Should we all go to Russia right now?

The value of the ruble has devalued by more than half in the past year.

Apple just stopped selling iPhones. But has Louis Vuitton stopped selling handbags?

My Russian source sent me an email to give me some context:

"1 year ago we had $1 = 32 Rubles, now $1 = 70 Rubles. Everybody expects it'll be worse after new year. I believe nothing will collapse :) But it will be definably a crisis, may be some companies will be bankrupts, because they have loans in USD and Revenue in Rubles. We had almost the same in 1998. Actually, you can buy a lot of things much cheaper now. For example, $4 = 280 Rubles, it's a cost of entire lunch (soup, drink, main dish); McDonalds Cheeseburger is about 50 Rubles, which is less than $1."

Who's booking? Shall we do a group rate?

Thanks, Elena!

Best,

Christine

Mood for Noods

Today, I yelled in my office, I'm in the mood for noods. Noods, like noodles.

Apparently, this is an accepted abbreviated term and people may have assumed that I was yelling that I'm in the mood for NUDES.

I'm mortified but laughing.

Happy Friday! Happy December!

These are from Orenchi Ramen in SF. Eat them if you want to wait!

Reasons by Christine -- my NaNoWriMo novel?

After a quick deliberation and a double check with my gut, I've decided to start writing about my life in San Francisco. Welcome to my brain.

Let's start with Reasons, Part I.

Reasons why I am unable to bring lunch to work:

I've never been able to bring lunch to anything. I never brought my lunch to school growing up - and I derive way too much pleasure from the indecision that is the hour that breaks up my day. After waking up bleary eyed on a cold, crisp morning, I focus my brain enough to get dressed, find socks that are definitely not matching, unless they're new - and run out the door. On a good day, my purse is stuffed full of snacks. This morning, I had a juicy apple, a knife, a container of sriracha, and some pea snacks. Tomorrow, I will bring a juicy and delightful pear with granola.

Thinking about breakfast is a feat in itself for me. Lunch - now lunch is a different story. The countdown from 11 - the hand wringing, the indecisiveness, the 1st world problem of it all. It's wonderful. Shall I Gchat all of my friends in the area to find a buddy that meets the geographical constraints that I'm willing to travel? Shall I escape and order Thai food at a location that's too far away? Or perhaps I'll eat delicious Chinese food that's charged by weight with free soup that I eat alone upstairs with no one to accompany other than my Kindle version of Outlander. Maybe I'll stand in line with a bunch of finance guys and eat Jimmy John's which I know isn't really that good, but it reminds me of my freshman year of college living in Brumby, next door to a Jimmy Johns, and still ordering delivery.

Getting up and leaving my desk at work mid-day - bringing my Kindle and eating food that's cheaper than it would be at dinner with similar portion sizes - mm, lunch is definitely the bargain meal. Leaving my desk and walking in the sunlight helps clear my head briefly and makes me want to punch someone less at 3:30 pm every day.

Lunch purchases: justified. If I had a stamp, I'd give my own stamp of approval.

Dear San Francisco healthcare institutions, I hate you.

Note to everyone: when you go to the ER, don't let them check your blood sugar. It costs $208 for them to prick your finger.

If they offer to give you a Benedryl, it will show up as $21, for a single fucking pill.

Forget about having a doctor actually try to figure out what's wrong with you... 

I signed up for National Novel Writing Month... and I've written no words.

FAIL.

I first heard about National Novel Writing Month from a girl that I sat next to on a packed Amtrak from New York Penn Station to Rome, New York. Haven't heard of it? That's okay. Closest destination? The saddest casino.

It's always a toss up on whether or not I'm feeling chatty, but usually I'm interested in learning about new people. It's been a few months now - I can say honestly that I don't remember too much about the girl that sat next to me except for the fact that we were able chat genially for 3 hours in crazy New York thunderstorms. She was originally from California, attended Hamilton College a few years after I graduated school, and she was a creative writing major. 

Together, we spoke about her writing schedule, which fed into my childhood aspirations of being an author and making it, through words alone. From the years of 10-15, I briefly entertained being a famous author, Tom Clancy style. I won some local creative writing contests in Georgia, but thinking back on it, I don't know if they were anything to remember. 

The idea of a bunch of people trying to write a 50k word novel over the course of a month intrigued me, so I made sure to pencil in that NaNoWriMo started Nov 1 (Hello Kitty's birthday). 

