Disney's Frozen: Memorable Quotes and Lessons (Re)learned

I just watched Frozen yesterday, before the entries for the Metro Manila Film Festival took over all the cinema showings. And boy, was I glad I did.

While watching the movie Thor: The Dark World, we saw this Frozen teaser trailer.

I laughed at this trailer. It was funny and hilarious. I then resolved myself to watch Frozen, simply for the fun of it. However, apparently, the teaser had nothing to do with the whole movie. Later did I know that Elsa with her 'Frozen' power is the gist of the movie. And it was one powerful movie at that, full with richness and depth, albeit the occasional cliches here and there.

So here are some of the quotes and the lessons I've learned/relearned:

"The heart is not so easily changed, but the head can be persuaded." - Pabbie 

I really liked this statement from the Grandfather Troll. It was just said in passing, however, I think it says a lot about rationality when being in love, about using rational judgments in making love decisions, not stubbornly pursuing a love justified as "it's true love."

Pabbie: Only an act of true love can thaw a frozen heart.

Bulda: A true love's kiss!

And here it was, another cliche! I was expecting Kristoff to kiss Anna in the end. But it was such a nice conclusion that Elsa's tears (depicting her love for her sister) melted Anna's frozen state. The act of true love meant familial love! How unexpected, what with the hints of a love triangle with Hans, Anna and Kristoff. It was beautiful to think that Disney has stopped portraying love as love at first sight, and true love's kiss which has disillusioned many youngsters about love, romance and even gender roles.

"Some people are worth melting for." - Olaf

Being a Filipino, I thought of this scene as an adaptation of Ninoy Aquino's famous saying. "The Filipinos are worth dying for." And it was such a nice gesture of Olaf to say that. That his love and concern for Anna goes to that certain extent.

"Conceal, don't feel, don't let them know." -Elsa

It was really a misguided parental concern to lock Elsa up and isolate her from everyone. I believe that's what made her very vulnerable to Anna's single push during the coronation night. This theme is like Mulan's "Reflection." And, I must say, Disney is reliving its glory as I once remembered it as child, with its recent movies, Tangled and Frozen.

Keep them coming, Disney! 

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Desiderata: The ABC of Happiness

Desiderata, is a prose poem written by Max Ehrmann in 1927. Some people call it the Desiderata of Happiness. Well, true enough, his words are to live by. 

I've known Desiderata during one of our English classes in high school. My teacher instructed us to memorize the poem for a graded recitation. Years later, I still remember some lines, because these words are to live by. Whenever I feel down, vexed, jealous, disappointed or angry, Desiderata never fails to calm me down.

And this is my favorite line.
Because I always feel envious of people and start that so called game of lack with them.

Or this. Whenever I feel that urge to be at the center of attention and please people.

Or wait. This can be it. Whenever I feel down and disappointed with myself. Doubting my competencies and actually asking the reason for my existence.

Or actually, this. To remind myself that the world is a nice world to live in and that happiness is a choice.

Well, actually... it's all of it. It really is the ABC of happiness. 

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Dreams, 2

It’s funny how everything in your dream seems to be logical while you’re dreaming it. However, once you’re awake, the dream seems to be nonsensical – not to mention the fact how the scenes change very abruptly and you think it was natural. "Dreams" is a series of posts about, of course, my dreams.

June 16, 2013 7:20 AM

I woke up to the sound of my mother’s voice calling us to eat breakfast. No dreams whatsoever – or so I thought. My mom told us how she was woken in the middle of the night by my scream. She thought that I and my sister (who were sleeping on the bed) were quarreling so she got up to check on us, only to find out that we were both soundly asleep.

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Dreams, 1

It’s funny how everything in your dream seems to be logical while you’re dreaming it. However, once you’re awake, the dream seems to be nonsensical – not to mention the fact how the scenes change very abruptly and you think it was natural. "Dreams" is a series of posts about, of course, my dreams.

