis Morrisette, Taylor Swift, Pierce the Veil, Sade, Chappell Roan, and, at one point, Megan Thee Stallion. Singing in front of other people will make you realize just how talented those artists are.

Everyone had different taste in music, but we could all enjoy an off-key rendition of “Hot n Cold” by Katy Perry. We bopped around the room singing as poorly as we wished, downing the fruity bottles of soju, which are deceptively alcoholic. 

Once the party started to wind down, we cut the cake. I ordered a lavender chocolate mousse cake that I got custom-made with a fun inscription. 

We left the karaoke place after our two hours were up, full of chocolate cake and Korean alcohol, with our voices shot, but having had a fun time. This birthday party was one for the books, since it was spent in good company, cheering our drinks and serenading each other.

The smoothest karaoke song of the night

Once my birthday was behind me, I was ready to feel the lobotomy that apparently happens when you turn 25. Your prefrontal cortex is finished developing and finally you have common sense, or so I am told. 

Unless I am imagining it, I thought that I could feel the chemical change that my brain underwent. In some ways, it was like completing a level in a video game or taking a hit of someone’s ADHD medication: you’re locked in like never before.

Turning one year older feels strange when you’re concerned about the state of the world and I am more concerned with the state of the world than ever before, which is saying something. It makes it hard to understand my future and for the first time in my life, it felt like I couldn’t see my future all that clearly. 

I still don’t know what to make of this other than the fact that this might just be a part of what it means to be 25. 

No matter what, I intend to be hopeful as I enter into my 25th year. Everyone that I have spoken to about it has said that 25 is a great age. You’re close to 20 and you’re close to 30, with a quarter of a century lived, and hopefully, at least two more quarter centuries yet to live. The important thing to remember is that at 25, you’re still just starting out. There is still plenty of time for mistakes, new beginnings, career changes, breakups, breakdowns, and other epic highs and lows. 

And hopefully, many happy returns. 

Thank you to all of my friends who showed up for my birthday and made it truly special! And to everyone else who has a summer birthday like me: happy birthday!

The Tragic Queen,

Raquel

P.S.: Check out my most recent blog post about how I did spend the day at the beach when the weather was permitting. 

Columbia University Graduation

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It’s official: I have graduated from Columbia University! 

My friends and I sat outside in our full regalia in 90 degree heat— meaning that we earned our degrees and then some. Everyone was sufficiently irritable by the time that our group was called, but happy, nonetheless with our accomplishment. 

We sat around in this apocalyptically warm weather, listening to existential speeches on the dangers and trappings of AI all while celebrating the creation of art in troubling times. 

My friends and I sat in the tiny but mighty writing section, shaking our tambourines. Every school was given a prop; ours were tambourines for reasons that would soon become obvious. 

Official picture from Columbia’s instagram page. Note how I am the only one not looking

The highlight of the ceremony was John Baptiste’s surprise musical performance. As an honorary doctorate of the School of the Arts, Baptiste stopped by on his way to the final taping of Late Show with Stephen Colbert to treat us to his musical stylings.

He sat down at the piano, opening with Für Elise before moving on to a truly modern rendition of “if you’re happy and you know it” to which the writing section got to shake their tambourines. His fingers fluttered over the keys like it was nothing, while singing effortlessly, like he was just opening his mouth and pouring out beautiful music.

That night, we had a separate graduation ceremony for the School of the Arts in which me and a few of my friends walked across the stage and accepted empty envelopes for diplomas that will be arriving in the mail in the coming weeks. 

One professor semi-praised AI in his speech and was promptly shouted down (praising AI to a group of students who just went into hundreds of thousands of debt for a job in an industry that will probably no longer exist in a few years during one of the worst job markets in recent history seems like peak tone-deafness to me).

I had a fun time as I celebrated the last graduation of my life (though I would not turn down an honorary doctorate one day). 

My time at Columbia was extraordinary. I met some pretty amazing writers, and with that, some pretty cool people, but most importantly, my writing has been shaped and sharpened, more than I ever thought possible. Sitting there, in the blistering heat, I thought about all of the work that I put into it, how I hardly slept as I rushed to finish submissions, gave and received feedback on novels, and read all kinds of fiction.

Regardless of what the future holds in terms of AI and other existential threats, I will keep writing.

A shoe change happened

Now I am on to the next thing, like working to finish and sell my debut novel.

I am a lion. Hear me roar!

The Tragic Queen,

Raquel

P.S.: Check out my blog post on my previous college graduation

And for the lady, perhaps some recommended reading…

Experts Only Music Festival

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A couple of months ago, my mother called me up and asked me if I wanted to go to this “music thing” that she heard about in her neighborhood that weekend. I said yes, unaware that this “music thing” was the New York City music event of that weekend. 

It was the inaugural Experts Only festival, a music festival hosted by DJ John Summit on Randall’s Island. The DJ played house music the entire afternoon. 

Experts Only was the whole nine yards: food stalls, merch stands, beach balls bouncing off the top of the crowd, a woman dancing on stage at all times, and someone who was clearly on ecstasy and therefore not dancing at all to the beat. The whole thing was like a big high school football game, only instead of tailgating you’re eating from a food truck in the middle of a field surrounded by 300 strangers and instead of showing off your school spirit you’re showing off every inch of your body that you’re legally allowed to show.

