like i'v done before with www.lepuppypoo.com, i'm more than happy to use my blog to help pimp out my friends' ventures and endeavours pro bono.  and no, i wasn't asked to do this, but i do admire my friends who aren't afraid to take control and steer their lives in a different direction.. very admirable.

 

this time, it's liz, a good friend i've known for a while.. hard to believe she's all grown up and doing grown-up stuff! lol 

 

check out her website to see some of her work in makeup and jewelry:

 

and her very-soon-to-be-launched online cosmetics store:

 

so yeah, check them out!

* SALAD DODGER.
An excellent phrase for an overweight person.

 

* SWAMP-DONKEY
A deeply unattractive person.

 

* TESTICULATING.
Waving your arms around and talking bollocks.

 

* BLAMESTORMING.
Sitting round in a group, discussing why a deadline was missed or a project failed, and who was responsible.

 

* SEAGULL MANAGER.
A manager who flies in, makes a lot of noise, craps on everything, and then leaves.

 

* ASSMOSIS.
The process by which people seem to absorb success and advancement by sucking up to the boss rather than working hard.

 

* SALMON DAY.
The experience of spending an entire day swimming upstream only to get screwed and die.

 

* CUBE FARM.
An office filled with cubicles.

 

* PRAIRIE DOGGING.
When someone yells or drops something loudly in a cube farm, and people's heads pop up over the walls to see what's going on. (This also applies to applause for a promotion because there may be cake.)

 

* SITCOMs.
Single Income, Two  Children, Oppressive Mortgage.
What yuppies turn into when they have children and one of them stops working to stay home with the kids or start a "home business".

 

* SINBAD.
Single working girls.  Single income, no boyfriend and desperate.

 

* AEROPLANE BLONDE.
One who has bleached/dyed her hair but still has a 'black box'.

 

* PERCUSSIVE MAINTENANCE.
The fine art of whacking the crap out of an electronic device to get it to work again.

 

* ADMINISPHERE.
The rarefied organisational layers beginning just above the rank and file. Decisions that fall from the "adminisphere" are often profoundly inappropriate or irrelevant to the problems they were designed to solve. This is often affiliated with the dreaded "administrivia" - needless paperwork and  processes.

 

* GOING FOR A McSHIT.
Entering a fast food restaurant with no intention of buying food, you're just going to the bog.  If challenged by a pimply staff member, your declaration to them that you'll buy their food afterwards is known as a McShit with Lies.

 

* 404.
Someone who's clueless.  From the World Wide Web error message "404 Not Found" meaning that the requested document could not be located.

 

* AUSSIE KISS.
Similar to a French Kiss, but given down under.

 

* OH - NO   SECOND.
That minuscule fraction of time in which you realize that you've just Made a BIG mistake (e.g. you've hit 'reply all').

 

* GREYHOUND.
A very short skirt, only an inch from the hare.

 

* JOHNNY-NO-STARS.
A young man of substandard intelligence, the typical adolescent who works in a burger restaurant.  The 'no-stars' comes from the  badges displaying stars that staff at fast-food restaurants often wear to show their level of training.

 

* MILLENNIUM DOMES.
The contents of a Wonderbra, i.e. extremely impressive when viewed from the outside, but there's actually naught in there worth seeing.

 

* MONKEY BATH.
A bath so hot, that when lowering yourself in, you go:
"Oo!  Oo!  Oo! Aa!   Aa!  Aa!".

 

* MYSTERY BUS.
The bus that arrives at the pub on Friday night while you're in the Toilet after your 10th pint, and whisks away all the unattractive people so the pub is suddenly packed with stunners when you come back in.

 

* MYSTERY TAXI.
The taxi that arrives at your place on Saturday morning before you wake up, whisks away the stunner you slept with, and leaves a 10-Pinter in your bed instead.

 

* BEER COAT.
The invisible but warm coat worn when walking home after a booze cruise at 3:00am.

 

* BEER COMPASS.
The invisible device that ensures your safe arrival home after booze cruise, even though you're too drunk to remember where you live, how you got here, and where you've come from.

 

* BREAKING THE SEAL.
Your first pee in the pub, usually after 2 hours of drinking.  After breaking the seal of your bladder, repeat visits to the toilet will be required every 10 or 15 minutes for the rest of the night.

 

* TART FUEL/BITCH PISS
Bottled premixed spirits, regularly consumed by young women.

