By Erica and Matt Chua, on Mon Mar 4, 2013 at 10:00 AM ET
Istanbul is a unique city where East meets West, Europe is connected to Asia by a bridge and the Middle East is just a short boat ride away. Nowhere is the cultural convergence of Turkey more evident than in their diverse and vibrant markets. The Grand Bazaar in the center of the old city and the spice market on the banks of the Bosphorous offer a glimpse into the past and the opportunity to travel without leaving the country.
Grand Bazaar
Construction of the Grand Bazaar started in 1455 and continued to grow as it first housed the textile trade, then included space for the slave trade within the area. As more shop owners set up their businesses an entire quarter dedicated to commerce was born. In the seventeenth century the area became the hub of Mediterranean trade, further proof of the power of the Ottoman Empire. It seems as if the history is still present within the vaulted chambers of the historic market, the diversity of vendors is incredible and the whole area has a wonderful old world charm.
Tea cups and tea sets for sale in the Grand Bazaar
Read the rest of… Erica and Matt Chua: Istanbul Markets
I’m loving this black and white striped Ralph Lauren tie that I got on sale for a client at Bergdorf Goodman. Originally $150, it rang up as $69. The deals these days are out of control.
To preface this entry I would like to say the following; I am very opinionated and if you are easily offended, quit reading now.
Now, that we have crossed that bridge I’d like to get into the subject at hand.
I was in the Baltimore Airport recently and I went to the magazine stand to look for some reading material. There were dozens of different magazines covering subject’s matters from money to parenting to exercise. However, I started to see a trend that did not set well with me. It seemed like every magazine cover was obsessed with physical characteristics highlighted by “Ripped Abs in 30 days” “Lose 30 LBS without Dieting” or my favorite, “Reduce Your Belly Fat by Eating this Fruit.” If that isn’t bad enough, the covers of these magazines make things worse.
On the “Muscle Mags” you have an Incredible Hulk like figure with muscles in places most people don’t have places. On the other side of the coin the magazines aimed at women have relatively thin, almost emaciated cover models. What is going on here? What is the “media” trying to tell our society?
Now, I have no issue with the people on the covers of these magazines, they are in great shape (in most cases) and it’s their job to look like that. I myself have trained; physique athletes, a Miss America contestant and other “body conscious” athletes. I have no issue in competing in something that judges your body in some way. What I do have issue with is the projected image of what is beautiful and in shape. It is unrealistic for the average people that picks up one of these magazines and expect to look like these people. Most of these individuals have been athletes all their life, have put in the hard work to look the way they do and have a great genetic profile. Should that stop them from trying? No! But should it convince them that because they saw this on a magazine cover that they are inadequate if they don’t look this way? Our society’s opinion on what is acceptable, beautiful and realistic is warped.
My dog is snoring beside me as I write this. She looks adorable sprawled out on my bed—she likes to put her head on my pillow. When animals do things that look human, we always think it’s great. I’m looking at her innocent sweet face, and I’m tempted to kiss her head.
But I won’t wake her up; she is very tired. She didn’t get as much sleep as usual because for some period of time over the course of the night, she helped herself to a leftover chicken. Or maybe it only actually took 5 minutes and then she enjoyed a deeply replenishing tryptophan induced slumber for 8.75 hours. I’ll never know.
I walked into the kitchen this morning, and the evidence was everywhere—the trash can tipped over, assorted garbage, mango skins, and the empty very clean roasted chicken containers were sprawled across the room—the cleanest garbage a person could ask for.
But I couldn’t believe it. Our dog is 10 or 11 (the family of a rescue never knows for sure) and has been with us 7 or 8 years (a middle-aged-woman never remembers for sure), and I don’t think there has ever been an incident of kitchen trash trespass. This was a little shocking—I stood staring for half a minute. For 10 of those seconds I actually even surmised that it was a raccoon who had done it. They have opposable thumbs you know.
So I tested my hypothesis by calling my pup to the crime scene. I didn’t warn her with my tone that this was a test (and may I just say that this was very canny and professional behavior on my part, very, very canny and professional at 6:47 A.M after staggering out of bed with my dream all around me still. I have had no formal crime scene training).
So she came wagging toward the kitchen but stopped on the threshold, head down, tail disappearing. Aha! She had done it. It was not a raccoon. Mystery solved. She slinked away to hide on my bed.
In this 8 minute video, people of varying faiths discuss forgiveness. I’m drawn to The Dalai Lama in the final 40 seconds who says, “Anger [doesn’t] help—only destroy[s] your own peace of mind. Deliberately, try to keep your mind more calm.”
