The Adventures of Trish of all Trades

Marathon Monday

dishinoutsomegratitude — Mon, 15 Apr 2013 23:16:00 -0400

As far as I know all my friends in Boston are safe. But scrolling through all the tragic news stories and hearing about the people that are still missing, I can’t help but feel a bit heavy hearted. This isn’t a great time of year for me as I’m remembering my father, who I last saw on Marathon Monday 2006. But this… this did make me smile. Let’s not forget the light.

(Original http://instagram.com/p/YJbQeygCFP)

Takin' it all in...

dishinoutsomegratitude — Sun, 10 Mar 2013 23:43:38 -0400

(an aerial view of NYC from the plane today)

I’m in NYC right now in a pretty nifty hotel room. Tomorrow I’m going to participate in an incredible opportunity that has the power to affect a lot of women out there. And, for once, I’m not saying “how did I get here”… because I know how I got here. I have some amazing friends, colleagues, and acquaintances (yes, the latter counts immensely). I’ve worked hard. I’ve helped build communities. I’ve had pretty awesome bosses like Dave that have encouraged me along my professional career. And I’ve realized that helping people light their candles, will never extinguish my own light.

I hope you take some moments this week to soak it all in, no matter how hard you’re working.

Anyway, no long post here. Just wanted to take a moment. See ya on the flip side.

It’s a Freddie Scott kinda night… ‘(You) Got What I...

dishinoutsomegratitude — Thu, 07 Mar 2013 22:39:00 -0500

It’s a Freddie Scott kinda night…

‘(You) Got What I Need’ by Freddie Scott

A lil more comfortable with this every day...

dishinoutsomegratitude — Sat, 09 Feb 2013 21:44:00 -0500

Source: forum.football365.com via Trish on Pinterest

I'm not doing well with this NaBloPoMo thing...

dishinoutsomegratitude — Sat, 03 Nov 2012 19:26:41 -0400

And it’s only day 3… so how about this for inspiration:

Like this infographic? Get more content marketing tips from Copyblogger.

Me and Sandy

dishinoutsomegratitude — Thu, 01 Nov 2012 23:59:00 -0400

I usually attempt NaNoWriMo, but I’m going with NaBloPoMo this year. Slightly easier. What’s that mean for you if you’re too lazy to click on those links? It means I’m going to post every day in November. So here goes.

When Hurricane Irene hit Boston last year, it was this incredibly ridiculous hyped up thing. Irene did however, damage my hometown in NJ quite severely. My godkid’s basement had water that was chest deep on an adult. But since I wasn’t there it felt more like a story than an actual event. So when I heard about Hurricane Sandy, I didn’t even think to prepare for it.

(like the woman in the back photobombing?)

This past weekend was my mom’s birthday, so I went down to NJ to celebrate it with her. The whole trip was supposed to be pretty awesome. She was excited. One of my brothers was flying out. I managed to get a few meetings in NYC for work. It all seemed peachy.

On Sunday Amtrak emailed and called to say my train was canceled. Seeing as that Amtrak gets delayed quite frequently, I didn’t think much of it. But when the lights went out on Monday, something didn’t sit quite right.

Tuesday morning we woke up and the power was still out. The longest we’d ever experienced while in NJ. My brother and I started to search on the web and my mom called her friends to see what was happening. The mayor of my hometown had left an automated message on our machine, telling folks to call his cell if they needed anything (oh small towns). After talking to people and scouring websites, it was crazy the lack of information we were getting. Amtrak stopped contacting me directly after that first cancellation and their press releases pointed people to their Twitter and Facebook pages (although the latter is best, their Twitter is so so). When I called, I waited for a half hour on the phone with no human contact. Our energy company said nothing on their homepage except for how many of their customers were without power (close to 1 million). Their Twitter account kept saying, we have no timeline for repair and once we finalize a water/ice list we’ll distribute it.

The temperature dipped down to the 40s in the house and I hadn’t packed anything for cold weather. Thankfully, my mom had tons of fleece blankets and a gas stove so we were able to cook some things. We did have some candles and a lamp, so at night, we huddled in our kitchen and chatted until what seemed like an hour adults could/should go to sleep.