 

* PICASSO BUM.
A woman whose knickers are too small for her, so she looks like she's

 

 

finally, it's snowed!!!  went to avoriaz (part of 'portes du soleil', purported the biggest ski area in the world) last sat before the snow and it was bad.. it had the best condition of the resorts around, but still it was pretty sad.. at least it was big enuf to have enuf slush trails to make my day worthwhile.  despite the conditions it was crowded!  full of brits who, presumably, prebooked their holiday and figured they may as well make the best of it.  good thing they reduced the price to only 20€!

 

so it was good to see it snow!  snowed a bit monday nite, then a big dumping tuesday, a bit more yesterday, and today it just continues to be damn cold!  so, if i can have my way, it'll continue to snow in the mountains, esp rite after feb 4 (when i get back from madrid and ready to head to the slopes), be nice and sunny in geneva and melt it all away in the city.

 

we'll see if that happens!

 

uploading a few pix (3) taken from my apt and nearby, and 4 taken by my colleague from our office.

 

 

 

alright, so i'm really just procrastinating. hahaha  i really have to study, but telling myself that after having a very very chill weekend (and not overly concerned that my 'study sunday' turned into 'surfing sunday'), i'll start being studying tomrrow.  worse yet is, i still have emails i need to reply to!  jan 14 = end of vacation, jan 15 = start of the year.  for real.

 

ha!

 

anyway, something else i read recently i wanted to share.  in the jan 2007 issue of Outside mag (which i used to subscribe to, and i thot i didn't renew the subscription after i'd left but they kept on delivering to my parents, so either they forgot, i forgot i renewed, or my parents did w/o me knowing) was a short, funny article: "Be Afraid. Please." (available also in podcast - love how the associate editor try to sound edgy and cool.. i doubt that's his real voice! hahaha) where the author, an independent-travel writer, laments the fact that americans are going to dodgy places more and more.

 

his best line, (and i can sorta relate.. or maybe i'm the guy he's referring to?):

 

 

 

just before i came back to geneva, i grabbed a Details mag to read during my long journey.  i picked it up cuz this issue featured, as the cover puts it, "The Return of the Yuppie: How Gen X Became What It Hated Most."

 

now, ppl my age (ie about to hit 29) are kinda torn between gen x and gen y.  not that anyone born before or after us can easily be pigon-holed, but for most of us, to define ourself with a pre-fabbed easily digested identity, we usually have to pick a little bit from door a, a little bit from door b.

 

but first of all, let me state that i have nothing against yuppies per se.  in fact, i had always strived to be a yuppie, in its most pure definition as a 'young urban professional'.  what i, and many, cringe at, is the connotation attached: "conspicuously successful, luxury-loving, self-satisfied".

 

and a year and a half ago, before i quite my job and moved to europe, i was a yuppie in the literal sense, which was great, but certainly, most absolutely i was NOT conspicuously successful, luxury-loving, or self-satisfied.  not when i was penny-pinching to save up for grad school, and when i found the conspicuous consumption of my cohorts in the same industry a bit much and the repulsion to which was partly why i chose this masters program.

 

right?  or was i in denial?

 

perhaps.  still not sure after having read the articles.  but there's not clear-cut answer, nor is it important.  i'd never been really, really, into the the alt-scene.  there, you easily find lots of wannabes and insecure ppl on the brink of an identity crisis pretentiously name-dropping indie film directors they once smoked pot with.  self-satisfaction comes in many forms.  (same magazine, several articles down on enviro-nuts' attitudes on the rest of us: "Many of those who [are more enviro-conscious] than the average guy have launched a campaign to make the rest of us feel like lesser beings... In our status-obsessed culture, it's become almost as important to seem green as to actually be green.")

 

in the article on ppl in their 30s being in denial about them being true bona fide yuppies ("You may think you're less coveteous than your Yup 1.0 counterparts, but that's only because Madison Avenue has so stealthily made you its bitch.") the author cerntred on the loft party.  so that got me to think.  hmm, the only real loft party i'v been to was the one my now-discovering-her-own-adventures-in-japan friend hilary took me to, and that was definitely very lo-budget, alternative.  but since then i'v been to a few parties in loft-like structures.. one of which involved champagne and caviar, with a room full of (mostly but not all) annoying yuppies (or yuppies in denial or yuppies in training).  but well that's cuz it was in geneva.  i wouldn't have so easily availed myself to such a gathering otherwise.

