London Calling

 

The moment it sunk in that I am moving to London, my memory sent an electric shock down my spine. I vividly recalled my obsession with the Great Britain, Londinium, United Kingdom, Big Ben, high tea. I  remembered that from when I was 11 till I moved to Canada (where new elements started occurring to me), I was completely bonkers about Britain! I wanted to live there, I wanted to be British, I wanted to brandish the Union Jack everywhere I could.

 

Let’s face it. 

 

I am moving TO LONDON! This is happening. 

 

I am so absolutely excited about the possibilities of London. Of the busy and dynamic current of lives that it is, of the immense history, world class culture of all types, of the multicultural mix of people that I am delighted to meet, of the prime location and Heathrow, Heathrow, Heathrow that is the hub to everywhere else in the world. One of my most amazing friends (Kat!) is living there right now, and she loves the city. My other European friends are a stones throw away. This is it. THIS is the change I’ve been wanting, THIS is the godsent gift to my present situation. This is the fate grabbing me by the the collar and presenting me with the pearl of my twenties. Living in London in your twenties is probably one of the best things that can happen. 

 

I am immensely grateful to life. I am immensely grateful to my company that is moving me to work in our London office (in Camden, no less!). I am excited! 

Quick NYE Post Before It’s All Over

2009! Ima gonna let you finish, but 2010 is gonna be the best year evar. In fact, because I am a die-hard optimist with an agenda, ALL I want to say is that next year will be better (in fact, next year will be better because it’s my year of the Tiger, and I am a ferocious one, so y’all better watch out, make amends or clear path), and you, 2009, were just the “will do sans anything more impressive” year. However, if I compare you to 2008 or 2007 and back, then definitely you were the best so far.

So thanks for being what you were, 2009. You were great in terms of career opportunities, networks built, friends made, randoms tossed, knowledge gained and maturity points earned. If I was even geekier than I am, I’d keep a massive Excel spreadsheet documenting hangover days year after year (you can have the idea free of charge, dear readers), and saying, Oh this 2009 year is good, I’ve been behaving so much better!

Thanks for all, but seriously, get the hell out.

And all the rest of you: please be careful on December 31, 2009. It’s the full moon lunar eclipse.

Why Doesn’t Every Consumer Staple Company Do This?

In a quest to find a personal hygiene product, a stick deodorant, to be precise, I ventured into Shoppers Drug Mart, which is a Canadian (and better, in my opinion) version of Duane Reade or Walgreens in the US, Jean Coutu in Quebec and London Drugs in the Canadian West.

Walking through the aisles populated by at least one individual lost in thought and intimidated by choice of products that he or she came to buy, I stumbled onto my section. It is important to state that at first I kind of chuckled at old men bent over rows of toothpaste, females ardently arguing over two boxes of hair color which shades looked exactly the same, young guys figuring out bath tub cleaning supplies, and old ladies hovering over stacks and stacks of hand cremes and facial moisturizers. So many choices, so little time, so much uncertainty.

Then I became part of the comedy that I first laughed at. Seriously, how the heck am I supposed to choose an antiperspirant, there are like 50 of them begging for my bucks. OK, there is a gel type and a white stuff type. I pick the white. That’s a start. Then I start taking tiny steps to the right and to the left, unable to choose between two different brands (I felt like trying something different as my previous deodorant wasn’t particularly thrilling).

And then EUREKA. I see the brilliant people behind DOVE screaming their product benefits at me via a very visible sticker on their Ultimate Beauty Care antiperspirant stick (Radiant Silk type, btw). I immediately grabbed it, smelled it, like it, put it in my basket and walked away.

If at least ONE market player explicitly tells me why they’re better than their extremely similar competitors in the consumer staple market, I’m going to go with the loudmouth brand. Thanks Dove, thanks Unilever actually.

The 6 benefits and advantages are, just so I could hopefully inspire you to switch brands:

1. all day wetness protection
2. all day odour protection
3. formulated to stay on skin, not on clothes
4. Dove 1/4 moisturizers
5. smooth & silky application
6. beautiful fragrance

As a relatively unpicky (but quality-seeking) consumer, I want all of those features. But notice something? Every antiperspirant stick brand can make the same claims, perhaps sans the Dove 1/4 moisturizers part, but with their own secret ingredient. We’re talking consumer staples, we’re talking spending 15 minutes deciding between thing A and thing A. It’s almost all the same. And yet Unilever was the only one that explicitly shoved the differentiating factors into my face.

Bravo, you win my $4.39!