On Wednesday, Mom left the house for the first time since Sunday to check in on her friends and to see what was up. The entire town was a ghost town. There were shelters, but there were no policemen to be found. Nothing was open and a bunch of random roads were blocked off. My brother and I noticed that no trucks had come to pick up downed trees, but some smart neighbors started to chop up and gather the trees for firewood. I thought at the time, I can’t imagine what people did before smartphones, but it’s not like we were figuring out any good information from going online. While driving, mom flipped on the radio and told us more about what was happening.

After 4 days of being strung along by Amtrak, I bit the bullet and shelled out a couple hundred dollars for a plane ticket. JetBlue made it all worth it though. I felt bad leaving my mom today, but I had to get back to work and thankfully she’s got my brother and her circle of friends checking in on her. It made me think about how people my age are so disconnected and how we probably wouldn’t do the phone chain that my mom was so used to. We’d wait for a few days before we contacted someone… mostly because we didn’t see them tweet or post on Facebook.

Thankfully we’re all safe and so is my family up and down the east coast. Some are without power, but we’re all okay with no major property damage.

It’s all got me thinking about the next time I hear there’s a storm. First off, I’m phoning my closest friends and making a pact that we’ll check on each other. Then I’m going to Costco to get an obscene amount of water and easy things to eat. Oh and pants. I’ll remember to have sweatpants. In all seriousness, I hope we all take some time to send good juju to the millions without power and those who have been displaced. We’re all in this together.

(the captain on my flight made sure we noticed the really empty runway at Newark Airport)

4AM State of Affairs - Becoming famous. Or not.

dishinoutsomegratitude — Mon, 08 Oct 2012 05:10:00 -0400

I used to want to be famous. In my games of MASH with my friends, under the first job line I’d write in “actor/singer/writer/choreographer/director/talk show host”. As a grammar school/junior high girl, I wanted to stand out in a good way. A sliver of me thought that being famous would be the only way I’d get out of New Jersey. I mean, who leaves their hometown to become an accountant? Or a… yeah I don’t know. It was silly at the time. I just felt, who would leave the comfort of family and friends if it wasn’t for something extraordinary (no offense to accountants), because that specialness would be what lifted them and floated into another state of being. Or Los Angeles.

Since grammar school, I’ve put on all those different hats in my adult life minus choreographer. The only things I ever choreographed were versions of Alright Tonight and Footloose. Oh and an epic remake of Waterfalls in my parents’ pool when that CrazySexyCool first dropped. Man, that was a good record. Where was I?

Oh. Yeah. In 2002, I up and moved to Boston. Turns out getting into college is another way to skip town. And up until the weekend of my graduation, I still had this hope of becoming famous. I had interned at HBO Films my junior year and besides never doing a lot of acting while I was in college, well at least not as much as I did in high school, I thought I might head back to LA after I graduated to dabble in acting. Ya know, get discovered without having to put in the work. Etc and so forth. Clearly, that didn’t happen or maybe not so clearly if you’ve stumbled onto this blog and thought the only way this girl could get away with blathering is if she was famous (nay). But after I graduated/my dad passed away (that weekend = same) in 2006, it took me a long time to try and figure out what I was meant to do. Becoming famous suddenly became stupid. My dad had always talked about finishing college, but he never told me what came afterwards. Now without him, how the heck was I supposed to figure it out?

I feel like it was 2008, or maybe even 2007 that I really started to settle into adulthood. Find things that made me feel alive again. I realized, I didn’t want to be famous anymore. The one thing I wanted more than air, was to be a woman my father would be proud of. One that would make my father beam. He always said, people will know that he was good, because his children would be good. And I wanted to focus on that.

My father would have loved to hear about my startup life. Being an engineer and an inventor himself, he would have loved to see we filed a patent. That I’m using every bit of working experience I’ve gained over the past 12+ years. That I wake up in the morning, excited to help people. I mean, he would have been proud with whatever I pursued… but I really didn’t put my big girl pants on until just a few years ago when I decided to pursue what would make me jump out of bed in the morning instead of job security and health insurance. And that right there, not just the notion and realization, but the actualization is what my dad would be so proud of.

