Healthy To The Tea

I recommend taking a closer look at your tea the next time you go to brew your favorite cup. Even if it's in a tea bag, cut the bag and look at it. You'll see nature's beautiful and flawless "sugars and spices" ingredients. Looking through my tea which is a oolong mate chai tea, I found flower blossoms, candied ginger, seeds and fragrant pods. It brings your tea to perspective if you not only imagine all the natural and organic materials in it but look also. You'll find yourself drawn back and will never think of your delicious tea as just leaves but a collective of the flora we take for granted. 

I have a jar of star anise stored next to my bed and sometimes it helps when I have a migraine to just open the jar and take a whiff of the spice. Not to mention it naturally is in a beautiful star shape, it also holds a lot of culinary and medicinal uses. On my mom's side in Cambodia, they use the spice in beef broths and in Vietnam in pho. Did you know star anise is also used in the compound of Tamiflu? So keep a jar handy if you love chai, feeling like you're in Southeast Asia or to prevent from catching the flu this season.

Scenes from the Free People Blogger Retreat

Here are some pictures from the Free People Blogger retreat I attended with Kaitlin on Friday! It was hard to act calm and collected since I had been anticipating this event since November. Needless to say it was more than I imagined it would be and above all such a great learning experience. This was my second time at URBN headquarters. I had visited before for a networking event and I also work for Urban Outfitters. I absolutely love coming to the Naval Yard in Philly. 

The retreat taught me so much! As a public relations and communications graduate I came in knowing what I was already taught for 4 years and left with even more new knowledge. It is always great to hear from those in the field and even better from a company you admire. The presenters brought an informative and reali life view on topics and answered all our questions. 

Needless to say I went back to work the next morning and was bombarded with questions about the event. I don't think my words were enough to explain my experience from the Free People folks. I simply had a fantastic time and left feeling more sure of myself and my future dreams and passion for writing. If I were to leave with only one thing in mind from the retreat it would be simply this from the editor Shani Silver:

"Blog for yourself don't lose yourself in blogging. If it's something you wouldn't say yourself don't write it and most of all if blogging ever seems like it's becoming a dread, take a break form it and reevaluate why you were blogging in the first place."

Some doodles and notes taken.

Beautiful seasonal display when you enter Free People offices.

Good grub is good.

For some reason the overcast of the day seemed perfect with the ships.

Kaitlin and I - prints on prints on prints on textures on textures

Wall of vases

Lounge time although it was too pretty to be wrinkled by my tired bum!

Strangers in the Night

Have you ever felt as though the person you thought you knew is no longer that same person?

Though it may be disheartening, we must all remember that we all start as strangers. The saying of "nobody knows you better than yourself" holds insurmountable truth. The thing to remember is we must not be afraid of change but rather embrace it. The universe is subject to change and we are part of it. This is an unwritten rule that we cannot change but only adapt to.

So if we cannot help but change, then change to help and welcome it. :)

Fire Breathing

So for Christmas my lovely brother Jon got me a Teavana limited edition " 6 Dragon Symphony Tea Tumbler".

What am I drinking? Well, Samurai Chai Matte Oolong tea of course!

The tea tumbler comes with a collector's silk lined gift box but it is double layered glass and I'm afraid to bring it to travel with or work.

But oh...isn't it grand?

I shamelessly admit to feeling like a warrior child when I drink out of this.

Loneliness as a situation can be

 corrected, but as a state of mind it is

an incurable illness.”

—	Vladimir Nabokov

Springfield Road

Guess what just became my new desktop background?

Favorite Photos From New York

I bet NYC misses me because I surely miss it.

Cuz' We're All Just Portions For Foxes

Currently bobbing my head back and forth and tapping my hand on a pillow jamming out.

Inspiration of the Day

Haircut Before and After

Before the hair cut. Only lost about 2 inches

I wanted a change but not a drastic one to my already medium length hair. I had bangs already and didn't want to deal with the hassle of an awkward stage of uneven length hair I'd have to commit to.

My style hair inspiration was a "lob" aka a bob cut that is a little longer and less structured. One of my style icons Nicole Richie effortlessly donned this look:

If I don't write my resolutions down

I’ll forget:

1. Concerts

2. Actually go to my doctor appointments

3. Love anew but not necessarily ” a new” :)

4. NYC MoMA and food tour and planetarium with someone special

5. New job in my respective field

6. Stop cutting my hair

7. Stop sleeping with my contacts in

8. Actually eat breakfast, lunch THEN dinner.

9. Finish White Collar seasons 3 and 4, AHS season 2

10. Get my ride vrooooooooom!

11. Start a tattoo fund jar for myself.

12. Limit my search frequency of Ryan Gosling. 

13. Never give up on what my heart tells me and who it tells me makes me smile most genuinely.

Not really resolutions, just really really really attainable goals.

Response to Jalopnik article " What's The Most Annoying Driver Habit Where You Live?"

Jess_L0pezz  13 days ago

Here in Philadelphia you can see where the care for road infrastructure and sensibility teeter off the city management's and residents' "to do" list in the City of Brotherly love. Lowered cars to create sleek streamline profiles only do so in vain as countless and shameless so-called "gear heads" only meet a sleek and nearly flawless profile with the undercarriage of their car as they smash into the potholes and uneven streets of Philly. All the while cursing out a very avoidable and common sense mindset of "how low can you go?" can you get down low?" Obviously for the city I live in, you can't get down low without kissing the street and kissing your car's lip, kit and bumper bye bye.

Here is the original Jalopnik post. 

”Don’t tell your daughters to not

go out. Tell your sons to behave

and respect properly”.

Powerful sign from India’s rape tragedy. This even applies to just a woman walking down the street I’m tired of how some fucking “men” act on a regular basis! I hope India’s movement to stop how female sex crime victims get treated moves forward with the utmost regard for future women’s rights.

If you want to weigh out harmless catcalling, inappropriate remarks, gestures and harassing as nothing or not as equal to rape then you should go take a crash course in how to be a decent human being.

Tolerance of these perceived “less threatening” acts needs to stop now. We have a zero-tolerance policy for things such as bullying and violence that are shown to cause detrimental emotional and behavioral effects YET when a girl walks down the street and is harassed from a car full of rowdy young men it’s nothing. 

This is unacceptable. The rhetoric and culture around women, rape, and just simply respect needs to be addressed.

I’m sorry but India’s rape tragedy has been bothering me so much lately, I hear and track the updates on the story and just get disgusted. What’s worse is that it takes a public outrage to finally address something that needs to be addressed everywhere.

I pray for the victims, the women everyday who are subjected to this useless nonsense and I pray for the future of not only women’s rights in India but around the world.