Work-Life Balance - Trick or Treat?

In the turbo fast pace of modern living I have often wondered how it is that we don’t actually have more time to spare? Everything around us has evolved to suit life ‘on the go’ – breakfast comes in bars to be eaten on the morning train, coffee is pre-brewed en masse and served with ice so we can consume it before clocking in, drive-thru fast food, e-banking, internet shopping, even our Kindles mean we no longer need two hands to turn the newspaper headlines....

You would imagine that, with all of the minutes we gain every day through our touch-button existance, we would in fact generate extra hours by the time a weekend comes around. Ironically, however, automation does not have a button for relaxation. Life in the fast lane is not a place where less is more, it’s a place for more of the same, and with more efficiency. As multi tasking becomes a basic skill for survival, I wonder, what is the price we pay for performance and productivity?  

...In today's life on the run, can taking time-out really be considered the luxury retreat, or is this an urban legend of years gone by, now itself an essential survival item needed to recharge and maintain our stamina in the rat-race?

In truth, being successful with the accessible actually requires a fine-tuned discipline in your personal life –  2 weeks of global travelling tallies a parallel accrual of mobile massage, facials, threading and waxing to keep up appearances, never mind energies. And when the only regular option for sustenance is fast food it is understandable the high street now offers lunchtime lipo to undo the calories consumed from a late brunch, and to re-direct your fillers to your face instead of your sandwich! 

The treatments that we once considered truly a treat could arguably now be an expense item, if not a tax-exempt benefit, if we are to really reach the ripe old age of retirement. So, as I proactively pre-plan my personal priorities to accommodate my next four weeks working schedule I wonder, is the fast pace of modern living racing us through time before our time and do we have to work even harder to turn back the clock?

'Til next time, Pandora

The Teatosterone Theory

This weekend I played hostess to another client dinner event - the usual business banquet that allows for strategic 'offline' networking yet, despite the abandonment of laptops, still manages to reflect a conclave of papal standards that almost surely reminisces on results past, present and future goals ahead.

Perhaps somewhat tongue in cheek, but these events rarely tend to have much variation – a crustacean starter (I’m convinced this allows for phallic prowess of de-shelling, whereas I tend to opt for the lazy pescatarian choice of squid or smoked salmon), steak of course (any kind, but always rare) and a steady flow of vin rouge (du chateau cher).

Competitive business chit chat never fully relaxes although it gains more fluidity and colour as the wine doth flow and we graze our way through courses towards after-dinner liqueurs. But, just as I awaited the fluffing of feathers that signals the time to engage on the important selection of brandy, port and, on occasion, cigars to wrap up the night, what caught me completely by surprise was that the tipple to tickle the post-meal palate was tea. Yes, let me repeat....Tea.

Faster than we could say one lump or two my conclave had turned Mad Hatters Tea Party, and in true MH character was quickly immersed in stories of limitless fantasy on the chill-factor of chamomile, the soothing refreshment of peppermint and its double invigoration with eucalyptus to fight flu, green tea and nettle tea to cleanse and fight sickness, fruity, red bush caffeine free tea….never did I expect there to be so much manthusiasm for his infusion.

Precariously adding my blasphemous order for double espresso to the tea trolley, I felt like I had somewhat pushed Alice through the looking glass and straight to the dark side, convinced I would undoubtedly face teaspoons at dawn as the Queen of Hearts order me to be beheaded.

But as the table of steak-eating, lobster breaking, wine guzzling machos extended their pinkies to sip their heavenly herbals it seemed our business men were happy to discard their coveted blackberry, as long as they at least had it infused in their leafy night-cap.

So as I considered the working week ahead  I wondered if I was better placed to reschedule my business lunches and brunches to morning elevenses and indeed, if our men folk were turning totally tea-total, is the future of blind dates destined to meet over scones and clotted cream…?

 

‘Til next time, Pandora

One in a Million….

How can it be possible that in a city of 1.6 million people you can actually feel like Number One and not just another face in a very big crowd?