Anyway… this was just an affirmation post for me. Had a rough week last week and I woke up an hour ago and thought, you are pretty damn lucky. Remember why. Remember who got you here. Remember to find joy. If you can’t remember to find joy, what’s the point?

3 Things I Know to Be True - 8/26/12

dishinoutsomegratitude — Mon, 27 Aug 2012 00:27:40 -0400

(This is is a good one yeah?)

Now that we’ve gotten down to a pretty great blog schedule at work, it’s time for me to get back to blogging over here too. I’ll have to do an epic summer recap this week, then it’ll be back to startups, food, volunteering, Boston, and probably a little ranting. But I figured I’d kick it off with the 3 things exercise.

1) Life be crazy. - Last week, my seemingly healthy uncle passed away and I found out my brother and his wife are having a baby. Let me repeat: Life be crazy. Take advantage of every single breath.

2) It’s okay to say you’re awesome at something. - This has been a bigger issue over the past year. When I’m not yelling from the rooftops about something great I’ve been working on, I’ve been told I “need higher self esteem”. When I do admit I’m good at something, I’ve been teased me for being cocky. When is it okay to be awesome? Whenever you want, kid. Well, as long as you can back it up. Don’t mind the haterz.

3) It’s okay to relax on the weekends. - I try to repeat this to myself over and over, “Just because you’re at a startup doesn’t mean you have to work every waking moment”. The best part about training for this triathlon has been figuring out what I need to succeed. And that (lots of) rest needs to happen in order to be really productive. I can’t work and train and not take care of myself. Slowly but surely I’m moving up taking care of myself past working at a startup. They’re still very very close, but if the former isn’t doing well, the latter won’t do well.

Photo

dishinoutsomegratitude — Mon, 09 Jul 2012 00:32:32 -0400

"If I were you, I would have said something..."

dishinoutsomegratitude — Mon, 09 Jul 2012 00:30:00 -0400

(pic from Eugene Ho’s, “my slanted eyes are beautiful”)

The other week… I was hanging out with some folks and having a pretty decent time. Not sure how, but the topic of Asians came up. One person said how they mimic Asian accents when they’re super tired. Another said how they liked to pull their dog’s (or cat?) eyes back to make them squinty like an Asian. The combination of drinking and being the only non-white person there got to me. Not wanting to be a party pooper I politely smiled at their jokes since I was the only one not laughing, and at the earliest moment I excused myself and left.

When I relayed this story to some friends of mine, one of them piped up and said, “Are you kidding me? If I were you, I would’ve said something.” On the surface, it’s true. I should have said something. On the other hand, is a late night lecture to some inebriated folks going to do anything? Meh, I’m leaning towards no. I knew he, as a white male, didn’t intentionally indicate that I was weak, but I interpreted it that way. Also the assumption, “If I were you” bugs the crap out of me. If he were actually me, he’d be tired of hearing that it’s somehow okay to make fun of what he looks like. And maybe, just maybe, he might also have been too tired to say something.

I can remember the first time someone said something racist to me, I was 5. An elderly neighbor said, “Go back to where you came from”. I thought this was ridiculous because I just found out that I came from my mom’s stomach (minus the other details). This neighbor also let their dog out to bark whenever my father was doing yard work. Kinda crazy. My pre-teen/teen years were peppered with teasing as well. Some insults were because of my chubby, braces wearing, be spectacled self. But others were clearly about me being Asian… like when kids yelled “Chink!” as I walked through the mall or skated in the rink by my house. An optician told me that the contacts she got for me would be difficult to put in because my eyes were so small (got it in the first try BTW). Even when I moved out of my small town into the big city of Boston, the comments continued. An old neighbor of mine in Beacon Hill asked my then roommate why he would live with an “Oriental girl”… why not a nice white roommate? I’ve stood on a curb waiting for someone in Chinatown, and men have screamed, “How much?” as they drove by.

I’ve gone from being the silent to angry to calm to funny Asian over the years. When you go to predominantly white schools, there’s never any diversity training. And without any diversity training, well there sure as heck aren’t any coping sessions either. At this point though, I’ve learned to love who I am, even when I decide to stay quiet and choose to battle another day.