Courtesy of Nanowritmo.org. Yes, this s a writing coat of arms. It's awesomely nerdy. 

It's been 9 days in. I've signed on. My word count is 0. I need to write about something I know. 

Here are 7 topics that I've thought about writing about:

1. The trial and tribulations of being a shopaholic (it's been done, search Sophie Kinsella, then read Can you keep a secret - hilarious and the last book that I bought in England) - I may call this one, the Art of the Squeal. - is it squeal-worthy? HA! In the time that you were weighing whether or not it was squealworthy, I've bought it and shipped it to my office.
2. The trials and tribulations of being a 20 something girl in San Francisco (I think this could be thought provoking - mostly about budgeting, fighting debtors, always thinking about switching jobs to make more money... maybe it'll be called Reasons by Christine - a daily journal entry on how I reason myself into taking a car to work/ eat carbs/ not go to the gym/ read NYmag for too long/ eating another Jimmy John's sandwich/ not cleaned my room/ bought another pair of shoes
3. How being a Southern girl out of the South is the best kind of girl - it's true. All my best friends have been positively influenced by the South. 
4. A romance novel from the Regency era (would require some research, clearly, my main character Lavinia is going to be a bitch with a heart of gold that falls in love with a Duke. If you read romance novels, you know that NO HEROINE is ever named Lavinia, because that's a mean pointy name..)
5. 50k words of anxiety ridden To-Do Lists
6. 50k words on why I've not gone to the gym in SO LONG but yet keep paying for it.
7. 50k words on worthy crafts to complete

If you think that any of these are compelling, I urge you to comment to me, and my goal is actually get started writing in about 4 days. Let's be real - 30 days is too many days for a procrastinator like me. I can do it in 15. 

Nora and Christine's Hello Kitty Dance PHHHOTO

Nora and I debated heavily on what we would be doing for our short gif. The group in front of us was blowing kisses into the camera, one guy was scrubbing his eyes and pretend crying. Their moves were awesome, but our moves are pretty classic to us!

Hello Kitty Con and Hello Frustration

I attended Hello Kitty Con on Saturday with my friend, Nora.

The day following the announcement in June, I purchased tickets purposefully for Saturday, November 1, thinking booking the day of Hello Kitty's birthday would prove to special - especially since it's Hello Kitty's BIG 40th ANNIVERSARY Birthday! After taking off of work early in San Francisco on Friday after the World Series Parade, I flew into Los Angeles in the late evening to celebrate a light Halloween so that I could attend Hello Kitty Con the following day. Oops, we went to bed at 5 am.


After wrestling myself out of bed in the morning, Nora and I rolled into Little Tokyo. Nora asked me to explain my love for Hello Kitty on our walk to the Convention.  It's not easy to put into words. My love for Hello Kitty is ingrained - my love for HK is like my love for reading.

We got our IDs, we got our little booklets, and it was the beginning of the end.

I thought that Hello Kitty Con would be a quest in acquiring cute Hello Kitty stickers. Instead, Nora and I found ourselves trapped in a Sisaphean cycle of lines. We waited in line to get inside the overhang. In order to get inside the convention center, we got into another line. Inside, the space was a display of knick-knacks, many of which I owned. Raised about the convention center was the merchandise store, which to my and Nora's dismay was only able to reached after three to four hours of lines. Nora and I walked around looking at each exhibit, taking photos with random Hello Kitties.

We had to stand in line in order to take this picture:

Nora and I trapped in the extra large replica of the Hello Kitty coin purse that started it all

Here are some other photos of Nora and me posing next to random Hello Kitties, that we had to wait in line for:

Click to Enlarge!

After about three hours of waiting in lines, Hello Kitty Con shut down the merchandise acquisition (store!) line at 3 pm. With no notice in the program, my one day access to sold out Hello Kitty Con was pretty much over.

For a convention that's all about a kitty that got its start from being on a coin purse, the lack of access for someone who flew to Los Angeles for 24 hours to attend the convention where I would be able to add to my lifetime collection of Hello Kitty thing was disappointing. 

If Sanrio is going to be putting a piece of merch on display like the Hope Diamond, I'd hope that you would focus the convention on the attendees, those superfans who are present to acquire more merchandise. 

Hope Diamond? Pretty much!

It's my personal opinion as a lifetime lover of Hello Kitty that the whole convention was overbooked, and the ratio of museum style exhibit to store and purchase availability should have been flipped. Side note: when Hello Kitty Con said Marketplace, I thought Supermarket Place - just like in Asia, where you can get Hello Kitty anything inside a Supermarket. Silly me.