This week I have been travelling in Asia Pacific, countries where the business world follows the sun 24*7. In sync with the round the clock work ethic, business tripping here also tends to push a dusk to dawn schedule of non-stop circuit training between meetings, inner-city crazed traffic and late night working dinners. Here indeed lies the proof that there are more cities than New York that never sleep and, if they do, it is most certainly standing up and with a smile on their face, ready to offer whatever service and help they can, on demand.

Today, conversely, I found myself with the rare luxury of a full day of downtime. Inarguably it is the result of the mixology of uber productivity, insomnia and energy drinks I have been cocktailing on over the last 4 days in order  to maintain the pace but, in the spirit of the cocktail glass being half full, I have used the time to its utmost decadence.

Pampering at any time is the pinnacle of self indulgence but, in a country that has a service culture that is second to none, anything is possible here whenever sir or madam so requires it.

A wholly personalised service starts on first name terms (ok, preceded by sir or miss) on arrival, as if it has been clockwatched to the nano second and a personal butler service for your every whim and need almost levitates you above the ground as you are hosted in and out. 

Admittedly, when your day begins with an aromatic soak in rose petals, you know it can only be good. Even the air is designed to smell to your personal liking with an apothecary of oils and tinctures for a massage that makes you feel you are lying on a lily pad, sole-zen occupancy.

Teleported to the hair salon is a Dorothy experience before visiting the Great Oz – parallel tinkering of fingers and toes, tresses simultaneously groomed with 4 (sometimes 6) hands, and from nowhere more hands indulge you in a neck and back massage that uncovers knots that even a naval periscope couldn’t detect. The power of these hands, combined, is greater than Midas himself, cultivating and setting free a creation of papilionaceous genius, yet oblivious to the magic of time reversal that they are conjuring.

(The nettle tea, however, I might just have to pass on 2^nd time around, but I’m sure it has cleansed me so much that I have probably earned a second ticket for entry at the pearly gates).

But, as I closed the door on my Oz Kingdom, and stepped back to the smoky hustle and bustle of the metro mayhem, I did so with more karma than I had first left it. And protected from the smog in my private bubble of scented oxygen…I wondered, how is it possible to be surrounded by so much but really feel like 1 in a 1.6 million...

'Til next time, Pandora

Can faking it really give you satisfaction?

Eat-Pray-Love is most definitely the topical mantra of the moment, but whilst it may very well represent the spiritual milestones to reach your inner sanctum, in an age of conspicuous consumption, the real journey to find life’s utopia has inevitably become a search for the Holy Grail, with an emphasis on the pleasure of the ‘...ohhhh’.

We have all been there – the magnetic force of the first attraction, the love affair from afar, the lust that turns to obsession, the build up of uncontrollable desire, and,  just as you reach the climatic moment of pure ecstasy .......you have to make the ultimate decision…do I fake it and pretend its great, or go the extra mile and find the true pleasure?

The toss-up for multiple pleasure is a no brainer for me – indeed, the very thought of having a premature e-transaction is a fraud onto itself, a cardinal sin of the Holy Grail of Haute-Couture.

For others, however, it seems the value of authenticity is becoming a diminishing currency, if not fully evolving into one of grand fauxthenticity. 

We may be living in a material world but, in the face of today’s economic down turn, it would appear the pot of gold at the end of the fashion rainbow is in fact gold-plated.

Are we in entering a new crisis where the Recessionista has turned Fauxinista, her Haute-Couture tragically now Cut-Price?

I have no doubt that there are certain times when faking it is not in fact a faux-pas, but when it comes to the teachings of the Fashion Gods, there are some things that should be kept sacred – Dior is not a discount, you never barter for Balenciaga and, quite frankly, Chanel is not meant to be cheap.

The econonists are clear - you need to speculate to accumulate. The chic-onomists will advise that investment today means vintage tomorrow. So, if you insist on trying to make a quick savings, are you really prepared to be that person who carries a Flouis Fluitton?

'Til next time, Pandora

Mile High Club Membership – Sex Symbol or Status Symbol?

