La douceur de vivre (The Sweet Life)

I met up with Olivia for a posh party in the city to celebrate Bastille Day. Now if you are not familiar with this day- its the French National holiday commemorating the uprising of a modern nation during the French Revolution. There is a lot more to the storming but that's your crash course... I take credit cards, checks and cash!

Olivia, I missed you!



I met some really interesting people. One lady lives in Beijing so we recounted some of the stories of us living in China. On the way home, I saw a girl and she was writing a paper on education. I remember how it was huge culture shock for me that people didnt talk to each other in New York and how weird it was for me. I decided to break my NY tradition, get rid of my screwface and initiate a conversation knowing quite well that she could give me the cold shoulder and the leave me alone face or accept the invitation to communicate. I really have no clue where she is from but she was a jilbaab (the Muslim looking attire) but based on her paper I knew she at least spoke English. I started the convo, she turned smiled and started telling me about another paper she did on outsourcing and apologized for sitting at my seat so I had to hold my heavy bag. We spoke about the economy and then she said something about being happy to meet me with the preface "thank God that we..". The point is the need to communicate is a human feature and the quicker we learn to focus less on our differences and magnify our similarities, the sooner we will move to living the sweet life (la dolce vita). We are human and that calls for interdependence whether it be for serious help, a good conversation or just a sense of belonging.

Life life to the fullest