Herein people are discussing forgiveness in far more serious terms than the sins of a beloved pet, but I feel it’s worth saying here that we practice first at home. What an opportunity to check-in with ourselves about our reactions. I ask myself here if I can respond rather than react in general, to perceived slights from others. What about when I’m kept waiting and it’s no one’s fault but a “stupid system” like traffic that has inconvenienced me AND caused me to be late? What about later today when I have to deal with roasted-chicken-carcass-dog-vomit in my carpet?
Read the rest of… Lisa Miller: Forgiveness and Triggers after Chicken
By Lauren Mayer, on Tue Feb 26, 2013 at 3:00 PM ET
Like many of my peers, I grew up in a completely traditional family, with 2 parents, 3 kids, several pets, and a house in the burbs. My parents were each other’s first marriage, we all had the same last name, and we were just like nearly every other family on the block. However, that model is increasingly rare, even in my own experience – I’m divorced from my kids’ dad and remarried, plus I never changed my name either marriage, so our neighborhood carpool chart has to refer to us as ‘The Mayer/Grinthal/Visini family. Plus my ex has remarried a woman with kids of her own, so we’re all one big happy blended family, meaning we can all sit together at graduations and barmitzvahs (and giving me better material than I could ever write – I landed one corporate consulting gig through my first husband’s second ex-wife’s third husband, which as you might imagine I love to say!)
And my kids are growing up comfortable with all sorts of families. When my son Ben was about 8, he met a kid who was being raised jointly by a gay couple and a lesbian couple, and Ben informed the boy that he also had two dads and two moms – Ben was referring to his parents and step-parents, but in his view there really wasn’t any difference. Families now come in all shapes and sizes, and so when I was asked to write a kid-friendly song for a special needs program, I couldn’t resist throwing in my own agenda – plus as we get closer to some pivotal Supreme Court decisions on marriage equality, I figured it wouldn’t hurt to celebrate diversity!
By Erica and Matt Chua, on Mon Feb 25, 2013 at 10:00 AM ET
Sailing the Nile for three days sounds wonderful, doesn’t it? Sailboats conjure up feelings of freedom, relaxation and, let’s be honest, opulence. How often do you associate sailing with anything less than the high-life? My last multi-day sailing experience, yachting around the Galapagos, was exactly what sailing fantasies are made of. Sailing on a felucca for three days up the Nile though was not.
The idea of sailing from Aswan to Luxor as the ancient Egyptians did is romantic. Wanting to see the Nile, relax and enjoy a little more of Egypt’s scenery we signed up for the two night, three-day tour. Originally we had planned to do the five-day cruise, but people had told us that two nights was plenty, actually they told us one night was probably enough. Even with this advice we decided to spend a little extra time, hoping to see more of the Nile, little did we know that extra time didn’t equate to extra distance.
Getting on the boat around 1 PM we lazily drifted a couple hundred meters to what we presume was a police checkpoint. Waiting there for a few minutes, we were excited when the captain returned to start our voyage. After drifting downstream for another 20 minutes we stopped at a beach to “swim”. Only LOCAVORista took the opportunity to dive into the Nile while our two German shipmates and I read on the boat. After LOCAVORista finished her swim the captain continued playing in the water for another hour or so. When he finally returned we were excited to really get moving, maybe actually sail.
Read the rest of… Erica and Matt Chua: Sailing the Nile — Dream or Dull?
The before and after section is the most visited part of my site, so this week I’m lifting the hood to show you how it came together for my client in the images above: John Bailey. John is a Management Consultant, and he was looking to create a more appealing image for speaking and presentations. Here’s how he described what he wanted to accomplish:
“Take the package that is me – height, build, bone-structure, baldness and all – and create an image that says ‘authority, approachable’”.
John is located in Oregon, so we did all our work via Skype and email. Here’s how it went down:
Color
The black and silver color combo is too aggressive for business. In addition, because John’s head is bare, the black shirt is overly intense and stark on him – almost making him look like a floating head. Overall, he was coming off too strong in his before look. In contrast, the lavender shirt is more flattering, and in combination with the sportcoat, it’s friendly but authoritative.
Proportion
John is 5’ 8” and slightly stocky, so a main goal was to make him look longer and leaner. The diagonal lines of his sportcoat’s opening “V” are slimming and elongating, and pull him in at the waist. Paired with dark jeans, the jacket creates an overall monochromatic look that also makes him look taller and thinner. We had his jacket cut on the short side to make his legs appear longer.
Detail
The peak lapel on John’s jacket draws the eye up toward his broad shoulders and his face in a flattering way. He looks sharp but approachable with his open collar.
Hair
John had already ditched the moustache pre-Rath. Good call, John! The shaved head is a confident look (studies have been done on this – here’s a great article on the topic). Making the move from contacts to glasses made sense, as it adds dimension to his face so that he doesn’t look so bare.