I will say that it’s all made me a stronger person. Pushed me to mentor more and get involved. I don’t want anyone to feel as small as I did in many of those moments. I also don’t want people to feel like anyone has control over their emotions besides themselves. Onward and upward…

Feelin’ it.

dishinoutsomegratitude — Tue, 03 Jul 2012 21:54:00 -0400

Feelin’ it.

Oh In Living Color… I thought the world would be amazing...

dishinoutsomegratitude — Tue, 03 Jul 2012 00:16:46 -0400

Oh In Living Color… I thought the world would be amazing if we could all just dance together with the fly girls.

The world needs to be a little more like LRCB

dishinoutsomegratitude — Sat, 16 Jun 2012 10:54:51 -0400

Mid-May I had a chance to participate in Ladies Rock Campaign Boston. Centered on collaboration, music, creativity, and female empowerment… it was probably one of the best weekends of my life. LRCB is a fundraiser for and abbreviated version of Girls Rock Camp Boston. The Girls Rock Campaign actually has chapters all over, and it’s a program to help empower girls (8-17) through music education. The girls get a week and the ladies get 3 days. So what happens? Well around noon on Friday you get together with 4-5 women you’ve never met and form a band based on what music you’d like to play. You spend the rest of the day coming up with a band name, figuring out lyrics and your instruments. Some folks pick up instruments that they’ve never played before, so there’s working around that too. Saturday is all about finishing up the song (or if you’re me, writing a rap for a bridge… heh) and rehearsing like whoa. You also come up with a logo and screen print it onto t-shirts for the band. Sunday night, you get to rock out on stage (for us, it was the TT the Bear’s stage). During the camp there are also workshops in self defense, songwriting, the history of women in rock, other instruments you’d like to play as well as different ice breaker games. And well, a whole lot of singing, dancing, and yelling. So why should the world be a little more like LRCB (besides everything I just described)? Well…

(This is my indie pop band Vowel Movement…heh Like my shirt? :) Photo courtesy of Sharona Jacobs Photography)

»> Fewer apologies. A lot of the activities we did at LRCB, are ones that they do with the girls. As women, there are quite a few times in our lives that we’re taught to be seen and not heard. That our opinion doesn’t matter. So one of the LRC/GRC policies is, if you make a mistake on your instrument and you feel like apologizing… don’t. Just scream out “I ROCK!”. Or if you catch someone apologizing for something they really don’t need to apologize for, yell “YOU ROCK!”. Wow… what an incredible way to find out just how many times a day we apologize for things that really don’t need it. This leads into…

»> It’s okay to scream. There’s that saying, boys will be boys. It’s okay for them to be loud and aggressive. But women? Nope. Some of the musicians mentioned that when they do soundchecks they always go full out because some sound booth dudes see that they’re women and automatically assume they’ll sing quiet folk instead of rock or metal. On the flip side, you know what’s also okay? Crying. There’s that other feeling of, never let “them” see you get upset because then you’ll be “that girl”. It’s okay to be emotional, to be passionate, to let it out when you have to. You rock! Remember? :)

(this was during “Behind Your Back”… basically when everyone goes around telling people how much they appreciated them for whatever reason. From helping you out with an instrument, to just smiling every morning.)

»> Praise with feeling. “He’s kickin’ ass and taking names…” “He’s killing it…” “He’s crushing it…” In my world, the startup world, conversations are littered with these phrases. It was incredibly refreshing NOT to hear any of the above. The aggression is unnecessary and what is this “it”? Take a second to actually address what you admire about what the person and their work/music/whatever.

»> Focus on you. Another trait female trait is to always act as the caregiver and mother. To be agreeable. This was something we went over a bunch in the vocals class I took. Sometimes people think they can push around the vocalist because they’re not holding an instrument… but our voice is our instrument! We do more than just execute, we have opinions and ideas too. So while consideration and collaboration is important, make sure you’re doing what’s right for you too.

