anmiwa's Xanga

blip!

Wed, 14 Feb 2007 08:31:40 GMT

laurence gives a shout out to me on his xanga, and all of a sudden, i get 3 new xanga subscribers, and visits to my dot mac website. huh.
fascinating.
i guess that's what we call (in the industry) pr. haha
kinda of a shame i don't really xanga much anymore...
oh well. maybe, just maybe i'll get inspired after i move to the lonestar state.
...gone will be the isolated workdays in my home office, where i can count the number of people i see in the day on one hand (a list which includes the tall blond fedex lady and singing asian postman), and where i might leave the house every 2-3 days.

kitsch*n glam turned 3 years old on feb 2nd.
2006 was a brilliant year of growth. 333% to be exact.
i started making monthly shipments to anthropologie in april. and I got a european distributor.
and wouldn't you know it? i hit profitability.
i finally paid myself a salary in october, after 2 years and 8 months of blood sweat and tears..gave myself two happy checks! (which totaled less than my starting salary right after college, i'm moving up in the world, don't cha know?) woohoo. paid off personal cc debt, and spent the rest. all gone! muhahaha.

2007: i'm moving me and me business to austin, texas, the land of 62 cents a square foot for office/warehouse space and future husbands. teehee.
kitsch*n glam will hire it's first part-time employees, and maybe- just maybe, I'll be able to delegate away responsibilities and regain that concept of balance in life. maybe! perhaps i'll work 40 hours a week instead of 60, perhaps i won't have to beat myself up for taking time for myself, perhaps i'll stop complaining about being plain old tired and burned out to the power of three.

perhaps kitsch*n glam will get another large client, so I won't have only one cash cow.
perhaps i get back into acting!
perhaps i'll get a licensing deal and just be responsible for product development/design.
perhaps turning 31 will be an excellent time in my life.

happy chinese new year y'all!

hey! support asian american christian music!
http://www.mingmusic.com/
he's my cousin, and he's brilliant! and if you buy his album....you'll see some brilliant photography by moi!

funny actually.

Wed, 19 Jul 2006 19:02:10 GMT

I just reread all my blog postings back to 2003...and you know what!? i'm still struggling with alot of the same things! but i've experienced so much more since my flute teaching/photography days.... pretty amazing.

little did i know what God had in store for me.

i think i know myself alot better now.
this was where He was leading me.

i've moved!!

Sat, 15 Apr 2006 15:08:46 GMT

check it out!
still uploading pictures... so be sure to visit again...and again...and again...

http://web.mac.com/anmiwa

Wednesday, February 22, 2006

Wed, 22 Feb 2006 13:56:50 GMT

photos of the before....what til i extreme makeover this!

yipppeeeee!

Tuesday, February 21, 2006

Tue, 21 Feb 2006 03:25:56 GMT

Big dream come true.
***to live in a house and decorate it!

I'm moving! after 7 years in my monon street apartment, i'm moving to nearby Glendale...to a cute little craftsman style house that has a 2 car garage...bring kng and my bed under one roof, and having a part time roomie that comes with a darling 10 month old little girl. yippeee!

i'll do a little before & after picture posting once i move ...
i bought 10 different colors from sherwin williams today....red- orange- green- mustard- turquoise- pink...etc...AND i'm buying a used refrigerator that they're going to paint RED for me. yipppeeee!!

i finally get to be a grownup- with out the mortgage. heh heh.

and I'll be auditioning for the vegas Avenue Q on monday the 27th...I'm ready for this audition....but what if i have to move to vegas, and I just moved into a house!?!? i'm so excited on all sides!

this new decorating project is a welcome change to my dwindling passion for kitsch*n glam....
and I can finally sing really loud, or actually pull out my flute and practice and not feel self conscious or bother neighbors. yay!

i'll be painting and scheming and packing nonstop for the next 2 weeks....****happiness!

Thursday, December 22, 2005

Thu, 22 Dec 2005 16:41:59 GMT

http://www.cuteoverload.com/

Saturday, December 17, 2005

Sat, 17 Dec 2005 22:03:47 GMT

I'm in china on business, in Ningbo, a few hours south of shanghai, checking on my aprons...(i'm moving production over here)
i've been suffering from culture shock....SHOCK SHOCK SHOCK.
I never want to relive the past 24 hours again....

