passion is in fashion

Whisked off my application! Yay! So happy!

Thank you my dear editors, proof-readers, and moral supportors. Could not have done it without you.

xoxo

All grown up, and so pretty.   The dress is BCBG by the way. 

Only it’s M S Barcelona: Birthday trip with the Honey, July to August, 2009.

Equality is in fashion.  Ach ja.

President Obama is scheduled to sign the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act into law today. (This is, technically, his second bill-signing, not the first. But you cannot possibly expect us to make a fuss about legislation fixing the salary of the secretary of the interior.)

“I’m so excited I can hardly stand it,” Ledbetter said recently after the bill passed the Senate.

Obama told her story over and over when he campaigned for president: How Ledbetter, now 70, spent years working as a plant supervisor at a tire factory in Alabama. How, when she neared retirement, someone slipped her a pay schedule that showed her male colleagues were making much more money than she was. A jury found her employer, the Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company, to be really, really guilty of pay discrimination. But the Supreme Court, in a 5-to-4 decision led by the Bush appointees, threw out Ledbetter’s case, ruling that she should have filed her suit within 180 days of the first time Goodyear paid her less than her peers.

(Let us pause briefly to contemplate the chances of figuring out your co-workers’ salaries within the first six months on the job.)

- Gail Collins, The New York Times Jan. 28, 08

Patricia quotes Rilke: “Between grief and nothing I will take grief.”

Images from thesartorialist.blogspot.com

“Any Porch” was “the first thing” she had ever written.

Her father had died just “a month or two” earlier.  She was an orphan.

She was working at a dance school, even though she lacked “the faintest idea” how to teach, couldn’t distinguish the lame duck from the bunny hug, and was expecting to be fired any day.

She was “tiring” of a musical career, which she had learned was not a bowl of cherries.

“A literary life” would suit her far better.

Could Mr. Crowninshield give her a job?

- Excerpt from Dorothy Parker: What Fresh Hell is This? by Marion Meade

Went to hot yoga the other day, and amid various sweaty tree poses, I had a revelation.

When trying to stand on one foot, it’s much easier to focus on one spot.  It could be the ceiling, the mirror, or the water bottle of the person in front of you.  Perhaps, it is just easier to self-adjust when there is a spot in mind.  Where it is, is much less relevant.  It is also fine to focus on one spot for a while and switch to another later.

Like life?

two things happened to me recently:

1. i have the constant urge to cook
2. i fell in love with beijing or rather, my tofu fell

my tofu fell from my bags of groceries and rolled over twice in all its glorious springiness. and someone said: “whoa! the tofu fell!!!” i smiled

also, while buying said tofu, a little old lady munching on some soupy tofu on the go from the attached stand said in a craggily voice:
“i want one too!”
“a big one or a small one?”
“big one!”
“1.70″
“that’s a big one?”
“you can buy two”
“oh no, i can’t carry that!”
to which we all smiled. what a cute little lady!

i also bought cinnamin sticks and ginger to attempt chai tea.
vegie curry on the stove. we’ll see how that turns out.

it’s like i’m mutating into an indian auntie type

- p, reporting from beijing

awww. sanjay gupta is like totally the hottest surgeon general i’ve ever seen so i’m all about little indian aunties.

just the other day i was on the tram in hk, and a little old lady told me to be happy. i was sad. so upon her instruction, i cheered up.

i have no urge to cook, however, so haven’t been actively dropping tofus.

- m, responding from hk

that is so cute too. every now and then (a handful of times in my life) someone has told me something to that effect. and i think it’s because the usually much older and by default wiser person sees in me a young person who is wasting life by being ungrateful for my youth (like, what do i have to even be unhappy about? at least my boobs aren’t saggy and i can get around without arthritis getting in the way, yea?). youth is everything but of course those who have it never realize it until they are no longer young. in that sense, the deceivingly simple aphorism of ‘be happy’ or ‘smile’ is actually an urgent wake-up call.

- p, following up from beijing

Sasha, right, and Malia Obama sported J. Crew at their father’s swearing-in.

Image via nytimes.com (Photo: Chuck Kennedy/Associated Press).

During the inauguration festivities, President Obama and his family made J. Crew their house brand, as the family mixed haute couture with clothes and accessories the retailer made exclusively for them.

For the swearing-in ceremony, Malia and Sasha Obama wore brightly colored wool coats, gloves and scarves specially designed from J.Crew’s “crewcuts” line for children.

Michelle Obama has been an unofficial pitchwoman for J.Crew since October when she first went on “The Tonight Show with Jay Leno” wearing a three-piece yellow ensemble. On Inauguration Day, she wore J. Crew olive gloves complementing her heels and elegantly intricate lemongrass dress made by Isabel Toledo.

Not to be left out, President Obama attended his inaugural ball marathon with a silk ivory bow tie that J. Crew designed for him, with high-end silk not sold in their stores.

“It was an incredible honor to be part of history,” J. Crew’s creative director, Jenna Lyons, said in a telephone interview on Wednesday. “We are grateful, let me say. We needed it and we’re thrilled to have it. It’s an incredible validation to have the First Family like what you’re doing.

No wonder J. Crew was thrilled. The company’s shares jumped 10.6 percent Wednesday, up from $9.03 a share to $9.99. Stocks were worth $49.80 a share in May, however.

…

“We just felt like it was such an important day, that they deserved something exclusively made for them,” Ms. Lyons said. “I don’t want them going to school and turning up in the same coat as their classmate.”

Ms. Lyons said that the company’s chief executive, Mickey Drexler, has been fielding e-mails since Tuesday from customers telling him: “Now, I have something in common with the First Lady.”

- Jan. 21, 2008, The New York Times

I like the tidbit about their first day of school. We can all related to that.

I *sort of* called it.