My favorite photo other than the first photo I posted, is this one, which is actually from the Japanese Heritage Museum!

Kawaii!

At the Japanese Heritage Museum, Nora and I discovered how many apples tall we are. I discovered that I'm the same height in apples as I am in beers. We saw more merch that I own, including backpacks from 2000-2014, and delicious and yummy bubble gum. The only thing that I would love to be able to rent is a Hello Kitty robot.

Farewell, Hello Kitty Con. You were so cute but so frustrating. I left Hello Kitty Con with a Loungefly HK pencil case and a Loungefly Hello Kitty lunch box. Other than a birthday gift with purchase at Sephora, no special events were held for Hello Kitty's birthday. All the activities that required tickets were out of tickets.

I left Hello Kitty Con with no stickers, no official merch and many disappointments. Like a paper with a poor thesis, Hello Kitty started with a good idea, but had no legs to stand on. Improve, please!

 #hellokittycon #hkcon #hellokitty

Perks of Living in California

A few weekends ago, there was a heat wave running through California - Minerva and I headed down to Pacifica in time to watch a wedding on the beach, eat some sandos from Mr. Pickle and watch the sunset.

This photo reminds me of the perks of living in San Francisco - we're only 15 miles from the beach! 

Read Daniel Silva's Gabriel Allon series

Earlier this year, I picked a random book of the New York Times Bestseller list, titled, The English Girl. As someone that likes novels about England, Ian McEwan books and admittedly, Regency era romance novels, I realized that I was reading a complicated spy novel with an amazing twist mid way through. The title character, Gabriel Allon, is an Israeli spy who has a talent for Italian art restoration and a hunger to capture a kidnapper. The novel is  thrilling and I was left wanting more as I finished it. It was so great in fact, that I sent emails to a few friends who I thought would enjoy it.

At the beginning of this summer, The Heist came out, and at this point, I recognized the author on the cover. I read through the book at a voracious speed, finishing it in a day. At the end of the Heist, I reached a turning point, I knew that the Heist was the fourteenth book in a series about Gabriel Allon. Each book is lengthy and I was a creature obsessed.

1. The Kill Artist: 512 pages
2. The English Assassin: 416 pages
3. The Confessor: 480 pages
4. A Death in Venice: 400 pages
5. Prince of Fire: 432 pages
6. The Messenger: 512 pages
7. The Secret Servant: 512 pages
8. Moscow Rules: 528 pages
9. The Defector: 528 pages
10. The Rembrandt Affair: 544 pages
11. Portrait of a Spy: 528 pages
12. The Fallen Angel: 464 pages

After 5,856 pages, I began to re-read the English Girl. The characters in the book had a lot more depth. While each book as a brief introduction of the characters, almost slightly like a more advanced Sweet Valley style, it was thrilling to be able to acknowledge previous missions and build further on the relationships between Gabriel, Chiara, Mikhail, and Shamron.

13. The English Girl: 544 pages
14. The Heist: 496 pages

Six thousand eight hundred and ninety six pages later, I can't wait for the next book. I'm about to start Daniel Silva's The Mark of the Assassin.

Yay, summer 2014!

Usher announces upcoming tour!

Seriously, this is something on my bucket list. All I need is Usher to post his third round of tour dates and hopefully he'll come to San Francisco. I just don't see how Atlanta isn't on there yet either. Obvi, he'll be going to both!

My fingers are crossed!

Daily Dose of Sad

Here is your daily dose of sad, ya'll.

I've edited this screen shot to reflect what I see when I read an OkCupid message sent me. User name is my creation. The message itself, is so sad, that I can't.

Christine's drink of choice

Gin + champagne + a squeeze of lime + and if possible, some St. Germaine.

All alcohol, very delicious, served mix with a lot of ice.

The Dom and Bom as Absolutely Fabulous would have you call it, and it is, absolutely fabulous.

Enjoy!

Although, I should include a small warning, here are some possible outcomes on what happens when you drink Dom and Boms:

• you may fall asleep on the floor in the middle of a party
• you may enjoy yourself at a wedding where you know few people and take a picture in a hat owned by someone dressed suspiciously like little bo' peep
• you might get hit on by a 20 year old Ivy League gentleman
• you may black out while making delicious Korean ramen noodles
• you might fall asleep and be caught snoring in the middle of a group of friends at 3 in the morning
• you may vomit
• you may want to have Gaviscon and Rolaids on hand. 