(pictured: the LRCB AWESOME AWESOME AWESOME volunteers)

I had so much fun and knowing that we helped raised money for the girls is the cherry on top of the ice cream sundae. Did you know that they never turn away a girl camper if she can’t afford to attend the camp? Yeah. They rock. ;) If you know an awesome gal that would love to do LRC, check to see if there’s a camp in their area. To donate to GRCB chick check out the link below:

http://girlsrockboston.org/Home.html

: Community & the Future of Women in Tech

dishinoutsomegratitude — Mon, 21 May 2012 22:42:00 -0400

: Community & the Future of Women in Tech :

Check out my article on BostInno! Totally forgot to reference my recap of the Technovation Challenge event. Love this program for high school girls…

http://bostinno.com/channels/community-the-future-of-women-in-tech/

vsnap:

by Trish Fontanilla, Community Manager at Vsnap

Think about a job you love(d). Who was the first person to talk to you about it? Where did you find resources to help you? What are you doing now to pay it forward? Those questions rattled around in my head this past week while I was at…

Random Lessons From My Father

dishinoutsomegratitude — Tue, 15 May 2012 23:50:00 -0400

Missing dad lately (his anniversary was this past weekend) and well, he may be gone but his lessons live on! BTW, he’s somewhere in the universe right now reveling in the attention I’m giving him by writing this blog. haha Perhaps one of his random lessons will apply to you today. Perhaps not. Perhaps you can save these for a rainy day. Or if you’re in Boston right now, some other rainy day. ;)

“Forget boys, eat chocolate.” - Ah, what a good one. haha Yes, my chemist father made sure that I knew that chocolate contained phenylethylamine, the same chemical that is released in your brain when you fall in love. Being the youngest and only girl of 4, I think this was his way of preventing any type of heartbreak. That and a good piece of chocolate is far easier to attain. ;)

“When you wake up in the morning, you decide what your day will be like.” - I try to hold tight to this one when I go underground and I’m pressed up to a foggy window in an overcrowded train. This one is the hardest… me? I’m totally responsible for my emotions? But I like to blame others for my bad days!

“Even the pope goes to the toilet.” - This one is pretty classic. No matter how much money someone made or how famous they were or if they had somehow wronged me… he wanted to make sure that I knew that we all have this connection of being human. He wasn’t a huge fan of celebrity and didn’t want me to be intimidated by anyone.

Oh pops…

A girl can dream…

dishinoutsomegratitude — Wed, 18 Apr 2012 01:59:05 -0400

A girl can dream…

3 Things I Know To Be True (4/12/12)

dishinoutsomegratitude — Fri, 13 Apr 2012 00:18:40 -0400

I was sending some vsnaps today and someone said they were into TED talks, so I attached this one from Sarah Kay. In her talk, she mentions getting people to write by making them write lists. Hopefully this will give me a little jumpstart. So here’s mine… Three Things I Know To Be True… today…

1) I have a really fantastic boss. After I accepted my job… I kept bumping into people telling me how lucky I was to be working with him… how they’d “go to war” with him… etc. A part of me thought, “Awesome!” and of course the other part of me thought, “Well what about me?”. Now after almost a year of working with him, it’s really starting to sink in how lucky I am to have a boss that listens to me. Don’t get me wrong, we do have little spats… but he really respects what I have to say. :)

2) The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg (@cduhigg) is an amazing book. If you’re into psychology or or marketing or you just wanna figure out why people do what they do, pick it up. It’s really helped me figure out work a little more… my life a little more… and it’s given me insight into the world around me. Fo serious.

3) There are some really badass women in Boston. They’re working hard, blazing trails, and using their connections for good. Great meeting tonight with the Wonder Women of Boston event committee. They motivate to do more and to reach more people. http://www.wonderwomenboston.com

No joke... where did March go?

dishinoutsomegratitude — Mon, 02 Apr 2012 00:15:00 -0400

12 days this month I was either at a conference or traveling because of one. And if you calculate the prep and recovery time, well I guess you could say that conferences pretty much took up my March. So, yeah. Hi! ;)

Mid-March, I went to my very first SXSW (just for the interactive part of the festival, sadly not music or film) and got to demo Vsnap (@Vsnap) at TechCocktail (@TechCocktail) as well as at the Microsoft Bing/MassChallenge (@BingBooster / @MassChallenge) party. It did rain a bit during the first half of the week, which was kind of a bummer…

