Passover some words of wisdom

I attended a family seder on Monday, a Jewish tradition that I've been fortunate enough to take part in for the past 3 years. Arturo and I chatted over ancient maps that were displayed on the walls of his home. Each map symbolized where different parts of his family were from and where they are now. His story was a fascinating one telling the drastic emigrations of his parents, from Latvia to Uruguay, Uruguay to Western Canada - each move requiring a change of lifestyle and starting over in a foreign country. His father, whom was a medical doctor, returned to school when he moved to Canada because medical licensing is different in each country. He loved what he did and wanted to continue to practice medicine. He was the oldest medical student in his school, at age 65. He practiced into his late 70's.

In the end, Arturo says to me, "It is extremely important to love what you do, it is unfortunate to be unhappy with your work when you spend so much of your life working. There are 3 key things to keep in mind when you want to succeed. Have common sense, be flexible, and gain skill set".

I have a couple of things to work on.

Here's some foolproof skincare advice

I recently returned from a business trip in Reston, VA; a cute town where pedestrian crosswalks actually mean something to drivers. Our meetings had ended early so I stepped out to take walk down Market Street and paid a visit to the beauty supply store, Sephora.

As of late, I've started to pay a bit more attention to my skincare. As in, I've started to use moisturizer on a daily basis. Needless to say, I am completely clueless in this field as far what ingredients do what and what brand is worth the extra buck.

I had incidentally packed a bottle of lotion that baaarely had half a pump left and brought it all the way to VA ::doh:: Since I had time on my hands that day and there were few customers in the store, I sought the advice of their skincare expert. We had narrowed it down to a few potential products that I might have been happy with. Standing to my right was the skincare expert and randomly, a fellow Asian customer was standing to my left chiming in on the choices because she, too, was looking for a moisturizer. We looked like a small Asian focus group discussing moisturizers back and forth. I really did enjoy having her as a sounding board.

We were comparing 2 products in the end, Sephora's hydrating lotion ($22, no spf, smooth application, cute and modern looking pump bottle) and First Aid's 5 in 1 lotion ($38, small squeeze bottle, SPF 15, anti-aging magic). My main concern was the price. The other girl's concern was the price and SPF protection.

Her: 'Ahh, I don't know what to get, I like the Sephora one but I wish it had SPF'
Me: 'Are you outdoors that much?'
Her: 'Yea, I'm a student so I'm always walking around outside to get to class and I want SPF protection and I DON'T want my skin to get dark'
Me: 'Yea, but the other one is a bit too pricey'
Her: 'I don't know what to do...'
Me: 'How about...you buy the cheaper one and you take the $ that you would save, by not buying the expensive one, and buy an umbrella'

And that folks, is my foolproof skincare advice; no skincare expert needed.
Oh, and I ended up buying something completely different (and even less expensive) for myself.

Twitter: the good and the bad

I love Twitter. It’s a shortcut way of ranting, sharing, or noting something. Too bad, when it’s all done and said in 140 characters or less, I am less inclined to go into detail about the story behind it via a blog entry. But when I’m in particular situations that encourage me to get some aspect of my life together (read: being stuck at the airport with a 2 hour delay and free internet), I find myself scrolling through old tweets to recount past events and the significance of a few that resulted in obscure one liners as place holders for stories that are so good, you need 141+ characters.

I attended a work conference this week, as if the poor data extraction from our site wasn’t already a bummer, I received a twitter request to follow from my ex. I can’t explain why little actions like these come around and still knock the wind out of me. I tried not to weigh the pros and cons too much before I exhaled and denied the request. I’m just not there yet and I don’t know if I’ll ever get there. I’m happy for you, can’t we just leave it at that and carry on with our lives? We’ve finally stopped the obligatory Merry Christmas, Happy New Year, and Happy Birthday texts.

I was waiting for E to get out of the writing group so we could catch our cab to the airport. I scrolled through my apps and saw Q of the day. I opened it up in hopes for some food for thought and ironically, the question that popped up read: Where did you leave it off with your ex?

I don’t know where we left it off. Well that’s a lie, we left it off at me denying his request to follow my tweets. Prior to that, he texted to tell me his dog died (which I was truly sad about), and the time before, it was to return my old photos. In the back of my mind, I knew he was cleaning me out of his life. He was moving. You, generally, only return things when you’re cleaning out to move. He was physically and mentally moving on. I’ve moved on myself but there’s something about the definitive that irks me. I’ve found comfort in things fading into the background and when the past is reintroduced, I can’t help but be taken aback and a little defensive – didn’t we agree to not talk about it anymore?

Maybe I take it as an attack to my ego, that as Nat says, I wasn’t the one that made him. Perhaps I just hate the idea of letting people down. I want everyone in my life to be happy and when I cannot deliver, I feel I let myself down.

Anyhow, I inadvertently learned that you are engaged, so congratulations are in order. I'm not sure if that was your intention all along for me to come across this information but I like to believe it wasn't. I am happy for you, my longtime friend so cheers to you and your future family. A toast from me to you and your champagne life.