HOW THE EXAM WORKS:

- You get 120 minutes to finish 120 questions.
- You need 85% to pass, which means you can’t get more than 18 questions wrong.
- You can leave questions unanswered or marked and come back to them later.
- Don’t plan to keep other tabs and windows open while you take this exam. Google makes you download an application that prevents you from doing anything else.

HOW YOU SHOULD STUDY, AND SPECIFIC TOPICS THAT MIGHT BE HARD:

- Make sure you go over everything in the learning center, specifically the area dedicated to the Google Advertising Fundamentals Exam. Definitely go through all the e-learnings; the way they’re designed makes the information a lot easier to digest and remember than simply reading blocks of text.

- Know what’s allowed and what’s not. Study the policies, the requirements for ad text, the format guidelines. Don’t just skim these things; Google asks very specific questions.

- Spend time clicking around and exploring the Google Adwords My Client Center. Google asks things along the lines of, “To ____, you must go to the ____ under the ____ tab.” You really need to know the organization, the tabs, and what happens in each of them.

- Don’t just know the rules and guidelines; make sure you understand them enough to think through a lot of hypothetical scenarios. The e-learnings have some pretty good examples of these. (Click here for an example of an e-learning containing quizzes that are very similar to some test questions. Click on #6 and #9 in the links on the left.)

- I guess following the example I posted in that last tip, you should know the rules for language and location targeting. Those details get a little tricky.

- Definitely make sure you can clearly differentiate between keyword targeting (on the Search Network) and placement targeting (on the Content network).  Google asks a lot of questions back and forth between these to try to trip you up.

SOME MORE GENERAL ADDENDUMS:

Be sure to read the questions carefully. The most subtle differences in the wording of a question can result in a drastically different answer. To make your life easier, I would outline a study sheet and print it out for reference beside you. If you want you might choose to set up another computer to search for information on, but don’t plan to have lots of time to look up questions.  You should know the material and leave the option of looking things up as a backup.  Otherwise your chances of failing are pretty high.

If you create a longer and more detailed document for yourself that you leave up on the second computer, you could simply use the Find function to locate things quickly by searching for specific words or phrases. In my document I kept information like very specific ad formatting guidelines, and it came in handy. There is definitely information that you’re tested on that’s impossible to completely memorize, especially if you’re asked to be certified within two weeks (as a lot of companies seem to require these days).

That’s all I can think of for now. I’ll edit this list as more comes to mind.

INGREDIENTS:

- cooking olive oil (my recommendation: O&CO.’s Mantinea & Avia)
- 2 cups chopped onions
- 1 cup chopped carrots
- 7-8 cups water
- 15 oz can of crushed tomatoes
- 2.5 cups of dry split red lentils
- 0.5 cup grated ginger (or less, depending on how much you like ginger)
- 1 cup soup greens
- 1 vegetable bouillon cube
- the juice of 3 or 4 lemons
- 1 tbsp garlic powder
- 2 tsp cumin
- 2 tsp chili powder
- vinegar (my recommendation: O&CO.’s Purple Basil Vinegar)
- finishing olive oil (my recommendation: O&CO.’s Basil Olive Oil)
- fresh ground black pepper
- salt to taste

(I was lame and forgot to buy regular carrots, so today I’m using baby carrots instead.)

DIRECTIONS:

1. Heat up a bit of cooking olive oil over medium heat in a pot large enough to hold all the soup you want to make.  Add the onions and carrots, and stir them around until the onions are soft. (If you prefer fresh chopped garlic to garlic powder, this would be where you should add that in. You can also add a bit of dried basil at this point if you feel like it.) Let all this cook together for a couple of minutes!

2. Add water to the pot and turn up the heat. Stir in the crushed tomatoes, lentils, grated ginger, soup greens, and bouillon cube. Bring all this to a boil. Then reduce heat and let it simmer for forty minutes.

3. Add lemon juice, cumin, garlic powder, chili powder. Simmer for another ten minutes. (Add water if the soup is getting too thick.)

4. Add purple basil vinegar, a drizzle of basil olive oil, salt, and freshly ground black pepper to taste! (Note: depending on my mood, I might switch up the finishing oil I use here. This time it’s basil, but other times I like to play around with O&CO.’s chili oil or green lemon oil, or even just one of their spicier New Harvest olive oils!)

All this makes, as my boyfriend would say, hella servings. Hella = around 12 very thick servings, I would estimate. I usually make a giant pot of soup all at once like this so that Loren and I have ready-to-eat lunch for a week or so. (At least, that’s always the plan. He typically ends up devouring all of it in just a couple of days.)

