Time for Reflection

Posted on August 30, 2010 by Yukari

Summer is almost over and everybody must be starting to feel that “back to school, back to reality” mode.
I am certainly one of them. I still haven’t started my son’s back to school shopping and that’s stressing me out, but anyway..

I am not overly superstitious, but I have come to believe one thing in astrology- Mercury Retrograde. I didn’t know anything about it until about 3 months ago when I heard it from a friend. OK, don’t leave yet-have an open mind for a bit and hear me out.
Basically, Mercury Retrograde happens 3 times a year (So I heard but I could be wrong) and we’re experiencing it now, until September 12th.
You can read about it here, but basically, during the Mercury Retrograde, a lot of miscommunication happens.
Excerpt from the article : “Since Mercury rules communication, it’s said that everything goes haywire in that area — emails get deleted or bounced back, mail is returned, calls go out into the ethers, etc. “

Saturday was prime example. I went to a yoga class in the morning, but somehow I misunderstood the class was an hour, instead of hour and a half. Met a friend for a breakfast and we had to ask our server twice to bring the bill, and the change. Thanks to this, I was late for a massage appointment (there was also time confusion there). We managed to reschedule for the following day, only to receive a phone call later from her to say she had double booked.
-I had a lunch date planned with a friend for Tuesday, but he had to reschedule, so we changed for Thursday, now I had to reschedule for Friday.
-There was a volunteer meeting Sunday night, but again, somehow I thought it was Saturday, and I missed a sailing trip for it.

You might think it’s just me being scatterbrain, but I choose to blame the Mercury.

So, what are we supposed to do during the Retrograde?
“Mercury retrograde gives us time to catch up with ourselves, and to look back.”
….and I like that idea. We tend to look ahead too much. Go, go, go-no?

Have you made New Year’s resolution this year?
I thought this is a good time to review those resolutions to give myself some reality check.
I wrote about my resolutions in January, but the most important of all for me is;

-To surround myself with positive and brilliant people, things and ideas.

I’m so happy to say that I am doing really well with it. I get so inspired by brilliant people and ideas, they basically are my drive for life.
Life is too short and you only live once, so why spend time with anything negative…I have been making conscious effort to spend time only with people I love and respect, and that’s working out brilliantly.

How are you doing with your resolutions?

..And one of those brilliant people is my partner in crime, Russel Lolacher and here’s our latest video.
I know you can’t hear me very well in this video-sorry! Time to invest in a microphone…

Going Bare for Cancer

Posted on August 27, 2010 by Yukari

I’ve written in my last post how this fall is going to be a busy one. This post is about one of my projects this fall.

Yesterday I did a nude photo shoot for Babes Go Bare for Cancer 2011 Calendar.
Last year, Trish, this amazing young and courageous woman organized Babes Go Bare and 12 women posed for the calendar AND they shaved their heads afterwords. I sponsored the calendar and also bought several copies to donate as door prizes for an event.

The fundraiser was so successful Trish decided to do it again this year- but this time, it’s co-ed.
I volunteered to be in the calendar this year, just for the fun of it at first, but soon I found out my dad had a pancreas cancer(He had Hodgkin’s disease before as well), it all became very relevant to me.
Only thing I wasn’t sure about was head shaving part….I just can’t do it. I have talked to Trish, and almost bowed out, since this project is about posing bare AND shaving head…..but Trish said I could be in the calendar if I could find 3 people as my proxies. And it looks like I did find 3. Thank you, @GDGeek, @MMI_Heather, and @Unclespeedo!!! I am eternally grateful.

And I am honored to share a month with Eshu Martin, a Zen monk. Yes, Eshu and I were both completely naked when we did the shoot! Isn’t that hilarious?
It all stated when the photographer of the calendar, very talented and beautiful Veronique da Silva posted on her Facebook wall about Babes Go Bare project. Lots of people commented on it, and I believe one of them was by Eshu. I sent Eshu a message suggesting that he should also pose for the calendar. He replied to me, “Ha ha, the day I am considered a “babe” is the day I’ll pose.” I told him that this year it’s going to be co-ed and that he should totally apply!
I mentioned this to Trish and she loved the idea. Only problem was, there were so many people wanting to be in this year’s calendar, some of the months had to be shared by more than one person. Trish asked me if I minded sharing with Eshu.. what can I say, if I choose one guy to be naked with, that had to be a monk, right?

I met Eshu just over 2 years ago, when I was still pregnant with my younger son (he just turned 2.) At the time, I literally felt lost in my life, and a friend told me about his Zen open house at Uvic’s Interfaith Chapel. Now, I am not a religious person, but being Japanese, and having practiced Cha-do(Japanese tea ceremony), the idea of Zen came quite naturally to me.
I showed up one day, all by myself and pregnant, and met Eshu, he gave us all first-timers some tips on how to sit and meditate, and…the rest is history.
He is one of those guys who is impossible not to like. After the sitting, we all sat around and introduced ourselves….and I still remember the feeling I had listening to other people’s story there, it was almost life changing. I was recently re-telling this story to a friend, and it still brought me to tears thinking about that night. (It’s a too long a story to tell here, ask me in person if you are interested.)
Soon after that I gave birth to my son, and I lost all the free time I had, and I haven’t been back to the sitting. But we kept in touch through Facebook and Twitter.

When I showed up at the studio, I was quite nervous, especially when I saw the Check TV crews for the interview(!). But eventually they left, my hair&makeup done, and I took everything off.

The shoot was a blast. It was full of laughs, and at the same time very peaceful. I am very happy with the shot Eshu and I did, and I cannot wait for the calendar to be ready-supposedly in October-I will make sure to post here when it’s ready.

Getting Engaged

Posted on August 24, 2010 by Yukari

I have fallen into one of the worst thing you can do when you have a blog-not updating it. I’ve been reading Amber Mac‘s “Power Friending” and she says “Nothing will nullify your commitment to the new school of communication as much as an old, rarely updated blog.” She is absolutely right. My bad.
Well, I have been busy this summer and it looks like this fall is going to be even busier. I am going to write about each project in the next few weeks, but here is my first.

As you see in my last two entries, I have started experimenting with vlogging. My first one was a Dove Movement project. I was nervous, but once done and when you get over the shyness, I was pleasantly surprised how easy it is to vlog!

I have been thinking about doing something like an online show/podcast for a while, but I really like the casualness of Ustream…it’s just live streaming and you can watch it if you have time. My good friend Russel Lolacher and I started talking about this idea and we came up with the concept of “Getting Engaged-Online, In Life and At Work“. We are both very passionate about social media and customer service. Whenever we get together at Tweetups etc that’s all we talk about. So, why don’t we record our conversation?

Here’s our first episode. You can view the 2nd episode here but it is 11 minute long-definitely something we need to work on,.
I would love to hear your suggestions and ideas about possible topics.