ioana
in quest for genuine
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About Me
- Name: ioana
- Location: Bucharest, Romania
I experiment with myself and the world around me. I always seek for that small sparkle of what's real and authentic in things, people, nature...
Archive
Friday, June 29, 2007
Lazy & Grumpy
I know, I know, I got all your emails saying to update more often! It's just that I've been incredibely lazy this past week, felt like sleeeeeeeping all day long. I blame it on the heat - we had like 40° here a couple of days ago - and my body is working on a strictly "functional mode" at such temperatures! That means eat, sleep, drink water, more water, cold water, ok some more water now.....
Besides, I've also been grumpy for the past couple of days, and this is a really baaaaaaad cocktail of moods. So I'm really not in the mood to blog, but in order to compromise I will just put some pics online (lame lazy solution :)).
We've (I+Lexy+our manager) attended an anniversary of one of our major partners. It was actually a very nice show, different from the usual over-worked PR events corporations organize. It feels good to receive attention and respect as a supplier - here the GM is making pictures with us :)
To escape the heat and the fact that our office has no aircon (yet!!!!) we decided to work for an afternoon at a pool&terrace! This place above! Niiiiiiice, no? Well, of course this turned out to be the first day with temperatures below 30, and actually we also got some rain! bah!!
We had a nice view on the lake from the pool, and we started making silly pictures of each other. This is me trying to act like a sexy innocent model....but I don't really have the face for it!More posing, this like time looking like the actual me!
On of my attempts to "ungrump" myself was to wear this shiny pinkysh nail polish. It worked.....for about 10 minutes!
Planning our trip for SE Asia was quite a buzz the past week, since we had to solve a lot of annoying administrative stuff - like getting our flight tickets between different countries, solving part of the accomodation, and the most pestering part of course - visas!!! An unexpected pleasant surprise was Cambodia - with a friendly easy to use online visa application. All you need is a digital passport-size photo and 25$ and voila, one day to get your e-visa.
And I mean, it's Cambodia, you know? A very poor and underdeveloped country! As comparison - for Thailand we had to go through all this annoying paperwork, and we are still waiting for the visa. Birocrats!
You can't really see because the picture is really small, but I didn't have a digital passport photo, so in the visa above is actually a photoshoped version of my head from the anniversay photo at the beggining of this post. Well, not really photoshoped because I actually have to use corel photo paint for licence reasons. See now, I have all reasons in the world to be grumpy - forced to use fugly corel instead of my beautiful and wicked photoshop?!?! ;)
Tuesday, June 19, 2007
This heat! 34°C and counting
I’ve just been home for a 4days extended weekend! In my first years of living in Bucharest I hated going home because it seamed boring and still compared to the ultra hype of Bucharest! But now I learned to love and appreciate the quiet calm of Oradea, and I also discovered that if you’re with the right crowd it can be very oh-not-so-quiet!!! :)
I noticed this morning when I arrived back to Bucharest the huge difference of entering in the two cities: there I could see from the train window green hills with colored houses and neat gardens; while here we were suddenly surrounded by grey buildings, smoggy concrete, and thick dust in the humid air. I’ve been living here for 6 years and it’s the first time I felt this city is ugly...how could I not notice all this ugliness before?
It must be the heat, this veil of hot air and burning sunlight that sits still upon the city. It simply melts my brain, I can no longer think clear nor act rationally! But it brought in front of my eyes the dirt and dust that swarms in the grey concrete of the city, the stench and smell of melting pavement right into my nostrils. As opposite, at home I could escape the heat on the green hills where a pleasant breeze blew gently, or around the river where the water would spread its coolness.
I seam to have a craving for nature and green, perhaps because the last time really spend in nature’s arms was a couple of year’s ago! I’ve only had short escapes since, and I feel I need to hike for a week or so to get it out of my system....placidly impossible considering my schedule for the rest of the summer :( On the train to Bucharest I pulled down the window and hanged with my head out for like an hour. I haven’t done that since I was in high school, going in youth camps! You know that sign that says “E pericoloso sporgersi”? Well, I sporgersed all the way I could, sticking my head and my hands out the window!
It was fantastic! The train was speeding though the mountains, with all the rocks walls just a meter away from me, and the fresh air flaying me in the face. It was all so incredibly fresh and alive: the clear green, the cool shadows, the sweet air. If I closed my eyes I could actually tell the different smells surrounding us: in one place fresh mown hay, in another a field of clover, here planted grains, there wild poppies!
I could so move to the countryside now! :)
Tuesday, June 05, 2007
World Enviroment Day - 5 June
The UNEP set 5 June as the World Enviroment Day! This year's theme is "Melting ice -a hot topic?" This is their website WED 2007.
Let's all remember what we're doing to our planet Earth and start acting against Climate Change (photos from UNEP site):
Let's all remember what we're doing to our planet Earth and start acting against Climate Change (photos from UNEP site):
Cool test from Lexy
Online tests - I could spend hoooooours doing them :) I particularry liked this one because it gave me a quick reminder of personal priorities, and it was all too flattery. What more for oneself to feel happy? :)
You'll Change The World As A Leader!