June 13, 2013 4:40 AM

I dreamt I was reading manga from my favorite manga site. After some time of reading, I realized I haven’t slept for two days straight! Still, I was up and about, full of energy and ready to read more.

Scene changes to a third person POV while I was watching my sister haggle for slots in the UPLB Systemone (she’s currently a Sophomore student in FEU-Makati.)

Scene changes to a dance stage. A dancer was missing from the stage. The person asked for a volunteer, and I stood up. We played the swing. I have two partners though, my ex-boyfriend and my friend.

Scene changes to an elevator lift of a building. I was escorting my grandfather in a wheelchair to the hospital in the building. Although I don’t know which floor. I have a hunch it’s around the lower floors – indeed it was on floors 1-3, however, when I asked the two men beside me, he said it’s the 25^th floor. So we went up, only to find out we were deceived. The atmosphere changed and suddenly, we were in the middle of some mysterious, murder movie.

What a weird dream indeed.

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HFDS111 and Sigmund Freud

For some facets of the theory, I can actually call myself a Freudian believer. I strongly believe in the power of the subconscious mind. That everything we do is what we really intend to do, we may not just be aware of it. I also believe that jokes are always half-meant. And the ever famous Freudian slips.

As part of our course outline in HFDS111 - Personality Theories, we will be discussing the lenses or traditions in determining personality. The first tradition is the Psychodynamic Theories.

And one of the most popular in the field of Psychoanalysis is Sigmund Freud. I will not delve much into the details but basically, Freud believes that personality is greatly determined by the biggest part of our mind - the subconscious and the unconscious. It is usually represented by an iceberg, as seen in the image below I downloaded from Google (credits to the owner).

Freud's Provinces and Structures of the Mind represented by the Iceberg

As seen in the image, there are three provinces of the mind: the conscious, preconscious (also called the subconscious) and the unconscious. What we usually see is only the tip of the iceberg. The same's true for the human mind, according to Freud. We can only see the conscious mind, which is only the tip of our whole personality.

While studying Freud, we are asked to record our dreams immediately after we wake up. Dreams are the "royal road to the unconscious". It is where our unconscious thoughts manifests in our conscious mind through symbols which may be of manifest or latent meaning. And more importantly, dreams, for Freud, is wish fulfillment or a repetition compulsion of a trauma. 

That is to say, I'll be blogging my dreams in the future and try to apply the Freudian psychoanlysis in determining my personality. 

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Introducing Oneself: The Creative Way

Introducing yourself. Getting to know your classmates. Drawing your self-representation. These are usually done during first days of each class.

However, some of our professors get a little bit... creative.

During our first day for our EDUC102 (Theories and Principles of Learning) class, my professor instrcuted us to do a visual representations of ourselves. However, we need to use a triangle in doing so. She argued that having that kind of restriction will help the students to be creative.

Usually, for this kind of exercise, I have my standard self-representation which is a mirror. Mirror because I reflect the attitude of the person I am with - not reflect in the sense of I will copy his/her attitude, but in the sense of I can adapt and be flexible towards the other person's attitudes and mood swings.

Because we need to use a triangle, I need to think of something else. After minutes of deliberation, I came up with this:

The long thread that represents freedom, because I live faraway from my parents, residing in an apartment near my university. The persons holding the thread are my parents, giving me the support I need even though I'm faraway, holding me in line wherever I want to go. The triangle is a small, but integral piece connecting me to my parents. Lastly, I represented myself as the balloon, always flying and soaring, but is ready to burst anytime.

Indeed, the subconscious mind is truly powerful. I have said the aforementioned reasons in a whim, just to have something to say because it was my turn to explain. However, after analyzing, I realized that somehow... the balloon representation of myself is a lot better than my standard mirror. It fits perfectly, capturing my innermost thoughts about my strength and weaknesses I've never given much thought about before.

