merry christmas!!!!

happy holidays to you guys.

love you and have a great christmas.

culture.

something women always do when they see a newly engaged female friend:

"OH MY GOD LET ME SEE THE RING OH MY GOD IT'S GORGEOUS!!"

then the lucky soon-to-be-bride blushes/laughs/smiles gleefully as she (coyly, almost) displays her left hand to the bevy of female friends.

i don't care about diamond rings. getting married freaks me out. maybe it's what the ring represents that turns me off? if i did get engaged, some cool/funky/interesting jewelry with sentimental value would be 100x more appealing than a big ol' rock. but still. once i am around a newly engaged woman, i can't help but join the masses and ooh and ahh over the ring too. it's ingrained in our cultural upbringing. and it's not really the ring i care about. it's just my way of letting the happy engaged girl know how happy i am for her too.

unless i was doing it to heidi montag. then you'd know i was just being fake. cuz we all know spencer bought her like a $99 ring that he picked out in 2 minutes and that's nothing to be impressed about.

even better than the real thing.

i love tegan and sara's "walking with a ghost".
i love the white stripes.
i LOVE covers.


i love this:

if you're into graphic details and typography.

then you'll appreciate the artwork of tauba auerbach. she does a lot of really cool stuff by breaking down words and letters into separate elements and looking for meaning in arbitrary shapes and patterns.

but, this person puts it better:

auerbach's work brings about a shift in our perception of written letters, a reversal of reflexes: seeing comes to prevail over meaning. - leah olman, art in america

YEAH. exactly!!

my favorite is this "A" print - she stylizes the letter so much that it becomes a work of art and an illustration and almost loses its significance as a semantic symbol. gorgeous gorgeous. how awesome would this look as a print in my room? yeah, i know. pretty awesome.

aritzia.

can i tell you how much i am in love with the aritzia store concept?

why?

they feature new looks with video instead of just static photos

their styling is totally mary-kate-olsen-nylon-mag-girl, not paris-hilton-clone

they mix the coolest high-low brands like vena cava, kensie, geren ford, mike & chris

they play black kids on their home page!!!

aritzia is a canadian retailer that originated out of an upscale department store, similar to a barney's co-op but lower price points. yet just as cool with an indie feel.

no stores yet in the LA area, but once there is, i'll be its #1 fan.

dumplings.

[16:38] eric: yay im gonna go eat some dumplings tonite
[16:38] me: what kind??
[16:38] eric: 5 for 1 dollah (make you holla)
[16:38] eric: guo-tieh
[16:38] eric: i dunno how to spell that
[16:38] me: pot stickers
[16:38] eric: yes
[16:38] me: yum
[16:38] eric: bombass
[16:38] me: crispy on the outside meaty on the inside
[16:38] eric: some of the best ive had
[16:38] me: delicious
[16:38] eric: yep
[16:38] eric: 5 for a DOLLAR

[16:41] me: i would eat 40 of those
[16:41] me: and it would only be $8
[16:41] me: damn and they say ny is expensive
[16:42] co-worker: eat 40 of what?
[16:42] me: oops
[16:42] me: never mind.

freaking wrong IM window

here comes another bubble.

my homage to boys.

[10:45] me: flora
[10:45] me: sometimes i am kind of amazed by boys
[10:45] me: yesterday i watched my roommate's two guy friends move the most gigantic fridge ever into our apartment and afterwards i was like damn. i am so impressed
[10:50] flo: hehe
[10:50] flo: like what would you do without them
[10:51] me: that is exactly what i thought
[10:55] me: and i was like man if they were cute boys i would totally be in love
[10:55] me: because they were so amazing at moving

gosh. i love boys. they can take stuff that weighs 5x as much as we do and totally OWN it. even the little guys that look kind of small and skinny are often amazingly strong. things i wouldn't even think of trying to move with the help of another person, they can lift by themselves. i am duly amazed at your abilities.

[10:57] flo: yes that makes me feel like boys are pretty independent
[10:57] flo: what do they need girls for
[10:57] flo: but girls need boys to move stuff
[10:57] flo: & assemble ikea furniture
[11:02] me: for our charming and adorable company
[11:03] me: for providing them exercise when we need to move furniture

i think it's a fair trade, don't you?

free nylon mag subscription!!!

for those of you who want to be nylon girls. click!!

unilever hypocrisy?

the dove campaign for beauty + axe marketing are housed under the same corporate roof of unilever - does that make the socially conscious advertising from dove the ultimate hypocrisy?

Dove's viral video attack on beauty advertising has produced a surprisingly strong and enduring blowback against Unilever from activists, newspaper op-ed writers, bloggers and videographers who see it as hypocritical coming from the same company that markets Axe.

