American Christmas...part 2 - A Sick Christmas

Well, don't you kind of think that life's kicking you in the ass for apparently no good reason, when you fly 7000 miles to spend Christmas with your friends and you get sick for like a week and you don't get to enjoy anything?

I must have done some horrible things in my life to deserve such a lousy Christmas. I was literally in bed with the phone in my hand, ready to call 911 at any moment, because the pain was too much for me. That's how all of the 2007 Christmas pretty much sums up.

I was supposed to do a lot of things, meet with a lot of people, travel, enjoy the scenery, instead I was in bed, crying from the pain, alone in the house, because the healthy people I'm staying with were doing whatever normal, healthy people do for Christmas in this part of the world.

Anyway, I am now up and kicking, no more back or pancreas or kidney pain, no more coughing, no more huge amounts of tea or fist-fulls of pills. I am alive.

You never get to appreciate your well-being until after you have felt the worst. I am so glad that the pain is gone and I can enjoy the simple things I took for granted, like walking through the snow and taking photos and sitting at Pizza Hut, having some nice pieces of apple pie and checking up on my e-mails.

I wish all of you a Healthy and Extremely Pleasant New Year!


Best wishes,
Lumi

American Christmas...part 1 - The Departure

Well, little I knew that the visa part was going to be the easiest and less expensive of them all, I would have worried less prior to the interview, by doing that I would have saved myself loads of precious neurons and my skin would have had less wrinkles, but noooo, I had to worry.

Here's a free piece of advice, which I promised myself I would take every time I have something hard to do, but I somehow almost always forget about it...DO NOT WORRY! WORRYING DOES NOT DO ONE GOOD THING FOR YOU. On the contrary, it makes your body anxious, it decreases the power of concentration, it clouds your judgment and it makes you annoying as hell to those around you, trust me, I've been there.

Back to the main topic, namely, my departure, I got my plane ticket (I kind of made a huge hole in the family budget because of that, but I love my parents and some day, I will pay them back, with interest), I got myself a medical and luggage insurance. NEVER LEAVE THE COUNTRY WITHOUT ONE!.

It doesn't cost a lot and it covers a lot of expenses in case of baggage loss, broken arms - I am going to ski after all :D -, flight delays and much more. You can get the travel insurance at any travel agency or insurance firm or in other places that I don't know about yet.

I'm going to leave this Saturday and apparently I'm going to be stuck in two airports about 9 hours in total...that should be fun, all alone in Amsterdam and LA, with no time and no money to visit anything in the cities, 'cause the airports are too far from the airports :)...but I don't want to complain, after all, after about 24 hours straight on the road, I will have to drive about an hour and a half to the place I'll be staying at. I can't wait for the actual travel time to be over and have some fun in a ten-hour-time-difference-from-Romania-zone.

Imagine, although my trip is about 24 hours long, I'll be leaving Romania on the 15th and arrive in the States on the 15th, same day, different continents.

And on a trip related subject, but another kind of trip, namely the carrier trip in our life, for those of you who live and breathe for PR and for those who have the courage to start their own business, in case you haven't heard about it yet, there's a book called "Guerrilla PR", written by Michael Levine. Read it and you won't regret one page; it's easy and fun to read and it has great advice on how to make your own PR campaigns without a lot of money.

I recommend that you read it in English though, because as I have noticed, translations seem to loose some of the charm of the writing and it would be ashame not to benefit from all that this book has to offer.

My next post is probably going to be from the States or from one of the airports on the way, since I'll have so much waiting time on my hands.


Take care of your budgets and don't fall in the holiday-retail-trap!


Best wishes,
Lumi

American Christmas...part 0 - The Visa

I've got it, I've got it, by Joe I've got it :D!

I got my tourist visa today, 10 years of traveling back and forth to/from the USA; as long as I have money for the plane ticket and my friends there can provide a house for me, I'm all set to go.

It kind of took me by surprise, after a month of searching for documents, fighting with everyone around me...it all paid out, with interest :).

In two weeks, my feet will no longer be on Romanian soil, but in sweet California, my home from last summer.

A Big Thank You goes to all of you who didn't bet against me and all that supported me through my crazy days!


