Romance vs reality

It’s way easier to romanticise a country you like than it is to face the reality of it, when I mean by that the country has the potential to disappoint or horrify you a lot if you’re not prepared to read up on its flaws. It’s easier to think of Japan as the land of anime and anime fans than it is to see it as a country where stray dogs do roam and terrorise the countryside, where racism exists both for immigrants and for indigenous people (Ryukyuan and Ainu) and where young athletes face bullying.

In the case with Germany, it’s like thinking it’s a dog friendly country because they allow dogs inside buildings, ignoring the grim reality where dogs get poisoned often and shot by hunters for intruding on their game (which happens often in German news reports). Not to mention Germany actually has more cat owners than America does, so if America’s bad Germany’s even worse for dog owners if we bring up dog poisoning. But if they knew, that would ruin the romance of such a place.

To be honest, I had the habit of romanticising countries before only to be disappointed by a flaw one has. I think one of the reasons why you won’t see some people flat out admitting their favourite country’s flaws, because if they knew they’d be just as disappointed and horrified. Ignorance is bliss, so goes the phrase. There are those who remain blissfully ignorant of their favourite country’s flaws, mostly because either they know their home country more or romanticise it a lot to the point of putting it on a pedestal even if they’d fall off at any time.

Though I still think looking up on the problems a country has makes one better informed about it than if they didn’t, especially if it’s something they have to prepare for should they go out and stay for a longer time. Better to know the faults ahead of time than to remain ignorant of the grim reality later on, hence that’s why it’s not a good idea to romanticise a country. Demonising it isn’t any better, but romanticising it does no good either.

A confession to make

I actually considered making leather clothing, but because I want to earn a lot of money from selling something like that. My sister told me that leather’s really tough and it has to be softened in order to be cut and made wearable, she went on saying that only perverts and cowboys wear leather trousers. Then I focused my attention on getting katsa fabric, but she also said it’s tough and if it were made into something at all it’s usually used for bags.

But I’m not going to lose my sight of getting fabric through any means only to be turned into clothing some of which I’ll sell for as much as I can do about it, honestly I actually want to use linen in dressmaking because it’s something I’ve yet to try. I want to give it a go, and I go the extra mile make into a garment that I can sell to people. I sold just one face mask this month and I need to find ways of making money from selling stuff so that I can earn a decent living.

I also have to learn how to sell on Shopee and Lazada, if I were so intent on selling stuff to people. Since of my relatives only has a Lazada account, I might as well set up shop on Lazada if I were to reach out to her and sell stuff there. Having accounts on both websites might help, especially if you use one of them to reach out to a customer who uses this one. I even considered getting silk fabrics, but with the intention of making them into garments to sell.

It’s more expensive so I might as well either demand either one of my international relatives to buy them for me or get a billionaire to do the same thing, but if it gives me a lot of money at least that can make me live comfortably. That’s if I also get a second job in cartooning, all the more to give me more money to support myself and others. It won’t be easy selling stuff, but I will go there to save myself from unemployment as I experienced it for many years.

Magnets

When it comes to what objectively attracts an autistic audience, it could be anything else in general as it needn’t to involve Thomas and Friends, Pokemon or Sonic the Hedgehog. The difference’s that something like Thomas and Friends is pretty much a well-known example of a brand that’s popular with autistic people, to be fair I do know two autistic people who were more into Disney princesses and one of them is really into the Monstars villains from the film Space Jam.

Conversely speaking, for all the stereotypical autistic association with trains something as similar as Chuggington never attracted a big autistic fanbase as Thomas did. If there’s something about Thomas that specifically attracts autistic people in a way Chuggington didn’t get and never got into, it wouldn’t surprise me if the former had a specific quality the latter lacked. But it needn’t to be Thomas to attract autistic people to it, it could be something as popular as Disney princesses.