With no head or facial hair, John’s look was vulnerable. He was attempting to strengthen that, but he was doing it in the wrong way. The end result was “trying too hard.” John says, “Men hate to ask for directions – and I think even more so about their appearance. It’s an admission of helplessness – and perhaps seems a bit vain as well. I think that holds lots of guys back from success … [Now] when I present professionally, the difference in how I feel – and therefore, how I carry myself – and the depth of the confidence I can project – is very significant.”
You can read more about John’s work here. A very warm thank you to him for participating in this article!
I have driven over 300,000 miles in the last 6 years. It wasn’t until recently I started to feel the extent it was having on my body. I woke up one morning and my hip was killing me and my shoulder ached, I just thought it was from hard workouts. Possibly, but when I evaluated the situation I realized I am in the most amount of pain when I drive a lot of miles in a short amount of time. Having the knowledge of how the body works, I can understand and appreciate the havoc sitting can have on one’s body.
The fact is MOST jobs are now sedentary jobs, where people; sit at a computer, sit in meetings, sit in a car or airplane and basically sit on the rear end all day. I realize this is part of it, everything in this world has become technologically advanced where people are more sedentary in the work place than ever before. That’s ok. No, really it is, because I am going to show you how to overcome this (more on that later).
Here is a stat for you that you may want to sit down for: According to a poll of nearly 6,300 people by the Institute for Medicine and Public Health, it’s likely that you spend a stunning 56 hours a week sitting on your butt- staring a computer working or watching TV trying to think about work. That is a lot of time in one position. Let me tell you how much that effects your body.
Let’s start with the lower half first, when you sit your hip flexors and hamstrings become shorten (not a good thing). This can lead to improper movement patterns leading to pain in various regions of the body. Also, since you are planted on your butt, your body sees no use for your glutes or your core musculature so they become lengthen or turned off. This is also, not a good thing. Your glutes act as the powerhouse of the low body allowing you to generate the most amount of power. If you have faulty glutes the lower back must pick of the slack.Everyone with lower back pain raise their hand! Is this starting to make sense? I hope so. So the technical version of the story is lower cross syndrome, whereas your hip flexors and hamstrings become shorten and your glutes and core musculature become lengthen and nonexistent. This contributes to knee pain, back pain, neck pain and many other types of “pain.” “JB, all from sitting??” YES!
Now, let me complicate the situation a little more. You decide to workout and you go to the gym and you find your favorite 5 machines. What do those machines have in common, you have to sit! Oh no! What good does that do? Sure your chest and arm muscles may look tone, but you still have pain in your lower back. Not a good trade off if you ask me. But are you asking me? I hope so, here are some tips to not sit so much and correct some of our imbalances.
By Lauren Mayer, on Tue Feb 19, 2013 at 3:00 PM ET
I just returned from chaperoning a high school trip to New York, taking 85 dance students to see shows, take class, and explore Manhattan. Granted, I was one of several chaperones so it wasn’t as arduous as it sounds, but it was still exhausting and challenging – try explaining to a huffy teen girl that “bed check” means I have to check that she’s actually in her room, so she can’t just text me that she’s going to bed. However, in general I can report that there is hope for the next generation. (My father used to worry that our generation would amount to nothing since we didn’t grow up with saxophone music, but the popularity of artists like Huey Lewis and Bruce Springsteen, with prominent sax players, reassured him. Likewise, I used to fret that the next generation was doomed because they were addicted to electronics, self-absorbed with short attention spans, and uninterested in reading the classic kids’ books I loved, but this trip convinced me they’ll be fine, based on a few observations:
– Sure, today’s teens text incessantly and have lost the ability to spell, thanks to spell-check and shorthand like ROTFLMAO, but they are also much more open-minded than we were as kids, eagerly trying new experiences and extremely tolerant of the more eccentric members of their group. (Remember, this was a trip for dance/theatre students from a large, extremely diverse public school, so we had the same types of characters you’d see on shows like Glee, as well as kids ranging from a senior who works 2 jobs to help support her family to some extremely wealthy kids who quietly put in extra money when the lunch group didn’t have enough for their table’s check.)
– Some things haven’t changed, like adolescent girls squealing and sighing over cute celebrities, but this group idolized the chorus boys from Newsies (with whom they got to take class and pose for photos), and even their less theatrically-inclined friends are more likely to worship movie starsn or singers with actual talent. (Of course, I still maintain the Monkees were talented comic actors in on the ironic joke, not just a manufactured boy band selected for their teen appeal)
– Speaking of irony, this generation gets it in a way mine never did. In fact, they have multiple layers of irony, so that they can ‘like’ everything from Hello Kitty to Justin Bieber – something about the ‘air quotes’ makes everything okay, which makes it not okay to tease their classmates for uncool tastes. (The weird girl in my 6th grade class who was obsessed with Dark Shadows, because she decided she was a vampire, would have fit in much better today!)