To be sure, none of the critics is coming to the defense of beauty-industry advertising, linked in the "Onslaught" video to everything from low self-esteem to plastic surgery to bulimia. Rather, they're attacking Unilever for simultaneously trotting out its own endless stream of buxom, scantily clad, sex-crazed women in ads supporting Axe.

via AdAge.

make it work.

project runway OWNS your wednesday nights!!

starts today yay

lost in translation.

sometimes when i have conversations with my mother in chinese i realize that a large percentage of what i am saying is actually just english peppered with bits of chinese words.

something as simple as "she called today to let us know about dinner at the restaurant" will sound something like: "that lady, she called [in chinese] umm to tell us [in english] we're going to have dinner, [in english] with her, at that...place [in chinese] ".

i mean, i know how to say that, but when i'm on the spot and trying to say a lot at once, my brain can't think that quickly in chinese. sometimes i look at my mom and she kind of has this confused look on her face like she is trying to put the random jumbled stream-of-consciousness coming out of my mouth into some sort of coherent statement.

sigh. someday i will wake up and not know a single word of chinese, even after living in the san gabriel valley all these years. the shame!!

10 things to do before i turn 30.

1. go to olympus fashion week
2. live in another city for at least a year
3. eat at french laundry
4. go to the ninja museum in japan
5. make two straight guys make out
6. learn to play the guitar like glen hansard
7. visit a rainforest
8. have a bathroom with a clawfoot tub
9. see swan lake
10. i can only think of 9

the great debate of our time.

pirates vs. ninjas

inquiring minds want to know...

eric tells me about his ideal man

me: ok now your turn
the ideal man

Eric: well
i love bubble butts
and hair
i LOVE hair on chests
uhm
strong and silent
tall, dark, handsome LOLOLOL
ok i have to stop
look what you made me do
i was homo for 10 seconds today

look eric, i have found him!! apparently tom jones is your ideal man.

open bars = good times.

hannah, flo and i at a wedding last saturday.

someone brought their tiny adorable dog to the wedding and we were like ohmygawd you are so cute we want to snuggle you and cuddle you and EAT YOU!

such a beautiful fairytale ceremony. it was practically in a forest. we were freezing though.

later we missed all the speeches at dinner because we drinking too much white wine on nearly empty stomachs, giggling at stupid things, and wondering aloud (probably very loudly, too) where our food was. then when the food finally came, they took it away when we went to the restroom. i think i might have eaten two slices of cake to compensate. i'm not positive. hannah also got bitten by another guest. yeah, it sounds weird, but it happened.

i don't even understand how i was able to drive home afterwards, but somehow we got back in one piece.

and that, my friends, is how i plan to behave at my own wedding someday.

raison d'être.

sitting in class and thought i should share this bit of wisdom that i heard today: "the meaning of life...is to bring meaning to life." i like that. personally, i think i bring meaning to everyone's lives through my amazing blogging, and your gratefulness truly warms my heart.

really, that quote is so good, it ought to be printed on an inspirational poster with a picture of a sunrise, destined to hang on the walls of high school counselors' offices all across america. next to the poster with the kitten that says "hang in there".

it's business time.

flight of the conchords are even better at making sexy love songs than barry white.

and they're environmentally conscious too:
"then you go sort out the recycling...that’s not part of it, but it’s still very important."

your face!

dude, this shirt says it all.

a present!

yum!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

silhouettes.

monica took this at the boxeight show and i liked the silhouettes.

do photographers feel weird being photographed?

fashion + cupcakes.

from louis verdad's spring 2008 collection

for my birthday, monica got tickets to the genart fresh faces fashion show in los angeles on friday (thanks mon!) to see endovanera, wren, dorothy lee, suh-tahn, and several other new los angeles collections, and to basically be a pseudo-anna wintour for a day.

since we were on the westside, we started off by going to susiecakes for red velvet cake, then crumbs to have (what else) cupcakes! i'm not sure it was the best idea to have that much sugar at once, but we thoroughly enjoyed it.

the genart show was held at the petersen automotive museum, where they set up a tent on the top floor, complete with runway and mini lounges and open bars throughout.

photos from the show (blurry ones mine, professional ones from getty images):

coincidentally, jeffrey sebelia (of project runway fame) was the emcee. i say coincidentally because the night before, we had also gone to the boxeight fashion showcase in downtown LA to see jeffrey's and louis verdad's spring 2008 collections.

heh heh heh...monica on the red carpet.

the boxeight shows were held at vibania cathedral, complete with the original confessionals.

we were such noobs amongst all the jaded nylon girls and hipsters, and took photos japanese-tourist-style nonstop. but GUESS what. WE SAW SANTINO RICE!! i think i might have squealed out loud when i saw him and somewhat startled monica, who tried to take a picture and got my wildly gesticulating arm in the photo instead.

he's very tall. look:

that's jeffrey sebelia below.

btw, i am really freaking annoying when i want a picture badly enough. like, i'd stand directly in front of santino and jeffrey and blatantly keep snapping photos, sometimes very poorly pretending to take pictures of monica.

we also saw cat deeley (i guess no one knows who that is, huh? she hosts "so you think you can dance", that show rocks), mayor villaraigosa, daisy fuentes, and bobby brown (i know, totally D-listy and random).

this black veil lady i found very interesting, and i surreptitiously snapped a photo of her.

monica did some detective work and found out that the black-veiled lady is diane pernet , who is apparently an important fashion icon, always wears the same outfit, and hangs out with skinny japanese men.

oh YEAH, and we sat behind jai from queer eye for the straight guy and shook his hand. we're totally BFFs now.

my photos from jeffrey sebelia's cosa nostra line:

getty images from the louis verdad show:

look how intense the photographers' podium is.

this took way too long to post. anyway, good times. thanks again mon. <3