Ever since I watched Snakes on a Plane I have to say the entire concept of the infamous Mile High Club has lost its intrigue somewhat. Let’s be honest, it is inarguably a challenge in itself to simply maintain your balance and manoeuvre the bathroom basics in the 4x4 square footage of the powder room in the skies, never mind trying to combine it with a journey to the stars. Even getting in the bathroom door requires the basic agility of a gymnast, so anything involving double occupancy undoubtedly calls for the skills of extreme contortionism. What’s more, with the risks of DVT at high altitude, the prospect of embarking on a mile-high cramped encounter with an anaconda is not quite my idea of a pleasure ride.

For those of us with a regular 9-5 in the skies it is the comfort and convenience of our take-off and landings that is much more important and which has diverted our mile high obsession to the elitist clubs of the frequent flyer.

Many a wry smile and smirk will have identified with the George Clooney character ‘Up in the Air’ , as he compares the perks of each individual wallet-sized aviation treasure - our gold and platinum membership cards are as coveted as our corporate American Express, fast-track check-in and security as essential as a Swiss timepiece for the military-tuned office to air scheduling, and the quietude of the executive lounge is a must-have zen, removed from the holiday-making masses.

For the frequent flyer our home is our cabin, as opposed to our castle. A-la-carte dining is simply a choice of chicken or beef (usually with noodles) and the closest we make it to pillow talk is ‘please fasten your seat-belt’.  So, faced with living from a wardrobe on wheels and sleeping in a different bed every night (alone) isn't it understandable that we hold a secret sky-high snobbery for in-flight personalised service of a different nature?

Leg-room, reclining chairs, porcelain coffee cups, real knives and forks - simple yet luxurious essentials when the alternative is the no-frills attack of the departure lounge mafia, made up of  the one time holiday makers who will undeniably have a crateful of liquids and gels in every pocket and insist on not taking off their shoes until at least a 10 person queue has formed behind them at security. THAT, trip after trip, is enough to send anyone out a plane, without a parachute.

However, for those of you who have created your own in-flight entertainment whilst on-board, wear your mile-high badge with pride, and well done for keeping the myth alive. For everyone else in the queue for the loo, you now know the real reason for the turbulence....

‘Til next time, Pandora

The F-Word finds the G-Spot...

Today my attention and thoughts have been drawn to the millennium makeover of the modern man. As time has elapsed over the years there has been a quiet awakening from male hibernation that has brought about the gradual change from caveman to cool, builder to buff, grunge to groomed. But just as our couch potatoes have started the trade-in for a plush new chaise longue, I wonder if simply being metrosexual is no longer enough?

The basic F-undamentals of the male are changing. Role reversal has gone to the next level – as Nineties Girl Power has broken the female shackles from the kitchen stove, the Noughties have seen the wooden spoon baton pass to our boys.

The Metrosexual has been overtaken by the Gastrosexual - the latest foodimentary man-skill to purvey passion to the palate through his culinary cunningness (…..not to be said too quickly if on your 2^nd glass of Pinot Grigio).

Discovering this g-spot has benefited us all, both in and out of the kitchen. There simply isn’t anything better than a man who can dress the perfect salad and season the perfect sauce and, lets be honest, after a hard day’s work at the office is there anything more rewarding than to know that your man can prepare the perfect meat and two veg for dinner?  

What has been a small step for gastronaut legends such as Ramsay and Pierre-White, has been a giant leap for the rest of mankind, and one to most definitely ‘go large’.

Whilst there is a mastery, however, to guaranteeing a Michelin Star service of such gastrogasmic delights, I wonder ...is it reserved only for the kitchen or is it a case that the true masters either have it or they don’t? The secret recipe to whet our appetites - the art of massaging the plumpest, ripest tomatoes on the vine, adding just enough oil to keep the pan perfectly hot for the most succulent of meat, bringing it all to the boil and keeping it simmering before finally serving al dente. (....we are talking perfect spaghetti bolognese, yeah?)

So, as we prepare to stand more and more heat from the kitchen, perhaps there is only question to be asked….Anyone for dessert?

 ‘Til next time, Pandora

Social Notworking - Blag meets Blog…

Humour me for a brief moment whilst I FACT you….