2010 Kick Ass Time

It's not 2010 yet, but this was at Chris's birthday party & it looked awfully appropriate for the January 1st photo

Fun fact: I was born in the year of the fire tiger – um, can’t you tell?, – back in the hot and Soviet 1986 (eat your shorts, I’m young and loving it).

Not only do I like the fact that 2010, when split, is 20:10 (2, 2, 2!), but just a nice set of wholesome and beautiful 0-0 and 2 and 1. Anyway, excuse my obsession with semantics and the aesthetics. Off to some New Year ideals and promises, yeah?

In the new year, the beautiful and successful, 2010, I will use less brackets. And I will say “like” less. Down with the valley girl-isms. I should probably use less dashes, but I feel they’re underused and need more attention.

If anything, I’ll require larger supplies of exclamation marks in 2010.

I will also start my RSSP contributions in July 2010. When you start young, you get chances to end up in the big pile of dough… eventually.

I will have read at least 25 books. This year I read 18 or 20. I’m really aiming for 35 tomes.

I also want to completely stop eating meat produced from those giant farm plants where the animals get treated in the most terrible ways. I already don’t eat red meat, but I really need to eliminate processed meats and chicken breasts that came from hell.

I will become what is known as the gym rat. My gym routine will take precedence. I need to exert myself on the treadmill or die.

I will polish my Spanish. I spent three years studying it, and even could write two-page essays (um, on explorers. I wrote about Cristóbal Colón). It’s a shame to let language escape. Resuscitation! ¡Vámonos! Almodóvar‘s films can and will help.

And there’s professional goals, but those are better left for planning on paper and in Awesome Note. I already started with the new division, talked with VP’s about future plans and have a personal list of accomplishments and project ideas. It’s on.

Going to SXSW in the new year is also a goal.

Tentative: I will go to Vancouver during the Olympics because I can get a free bed, room, house AND the best dog in the world to stay with. Bugs Tomato is my man! It’s my chance to visit a city during the Olympics. I’m probably not going to be at London 2012, maybe Sochi 2014, probably not Rio 2016, but who knows.

Either way, I will be happy, learning, yearning, trying and achieving. 2010 is only the beginning of the awesome 12 year cycle. Make amends or get out of my way. Rawr!

Master Organizer

I took this in Vancouver in 2003;
uploaded by dreamtiger

I have issues with time. I keep thinking – I know, – it goes away somewhere and is never coming back. Which is not a lie to be thinking. I try to fill up my time with meaningful activities, good people, cultural enrichment, jolly delicious food and drink, and generally good things for me.

I, like many of us humans, tend to forget things as well. That’s where the electronic, Internet and old-school analog productivity and remembrance tools come in:

Since 2004 I have been keeping a series of To-Do Books. They are the classic 32-page, 7mm ruled Exercise Books with a Canadian map on them; I believe children practice writing in those; those exercise books are relics sort of. I’ve been using them (am on book 6) to write down tasks I had to do. All tasks fit into either the Career/Academic column or Personal/Hobby one. It works, folks. When I’m not at home, I jot stuff down in the Gmail tasks feature – it’s split into work/career activities and personal/whatever lists.

I downloaded Awesome Note for my iPhone, which I love, and which is helping me manage various types of lists, from what to buy at Shoppers Drugmart to Business Books I want to read to longer-term professional and personal goals.

I love me wall Calendar and scribbling in the little squares. I’ve a weekly Organizer which is something I miss from the days of school – weekly agenda with homework, appointments, dates, parties, and big due dates.

Every evening i prepare my Daily To-do post-it. It’s usually for the day ahead type a thing – key tasks and pressing issues that need to be resolved. Usually no more than 3-5 tasks, although I personally find that if I overwhelm myself I’m more likely to start working on them at 10am instead of waiting till 2pm on a Sunday afternoon.

When I feel that I won’t be able to make the most of the groceries in the fridge, I sometimes write out meal plans. But they’re the least successful as I scramble things around.

NOW. That does not mean that I never relax. I also plan Days of Nothing, where my biggest task for the day is to go to a spa, make my way to a coffee shop, or just walk for at least 30 minutes.

I don’t beat myself over uncompleted tasks, some of which have been known to carry on from page to page in my To Do Book for weeks!

PS. One more blog post tomorrow and my blog-writing will equal that of August 2009. This December I will try to beat last December’s numbers, but 17 entries is a lot and I want to enjoy my time with the family.