 

right?  hmm.

 

another thing that struck a chord with that article was that 'global citizen', a term i have (had?) used to describe myself, was simply a product of psychographic targeting and clever brand masking technique used to hypnotize me with an idealized lo-fi image of myself.

 

very interesting and pretty hillarious read.  the main article's online.  the best quote from that was: "'When you’re 27 or 28, your body starts emitting the Sheraton enzyme. You can no longer sleep on people’s floors. By 37, the Sheraton enzyme mutates into the Four Seasons endorphin. People, like neighborhoods, have a tendency to gentrify."

found solace in thinking that maybe my body does not produce the Sheraton enzyme, cuz i still have no aversion to sleeping, or not-sleeping, in the most random and uncomfortable places.  perhaps my wacky crazy but always budget travels are not simply a reflection of my wanting to maximize the opportunities i can have to satiate my wanderlust, but maybe it's my unconscious desire to escape, periodically, from the inevitable fact that i am falling deeper and deeper into yuppiedom, nasty connotations and all.  in that vein, maybe i can reclaim (at least a part of) 'global citizen' as my own unmarketed-to identity.

 

and that's the realization that i came to (tho it'd been simmering under the surface the whole time), that i should stop denying it (took the online quiz, apparently i'm a high-end denier, but 'high-end' only because i was imagining what i WOULD buy if i had the income. lol) and start embracing it.  afterall, i'v always known that i wouldn't really be able to truly 'quit it all' and putz around the world, as i had (have?) often threatened myself to do.  but just because i might not want to belong to the just-bought-a-new-house-in-the-burbs-and-a-third-SUV yuppie club, doesn't mean that i should deny myself of the fly-to-the-tropics-at-least-twice-a-year-to-sip-on-super-cheap-cocktails-on-the-disgustingly-gorgeous-beach-while-waiting-for-the-boat-to-come-in-to-take-me-diving yuppie club.

 

like i said, this 'ah-ha' was just waiting to come out, the magazine was merely a catalyst.  but still, quite possibly the the best $4.95+tax i spend this year!

 

since most of you reading this are my age'ish, hope you enjoy my insights.  i'm in a very sharing mood, so thots/comments most welcome. :)

 

 

ok, so i teased you that i'd reveal my new year's resolutions in an earlier post.  truth is that i hadn't quite made up my mind yet, even tho the crystal ball had long dropped.  so it most certainly is NOT to procrastinate less!! lol  just can't change something so fundamental about myself i guess.

 

must say that i'd never been a real fan of nyr's.. i never believed that it's quite healthy/sane to focus so much energy on this one time of the year to try to improve yourself.  however, i do accept that it's very symbolic in making ppl stop and reflect.  and that's all i do, is to pause (or rather, go in slo-mo), and reflect.  but since jan 1 = new years, jan/feb=chinese ny, mar20=my birthday, it's pretty much a 3 month process of (excuse my bschool talk, can't help it) reflection, strategic design, plan implementation, feedback and revision.

 

so this year, seeing as how in 9 months time (one gestation period, as i have come to realize.. just have to labour thru it..) i will be once again thrown into the real world (thank god!  can't wait) with hopefully a game plan, i was thinking something along the lines of taking stpes to come to a better realization of how i can best manage myself in the future.  confused?  so am i.

 

but basically, i'v come to realize that i have a nasty tendancy to bite off more than i can chew.  i simply want it all.  that's a big reason why i'm constantly late - i plan to do a lot, thinking that i get to use the pause button for the space-time-continuum once a day or something.

 

so that means, a lot more focus, and a lot less ambiguity.  can't have it all, gotta pick my battles.  if i continue being a jack-of-all-trades (which for now is still a mega-plus) i risk completing the saying by becoming a master-of-none.

 

of course that has many real, concrete implications in my life, but that's all the soul-revealing i'm gonna do here. lol

 

but, to leave u with something else to chew on tho, i came across an emailed article/blog post right around the same time i made my mini-epiphany.  turns out to not have that much to do with what i was thinking, but the first bit did, um, grab my attention:

 

 

mildly interesting read, with lots of links to referenced books.  u can read the full post of "The Economics of Attention" yourself.