…today there are more people globally accessing the internet from their cell phone than from a computer. Pretty compelling if you think about it. So bar you live in an igloo, you’re climbing Mount Everest or you have joined some form of wild jungle tribe, you can pretty much be sure to ride the super information highway whatever.wherever.whenever you, well….wishever!

Put simply, wi-fi has sent us sci-fi. 

Life on earth is now a life in the ether. Friending through Facebook can grow your little black net-book faster than Hayley’s Comet can hit our dot.com, so it is little wonder that our free-time has rapidly morphed to me-time, as we abandon the art of talk for an addiction to text.  

The concept of personal space has become as rapidly jurassic as a Nintendo 64. We carry ‘content’ rather than conversation.  So, as I share my lunchtime bandwidth with a complete stranger, I wonder... are we so powered by a world of efficiency and technology that we are in fact evolving into a new-age Gattaca, a super-breed of multi-taskers?

The cull of the smoke-room has killed the whispering of office gossip in the workplace, in fact you could almost hear a pin drop during new millennium elevenses. That is, of course, if it wasn’t for the crescendo of pocket-sized polyphonic ringtones telling us ‘you have mail’.

No - the truth of today's hardworker.com is nothing but smoke and mirrors. The office blagger has metamorphosed to rogue blogger, a nation of dextrous texters that can foil the eagle eye of any class room teacher or office manager, capable of downloading more updates through a 15 minute chatroom than was ever possible in a 15 minute secret smoke in the bathroom.

Life after-work is equally as promiscuous. 2 is no longer company, and 3 is no longer a crowd – social networking has us connected virtually in crowds of double and triple figures, faster than you can say logmein. A rendez-vous can turn photo in an instant - shared, liked, commented and tweeted before the physical conversation back on terra firma has barely even started.

Life on-the-go has transported us into a virtual world of bandwidth-bootleggers, moonlighting on the payroll hour to keep up to speed with a life that is moving faster than time itself. If the virtual clock keeps ticking so quickly, how long will it be before the real life turns TIVO, our lives pre-programmed with the function to stop, rewind and replay?

‘Til next time, Pandora

Sliding Doors….is getting the next train better late than never?

We’ve all seen the movie - Gwyneth Paltrow’s cinematic moment of truth where love and life hinges on whether or not she catches a train. In the Gwyneth version, she steps into a parallel universe with the luxury of seeing how her decisions affect her life, whether she catches or misses the train. For the rest of us, well they say hindsight is a wonderful thing, and our choices make us who we are.

In a whirl-wind week of networking and socialising I have rubbed shoulders with all walks of life, all with different train stories. It’s funny how keen strangers are to reveal their life and times and the many trains that have been caught and missed, tickets lost, tickets re-found. And it has made me wonder, does the journey we start out on in the morning have a pre-defined destination, or can the train we choose actually shape where we will go?

Clambering for the back are those that don’t even care if they make the train or not. The young and restless, with no consequence to worry about on the decisions they make and with a rock ‘n roll carelessness that is a pre-requisite for starting out on life’s journey - armed with student rail card and entrapped with the excitement of the euro-pass to discover and blunder at every stop along the way.

The trendy singletons, standing on the same Gwyneth platform, typical dot.com in attitude, the world is their oyster with one eye on the dream of the first class carriage and the other on the next stop please. The singletons are on the party train, usually sleepy eyed and on the first one out on the morning, usually from someone else’s neighbourhood station, rarely the same station one weekend to the next.

Already armed with the newspaper and coffee (travel mug, from home) and standing just before the yellow line is the 2.4 regular, owner of the obligatory value travel card. Fed up with the days of missing trains, they work to a disciplined routine and make sure they are on the platform 15 minutes early for the train that is guaranteed a seat.

However what has surprised me most, perhaps naïvely, is the number of people who are no longer on the Gwyneth platform, but have taken the train and are living in one or other avenue of the Gwyneth parallels - The next train lifeline that has taken them on a diversion or found a new destination, or searching their pockets for the lost ticket that lets them on the regular train that might be less exciting but reliable.