Disney Princesses being Disney’s branding campaign involving its several female movie protagonists, there was one who liked Aurora from Sleeping Beauty. Sometimes it could be something as obscure as the Monstars from Space Jam, you know the film with Bugs Bunny playing basketball with Michael Jordan. I know somebody who was really obsessed with the Monstars, including the one Monstar she has a crush on Bupkus.

None of the Monstars’ names were found in the original film save for the credits, only in supplementary material (the one advantage the sequel had over the original film). This is the same person who’s into Gargoyles, which seems like an even unlikelier autism magnet in that the characters’ body languages are subtler (or less exaggerated) than in Thomas. But it needn’t to be Thomas for an autistic person to latch onto, it could be almost anything else.

If it fascinates them, it really fascinates them. If it doesn’t have to be Thomas to attract them, it could be something like Marvel films but either there’s no study ever conducted on Marvel fans to know whether some of them are autistic or that the sample size’s too small to draw conclusions from. Anime’s no stranger to attracting autistic audiences, but the two autistic women I mentioned aren’t that into it.

If it doesn’t have to be anime to be an autism magnet, it could be anything else like Harry Potter for instance.

Banned

If national parks are going to ban dogs from entering to curb dog predation, that’s because dogs are increasingly seen as an invasive species. Some people have suspected this, but it took a few studies to blow it up. Dog predation has become increasingly scrutinised in both news reports and academic studies, if you’re keen on it the idea that dogs are an invasive species isn’t that far off. Invasive not just because they harm endangered species through predation, but also through disease and competition.

Dogs are behind cats and rats, but way ahead of ferrets, minks, foxes and muskrats. Consider this, fur industries are either nonexistent or too small to exert a big influence throughout the tropics. So minks, muskrats and foxes wouldn’t be in big demand, if because the climates don’t allow it. Why wear fur when you’ll sweat real badly in the desert, savannah or rainforest? Mink coats will never become a big thing in the Philippines and Nigeria, which might be a blessing in disguise.

While this isn’t always the case, but when you have free-roaming dogs you have potential for wrecking havoc on wildlife. Even if not all dogs have a high prey drive, the potential’s still there if a dog manages to decimate a lot of frogs in a garden (this happened to me before with one of my dogs). Surely, you’ll complain a lot about this but the thing here’s that dogs are perfectly capable of decimating wildlife populations if given the chance and opportunity.

Even if it’s not all dogs, if you have some dogs killing wildlife then don’t let them off the hook especially now that they’re recognised as an invasive species. So much so that biologists will request national parks to ban dogs to minimise the threat, it wouldn’t be pretty for dog owners even though it’s necessary to save more lives this way. Though dogs can help in conservation, they’re fire in animal form because even if they’re useful they’re still harmful.

If you leave a fire unattended, it will burn everything and anything in sight. Leave a dog unattended and it will wreck havoc on wildlife. Now you might object to this and say that humans are an invasive species, but if humans are invasive species why aren’t they scrutinised to the same extent as dogs have and are subjected to? Wouldn’t that mean calling dogs invasive is more scientifically valid because there are more studies dedicated to this?

That’s why dogs are ranked as the third most damaging animal, behind cats and rats but far ahead of other mammalian invaders. Humans have yet to be scrutinised to the same extent dogs have recently been subjected to, they could be invasive but the full extent isn’t shown yet. This will surely strike a nerve with dog owners once national parks begin banning dogs there, but that involves a growing awareness of the damage dogs do and why these studies and reports exist.

You might even bring up pigs, but since they’re not ranked as the third most damaging animal after cats and rats this says a lot about the way pigs and dogs are brought up in. It’s not that there aren’t any pigs roaming either on their own or allowed to by people, but it’s not as common as you get with cats and dogs. It’s even the case in the Philippines where I’ve seen dogs and cats roam despite having owners, but it doesn’t happen to pigs.

If pigs are an invasive species, they’d be behind dogs in that their negative impact on the environment isn’t that big and not yet as scrutinised. You might say that dogs are behind cats in their impact on the environment, but once you bring up pigs and minks they’d be behind dogs by this logic. Seems like this would strike a nerve among dog owners, even though it’s been long suspected by other people and it took a study to confirm their suspicions.

