Hanging Art

I love this post over at Apartment Therapy (I’ve recently become obsessed with apartment/real estate-related websites - I’m so excited to find an apartment of my own!). It tells you how to hang art in groups on the wall, something that I’ve always loved (like the Club Monaco wall displays, with black and white photos, for example). This picture is actually from a Kate Spade shop though, apparently. It makes me wanna draw more as well as take more photographs so I can hang my own stuff on the wall of my next apartment (I have like zero wall space left in my current bedroom). Anything for inspiration, right?

 

If only I had 1/2 a million dollars…

I’d buy this:

It’s a studio loft in Chelsea/the Village, and gorgeousss! Pre-war, elevator building, GREAT location, big windows…and those stairs lead to the sleeping alcove. FUN! Ah, I can dream…

TV Time

So, The Hills Season 3 ended this week, and there’s been tons of stuff being published (articles, interviews, etc) with the ladies of the hills. For example, the Us weekly cover with Lauren & Heidi (photo left - I scanned it quickly at Park N Shop earlier - totally back on Team LC, and still really annoyed by Speidi), or stuff all over the web about them. Example: here’s an interview with Lauren asking how much of The Hills is actually set up; here’s an article that’s pretty much a recap of the finale (so don’t read it if you haven’t seen the finale yet); and even a comparison of Gossip Girl vs The Hills.

The new season starts in August (the day before my birthday, actually…), so looking forward to that! ;) 

Anyway - who saw Desperate Housewives this week? I think Edie really did cross the line far too many times, and that they did the right thing to do what they did - I felt so terrible for Bree when Edie was standing at her door blackmailing her. She’s such a sucky friend! Still, I couldn’t help but feel slightly bad when she tried to apologize. Ah, relationships…so tricky, no? 

Also, Gossip Girl! Serena is annoying - she obviously didn’t KILL the dude. Get over it already. (Btw, did you know Blake Lively has had a nose job?) Georgina is a major beyotch. Jenny wasn’t even in this episode. And I really like Rufus and Lily even though that would make it…weird for Serena and Dan. Btw, did you see Lily and Bart’s wedding website? Yeah, for real. (Well, not for REAl, since they’re fictional characters, but you know.) Can’t wait for the finale next week!! 

Can’t wait to catch Lindsay Lohan on Ugly Betty this week (re-watched Mean Girls overthe wknd, and I really love Lindsay), as well as the ANTM finale (I know it’s aired, but I need to watch it online later tonight! Who are/were you rooting for? I feel like Anya’s gonna win, and I really hope to God that Fatima doesn’t) later tonight and continue Grey’s even though it’s really gone downhill - can’t help myself!

Ah, love TV. And free online streaming.

(Back From Beijing) Catch Up!

Back from my trip, and woo do I have a million pics! (I LOVE my camera. ) ANYway…did y’all hear about the earthquake that hit China? I had absolutely no idea about it, since I was still in the air at the time it happened, didn’t find out until our press group were heading to dinner and one of the PR people was talking about it. It’s freakish - I can’t believe there are 12,000 people dead, all in one go. And, 7.8 on the Richter Scale! If I recall correctly, the big ‘89 earthquake (which I was in, thankyouverymuch) was ‘only’ around 6.5, and that caused major disaster to San Francisco and the Bay Area in general. So, send our prayers to China!!!

Back to the weekend…parents left Saturday morning, and C-Butt came over for dinner and for me to do her hair & makeup before going out. Uneventful night, and we got home pretty early (2!), and then crashed. (Lauren she tested out your future mattress and said it was comfy, fyi.) Sunday we lazed around all day, watching Nanny McPhee and crying our way through Stepmom on HBO before going grocery shopping and then making a REALLY GOOD DINNER. LoL. Our main thing was Kraft mac ‘n cheese, but I had the idea to bake it with cheese on top in the oven, and we decided to add some sausages, salad & broccoli, and mashed potatoes and gravy. (For the mac ‘n cheese, make it like normal, then put it in an oven safe glass dish, smother with shredded mozzerella and bake in the oven at 180 celcius (350 F, I believe) for 15 minutes - it’s SO GOOD.) Pics:

Anyway. The trip was pretty short, but it was good. China was still China - dirty, polluted, and tons of mainlanders…ha. Still, I had my very own room at The Peninsula, and it was gorgeous. I was only disappointed that they didn’t give me a room with one bed; instead I got two. Wtheck am I meant to do with two beds? I am only one person… But, I did enjoy the TV in the bathroom - watched Loser on HBO while showering one night. haha

The Napolean exhibit was pretty interesting, and although this trip was for a watch brand, I’m glad that they didn’t try to shove the brand’s history down our throats or anything (as press events tend to do, with whatever product they’re promoting at the time). And I met the 7th generation direct descendant of the founder, as well as the Head Curator from the Louvre which was cool. The only slightly annoying part was that the press conference was held in Mandarin and French…neither of which are my best languages, lol.

Last night the dinner was held at Bei Hai park, where the Emperor and Empress used to dine during Mid-Autumn Festival. We ate in the same room that they used to eat in, and the food was recreated as a fusion of Manchurian and ‘Han’ Chinese food. (The Emperor and Empress were Manchurian.)

Beijing pics:

And now it’s bedtime for me - back to work tmr (ugh!) and working this Saturday as well, plus my 2nd cousin’s in town on Friday…busy busy busy! Girl’s gotta get her rest now

Brief Hiatus

So tomorrow I’m off to Beijing for a press trip, and won’t be back till Wednesday. Sad part is that tomorrow’s a public holiday and I wouldn’t have to get up before 10 if I weren’t going on this trip; nice part is that we’re staying at The Peninsula and I get a room all to myself (so rumor has it, anyway…). Lots to update about, especially the dinner Candice and I made this evening (er, technically last night, as it’s past 12 now…)

Pictures and updates to come Wednesday!

Peace.

I’m a dork, etc

1. I feel like I’ve been posting wayyy too much, but lately I just have so much to say! And there’s been so much going on online that I just HAVE to link to!

2. So many people get to my blog via searching “bathroom stall”, “girl pee”, “girl bathroom”, etc. Who are these freaks and why are you searching about bathrooms and peeing girls???

3. The ‘rents are off to the US for 10 days on Saturday. Who’s ready for a crazy house party reminiscent of Jake Ryan’s in Sixteen Candles? (Kidding, Mom, I swear.)

4. At work today I was told by my boss that my desk is too ‘plain’, that I don’t have stuff everywhere and therefore it looks like no one actually works at my desk. (See pic that I took this morning):

So what he said is obviously untrue, because as you can see on the right, I do actually have a DVF page stuck up, as well as a mini-wall calendar with old movie posters (next month is Breakfast at Tiffany’s…finally!), and some random other stuff, like the easter bunny Emmy gave me sitting on my desk. I just didn’t cover all my cubicle wall-space with things. So my boss told me I should put stuff up. Um, ok…because you told me to…too bad I just haven’t found anything else I wanna stick up (in the office!).

5. I am obsessed with my new camera. Seriously, obsessed . I took really random pics today, including a whole sequence of me making faces. (I know, Mom, making faces causes wrinkles, I know…). And now you lucky readers get to see me being a total dork:

Told ya. About the dork thing. lol But, who cares? I have an AWESOME camera (Panasonic Lumix FX500, in case anyone is wondering) that nearly cut my NY Fund in half for the month (SO never letting this one out of my sight - ever!!), and I can take pictures all the freaking time. Woo! Expect many more photo entries to come…

[Livin'] On a Railroad…

 

The New York Times has an article on a man who built his home into an old railroad station in England. Slideshow here, and article here. It’s actually pretty interesting if

 you go through the slideshow - he put a sunken tub in the bathroom (a former cloakroom, right), as well as a wireless screen that has a floating keyboard in tub for internet access, tv, or watching dvds (I’d never get out of the tub, I don’t think…haha). It took him 3 years to completely renovate the place, which cost him 100,000 pounds to buy, and 50,000 pounds to renovate! New plans are to add an extension, but retaining the original building’s look and feel.