 

feel free to share YOUR resolutions in the comments section, whether i know u or not. i can be a pretty curious guy. :)

 

 

 

got this fwded to me, thot it was quite funny.  but then maybe that's cuz i'm a nerd..

 

 

The shape of things to come  By Guy de Jonquières

Published: December 27 2006 20:32 | Last updated: December 27 2006 20:32

For Asia, 2007 will be another year of breathtaking change. To those in the know, even the most improbable turn of events need not come as a surprise. Calling on its global intelligence network and the exclusive services of a shaman in western China, the FT offers readers a light-hearted scenario of imaginary events in Asia in the year ahead.

 

 

January. Beijing: in an effort to fend off the threat of trade sanctions by the US Congress over its soaring bilateral trade surplus, China dispatches purchasing missions to the US with instructions to make bulk buys at retail outlets across the country.

 

February. Taipei: supplies of political candidates run out after prosecutors launch probes into the few Taiwanese politicians not already under investigation for alleged corruption.

Tokyo: Japan announces that it has developed low-cost synthetic substitutes for iron ore and coal. Australia’s economy slides into recession, exports collapse and the Sydney stock exchange records its biggest ever one-day loss.

 

March. Beijing: Chinese purchasing missions report that after scouring US shopping malls they have been unable to find any consumer products that are not Chinese-made. Beijing announces plans instead to buy Wal-Mart and rename it The Friendship Store.
   

April. Naypyidaw: after decades under military rule, Burma says it will introduce democracy, calling general elections for next month.
   
Beijing: China finally reveals the composition of the basket of currencies used by its central bank to determine the renminbi exchange rate. Its main components are the Macau pataca, the Panama balboa, the Burmese kiat, the Bhutan ngultrum and the Laotian kip.

 

 

May. Pyongyang: hailing a momentous advance in national scientific achievement, Kim Jong-il announces that North Korea has developed the world’s largest silicon chip, covering the area of two football fields.
   
Naypyidaw: Burma holds general elections, monitored by official Zimbabwean observers. Generals are elected to every parliamentary seat.
 

 

June. New Delhi: India’s government finally gives up trying to run the country and decides to outsource the job to WeGov, a Bangalore-based consortium of IT companies led by Infosys and Wipro.
   
Tokyo: Japan’s last rice farmer dies at the age of 102. Warning of a grave threat to national security, the government raises tariffs on rice imports to 10,000 per cent, dealing a final blow to the Doha world trade round.

 

 

July. Washington: the International Monetary Fund is declared insolvent after its last remaining borrower repays its loans, leaving the institution without a regular income. East Asian countries band together to offer an emergency bail-out, on condition that the IMF agrees to deep structural reforms, savage austerity measures and strict surveillance by the People’s Bank of China.
   
London: world sand prices skyrocket after North Korea announces plans to mass produce giant semiconductor chips. China immediately acquires the Sahara desert in a move intended to guarantee the security of silicon supplies, saying it will not intervene in the region’s internal affairs.
 

 

August. New Delhi: reports that much of the work on India’s government outsourcing contract is being performed at US call centres trigger demonstrations in Indian cities.  Protesting that underpaid Americans are “stealing middle-class Indian jobs”, Indian trade unions demand sanctions on US exports and the revaluation of the dollar.
   
Sydney: Australia abandons plans to host the annual summit of the 21-member Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation forum after discovering that the Sydney opera house is too small to accommodate all the delegates, even standing up. The summit is cancelled when Papua New Guinea emerges as the only alternative venue and says leaders will be required to wear bullet-proof Kevlar vests for their traditional group photograph in local costume.

 

 

September. Washington: rumours that Asian central banks are considering diversifying their foreign exchange reserves into cowrie shells spark panic selling of the US dollar. The US Treasury requests emergency IMF assistance but is directed to a telephone number in Beijing.
   
Sydney: Macquarie, the acquisitive Australian investment bank, launches a hostile takeover bid for itself after telling financial analysts that there are no other suitable targets left.
 

 

October. Geneva: a World Health Organisation study finds that breathing Hong Kong’s air poses greater risks to health than smoking 80 cigarettes a day. Declaring that the time has come for firm leadership and decisive action, Donald Tsang, Hong Kong’s chief executive, hires a top US tobacco industry lobbyist to put an end to “baseless rumours” about the territory’s air quality.
   
New Delhi: WeGov, the outsourcing consortium charged with governing India, terminates its contract unilaterally, saying the assignment has defeated the efforts of the best brains.