I hope your Christmas will be a spectacular one, I don't know how mine will be, but, I'm gonna be in the States with a bunch of awesome people, so something at least pleasant has to come out of it.


I've always wanted an American Christmas :)...




Yeah I know it's the OC, but I only wanted the song :D.

The Spanish translation is mandatory, everything is translated in Spanish in the USA, from the milk carton labels to the ride announcement in Disneyland. It's the second unofficial (yet) language.

Something to write about...

Writers usually need to have something to write about in order to create a new masterpiece, mathematicians have to wake up in the middle of the night with a new idea of solving an equation in order to solve that equation, professors need to read in order to write their lecture for next day's classes, tattoo artists need to flick through art books in order to write new tattoos on a skin canvas, we all need inspiration and funny enough, when you're about to write something, most of the times, something that we read somewhere inspires us.

Today I was reading Mircea Eliade's "Oceanography" where he talks about a lot of everything, but mostly about the frustrations of writing an being a writer...so that's what made me write today...well, that and the fact that Joe, might read this :).

I have really gotten addicted to his music, I'm actually listening to KT Tunstall while my fingertips beat the keyboard.

Back to writing, well, from my very slim experience in the writing business you can write about almost anything and there is a pretty big probability that someone will actually like it. Writing is easy if you have a lot on your mind and it can be frustrating when it's conditioned by a deadline. Copywriters know this more than anybody.

But enough about writers writing stuff, enjoy KT with one of my favorite songs (the ending doesn't quite apply though):



Take care, Joe!


Hugs and kisses,
Lumi

Resting my chemistry

Everybody has their little escape plan (even if it is unconscious ) to get away from the things that make them mad. I calm my nerves by cleaning my room, so, if you happen to see a lot of mess in my room, that means that I'm happy or close to it, if you see it spotless, that means that I was very mad that particular day.

If the room is already clean and I'm still mad, I listen to Interpol...





If Interpol isn't around I make up definitions...like today, I made up a new definition for Marketing, I made a lot of these in the past :D...

Therefore, Marketing is (in my very own making-up-definitions-mood opinion) the field of science that deals with the creation and development of the life of a social-economical entity (product or service), so that, that entity will produce something (money, socio-cultural revolutions) and the individuals (people or organizations), that benefit from this entity, will be so well psycho-economically manipulated, that the illusion of satisfaction will get installed and will persist.

If you dare, tell me a made-up-by-you-when-you-were-mad definition!


Take care, my dear reader!


Best wishes,
Lumi

StrawberryFrog

I found out about a witty advertising agency several months ago, at an
AdRevolution 2 conference. After that I got on the net and found their site...since then, it has been one of my favorite web sites.

The agency is StrawberryFrog.

I like their site because it has very interesting navigation possibilities, the frog is your site guide, the menu is extremely easy to access and it has an unique simplicity that I haven't encountered in other similar web pages. You do need to have installed a Flash version on your computer in order to properly navigate it.

I like the agency because they have a different way of approach towards business creativity.

The stuff that they do, well, it's a lot and too interesting to even begin talking about it. I suggest taking a peak to see for yourselves and for that just look at the stuff they've done for MTV in Europe.

Here's a hint about what this amazing frog is all about :) :

Kilipirm and a rainy Saturday

About two times a year, at the Dalles Hall in Bucharest, book publishers from all over the country gather and transform the bleak street scenery into a book festival joined with a discount heaven and it's all called Kilipirim. This autumn it's held from November 6th until November 11th.

I had a gander at this autumn's Kilipirim and although I didn't have a lot of money to spend on books, I left Dalles Hall with two bags full of them. The selection is fantastic, you can find anything from architecture to cooking books, the ambiance is really pleasant and the discounts are a real pocket trap, but it's all worth it. After all, books are different worlds in pages and lines. They are an escape door to another dimension, a dimension where it doesn't rain so much, where there's not a lot of mud all over, where you do not see pickled, stray dogs on the streets.

Don't get me wrong, walking in the rain, just you, your sweety and a big umbrella is just oh so romantic, but sitting alone in front of your Mac, on a rainy Saturday afternoon, still in your pajamas is not exactly my idea of a great time. So, I think I'll go to Casablanca for an hour or so, with Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman.


Here's looking at you...white MacBook because we'll always have South Lake Tahoe :).