A go-getter like you knows the world’s problems aren’t about to fix themselves. And if no one takes the lead, how can any real change happen?
Courageous and hard-working, you have a talent few others share. No doubt, when you enter anything from a party to a classroom to a boardroom, the spotlight turns your way. And with your ability to motivate and inspire, why shouldn’t it?
Could the history books potentially read Gandhi, Mandela and you? It’s possible. When it comes to combating world hunger and poverty, you’re just the sort who can affect change. Whether you enlist your friends to help build housing for the poor, or organize an anti-hunger rally on a college campus, a leader like you has the special knack to make things happen.
Friday, June 01, 2007
Fashion Smashion
I’ve been having quite a few meetings the past few weeks, and since I love to take the business conversations out of the office, I grabbed the opportunity to have a tour of the surrounding coffee shops. Some of them are quite posh (read: trying to brand as posh), and you can meet celebrities or socialites there. I saw just one or two celebrities, but a whole big bunch of wanna-be socialites! All of them dressed with the Guccis, Diors and Versaces, on top of their Jimmy Choo heels and with a Birkin hanging in their hands! YUCK!
Seeing the socialite prototype (tall, slim, blonde, fringed) displaying their big logo bags all over the place made me shrivel with a sudden overexposure to superficiality! Let me take the “it bag” of the it bags: the Birkin!
To state the obvious for starters: this bag is unreasonably illogically expensive, prices start at 5.000 Euros, and they can go waaaaaaaay up from there. Errrrr, for what, may I ask? Ask the fashionistas and they tell you of the rare materials and their quality, hand made work that takes for months and months, expensive accessories such as diamonds and gold.
Yeah, right, these people are working months and months to make your bag, sister! **rolled eyes** Hello??? It takes a 5 weeks maximum for even the most luxurious bag to be finished, hand made and all that shit! The costs don’t justify the prices – in reality is the reduced offer that does. Hermes (and other luxury brands) keep make “exclusive limited collections”, only a few pieces of each bag, and charge enormous amounts for the “privilege” to wear a rare item. Artificial rarity creates artificially pumped prices, because you can always find some idiots willing to pay fortunes for “exclusivity”!
As for the rare materials used – they are mostly crocodile skin, ostrich feathers, chevre leather or lizard inserts. Let me peel off some skin layers from your skinny-socialite-ass and see what you think about leather then! That’s right biatch!
It seams the “IT bag” virus has also marched its way into Romania! Incredible how the need to cover oneself with logos and brands perpetrates in every aspect of our apparel: first it was the clothes, then the shoes, now the bags! Nothing against fashion, you know me, I own countless pairs of shoes and bags and dresses and jeans and etc etc. But enough is enough!!
Seeing the socialite prototype (tall, slim, blonde, fringed) displaying their big logo bags all over the place made me shrivel with a sudden overexposure to superficiality! Let me take the “it bag” of the it bags: the Birkin!
To state the obvious for starters: this bag is unreasonably illogically expensive, prices start at 5.000 Euros, and they can go waaaaaaaay up from there. Errrrr, for what, may I ask? Ask the fashionistas and they tell you of the rare materials and their quality, hand made work that takes for months and months, expensive accessories such as diamonds and gold.Yeah, right, these people are working months and months to make your bag, sister! **rolled eyes** Hello??? It takes a 5 weeks maximum for even the most luxurious bag to be finished, hand made and all that shit! The costs don’t justify the prices – in reality is the reduced offer that does. Hermes (and other luxury brands) keep make “exclusive limited collections”, only a few pieces of each bag, and charge enormous amounts for the “privilege” to wear a rare item. Artificial rarity creates artificially pumped prices, because you can always find some idiots willing to pay fortunes for “exclusivity”!
And one more obvious statement: that is one ugly bag! You’ll say that maybe I’m jealous and I’m only bitching cause I can’t afford such a bag. Hell, of course I’m jealous! If I had those minimum 5.000 euro to spare I could like...I don’t know....support my next trip to Africa, pay the first advancement for a car, roadtrip through Europe...or I could buy a bag. Tough choice, I must admit! Not to mention that several other items – take the bag below – cost like 50.000 euro up to 150.000 euro. For a bag!!! 
Honey, if you really have that kind of money, let me show you what you could throw it on:
Honey, if you really have that kind of money, let me show you what you could throw it on:a) Rent this luxury holiday yacht in the Mediterranean sea, $18.500 per week all inclusive (a month on the yacht, or the bag)
b) Buy a Ferrari Fiorano, $ 260.000 base price, and a waiting list of 5 years (as opposed to the 2 years for a Birkin bag). It's 2 high priced bags or this car.
As for the rare materials used – they are mostly crocodile skin, ostrich feathers, chevre leather or lizard inserts. Let me peel off some skin layers from your skinny-socialite-ass and see what you think about leather then! That’s right biatch!