I love when people do things like that - reuse old buildings that have tons of history for an entirely different function from what it was originally built for. It lets me let my imagination run wild, like when I used to go to Convent of the Sacred Heart in San Francisco, which used to be a mansion (Flood Mansion, if you wanted the name). When I went to school there I used to pretend that I was actually living in the building (not hard to do, with its wide marble staircase, and each classroom having a fireplace, and the library being a former ballroom, if I remember correctly), although my imagination would go a little wild and I’d end up getting a little scared by how big the ‘house’ is and how little I was and then stop pretending right then and there. LoL  Still, it was gorgeous and you could practically feel the history upon entering the buildings - and yes, I remember all of this even though I was only 7 years old when I moved to Hong Kong. 

Apparently it’s also quite a popular venue for weddings now (funny, my boarding school, also a Catholic all-girls school, was popular for weddings too - apparently Brooke Shields wanted to get married there but the headmistress was like “No, can’t do those dates, we’ve got [X] event going on…no, nor those dates either…” haha), and I can totally see why. Um, end random tangent.

All I’m saying is, I love when buildings are preserved, as they are so telling of the time that it was built and what it was built for, and it’s really fun just imagining what it was like decades or even centuries ago…a little trip back in time, if you will…at least in my mind.

SJP, LiLo, and Gossip Girl

There’s a great article/interview with Sarah Jessica Parker in New York Magazine, where they discuss Sex and the City (of course), and there’s a lot of general insight into SJP as an actual person, life after SATC, what she’s like around the neighborhood, and not just as an actress playing Carrie Bradshaw.

It’s a very well-written piece (by Emily Nussbaum), and it’s weird to me that she meets up with SJP a few times to get the whole interview. All the interviews I’ve done are usually done within half an hour, if I do it in person. How fun it must be! Still, can’t imagine having to transcribe all of it…although it WOULD be a ton more interesting than, say, interviewing another watch brand’s regionial marketing manager, or something.

Anyway, the article really made me respect her for the impact that she’s made on the world by playing Carrie, as well as her thoughts on celebrity endorsement, and being smart and sassy, the way every girl should be. It’s kind of a super long article, but I highly recommend reading it, especially if you’re an SATC fan.

(Btw, did you know that the SATC movie starts with Carrie and Big having been together for 10 years??? TEN years! And they aren’t even married! If I’m ever in a relationship for 10 years and not yet married, remind me to get out of it. That’s all.)

And, this news is way too good to pass up: Lindsay Lohan reportedly “borrowed” someone’s mink coat from a party for three weeks! LoL This girl and LiLo were at a party sitting next to each other, and then the girl’s coat (which is worth $11,000 and was a gift from her grandmother) went missing at the end of the night, only to show up on the pages of Ok! magazine two weeks later - with LiLo wearing it! LoL The girl had to call LL’s lawyers to get it back, and they sent it back reeking of cigarette smoke and with a tear in the lining. Now the girl wants $10,000 for the three week ‘loan’…ahahahah oh dear. (Click on Lindsay’s name above to read the article.)

(Both images from the New York magazine website, credited on the articles themselves.)

Lastly, who caught the latest Gossip Girl episode?? If you haven’t, go watch it online NOW, and do NOT proceed to read this! You’ve been warned!!
SPOILER ALERT! SPOILER ALERT! SPOILER ALERT! SPOILER ALERT!SPOILER ALERT! SPOILER ALERT!
K, now that that’s out of the way….WTF??? The ending? Serena’s confession to Blair? Why is Georgina a cow? I loved Jenny’s one-liner “Even you know that jealousy clashes with L.L.Bean pants” LOL oOoOo bitchy! Anyway, New York mag (again - I swear, this time surfing through it brought tons of great news) did a lil recap of this last episode - go read it! This was seriously one of the best episodes ever. Can’t wait till next week!!

