Rose Garden

Last week when we went to shoot Gamelan video - we got a chance to enjoy and take pictures of blooming roses in the Lake Harriet's Rose Garden

How the Kleenex Corporation Plans to Survive the Current Economic Meltdown

The present business climate has been harsh on all of us, including our friends out in the corporate world. While the Band-Aid company is negotiating deals with paper manufacturers to make extra-sharp edges on all paper made in the USA, for extra-deep and extra-frequent papercuts, the Kleenex marketing strategists have come up with a wholly different idea, and it's by far the crueler of the two. The latest marketing strategy goes like this:

STEP 1 -- make a movie made up entirely of heart-wrenchingly depressing scenes
STEP 2 -- call it "My Sister's Keeper" *
STEP 3 -- Get lots of people to see it
STEP 4 -- Each person needs at least 7 boxes of Kleenex to survive the film
STEP 5 -- $ !!! roll in the sweet moolah :^D :^) :^]

Happy day for the Kleenex people! Oh yeah, there's a step 6:

STEP 6 -- Take a bonus check, sit back with a cigar, and fire some interns while watching golf.


*Loosely based** on some old paperback novel which the marketing department couldn't even get through reading, due to all the papercuts inflicted by the 4th edition.

**I say loosely here, because if you've managed to read through the non-papercut edition and then have also managed to survive the movie (there is no non-Kleenex edition of that, unfortunately for America and the world and civilization), then you'll have certainly noticed that the ending of the movie has been COMPLETELY MADE UP.

This blog entry contributed by Russian after being forced to watch 2 girly films in one day (The Sister's Keeper and The Proposal - which turned out to be pretty good).

Strawberry Picking

'Tis the season for strawberries, folks! And in MN, where summer lasts about 16 days, and then turns instantly into a 12.5-month-long blizzard, we have to make the most of it. So, off we went, this past weekend, to Afton Apple Orchard (& Strawberry Farm) in Afton State Park -- not too far from Minneapolis, a 30 minute drive maybe -- and [romance!] just the two of us! <3 <3 <3 (hearts!)

[Hold on... wait a sec. Just the two of us? What?! There were supposed to be like 9 people who wanted to go with us -- what happened to all of them, huh? Where were they when the time came?! Where?! Answer: Not a single one of them was conscious at 8am when we woke up, and then everyone who *claimed* they wanted to go totally canceled on us. Well fine then! Who needs them and their excuses -- whatever people, just be lazy bums and sleep. Be jealous of these awesome pics.]

So like I said, we were dating, just the two of us, going on a little road-trip to pick strawberries. In no time at all, we were out in the country, in the beautiful summer sunshine. It was only the fifth day of the 16 days of summer here in MN, so we saw fields of very young corn (it looks just as leafy as fully-grown tall corn, but it's uh, just not-so-fully-grown)... anyway, the corn fields looked like oceans of green leafy waves, idyllic and undulating in the summer breeze, under the cerulean sky and the occasional billowing white clouds.

Our car sailed on the seas of farmland, going over hills and into valleys as smoothly as a lazy yacht out on the Pacific. When we arrived and opened our car door, the smell of strawberries flooded our senses. It was as though the strawberry fields went on forever! (I think the Beatles wrote that song about this part.) We ran free through the fields, we saw kids on a "train of cows," we took silly photos, smelled the gentle breeze and fresh country air, took in the glowing sunshine, and most importantly: gathered a crate full of the best-tasting strawberries you could possibly imagine.

Oh yes. You might be wondering how much a crate of the best-ever tasting strawberries goes for, these days. At the grocery store you'll of course see prices of up to $4.79 (!) per little clam-shell with, what, like 10 strawberries in it, maybe, if you're lucky? Or three giant mutant ones (see pic below)? Well folks, hold on to your socks because our gigantic crate of strawberries cost us exactly... 7 buckaroos! That's right, $7. Don't look in the mirror now, you'll totally freak out when you see yourself all green with jealousy.

But anyway, we highly recommend you try it for yourself -- go strawberry picking before July (and summer?) is over!!!

This blog post was written by Russian.

The pictures below were taken by Asian:

Busy Month

This month was really busy for me - working and volunteering and last Friday (June 26) finally I was done with all of it.

I was selected to be the chairman for an Asian Dance Night event - one of the many Asian Heritage Month events. Besides that, I was also in charge of food for all the other events. Selecting food was not too hard since I selected based on what I liked - for this month two of my favorite restaurants were really lucky since I catered everything from them.

Since the event was a volunteer event, it was hard to get everyone on board to help. I spent 2 weeks looking for a dance group who could perform and teach people, trying to find the best deal for everything since the budget was reduced per current economic conditions.

To make a long story medium-long, we settled on two dances: Indonesian and Russian [coincidence? hmm...] and some varieties of Asian booths such as writing your name in Russian letters (which was done by my hubby - for free) and Henna (cost $40 per hour).

The event turned out really well - we were expecting 80 people and 135 people came : )
I was really relieved I was able to arrange this event successfully - my first event as chairperson :)

This month I also participated on the video competition related with Asian Culture and won the 3rd prize (I actually submitted 3 videos: 2 Gamelan documentaries and 1 Indian Dance by Reana).

Shopping shopping shopping

This weekend we were busy spending our money - not for me actually. Russian's company announced that no more casual clothes are allowed, that means no more jeans or t-shirts, not even on Fridays. So I decided this Saturday to hunt down some new clothes for him. All his clothes, especially working clothes, are really old. Saturday we shopped for 4 pants and 6 shirts, when we got home, he tried them and found out that all the shirts and pants were too short - yes we tried only one at the store and use the same size to shop for all the others. This Sunday we had to go and return all of them and buy bigger sizes -- this time we tried each of them.

Now Russian has a new wardrobe - 15 new shirts, 6 t-shirts, 8 under-shirts, 5 new pants, 2 new ties and 1 belt. But all of this didn't cost so much, since each shirt was around $5-15 bucks and each pair of pants was around $12-20. He is lucky for having bigger sizes than me, so that most of his stuff is on sale.



We also bought 5 different gifts for all of our friends who are having babies this month - too many babies are being born this month! If this pattern continues, we will go bankrupt really really soon.