Recognition

via Gawker

Good things recently

1. A long conversations with Prof. Grady about the differences between European and American party-dancing. Most Americans are like loose cannons on the dancefloors. You can never be sure what to expect from them, ironic dancing is a given. Europeans play it cool. Or so they think.

2. Getting an awesome response to Openly Feminist! Blogging in Bulgarian will be harder...a lot more people leave comments...Not that I'm complaining.

3. Meeting all the Amica bloggers in person.

4. Watching BBC documentaries about the Roman Empire in preparation for our trip to Italy in a couple of weeks. We are dorks and we're proud.

5. XOXO, Gossip Girl

What kinds of good things have been happening in your lives recently?

Openly Feminist

By the way, I started a new blog titled Openly Feminist.

I am doing it in Bulgarian and write about dumb tv shows, articles I read and various things that grab my attention through a feminist perspective. I felt that I needed to do it because, in my humble opinion, many Bulgarians are very much feminist in their world-views and at the same time are TERRIFIED of being perceived as feminist. I figured that if I came out...maybe others would do too. I worry that I will be ridiculed (like I am most of the times when I do speak up against sexist remarks/jokes/practies and so on). But at the same time I am willing to take my chances. Who knows, maybe I will be surprised.

I will try to publish Enlgish versions of my posts here and vice versa. Wish me luck.

Cashmere Mafia...again

I just saw my first Cashmere Mafia episode. And, unlike last time, I will be bashing the show after having actually seen it! For those of you who don't know about it yet, Cashmere Mafia is supposed to be a follow-up to Sex and the City of sorts. The show is about four girlfriends living in New York City and holding very high positions in some major companies.

Now, I know it's a bit too soon to be making overarching generalizations after having seen just one episode, but I will say it anyway: the show is terribly superficial and extremely predictable. If you've seen Sex and the City, Desparate Housewives and/or Gossip Girl, you would not be able to be surprised in any way. The authors seemed to be so influenced by the above-mentioned shows that at some points in the episode you kind of start wondering why Carrie Bradshow's voice sounds different. Also, everyone is like...obsessed with this Gawker-type blog...All I've got to say about that is: XO-XO. Whatever, though. We all like watching movies and tv shows that are pretty much identical copies of other things we've seen before...so no hard feelings there.

What did scare me though was the blatant sexism in the way the main characters are portrayed. OK. So they are all supposed to be these super serious, educated, insanely successful professional women and, still, they are:

1. Immature: One of the women's husbands is cheating on her. Her friends sees him making out with another woman and tells her. What does she do?! She decides that the best thing to do is get even and cheat on HIM. Well...not that I know much about script-writing but I'm thinking...isn't this what the character would do in some other show?! I mean...if she really WAS the character that she is supposed to be, she would not be acting like a snotty high-school student who wants to win over her boyfriend by making him jealous. Or...would she?!

2. Superficial: Throughout most of the episode, one of the women is worrying like crazy about ONE zit that she got on her otherwise flawless face. At some point she even considers leaving the office and going home. WTF?!

3. Pathetic: Mia, played by Lucy Liu, has been left at the alter by her fiance. We are led to believe that he had been feeling threatened by her success. After the split, they stop talking. Mia's reaction: she does not tell her parents about it for two weeks AND dedicates her first column as editor-in-chief of Modern Man magazine to telling him (The Modern Man) that he should not be afraid of the Modern Woman. Jack and I, she says, we will need to begin communicating through the pages of the magazine. I say: Apparently Modern Woman over there is stuck in the Victorian era and her shyness does not allow her to face her problems and look for their adequate solutions.

In other words, the moral of the series is simple: don't worry about it, dudes, even if some women do manage to make if very high up in the corporate hierarchy, they are just as dumb and idiotique as the rest of them. Yes, they are in the BIG office but their existance there is only nominal, because apparently they cannot get over their personal dramas and act like grown-ups.

I am so terribly sad and disappointed.

Six years ago

Six years ago today I created a little html-file in Dreamweaver and sent a hopeful, somewhat desparate message out to the world. I naively thought that I had things to say and that there were people who would be willing to listen.

Today I send a special shout-out to Var for sending me my first ever reader email. He wrote me a note...not too long after I had first started blogging to tell me that he found me and that he liked my site and that he was Bulgarian too. I don't remember much else. But I definitely remember feeling like a million bucks (in euro). Who would have thought, though, that 6 years later, we would be kicking each other under the table every day. His cubicle is right next to mine and I've got reeeeeeally long legs.