When I wasn’t demoing or being sick (lost my voice after all the presentations and interviews), I was eating. This came off the Snarkys Moo Bawk Oink food truck (yes)… it’s chocolate and cream cheese frosting with cocoa krispies on top of a gourmet doughnut…

And these frickin’ delicious looking chocolate croissants came from Easy Tiger (@EasyTigerATX)… a bakery AND beer garden in Austin. Why am I in Boston? haha

I did see several great panels which I’ll probably post about later. It was one of the most exhausting and invigorating weeks I’ve had in the past several years. If you’re a startup or small biz, I did a recap with some SXSW tips on the company blog here. Thanks to my boss for sending me! :)

A few days after I came back from SXSW, it was time for Music 2.0: Tools + Tech for Musicians, Marketers, and Managers (FB page linked so you can see all the presos and recaps). It was a tougher year sponsor-wise, but we had some really awesome folks come through for us. Another shout out to popchips (@popchipsboston), Notch Session Ale (@notchbrewing), and vitaminwater (@vitaminwater)! In addition to helping Charlie organize this year, I also presented Vsnap as a great tool for musicians. I did clarify at the beginning that I was there as a music fan who thinks Vsnap would be awesome to use, as opposed to a Vsnap employee trying to pitch it as a music tool. Here’s a pic Joselin Mane took… kinda crazy. haha

And, today I got up at 4:30AM to hop on a flight back from the SheStreams (@SheStreams) conference in Florida. It was a very interesting experience and outside of a university guest lecture, I’ve never had to prep an hour long presentation. I talked about Vsnap indirectly, but it was mostly about the power of authenticity and empowering your staff to be brand evangelists. View from dinner the first evening:

And glance at my badge. The whole “speaker” thing will probably never get old. I feel like in the digital space, I spent so many years listening… the fact that people are even asking me to speak still boggles my mind and makes me giddy and nervous.

I put this photo of me and my cousins in the Philippines in my presentation. See that? Even when I was 4/5, I was a brand evangelist.

And a pic of my last night there…

I’m not a huge fan of 80 degree weather, but I do miss regularly going to the beach. It so so so so reminded me of the trips to the Jersey Shore/Wildwood with my family when I was little and it made me miss them so much. I think I’m probably going to plan a week-long trip to NJ/NYC/the Shore in June to coincide with my high school reunion.

Hope y’all have been well. :)

My idea of balance...

dishinoutsomegratitude — Sat, 11 Feb 2012 19:13:08 -0500

Source: Uploaded by user via Trish on Pinterest

Women-ness / Filipino-ness

dishinoutsomegratitude — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 00:02:00 -0500

This is partly inspired by Fred Wilson’s recent blog about women entrepreneurs. Or rather, the comments. :)

I remember the first time I really interacted with a Filipino performer. It was slam poet champion/activist/NYU artist-in-residence Regie Cabico. He came into my Performance as Cultural Criticism class at Emerson and I got ridiculously excited. It was a bizarre feeling. I asked him how his parents reacted when he told them he wasn’t going to be a doctor, lawyer, or businessman. My classmates laughed… but those are the preferred/parent-approved career choices for most first generation Filipinos (and a lot of other Asians out there).

I remember being electrified after class and my brain running wild with possibilites. I was majoring in writing, so of course I thought I could be a writer, but there was just this incredible boost knowing that someone that looked like me could be successful in the arts.

From what I gathered from the comments on Fred’s blog, people were arguing whether or not a girl needed a woman as an example of success to be successful herself. Well, as someone who looked to her father as her biggest mentor, I’d argue no. I love and adore my mother, but I spent most of my time with my father growing up and a lot of his ideals stuck with me more than my mother’s. But… I clearly get the importance of being able to outwardly identify with someone within an industry you hope to go into. While my renaissance happened when I was 21, the earlier the better.

I recently became a mentor for the Technovation Challenge which pairs women in tech with high schools girls to help them develop an app using Google App Inventor. I’ve definitely gone the bumpy non-linear route to getting where I am today, but hopefully I can inspire them in some way to get into the tech field.

And not because there should be women (and minorities) in tech, but because it’s what they would really love to do. :)