Since Wednesday, I've been taken out to lunch and dinner everyday- eating crazy fancy chinese food. Stuff I've never seen before. all very oily. I've probably eaten 5-6 different kinds of fish, tons of seafood, and crab everyday...eating to obilvion. My agent Eillen (she's my china contact) constantly would drop food into my plate, and when we ate with the factory people, there had to be wine and lots of toasting. The first day, the wine was a clear rice wine (StInKy!) that they dropped a raw egg in. YUCK!! great choice when there's aviary flu going around! wednesday we had lunch with the factory in restaurant filled with private rooms, sit in a private room and circle table, and a waitress serves you the food that comes through the cubbie hole. Then we went to the factory- discussed aprons all afternoon, and the factory owner treated us to dinner again, at the same restaurant, in a room across the hall from lunch, and different food...still greasy.

Day two ate lunch in the hotel. Walk through their seafood room and see all this random seafood in tanks to pick what you want to eat. I saw this big clam thing that had a long white "tail" coming out of it...they had used a rubberband to keep the two sides of the clam shell closed. SCARY! seafood stuff that I've never seen before, and none of it appetizing. dinner was in another private room restaurant...more food I've never seen before. what to eat, what not to eat without being rude. trying to at least try everything to be polite....please, don't give me yet another piece of crab. I'm not that big of a fan of it all. And unfortunately I have it ingrained in me that if there's food in my plate I need to eat it all up...and with food constantly appearing in my plate, i was getting too full at every meal.

Day three, I kinda mentioned I was a little tired of all the fancy chinese food. It was translated as she's not accustomed to chinese food, let's take her to kfc. yuck. 1. it's not the same. 2. yet again they ordered too much food. fried shrimp balls!? greasy egg custards. corn, mayonaise potato salad. I was craving something similar- like the chinese food i eat at home. simple plate of rice with simple meat and vegetables. or maybe some dumplings or something. are you telling me that if you deep fry chicken I won't get the aviary flu that's going around? Dinner was hot pot. and too many pieces of lamb. it was alright. thinking back on it all, I don't think i walked away thinking, wow that was delicious...i was more overwhelmed and overstuffed. wah.

Day Four, wake up, checking e-mail, and having stomach angst. Not feeling well enough to go downstairs for breakfast...nor do I feel well enough to go to my agent's office that morning. David, my US contact on this project, sends eillen to my room with white pills to take. I never take any kind of medication....but I didn't bring any pepto or maalox, so what choice do i have? I take 3 tablets...within 10 minutes i start feeling worse....read the bottle, oh I should've taken it after a meal...Eillen grabs me some "bread" from the breakfast buffet, it's all greasy chinese pastry stuff. yuck. i struggle to get one down, and lay back in bed...she leaves. i vomit...there's no glamour, and there's nothing in my stomach the first couple times, then it starts coming out. YUCK. i can't remember the last time I threw up.

clean up the bathroom...retreat back to bed. eillen shows up again with a different medicine that david bought- little black/brown balls that are super stinky. I set the bottle aside...i have no interest in taking anything else. I doze in and out of sleep, walking up to stomach pains, and david calls me and tells me to take his latest medicine...with hot water. SO i boil water...drink drink....finally get the nerve to take the medicine, the third one doesn't want to go down, and then i vomit again. yuck yuck yuck.

i lay back in bed. doze in and out. eillen comes in, feels my forehead, says i have a temperature, says the room's too hot, tells me to get up, she's going to take me to the hospital. i don't want to go to the hospital. please no. i just want to go home. i want my mommy. i am so miserable.

they take me to the hospital. eillen, her husband, sophia (her office assistant), david and me. we get there, I'm so weak and miserable they're holding me up at both arms walking around. wait...wait...it's cold as I'm waiting...go up to the second floor. they sit me down outside a "doctor's office". the doctors work out of a white tiled room, sitting at a desk, with a dirty gurney in the corner that has an old tattered sheet that has some red marks on it----i can't decipher if the red marks are blood or just some markings. five people or more, gathered around the doctor's desk, waiting to talk to him, to have him diagnose their individual ailments. I sit outside on the green chairs. A man walks by and spits right on the floor. inside the hospital. I saw this the other day at the mall, was already grossed out, now i see it in the hospital of all places. gross. My stomach is uneasy, my nose is runny, i just want to be in bed. i want to go to the bathroom, need to wait for sophia to come back with some tissues/toilet paper. Public places in china don't have toilet paper. and no one prepared me that there are no toilet bowls either ...you place your feet on the side of the hole, squat, and hope you don't splatter your pants. **this was my first time going to china...i've only been to taiwan when i was 3 years old.

i walk into the bathroom and it stinks like urine and its dirty and i immediately turn around. I can't possible go to the bathroom here, and I can't possibly stand over the white ceramic hole to vomit again.

finally it's my turn, they tell me to lie down on the worn out sheet on the dirty gurney. The doctor proceeds to push my stomach , and not just push, he's digging for treasure, asking me if it hurts. if you push down to my back yes it's going to hurt! then he says he wants me to get a blood test. huh!? what!? because i didn't have diarrhea, it was just vomitting, it might be something different. david and I were already discussing maybe it was from the water in the ice cubes at KFC....it's the food, i'm telling you we've been eating crazy food!