 

November. Washington: the US asks China to purchase more dollars to prop up the sinking currency and offers the Seventh Fleet as collateral. Beijing declines, saying it already owns the US Navy because it was paid for with borrowed Chinese money in the first place. The dollar falls further, reaching $3 to the euro. Congress debates a change in the inscription on dollar bills from “In God we trust” to “I hope that my redeemer liveth”.
   
Manila: the Philippines economy slumps after Western Union’s global money transfer system breaks down, cutting off flows of worker remittances.

 

 

December. New Delhi: after two months without a government, India’s industrial output soars to record levels. Sudden increases are reported in road, power station and airport construction activity. The national literacy rate improves by five percentage points.
   
Tokyo: Japanese consumer prices rise by 0.04 per cent year-on-year. Warning that the economy is in the grip of galloping hyper-inflation, the Bank of Japan raises interest rates to 10 per cent.

 

vacay over.  =(

 

didn't get to do all that i wanted to do over the break, but i knew i was biting off more than i could chew.  the biggest *shucks* missed 'to do' item was haircut.. it's at an ok length still, but i don't know if i can last til i escape switz b4 i want to get it cut.  and plus i like going to oscar's in chinatown for a cheap fast and good do-chop.

 

i'll update the list to show what my final tally was.

 

so after xmas, went with the whole fam to snowboard in lake louise.  oh how silly of my to have fallen for their 'fresh snow' lie!  i shoulda known better that they always inflate their snow reports.. but it was gorgeous, as always, if a bit crowded, and my bro had never been there before so it was good to show him the most famous of the 'big 3'.  but i did hike up the top of the larch chair to carve up some fresh pow!  and as you may recall, no camera, so all i could muster up was what my phone could take.. might post the vidz on youtube later.

 

spent one nite in calgary.. met up with a friend, didn't have time to call up anyone else.. forgot the # of the 24hr desk where i used to work so couldn't call up old colleagues at 1am to see what the electricity markets were up to.  and didn't want to go look it up either cuz partly i didn't want to hear about all the moola they're surely raking in that i had given up on.. lol

 

for new year's eve, i slept!  no plans with friends as the many party revelers i knew were out of town.  i was just so tired that i fell asleep in front of the tv around 11, and didn't wake up til 1am.. oops!

 

couple more days of last-minute shopping and ppl-seeing, sent my bro and sis-in-law off at the airport, then went home and had to dig up all the things i wanted to take back to geneva from home with me (only to have left a lot of the stuff in a forgotten pile in another room.. doh!) and pack.  was ok luggage-weight-wise on the edmonton>london direct flight (first chance i got to fly over the city, since i always fly south and the airport's south of the city) but london>lübeck i was overweight cuz ryanair's restriction is 15kg!!!  wtf?  at least the counter agent was nice enuf to round 20 to 19 and i had to pay £22 - significantly more than the flight itself!  and then from hamburg>geneva on easyjet, i was 22 kg but the agent was also nice and casually overlooked it. :)

 

had 5+ hrs in london between landing in heathrow and flying out from stansted, thought i'd have lots of time to kill.  but in avoiding the expensive direct airport-airport bus, i took the tube then a coach from victoria station, and in the end i arrived pretty much in time for the flight anyway.  unbelievable!

 

went to lübeck/hamburg to go to lüneburg to visit patrick and hiroko (a surprise email a week earlier announced that they were newlyweds!) for a couple of days, and it was good chance to reset my clock, cuz i couldn't sleep at all on the flight to london - dude behind me was too tall and everytime he moved he gave me whiplash!  ech..

 

fligth was late, got home really late, half unpacked last nite, had a very very difficult time getting up this morning - had no motivation to go to class - and then came into the office this aft - funny how i'm more enthused to go to a job that's unpaid than to go to school, which is ostensibly why i am in gva in the first place. hmm..  but then i didn't actually do any work today.  easyjet has a sale on, and i'd been shopping for flights. lol  again: unpaid, part-time, flex-time, no guilt.. i've been over this before.

 

lots of errands i have to do (like pay overdue bills!).  and i'll get to emails soon!  my parents have dial-up, so except for times when i lugged my laptop around or popped over to the uni library, i avoided the internet.

 

i came up with a few resolutions, might write about them later.

 

wish everyone all the best for 2007.