amy winehouse

I'm so sad to hear that Amy Winehouse has passed away. My deepest condolences for her family.

What a tragedy.

Her albums are fantastic, and I was really looking forward to her future work.

my inner French girl

I ran across an interesting philosophy that one might describe as "the inner French girl" or "Euro Chic."

Very inspiring; I like the idea of "editing" one's wardrobe and life.
I think my French coworkers will find it amusing though.

Ars Aromatica has been steadily promoting a similar philosophy over the years: "editing" one's stash of makeup for example. An appealing form of minimalism.

banila co sale in Harajuku

Banila co's shop near Harajuku (Meiji jingu mae station) has a 50% off sale; I picked up 2 tube lip glosses in a bright-but-wearable pink and orange for 500 yen each. They had a lot of other products on sale, but nothing I needed, so I limited myself to the super cheap glosses.

The sale is going on until the end of the month, so you have plenty of time to check it out.

one of my favorite blogs is gone

oh no! it was terribly well written and interesting.
I hope mymakeupreviews.blogspot.com comes back eventually.

Roy McDonald is my new hero

HuffingtonPost link:Republican NY State Senator Roy McDonald's Awesome Defense Of Gay Marriage:

"You get to the point where you evolve in your life where everything isn't black and white, good and bad, and you try to do the right thing.

You might not like that. You might be very cynical about that. Well, fuck it, I don't care what you think. I'm trying to do the right thing.

I'm tired of Republican-Democrat politics. They can take the job and shove it. I come from a blue-collar background. I'm trying to do the right thing, and that's where I'm going with this."

stop doing things that temporarily have a large impact

Always make changes so that they can be quickly reverted!

You never know when you need to quickly undo something.

i.e. work smarter, not harder.

i'm grateful

I'm grateful to have had the opportunity to work for and with a variety of companies from around the world.

My present company is particularly international, and I've really enjoyed the chance to interact with a number of people from European and Asian countries.

While working at a Japanese system integrator, I was able to meet quite a few Korean and Chinese companies working as integrators also. That was quite fun too.

The workaholic stance is quite pervasive - the effect of Confucianism?