Personally, I shall stick to cabs - my rules and my journey. But the next time you wait by the platform, think before you catch the train, about where and what you really want to get reach...

‘Til next time, Pandora

Licence to Thrill…..or Mission Impossible?

Like every girl, I am a coveted collector of corsetry. A proud owner of a top drawer filled with frill overspill. So it was passion-perfect that this evening I had the pleasure of exploring the lacy intimacy of what is deemed to be the Aristocracy of naughty but nice (with an emphasis on the naughty), at the launch of London’s newest Agent Provocateur.

An event at Provocateur is exactly that, designed to arouse as you browse. So, as an accolade to all lovers of the under-cover, I am inspired by the underwired and ask the eternal question, Does Size Really Matter?

If good things come in small packages, then great things come wrapped in tissue and tied with a large satin ribbon. But controversially, for a gift that is designed to hit the g-spot, just how is it that the female fancy comes ready to wear, whereas the male attempt to choose his filly's frillies unreservedly requires a returns receipt?

One would assume that with such attention to detail on the female form, our men’s anatomical alphabet would fully understand A to Double D. Unfortunately for as long as he continues to measure cup size by the handful he is destined for illiteracy and, when it comes to lingerie, our boys seem to have very large hands!

Furthermore, the said ‘browsing’ habits of our gift-giving males further digress as the 'browse' moves from basque to burlesque. Subconsciously romantic turns to erotic and the result is a gift box of body dysmorphia, most commonly unwrapping the smallest of smalls and a top that even Pamela Anderson would struggle to fill. This woman is not in your bed, she is in your head!

By comparison, if (heaven forbid) we followed the same thought process the simple boxer shorts would probably need to come with a prescription of Viagra…but then again, size doesn't matter....does it?

What leaves me most perplexed by the opposite sex, however, is the speed at which male titillation can turn timid when it comes to buying lingerie. The simple buying of a bra can become the enactment of a secret mission – Objective: find-pay-leave as quickly as possible. Challenge: no human intervention, categorically no questions. Success: dignity intact, shame averted, embarrassment nil.

Somehow however 007 charm is overtaken by panic, licence to thrill turns to spill, mission impossible is now most definitely the art of the possible. 

To be so keen to undress to impress, I remain uncertain - What is it that causes our men’s boudoir bravado to be shaken and not stirred when faced with the licence to buy lingerie?

‘Til next time, Pandora

A man walks into a bar....

Human Nature, by default, drives us all to make a first impression about people, regardless of whether we intend to do it and regardless as to whether it is fair reflection of the person involved. Let's face it, how many of our close encounters are really of the third kind, or if we're honest, how many are very much of the carefully selected and deselected first kind? That ‘walk in the bar’ moment. The first handshake of a job interview moment. The clothes, hair, smile and scent moment. All or any of the superficial decision moments that categorise the X-factor from the definitely Not U-factor.

In a world that is increasingly overloaded with consumerism are we increasingly more conditioned to buy brand and to love the label more than the contents? First impressions count – our merchandising and promotion is vital if don’t want to reach our sell-by date.

Economists and socialists are calling it Erotic Capital – investing in our appearance as a success factor for success itself. Women have been doing it for years. A Saturday night out starts from Saturday morning between salons and shops, cultivating the perfect specimen venus-fly-trap. The importance of appearance in the workplace determines professionalism and drive - effort in self reflects effort in the job. But there is no denying that if we feel good about ourselves our confidence, and often our ability, improves as a direct result.

By comparison, the stereo-typical Triple-S male routine is no longer enough (the fact is, it wasn’t really ever enough…). We expect our boys to do more than a quick Febreze shower. Grooming is not a chink in the male ego-armour, it is a medal of honour. The scent of a man can decide whether or not we wish to invest in his erotic capital at all.

It is a known fact that good lenses can be irreversibly damaged by bad frames - the truth is we judge, and we are judged. What’s inside may count, but it only really counts if you can be bothered to take off the wrapper...  

So, as we join the battle of the super-brands, is it our packaging that determines the length of our shelf life, or whether we will be simply left on the shelf?

‘Til next time, Pandora