If dogs are an invasive species, it’s an uncomfortable truth. Better to face the bitter truth than to believe in sweet lies.

Maybe it’s not that glamourous

Augie De Blieck said somewhere in his blog that comic book artists, especially those who work for comic book publishers, don’t earn much. Especially if their creations and stories are owned by publishing houses that it can be hard to earn royalties from them if it goes to the publishers. This is also the case with American comic strips, only a few are truly creator-owned as far as I know.

Thankfully this isn’t the case with Philippine comic strips where the cartoonist does own them and can freely take them to other publishers, whilst receiving a lot of royalties. Well, I know one cartoonist who’s like this and his name is Pol Medina Jr. Okay, not all Philippine cartoonists are rich but if their comics are really popular it would enough to alleviate their economic and financial situation. (Then again, some work two jobs.)

A number of American comic book artists are essentially no different, they even work two jobs to make ends meet. It might be possible for American comic book artists to earn enough to live comfortable off of their creations, especially when it comes to the really popular or young adult comics. It’s always possible, but that involves realising one could earn more from earning royalties from owning their creations.

Even if not all novelists and writers in general are rich, if those books sell well it can make them live comfortably. It gets complicated by that in other cases, especially if creator-owned stories as published outside of DC and Marvel, authors and cartoonists don’t earn much working on those that they end up earning relatively more from working for DC and Marvel.

I think if the Philippines are any indication, it’s possible for a newspaper cartoonist to earn a lot from their own creations and freely move them to other publications. But not all countries are created equally, so it would be this hard for cartoonists to do the same if they lived in the States. Not to mention, not all can earn a lot from their creations comic strip or otherwise. Pol Medina had to take up advertising when his cartooning gig didn’t pay much.

Frank Cho had to switch to doing art for Marvel Comics as it paid more than if he focused on his own creation, Liberty Meadows. While it’s possible to earn generously from one’s own creations, not everybody will become this successful and in America it might not even be enough to support themselves and their families so either they switch careers or work two jobs to make ends meet.

This may not be unique to Americans themselves, if a good number of Philippine cartoonists are any indication, but I think while it’s possible to earn a lot from a best-selling comic book or cartoon strip not everybody can. Others are at least moderately successful enough to live nicely, there are those who aren’t so lucky so they switch to other industries to earn more.

Then again in some cases, a comic book career’s not that glamourous. Not just because it doesn’t always earn much, especially if that story’s not that successful and financially viable enough to live comfortably but also because that involves working long hours. Especially in Japan, where some cartoonists don’t even sleep that long when they and their assistants are made to work on that series for a long time.

This makes me wonder if working in newspaper cartoons might be relatively better, especially if it doesn’t involve working on so many panels that it gives authors enough time to do anything else. Surely it’s done daily, but since it doesn’t involve many panels so there’s enough time to do other things. While working on a 20 page story involves a lot more to depict, it consumes more time this way.

Trust me, I actually spent almost a week working on a six page comic. I spent less than an hour and just one day working on a three panel cartoon, which says a lot about how much time is spent on making a comic book story with more pages. If working as a comic book artist isn’t a bed of roses, it’s not just that you wouldn’t be paid much but you’d work longer hours if you do more pages.

So if working as a comic book artist isn’t cut out to be (for some people), would comic book adjacent stuff be any better to some extent? That’s what he pointed out, though to add my take on it if you really want to do comics but still want to own them and earn as much as you can whilst working for something big you better move elsewhere to do this. You wouldn’t become rich overnight.

But at least you earn enough to live comfortably, though living in a poorer country and working for a big international company by proxy would make you earn more. That’s if certain currencies are converted into the next nation’s equivalent, though that hasn’t stopped the likes of Gerry Alanguilan from working in architecture at some point. Though in light of this, whether if working in comic books is even a good thing depends on the circumstances one is in.

Perhaps a surprising one if you are say Filipino and work for Marvel and DC, if monetary conversions were taken into consideration.

