Since I still need an outlet to vent and whatnot, I decided to do so on my Tumblr (which houses my favourite looks from LOOKBOOK.nu as well, just in case you’re interested). I’m not going to say that I’m looking for a direction with this blog (let’s be honest, it’s never had a direction) but I’m going to let the negativity out of it.

I recently changed Firefox for Google Chrome… Firefox and I were fighting again and Safari was being all special when playing True Blood so I went with Chrome and it has treated me well, plus I like all the plugins it has and it doesn’t crash on me every five seconds. I also like that he lets me know when I got new mail. BTW, how cool is that you can receive all your email on GMail? I love it!

I’m also changing my Molsekine for an old Mean planner I had laying around, after reading these two Filofax posts, I fell in love with planners again and decided to take out my old one (it also helps that Filofax doesn’t ship to Mexico, that I’m penniless and that I really don’t want anymore shipping drama), so I’m going to buy re-fills and geek it all out by filling it with everything. I’ve only included my cards and business cards plus planned my month of August and pasted a post-it for my to-do list (I’m out of to-do list paper u_u). When it’s finished I’ll post it :D.

I really loved this poster that Gala blogged on the Cherry on Top this week that I just had to re-post it:

By Ben Crick

You should really check out the accompanying article and the other posters, they are extremely cool looking and so true.

I think that this is a good reminder for EVERYONE, not only those in creative industries. I think that no matter what your work is… you cannot undersell it or give it away for free. If you really love what you do, you can’t just give it away…

Have an awesome week everybody!

Kisses,

Julie.

Well, today was my nephew’s First Communion (my extended family are very devout Catholics) and we got a chance to get together and meet the newest additions to our family. I went with my mum because my dad and sister had to go to my sister’s apartment to receive some of her furniture, so we loaded my car and off we went. My grandma’s house is the state of Hidalgo, two hours away by car from my house. Right now there are some construction going on the road and we got delayed because of the traffic. Still, we made it on time to help get everything set up.

Few minutes after we arrived, my aunt Yolanda and her family arrived. I got really excited because my cousins were with her as well. I have two cousins from my aunt Yolanda, Yazmín and Jake. Yaz is a super scientist, she studies biomedical science and just finished a stint over at Harvard University looking for a cure to diabetes using stem cells, she’s super cool and sweet, I love her to pieces. Jake is my twin from another mother. We were born 22 days apart (he July 13th, me August 4th) and they call us twins, he’s much taller than me but we have the same curls, get sick in the same time spans (same illness), like the same food and dress in similar colour schemes. We also share an affinity for Fedoras.

So, I spent the whole time hanging out with my cousin Jake and cuddling my nieces Vane (7) and Danny (5). They are adorable little girls, super cute and they are super girly. I also spent some time cuddling my nephews Diego (2 or 1, I can’t remember) and Julio (1 month and a half). Julio (named after my dad) is our second newest addition, he’s super cute and super big! Our newest was born this week so my cousin didn’t bring him along. There’s like a huge baby boom in our family.

Jake and I reminisced our childhood and felt kind of grown up, we took pictures, laughed a lot and took care of the kids while our other cousins were getting things ready for the children. We also walked around town a lot. It was nice spending time with him, I don’t see him a lot and he’s one of my favourite cousins (I have 4 favourites).

After the Spanish version there are some pics.

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No sé si ya sabían pero tengo una familia enooorme (sin contar el lado mi papá). Mi mamá tiene 10 hermanos y hermanas y casi todos tuvieron hijos. Tengo un aproximado de 40 primos y primas y muchos sobrinos y más por venir.

Hoy fue la Primera Comunión de uno de mis sobrinos (mi familia es bien Católica) así que aprovechamos la pachanga para juntarnos y conocer a los nuevos miembros de nuestra enorme familia. Fui con mi mamá porque mi papá y mi hermana iban a ir al depa de mi hermana a recibir unos muebles, así que subimos un buen de cosas a mi carro y nos fuimos. La casa de mi abuelito se encuentra en el estado de Hidalgo a dos horas de mi casa. Están arreglando la carretera así que hay mucho tráfico y eso nos hizo llegar un poco tarde de lo que teníamos planeado. Aún así llegamos a tiempo para ayudar en lo que se puediera antes de la fiesta.

Poco después de que llegamos, llegó mi tía Yolanda con su familia. Me puse bien feliz porque venían mis primos con ella. Mis dos primos de parte de mi tía Yolanda son Yazmín y Jake. Yaz es la súper científica de la familia, estudia ciencias biomédicas y estuvo un rato en Harvard investigando una cura de la diabetes usando células madre. Es super linda y cool :D, si la adoro! Jake es mi gemelo de otra mamá XDD. Nacimos con 22 días de diferencia (él nació el 13 de julio y yo el 4 de agosto) y nos dicen gemelos. Él es mucho más alto que yo pero tenemos los mismo chinos, nos enfermamos de lo mismo al mismo tiempo, nos gusta la misma comida y nos vestimos en  colores similares. También nos gustan los Fedoras.