My other classmates have drawn a slice of pizza (she says she loves to eat so a pizza's the first thought that came to mind), a chick (it was cute how she used the beak as her triangle!, I forgot her explanation though), an arrow (pointing to the left because he's an activist and and upward to represent being progressive), a tree (because she's strong and resilient), among many more.

It was indeed a nice way. and a creative one at that. So, using a triangle, what's your visual representation of yourself?

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I missed you.

After months of inactivity, I decided to blog again. :)

Mostly, this blog is filled with random rants and thoughts about myself, and my ex-boyfriend. hahaha! So, I kind of want to revamp this page to something more worthy of reading, something more about who I am as I am.

And for the past year I was happy being in a relationship with myself, I spent most of my time reading mangas, watching animes and such.

This semester, I am registered as a fourth year BS Development Communication student. Exciting things are bound to happen - with my courses, my organization, with my thesis (it's really a big problem if you don't have a thesis problem). So there are a lot of stories that can be written - all of which, as trivial as they may seem, be as inspiring and as exciting for you as they had been to me.

Hope you'll like them! :)

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My OJT Experience - in a nutshell

Summer. Beaches. Vacation.

However, a vacation full of novels, mangas and animes is not possible this year. According to our BS Development Communication curriculum in UP Los Baños, we have to take our on-the-job training this summer. Back in March, I thought, “Goodbye fun summer; hello work”. Little did I know I was about to experience one of the best, if not the best, summer vacations I’ve had in my 18 years of existence.

Being a part of the Citizen Participatory Audit (CPA) Team of ANSA-EAP for more than one month has allowed me to experience things I never thought I would enjoy. On the first day of our internship, we were brought to a meeting for one of the pilot projects of CPA, the performance audit of the CAMANAVA Flood Control Project. There, we met COA directors, auditors, engineers from the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) and other CSO stakeholders from across the country, like the Concerned Citizens of Abra for Good Government (CCAGG). Frankly, I was starstruck to see some of our government’s high ranking government officials. And as our internship progressed—after a series of meetings, seminars and workshops—the experience of working with the composite audit team is really unforgettable.

Being an enumerator for a day.
Photo taken May 29 during the Solid Waste Management Survey at Brgy. Commonwealth, Quezon City.

I also experienced fieldwork by accompanying survey enumerators as they interviewed the residents of Barangays Commonwealth, Kaligayahan and Tandang Sora in Quezon City to check the local government’s compliance in the Solid Waste Management Act. We get to meet the residents and talk to them. But the experience did not stop with that; we also got to experience processing survey data. It was my first time doing such a task, and I must say that I had a love-hate relationship with MS Excel during those weeks. I learned how to use pivot tables and conditional cell formatting, which was also an unforgettable experience, not to mention a newfound skill.

Moreover, I’ve had many realizations during my stay. In a nutshell, I can now confidently say that Development Communication is using communication to promote social change and to empower the people to drive their development. And its usual audience are found at the grassroots – the farmers, the fisherfolk, and the masses, as we call them. During my stay in ANSA–EAP, I’ve realized that DevCom is also applicable to the urban sector, not only in the rural areas. This became very apparent to me in CPA’s second pilot audit, where we conducted community scorecards and focus group discussions with conditional cash transfer beneficiaries and the local health service providers in Marikina. I’ve realized how important a dialogue is in finding solutions to problems that are there but are not always given due attention. I’ve also realized the importance of framing and reframing ideas in facilitating meetings; this skill really helps people understand each other better in constructive engagement exercises. Lastly, I realized, yet again, the importance of people participating in every process – from planning, to implementation, down to monitoring and evaluation of the activity. Indeed, participation makes people informed and proactive in bringing about positive change to their communities, which is a step towards developing the country.

I expected this summer to be full of work—and indeed, it was. However, it was work that I found I loved and enjoyed doing. I discovered my passion in working for an organization that is people-oriented. And even though it lasted only for a short while, working in ANSA-EAP gave me many valuable experiences and lessons that I will take with me as I return to the university as a student and later on, as a Development Communication practitioner.

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