What a businessperson really is like

When it comes to businesspeople, there’s a tendency to stereotype them as rich. Yes a good number of well-known businesspeople are rich, rich enough to buy luxurious items even if not all of them do so. The surprising thing is that small and medium sized businesses/enterprises outnumber the larger ones in most national economies, so the average businessperson isn’t going to be that rich. Well, not all of them are that poor either and many more of them are practically middle class.

That’s enough to sustain and support themselves given the bare minimum needed to start a very successful business, speaking from personal experience I have sold a lot of face masks for 20 pesos. That’s enough to buy myself some magazines, so to speak and I’m planning on selling and making clothes to earn more money. It’s not that easy selling stuff, especially if it’s something that you might lose at any time (this has happened to me once). Not to mention increased competition from other businesses.

Back to the stereotype of the businessperson as rich, I think most people have no idea what it’s like to run a business since it’s not always easy to earn money from selling something. Especially when you not only have a lot of competition but also face losing your job and resources (I know this from experience), that it shouldn’t be surprising there’s a reason why most businesses are either small or medium sized in scope. Some businesses are even smaller still, hence the word micro enterprise.

I may not be rich enough, but I will make enough money from selling clothes to support myself and I think that’s true for anybody working in smaller enterprises where they do this to support themselves and their families as well. I may not speak for all people working in small and medium enterprises, but I am speaking from personal experience selling stuff nearly two years ago. It’s not easy making and selling stuff, especially if you lose those resources.

But once I get back to selling something, that’s when I’ll earn money again and I’ll give you more insight on what’s like to run a small business. Not to mention when it comes to selling stuff, as I learnt, it’s not always about deliberately selling stuff to people but rather allowing the customer their own choices to something they like. This is what I learnt from my aunt who told me this, so I decided to consider selling stuff online to allow people to decide for themselves. Again it’s not easy setting up a business, much less in ways you’re not familiar with.

That’s why setting up a business will not come easy, whether if it’s something you will lose or if it’s a new way of selling things it will not be easy.

Making something

To be honest, I do want money. I need to sell something to support myself and I have plans of selling something expensive to give myself a lot of money, so I do have thoughts of having a lot of money myself. Nonetheless, I feel the poor also want something special themselves. So it would be nice if I were to give them something, be it a nice gown or a nice blouse. If the rich can have nice things, so do the poor. I might have to sacrifice my desire to have a lot of money for myself to give them something, I have to realise since I want something for free it’s only fair to give them something for free as well.

Yes, I have my hesitations as I want to make a lot of money for myself. But to compromise, I would make something for free once I’m financially stable enough to support myself that I can afford to give special presents to people. I’m not there yet, but I will have to get there once I have enough money to support myself and then others. For the time being, I have to learn to make a dress before I can make a dress as well as a blouse to sell them to other people. I may not be good enough at something yet, but I do have some prior sewing experience to know how to make one myself.

I do have experience in selling something before, mostly with facemasks as I sold them for 20 pesos each. One of my relatives suggested I should’ve sold them for 50 pesos, given the effort I make in creating them. I actually have plans of making and selling blouses for 260 pesos, since that would give me more money than with facemasks, which I sold for 20 pesos. I could and actually want to sell dresses for 460 pesos, which would give me even more money but if I earned 1000 pesos I would have to spend it on more fabrics to sell and a handful to keep. Perhaps some as gifts to give away.

There are probably going to be things where I’d keep for myself and/or somebody else, so I have my priorities where I’d sell some outfits, ones to keep myself and some to give away to others. I may not be there yet, but I will do anything to work and support myself when I can. I’ve just made a pattern for a dress, but I need chalk to fulfill my vision. This is just the beginning for me making a dress, but I could hit big with selling and making dresses in the future. This is wish fulfillment at best, but that’s the best I can do for my situation.