Me la pasé todo el rato con Jake y con mis sobrinas Vane (7) y Danny (5). Danny y vane son unas niñas adorables, super cute y super girly las dos. También estuve con mis sobrinos Diego (1 o 2 años, no me acuerdo) y Julio (mes y medio). Julio (le pusieron así por mi papá) es nuestro segundo bebé más nuevo, el más nuevo nació apenas esta semana y todavía no sé cómo se llama :(, está enorme y es el bebé más lindo del mundo. Hay un super baby boom en mi familia.

Jake y yo recordamos cuando éramos chiquitos y nos quedábamos en casa de mi abuelita, nos tomamos fotos, nos reímos y cuidamos a los niños un ratito en lo que mis primas les servían de comer y así. También nos la pasamos paseando por el pueblo. Me gustó pasar tiempo con él, no lo veo seguido y es uno de mis primos favoritos (uno de los 4 favoritos).

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Picture time!

Welcome to Chapantongo!

Julio

Yaz

Danny, Vane, Julie and Jake

My grandma, most of my aunts and uncles and some cousins

Some cousins, nephews and grandma

Kisses,

Julie.

I finished finals!!!!!

While that doesn’t mean that I’m free (still have to hand in the Financial Engineering final project) I’m very much stress-free. This semester was suppossed to be easy and nice and it was a bit like that and a bit stressful.

I learned a lot of things, like some design principles that helped me re-vamp my blog. I learned that engineers can kick ass in pretty much everything if we are willing to get out of the box. I learned that I’m actually good at financial stuff. I learned that properly using Excel is a bitch.

I love the fact that most of my professors are awesome. They really want to push you to do your best and they always have kind words to say. I also learned that you can breeze by classes without actually knowing what the class was about and still get an awesome grade (9.2/10).

So far my grades are:

• 9.2/10 – Engineering Projects 2 – This is the class that I never knew what it was about.
• 9.7/10 – Web Design – Oh yeah!
• 10/10 – Internet Technologies
• 9.5/10 – ERP
• 9.6/10 – Financial Engineering

My best semester yet! Only one more to go.

I’m still missing 2 other grades but I’m not nervous. I think that we are totally going to kick ass on everything!

So, it’s back to our regular programming starting this weekend.

Kisses,

Julie.

I start finals tomorrow (5 exams in 3 days, at least I got it easier than some of my other friends). Then next week is my friends’ graduation party and I still need to get a dress and shoes, or maybe just shoes. I really want to dance all night so shoes are a must!

To top it all off, I’m sick. I think I might have some kind of throat infection but I refuse to take medicine until after finals. I don’t react well to normal medicine, so my doctor prescribed these little pills which you only take one a day for 3 days. They cure me but in hte meantime I have the worst time. They actually make things much, MUCH worse before making everything better and with finals almost here I can’t risk being a vegetable during exams. I’m basically holding up with scalding hot beverages, loads of herbal tea and hiney and lemon. Oodly enough, I’m not a snot fest nor am I coughing up every five seconds.

So basically, I’m not going to be posting until after I spend my three days as a vegetable and I stop feeling like utter crap. Also, I need to concentrate on finals.

Anyways, I hope that you are all feeling much, MUCH better than I am and that you have a beautiful week.

Sickly kisses,

Julie.

I came back home, had a power nap (20 minutes), had lunch and made my way to Santa Fe to meet my sister because WE WERE GOING TO THE MUSE CONCERT!!! OMG!!! OMG!!

Finally, we met and we climbed into her friend’s car (that ride wins the award for worst car ride EVER!) and after two hours of traffic jams, we arrived at the Foro Sol (which is kind of a baseball stadium or something like that, I don’t know). It was packed! I mean, really packed! We left the car in the next venue (Autódromo Hermanos Rodríguez) and walk like 30 minutes to get to the concert venue and meet with my sister’s BF (aka her best BF ever).

I was in the back, because well my sister didn’t want to get closer in case we would be smashed by the crowd or something.

We went inside, they bought some beer, I lost 50 pesos (so, so, so sad), we sat until the opening number (who played during 15 minutes because no one was looking at them) and then sat some more until Muse came out (around 10 pm).