we go to another floor to get blood drawn. It's like going to the bank teller. sit down, put your arm through the hole in the glass, and they draw your blood. I sit down, look to my left, and looky here- it's a yellow plastic bin with used bloody needles, tubes and random medical stuff. I am completely apalled and grossed out. i'm supposed to trust this place? that's so dirty, spitty, and other peoples' blood in a bin next to my arm. gross! 10 minutes later the results are in, time to go back to the doctor. my white blood cells are a little higher. talk to a 2nd & 3rd doctor. I don't have any more stomach pains. the doctor can't say/find anything...he doesn't see the need to give me an IV. David tells me that he doesn't trust them giving me and IV, and I'm just thinking, get me out of here NOW!!

finally get back to my hotel room. proceed to sleep the sleep of a thousand sleeps...i think i slept 12 hours straight. had to wake up to see some apron corrections the factory brought over. i feel alot better. not so bloated. kinda hungry. ready to go home. I was supposed to be boarding a plane to go to beijing this morning to meet up with an old high school friend....but have decided to hang out in ningbo til i leave for the states tomorrow.

i want to go home.
it's not that i hate china. I think it's a fascinating place. I'm frustrated that my chinese language skills are so crappy, that sometimes when I tell david something- he translates my words into something totally different, or doesn't fully understand me. I'm a little disappointed that my aprons will not be made with my first choice fabric, and I'm scared of production now- just because they've got the samples correct, is no guarantee that the final product will be correct.

but what an adventure. this is the first of five plane flights I'll be taking between now and february. let the busy, crazy, chicken with her head cut off season begin!

*sigh*

Monday, October 18, 2004

Mon, 18 Oct 2004 15:49:29 GMT

The latest on my life...

Guys & Dolls, the musical I'm in...as the lead Adelaide- has been extended, yay!! til december 18th! (no thanksgiving weekend shows) and, i've been nominated in the preliminary round of the LA Theatre Ovation Awards for the Best Lead Actress in a Musical category!! woohoo!!

and, Kitsch'n Glam aprons will be on the TODAY show this wednesday morning....sometime between 8:30- 10 am!! the InStyle Mag correspondent is planning to color coordinate her outfit to wear the apron on the show!! YIPPPPEEE! hey all you east coasters....would you be available to sit on the phone with me wednesday morning to tell me when the aprons actually appear on the show?

Other than that....watch for the december issues of Bon Appetit (hits the newstands around nov. 12th) and Dwell magazine (hits the newstands nov. 9th)...my apron will be in there! AND the jan/feb issue of Bridal Guide Magazine will have my apron as well! wahooey!

just trying to be patient and wait wait wait...hoping to sell lots of aprons this christmas!

yeeehaw!

Wednesday, September 15, 2004

Wed, 15 Sep 2004 00:05:33 GMT

This is tim, he's my new boyfriend, and he's great.
the best part of dating him, is that i am comfortable to just be myself with him, no tap dancing required.

He's 34, and he's an up and coming screenwriter who writes brilliant comedic screenplays. and he's a solid christian, thanks to his mom who brought him to Jesus at the ripe age of 4. He grew up going to christian schools, and attended wheaton.

He plays with me: improvises and makes me laugh. he is thoroughly entertained by me, and i am thoroughly entertained by him. We can happily amuse each other with different voices and dramatic looks for hours on end. He tells me that he wants to take care of me. and when i tell him grandiose ideas i have on things i want to pursue or have in life, he replies, "let's get that for you"....he's cool.

he's a talented runner. two times in his life he was training to qualify for the olympic trials...unfortunately, both times he got sick. the fastest he's run is 19 miles an hour, his usual pace is about 8 mph or so.

he's disciplined- when he says he'll do something, he does it. and that's cool.

my momma met him and said he seems very comfortable with himself, very grounded, and it seems like he had a happy childhood. yeah, i think he did.

just wanted to share.
;)

Monday, June 28, 2004

Mon, 28 Jun 2004 18:53:08 GMT

The Kitsch'n Glam website is open for business!

The day has arrived, and we've officially opened our doors. Come on in and be the first to see our aprons before they become the next big fashion trend.

Look and feel sexy and fashionable preparing your favorite culinary masterpiece, hosting your next soirée, or spicing up any special occasion. And did we mention they're great for gifts?

http://www.kitschnglam.com

Kitsch'n Glam
Life happens. Look fabulous.

Please spread the word to 10 people you think would be interested in my product!!

thanks!