Uncertainty

I feel pretty directionless and lazy in life, I really want to go out and do something. There’s a lot of uncertainty going on that I have to turn to God for answers and directions, but I’m not sure where I’m heading to. My father has yet to find a way to get the data from my USB, which no longer works and I’m waiting for it to happen. In the meantime, I have to trust God in what he does. I’m not sure about what he’s going to do, but I do want something good out of it.

I feel really helpless and hopeless in here, still waiting for something good to happen. I might as well take the time to do something, while something will surely happen in my favour. I also feel like leaving Marikina as I think it doesn’t do my mental health any justice, so I’d rather go out to take my mind off of things even if I won’t always use the computer there. But I can sit back and relax there, no need to worry about a lot of things.

On the brighter side of things, I have a chicken that laid eggs and begat many chicks to take care of. I should be happy about this, since my father showed me that. But I don’t feel good, I feel bad for the animals’ conditions here so I want to go to Cubao to check on the animals there and not feel too awful there as well. I had a great time in Cubao, eating, reading comics and playing with the cats there. But it was a short-lived time as I had to return home.

So my unhappiness continues, I’m not certain about what God would do to me. Well, I keep on praying for my father to extract data from dead hard drives and my aunt to get a black cat. I have to wait and see, since something good could happen. But I’m still uncertain about a lot of things in life. Who knows what he has in store for me, it could be something real good in the future. That’s good for sure, but I have to wait and keep on praying for something to happen.

Geekdom and idealisation of countries

Admittedly, this isn’t unique to geeks as some people do have a habit of idealising certain countries. But the thing here’s that there’s a tendency for some anime fans to idealise and stereotype Japan as this anime loving nation, even if not all Japanese people necessarily care about anime and that’s practically just one facet of Japanese culture. (That could be me going to Japanese language websites to look up on stray and feral dogs, which do occur in the countryside.)

It misses the entire forest for one tree, one species of a tree to be specific. That’s not to say Japan’s unlikable as a country, but it does have its faults whether if it’s the racism or the tendency to discriminate against students who have a naturally different hair colour (and are even required to dye it black). Not to mention Japan actually has an ageing population with a declining birthrate, not that young people are nonexistent in Japan but there’s increasingly less of them these days.

There’s a habit of equating Japan with all things strange, which I was prone to until I started reading up on something like say stray dogs for instance which a different picture of Japan emerges. Likewise there’s the irritating tendency to associate Japan with all things anime, as if all Japanese like anime regardless of their actual feelings and that some Japanese simply aren’t into anime. But that involves seeing the Japanese as human, flawed and not always into what you like.

That’s the problem with idealising a country, it misses out the flaws including potential ones in favour of something that’s romantic. It can be by proxy, it can be direct. But one thing’s certain: it’s the tendency to romanticise and idealise a country regardless of its flaws and shortcomings. Some African American men idealise Brazil and go there to have sex with its women, but Marques Travae (the man behind Black Brazil Today)’s really into Brazil by not only depicting facts but also its flaws.

Now that’s somebody who really does care for Brazil and see Brazil as it really is, there are probably some Japanophiles who feel the same way around Japan but sadly some of the more vocal anime fans see it as anime land. That’s really a nearly two-dimensional impression of the country, othering it only instead of seeing it as weird and awkward it sees it as this glorious playground where everybody loves one thing. (This is like thinking Germany is this dog-friendly paradise, regardless of the fact that dog poisoning occurs fairly often in the news so some Germans hate dogs.)

Seeing a country for its flaws and virtues is the more mature way of viewing things, it’s accepting it as it is without exaggeration or idealisation. That’s not to say you should hate a country, it’s really a matter of accepting it as it is though it’s the harder way to do so. I did have a period of idealising Nigeria but the more I read up on its flaws, the more upset I got and eventually moved onto other countries in 2017. I did go to back to being interested in Nigeria, but it does make one wonder if there are any countries that live up to one’s expectations better to some extent.