There are no words to express the major AWESOMENESS and WIN of that concert. Where can I start? Everything was awesome, from start to finish. The stage, the lights, the green lasers, the smoke, Matthew Bellamy’s voice, the music, the wardrobe. There were times that I just stopped screaming, jumping and singing just to stare with my mouth open in complete awe. It was the best concert that I have ever been to. I’m totally in celebrity crush mode with Matthew Bellamy, he’s kind of hot and his voice and talent OMG! My sister and I kept dishing on his awesomeness and her BF was like ¬¬ “stop it”. I took a small video, but it looks awful so no, I’m not going to post it. You can find the set list for the concert here and the pic they took from the stage here.

The next day, I had afternoon classes (thank God) and I was playing with Maximus. He’s not allowed inside during the day, he can come in the late afternoon but not before that. So we were hugging each other when my dad came into his sight and he wanted to come in. He was scratching at everything, trying to get his attention and he scratched my arm (I ended up letting him in so that he would stop). This is my arm yesterday:

It stings but the scratches are fading n_n.

What about you?

Kisses,

MrCMC (a teacher/friend of ours) told us before Spring Break about the Google Developer Fest 2010, it is a series of conferences about Google’s new technologies and you know, cool Google Stuff in general. As you know, i’m a HUUUGE Google fan, in fact, my dream job is to work at Google.

So Alekz and I moved some stuff around and we managed to get Tuesday morning free to go there. We got our invites and yesterday morning we left.

Let me tell you… Google never disappoints.

Registration and lobby

The lobby was full of puffs, chairs, and tables for you to hang around and there was free WiFi in case you wanted to do some live streaming or just tweet constantly (which is what I did). Everything was black or white with Google’s colours. It was really cool and there were loads of coffe, drinks and tasty treats to indulge ourselves.

Upon registration, you were given your conference kit. It included:

A DevFest T-shirt

Google México notepad

A Google ball point pen

Once we got our conference kits, we went to get comething to eat. I had a cup of coffee because I was so sleepy and we had cookies.

They were delicious!

While we were waiting for the keynote to start, Mido and I were standinge near a Google sign because I wanted to take a picture of her. A photographer came by and asked if he could take our picture, we said yes and started posting and just before he was going to take the picture, Alekz and Mario came by and posed with us XDD. It was so funny, then I asked him to take a picture of the 4 of us with my camera. He was really nice and took our picture n_n.

YAY!

We didn’t stay the whole day, we just made it to 3-4 conferences (we split and Mido ended up going to one extra conference) but it was so awesome. During the keynote we met all of the conferencists and what they were talking about. The Google Mexico director was there and we saw loads of demos about Android, Google Engine App, Google Webkit Apps, Google Wave, Google Maps and Earth, Google Chrome, HTML 5, CSS3 and loads of other things. The speakers talked mostly in English and it was just awesome! I really enjoyed the keynote. It was so much fun lo listen to everyone speak and show demos.

After the keynote, we had a bit of a resting period and while Mido and Mario went to the Google Geographic stuff, Alekz and I went to the Cloud Computing conference. It was good, they talked about the Google App Engine and how you can make really powerful applications using Google’s infraestructure, they also talked about merchandising your app. It was very cool, it would’ve been cooler if the wireless connection didn’t fail big time.

After that, we went to look for Mido but we couldn’t find her, so Alekz and I went to get our lunchbox (courtesy of Google) and then we found Mido. This is what was inside my luchbox:

It was junk food, but it was good. Unfortunately, my wisdom tooth started hurting and I couldn’t finidh my baguette T_T. We ate and we were planning to leave, but Mido saw that the parking fee went flat after 5 hours so we decided to stay and go to the Android conference. It was really interesting, but I was tired and very sleepy so I fell asleep during the last few minutes. After that conference we left and I took mido with me to school, then I hung out there a little bit and went home.

Google, I love you!! I do, I do, I dooooooo.

So remember my shiny new job?

Well, I quit after just one day. Yes, I’m the girl who quit her job after just one day.

Why? It was not a bad job with decent pay and semi-doing what you’re studying at school.

The truth is that (I got hired at some car company) because of company policies, I wasn’t allowed to park my car inside if it wasn’t from a certain brand (which my car isn’t) and I was left with two choices:

• Park it at the super expensive parking lot across the street
• Park along the street

Now, my dad offered to pay the super expensive parking but I didn’t want it. The truth is that I was never really excited about the job. It’s not because it wasn’t a good job (because it was, the pay was great for a starter job), it just wasn’t what I want to spend half my day doing. I’m not going to jeopardize my schooling, my health, my car, my happiness for some money that I don’t even need. I need work experience, but it is not worth it the 3 hour traffic time, it is not worth it being sick all the time, being exhausted when I get to school, being confined in stuffy clothes and doing things that I don’t love.