You can of course cut down on the quantity of these ingredients if you only want to make a few servings at a time. Also, I like my soups nice and thick, so I tend to make them with an overwhelming proportion of solid ingredients.  I’ve discovered that with lentil soup especially, the proportions of everything can be adjusted however you like, so feel free to experiment!

(Another note: I actually felt that the ginger flavor didn’t come through enough in the soup I made today.  Perhaps the flavor was boiled to death.  Next time I’m going to try sautéeing the ginger separately and then adding it to the soup closer to the end!)

And the final result:

Now all that’s left is to eat and enjoy!

Anyway. Loren and I spent a lot of time debating what we should do this year. After much indecision and procrastination, we decided at almost the last minute that we wanted to spend this Valentine’s Day (and coincidentally, Chinese New Year) up in Montpelier, Vermont. It was frigid, it was snowy…but it was also gorgeous and amazingly fun. We rented a car (a shiny black Volkswagen Beetle!) and drove all around.  On Sunday Loren surprised me by slipping a heart-shaped box of chocolates into my bag before I woke up. So adorable! (And, of course, delicious.)

A dozen random photographs from our trip, in no specific order:

A list of places we especially enjoyed, for anyone thinking about venturing up there:
- Vermont Historical Society
- Morse Farm Maple Sugarworks & Cross-Country Skiing
- Cold Hollow Cider Mill
- Bear Pond Books
- Rivendell Books
- Samosa Man
- Coffee Corner
- The Skinny Pancake (we ate there three times in two days — it was that good)

We thought it was a pretty good itinerary for a fun weekend trip.

And equally necessary — a list of the yummy things we purchased:
- Grade A Dark Amber Maple Syrup (Morse Farm Maple Sugarworks)
- Pure Maple Cream (Morse Farm Maple Sugarworks)
- Pure Vermont Honey (Butternut Mountain Farm)
- Maple Apple Sauce (Cold Hollow Cider Mill)
- Peach Butter (Hidden Orchard Farms)
- Pumpkin Butter (Hidden Orchard Farms)
- Berry Berry Rhubarb Conserve (Vermont Harvest)
- Pure Maple Candy (Morse Farm Maple Sugarworks)

Scrumptious is an understatement! I really can’t wait to dig into some of these jars…the maple cream is probably my favorite.

Aside from all that, happy Year of the Tiger!

Currently, my friend Sanyo, who I met during my 2008 spring semester abroad in Shanghai, is visiting New York City all the way from Southern California. For my birthday last year he gave me a Hagi-yaki tea bowl made by Seigan Deishi, a famous ceramicist:

Hagi-yaki is a type of Japanese pottery that’s made with some weird glaze, and what makes it cool is that every piece is one-of-a-kind, and apparently only 15 out of 100 of these actually survive when they’re baked in the kiln. These pieces change color over time as they’re filled with tea again and again, so the alteration adds to their uniqueness.

When he came to visit this time, he gifted me with a late Christmas present of yet another Hagi-yaki, which I’m even more in love with:

Another picture of them side by side for comparison’s sake:

And another late Christmas present I received was a Chai tea kit from my friend Althea. She found the kit on Etsy (and if you yet haven’t realized how in love with Etsy I am, read my second to last post.)

It’s the cutest idea ever! It comes with six little containers, each holding a different ingredient: Earl Grey tea, cardamom tea, whole cloves, Ceylon cinnamon, whole cardamom, and star anise. There’s also a little scrolled up card inside with detailed instructions on how to make this delicious chai tea from scratch.

I myself also gifted a couple of tea sets this past holiday season. I gave my boyfriend Loren this lovely blue celadon gaiwan:

I gave Sanyo this gorgeous painted plum blossom set:

And while we’re on the subject of all things related to tea, I might as well talk about my current favorites. I will of course forever be partial to Asian teas just because I was raised on them. My parents religiously drink this Dong Ding Oolong tea from Taiwan, and I must confess to being pretty addicted myself. As far as non-Asian teas go, I really love this British Breakfast Black Tea that Loren bought for me as a Happy-First-Day-Of-Work present.

And a close-up on the Oolong:

Yum!

I remember most of these pretty vividly.

The first day of Kindergarten, when I had to say goodbye to my parents and venture onto that big yellow school bus alone, and I got off at the wrong stop and had no idea what to do except cry, clutching against my chest an unopened box of tissues, my contribution to the classroom.

I remember my first piano recital, when I was too young to understand what nervousness was, and I loved my new dress and the matching barrettes my mother put in my hair, and I was exhilarated by the audience and my fingers jumped way too high in the air as I pounded out “Pop Goes The Weasel.”