Not that Ghana and Cameroon are entirely faultless, in fact Cameroon has had a problem with the conflict between Anglophones and Francophones but they do have more people tolerating cats than Nigeria does (this is also how I learnt not all African countries are interchangeable). Likewise, Poland and Italy have a larger number of dog owners than Germany does even though they still have problems with dog poisoners and hunters shooting dogs.

It’s really an odd fact that some countries might and do fulfill one’s expectations of their favourite country a little better, maybe not necessarily any better but somewhat moreso to an extent when it comes to certain faults both perceived and otherwise. While India might be closer to the West due to being a former British colony en masse, China has several languages nearly devoid of grammatical gender and while China does have those languages, India has more English speakers so they’re not without their own vices and virtues.

This is also true for Japan and also Britain when it comes to being idealised by geeks as far as I know about it and have experienced.

What I wanted to do

Back in 2014, one of the jobs that I wanted to do was to make soap. That’s to give myself something better to do so that I won’t always be on the computer, but my grandmother discouraged it so I turned to sewing and embroidery instead. My grandmother didn’t want me to make soap because you needed lye to make it, which would hurt the eyes. You could make soap without using lye and it can be done with the cold process method, which involves combining lye with oils and leaving the soap at room temperature in order to saponify.

But I’ve yet to learn how to cook and make soap myself, so sewing and dressmaking are the more accessible and viable options for me when it comes to selling what I made. I remember sewing a lot in 2009 but it didn’t take off big time until the mid-2010s when I started embroidering a lot and tend making my own skirts with the help of my father. I wouldn’t start selling them until 2020, which’s the time when I sold a lot of facemasks to my relatives for 20 pesos. I lost my job in the later months of 2020 and 2021 so I need to find work again to earn more money.

I still feel like I need to take a risk in order to have something much better to do and also to have something to earn from, which I needed to do to get back to work big time. As for sewing, I also need to diversify and improve on my sewing skills so that I can reduce the amount of fabric puckering when I sew as well as learning how to sew trousers/pants and dresses. I might as well need proper formal, albeit vocational education to learn how to sew dresses and trousers that I can sell for around 300 and 400 pesos given they require more yards/metres than a single blouse.

I tried making trousers before, but it’s not what my sister wanted them to made so I have to undergo vocational education to learn how to properly make trousers that I can sell for 400 pesos online (I need to do this so that I can earn more money this way). I have to sell stuff so that I can earn money to support myself and buy whatever I wanted, but I need to work two jobs to earn more money and fund the resources needed for my dressmaking and business.

It wouldn’t be easy but I need to start sewing and selling again so that I can earn money to buy whatever I wanted and needed, I need to have extra income so having two jobs is necessary for me to fund the resources needed for my business as I said before. It’s not easy selling stuff, especially if you have competition that you have to compete with other businesses to get the customer’s attention. I even need money to start a business, though with somebody’s help as I’ve just started and I am not that financially stable and well-off enough yet.

Soap making may not be a viable option for me to do, given how risky it is to the eyes that I need special glasses for that to make soap with so dressmaking and sewing are the safer, more viable options to do. Even then, you need to have some risk taking in order to expand your business and your sewing skills to take on new things likes dresses, shorts and long trousers in addition to the relatively easy to make blouses. It wouldn’t be easy making something new, but it is worthwhile when it comes to expanding your business and having something else to do and make.

Especially if you’re willing to expand your business to encompass different items to sell, Bench (a Philippine clothing brand) went from selling T-shirts in malls to selling trousers, underwear, colognes, skirts, dresses and shorts. So it does give me inspiration to not only start my business, but also to expand my business to sell different kinds of clothing like trousers and shorts. Not an easy route, that’s if your skills in making trousers and shorts aren’t that great yet but necessary if you want to sell more stuff as well as learning how not to pucker while sewing.

As for soap making, it wouldn’t be easy either and it’s the riskier of the two as that involves working with something that would irritate the eyes but I do think I’d like to take a risk to sell soap alongside clothing to have some extra income. But then again soap making’s a little too risky to do, so my second job would have to be cartooning to support my career in dressmaking when it comes to buying the resources needed for one’s business.