I’m going to focus on what I really want to do… DEVELOP! Write code, research, solve problems. THAT is what makes ME happy. That’s where I’m at my best and that is what I want to do for the rest of my life.

I’m taking this decision for me, because it’s what I feel it’s best for me.

Sorry, if you feel like I dissappointed you or something.

On the other hand, I’m going to be able to focus on what’s really important: finishing school and doing what I love.

First some things: this is the bag that I carry when I’m not in school. When I got to school I change between 2 book bags (depending on whether I’m carrying my laptop or not) and I carry a lot more stuff with me.

So, what’s in my bag?

  My bag is white and pink Puma shoulder bag that I got in Spain back in 2008. It was incredibly cheap (like 12 Euro) and since then, it has become my favourite going out bag.

Inside my puma bag I carry:

• Lip Balm: This one is Beauty Rush by Victoria’s Secret. My sister got it for me when she was in San Diego. I love that lip balm because it is a gloss too. It sparkles and it is so refreshing
• Hand Lotion: I don’t like having dry hands and mine tend to scar and get all scale like and it’s not pretty
• Hand Sanitizer: AH1N1? Enough said. I also hate having my hands dirty. I wash them like at least 15 times a day
• Tissues: Special tissues for people with colds. I tend to get sick a lot, or get allergies
• Frame glasses: Just in case I lose a contact or something
• Contact lenses solution: Just in case I need to take my contacts off or something
• Contact lenses case: Just in case

• Wallet: Includes little money and ID’s
• Moleskine: 2010 Horizontal Weekly Planner. I have my life planned in that thing
• Pencil: Nightmare before Christmas, to write on the Moleskine
• USB Key: you never know when you might need one
• Sunglasses: Oh, the joys of wearing sunglasses and being able to see where you’re going at the same time!
• Cell Phone: A BlackJack II in a pink silicone case. I love that cell phone
• iPod Touch

Not pictured:

• Keys
• Camera

Now that I use the contacts I carry around more stuff, but it’s worth it because I love not wearing my frames.

Kisses,

Julie.

My new laptop AKA Snow or something

Snow (temporary name) is an HP dv4 with Windows 7. I have to say that I made the right choice buying it. Specially, since I almost cried the other day because I couldn’t make a Mac do what I wanted it to do. I’m a PC girl to the bone. Also, isn’t it completely pretty?

Unicorn wall update

I placed my Balenciaga poster on the unicorn wall because I think that it looks really good with the colour. The rest of the pictures are from the March edition of Elle Mexico (which, BTW, is filled with spelling mistakes).

I found my NBC watch!!

Well, I didn’t find it, my mum did. I knew that it wasn’t lost, it was somewhere in the house. It actually was underneath the huge couch on which I usually take naps during summer break. I’m so happy it was found because:

1. I love Nightmare Before Christmas
2. The watch is awesome
3. Maori got it for me in Japan

I’ll be doing a what’s in my bag post either today or tomorrow.

Kisses,

Julie.

I’ve been job hunting for a while, but I still haven’t heard anything back on whether I got positions or not. Yesterday, some friends and I sat some exams for a company that is looking for interns in various areas. The exams were exhausting and I ended up with a headache. I think I did good on them , and I certainly hope that I get a call-back.

I also got a 10/10 in my Financial Engineering test. I still can’t believe it, I was hoping for a 3/10 and I got a 10/10. I seriously starred at my exam and asked a classmate “Is the scale 1-10 or 1-100?”. Apparently, there were only five 10/10. I’m so proud, because I’m terrible at financial stuff.

In the afternoon, I got a call from a company asking me for an interview today. So, I searched for the location of the company, got into a huge fight with my mum and sister and I decided to take a cab from school to avoid getting lost.

I got there super early and then I walked into the interview. It went awesome and I got to interview with a guy from another university. He was awful!! Ugh, I hated him, so uptight and not nice at all. My interview went really smooth, i interviewed both with HR and who would be my direct boss. The job is not bad and the pay is good but there is no parking space for my car and it sucks because in Santa Fe (Mexico City’s Corporate District), there are no streets where you can park and I’m not paying $200 MXN everyday for cabs.

So, I’m still on the lookout for a job. I’m going to spend my Spring Break sending out resumes and see what else I can find.

On other news….

Alekz got his own Photography Expo at uni!!! It was awesome and I got to take pictures of him making a speech, being interviewed and everything. I’m so, so, so proud of him. Pictures when I get them from him (cuz I took them with his camera).

I’m tired and extremely hot. There is a heat wave and spring here in Mexico and I feel tired, I’m going to sleep because I’m officially on SPRING BREAK!!

Kisses,

Julie.