Tinder thinks I'm in Paris

Dear Laurent, Belahcene, Mad, Alexis, Amine, Marc-Antoine, Pierluigi, Jean, Dara, Yoel, Badreddine, Alexandre, Prive, Saada, Phillipe, Mickael, Matthieu, Etienne, Andres, Julien, Youssef, Laurian, Olivier, Cyril, Celestin, Antoine, Pierre, Adrien, and Yann,

It's confusing, I know. I'm sorry. One second, I'm 2 or 3 miles away, then... Tinder flips me back to where I actually am, in San Francisco, and I'm back to being 5560 miles away.

It's just too bad because, Yoel, you're not so bad yourself. Alexis, your English is superb but I'm not your babe.

Yes, I was in Paris briefly almost a fortnight ago. Yes, it was fantastic. No, I'm not available to hook up with a French guy and it's a pity because every man on French Tinder is kind of hot. Ladies, if you're traveling soon, don't hesitate to pop open your Tinder and take a look!

#thisiswhyimsingle

What could be better than David Gandy?

This video: currently, as of July 18, 2014 at 2 pm PDT,  it has more hits than J.Lo's First Love.

It's adorable. Based on the music, the couple is my age. I'm impressed and enthralled. Enjoy. 

David Gandy is Adonis

First, watch this video. Let's contemplate together how lucky Jennifer Lopez is. She's ageless, she's stunning, her cheekbones = wow.

Now, let's just set up how this video was created. All of this was made up in my mind, but I'd like to think some of it was true. Jennifer has this song. It's called First Love, so naturally, J. Lo is thinking, I've got to find the hottest man on Earth right now, because that could be believable as her first love.

Lo and behold, David Gandy is the number 1 ranked male model is G.B. and in my humble opinion, the world.

Ta Da. J.Lo's people call David Gandy. They pitch him the idea:

All you need to do, David, is dress in an all white body suit, brood at J.Lo dancing from across the room, stand underneath a shower in your all white body suit, ride a motorcycle, carry a large tire, and roll around with J.Lo in the desert. SLOWLY.
You don't need to shower the day before, we've got that for ya. Smiles optional. 

David Gandy says yes. This video was made and my brain has exploded.

Scroll to 3:18, 3:26, 3:28 for glimpses of pure pleasure. You're welcome. Sorry , not sorry for being a fan girl and don't ask me how old I am. 

6 things I'm obsessed with at the moment

This is why I'm not blogging.

I'm obsessed with:

1. Teas and finding cute accouterments. I'm looking at Mariage-Frere teas like it's my business.

2. Anthropologie dresses and teapots.

3. Moynat bags, specifically the Rejane. (Hey Rashid!, if somehow Moynat keeps a Google alert on their brand and my blog shows up!)

4. Finding all my lipsticks.

5. Taking advantage of the fact that my Tinder still thinks I'm in Paris. Love swiping on Adriens.

6. David Gandy. What I want for my birthday: David Gandy by Dolce and Gabbana.

To all the single ladies

As I expect that readership to my blog is at an all time low (read = 0 )... I feel like it is once again a safe space to put some thoughts that I've been having into the interwebs.

 

Since leaving the mountain village and re-inserting myself back into society, I have been busy at work, and not at work. I've been traversing the ins and outs of living back in the first world.

 

Thinking about why I'm single, definitely a first world problem.

 

When I was living in China, I always thought about how I was going to wash my underwear and what method I would be cooking potatoes for the day. Never why I wasn't meeting strangers to call my gray space acquaintance of more than a friend, not maybe not anymore than that.... more on that later .

 

For two years, I thought more of how to continue to exist in general with an emphasis on how not lose any more hair.

 

Well, after many moves, from China to Atlanta, and Atlanta to three separate houses in the Mission of San Francisco, I'm happy to say that I finally have the luxury to think about why I'm single.

 

1. My day job is talking to strangers. Post work, I like silence with a side of Vanderpump.

 

2. I want to establish a connection too quickly and often bypass the expected period of considering someone a stranger. If we have a great initial conversation, I'm going to assume that I can ask you to take off your pants - regardless of gender.

 

3. I'm set in my ways. I want to do what I want do and when I want to do it.

 

#thisiswhyImsingle is one of my favorite thoughts of the past month. I'm afraid if I think it any longer.... this might actually become a problem. Welp, whatever.