Ubiquitous

Cashmere Mafia

// February 23rd, 2008 // 13 Comments » // Fashion, Review

Yep, that’s what I’m watching on Stage6 when I’m not blogging.

If I haven’t mentioned it already, I’m a huge TV watcher. Before school and all that stress came along, I knew the days in my week by what show was on TV. Survivor, Big Brother, The Bachelor, For Love or For Money, Friends, Everybody Loves Raymond, House, the list goes on. What I didn’t know was that my love of fashion and TV sitcoms can come together in the newest show to hit ABC: Cashmere Mafia.

The show blurb describes it self as “A group of successful female executives who have been friends since college turn to each other for guidance as they juggle their careers with family in New York City.”. You can see a preview here. I admit, I got hooked on the preview because Lucy Liu was in it. Then I saw all the stunning clothes these ladies put on, they’re absolutely gorgeous.

I have to also admit that the plot is nothing totally new and it competes directly with the other new release Lipstick Jungle (there’s a whole controversy on how the creators of these two shows were once very close friends and then… fall out). However, I like the close friendship these ladies share and the producers’ attempts to at least portray somewhat realistic scenarios in the high corporate business world in New York. People have called Cashmere Mafia “Sex and the City for the thinking women”, and it couldn’t be more true.

P.S. - 28 Books in 2008 has almost 40 participants! Join today!

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1 Down, 27 to Go

// January 19th, 2008 // 5 Comments » // Review

I’m happy to announce that I’ve finished the first book in my reading challenge - Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf. It coincidentally was the book from which the oral exam test passage came from, wow!

Title and Author: Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf

Genre: Modernist fiction, historical

Unique features: stream-of-conscious narration, takes place in one day

Thoughts: I think Mrs. Dalloway is one of those books where we the readers either hate it or love it. Instead of a linear plot, it takes on the centre of consciousness of many of its over one hundred characters (though predominantly in the mind of Clarissa Dalloway, Peter Walsh, Lucrezia Smith, and Septimus Warren Smith) where action is replaced by thoughts and memories and advancement in the storyline is replaced by the passage of time. The language is densely packed with sentences as long as a paragraph and peppered with commas, colons, dashes, parenthesis, and semi-colons to emulate the fragemented and wandering consciousness of each character, which, more often than not, inadvertedly cross with that of someone else.

The themes of death, passage of time, and the sense of empire are constantly mentioned throughout the book. Objects and people who symbolize the mighty power of the British Empire are dramatically juxtaposed with those who lost their jobs, self-worths, and, in the case of Septimus Warren Smith, their lives to the traditions of the empire and the values of the upper-middle aristocratic society. Empathy is essential for the understanding of this novel; otherwise readers will no doubt agree with critics on the “frivolous, useless” nature of Virginia Woolf’s writing. There are points in the book where I, with the combination of the effects of the content and language, experienced something like a near-epiphany on the subjects of human life and behaviour and other points where I was exasperated at the drawn out and repetitive nature of Mrs. Woolf’s writing.

Favourite passage:

[Clarissa] had once thrown a shilling into the Serpentine, never anything more. But [Septimus] had flung it away… Death was an attempt to communicate, people feeling the impossibility of reaching the centre which, mystically, evade them; closeness drew apart; rapture fades; one was alone. There was an embrace in death.

Now reading: The Story Teller by Mario Vargas Llosa

As for the 28 Books in 2008 Challenge, we just hit 20 participants, get on the bandwagon folks!

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Avid Readers, Unite!

// January 1st, 2008 // 16 Comments » // Online Experience

Can you do it? Can you pull it off? Time to put those New Year Resolutions into action!

28 Books in 2008

P.S. - Happy New Year Everybody! I can’t believe my grad year is finally here! EEEKS, May exams!

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