I was entirely unprepared for the music festival that I walked into, wearing a long sleeve black shirt and jacket. I was the most fully clothed person there, aside from my mom. I looked like a narc.

Everywhere I looked, there were sheer body suits and crop tops. Ass crack and butterfly tattoos were also very much in, as were pashminas and chainmail waistbands. Influencers and wannabe influencers posed for pictures in their outfits. The event was in full swing.

We danced our way to the front of the crowd, squeezing through the mesh of bodies, and when we needed a break from the dancing, we sat in a field drinking vodka lemonades and eating street tacos. 

My mother nodded along to the music. I jumped up and down like a lunatic.

We got there in the early afternoon and then stayed late into the night, technically morning. At the end of the night, we caught the ferry, with me limping from how hard I danced. I ended up pulling a muscle in my leg and then freaking out that I had a varicose vein, because of how it was bulging out of my calf, but it was worth it to experience such an awesome music festival.

It’s not often that I get to be pleasantly surprised when an impromptu weekend hanging out with my mother turns into a wild night of drinking and dancing at a New York City music festival. My mother, despite having a good time, has decided not to join me next year.

This was my first time at a music festival, but I am determined for it not to be my last. This year, I will be sure to return to Expert’s Only in a crop top with my friends, ready to have more vodka lemonades and street tacos, like the twentysomething that I am. 

The Tragic Queen,

Raquel

Going to the Zoo

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Most zoos are underwhelming and disappointing. You bake in the heat, walking around a heat-baked, concrete zoo, only to see a handful of animals who look about as miserable and overheated as you do.

The Singapore Zoo is not such a zoo. The animals are actually on display, front and center, feeling close enough for you to touch them. 

At some point, everyone goes to the zoo

Unlike all of the zoos I’d been to in the past, there often was little to no barrier between the animals and the zoo patrons. This is as cool as it is terrifying. The animals are right in front of you, not hidden behind glass or cage bars. 

The tigers and lions roamed around their enclosures. The elephants sat around, their ears slapping the sides of their bodies.

I felt like a little kid again, thinking about what kind of animal I would be if I had to choose, and always picking one of the more exotic ones, like an elephant, giraffe, or a cheetah. 

You could see every type of monkey swinging in its enclosure.

Amusingly, the zoo has monkeys that are not part of the exhibits. Because the zoo backs up to a wooded area, monkeys from the jungle, but not the zoo, hang around. 

The people who work at the zoo handle this by shooing away the monkeys with the same energy that New Yorkers shoo away rats or pigeons. 

My aunt got into a fight with one such monkey who had gotten hold of a plastic bag that had been left behind by a tourist and my aunt was trying to pry it from its hands. It is hard to convey to a monkey that you are acting in its best interest by not letting it play with a torn plastic bag that it is wrapping around its head. 

Overall, we had a fun time going to the zoo. The Singapore Zoo is considered to be one of the more ethical zoos in the world due to its focus on conservation and restoration. All throughout the zoo are signs outlining the status of the animals as endangered animals on the brink of extinction and where they can be found– if they can be found– in the wild. 

The Tragic Queen,

Raquel

P.S.: Check out my previous blog post about the Singapore Botanic Garden

A Moveable Feast

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“When spring came, even the false spring, there were no problems except where to be happiest.”

–Hemingway, “A Moveable Feast”

After my couple of days of art museums, opera, and a cemetery, I decided to focus on purchasing two of the main things that I love: books and paintings.

Together, my aunt and I went in search of art. I’d seen enough movies and tv shows that romanticized the Parisian art scene to make me believe that there would be a starving artist on every street corner, hawking their wares to only the truest of art lovers (I’ve seen Titanic). That is a pretty old brochure for the city of love, as I learned when I walked the streets not seeing any intrepid young painters with easels sketching in the streets.

Undeterred, we ventured up Montmartre, one of the most picturesque parts of Paris, in order to get a view of the city from the basilica on top of the hill. We didn’t find any art there, but continued on throughout the city. 

No trip to Paris would be complete for an aspiring writer without making a pit stop at Cafe De Flore, an old stomping ground of Hemingway, Simone De Beauvoir, and Sartre, among others. 

Despite what other people will tell you about how the cafe is stodgy, overrun with tourists, and Instagram-famous (the biggest cardinal sin) I am willing to defend it. 

It is still a cute, charming French cafe with a lot of history. And, most importantly, it remains a good place to get a glass of wine.

After lunch, we walked down the street to Shakespeare & Co., an English-language bookstore that supported the likes of Hemingway, Fitzgerald, and Joyce back in the day. It sold Hemingway’s first novel and still maintains a line out the door most days. It sits across the street from Notre Dame Cathedral right along the Seine. 

Walking down the street in the late afternoon, my aunt and I found an art gallery, which is how I wound up buying a nude painting of a woman. It is an incredibly beautiful piece of art that I want to hold onto forever and pass on to my family members once I die.

It was a good day of shopping, drinking, and art purchasing. My new books are on my shelf. My painting will soon be on display in my apartment. The day left its mark. 

The Tragic Queen,

Raquel

P.S.: For more ideas about what you can do in Paris, check out my previous blog post about my trip to the Musée d’Orsay and Opéra Bastille.