Highlights of 2008

I’m glad the year of the Mouse/Rat is over. It was a tough year, but also a very rewarding one, filled with events, color and life. It was definitely a great one for meeting new people and leaving the dead end contacts behind. It was a year of travels, learning, emotional change of scenery, breaking the habits, and finding peace. In short:

Vice internship, movies with Slava, Barbi, snow angel challenge, high tea, cuckoo New York trip, mad revelations and heartbreaks, the legendary night of the Justice show at the Great Hall, indoor pool voleyball in Richmond Hill with a blizzard outside, Montreal for the first time ever, straight to Vancouver, the return of Dimitri, straight A’s that semester, “I love nature” cottage visit, summer internship, more Montreal, Lemeac, Rajni, Ottawa, Rafael Nadal, gourmet adventures with Roberto, Magdalena’s return, dancing late and coming to work early, Osho, red eye to Europe, constantly ringing cell in Berlin, Baltic Sea, goth party in the bunker, wasp attack, Kunstwerke, Michael and Karin’s epic search for a gallery, scootering in Ibiza, flying, getting lost in the hills with fuel running out, Gaudi, Joan Miro, Catalan people, Faulkner’s Light in August, La Tomatina, Valencia’s paellas, the girl from Jupiter, getting lost in Barcelona with a flight to catch, gloomy London and port, vintage stores in Shoreditch, Strategic Planning, yoga, wonderful professors, wonderful people, PalmsOut in October, jerks stealing my possessions, Vosges chocolate in SoHo, Coney Island freak show, Mad Men, calming down, peace of mind, movie night with dear C.L., playing the tambourine till 4am, BBDO, roommate reunion, blizzards in Vancouver, the return of Scotch, securing that opportunity, The Sacred Book of the Werewolf, light at the end of the tunnel, Russian madhouse, caviar and champagne on New Year’s Eve.

Flashback alert!

…to the fall 2006 in Toronto, and my first residence on Sherbourne & Wellesley.

If you live or are familiar with Toronto, then you know that that particular area is no good. But I got lucky with the landlord (he would fix the problems right away and gave us discounts on pizza since he owned the Domino’s below us) and a very quiet roommate (I would see her once every two weeks and I would always startle her; we never had any social functions). I found this place a week after I moved to Toronto, and considered it a pretty rad deal.

No matter what it was (and no matter that 9 months later I moved to Kensington), it was my landing point in Toronto, and the start of all my explorations. I used to spend a lot of time there in the early fall of 2006. My Russian folks from the University of Waterloo paid many a visit during their co-ops and party frenzies (have you noticed that I used the word “frenzy” in the last 3 posts?), my mom saw this place when she visited, we could do laundry at home, I hosted a couple of my first ever dinner parties, and even facilitated a number of peculiar memories.

I remember coming home late at night, looking like a tough m*&$@#!er so that nobody would talk to me, watching the trannies and cabbies hang out at the Beaver gas station. The writing material. I would even write, “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness…” and so long and so forth, if Charlie Dickens hadn’t thought of that one first.

why hello

Originally uploaded by dreamtiger

this is from such a long time ago! well, well…. 2004. I remember, those were the days. Summer after we graduated from high school, the days before university, texting my boyfriend at the time (finance engineer guy, heh), we just spent the afternoon shooting 35 mm and speculating about the future. The sun shone brightly, the belt felt heavy, we felt the lightness in our stomachs and were so full of optimism… Speaking of, the positivity is even higher now.

Platja den Bossa

I really like this photo, which I took in Ibiza, on Platja den Bossa. I haven’t even noticed the great composition – look at the man and the woman! And then check out the couple in the distance – their heads are almost on the same level as the couple’s in the foreground. Yeah!

Playa d’en Bossa is the longest beach strip on the island (2 km). It’s full of beach cafes, bars, restaurants that often have famous DJs spin some tunes before performing at major clubs of the island (Space, Amnesia, Pacha, Privilege, Eden, did I forget something?).

We rode our scooter to the beach after spending most of the day in Eivissa town (where we scootered all the way to the top! See other photos), and relaxed. Be warned – numerous umbrellas beach chairs (is that what you call them?) that fill up the area have to be paid for. Watch out for the collector man.

Rabindranath Tagore “Stream of Life”

The same stream of life that runs through my veins night and day
runs through the world and dances in rhythmic measures.

It is the same life that shoots in joy through the dust of the earth
in numberless blades of grass
and breaks into tumultuous waves of leaves and flowers.

It is the same life that is rocked in the ocean-cradle of birth
and of death, in ebb and in flow.

PS. Tagore was the first from Asia to win the Nobel prize. There is a song called “Praan” and is sung in Bengali (same poem). Check it out, it’s beautiful.

PPS. My first entry!