“Bloggy Friend Swap”

So I participated in my first ever bloggy friend swap (like a pen pal exchange, except everyone’s a blogger - Candice don’t make fun of me, lol) that Rachel over at Confessions of a Jersey Girl set up. The idea was for bloggers everywhere to sign up, and Rachel paired us all off to send that particular blogger something from where we live. I got paired with Jen at Hey, y’all!, who lives in - you guessed it - NYC! haha

I got my stuff last night, and since I don’t have a camera, I had to use Photo Booth to take a pic of what she sent (which is why all the writing is in reverse):

There was also a typed letter explaining what she sent, and this is what it said:

Hi, Jess!!

Here’s your package all the way from NYC! Open it first and take a look, then read the story. Go ahead. Open it up. (See, I even recycled a Macy’s box from the Macy’s store on 34th St!) Ok, so it looks like a necklace one might buy at Macy’s right? Oh, no! It’s so much more than that!!! My friend [TR - not sure if I should put the full name on the blog - Jen you can let me know!] makes jewelry. A few years ago she started getting hired by Broadway theatres to make pieces for the shows. She’s kind of modest about it, but we’ve been friends for a while, so she lets me buy her pieces when I want to. Anyway, this particular piece was made for a production of THE RIVALS which was performed at Lincoln Center Theatre in 2005 and which was, incidentally, my first Broadway show to work on as a stage manager! It was made for the actress Dana Ivey to wear, but her black costume got cut from the show (it took her too long to change into it), so the necklace didn’t make it past dress rehearsal.

Anyway, T reclaimed it and sold it to me. All the money she made will be donated to Broadway Cares, a charity that contributes money to great causes, like helping people in the Arts get health insurance, free mammograms, walk-in health care and the like. Plus, every New York girl (which you will soon be!) needs some cute jewelry to wear out and about! I hope you enjoy it and the story behind it.

The other thing, as the post-it says, is my first map of NYC. I am sending it along to you, the next New New Yorker. May you enjoy it as much as I did and may you never lose your way.

Take care,

Jen

Isn’t she the sweetest?? I am thrilled with what she got me, and I totally love the story behind the necklace AND the map (which is waterproof ! Yeah, really!!), and I also love that the map was handed to Jen when she first move and now she’s passed it on to me.

Now I REALLY can’t wait to move…and Jen, thank you for the lovely package, and I hope you like your presents when you get them!!

What I Do at Work

For those of you wondering what the heck I do at/for work, here’s the link to the May issue (in PDF format).

In the wedding section (which is the section I’m mostly in charge of, writing-wise, anyway - I don’t do any of the shoots), scroll to page 212 for my article on How To Propose (including my friends’ proposal stories - Jessica, Crystal, Deb and Veronica!), then the article immediately after is the advice column I have to find someone to write a topic on every month (and then edit it after - this one I actually had to do it in email interview form, and then rewrite it to make it more article-like - but of course I don’t get the credit for any of it!), and then it’s inEtiquette, which covers various wedding traditions/customs, either by country or whatever we come up with. May’s topic is wedding superstitions and good luck customs. 

In the fashion section, I’m in charge of the designer interview every month. For May I interviewed Luella Bartley (page 130, “Lovely Luella”). She was awesome to interview, very down to earth and very quirky British. The upcoming June issue is the men’s issue so I arranged an email interview with the Ferragamo menswear designer, Massimiliano Giornetti. For May I also wrote the watch brand profile, on Breguet (page 116, “Historic Breguet”).

Those are just the topics that have my byline; I also write quite a few advertorials per issue (paid editorials, the stuff that’s labelled “Special Feature” at the top of the page), but because those are paid for by our advertisers my name doesn’t get put on it.

Anyway, hope y’alls enjoy - guess I should actually go do some work now!

PS. All my stuff gets translated into Chinese by a colleague, that part isn’t me. I kinda wish they got credit for translating my stuff in the mag!