Check out this wonderful video Mr. Chokkattu made of our time in Iceland!
Both Jonsi’s Helmgilas and Phoenix’s Love Like a Sunset were songs we played over and over driving through the country and I think Iceland’s beauty can really only be underlined by someone from there. We both miss Iceland dearly, and personally, for me this video is a tribute to happiness.
(If you see some Asian dork in blue, it is 100% NOT ME. NOT ME AT ALL.)
A picture Mr. Chokkattu took of me while we were on a kayak.
This will be my last post explicitly about Iceland!
So we all know now that I adored the country of Iceland, and I want to go back some day really, really badly, with maybe a job long enough to support me for a few months or just some more cash in my pocket. And that the scenery is beautiful and the landscape breathtaking, etc. But I have to share some of the specifics I jotted down. Some of them are important, some of them are surprising, some are less about Iceland and more about trips in general, and some are pretty stupid but whatever they seemed important enough to write down at the time. This list is a little long, so let’s get started:
This will be the second to last post about the most beautiful and refreshing place I’ve ever visited. I will miss a number of things about Iceland, which I will enumerate in my last post, but can be summed up as: how the hell did this little island slip my travel plans. It was only because of Mr. Chokkattu that I thought of this place at all as a potential destination and that’s insane to me now.
We filled our last full day in Iceland with Snæfellsjökull and rounded the trip out back in Reykjavik at the Settlement Museum before we bid the country adieu the next morning. My last glut of pictures, 60 altogether:
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The return of my mother and my brother from their time in Hong Kong, my productive breakfast at Lole Atelier, and a 5 minute conversation with a really nice dog owner with a 4-month-old black shiba puppy has been rejuvenating in a way I never really seem to expect, which is good, since it wouldn’t be so effective if I expected it to happen.
Highlights from:
Matt Archambault: Social media and branding
Bloo, my stuffed representation of the internet sensation Boo started smoking under the supervision of my boyfriend. I am so disappointed.
I decided it would be a lovely idea to leave Bloo with Mr. Chokkattu for a fun day at his office and workplace, to be returned to me the next time he sees me this week: Tuesday, if nothing goes wrong. The morning went fairly well:
That’s what I did today with Mr. Chokkattu.
Recipe from the SORTED boys, whom I met the other week when they visited NYC for the Today Show, cheerily enough. I think I love them more now that I’ve met them. They’re a little shorter than I thought they would be, but at 5’1″ that’s not really a thing I can get hung up on, haha. This one’s my favorite picture. Credits to Mr. Chokkattu, linked above.
The beauty industry was something that, to a tiny, chubby, poor girl with limited artistic talent, seemed rather unapproachable. There seemed to me a certain limit to beauty, and if you go beyond it, it’s simply not beauty anymore, but becomes humdrum or “fucking weird” and while beauty is subjective, even if you openly deny the traditional ideas of beauty in your particular culture, you still know what they are.
Thankfully, even something seemingly as set and unchanging as the ideas of beauty get a facelift, as over the years we’ve seen ethnic faces in the crowd become the norm of any fashion show, and plus-size models take the runway and the covers of magazines. The acknowledgment of the beauty of the transgendered in huge “traditional” places such as Barneys New York.
Actually called: Wix Breakfast: Life Attracts Life- Give Your Brand a Personality Boost! 
School’s getting closer, so I decided to retrain myself for it by going to bed ridiculously late and waking up ridiculously early for a lecture! Yay! I found it on Eventbrite while browsing and took a chance.
And I’m really glad I did. It was a really interesting seminar, a little on the short side, full of little tips I would have never thought of, like how important emotional touchstones, big and small (“anything from a big brand experience to a tweet”), are to a customer base. There are tons of examples of these connections with consumers that I can think of. Some smaller gestures include Xbox’s (T, F) and T-Mobile’s (T, F) avid usage of their twitter handles and Facebook support apps to annual events like Krispy Kreme’s Day of the Dozens, Talk Like a Pirate, and National Doughnut Days. Everyone remembers larger political gestures like Oreo’s support for gay pride, to well-established, company-wide policies like Starbucks’ C.A.F.E Practices (they work with Conservation International to keep the farming sustainable) and TOMS Shoes policy of donating a pair of shoes for every pair purchased. All of them work to improve the perception of the brand and endear its consumers to it, while actually decreasing a little of the bad in the world at the same time. And of course, little gestures like that are key for small business owners to create their own communities; Milk Sugar Love’s content on their Facebook page regularly attempts to engage users with questions and relatable expressions.
I hope you had as much fun and felt as much love as I did last night. Here’s to the new year!
At least they didn’t tow it. Thanks guys! I won’t do it again, I promise >.<"
Pomelo girl thoughts 