There was the first time I went in for a job interview, and the uncomfortable black suit I wore despite the heat, and the awkwardness that shrouded me as I tried to appear confident, answering questions that I desperately wished I could have predicted and prepared for.

And one memory most clear in my mind is the first time I went to live abroad, when I left my family and friends behind so I could go explore Shanghai and make a new home for myself, so I could find a new independence and strength in that metropolitan jungle.

Sometimes these firsts are pretty amazing.  You have no idea what to expect and you find yourself pleasantly surprised.  Other times these firsts are pretty damn awful.  Maybe you build up expectations when you have no precedents to benchmark against and you end up really disappointed.

Yeah, life is filled to the brim with firsts.  But what’s important for us to remember is: no matter how good or bad these firsts are, there will always be what comes next.

Not to mention, these accessories are usually decorated with brand names, huge and bolded. And I don’t mean fashion-statement brand names like Louis Vuitton or Gucci. My camera came with an ugly strap that has “CANON” plastered across it in thick white letters. Yeah, you know the one I’m talking about. Are there really so few women in the photography world that companies don’t see trendy camera accessories as an untapped market with great potential? Hmph. I refuse to believe it.

All I can say is: THANK GOODNESS FOR ETSY. On Etsy you will find a large variety of cute camera strap covers, handmade to fit whatever you’re using. Here are some by SillyJilllyBoutique, who I believe offers the cheapest ones (and in the greatest variety of funky prints). The first two are the ones I absolutely adore most:

And a couple lovely ones by HowardAvenue:

On Etsy you will find LENS COZIES — whoever dreamed up that we would need these? Of course we don’t actually need them…but we’re women. We want them. We will always be able to rationalize a need for these things.

By Sarah Goldschadt (Goldylocks):

Okay, I admit, maybe these animal ones are slightly on the weird side. It’s definitely my honey bee obsession that makes me partial to the crocheted bee cozy. But check out the ones below!

By GypsyRoseHandbags:

By TracyJoy:

But here is the must-have accessory that has me OBSESSED. On Etsy you will find these GORGEOUS, GORGEOUS CAMERA GEAR BAGS. By Ketti Handbags:

The woman who makes these even saves you the trouble of thinking up a rationale: “Who wants to be toting around a giant camera bag that screams ‘I’m full of expensive gear?’ Not me.”

Me neither! Plus, why should we have to compromise fashion for photography? Swear to god, I will be purchasing one of these the moment I have the discretionary income for it. Or I’ll beg for one for my birthday. Whichever comes first.

A couple of other ones I love…

By GypsyRoseHandbags:

By JanineKingDesigns:

On a side note, I can’t wait for the day that Etsy makes it possible for people to purchase generic, Etsy-wide gift cards. It’ll be the best day of my life. Well, not really. But close enough.

I get that Diesel has always been into this idea of challenging its consumers to be bold and confident…but stupid? When has stupid ever been something we want to aspire to be? It felt like a stretch for Diesel to try to convince its target market that putting yourself in idiotic situations is stupid but cool. The humor in most of the outdoor advertisements I saw was more on the slapstick side and not so much in the realm of witty and amusing, where I think it would have done better.

I found myself shaking my head at nearly every one of these posters I walked past, and I couldn’t resist googling the campaign to see how well it was doing. It wasn’t until I went on the Diesel website that I came across the video the BE STUPID campaign is centered around:

Now this video, aside from being too text heavy, actually makes for a pretty decent campaign. It succeeds in getting the message across: we can’t be afraid of being or looking stupid…we have to just go for it. It’s along the lines of what Diesel has always tried to emphasize: to be less inhibited and live for the thrill and excitement of life.

What does make this campaign really stupid is the fact that this whole extra layer of meaning is lost when they try to cram the entire concept into just a few lines of text on top of a lame picture. I feel like Diesel is almost trying to imitate Dentyne Ice’s “Make Face Time” campaign.  I thought “Make Face Time” was pretty brilliant, though ultimately it got stopped because it didn’t really increase sales. The point is, at least Dentyne Ice successfully created something poignant and meaningful that made me pause and think for a moment…whereas Diesel just made me raise my eyebrows.

However, Diesel does have a few ads that do a decent job of capturing the idea:

But for some reason, I haven’t seen any of those around the subway lines I frequent. I found them only when I clicked through the campaign on the Diesel website. The three I posted first, the extra stupid ones? I’ve seen them all over the place, over and over again. Where do they put the posters that are actually good, and why didn’t the crappy versions get cut?  I understand the advantages of having more variety in a series of ads, but seriously, Diesel? You would probably make a much better impression if you at least dropped the stupid ones.