Seriously, though, thank you. Thank you all for listening. Thank you for sticking around. But most of all, thank you for talking back.

It's been a riot!

Professional Experience

A couple of co-workers and I were just talking about jobs and professional dress-codes and the kinds of things that one should keep in mind when applying/looking for a job. The general agreement was that one needs to do quite a bit of soul-searching before ever bothering to even send in a resume. One of the guys said that he could never work at a place where he would be required to wear a suit every day. I know it sounds superficial, he said, but I know myself. I would not feel comfortable, I would fidget all day, and would not be able to get anything done.

The conversation reminded me of my old friend Bill, who had a line in the PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE section of his resume, which said he used to be a Gravedigger (an actual job he held for one summer while still in college). He said that interviewers always asked him about that. And if they didn’t or if they didn’t find that hilarious, he just knew he was not interested in working for them. See, a sense of humor was something that he really appreciated in a potential employer and he knew that he would never be able to work for someone who took themselves too seriously.

It is that very same thing that I appreciate in my job. People here work, argue, bang on tables…but they are also very laid-back and love to have fun.



I don’t think I could work for an employer if they:

- Discouraged people from having Moonwalking contests in the office
- Frowned upon impromptu fashion shoots
- Demanded that everyone should keep their shoes on at all times
- And the list goes on.

I bet you already see where this is going but I will ask anyway: What are your personal (weird) employer requirements? What would make you not take a job?

***

All photos by Dragon, aka Official Department Photographer. Keep clicking.

WOW! Where are you from?!

Kyle’s stepdad’s sister went to Paris a couple of years ago. She knows French but had a terrible experience speaking French while in France. She would always try and people would not be able to understand and then everyone would get frustrated. Sometimes people would switch to English, sometimes they would simply ignore her. I am particularly sympathetic to that last bit, because I had a terrible experience during my 24-hour stint in Paris back in September. When I was there, I was in several situations where people had an opportunity to decide whether to be nice or rude to me and ALL of them chose the latter. Anyway.

So, on her last day in Paris, Tom’s sister is sitting in a cafe, sipping some wine when she strikes up a conversation with another woman sitting at the table right next to her. They talk about Paris, the weather, life. They are totally hitting it off. She’s super excited because FINALLY she is able to speak French AND be understood. WOW, she says to the other woman, It was so great to talk to you!!! Where are you from?! The woman takes a sip of her coffee and answers:

Kansas City.

Start worrying

In an article I read over the weekend, the author was trying to make sense of her pessimism. Why, she wondered, her glass was always half-empty.

Among other things, she thought that it had something to do with the fact that she came from a family of East European Jews who immigrated to the United States after escaping from a Nazi concentration camp in Poland. They were never able to quite shake off the experience (not that one can blame them). They were always prepared for the worst, always ready for live the screw things up for them just any minute now. Rather than trying to get rid of their worries, however, they embraced them. And turned pessimism into a life-credo. Her family’s favorite joke:

Jewish Telegram:
Start worrying. Details to follow.

Have a great week y’all.

Anything else I should know?

Today I discovered an amazing dental clinic in our neighborhood. By amazing, I mean that my dentist was nice and chatty and didn't seem to mind me being nosey. Oooh, what's that in the little box? Why are you doing this? WHA-ITH-THITH?!?!!

I had a filling done. WITH ANAESTHESIA. I normally tend to tough it out at the dentist. In fact, until this very day it used to give me great pride and pleasure to tell people that I'd never had a procedure done with anaesthesia. But last night I had a bit too much to drink and my younger-but-much-wiser-than-me sister advised that I should probably just ask for anaesthesia. Hangovers are bad enough as it is. Nursing one while sitting on your dentist's chair only makes it worse. So I listened to my little sister and as a result felt nothing of what I sort of imagine could have been a fairly painful procedure. I was so SURPRISED and IMPRESSED! I mean...I don't think I can ever go back to the world of dentist-induced pain ever again. And was so amazed that nobody had told me about any of this before.

I was telling Prof. Grady about it and asked him How come more people don't know about this?! He said, Um, baby...I think they do.

Um, guys, anything else I should know about? Seriously.