Sky Mall

Note: Posting this now but wrote it on the plane on 4/5... :) 

I'm on the plane to Taiwan right now, and I woke up from a deep sleep of about 5 hours to my mother peering over the EVA Air Sky Mall catalogue from where she sat one seat over (there is no one in between us--we got lucky!) 

"We should buy something," my mom said. "We don't have any gifts." We had both been working late and overtime to meet some project deadlines. No time or energy for shopping, admittedly one of our favorite pastimes. 

I groaned. "Mom, you don't need to get anyone gifts. You just came four months ago. And it's not like we're coming emptyhanded." Between the two of us, we had four pieces of luggage that maxed out at an impressive 50 lbs each, due to all the food, wine, and vitamins inside. There was something like 20 bagels, five giant Costco bottles of Centrum, and four huge two-gallon jugs of olive oil.  

"A lot of that is from your uncle," she said. My uncle lives five blocks away from us in Livingston. We like to joke that he had a semi-midlife crisis a couple years ago, which was why he stockaded a vineyard's worth of wine in his makeshift cellar (ie garage). At one point, he had more than 200 bottles.  

Before we left for Taiwan, he unearthed four bottles of his favorite German white wine and handed them off to us to give to his sister, my aunt. 

"Okay, fine," I said to my mom. My reservations stemmed from my suspicion of duty-free shopping. I never thought the savings were as huge as the airlines and airports tried to make them out to be. Also, I had a feeling the joy of catalog shopping was more material here than the need to give gifts, but then I reasoned that my mom had just gotten promoted and a 8% pay raise. She could spend if she wanted to.  

I paged through the catalog with her and ultimately we decided on a YSL lipstick duo from the "Rouge Volupte Shine" series. By chance, my friend Tina had allowed me to try hers a week ago, and I remember the formula being sheer and light, not heavily pigmented and tacky, which I thought was perfect for my mom's friends. It was about $55 for the set, which I thought was quite good in light of the $37 my girlfriends and I splurged on Giorgio Armani lipstick for H's birthday present; the catalog indicated the original price for one tube of YSL lipstick wasn't far off from that $37 pricepoint. Not bad at all.

When we paged the flight attendant to buy the set, she told us there was a special going on: 15% off your purchase if you bought more than two items. My mom and I glanced at each other and went to town. We added another YSL lipstick duo and a Kiehl's toner to our purchase. The toner was for my cousin Jessica, who is 25 and quite fond of Kiehl's products, and the second duo was for my mom's other friend....or friends, as it turned out, because  when the items came, we opened up one of the lipstick duo boxes, and to our delight, each lipstick tube was separately packaged in those gold YSL boxes--my mom could gift them separately if she so wished. 

Altogether it was about $130 for everything. The toner was pricy, there was only a slight discount, but I thought the lipstick was a deal, and in my mind the coral and dusky pink colors would look great against Asian skin tones.   

 

A rainy Saturday morning

It was H's birthday last week. A joyous birthday because just a short while ago, she got her visa sponsorship. Quite difficult in this economic environment and there were several nerve-wracking months when the decision-making date just kept getting pushed off... 

So on Saturday the 29th, which was her 23rd birthday, I woke up bright and early roundabout 9am. The two of us had just stayed in and watched Ender's Game the night before. I'd gotten the DVD from Redbox, after returning two DVDs I'd borrowed Thursday night for free with Redbox's monthly "Rent 5 DVDs free" coupon. Of course, I fell asleep watching Don Jon Thursday night and I only managed to watch an hour of "We're the Millers" (which was freaking hilarious)...going to go back and get those one day again haha. I was going to re-rent "We're the Millers" with the 50 cent off coupon I got Friday morning, but Ender's Game was too tempting, and after a brief conference with H, we chose sci-fi action over raunchy comedy. 

H seemed to think the movie was a little too trippy. The "kid commander" thing quite provoked her disbelief. ("They're all kids? There are no adults they can trust to be in charge?") However, I thoroughly enjoyed the movie. I'm sad it didn't do so well in theatres. I shall write a review sometime. 

After the movie, I hit my bed relatively early and woke up at 9am. I got dressed in all Gap (a light blue washed denim shirt and skinny cropped pants made of navy fabric patterned with sprays of white flowers) and hustled down Broadway, stopping in at Sephora and CVS to pick up Giorgio Armani lipstick in #301 (a hot red color) and a Masterlock for H's birthday present. These presents joined one other: Jiye and I had stepped out of our offices in Midtown East the day before to hit up the HBO shop and buy H a heat-sensitive color-changing Game of Thrones mug. 

It started drizzling during my journey down Broadway, so I whipped out my trusty Barclays umbrella with the windflaps. Quite useful in these skyscraper windtunnels. 

At Grace Street, I met up with Ran and we discussed our business. He reviewed the business workplan I had put together and gave me tips on how to improve it, and we chatted about customers and what needed to be done to move the business forward. He gave me a book called The Start-Up Manual, which was his textbook from Entrepreneurship class. 

Then I traipsed 10 more blocks to 17th St and 6th Ave and Crema Ristorante to meet the girls for H's birthday drunch...more on that later... 

Overtime

There's something about working late. On the plus side, I get more hours, dinner, and a ride home if I feel like it--usually if it's cold or if I'm in my other office on the East Side. 

But if it's sunny and warm(er), and I'm just really dreading the work on my plate, the hours between 4pm and 6pm feel like torture--because I could leave, and the twilight sunshine is streaming in through the windows, and I could maybe go to the gym or that Rent the Runway sample sale... 

But then I'd be screwed when I have to hand in my work the next morning! Or the 2 or 3 days after or whatever. So more often than not I stay. I get food. I avoid spending money on fancy dresses I don't really need. I go to the gym in the morning and my hair is much more agreeable because I didn't sleep on it damp. 

And I hand in my work on time, at the quality I want. Work is always a tradeoff between time and quality. I hate giving one up in favor of the other. But I see people around me who have chosen time over quality; they leave strictly at 5:30pm no matter the upcoming deadline. If the person in question has neither a family to go home to nor a nighttime engagement to attend, I tend to feel a wave of disbelief or disdain, but sometimes, I admire their discipline...in the grand scheme of things isn't it better to prioritize your free time, instead of the grand goals of whatever institution you've attached yourself to and your inner ambition...but I guess I continue like this because I do find self-worth in my work accomplishments. 

Still, as things are now, I'm so tired by the time the weekend rolls around, I hardly have the energy to do anything but vegetate in bed. I can't bring myself to reply to personal emails when I get home weekday nights. I don't do my taxes or monitor my investments. I'm even too lazy to read a book or watch TV! (Hockey, football, etc excluded; I think my brain finds sports require less thinking.) Luckily I rotate soon--and I will only have *one* team next time. 

Life is a tradeoff between leisure and work. What makes it bearable is that pleasure can be found in either.