– Okay, they may not read Little Women or The Hobbit (since they can see the movie, duh . . . ), but they are fairly sophisticated. My 16-year-old son was on the trip – mostly with another chaperone’s group, since the organizers realized no kid in his or her right mind wants to spend a high school trip with a parent! – and he came back one day very proud of having bought two LPs in a vintage record store (records being as exotic to these kids as 78s were to us!) And several of his friends bought LPs as well. When I explained my turntable had been destroyed several moves ago and many of his friends’ parents were probably in the same boat he replied, “Oh, they’re not to play, Mom, it’s all about the aesthetics.” (I also love that the records he chose were by Rush and Frank Sinatra – how’s that for ironic fusion?)
– They are fairly tolerant of our generation’s befuddlement. The whole trip made me feel a bit like Jane Goodall researching chimpanzees, observing an entirely different species and trying to decode their communication methods – I’ve finally learned text shorthand, LOL, but I’m still not sure whether Instagram is a noun or a verb. But when I tried out their vocabulary, using ‘dope’ or ‘JK’, they didn’t laugh too loudly (at least in front of me).
– Today’s kids are a great combination of independent and needy – they found their way around and got themselves up on time, yet they weren’t afraid to call on a chaperone when they had questions or were concerned about their roommate whose boyfriend broke up with her via text. (I particularly loved seeing “The Mystery of Edwin Drood” with them, which is a highly stylized, odd musical based on English music hall theatre, including lots of characters talking to the audience and having women play male ingenue roles, a tradition begun with operas using mezzos as boys. At intermission, a group of the kids came up to me and told me they were completely confused, so when I gave them a bit of background, one of them exclaimed, “Oh, we just thought they were lesbians!” Which they actually thought was cool . . . . )
One other side note – it was wonderfully refreshing to go several days without seeing a newspaper or looking at a computer, and consequently having no idea of what was going on in the world. When I mentioned that to my husband in one of our very brief phone check-ins, he said, “Well, you heard a meteor crashed in Russia,” and I thought he was joking. Anyway, if you are a parent who is nervous about chaperoning this type of large trip, rest assured that it will be reassuring (but not very well restful), so take inspiration from these kids and go for it. However, you won’t have much time to act on that inspiration, which is why I don’t have a video to post this week. Stay tuned for next week!
By Nancy Slotnick, on Tue Feb 19, 2013 at 8:30 AM ET
Be yours.
Happy Valentine’s Day are the three most unwelcome words to most singles. And to a lot of married people too. It’s not that I don’t like love. I’m in the love business. I am a hopeless romantic. I am happily married. But I secretly hate Valentine’s Day. Please don’t tell my husband, or he’ll stop getting me the obligatory card and flowers. I would be embarrassed not to get them, even though I hate Valentine’s Day. Thankfully, he doesn’t read my blog. 😉
Guys- let me tell you this- even if a girl hates Valentine’s Day, even if she seems like the biggest tomboy in the world, even if she is the most independent career girl you have ever met, she will silently turn to the mush inside the Cadbury chocolate egg on Valentine’s Day. (i.e. a sweet mess. If she happens to be a hot mess too, then you’ve got a keeper.)
It’s so much pressure. I know, that’s why I don’t like it. It’s especially unfair to guys. They can’t win and they have to be emotional on cue. Actually, they can win. If they propose on Valentine’s Day. Another word to guys- if you are anywhere close to engagement (which could even include being on a second date) the thought will cross her mind. We can’t help it; it must be the estrogen. Which is probably offset by the seratonin in the chocolate, so that explains the Godiva Diva Empire.
Here’s one more tip guys- you actually can win another way- buy lingerie for Valentine’s Day. This will show her that you still think of her in that way and it might help you get laid for Valentine’s Day. So I recommend that more than chocolate or flowers. However, if the thought of your wife/girlfriend in a Victoria’s Secret teddy makes you want to cringe because of the “freshman 20” she’s gained in the face of your relationship gone stale, I can’t help you. Well, not with a quick tip. There’s ways to approach this but not on Valentine’s Day. Contact me for coaching and we’ll tawk….
Did I mention that I hate Valentine’s Day? Maybe that’s why this blog is turning so sour right now. I think I’m being cruel and cynical. That’s not like me at all. Here’s the story of how I met my husband, as told by the New York Times, on July 1, 2001, our wedding day. I really am a hopeless romantic- believe me.
Read the rest of… Nancy Slotnick: Valentine’s Day Revisited
